DUBYA NEWS
DUBYA NEWS
dubya news stories archive
newest stories listed first
links to some news stories may have already expired
as of march 27, 2006
The Top 10 Conservative Idiots (No. 238)
but i went to yale... i is smart!
It's spring again, which could only mean one thing: Open season on conservative idiocy! The liberal blogosphere bagged another trophy last week, this time in the form of Ben Domenech, much to the shame of the Washington Post. But that's not all! Bill Frist was caught lying about the Democrats (and it was a doozy). George W. Bush faced some tough questions (not). And Ken Mehlman was a major hypocrite (as usual). Plus, we've got two, count 'em, two crazy people on the list. more...
GOP Hypocrite of the Week: John Snow
One of the key problems with the Bush/Snow model of CEOs is that even if you are a dreadful leader, you still get a ton of cash and compensation because it's assumed that if you are in such a powerful position, you deserve it. Meanwhile, the average American worker is getting shafted, that is, if his or her job hasn't already been outsourced by the CEO. more...
Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says
In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war. But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times. more...
Make the Choice. You're either on the side of those fighting for America, our future, our principles, and our Bill of Rights -- or you quiver in fear of exposing the incompetent, destructive liars. Make the Choice.
Okay, Now Bush is saying he never connected Saddam with 9/11. Since Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been the major financiers of Al-Qaeda -- and Saudi Arabia the major nation responsible for the spread of the extremist, fundamentalist Wahabi form of Islam. And since 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi and none were Iraqi. And since Osama (who Bush still hasn't caught) is Saudi.... Oh well, you get the picture. The thought that Saddam was connected to 9/11 didn't spring into people's head like a psychotic thought. No, it was firmly implanted there through a drumbeat of Bush Administration rhetoric implying the connection. Cheney is still claiming the connection! more...
45,000-strong British journalists' union praises new media in Venezuela
This resolution, submitted by the London Central branch, was seconded by journalist Ian Bruce from the BBC. He praised the new media in Venezuela in its efforts to provide an alternative viewpoint to the opposition-dominated media. The resolution went on to instruct the National Executive to build solidarity with and send messages of support to these new broadcasting bodies. Once again, British journalists have sided with the revolution in Venezuela. Hopefully this growing support will become increasingly reflected in the British media. more...
Neocons Commence World War Three
In Bushzarro world, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was first about Saddam’s illusory weapons of mass destruction, and then in lieu of actually finding any weapons the excuse shifted to altruism, a mawkish desire to bestow democracy on benighted Iraqis (who pretty much pioneered civilization 12,000 years ago as Mesopotamians and didn’t need any help from the neocons). In fact, the invasion had nothing to do with either of these things, as some of us said in late 2002, about the time the Straussian neocons began making serious noise about invading Iraq and killing thousands of people. ... According to retired Delta Force Command Sergeant Major Eric Haney, the United States has “fomented civil war in Iraq” and has “probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis…. I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies,” Haney will tell the Los Angeles Daily News tomorrow, Raw Story reports. more...
Appropriate to impeach Bush
Under the new "George Bush Constitution" it is George Bush who decides which laws, if any, he will execute. Under the new constitution it is George Bush who determines which laws are "constitutional" and which are not. Under this new constitution George Bush can make up the laws as he goes along. When questioned about the clear criminal violation by Mr. Bush of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Attorney General Gonzalez asserted that George Bush was not bound by that law or any other laws. As an accommodation, the Bush government would listen to "suggestions" from the Congress. more...
Retraining Laid-Off Workers, but for What?
More than 45 percent of the nation's workers, whatever their skills, earned less than $13.25 an hour in 2004, or $27,600 a year for a full-time worker. That is roughly the income that a family of four must have in many parts of the country to maintain a standard of living minimally above the poverty level. Surely lack of skill and education does not hold down the wages of nearly half the work force. Something quite different seems to be true: the oversupply of skilled workers is driving people into jobs beneath their skills and driving down the pay of jobs equal to their skills. ... The federal funds for training fell far short of the demand. The only way to stretch the money was to put up obstacles. Even then, most of the people who did complete the program could not find jobs at anywhere near their old pay. The process was like a funnel: wide at one end, where all the laid-off workers go in, and narrow at the other, where a limited number gradually emerge into retraining and, if they are lucky, new jobs at decent pay. Mark A. Crouch, a professor of labor studies at Indiana University, used another analogy to describe the recycling of laid-off workers. He called it a "burial program." more...
The “Noble Cause” that killed Casey Sheehan
So, what’s the Bush plan? Well, what you see is what you get. The major corporations have already loaded the boats, shifted the jobs, and drained every farthing from the public till. The Bush team has set up NorthCom (Northern Command) inside the country to deal with any needless unruliness on the part of the masses once they discover the country is dead broke; and the Federal Reserve has cobbled together a dollar-system that allows them to print worthless script in exchange for the wealth and resources of foreign nations. This allows Bush’s parasitic-class of bankers, oil magnates, and defense contractors to live large on the sweat and labor of the poorest workers on earth. Sounds like a plan. This is why we fight; to defend this system of calculated theft. This is the "noble cause" behind the war in Iraq; to preserve the global extortion-racket we call "dollar hegemony". Now, someone please tell Cindy Sheehan that’s why her son died. more...
Washington Post's left-baiting blogger is fired for plagiarism
A former Bush administration aide has resigned from his new role as a blogger for the Washington Post after evidence emerged that much of his previous journalistic work had been the result of plagiarism. Ben Domenech, 24, had been hired by the newspaper to write what he described as "a blog for the majority of Americans" - enraging some liberals who took it to mean the Post had accepted rightwing claims that its coverage is biased to the left and, therefore, in need of balancing. ... Critics of Mr Domenech first objected because of a posting he had made on another blog, RedState.com, calling the late Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King's wife, a communist. Then they uncovered long passages apparently lifted from the work of others - first in his student newspaper, and then in other publications. One movie review contained a passage identical to one in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, while another article lifted sentences wholesale from PJ O'Rourke's book, Modern Manners. more...
Iraq’s Militia Problem: Go Blame Iran
Get ready for a sustained propaganda campaign against Iran that will rival the one used against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. “Like a roomful of Energizer bunnies,” writes Andrew I. Killgore, the neocons “just keep going and going and going,” marching with determination toward conflict with “axis of evil” Iran, the next target on the neocon hit list. Zalmay Khalilzad is in essence announcing a new sustained propaganda campaign against Iran as the Straussian neocons prepare to sabotage any “talks” with Iran over “how to stabilize neighboring Iraq,” billed as “high-level meetings,” according to the Associated Press, approved by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. more...
Neocons: Russia in Cahoots with Saddam
It is no secret the Straussian neocons are miffed over Putin’s treatment of the billionaire Russian Oligarchs, a cabal of fraudsters and embezzlers connected to the Russian Mafia. In fact the Oligarchs are at the heart of the neocon animosity toward Russia and Vladimir Putin, who is no push-over like the drunkard Boris Yeltsin. ... However, in Bushzarro world, evidence is not required, as large numbers of clueless Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had something to do with nine eleven and traipsed with Osama bin Laden. Now they will be told the back-stabbing Putin connived with Saddam Hussein, a rather suspiciously timed accusation in light of Russia’s meddlesome role in deflecting the neocon set-up of Iran. more...
O'Reilly claimed Hillary Clinton supports "things most Christians do not," then dismissed example of GOP support for death penalty
Bill O'Reilly falsely claimed that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) supports "things most Christians do not, i.e., partial birth abortion." In fact, Clinton has consistently said she would support a ban on late-term abortions so long as there were exceptions to protect the health and life of the pregnant woman. more...
Please help Clint Curtis
Curtis was himself a life-long Republican. He designed the prototype in good faith, assuming its source code would easily reveal any fraud and taking Feeney at face value that the program would be used for political research only. After a protracted legal struggle ended with a court’s ruling that source code inside an electronic voting machine is proprietary to the company that manufactured the machine (these companies all have close ties to the Republican party, as we know), Clint Curtis realized what had really happened in October 2000… he had unwittingly enabled election fraud in Florida. Hanging chads hadn’t determined the election, widespread vote flipping had instead. more...
U.S. in Iraq: In the for long haul?
While leaders on Capitol Hill debate whether or not to withdraw U.S. forces, the Bush Administration continues to build huge, impenetrable, permanent bases in Iraq. Just this month, the commander of CENTCOM refused to state unequivocally that the U.S. did not plan to have a permanent presence in Iraq. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, based out of one of Saddam's main palaces, is the largest embassy by any nation anywhere in the world, costing over a whopping $1 billion. How many buildings do you know of that cost a billion? ... It's hard for the American public, or the Iraqi citizenry for that matter, to honestly believe that we will ever truly leave Iraq and allow it to be sovereign, independent, and self-determining when our deeds suggest we're making ourselves so at home there. more...
Former DeLay Aide Got $1 Million From Non-Profit Group
A top adviser to former House Whip Tom DeLay received more than a third of all the money collected by the U.S. Family Network (USFN), a nonprofit organization the adviser created to promote a pro-family political agenda in Congress, according to the group's accounting records. DeLay's former chief of staff, Edwin A. Buckham, who helped create the group while still in DeLay's employ, and his wife, Wendy, were the principal beneficiaries of the group's $3.02 million in revenue, collecting payments totaling $1,022,729 during a five-year period ending in 2001, public and private records show. The group's revenue was drawn mostly from clients of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to its records. From an FBI subpoena for the records, it can be inferred that the bureau is exploring whether there were links between the payments and favorable legislative treatment of Abramoff's clients by DeLay's office. more...
Don Monkerud: Corruption runs deep in GOP
Republicans claim that saying their party fosters "a culture of corruption" is an exaggeration and merely politics as usual, but closer examination reveals that this Congress may indeed be the most corrupt in history. The change in Washington's culture began in 1995 with Newt Gingrich and his "Contract For America." With Tom DeLay's selection as majority whip, the GOP began the "K Street Project," which pressured trade associations and lobbying firms to hire only Republicans and to contribute to GOP campaigns if they wanted access to Congress. Since then, lobbying has grown rapidly: The number of federal lobbyists has more than doubled since 2000 to 34,750. ... How long will the corruption last and how deep will it go? The GOP is in firm control of the Supreme Court, the White House, the House and the Senate, and voting districts have been gerrymandered so few seats are expected to change hands in elections. Without a major change in voting behavior, the Republican Party is likely to remain in charge and government corruption will continue to set new records. more...
Don Rumsfeld; America’s biggest Flop ever
Donald Rumsfeld will feature prominently in the chronicle of military history. His name can be affixed to every major strategic catastrophe since the inception of the Iraq war 3 years ago. Rumsfeld now ranks among the greatest bunglers of all time. His litany of failures reads like a journeyman’s manual for military defeat, rather than a blueprint for peaceful occupation. His performance as Sec-Def makes George Armstrong Custer look like Erwin Rommel. Under Rumsfeld’s leadership the "cakewalk" war has morphed into an "unwinnable" quagmire; sucking men and resources into its vortex at an unimaginable rate. The occupation of Iraq "should have been simple" says political analyst Noam Chomsky, but under Rumsfeld’s stewardship, it has become more difficult than the Nazi occupation of France. Only in Bush-world would such manifest incompetence be lauded as achievement. "You’re doin’ a heck-of-a job, Rummy." more...
US-China trade war looms
American senators could vote this week to slap tariffs of 27.5 per cent on all Chinese goods, amid a rising clamour of protectionist anger on Capitol Hill. The sponsors of the so-called Schumer-Graham Bill were in Beijing last week - Chuck Schumer's first official trip overseas in 25 years - to press home the message that China's cheap currency gives it an unfair advantage over the Americans. Schumer, a Democrat who represents New York, and his Republican co-sponsor, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have been promised a vote on the measure by the end of March. more...
Apocalyptic president
But it is almost certain that Cleveland was the first time Bush had heard of Phillips's book. He was the visionary strategist for Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign; his 1969 book, The Emerging Republican Majority, spelled out the shift of power from the north-east to the south and south-west, which he was early to call "the sunbelt"; he grasped that southern Democrats would react to the civil-rights revolution by becoming southern Republicans; he also understood the resentments of urban ethnic Catholics towards black people on issues such as crime, school integration and jobs. But he never imagined that evangelical religion would transform the coalition he helped to fashion into something that horrifies him. more...
Haditha and My Lai: Same Killer Dynamic
Fast-forward nearly four decades: “The US military is investigating two incidents in which American soldiers killed at least 26 Iraqi civilians and then claimed that they were either guerrillas or had died in cross fire,” writes Patrick Cockburn for the UK Independent. “The growing evidence of retaliatory killings of unarmed Iraqi families, often including children, by US soldiers seemingly bent on punishing Iraqis after an attack, will spark comparisons with the massacre of Vietnamese villagers.” In fact, reports of the attack on civilians in Haditha sound disturbingly similar to the My Lai Massacre. more...
I’ve got your "GOOD NEWS" right here, pal!
George Dubya Bush has been lambasting the press for not focusing on good news in our endless "war on terror", particularly in Iraq. It’s high time we responded with some hopeful stories and became optimistic. Here are some examples of real progress I dug up just this week: more...
Is the Media Only Showing the Bad News in Iraq?
If you are looking for good news stories in a war zone, you are looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. It is like looking for virgins at the Playboy mansion -- you might find a few, but they're certainly not the majority. If you want good news stories, go to Disneyland. Not Iraq. more...
U.S. fails to collect billions in penalties for wrongdoing; many reasons why
The amount of unpaid federal fines has risen sharply in the past decade. Individuals and corporations regularly avoid large penalties for wrongdoing, sometimes through negotiations, sometimes because companies go bankrupt, sometimes because of officials' failure to keep close track of who owes what under a decentralized collection system. These are conclusions of an Associated Press examination of federal financial penalty enforcement across the nation, which also found: more...
Dubya's attacks on Chavez' brand of populism appear to have backfired...
"People have heard that there's a social transformation going on in Venezuela, they've seen a lot of Hugo Chavez in the headlines, and they want to see for themselves what's really going on," said Andrea Buffa of Global Exchange. The San Francisco human rights organization, whose Reality Tours promote understanding of international issues, has doubled its trips to Venezuela this year. Chavez, whose popularity has survived repeated challenges, has been using Venezuela's ample oil revenue to provide education, health care and development for the country's poor majority. Global Exchange has 12 two-week trips coming up in 2006, costing an average of about $1,300, not including international airfare. Tours visit literacy classes, cooperatives and media outlets, and visitors meet government ministers, lawyers and oil company officials. more...
Dixie Chicks tackle Bush backlash
Country music stars the Dixie Chicks have used their new single to hit back at people who made death threats after they criticised President George Bush. The trio caused an outcry in 2003 after singer Natalie Maines said the band were "ashamed" the US President was from their home state of Texas. more...
Burning Bush
But she is about to make one very powerful enemy: George W. Bush. Pink's new album, I'm Not Dead, contains a song called Dear Mr President, which pushes her First Amendment rights to the limit. It's an open letter to Dubya in which she imagines talking to him face to face, quizzing him about the homeless, overflowing prisons, single mothers and unemployment. more...
Red Cross, Humane Society focus of Katrina probe
On Saturday, Red Cross volunteer Jerome Nickerson Jr., a Baltimore lawyer who was asked by the Red Cross in the fall to team with another volunteer to investigate complaints of misuse of supplies and cash, said he found numerous problems in the disaster-relief operation. He said they found "rogue warehouses" filled with Red Cross supplies that they thought were being sold. Also, some disaster staffers were ordering suspiciously large volumes of such supplies as cooking oil, coffee and canned food. Red Cross volunteers were also using multiple debit cards loaded with thousands of dollars in Red Cross funds. "It was completely out of control," he said. more...
Over 1 Million Protest in Los Angeles for Immigrant Rights!
Today’s demonstration was the largest of many immigrant rights demonstrations that have taken place this month. It is an uprising from the people against the reactionary Sensenbrenner Bill that passed in the House of Representatives. The bill criminalizes immigrants and those who support them. The demonstrations began with 50,000 in Washington DC on March 7, 500,000 in Chicago on March 10 (the largest demonstration ever in Chicago history), and tens of thousands more in the last week in Milwaukee, Phoenix, Atlanta and other cities. In build up for today’s demonstrations, thousands of high school students walked out of class and marched yesterday in Los Angeles. Yesterday in Georgia, tens of thousands of immigrant workers refused to show up at their jobs in a work stoppage protesting regressive legislation passed by the Georgia State Legislature. These demonstrations reflect a tremendous upsurge in the immigrant community. more...
SAS soldier quits Army in disgust at 'illegal' American tactics in Iraq
Mr Griffin, 28, who spent two years with the SAS, said the American military’s "gung-ho and trigger happy mentality" and tactics had completely undermined any chance of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population. He added that many innocent civilians were arrested in night-time raids and interrogated by American soldiers, imprisoned in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, or handed over to the Iraqi authorities and "most probably" tortured. Mr Griffin eventually told SAS commanders at Hereford that he could not take part in a war which he regarded as "illegal". He added that he now believed that the Prime Minister and the Government had repeatedly "lied" over the war’s conduct. more...
60 Minutes joins the propaganda war
As Finer points out, the real motive behind the siege was to root out sympathizers of the Iraqi resistance. That means that the US military was simply promoting greater sectarian violence to suppress the opposition. This is a vastly different explanation than the official version of a pitched battle with Al Qaida. So, who should we believe; Jonathan Finer or 60 Minutes? We already know that the Pentagon is committed to the policies of deception and misinformation. Their unwavering support for the planting of stories in the Iraqi press further demonstrates their belief that lies are vital to their overall strategy. We must assume that the 60 Minutes fits into this paradigm of psy-ops (psychological operations) directed at the American public to shore up support for the war. more...
Documents Reveal Saddam's WMD Woes
Newly released documents seem to confirm that Iraq had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s. In transcripts from top-level Iraqi meetings dating from soon after the 1991 Gulf War to approximately 1996-97, Saddam Hussein and top aides state that they had shut down Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. "We don't have anything hidden!" Hussein interjects at one meeting. more...
Some Troops Headed Back to Iraq Are Mentally Ill
Lots of ugly things going on here. The simple and incontrovertible truth is, we don't have enough troops there, and we don't have enough troops to send. I am not returning to Iraq because of PTSD. No one should who has it, or is on medication to control it, should. No good can come of it. No service member will recover from PTSD while on a subsequent tour. They will not even just maintain stasis. But the Pentagon is doing it with smoke and mirrors, even as the SecDef and SecArmy hold press conferences to tell the American public that there are no personnel problems, no recruiting problems, no retention problems, and no PTSD problems. I have news for any one reading this: they are lying through their god-damned teeth. more...
New Orleans spurns voting rights, NAACP charges
On March 7 state Sen. Cleo Fields asked the department to deny pre-clearance for the April 22 election, saying illegal changes in voting procedures have been made. Of the city’s list of 442 voting precincts for the April 22 election, 300 in mostly Black neighborhoods have been demolished or are uninhabitable. The secretary of state has not informed registered voters where they are to vote or what the voting procedures are, though he has promised to do so. The state opened and closed the candidate qualification period without properly informing all New Orleans citizens, Fields charged. The secretary of state refuses to provide any group, individual or elected official contact information for displaced New Orleanians, said Fields. He said he has been unable to contact his displaced constituents, nor can any candidates. Displaced New Orleans voters have less than 60 days to request an absentee ballot, receive it, fill it out and mail it back. There is no procedure for displaced new voters to register. The state has refused to set up satellite voting sites outside of Louisiana. There are 10 satellite sites in Louisiana, but tens of thousands of New Orleans citizens are in Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Colorado and other states. The Metropolitan Organization, a Houston community advocacy group, says there are 45,000 New Orleans registered voters in Houston. Fields estimated that 50 percent of African American voters will be disenfranchised unless satellite sites are in place. Noting that the federal government set up satellite voting sites so that Iraqi citizens living in the U.S. could vote in the recent Iraqi election, he said the same should be done for displaced New Orleans voters. more...
Sponsor of terrorism: the United States
Imagine a group of five CIA officers dispatched to a foreign country to investigate and report on an Al Qaeda cell planning a series of major bombings in the United States, including hotel and shopping mall bombings. Then, imagine the outcry if the five CIA agents were arrested by the nation where they were assigned and hit with trumped up charges, found guilty before a kangaroo court, and sentence to life terms in prison for espionage. The United States would demand revenge and likely take military action against the host country. The harboring of terrorists was the justification used by the Bush administration to attack Afghanistan. The above scenario is exactly what occurred to five Cuban intelligence agents dispatched to Miami to report on the activities of Cuban exiled terrorists who were planning a series of terrorist bombings against foreign tourists and Cuban civilians in Cuba during the 1990s. more...
Ten Telltale Signs of GOP Disease
As a public service, here are the ten telltale signs of Republican plague: 1. You keep lying, even when it’s apparent to everyone that you’re lying: Insist that the situation in Iraq is not a civil war; Bush tax cuts are good for the economy; Republicans are fostering Democracy. Repeat things that are not only untrue, but are absurd: George W. Bush cares about civil rights. You can’t stop; you’re sick; you’re a Republican. 2. No matter how bad things get, assert that President Bush is doing a great job. Even when there are obvious screw-ups — the reaction to 9/11, the occupation of Iraq, and the response to Katrina — block all meaningful investigations, no matter how impartial. Steadfastly maintain that Dubya knows what he’s doing, even when it’s apparent to most of the public that he not only doesn’t have a plan to fix the problem, he doesn’t get that there is a problem. You’re inflexible; you’re stuck; you’re a Republican. 3. Keep repeating that the situation in Iraq is getting better. Say that you see the light at the end of the tunnel, even if there’s no light and it’s a bottomless pit. Tell Americans that Iraqis want us there and our troops believe in their mission, even when polls say that Iraqis ask us to leave and our troops want to come home. Insist that the press isn’t reporting the good news, even when the only positive stories are those planted by your toadies. You’re strident; you’re in denial; you’re a Republican. more...
March 25, 2006
The Pentagon's role as a source of media disinformation. First it was the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs, which morphed into the Office of Special Plans. Both served as conduits for neo-con propaganda spewed forth by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Heritage Foundation, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Hudson Institute, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), among others prior to the invasion of Iraq. Now the Pentagon has issued an "unclassified report" stating that in the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Russia obtained war plans and planned U.S. troop movements from “inside the American Central Command.” The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) denied the charge, stating that "similar, baseless accusations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once." more...
Stop impeach talk, Dems, and just win
The top reality: Democrats do not have the political power to back up any talk of impeachment. Instead, they should work hard to win enough seats in the House and Senate this fall to shift the political numbers and make national reform - in particular, congressional oversight of the executive - possible. ... First things first: Win. In the showdown at the polls, get the numbers needed in the House and/or the Senate. Then, and only then, will Democrats have earned the right to reset the nation's agenda, which absolutely should include presidential accountability in all matters of war and peace. more...
Immigrant rights actions impact Senate debate
Meanwhile, matters are coming to a head in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee continued its work on March 15-16. Its starting point, Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) “chairman’s mark,” a legislative draft, greatly resembled the harshly repressive Sensenbrenner bill, HR 4437, in that it lacked an effective path to legalization and citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the U.S. Specter’s draft also incorporated many of Sensenbrenner’s concepts to criminalize the undocumented and those who help them, while limiting due process for immigrants appealing government decisions about their cases. Specter’s proposal also includes an open-ended guest worker program lacking adequate labor protections. Committee Democrats are working to make the legislation less harsh. At press time, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who spoke at the Chicago rally, was fighting to eliminate “criminalization” language while Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) got at least a few Republicans to consider a legalization-to-permanent-residency program. However, Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on March 17 introduced a bill including all the repressive features of HR 4437 with no legalization path or guest worker program, but more permanent resident visas. Not to be outdone, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), head of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, issued a letter signed by 73 congresspersons supporting the Sensenbrenner-Frist approach but criticizing Frist for proposing more legal immigrants. more...
A drunken Dubya?
When Washington insiders gather over a drink or three the topic is often whether or not President George W. Bush is on or off the wagon. Bush, an admitted alcoholic who claims he quit without any self-help program, may or may not be drinking again, depending on who you talk to. more...
Yeah right, it's the media's fault that war is hell
By now, you've all seen the segments on CNN, Fox (if you watch it), and all the other major media outlets seriously debating whether reporters are giving enough coverage to the "good" parts of the Iraq war. This is just mind-boggling to me. I mean, war is kind of all about violent combat and death, right? Or am I misunderstanding something about the nature of war here? But aside from the most obvious ridiculousness of "good" war stories is the attempt at straight-faced "reporting" as news outlets respond to the accusations from Dubya and his supporters that it's the media's fault that this isn't a more popular and lovable war. How can we even take these accusations seriously when they come from the same administration that has regularly paid fake reporters to praise its policies both here and in Iraq? more...
'V' for vindicating the Wachowskis
But it does slap the politically apathetic on the wrists, reminding Americans that if we continue to allow the erosion of our civil liberties, we too may find ourselves, with or without the aid of this obvious allegory, living under a Chancellor Sutler of our own. more...
Civil rights leader Andrew Young comes under fire for doing PR work for Wal-Mart
Young took part in the pep rally in his new position as a paid corporate cheerleader for Wal-Mart – a role that has perplexed some of his longtime civil rights colleagues, who have all but accused him of going over to the enemy. Activists for the poor have long complained that Wal-Mart skimps on wages and health benefits, forces employees to work off the clock, and kills off mom-and-pop businesses. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, known as the dean of the civil rights movement, said Young – the 74-year-old former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador – is acting as a "lone wolf" in working for Wal-Mart. more...
Puzzled People
The latest allegations against another so-called "Black conservative," Claude Allen, while they are quite sad and disturbing, are also an indication of something more, something larger, something strange. We have seen the likes of Armstrong Williams, Rod Paige, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and even Colin Powell, to some extent, fall prey to the wiles of folks like Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott, and both of the Bushmen. Under Ronald, "Let 'em eat ketchup" Reagan, there was Samuel Pierce, the lone Black face in the cabinet and the guy whose name Reagan even forgot at a public function. ... What is the rationale for someone like Colin Powell to do the bidding of a dunce? What would make any Black person think Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms had their best interests in mind? Is the political lure that strong for Black folks? Will we sell our souls to be accepted in White-controlled political circles? more...
Vendetta for Dubya
I have to wonder what George Bush does for entertainment these days. I suspect he's one of those bibliophobic alpha males, like Tony Soprano, who watch the History Channel while they toil on their Stairmasters. Well, for Little Caesar's sake, I hope this is how he passes the time. Because if he strayed near a major multiplex this weekend he would have had a terrible time of it indeed. And if he'd stopped in for a quiet night in front of the idiot box, things would have been even worse. more...
FBI agents told: you can't have emails
The FBI's office in New York is supposed to be on the front line of America's defences against terrorism, but it is so strapped for cash it cannot afford email accounts for its agents, according to a news report yesterday. "As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dotgov accounts," Mark Mershon, the assistant director of the New York city office told the Daily News. more...
Veterans march to New Orleans: ‘Make levees, not war’
Army veteran Tina Garnanez, a member of the Navajo tribe from Farmington, N.M., said the devastation reminded her of the worst Iraq war zones where she spent seven months. “Our communities have been neglected just as Iraqi communities are being neglected,” she told me. “The U.S. government wrote our laws and made treaties with us that were broken. Now the U.S. writes Iraq’s laws. I will take the spirit from this experience back to my people. The reservations are like the Gulf Coast. We are devastated too.” more...
Poor still pay for water - to Coke, Pepsi and other private companies
"Water is not for sale," demonstrators chanted at the World Water Forum this week. But they couldn't be more wrong - private companies make much more money selling bottled water than they ever did developing public water systems. Companies also stand to benefit from a renewed push for big dams in the Third World. So even though just about everybody, from CEOs to aid workers, spoke out against the privatization of water, the apparent victory for anti-corporate forces may prove hollow. more...
Dubya's uncle nets $3 million from war profiteering
The LA Times is reporting today that "Uncle Bucky" William H.T. Bush, younger brother of Bush 41, has just made close to a cool $3 million from the sale of a company that profited from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Just another coincidence like Bill Frist's "non-insider trading blind trust profits" or Halliburton just happening to get record profits and no-bid contracts or Carlyle Group profiting handsomely or Karzai's coincidental connection to Unocal before being installed as puppet leader in Afghanistan.... And if that wasn't enough to make you want to throw something out the window, the company is the target of not one but two SEC investigations. more...
Losing faith in our Chief
Where does this money come from? Unfortunately, China, our rival as the top world power, is loaning us the money. Our generation will be the ones having to repay the debt to them. I've a feeling if we don't fork over the dough China will simply buy us out and turn our country into a vacation resort or something. However, it seems that some politicians are finally seeing the end of the tunnel. A recent Associated Press article states that Bush's top pundits, those who have stuck with him through the worst of his presidency, are stepping away from the sinking S.S. Dubya. Hey, if your tenure was marred by a pending Iraqi civil war and a miserly 37 percent job approval (which is the worst for any president), wouldn't you want to step off the ship that doesn't care what its people think anymore? more...
The argument for draft deferments
Despite poll numbers showing him to be less popular among Americans than O.J. Simpson was after his arrest and trial for murder, and even less popular than Uncle Joe Stalin is with Russians, Vice President Dick Cheney insists he won’t resign. ... Considering Cheney’s pivotal role in launching a disastrous war, rationalizing torture, starting an illegal wiretapping program and crafting a cataclysm-courting energy policy, it sure does seem a shame that he couldn’t have brought himself to ask Dubya for yet another draft deferment. more...
Somebody please pull the cloth out
In one fell swoop, America's cars, trucks and SUVs would get 20% better petrol mileage per gallon. Dubya could regain his lost prestige as the driving public fell upon him with astonished kisses and praise. This is an obvious move if he wants better ratings for Republicans in the upcoming mid-term elections. But somebody will have to pull the cloth out first. more...
The double standards of the United States
Last Thursday, the general assembly of the United Nations voted to set up a new human rights council, to actively promote, monitor and supervise the delivery of human rights in the member states. Only four countries voted against. The US was one. ... I think it is more serious than just ceding the moral heights. What I believe may be happening is not just a proportionate adjustment to new circumstances, but a shift in a nation's fundamental morality. The changes started with the US government and have trickled down insidiously to the people. more...
Male supremacy is not just women’s problem
The oppression of women and the male supremacist ideology that justifies it arose from and has been a part of all class-divided societies. Today it is bound up with capitalist exploitation and the drive for maximum corporate profits. Capitalism and the capitalist ruling class are the source of male supremacist ideology, not the working class and working-class men. But just like racism, the capitalist class daily injects this destructive ideology into working-class life and culture, in a variety of ways both open and subtle. It is insidious and influences both men and women. Even the most progressive-minded men, including class-conscious men, are not immune from male supremacy and often exhibit a blind spot when it comes to women’s equality. As with racism, if we are not fighting male supremacy and constantly strengthening our defenses against it, we are likely being influenced by it. more...
How the corporate right lies about union corruption
In fact, almost all of the big money associated with the $400 million figure in “labor racketeering” was committed by private industry against unions, not by union officials. But that’s how you lie with statistics. Throw around a word like “labor racketeering” while only talking about union officials and leave the impression that the crime only involves acts by unions, not acts where unions and their members are the victims. And remember, this is data from the Bush administration and with all their resources gunning to indict union leaders, most of the fish they catch are still corporate criminals. Corporate flacks can keep putting out their propaganda, but it’s ultimately hard to take K Street lobbyists seriously as they beat their chests about supposed union ethical failings. Obviously, any union illegal conduct should be rooted out, but in a world of multibillion corporate corruption, from Enron to defense contractor rip-offs of the public, unions are models of integrity, especially in comparison to many of the criminals running corporate America. more...
Minority Scholarships Going to Whites Closes Doors and Threatens America’s Future
As America’s population becomes more diverse, (by 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 50 percent of all American children will be children of color) one must question the wisdom is this sea change by academia if fewer minorities are able to attain a higher education, what will be the economic capabilities of America’s future earners? Who will become the engineers, doctors, lawyers and others able to consume America’s own goods and services and compete in our global economy. Minority scholarship and fellowship programs give minorities access to higher education exist not only to right the moral wrongs of America’s segregated past, they are America’s best economic interests. more...
Dubya and Iraq: Responses to ''Bush defends agenda, motives,'' Page One, March 21
President Bush's dishonesty at his Cleveland speech --- in answering a question about whether he ever said there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11 --- is another reason (besides his authorizing illegal spying) why I support censuring him. One has only to read Bush's 2003 State of the Union address for the truth about what he told the American people. Regardless of one's political persuasion, lying is lying and deceit is deceit. What will it take to hold Bush and others in his administration accountable? more...
Should we bring back the draft?
We have severely damaged our economy, served as a far better recruiting machine for al-Qaida than Osama could have imagined, and ruined our international standing. Yet the war goes on, and will go on. Nobody cares enough to stop it. And why is that? Simple. We don't have to go, and the children of those who really own and run this country almost never take a turn in uniform. The middle and upper classes are insulated from this war, which is being fought mostly by poor jobless white kids from places like Flint, as Fahrenheit 911 made devastatingly clear. Inner-city blacks, Hispanics, and other new immigrants are also doing their bit for democracy by being blown up by roadside bombs. But few or none of them have fathers who are congressmen or college deans, and so we ignore them. more...
AIDS leaves 9 mln African children without mothers
In 2006, if Britain, the United States and Ireland met all their pledges, there would be $412 million committed for children -- or about one quarter of the $2.1 billion needed per year. "This is best case scenario and it's not yet clear whether all of the donors will meet their commitments," a spokeswoman for Save the Children told Reuters by telephone from London. The charity addressed its appeal to the G8 wealthy nations, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Bank and the European Commission. more...
Inuit See Signs In Arctic Thaw
The global warming felt by wildlife and increasingly documented by scientists is hitting first and hardest here, in the Arctic where the Inuit people make their home. The hardy Inuit -- described by one of their leaders as "sentries for the rest of the world" -- say this winter was the worst in a series of warm winters, replete with alarms of the quickening transformation that many scientists expect will spread from the north to the rest of the globe. more...
Warning: This bill could make you sick
The House of Representatives this month passed the National Uniformity for Foods Act, a measure that would kill or cancel significant parts of 200 food-safety laws in 50 states. This ill-advised bill, supported by millions of food-industry dollars, passed without a single hearing. Now it's in the hands of the Senate. more...
Thousands say 'enough!' in nationwide war protests
In Los Angeles, Fernando Suarez del Solar, whose son was killed in Iraq, told a gathering, “My son died, and anything I do here will not bring him back … but I think I can save other children.” Suarez del Solar and Iraq war resisters are leading a 241-mile march for peace due to arrive in San Francisco March 26. Later thousands marched and rallied in Hollywood, where speakers included actor Martin Sheen and Paul Haggis, screenwriter and producer of the Oscar-winning film “Crash.” In nearby Orange County, long considered a right-wing stronghold, hundreds participated in a march and rally that participants called the county’s first large anti-Iraq war protest. more...
Hugo Chavez Delivers A Roundhouse Punch To George Dubya Bush
Chavez called Bush a donkey, an alcoholic as well a drunkard, in response to a White House report branding the leader of Venezuela a demagogue. President Bush has enough troubles on the home front, he doesn't need to pick any fights with Chavez. Venezuela supplies about 15% of U.S. crude imports; we shouldn't provoke the leader of this oil rich country. Just because Chavez is a socialist, that doesn't make him a demagogue. Chavez has excellent relations with his neighbors; if only Bush had as good relations with our European allies. Unlike Bush who lost to Al Gore and barely beat John Kerry, Chavez won an overwhelming victory in a recall referendum in 2004. The Bush administration should stop trying to destabilize the popularly elected government of Hugo Chavez. The feisty leader of Venezuela won't deliver a knockout blow to Bush, but he did bloody his nose. Bush may have given up alcohol, but he is definitely punch drunk. I hope that the calls for his impeachment will continue to grow. more...
Common knowledge is so uncommon!
A random survey carried out on thousand Americans by the McCormick Tribune Museum, a foundation that supports work in journalism, found that only 28 per cent could name more than one of the five freedoms granted by their constitution, viz freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances. On the other hand, the same number of people had little difficulty recalling names of the members of the Simpson Family, a popular cartoon series, or for that matter at least three judges on the American Idol show. more...
Spot the difference
We do not know who was responsible. The Syrians could well have been at the bottom of it, seeing as they had a lot to gain from the removal of the “troublesome” Hariri. However, other players, including the Americans, the Israelis and Lebanese factions could equally have had a hand in destabilising the evolving political situation in the region. ... So, is there going to be a UN inquiry into what happened at the prison in the West Bank town of Jericho? Why did the Anglo-American monitors unilaterally void this agreement? How soon after their withdrawal did the Israelis move in? Will Jack Straw and his boss Tony Blair be visited by a UN delegation? And what of our Dear Dr Rice and Dubya? Will they be called upon to give their penny’s worth to the (as yet non-existent) inquiry? We should be told. more...
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