|
 |
 |
|
| |
STRAIGHT TRACK
 |
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 |
BuzzFlash Recommendation
The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity
by Ambassador Joseph Wilson
Okay, for the umpteenth time, let's get this straight: In order to send a message to any Bush Cartel whistleblowers and truth tellers, Karl Rove or Scooter Libby (or both) authorized the outing of a CIA operative. But this wasn't just any CIA operative. This was a woman who specialized in tracking the illicit trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction.
11:16:40 AM
Google It!
|
|
|
Tuesday, April 27, 2004 |
On April 12th 2002 the world awoke to the news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been removed from office and had been replaced by a new interim government. What had in fact taken place was the first Latin American coup of the 21st century, and the world's first media coup...
12:00:32 AM
Google It!
|
|
|
Monday, April 26, 2004 |
Michael did a great job on these stories. What's happening with voter reg
in Minnesota is disturbing --
Barb
Every vote counts?
"Hanging chads." Inaccurate voter registration records. Thousands of eligible voters turned
away from the polls. Florida's failures during the 2000 elections drew
international attention. Such problems couldn't happen here in Minnesota.
Or could they? Groups involved in helping people register for the 2004
election say they are running into confusion around new federal
requirements -- and they say legislation passed by the Minnesota House
would make matters worse. Read Union Advocate Editor Michael Kuchta's
special report on problems posed by the new requirements -- and how they
could affect your right to vote.
http://www.workdayminnesota.org/view_article.php?id=168c23be71005732e1cc5b13dd996e9d
12:31:33 PM
Google It!
|
|
|
Sunday, April 25, 2004 |
As one brother asked, "Where's our UTU on this issue?"
BLET calls for corporate governance reform at Union Pacific
CLEVELAND, April 22 -- Roughly 19 million shares (9.5% of voting shares) were cast in support of a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) shareholder proposal at the Union Pacific Corporation’s annual shareholders meeting in Salt Lake City last week.
9:38:00 AM
Google It!
|
|
Is Military Draft in the Works?
By Andrew Greenley
The Chicago Sun Times
Friday 23 April 2004
There's a sign on the horizon, no bigger than a man's hand, that there's a military draft in the works. The Defense Department has announced that Selective Service is making preparations for another draft, "in case one is needed." The New York Times in an inane editorial pleads with the president to articulate a goal for the war that if it "was clear and comprehensive and people understood how to reach it, then Mr. Bush could . . . even bolster the desperately straitened military with a draft if Americans understood the need to sacrifice."
If the editorial writers of the New York Times are talking about a new draft that would send young men and women to die in the deserts of Iraq fighting crazy religious fanatics, then the idea is certainly being whispered about in the upper echelons of American society. A draft would not be proposed before the election -- if it were, Bush would be wiped out in a landslide. But a wise person would not bet against the draft being proposed next January.
What in the world is the Times talking about? Why should Americans sacrifice for the Iraq War? Not by the wildest stretch of the imagination can one seriously argue that the war in Iraq is to defend vital American interests. We found that there were no weapons of mass destruction there and no connection with al-Qaida or the Sept. 11 attack. The only issue seems to be whether we can impose democracy on Iraqis who don't seem seriously to want it or to prevent a civil war that will happen anyway as soon as our army leaves. Americans are supposed to accept the need to sacrifice their unwilling sons and daughters to fight for such absurd goals?
There are many authoritarian liberals who have a kind of illicit romance with the draft. Young people owe their a country a part of their lives, even their lives itself (not their own sons and daughters' lives, of course). Military service is good for you, some veterans insist. It will make a man out of a drifting late adolescent. What it will do for a young woman remains to be seen -- probably teach her how to live in a world where rape is commonplace.
Building up the army with a draft will serve only the needs of the Bush administration to "win" a war. Gen. Eric Shinseki, then-chief of staff of the Army, said that 200,000 would be needed to pacify Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld made fun of him in public. Now the Defense Department seems to be engaged in remote planning for a draft army that will be much larger.
How many men and women, it must be asked, will be required to pacify Iraq and to turn it into a freedom-loving democracy? How long will it take, how many lives must be sacrificed to protect the honor and the legacy of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and their crowd of imperialists?
Doubtless it will be argued in favor of a draft that we all must make sacrifices for a war on terrorism. It might be better if one sent men and women in their 40s to fight in a foolish, unjust, immoral, criminal war. It would be good for them. They'd have to lose weight and get back in physical condition.
Bush has made "the war on terrorism" a mantra to cover everything his administration has done. But the Iraq war has nothing to do with the war on terrorism, as we now know. It was a plan of Cheney and Rumsfeld and their coterie of "neo-conservative" intellectuals (like Paul Wolfowitz) long before they came to power. It was supposed to make the United States a major power in the Middle East; to provide a democratic alternative to the typical Arab autocracy; to give the United States control of major oil fields; to take pressure off Israel, and to establish that the United States was a superpower that could go anywhere in the world and do anything it wanted. The "war on terror" was only a pretext to implement this plan, as accounts of the early White House reaction to the Sept. 11 attack seem to indicate.
Does one have to say that none of these goals have been achieved or can be achieved?
I wonder why Sen. John Kerry sounds so much like Hubert Humphrey in his support of the continuation of the war. I hope at least he makes opposition to a new draft a major issue in the election.
12:26:51 AM
Google It!
|
|
|
Thursday, April 22, 2004 |
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVIZED
Wednesday, April 21 -- 7pm & 9pm
 A study on how big money corrupts the truth.
The Irish filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Brian, were inside the palace making a routine documentary about Chavez when the coup began. Meanwhile, a million Chavez supporters gathered in the streets outside demanding that their leader be restored. Within 48 hours, their pleas were answered and Chavez was president again. THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED offers a fascinating inside perspective on both Chavez's popularity and the way that media can bastardize the truth for political gain. Ireland, 2003, color, 74 mins, unrated.
5:08:23 PM
Google It!
|
|
|
Sunday, April 11, 2004 |
Rise of the Machines
By Conn Hallinan
April 8, 2004
Submitted to Portside
The press had lots of fun with the recent robot
debacle in the Mojave Desert. Competing for $1
million in prize money, 15 vehicles headed off on a
142-mile course through some of the most forbidding
terrain in the country. None managed to navigate even
eight miles. The robots hit fences, caught fire,
rolled over, or sat and did nothing.
However, the purpose of the event was not NASCAR for
nerds, but a coldly, calculated plan to construct a
generation of killer machines.
Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), the Mar. 13 "race" was part of the
Department of Defense's (DOE) plan to make one third of
the military's combat vehicles driverless by 2015. The
push to replace soldiers with machines is impelled by an
over extended military searching for ways to limit US
casualties, a powerful circle of arms manufactures, and
an empire-minded group of politicians addicted to
campaign contributions by defense corporations.
This "rise of the machines" is at the heart of the Bush
Administration's recent military budget. Sandwiched into
outlays for aircraft, artillery and conventional
weapons, are monies for unmanned combat aircraft, robot
tanks, submarines, and a supersonic bomber capable of
delivering six tons of bombs and missiles to anyplace on
the globe in two hours.
DARPA, the agency behind these Buck Rogers weapons
systems, has a mixed track record, somewhere between
silly and sobering. The mechanical elephant it developed
for the Vietnam War was not a keeper, and one doubts
that the robot canine for the Army, aptly dubbed "Big
Dog," will ever get off the drawing boards. But DARPA
also gave us stealth technology, the M-16 rifle, cruise
missiles, and the unmanned Predator armed with the
deadly Hellfire Missile.
It is presently deploying a carbon dioxide laser to spot
snipers in Iraq, as well as a "sonic" weapon that can
supposedly disable demonstrators at 300 yards with a
145-decibel blast of sound.
Boeing is busy testing its UCAV X-45A unmanned combat
air craft for DARPA, while Northrop Grumman is working
on a competitor, the X-47A Pegasus. DARPA has already
field-tested the A-160 Hummingbird, an unmanned chopper
for the Marines that can carry 300 pounds of missiles up
to 2,500 miles.
According to U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Penn), chair of
the House Subcommittee on Procurements, one-third of
U.S. tactical-strike aircraft will be unmanned within
the next 10 years.
Lockheed Martin and Boeing, along with Carnegie Mellon
University, are developing ground combat vehicles: the
Gladiator, the Retiarius, and the Spinner.
The military's interest is in part a function of the
Vietnam Syndrome: lots of aluminum caskets and weeping
survivors play poorly on the six o'clock news. While so
far the Bush Administration has managed to keep these
images at arms length by simply banning the media from
filming C-130s disgorging the wounded and the slain, as
casualty lists grows longer, that will get harder to do.
The lure of being able to fight a war without getting
your own people killed is a seductive one. "It is
possible that in our lifetime we will be able to run a
conflict without ever leaving the United States," Lt.
Col. David Branham told the New York Times last year.
A high tech machine war would allow the U.S. to quickly
strike over enormous distances, an important capability
in the Bush Administration's pre-emptive war strategy.
Project Falcon, under development by Lockheed Martin and
Northrop Grumman, is a case in point. While the press
has billed the recent successful test of the X-43
Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle with its scramjet as a boon to
commercial aircraft---40 minutes from Washington to
Paris---DARPA has something a good deal more sinister in
mind.
"The X-43 has everything to do with defense and very
little to do with aerospace," Paul Beaver, defense
analyst for Ashbourne Beaver Associates told the
Financial Times. "But if it can be dressed up as a
commercial aerospace program it allows NASA (National
Aeronautics and Space Administration) more access to
funding."
Such a bomber---manned or unmanned---could strike a
target anywhere on the globe within two hours. The
revolutionary scramjet can accelerate an aircraft to 10
times the speed of sound, making it virtually
invulnerable.
An inordinately large section of Bush's military budget
will end up in the coffers of the "Big Five"--- Lockheed
Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon, and General
Dynamics. But unraveling that budget is no easy task.
The budget request for fiscal 2005 is $401.7 billion, a
9.7% jump, but there are a host of programs hidden in
other budgets. For instance, the $401.7 figure doesn't
include $18.5 billion for nuclear weapons, because that
expense is tucked away in the Department of Energy
budget. Homeland Security, and related programs in
Transportation, Justice, State, and the Treasury, add
another $42.5 billion. What should also be included are
the Department of Veterans Affairs ($50.9 billion) as
well as the interest on defense related debt ($138.7
billion).
The Administration has already informed Congress that it
intends to ask for a $50 billion supplement for the war
in Iraq and Afghanistan (it got $62.6 billion last
spring and $87 billion in November).
Hit the add button, and the military budget looks more
like $702.3 billion. That's real money.
But not for the troops. The average front-line trooper
makes $16,000, the same as a Wal-Mart clerk, and
according to a study by "Nickel and Dimed" author
Barbara Ehrenreich, more than 25,000 military families
are eligible for Food Stamps. The new budget will raise
wages 3.5%, but most of that hike will go to the high
tech Air Force (9.6%), not the larger Army (1.8%).
The arms corporations are another matter. Lockheed
Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman will corner one out
of every four of those dollars.
There are other spigots besides the military budget that
pour money into the coffers of the Big Five. The big
winners in NASA's budget boost will be Boeing, Lockheed
Martin, Northrop Grumman, and TRW, all major space
contractors.
This generosity is repaid come Election Day. In the 2002
election cycle, defense firms, led by Lockheed Martin
and Northrop Grumman, poured over $16 million into
Political Action Committees (PAC) at a ratio of 65% for
Republicans and 35% for Democrats. According to the
Center for Responsive Politics, those figures appear to
be holding in the run up to the 2004 elections as well.
The collusion between politicians, the military and the
defense firms is particularly egregious in the
Administration's race to deploy an anti-ballistic
missile (ABM) system. The ABM soaked up 15 percent of
the $43.1 billion slated for weapons development in
2003---60% of which went to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and
Raytheon--- and it is getting a major boost in the new
budget.
The hemorrhaging of money by the ABM has churned up
opposition from current and former military leaders. Led
by retired Admiral William Crowe, former chair of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, 48 admirals and generals recently
urged that the Administration halt deploying the ABM and
instead divert the $53 billion slated to be spent on the
system over the next five years to protecting the
nation's ports from terrorism.
While the military budget and ancillary programs
continue to balloon, domestic spending will rise a tepid
.5 percent; the White House is highlighting its plan to
raise education spending by 3 percent, but that will
only mean a jump of $1.6 billion, less than the cost of
a single Northrop Grumman B-2 bomber.
Machines that think and kill are expensive, and very few
companies have the wherewithal to make them on the scale
needed for the US to continue its imperial reach. The
synergy between the massive companies that benefit from
empire, and their ability to fill the election coffers
of those who dream of a world more akin to the 19th than
the 21st century, is a powerful one.
Add to that a military beset by re-enlistment
difficulties, and the circle comes complete: war that is
costly but, for our side, largely bloodless-virtual war.
Bloodless war is an illusion. More than 600 U.S. solders
have died in Iraq, and thousands of others have been
wounded and maimed. No one knows how many thousands of
Iraqis have died, because, as Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell
told the New York Times, "We don't keep a list. It's
just not policy."
In his book Virtual War, historian Michael Ignatieff
asks the question: "If western nations can employ
violence with impunity, will they not be tempted to use
it more often?"
The "impunity," of course, is fantasy. Our military may
indeed be able to kill at enormous distances with its
Frankenstein killing machines. But all that means is
that civilians, not the military, become targets. Ask
the relatives of those who died in the Twin Towers, the
embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the nightclub on
Bali, and the commuter train in Spain if high tech war
has no casualties.
---
Conn Hallinan is an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus
and a provost at the University of California at Santa
Cruz
12:31:21 AM
Google It!
|
|
|
Friday, April 09, 2004 |
A crush note to the blogosphere
Newest mode of journalism has tenacity and transparency that major media lacks
|
I've got a confession to make. I've got a big-time crush. I'm talking weak-in-the-knees infatuation. But it's not Brad or Orlando or Colin or any of the cinematic hunks du jour who have set my heart aflutter. No, it's Atrios and Kos and Josh Micah Marshall and Kausfiles and Kevin Drum and Wonkette. Bloggers all. Yes, when it comes to the blogosphere, I'm a regular cyberslut. And I don't care who knows it. Bring on the fines, Michael Powell!
Arianna Huffington www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16727 |
5:50:01 PM
Google It!
|
|
(April 09, 2004 -- 01:06 AM EDT // link // print)
From a Friday Washington Post story on the degenerating situation in Iraq ...
This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.
and this ...
Bush spent the morning watching national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's televised testimony to the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, then toured his ranch with Wayne LaPierre Jr., chief executive of the National Rifle Association, and other leaders of hunting groups and gave an interview to Ladies' Home Journal. He is not scheduled to appear in public until Sunday, when he will visit nearby Fort Hood, the home base for seven soldiers recently killed in Baghdad.
Vacation gibes are usually unfair. But with the situation in Iraq so critical, shouldn't the president be at the White House? It's a full-time job, comes with a decent salary.
5:37:18 PM
Google It!
|
|
Thanks to BushWhacked we have:
Complete Coverage of the Rice Testimony By The Center for American Progress
Center for American Progress, 8 April 2004
EXCERPT:
Statement On Rice Testimony, by John Podesta
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission today established new and important facts.
Bush Administration Warned 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,' April 8, 2004
Two and a half years after 9/11, the American public learned today that President Bush received explicit warnings that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack the United States – including activities "consistent with preparations for hijacking."
Claim vs. Fact: Rice's Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission, April 8, 2004
CLAIM: "I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons." FACT: Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. There, "U.S. officials were warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner" into the summit, prompting officials to "close the airspace over Genoa and station antiaircraft guns at the city's airport."
Claim vs. Fact: Condoleezza Rice's Opening Statement, April 8, 2004
CLAIM: "We decided immediately to continue pursuing the Clinton Administration's covert action authorities and other efforts to fight the network." FACT: Newsweek reported that "In the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called 'Catcher's Mitt' to monitor al-Qaida suspects in the United States."
Responses of Condoleezza Rice in the Weeks Before Her Testimony, April 8, 2004
The president asked if Iraq was complicit. Anybody should have asked whether Iraq was complicit given our history with Iraq.
SEE ALSO:
Rice on the Stand
David Corn
The Nation, 8 April 2004
EXCERPT: Condoleezza Rice is fortunate that she only has to speak under oath when she appears before the 9/11 commission. Her much-anticipated testimony to the panel investigating the 9/11 attacks overall was predictable. She vigorously defended herself, her administration and her boss from the charge that they had not assigned the al Qaeda threat sufficient importance prior to September 11. She could not bring herself to utter what Commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator, called "the m-word"--that is, "mistake." Instead, she only would note that "America's response [to the growing al Qaeda threat] across several administrations of both parties was insufficient," and she blamed that on the general tendency of democratic societies to be slow in reacting to "gathering threats." (To prove her point, she cited the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania.) She repeatedly referred to "structural problems" that had long existed in the national security community as the primary reason for the failures--another word she did not mention once in her opening statement--that occurred on and before 9/11. As could be expected, the Republican-appointed commissioners tossed her easy questions, and the Democrats tried to zing her but were hampered by tight time restrictions. Still, the hearing produced information indicating that she and the Bush administration have not been straight with the public as they have attempted to convince America they were fully vigilant in the fight against al Qaeda prior to September 11.
SEE ALSO: Bush Told of Hijack Warning Weeks Before 9/11 (The Guardian)
LexiCondi: Decoding Rice's Self-Serving Testimony
By William Saletan
Slate, 8 April 2004
EXCERPT: Four years ago, when the Justice Department deposed Al Gore in the Clinton fund-raising scandal, I poked fun at Gore's self-serving, hypocritical redefinitions of everyday words. Today, National Security Adviser Condi Rice resorted to similar tactics in her testimony before the 9/11 commission. Here's a glossary of her terms.
12:00:58 AM
Google It!
|
|
|
Tuesday, April 06, 2004 |
Buzzflash editorial that asks the question, "Are you ready for martial law?"
Will the 2004 Election Be Called Off? Why Three Out of Four Experts Predict a Terrorist Attack by November
by Maureen Farrell
10:28:45 AM
Google It!
|
|
|
Thursday, April 01, 2004 |
BLACKWATER USA
|
|
| "Blackwater USA is comprised of five companies; Blackwater Training Center, Blackwater Target Systems, Blackwater Security Consulting, Blackwater Canine, and Blackwater Air (AWS). We have established a global presence and provide training and tactical solutions for the 21st century."
Our clients include federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Transportation, local and state entities from around the country, multi-national corporations, and friendly nations from all over the globe.
We customize and execute solutions for our clients to help keep them at the level of readiness required to meet today's law enforcement, homeland security, and defense challenges.
Any and all defense services supplied to foreign nationals will only be pursuant to proper authorization by the Department of State.
Come to Blackwater, where the professionals train."
Gary Jackson
President |
1:19:05 PM
Google It!
|
|
© Copyright 2005 The Usual Suspect.
Last update: 5/25/2005; 4:16:09 PM.
|
|
|
