Trials & Tribulations of One Firebrand Chicana

2005-10-11T03:59:00.000-04:00

Officials race to head off a bird flu pandemic

Maybe it's just media influence but I am fucking scared about this. Why is the world always ending? I'm sick of worrying. I don't even know what to say about the 20,000 human beings that were killed by this monstrous earthquake. What can you say when life in the U.S. is so normal right now and we can't even grasp that level of death? How could we anyway? I just don't know how to reconcile by day-to-day life with the catastrophes of the world. What's more important?

Officials race to head off a bird flu pandemic
By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
Health officials from all over the world are scrambling to figure out how to ward off a global outbreak of deadly flu. President Bush, fresh from reading a 546-page tome on his vacation about the 1918 "Spanish flu" outbreak, has been consulting with the heads of vaccine companies, and he warns that the military might be used to enforce quarantines. His administration's flu battle plan reportedly predicts that almost 2 million Americans could die in a major outbreak. (Related: Tracking a deadly virus)
Disinfectant is sprayed at a chicken farm in Yeoncheon, north of Seoul. South Korea is advising farmers to take precautions against a potential bird flu outbreak.
By Ahn Chung-hwan, AP

The dire projections are prompting new anxiety among Americans already reeling from hurricane disasters. But the experts have been warning for years about a possible flu pandemic. Why suddenly are all the government's alarm bells going off? Are there real reasons to be frightened now? And if there is a flu pandemic, how bad could it be?

Two recent, unrelated events have put the possibility of a flu pandemic into sharp focus:

•An avian flu that had largely been confined to Southeast Asia has spread to Europe and Turkey.

•Two back-to-back hurricanes in the Gulf demonstrated nature's potential for devastation.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt was visiting hurricane emergency shelters after Katrina and Rita when it hit him just how bad a flu pandemic could be. "What if it weren't just New Orleans" struck by catastrophe, Leavitt recalls thinking. "What if it were Seattle, San Diego, Corpus Christi, Denver, Chicago, New York? Make your own list."

Unlike a hurricane that's confined to a specific area over a short time, a pandemic flu strikes everywhere and can last a year or more, says Leavitt, who left Saturday on a fact-finding trip to flu-stricken regions of Southeast Asia. Waves of illness would shutter schools and businesses, swamp hospitals and send tens of thousands to overflow medical shelters and early graves.

"The big lesson I learned from Hurricane Katrina is that we have to be thinking about the unthinkable," Leavitt says, "because sometimes the unthinkable happens."

The unthinkable has become all too real in Vietnam, Thailand and other Asian countries where an especially deadly flu virus, influenza A/H5N1, has been spreading through millions of birds for the past two years. The virus recently has shown up in birds in Romania, Russia and Turkey.

So far, the virus has infected 117 people, killing 60, a death rate of nearly 50%. Most people have been infected through close contact with infected poultry. In rare cases, the virus is believed to have spread among family members through close contact. If the virus learns to spread readily from person to person through the air, it could cause a pandemic that rivals the worst.

No one can predict when a killer flu will strike, how bad it will be or even whether the virus will sustain its virulence after it begins to spread widely among humans. "It's clear the warning signs are troubling, but there is no certainty," Leavitt says.

The 'ugly truth'
A SCARY SCENARIO
The last flu pandemic, the Hong Kong flu, struck in 1968-69 and killed 1 million people worldwide and 34,000 people in the USA. A strain three times more lethal could kill more than half a million in the USA and send 2 million people to the hospital. Projected numbers of dead, hospitalized and cases:
State Dead In hospitals No. of cases
Ala. 8,886 38,591 1,079,789
Alaska 886 4,558 152,328
Ariz. 9,223 39,675 1,138,742
Ark. 5,350 22,660 630,705
Calif. 60,875 273,090 8,067,075
Colo. 7,192 32,978 973,161
Conn. 7,054 29,932 817,465
Del. 1,507 6,560 182,895
D.C. 1,155 4,974 132,241
Fla. 35,737 142,386 3,663,486
Ga. 13,655 62,912 1,871,561
Hawaii 2,446 10,571 296,651
Idaho 2,279 10,157 302,558
Ill. 23,720 103,738 2,973,962
Ind. 11,817 51,711 1,466,027
Iowa 6,233 26,090 713,106
Kan. 5,373 22,946 654,335
Ky. 7,930 34,748 977,031
La. 8,334 37,148 1,087,942
Maine 2,651 11,333 310,513
Md. 9,958 44,500 1,273,572
Mass. 13,136 56,038 1,529,313
Mich. 19,622 86,005 2,443,473
Minn. 9,304 40,786 1,171,387
Miss. 5,362 23,531 682,625
Mo. 11,274 48,240 1,350,515
Mont. 1,804 7,787 219,703
Neb. 3,441 14,697 414,218
Nev. 3,243 14,455 419,202
N.H. 2,333 10,301 293,177
N.J. 16,980 72,791 2,013,212
N.M. 3,244 14,504 432,438
N.Y. 37,701 162,490 4,534,307
N.C. 14,987 65,637 1,856,296
N.D. 1,371 5,795 160,221
Ohio 23,197 99,979 2,796,583
Okla. 6,833 29,376 829,273
Ore. 6,724 29,047 810,872
Pa. 27,185 112,658 3,004,915
R.I. 2,234 9,263 246,857
S.C. 7,474 32,983 940,045
S.D. 1,559 6,599 184,493
Tenn. 10,875 47,678 1,342,050
Texas 35,124 160,648 4,859,834
Utah 3,393 15,906 514,787
Vt. 1,185 5,213 147,245
Va. 13,104 58,872 1,683,499
Wash. 10,910 48,610 1,402,591
W.Va. 4,049 17,014 453,947
Wis. 10,620 45,842 1,292,419
Wyo. 915 4,086 119,936
Note: Numbers are based U.S. Census data, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention computer program and a 25% infection rate.
Source: The Trust for America's Health, a non-profit public health advocacy group

Health experts agree that a pandemic is inevitable sometime, that the best defense is preparedness and that the world isn't ready. Katrina laid bare America's inability to deal with a massive emergency.

"We're not prepared. It's the ugly truth," says Shelley Hearne, executive director of Trust for America's Health, a non-profit public health advocacy group. "If our emergency response failed so badly for a Category 5 hurricane, imagine what would happen if a Category 5 viral storm hit every state."

Among other things, she says, there is no human vaccine against the avian flu virus, the U.S. government has stockpiled enough anti-viral drugs to treat only 1% of the population, and the hospital system couldn't handle the overload if flu victims flooded emergency rooms.

Health experts such as Hearne have been sounding the alarm about a possible flu pandemic for at least two years, but their cries went largely unheeded until now.

Katrina hit just days after Bush finished John M. Barry's The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History during his August vacation on his ranch, White House spokesman Scott McClellan says.

Apparently motivated by the frightening tale of the 1918 epidemic, which killed an estimated 150,000 people in the USA and 50 million worldwide, Bush said last week that the military might be needed to enforce quarantines.

Michael Stebbins of the Federation of American Scientists and others challenged the suggestion as unworkable. "It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of public health emergencies," he says. "I would be fascinated to see whether the president has a plan to quarantine a city like Washington, D.C., New York or Boston with so many roads in or out. Is he going to send in tanks and armed men?"

Assistant Secretary of Defense William Winkenwirder declined to comment on the president's statement but said the military is often called upon for logistical and medical support in emergencies.

Scientific reports released on the heels of Bush's statement increased the nation's anxiety. In one, Jeffery Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and his team said in the journal Nature that the 1918 pandemic began when the virus leapt from birds to humans, a scenario that mirrors what is happening in Asia today.

In a bid to contain the current epidemic, officials in Southeast Asia have slaughtered 140 million birds. That has not stopped the virus from spreading.

Bush met last week with the chief executives of four vaccine companies to determine how he can help them boost production enough to safeguard the population. The State Department on Friday convened a meeting of health officials from 80 countries to map out plans to arrest the flu's spread.

The administration's plan

The administration is putting the finishing touches on its long-awaited pandemic plan to be released after Leavitt returns from his trip. A draft version, dated Sept. 30 and leaked to The New York Times, reportedly predicts a major outbreak might kill up to 1.9 million people and make half the country sick.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, says he learned of the administration's prediction on Sept. 28 in a top-secret meeting in a secure room in the Capitol. He and a few other senators met with Leavitt; Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The administration, Harkin says, predicts U.S. deaths from pandemic flu could range from 100,000 to 2 million, and as many as 10 million might be hospitalized. Up to 100 million might become sick. Seasonal flu epidemics kill about 36,000 people each year in the USA.

The briefing prompted Harkin to push for $4 billion in supplemental funds. "We saw what happened when you're not prepared," he says. The money will bolster surveillance, increase stockpiles of anti-virals, increase the vaccine supply, and help state and local health officials prepare for epidemics.

Fauci says the scary statistics resonate at the White House: "The president has taken a strong personal interest in getting this country prepared for pandemic flu."

Soon after he gets back from Asia on Oct. 18, Leavitt will unveil the administration's pandemic plan. He offered few details, but he sketched out the administration's aims:

•Improving the global network to detect disease outbreaks. The United States is working with China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and others to strengthen surveillance.

•Heightening vigilance at home. Among other things, CDC is sending avian flu test kits to a network of labs.

•Stockpiling anti-viral medications. Leavitt has entered into negotiations with companies that make anti-virals, seeking enough to treat 20 million people.

•Increasing vaccine capacity. The United States wants to rebuild the vaccine market to give drug makers appropriate incentives to end shortages.

"A major part of our domestic plan needs to be domestic capacity, because in a pandemic, the emergency will be managed across the globe," Leavitt says. "Anyone with a supply produced in their country will want to keep it there."

Vaccines are less profitable than drugs, and drug makers worry about liability issues, such as those that arose when swine flu vaccine, produced in 1976 to avert an epidemic that never materialized, caused a nerve disease. The administration seeks to solve both problems by providing vaccine makers with a stable market and protection against lawsuits.

Hearne says health officials hope the administration's plan will be enough to deal with a flu pandemic. "The reality is that if a pandemic hits, it's not just a health emergency," she says. "It's the big one. It requires big thinking to make sure all those dots are connected. Katrina was a wake-up call."

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-10-10-avian-flu-cover_x.htm

2005-08-25T00:43:00.000-04:00

Chávez taunts US with oil offer

Robertson's such a jackass. I'm more angry that white Americans in power still think they can rule the entire world. It this type of covert political tactics that has created America's notorious reputation around the planet. I'm not an expert on Chavez's administration so far but I do know that he's had massive popularity with the the working masses of his country and they voted him in freely. They also worked to keep him in power when a coup threatened Chavez. I feel that we need more socialism and definitely progressive politics in the mainstream and I know that this level of capitalism cannot last that much longer. Capitalism must be modified to benefit the working people of this country and not the rich. I support people who are not afraid of speaking out against American policy that constantly puts profits over humans. This country is great but it's government needs systemic changes. I would never advocate violence and I hope we find nonviolent means to changing this American capitalist enterprise.

Chávez taunts US with oil offer

Venezuelan president hits back at assassination remarks with offer of cheap petroleum for poor Americans
Duncan Campbell
Thursday August 25, 2005

Guardian
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela hit back vigorously at calls by an ally of President George Bush for his assassination by offering cheap petrol to the poor of the US at a time of soaring fuel prices.

In a typically robust response to remarks by the US televangelist Pat Robertson, Mr Chávez compared his detractors to the "rather mad dogs with rabies" from Cervantes' Don Quixote, and unveiled his plans to use Venezuela's energy reserves as a political tool.

"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," he said.

Mr Robertson's remarks have threatened to inflame tension between the US and one of its main oil suppliers.

Yesterday the religious broadcaster apologised for his remarks.

"Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologise for that statement. I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the US is out to kill him," he said.

In a TV broadcast on Monday, he said: "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

Yesterday Mr Robertson initially said his comments had been misinterpreted, but went on to add that kidnapping Mr Chávez might be a better idea.

"I said our special forces could take him out. Take him out could be a number of things, including kidnapping."

The Bush administration tried to distance itself from Mr Robertson's views without upsetting the large Christian fundamentalist wing which the veteran evangelist represents.

A State Department spokesman said assassination was not part of government policy. "He's a private citizen," Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, said of Mr Robertson. "Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time."

But Mr Robertson's remarks are seen as an embarrassment at a time when the US is calling for a united front against terror.

Democrats have challenged the Bush administration to be more outspoken in its response to Mr Robertson's remarks on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Venezuela's ambassador to the US, Bernardo Alvarez, said: "Mr Robertson has been one of this president's staunchest allies. His statement demands the strongest condemnation by the White House."

The Venezuelan government is asking for assurances from the US government that Mr Chávez will be adequately protected when he visits New York for a special session of the UN next month.

Venezuela's vice-president, José Vicente Rangel, said the possibility of legal action against Mr Robertson for incitement to murder should also be considered.

Venezuela, the world's fifth largest crude exporter, supplies 1.3m barrels of oil a day to the US. It remains unclear how poor Americans might benefit from the cheap petrol offer, but Mr Chávez has set up arrangements with other countries for swapping services in exchange for oil. Cuban doctors are working in the poorer areas of Venezuela in exchange for cheap oil going to Cuba.

Jamaica yesterday became the first Caribbean country to reach an agreement with Venezuela for oil at below-market terms. The Petrocaribe initiative is a plan to offer oil at flexible rates to 13 Caribbean countries. Jamaica will pay $40 a barrel, against a market rate of more than $60.

Mr Chávez said oil importers such as the US could expect no respite from the oil market, predicting the price of a barrel would reach $100 by 2012.

2005-08-06T01:14:00.000-04:00

Trials & Tribulations of One Firebrand Chicana

Doves, silence for A-bomb victims
Hiroshima recalls day 60 years ago that changed face of war

I've got a lump in my throat.
I can't believe this took place... why?

Doves, silence for A-bomb victims
Hiroshima recalls day 60 years ago that changed face of war

HIROSHIMA, Japan (CNN) -- Hundreds of doves were released in Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima Saturday as tens of thousands of people gathered 60 years after the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city, killing nearly half of its residents.

At 8:15 a.m. (11:15 p.m. GMT Friday) -- the moment when the bomb detonated on Aug. 6, 1945 -- the crowd was hushed for a minute of silence in tribute to the more than 140,000 people who died either instantly or not long after the attack.

Thousands more suffered severe burns and the effects of radiation sickness, and many of these people also did not survive.

The park surrounds the closest building to survive the blast.

On August 9, 1945, three days after the Hiroshima attack, another atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, who each year issues a Declaration of Peace for the anniversary, described it as "a time of inheritance, of awakening and of commitment ... to the abolishment of nuclear weapons and the realization of genuine world peace."

"No one else should ever suffer as we did," said Akiba, quoting the "hibakusha" warning from the bombing survivors. He urged nuclear powers to abandon their arsenals.

During the Hiroshima ceremonies, dignitaries placed wreaths and flowers at the base of the monument. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also paid tribute to the bombing victims, saying Japan has vowed "never to repeat the tragedies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"We also will take the lead in the international community to promote ... nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation and do our best to abolish nuclear weapons," Koizumi added.

The anniversary comes as North Korea disarmament talks continue in Beijing.

Negotiations have reached an impasse over Washington's insistence that Pyongyang should not be allowed to have any nuclear program that might be converted to making weapons.

North Korea insists it has the right to developing nuclear power for peaceful means.

One of the Hiroshima survivors is Hiroko Yamashita, who was home alone when the bomb went off.

"I remember the figure of my little brother coming home from our neighbor's house, silhouetted in a white flash," she said.

Yamashita was 18, he was 6, and their parents had asked her to watch him.

Their house was about 800 meters (yards) from where the bomb exploded. Their three-story home collapsed, but she and her brother found each other.

"We're OK is all we could say, over and over."

She told CNN she saw survivors with burned skin hanging from bodies."I still remember the voices of the dying calling, 'help, help us,' but we could not help them."

Yamashita suffered gaping wounds that exposed her bones and went to a nearby airfield, where co-workers found her and re-united her and her brother with their parents.

She thought her brother was fine. But he collapsed, bleeding from his nose, and his hair fell out. He died at a medical facility, in the bed next to her.

Yamashita said she still suffers from recurring cancer from the bombing.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/08/05/japan.hiroshima/

2005-06-20T16:47:00.000-04:00

"Disastrous" bill would cut public-broadcasting service

I am horrified about the new Congressional bill to cut funding for PBS and NPR! What the hell is wrong with our "elected" officials who are supposed to advance the public interest?? There is no other public and free institution like PBS or NPR that is open to all. Their funding should pretty much be endless in my opinion. Does Congress realize how vital these outlets are for public education and knowledge? With all the budget cuts that public schools and colleges get all the time PBS and NPR are often the only form of receiving increasingly missing information. I feel really strongly about this. If the government consistently chooses to overspend on things like the military and not education, then they really should keep their hands off funding for public broadcasting. Period. Man, I really need to run for Congress so that the public interest remains vital there... those well educated representatives have little to worry about if public broadcasting is in trouble but what about the rest of the working public and citizens?? I've already filled a part of the petition sponsored by MoveOn.org.... I suggest everyone do the same RIGHT NOW. Thanks!

http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/

Kay McFadden
"Disastrous" bill would cut public-broadcasting service

If you can't join 'em, lick 'em. That seems to be the Republicans' final solution for public broadcasting.

Last Thursday night, the House Appropriations Committee approved a 2006 fiscal spending bill. According to Congressional Quarterly, it would cut 23 percent of funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which gives money to PBS, NPR and member stations.

The proposed bill rolls back a 2004 appropriation and reduces CPB's budget by $87 million, to $300 million. It also would eliminate all money for PBS stations to convert to digital and for PBS' "Ready to Learn" early-learning service for children.

Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the committee's ranking Democrat, told Congressional Quarterly that the proposal was "disastrous for public broadcasting as we know it."

Closer to home, Seattle's KCTS-TV and Tacoma's KBTC-TV are holding a joint press conference at 10 a.m. today to call attention to the impending plight of local stations.

Bill Mohler, president and CEO of KCTS, said the loss is most likely to hurt production and local outreach for children's shows, which get less corporate underwriting despite their critical acclaim and hallowed place in PBS programming.

"This is very, very troubling to me," said Mohler. "I can't believe that people would want to strike out like this. It's really punitive, especially to reach into an appropriation approved by a prior Congress."

Hard to believe, maybe, but not hard to conceive. In 1995, Republican and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich led an unsuccessful effort to ax funding for CPB.

There are significant differences this time around. GOP conservatives have been savvier in conducting a multi-pronged assault on public broadcasting, from attacks on PBS and NPR content to attempts to install their own leadership at CPB.

Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, the Appropriations chairman, said last week that the cuts had nothing do with targeting public TV or radio. He pointed out that the entire bill — which includes spending for labor, health and human services and education — contains reductions.

Sure. While we're in the counting House, it's worth noting that the present CPB budget costs American citizens just over $1 apiece a year.

Whatever Regula's intentions, the bill comes after months of mounting criticism from conservatives that have often had an orchestrated appearance — even as poll after poll shows that public television has some of the highest credibility ratings with the public.

The first target was Bill Moyers' allegedly liberal tilt on "Now." Moyers departed in December. Then a pair of lesbian moms on "Postcards from Buster" drew outrage. Next it was two "Frontline" broadcasts in which U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq used naughty words.

PBS tried to accommodate.

Instead of airing the disputed "Buster" episode, it left the choice to individual stations. It aired expurgated versions of the "Frontline" programs, again leaving it to local stations to choose the original version. (Note: KCTS ran "Buster" and the nonbleeped "Frontlines.")

PBS President Pat Mitchell went further. She gave shows to conservatives Tucker Carlson and Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot. She announced public television would hire an ombudsman to address the issue of balance.

While all this was going on, the CPB board was being reshaped by Republican hands — to an extent that even CPB's board apparently didn't realize.

Last Monday, The New York Times broke the story that CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican elected by the board in 2003, secretly hired an outside consultant to monitor Bill Moyers' "Now" for "anti-Bush," "anti-business" and "anti- (House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay" bias.

Wisconsin's Obey and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., have called for an investigation by CPB Inspector General Kenneth Konz.

They also want Konz to check out reports that Tomlinson told members of the Association of Public Television Stations at a meeting of TV and radio executives last November that they needed to include the November election mandate in programs.

CPB is supposed to be apolitical. The 1967 law that established it says so.

Now that Tomlinson has been caught maneuvering, it's hard to resist speculation that Republicans are using financial hardball to get public broadcasting to toe the line, or die.

They've timed their actions shrewdly.

The explosion in viewing choices since 1995 has made PBS vulnerable to critics who say that it's no longer vital or unique. Cable channels now crowd the field with quality offerings in traditional PBS bastions like children's shows and British imports.

Ratings and corporate funding also have declined since 1995, forcing public television to carry more "sponsorship spots" and dilute its identity as noncommercial. That's alienated some of PBS' staunchest viewers.

Still, PBS owns the claim to being independent of corporate interests. Its news and information programs — "Frontline," "American Experience," "American Masters" and "Nova" — have virtually no equal.

Many a parent still would rather plop his or her child in front of an afternoon of PBS programming than roll the dice with commercial alternatives.

Transcending these considerations is the democratic vision of a level viewing field. For people unable to afford cable, PBS is the only oasis of mostly commercial-free quality.

At the local level, value goes beyond the screen.

On $45,000 a year, KCTS' "Ready to Learn" program teaches parents and educators to support children's school readiness, promotes literacy and distributes thousands of free books to poor kids.

That could all go away under the proposed elimination of that program.

It's discouraging in this supersized financial era to have to fret over such piddling amounts. Being head of a public-TV station must really suck some days.

More depressing is the spectacle of PBS turned into a political football. Bias probably creeps into all forms of media as a matter of human nature. Yet how can anyone fault the service that public broadcasting has rendered for decades?

If public TV is killed, it'll be interesting to see what happens to that suddenly available broadcast spectrum. I expect sums far greater than $45,000 will be tossed around.

The appropriations bill moves to a full vote Thursday in the House. In July, the House and Senate conferees expect to meet to reconcile budget legislation.

Don't sit on your hands. Check out kcts.org, moveon.org, reclaimthemedia.org and commoncause.org for starters. E-mail your political representatives. Stop watching TV — just this once.

kmcfadden@seattletimes.com

2005-05-19T01:23:00.000-04:00

Latino mayor for Los Angeles after 133 years

I'm so dead tired right now so all I can say about this news story is "Yes!!!" ;) Never mind!
"L.A. Elects 1st Hispanic Mayor Since 1872"
Since 1872!!! Well, it's about fucking time again!

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Thursday May 19, 2005

Guardian
Los Angeles has a Latino mayor for the first time since 1872 after a victory at the polls for Antonio Villaraigosa over the incumbent, Jim Hahn.

The 59%-41% victory for the Mexican-American city councillor was being heralded yesterday as a political breakthrough for the growing Latino population in the US.

Mr Villaraigosa captured 80% of the Latino vote in the city and 60% of the white vote on a turnout of about 30% of registered voters.

At a victory rally on Tuesday he told supporters: "We are all Angelenos tonight. You all know that I love LA, but tonight, I really love LA."

Standing with his family in front of a giant Stars and Stripes and preceded by a mariachi band, Mr Villaraigosa sought to put the acrimony of the campaign behind him.

"It doesn't matter whether you go to work in a fancy car or on a bus, or whether you worship in a cathedral or a synagogue or a mosque," he said. "We are all Angelenos, and we all have a difference to make."

The 2000 census showed that Latinos make up 46% of Los Angeles's 3.7 million population, but only 22% were eligible to vote.

Both candidates were from the Democratic party and the campaign focused on style as much as policy.

Mr Hahn, who was attacked for his underwhelming style, admitted to reporters on Tuesday that he suffered from "charisma deficit disorder".

His challenger portrayed himself as a dynamic figure who would ably represent the second biggest city in the US nationally and internationally.

Mr Villaraigosa campaigned through the night before polling day, cajoling voters at late-night food stalls across the city. His team sought to contrast that strategy with the incumbent, who went home to bed.

But negative campaigning alienated many voters. Even local news media downplayed the result. The only television channels to carry Mr Villaraigosa's victory rally live were local Spanish ones. The lengthy campaign - Tuesday's vote was a run-off following a primary won by Mr Villaraigosa in March - saw both candidates accusing each other of corruption. Mr Hahn also sought to portray Mr Villaraigosa as soft on gang crime, a key issue in the city. But the collapse of the mayor's coalition from four years ago of suburban whites and urban blacks left him facing an impossible task.

Mr Villaraigosa became the fifth Latino mayor of a big city in the US, following Miami, San Antonio, San Jose and Dade County.

As a second generation Mexican-American, he faced a linguistic handicap: he had to learn Spanish as an adult.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Another good article here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0519/p01s01-uspo.html

2005-05-18T00:59:00.000-04:00

Ideological filibuster clash expected to begin Wednesday

BY DICK POLMAN

Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - At the dawn of the American experiment, James Madison envisioned the creation of a U.S. Senate that would operate with "wisdom" and "stability." It would be impervious to the emotions of the masses, "an anchor against popular fluctuations." It would build "a necessary fence" against majority will, by protecting minority rights.

But Madison's formula, largely honored in practice, may be imperiled by the showdown over President Bush's judicial nominees, an ideological clash slated to begin Wednesday - and potentially end next week with a historic vote that could fundamentally alter the role and character of the institution itself.

Reputedly "the world's greatest deliberative body," the Senate is on the verge of being engulfed by the political passions it was designed to withstand. A chamber that once valued compromise and moderation now appears hostage to the well-heeled ideological interest groups, on the left and right, whose partisans will accept nothing short of total victory.

The majority Republicans are poised to change Senate rules and erase the Democrats' ability to block pending Bush nominees.

But if GOP senators vote to erase the filibuster - a time-honored tactic that allows dissidents to conduct extended debate to prevent a vote - many analysts believe over time the Senate will mirror the House of Representatives, a place designed to favor majority rule over minority rights. Therefore, Madison's "fence" would be trampled.

Senate Republicans say, however, that they won't alter the chamber's character, that they intend to eliminate the filibuster (the "nuclear option," as coined by Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi) only when used against judicial nominees. They argue Bush's stymied nominees should be sent to the floor for a final vote, in accordance with the constitutional proviso that senators "advise and consent" on a president's choices.

But since Democrats see that argument as part of a plot to pack the courts with "extremist" judges, odds seem slim that a nuclear showdown can be averted.

In the words of legal commentator Stuart Taylor Jr., the warring Senate camps, rather than stressing civility, are now behaving "like testosterone-crazed teenage drivers locked in a game of chicken."

That's because, unlike their Senate forebears, these lawmakers are more closely attuned to the passions of their activists. It's noteworthy that whenever the few remaining moderate senators have floated compromises, the interest groups have reacted with scorn.

On the left, Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told the Associated Press, "You cannot back down from bullies." On the right, Concerned Women for America sent out e-mail Tuesday warning against "soft-centered sellouts."

Ross Baker, a Senate expert who has worked in the chamber, said if the GOP nixes judicial filibusters, "the Senate would become a vastly inferior institution that would not reflect what the Framers had in mind.

"Among other things," said Baker, a political analyst at Rutgers University, "the fallout from the nuclear option - and fallout is the right word, because it would be toxic - will hurt relations between senators. It would be tougher for them to deal with each other across party lines, make it tougher to get things done."

Steven Smith, a Senate expert at Washington University in St. Louis, and an author on six books about congressional politics, sees the nuclear option as "a potentially dangerous precedent" that would encourage future senators to eliminate a minority's right to filibuster on a whole range of issues.

"Nobody in leadership, on either side, is taking the high road," Smith said. "Pure power politics are dictating their positions, and they're willing to just let the next generation of senators come in and pick up the pieces. ... The Senate was not designed to allow a majority to simply get its way."

It would be wrong to imply that the Senate has always been a rarified haven of wisdom, far from the "madding crowd." The dominance of communist-hunter Joseph McCarthy during the early 1950s argues against that.

And the passions of the day have literally intruded on occasion; in 1856, Sen. Charles Sumner, a foe of slavery, was beaten senseless on the Senate floor by a cane-wielding Southerner (it was a visiting House member, but he was applauded by the Southern senators who witnessed his attack).

But civility and compromise have generally been the norm. As recently as 1995, chamber experts counted 17 senators in both parties who often crossed over to vote with the other camp. That number was even higher for most of the last century, and few lawmakers felt compelled to resort to filibusters. The Senate averaged only one a year during the 1950s, 4.6 a year during the `60s and 11.2 a year during the `70s.

But Wednesday's showdown over judges and filibuster rules is essentially a product of the widening partisan divide.

The demise of Southern conservative Democrats and Northern moderate Republicans has tilted the Democrats leftward and the Republicans rightward.

A generation ago, it would have been unthinkable for the Democratic leader to call the president a "liar" and a "loser" (as Harry Reid has done) and for the Republican leader to stump for the defeat of his counterpart in the other guy's state (as Bill Frist did in South Dakota last year, against Tom Daschle).

"You end up with two senatorial parties that are personally distant from each other," Smith said. "Members are developing fewer friendships with each other, across party lines, and that makes it easier for their rhetoric to get out of hand" - which, in turn, provides fresh fodder for the special-interest groups that continually stoke their partisan supporters with e-mails and Internet ads. On the judicial showdown, the traffic has been particularly heavy.

Still, the fate of the nuclear option - and the future of the chamber - may well hinge on the small band of uncommitted Republicans. Some are moderates; others are traditionalists who have questioned the wisdom of altering Senate rules.

But if they're looking for guidance from moderate Americans, they may wait in vain, because the latest polls show that roughly two-thirds of the people aren't paying attention.

"It's still a highly esoteric debate," said Baker, "conducted entirely for the activists on the left and right who have a big stake in the outcome."

And it's the activists who will vote most heavily in the 2006 elections - yet another reason why lawmakers, employing hot rhetoric in the days ahead, may well test Madison's admonition that "coolness" shall prevail in the U.S. Senate.

---

© 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site, at http://www.philly.com

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

2005-04-12T13:52:00.000-04:00

Feminist Scholar Andrea Dworkin Dies at 58

Her ideas have challenged me more than any others as a young feminist. The strength she had to have to be so vocal and public must have been extraordinary. RIP.

Feminist Daily News Wire
April 11, 2005

Feminist Scholar Andrea Dworkin Dies at 58

Andrea Dworkin, a feminist icon and scholar, died on Saturday at the age of 58. Her cause of death was not known, but her agent Elaine Markson told the Guardian that she had become frail in the last week and had a series of falls. Dworkin was the author of over a dozen books, and was known best for her writings on pornography and violence against women, as well as her theories on how these issues contributed to sexual inequality.

“The women’s movement, domestically and globally, has lost one of its most moving, brilliant, and clear voices,” said Robin Morgan, a noted feminist author (her books include Sisterhood Is Powerful and Sisterhood Is Global) and former editor-in-chief and current Global Editor of Ms. magazine. “Andrea Dworkin was a fine writer, had a fierce intellect, and was an uncompromising feminist.”

Dworkin, together with feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, wrote a law defining pornography as a violation of women’s civil rights, enabling women to sue those who produce and distribute pornographic materials. The law was passed in Indianapolis in 1983, but was overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals two years later.

The works of Dworkin on sexual inequality and to end pornography have been highly controversial. The Guardian described Dworkin in 2001, saying, “Dworkin is a threat, of course, to exactly the extent that radical feminists have always posed a threat – pointing out unapologetically the degree to which violence against women and children by men remains rampant.”

2005-04-03T18:48:00.000-04:00

Private volunteers patrol a porous border

These people are not asking the right questions. The question is, why do so many people continue to risk their lives for economic opportunity in the U.S.? Why do U.S. citizens feel threatened for their jobs? What have the effects of NAFTA been on the global economy that we all are tied to? This issue is much bigger than simply patrolling the border and stopping a few individuals. This is a worldwide economic struggle. Complexity should not be simplified.

from the April 04, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0404/p01s03-usgn.html

Private volunteers patrol a porous border
In April, a slice of Arizona will be monitored by 1,500 'minutemen.'

By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

TOMBSTONE, ARIZ. - With lawn chairs, two-way radios, and binoculars, they've come to save the Union. All volunteers, age four to 86, they've descended here from all 50 states via RV, motorcycle, sidecar, and sport coupe.

Across a remote corner of the American Southwest - a honeycombed terrain that helped Apache leader Geronimo elude the US government for years - they are providing eyes, ears, and vacation time to another cause they feel has long eluded the same government: effective immigration law enforcement.

Some 1,500 self-selected volunteers will begin fanning out to designated outposts along the Arizona border Monday in a highly visible - and controversial - bid to help reclaim part of the US-Mexican border. If successful, similar projects are planned in neighboring states in coming months.

"We are lighting the fuse to a grass-roots grass fire using the Constitution, the First Amendment, and Martin Luther King's philosophy to pursue our objective in a peaceful, rational way," says James Gilchrist, a former marine and cofounder of the so-called Minuteman Project. "This is just the beginning."

Taking strategic cover beneath glades of sage and piñon pine, behind buffalo-sized boulders, the "minutemen" will be stationed every 300 yards along a 40-mile stretch of border known as the San Pedro River Valley. The area has become a favorite corridor for illegal immigrants to enter the US.

The goal: monitor the problem of illegal entry firsthand, notify the Border Patrol of attempted crossings (taking strict care, they say, not to confront anyone), and spotlight the growing problem in the Tucson area. Last year, agents apprehended 500,000 illegals along this stretch of border alone.

As evident by rallies this weekend in the small border towns of Douglas and Naco, the Minuteman idea has sparked wide debate about the motivation of participants, concern about their methods, and apprehension that confrontation with illegals could escalate into violence.

"We think there is a strong possibility of conflict and misunderstanding," says Eleanor Eisenberg, head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which has trained dozens of volunteers to monitor the minutemen.

The US Border Patrol has also stated loudly that the minutemen will not help agents do their jobs. They worry about the civilian volunteers setting off ground sensors, complicating video surveillance, and creating security problems. "Having a large number of people walking purposefully around the areas of migrant trails is not beneficial to us," says Rob Griffin of the US Border Patrol's Tucson sector.

The minutemen say one goal is to draw attention to the underfunding of the Border Patrol. But officials counter they don't need the help: Last week, the agency's Tucson sector announced a 25 percent increase in staffing in Arizona, which includes 155 permanent personnel and 200 temporary. Twenty-three new aircraft are surveying the area as well.
Countering perceptions

The minutemen may have as much PR work to do about their own organization as they do about the Border Patrol. In advance of their highly publicized initiative this week, critics - including some state and federal officials - labeled some of the volunteers "vigilantes," "racists," and "white supremacists."

Clearly, the group is trying to dispel those perceptions. At rallies in Naco and Douglas over the weekend, volunteers waved American flags and stood politely outside Border Patrol offices. They provided biographies and explained their intentions. Most say they have sacrificed to be here. They have spent their own money on food and travel. Some are sleeping in tents or in dorm rooms at a local Bible college. Many are missing work.

"I'm easily giving up tens of thousands because I had to shut down two projects to be here for two weeks," says Scott Smith, who runs a real-estate consulting firm in Maryland. "I'd like to be here longer, but I can't afford it."

Organized nationally over the Internet, the group is fairly diverse. It ranges from blue-collar workers (construction, truck drivers, labor unionists) to professionals (teachers, chemists, engineers). There's a large contingent of veterans and career law-enforcement officials. Some 40 percent are, organizers say, women and minorities. Many are retired.

"The people here are really middle America, not one side or the other of the political and social spectrum," says Barbara McCutchen, a former school teacher and advertising saleswoman from Arkansas.

She and others say their concerns are practical rather than race-based - principally, worry about terrorists entering the US and the high cost of providing social services to illegals. They also see illegal immigration adding to crime and prison expenditures.

Some quote studies showing 500,000 illegals residing in Arizona alone - costing $1.3 billion in education, healthcare, and criminal justice. "That's nine percent of the state population," says Randy Graf, a former state representative who has been helping organizers. "The costs add up and up."

Volunteers say the impact shows up not only on government balance sheets, but in backyards. Kerry Morales, who came from Laredo, Texas, says she gets 200 illegals a day across her 80-acre ranch. Bands of illegals have broken into her house, attacked her numerous times, and damaged her property by leaving gates open, letting horses escape. Two dozen child abductions have been reported in Laredo in recent years, she says, with cross-border Mexicans demanding ransoms of $10,000 to $20,000.

"I want to bring attention that for people like me, there is physical danger," says Ms. Morales, who is married to a Hispanic. "The fact that our opponents are calling us racist and extremist is completely untrue."

Some complain about a diminished quality of life from illegals moving into communities from Oregon to California, Florida to the Carolinas. They decry the unfairness of giving illegals privileges that other immigrants have waited years to get.

"My son married a South Korean and they followed all the rules and it took two years," says Richard, a retired construction worker from Ventura, Calif., who declined to give a last name. "Why should we give privileges to people who just come across and blatantly disregard our system.?"
A double standard?

Tim Donnelly, who runs a small manufacturing supply company in Twin Peaks, Calif., says California has set aside $67 million for college tuition for illegals who have spent three years in high school, while active US military who move to the state must pay higher out-of-state tuition.

"I find that prejudicial and discriminating to military and legal immigrants," he says.

Wayne Holland, a novelist from Orange County, Calif., says the effects of illegal immigration on his state can be seen from the trash across the landscape that used to be pristine. Fifteen years ago, Mr. Holland participated in a San Diego rally in which 1,000 cars shined spotlights on the border to highlight the problem of illegals cutting through backyards. "That rally never really went any further because the numbers weren't there," he says. "Now we are seeing the problem grow to other states and people."

Whether the month-long vigil will have any effect is the source of great debate. Some say the initiative has gotten so much press that few illegals are likely to attempt entry in this region at this time.

But participants are at least heartened that illegal immigration is getting a closer look. "The national attention to this is beginning to shift," says Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) of Colorado, a speaker at one of the rallies.

2005-04-03T17:24:00.000-04:00

US intelligence 'dead wrong' on Iraq weapons:

Dead wrong, huh? Most people with a brain knew this the minute the war started. How many people died for this gross mistake, again? It makes me wonder about all these religious folks who hold life sacred but who still support war. Utter bullshit.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US intelligence agencies were "dead wrong" in their pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs and still know dangerously little about current nuclear and biological threats, a US presidential commission said.

After a year-long inquiry, the panel warned in a scathing report that the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, based on accusations that turned out to be false, had done damage to US credibility that "will take years to undo."

"We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the commission said. "We simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude."

The panel warned that US intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of Iran and North Korea -- both locked in nuclear disputes with the United States -- may be "disturbingly" shaky. A chapter on the subject was classified.

US President George W. Bush welcomed the report and said he had directed his homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, to review the 600-page document and take "concrete action" on its recommendations.

"The central conclusion is one that I share: America's intelligence community needs fundamental change to enable us to successfully confront the threats of the 21st century," he said in remarks at the White House.

The panel called for bolstering the powers of the newly created director of national intelligence -- former US ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte awaits confirmation to that post -- as part of creating more centralized management and integrating what it described as a loose grouping of independence agencies.

"To win the war on terror, we will correct what needs to be fixed," Bush said with the commission's co-chairman, former federal judge Laurence Silberman and ex-senator Charles Robb, at his side.

The report took the US intelligence community severely to task for a series of shortcomings it said led to the false conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

It cited analysis compromised by assumptions about Saddam's intentions following the 1991 Gulf War; data collection problems; and the failure to communicate to policymakers just how little hard intelligence they had.

"The bottom line is the intelligence community operated on presumptions or assumptions based on what they had seen in 1991," Silberman told reporters. "What little evidence they did have, which was inconsistent, was tortured into those presumptions."

The commission report said it found no evidence that political pressures had warped US intelligence findings on Iraq, but steered clear of whether the Bush administration had exaggerated the intelligence to sell the war.

At the same time, the panel said that flaws that crippled analysis of Iraq "are still all too common" and warned that US intelligence on countries like Iran and North Korea lacks critical information.

"The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries," the commission said.

"Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the worlds most dangerous actors. In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or 10 years ago," it said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said there were no plans to change US policy toward Tehran or Pyongyang, and other officials declined to say whether current US policy of "preemptive" military action would change.

Tehran denies the charge that its civilian nuclear program hides a quest for atomic weapons. North Korea boasts that it has nuclear arms.

The commission warned that the US intelligence community also "has not kept pace" with the spread of weapons of mass destruction and eagerness among terrorists like those behind the September 11, 2001 attacks to get them.

The presidential commission had some good news on at least one front, praising "innovative" US intelligence efforts on Libya's now-abandoned nuclear arms program as "fundamentally a success story."

It said the use of new techniques to penetrate the global sales network of Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan "allowed the US government to pressure Libya into dismantling these programs."

The United States invaded Iraq on grounds that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons and sought nuclear arms, but none has been found and US-led forces have abandoned searching for them.

The White House has since shifted its public rationale for the invasion from the weapons to the oppressive nature of Saddam's regime and what Washington says is the need to spread democracy in the Middle East.

2005-03-30T23:54:00.000-05:00

A productive, but taxed, Earth
A UN-sponsored study finds that humans' growing demands have damaged the planet at unprecedented levels.

I fear the worst. I've been waiting for the end ever since I was 10 yrs. old. Really, I have. Sigh....

from the March 31, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0331/p11s02-sten.html

A productive, but taxed, Earth
A UN-sponsored study finds that humans' growing demands have damaged the planet at unprecedented levels.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For hundreds of years, cod swarmed in waters off Newfoundland's rugged coast. But by 1992, rampant overfishing had crushed the cod. Price tag to people: tens of thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars spent in job retraining.

Last year, a weather satellite spotted a monster dust cloud over Africa - hard to miss at 5,000 miles wide. Tree-cutting in northern Africa helps nourish such clouds, which cross the Atlantic, settle into US coastal waters, and possibly contribute to toxic algae blooms. Price tag to people: breathing problems for US coastal residents.

Cod depletion and dust clouds seem like pretty different problems. But they each play a role in the overall environmental degradation of the planet - a condition that a new global study says has escalated so quickly over the past 50 years that it outpaces anything experienced by ecosystems in human history.

Demands for water, food, fuel, timber, and fiber - all part of global economic expansion - have driven the change. The result: a big increase in short-term human benefits, less hunger, and more wealth. But this progress has been counterbalanced by a massive loss of diversity of life on Earth.

That's the state of the world, according to the first Millennium Ecosystem Assessment produced by some 1,300 scientists from 95 countries charged with painting a global eco-portrait. The United Nations-sponsored study was funded by the World Bank and several private foundations.

"We've had many reports on environmental degradation, but for the first time we're now able to draw connections between ecosystem services and human well-being," says Cristian Samper, director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington and a chief architect of the study.

Northern Africa's drying Sahel region and Newfoundland's emptier coastal waters, he says, are just two examples in an overall conclusion that 60 percent of the world's ecosystems are being degraded or used unsustainably. Ecosystems being drained or degraded largely in the pursuit of human well being include:

• Land: More of it has been converted to crop land since 1945 than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined. Cultivated land now covers one-quarter of Earth's land surface.

• Coral reefs: About 20 percent of the world's coral reefs were lost and another 20 percent degraded in the past few decades.

• Rivers and lakes: Despite the fact that the amount of fresh water stored behind dams has quadrupled since 1960, its use for agriculture and other needs has exceeded long-term supplies by 5 to 25 percent.

• Coastal areas: Farmers' increased use of nitrogen fertilizers since 1985 has polluted waterways and coastal ecosystems. About 35 percent of mangrove swamps needed for water filtration in coastal areas have been bulldozed.

• Oceans: Many areas have been overfished, reducing stocks by 90 to 99 percent of preindustrial fishing levels.

"We always have this sense that if we just let up on overfishing for awhile the fish will bounce back," says Tundi Agardy, executive director of Sound Seas, a coastal-planning policy group, who was lead author on the coastal chapter of the millennium assessment. "But what we found is that, many times, the recovery of overexploited species is made impossible by all sorts of things like pollution, habitat loss, and climate change."

The loss of coral, for instance, is often attributed to degraded coastal waters that were harmed over time. Mangrove swamps that filter pollutants were bulldozed for apartment buildings. Combine that with large human populations living seaside and increased agricultural runoff flowing into the oceans. Now add overharvesting of fish that eat algae. Suddenly, you've got algae blooms that overwhelm coral reefs, Dr. Agardy says.

It's not known what changes have kept the cod from rebounding. Some say a change in ocean salinity. Others, including former fishermen, have blamed seals for eating them. Harp seal pups were butchered on the ice this spring for their pelts, but also in the expectation that a smaller seal population would help the cod recover.

But in years past, the cod recovered even with seal predators present, Agardy says. "It's pretty clear that cod have been fished down to a point where it will be hard for them to ever recover," she adds.

Yet changes in fishing policy and enforcement of those changes may help oceans recover, she says, adding that the question now is whether the political will exists to create change.

A key element of the UN report was to bring together economists and biologists to examine the impact of ecosystem changes on human well-being. In accounting terms, the report says, the loss of an ecosystem can be equated to loss of a capital asset.

For instance, exploitation of nature has benefited the economies of nations like Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Venezuela. But those nations actually experienced a "loss in net savings" when depletion of natural resources (energy and forests) and damage from carbon emissions were factored in, the report found.

A key finding was that abrupt, unexpected changes in ecosystems are increasingly likely. Changes are usually gradual in ecosystems, yet once a threshold is crossed, stark and rapid changes are possible.

Susan Minnemeyer spotted one of those changes a few years ago while peering for the first time at sharp satellite photos of Cameroon's dense tropical rain forest. As global information systems manager for Global Forest Watch project at the World Resources Institute in Washington, she noticed tiny lines in the forest, a spider's web criss-crossing the jungle - thousands of miles of illegal logging roads.

Losing valuable forest to illegal logging is bad enough, she notes, but another critical hidden cost has emerged: loss of wildlife.

Superficially, the Cameroon forest looks intact even after such logging because the forests aren't clear-cut; just the valuable trees are taken. But the illegal roads have opened up paths for hunters.

The growth of the bushmeat trade is rapidly depopulating the forests of all large mammals, Ms. Minnemeyer says. Her finding was just one of many examples of accelerating species loss cited in the study.

"It can look intact from the sky," Ms. Minnemeyer says. "But this is an empty forest - it's actually devoid of wildlife. We think we can change this, and we're working with the government to do that."

2005-03-24T01:05:00.000-05:00

Tell Congress to stop grandstanding on the Schiavo tragedy.

Some choice excerpts from MoveOn PAC's email today:

Bush, Frist, and DeLay claim that they're acting out of concern for Ms. Schiavo. But a memo intended only for Republican Senators—uncovered by ABC News—reveals Republicans' true concern: "The pro-life base will be excited...this is a great political issue...this is a tough issue for Democrats."[2] This story also takes the heat off Tom DeLay, who is facing a number of serious ethics charges and legal scandals.[3]

Even many right-wing activists are concerned about Congress's interference in this case. GOP pollster Tony Fabrizi told the L.A. Times, "It becomes a more crystallized proof point that we are no longer the party of smaller government. We have become a party of 'It doesn't matter what size the government is as long as it is imposing our set of values.'"[4]

A large majority of the American public agree that Congress was wrong to interfere in the Schiavo case, and less than a quarter believe Congress acted out of real concern about Schiavo's life, according to an ABC poll.[9] And the nation's editorial boards agree. Check out this sampling from many of the nation's papers, compiled by the National Journal's Hotline:

* "The U.S. legal system is not supposed to be one of legislative 'do-overs... Lawmakers may believe that they acted this weekend to save a life, but they also took a step that diminishes the rule of law" (Washington Post, 3/22).

* "When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they devoted the largest section to spelling out the powers of Congress. Nowhere did they include the right to play doctor. Terri Schiavo's story is tragic enough without political malpractice" (USA Today, 3/22).

* "The Bush administration and the current Congressional leadership like to wax eloquent about states' rights. But they dropped those principles in their rush to stampede over the Florida courts and Legislature...It may be a formula for short-term political success, but it is no way to preserve and protect a great republic" (New York Times, 3/22).

* "Congress' unwarranted and brash effort to seize judicial power in the case of Terri Schiavo is shameful truly a low point in its recent history" (Kennebec Journal, 3/22).

* "What has happened here is that the GOP, famously the party favoring limited government intervention into people's personal lives, has inserted the federal government squarely in the middle of an incredibly personal medical issue. And they've done it all in the name of making sure that some of their core voters stay with them" (Athens Banner-Herald, 3/22).

* "Terri Schiavo has the right to die ... Congress and President Bush should be ashamed for prolonging the suffering and trying to legislate what is clearly the authority of the courts to adjudicate" (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 3/22).

* "Coming at a time when crucial health care services are being slashed, it is particularly upsetting to see this kind of expensive grandstanding on the part of congressional Republicans over one high-profile case. This is not compassion: This is cold-blooded political calculation" (Charleston Gazette, 3/22).

* "One by one, the bedrock conservative convictions of the national Republican Party are giving way...yielding to the demands of a raucous religious right that has become the Republicans' most reliable electoral base" (Trenton Times, 3/22).

* "Washington's empathy for Schiavo centers on vying for political points, not merely concern for one family's personal, medical plight. That makes this unwise intervention by elected officials even more distasteful" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/22).

* "To have the legislative and executive branches of the federal government mobilize on a Sunday as fast as if we'd declared war in order to intervene in a family's medical dispute is, frankly, frightening. It's an unprecedented intrusion by the highest echelons of federal power into a private hospital room. It's dangerous. And more than a little Orwellian" (Augusta Chronicle, 3/22).

2005-03-18T01:10:00.000-05:00

Bush Digs Dry Well in Alaska
Glut of right wingers, dearth of oil

"President's Bush quack solution to the energy crisis, i.e. opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. In addition to wrecking the ecology, oil drilling in Alaska won't produce more than a puddle of crude toward reducing energy imports in the Lower 48." Wow, did this mean nothing when they approved to do this? Unbelievable.

Mondo Washington
Bush Digs Dry Well in Alaska
Glut of right wingers, dearth of oil
by James Ridgeway
March 17th, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Docile as always, members of the Senate yesterday narrowly voted to support President's Bush quack solution to the energy crisis, i.e. opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. In addition to wrecking the ecology, oil drilling in Alaska won't produce more than a puddle of crude toward reducing energy imports in the Lower 48.

The vote was close and represents but the first volley in the continuing struggle to stave off exploitation of the Arctic refuge. Still, it already has been taken as a symbol of Bush's strength on domestic issues. In this case, opponents of drilling are to be found among environmentally minded members on both sides of the aisle. Nonetheless, the right back benches, which drive the Congress, held firm and squashed the middle. This vote can only embolden the right to up—not lower—the ante on any number of issues, from Social Security to energy to Medicare.

Oil drilling in Alaska isn't going to solve any problems, and may make them a good deal worse, by providing the yuppie SUV owners reason to think they can keep on guzzling gas. Yesterday's misreported OPEC production increase isn't really an increase at all, but an acknowledgement that the cartel already is producing all it can, and the already high prices are likely to increase, not decrease.

All sorts of oil people these days are predicting the energy industry is exhausting existing reserves. There are no new big finds. Many analysts believe the much ballyhooed discoveries in the Caspian basin have been hyped way beyond their actual size. Not to mention the extraordinary costs of building pipelines over thousands of miles to haul oil and gas to Europe in the West, and industrial China in the East.

To be sure, the frozen north holds untapped reserves, but the Arctic play to date has largely centered on Canada, and sucking up and piping its oil reserves down to California and the mid-continent.

Analysts at John S. Herold, Inc., the energy research outfit that first spotted the flimflam at Enron, have joined the crowd in predicting oil production is topping off. Robert Bryce, in Salon, wrote on Tuesday, "Since last fall, Herold has done peak estimates on about two dozen oil companies. Herold believes that the French oil company, Total S.A., will reach its peak production in 2007. Herold expects 2008 to be critical, with Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., BP, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and the Italian producer, Eni S.p.A., all hitting their peaks. In 2009, Herold expects ChevronTexaco Corp. to peak. In Herold's view, each of the world's seven largest publicly traded oil companies will begin seeing production declines within the next 48 months or so." Says Herold Executive Vice President Richard Gordon: "If the dinosaurs are going extinct, we are trying to figure out which ones are going to go extinct the soonest."

As oil prices continue to climb, the oil producers hopefully will continue to pump their proceeds into American dollars. But there is a widening acknowledgement that the American economy is a touch-and-go affair, not about to crash, but not about to boom, a wobbly situation. What happens if central bankers in Asia and elsewhere begin to shift their dollar holdings? "What foreign central bankers have it in their power to do," notes the Economist, "is to reveal before all the world that the mighty American economic empire has no clothes." A good part of the reason would be the government's inability to come to grips with the energy crisis that has been in our face since the early 1970s. There is no alternative but to move away from fossil fuels. But this is anathema to the right wing in Congress.

2005-03-16T20:59:00.000-05:00

Senate OKs Alaska wildlife refuge drilling

Well, I actually called up Florida's senators and delivered the message MoveOn asked its supporters to give. I left the message with an intern. I wonder what they do with those messages anyhow? I can't believe the vote was so close too. I hate that Bush and his supporters just keep on winning their proposals on all fronts. Why can't this land be kept off limits? Why is there no limit to how much profit can be made by these oil barons? I just don't understand this govt. and I'm so very disappointed.

from the March 17, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0317/p02s01-uspo.html

Senate OKs Alaska wildlife refuge drilling
By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

In a major victory for President Bush's energy policy, the Senate voted Wednesday to open Alaska's wildlife refuge to oil drilling.

The 51-to-49 Senate vote moves the prospect of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) closer to reality after two decades of debate. It comes as oil and gas prices are approaching new highs.

While Wednesday's vote marked a major defeat for environmentalists, it doesn't mean drill bits will be sinking into the Alaska tundra anytime soon. The measure will still have to be approved by the House, which is far from certain. "There's a lot of moving parts in this thing," says Peter Rafle, communications director of The Wilderness Society. "It's far from over."

The fight over ANWR - which may or may not have a significant amount of oil beneath its surface - is one of the longest-running environmental dramas in recent history.

For years, Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress have been able to fend off oil exploration and development there by threatening a filibuster. But now, GOP leaders in the Senate have succeed in attaching it to the 2006 budget resolution as a potential source of revenue. The move sidestepped a filibuster by Democrats which would require 60 votes. The budget resolution required only a 51-vote majority.

The House is still working on its budget resolution for 2006, and the two legislative chambers will have to reconcile whatever differences remain - including oil exploration in Alaska.

From an environmental standpoint, the debate is over whether advanced "directional" drilling methods would allow for a much smaller "footprint" (drill rigs, roads, etc.) impacting wildlife. Advocates say they can do this with minimum damage to the fragile tundra; activists say it's a sham. Meanwhile, oil companies themselves reportedly have lost interest in the project.

So why are President Bush, the Alaska delegation, and others pushing this controversial proposal? Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney - both former oil men - see it as an important part of the effort to reduce US dependence on foreign oil. Unlike politicians in California and Florida, including the President's brother Gov. Jeb Bush, who resist unsightly oil rigs off their coasts, the Alaska congressional delegation is all for drilling in a remote part of their state. If nothing else, ANWR symbolically focuses the broader debate over natural resource extraction in wild areas around the country.

Without more exploration, even the best estimates of oil in ANWR are educated guesses. The US Geological Survey (USGS) figures the amount of "technically recoverable oil" to be between 5.7 billion barrels (95 percent probability) and 16 billion barrels (5 percent probability) with a mean value of 10.4 billion barrels.

"Economically recoverable oil" is the more relevant figure, according to USGS officials, meaning a company would find it financially worth the effort. But that's even harder to determine because it depends on fluctuating oil prices, a yet unknown accumulation size, recovery technology, and proximity to pipelines and other existing infrastructure.

What all of this means, claim drilling opponents, is that ANWR likely contains less than a year's worth of oil - none of it reaching the US market for at least 10 years.

As an officially designated wildlife refuge, ANWR would have been off-limits to drill rigs. But when the 19 million-acre refuge was established in 1980, and in recognition of the potential for oil and gas there, the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain along the Arctic Ocean was left open to leasing and exploration.

Oil there may be, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service says the drillable area "is critically important to the ecological integrity of the whole Arctic Refuge, providing essential habitats for numerous internationally important species."

Most Americans will never see the place or the caribou, polar bears, muskoxen, arctic foxes, wolverines, grizzly bears, snow geese, and other migrating birds that inhabit its tundra just north of the Brooks Range. But for much of the public this "American Serengeti," as environmentalists call it, represents an ideal of natural wildness that must remain pristine.

While the fight in Congress over ANWR may be a close one, public opinion weighs heavily against drilling.

A recent survey conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters asked simply, "Should oil drilling be allowed in America's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?" The results: 53 percent against, 38 percent in favor. Regarding the current effort to attach ANWR to a budget resolution rather than vote directly on its merits, a whopping 73 percent agreed that drilling there "is too important to the American public and future generations to be snuck through."

More broadly, according to this survey, Americans favor conservation (34 percent) and alternate forms of energy (39 percent) over domestic oil production (18 percent) as "the best way to reduce US dependence on foreign oil."

Meanwhile, industry interest in the politically charged Arctic refuge seems to have waned as well.

"The enthusiasm of government officials about ANWR exceeds that of industry because oil companies are driven by market forces, investing resources in direct proportion to the economic potential, and the evidence so far about ANWR is not promising," oil industry consultant Wayne Kelley told The New York Times recently.

History of the Refuge:

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Wednesday, March 16, 2005 · Last updated 4:51 p.m. PT

Arctic Drilling Timeline

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

An Arctic National Wildlife Refuge timeline:

-1960: President Eisenhower declares that 8.9 million acres of tundra and mountains in the northeastern corner of Alaska be set aside as a protected wildlife refuge.

-1980: Congress expands the refuge to 19 million acres and declares part of it wilderness. Also proclaims that potential oil reserves in the refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain be considered for development, but only if Congress specifically authorizes it.

-1995: Congress, using the budget process, authorizes oil drilling in the coastal plain, but President Clinton vetoes it.

-2002-2003: The House repeatedly approves drilling in the refuge as part of broad energy legislation, but the Senate rejects drilling, unable to overcome a Democratic-led filibuster.

-November 2004: Republicans gain four seats in the Senate, expanding their majority to 55. ANWR drilling advocates predict the increased GOP strength will help to open the refuge to oil development.

-March 2005: The Senate inserts into the budget a revenue provision that anticipates oil lease sales in ANWR. A Democratic-led attempt to strip the provision from the budget measure falls short 51-49. The budget document becomes a vehicle for authorizing ANWR oil drilling.

2005-03-11T01:51:00.000-05:00

Agent Orange Case for Millions of Vietnamese Is Dismissed

Unbelievable. I'm so angry about this. And the injustice continues to roll on. I hate the U.S. govt. for ever having released such poison on the world. There is so much retribution this country has to go through to wash away the destruction it created during Vietnam. Sadly, I see the same situation happening now in Iraq as in Vietnam. That is, the U.S. has no business being involved in such a horribly unjustified war. Period. Fuck war and fuck the U.S. govt. for never representing their citizens. It's this govt. who decides to have a war and it's humanity that pays the price. Man, I hate war so much. Arghh!

Agent Orange Case for Millions of Vietnamese Is Dismissed
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: March 10, 2005

In a decision that could close a controversial Vietnam-era chapter of American history, a federal judge in Brooklyn today dismissed a damage suit filed on behalf of millions of Vietnamese that claimed American chemical companies committed war crimes by supplying the military with the defoliant Agent Orange.

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The civil suit, filed last year, had sought what could have been billions of dollars in damages and the environmental cleanup of Vietnam. The suit drew international attention for its claims about Agent Orange, which was widely used by the American military to clear the jungle until 1971.

The suit claimed that the defoliant, which contained the highly toxic substance dioxin, left a legacy of poison in Vietnam that caused birth defects, cancer and other health problems and amounted to a violation of international law.

But Judge Jack B. Weinstein of the United States District Court sided with the chemical companies and the Justice Department, which argued that supplying the defoliant did not amount to a war crime.

"No treaty or agreement, express or implied, of the United States," Judge Weinstein wrote, "operated to make use of herbicides in Vietnam a violation of the laws of war or any other form of international law until at the earliest April of 1975."

Because of sovereign immunity, the United States government was not sued.

In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford adopted a national policy renouncing the first use of herbicides in warfare. Also in 1975, the Senate ratified an international Geneva accord dating from 1925, which outlawed the use of poisonous gases during war.

The suit claimed that because of the dioxin in Agent Orange, spraying it amounted to the use of poison during war.

But Judge Weinstein concluded in a 233-page decision that even if the United States had been a Geneva signatory during the Vietnam War, the accord would not have barred the use of Agent Orange.

"The prohibition extended only to gases deployed for their asphyxiating or toxic effects on man," said the decision, issued in response to a motion for dismissal by the defendants, "not to herbicides designed to affect plants that may have unintended harmful side-effects on people."

William H. Goodman, a lawyer for an association of Vietnamese that filed the suit as a class action, said the decision would be appealed. He said the United States Supreme Court could eventually decide the issue.

"The judge missed the point," Mr. Goodman said. "He ruled as a matter of law that what these defendants manufactured was not a poison, whereas even these manufacturers recognized that it was at the time."

The companies have long said that dioxin was an unwanted byproduct of the manufacture of Agent Orange, but claimed that there was no conclusive link to the many serious health problems blamed on Agent Orange.

Over many decades, American veterans of the Vietnam War filed suits making health claims similar to those now being pressed by the Vietnamese. Judge Weinstein also handled those cases.

Seven American chemical companies settled the veterans' cases for $180 million in 1984.

The same chemical companies, including Dow, Monsanto and Hercules, were sued in the Vietnamese case.

Spokesmen for some of the companies applauded the decision today.

"We believe the defoliant saved lives by protecting allied forces from enemy ambush and did not create adverse health affects," said Scot Wheeler, a spokesman for the Dow Chemical Company.

Glynn Young, a spokesman for Monsanto, said Judge Weinstein's decision was correct.

"The judge said they didn't make the case," Mr. Young said. "That's a very difficult message for a lot of people to understand because there's so much emotion wrapped up in cases like this one."

Though he ruled against the Vietnamese plaintiffs, Judge Weinstein agreed with many arguments put forth by their lawyers. He rejected arguments of the Justice Department that the court had no place in reviewing military strategies adopted by President John F. Kennedy and his successors.

Saying "presidential powers are limited even in wartime," Judge Weinstein said American courts had the power to decide whether presidential decisions about the conduct of a war violated international law.

"In the Third Reich," the decision said, "all power of the state was centered in Hitler; yet his orders did not serve as a defense at Nuremberg," where war crimes trials were conducted after World War II.

Similarly, he rejected an argument from the chemical companies that they were shielded by rules that typically protect military contractors from suits for providing war materiel.

Clearly writing to influence courts in the future, Judge Weinstein used sweeping language and employed extensive citations to historical, military, scientific and legal writings.

If supplying contaminated herbicide had been a war crime, Judge Weinstein wrote, the chemical companies could have refused to supply it. "We are a nation of free men and women," he wrote, "habituated to standing up to government when it exceeds its authority."

2005-03-11T01:37:00.000-05:00

Taco Bell deal will cost company $100,000 per year

What the fuck? Taco Bell only has to fork over only 100 grand more per year?!!! That's so unfair. And it's only benefiting 1,000 workers? C'mon this is not justice. This is a farce. Yes, it's a great victory for this organization but only a small wave in the ocean. I am so happy for them as a long time supporter but I'm also angry that this corporation doesn't feel the need to give more than this after all the profits the make. We never needed corporate accountability more than now. The age of the robber barons has never ceased in my opinion. Still, I'm very excited to attend the celebration rally whenever it's held. Yeah!

The Daily Texan - University
Issue: 3/10/05

Taco Bell deal will cost company $100,000 per year
By Jeff squire

Taco Bell's agreement with Florida tomato pickers to pay more for its tomatoes will cost the company an additional $100,000 a year.

Taco Bell made more than $1 million in sales in 2003, and its parent company, Yum! Brands Inc., earned more than $1 trillion. Profits for the companies have only increased since the workers began a three-year boycott of the company, and the decision has nothing to do with money, according to Taco Bell spokeswoman Laurie Schalow.

The company declared sympathy for the tomato pickers from the beginning, Schalow said, and only waited until now to make a deal because it finally secured assurances from its suppliers, who employ the pickers, to pass the additional money directly to the roughly 1,000 workers.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who led the boycott, asked for a penny more per pound of tomatoes. The workers currently earn approximately 1.25 cents per pound for a mean income of $7,500 a year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The figure had not changed since 1978, and it constitutes a decrease of 65 percent in 27 years when adjusted for inflation. The current poverty threshold for a one-person household in Florida is $9,570.

Taco Bell recently secured an agreement with several of its tomato suppliers to pass the penny raise to pickers, and the company said it will monitor those suppliers to ensure this arrangement. The raise will nearly double current wages, according to CIW, bringing them almost to the poverty level.

The company's first attempt to appease the pickers came last year when it issued a $110,000 check to CIW. The company wanted the money, equal to the amount of a 1-cent per pound yearly increase, dispersed among the workers, but CIW refused.

"It wasn't systemic change. That's what we wanted," said Julia Perkins, CIW spokeswoman.

Now, with the support of the CIW, the company will give roughly that amount every year and has pledged to encourage similar efforts within the industry. Until Tuesday, the company maintained throughout the boycott that any solution must be industry-wide and resisted unilaterally raising rates in the Florida market, where it buys less than 1 percent of tomato crops.

"One thousand dollars just isn't going to help a lot of people," said Schalow, which is why the company wants other industry leaders to follow suit.

CIW leader Lucas Benitez called the company's change of heart a "new standard of social responsibility for the fast-food industry." Organizers of the nation-wide boycott attribute the company's reversal to rising social pressure, advanced in large part by students.

At the University, efforts to expel Taco Bell from the Texas Union failed, though the organization spearheading the move on campus, the Student Labor Action Project, continued efforts to boycott the restaurant.

The boycott really had no financial effect in Austin, said Don Barton, vice president of Austaco, which runs some 70 Taco Bells in Central Texas, including the one in the Union. He said he just didn't believe it was large enough to have an impact, though he said his company will be glad to pay its part of the agreement, which amounts to roughly $1,000 a year.

2005-03-09T15:23:00.000-05:00

COALITION OF IMMOKALEE WORKERS, TACO BELL® REACH GROUNDBREAKING AGREEMENT

Man, I can't believe this has finally happened! After so much work and years. So much struggle for just a penny more. It seems so long ago when I joined the march; that must have been 5 years ago. Change sure is slow, indeed.

COALITION OF IMMOKALEE WORKERS, TACO BELL® REACH GROUNDBREAKING AGREEMENT

CIW to end Taco Bell boycott; Taco Bell to pay penny-per-pound surcharge demanded by workers, will work with CIW to raise farm labor standards in supply chain, across industry as a whole

March 8, 2005 (IMMOKALEE/LOUISVILLE) – In a precedent-setting move, fast-food industry leader Taco Bell Corp., a division of Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM), has agreed to work with the Florida-based farm worker organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), to address the wages and working conditions of farmworkers in the Florida tomato industry.

Taco Bell announced today that it will fund a penny per pound “pass-through” with its suppliers of Florida tomatoes, and will undertake joint efforts with the CIW on several fronts to improve working conditions in Florida’s tomato fields. For its part, the CIW has agreed to end its three-year boycott of Taco Bell, saying that the agreement “sets a new standard of social responsibility for the fast-food industry.”

“As an industry leader, we are pleased to lend our support to and work with the CIW to improve working and pay conditions for farmworkers in the Florida tomato fields,” said Emil Brolick, Taco Bell president. “We recognize that Florida tomato workers do not enjoy the same rights and conditions as employees in other industries, and there is a need for reform. We have indicated that any solution must be industry-wide, as our company simply does not have the clout alone to solve the issues raised by the CIW, but we are willing to play a leadership role within our industry to be part of the solution,” Brolick added.

Taco Bell has recently secured an agreement with several of its tomato-grower suppliers, who employ the farmworkers, to pass-through the company-funded equivalent of one-cent per pound directly to the workers.

“With this agreement, we will be the first in our industry to directly help improve farmworkers’ wages,” added Brolick, “And we pledge to make this commitment real by buying only from Florida growers who pass this penny per pound payment entirely on to the farmworkers, and by working jointly with the CIW and our suppliers to monitor the pass-through for compliance. We hope others in the restaurant industry and supermarket retail trade will follow our leadership.” Yum! Brands and Taco Bell will also work with the CIW to help ensure that Florida tomato pickers enjoy working terms and conditions similar to those that workers in other industries enjoy. CIW/Taco Bell Resolution Page 2

“We are challenging our tomato suppliers to meet those higher standards and will seek to do business with those who do,” said Jonathan Blum, senior vice president, Yum! Brands. “We have already added language to our Supplier Code of Conduct to ensure that indentured servitude by suppliers is strictly forbidden, and we will require strict compliance with all existing laws. Finally, we pledge to aid in efforts at the state level to seek new laws that better protect all Florida tomato farmworkers,” added Blum.

The Company indicated that it believes other restaurant chains and supermarkets, along with the Florida Tomato Committee, should join in seeking legislative reform, because “human rights are universal and we hope others will follow our company’s lead.”

“This is an important victory for farmworkers, one that establishes a new standard of social responsibility for the fast-food industry and makes an immediate material change in the lives of workers. This sends a clear challenge to other industry leaders,” said Lucas Benitez, a leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

“Systemic change to ensure human rights for farmworkers is long-overdue. Taco Bell has now taken an important leadership role by securing the penny per pound pass-through from its tomato suppliers, and by the other efforts it has committed to undertake to help win equal rights for farmworkers,” Benitez added. “We now call on the National Council of Churches, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights and other organizations to join the CIW and end their boycott of Taco Bell, and to recognize the Company by supporting its ongoing leadership in our fight against human rights abuses. But our work together is not done. Now we must convince other companies that they have the power to change the way they do business and the way workers are treated.”

Representatives from the Carter Center assisted the discussions and resolution between the two organizations. “I commend the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for their principled leadership in this very important campaign. I am pleased Taco Bell has taken a leadership role to help reform working conditions for Florida farmworkers and has committed to use its power to effect positive human rights change. I now call on others in the industry to follow Taco Bell’s lead to help the tomato farmworkers,” said former President Jimmy Carter.

Taco Bell Corp., based in Irvine, California, is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. and the nation’s leading Mexican-style quick service restaurant chain serving tacos, burritos, signature Quesadillas, Border Bowls®, nachos and other specialty items. In 2004, Taco Bell purchased approximately 10 million pounds of Florida tomatoes, representing less than one percent of Florida’s tomato production. Taco Bell serves more than 35 million consumers each week in more than 6,500 restaurants in the U.S.

CIW is a membership-led organization of agricultural workers based in Immokalee, Florida, that seeks justice for farmworkers and promotes their fair treatment in accordance with national and international labor standards. Among its accomplishments, the CIW has aided in the prosecution of five slavery operations by the Department of Justice and the liberation of over 1,000 workers. The CIW uses creative methods to educate consumers about human rights abuses in the U.S. agriculture industry, corporate social responsibility, and how consumers can help workers realize their social change goals.

2005-03-08T15:00:00.000-05:00

World marks International Women's Day

How come women are still not in power yet? Don't we make up more than half the world's population? There is still so much more to do. Ay.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 · Last updated 11:35 a.m. PT

World marks International Women's Day

By EDITH M. LEDERER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

UNITED NATIONS -- Leaders of the fight for women's equality say there is no going back on the revolution that began 30 years ago, though the challenges ahead are immense.

The comments came at a U.N. meeting to evaluate the world's progress toward gender equality. Now in its second and final week, the gathering has drawn delegates from 130 countries and 6,000 representatives from women's and human rights organizations.

Commemorating Tuesday's International Women's Day, Rachel Mayanja, the secretary-general's top adviser on women, warned that "the task ahead is not going to be any less difficult than it has been during the past decades."

She stressed that world leaders cannot view poverty, armed conflict and violence in isolation.

"The eradication of poverty and disease is as important as dealing with the criminal networks that traffic in women and children," she said.

Nafis Sadik, a special adviser on AIDS to Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former head of the U.N. Population Fund, said governments spend more than $900 billion on the military while the world's richest countries spend less than $70 billion on development assistance - and only about $3 billion of that amount goes to gender equality programs.

"What contributes more to security, $3 billion invested in women or the $900 billion squandered on weapons?" Sadik said to loud applause. "It is time for political leaders to stop talking about peace and really start investing in it."

At a commemoration held Friday before most of the ministers and VIPs left, two Nobel Peace Prize winners and the heads of the four U.N. conferences on women since 1975 spoke of progress and challenges ahead. The four conferences built the global women's movement.

Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, last year's Nobel laureate, said women must celebrate their achievements, including her prize, but must fight poverty by championing debt relief and open markets, and tackle climate change and deforestation.

"It is us who will eventually have to convince our governments that women need to be given equal space, to be given an opportunity to exploit their potential, and that it is not a gift for women to participate in decision-making - it is a right," Maathai said.

Rigoberta Menchu, the Indian rights activist from Guatemala who won the peace prize in 1992, said women should be "a beacon of hope" to change systems promoting racism, discrimination, exclusion and the lack of economic opportunity.

"We women have to give the example of being inclusive, of fighting exclusion, of fighting racism," she said. "That is why I'm here."

Helvi Sipila, secretary-general of the first U.N. women's conference in Mexico City in 1975, said in a video message from her home in Finland that women have made "considerable strides toward gender equality" but not enough has been done to advance peace.

"Today ... we must ask ourselves more seriously and with greater determination than ever what we can do in order to end violence, to enhance national and international understanding, and to secure world peace," said Sipila, 89.

Gertrude Mongella, secretary-general of the 1995 Beijing conference and now president of the Pan-African Parliament, recalled that in her final speech in Beijing she said: "A revolution has begun and there's no going back."

Ten years later, she said, women are more visible, gender equality "has become a working concept worldwide," and "women and men are now mobilized to see women's issues as societal issues, whether they like it or not."

"We are here to set a new speed," Mongella said. "We are here to remove the remaining obstacles. ... We are on the right track of our revolution. There is no going back."

Former U.N. assistant secretary-general Angela King, who was Annan's top adviser on women and organized the 2000 U.N. conference that reviewed Beijing, said the challenges of five years ago are the challenges of today.

She said an increasing number of women live in poverty, lag behind in economic advancement, are hurt by globalization, are contracting HIV/AIDS in greater numbers and are increasingly subject to violence in armed conflicts and through trafficking, she said.

King noted there are only four women prime ministers of independent countries and few women are at peace tables, citing them as the difficulty in changing stereotypes of women's limited roles.

"In 1975, the Mexico conference ignited a spark of awareness among women of their shared hopes and common problems," King said. "With each successive conference, the spark grew.

"Let us pledge today as the United Nations community, as governments, regions and individuals, that the flame for women's freedom and equality become a shining beacon for action to fully realize gender equality, development and peace

2005-02-20T22:57:00.000-05:00

WHEN the Kyoto Protocol was first signed, it was met with joy...

Another story on the recent implementation of the Kyoto Protocol...

WHEN the Kyoto Protocol was first signed, it was met with joy and excitement throughout the world. The 1997 agreement pledged its signatory countries to implementing programs against global warming. With the world weather patterns increasingly reminding the world that global warming is a real phenomenon, the wisdom of the global effort that resulted in the Kyoto agreement has been validated.

However, the United States, the largest energy consumer in the world, which accounts for a significant percentage of the planet's greenhouse gases, withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol during George W. Bush's first term. The decision of the American Republican administration was met with outrage throughout the world: not least because previous (Democratic) American administrations had been at the forefront of the lobbying for the agreement.

The Kyoto accord establishes, as global policy, the directive that the use of fossil fuels should be accompanied by strict emission standards and by a serious effort to develop more fuel-efficient technologies, as well as energy substitutes that reduce greenhouse gases. Obviously such policies endanger the healthy profits of oil companies, car manufacturers and electricity producers, all of which were significant contributors to the Bush campaign.

It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say that the official American about-face with regard to Kyoto was a matter of business. Long ago, an American president, Calvin Coolidge, said "America's business is business." Just as the American obsession with business interests and its inherent tendency to be isolationist torpedoed America's participation in the League of Nations (the post-World War I precursor to the United Nations) in the 1920s, so too does the withdrawal of Republican support from the Kyoto accord and the International Criminal Court show that American idealism tends to play second fiddle to American profiteering.

It's been said that America's turning its back on the League of Nations led to the unchallenged rise of fascism. America's ambivalence toward the UN after World War II has also led to an uneven American engagement with the global community. There is an American saying: "All politics is local." And the Bush administration's turning its back on two immensely important global agreements, the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court, shows as much.

The world community, faced with what could have been a catastrophic American withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement, decided to go on without the United States. It helped that emerging global economic and military powers, such as the People's Republic of China, saw that environmental protection cannot be separated from sustainable economic growth. The European Union, Japan and the emerging powers-such as India, China and Brazil- continue to be dedicated to the spirit of the Kyoto agreement. So does the Philippines, which has been feeling, deeply and painfully, the price of environmental mismanagement.

Energy Secretary Vince Perez hailed the most recent accession to the Kyoto Protocol by the Russian Federation. He recently announced new government initiatives seeking clean indigenous energy resources, and he said the government is keen on the development and commercial utilization of renewable energy. These government programs aim to promote clean alternative transport fuels and to enhance energy efficiency as well as conservation efforts to ensure sustainable energy development in the country.

On the surface at least, the country is on the right track. While it took five years (from 1998 to 2003) for our country to ratify the Kyoto accord, the fact is we did. As did so many other nations. This only goes to show that the tantalizing possibility of America increasingly getting left behind by the combined efforts of other countries may be upon us.

It may be a passing era when the United States could call the shots virtually at will in the global scene. America is powerful, but rivals are rising to the fore. America will be a crucial world player for generations to come; but it must increasingly adopt to the possibility of its remaining to be an important power bloc, but just one of many. Be that as it may, it's good to see that our country remains where it does best: not simply following the American Pied Piper, but discovering there is wisdom and strength in collective global engagement.

2005-02-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

Kyoto protocol comes into force

Now if only our shitty administration could figure out that the U.S. is the biggest polluter on the face of the planet and that we need to take a part in this effort. Man, the arrogance of this country and the politicians here is inexcusable! I need to become one too so that I could present some alternative points of view on issues like these. It's so hard to take power from those who've always had it. I'm just afraid that I'll be around when major climate shifts happen and I'll regret not doing anything to prevent it when I had the chance. More stories on the Kyoto protocol soon.

Staff and agencies
Wednesday February 16, 2005

Guardian Unlimited
The delayed Kyoto protocol on global warming finally came into effect today, seven years after it was first negotiated.

Environmentalists welcomed the development, which comes amid increasing fears about the effects global warming is already having. However, many voiced concern that the US and some other key countries had yet to ratify the protocol and that it does not go far enough.

Tony Blair, the prime minister, today said he was determined to pull the US "back into dialogue" over the need to tackle climate change.

He sought to reassure Washington that investment in science and technology meant reducing emissions did not have to affect living standards and economic growth and reaffirmed his commitment to making the issue a key priority during Britain's presidency of the G8 group of industrialised nations this year.

In central London, around 50 Greenpeace demonstrators blowing foghorns stormed into the International Petroleum Exchange, bringing trading to a halt just before 2pm. Police were attending the scene. The activists said they wanted to make the point that the aims of the Kyoto protocol were modest. Their message to petroleum firms was that "people's futures [are] more important than their profits".

The Kyoto pact, which has been ratified by 140 countries - but not the US, Australia, China or India - officially came into force at midnight New York time (0500 GMT). It was first negotiated in Japan's ancient capital, Kyoto, in 1997 but its implementation has been delayed because of a requirement that countries accounting for 55% of the world's emissions must ratify it. That goal was only reached after Russia signed up to the deal last year.

The protocol, an adjunct to the 1992 UN treaty on climate change, imposes limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases. It sets the target of a total cut of at least 5% in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2012.

Climate change experts warned of disastrous weather - including extremes of temperature, storms, droughts and floods and the melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps - if nothing is done to curb the emission of warm gases, which come mostly from transport and industry.

The environmental organisation Friends of the Earth welcomed today's development, but said more drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions were desperately needed.

Some commentators blame George Bush's administration for damaging efforts to prepare for a successor to the treaty, which expires in 2012.

The US, the world's largest emitter of such gases - accounting for almost one-quarter of global emissions - has refused to ratify the agreement. It had agreed to a 7% reduction before Mr Bush denounced the pact in 2001.

US officials argue that it would harm its economy and is flawed by the lack of restrictions on emissions by emerging economies such as China and India, which have also not signed up.

A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, yesterday said "we are still learning" about the science of climate change. He said: "We have made an unprecedented commitment to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in a way that continues to grow our economy."

Speaking on Channel Five's The Wright Stuff, Mr Blair emphasised the importance of bringing China and India into the protocol, warning that within 40 years global warming was "going to be a major, major issue", while Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, described global warming as the "most significant issue for the human race in the next half century".

Australia defended its decision not to sign up to the protocol, although the environment minister, Ian Campbell, said the country was nevertheless on target to cut emissions by 30%.

The protocol focuses on carbon dioxide and five other gases that can trap heat in the atmosphere and are believed to be causing global temperatures to rise. Its targets vary by region, with the UK and other EU countries committed to cutting emissions to 8% below 1990 levels by 2012.

Since 1997, some countries have pledged to cut greenhouse gases further than the levels they had committed to in the treaty.

The enactment of the treaty today was being marked with a series of official events around the world. Japan planned to celebrate at the convention hall in which the accord was negotiated.

In a recorded message to be played at the event, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, called on the world community to be "bold" in providing a "concerted global response" to the issue of climate change.

However, Japan - the world's second largest economy - is struggling to find ways to meet its obligations, with a report this month showing that 11 of the 30 leading Japanese industries risked failing to reach targets.

The country has also been especially active in carbon trading, a system under which governments have allocated carbon dioxide quotas to industrial facilities. Those emitting less gas can sell the "credit" to other companies that emit too much, and figures suggest Japan bought more than 40% of the available credits last year.

The Kyoto targets:

The 25 member states of the EU will redistribute their quotas among themselves, taking advantage of a protocol scheme known as a "bubble". Romania, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and Bulgaria, which are non-EU states, are also committed to cutting emissions by 8%.

Canada, Hungary, Japan, and Poland are committed to cutting emissions by 6%, Croatia by 5%. New Zealand, Russia, Ukraine and Norway are committed to allowing only a 1% rise in emissions. Australia agreed not to increase its emissions by more than 8%, and Iceland by no more than 10%.

Of the 140 countries that agreed upon the emissions targets, 30 are industrialised.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

2005-02-14T22:31:00.000-05:00

Jennifer Lopez To Star In 'Bordertown'

Great, J. Lo is going to take another Mexican related event and use it to futher her career! Man, fuck her! I hope the director can at least remain truthful and sensitive about the subject matter. He also directed both Selena and Mi Familia but I still have issues with him. I'll just have to wait and see how this movie's going to be made and marketed. The atrocious deaths of so many Mexican women should definitely not be fodder for a Hollywood "thriller" movie! Urrgh, there's some protesting/boycotting to be had if this movie comes out poorly! I feel very strongly tied to these murders as a Chicana and I have to be this angry about it. After all, who's looking out for us Mexicanas anyway?

Production Weekly reports that Gregory Nava is in talks with Jennifer Lopez, who he directed in 'Selena', to star in the thriller 'Bordertown'. Lopez would play Lauren, an impassioned American reporter for the Chicago Sentinel who heads to Juarez, a Mexican bordertown, in order to investigate a series of mysterious slayings involving young factory women from all over Mexico. As she discovers hundreds of victims, she gains the trust of local factory workers but falls into danger. Production on the film is scheduled to begin March 7th in Mexico.

2005-01-19T08:48:00.000-05:00

Acts of cruelty that disgraced a nation

Unbelievable... the crimes of a military but they're only scratching at the surface. Men in uniform have been trained to act in this manner by their dehumanizing training. I hate the fucking military.
The pictures are even more unbearable to see but we must be witnesses to this cruel behavior to condemn it: http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1258&storyid=2534076

By MICHAEL SEAMARK

January 20, 2005

A BRITISH soldier lashes out with his fist at an Iraqi civilian trussed up in a cargo net.

Another prisoner is hoisted off the ground on the prongs of a forklift truck operated by his grinning tormentor.

These shocking photos and many more like them are the images that have shamed a nation and form the basis of a court martial that has been dubbed Britain's Abu Ghraib.

The 22 images also show a soldier wielding a wooden pole, standing with both feet on an Iraqi lying bound and helpless on the floor. Others, too obscene to print, included Iraqi civilian captives being forced to simulate sex acts with one another.

Their crime: stealing food just days after the war in Iraq ended.

The sordid details of what happened at Breadbasket Camp in May 2003 emerged at the court martial in Osnabruck, Germany, where three members of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers face a series of charges relating to the incidents.

Prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Nick Clapham told a seven-man panel of senior officers: "'It can't be said that these photographs depict images that are anything other than shocking and appalling."

On trial are 33-year-old Corporal Daniel Kenyon, Lance Corporal Mark Cooley, 25, of Newcastle, and Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, 30, of Oldham.

All three, who fought in the war, face possible imprisonment and being dismissed from the army in disgrace if they are convicted.

Lt-Col Clapham said the alleged abuse happened two weeks after "the President of the United States famously disclosed an end to major combat operations".

The army, plagued by nightly thefts of food and humanitarian supplies from the camp, instigated Operation Ali Baba to capture and deter the Iraqi civilian looters.

Camp quartermaster Major Dan Taylor organised soldiers in groups of four and six, armed with SA80 assault rifles and long wooden poles used to support camouflage netting, to patrol the perimeter early in the morning.

If they captured looters, they were told they should "work them hard" on menial tasks, including returning the stolen property.

Lt-Col Clapham said apprehending the looters was legal, but he accepted that their temporary detention was illegal under the Geneva Convention.

Corp Kenyon's section "received three or four Iraqis" and took them to a warehouse complex inside the camp. It was there, said Lt-Col Clapham, that the physical and sexual abuse took place.

It came to light when another member of the regiment, Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 20, returned home to Tamworth, Staffordshire, and put a roll of film into a local photo shop.

Shop assistant Emma Blackie and colleague Kelly Adney alerted civilian police when they saw the contents.

The prosecutor accepted that the order by Major Taylor to work the prisoners hard was unlawful.

"But had these defendants done nothing more than what that order had envisaged they would not be facing the charges that they face today. We say that these charges are running way outside of that order," he said.

"In no way did that order envisage conduct of the type you have heard me describe."

He told the panel there was no doubt the incidents had taken place, "what you have to decide is what role, if any, these defendants played".

Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Spencer, one of the army's senior legal advisers, told the court martial he and a team of lawyers went to the Gulf specifically to brief soldiers on how to deal with prisoners of war and civilians.

There was "epidemic and psychotic looting" across Iraq at the end of the war but soldiers were told civilians were to be treated "with the utmost humanity and dignity".

He said: "Once a person has been temporarily detained he should either be released or handed over to the Royal Military Police or equivalent as soon as possible.'

The court martial continues.

The Daily Telegraph

This report was published at www.dailytelegraph.com.au

2005-01-15T01:54:00.000-05:00

FINAL WORD ON IRAQ'S WMD SOUNDS VERY FAMILIAR

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ucgg/20050114/cm_ucgg/finalwordoniraqswmdsoundsveryfamiliar

Fri Jan 14, 6:23 PM ET

By Georgie Anne Geyer

WASHINGTON -- So now it's official and we can all breathe a little easier. This week, we finally know about the weapons of mass destruction. They weren't there, certainly not when we rushed to implausible war nearly two long years ago.

Geyer
Georgie Ann Geyer

When the Iraq (news - web sites) Survey Group announced this week that it was officially ending its search for WMD, it was a little like facing the announcement of the death of a person who had, in fact, died some years back. How can one mourn an event already gone so stale?

The White House seemed hardly to mourn at all, despite the fact that its little "mistake" has cost some 1,300 American lives, not to speak of those Iraqi lives (probably upward of 100,000) they simply don't acknowledge. President Bush (news - web sites) noted this new marker only by saying, isn't the world better without Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)?

Well, as a harsh and cold-bloodedly realistic judgment, one can argue that neither Iraq nor we are better without Saddam Hussein, despite the president's sleepwalking words.

On top of that, this week, the National Intelligence Council, which is the CIA (news - web sites) director's personal think tank, released a stunning report saying that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan (news - web sites) as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists. Not only has Iraq provided terrorists with a "training ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills and a recruitment ground," CIA officers said in a briefing, but there is the likelihood that the "jihadists" not killed there will in time "go home," thus "dispersing to other countries."

In the rampant violence and insecurity that followed the fall of Saddam, hundreds of foreign terrorists flocked to the open and uncontrolled Iraq, garnering and using unprotected weapons caches that the American invasion was supposed to have obliterated. This type of violence -- expanded -- will be at its height in 2020, the report said.

A personal note to those of my good readers who persist in believing that Iraq is not a mess: This report took a year to produce and is the result of the analysis of 1,000 U.S. and foreign experts.

What's more, pessimism about the war and what we have wrought is prevalent across virtually all sectors in Washington -- except, of course, the president and his cynical neocon fanatics who still dream of reconfiguring the Middle East by getting American troops on the ground alongside Israeli troops. The Financial Times reported this week from a leading diplomatic source that outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) last week told the president of the war, "We're losing."

But if the old WMD story that was the basis for this foolish and wasted war was not true of pre-war Iraq, what of it was true?

The man who headed the Iraq Survey Group and did much of the original research in Iraq, Charles Duelfer -- the CIA's special adviser and a man of unusual integrity -- already has given us some insight into the answers to that question in his initial report that was released in October.

After research that included interviews in Baghdad with many top Saddam aides and with access to the ongoing interrogations of Saddam himself, Duelfer wrote a brilliant initial report that rivals the best historical, political and psychiatric literature on leaders and their psychoses.

Saddam, he found, was as autocratic, cruel, grandiose, isolated and dominating as the world thought, but there was little mystery about his love affair with horrible weaponry. He kept it and used it in the Iran-Iraq war against the Iranians, in which a million people died on both sides.

After the '91 Gulf War (news - web sites), it appears that the Machiavellian Iraqi leader deliberately kept the appearance of having WMD in order to deter and strike fear in his neighbors while, on another power level, getting rid of them in order to convince the United Nations (news - web sites) weapons inspectors that he had none.

When one thinks about it, taking into consideration the fearful and hate-ridden psychologies of that part of the world, why would he NOT take these two related steps?

But there was at least one other crucial part of Duelfer's first analytical report. Saddam, he said, liked American movies and literature, his favorite being Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." Even more amazing, as late as the 1990s, he was sending emissaries to Washington to try to open a dialogue.

While Saddam "derived prestige from being an enemy of the United States," Duelfer wrote, he also recognized that "it would have been equally prestigious for him" to be a U.S. ally. In fact, Saddam's men approached Duelfer and other U.N. inspectors who were in Iraq in the mid-'90s, saying that "if Iraq had a security relationship with the United States, it might be inclined to dispense with WMD programs and/or ambitions."

You may say these acts were cynically self-interested -- surely, they were. But you can also say, with unfortunately even greater assurance, that the picture painted of Iraq and Saddam and WMD from the very beginning of this war by American leaders would be farcical, were it not so deadly serious.

2004-12-22T03:48:00.000-05:00

Newborn galaxies teeming with dozens of baby stars
Scientists hope to learn how stellar systems are born

I love reading stories like these! I get all shiny-eyed and optimistic until I realize how scared I am of outer space. Whoops! Solar system anxiety creeping up again!

Dec. 21, 2004, 7:48PM

Newborn galaxies teeming with dozens of baby stars
Scientists hope to learn how stellar systems are born
By MARK CARREAU
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Though billions of years old, the universe still produces compact galaxies brimming with baby stars, astronomers said Tuesday.

ADVERTISEMENT
With help from a NASA telescope, scientists have discovered about three dozen young galaxies in the not-too-distant cosmic neighborhood that could help astronomers unravel the forces that helped create the earliest star systems.

"This is almost like looking out the window and seeing a dinosaur walking by," said Tim Heckman, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who specializes in galaxy evolution. "We thought this type of galaxy had gone extinct, but in fact newborn galaxies are alive and well in the universe."

Astronomers believe the universe unfolded 13.7 billion years ago after the theoretical Big Bang, a massive explosion of super dense matter.

As the expanding universe cooled, it absorbed hydrogen and helium. Those elements collapsed under gravity to create the first stars and galaxies, an activity that astronomers believed peaked eight to 10 billion years ago.

NASA launched its $100 million Galaxy Evolution Explorer 20 months ago to look for newborn star systems in the distant, early cosmos.

Also known as Galex, scientists equipped the small orbital telescope with optical systems sensitive to ultraviolet light, an energetic emission unleashed during star formation. The Earth's thick atmosphere shields ground-based telescopes from the energetic emissions.

Galex's first sweep has revealed 36 of the young galaxies ranging from two billion to four billion light years away. They range in age from 100 million to one billion years, said Chris Martin, the California Institute of Technology astronomer who led the search.

By comparison, the Milky Way galaxy is believed to be 10 billion years old, while Earth's sun and its solar system are about 4.5 billion years old.

The Galex team hopes the galactic infants have similar composition and structure to ancient and so far unseen distant siblings.

Scientists said the powerful Hubble Telescope must be repaired before they can study the earliest galaxies and compare them with the latest discoveries.

According to Alice Shapley, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley, scientists want to resolve the range of star ages and masses as well as the rate of star birth.

The findings could help astronomers explain whether star systems of this type merged over the over the ages to form larger galaxies such as the Milky Way.

Using Galex, astronomers can detect only compact ill-formed "fuzzy blobs" with the bright, telltale ultraviolet emissions of explosive star birth. They must leave to their imaginations what it might be like to live in such a star system.

"I believe you would see a very large number of quite bright blue stars," Martin said. "Blue stars are very hot and very massive. So, I imagine the sky would look quite a bit different from our own position in the Milky Way."

mark.carreau@chron.com

2004-12-22T03:11:00.000-05:00

India roiled by Internet sex case
American charged over sale of clip

Culture clash!

India roiled by Internet sex case
American charged over sale of clip
By Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times | December 22, 2004

NEW DELHI -- From India's Parliament to corporate boardrooms and newspaper editorial boards, a video scandal involving teenage sex has set off a storm of controversy.

The American head of an Indian Internet firm caught up in a scandal was released on bail yesterday as police interrogated the private school student who filmed the lewd clip with a cell phone camera.

A Delhi High Court judge ordered the release of Avnish Bajaj, head of the eBay-owned Baazee.com, who still faces charges that he allowed the sale of pornographic material on the Web site.

Bajaj was arrested Friday and initially held in Delhi's high-security Tihar prison after a video clip of two private school students engaged in a sexual act was posted for sale on Baazee.com, India's biggest Internet auction site.

The 17-year-old boy who shot the video on his cell phone also was arrested. A juvenile court allowed police to question him yesterday in the presence of a social worker and his father. He was being held in a juvenile home until early next month.

The boy and the 16-year-old girl in the clip have been expelled from Delhi Public School, one of the Indian capital's most prestigious private schools.

Police also have charged a student at the Indian Institute of Technology, whom Baazee identified as the person who offered the clip for sale on the Web site. Investigators are looking for more suspects in a case that has scandalized India, where even public displays of affection as tame as kissing are frowned upon.

Police say the boy shot the video with a cell phone in his bedroom in July. The clip began to spread on cell phone and Internet networks after he showed it to friends.

A member of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party accused the United States of meddling in Indian affairs after local reports, citing unidentified official sources, said that the incoming US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, had taken an interest in Bajaj's case.

A US Embassy spokesman here did not respond to an interview request, but a State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, told reporters in Washington on Monday that ''this situation is one of concern at the highest levels of the US government."

He added that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell ''has been following it closely" and had asked about the case at a morning staff meeting.

Bajaj, 34, is a naturalized American citizen who lives in India. He sold Baazee.com to eBay, based in San Jose, Calif., for about $50 million in August.

The embassy has provided him with consular assistance, and an American diplomat attended a court hearing Monday at which Bajaj appealed a lower court order that he remain in jail until Friday.

Bajaj faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of more than $2,200 if found guilty of violating India's Information Technology Act, which prohibits ''publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form which is obscene."

Bajaj's attorney argued that the Internet executive should be released on bail because he had cooperated with authorities and had removed the listing of the video sex clip as soon as it came to the company's attention. The seller offered to e-mail the clip for just less than $3, but the clip itself was not shown on Baazee.com, the company said.

2004-12-22T02:45:00.000-05:00

56 Percent in Survey Say Iraq War Was a Mistake

Finally, we start to hear the voices of the many who have opposed this war since the beginning. The travesty must end now!

washingtonpost.com

56 Percent in Survey Say Iraq War Was a Mistake
Poll Also Finds Slight Majority Favoring Rumsfeld's Exit

By John F. Harris and Christopher Muste
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 21, 2004; Page A04

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14266-2004Dec20?language=printer

President Bush heads into his second term amid deep and growing public skepticism about the Iraq war, with a solid majority saying for the first time that the war was a mistake and most people believing that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should lose his job, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

While a slight majority believe the Iraq war contributed to the long-term security of the United States, 70 percent of Americans think these gains have come at an "unacceptable" cost in military casualties. This led 56 percent to conclude that, given the cost, the conflict there was "not worth fighting" -- an eight-point increase from when the same question was asked this summer, and the first time a decisive majority of people have reached this conclusion.

Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld at a morning news conference yesterday, but the Pentagon chief who soared to international celebrity and widespread admiration after the terrorist attacks three years ago can be glad he answers to an audience of one. Among the public, 35 percent of respondents approved of his job performance and 53 percent disapproved; 52 percent said Bush should give Rumsfeld his walking papers.

Seven weeks since his reelection victory over Democrat John F. Kerry and four weeks before his second inauguration, the poll suggests Bush is in a paradoxical situation -- a triumphant president who remains acutely vulnerable in public opinion on a national security issue that is dominating headlines and could shadow his second term.

While the results are bad for Bush as people look at past decisions -- whether the Iraq war should have been waged in the first place -- the president has more support for his policies over the choices he faces going forward.

A strong majority of Americans, 58 percent, support keeping military forces in Iraq until "civil order is restored," even in the face of continued U.S. causalities. By a slight margin, 48 percent to 44 percent, more voters agreed with Bush's position that the United States is making "significant progress" toward its goal of establishing democracy in Iraq. Yet, by a similar margin, the public believes the United States is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order.

This was just one area where there was considerable ambivalence and even pessimism about the challenges confronting U.S. policy in the coming months.

On the question of whether Iraq is prepared for elections next month -- a topic widely debated among national security experts -- 58 percent of respondents believed the violence-plagued country is not ready. Nonetheless, 60 percent want elections to go forward as scheduled -- even though 54 percent do not expect honest results with a "fair and accurate vote count." Fifty-four percent are not confident elections will produce a stable government that can rule effectively.

Bush waged his reelection campaign heavily on national security, but the polling data reaffirm what similar surveys showed during the campaign: He is winning only half the case.

A full 57 percent disapprove of his handling of Iraq, a number that is seven percentage points higher than a poll taken in September. But the president's core political asset, public confidence in his leadership on terrorism, remains intact, albeit down significantly from even a year ago. Fifty-three percent approve of his record on terrorism, while 43 percent do not. Those numbers were 70 percent and 28 percent a year ago this week.

The public splits down the middle on Bush's overall job performance, with 48 percent approving while 49 percent disapprove, percentages that closely approximate results taken just before the election. By contrast, President Bill Clinton had an approval of 60 percent in a poll taken just before he began his second term.

The Post-ABC results are consistent with other newly released surveys. Time magazine, which this week named Bush its "Person of the Year," found that 49 percent approve of his job performance, little changed from before the election. A Pew Research Center survey, meanwhile, showed that the angry divisions about Bush that marked the 2004 campaign were hardly bridged by the election's end -- nor were the sharply divergent appraisals of reality. By emphatic majorities, Bush voters were upbeat on whether things are going well in Iraq and with the economy, while Kerry voters were negative.

The Post poll also showed such partisan divides on many foreign policy and national security questions. In a potential trouble sign for the White House, Republicans' support for Bush on these questions is lower than the Democratic opposition. And majorities of independents side with the Democrats in their skepticism toward the administration's course.

There are sharp partisan divisions over Rumsfeld, with about two-thirds of Democrats and slight majorities of independents disapproving of his job performance and believing he should be replaced. Smaller majorities of Republicans, about six in 10, approve of Rumsfeld and want him to stay in the job.

There are similar splits on Iraq. Majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents agree the elections should be held. But more than two-thirds of Democrats and about six in 10 independents believe that Iraq is not ready for elections and that the vote will not be fair and will not produce a stable Iraqi government, in contrast to a majority of Republicans. Opinion is even more sharply divided over the outcome of elections. Seven in 10 Democrats and five in nine independents believe elections will not produce a stable government in Iraq, while more than two-thirds of Republicans believe they will.

A total of 1,004 randomly selected Americans were interviewed Dec. 16 to 19. The margin of sampling error for the results is plus or minus three percentage points.

2004-12-22T01:54:00.000-05:00

Fans' Racist Taunts Lead to Fine of Spanish Soccer

Racism worldwide, how nice eh?

washingtonpost.com
Fans' Racist Taunts Lead to Fine of Spanish Soccer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17785-2004Dec21.html

Wednesday, December 22, 2004; Page D02

World soccer's governing body yesterday fined Spain's national federation $87,000 for racist taunting by its fans during matches against England.

FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said the Spanish federation also was warned against a repeat of such fan behavior at future games. According to Spain's Efe news agency, a Spanish soccer official said the federation would honor the fine and had no plans to appeal the sanction.

Taunts aimed at the black players on England's soccer team marred Spain's impressive 1-0 victory in the Nov. 17 match. While the Spaniards outplayed England at Santiago Bernabeu stadium, their fans taunted Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole whenever they had the ball.

England also protested Spanish fans' racist chanting during a meeting of the two nations in an under-21 match the day before. FIFA chief Sepp Blatter said: "Racism again is rearing its ugly head in society and in football. FIFA is determined to stamp out racism."

Spanish soccer has been hit by a string of racist incidents. Earlier this month, European governing body UEFA fined Real Madrid $13,023 for racist behavior by its supporters at the Champions League game against Bayer Leverkusen on Nov. 23. Members of the crowd made Nazi salutes and taunted Leverkusen's black players

2004-12-19T00:32:00.000-05:00

In U.S., 44 Percent Say Restrict Muslims

As much as I am weary of the politics of most people around me, I still find this poll's results shocking. How in the hell can most Americans believe this! This country is not just for white Americans, sorry! Jesus, this is clearly a sign of the times. All I can say is that everyone who participated in the sentiment that interned Japanese-Americans and hunted Communists in history are now seen as the stupidly inhumane people that they were. The same will happen when people in the future look back on this period in history. Nothing good can come when you dehumanize and scapegoat one group of people. Oppression will only lead to a fierce blowback. I stand for the rights of everyone and this poll just angers me and makes me disheartened for the future of our society. I clutch my heart and thank my good senses that I support the ACLU whenever I hear about shit like this. On another note, I'm not surprised that the more religious you are the more repressive you are. Nice one, all you good Christian folks!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041218/ap_on_re_us/muslims_civil_liberties_4

In U.S., 44 Percent Say Restrict Muslims

Fri Dec 17,10:08 PM ET

By WILLIAM KATES, Associated Press Writer

ITHACA, N.Y. - Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.

"It's sad news. It's disturbing news. But it's not unpredictable," said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society. "The nation is at war, even if it's not a traditional war. We just have to remain vigilant and continue to interface."

The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way.

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

Cornell student researchers questioned 715 people in the nationwide telephone poll conducted this fall. The margin of error was 3.6 percentage points.

James Shanahan, an associate professor of communications who helped organize the survey, said the results indicate "the need for continued dialogue about issues of civil liberties" in a time of war.

While researchers said they were not surprised by the overall level of support for curtailing civil liberties, they were startled by the correlation with religion and exposure to television news.

"We need to explore why these two very important channels of discourse may nurture fear rather than understanding," Shanahan said.

According to the survey, 37 percent believe a terrorist attack in the United States is still likely within the next 12 months. In a similar poll conducted by Cornell in November 2002, that number stood at 90 percent.

___

On the Net:

Cornell University: www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Dec04/Muslim.Poll.bpf.html

Muslim American Society: www.masnet.org

2004-12-17T22:49:00.000-05:00

A Whitewashed Earthsea
How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.

This essay is mind-blowing! To read something this socially aware and explicit is refreshing. Even from a writer. Few popular writers ever dare to be so down to earth and get real about social issues. The color issue is still something very much alive and pertinent. This writing is so clear, direct, and genuinely human that it makes me, as cynical as I am, very proud to agree with this writer.

culturebox
A Whitewashed Earthsea
How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.
By Ursula K. Le Guin
Posted Thursday, Dec. 16, 2004, at 6:14 AM PT

On Tuesday night, the Sci Fi Channel aired its final installment of Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries based—loosely, as it turns out—on my Earthsea books. The books, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are. I don't know what the film is about. It's full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense. My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he's a petulant white kid. Readers who've been wondering why I "let them change the story" may find some answers here.

When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of "consultant"—which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film. They said they had already secured Philippa Boyens (who co-wrote the scripts for The Lord of the Rings) as principal script writer. The script was, to me, all-important, so Boyens' presence was the key factor in my decision to sell this group the option to the film rights.

Months went by. By the time the producers got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries—and another producer, Robert Halmi Sr., had come aboard—they had lost Boyens. That was a blow. But I had just seen Halmi's miniseries DreamKeeper, which had a stunning Native American cast, and I hoped that Halmi might include some of those great actors in Earthsea.

At this point, things began to move very fast. Early on, the filmmakers contacted me in a friendly fashion, and I responded in kind; I asked if they'd like to have a list of name pronunciations; and I said that although I knew that a film must differ greatly from a book, I hoped they were making no unnecessary changes in the plot or to the characters—a dangerous thing to do, since the books have been known to millions of people for decades. They replied that the TV audience is much larger, and entirely different, and would be unlikely to care about changes to the books' story and characters.

They then sent me several versions of the script—and told me that shooting had already begun. I had been cut out of the process. And just as quickly, race, which had been a crucial element, had been cut out of my stories. In the miniseries, Danny Glover is the only man of color among the main characters (although there are a few others among the spear-carriers). A far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned. When I looked over the script, I realized the producers had no understanding of what the books are about and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence.

Most of the characters in my fantasy and far-future science fiction books are not white. They're mixed; they're rainbow. In my first big science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the only person from Earth is a black man, and everybody else in the book is Inuit (or Tibetan) brown. In the two fantasy novels the miniseries is "based on," everybody is brown or copper-red or black, except the Kargish people in the East and their descendants in the Archipelago, who are white, with fair or dark hair. The central character Tenar, a Karg, is a white brunette. Ged, an Archipelagan, is red-brown. His friend, Vetch, is black. In the miniseries, Tenar is played by Smallville's Kristin Kreuk, the only person in the miniseries who looks at all Asian. Ged and Vetch are white.

My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn't see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had "violet eyes"). It didn't even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now—why wouldn't they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?

The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from Northern Europe, which is why it was about white people. I'm white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for "young adults") might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees—hoping that the reader would get "into Ged's skin" and only then discover it wasn't a white one.

I was never questioned about this by any editor. No objection was ever raised. I think this is greatly to the credit of my first editors at Parnassus and Atheneum, who bought the books before they had a reputation to carry them.

But I had endless trouble with cover art. Not on the great cover of the first edition—a strong, red-brown profile of Ged—or with Margaret Chodos Irvine's four fine paintings on the Atheneum hardcover set, but all too often. The first British Wizard was this pallid, droopy, lily-like guy—I screamed at sight of him.

Gradually I got a little more clout, a little more say-so about covers. And very, very, very gradually publishers may be beginning to lose their blind fear of putting a nonwhite face on the cover of a book. "Hurts sales, hurts sales" is the mantra. Yeah, so? On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal—a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader.

I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does.

I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in—and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, when they'd found nothing to read in fantasy and science fiction except the adventures of white people in white worlds. Those letters have been a tremendous reward and true joy to me.

So far no reader of color has told me I ought to butt out, or that I got the ethnicity wrong. When they do, I'll listen. As an anthropologist's daughter, I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism—a white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance. In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future science fiction setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That's the beauty of science fiction and fantasy—freedom of invention.

But with all freedom comes responsibility. Which is something these filmmakers seem not to understand.

Ursula K. Le Guin is the author of the Earthsea series and many other books. Her most recent book is Gifts.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111107/

Comments/Feedback to this story:
http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=culturebox

2004-12-16T10:49:00.000-05:00

The leaders we have, not the ones we might want

I'm now understanding the situation that soldiers are in. It's always been hard for me to feel sympathy for those who enlist and ignore the blatant cruelty of the military, but I've underestimated their lives. It's still an issue I grapple with....

Tuesday, December 14, 2004, 12:00 A.M. Pacific

Guest columnist
The leaders we have, not the ones we might want

By Steven W. Simpson
Special to The Times

Will someone explain to me what in the world is going on in Iraq? Our troops are now digging around in trash heaps looking for chunks of metal they can use to improvise armor to protect their vehicles against small-arms attacks.

We are not talking about troops whining because they want another dozen $10-million-a-pop missiles or better satellite-guidance systems. These are grunts in the field getting shot at who are picking around in junkyards for chunks of metal they can weld on whatever tin-can war equipment the Army is passing out these days.

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why U.S. forces were being sent into action with insufficient protection, Rumsfeld told the soldiers, in effect, to stop whining about all those shrapnel holes in their inadequate military vehicles.

Rumsfeld, in what has to shake out as one of the most cold-blooded, disaffected statements by anyone about the war, told the people risking their lives, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have."

Rumsfeld and his Pentagon buddies, who are safe behind nice, fat desks, want the troops to go out and fight despite the fact that the behind-the-lines people did not do their job. They did not plan adequate armor protection and issued the troops equipment that even under the most minimal of battlefield conditions will get them killed.

The troops know it because they are in the middle of the fighting. They have seen explosives penetrate the inadequate armor and kill their buddies. That's why they are searching trash piles for protection. The real trash pile is in Washington, D.C., and could use a good picking over.

I was a platoon leader in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. When we got into bad fights, it was always terrible and frightening. But in the back of our minds, we always knew we were fighting against people with inferior equipment and weapons.

We knew if we could fight long enough, stay alive long enough, our weapons and technology would help us win. Both sides fought with courage in that war, but our equipment and weapons were the best. Now we have soldiers in the field with fighting vehicles that wouldn't even stop a bullet unless soldiers glued some junkyard trash on the sides.

I am a veteran. I was not asked to risk my life and fight for my country using second-class equipment and pieces of glued-on trash. Has this country forgotten how terrible war can be? Has our military leadership been sitting in their offices so long that they forgot what bullets and bombs can do to human flesh? Or worse, they remember and no longer care?

Perhaps worse than lack of adequate equipment is lack of adequate troops. This administration has been very loud telling anyone who will listen that we will stay the course. From the looks of things, what that means is the soldiers who happened to be enlisted at the time the war was started will be forced to continue fighting until America gets tired of the bloodshed. That's because there are no new troops to send in to relieve those doing the fighting.

Reserve and National Guard soldiers make up 45 percent of U.S. troops in Iraq. The so-called Pentagon "stop-loss" orders are forcing soldiers to continue fighting beyond the limits of their enlistment. President Bush said there would be no draft, but it does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that if we do not have enough soldiers in our regular and part-time forces combined, new soldiers will need to be found somewhere.

An Army Reserve unit in Iraq refused to carry out a convoy mission it considered too dangerous. Eight U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Kuwait filed a lawsuit challenging the "stop-loss" policy. These people are not cowards. They are soldiers at the sharp end of the stick who are trying every way they know how to tell America that the desk-jockeys are sending them into battle without appropriate equipment, without enough troops, and getting soldiers killed unnecessarily.

We went through this in Vietnam and should have learned to ask questions and hold our leaders accountable. Get the heat off those risking their lives and start questioning the Pentagon and administration officials responsible for this nonsense.

Steven W. Simpson is a writer and editor. He teaches at the Mercer Island High School alternative school, Crest Learning Center, and publishes a weekly online education newsletter, Ed.Net (www.edbriefs.com).

Write him at simpson@edbriefs.com

2004-12-16T04:01:00.000-05:00

It came from the vaults! Google seeks to open the library

One last story on Google.

Google info link: http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/15/google_print_library/

It came from the vaults! Google seeks to open the library

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco (andrew.orlowski at theregister.co.uk)
Published Wednesday 15th December 2004 09:25 GMT

In what could be a historic move in the history of the internet, Google has announced arrangements with Harvard University, and a handful of public libraries, to digitize parts of their valuable collections and make them available over the public web. Yahoo!, Grokker and Microsoft are working on similar ventures.

Google Print Library (http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html), as it's called, will take many years to complete its first phase, and like the others, faces tremendous hurdles. Copyright and licensing issues remain a huge obstacle; the ontological expertise remains the domain of information professionals; and as a monopoly gateway to the world's information, no private corporation can expect to evade regulatory concerns. And lazy governments, both central and local, could find use it as an excuse to axe what commitments they have to making high quality information available. Any of these issues could hobble the venture, providing a service that's as useful as the fake cardboard book-props one can buy by the yard to fill an empty study bookcase. But as a statement of intent, such ventures deserve to be taken seriously.

Google will co-operate in scanning and digitizing works with major academic libraries and make them searchable. The results will be displayed using Google Print - which uses DRM to restrict the viewing and printing of copyright material - and display links to either commercial booksellers such as Amazon.com or, using Open Worldcat metadata, provide information where to find it at your local library. Initial partners include Harvard, with 15 million books, Oxford's Bodleian Library (http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/google/pics.shtml), Stanford and Michigan University, where the scanning of seven million books is expected to take six years. Google won't at first offer advertisements on Print Library, although there's plenty of scope for this to change. For example: Do you want fries with your burgher? (http://www.google.com/search?q=burgher).

At ResourceShelf, Gary Price has a roundup (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3447411) of other digitization projects, and librarian Steve Cohen offers a few notes of caution. Google will need to improve on the brute force text search algorithms it uses today, he notes (http://www.resourceshelf.com/2004/12/google-lets-digitize-several-million.html), and "libraries should be pushing their own materials through their websites rather than having to 'rely' on Google to do so".

The promise of universal access to data repeated over a decade of internet hype has not been fulfilled, and the role of librarians as information professionals has been consistently undervalued - something, we suspect, to do with the adolescent hostility to expertise that characterizes so much internet evangelism. Which in turn, probably has a lot to do with the internet's libertarian backgrounds. Whether the private sector succeeds after a decade of failure in overcoming copyright interests remains to be seen, and whether it can be trusted to do so is another question. We'll certain need the librarians, to keep the Microsofts and Googles both honest and effective. ®
© Copyright 2004

2004-12-16T03:54:00.000-05:00

Despite Google, we still need good libraries

A good statement to make amidst the excitement of new Google technology. I'm sure there's a way between balancing the traditional elements of knowledge with the new. At least I hope so cause' I'd be very sad if libraries ceased to exist!

Despite Google, we still need good libraries

GEORGE KEREVAN

GOOGLE, with whom I spend more time than with my loved ones, is planning to put the contents of the world’s greatest libraries on line, including the Bodleian in Oxford and those of Harvard and Stanford in America. Part of me is ecstatic at the thought of all that information at my fingertips (assuming my mouse is not greasy, or the damned computer is not flashing incomprehensible "error" messages). Another part of me is nostalgic, because I think physical libraries, book-lined and cathedral-quiet, are a cherished part of civilisation we lose at our cultural peril.

My love affair with libraries started early, in Drumchapel in the Fifties. Glasgow Council neglected the shops and amenities but somehow remembered to put in a public library - actually, a wooden shed - for the 60,000 exiles packed off to the city’s outer fringe.

That library was split into two - an adult section and a children’s section. This was an early taste of forbidden fruit. A lifetime of hating bureaucratic rules was born. Not to mention much useful human reproductive knowledge gained from certain books examined surreptitiously in the adult biology section.

The first lesson here is that on-line libraries are valuable, but they are only as useful as the electronic librarians let them be. Don’t count on the Chinese authorities being Google-friendly.

At university, I discovered the second great secret of the library as a physical space: its serendipity. Glasgow University has a skyscraper library, built around a vast atrium stretching up through the various floors. Each floor was devoted to a different subject classification. Working away on the economics floor, I could see other students above or below - chatting, flirting, doodling, panicking - each cocooned in their own separate world of knowledge. Intrigued, I soon took to exploring what was on these other planets: science, architecture, even a whole floor of novels.

Lesson two: the unique aspect of a physical library is that you can discover knowledge by accident. There are things you know you don’t know, but there are also things you never imagined you did not know (to paraphrase the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld).

There is a stock response to my love affair with libraries: that I am being too nostalgic. That the multi-tasking, MTV generation can access information from a computer, get cheap books from the supermarket and still chatter to each other at a thousand decibels. Who needs old-fashioned library buildings? And why subsidise what Google will provide for free?

There is proof for this line of argument. In 2003, the number of people in Scotland using their local public library fell for the fifth year running, with just under a quarter of Scots now borrowing books (admittedly, that was 34 million books). As a result, local authorities have reduced their funding on new books by 30 per cent. Of course, fewer new books mean fewer library users, so guaranteeing the downward spiral. And, yes, I do know that of the 20 most-borrowed books in British libraries, 16 were written by one person, the children’s author, Jacqueline Wilson.

One erroneous response to this state of affairs has been to turn traditional public lending libraries into glorified community centres full of broken-down PCs and dog-eared popular novels which you can find in better condition in the local charity shop for ten pence. That is not a library: that is a politically correct con trick.

It may well be that public demand and technical change mean we no longer need the dense neighbourhood network of local libraries of yore. But our culture, local and universal, does demand serious city libraries where one can find science, history, reference texts, foreign-language works and art books - precisely the material that is too expensive for the ordinary person to buy, and for the most part too complex to find on-line. Such facilities are worth funding publicly because the return in informed citizenship, civic pride and enhanced skills is far in excess of the money spent. Better a few good public libraries than a host of tatty community centres. City libraries also have that undervalued resource - the trained librarian. The ultimate Achilles’ heel of the internet is that it presents every page of information as being equally valid, which is of course nonsense. The internet is cluttered with false information, or just plain junk. The city library, with its collection honed and developed by experts, is a guarantee of the quality and veracity of the information contained therein, in a way that Google can never provide.

Libraries have another function still, which the internet cannot fulfil. Libraries, like museums, are custodians of knowledge - and should be funded as such. It has become the fashion in recent decades to turn our great national museums and libraries into entertainment centres, ostensibly to justify their public expense. As one of the original founders of Edinburgh’s highly successful Science Festival, I have every enthusiasm for popularising esoteric knowledge. However, the world of knowledge cannot be reduced to the level of a child’s view of the universe.

FURTHERMORE, we have a duty to future generations, especially in the nation that gave the world the Enlightenment, to invest in the custodians of our culture, above all of its literature and manuscripts. Besides, the desire by politicians to turn museums and libraries into theme parks has less to do with modernising access to knowledge, and more to do with courting cheap publicity.

Fortunately, there are still some adventurous minds, defending the notion of libraries as workshops of the future rather than tombs of the past. Witness Aberdeen University, where the principal, Duncan Rice, has just launched an appeal for a major new library facility, in part to re-house the university’s glorious medieval-humanities collection.

Professor Rice’s inspiration is the famous Beinecke Library at Yale University. One of the largest buildings in the world devoted entirely to rare manuscripts, the Beinecke has no windows but is constructed of thin marble panes which filter light so that the fragile materials can be displayed without damage. Inside, the golden effect is extraordinary. Let’s hope some benefactor comes up with the cash for Aberdeen so that the project is not held back or reduced in aspiration, architecturally or intellectually. (By the way, the price is one-tenth of one Scottish Parliament building.)

Of course, I can’t wait for Google to get on-line with the Bodleian Library’s one million books. Yet here’s one other thing I learned from a physical library space: the daunting scale of human knowledge and our inability to truly comprehend only a fraction of it. On arriving at Glasgow University library, I did a quick calculation of how many economics books there were on the shelves and realised that I could not read them all - ever, never mind before the time my degree course was over. From which realisation comes the beginning of wisdom, which is different from merely imbibing information.

The internet, on the other hand, is still in its Messianic phase. The new Google library reminds me of a short story by the science-fiction writer, Frederic Brown, where all the knowledge of all the computers in the world is finally available on one giant, Google-like application. To celebrate, the computer is asked the ultimate question: "Is there a God?" After a few whirrs and clicks, the machine answers: "Yes, now there is."

This article:

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1434442004

2004-12-16T03:47:00.000-05:00

Global library heralds new information era

I completely agree. Google is just continuing to change the face of day-to-day living. I can't wait to see the results of this new innovation. I love Google, information, books, and libraries. This is terrific news for a change!

Global library heralds new information era
12-16-2004, 07h07

NEW YORK (AFP) - Moves by Internet search giant Google to create a global virtual library could signal a communications revolution on a par with Johann Gutenberg and the invention of moveable type in the 15th century.

"We've been talking about it here in those kind of terms," said John Wilkin, associate librarian at Michigan University.

Michigan and four more of the world's top libraries -- Harvard, Stanford, New York Public Library and the Bodleian in Oxford -- announced this week a deal with Google to digitise millions of their books and make them freely available online.

"This just changes the landscape so completely," Wilkin said.

"The research library, which was not very accessible before, will be available to everybody. The focus will start to shift to electronic space for all of our scholarly communications," he said.

Michigan and Stanford are planning to digitise their entire library collections -- totalling some 15 million books -- while the Bodleian is offering around one million books published before 1900.

The Harvard and New York Public Library contributions are smaller, but the entire project is still expected to take up to 10 years, with cost estimates ranging from 150 million to 200 million dollars.

"This is a great leap forward," said Michael Keller, librarian at Stanford University which has been digitising texts on a far smaller scale for several years.

"This new arrangement catapults our effective digital output from the boutique scale to the truly industrial," Keller said.

The project will grant global access to landmark publications and other rare out-of-print titles that previously were only available to specialised researchers on an appointment-only basis.

Among the historical books held by the participating libraries are a 1687 first edition of Isaac Netwon's "The Principia," owned by Stanford and Charles Darwin's 1871 classic "The Descent of Man" in the Bodleian.

"It's a revolution," Ronald Milne, the Bodleian's acting head librarian told the Times of London.

"In terms of what Gutenberg's invention was all about, enabling books to be disseminated cheaply, it is very much comparable to that," Milne said.

The access issue is as much about scope as price, and the Google project may ruffle some feathers in countries like China which still have lengthy lists of banned books.

"Once you have the research library available to anyone with an internet connection, it's going to be very hard to influence what people can see and what they can't see," said Michigan's Wilkin.

Books which have passed out of copyright and into the public domain will be available in their entirety, while the reproduction of newer titles will require the publishers' permission.

For Google, the move allows the company to get a jump on its competitors in what can only be an expanding field, and observers say the company will boost advertising revenue through increased user volume.

Publishers should also benefit, as excerpts of books still under copyright will be accompanied by purchase links.

"Every bit of anectdotal evidence has confirmed that when an in-print book is made available on the internet, the sales go up," Wilkin said. "So, I think publishers will see this as a boon."

The project is an extension of an existing Google Print program, which allows users to search contents of newly published books.

"This is a win-win situation for everyone involved," agreed Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library.

"It is central to our mission of making our collections democratically accessible to a global audience, free of charge," LeClerc said.

The Google project is not the only one of its type, although it is far and away the largest.

The Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library, announced this week an agreement with libraries from five countries, including the United States, Canada and Egypt, to put one million digitised books on the web.

2004-12-16T03:35:00.000-05:00

Presidential Medals of Failure

"The War to Rid Iraq of WMD has now become The War to Bring Democracy to the Middle East."

Another story on the latest farce from the Bush Empire.

washingtonpost.com

Presidential Medals of Failure

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A37

Where's Kerik?

This is the question I asked myself as, one by one, the pictures of the latest Presidential Medal of Freedom awardees flashed by on my computer screen. First came George Tenet, the former CIA director and the man who had assured President Bush that it was a "slam-dunk" that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Then came L. Paul Bremer, the former viceroy of Iraq, who disbanded the Iraqi army and ousted Baathists from government jobs, therefore contributing mightily to the current chaos in that country. Finally came retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the architect of the plan whereby the United States sent too few troops to Iraq.

One by one these images flicked by me, each man wearing the royal-blue velvet ribbon with the ornate medal -- one failure after another, each now on the lecture circuit, telling insurance agents and other good people what really happened when they were in office, but withholding such wisdom from the American people until, for even more money, their book deals are negotiated. (Franks has already completed this stage of his life. His book, "American Soldier," was a bestseller.)

I braced myself. Could Bernard Kerik be next? Would we skip the entire process of maladministration, misjudgments in office and sycophantic admiration of the current president and go straight to the celebrated failure? After all, what seems to matter most to this president is not performance -- certainly not excellence -- but a matey kind of loyalty and obsequiousness, of which Kerik had plenty.

"Bernie," Bush called out at a White House ceremony last year.

Kerik, who was walking away, stopped. "Yes, sir," he said.

"You're a good man," the president said.

It is this manly affection that explains how Kerik came to be nominated to head the Department of Homeland Security. The president liked him. He was the president's kind of guy: a wayward, messy kind of youth and then -- wow! -- this explosive career, coming out of the starting gate like Seabiscuit, another runt with something less than an elite East Coast pedigree. What's more, he had been recommended by Rudy Giuliani, another very tough guy who, everyone somehow forgot, is a man hobbled by awful judgment, in people as well as in himself.

Had the president given the awards a moment's thought, he might have asked himself what he was doing. A pretty good argument can be made that Tenet was incompetent. He not only failed to prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 but he failed to protect the president from what has to be a historic embarrassment: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

As for Franks and Bremer, they cannot -- on the face of it -- both deserve medals. Since coming home from Iraq, Bremer has said the United States did not use enough troops there. "We never had enough troops on the ground," he confided to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers in October. This allowed the looting that broke out shortly after Baghdad was captured and the subsequent insurgency. For the record, Franks -- prodded by Donald Rumsfeld -- is the guy who never had enough troops on the ground. Which one deserved the medal? Easy. Neither.

The White House medal ceremony was really about George W. Bush. It had a slight touch of the absurd to it, as if facts do not matter and failure does not count. The War to Rid Iraq of WMD has now become The War to Bring Democracy to the Middle East. No one is ever held accountable, because the president will not do as much for himself. He admits no mistakes because he is convinced that he has made none. The terrorist attacks themselves, for which Tenet should have been sacked, are no one's fault because they cannot be the president's fault. He was warned. Condi Rice was put on notice. But, still, who could have known?

To make these awards in the face of failure -- the mounting American death toll, the awful suffering of the Iraqis, the looming possibility of civil war, the nose-thumbing of the still-at-large Osama bin Laden and the madness of making war for a nonexistent reason -- has the creepy feel of the old communist states, where incompetents wore medals and harsh facts were denied. For this reason Bernie Kerik -- three months in Iraq building a police force as good as rhetoric can make it -- seemed as likely and appropriate a recipient of a presidential medal as any of the others.

Maybe next year.

cohenr@washpost.com

2004-12-16T03:21:00.000-05:00

HIV now a bigger threat to women than men
UN calls for social change as infections soar among females

This story is from a couple weeks ago that I forgot to post. Needless to say, this is an important issue that should be at the top of everyone's agenda right. This severely worries me as a feminist human rights supporter. :0

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Wednesday November 24 2004
The Guardian

The Aids pandemic rampaging around the globe will not be stopped
without radical social change to improve the lot of women and girls,
who now look likely to die in greater numbers than men, United
Nations agencies said yesterday.

Infections among women are soaring, from sub-Saharan Africa to Asia
to Russia. What began as a series of epidemics among men - in some
regions gay and bisexual men, in others men who frequented sex
workers or male drug users - has spread to their female partners who
are biologically more easily infected.

In many countries, women's subordinate status, and their lack of
education and economic power have made it impossible for them to
negotiate sex with men or to ask for the use of condoms. Yesterday
the UN agency set up to combat the pandemic, UNAids, called for all
that to change in the interests of checking the spread of a disease
which killed 3.1 million adults and children last year.

"We will not be able to stop this epidemic unless we put women at the
heart of the response to Aids," said UNAids' executive director,
Peter Piot.

At the launch of the UNAids annual report on the pandemic yesterday,
actor Emma Thompson, who is a founder member of the Global Coalition
on Women and Aids launched this year, put it in starker fashion.
"There are some countries where women are an endangered species -
they will disappear from the face of the earth," she said. "I think
this is the greatest catastrophe that the human race has ever faced."

Across the globe, 39.4 million people, including 2.2 million
children, are carrying the HIV virus and will die without treatment
to contain it - up from about 36.2 million two years ago. Only one in
10 in developing countries can get the drugs they need.

Last year, 4.9 million people were newly infected and 3.1 million
died. In some parts, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the numbers living
with HIV appear to have stabilised, but only because as many are now
dying as are acquiring infection.

In the UK, HIV continues to spread. UNAids says it "has become the
fastest-growing serious health condition". A report today from the
Health Protection Agency will confirm the trend. Last year there were
7,000 new diagnoses, taking the total numbers living with infection
well above 50,000.

The numbers of women affected globally are rising faster than those
of men, now making up nearly half of the total. In sub-Saharan
Africa, where the pandemic is furthest advanced, the transition is
complete - 57% of those with HIV are women. In Zambia, Zimbabwe and
South Africa, 77% of all young people infected virus are women.
Across nine countries in that region, the infection rate in the whole
population is one in four.

In other parts of the world, there have been large hikes in the
proportion of women affected. In east Asia, there has been a 56%
increase in the number of HIV positive women in the past couple of
years. In Russia, where the epidemic began in young, mostly male
injecting drug users, the proportion of women infected has gone up
from 24% to 38% in just 12 months.

In every region of the world - including the US, where Aids is one of
the biggest killers of African-American women, and Europe - it is the
same story, said Kathleen Cravero, deputy executive director of
UNAids, yesterday, and it means that a new strategy must be adopted.

"The prevention strategies now in place are missing the point when it
comes to women and girls," she said. The ABC mantra favoured by the
US - abstinence, be faithful and use a condom - is useless to women
who do not have the power to refuse sex, sometimes from an older,
sexually experienced husband who already has HIV.

Social and cultural change is the only way to check the pandemic in
countries where women have no status or power, UNAids says - although
it accepts that revolution is not on the cards.

"What we're talking about is very specific actions that are doable,
moving to a situation where every woman gets to keep her house and
her land and her furniture when her partner dies," said Ms Cravero.
"It doesn't mean turning society on its head. It means getting the
right laws in place and making them enforceable.

"We have to work against the fatalistic idea that you can never
change these things."

UNAids is urging governments to reform their inheritance laws, pass
legislation protecting women from domestic violence and help girls
attend secondary schools. A woman who has some education and some
economic power through possession of her own house and garden will be
better able to negotiate sex, said Ms Cravero. "We have to turn
abstinence on its head and fight for the right of every woman to
abstain when and if she wants to, because right now she doesn't have
that right."

Ms Thompson related stories from three trips to Africa of sugar
daddies who offered schoolgirls meals or trainers for sex. "I knew of
a girl who gave her body to a man because he gave her an apple,
because nobody had ever given her anything before," she said.

Mothers who were desperate for money would gamble that if they were
infected with HIV, they could stay alive long enough to bring up
their children. "I would sell my body if I had to do it to feed my
child," said Ms Thompson.

She suggested that Tony Blair could contribute by going to Ethiopia,
where she had recently been, and publicly taking an Aids test. "I
think it is going to take big gestures like that. Examples have to be
set by men of power."

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited
site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

2004-12-16T03:19:00.000-05:00

Cholo is bursting out of the barrio

Mainstream America is learning how to say a new word: cholo.

This is pure shite. Mexicans should be so lucky! Note the sarcasm. Hmph. Old story that needs to be filed for posterity here.

Cholo is bursting out of the barrio
By Karen Thomas, USA TODAY

Mainstream America is learning how to say a new word: cholo.

It's slang for Mexican gangster, and the lifestyle has its roots on the gritty barrio streets of East Los Angeles.

These days Christina Aguilera's sporting a bandana everywhere.
By Scott Gries, Getty Images

Fashions first seen on gang members are popping up on the clean-cut likes of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. But the trend extends beyond the cholo uniform of bandanas, khakis and plaid Pendleton shirts. It's even being celebrated on the Discovery Channel.

And celebrities — always a gateway for what's cool for the masses — are infatuated.

"We love cholo," says stylist Trish Summerville, who has worked with Pink, Mya, Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera.

The cholo movement feels "exactly like rap/hip-hop culture did in the early '80s," says trend researcher Irma Zandl, founder of Manhattan's Zandl Group. "We're at the very start of something as big or bigger than hip-hop."

Evidence that cholo has moved beyond the barrio:

Bandana style

For cholas (female cholos), it's not just having a bandana, it's how it's worn — "folded flat, across the front of your head," Summerville says. Celebs spotted in cholo-style bandanas: the Olsen twins, Aguilera, Missy Elliott and Vivica A. Fox.

Pepsi goes cholo

Older-model sedans that sit low to the ground have long been part of the Mexican scene, and the automotive style has been borrowed by hip-hoppers. How cool is the new Vanilla Pepsi ad, in which the delivery truck is outfitted with hydraulics to make it bounce to the music?

Cholo 'Madness'

Motorcycle customizer Jesse James, left, who grew up in a Mexican neighborhood in East L.A., is now the darling of the Discovery Channel with the popular series Motorcycle Madness. James says he "adapted cholo into the way I dress and the way I build my bikes." Celeb clients include Keanu Reeves, Fred Durst and Kid Rock.

Gang-inspired tattoos

Celebs such as Bow Wow, Justin Timberlake, Eminem and Beyoncé Knowles are flocking to tattoo specialist Mr. Cartoon. The East L.A. artist bases his fine-line work on a prison practice among gang members who tattoo themselves with a method using sharpened guitar string threaded through an empty pen. Other cholo-inspired tattoo trends: Old English lettering and neck tattoos. Aguilera has "xtina" tattooed on the back of her neck.

Cholo on MTV

Beyond fashion, musicians are embracing cholo in their videos. Metallica's Saint Anger is set in a real L.A. prison, and much of the video is focused on tattooed, cholo-attired inmates.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-10-08-cholo_x.htm?POE=click-refer

2004-12-16T02:18:00.000-05:00

Defense Missile for U.S. System Fails to Launch

Let's hope Bush sees this as proof that this ludicrous missile system is bollocks and should be forgotten. Hah, that's funny. Of course our government isn't that savvy! Silly me.

December 16, 2004
Defense Missile for U.S. System Fails to Launch
By DAVID STOUT and JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - An important test of the United States' fledgling missile defense system ended in failure early Wednesday as an interceptor rocket failed to launch on cue from the Marshall Islands, the Pentagon said.

After a rocket carrying a mock warhead as a target was launched from Kodiak, Alaska, the interceptor, which was intended to go aloft 16 minutes later and home in on the target 100 miles over the earth, automatically shut down because of "an unknown anomaly," according to the Missile Defense Agency of the Defense Department.

The launching had been planned as the first full test in two years of this element of the Bush administration's effort to deploy a multilayered missile defense shield.

The setback threatened to delay further the initial step of activating a basic missile defense, which had once been planned for September but slipped into next year after a series of canceled tests and developmental difficulties.

The launching had been delayed several times because of bad weather or problems with equipment at the Pacific test range on Kwajalein Atoll, where officials must now try to determine what went wrong on Wednesday.

The last test of the interceptor, on Dec. 12, 2002, was also a failure, as the interceptor failed to separate from its booster rocket, missed its target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere.

But shortly after that, President Bush ordered the Pentagon to proceed with initial deployment of a limited system, a goal that he campaigned on in the election this year.

In 2003, a test of another part of the system, based on Navy ships, also failed.

Before Wednesday's test, the Missile Defense Agency had conducted eight tests with interceptor vehicles, scoring hits in five under carefully controlled conditions. Some critics of the agency, which has spent more than $80 billion since 1985, say the entire test program is unrealistic and that the tests have been scripted.

The failure was the latest challenge to the administration's drive to deploy the system piecemeal even as developmental tests, fraught as they are with technical difficulties, are carried out.

The overall missile defense program is to cost more than $50 billion over the next five years; the first group of land- and sea-based missiles, sensors and associated systems envisioned for deployment is to cost more than $7 billion, and this test alone had a budget of $85 million.

The failure Wednesday may renew a running debate on Capitol Hill over the missile program when the new Congress convenes early next year.

A Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has been critical of the program, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said the latest setback might make lawmakers wonder whether money for the Pentagon might be better spent elsewhere, particularly in light of the mounting costs of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It reinforces the point I've been trying to make," Mr. Reed said in a telephone interview. "This is a very complicated system that requires testing."

But a spokesman for Senator John Kyl, Republican of Arizona, a strong advocate of the program, said "one bum test" would not alter support for it.

Indeed, despite a series of delays in testing this year, Congress has embraced the deployment of a rudimentary system, which is favored by those who want to field even a limited system sooner rather than later.

Advocates say that fielding even a few interceptors of modest abilities, and improving them later, would help defend against potential threats that themselves are only just emerging, especially from North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programs.

The military spending bill that Congress approved in October allocated $4.6 billion in the current fiscal year to support the initial fielding of the ground-based missiles. Recognizing the "challenges" involved in the attempt, the House and Senate members who negotiated the final bill approved an additional $200 million, and ordered the Pentagon to "fully fund this critical program" in next year's budget request.

The idea is to deploy 10 interceptor missiles initially, 6 in Alaska and 4 in California, to be supplemented later by another 10. Later still would come ship-based missiles that could hit enemy missiles as they lifted off and an airborne laser defense to intercept inbound warheads as they re-entered the atmosphere.

Right now, there are six missiles in silos in Alaska and one in California, with one more due in California by the end of the month, said Richard A. Lehner, a missile agency spokesman. None of those in place are operational.

Mr. Lehner said that despite the disappointment, Wednesday's event was not a total failure. He said "quite a bit" had been learned from the aborted test, which he called "a very good training exercise." He said the rocket that failed to rise could be used later. The target splashed down in the ocean some 3,000 miles from Kodiak, he said.

The Pentagon said it did not know whether the problem that stymied the launching was serious enough to cause major delays. Mr. Lehner said he could not predict when the cause of the weapon's shutdown might be determined. No other tests have been scheduled.

Wednesday's test was to have been the most advanced so far, Mr. Lehner said. The interceptor was equipped with the same type of booster rocket that the defense system is to use when it becomes operational, although a next-generation booster is already in the works.

The agency says the tests are devised to answer specific questions and "to build confidence in the system that we are working to design." Although individual tests are expensive, Mr. Lehner said, fewer are necessary than with missiles of years past because of advanced modeling and simulation techniques.

The missile system under development is a scaled-down version of the so-called Star Wars defense envisioned by President Ronald Reagan two decades ago against a rain of missiles from the Soviet Union. But the end of the cold war made Mr. Reagan's original vision outdated.

President Bill Clinton's administration explored a much less advanced system. Mr. Bush pledged during the 2000 campaign to push for a scaled-down version of the Reagan plan. By walking away from the Anti-ballistic Missile treaty during his first term, Mr. Bush cleared the way for a deployment.

Mr. Lehner said there was no new target date for deployment of the system. In December 2002, Mr. Bush said he hoped it would be operational by September 2004. But by then, the program had fallen behind schedule by about 10 months.

In a report last March, the Government Accountability Office, an auditing arm of Congress, said that a first-generation booster built by Orbital Sciences Corporation that was being used in current flight tests had passed its early tests and could be produced, though it was uncertain whether enough could be built for the initial deployment.

A next-generation booster made by Lockheed Martin was having problems with its flight computers, and accidents at a factory making parts for the booster meant it would not be available for the initial deployment, the G.A.O. said.

On Monday, Boeing won a $928 million contract for the overall ground-based interceptor project.

Victoria Samson, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, said the latest failure showed that the system was still "in a very rudimentary state," and that the missile agency had felt the need to rush the process. The center, founded by retired military officers, calls itself a "watchdog on wasteful defense spending."

Mr. Lehner said there had been no rush. "We took our time," he said. "This is a very deliberate process."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/politics/16missile.html

2004-12-15T18:06:00.000-05:00

"these men (Franks, Bremer, Tenet), and the man giving the medals out (Bush), should be charged for war crimes, not receiving honors."

advanced the cause of human liberty." Yeah, right! God, people are truly morons if they believe this propaganda.. Urghh...

Bush's Medal of Freedom Recipients Hammered by Left
By Kathleen Rhodes
CNSNews.com Correspondent
December 15, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - The highest honor bestowed on an American citizen, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was awarded Tuesday to three key individuals involved in the liberation of Iraq, prompting one anti-war activist to call the ceremony "a complete farce," involving "people who carried out an illegal, immoral and unjust war and occupation."

President Bush honored retired four-star general Tommy Franks, former U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer, who administered the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and former CIA director George Tenet. But left-wing blogs were buzzing Tuesday afternoon with bitterness.

In an e-mail to CNSNews.com , AiMara Lin, the national office coordinator for the Not In Our Name project, wrote that "these men (Franks, Bremer, Tenet), and the man giving the medals out (Bush), should be charged for war crimes, not receiving honors."

Lin indicated that her organization would continue to oppose what she called the "immoral" actions of the U.S. "Expect a massive outpouring of what people really think of Bush and this illegitimate agenda of war and repression on January 20th, Inauguration Day, when the entire world says NO," Lin wrote.

"We did not give a mandate for this war, and we will continue to fight it. The government doesn't want us to know how many Iraqis or Americans are dying. It's disgusting," she added.

By contrast, President Bush used the White House East Room as the backdrop to praise Franks, Bremer and Tenet for "having played pivotal roles in great events." Their efforts, Bush said, "have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty."

Tenet served as CIA director for seven years, through the last part of the Clinton administration and the first three-and-a-half years of the Bush administration before resigning in July. "More than three-quarters of al Qaeda key members and associates have been killed or detained, and the majority were stopped as a result of CIA efforts," the president said in praising Tenet.

"Tenet was one of the first to recognize and address the growing threat to America from radical terrorist networks," Bush added. "Immediately after the attacks on September the 11th, George was ready with a plan to strike back at al Qaeda and to topple the Taliban."

The president went on to describe Tenet as "a fine public servant and patriot," whose "tireless efforts have brought justice to America's enemies and greater security to the American people."

Tommy Franks, the general who headed operations in both the Afghan and Iraqi theatres and later endorsed President Bush's re-election campaign, also was credited with "defending the world's security."

Franks "helped liberate more than 50 million people from two of the worst tyrannies in the world," Bush said. He lauded the general's "brilliant strategy" in Afghanistan, which "defeated the Taliban in just a few short weeks." Bush also called Franks' invasion of Iraq the "the longest, fastest armored advance in the history of American warfare.

"One of the highest distinctions of history is to be called a liberator, and Tommy Franks will always carry that title," Bush said.

Bush referred to Bremer, who served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council and oversaw the transition of power in post-war Iraq, as a "seasoned diplomat" who "earned the respect and admiration of Iraqis.

"His silence was essential to reassure Iraqis that the new law was entirely their own. Yet his presence was essential to reassure Iraqis of our coalition's steadfast commitment to their future and their success," Bush said of Bremer.

Bush's honorees, especially Tenet and Bremer, were the target of much criticism while carrying out their jobs related to the war against terrorism. The 9-11 Commission and U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reports blamed Tenet, in part, for the intelligences failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Tenet's assertion prior to the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, was also ridiculed when no WMD stockpiles were uncovered. However, documents that CNSNews.com obtained in October from a senior U.S. government official showed that Saddam had purchased anthrax and mustard gas and had extensive ties to the world's most notorious terrorist groups.

Bremer fueled criticism of the Bush administration's pre-war planning in Iraq when he told the Washington Post on Oct. 6 that the United States had paid dearly for "not stopping [the looting] because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness."

Bremer was also widely criticized for disbanding Iraq's defense ministry while holding down the administrator's position at the Coalition Provisional Authority. Monday, Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawar called that decision Bremer's "big mistake."

2004-11-11T21:54:00.000-05:00

Iris Chang, 36- U.S. Author of 'Rape of Nanking' Commits Suicide

This is seriously sad news. Her life story seems one that I fear will happen to me if I continue to become involved with more and more situations that are tragic and distressing. Maybe the source of her depression was the research she was doing for her new book, which probably wasn't the most joyous of material. I actually read her book when it came out and I must have been 14 or 15 and I remember it having a big impact on me. Her suicide is incredibly tragic when you take into account that she spent most of her young life trying to fight for the truth and justice of so many women within her culture. She was truly inspiring. I just hope that I can do similar kind of life work but that I would be able to balance out my life enough so I won't feel the need to kill myself. I now it's a common thought when you see all the obstacles and issues that exist and that you want to change. How do you remain positive through all the negative, is what I'd like to know. Chang's work will not soon be forgotten.

U.S. Author of 'Rape of Nanking' Commits Suicide
Thu Nov 11, 2004 02:10 PM ET

By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The author of "the Rape of Nanking," an acclaimed history of Japanese brutality against China in the 1930s, has committed suicide, officials said on Thursday.

Iris Chang, 36, published "The Rape of Nanking," a graphic account of the 1937 Japanese Army invasion of China. After it appeared in 1997, the book helped prompt Japan to reexamine this dark history.

Police found her body in a car on a road south of San Francisco and said she died from a single bullet to the head. Her husband reported her missing on Monday and police identified the body on Tuesday morning, said Terrance Helm of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department.

"Our detectives determined it was a suicide," he said.

Her agent, Susan Rabiner, said Chang had suffered from "classical clinical depression" and had been hospitalized earlier this year. She said Chang left a note to her family asking that she be remembered as she was before her illness.

The release of her best-selling book came on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese capture of the Chinese capital of Nanking. She wrote graphically of the result in a book her agent said sold about half a million copies.

"An estimated 20,000-80,000 Chinese women were raped," Chang wrote. "Many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters and sons their mothers as other family members watched."

"Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practiced."

Japan has been slow to acknowledge the scale of the atrocities, and her account sparked anger from conservative Japanese. In 1998 Japan's ambassador to the United States created a diplomatic stir by calling Chang's book misleading.

Her book was never published in Japan although it was translated into a number of foreign languages. "I think the right-wing assaults on the Japanese publishing houses have sent a chill across the entire industry," she told Reuters in 2001.

Chang spent two years working on the book when she was in her late 20s, interviewing aged survivors in China. The effort gave her an unusually high profile for a young historian, and her Web site lists more than two dozen public appearances for the period between March and May this year.

"A lot of people, when Iris would tour and talk about the Rape of Nanking, would come to her with their stories of unhappiness, atrocities, violence, on any side," said Wendy Wolf, one of her editors at Viking Penguin. "It sort of opened minds to talking and sharing their own experiences."

Her agent Rabiner said she was working most recently on a book about U.S. forces who fought on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines in World War II.

Born in Princeton, New Jersey, to Chinese immigrant parents, Chang grew up in Illinois and graduated from the University of Illinois in 1989. She worked for the Associated Press wire service and the Chicago Tribune before becoming an historian full time. She lived in Sunnyvale, California.

Her most recent book was "The Chinese in America: A Narrative History." She is survived by her husband and two-year old son.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=6789359

2004-11-07T12:45:00.000-05:00

Howard Zinn on The Optimism of Uncertainty
November 06, 2004

(Note: Howard Zinn will be speaking at USF-Tampa on Nov. 30th @ 7PM! That should be awesome!)

In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in
comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to
stay involved and seemingly happy?

I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we
should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The
metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose
any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a
possibility of changing the world.

There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment
will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden
crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's
thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by
the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.

What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter
unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia, in
that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most
advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent
him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre
shifts of World War II--the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing
photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German Army
rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal
casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the
western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat
of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to
die?

And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in
advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent
Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China
renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making
overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise,
perplexing everyone.

No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening
so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be
created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village
socialism of Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent
Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism
being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was
gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists,
Communists, anarchists, everyone.

The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective
spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political
power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of
the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The
failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its
decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most
striking evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons
does not guarantee domination over a determined population. The United
States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in lndochina,
conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world
history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we
see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the
presumably powerless, as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement of
workers and the poor elected a new president pledged to fight
destructive corporate power.

Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the
struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent
overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who
seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent
power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less
measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity,
organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience--whether by
blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua
and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the
Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need
deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.

I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the
world (is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite
of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me
hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests. Wherever I
go, I find such people. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to
be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they
tend not to know of one another's existence, and so, while they
persist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing
that boulder up the mountain. I try to tell each group that it is not
alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence
of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware
of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving
zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic
actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.

An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the
dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly
romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not
only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our
lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do
something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so
many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the
energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a
world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a
way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future
is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human
beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is
itself a marvelous victory.

This message has been brought to
you by ZNet (http://www.zmag.org)

2004-11-04T23:44:00.000-05:00

Kerry Won...
Greg Palast
November 04, 2004
Excerpted from TomPaine.com

---Kerry won. Here are the facts.---

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad.
But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy
sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got
the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New
Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit
poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47
percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51
percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry
took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate.
Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they
don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?"
The voters don't know.

Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio
punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply
not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See
TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]

---Whose Votes Are Discarded?---

And not all votes spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every
official report, come from African-American and minority precincts.
(To learn more, click here.)

We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a
plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count.
That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris,
excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of
these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole
wasn't punched through completely-leaving a 'hanging chad,'-or was
punched extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert
statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated
that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by
black folks. (To read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission, click here .)

And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of
ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from
Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and other
minority citizens.

---The Impact Of Challenges---

First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn't
punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the 'challenges.'
That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old
Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of voters of
color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP laid
plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws-almost
never used-allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger
individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio courts
were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where
race is a factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared
to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door.

---Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote---

Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality-if all votes are
counted-is more obvious still. Before the election, in TomPaine.com,
I wrote, "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New
Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted."

How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and the provisional
ballots.

CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes. Again, the
network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, '100
percent' of ballots cast.

New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent,
votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor
precincts-Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same
ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage
bin.

Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in
the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are
five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter.
Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush
'plurality.'

To read the article in full, click here: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php

---

Contact: media@gregpalast.com

View Greg Palast's BBC Television film, "Bush Family
Fortunes," available on DVD from The Disinformation Company at
http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

2004-11-04T01:13:00.000-05:00

The GOP edge grows wider:

OH NO!!!

Gains across the board may encourage a stronger Republican agenda.
By Linda Feldmann and Sara B. Miller | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - Now, more than in 2000, one-party rule is the name of the game. For the first time since the 1920s, the Republican Party has won control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives in consecutive elections.

And even though the margin of victory for each remains narrow, it grew in all three, signaling profound implications for governance in America over the next four years. Even when George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 without winning the popular vote, he plowed ahead with a bold agenda. Expect nothing different in a second term, analysts say.

"Just think of last time," says George Edwards III, a presidential scholar at Texas A & M. "He didn't hesitate, he didn't try to govern from the center, and won't do it this time."

Bush-watchers expect a period of conciliatory talk, in which the president speaks of the need to heal the nation's deep partisan divide and come together for the national good at a time of war abroad and threat to security at home. But the center in American politics is an ever-lonelier place; witness the defeat or retirement of many of the remaining conservative Democrats in the House and Senate. If Bush has learned anything from the last four years, it is that he can play hardball and win. The defeat of the Democrats' Senate leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, is the icing on Tuesday's GOP sweep - and exacerbates the Democratic Party's disarray.

What to expect on Bush's agenda
Historically, second presidential terms are usually not as successful as first terms, when it comes to passing major new programs. Second terms are usually about completing unfinished business - and in Bush's case, the plate is full. The Iraq war remains front and center. As Bush enters his second term in January, Iraq will be holding elections, a crucial test of that nation's ability to transform itself into a functioning, self-governing nation.

On the domestic agenda, expect "tax cuts as far as the eye can see," says Marshall Wittmann, a former Republican activist and now a senior fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "The only constraint that Bush has at this moment is the deficit, but that doesn't seem to have stopped him in the past."

More specifically, Bush could move to make permanent the elimination of the estate tax and institute broader tax reform, making the rate system "flatter." Other legislation that was bottled up in the first term, such as the energy and highway bills, will likely move. One big unfinished agenda item from Bush's first term is reform of Social Security, specifically the establishment of private accounts. Bush and the Republicans can also be expected to defund discretionary programs, limiting the Democrats' ability to provide money for new social programs.

But even as Democrats are licking their wounds from an Election Day with few bright moments, they can take some solace in looking ahead to a second Bush term in which the buck firmly stops at the GOP's front door. The Republicans will now be even more firmly in charge than they were during the last four years (which included a period of Democratic control in the Senate); Bush's high-wire act in Iraq contains a big risk of public disillusionment.

"Republicans have no more alibis, no excuses," says Mr. Wittmann. "The one thing we do know is there's a tendency for a party with this much power to overreach."

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, sees the bigger majorities in the House and Senate as easing his party's ability to govern - and a signal to Democrats that it's better to go along than to fight. Bush's majority of the popular vote - making him the first presidential candidate to achieve that feat since his father, in 1988 - represents an endorsement of his agenda by the people, he says.

"The Senate now looks like it will be somewhat governable, as governable as it ever gets," says Mr. Ayres. "The clear message [of Tuesday] is that blind obstructionism did not work. It cost the Democrats seats. So I hope the Democratic minority will see that reasonable cooperation is a better bet for their electoral future."

Compromise and liabilities
Some analysts say Bush would be smart not to "go for broke" with a conservative ideological agenda in the new Senate, instead opting for a moderately conservative agenda that antagonizes the Democrats a bit less. If, as appears likely, there is one or more vacancy in the Supreme Court in the next four years, Bush still will need to make compromises to get his nominee confirmed by the Senate. The larger Republican majority will still not be close to the 60 seats needed to end a filibuster; Bush will need cooperation from some Democrats.

"He didn't propose what I consider to be a bold agenda in the campaign, [which was] pretty well established already," says Stephen Wayne of Georgetown University. "The issue is not will he be bolder, but will he be more willing to compromise to achieve half a loaf rather than the whole loaf, and put this down as a credit ... in the legacy column?"

On Iraq, one of the first orders of business in the new Congress will be to pass a supplemental appropriation to fund operations there. Ironically, while Iraq was a big campaign issue, foreign policy analysts see the outcome of the US election as mattering little to the next president's options there.

"My great fear was that Kerry would get elected, this thing would spin out of control, and the Republicans would blame the Democrats and say, 'We were on our way to winning and the Democrats blew it,' " says John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. "That's the argument they would have made and hung this albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party for the next 30 years."

One policy area in which the Republican Party may not have to pay the cost is Social Security. The transition to private or partially privatized accounts, if such a plan goes through, will be extremely expensive. But, says Professor Edwards, "it doesn't mean a disaster for Republicans, because the crunch will not have hit in four years."

• Faye Bowers contributed to this report.

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2004-11-04T01:05:00.000-05:00

A one-way ticket to Canada?

A useful site to leave the good ol' USA for Canada, which I'm highly considering:
http://www.canadianalternative.com/

Canada: U.S. immigrants must seek visas

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Colin McClelland

Nov. 3, 2004 | TORONTO (AP) -- Americans attempting to escape four more years of President Bush by fleeing to Canada will have to wait in line, just like immigrants from any other country, the Immigration Ministry said Wednesday.

Over the years, Canada's social climate has shifted to the left of the United States, with relatively higher taxes supporting programs such as public health care. That and the promise of legalized gay marriage and lenient marijuana laws might be a draw to some Democrats despondent over Bush victory and the promise of continued conservatism from his administration.

The U.S. consulate in Toronto estimates there already may be a million Americans living in Canada _ most don't register _ about a quarter of them in Ontario. But Americans who want to join the expatriate ranks across what is called the world's longest undefended border won't get special treatment just because their brother is married to a Canadian or they like cheap weekends in French-speaking Montreal.

``The immigration program is universal _ it applies to everyone the same,'' France Bureau, spokeswoman for Immigration and Citizenship Minister Judy Sgro told The Associated Press.

``People must apply at a visa mission abroad and all applicants must meet the requirements,'' Bureau said.

All immigrants need a work permit, a government web site says. A government department must approve any offer of local employment before a permit is issued.

Those without a job offer can apply in the skilled worker category to become a permanent resident, which takes about a year to process. Applicants must have enough funds to support themselves in the meantime. Citizenship applications take an additional three years or so.

Skilled worker applicants must posses a minimum of points in required areas such as education and language proficiency.

Immigrants wanting to live and invest in Canada must have a net worth of $662,000 and be ready to put up at least $331,000. Those wishing to start a business must have a net worth of $248,000.

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/11/03/canada/

Other Salon.com stories of note:

Bloggers said to blame for bad poll info

http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2004/11/03/bloggers/index.html

Bush won battle of values

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/11/03/values/index.html

Kerry's erratic campaign led to loss
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/11/03/kerry_campaign/index.html

From The Christian Science Monitor:

A deepening divide between red and blue

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1104/p01s02-uspo.html

2004-11-04T01:02:00.000-05:00

Seein' Red

It's absolutely frightening to see this country's true colors: red. I would've never believed that so many people were so scared and small minded. What's wrong with this country and it's people?! This land is not my land and it was definitely not made for you or me. I now have to find a hardcore "I hate Bush and what he stands for" t-shirt to wear and represent for all of us who felt that he should never have been elected again. I'm not taking these election results lightly and forgetting them. Society will know my wrath!

Take a look at all that red! : http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/

These number breakdowns sure are interesting. An overwhelming number of people of color voted for Kerry!? You don't say! Note the sarcasm. :
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

This article cleary defines the difference between the Democrats and Republicans for people of color:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1407/

From http://www.indyvoter.org/ :

Call to Action for November 3rd and Beyond

WE DECLARE VICTORY

They might have conceded - but we haven't conceded our right to have our votes count.

Today we celebrate victory. Young voters in 2004 turned out at dramatically higher numbers than 2000 (+9.3% from 2000).

Hundreds of local groups around the country turned out an unprecedented base of voters.

You'll see more local updates later- where we document our margins of victory and incredible, inspiring stories from around the country. In the meantime, check out Election Shout! - our blog.

So what to do now?

• Celebrate our work - there were lots of local victories and youth were the top anti-bush vote

• Strengthen our movement, LOVE EACH OTHER, don’t let them break our spirit.

• Document your stories - we are learning from them and have built an amazing base to work from for next time.

• All eyes on Ohio!!! – organize local actions in support and go to Columbus for today's convergence if you can

• Wherever you live, continue with post-election plans in your local community

• Demand systematic investigation of voting irregularities in local places nationwide - e.g. provisional balloting issues, absentee ballot issues, discrepancies with exit polling data, voting machine problems, polling places moved

• Expose incidents of voter suppression - send reports to us at info@ttww.org

• Wear BLACK or a BLACK ARMBAND this week

• The League hereby declares November 4th, 2004 a National Day of Love and Sustainability. Take care of yourselves and each other. We're in this for life.

A Statement From Morrissey: (This was before the election obviously)

October 27, 2004
With all my heart I urge people to vote against George Bush. Jon Stewart would be ideal, but John Kerry is the logical and sane move. It does not need to be said yet again, but Bush has single-handedly turned the United States into the most neurotic and terror-obsessed country on the planet. For non-Americans, the United States is suddenly not a very nice place to visit because US immigration officers – under the rules of Bush – now conduct themselves with all the charm and unanswerable indignation of Hitler’s SS.
Please bring sanity and intelligence back to the United States.
Don’t forget to vote.
Vote for John Kerry and get rid of George Bush!

http://morrisseymusic.com/newsitem.asp?id=89

2004-11-04T00:25:00.000-05:00

Banana Republicans
How the Right Wing is Turning America Into a One-Party State
Sheldon Rampton - Author
John Stauber - Author

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_1585423424,00.html

I am now going to read this book thanks in part to all the unjust power that the Republicans hold.

The bestselling authors of Weapons of Mass Deception expose how the "right-wing conspiracy," as represented by the GOP and its mouthpieces in media, lobbying groups, and the legal system, is undermining dissent and squelching pluralistic politics in America.

The U.S. economy is on the ropes, fear grips the nation, and we are embroiled in two overseas military quagmires with no end in sight. Outside its borders, the United States is hated and feared as never before.

For the first time in living memory, a single party-the Republicans-controls every major institution of the federal government: the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate and House of Representatives-not to mention the "fourth branch of government," the mass media. How did this come to pass?

Banana Republicans reveals how the national GOP maintains its hold on power through the systematic manipulation of the electoral system, the courts, the media, and the lobbying establishment. The book examines:

* The legacy of the Florida ballot scandal, and how it has played out in the recall movement in California-and other states, where recall efforts are under way-and in the redistricting controversy in Texas.
* How a GOP echo chamber systematically spreads its views through conservative media giants-e.g., Clear Channel, Fox-and highly placed columnists, journalists, and opinion makers.
* How the Bush administration is loading the federal courts with a generation of demagogues, and smearing the names of legislators who attempt to stand in its way. * How House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has strong-armed traditional lobbying firms into exclusively hiring Republicans, so that even K Street is political, rather than merely opportunistic.
* How the GOP has equated dissent with treason-e.g., Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accusing war critics of abetting terrorism.
* How the Bush administration uses its power to punish dissent, such as the leaking of a CIA agent's name to the press, and unprecedented lawsuits against activist organizations such as Greenpeace.

2004-11-04T00:15:00.000-05:00

Alternet has some awesome articles for everyone still reeling from the election results. Please read them and gain a sense of solidarity in these tough times!

http://www.alternet.org/

Here's another great article:

A one-way ticket to Canada? Seceding from the Bible Belt? The outcome of the 2004 elections contain happier and more likely possibilities for the future.

The Day After

By Ian Williams, AlterNet

Posted on November 3, 2004, Printed on November 3, 2004

http://www.alternet.org/story/20393/

It's Wednesday morning and liberals around the nation are contemplating the awful implications of another four years in Bush country. Some New Yorkers have already applied for Canadian immigration papers in fear of a Bush win.

The electoral map, however, offers another option – one that may be more sensible and more durable than leaving the country. How about a new Confederacy that combines the West Coast North Eastern states and Canada, all joined together in a new Union of Provinces and States based on rational and democratic principles? This would leave the cowboy heartland and the South to the creationist fate they deserve – not to mention the series of hurricanes that either the global warming they don’t believe in – or the God they do – is sending as a message to them.

The result of the American election reveals a country deeply split, geographically and ideologically – or rather theologically . It reveals a Bush constituency so deeply conflicted internally that they ended up casting their ballots for a president who supports a number of policies that they actually disagree with.

This disconnect can be seen in the victory of the referendum in Florida to raise the minimum wage – a centerpiece of the Kerry campaign. Bush has resolutely opposed an increase in Washington, but was totally evasive on the issue during the campaign. Over 72 percent of Floridians voted for the raise, which means that at least 60 percent of Bush voters supported a measure that is socially and economically the antithesis of what their candidate stands for.

There even seems to be some evidence that even some black religious voters, long a traditional vote-bank for the Democrats may have succumbed on the “gay marriage/evangelical” issues and voted for a party that in some localities is the direct descendant of the Dixiecrats and the Klan. It was a triumph of the Bush campaign to secure a chunk of the black vote while still successfully evoking the coded racism that has worked so well for the GOP across the country.

Recent polls from the University of Maryland showed that the Bush campaign had concealed much its real political and economic agenda from its supporters – who are out to the left of Kerry on many issues. But the key issue for Bush voters was security and terrorism. Many still believe in he Iraq War and the "war on terror" with a conviction that is as faith based as so much of their voting. As that poll showed, over 7 percent of Bush supporters believed that weapons of mass destruction had been found, and that Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

So what are the consequences for the nation, apart from renewed scrutiny of the Constitution’s creakily democratic processes? Slightly more likely than the union with Canada is that the Republican Party, under the renewed control of the deeply conservative ideologues marches down the dead-end charted by the British Conservative Party. In other words, it will ultimately reduce itself to an unelectable rump by shedding the saner and more tolerant Republicans, like George Pataki in New York and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California whose politics are not as right wing as the Bible Belt would wish.

On the brighter side still – despite the appalling levels of voter ignorance in the most expensive election in history – the election marked unprecedented levels of popular participation. Set rolling by Howard Dean’s grassroots campaign, volunteers went to work on the Democratic campaign on a scale not seen in decades past. In safer states like New York and Massachusetts, thousands took weeks off work to get out the vote in swing states like Pennsylvania, where, incidentally, a core of British Labor and Union volunteers defied Tony Blair to canvass for Kerry.

The flood of volunteers, voter registrations, and, by American standards, high turnout led to great Democratic optimism. However, Democrats failed to notice that the evangelical voters too were turning out in large numbers. They were motivated, in part, by state referenda seeking to ban gay marriages, and by the abortion issue – one of those peculiarly American touchstone issues that trumps all rational considerations of war and peace, prosperity and social justice.

However, while most Kerry supporters were clear what they were voting against, the Kerry campaign was much less clear in showing voters what they would be voting for. The Bush campaign was able to successfully attack Kerry on positions that he then failed to failed to articulate convincingly. But it must be recognized that any such effort to define himself was indeed an uphill struggle against the constant intellectual erosion of overtly partisan news and talk shows.

The final piece of good news: the unprecedented mobilization on behalf of the Kerry-Edwards ticket may help the Democratic Party escape from being a bran-tub of special interests and minorities. It may lay the groundwork for broader agenda that will bring the various factions together. At present, so many blue collar workers whose wages are frozen, who face export of their jobs abroad, and whose unemployment benefits are about to disappear, continue to abhor the Democrats as the party of abortion and gay marriage. If the Democrats cannot frame a platform that appeals to those voters, then there is little hope for the Democratic Party – or for the United States for that matter.

As for the rest of the world, they'll just have to work out a way to carry on together without the constructive input of the world’s strongest military power.

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20393/

2004-11-04T00:11:00.000-05:00

Let the blame game begin.

Answers? Do We Have Answers?

By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet

Posted on November 3, 2004, Printed on November 3, 2004

http://www.alternet.org/story/20392/

It was the Ground War. It was the Air War. It was the youth vote. It was the 'Yalla' vote. It was the hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters. It was the millions of newly registered voters.

It was George Soros. It was the felons' list. It was voter suppression. It was voter fraud. It was the mystery bulge, and the wired president. It was the swing states. It was the battleground states. It was the computer voting machines.

It was the media. It was the blogosphere. It was Sinclair Broadcasting. It was Dan Rather-Biased. It was fair and balanced. It was Sun Myung Moon, it was Jon Stewart as a butt boy. It was Tucker Carlson as a dick.

It was ballot access. It was ballot security. It was election law experts.

It was the Bush twins. It was Vanessa and Alexandra. It was Teresa.

It was the economy, stupid. It was Iraq. It was staying on message. It was terror. It was terror. It was terror.

But most of all it was Ralph Nader.

Oops – that was four years ago.

Athough truly, it seems like just last night.

But if it wasn't Nader, what is the explanation for the Democrats going down, down, down this year?

After all, it's a Republican Senate. It's a Republican House. It's a Republican Supreme Court – poised to become vastly more so.

But if the Democrats can't blame Nader, as they have in increasingly vociferous terms for the past eight years – who can they blame?

Maybe they should start with themselves.

Maybe running as the Democrat wing of the Republican party isn't such a good idea after all. Maybe turning the convention into a four-day meeting of Securocrats was a bad idea. Maybe turning the conversation into a nine-month gabfest on strength and security, war and terror, terror and terror, only reminded people that they vote for Republicans in times of fear.

Maybe selling out to buy in was wrong. Maybe raising hundreds of millions from corporations means losing your soul.

Maybe being an anti-war hero who runs as a war hero was wrong. Maybe Howard Dean was right.

Maybe it's time for the democratic wing of the Democrat party. Maybe there really is a democratic wing of the Democrat party.

Maybe Kerry should have announced a plan to end the war. (After all, he seemed to have a plan for nearly everything else!)

Maybe it was the weapons of mass destruction. Maybe it was the weapons of mass deception.

Or maybe – just maybe – it was the Democrats.

Maybe it was the most inept press and communications staff and strategy seen in along time. Maybe it was the press secretary hanging up on the press, and the communications operation functioning worse than the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Or maybe – just maybe – it was the Democrats.

Maybe it was their platform. Maybe it was their vision. Maybe it was their values. Maybe it was their lack of them. Maybe it was the way they presented things.

Or maybe this is just a 'red' country. Electoral votes aside, three million more Americans just voted to re-elect George Bush.

Maybe the Democrats need to revamp.

Maybe the Democrats need to disband.

Let's just go ahead and blame Nader again.

After all – it's easier than looking in a mirror.

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20392/

2004-11-04T00:08:00.000-05:00

Presidential Cockfight

By Margaret Cho

It’s such a bizarre and weird time in the world.

This presidential race has become the biggest dick contest in history. “Your dick is indecisive!” “Your dick started an unnecessary war!” “Your dick didn’t get injured enough in Vietnam!” “Your dick didn’t even go to Vietnam!” “Your dick is soft on terrorism!” Has this kind of dick waggling happened before outside of a pro-wrestling context?

It is embarrassing, because you want to believe that our leaders would have some decorum or gentility in the debate to win the most powerful position in the world. It literally is the battle over who gets to be the king of the planet. I want someone with a bit of self control in that position.

Of course, the Republicans started it, so you can’t fault Kerry for joining in. After all, the Democrats could stand to do a little mud-slinging. A lot of mud-slinging would be needed just to catch up.

Then there is the Bush administration trying to keep us in a state of panic all the time, like raising the Terror Alert so that we’re not at ease but always on edge. And it’s always the most ridiculous stuff like, “An ATM was targeted in Midtown Manhattan!”

But I’m so used to raised terror alerts, I’m unaffected. I’m like, “It’s orange. Does that mean I have to take off my shoes?” Meanwhile, clog sales have gone through the roof. People think that it’s Halliburton that’s benefiting from all this; no it’s Birkenstock. It’s a huge clog/mule cartel conspiring. Slip-on shoes are the future.

I would feel a little bit better if George W. Bush could say the word “nuclear” correctly. You’d think that somebody would have said something by now, that Condoleezza Rice would have gotten up in his face, “Fool! It’s ‘nu-clear’. I’m gonna have to write it down for you, make you some flash cards.”

And I’m very worried about the troops, but I’m also worried that my reproductive rights might be taken away from me. And I’m as scared of terrorism as every one else, but I’m also scared that people over here are getting arrested by the F.B.I. and the I.N.S. for having the wrong last name. And I’m so, so sorry that there’s so much starvation in Iraq and so much starvation all over the world, but I am also so, so sorry that there are young girls here starving themselves to death so that they can look like the actresses on TV.

------------------------------

During this election, gay and lesbian activist groups are buckling under the pressure to remain silent about their existence. They haven’t talked about gay marriage and they’re not going to. I accept the fact that John Kerry cannot endorse gay marriage until the election. At this point, I don’t give a shit. Anybody but Bush. Anybody. And when we do get Kerry into office, then we really go for it. Hit ’em where they live. Get all the wedding planners to go on strike.

All the busy-body “Christian” people—when they’re not preparing for the Rapture—are trying to make gay people miserable. I don’t see why our lives affect theirs in the least. They point to us as evidence of Satan in the world. Don’t they realize that Satan is intolerance, that every time they practice injustice, another demon gets his wings?

The Pope recently castigated the media for making gays look normal. Yeah, he’s a real good judge of normal. With the gold dress, and the matching gold hat, living up in the Vatican with 500 men, surrounded by the finest antiques in the world. You go, girl!

But it is the religious right who are fucking scary, because they’re out of control. Even the Satanists are saying, “Wow, you guys are being really mean.”

------------------------------

There is also a war against women, against women’s rights. I was at the March for Women’s Lives in Washington. It was huge. I got there on Friday—the march was on Sunday—and women were already protesting in the streets. I was worried they were going to shoot their wad. But then I remembered that women can protest multiple times. There were lots of people, and great speakers. Gloria Steinem spoke, and Susan Sarandon spoke, and Paris Hilton spoke—“No more wire hangers! Wire hangers make those weird creases in your sweaters!”

I saw Ann Coulter the other day on a show called “Scarborough Country.” I don’t know why Joe Scaraborough is not on Fox. It seems as if he escaped from Fox News and is on a rampage on MSNBC. I guess FOX News started to send out spores and grow shows on other networks. It’s all very conservative, very angry stuff.

So Ann Coulter is on talking about how USA Today fired her because, when covering the Democratic Convention, she wrote, “Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags.” I’m such a feminist, but every time I looked at Ann I got so angry. I’m like, “You know that’s why women shouldn’t work.”

------------------------------

Another one of my issues is the death penalty. I’m opposed to it, so I write a lot of governors’ letters asking for stays of execution. The other day I had to write, “Dear Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.” And that felt so embarrassing, so frightening. The only thing he’s done so far in office is, let’s see, well, he called Democrats “girly men,” and then he shortened the stay for animals in an animal shelter from six days to three days. That’s so mean! “The kitty must die after three days. The kitty will be terminated after 72 hours. Hasta la vista, kitty.” Of course, the animal activists heard about it and slammed him. Then he was all, “The kitty may live, I’m sorry.” Animal activists are fierce. They are the most terrifying people. I just wish they would start working for human rights. We need them. Desperately. You don’t fuck with vegans. They are mean. They are scary. They are hungry.

------------------------------

When somebody insults me and says I’m fat, or ugly, or not funny, or stupid, or whatever, I can argue with them. But when somebody says something about my race, I feel it, because that’s who I am. And when somebody attacks your sexuality it hurts, because that’s who you are. You can’t change that. Sexuality and race are those central parts of ourselves that we can’t remove or control.

When something hurts me I have to say something. If I don’t it will just burn me up. Living in America as a minority feels like dying of a thousand paper cuts, and I ain’t going out like that.

My favorite activist group was from the ’80s, ACT UP. They had a great slogan, “Silence Equals Death,” which meant that if we don’t talk about AIDS we will die of AIDS. I’ve got a similar slogan for me: “Silence equals nonexistence.”

That makes me a problem dinner guest. At some point during the evening someone will say, “Don’t go there.” Well, I live there. I bought a house there. I’m going to take you there.

I used to feel so weirdly paranoid talking and saying anything negative about the war or George Bush. But I got over it. I was doing a benefit for MoveOn.org in New York, and this was the week that the crazy right-wing conservatives were all angry because MoveOn had been running an ad that compared Bush with Hitler. And I said, “You know, George Bush is not Hitler. He would be if he applied himself, but he’s just lazy!”

I was deluged with hate mail, from the Freerepublic.com site. It wasn’t about political discourse. None of it was: “Ms. Cho, I believe you are being unfair to our administration. Please look again at our foreign policy.” It was: “You Mongolian #### dyke. Four more years! Go back to your country, pig ####. Jesus Saves! Four more years!”

So since I wholeheartedly believe in free speech, I took all of their e-mails and I posted them on my Web site and included their return e-mail addresses. And these people who really like George W. Bush, they’re not that smart. They had e-mailed me from work. Well, I found out there are people out there who really like me, and who are pissed off to begin with. And they just need that much of a reason to go off. So when I had posted all these e-mails, I inadvertenly activated al Gayda. That’s one sleeper cell you do not want to wake up. These queens get up on the wrong side of the bed. They started an al Gayda training camp where they offer Pilates. Soon, the apology emails began flooding in. “I’m sorry! You’re an American. You’re entitled to your opinion. I’m sorry I called you a Mongolian ####. Please make these gay people leave me alone! I’m afraid! Oh god, hurry, I think Cirque du Soleil is warming up on my lawn!”

This fall comedian Margaret Cho has been visiting swing states on a “State of Emergency Tour”. On October 29 she will perform in Jacksonville, Florida, and on October 30 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her latest video, Cho Revolution, was released in August. Read an In These Times interview with Cho.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1387/

2004-11-03T23:44:00.000-05:00

A sincere thank you from John Kerry:

Dear Supporter,

Earlier today I spoke to President Bush, and offered him and Laura our congratulations on their victory. We had a good conversation, and we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity for finding the common ground, coming together. Today, I hope that we can begin the healing.

In America, it is vital that every vote counts, and that every vote be counted. But the outcome should be decided by voters, not a protracted legal process. I would not give up this fight if there was a chance that we would prevail. But it is now clear that even when all the provisional ballots are counted, which they will be, there won't be enough outstanding votes for our campaign to be able to win Ohio. And therefore, we cannot win this election.

It was a privilege and a gift to spend two years traveling this country, coming to know so many of you. I wish I could just wrap you in my arms and embrace each and every one of you individually all across this nation. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

To all of you, my volunteers and online supporters, all across this country who gave so much of themselves, thank you. Thanks to William Field, a six-year-old who collected $680, a quarter and a dollar at a time selling bracelets during the summer to help change America. Thanks to Michael Benson from Florida who I spied in a rope line holding a container of money. It turned out he raided his piggy bank and wanted to contribute. And thanks to Alana Wexler, who at 11 years old and started Kids for Kerry.

I thank all of you, who took time to travel, time off from work, and their own vacation time to work in states far and wide. You braved the hot days of summer and the cold days of the fall and the winter to knock on doors because you were determined to open the doors of opportunity to all Americans. You worked your hearts out, and I say, don't lose faith. What you did made a difference, and building on itself, we will go on to make a difference another day. I promise you, that time will come -- the election will come when your work and your ballots will change the world, and it's worth fighting for.

I'm proud of what we stood for in this campaign, and of what we accomplished. When we began, no one thought it was possible to even make this a close race, but we stood for real change, change that would make a real difference in the life of our nation, the lives of our families, and we defined that choice to America. I'll never forget the wonderful people who came to our rallies, who stood in our rope lines, who put their hopes in our hands, who invested in each and every one of us. I saw in them the truth that America is not only great, but it is good.

So here -- with a grateful heart, I leave this campaign with a prayer that has even greater meaning to me now that I've come to know our vast country so much better and that prayer is very simple: God bless America.

Thank you,

John Kerry

2004-11-03T23:39:00.000-05:00

A National Day of Mourning

I will post some of the comments I've made online today verbatim later but these words from others, as always, say it so much better than I could now. Especially with my being so distraught and enraged right now.

From Move-on.org

Subject: Because of you, there is hope.

Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 17:59:25 -0800

Dear MoveOn member,
We'll admit to being heartbroken by the outcome of yesterday's election. It's a dark day.

But this afternoon, we received this email:

Subject: Running for Congress
Eli,

In light of what happened yesterday, my friend and I have decided to get personally involved. He wants to run for Congress in 2006, and I'm his campaign manager at this point. Do you know of a good information source for how we handle the legalities of forming a campaign, opening bank accounts, registering with the FEC, etc?

Thanks,
Chris

We have suffered a defeat, but we are not defeated.

And our heartache does not diminish our pride in what you've done. We're proud about Wisconsin, where MoveOn volunteers turned out over 27,000 voters and Kerry won by only 11,813 votes. And New Hampshire, a former Bush state where we turned out 9,820 of the people on our list and Kerry won by 9,171 votes. Other groups were working with us in both states, but it's clear volunteers were at least partly responsible for the margin of victory.

We're proud about Ken Salazar, the newest Senator from Colorado, whose campaign was fueled by the donations of thousands of MoveOn members. We're proud that before he conceded this morning, John Kerry called to thank all of you for what we did to help his campaign.

Most of all, we are so proud of all of you, the MoveOn members who worked so hard and gave so much to take back America.

Yesterday, over 70,000 of us worked from before 5am Eastern to 8pm Pacific, getting voters to the polls. At 4:50am in Florida, we heard from our lead organizers that hundreds of precinct leaders had checked in and were on their way to the polls. In Columbus, with three hours to go, we sent out a final message saying "It's not too late! Help volunteer." Within minutes, two dozen people came running up the stairs in the rain, wanting to know, "What can we do? Put us to work!" One volunteer whose car broke down ran home, grabbed her bike, and biked from house to house in the thunderstorm, knocking on doors and reminding people to vote.

That you put so much into this effort makes the loss more painful in some ways. But the fact that so many of us were involved offers true hope for the future of democracy. In the campaign to defeat George Bush, you have proven that real Americans can have a voice in American politics. In the months and years to come, that revelation will change everything.

Although George Bush won by 3% nationally, we must remember that 55.4 million Americans stood with you and with John Kerry. You are certainly not alone. And a healthy environment, a strong and fair economy, good schools, domestic safety and the end of the war in Iraq are goals we all share -- red states and blue states alike.

Our journey toward a progressive America has always been bigger than George Bush. The current leg is just beginning -- we're still learning how to build a citizen-based politics together. But it's a journey our nation has been on for a long time. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

Today, we'll take a breath. Tomorrow, we'll keep moving toward the America we know is possible.

Sincerely,
--Adam, Ben, Carrie, Diane, Eli, Hannah, James, Joan, Justin, Laura, Lee, Marika, Mat, Meighan, Micayla, Nepunnee, Noah H., Noah W., Paul, Peter, Rosalyn, Wes, the team at We Also Walk Dogs, the team at Fenton Communications, and all 500 members of the Leave No Voter Behind staff.
November 3rd, 2004

2004-11-01T00:47:00.000-05:00

Tampa Indy Voter Guide
Tampa & Hillsborough County, FL, Nov 2 2004

http://www.indyvoter.org/voterguide.php?detail=633&printsafe=1

Tampa Indy Voter Guide
Tampa & Hillsborough County, FL, Nov 2 2004

Printer Safe Voter Guide - Guias Para Imprimir

JOIN THIS VOTER BLOC -- ENDORSE THIS VOTER GUIDE!

Download Voter Guide PDFs

Tampa Voter Guide

DJ Lazy's Hip Hop Voter Guide

Go to Guia Para El Votante Hispano De Tampa Bay 2004

We searched the Internet high and low for someone who didn’t suck to vote for in the November 2nd elections. Candidates who cared about what you said was important to you – reproductivefreedom, the war in Iraq, health care, the possibility of a draft, civil rights, nuclear weapons and same sex civil unions. Our sources (check ‘em out): The Supervisor of Elections for Hillsborough County (http://www.votehillsborough.org/) Project Vote Smart (http://www.vote-smart.org/) Congress.org (http://www.congress.org/) Look us up on the web http://indyvoter.org/tampa Let us know what you think of our voter guide! Email us at tampa@indyvoter.org Or call Kai & Frank at 813-472-1707

Candidate/Ballot Item: President and Vice President: JOHN F. KERRY AND JOHN EDWARDS (D)
Position: Yes
Reason: W. has got to go. We are so over him. While sketchy on how soon they’ll wrap up this war in Iraq,to their credit both Kerry and Edwards have always voted consistently for women’s reproductive freedom. You heard them in the debates – no draft, health care for all, and though Kerry does feelmarriage is between a man and a woman, he doesn’t feel he has to impose his personal belief on everyone else.

Candidate/Ballot Item: US Senate: BETTY CASTOR (D)
Position: Yes
Reason: She’s pro- affirmative action, against the War in Iraq, and supporting Health Care for All. Her opponent Mel Martinez is a pretty crazy right-winger.

Candidate/Ballot Item: US Representative District 11: KARL M. BUTTS – write-in candidate
Position: Yes
Reason: Write Karl in because he is down. He’s a farmer on a commune in Plant City and he cares about defending workers and women’s reproductive rights, and wants health care for all. His opponentsare Jim Davis, the incumbent middle of the road Democrat and Robert Edward Johnson, a libertarian, who doesn’t believe in affirmative action or public funding for reproductive freedom.

Candidate/Ballot Item: State Representative District 56: “NEIL” – write-in candidate
Position: Yes
Reason: Just write in “NEIL” on this one! He’s for something that we need locally; quality public transportation. Neil Constatino is a local activist who lobbied for the Friendship Trail Bridge. His opponent, Trey Traviesa, is a conservative Republican venture capitalist.

Candidate/Ballot Item: State Representative District 57: DEBORAH COPE (D)
Position: Yes
Reason: Vote for Deborah because she cares about health care, the environment, and she is endorsed by the AFL-CIO. She is running again Faye Culp, a Republican who opposes affirmative action.

Candidate/Ballot Item: State Representative District 60: KAREN PEREZ (D)
Position: Yes
Reason: Karen is great. A solid Democrat who is pro-choice and believes we should all have quality health insurance. What more is there to say? Well, how about her opponent, Republican Ed Homan,supports limiting a woman’s reproductive freedom, does not want to recognize same sex civil unions, and says “no” to affirmative action.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Retain Justice of Supreme Court Kenneth B. Bell
Position: No
Reason: Kenneth B. Bell is listed as nonpartisan. Your options are to “yes” (to keep Justice Bell) or “no” (to remove Justice Bell). Vote No. Bell is a conservative former real estate lawyer from Pensacolawho is a registered Republican and has a reputation of supporting conservative,religious right policies.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Retain Justice of Supreme Court Raoul G. Cantero, III
Position: No
Reason: Raoul G. Cantero, III is also listed as nonpartisan. Again, your options are to vote “yes” (to keepJustice Cantero) or “no” (to remove Justice Cantero). Vote No. Cantero is a corporate lawyer who was nominated to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Jeb Bush. He secured the release fromprison of a radical anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch. Cantero once described Bosch on Miami radio as “a great Cuban patriot.”

Candidate/Ballot Item: Retain District Court of Appeal Judge Charles T. Canady
Position: No
Reason: VOTE NO While a member of the U.S. Congress, Canady is on record as opposing a woman's right tochoose, opposing affirmative, and opposing the right to die for terminal patients. He is one of Jeb Bush's political cronies and acts as the judicial equivalent of a conservative rubber stamp. He is bad, bad, bad, let's get him out of office.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Retain District Court of Appeal Judge Stevan T. Northcutt
Position: Yes
Reason: Northcutt was appointed by Lawton Chiles in 1997. Northcutt is active in local programs and hisrecord has been excellent on all issues.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Retain District Court of Appeal Judge Craig C. Villanti
Position: No
Reason: Both Villanti and Wallace are two more of the conservative republican machine's political cronies.Bush appointed them and WE CAN GET THEM OUT!

Candidate/Ballot Item: Retain District Court of Appeal Judge Douglas A. Wallace
Position: No
Reason: Both Villanti and Wallace are two more of the conservative republican machine's political cronies.Bush appointed them and WE CAN GET THEM OUT!

Candidate/Ballot Item: County Clerk of the Circuit Court: PAT FRANK (D)
Position: Yes
Reason: Plain and simple: Pat Frank is just better qualified.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Supervisor of Elections: ROB MACKENNA (D)
Position: Yes
Reason: Everybody LOVES Rob! He’s a computer programmer pushing for a voting paper trail. He’s the only candidate in Florida endorsed by Democracy for America, and hey, he's been to a show at the Orpheum!

Candidate/Ballot Item: County Commissioner District 7: Denyse Layne (D)
Position: Yes
Reason: Layne has a positive stance on heath care, and is heavily endorsed by several organized labor and environmental groups.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Amendment 1
Position: No
Reason: Amendment 1: Parental Notification of a Minor’s Termination of Pregnancy - VOTE NO If passed, this would require minors to tell their parents if they are seeking an abortion. Supporters, such as the Christian Coalition, argue that parents must be involved in their daughters’ important medical decisions and parents should know when their daughters undergo surgery. On the other hand opponents, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argue that seeking an abortion is a private decision and would “violate the right of privacy contained in Article 1, Section 23 of the Florida Constitution.”

Candidate/Ballot Item: Amendment 2
Position: No
Reason: Constitutional Amendments Proposed by Initiative – VOTE NO If passed, this would require citizens gathering signatures for a constitutional amendment to file their completed paperwork one year prior to the election. Right now citizens have until 3 months before the election -- that’s 9 extra months to gather petitions. This measure would decrease the amount of time petitioners have to collect the required number of signatures to get an amendment on the ballot.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Amendment 3
Position: No
Reason: The Medical Liability Claimant’s Compensation Amendment – VOTE NO If passed, this would require that patients who win a malpractice lawsuit to receive at least 70% of any award under $250,000 and 90% of any award over $250,000 malpractice lawsuits. The physicians who support the bill claim that it will prevent frivolous lawsuits and stabilize insurance premiums. Trial lawyers say this Amendment would greatly limit the ability of working people to file malpractice cases.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Amendment 4
Position: Yes
Reason: Authorizes Miami-Dade and Broward County Voters to Approve Slot Machines in Pari-mutuel Facilities – VOTE YES If passed, this would allow Miami-Dade and Broward counties to vote on whether or not to tax slot machines and give the proceeds to education. In other words, this amendment asks everyone in Florida to vote on whether or not to allow Miami-Dade and Broward residents to vote on this issue.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Amendment 5
Position: Yes
Reason: Florida Minimum Wage Amendment – VOTE YES If passed, this would raise the minimum wage in Florida by one dollar, making it $6.15 per hour. Also this amendment would index the minimum wage to the rate of inflation, to stabilize the purchasing power of the minimum wage over time. The impact of this amendment on costs and revenues of state and local governments is expected to be minimal.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Amendment 6
Position: No
Reason: Repeal of High Speed Rail Amendment – VOTE NO If passed, this would reverse an amendment that was passed by voters in 2000 to build a high speed rail line between Tampa, Orlando, and Miami. The high speed rail line is intended to cut down on harmful auto exhaust by getting people to ride the train instead of drive their car. Jeb Bush is lobbying for this amendment to repeal the rail line and environmental groups are lobbying against the repeal.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Amendment 7
Position: Yes
Reason: Patient’s Right to Know About Adverse Medical Incidents – VOTE YES If passed, this would allow patients to review the medical malpractice records of their health care providers. On top of that, it would provide that these patients’ identities be kept secret. This bill is supported by trial lawyers who claim that the amendment will prevent doctors from hiding previous incidents of malpractice from their new patients. Doctors assert that their current system of review rests on the documents remaining “privileged,” and the medical process would be threatened if the documents become public.

Candidate/Ballot Item: Amendment 8
Position: Yes
Reason: Public Protection from Repeated Medical Malpractice – VOTE YES If passed, this would block physicians who have committed three or more incidents of medical malpractice from obtaining a medical license. Trial lawyers started this amendment to help get rid of “bad” doctors and increase medical accountability. Doctors claim that the bill will scare away doctors that perform high-risk surgery and limit the availability of health care, and create “a medical wasteland.” Supporters also point out that the cost of the bill will be very minimal.

2004-11-01T00:45:00.000-05:00

From Democracy Now!

Palast interview transcript:

Secret Document Suggests GOP Preparing to Challenge Black Vote in Florida
Thursday, October 28th, 2004

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/28/141211
Investigative reporter Greg Palast exposes a secret document within the Republican Party in Florida that contains nearly 1,900 names and addresses of voters in the predominantly black and Democratic areas of Jacksonville. The so-called "caging list" could be used to block and harass African-American voters. [includes rush transcript]

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Concerns continue to mount across the country over the fairness of next Tuesday's election. Already problems have emerged in many states. In one county in Ohio, more than 900 registered voters have been told they must appear in court on Saturday to defend their voter eligibility or risk losing their right to vote. In Wisconsin, scores of students report that their local elections board says it has no record of their voter registration. In Nevada, fallout continues after the it emerged that a group registering voters had destroyed possible hundreds of ballots of voters who identified themselves as Democrats. But nowhere is concern greater than in the state of Florida, the epicenter of the theft of the election in 2000.
Yesterday, the deputy election supervisor in one of Florida's most populous counties admitted that some 60,000 absentee ballots had gone missing. Broward county election official Gisela Salas said the matter is under investigation by law enforcement agencies. In 2000, it was Broward county that gave Al Gore his strongest support in the state of Florida. The US Postal Service says it has investigators trying to find the missing ballots, which constitute 5 percent of Broward County's electorate.

This comes as investigative reporter Greg Palast obtained a secret document from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida. The document suggests a plan-possibly in violation of the law-to disrupt voting in the state"s African-American voting districts.

Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list". It lists more than 1,800 names and addresses of voters in predominantly Black and traditionally Democratic areas of Jacksonville, Florida. Palast broke the story on BBC's Newsnight program. Today, we broadcast the story in its entirety for the first time on US television and radio. Here is Greg Palast's report.

Greg Palast's report.
Greg Palast, investigative reporter with the BBC and author of the books "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and "Democracy and Regulation." He has a new documentary out called "Bush Family Fortunes."

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RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: Today we broadcast the story in its entirety for the first time in the united states on U.S. television and radio here. Here is Greg Palast's report.

WILLIE STEEN: I'm happy, I'm excited, and I'm ready to vote.

GREG PALAST: Willie Steen's his way to vote…he hopes. In the last election, he was one of thousands of black citizens stopped from voting when they were falsely tagged as criminals.

WILLIE STEEN: I went in the place to vote and I was with my son, and there's about forty or fifty other people around, and I got up there to vote, and they told me that I was a convicted felony. I told the young lady that I never been arrested before.

GREG PALAST: Enthusiastic Americans like Willie can now vote early in the weeks before election day. Willie sued governor Jeb Bush after Jeb's officials were caught playing games with the voter list, dropping legal voters, especially black ones, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

WILLIE STEEN: Hey, how are you doing?

GREG PALAST: This is as far as Willie got last time. Will he be blocked yet again? We leave Willie in Tampa to go just past Disneyworld to Faithworld. Here in Orlando, the faithful, who believe they were cheated last time, pray it won't happen again. In the last election, one million black votes were not counted.

FAITHWORLD PREACHER: The Reverend Jesse Jackson.

JESSE JACKSON: You don't have to vote the way I vote. But I shouldn't steal your vote, in the name of Democracy. The winner shouldn't lose and the loser shouldn't win.

GREG PALAST: Jackson fears that the Republicans have some new plan to block the black vote, not just the fake felon scam used last time on Willie Steen.

JESSE JACKSON: There are more Mr. Steens out there, and now you have a case of this is a guy who just may be a kind of biopsy -- a kind of political biopsy of a cancer that is much more widespread than just one example. You can't forget the stealing of your birthright. You can't forget disenfranchisement of your vote.

GREG PALAST: A hundred miles away in the riverside town of Jacksonville, we may have found the evidence of the plan Jesse Jackson fears: something called a “caging list,” which could capture black voters. This is a list of nearly 2,000 voters in the black neighborhoods of Jacksonville, who appear to have errors in their mailing addresses. The list was specially prepared for George Bush's campaign.

GEORGE BUSH: There is no doubt in my mind that, with your help, we'll carry Florida again, and win a great victory on November the 2nd.

ION SANCHO: Every one of these has to be hand entered, and --

GREG PALAST: We asked Ion Sancho why the Republicans might put together such a list. Sancho is a Democrat; but he's also one of the most respected and experienced of Florida's county elections supervisors.

ION SANCHO: The only thing that I can think of African-American voters listed like this, these might be potential individuals that will be challenged if they attempt to vote on election day.

GREG PALAST: American states allow political parties to place their people right inside the polling stations, like this one in Jacksonville. They can point to a voter and challenge their right to vote. Voters will be turned away with provisional ballots, which are usually just thrown out. Political parties rarely use challenges because they can bring voting to a halt.

ION SANCHO: In Leon county, for example, we have not had one challenged voter in the sixteen years that I've been the supervisor of elections. Because again, if you challenge voters, you really must do so with concrete, hard evidence, not your opinion. And this process can be used to slow down the voting process, to cause chaos on election day and, quite frankly, to discourage voters from voting.

GREG PALAST: Do the Republicans have a plan to launch thousands of challenges on November 2nd, and bring voting in Florida's black, Democratic precincts to a standstill? This is the caging list. And this it where it was sent: to the office of Brett Doster. He's the Executive Director of the George W. Bush for President Campaign in Florida. Let's ask his team about it. I asked Republican spokeswoman, Mindy Tucker Fletcher, if they had a strategy to challenge these black voters on election day.

MINDY TUCKER FLETCHER: I can't tell you right now. I don't -- I'm not part of the -- that strategy,

GREG PALAST: OK.

MINDY TUCKER FLETCHER: But I -- I -- this is -- this was not done in order to create a challenge list, as you, I think, were trying to get to.

GREG PALAST: But they accuse Democrats of registering voters illegally; so Republicans must counterattack. So you're saying your poll workers will be instructed to challenge people to say they should have a provisional ballot?

MINDY TUCKER FLETCHER: Where it's stated in the law, yeah.

GREG PALAST: Are you worried that will gum up the procedures for legal voters.

MINDY TUCKER FLETCHER: By enforcing the laws?

GREG PALAST: Well, that's a good question.

MINDY TUCKER FLETCHER: I imagine even the people in line would want the laws applied.

GREG PALAST: The law appears to be applied in a curious way in Florida. Across the road from the Jacksonville voting station, I spied someone hiding away a camera in a black s.u.v. with blacked-out windows. He was disguised in a tourist uniform, complete with shorts, baseball cap, and open-toed sandals. He had been filming every voter. I thought I'd say hello. This isn't just a hobby? You're just not doing this volunteer?

DOUG THE INVESTIGATOR: No.

GREG PALAST: OK.

DOUG THE INVESTIGATOR: No. I'm an investigator. This is my --

GREG PALAST: Are you a licensed investigator, or ...? A professional agency, then. It's not -- you're not like some frea -- you know, just some guy who decided he's going to do something. He remembered that his name was 'Doug,' but he couldn't remember who he was working for. The local congresswoman had a suggestion.

CONGRESSWOMAN: The Republicans, once again, are trying to intimidate African-American voters. This car have been here since the eighteenth, in front of the supervisor's office all day, and they have been filming.

GREG PALAST: Back in Tallahassee, another election scam surfaced which could sabotage thousands of voter registrations. It targeted students with liberal views. Election supervisor Ion Sancho discovered the scam struck close to home.

ION SANCHO: This, for example, is a copy of my step-daughter's voter registration from Orlando; and it is clear that her own handwriting filled in blocks two through fifteen. Apparently, a petition form was placed over the top of a voter registration form. It purported to tell the citizen they were signing a petition to legalize medical marijuana. The citizen filled it in, thinking that's what they were doing, and then after the voter had left, the individual fraudulently filled out lines one, the party change, making them a Republican now, and then fraudulently signed it, and then turned the application over to the election administrator. This form changed the voter's registration from Tallahassee to Orlando. And if this voter had not known me, and turned this information over to me, she may have been -- she may have been disenfranchised when she attempted to vote.

GREG PALAST: Is it a crime to misregister someone in that way?

ION SANCHO: It is a third degree felony to do this. It is an illegal act.

GREG PALAST: And the Republicans now admit it was their operatives who collected these thousands of suspect registrations, though the party denies it committed fraud. Civil rights experts in Washington fear the threat to a free and fair election is severe, and unprecedented. Ralph Neas is commander-in-chief of an army of 6,000 lawyers who will take up battle stations on election day, to protect voters from dirty tricks.

RALPH NEAS: This is the nerve center.

GREG PALAST: Right.

RALPH NEAS: There will be fifty-six of our field offices in the seventeen states, and then there will be thirty-eight legal command centers where the majority of the lawyers will be. There will be a law student or lawyer at every precinct; but if there are real problems, we've got mobile traveling vans of lawyers who will go to the troubled precincts and make the decision.

GREG PALAST: They'll keep their eyes open for mass challenges by poll watchers paid for by the Republican party. It may be disruptive, but it's perfectly legal to challenge voters; but if you target the challenges at black districts, like Jacksonville, you're breaking federal law.

RALPH NEAS: You cannot target districts, with respect to challenging voters, if race is a consideration. Doesn't even have to be the major factor. You cannot target on the basis of race.

WILLIE STEEN: Thanks.

GREG PALAST: Back in Tampa, Willie Steen finally gets to vote. But this happy ending was thanks only to "Newsnight." The day before he was still listed as a criminal felon, but when we turned up with cameras, his status magically changed to upright citizen who can vote unchallenged. But what about the thousands of others, without TV cameras, who will have to overcome the new tricks, caging lists, registration games and more in the 2004 battle of the ballot?

AMY GOODMAN: Investigative report by Greg Palast for BBC's "Newsnight", first aired here on Democracy Now! in the United States. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, Greg Palast joins us live in our studios.

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is investigative reporter, Greg Palast. Juan.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Greg, congratulations on another terrific report. I guess the people in England and Europe are more informed on the shenanigans going on in the United States.

GREG PALAST: They're absolutely horrified. They are watching black cars with blacked out windows surveilling black voters. You are seeing challenge lists. To the rest of the world, the reaction in Europe to the report this led the BBC news in Europe, and the reaction was, the US is running election like Zimbabwe.

AMY GOODMAN: Didn't this happen in 2000, that your reports, first exposing what was going on in Florida, appeared in Britain and Europe, and the US press didn't touch it for months?

GREG PALAST: Only -- I broke the story on BBC and in The Guardian, that tens of thousands of voters were falsely listed as felons and barred from voting. Basically, it was black people who were only guilty of voting while black. In the film, we have one of those people, Willie Steen, and I want to emphasize that because the Republican Election Supervisor was tipped off of our coming down with the cameras to watch him vote, even though the state said –

AMY GOODMAN: He was doing early voting.

GREG PALAST: He was doing early voting, that one hour before he voted, they changed his status from felon to upright citizen, so he could vote. There's still -- the U.S. press doesn't cover this.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And who was it who tipped him off? You told us off camera. Can you tell us on camera?

GREG PALAST: One of the major newspapers in America is foolishly still not covering the story. It's hard to cover the story. You have to understand, BBC has been threatened by the Republican National Committee.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What was the newspaper? A reporter from the major newspaper?

GREG PALAST: I cannot say.

JUAN GONZALEZ: OK. It's a major newspaper in New York, right?

GREG PALAST: I understand.

AMY GOODMAN: What about BBC. You are talking about being threatened?

GREG PALAST: Yeah. That's why I’m grateful that you have run the report today. Because the Republican National Committee is threatening BBC, as they have done before with my reports, saying that if Greg Palast is on the air there will be no interviews for the network. From the Republican National Committee, which is, of course, cutting off the air supply of the news organization, and you can immediately see why American news organizations won't touch the story. That's basically that the Republican Party has a hit list of black people they're going to try to wipe out on Election Day, stop them from voting, and in particular, this has the effect of not only of intimidating the voters, eliminating voters, but in places like Jacksonville where three and four-hour waits are expected, this could entirely sabotage the voting operation. Understand, this is illegal if they're targeting black folk. It is against federal law.

AMY GOODMAN: We saw that scene of Congress member Corrine Brown in Jacksonville. Explain what she was saying.

GREG PALAST: The BBC cameras were there to interview her about voter harassment, and it just so happened that we caught a guy in the blacked out car with a telephoto lens filming each of voters going into the early voting booth. It's mostly black voters doing early voting. This may be related to this so-called caging list to knock out the block vote.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Also, the segment where you went into the fake registrations or the ones that where signatures were falsified. How expensive was that?

AMY GOODMAN: And explain who that this guy is.

GREG PALAST: What you saw was a guy, Ion Sancho, who is probably considered the most experienced and respected of election supervisors in Florida. Unfortunately, my one mistake was to identify him as a Democrat, because the Republicans told me he was a Democrat. He's very independent, not affiliated with any party. He has also asked the parties not to challenge voters on Election Day. The supervisors have said it's really never been done in Florida history. This basically is an attempt to stop the entire voting process, bring it to a halt. As for registrations, what happened was that students, mostly Democrats, students filled out petition forms for medical use of marijuana, and it turns out they were signing the back of registration forms without knowing it, reregistering themselves as republicans. This was definitely tied to a republican-paid operation, and at least 4,000 of the forged registrations, which is a felony to forge registration, have been found, and Jeb Bush's department of law enforcement says that they don't have time for the next few weeks to get around to arresting the forgers. It's just -- this is just the beginning of the game.

AMY GOODMAN: What does it mean that they have now registered as Republicans? Can they still vote?

GREG PALAST: No, they cannot. They have now double- registered. They only got caught because the Election Supervisor's daughter was caught in the scam. If she had put in an absentee ballot, if this wasn't caught in her case, her ballot would be thrown out.

JUAN GONZALEZ: He also said they were being reregistered in another county, therefore, creating problems?

GREG PALAST: Yes. In other words, basically setting up the voter to have their vote voided because they're double registered. And again, this is just one of the several games we are finding, for example, the felon purge, which our press here has said is over with believe me, it ain't. Most of the people of the 93,000 people tagged in the first round as felons, who are legal voters, mostly Democrats, 4 to 1 Democrats, just so you know, 4 to 1 Democrat registered. Most of those are still purged. They're still playing games with these people. Then you've also got games with absentee ballots. One thing that's not come out in the story about Broward County, and the ballots missing, you have to understand that Jeb Bush fired a black female Democrat who was elections supervisor, who was elected, replaced her with his own appointee, who is suddenly now not sending out absentee ballots in a heavily Democratic area.

JUAN GONZALEZ: This is Broward?

GREG PALAST: Broward. You have Jeb Bush appointing Republicans to replace Democrats, who are then impeding the vote, as in Jacksonville where a Republican was just appointed to take over, and he's making it almost impossible for black people to vote. Jacksonville, by the way, is the largest physical city in the United States with one polling place for early voting, again to stop the churches and Jesse Jackson and his group from bringing in thousands of voters to vote.

AMY GOODMAN: So again, this top news, as many as 58,000 absentee ballots have gone missing in Broward County, ballots said to have been mailed two weeks ago, but somehow, they have disappeared. Now there's a lot of finger pointing, the county is blaming the postal service. The post office said, No, we didn’t get them.

GREG PALAST: You have to understand the games that are being played. Theresa LePore, Madame Butterfly from Palm Beach, who is an ally of Jeb Bush, was just defeated a few weeks ago in her own re-election. She will still be counting votes in November. In the last race, a couple of weeks ago, she counted 37,000 votes from 31,000 absentee ballots. It was like Fishes and Loaves. The problem is, if she had gone the other way, we would not have caught her. If she counted 31,000 votes out of 37,000 ballots. Do not, I recommend to people, don't use absentee ballots. You don't know where they're going and what they're doing with them. That's the great scams of this election. The thing is that it's all aimed racially. And you have to understand, who are people on the caging list that the Republicans appear to be ready to challenge? They include people whose addresses they claim cannot be verified. I verified some of these addresses. I found 50 guys shipped out from the military, so their addresses changed from the poor neighborhoods of Jacksonville to Baghdad. And they are going to challenge these soldiers’ votes.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get the caging list?

GREG PALAST: If I said that, I wouldn't receive any more lists. Let me tell you, if anyone has any lists or good items, go to Gregpalast.com. I love it, especially if it’s marked secret or confidential on the top.

JUAN GONZALEZ: There's no reason, obviously, to assume if this kind of situation is occurring in Florida, that it’s not occurring in other states as well, other battleground states.

GREG PALAST: I have to tell you that I have been writing a story called “Other Floridas.” New Mexico -- there's non-count of vote in the Hispanic areas and Native American areas. Colorado they're starting a felon purge, days before the election which is against federal law, by the Republican Secretary of State. In Harper's, in this month's issue, I have gone through how the change in machinery to computers is going to cost hundreds of thousands of African American votes, Democratic Party votes. We figure our analysis is that in southern Florida alone, the change to computer also cost 27,000 votes -- will cost John Kerry a net of 27,000 votes. So, it's even the machinery. We have Hispanic precincts in New Mexico which in the last race showed no vote at all for president, and the response they get from elections officials, some people cannot make up their mind. What's happening is in poor areas, they're being given crap machines, just like they get crap hospitals and crap schools. They know this means that a lot of votes are lost in the machinery, whether its computers or punch cards. You name it. You have a loss of -- by the US Civil Rights Commission statisticians that I have been working with, we calculated a loss of 1 million black and minority votes lost in the machines. This is a tremendous electoral thumb on the scale, when we are going into this Tuesday. It's nationwide. I concentrated on Florida, because Florida will be Florida again. Look to, if you are going to see it election shoplifted, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio. Those are going to be states where you cannot trust the vote.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much, Greg Palast for joining us. Investigative reporter with this explosive report.

GREG PALAST: Thank you very much.

www.democracynow.org

2004-11-01T00:37:00.000-05:00

Abused and conned in Florida

The Observer, London
Sunday, October 31, 2004

Voters claim abuse of electoral rolls

Students say they were conned into registering twice

Greg Palast in New York
Sunday October 31, 2004

An Observer investigation in the United States has uncovered widespread allegations of electoral abuse, many of them going uninvestigated despite complaints of what would appear to be criminal attempts to manipulate voter lists.

The allegations, which come just two days before Americans go to the polls in one of the most tightly contested elections in a generation, threaten to plunge Tuesday's count into a legal minefield and overshadow even the elections of 2000.

The claims come as both Republicans and Democrats put in place up to 2,000 lawyers across the country to challenge attempts to manipulate the vote in swing states.

Although allegations of misconduct have been levelled at both parties recently, the majority of complaints that have been identified in The Observer's investigation involved claims against local Republicans.

The claims, made by the BBC's Newsnight, follow alleged attempts by Republicans to illegally suppress the votes in key states. Republican spokesmen deny these allegations.

WATCH THE BROADCAST

One of the more serious claims is that no action has been taken in a complex fraud, where more than 4,000 Florida students were allegedly conned into signing a form which could lead them to be doubly registered and void their votes. The Florida Law Enforcement Department has told the complainants that it is too busy to investigate.

In Colorado too, Democrats are complaining about an attempt to remove up to 6,000 convicted felons from the electoral roll, at the behest of the state's Republican secretary of state, Donetta Davidson, despite a US federal law that prohibits eliminating a voter's rights within 90 days of an election to give time for the voter to protest.

The attempt to purge the list of alleged felons would appear to be a re-run of the attempt by Florida Governor Jeb Bush's secretary of state to remove 93,000 citizens from voter rolls as felon convicts are not allowed to vote.

Investigations appear to have established that only 3 per cent of the largely African-American list were illegal voters.

That action led to a vote in July by the US Civil Rights Commission to open a criminal and civil investigation of the Jeb Bush administration's purge of voters, including indications of concealing evidence subpoenaed by the commission's investigators. The new claims follow the Newsnight revelation last week of confidential documents from inside Republican headquarters in Florida and Washington which the programme claimed suggested a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to stop thousands of African-Americans from voting on election day.

The programme produced two leaked emails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, containing a 15-page list. The list contains 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democratic areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: 'The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day.'

Ion Sancho, not affiliated with any party, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot. They may then only vote 'provisionally' after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.

Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a voter 'in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections. Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day and discourage voters from voting.'

Sancho calls it intimidation. And it may be illegal. In Washington, well-known civil rights attorney Ralph Neas noted that US federal law prohibits the targeting voters, even if there is a basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the voters.

The list of Jacksonville voters covers an area with a majority of black residents.

When asked by Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican spokespeople claimed that the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising solicitations or newly registered voters to verify addresses for purposes of campaign literature.

Republican state campaign spokeswoman, Mindy Tucker Fletcher, stated the list was not put together 'in order to create' a challenge list, but refused to say it would not be used in that manner.

The Observer has found that many people are soldiers sent overseas. Republicans acknowledge the list was created by compiling lists of voters whose addresses have changed whose only use, say critics, would be to challenge voters on election day on the basis that their voting address is not valid. But this 'caging' method captures those whose addresses have changed because they have been sent to Iraq or other places. The list includes homeless shelter residents, casting doubt on suggestions the list was created from fundraising solicitations for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Contact: media@gregpalast.com

View Greg Palast's BBC Television film, "Bush Family Fortunes," available this week on DVD in an updated edition from The Disinformation Company at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

To receive Greg’s investigative reports click here: http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1340190,00.html

2004-10-29T19:06:00.000-04:00

Study Puts Iraqi Deaths of Civilians at 100,000

Lest we forget the other toll of this ridiculous war. I guess it's not so ridiculous when 100,00 innocent people die, is it? Get this, some older woman for the Bush campaign just knocked on our door about 15 mins. ago and my brother answered it. She let him know why she was there are for what campaign with a friendly demeanor. As soon as my brother said "we already voted and we picked the other guy" her friendly face drained and she retreated fast! Fuck them! I'm sorry but the issues Republicans worry about and what we worry about as working class Latinos in this country seem completely different. I would never vote for them even if my life depended on it! I'm so anxious about the election's results! I just don't want Bush to win! There's election fraud and mishaps already happening. I don't know how it's going to come down to. Please people, think of it logically: we've seen Bush perform for the past 4 years and we should have a good idea how he works: terribly At least for Kerry, we would have a fresh start to see how he would work. I know Bush and what he's done is awful! I'd rather see Kerry have a chance to prove himself than give that demagogue, Bush another chance! No fucking way, I say! He wasn't even supposed to get a first chance anyhow and he forced it to happen! Not this time, dumb-ass! Whoo!

October 29, 2004

CASUALTIES

Study Puts Iraqi Deaths of Civilians at 100,000

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL,
International Herald Tribune

ARIS, Oct. 28 - An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 United States-led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Coming just five days before the presidential election the finding is certain to generate intense controversy, since it is far higher than previous mortality estimates for the Iraq conflict.

Editors of The Lancet, the London-based medical publication, where an article describing the study is scheduled to appear, decided not to wait for the normal publication date next week, but to place the research online Friday, apparently so it could circulate before the election.

The Bush administration has not estimated civilian casualties from the conflict, and independent groups have put the number at most in the tens of thousands.

In the study, teams of researchers led by Dr. Les Roberts fanned out across Iraq in mid-September to interview nearly 1,000 families in 33 locations. Families were interviewed about births and deaths in the household before and after the invasion.

Although the authors acknowledge that data collection was difficult in what is effectively still a war zone, the data they managed to collect is extensive. Using what they described as the best sampling methods that could be applied under the circumstances, they found that Iraqis were 2.5 times more likely to die in the 17 months following the invasion than in the 14 months before it.

Before the invasion, the most common causes of death in Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and chronic diseases. Afterward, violent death was far ahead of all other causes.

"We were shocked at the magnitude but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins team. Dr. Burnham said the team excluded data about deaths in Falluja in making their estimate, because that city was the site of unusually intense violence.

In 15 of the 33 communities visited, residents reported violent deaths in their families since the conflict started. They attributed many of those deaths to attacks by American-led forces, mostly airstrikes, and most of those killed were women and children. The risk of violent death was 58 times higher than before the war, the researchers reported.

The team included researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies and included doctors from Al Mustansiriya University Medical School in Baghdad.

There is bound to be skepticism about the estimate of 100,000 excess deaths, since that translates into an average of 166 deaths a day since the invasion. But some people were not surprised. "I am emotionally shocked but I have no trouble in believing that this many people have been killed," said Scott Lipscomb, an associate professor at Northwestern University, who works on the www.iraqbodycount.net project.

That project, which collates only deaths reported in the news media, currently put the maximum civilian death toll at just under 17,000. "We've always maintained that the actual count must be much higher," Mr. Lipscomb said.

The researchers said they were highly technical in their selection of interview sites and data analysis, although interview locations were limited by the decision to cut down on driving time when possible in order to reduce the risk to the interviewers. Each team included an Iraqi health worker, generally a physician.

Although the teams relied primarily on interviews with local residents, they also requested to see at least two death certificates at the end of interviews in each area, to try to ensure that people had remembered and responded honestly. The research team decided that asking for death certificates in each case, during the interviews, might cause hostility and could put the research team in danger.

Some of those killed may have been insurgents, not civilians, the authors noted. Also, the rise in deaths included a rise in murders and some deaths were caused by the decline of medical care. "But the majority of excess mortality is clearly due to violence," Dr. Burnham said.

The study is scientific, reserving judgment on the politics of the Iraq conflict. But Dr. Roberts and his colleagues are critical of the Bush administration and the Army for not releasing estimates of civilian deaths.

"This study shows that with moderate funds, four weeks and seven Iraqi team members willing to risk their lives, a useful measure of civilian deaths could be obtained," the authors wrote.

2004-10-28T23:40:00.000-04:00

From: "Florida for Kerry-Edwards"
To: afichick@mail.com
CC:
Subject: RALLY: John Kerry in Tampa, FL
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 10:48:55 -0500

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Supporter,

Please join us for the Fresh Start for America Rally with John Kerry in Tampa on Sunday, October 31.

This is an exciting opportunity to stand up and show your support for John Kerry and John Edwards in the final days before the election.

Tickets are required for this event. To print your complimentary ticket(s) or to volunteer at the rally, please click here:

http://www.johnkerry.com/tickets

WHEN: Sunday, October 31
Doors open at 8:00 p.m.
WHERE: Curtis Hixon Park
700 N Ashley St
Tampa, FL
DETAILS: Due to security, please do not bring any umbrellas, bags, or signs. Please limit personal items as well. This event will take place RAIN or SHINE.

John Kerry and John Edwards will stand up for the values that have always made America great: faith and family, strength and service, responsibility and opportunity for all. Join us at the rally, and show that you share the Kerry-Edwards vision for an America that is stronger at home and respected in the world.

http://www.johnkerry.com/tickets

Thank you for standing with us,

Florida for Kerry-Edwards

-Guess who's gonna be there?
-That's right, me!
-Kerry please kick Bush's ass!

2004-10-21T13:34:00.000-04:00

Finally, some justice. I can't even explain why the military is so brainwashed into following and committing crimes. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

U.S. Soldier Sentenced to 8 Years for Iraq Abuse
Thu Oct 21, 2004 10:02 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick was sentenced to eight years in prison on Thursday for sexually and physically abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.
Judge Colonel James Pohl also sentenced Frederick, 38, to a reduction in rank to private, to forfeiture of pay and a dishonorable discharge from the army.

Frederick's lawyer Gary Myers called the sentence "excessive" and said he intended to appeal.

"We will seek to try to achieve a sentence reduction," he said.

Frederick, the most senior enlisted man charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal, had pleaded guilty to five charges of abusing detainees at the facility in October and November last year, including making three prisoners masturbate.

He also punched one prisoner so hard in the chest that he needed resuscitation.

Major Michael Holley, the military prosecutor, told the court it was a simple case of right and wrong.

"He's an adult and capable of telling, as we learned, the difference between right and wrong," he said of Frederick. "How much training do you need to learn that it's wrong to force a man to masturbate?"

Myers said that while Frederick was right to be punished, a degree of responsibility had to be borne by the military establishment.

"Punish him, yes. But please try to understand the defense's point of view that there is corporate responsibility," Myers said. "We discovered that (Frederick) has no abhorrent tendencies."

Frederick is the third U.S. soldier to be convicted for his part in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal. Five soldiers are still due to face courts martial.

Judge Pohl originally sentenced Frederick to 10 years inprisonment, but reduced it to eight years because of a plea bargain.

2004-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

I love In These Times! They always have stories and opinions that you would never otherwise hear. This is a great article on how Bush managed to say very little during the debates. I was feeling incredibly horrible and guilty all day because of the documentary on the genocide in Rwanda that I saw in class today. I was aware of the genocide but I had never see a film about it which had actual horrifying footage in it. I was so outraged and emotional watching this. I felt like exploding after class. The injustice of it. The Western nations who stood by as bystanders and did nothing only going so far as to airlift their white citizens from Rwanda, leaving all the innocent Black Africans to die. Fucked up, I tell you. Even the U.N. was complicit in the genocide by skirting the issue entirely. I wrote so many notes with furious passion. First thing after class, I searched for sites on how you can either volunteer or become involved with the U.N. I'm seriously considering joining the U.N. or some other organization with the power to stop something like this from happening. The tragic news is that Sudan is now being compared to the genocide in Rwanda. It's at this point that I wish that I was in a position of power to help, aid, or help the victims of genocide. If I were in the U.N. I would push for immediate action and attention. Not like how they acted during the Rwandan genocide. Sigh, my soul is so heavy with the weight of social responsibility. Not to mention but I saw the documentary Dreamworlds again today and the rape scene left with tears rolling down my face. I was so impacted with everything and then that scene that it all came out. I'm more determined now than ever to create a life where I can be a part of social change. Finally, here's the story on Bush:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1355/

IN THESE TIMES

Please consider subscribing to the print edition and supporting independent media: http://www.inthesetimes.com/subscribe/
This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1355/

The Hollow Man
The debates revealed just how little Candidate Bush has to offer.
By David Kusnet October 18, 2004

After the third and final presidential debate concluded with the candidates reciting their prepared closing statements, the television pundits repeated their equally predictable conclusion that the event was a draw, with Kerry ahead on “substance” but Bush besting him on “style.”

But soon afterward, the voters weighed in with a different decision, declaring Kerry the winner by margins ranging from 52 percent to 39 percent (CNN/USA Today) to 39 percent to 25 percent (CBS) and 42 percent to 41 percent (ABC News in a sampling heavily weighted to Republicans.)

The people, not the pundits, had it right. Kerry won all three debates. Yes, he scored heavily on policy—a tribute not only to his forensic skills but also to the facts about the quagmire in Iraq and the jobless, raise-less economic recovery. But he also prevailed on personality—with his steady stoicism more reassuring in a post-9/11 world than the self-styled “wartime president’s” unsettling tendency to growls and giggles.

While the voters’ verdict on the three debates was varied, there’s no doubt about their impact on the presidential race. Bush began the debates 7 percentage points ahead of Kerry in most national polls. Two weeks later, after the third debate, Bush and Kerry were tied, with about half the voters saying they don’t want four more years of Bush—a perilous position for a president running for reelection.

The campaign turned from a blowout to a dead-heat because most voters seem to see the debates—and, perhaps, the presidential choice itself—through the lens of the first debate, where Kerry was confident and concise and Bush was frowning and frazzled.

But if any of the remaining undecided voters, especially worried working people, were watching the third debate, the Kodak moments came when Bush was asked questions about how the economy affects everyday Americans.

Early in the evening, moderator Bob Schiefer asked Bush, “What do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who’s being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?”

Bush looked at Schiefer, not the camera, and answered: “I’d say, Bob, I’ve got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st Century. And here’s some help for you to get an education. Here’s help for you to go to a community college.” Then, Bush started singing the praises of No Child Left Behind, the program to improve the nation’s public schools, from kindergarten through high school.

Several questions later, Bush was asked whether he would raise the minimum wage. This time, he devoted two sentences to low-wage workers, then retreated to No Child Left Behind.

For voters anxious about losing good-paying jobs or already working for poverty wages, Bush’s message was clearer than he knew: The problem, dummy, is you didn’t get a good education. And while it’s most likely too late for you, at least your kids just might have a future, if we shake up or shut down their schools.

Maybe Bush’s just-folks manner still makes him personally likeable, but the third debate went a long way toward sealing the impression that he’s a regular guy who’s out of touch with regular people. After all, he’s been president for four years, but on the night when his presidency hung in the balance, he couldn’t speak for 90 seconds about the problems of mature workers who are afraid their jobs will be shipped overseas, leaving them working for Wal-Mart wages.

Bush’s failure to fill his allotted time with credible discussions of economic issues spoke volumes about his handicaps as a debater, as a candidate, and, ultimately, as a president. Before the debates began, pundits and partisans alike agreed that Bush and Kerry had contrasting problems. Bush’s challenge was to collect and commit to memory enough plausible points about the country’s condition to fill his half of a 90-minute debate. Kerry’s problem was distilling what he wanted to say, so that he could complete his answers before the red lights went on.

Never before (including in Gerald Ford’s and Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaigns) had a sitting president faced such low expectations, nor had a challenger ever had it taken for granted that he had a greater command of the facts about foreign and domestic issues, facing only the obstacle that he had too many ideas to cram into 90-second responses.

Indeed, Bush’s advantages were believed to be his friendlier, more accessible personality and his ability to sum up his positions in simple statements of principle. In 2000, he held a more knowledgeable but less likeable Al Gore to a draw in their debates, and, this time, many pundits and political insiders thought the aura of the presidency would give him an added advantage over the patrician and professorial Kerry.

Except for the second debate where the town hall format allowed Bush to banter with the audience, Kerry was the winner on style as well as substance. Towering over Bush, looking straight into the camera, speaking in a strong and steady voice, and rarely fretful or frustrated, Kerry looked and sounded more like a president than the incumbent. He certainly seemed nothing like the “flip-flopper” who had been regularly lambasted by Bush’s stump speeches and the Republican convention oratory and branded “unfit for command” by attack ads on TV and a poison-pen paperback in the bookstores.

While Kerry, unlike his running mate John Edwards, is hardly populist in manner, he has honed an attack on Bush’s economic policies for catering to special interests, from the top-bracket tax cuts to the ban on importing inexpensive prescription drugs from Canada. And Kerry offered ideas to address the anxieties of middle-class Americans, from securing their health coverage to abolishing the tax incentives that send their jobs abroad.

Meanwhile, by the third debate, Bush had lost his last remaining advantage—an emotional intelligence that allowed him to bond with Americans, even though he rarely addressed them articulately without a prepared text—the great exception being his bullhorn-wielding pledge to the firefighters and ironworkers near Ground Zero: “The people who knocked down those buildings are going to hear from all of us soon.” Except when asked about faith and family, that Bush didn’t show up at the first or third debates. Instead, he smiled at things that weren’t happy, laughed at things that weren’t funny and seemed less like a commander-in-chief than an unprepared high school kid suddenly called upon in class.

In the remaining days of the campaign, Bush and his backers are left with the last-ditch tactic of embattled Republicans: calling their opponents “liberals,” and, in Kerry’s case, a “Massachusetts liberal” at that. But Kerry has taken pains to present himself in ways that transcend the stereotypes that skewered Michael Dukakis and Edward Kennedy. Unlike his predecessors and presumed soul mates, Kerry is a war hero, a former prosecutor, an aviator and, he reminded Americans in the final debate, an avid hunter as well.

Moreover, the issues in this campaign are different from those of 16 years ago, when the elder Bush branded Dukakis with the dreaded L-word. When the younger Bush bashes Kerry for wanting to spend more money on public education and homeland security, Kerry cheerfully pleads guilty, knowing that these charges carry none of the emotional impact of calling Dukakis soft on crime and spendthrift on welfare.

Four years ago, Bush won, sort of, by being more likeable at a time when it seemed the presidency might not be much more difficult than being governor of Texas. This time, Kerry can prevail with voters looking for gravitas, not geniality. Republican oratory notwithstanding, Bush, not Kerry, may be the candidate whose rationale was reduced to rubble on September 11, 2001.

David Kusnet was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton from 1992 through 1994. He is the author of Speaking American: How the Democrats Can Win in the Nineties (Thunder’s Mouth, 1992).

2004-10-17T03:05:00.000-04:00

Kerry's Cheney gay daughter remark "uproar!"

What bullshit! The way Republicans are responding to mentioning a gay family member is equivalant to an insult. This speaks volumes about how they perceive gay people! They need to embrace the fact that gay people exist and are as human as everyone else and thus should have all the same rights, and get over it like the rest of us do. Grrr. I'm mentioning this in my paper on the debates for my Gender in Society class. This just adds more fuel to the flames...

From The Washington Post:
washingtonpost.com

Singling Out Mary Cheney Wrong, Most Say
2 in 3 Polled Find Kerry's Comment 'Inappropriate'

By Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 17, 2004; Page A05

An overwhelming majority of voters believes it was wrong for John F. Kerry to have mentioned in Wednesday's presidential debate that Vice President Cheney's daughter is a lesbian, according to The Washington Post tracking survey.

Nearly two in three likely voters -- 64 percent -- said Kerry's comment was "inappropriate," including more than four in 10 of his supporters and half of all swing voters. A third -- 33 percent -- thought the remark was appropriate.

Kerry's comment touched off a rare row among family members of the two tickets, and has become one of the hottest topics on talk radio since a CBS News report about Bush's National Guard service that was later discredited.

In the first reaction from President Bush, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters on Air Force One on Friday that Bush "does not believe it was appropriate."

Asked whether he was looking for an apology from Kerry's camp, McClellan replied, "That's something for Senator Kerry to decide." McClellan said he thinks "a lot of people" share the president's view of the comment. "I cannot think of a single instance where a presidential candidate has talked about his opponent's child in such a way," McClellan said.

Kerry made the comment when asked whether he believes homosexuality is a choice. Bush answered that he did not know. Kerry said, "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

Cheney has two daughters, and one of them, Mary Cheney, who heads vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney campaign, has been open about being gay.

After the debate, her mother, Lynne Cheney, criticized Kerry for raising the issue of her daughter's sexual orientation. The vice president expressed his anger the following day.

The Post tracking poll shows Bush leading Kerry 50 to 47 percent. Independent Ralph Nader continues to barely register nationally, getting 2 percent of the hypothetical vote. But the survey suggests that Kerry continues to claim a large lead in key battleground states. In these 13 states, Kerry held a 53 percent to 43 percent advantage among likely voters.

A total of 1,555 registered voters were interviewed Wednesday through Friday nights, including 1,203 likely voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for the overall results. It is plus or minus six percentage points for the question asking views on Kerry's comment about Cheney's daughter, which was asked on Thursday night.

2004-10-17T03:02:00.000-04:00

Greg Palast on Dan Rather-CBS fiasco

Shooting the Messenger Doesn't Discredit the Message

The Real Lt. Col. Burkett - in His Own Words to BBC Television
by Greg Palast

Tuesday October 5, 2004

When Dan Rather went down for airing a document he couldn't source,
he did the courageous thing: blamed someone else.

In this case, Rather and CBS loaded their corporate guilt on a guy
you've probably never heard of before, rancher Bill Burkett of
Abilene, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Texas Air National
Guard.

CBS did a no-no -- used a document on air without fully checking out
its source. No excuses. Shouldn't have done it. They got the
document from Burkett.

Once CBS hung out its source and painted a target on him, Rove-ing
gangs of media hit men finished him off. Burkett's an evidence
"fabricator," "Bush-hater," and even, suggests
William Safire in the New York Times as he fantasizes a dark
left-wing conspiracy, a felon ready for hard time.

Let me tell you about this Burkett "criminal." I met him
while filming for BBC's Television documentary, "Bush Family
Fortunes." Better than that, I'm posting a transcript of our
hour-and-a-half interview.

Burkett a 'Bush-hater'? "George W. Bush was an excellent
pilot," Burkett told me, "He had the right leadership
skills, he had the 'Top Gun' approach."

But I didn't go interview Burkett to chat about our President's days
when he flew high. He has an important story to tell which has not
one damn thing to do with a memo by some Lt. Col. Killian. It has to
do with a phone call and a shredder.

Burkett, a top advisor to Major General Daniel James at the Air
Guard, was working at Camp Mabry with Major General James when a call
came in from Joe Allbaugh, the Chief of Staff to then-Governor George
W. Bush. Bush was about to get a political polishing up for his
White House run, with a ghost-written autobiography, which would
include his heroic years during the war in Vietnam. Allbaugh,
according to Burkett, stated that Bush political operatives Karen
Hughes and Dan Bartlett would be dropping by the Air Guard offices to
look at the war record and wanted to, "make sure there's nothing
in there that'll embarrass the Governor."

According to Burkett, the General and his minions who work for the
Governor, not the US Air Force, took this as an unsubtle hint from
the boss to purge the record. Lt. Col. Burkett, both curious and
disturbed by the call, wondered how his fellow comrades-in-arms would
respond. His answer was in the trash-to-be-shredded bin: George
Bush's military pay records. "I saw what are called LES (Leave
and Earnings Statements) which are pay documents. I saw Retirement
Points documents and other administrative information."

He did not see their content, only Bush's name, and therefore cannot
answer the 64 million dollar question: Did those records, now
"missing," indicate that our President went AWOL while
others ended up on the Black Wall?

That's Burkett's story and it's in the BBC film. Watch the film,
read the transcript, and judge for yourself. I think you'll find in
Burkett a straight shooter, telling a piece of the larger draft-dodge
story which mounting evidence corroborates.

So what about that "Killian" document? We don't have it in
the BBC film - we couldn't source it so we wouldn't use it. Burkett
passed it on from a third party, obviously someone still in the Guard
or fearful of Bush Family retribution. Now why would they imagine
that?

Under pressure, Burkett gave CBS a false name to cover for the
whistleblower. Burkett should not have done that. It is inexcusable.
Period. Yet, that does not tell us the document was fabricated. It
was the job of CBS to follow up -- they are the journalists.

And it is also the President's job. Safire in the Times, in charging
that Burkett faked the document, demanded the military open a
criminal investigation. Darn right they should. They haven't. Why
not? Maybe they don't want to check into this 'fake' document
because maybe it's not fake.

An investigation should begin with questions for the President.
After all, he can clear up the matter lickety-split.

"Mr. President, did you or did you not ask your commander Lt.
Col. Killian how you could shirk your duty to show up?"

"Mr. President, did you or did you not refuse a direct order to
take a medical exam and pee into a jar?" (The record is solid
on the evidence of refusing that order, Mr. Top Gun -- you were
stripped of your flight wings.)

"Mr. President, did Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes make any calls
to get you out of 'Nam and into the Air Guard? Yes or no?"

See Dan, that's how it should be done. It wasn't Burkett's job to
verify the evidence, it was the job of Dan and the President.

It is for the President, not Bill Burkett, to answer the question,
"Did your daddy the congressman vote to send other men's sons to
Vietnam while pulling the strings to keep you cozy and safe? Yes or
no, Mr. President, yes or no?"

For a clip from the BBC Television investigative reports on George
Bush's military career, go to www.http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

Greg Palast's interview with Col. Burkett for BBC can be read at http://www.gregpalast.com/documents/BurkettTranscript.pdf

2004-10-17T02:36:00.000-04:00

More politics news from several sources....

From Clamor Magazine email:

Okay. Does anyone but me just wish this election would be over
tomorrow? Can I get a HELLS YEAH? Maybe it's just because we're in
the middle of ground zero as they are oh-so-sensitively referring to
Ohio, but I could go a lifetime without having another conversation
about Swift Boats or getting out the vote. Bush is a madman. Kerry
sucks less. Let's get it over with already.

[1] CLAMOR UP FOR BEST IN SHOW: Utne Magazine (http://www.utne.com) has announced the nominees for their annual Independent Press Awards, and Clamor has
been nominated once again for Best Cultural Coverage. We're also up
for General Excellence, which we think is, well, generally excellent.
Thanks to all of you for reading, subscribing, and keeping Clamor
thriving for almost five years now.

[2] SWING STATE POSTER PROJECT: One final project before we step away
from this train wreck of an election year: The evening of November 1,
Clamor will join forces with Punk Planet, The Center for the Study of
Political Graphics, In These Times, and artists, activists, and
volunteers throughout the U.S. to present a national night of
swing-state postering, an election eve celebration of artistic
activism. We are concentrating our efforts around polling places in
OH, WI, PA and FL. Poster-hangers, artists, printers, and financial
donations (to offset mailing, printing, and materials costs) in these
states and others are urgently needed. Head over to http://www.punkplanet.com/swingstate or email
swingstate@punkplanet.com for all the details (including information about how you can make artistic and financial contributions to this project).

ACLU email on voting rights info:

ACLU Voter Empowerment Cards are now available for download in .pdf file format, or via bulk order through our respective ACLU state affiliates. (Click on the web site link or mail-to link for each state affiliate on the ACLU web page given below to place your order directly with the state affiliate. Just use the link or the state affiliate web site to send them a personal email identifying your group and indicating how many cards you need).

These cards are designed to inform voters of their rights and responsibilities on Election Day and help voters avoid problems when casting a ballot. Along with downloadable cards, there is information on the ACLU web site about voter registration forms, absentee ballot applications, polling place locators and contact information for the ACLU in various states, as well as contact information for state election authorities. See: www.aclu.org/vec.

Florida | Georgia | Iowa | Missouri | New Jersey | New Mexico | North Carolina
North Dakota | Pennsylvania | South Dakota | Tennessee | Washington

Please check the site frequently, as new states will likely be added soon, including Louisiana (which will likely be up later today – Friday) Maryland, Rhode Island.

Our apologies if no card is yet available for your state. Additional cards are in production, but because of the burden of election-related work here at the Voting Rights Project we cannot provide additional details about when those cards might be posted to the site or available for order. We will, however, post additional messages to various lists (and to all the individuals who receive this message) as new cards are finished. Thank you for your patience and your efforts to ensure that every vote is counted on Election Day.

Thank you very much,

Daniel Levitas | Ira Glasser Racial Justice Fellow - ACLU Voting Rights Project

2725 Harris Tower | 233 Peachtree Street, N.E. | Atlanta, GA 30303

(404) 523-2721 x 213 (voice) | (404) 653-0331 (fax) | dlevitas@aclu.org

2004-10-17T02:02:00.000-04:00

On the threat of an impending military draft!

Oh, fuck no! I would be protesting that so fucking quickly. Please god, I know we don't get along very well but get Bush Jr. out of office next month!

From a friend's LJ post:
Heh.... Campaigning in an area heavily dependent on the military, Bush said, "We will not have an all-volunteer army" before correcting himself. "Let me restate that," he continued. "We will not have a draft ... . The best way to avoid a draft is to vote for me."

From a Rock the Vote email:
Take Action on the Draft!

Dear Manny,

We just received an outrageous letter from the Chairman of the Republican Party,
demanding that we stop talking about the issue of the military draft.

He said that the draft issue is just an "urban myth" and Rock the Vote's
effort is being conducted with "reckless disregard for the truth."

The truth is that we still haven't received acceptable answers from the candidates
to real questions affecting our lives. The possibility of a draft is not a hoax.
It's a real issue that deserves real answers.

An attempt to silence us by any politician-Democrat, Republican, Whatever-is
unacceptable. This is one of the most important issues affecting our generation. And
that's why we need to stand up and make our voices heard right away.

Below is the letter that Rock the Vote sent back to the Chairman. Please read it.

http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=843295&l=5014 responds to RNC.pdf
(PDF)

If you like what we are saying, sign our petition to the Chairmen of both
the Republican and Democratic parties asking them to answer some key questions that
we have about the draft:

http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=843295&l=5015

We're not going to stop talking about the issue of a draft simply because it makes
the politicians squirm. We're not going to let Congress think that a phony vote
against the draft settles the matter.

By sending thousands of email draft cards and talking to your friends about the
possibility of a draft, you ignited a national dialogue. If you have any doubt, just
look at the last two presidential debates-both of which included questions for both
candidates on the draft.

Click here to tell both parties that we need answers to some fundamental questions
affecting our lives:

http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=843295&l=5016

Sincerely,
Jehmu Greene
President

PS. And please support our effort to keep the heat on the politicians. Donate to our
campaign today.

http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=843295&l=5017

--

Rock the Vote Responds to the RNC

October 14, 2004

Mr. Ed Gillespie, Chairman
Republican National Committee
310 First Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003

VIA FASCIMILE: (202) 863-8774

Dear Chairman Gillespie,

The letter I received from you yesterday was quite a surprise. It struck us as just
the sort of "malicious political deception" that is likely to increase voter
cynicism and decrease the youth vote. In fact, it is a textbook case of attempted
censorship, very much in line with those that triggered our organization's founding
some fifteen years ago.

I am stunned that you would say that the issue of the military draft is an "urban
myth" that has been "thoroughly debunked by no less than the President of the United
States."

I have some news for you. Just because President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and
Secretary Rumsfeld, and for that matter Senator Kerry, say that there is not going
to be a draft does not make it so. Just because Congress holds a transparently phony
vote against the draft does not mean there isn't going to be one. Anyone who thinks
that the youth of America are going to take a politician's word on this topic is
living on another planet.

By your logic, there should be no debate about anything that you disagree with.
There's a place for that kind of sentiment (and your threats), but its not here in
our country. There are questions that the politicians are running away from. How
long can we keep 138,000 U.S. troops or more on the ground in Iraq? What if
full-scale civil war erupts there, as the CIA has warned is a realistic possibility?
Would the next President be faced with a choice of pulling out of Iraq rather than
institute a draft? Would women be drafted? What exactly would the draft-age be?

According to the Pentagon's own internal assessment, there are "inadequate total
numbers" of troops to meet U.S. security interests. The current issue of Time
magazine reports that, "General John Keane, who retired last year as the Army's No.
2 officer, says the continued success of the all-volunteer military is not
guaranteed... Keane has told Congress that adding more than 50,000 troops to the
Army would require thinking about a return to the draft."

But you want young people to believe that the draft is just an "urban myth." I was
expecting that you were going to present some facts to back up your assertion. But,
instead, you have demanded that we stop talking about it.

Although the draft may not be a discussion topic for someone of your age, we have
found that young people - Republicans, Democrats and Independents - are very
interested in this issue. We believe in the capacity of young Americans to make
their own judgments when fairly presented with the facts. That is why we are
actively promoting an informed, educated dialogue. I urge you to review the
"Debunking the Myths" section on our website where we address misperceptions about
the draft.

Mr. Gillespie, this is a generational issue. Nothing cuts closer to the core of the
very reason Rock the Vote exists. We think young people deserve to know where the
politicians stand on this issue-and that a generation that could be called to
service deserves more than the phony debate they are getting. We believe that it is
only by asking questions-not by censoring debate-that our democracy can remain
strong and vital.

Issues such as jobs, health care, Iraq, taxes, and education have energized the
electorate, and the draft issue deserves the same serious treatment and candor.
Blanket denials do not square with the facts and do not level with the electorate.
As far as the possibility that Rock the Vote's efforts might "decrease the youth
vote," we are feeling very confident at this point that the opposite is true. More
than 1.1 million people have used our website to fill out voter registration forms
this election cycle. Our street teams and ground partners have registered hundreds
of thousands more. Young voters are going to surge at the polls on Election Day and
make the difference for whichever candidate does thebest job reaching out to them.

Despite the strong and often strident tone of your letter, I would hope that we
could both agree that honest and open debate is the surest guarantor of our
democracy and liberty.

Sincerely,
Jehmu S. Greene
President

CC:
Randel A. Falco, NBC Universal Television Networks Groups
Judy McGrath, MTV Networks
Jonathan Miller, AOL
Vincent K. McMahon, Chairman, World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.
Richard D. Parsons, Chairman and CEO, Time Warner Inc.
Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
David Letterman, The Late Show
Conan O'Brien, Late Night
Jay Leno, The Tonight Show

--

The Draft

Please view below the draft public service announcement.
The Draft PSA

http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=843295&l=5018

--

The Draft Blog

Check out the current dialogue on the Draft on our Blog!
http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=843295&l=5019

--

Volunteer!

Volunteer with Rock the Vote in our Get Out the Vote and Election Protection efforts!

Click here to Volunteer
http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=843295&l=5020

2004-10-02T00:50:00.000-04:00

I saw John Kerry live here at USF, Tampa today! It was an amazing experience for me despite considering myself a cynic. I'll expand on this later but I'll share the fact that 3 major public figures are visiting my campus at USF in one weekend. Including: John Kerry, Michael Moore, & Gloria Steinem. I feel blessed, for once at this college! Whoo!

2004-10-02T00:43:00.000-04:00

Greg Palast on the Presidential Debate

Mr. Tall and Mr. Small
By Greg Palast

Thursday September 30, 2004
Our President told the debate audience, "You cannot lead if yousend mexxed missiges." I certainly hope not.But that's exactly what we got. You watch our President, the nervoushand-hiding, the compulsive water-glass-fondling, the panickedI-wish-I-had-a-whiskey look, and you think, "My god, this is theguy who's supposed to save us from al Qaeda."And how are we going to win the War on Terror, Mr. President? "First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. Iknow that," he said. Well, that's a start, I suppose.But it doesn't have to stay this way. This is America, home of thebrave and where, I remember from school, we could vote for presidentand the votes would count. So we looked to the tall man next to himto show us the way out.In Iraq, "We don't have enough troops there," said the tallone. Really, Senator? We should send MORE? Not exactly: Mr. Tall'sgot a plan to get our troops out. He'll have a big meeting of"allies," and after he talks with them, they will all jumpup and volunteer to send THEIR kids to Fallujah. France andIndonesia and Kuwait can't wait to ship in soldiers and extra bodybags. Right. We love you, John, but there’s no band of Hobbitscoming to the rescue -- that's just a movie.Well, he looked kind of "presidential." But given theline-up includes Nixon, Ford and two Bushes, that's not a big trick.I'm sorry. I know I'm supposed to stand up and cheer that John Kerrydidn't get Gored. In fact, if you look at presidential debates theway the media plays it, as something akin to Olympic figure skating,where you score for the competitor’s style, you could say Kerry won.But I don't feel WE won anything.I mean, when Jim Lehrer asked how the candidates would make Americasafe from terrorists, Mr. Tall said he'd hire more firemen. And addmore cops. Maybe he thought he was running for mayor.It was disappointing, but then Mr. Small's answer was downrightfrightening. We have to "stay on the offensive," and"stay on the offense," and "I repeat, stay on theoffense." We have no doubt that Mr. Small can beextraordinarily offensive, but even he can't take his offensivenessto the bad guys if he doesn't know where they are. And on thatpoint, he's clueless.There were two words I was hoping to hear from Mr. Tall: "Saudi" and "Arabia." Imagine if he laid it onthe line, "The terrorists didn't put the hijackings on a creditcard, Mr. President. Their Saudi sponsors are fattening on thebloated war-driven price of oil. But you can't touch yourbuck-buddies in the Gulf, can you, Mr. President?. AsCommander-in-Chief, I'd cut'm off at the spigots, beginning with therelease of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And then I'dseize their fat assets in the USA to compensate the victims of terrorattacks."When Mr. Tall was asked what whoppers the President has told us,surely there was something a bit more memorable than Mr. Small'sfailing to win over allies for his whacky crusade.Here's what Mr. Tall said … in my dreams:* "Beginning in March 2001, your Administration began a seriesof meetings with oil company executives to map the conquest of Iraqand its oil, a plan Americans would pay for in blood. You originallycalled this scheme, 'Operation Iraqi Liberation' -- O.I.L. We don'tappreciate your little joke, Mr. Small."* "One month after seizing Baghdad you fired General JayGarner, the man you put in charge of Iraq, after he called for rapidelections in Najaf; after he refused to impose your plans to sell offIraq's oil fields. In Najaf, citizens denied ballots, turned tobullets. And then, as General Garner predicted, the seizure ofIraq's assets resulted in the type of war one expects -- when seekingto impose colonial control."* "Mr. Small, you claim we've given a thousand lives to bringdemocracy to the Mid-east. But so far, your democracy, Mr. Small,comes down to a puppet prime minister, we've installed in Iraq and apuppet government, the Saudis have installed in Washington."OK, I can't expect all that in a presidential debate, where themessage has to fit through a tube. But still, Mr. Tall could havewon my vote with two words. It's the two-word answer John Kerry gavethree decades ago when asked the same question -- “How can we get ourtroops out of a disastrous war?”Then, the clear-minded, tall young men said, "In ships."==================
View Greg Palast's exclusive interview with General Jay Garner forBBC Television in the film, "Bush Family Fortunes,"available this week on DVD in an updated edition from Ryko at http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/39944000/rm/_39944105_iraq_palast19mar_vi.ramTo receive Greg’s investigative reports hot off the press click here:http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm============================================If you would like to have your e-mail address removed from thismailing list. Cut and paste the following URL into your browseraddress bar. This will automatically remove from the mailing list andyou will receive no further mailings.http://www.gregpalast.com/emailremove.cfm?id=5257

2004-08-16T19:27:00.000-04:00

Palast on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez: "negro e indio" - "Floridate" - "pan y ladrillos"

Why does the U.S. mean corruption and greed in other countries? I wonder why? Another brillant piece of journalism from Palast. Quite timely too since I heard about this struggle in Venezuela on Democracy Now! today.

DICK CHENEY, HUGO CHAVEZ AND BILL CLINTON'S BAND
Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President
Monday Aug 16, 2004

There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I
may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts.
Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of
the population, the 'hacendados.'

I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest
march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high
heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez -
dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the
"socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar
convertible.

That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the
"socialist" manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag.
It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress which gave land to
the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant
haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s
by that Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the
time agreed to hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to
their property.

But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the
affable president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of
office, is a "negro e indio" -- a "Black and
Indian" man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless and, until
now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the 80%
Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man
in the Jaguar.

So why, with a huge majority of the electorate behind him, twice in
elections and today in a referendum, is Hugo Chavez in hot water with
our democracy-promoting White House?

Maybe it's the oil. Lots of it. Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude
that rivals Iraq's. And it's not his presidency of Venezuela that
drives the White House bananas, it was his presidency of the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control
of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez cut a deal with our maximum leader of
the time, Bill Clinton, on the price of oil. It was a 'Goldilocks'
plan. The price would not be too low, not too high; just right, kept
between $20 and $30 a barrel.

But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To
him, the oil industry's (and Saudi Arabia's) freedom to set oil
prices is as sacred as freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this
info, by the way, from three top oil industry lobbyists.

Why should Chavez worry about what Dick thinks? Because, said one of
the oil men, the Veep in his bunker, not the pretzel-chewer in the
White House, "runs energy policy in the United States."

And what seems to have gotten our Veep's knickers in a twist is not
the price of oil, but who keeps the loot from the current
band-busting spurt in prices. Chavez had his Congress pass another
oil law, the "Law of Hydrocarbons," which changes the
split. Right now, the oil majors - like PhillipsConoco - keep 84% of
the proceeds of the sale of Venezuela oil; the nation gets only 16%.

Chavez wanted to double his Treasury's take to 30%. And for good
reason. Landless, hungry peasants have, over decades, drifted into
Caracas and other cities, building million-person ghettos of
cardboard shacks and open sewers. Chavez promised to do something
about that.

And he did. "Chavez gives them bread and bricks," one
Venezuelan TV reporter told me. The blonde TV newscaster, in the
middle of a publicity shoot, said the words "pan y
ladrillos" with disdain, making it clear that she never touched
bricks and certainly never waited in a bread line.

But to feed and house the darker folk in those bread and brick
lines, Chavez would need funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie
wouldn't do it. So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving
Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill Clinton's ally in Caracas became Mr.
Cheney's -- and therefore, Mr. Bush's -- enemy.

So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to "Floridate" the will
of the Venezuela electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice
won election. Winning most of the votes, said a White House
spokesman, did not make Chavez' government "legitimate."
Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security spooks
to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from
the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for Democracy,' to the
Chavez-haters running today's "recall" election.

A brilliant campaign of placing stories about Chavez' supposed
unpopularity and "dictatorial" manner seized US news and
op-ed pages, ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York
Times.

But some facts just can't be smothered in propaganda ink. While
George Bush can appoint the government of Iraq and call it
"sovereign," the government of Venezuela is appointed by
its people. And the fact is that most people in this slum-choked land
don't drive Jaguars or have their hair tinted in Miami. Most look in
the mirror and see someone "negro e indio," as dark as
their President Hugo.

The official CIA handbook on Venezuela says that half the nation's
farmers own only 1% of the land. They are the lucky ones, as more
peasants owned nothing. That is, until their man Chavez took office.
Even under Chavez, land redistribution remains more a promise than an
accomplishment. But today, the landless and homeless voted their
hopes, knowing that their man may not, against the armed axis of
local oligarchs and Dick Cheney, succeed for them. But they are
convinced he will never forget them.

And that's a fact.

---

Greg Palast's reports from Venezuela for BBC Television's Newsnight
and the Guardian papers of Britain earned a California State
University Journalism School "Project Censored" award for
2002. View photos and Palast's reports on Venezuela at
www.GregPalast.com.

2004-08-11T13:11:00.000-04:00

This is seriously the most tragic thing I've heard all day. How can we continue to engage in war when it destroys peoples lives and minds because it's too much for humans to take. This young person could not overcome the pain of killing other human beings, especially if they were unarmed. I can't seriously sit here and do nothing about the madness in the world. I don't think any protest could change things now.

Wednesday, August 11th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/11/145205

Parents Mourn Son's Suicide After Returning From Iraq Duty: "He's a Casualty of War But He'll Never Be Known As That"

We continue our conversation with Kevin and Joyce Lucey, the parents of Jeffrey Lucey, a 23 year-old U.S. soldier who hung himself a year after returning home from military duty in Iraq.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the Democratic National Convention in Boston, the parents of Jeffrey Lucey, a U.S. soldier who killed himself after returning home from military duty in Iraq, spoke publicly for the first time on Democracy Now!
Lucey signed up for the Marine Reserves straight out of high school. In February 2003, one month before the invasion, he was shipped out to Iraq. He was deployed there for five months, during which he fought in the battle of Nasiriyah. He returned to the U.S. later that year.

A few months after his return, Jeffrey's parents, Kevin and Joyce, began noticing signs of what they later came to know as post-traumatic stress syndrome. In late May 2004, they had Jeffrey involuntarily committed to a military veteran's hospital after he ignored his parents' and sister, Debbie's pleas to seek help. The hospital discharged him after a few days.

Three weeks later on June 22nd, Jeffrey Lucey took his own life. He was 23 years old. His father, Kevin came home to find his son had hung himself with a hose in the cellar of their house. The dog tags of two Iraqi prisoners he said he was forced to shoot unarmed, lay on his bed.

Shortly after his death, Kevin and Joyce Lucey joined us on the program to talk about their son. After the broadcast, we continued our conversation with them.

2004-07-22T03:32:00.000-04:00

Ronstadt Booed and Booted - STORY BELOW

I am so sick of the reactionary citizens of this country who dumbly believe that protecting this sham of a president is actually being patriotic. Where the hell are all the liberals and people with common sense to stand up for those who wish to speak out? I'm just sick of conservatives and right-wingers controlling the official message or what's sanctioned. How could censorship ever be a good thing in a democracy? How can so many people feel so threatened by the very mention of Moore's name and film? It's unbelievable how bad the climate is for dissent when people will angrily shout you down and kick you out for speaking your mind. Ronstadt must be allowed to speak her mind. Hell, she comes from a period in music where it was a nessecity to be political in your music and performance. I'm not sure why her fans are so shocked to hear her voice political opinions, unless they're morons who think that another Sept. 11th will never happen as long as we keep our mouths shut and trust the adminstration to protect us. Guess what? Fuck the government! They are hardly trustworhty, especially Bush and his adminstation. Goddamn, I can't wait for him to get booted out of the White House for the blatant lies he's used to cover his ass. Goddamn, I am fucking "American!!!" (as these blind patriotic morons insist on stressing) and I would rather have Michael Moore as president instead of the current meathead in office. Cultural life and the political landscape is slowly dying right now in America thanks in part to blind "patriots" constantly censoring people who don't agree with them. This is the kind of country I don't want to live. This is facism. AAHHHHH!!!!

Ronstadt Booed and Booted

http://www.pollstar.com/news/viewnews.pl?NewsID=3464

Updated 12:13 PDT Mon, Jul 19 2004
(Las Vegas - AP)
Singer Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" during a performance at the Aladdin hotel-casino. Before singing "Desperado" for an encore Saturday night, the 58-year-old rocker called Moore a "great American patriot" and "someone who is spreading the truth." She also encouraged everybody to see the documentary about President Bush Ronstadt's comments drew loud boos and some of the 4,500 people in attendance stormed out of the theater. People also tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air. "It was a very ugly scene," Aladdin President Bill Timmins told The Associated Press. "She praised him and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose." Timmins, who is British and was watching the show, decided Ronstadt had to go - for good. Timmins said he didn't allow Ronstadt back in her luxury suite and she was escorted off the property. Ronstadt's antics "spoiled a wonderful evening for our guests and we had to do something about it," Timmins said. Timmins said it was the first time he sent a performer packing. "As long as I'm here, she's not going to play," Timmins said. Ronstadt had been booked to play the Aladdin for only one show. Calls to Ronstadt's manager were not immediately returned. In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal before the show, Ronstadt said "I keep hoping that if I'm annoying enough to them, they won't hire me back." Looks like she got her wish.

2004-07-22T03:14:00.000-04:00

RHAPSODY Link

2004-06-12T03:28:00.000-04:00

I'm glad Morrissey said it!

'Bush should have died, not Reagan': Morrissey

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/04-06/11.shtml

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/comments/view.html?story_id=119107

*Man, this coverage of Reagan is driving me insane! Who gives a shit! I feel like such a teenager for feeling so apathetic about this shit but it really is more than necessary! I'm also peeved that the mail didn't come today (in honor of Reagan?!) since I still haven't received the latest Morrissey album that I ordered about 2 weeks ago. I think it's lost in the mail! Almost by coincidence, Pitchfork featured a news story about some political shitstorm Morrissey has started by wishing that Bush would have died instead of Reagan. Amen brother! Although, I would take it one step further and say it wouldn't be such a loss if both were dead. I know there would still be unscrupulous people in power if they were dead; there would just be two less. I'm absolutely sick of white men in power! I might actually run for office so I can change that... urrghh.

2004-06-11T15:33:00.000-04:00

Call me a hippie, but I totally agree with this song....

It was originally sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie but I heard the version by 60's folk singer, Donovan on a British Invasion compilation that I have. It's a very beautiful song that always gets me teary-eyed when I hear it. I only wish everyone could agree on the message of this song and then refuse to take part in any wars. The more I mature and learn, the more I realize that I'll never understand or support war of any nature. It's always wrong to kill, especially when it's civilians being killed with immense bombs. Fuck war and the military. Oh, and blind patriotism, too. I can't get out if this political mood that I'm in. I'm very worried about the issues at hand and the future. Not even music can soothe my nerves when I'm so angry about unjust killings.

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
Buffy Sainte-Marie
© Caleb Music-ASCAP

I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

2004-03-28T05:01:00.000-05:00

Hello world!
This is my first post on my blog and hopefully things will go well. I'm kind of sick of staring at a computer screen, though, so I'll be off soon. I also need a shower since I've been on the web so long. I am an admitted net junkie. Not good for human interaction or personal health! Oh well.