Freedom and Democracy is Dying

By Robert Parry
February 25, 2006

In just this past week, conservative legend William F. Buckley Jr. and neoconservative icon Francis Fukuyama have joined the swelling ranks of Americans judging George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq a disaster.

"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed," Buckley wrote at National Review Online on Feb. 24, adding that the challenge now facing Bush and his top advisers is how to cope with the reality of that failure.

"Within their own counsels, different plans have to be made," Buckley wrote after a week of bloody sectarian violence in Iraq. "And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat."

Fukuyama, a leading neoconservative theorist, went further citing not just the disaster in Iraq but the catastrophe enveloping Bush's broader strategy of preemptive military American interventions, waged unilaterally when necessary.

"The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles," Fukuyama wrote Feb. 19 in The New York Times Magazine.

"Successful preemption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before," Fukuyama wrote.

While those Americans who always opposed the Iraq War may see this unseemly scramble of Bush's former allies as a classic case of rats deserting a sinking ship, the loss of these two prominent thinkers of the Right mark a turning point in the political battle over the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

If Bush can't hold William F. Buckley Jr. - and if even the ranks of the neocons are starting to crack - Bush may soon be confronted with a hard choice of either acknowledging his errors or tightening his authoritarian control of the United States.

Bush's foundering Iraq policy also raises the stakes in the November elections. Prospects have brightened for those who want Bush held accountable for his reckless deeds and his violation of laws, both domestic and international.

Fortune Reversal

This reversal of fortune is stunning when compared to Bush's seeming omnipotence in 2002, when he unveiled the Bush Doctrine, and even a year ago when leading U.S. pundits were hailing the President as a visionary leader.

Bush picked his belligerent course in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington. Though the world had rallied to America's side - offering both sympathy and cooperation in fighting terrorism - Bush chose to issue ultimatums.

Bush famously told other nations that they were either "with us, or you are with the terrorists." Vowing to "rid the world of evil," he made clear he would brush aside any restrictions on his actions, including the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions.

Europeans were soon protesting Bush's treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Muslims were voicing growing hatred for the United States. Though Bush's tough actions were popular with his base, they played poorly abroad.

"It annoys your allies in the war against terrorism, and it creates problems for our Muslim allies, too," one West European ambassador said in 2002. "It puts at stake the moral credibility of the war against terrorism." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Return to Unilateralism."]

Bush spelled out his broader strategy in a speech at West Point on June 1, 2002. He asserted a unilateral U.S. right to overthrow any government in the world that is deemed a threat to American security, a position so sweeping it lacked historical precedent.

"If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," Bush said in describing what soon became known as the "Bush Doctrine."

Shortly after Bush's West Point speech, an article at Consortiumnews.com observed that "Bush's grim vision is of a modern crusade,' as he once put it, with American military forces striking preemptively at evil-doers' wherever they live, while U.S. citizens live under a redefined Constitution with rights that can be suspended selectively by one man.

"Beyond the enormous sacrifices of blood, money and freedom that this plan entails, there is another problem: the strategy offers no guarantee of greater security for Americans and runs the risk of deepening the pool of hatred against the United States.

"With his cavalier tough talk, Bush continues to show no sign that he grasps how treacherous his course is, nor how much more difficult it will be if the U.S. alienates large segments of the world's population." [See "Bush's Grim Vision"]

Iraq War

On March 19, 2003, Bush took another fateful step, ordering the invasion of Iraq despite being denied authority from the U.N. Security Council.

After ousting Saddam Hussein's regime three weeks later, Bush basked in popular acclaim from many Americans. He even donned a flight suit for a "Mission Accomplished" aircraft-carrier celebration on May 1, 2003.

During those heady days, Bush and his neoconservative advisers dreamed of remaking the entire Middle East with pro-U.S. leaders chosen through elections and Arab nations ending their hostility toward Israel.

But Bush's wishful thinking began to run into trouble. A fierce resistance emerged in Iraq, claiming the lives of hundreds - and then thousands - of U.S. soldiers who couldn't quell the violence. Instead of contributing to peace, the Iraqi elections deepened the country's sectarian divisions - empowering the Shiite majority while alienating the Sunni minority.

Surging anti-Americanism caused other Middle East elections to have the opposite results from what Bush's neoconservatives predicted. Instead of breeding moderation, elections in Pakistan, Egypt, Iran and the Palestinian Authority saw gains by Islamic extremists, including a surprise victory by the militant group Hamas in Palestine.

The United States also has seen its international reputation devastated by reports of abuse and torture in U.S.-run detention centers. Rather than the all-powerful nation that the neocons wanted to project, the United States revealed the limitations of its military might and the incompetence of its administrative follow-through.

This string of catastrophes has now led even prominent conservatives to conclude that Bush's "stay the course" strategy must be rethought. They see Iraq spiraling toward a civil war with 138,000 U.S. troops caught in the middle

The latest defectors - Buckley and Fukuyama - threaten to pull away even members of Bush's political base. Buckley is the godfather of conservative punditry, while Fukuyama has been a bright light among neocon theorists.

Now, Bush must decide what to do - admit mistakes and heed the advice of critics - or circle the wagons even tighter and lash out at the growing majority of Americans who think the war in Iraq was a deadly mistake.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

http://911revisited.infad.net/video.html

"If you refuse to be anything but a sheep, don't bitch about the wolves. Nobody cares what a sheep thinks and even less about what it says; not even other sheep."

Do the People of the United States Care Enough to Stop Him?

By Bill Christison - Former CIA analyst

November 16, 2005

http://www.counterpunch.org/christison11162005.html

In this his time of troubles, Bush seems to be moving deliberately and rapidly toward new wars of aggression in an unforgivable gamble to overcome his troubles. His speech on Veterans' Day, November 11, 2005 at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania leads to this conclusion more clearly than any of his previous speeches and activities. The new wars would be the start of a world war initiated by Bush and radical Christianity against what he calls radical Islam, but in truth the wars would be waged against all Islam.

To repeat, despite Bush's arguments to the contrary, the "clash of civilizations" would consist of wars started by us. The killing of innocent people in these wars is likely to be massive, and the wars could at any time turn nuclear. If the people and the politicians of America allow these wars to take place, the stain on the morality of Americans will last for generations.

Let's note some of the statements Bush made in this speech of November 11. Many are not new, and some were foreshadowed in a speech by Bush a month ago, but their volume and intensity in the Veterans' Day speech are noteworthy.

"Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; and still others, Islamo-fascism . . . These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Hindus and Jews -- and against Muslims, themselves, who do not share their radical vision."

" . . . these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions."

" . . . these militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."

" . . . the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction; to destroy Israel; to intimidate Europe; to assault the American people; and to blackmail our government into isolation."

"The influence of Islamic radicalism is also magnified by helpers and enablers. They've been sheltered by authoritarian regimes -- allies of convenience like Iran and Syria -- that share the goal of hurting America and modern Muslim governments, and use terrorist propaganda to blame their own failures on the West, on America, and on the Jews."

"The government of Syria must do what the international community has demanded . . . The government of Syria must stop exporting violence and start importing democracy."

"Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence: the Israeli presence on the West Bank, the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of killers -- and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder."

"The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses."

"Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life."

"These militants are not just the enemies of America or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and they are the enemies of humanity. And we have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before -- in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, the Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields."

"Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples -- claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent."

"And Islamic radicalism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure. By fearing freedom . . . this ideology undermines the very qualities that make human progress possible . . . And whatever lies ahead in the war against this ideology, the outcome is not in doubt . . . Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future."

" . . . we're determined to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes. State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists, and they deserve no patience from the victims of terror. The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they're equally guilty of murder."

"We don't know . . . the sacrifices that might lie ahead. We do know, however, that the defense of freedom is worth our sacrifice, we do know the love of freedom is the mightiest force of history, and we do know the cause of freedom will once again prevail."

We cannot be sure how much of this is bluff by Bush -- to what extent he hopes or believes that Muslim nations will surrender to him without a fight. The prudent assumption is that not much of it is bluff, and that Bush, the radical Christians, the Christian Zionists, the nation's military-industrial conglomerates, and their Israeli allies -- all of whom today call the tune in U.S. foreign policy -- are willing and in some cases actually wish to involve the United States in further wars.

The people and the politicians of this country should rise from their apathy and shout, "No." The time is past for useless analysis and discussion. We Americans, accounting for no more than five percent of the human inhabitants of this globe, should decide here and now whether we are going to be moral or immoral in our future relationships with the rest of the world.

Bill Christison >was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. He can be reached at christison@counterpunch.org.

by Paul Craig Roberts

America is headed for a soft dictatorship by the end of Bush's second term. Whether any American has civil rights will be decided by the discretionary power of federal officials. The public in general will tolerate the soft dictatorship as its discretionary powers will mainly be felt by those few who challenge it.

The congressional elections this coming November is the last chance for for Americans to reaffirm the separation of powers that is the basis of their civil liberties. Unless the voters correct their mistake of putting both the executive and legislative branches in the hands of the same party and deliver the House or the Senate to the Democrats, there is nothing on the domestic scene to stand in the way of more power, and less accountability, being accumulated in the executive.

The Democrats have been a totally ineffective opposition and might not inspire any voter response other than apathy. Rather than vote for a cowardly party that is afraid to defend the Constitution, voters might simply not vote at all.

In this unfortunate event, the only check on the Bush regime is its own hubris.

Bush's ill-fated invasion of Iraq has set in motion forces beyond his control. On February 23 the Asia Times reported that America's Pakistani puppet, Musharraf, is “losing his grip.” Some Pakistani provinces are already beyond Musharraf's control, and the remainder are rioting against “Busharraf” as Musharraf is now known. The infantile American press misrepresents the riots as responses to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, but in fact the target of the riots is the American puppet.

By invading Afghanistan and Iraq and by threatening Syria and Iran, Bush has taught Muslims everywhere that they owe their humiliation to the Western controlled secular governments that suppress their aspirations. They are realizing that their power resides in Islam and that this power is suppressed by secular governments. Busharraf is probably dead meat, and when he goes so does the US military adventure in Afghanistan.

When Bush attacks Iran, the US army will be caught between the Iraqi Shia and the Iranian Shia and will be decimated in fourth generation conflict, so aptly described by William S. Lind. If a few thousand Sunni insurgents can tie down 10 US divisions, imagine the fate of US forces trapped in a Shia crescent.

The collapsing power of the US hegemon is everywhere evident. It is evident in the inability to successfully occupy Iraq or even Baghdad. It is evident in the growing military cooperation between North and South Korea, and it is evident it the revolt in the Indian government against Prime Minister Singh's nuclear agreement with the US. Indians say this agreement subjects India to US hegemony and represents America's attempt to block India's pioneering research on thorium as a nuclear fuel. Opposition parties have told Singh that if he signs the agreement, they will bring down his government.

The entire world now recognizes that America has lost its economic power and is dependent on the rest of the world to finance its budget and trade deficits. The US no longer holds the cards. American real incomes are falling, except for the rich. Jobs for university graduates are scarce, and advanced technology products must be imported from China. The US is a rapidly declining power and may soon end up as nothing but a tinhorn dictatorship.

Dr. Roberts [send him mail]is Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. ,Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com

Paul Craig Roberts Archives

By Robert Fisk

02/26/06 "The Independent" -- -- Everyone in the Middle East rewrites history, but never before have we had a US administration so wilfully, dishonestly and ruthlessly reinterpreting tragedy as success, defeat as victory, death as life - helped, I have to add, by the compliant American press. I'm reminded not so much of Vietnam as of the British and French commanders of the First World War who repeatedly lied about military victory over the Kaiser as they pushed hundreds of thousands of their men through the butchers' shops of the Somme, Verdun and Gallipoli. The only difference now is that we are pushing hundreds of thousands of Arabs though the butchers' shops - and don't even care.

Last week's visit to Beirut by one of the blindest of George Bush's bats - his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice - was indicative of the cruelty that now pervades Washington. She brazenly talked about the burgeoning "democracies" of the Middle East while utterly ignoring the bloodbaths in Iraq and the growing sectarian tensions of Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the key to her indifference can be found in her evidence to the Senate Committee on International Affairs where she denounced Iran as "the greatest strategic challenge" facing the US in the region, because Iran uses policies that "contradict the nature of the kind of Middle East sought by the United States".

As Bouthaina Shaaban, one of the brightest of Syria's not always very bright team of government ministers, noted: "What is the nature of the kind of Middle East sought by the United States? Should Middle East states adapt themselves to that nature, designed oceans away?" As Maureen Dowd, the best and only really worthwhile columnist on the boring New York Times, observed this month, Bush "believes in self-determination only if he's doing the determining ... The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react." And conniving with rogue regimes, too, Dowd might have added.

Take Donald Rumsfeld, the reprehensible man who helped to kick off the "shock and awe" mess that has now trapped more than 100,000 Americans in the wastes of Iraq. He's been taking a leisurely trip around North Africa to consult some of America's nastiest dictators, among them President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, the man with the largest secret service in the Arab world and whose policemen have perfected the best method of gleaning information from suspected "terrorists": to hold them down and stuff bleach-soaked rags into their mouths until they have almost drowned.

The Tunisians learned this from the somewhat cruder methods of the Algerians next door whose government death squads slaughtered quite a few of the 150,000 victims of the recent war against the Islamists. The Algerian lads - and I've interviewed a few of them after their nightmares persuaded them to seek asylum in London - would strap their naked victims to a ladder and, if the "chiffon" torture didn't work, they'd push a tube down the victim's throat and turn on a water tap until the prisoner swelled up like a balloon. There was a special department (at the Chateauneuf police station, in case Donald Rumsfeld wants to know) for torturing women, who were inevitably raped before being dispatched by an execution squad.

All this I mention because Rumsfeld's also been cosying up to the Algerians. On a visit to Algiers this month, he announced that "the United States and Algeria have a multifaceted relationship. It involves political and economic as well as military-to-military co-operation. And we very much value the co-operation we are receiving in counter-terrorism..." Yes, I imagine the "chiffon" technique is easy to learn, the abuse of prisoners, too - just like Abu Ghraib, for example, which now seems to have been the fault of journalists rather than America's thugs.

Rumsfeld's latest pronouncements have included a defence of the Pentagon's system of buying favourable news stories in Iraq with bribes - "non-traditional means to provide accurate information" was his fantasy description of this latest attempt to obscure the collapse of the American regime in Baghdad - and an attack on our reporting of the Abu Ghraib tortures. "Consider for a moment the vast quantity of column inches and hours of television devoted to the detainee abuse [sic] at Abu Ghraib. Compare that to the volume of coverage and condemnation associated with, say, the discovery of Saddam Hussein's mass graves, which were filled with hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis."

Let's expose this whopping lie. We were exposing Saddam's vile regime, especially his use of gas, as long ago as 1983. I was refused a visa to Iraq by Saddam's satraps for exposing their vile tortures at - Abu Ghraib. And what was Donald Rumsfeld doing? Visiting Baghdad, grovelling before Saddam, to whom he did not mention the murders and mass graves, which he knew about, and pleading with the Beast of Baghdad to reopen the US embassy in Iraq.

With the usual press courtiers in tow, Rumsfeld has no problems, witness George Melloan's recent interview with the Beast of Washington in his Boeing 737: "He generously spares me time for a chat about defence strategy. Bright sunlight streams in and lights his face ... Sitting across from him at a desk high above the clouds, one wonders if the ability of this modern Jove to call down lightning on transgressors will be equal to the tasks ahead."

And so myth-making and tragedy go hand in hand. Iraq's monumental catastrophe has become routine, shapeless, an incipient "civil war". Note how the American framework of disaster is now being portrayed as an Iraqi vs Iraqi war, as if the huge and brutal US occupation has nothing to do with the appalling violence in Iraq. They blow up each other's mosques? They just don't want to get on. We told them to have a non-sectarian government and they refused. That, I suspect, will be the get-out line when the next deluge overwhelms the Americans in Iraq.

Winston Churchill, when the Iraqis staged their insurgency against British rule in 1920, called Iraq "an ungrateful volcano". But let's just sit back and enjoy the view. Democracy is coming to the Middle East. People are enjoying more liberties. History doesn't matter, only the future. And the future for the people of the Middle East is becoming darker and bloodier by the day. I guess it just depends whether "Jove" is up to his job when all that bright sunlight streams in and lights his face.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
Posted on February 27, 2006, Printed on February 27, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/32483/

What an embarrassment our national government is. Mired in the sickening muck of corrupt corporate money and right-wing ideology, our so-called leaders continue to divert our public treasury and our nation's unlimited potential for good into war, into the pockets of the superrich, into the self-serving whims of greedheaded corporate executives, into a rising police state, into the careless desecration of nature … into waste.

Then why am I laughing, why am I almost giddy with optimism about where we're heading? You might say, That's an easy question, Hightower; you're either stupid or insane. Indeed, I know a few leaders of progressive groups based in Washington who have been drained of all optimism. Looking at the national scene, they share Woody Allen's despairing observation: "We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let's hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice."

Luckily, however, my work is not based in Washington, and my frequent travels allow me to be in touch with a grassroots America that's unabashedly progressive and on the move. Yes, Washington is ignoring our country's real needs and squandering our democratic promise, but out beyond the Beltway (and below the radar of the Powers That Be) there are folks, groups, coalitions, and even elected leaders who're taking action at the state and local level to build an America based on our historic ideals of fairness, justice, and equal opportunity for all. I have great hope, because grassroots people are so much stronger, more resilient, more creative, and more American than the gooberheads at the top, and they'll not long be held down or held back.

There is a ferment for change in our land today and undeniable movement toward it. We should take heart in our people's history, which is the long story of ordinary folks agitating, organizing, and mobilizing for a little more justice.

Progress often gets diverted or dammed up by the avaricious powers, but it ultimately finds another outlet. I can give my own testimonial to this dynamic. Coming of political age in segregated Texas in the 1960s, recalcitrant state and local officials were blocking progress, so all of us involved in the civil rights movement looked to Washington as the channel for producing progressive action and we made progress. Likewise, in the 1970s, it was through the national government that we opened channels for progress on women's rights, worker safety, environmental protections, etc.

By the 1980s, however, the monied interests were locking down both parties in Washington, and progressives were largely stymied. But not for long -- a trickle of action soon began coming out of cities and states across the country. I was one of those small trickles. Having been elected Texas agriculture commissioner in '82, my office became a source of action for small farmers, organic production, pesticide regulation, direct marketing, rural development, renewable energy, and more.

Since then, with corporate and right-wing interests seizing all three branches of the national government, and with the Democratic leadership being either co-opted or inept, the flow of progressive energy has moved steadily out of Washington and (like water finding a new course) into grassroots organizing. In the past decade, these feisty groups using street actions, ballot initiatives, lawsuits, the internet, media exposés, local elections, radio, potluck suppers, festivals, satire, and every other tool at their disposal have become a powerful force on a wide range of issues, and they are changing American politics from the ground up. Let's take stock of some of the progress being made.

Wage wars

For years, Washington and Wall Street have been waging a war on American wages, using everything from monetary policy to immigration policy in their constant effort to push workers' pay down.

The most visible of these efforts is the obscene sight of fat-cat CEOs and well-paid Congress critters conspiring to keep our country's wage floor stuck at the subpoverty level of $5.15 an hour (about $10,500 a year). As John Edwards says, "it's a moral disgrace." Yet despite support for boosting the minimum wage from 86 percent of Americans (including the chairman of Wal-Mart, who wails that these poverty workers can't afford to shop at his stores), corporate lobbyists have kept hourly pay nailed down at $5.15 for nearly a decade. Washington won't budge, so there's nothing we can do, right? Wrong. Led by ACORN, the innovative community-organizing group, a broad coalition of wage-increase advocates has shifted the battlefield to the cities, counties, and states, putting forth a concept called the "Living Wage."

The idea is that corporations getting contracts, subsidies, or other benefits from local governments should not get away with poverty pay. Pushing local ordinances or ballot measures, the Living Wage coalitions propose pay scales that raise the minimum above the region's poverty level, with most proposals requiring some health-care benefits and many indexing the pay levels to inflation. Well, you might think, that's a nice proposition, but people are way too conservative to go for it. Wrong. In fact, when put before voters, Living Wage initiatives typically win by more than two thirds of the vote.

A telling case is Florida. In 2004, a modest initiative was on the ballot proposing to raise the state's minimum wage by a buck, to $6.15 an hour. John Kerry's presidential campaign studiously avoided supporting this measure, fearing that voters in this red state were so conservative that being associated with a wage hike would hurt his chances. So much for his political genius 72 percent of Floridians approved the pay increase! Kerry, on the other hand, got only 47 percent of the vote.

For these Living Wage battles, coalitions have been forged among workers, poor people, women, churchgoers, small-business owners, neighborhood groups, civil rights advocates and even some conservative business leaders who either see it as a moral issue or understand that higher pay means more spending and a stronger local economy. That's a pretty stout coalition! While it has received little national media coverage, these combined efforts are achieving stunning successes all across the country. More than 130 cities, counties, and states have already enacted some form of the Living Wage.

These victories are not just coming in the liberal outposts of, say, New York City and San Francisco, but also in such places as Dayton, OH ($9.30 per hour, with benefits); Palm Beach, FL ($9.73, with benefits); Louisville, KY ($10.20, indexed to inflation); Pima County, AZ ($8.35, with benefits, indexed); Bozeman, MT ($9.73, with benefits); Rochester NY ($9.43, with benefits, indexed); Covallis, OR ($9.00, indexed); the Richmond, VA, school district ($8.77, with benefits); and the Central Arkansas Library System ($9.00, with benefits, indexed).

Clean elections

What a scream it was last month to watch George W, Tom DeLay, and some 60 other top elected officials rush out to throw tens of thousands of dollars at various charities. These were campaign funds they had previously taken from sleazeball superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. Until January 2, none of these politicians had been even slightly squeamish about banking Jack's checks. But on that day, the GOP's leading influence-peddler pleaded guilty to three counts of money corruption involving his lobbying operation. As part of his plea deal, Abramoff agreed to "tell all" to federal prosecutors about his money-for-favors relationships in Washington … and to testify against his former political cohorts.

When the lead prosecutor declared that the corruption "is very extensive," that did it. Suddenly our stalwart leaders were spontaneously struck with the need to offer up loads of cash to charity -- as if such a showy gesture could remove the indelible green stain that contaminates them and our national capital. Of course, giving back a few bucks doesn't alter the culture of corruption (notice, for example, that while George W grandly donated $6,000 of his Abramoff money to charity, he refused to give away as much as $200,000 that Jack had raised for his '04 run). Sheesh.

The spreading Abramoff scandal, coupled with DeLay's Texas indictments for money laundering, the Duke Cunningham bribery conviction, and the relentless pursuit of corporate dollars by practically all of our top political leaders shows that we no longer have elections -- we have auctions. Can't something be done? It can be … and is -- but not in Washington. Once again, the action is in the countryside. In the past decade, eight states and fourteen cities have passed "Clean Election" laws to end the money chase in their political races, and eight other states and at least one major city are moving toward passage of such laws this year.

The key component of Clean Elections is to provide the alternative of public financing for the campaigns of all candidates who agree not to accept money from corporations or other favor-seeking interests. This means that people running for mayor, governor, the legislature, a judgeship, or whatever don't have to spend the bulk of their campaign time in corporate suites or at the watering holes of lobbyists -- and if elected, they owe absolutely nothing to the monied powers! It also means that regular people (a schoolteacher, factory worker, nurse, farmer, shopkeeper, cabdriver, et al.) can run for office, for they could qualify for a level of public funding that would make them competitive with a lobbyist-financed candidate. It gives us a meaningful tool for reclaiming our democracy.

Maine, Arizona, and Connecticut now have public-financing laws for all of their state offices, from governor to corporation commissioner. Vermont and Massachusetts have also approved statewide systems but have not yet implemented them. In addition, North Carolina has okayed public funding for its judicial races, New Mexico has done so for candidates seeking to be on its Public Regulation Commission, and New Jersey has approved a pilot project for public financing in four legislative districts.

Cities are on the move, too. Portland, Oregon, will have the Clean Election alternative for all of its city races this year. In 2005, 69 percent of Albuquerque's voters said "yes" to a charter amendment providing public funds for its mayoral and city council candidates. Another 12 cities have put partial systems in place, and Los Angeles is presently structuring a plan for full public financing.

Most important, the Clean Election system works. In Maine, the state AARP, AFL-CIO, Common Cause, Council of Senior Citizens, Dirigo Alliance, League of Women Voters, Peace Action, Peoples Alliance, and others joined hands in 1996 to pass an initiative creating the nation's first public-financing program. When first implemented in 2000, half of the state's senators and 30 percent of house members were elected without taking a dime in special-interest money, and the program has grown more successful with each election. Today 83 percent of Maine's senate and 77 percent of its house are made up of legislators who ran "clean."

The result is that Maine's state government is able to reflect the people's will. In 2003, for example, Maine became the first state to pass a bill providing health care for all of its people. As a state legislator says, "There is just no way this bill would ever have seen the light of day under business-as-usual politics dominated by private campaign contributions. Instead, we took on the big pharmaceutical and insurance companies and adopted a healthcare plan that serves the people rather than special interests."

Now the incumbent Democratic governor and two of his three Republican challengers have taken the "clean" pledge for this year's election. Last year the state fixed a loophole in its law by requiring that in the last 21 days of an election, all attack ads or other campaign material put out by so-called "independent" groups must disclose the source behind the ads. In addition, the state will provide public matching funds for the candidates who are attacked, so they can respond.

There's similar success elsewhere. In Arizona, for example, 58 percent of the house, a fourth of the senate, and 10 of 11 statewide officials (including the governor) are "clean." The grassroots coalition that passed Arizona's public-financing system in a 1998 ballot initiative has also remained vigilant, beating back seven court challenges and repeated efforts by corporate interests to repeal the law.

Again, there's no need to wait on Washington for electoral reform when you can make it happen in your own city, county, school district, state, or any other jurisdiction you choose to tackle.

Reefer medicine

Isn't being horribly sick punishment enough without having the FBI, DEA, and other police agents busting down your door to throw you in jail? Unfortunately, the federal government's crackpot drug war has turned cops into drug thugs as they pursue an insane, inhumane, ideologically driven policy of cracking down on seriously sick people who use doctor-prescribed marijuana to treat the chronic pain and nausea of cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, polio, and other harsh illnesses.

Two years ago, nine armed members of a DEA task force raided Don Nord's home in Hayden, Colorado, arresting him and seizing his three marijuana plants. Nord is no drug dealer -- he's a disabled, wheelchair-bound, 57-year-old man battling kidney cancer, diabetes, lung disease, and other problems. He was not toking on reefer for a joy ride, but using the marijuana under a doctor's supervision as a medical necessity.

Meet Suzanne Pfeil. She is paralyzed by post-polio syndrome and was under the care of WAAM, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz, California. In 2002, she was awakened by five DEA agents pointing automatic rifles at her head. WAAM is a non-commercial medical co-op that, with the blessing of local officials, maintained a marijuana garden at its hospice to treat its 225 members, 85 percent of whom were terminally ill. In the early hours of September 5, the DEA burst in. They terrified the patients, charged two with violating federal drug law, ripped up the coop's garden, handcuffed WAAM's two founders, and took them to jail.

This was too much even for the arch-conservative editors of the Orange County Register, who called DEA's actions "an unwarranted and extreme operation against sick people … Such cruel raids suggest that a law that can be used to terrorize sick people is in need of reconsideration." But Washington -- under Democratic administrations as well as Republican -- has done nothing to stop the stupidity, instead continuing to sanction such extremism in the name of looking tough in the drug war. Last year on June 15, for example, Congress voted 264-161 against allowing the ill to use this proven treatment.

These people are nuts … and dangerous. Luckily, though, there's sanity among grassroots folks. Polls constantly show overwhelming support for laws to let the sick use doctor-prescribed marijuana. The latest Gallup survey shows 78 percent of Americans backing such common sense. Lest you think that's a lot of blue-state, smoke-induced, ex-hippie sentiment talking, independent polls in the deep red states of Alabama and Texas register three-to-one margins in favor of medical marijuana, including 67 percent support among Texas Republicans!

More significantly, when given a chance, people are voting their convictions. Led by the Marijuana Policy Project, coalitions of doctors, nurses, and patients have come together to raise common sense to high places. Defying the furious fulminations and fervid opposition of assorted drug czars from Washington, voters in 11 states and numerous cities have already approved the medical use of marijuana by compelling margins. Let's do a brief roll call:

• In 2004, while Bush was easily winning the majority of Montana voters, those same people approved by a two-to-one margin a medical marijuana initiative that the White House had adamantly opposed.
• In 2003, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich became the first Republican head of state to sign medical marijuana into law. This came in the face of ferocious campaigning by the White House drug czar to get Ehrlich to veto the bill. Flexing his ignorance, the czar told Marylanders that marijuana was "medicinal crack."
• This year, Rhode Island became the 11th common-sense state when more than three-fifths of legislators voted to override the Republican governor's veto of a bill to protect medical-marijuana patients from arrest. The bill had passed 30-0 in the senate, 52-10 in the house.
• In Michigan, cities are taking the initiative. In the past two years, Detroit okayed marijuana use by a 60-40 vote, Ann Arbor by 74-26, Ferndale by 61-39, and Traverse City by 63-37.

The power is ours

On big issue after big issue -- such as dramatically cutting the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, declaring energy independence with a crash program of renewable energy and conservation, bringing the troops home from Bush's war of lies in Iraq, and giving Americans relief from the price gouging of drug companies -- Washington has become the enemy.

But rather than wring our hands about that, we can roll up our sleeves and join hands with the grassroots groups that are taking action on these problems and making progress. Congress and presidential candidates are too corrupted or too cowardly to lead our country back to its democratic ideals. We have to lead ourselves -- and there is opportunity for you to be part of the renewal right where you live.

Jim Hightower is the author of "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush" (Viking Press). He publishes the monthly Hightower Lowdown; for more information about Jim, visit jimhightower.com.

Posted by Jesse on February 26th, 2006

http://www.tvnewslies.org/blog/

The 9/11 truth movement is closing in on the Bush administration and they, along with the mainstream media are getting desperate to fend off the public pressure! The information and evidence of 9/11 being, at least in part, an inside job is too abundant, too obvious and too powerful for even the Bush administration and their conspirators in the media to fend off forever! With every viewing of Loose Change 2, with every Sunday evening meeting at the St. Marks Church in NYC, with every public appearance by Jimmy Walter and with every tidbit of 9/11information that broadcasts out of Mike Malloy’s studio, the noose tightens around the necks of the “new Pearl Harbor” administration! What we are watching now with the hoopla about the UAE port scandal is a desperate effort to reemphasize the 9/11 myth that has been told to us by the PNAC administration. This is an effort to counter the exploding 9/11 truth movement.

The 9/11 truth movement is growing fast. More and more people are finding out each day that the story told to us by the Bush administration can not possibly be true. Documentaries such as Loose Change 2, In Plane Site and 9/11 Eyewitness are finding their way into the DVD players of people who never before questioned the events. Scholars and academics are becoming vocal and active members of the realty based world and they are starting to attract the attention of the average middle American who may have trouble taking an Alex Jones seriously. The inside players are now desperately scrambling to reinforce their fortress of manufactured reality so as to ward off the ever growing collective voice of the reality based community. Well, I have news for the Bush administration and the media: you are going to lose this one! The evidence of your complicity is too compelling and too widely available to the public. Eventually the majority of Americans will see the evidence and virtually everyone who sees it realizes that our president and his administration were complicit in the events of that day.

As you watch Tim Russert on NBC hold up the fictional 9/11 Commission report for about 30 full seconds today, you will understand that the PR campaign to reinforce the myth of the official story is on. As each UAE/Al Qaeda connection issue is raised by members of Congress we see how our legislators are either part of the conspiracy or they are incompetent and uninformed. Do any members of Congress remember the comments from our own FBI director, who admitted that we did not know the identities of the hijackers because they may have used stolen identities? This happened when he was confronted with the information about the discovery of 4 of the accused 9/11 hijackers, alive and well! This is yet another smoking gun of 9/11. If we don’t know the identity of the hijackers, how did we know whom to blame and how do we know whom not to blame?

The media helps the Bush administration focus on this UAE non-scandal. Port security is useless. One does not have to bypass security in order to conduct a nuclear attack on the U.S. One does not have to dock a ship and bypass security to unload a nuclear weapon in order to use it. One just needs to set off a nuclear device a mile or so away from the port…IT IS A NUCLEAR WEAPON YOU BONEHEADS….port security will not prevent this!!!

In the meantime the Bush administration is quietly performing subcritical nuclear tests. Yes, they are conducting nuclear tests. Guess what I think…I think they are testing small controllable devices so that when they conduct their false flag nuclear terror operation on the US they can do so in the same way they conducted the events of 9/11; with minimal death and maximum shock value! Think about it: 4 planes… where the combined number of people on the flights filled only one plane…hitting the towers 20 minutes before the majority of the 50,000 people who worked in them were due to arrive! This is textbook false flag operations and we are now watching, with this UAE non-scandal, an effort to condition the American public to accept the next 9/11 cover story.

It is the Bush administration who is conducting subcritical nuclear tests. Congress and the media are doing most of the dirty work as they reinforce the myth of 9/11. Don’t let it fool you. This is smoke and mirrors. We know who makes the nukes, we know who sponsors, funds and exports terror and we know who has been behind most of the terror groups around the world. At least America still has one industry that is thriving in a global economy!

I will be discussing this on my radio program on the Monks Media Radio Network on Monday, February 26h at noon ET. Call in with your thoughts. (The show is archived, if you miss the original) In the meantime do the math. The port security scandal is a non-issue. There is no way to prevent a nuke on the US without inspecting every single ship way offshore, securing every single nuclear device already existing in the US and without removing from power, by whatever means necessary, every single person who is part of the military & intelligence industrial complex including every member of the Bush administration and virtually every member of Congress. Unless we the people take our nation back we will continue to fall victims to the maniacs who seized control of our planet (while they were not shooting their friends in the face that is!) Think about it! (PS I stopped by our local Marine recruiting station yesterday and I dropped off a copy of Loose Change 2. Why don’t you do the same thing! )– Jesse, Editor, TvNewsLIES.org

Posted by Jon Ponder | Jan. 3, 2006, 11:39 am

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2006/01/03/confessions-of-a-bush-hater/

“Bush hater” is a term invented by people who didn’t like being called “Clinton haters” because it was true. I don’t mind being called a Bush hater because it is not.

My antipathy for George Bush is a thousand miles wide and a micro-millimeter deep. Underneath that thin veneer of dislike lurks one million metric tons of couldn’t-care-less.

On that glorious day when he goes back to Crawford for good - and the world once again becomes safe for democracy - before the sun sets, I will have forgotten him. Seriously. George who?

(For Mr. Bush, I predict the transition from Worst President Ever to Worst Ex-President Ever will be seamless. He’ll be content, finally, to have nothing on his schedule but working on his abs. We won’t be hearing much from him. I mean, it’s not like he’s going to write a book.)

What sets Mr. Bush apart from past presidents is how woefully ill-equipped he was for the job when he took office. His staff might have compensated for his incompetence if it hadn’t been for the bad luck thrown their way. But isn’t crisis management the most important qualification for the presidency?

With the exception of hardcore ideological issues that might benefit his constituents, such as his very effective redistribution of wealth from the middle class up to the super-rich, Bush has bungled issues that have come up both large and small - from 9/11 to stem cell resarch, from the war in Iraq to Social Security “reform,” from the death of Terri Schiavo to the nomination of Harriet Miers.

The president’s incompetentce is compounded by his blindness to it. He lacks the mental discipline to undertake analysis or introspection, which renders him befeft of the fundamental tools required to take corrective action when he makes mistakes.

Basic communications skills are another minimum requirement for the presidency in the TV age. But this president is hands down the worst public speaker in modern politics. His speechifying style is bizarre. The … staccato … way he … talks … grinds on the brain of the listener. He sounds like Capt. James T. Kirk doing a hillbilly accent with a mouth full of marbles.

The good ol’ boy demeanor he projects strains credulity. Why would a pampered, prep-schooled aristocrat, born to parents whose combined lineage includes America’s wealthiest and WASP-iest families, adopt the persona of a back-slappin’ backy-chawin’ goober?

And that is the final point, he did not get where he is on his merits - he became president because he had the right name. Every single other thing about him is built on fiction.

Failing upward into the presidency is just un-American.


First Impression

How did I become a so-called Bush hater? There’s an old saying, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” - and George Bush Jr. made a very bad first impression on me.

Sometime after the Republican convention in 1988 I read a quote from George W. that singled him out in my mind from among Vice President Bush’s half-dozen or so grown children. During the convention - where his father became the Republican presidential nominee - Bush Jr. had given an interview to a reporter from the Hartford Courant that went like this:

REPORTER: When you’re not talking about politics, what do you and [your father, the Vice President of the United States] talk about?

GEORGE W. BUSH: Pussy.

When I read this, it struck me that those two syllables spoke volumes: “I am a dunderhead, and I am brazen about it. And by the way, fuck you.”

Looking back now, I realize he was probably drunk or coked up.

Imagine the outrage from the Right and the “librhul media” if that word had been uttered by Roger Clinton, Chip Carter or one of John Kerry’s kids. The campaign would have been putting out that fire for months.

But now we know that in 1988, Bush Jr. was not just another politically clueless member of a candidate’s family shooting off his mouth.

During the Reagan years, George W. had been tutored, along with young Karl Rove, in smashmouth politics by its modern inventor, Lee Atwater. Junior had to have been fully aware how politically reckless that answer was. Republicans were already in bad odor with women voters after eight years of Reagan policies. Viewed in that light, the answer he chose to give in that interview was a sniper shot at his father’s presidential campaign.

In fact, if you look closely, that single remark reveals layers of festering rage directed at women in general, and his mother, wife and toddler-age twin daughters, specifically; his father personally as well as the Bush-Quayle campaign; and - last but not least - the media. Was he daring the Courant reporter to publish the naughty word?

Even more revealing is this: Can we assume the answer was a lie? Please, God. I hope the Bushes, father and son, do not have conversations like this:

GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Hey son, so are you getting plenty of poontang these days?

GEORGE W. BUSH: Wee-doggies, you bet. Me and Neil just ordered up some Asian hootchie mamas the other day and banged the heck out of ‘em.

GEORGE H.W. BUSH: That’s my boy!

BEAVIS: Heh-heh.

BUTTHEAD: Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh.

Fact from Fiction

A central tenet in the Rove “Way of War” is to attack your opponent not on his weaknesses and foibles but on his strengths. (The new term of art for this is “Swiftboating.”)

In all his campaigns, no one has ever Swiftboated George Bush. You have to wonder why, since his perceived strengths are mostly fiction. For example:

Fiction: George W. Bush is “resolute.” Fact: He has flip flopped on campaign finance reform, formation of the Homeland Security Department and the 9/11 commission - to name just three examples.

Fiction: Invading Iraq has made us safer. Fact: Our presence there is recruiting new terrorists every day.

Fiction: Our invasion had nothing to do with Iraq’s oil. Fact: If there had been no oil in Iraq, we wouldn’t be there. Earlier this year, Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice declared, “in our world there remain outposts of tyranny in Cuba, and Burma and North Korea, and Iran and Belarus, and Zimbabwe.” The brutal regimes that run those countries are all guilty of abuses as bad or worse than Saddam Hussein’s. If Mr. Bush really cared about reigns of terror in foreign lands, we would have invaded them all. The difference is, none of those places have significant oil reserves.

Fiction: Bush quit drinking in the 1980s. Fact: Despite this assertion in his autobiography, which was written by Karen Hughes, the Smoking Gun has video of Mr. Bush quite drunk at wedding in 1992. Maybe he never quit. For all we know, Mr. Bush’s incompetence may stem from the fact that he is too impaired to do his job.

Chicken Neck

By labeling the opposition to the president as “Bush haters,” the Right hopes that the Left will fall into the same trap they did - that, like them, our loathing of the man will so blind us with rage that we over-reach as they did when they impeached President Clinton.

Not gonna happen. What they don’t understand is that hating Bill Clinton was personal for them. There is nothing about President Bush that inspires that kind visceral reaction to President Bush. He’s an annoying super-annuated frat boy, and if he weren’t sitting in the Big Chair he would be completely irrelevant to our lives.

In 2005, the public began to wake up to the reality of the real man that lurks behind the “Dear Leader” hologram his handlers have created. Across the board, polls show that the public no longer trusts George Bush.

This awakening among the citizenry reminded me of a column Molly Ivins wrote after the 2004 presidential elections:

Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin’ chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog’s neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing’ll smell so bad the dog won’t be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won’t kill chickens again.

The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.

And at least Democrats won’t have to clean up after him until it is real clear to everyone who made the mess.

During his administration’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, many Americans got their first glimpse of the real George W. Bush. While the rest of us were glued to the news watching an ancient American city drowning in the rising waters of Lake Ponchitrain, the president was AWOL. When he finally reappeared, he came off as clueless, disengaged and really too tired (some say hungover) to be bothered.

What may have been the tipping point for political independents and other former supporters of the president was the news that his underlings had been forced to burn a DVD of news coverage in order to catch him up the storm’s destruction and his administration’s failures. People who had bought into the fictional Dear Leader persona were left wondering why George Bush hadn’t been curious enough to turn on the news himself. What sort of leader can’t work up the energy to watch news of the despair and tragedy of his people?

What sort of man doesn’t give a damn that his countrymen are drowning?

President Bush’s poll numbers went into a decline after Katrina and have never fully recovered. In every poll since then, more than half those questioned have disapproved of his performance.

Apparently, it took the loss of an American city to wake people up to the fact that they had a rotting chicken tied to their necks.

The problem in our country today is not Bush hating, it’s Bush worship. It is the minority of people who give blind obedience to this man, especially those in the middle and lower classes whose interests he opposes, who are giving aid and comfort to the destruction of American democracy.

Three Texan surgeons were playing golf together and discussing surgeries they had performed.

One of them said, "I'm the best surgeon in Texas. A concert pianist lost 7 fingers in an accident, I reattached them, and 8 months later he performed a private concert for the Queen of England."

One of the others said, "That's nothing. A young man lost both arms and legs in an accident, I reattached them, and 2 years later he won a gold medal in field events in the Olympics."

The third surgeon said, "You guys are amateurs. Several years ago a cowboy who was high on cocaine and alcohol rode a horse head-on into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the horse's ass and a cowboy hat. Now he's president of the United States.