George vs. Saddam

Will the competition never end. Dubya is now claiming that Saddam could cripple the U.S. Economy — Would he do a better job of it than George has already done.

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush warned on Tuesday that a major attack on the United States by Iraq or a group working on its behalf could cripple the U.S. economy.

Rep. Rangel Calls for Reinstatement of Draft

Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel called yesterday for the reinstatement of the draft, saying it would give legislators pause before authorizing military action.

Rangel, a strident opponent of war against Iraq, said the United States has been "too cavalier" in its foreign policy. Its willingness to place troops in harm's way, the Democrat said, is tied to the fact that many soldiers are volunteers recruited from low- and moderate-income families.

"Realistically, when you talk about a war, you're talking about ground troops, you're talking about enlisted people, and they don't come from the kids and members of Congress," Rangel said on CNN's "Late Edition."
[MORE]

' ... If each of the individuals who are about to die has an average of thirty-years of life ahead, this would be three million years snuffed out. More than a billion days. Let's say two hundred million moments of lovemaking, three-quarters of a billion bursts of laughter, and the same number of tears. A half-billion personal epiphanies, and six billion dreams ... '

Via Unknown News.

My Own Private Canivore: CarnivorePE (Personal Edition)

Carnivore is a surveillance tool for data networks. At the heart of the project is CarnivorePE, a software application that listens to all Internet traffic (email, web surfing, etc.) on a specific local network. Next, CarnivorePE serves this data stream over the net to an unlimited number of creative interfaces called "clients." The clients are each designed to animate, diagnose, or interpret the network traffic in various ways.
CarnivorePE is inspired by DCS1000, a piece of software used by the FBI to perform electronic wiretaps. (Until recently, DCS1000 was known by its nickname "Carnivore.") Improving on the FBI software, CarnivorePE features exciting new functionality including: artist-made diagnosic clients, remote access, full subject targetting, full data targetting, volume buffering, transport protocol filtering, and an open source software license.

ACTIVIST NETWORK IN NY EVICTED FROM INTERNET BY DOW, VERIO

Because of a bit of web detournement by RTMark, its host, Thing.net, is losing its connectivity. Thing.net's upline provider, Verio, got a DMCA notice from Dow Chemical in reference to a political parody site an RTMark group called The Yes Men set up. The site, similar to this one at dowethics.com, was designed to look like an authentic Dow site but contained content critical of the Union Carbide and Dow handling of the 1984 Bhopal disaster. (There's also an article about the controversy in the New York Times.) Found on Weblogsky

Local Child Denies Being Naughty Requests presence of lawyer

Local mall Santa George Graham has issued a report which indicates that he and his staff of elves have made "no progress" in their interviews with alleged naughty boy, Ralph Carson.

Carson, six and three quarters going on seven, was brought to the mall on December 21 by his parents in a "last ditch" effort to get the boy to admit to the many instances of poor behavior that have caused chaos in his household for the better part of the year.

The release of the report comes one day after Amnesty International released it's own report blasting the interrogation of Carson. Amnesty says that "three days in a mall" is cruel and unusual at the very minimum and could possibly be considered torture under International Holiday rules.

Palestinians Accuse Israeli Security Of Making Them Choose Which Limb Will Be Broken: "Nose, arm or leg?"

Bush Team Prepares Environmental Hit List
According to Grist: "The list grew out of an announcement made by President Bush in March, when he urged companies to contact the administration '[if] there are nettlesome regulations which are costly for you to operate your business that you don't think make any sense.'"

Seattleites Oppose War On Iraq: "A majority of Seattle-area residents oppose war with Iraq, a prevailing sentiment that runs counter to the rest of the state and the nation, according to a new Seattle Post-Intelligencer poll."

I doubt that the rest of the country is so rah-rah . . . In related news to the city versus state contrast, a recent study has concluded that people who live in cities are smarter than those who live in sprawl.

More good news
U.S. Global Warming Emissions in Biggest Decade Drop: "U.S. greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming fell by 1.2 percent last year, the largest decrease in a decade, due in part to slow economic growth and a milder winter, the government said recently."

Protesting May Be Good for Your Health: "The take-home message from this research therefore might be that people should get more involved in campaigns, struggles and social movements, not only in the wider interest of social change but also for their own personal good."

Viva Health!
(This one's for A.Q.?)

Dow Sues Penniless Bhopal Survivors: "In a stunning example of corporate insensibility, Dow Chemical, the worlds largest chemical company, and new owners of Union Carbide is to sue survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. While the site of the disaster lies covered in toxic waste and survivors struggle with continuing ill health and deadly pollution from the site, Dow has decided to add to their woes with an Indian lawsuit."

US wrecks cheap drugs deal
A last minute Christmas Gift from a compassionate conservative.

Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, last night blocked a global deal to provide cheap drugs to poor countries, following intense lobbying of the White House by America's pharmaceutical giants.

Faced with furious opposition from all the other 140 members of the World Trade Organisation, the US refused to relax global patent laws which keep the price of drugs beyond reach of most developing countries.

Weapons inspectors turn fire on Britain and US

Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, delivered a stinging attack on the US and Britain, accusing them of failing to co-operate with his team.

"If the UK and the US are convinced and they say they have evidence, then one would expect they would be able to tell us where is this stuff," Mr Blix said. Asked if he was getting enough co-operation from Western intelligence agencies, he said: "Not yet. We get some, but we don't get all we need."

Bush's Master Plan For The Internet

Bush and his Machiavellian minions will no longer put up with you roaming free into dangerous territory on the internet. You need to be corralled, electronically tethered, kept away from sites promoting conspiracy theories -- in other words, information the corporate media, the official US Ministry of Disinformation, does not want you to read or see. It's now increasingly obvious the Bushites want to lock us up in a hermetically sealed informational box and throw away the key. All the information they consider worthwhile will be pumped in through a one-way hole.

During war, as they say, the first causality is truth. And war -- all the time and everywhere people resist -- is what Bush will deliver. It will be easier for him to accomplish this if you can't read the truth, if you remain ignorant, or if you are obstructed from organizing and speaking out on the internet against war and madness. Bush knows this -- or, at least, those around him know this. The internet, regardless of its trashy and lame commercial characteristics, is a nearly perfect medium for organizing. It's a thorn in the side of neo-cons and fascists everywhere. [more]

Jewish Professors Keep Divestment Drive Alive: "Modeled on an anti-apartheid campaign that led campuses to divest from South Africa in the 1980s, the petition criticizes Israel's actions in the occupied territories and calls on universities to sell any investments in Israel, and in companies that do business there."

The comparisons between the Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and apartheid S. Africa keep cropping up--most prominently when voiced by Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and poet Breyten Breytenbach. See also: On Israeli Terror Groups:

Ateret Cohanim, The Jewish Underground, the Jewish Defense League, Kach, Kahana Khai, Eyal, etc. are among the many groups that planned and/or carried out terrorist attacks against mostly Palestinian civilians from the 1970s onwards . . . [more]

The Corporations That Supplied Iraq's Weapons Program

Washington Senator asks why bin Laden is so popular
Patty Murray, a Washington State democrat, asked students at a Vancouver, WA high school to ponder why Osama bin Laden is so popular in third world countries.

"He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that," Murray said.

"How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"

An expert on terrorism, who co-wrote a book profiling bin laden and al-Qaida, said Murray's comments, published yesterday in the newspaper The Columbian, were on the mark.

Related links (via Drudge):

U.S. SEN. PATTY MURRAY -- SENATOR ASKS STUDENTS TO PONDER

Murray asks students to weigh bin Laden's appeal

The New Yorker: Online Only We're beginning what could be a hundred-years war if we don't change our policy. I don't think a lot of people, particularly in Washington, particularly in places in the White House, fully understand the dangers of going to a full-scale war. The fact of the matter is that there's no reason for a fundamentalist Muslim to have anything but contempt for Osama bin Laden, because he stands for nothing that has to do with their religion. And we just don't give those fundamentalists a chance to breathe. Our policies push them into his camp too much. I'm not saying anything new—I think Jimmy Carter was trying to say the same thing last week when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Unless we deal with the real issues, the underlying issues around the world that lead to the kind of madness that we saw on September 11th; unless we can deal with some of those underlying problems—the lack of any trickle-down economy in the Gulf world, the complete corruption of the leadership of most of the oil sheikhdoms that we tolerate; until we try to apply pressure to make life better there, we'll have problems in the Middle East. We also have problems with Israel and Palestine that we're not dealing with.

Canadians to lead weapons inspections team into USA

In the new year, Rooting Out Evil will be sending a team of volunteer weapons inspectors into that greatest of rogue nations, the United States of America.

We have selected the US as our first priority based on criteria provided by the Bush administration. According to those criteria, the most dangerous states are those run by leaders who:

1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties; and
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.

The current US administration fulfills all these criteria. And so, again following Bush’s guidelines, Rooting Out Evil is demanding that his administration allow immediate and unfettered access to international weapons inspectors to search out their caches of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

If they refuse to comply, we will assemble as many volunteer weapons inspectors as possible at a major border crossing between the US and Canada and attempt to cross into the US on a mission of peace. We will be greeted on the US side by Americans who favour true global cooperation, an end to weapons of mass destruction, and a regime change in the US at the next election.

Enron follies video features Shrub yukking up corrupt accounting

The Feds are looking into a video of a 1997 Enron retirement party, which featured "humorous" skits about Enron's corruption -- including a cameo by George W. Bush, yukking it up with his morally bankrupt cronies.

When the pretend Kinder expressed doubt that Skilling could pull off 600 percent revenue growth for the coming year, Skilling revealed how it could be done.


"We're going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting," Skilling joked as he read from a script. "If we do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line." Via BB

Filmmaker Michael Moore's E-mail Intercepted/Home Searched by Secret Service
(The Story of a Vietnam Vet Caught in a Government / Celebrity Surveillance Crossfire)

In a not-so-cryptic “message” eventually intended for all U.S. citizens -- but likely one very famous American in particular, three armed U.S. Secret Service agents and a local sheriff employed psychological intimidation to invade the privacy of retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Michael Moore, 49, of Goldston, North Carolina at his home on December 10, 2002...

In another warning sign of what lies ahead for all Americans regarding police-state abuse of power (thanks to sections of the post-September 11 “Patriot Act” approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush), U.S. Intelligence intercepted North Carolinian Michael Moore’s email -- likely believing it was written by independent film producer-icon (“Bowling for Columbine”) and author (“Stupid White Men”) Michael Moore. Inother words, they got the wrong Michael Moore.

George W. Bush, Warlord, by Ted Rall

First he appointed himself President. Now George W. Bush has declared himself God.

As Americans begin their third year of Supreme Court-ordered political occupation, Bush has just signed an impressive new executive order. You may be surprised to learn that it grants him the right to order your execution. No judge, jury or lawyer. No chance to prove your innocence. One stroke of Bush's pen, and bang--you're dead.

Not even your American citizenship, according to Bush, will save your life if and when he decides to kill you. [more]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has banned an award-winning Palestinian film from their competition because they assert that Palestine is not a country 'according to the UN.' Ali Abunimah and Benjamin Doherty point out the inherent hypocrisy in this:

In 2001, AMPAS accepted an entry from Hong Kong, even though that former British colony is now an administrative region of China, with no status at the U.N. In 2000, the film Solomon And Gaenor, a love story about a Yiddish-speaking Jewish man and a Welsh girl, was a finalist for the Best Foreign Film award, representing Wales. Wales is not an independent state.

Palestine, by contrast, has maintained an officially recognized permanent observer mission at the U.N. for decades and dozens of countries have recognized the state of Palestine and maintain diplomatic relations with it at the ambassadorial level.

This raises the question: Is there a double standard to keep Palestine out of the Oscars? [more]

Can't Afford Not to Consume
From the blog of Honorary Harbinger Douglas Rushkoff:

Today, most references to collective costs are mistaken for some form of rehashed communism. Meanwhile, the hard left mistakes all notions of free market forces as the tyranny of the individual. (And, of course, to us 'spiritual' folks, the individual doesn't even exist.)

There's got to be a frame of reference for finances that stresses collective costs while acknowledging the efficiency of market forces. If you know the name of this model, let me know.

Dubya bellows:

As commander in chief, I do not believe I can ask others to accept this risk unless I am willing to do the same. Therefore, I will receive the vaccine along with our military.

Hey George if you really believe that we want to see you on the front lines leading the troops. Oh, whats that, it was really just another bullshit sound bite. Duh!

From
Joe Conason's Journal at Salon: "After being roundly blasted for excusing Lott, Tom Daschle has tried to sound tougher, and of course failed. Joseph Lieberman and Ted Kennedy made stronger statements but flinched from demanding that Lott step down. Hillary Clinton flinched too, and her statement was pretty lame. Far too few of the Senate Democrats have made themselves heard at all. It's pitiful to watch these Democrats articulate a weaker stance than Bill Bennett and Bill Kristol. They had better take a few minutes to review Lott's full record, available here and elsewhere, and then ask themselves how they will explain this sorry abdication to the decent Americans who have always supported them."

pardon our hippyness

excuse our 60's activism coming out again, but the crack staff at skippy wants to remind everyone in the socal area about the candlelight vigil in hollywood tomorrow.

go to www.answerla.org for details, but briefly, there will be candle light vigil to stop the war before it starts, at the corners of hollywood and highland blvds. in hollywood, on saturday dec. 14, beginning at about 7:30.

see you there!

Dow and Burson-Marsteller Suing Parody Websites

Did You Know...
Dow is responsible for the birth of the modern environmental movement. In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring about the side-effects of a Dow product, DDT, on North American bird populations. Her work created a groundswell of concern, sparking the birth of many of today's environmental action groups. Another example of Dow's commitment to Living. Improved daily.

Two giant companies are struggling to shut down parody websites that portray them unfavorably, interrupting internet use for thousands in the process, and filing a lawsuit that pits the formidable legal department of PR giant Burson-Marsteller against a freshman at Hampshire College.

The activists behind the fake corporate websites have fought back, and obtained substantial publicity in the process.

A December 3 press release originating from one of the fake sites, Dow-Chemical.com, explained the "real" reasons that Dow could not take responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe, which has resulted in an estimated 20,000 deaths over the years. "Our prime responsibilities are to the people who own Dow shares, and to the industry as a whole," the release stated. "We cannot do anything for the people of Bhopal." The fake site immediately received thousands of outraged e-mails .
Within hours, the real Dow sent a legal threat to Dow-Chemical.com's upstream provider, Verio, prompting Verio to shut down the fake Dow's ISP for nearly a day, closing down hundreds of unrelated websites and bulletin boards in the process.

The fake Dow website quickly resurfaced at an ISP in Australia.

In a comical anticlimax, Dow then used a little-known domain-name rule to take possession of Dow-Chemical.com , another move which backfired when amused journalists wrote articles in newspapers from The New York Times to The Hindu in India, and sympathetic activists responded by cloning and mirroring the site at many locations, including http://www.dowethics.com/, http://www.dowindia.com/ and, with a twist, http://www.mad-dow-disease.com/. Dow continues to play whack-a-mole with these sites (at least one ISP has received veiled threats).

Read the Whole Story Here.

Stop The War Conference.
As the US government moves steadily towards a military confrontation with Iraq, resistance to US foreign policy in the Gulf has been growing constantly. With this situation in mind, student activists at the University of Michigan have organized the STOP THE WAR Conference, which will be a productive space both for activists to build connections to increase the effectiveness of the antiwar movement, and for those who want to learn more about the multitude of issues involved in the US war on Iraq.


This conference will be an amazing opportunity to meet and network with other activists and educate yourself on this pressing issue. Conference organizers have gathered a group of experienced activists and world-reknowned intellectuals to give lectures and lead workshops on a wide range of issues.


You can use this website as a tool to learn more about the conference.


If you're planning on coming to the conference, you must register. It only takes a minute, and will ensure that you receive up-to-date information on the schedule of events, in addition to helping us coordinate logistics.

• program
  
• speakers
  
• related events

"I began to understand that 'America' in reality belonged to the whole world and not just to Americans. The idea of America had already been invented by the philosophers, the vagabonds, the dispersed of this earth, long before the Spanish ships got there. Those whom we call Americans have only rented it for a time. If they behave badly, we can discover another 'America'.The contract can be canceled at any time."
--Sergio Leone

. . . cool quote via the Musings & Meanderings of an Unabashed Liberal

More on Leone here.

The University of Michigan students vote against war
After weeks of debate and postponements, the Resolution Against a War in Iraq was voted upon and passed, 22 to 13, at last night's Michigan Student Assembly meeting. MSA will now work with anti-war student groups to promote dialogue and educational events pertaining to the war.

It has also been resolved that MSA will urge President Bush not to preemptively or unilaterally start a war with Iraq and encourage the Bush administration to pursue a peaceful diplomatic resolution built upon international support

Dubya Subpoenaed For Texas Rape of Minor (link is to a PDF)

It says in this Texas county court document that Dubya has been accused legally of having sex with a minor, and then using his powers as President to harass her into committing suicide.

Wonder if this will make the media? You can be sure that if it was Slick Willie being accused the Republicrats would see to it that it did.

Link to an HTML version for the PDF impaired.

Bush warns Iraq of harsh response

In a new defense strategy submitted to Congress on Wednesday, President Bush warned Iraq and other hostile countries that the United States is prepared to use "overwhelming force" -- including nuclear weapons -- in response to any chemical or biological attack.
The threat was contained in a White House document called the "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction." Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer called it a declaration "of how seriously the United States would take it in the event that weapons of mass destruction were used."

anti-war protests

in honor of human rights day today, there are many planned anti-iraq protests across the world.

reuters says anti-iraq war protestors rally across u.s.

"more than 100 communities in 35 states are playing host tuesday to rallies, marches, and protests by liberal groups and activists against what organizers say are the white house's 'plans to invade Iraq at any cost'," says united press international

"a delegation of priests, nuns and roman catholic lay people is expected in iraq tuesday for the beginning of a series of demonstrations against a possible u.s. invasion of that middle-eastern country," says crosswalk.com.

8 protestors arrested outside of colo. sen. wayne allard's office last week (scroll down to bottom stroy)

and talkleft informs us that more than 100 celebs have signed an anti-war letter to be send to mr. bush. (don't send it with winona, she might lift something at the white house and get us all in dutch!)

remember, if you're in the socal area, this saturday, dec. 14, a candle light vigil to protest war will be held in hollywood at the corner of hollywood and highland streets at 7:30. please go to www.answerla.org for details.

Caught whistling Dixie
Four days later, Lott's controversial comment gets some attention. But not from top congressional Democrats

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's big mistake came last Thursday, at a ceremony commemorating the 100th birthday of Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. When it was his turn to speak, Lott boasted that his home state of Mississippi had supported Thurmond's run for president in 1948, and that "if the rest of the country had followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years."

Thurmond ran in 1948 as an openly pro-segregationist Dixiecrat. Lott's comment, according to the Washington Post, was met by "an audible gasp and general silence."

But perhaps even more surprising is how that stunned silence extended all the way to the Democratic Party. By Monday, many black leaders and black organizations had denounced Lott's remarks. On Monday, Lott said only that his comments "were not an endorsement of [Thurmond's] positions of more than 50 years ago, but of a man and his life." And four days later, few leading Democrats -- including those considering a bid for the 2004 race -- were willing to openly criticize the senator.

Anti-War Movement? It's News to Us

Marjie Lundstrom, writing in our favorite newspaper named after an insect, the Sacramento Bee, seems to think that the mass media is missing out on coverage of the anti-war movement. Hey, who are we to disagree with the Bee?

Ms. Lundstrom writes about the decidedly-not-lunatic-fringe that is busy protesting Mr. Bush's march to war:

"The Rocklin schoolteacher who worries about his students' futures. The 68-year-old "stay-at-home protester" who e-mails and writes his elected officials. The 64-year-old semiretired carpenter who proudly stages a war protest in Auburn.

"There is the Sacramento attorney who sees her peace activism as a "matter of logic." And a father who drives his 12-year-old son to the Oct. 26 peace rally in San Francisco. A 51-year-old writer takes a ferry to the rally, too, because she is alarmed by President Bush's "frightening drive to war."

But Ms. Lundstrom thinks the Media are missing the obvious story: that much of mainstream America is anti-war.

"Yet media coverage seems stuck in a 1960s and 1970s Vietnam War-era frame, with journalists confining themselves to protest stories and visual images reminiscent of those times."

"Unlike the early days of the Vietnam anti-war movement...churches and labor unions have edged into this movement much sooner. Those speaking out against attacking Iraq already include the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches, the United Methodist Church and, in this state, the California Federation of Teachers. AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has expressed reservations to both houses of Congress.

Hey, Marjie, we don't disagree! But don't tell us, tell Walter Isaacson!

(Thanks and a tip of the Bush Kangaroo Hat to The Hamster for directing us to Ms. Lundstrom's article in the Bee).

Rawls and Us Rawls, Ryan wrote, "had two deep insights. The first was that utilitarianism was fundamentally flawed; utilitarianism, that is, trying to maximise the welfare of a whole society, failed to recognise what Rawls called 'the separateness of persons.'... The second deep insight is thus that we need an account of justice as fairness. What is the crucial question that we must be able to answer if we are to say that social arrangements meet the test of fairness?... Rawls's stroke of genius was to invent the idea of a 'veil of ignorance,' shrouding the folk who make this social contract so that they do not know who they will be, what abilities they will possess, what faith they will adopt, and so on. If they do not know whether they will be winners or losers, smart or dumb, Christians, Jews, Muslims or atheists, they will sign up only for arrangements that protect them whatever happens." [Eric Alterman in The Nation]

Be Careful What You Wish For

Gen. Amir al-Saadi, an Iraqi general, "defies" the U.S. and Britain to find any proof of WMD in Iraq. Well, knowing Mr. Bush, he's not one to take a double dare lying down (but he does double down when he dares to lie).

However, apparently the U.S. was right, according to Gen. al-Saaqi, when it contended that Saddam was close to having a "Nagasaki-sized" nuke at the end of the First Gulf War. This is not good news, even if it is old news.

Saddam seems to be calling Mr. Bush's bluff, and that's not a good thing. Because we know that Mr. Bush is many things, but he probably isn't bluffing about invading Iraq.

The U.S. and the other members of the U.N. Security Council has received copies of the Iraqi Arms Disclosure Statement - all 12,000 pages of it. On the face of it, that means it will take at least until Christmas for the lawyers to get through the document...so at least we'll have a happy holiday, assuming the economy holds up, and we aren't any of the 6 percent of the unemployed, the largest surge in unemployment since the end of the last Bush recession 9 years ago.

But, back on point, we are betting that the Bush Administration will find something in the WMD Declaration that won't sit well with them, thus creating an excuse to invade.

Our money is on January...still cold enough to comfortably wear those anti-biological/chemical warfare suits, but soon enough after the holidays to take advantage of the White Sales for the flags that the Bushies assume the Iraqis will want to be waving.

Homegrown Border Patrol?

Chris Simcox, owner of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, a weekly newspaper in Tombstone, AZ, made headlines when he issued call for an armed citizen's militia to patrol the border against "invasion" from Mexicans illegally entering the U.S. Simcox exhorted Tombstonians: "Concerned Citizens turn off the T.V. Join together to protect your country in a time of war!"

Simcox apparently sees the militia as an adjunct to the Department of Homeland Security, telling another Arizona newspaper that the citizen militia will be called "Civil Homeland Defense Force". He told reporters that militia members will be patrolling public lands instead of private property as he initially proposed. Members will be armed and patrolling water stations set up by humanitarian groups, Simcox said.

Meanwhile Tuscon's Derechos Humanos (Human Rights) Coalition noting that several murders of Mexicans as they attempted to cross the border have yet to be prosecuted, says that racist groups are behind recent calls to protect the United States from terrorists. And that "the hate mongers wrap themselves up in the flag and shamelessly exploit the anti-terrorism atmosphere of the country."

For educational purposes, check out what you would have received last week in your email box had you been an employee of the Department of Justice:

The Attorney General
Washington D.C.
November 2002

Dear DOJ Family,

As Americans prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, I am reminded of the many blessings made possible by the sacrifice of generations that have gone before us. In their first years in the New World, the Pilgrims suffered and sacrificed, paving the way for the America that now exists.

During one particularly harsh time, known as "The Starving," each Pilgrim was allocated a mere five (5) kernels of corn per day. Nothing more was eaten except the seafood which was caught. That disciplined, sacrificial hardship protected the seedcorn that was necessary for future plenty.

This Thanksgiving in America, as I thank God for His blessings and the sacrifices of those who have gone before me, I also give thanks for you. I am grateful for our opportunity to work together to promote freedom around the world. May God bless and protect you, your family and America.

Sincerely,

John Ashcroft

Historical memory: In the run-up to the American War in Vietnam, there was considerable debate within LBJ's government about the best strategy to pursue. There was almost no debate about whether or not to escalate the war, despite the fact that Johnson had run for election on the grounds that Goldwater would dangerously escalate the American involvement in Vietnam. The JCS wanted an all-out war from the start, including the option to use nuclear weapons, while the civilians in DOD favored a slow build-up. While it is always dangerous to argue from historical parallels, it is nevertheless instructive to recall that debate today, in the context of the current run-up to war with Iraq. I am a student of the Vietnam War(s) & while there are a number of texts we might consult (particularly Jeffrey Record's The Wrong War) nothing I have read traces the internal politics of the Johnson administration's war planning with anything approaching the detail & nuance of Daniel Ellsberg's memoir, Secrets. Even while denouncing Goldwater's suggestion that field commanders be given authority to use tactical nuclear weapons, Johnson had already given his military a (more limited) authority to use such weapons under particular circumstances, such as an inability to communicate with Washington. Several members of Johnson's Joint Chiefs of Staff, especially Curtis LeMay, secretly supported Goldwater's position. Throughout this process, many civilian analysts in the Defense Department, including, according to Ellsberg, Robert McNamara, not only opposed the use of nuclear force, but also took seriously LBJ's declaration, "We seek no wider war." The picture Ellsberg pains is of an administration that at its highest levels was bent on pursuing a policy of escalation even while many (though by no means all) of its own policy intellectuals were deeply skeptical of such a policy.

The mendacity & duplicity that resulted from this situation effectively shut the Congress & the American people out of the debate. Guys like Ellsberg (he says) saw the Congress as an obstacle to be circumvented rather than as a representative of the American people. In fact, the one thing that all the participants in the debate agreed on was that democratic institutions were not all that well-suited to their agendas, whatever they were. And so everybody who knew anything simply lied to the people's representatives & to the press. Secrecy was seen as a virtue closely allied with loyalty. Reading Ellsberg's account, it becomes clear that all of the significant debate about the war took place within the executive branch of the government, the legislative branch having been effectively frozen out of the process. What's more, information about the war was manipulated in order to achieve political ends. When the Viet Cong attacked American interests at Pleiku & Qui Nhon in February of 1964, plans had already been developed for systematic bombing of North Vietnam. That is, the US government was looking for a pretext to attack, despite the fact that LBJ had not authorized any action except tit-for-tat raids in response to specific incidents. Ellsberg reports that after the Qui Nhon raid, he spent the night in the Joint Chiefs War Room in the Pentagon, where he was given an open line to Saigon so that he could gather atrocity stories for McNamara to take to Johnson the next morning.

I do not mean to minimize the loss of lives, American & Vietnamese, that occurred in Vietnam at this time; the point I'm trying to make here is political. Instead of a debate about the merits of escalating American commitment in Southeast Asia, there was a defense establishment that, despite its own lack of unanimity, configured itself to expand the war even while the world was being told that was not the case [The Pentagon Papers, Vol 3 pp 193, 559]. Ellsberg says he acted out of loyalty & that only later did he come to see that this loyalty was misplaced. He thought, he says, that McNamara & the president were committed to a limited war, a war of containment that would avoid large-scale bombing campaigns.

Now, from what we poor citizens can tell, there is also a debate going on in the highest reaches of our government. And the news this week seems to indicate that the administration is looking for an excuse to start a war in Iraq. The roles appear to be reversed this time, with the military showing considerably more reluctance to go to full-scale war than the civilians in DOD. One can debate the merits of the war & it is dangerous to draw historical analogies; the similarity here is mendacity. Then & now, the American government, especially the executive branch, demonstrated a profound lack of faith in the democratic institutions that are the foundation of American liberties. We have been down this road before.

Senator Daniel K. Inouye speaking of John Poindexter and Oliver North during 1987 Senate Hearings on the Iran-contra affair. He is disucssing their riding rough should over our constitution.

"This is a dangerous world," they said. That my fellow citizens is an excuse for autocracy, not policy. Becuase no times were more danerous than when our country was born, when revolution was our midwife. Our system of government has withstood the tests and tensions of civil conflict, the depression and two world wars, times hardly less challenging than our own present. Indeed as our greatest military leaders, such as Washington, Marshall, and Eisenhower, have recognized, our form of government is what gives us strength. It must be safeguarded, particularly when times are dangerous and the temptation to arrogant power is the greatest. Vigilance abroad does not require us to abandon our ideas of rule of law at home. On the contrary, without our principles and without our ideals we have little that is special or worthy to defend.

How soon we forget and how little things change.

Poor Forgotten As Digital Divide Still Gapes: " . . . today, only 25 percent of American households earning less than $15,000 per year have Internet access, while nearly 80 percent of families earning $75,000 or more have access in the home."

Jeb Bush to Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau: "Walk softly."

Photographer Arrested For Taking Pictures Of Vice President's Hotel: "When Maginnis refused to admit to being any sort of terrorist, the Secret Service agent called him a 'raghead collaborator' and a 'dirty pinko faggot.'"

Bhopal disaster has no parallel in human history

It all began 18 years ago during the night of 2 December 1984 when 40 tonnes of lethal gases leaked from Union Carbide Corporation's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. People just did not know what had hit them. There was no warning. Before anyone could realize the full impact of the disaster an area of about 40 square kilometres, with a resident population of over half a million, was engulfed in dense clouds of poison.

People woke up coughing, gasping for breath, their eyes burning. Many fell dead as they ran.

Ecosocialism -- A Weblog of Ecosocialist Opinion

Bill Moyers responds to comments made about him by Bill O'Reilly.

Eyeballing Total Information Awareness

The SF Weekly's column by Matt Smith in the Dec 3 issue points out that there may be some information that John M. and Linda Poindexter of 10 Barrington Fare, Rockville, MD, 20850, may be missing in their pursuit of total information awareness. He suggests that people with information to offer should phone 1 301 424 6613 to speak with that corrupt official and his wife. Neighbors Thomas E. Maxwell, 67, at 8 Barringon Fare ( 1 301 251 1326), James F. Galvin, 56, at 12 ( 1 301 424 0089), and Sherrill V. Stant (nee Knight) at 6, may also lack some information that would be valuable to them in making decisions -- decisions that could affect the basic civil rights of every American.

In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects

Those Designated 'Combatants' Lose Legal Protections

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.

The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.

Sousveillance, not just surveillance, in response to terrorism
by Steve Mann

License To Chill -- Hackers Hamstring Rights Violators

SUMMARY: International hacker organization issues software license that
allows the group or its licensees to take human rights violators to court.

CROSSHAIRS: This story is important for anyone interested in hacking,
human rights, information security, open-source software, Internet censorship, international law, international politics, or technology transfer.

It's already started

Reuters reports bombings in Iraq - an oil plant targeted, four killed. Meanwhile UN inspectors were busy visiting "an agricultural facility and military complexes near Baghdad". And the official reply from the U.S. Central Command? "We have nothing on it". Apparently it's not the first strike of this pre-officially-declared-war phase (there's always been on and off bombings during all the past ten years too). But formalities have to respected - so, it's not war yet. Presumably it takes a much higher frequence of air strikes to qualify as such.

The formal game continues, and this time it's not (yet, at least) Iraqis blocking inspections but inspectors blocking journalists from entering the facilites with them. It must be only for security reasons, of course...

"God is being invoked in many lands these days, my lord. What about the enemy's God?" -- Greta Garbo as Queen Christina in QUEEN CHRISTINA (1933).