Observations on current events

Energy:

An Audi we're unlikely to see in the U.S.
Consumption of 3.3 liters / 100 km = 71 MPG (U.S. Gal.)

Fourtitude.com - New Audi A3 1.9 TDI e Uses Just 3.3l/100km From Darwin to Adelaide
"The new Audi A3 Sportback 1.9 TDI e has achieved an outstanding fuel consumption result of just 3.3l/100km following its maiden Panasonic World Solar Challenge voyage from Darwin, NT to Adelaide, SA.
Travelling a total of 3,543 km from Darwin to Adelaide, the official results published by the organisers saw the new A3 1.9 TDI e achieve an average result of 3.3l/100km. At times, fuel consumption dropped as low as 2.6l/100km on the journey. Average C02 emissions were just 98g/km.
Official fuel stops along the route recorded how efficiently all participants travelled. The final results were presented last night (Sunday 28 October 2007) at the Adelaide Town Hall..."

The Government of We The People?

Has the NID forgotten who he is employed by (U.S. taxpayers)? The People have every right to know.

Reluctance to even ask for an NIE to be produced is another matter.
Team Bush had to be dragged kicking and screaming to even request an NIE on Iraq, a country already targeted for invasion. One would think an NIE would be requested before one makes up one's mind to invade, but that tells us just how important the assessment of the intelligence community was to these people. They preferred to 'stovepipe' intel from the OSP straight to Cheney's office.

AP: US Intelligence Officials Clamping Down on Release of Intelligence Estimates
"National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates, a top U.S. intelligence official said Friday.
Knowing their words may be scrutinized outside the U.S. government chills analysts' willingness to provide unvarnished opinions and information, said David Shedd, a deputy to McConnell.
He told congressional aides and reporters that McConnell recently issued a directive making it more difficult to declassify the key judgments of national intelligence estimates, or NIEs, which are forward-looking analyses prepared for the White House and Congress that represent the consensus of the nation's 16 spy agencies on a single issue. The analysis comes from various sources including the CIA, the military and intelligence agencies inside federal departments.
Referring to the public release of the reports, Shedd said during a congressional briefing: 'It affects the quality of what's written.'
So far this year, the national intelligence director's office has released unclassified key judgments from three NIEs - two on Iraq and one on terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland.
The trend toward releasing NIEs started about four years ago, most notably with the White House's July 2003 disclosure of key judgments from a controversial NIE on Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program. The White House was pressured to release those findings after parts of the NIE that supported the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq were leaked to the press..."


Being Well-Connected PAYS!

LA Times: Firm Awarded Defense Contract After Hiring Ex-Bush Official
"A Defense Department medical services contract worth up to $790 million was awarded last month to a Wisconsin-based company three months after it hired a former Bush administration appointee who had supervised military health programs at the Pentagon for the last six years.
William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs from 2001 until April, joined Logistics Health Inc. as a director and consultant in June. The firm beat out two other bidders with proposals that ranged from $80 million to $100 million less, records show. Under the new contract, Logistics Health will provide immunizations and physical and dental exams for reservists and National Guard members.
Logistics Health of LaCrosse, Wis., is headed by another ex-official of the Bush administration - former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson..."


Buying Influence:

NY Times: As Democrats Criticize, Health Care Industry Donates
"In a reversal from past election cycles, Democratic candidates for president are outpacing Republicans in donations from the health care industry, even as the leading Democrats in the field offer proposals that have caused deep anxiety in some sectors of the industry, according to campaign finance records.
Hospitals, drug makers, doctors and insurers gave candidates in both parties more than $11 million in the first nine months of this year, according to an analysis done for The New York Times by the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent group that tracks campaign finance.
In all, the Democratic presidential candidates have raised about $6.5 million from the industry, compared with nearly $4.8 million for the Republican candidates. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has amassed the most of any candidate, despite her calls for broad changes to the health care system that could pose serious financial challenges to private insurers, drug companies and other sectors.
Mrs. Clinton received $2.7 million through the end of September, far more than Mitt Romney, the Republican who raised the most from the health care industry, with $1.6 million. The industry's drift in contributions toward Democratic candidates mirrors wider trends among donors, but the donations from this sector are particularly notable because of the party's focus on overhauling the health care system..."


The Farm Bill As America's Food Bill:

McClatchy Newspapers: Are Rising Obesity Rates Linked to US Farm Aid?
"...Hoping to produce thinner waistlines, many doctors - including the American Medical Association - want Congress to stop subsidizing the production of foods that are high in fat and cholesterol and spend more to promote fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains that are not.
Farm Belt lawmakers are on the defensive.
'I agree that obesity and health are serious issues in America today,' said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. 'However, blaming the cause on the crops that we grow in Kansas and/or the U.S. farm program is overlooking the personal responsibility we all have in our daily lives and diets.'
The debate is intensifying as the Senate prepares to vote on a new farm bill. On Thursday, the Senate Agriculture Committee approved a bill that would give a record $2 billion for specialty crops, which include fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits and nursery crops. That's at least four times as much as what Congress provided in 2002, when it approved the last farm bill.
The 2007 farm bill will determine which food industries get the most help from U.S. taxpayers over the next five years.
'The real scandal in Washington is the farm bill,' said Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. 'Senators take millions from corporations that produce bacon, burgers and other fatty foods. Then Congress buys up these unhealthy products and dumps them on our school lunch program. Companies get rich, and kids get fat.'
Fruit and vegetable growers, who have long felt ignored on Capitol Hill, are confident they'll cash in this year. They want to persuade Congress to broaden subsidies beyond traditional farm crops such as corn, wheat, rice and cotton..."


Energy:

AP: Panel Urges Bush to Drop Nuke Waste Plan
"A panel of the National Academy of Sciences urged President Bush on Monday to abandon an ambitious plan to resume nuclear waste reprocessing that is the heart of the administration's push to expand the civilian use of nuclear power.
A 17-member panel of the Academy's National Research Council said the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, has not been adequately peer reviewed and is banking on reprocessing technology that hasn't been proven, or isn't expected to be ready in the time the administration envisions.
The report, released Monday, said GNEP research is taking money and focus away from other nuclear research programs and efforts to speed the construction of new nuclear power plants..."

Iraq:

AP: Immunity deal hampers Blackwater inquiry

How convenient, that one hand washes the other. The State Department seems to forget for whom they work: The People.

"The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
The immunity deal has delayed a criminal inquiry into the Sept. 16 killings and could undermine any effort to prosecute security contractors for their role in the incident that has infuriated the Iraqi government..."


McClatchy Newspapers: Chalabi back in action in Iraq
"Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial, ubiquitous Iraqi politician and one-time Bush administration favorite, has re-emerged as a central figure in the latest U.S. strategy for Iraq.
His latest job: To press Iraq's central government to use early security gains from the surge to deliver better electricity, health, education and local security services to Baghdad neighborhoods. That's the next phase of the surge plan. Until now, the U.S. military, various militias, insurgents and some U.S. backed groups have provided those services without great success.
That the U.S. and Iraqi officials are again turning to Chalabi, this time to restore life to Baghdad neighborhoods, speaks to his resiliency in this nascent government. It's also, some say, his latest effort to promote himself as a true national advocate for everyday Iraqis.
Chalabi, in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, provided White House and Pentagon officials and journalists with a stream of bogus or exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorism. He also suggested that he'd lead Iraq to make peace with Israel and welcome permanent U.S. military bases, which could apply pressure to Iran and Syria..."


Justice & Government Secrets:

Brad Blog: EXCLUSIVE: FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Will Now Tell All - and Face Charges if Necessary - to Any Major Television Network That Will Let Her
'Attention CBS 60 Minutes: we've got a huge scoop for you. If you want it.
Remember the exclusive story you aired on Sibel Edmonds, originally on October 27th, 2002, when she was not allowed to tell you everything that she heard while serving as an FBI translator after 9/11 because she was gagged by the rarely-invoked 'States Secret Privilege'? Well, she's still gagged. In fact, as the ACLU first described her, she's 'the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.'
But if you'll sit down and talk with her for an unedited interview, she has now told The BRAD BLOG during an exclusive interview, she will now tell you everything she knows.
Everything she hasn't been allowed to tell since 2002, about the criminal penetration of the FBI where she worked, and at the Departments of State and Defense; everything she heard concerning the corruption and illegal activities of several well-known members of Congress; everything she's aware of concerning information omitted and/or covered up in relation to 9/11. All of the information gleaned from her time listening to and translating wire-taps made prior to 9/11 at the FBI..."

Taxes:

The Raw Story: Clinton labor secretary: 'Bought out' Democrats won't raise taxes on rich
" 'Taxing the super-rich is not about class envy, as conservatives charge,' argues Robert Reich, secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, in a Salon essay Thursday. 'It's about the nation having enough money to pay for national defense and homeland security, good schools and a crumbling infrastructure, the upcoming costs of boomers' Social Security (the current surplus has masked the true extent of the current budget deficit, but it won't for much longer) and, hopefully, affordable national health insurance.'
All the top Democratic presidential candidates have said they would roll back President Bush's tax cuts, returning the tax rate for top earners to 38 percent from the 35 percent it sank to during the Bush years. But Reich argues this approach is small potatoes compared to what's needed to fund necessary programs, and he said Democratic fealty to raising taxes creates the appearance that 'the rich have bought them out.'
The widening income gap has put 21 percent of the country's income into the hands of the top 1 percent of Americans, while the bottom 50 percent of workers earn just 12.8 percent of wages, creating the highest concentration of wealth since the 1920s.

'The biggest emerging pay gap is actually within the top 1 percent of all earners,' Reich notes (emphasis his). 'It's mainly a gap between corporate CEOs, on the one hand, and Wall Street financiers -- hedge-fund managers, private-equity managers (think Mitt Romney) and investment bankers -- on the other.'
Several hedge fund managers take more more than $1 billion per year, and their income is treated as capital gains -- not income -- so they pay a 15 percent tax rate, which is lower than that paid by most middle-class Americans, Reich notes.
'At the very least, you might think that Democrats would do something about the anomaly in the tax code. ... But Senate Democrats recently backed off a proposal to do just that,' he writes. 'Why? It turns out that Democrats are getting more campaign contributions these days from hedge-fund and private-equity partners than Republicans are getting. In the run-up to the 2006 election, donations from hedge-fund employees were running better than 2-to-1 Democratic. The party doesn't want to bite the hands that feed,'..."


Campaign For The 2008 GOP Nomination:

Frank Rich: Rudy, the Values Slayer
"...I asked Mr. Koeppel, a born comic, whether it was unexpected that Rudy would live with an openly gay couple. 'I don’t know if it’s any more unusual than him wearing a dress,' he deadpanned. On a more sober note, Mr. Koeppel told me that the connubially challenged mayor was an admirer of his and Mr. Hsiao’s relatively 'idyllic life' and had assured them that 'if they ever legalized gay marriages, we would be the first one he would do.' That this same Rudy Giuliani would emerge as the front-runner in the Republican pack six years later is the great surprise of the 2008 presidential campaign to date, especially to the political press. Since the dawn of the new century, it has been the rarely questioned conventional wisdom, handed down by Karl Rove, that no Republican can rise to the top of the party or win the presidency without pandering as slavishly as George W. Bush has to the most bullying and gay-baiting power brokers of the religious right..."


Human Rights

The Observer (UK) - Indian 'slave' children found making low-cost clothes destined for Gap
"Child workers, some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant. Speaking to The Observer, the children described long hours of unwaged work, as well as threats and beatings. Gap said it was unaware that clothing intended for the Christmas market had been improperly subcontracted to a sweatshop using child labour. It announced it had withdrawn the garments involved while it investigated breaches of the ethical code imposed by it three years ago..."

Who Pays Most Dearly For Anti-Regulation Ideology?

Paul Krugman: A Catastrophe Foretold
" 'Increased subprime lending has been associated with higher levels of delinquency, foreclosure and, in some cases, abusive lending practices.' So declared Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve official.
These days a lot of people are saying things like that about subprime loans — mortgages issued to buyers who don’t meet the normal financial criteria for a home loan. But here’s the thing: Mr. Gramlich said those words in May 2004.
And it wasn’t his first warning. In his last book, Mr. Gramlich, who recently died of cancer, revealed that he tried to get Alan Greenspan to increase oversight of subprime lending as early as 2000, but got nowhere.
So why was nothing done to avert the subprime fiasco?...
...The answer is ideology.
In a paper presented just before his death, Mr. Gramlich wrote that 'the subprime market was the Wild West. Over half the mortgage loans were made by independent lenders without any federal supervision.' What he didn’t mention was that this was the way the laissez-faire ideologues ruling Washington — a group that very much included Mr. Greenspan — wanted it. They were and are men who believe that government is always the problem, never the solution, that regulation is always a bad thing..."

FEMA:

Raw Story: White House: Fake FEMA news conference won't happen again
"White House Press Secretary Dana Perino assured reporters today that the staged news conference organized on Tuesday by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would not happen again, and said the White House would never employ such tactics at its own press briefings.
'It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it,' said Perino.
According to a report in the Washington Post, FEMA had instructed its own public relations staff to pose as reporters when no legitimate members of the media arrived in time for a hastily arranged briefing about the California wildfires..."

The Environment:

El Paso Times: El Paso Times - Chertoff waives laws to build border fence
"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used his power to bypass environmental laws so he can restart construction of a fence on the Arizona-Mexico border.
Chertoff's action made public on Monday allows construction to go forward on about seven miles of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Arizona.
Work on nearly two miles of the fence has been suspended since Oct. 10. On that day, a judge ordered a delay on its construction.
She ruled the federal government had not fully studied the environmental impact of the fence.
Congress gave Chertoff the power to waive environmental and other laws to build border barriers when it passed the REAL ID Act in 2005."


On Torture:

Raw Story: General claims Bush gave 'marching orders' on aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo
"More than 100,000 pages of newly released government documents demonstrate how US military interrogators 'abused, tortured or killed' scores of prisoners rounded up since Sept. 11, 2001, including some who were not even suspected of having terrorist ties, according to a just-published book.
In Administration of Torture, two American Civil Liberties Union attorneys detail the findings of a years-long investigation and court battle with the administration that resulted in the release of massive amounts of data on prisoner treatment and the deaths of US-held prisoners.
'[T]he documents show unambiguously that the administration has adopted some of the methods of the most tyrannical regimes,' write Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh. 'Documents from Guantanamo describe prisoners shackled in excruciating 'stress positions,' held in freezing-cold cells, forcibly stripped, hooded, terrorized with military dogs, and deprived of human contact for months.'
Most of the documents on which Administration of Torture is based were obtained as a result of ongoing legal fights over a Freedom of Information Act request filed in October 2003 by the ACLU and other human rights and anti-war groups, the ACLU said in a news release.
The documents show that prisoner abuse like that found at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was hardly the isolated incident that the Bush administration or US military claimed it was. By the time the prisoner abuse story broke in mid-2004 the Army knew of at least 62 other allegations of abuse at different prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, the authors report.
Drawing almost exclusively from the documents, the authors say there is a stark contrast between the public statements of President Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the policies those and others in the administration were advocating behind the scenes.
President Bush gave 'marching orders' to Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who asked the Pentagon to approve harsher interrogation methods at Guantanamo, the general claims in documents reported in the book..."


Iraq:

CNN: Report: Most of $1.2 billion to train Iraqi police unaccounted for
"The U.S. State Department is unable to account for most of $1.2 billion in funding that it gave to DynCorp International to train Iraqi police, a government report said Tuesday..."

Iraq:

Jack Miles: Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
"The oil game in Iraq may be almost up. On September 29th, like a landlord serving notice, the government of Iraq announced that the next annual renewal of the United Nations Security Council mandate for a multinational force in Iraq - the only legal basis for a continuation of the American occupation - will be the last. That was, it seems, the first shoe to fall. The second may be an announcement terminating the little-noticed, but crucial companion Security Council mandate governing the disposition of Iraq's oil revenues..."

AP: State Department Security Chief Resigns
"The State Department's security chief resigned on Wednesday in the wake of last month's deadly Blackwater USA shooting incident in Baghdad and growing questions about the use of private contractors to protect diplomats in Iraq..."


Iran:

Esquire: The Secret History of the Impending War With Iran
"Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush Administration say the US has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise. It'll be Iraq all over again...."

The Warfare State:

Apparently there's always money to be found for more war, but little chance for funding healthcare or heating assistance for the poor. Once again, is this just a cynical GOP back-door strategy to bankrupt the People's government, so it can never again afford to fund the New Deal and Great Society programs the Conservatives hate so much?

Maya Schenwar: War Supplemental Makes Room for Iran
"The Bush administration's $196.4 billion war supplemental spending request, released Monday, has Democrats reeling. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd called the supplemental "short-sighted at best," while House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey remarked in a statement, 'It's amazing to me that the president expects to be taken seriously.' Yet beyond the request's mind-boggling size, its open-ended aims point to the potentially vast scope of the 'war on terror' for years to come - including an undiminished presence in Iraq and the possibility of action against Iran.
In the newly revised supplemental, more money than ever has been appropriated for procurement - the production of new materials, which may take three years to actually reach the battlefield, according to Department of Defense estimates in 2006. Moreover, that battlefield may change. The 2008 supplemental's title, the Global War on Terror Request, is appropriately broad, as the majority of the request's appropriations do not refer exclusively to Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, according to a report this morning in Congressional Quarterly Today, the Bush administration's request for a 'Massive Ordnance Penetrator for the B-2 aircraft in response to an Urgent Operational Need from theater commanders' could be geared toward bombing underground targets in Iran.
Policy experts say that, as it stands, the supplemental contains no provisions that would prevent its funds from being used to strike Iran..."

The Independent (UK) - Afghanistan and Iraq Set to Cost More Than Vietnam and Korea
"President George Bush will have spent more than $1 trillion on military adventures by the time he leaves office at the end of next year, more than the entire amount spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
There are also disturbing signs that Mr Bush is preparing an attack on Iran during his remaining months in office. He has demanded $46bn (£22.5bn) emergency funds from Congress by Christmas and included with it a single sentence requesting money to upgrade the B-2 'stealth' bomber.
By wrapping his request in the flag of patriotism, the President has made it very difficult even for an anti-war Congress to refuse the money. He was accompanied by the family of a dead US marine when he made the request for funds on Monday..."


Free & Fair Elections?

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: Will the GOP election theft machine do it again in 2008?
"With record low approval ratings for the Bush/Cheney regime and the albatross of an unpopular war hanging from the GOP's neck, do you think that a Democratic presidential candidate will win the White House, get us out of Iraq, and end our long national nightmare?
Think again – the mighty election theft machine Karl Rove used to steal the US presidency in 2000 and 2004 may be under attack, but it is still in place for the upcoming 2008 election.
With his usual devious mastery, Rove has seized upon the national outrage sparked by his electoral larceny and used it as smokescreen while he makes the American electoral system even MORE unfair, and even EASIER to rig. Thus the administration has fired federal attorneys when they would not participate in a nationwide campaign to deny minorities and the poor their access to the polls. It has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to install electronic voting machines that can be 'flipped' with a few keystrokes. And under the guise of 'reforming' our busted electoral system, it is setting us up for another presidential theft in 2008..."

Right-Wing Propaganda:

Barbara Ehrenreich: It’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week!
"I’ve never been able to explain Halloween to the kids, with its odd thematic confluence of pumpkins, candy and death. But Halloween is a piece of pumpkin cake compared to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which commences today. In this special week, organized by conservative pundit David Horowitz, we have a veritable witches’ brew of Cheney-style anti-jihadism mixed in with old-fashioned, right-wing anti-feminism and a sour dash of anti-Semitism.
A major purpose of this week is to wake up academic women to the threat posed by militant jihadism. According to the Week’s website, feminists and particularly the women’s studies professors among them, have developed a masochistic fondness for Islamic fundamentalists. Hence, as anti-Islamo-Fascist speakers fan out to the nation’s campuses this week, students are urged to stage 'sit-ins in Women’s Studies Departments and campus Women’s Centers to protest their silence about the oppression of women in Islam.'
Leaving aside the obvious quibbles about feminist pro-jihadism and the term 'Islamo-Fascism,' which seems largely designed to give jihadism a nice familiar World War II ring, the klaxons didn’t go off for me until I skimmed down the list of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week speakers and found, incredibly enough, Ann Coulter, whom I last caught on TV pining for the repeal of women’s suffrage. 'If we took away women’s right to vote,' she said wistfully, 'We’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream; it’s a personal fantasy of mine.'
Coulter is not the only speaker on the list who may have a credibility problem when it comes to opposing oppression of women in Islam or anywhere else. Another participant in the week’s events is former Senator Rick Santorum, whose book, It Takes a Family blamed 'radical feminism' for pushing women into the workforce and thus destroying the American family. A 2005 column on that book in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, began with: 'Women of America, I hope you look good in a burqa. If Senator Rick Santorum,R-PA, has his way, we will all be wearing the burqas discarded by our recently liberated sisters in Afghanistan...' (This was the before the Taliban re-emerged,)..."


Bush & Iran:

Ralph Nader: The Imperial Presidency
"Mired in the disastrous Iraq quagmire, opposed by a majority of Americans, George W. Bush has reached new depths of reckless, belligerent bellowing. At a recent news conference, he volunteered that he told our allies that if they’re 'interested in avoiding World War III,' Iran must be prevented from both developing a nuclear weapon or having 'the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.'
To what level of political insanity has this Washington Caesar descended? Only two countries can start World War III-Russia and the United States. Is Bush saying that if Russia, presently opposed to military action against Iran, persists with its position, Bush may risk World War III? If not, why is this law-breaking warmonger, looking for another war for American GIs to fight, while his military-age daughters bask in the celebrity lime light?
Why is he using such catastrophic language?
Surely he does not think Iran could start World War III. His own intelligence agencies say that, even assuming that the international inspectors are wrong and Iran is moving toward developing the 'knowledge' of such weapons, it can’t build its first such weapon before 3 to 5 years at the earliest.
Why would a regime ruling an impoverished country risk suicide, surrounded as it is by countries armed to the nuclear teeth, such as Israel and the United States? This nation of nearly 80 million people hardly needs to be reminded that the U.S. overthrew its popular premier in 1953, installing for the next 27 years the brutal regime of the Shah.
They recall that President Reagan and his Vice President, George Herbert Walker Bush urged, funded and equipped Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran-a nation that has not invaded any country in over 250 years-which took around 700,000 Iranian lives.
Moreover, the undeniable historical record shows that U.S. companies received licenses from the Department of Commerce, under Reagan, to ship Saddam the raw materials necessary to make chemical and biological weapons. Saddam used such lethal chemical weapons, with the tolerance of Reagan and Rumsfeld, on Iranians to devastating effect in terms of lives lost.
Then George W. Bush labels Iran a member of the 'axis of evil' along with Iraq, ignoring a serious proposal by Iran in 2003 for negotiations, and shows what his language means by invading Iraq.
The authoritarian Iranian government is frightened enough to hurl some defiant rhetoric back at Washington and widen its perimeter defense. Seymour Hersh, the topflight investigative reporter for the New Yorker magazine has written numerous articles on how the crowding of Iran, including infiltrating its interior, has become an obsession of the messianic militarist in the White House.
The Pentagon is more cautious, worrying about our already drained Army and the absence of any military strategy and readiness for many consequences that would follow Bush’s 'bombs away' mentality.
Then there is the matter of the Democrats in Congress. After their costly fumble on Iraq, the opposition Party should make it very constitutionally clear, as recommended by former New York Governor, Mario Cuomo in a recent op-ed, that there can be no funded attacks on any country without a Congressional declaration of war, as explicitly required by the framers of our Constitution.
But the Democrats are too busy surrendering to other Bush demands, whether unconstitutional, above the law or just plain marinated in corporate greed. Some of this obeisance was all too clear in the Democrats questioning of Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey..."


Scott Ritter: On the Eve of Destruction
"...Pundits have raised their eyebrows and comics are busy writing jokes, but the president’s reference to Armageddon, no matter how cavalierly uttered and subsequently brushed away, suggests an alarming context. Some might note that the comment was simply an offhand response to a reporter’s question, the kind of free-thinking scenario that baffles Bush so. In a way, this makes what the president said even more disturbing, since we now have an insight into the vision, and related terminology, which hovers just below the horizon in the brain of George W. Bush..."

Economics:

Paul Krugman: Gone Baby Gone
"It pains me to say this, but this time Alan Greenspan is right about housing..."

Machines of War:

WIRED: Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14
"We're not used to thinking of them this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic -- picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force 'is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday,'..."

Plamegate:

Bush and Cheney are threatening WWW III over Iran's desire to do what at least two of its neighbors (Pakistan & Israel) do. The fact that Plame was working on non-proliferation makes the politically-motivated outing of Amb. Wilson's wife even more disturbing. The people at BushCo really are incredibly irresponsible, while claiming to need to violate the Constitution to keep America 'safe.'

Raw Story: CBS confirms 2006 Raw Story scoop: Plame's job was to keep nukes from Iran
"CBS News has confirmed, in advance of a 60 Minutes interview with outed CIA agent Valerie Plame to be run this Sunday, that Plame 'was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.' 'Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons,' Plame told 60 Minutes. Plame also indicated that her outing in 2003 had caused grave damage to CIA operations, saying, 'All the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases' to see where she had gone and who she had met with. RAW STORY first revealed Plame's Iran mission and the damage done to CIA operations by her outing in a February 13, 2006 story by Raw investigative editor Larisa Alexandrovna, titled 'Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say,'..."

On Torture:

Tom Engelhardt: Bush’s Pentagon PapersThe Urge to Confess
"They can’t help themselves. They want to confess.
How else to explain the torture memorandums that continue to flow out of the inner sancta of this administration, the most recent of which were evidently leaked to the New York Times. Those two, from the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department, were written in 2005 and recommitted the administration to the torture techniques it had been pushing for years. As the Times noted, the first of those memorandums, from February of that year, was 'an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.' The second 'secret opinion' was issued as Congress moved to outlaw 'cruel, inhuman, and degrading' treatment (not that such acts weren’t already against U.S. and international law). It brazenly 'declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard'; and, the Times assured us, 'the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums.'
All of these memorandums, in turn, were written years after John Yoo’s infamous 'torture memo' of August 2002 and a host of other grim documents on detention, torture, and interrogation had already been leaked to the public, along with graphic FBI emailed observations of torture and abuse at Guantanamo, those 'screen savers' from Abu Ghraib, and so much other incriminating evidence. In other words, in early 2005 when that endorsement of “the harshest interrogation techniques” was being written, its authors could hardly have avoided knowing that it, too, would someday become part of the public record.
But, it seems, they couldn’t help themselves. Torture, along with repetitious, pretzled 'legal' justifications for doing so, were bones that administration officials — from the President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense on down — just couldn’t resist gnawing on again and again. So, what we’re dealing with is an obsession, a fantasy of empowerment, utterly irrational in its intensity, that’s gripped this administration. None of the predictable we’re shocked! we’re shocked! editorial responses to the Times latest revelations begin to account for this..."


Government Of, By, and For The People?

Naomi Klein: Outsourcing Government
"‘We didn’t want to get stuck with a lemon.' That’s what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said to a House committee last month. He was referring to the 'virtual fence' planned for the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada. If the entire project goes as badly as the 28-mile prototype, it could turn out to be one of the most expensive lemons in history, projected to cost $8 billion by 2011. Boeing, the company that landed the contract — the largest ever awarded by the Department of Homeland Security — announced this week that it will finally test the fence after months of delay due to computer problems. Heavy rains have confused its remote-controlled cameras and radar, and the sensors can’t tell the difference between moving people, grazing cows or rustling bushes. But this debacle points to more than faulty technology. It exposes the faulty logic of the Bush administration’s vision of a hollowed-out government run everywhere possible by private contractors. According to this radical vision, contractors treat the state as an ATM, withdrawing massive contracts to perform core functions like securing borders and interrogating prisoners, and making deposits in the form of campaign contributions. As President Bush’s former budget director, Mitch Daniels, put it: 'The general idea — that the business of government is not to provide services but to make sure that they are provided — seems self-evident to me.'
The flip side of the Daniels directive is that the public sector is rapidly losing the ability to fulfill its most basic responsibilities — and nowhere more so than in the Department of Homeland Security, which, as a Bush creation, has followed the ATM model since its inception..."

Economics:

Naomi Klein: Greenspan and the Myth of the True Believer
"...When hard-right political leaders and their advisers apply brutal economic shock therapy, do they honestly believe the trickle-down effects will build equitable societies--or are they just deliberately creating the conditions for yet another corporate feeding frenzy? Put bluntly, Has the world been transformed over the past three decades by lofty ideology or by lowly greed?
A definitive answer would require reading the minds of men like Dick Cheney and Paul Bremer, so I tend to dodge. The ideology in question holds that self-interest is the engine that drives society to its greatest heights. Isn't pursuing their own self-interest (and that of their campaign donors) compatible with that philosophy? That's the beauty: They don't have to choose. Unfortunately, this rarely satisfies graduate students looking for deeper meaning. Thankfully I now have a new escape hatch: quoting Alan Greenspan.
His autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, has been marketed as a mystery solved: The man who bit his tongue for eighteen years as head of the Federal Reserve was finally going to tell the world what he really believed. And Greenspan has delivered, using his book and the surrounding publicity as a platform for his 'libertarian Republican' ideology, chiding George W. Bush for abandoning the crusade for small government and revealing that he became a policy-maker because he thought he could advance his radical ideology more effectively 'as an insider, rather than as a critical pamphleteer' on the margins. Yet what is most interesting about Greenspan's story is what it reveals about the ambiguous role of ideas in the free-market crusade. Given that Greenspan is perhaps the world's most powerful living free-market ideologue, it is significant that his commitment to ideology seems rather thin and perfunctory--less zealous belief, more convenient cover story.
Much of the debate around Greenspan's legacy has revolved around the matter of hypocrisy, of a man preaching laissez-faire who repeatedly intervened in the market to save the wealthiest players. The economy that is Greenspan's legacy hardly fits the definition of a libertarian market but looks very much like another phenomenon described in his book: "When a government's leaders routinely seek out private-sector individuals or businesses and, in exchange for political support, bestow favors on them, the society is said to be in the grip of 'crony capitalism.'" He was talking about Indonesia under Suharto, but my mind went straight to Iraq under Halliburton. Greenspan is currently warning the world about a dangerous looming backlash against capitalism. Apparently, this has nothing at all to do with the policies of negligent deregulation that were his trademark. Nothing to do with stagnant wages due to free trade and weakened unions, nor with pensions lost to Enron or the dot-com crash, or homes seized in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Greenspan, rampant inequality is caused by lousy high schools (which also has nothing to do with his ideology's war on the public sphere). I debated Greenspan on Democracy Now! recently and was stunned that this man who preaches the doctrine of personal responsibility refuses to take any at all..."


Campaign Season:

When money = speech, always follow the money.

Ari Berman: Rudy's Dirty Money
"...On the surface, it's surprising that a thrice-married, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control mayor of New York City could do so well in the Lone Star State. But when you examine Giuliani's record as mayor and his positions on the campaign trail, it begins to make sense. As mayor of New York, Giuliani tried to privatize everything he could, including hospitals, schools and the management of Central Park, while vetoing a living-wage ordinance for city employees.
On the campaign trail in Texas, like everywhere else, he talks largely about 9/11 and 'the terrorists' war against us.' (His foreign policy advisers include neocon war cheerleaders like Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes.) He has taken a newfound hard line on illegal immigration and the border and frequently professes his love for Ronald Reagan. He talks about the need to further reduce taxes and shrink the government. In an essay on National Review Online, Pickens explained his support for Giuliani in part by noting that 'Rudy will demand that each Cabinet member submit budget cuts of between 5 and 20 percent annually.' When asked at a cocktail party in the Woodlands, a chic suburb of Houston, how he could win the South, Giuliani mentioned his 'strong conservative credentials' and his competitiveness in a general election, according to Jim Granato, a professor at the University of Houston who attended the event. 'He's the one they think can defeat Hillary,' says Stein.
In a state where Republicans remain doggedly fond of their native son, Giuliani rarely, if ever, criticizes President Bush. 'Rudy's been alone, among all the candidates, in treating Bush with kid gloves,' says Giuliani's former deputy mayor, Fran Reiter. 'So gathering Bush's supporters to his campaign makes sense to me.'
When it comes to energy policy, Giuliani's record as mayor won't present a roadblock to his industry supporters. He put ten new power plants in New York neighborhoods over the objection of community groups and allowed utility giant Consolidated Edison to expand along the East River. Unlike other New York Republicans, such as former Governor George Pataki, 'environmental issues were not a big category for Giuliani,' says Reiter.
At a speech last year at the Manhattan Institute, the conservative think tank that generated many of Rudy's mayoral policies, Giuliani called the idea of energy independence 'the wrong paradigm.' He dismissed energy conservation as 'helpful but not really very, very effective.' He was most animated, according to press reports, about the need to build new nuclear power plants and expand oil drilling. 'We haven't drilled in Alaska,' he said. 'We haven't built oil refineries. We haven't ordered a nuclear power plant since 1978.' He also plugged ethanol, a favorite in Midwest corn states like Iowa, and so-called clean coal technologies.
On the campaign trail, Rudy now includes the requisite language about curbing global warming and weaning America from its dependence on foreign oil. One of his campaign's 'twelve commitments' is to 'lead America towards energy independence.' At a diner in Waterloo, Iowa, this past summer, he was asked how he'd accomplish that goal, given his clients in the oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries..."

Iraq's Oil:

Dallas Morning News: Democrats: Bush Ties May Have Led to Iraq Oil Contract
"Democratic lawmakers moved Monday toward investigating Hunt Oil's oil exploration contract in Iraq, saying the company's ties to President Bush raised questions about whether it had insider information that helped it reach the deal.
U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, asked Hunt to turn over all Iraq-related communication with the U.S. government by Nov. 2.
The lawmakers also demanded that Ray Hunt, Hunt Oil's chief executive, submit copies of information he may have received about Iraq as a member of Mr. Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
A Hunt spokeswoman said the company would cooperate with the request for 'certain limited information.'
Spokeswoman Jeanne Phillips said the company's judgment to explore for oil in the Kurdish region of Iraq was made without U.S. government advice.
'As we have stated before, our policy as a company is to act independently when determining where to explore for oil and gas around the world,' Ms. Phillips said in a prepared statement.
Mr. Hunt, 64, has not talked about his service on the intelligence board, which meets about six times a year. Its members, all presidential appointees, have security clearances, and much of their work is classified..."


Domestic Surveillance:

The Democrats folded like so many chairs on this one. It seems no majority exists to defend the 4h Amendment. How very, very, sad. The Founders would be horrified.

Raw Story: Senate caves to Bush on telecom immunity
"Despite an intense lobbying effort from privacy groups, the Senate sealed an expected deal this week with President Bush to grant major telecommunications companies - including Verizon, Comcast and AT&T - immunity from prosecution for their role in the President's warrantless eavesdropping program if they can 'demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.'
The legislation finalizes the deal between Senate Democrats and the Administration over the terms of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance..."

Media:

People like the editors of this publication seem to think that media should primarily about making money, rather than providing accurate information to the public. Their hostility toward the mere discussion of the Fairness Doctrine is unfortunate and demonstrates their skewed understanding of what an FCC license-holder's duty to serve the public interest entails.

Investor's Business Daily:The Plan To Rein In Free Speech

Energy

Brilliant!

Popular Mechanics: Windbelt - Third World Power - Wind Generator
"Working in Haiti, Shawn Frayne, a 28-year-old inventor based in Mountain View, Calif., saw the need for small-scale wind power to juice LED lamps and radios in the homes of the poor. Conventional wind turbines don’t scale down well—there’s too much friction in the gearbox and other components. 'With rotary power, there’s nothing out there that generates under 50 watts,' Frayne says. So he took a new tack, studying the way vibrations caused by the wind led to the collapse in 1940 of Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge (aka Galloping Gertie).
Frayne’s device, which he calls a Windbelt, is a taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils. Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines. Frayne envisions the Windbelt costing a few dollars and replacing kerosene lamps in Haitian homes. 'Kerosene is smoky and it’s a fire hazard,' says Peter Haas, founder of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, which helps people in developing countries to get environmentally sound access to clean water, sanitation and energy. 'If Shawn’s innovation breaks, locals can fix it. If a solar panel breaks, the family is out a panel.'
Frayne hopes to help fund third-world distribution of his Windbelt with revenue from first-world applications—such as replacing the batteries used to power temperature and humidity sensors in buildings..."

Aviation Week: NSSO Backs Space Solar Power
"Collecting solar power in space and beaming it back to Earth is a relatively near-term possibility that could solve strategic and tactical security problems for the U.S. and its deployed forces, the Pentagon's National Security Space Office (NSSO) says in a report issued Oct. 10.
As a clean source of energy that would be independent of foreign supplies in the strife-torn Middle East and elsewhere, space solar power (SSP) could ease America's longstanding strategic energy vulnerability, according to the 'interim assessment' released at a press conference and on the Web site spacesolarpower.wordpress.com..."


Middle East:

Bombing another country without direct provocation, or U.N. Sanction is illegal under International Law, but it's not as though that stops Israel from doing this sort of thing as a matter of course (they bombed an Iraqi facility in 1981).

New York Times: Israel Silent on Reports of Bombing Within Syria
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli officials declined Sunday to confirm or deny a report that an Israeli Air Force strike against Syria last month had bombed a partly constructed nuclear reactor of North Korean design.
The report, published in The New York Times on Saturday, was featured prominently in the Israeli news media on Sunday. But Israeli officials continued their silence about the Sept. 6 airstrike, though they have signaled they are proud of the operation; a senior military official said it had restored 'military deterrence' in the region.
Former Israeli officials and intelligence experts would not discuss whether Israel hit a nuclear reactor that was under construction. But they said the report was plausible given their understanding of Syria’s ambitions in the realm of nonconventional weaponry and its longstanding quest for strategic parity with Israel.
Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi Farkash, Israel’s former chief of military intelligence, called the notion that Israel had targeted a nuclear reactor in Syria 'logical,'..."


Doing Business As...

Daniel Hopsicker: SLOPPY TRADECRAFT EXPOSES CIA DRUG PLANE
"Seventeen months after an American-registered DC9 airliner was busted with 5.5 tons of cocaine, a major international scandal is brewing over a second drug trafficking incident in Mexico's Yucatan involving an American-registered jet owned by a dummy front company of the kind usually associated with the CIA.
A weekend visit to 'Donna Blue Aircraft Inc' of Coconut Beach FL., the company which FAA records show owned the Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) which crash-landed with 3.7 tons of cocaine aboard in Mexico’s Yucatan two weeks ago, has revealed that the company’s listed address is an empty office suite with a blank sign out front.
There was no sign of Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc., at the address listed at the Florida Dept. of Corporations, 4811 Lyons Technology Parkway #8 in Coconut Beach FL.
However, there were, oddly enough, a half-dozen unmarked police cars parked directly in front of the empty suite..."

New York Times Editorial: Spies, Lies and FISA
"As Democratic lawmakers try to repair a deeply flawed bill on electronic eavesdropping, the White House is pumping out the same fog of fear and disinformation it used to push the bill through Congress this summer. President Bush has been telling Americans that any change would deny the government critical information, make it easier for terrorists to infiltrate, expose state secrets, and make it harder 'to save American lives.'
There is no truth to any of those claims. No matter how often Mr. Bush says otherwise, there is also no disagreement from the Democrats about the need to provide adequate tools to fight terrorists. The debate is over whether this should be done constitutionally, or at the whim of the president.
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, requires a warrant to intercept international communications involving anyone in the United States. A secret court has granted these warrants quickly nearly every time it has been asked. After 9/11, the Patriot Act made it even easier to conduct surveillance, especially in hot pursuit of terrorists.
But that was not good enough for the Bush team, which was determined to use the nation’s tragedy to grab ever more power for its vision of an imperial presidency..."

Bush's Next Target: Iran

Scott Ritter: No Legitimate Justification for War with Iran - CommonDreams.org
"Given the complexities of the modern world, and the uncertainties inherent in such, it is prudent for any nation possessing global reach and ambition to be prepared to defend its legitimate interests through the use of military force. The geographic reality of Iran’s physical location vis-à-vis the Strait of Hormuz, and the dire economic consequences that would accrue should Middle Eastern oil supplies become choked off through any closure or lengthy disruption of shipping through the Straight of Hormuz, dictate that the United States plan for the possible deployment and employment of its military to secure this strategic shipping lane.
But there is a far cry from preparing for the possibility of conflict, and planning for the implementation of pre-emptive military action designed to eliminate capabilities not forbidden under international law (such as Iran’s nuclear energy program) or facilitate regime change in a sovereign state. The actions underway by the US military, operating under the aegis of its civilian leadership, are indicative of the former, not the latter, and as such can be categorized as undesirable on the part of those who embrace the rule of law set forth by the Constitution of the United States and, in related fashion (one only needs to read Article 6 of the Constitution) the Charter of the United Nations.
The United States should only consider the use of military force as representing a viable option once it has exhausted every venue short of war to resolve an identified national security problem. This must include seeking authority for such a military strike in accordance with international law as set forth under the Charter of the United Nations, as well as carrying out the coordination between the executive and legislative branches mandated by the U.S. Constitution. In the case of imminent danger to national security, decisive action would of course need to be taken, hence the need for updated military contingency planning. However, there is simply nothing transpiring in Iran today that constitutes categorization as an imminent threat to the national security of the United States, and as such nothing about the Iranian situation can be interpreted as providing justification for any accelerated military action that seeks to circumvent due process..."


War:

John W. Warnock: Depleted Uranium: Enduring Risk
"Six years ago this past Sunday, the U.S. government launched a war against the government of Afghanistan. Air power was the key...
...All the weapons used by the U.S. air attack included depleted uranium shielding.
Depleted uranium (DU) is produced during the uranium enrichment process. The U-235 used to produce fuel for reactors generating electricity is removed, leaving the U-238 isotope. The material is extremely dense and increases the penetration ability of weapons; it is used to coat shells and warheads on missiles and bombs. On impact, the shell, with its uranium and traces of americium and plutonium, vaporizes and becomes very tiny particles of radioactive dust. When it is inhaled it can stay in the body, emitting radiation.
The DU used in U.S. weapons comes from the uranium mines in Saskatchewan.
In the 1991 Gulf war, DU was delivered almost exclusively with shells from tanks and ammunition used by aircraft. It is used in all armour-piercing ordnance. In the wars in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999, NATO allies added DU missiles and bunker busting bombs. Thousands of DU bombs and missiles have been used by U.S. forces in the Afghan and Iraq wars. A typical bunker bomb contains 1.5 tonnes of depleted uranium.
In August 2003 Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor used a Geiger counter to test several sites in Baghdad near where bunker-buster bombs and missiles had fallen. He found radiation readings that were between 1,000 and 1,900 times higher than normal background radiation readings. DU weapons are still being extensively used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After the 1991 Gulf War, birth defects and leukemia rose dramatically in the areas around Basra where these weapons were used. By 2003, the U.S. Defense Department admitted that over 200,000 Gulf War veterans had filed for compensation for death, illness or disabilities.
The veterans refer to this as 'Gulf War Syndrome.' In the first Gulf War, the U.S.-led coalition suffered 148 deaths.
Since then 8,000 veterans of this war have experienced early death.
In 1996 the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring that DU weapons were illegal 'weapons of mass destruction.' In 2002, the U.N. Human Rights Convention passed a resolution urging a ban on the use of any DU weapons. We will have to wait to find out the impact of these weapons on the people of Afghanistan and the men and women in the U.S., Canadian and NATO armed forces."


Corporate Power

Ned Resnikoff: Corporations Versus Democracy
"The most important issue to young people in the 2008 campaign is one that no presidential candidate will discuss. In fact, even touching on this subject is taboo for anyone with aspirations to Congress or the White House. Anyone who has the temerity to mention this political third rail will almost certainly lose the campaign. The issue is the curtailing of corporate power, and as long as corporations continue to finance major candidates, it will remain unspoken. No one running for office wants to be blacklisted by corporate lobbyists in Washington. That’s a shame, because this issue is connected to almost every other problem facing America today. As long as corporations have no incentive to avoid polluting, we will continue to poison this planet at an alarming rate, and as long as corporate lobbyists hold an inordinate amount of influence in Washington, there will be no substantive solutions to problems like income inequality or our woefully inadequate healthcare system. The unchecked power of American corporations does not just affect America, either. It is our corporations that are exploiting developing nations by employing their people at low wages in inhuman working conditions. The environment, obviously, is a global issue. And while some may scoff at the idea of the United States waging war for economic reasons, it is difficult to ignore the mounting evidence that we invaded Iraq, at least in part, to bring profit to American oil companies and defense contractors. What country is next? Iran? If presidential candidates were willing to treat unchecked corporate power as an actual problem, we might be able to begin considering solutions. At a start, the regulations already in place to curtail corporate power could be enforced again..."


Domestic Surveillance:

Joe Nacchio is heading to jail for insider trading, so he's a man of questionable ethics, but it seems he was on the right side of this issue, even though the politics of fear had yet to be unleashed upon the general U.S. population via 9/11.

What makes this story very interesting is that the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before 9/11.
So, Bush wanted to spy on Americans while ignoring the threat from Bin Laden.
Why?
To wiretap Congress, so he could blackmail them into supporting his proto-fascist, war-seeking, 'unitary executive,' agenda to bankrupt the Treasury as a back-door to killing The New Deal & Great Society programs the Conservatives hate, but can't legitimately remove?

Raw Story: Qwest CEO's 'classified defense' raises question on NSA surveillance
"A former CEO who stood up to the Bush administration's demands that he assist in the warrantless surveillance of Americans suggests in court documents that the National Security Agency withdrew a lucrative contract in retaliation for his refusal..."

Iraq:

NY Times: Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is 'a Nightmare'
"In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration's handling of the war 'incompetent' and said the result was 'a nightmare with no end in sight.'
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who retired in 2006 after being replaced in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, blamed the Bush administration for a 'catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan' and denounced the current addition of American forces as a 'desperate' move that would not achieve long-term stability.
'After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,' General Sanchez said at a gathering of military reporters and editors in Arlington, Va.
He is the most senior war commander of a string of retired officers who have harshly criticized the administration's conduct of the war. While much of the previous condemnation has been focused on the role of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, General Sanchez's was an unusually broad attack on the overall course of the war.
But his own role as commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal leaves him vulnerable to criticism that he is shifting the blame from himself to the administration that ultimately replaced him and declined to nominate him for a fourth star, forcing his retirement..."

On Torture:

Whether it is this topic, or the Congressional efforts to (finally?) clarify what constitutes an unambiguous definition of cooercive interrogation (read: torture), it is useful to compare the position of the less right-wing NYT and that of the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal. The
Journal asserted recently that calling what the CIA has been given license to do 'torture,' is absurd. Allowing state power to use inhumane techniques in one situation is only one step away from doing so routinely where the state argues it needs information human beings have and won't share.

New York Times Editorial: Supreme Disgrace
"The Supreme Court exerts leadership over the nation’s justice system, not just through its rulings, but also by its choice of cases — the ones it agrees to hear and the ones it declines. On Tuesday, it led in exactly the wrong direction..."

Newsweek: Gonzales Lawyers Up
"No sooner did Alberto Gonzales resign as attorney general last month than he retained a high-powered Washington criminal-defense lawyer to represent him in continuing inquiries by Congress and the Justice Department.
Gonzales’s choice of counsel, George Terwilliger—a partner at White & Case—is ironic if not surprising. A former deputy attorney general under the first President Bush, who later helped oversee GOP lawyers in the epic Florida recount battle of 2000, Terwilliger had been a White House finalist to replace Gonzales—only to be aced out at the last minute by retired federal judge Michael Mukasey.
The top concern for Gonzales, and now Terwilliger, is the expanding investigation by Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s fiercely independent inspector general, according to three legal sources familiar with the matter who declined to speak publicly about ongoing investigations..."


Iran:

Scott Ritter: Oil, Israel, and America: The Root Cause of the Crisis
"...Iran’s nuclear program, far from being the 'root cause' of Iranian-American animosity, is simply a facilitator for those who are predisposed to accept at face value anything that paints Iran in a negative light. The same can be said of almost every effort undertaken by the US government, post-1998, regarding Iran. A major impetus behind this trend towards rhetorically-based negativism regarding Iran is the influence exerted on the US national security decision making process by the government of Israel, and those elements within the United States, both governmental and non-governmental, which lobby on behalf of Israel. Israel has, for over a decade, listed Iran as its most serious national security threat, and has lobbied extensively to get the United States to embrace a similar policy direction.
A pre-occupation with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the 1990s up to 2003 precluded such a shift in policy. However, while the deteriorating situation in Iraq since the march 2003 invasion and occupation by the United States has dominated the US national security decision making hierarchy, the elimination of Saddam Hussein, coupled with a less than satisfactory outcome regarding holding to account the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the united States, created an ideologically-driven gap in the threat models pushed by those making policy in the United States, and since 2004 Israel has been successful in pressuring American policy positions vis-à-vis Iran to more closely model the positions taken by Israel, up to and including a characterization of Iran as a nation pursuing nuclear weapons ambitions, operating as a state sponsor of terror, and possessing a government which is fundamentally incompatible with regional and global peace and security.
The Israeli perspective on Iran is driven by two primary factors: a 'zero tolerance' for the acquisition of nuclear weapons by any nation deemed a threat, either real or potential, that is so strict even nuclear energy-related programs permitted under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (which Iran contends, and the IAEA concurs, is the case regarding its nuclear activities) are deemed unacceptable, and an inability to diplomatically resolve the reality of the Lebanese Hezbollah Party on its northern borders.
The Israeli posturing regarding Iran’s nuclear program, and America’s unquestioning support of the Israeli position, has nullified any chance of meaningful diplomacy in this regard, since diplomacy is at least nominally based upon the rule of law as set forth under relevant treaties and agreements, a reality Israel refuses to acknowledge as legitimate concerning Iran’s nuclear ambitions..."


The Warfare State:

Why did it take six years to do this?

KXNet.com (N. Dakota): Democrats Pass Bipartisan Bill To Stop War Profiteering
"By a vote of 375-3, the House has passed the War Profiteering Prevention Act, H.R. 400. The bill makes war profiteering a felony..."

Iraq:

Janessa Gans: I survived Blackwater
"...As a U.S. official in Baghdad for nearly two years, I was frequently the 'beneficiary' of Blackwater's over-the-top zeal. 'Just pretend it's a roller coaster,' I used to tell myself during trips through downtown Baghdad.
We would careen around corners, jump road dividers, reach speeds in excess of 100 mph and often cross over to the wrong side of the street, oncoming traffic be damned.
But much more appalling than the ride was the deleterious effect each movement through town had on the already beleaguered people of Iraq. I began to wonder whether my meetings, intended to further U.S. policy goals and improve the lives of Iraqis, were doing more harm than good. With our drivers honking at, cutting off, pelting with water bottles (a favorite tactic) and menacing with weapons anyone in their way, how many enemies were we creating?
One particularly infuriating time, I was in the town of Irbil in northern Iraq, being driven to a meeting with a Kurdish political leader. We were on a narrow stretch of highway with no shoulders and foot-high barriers on both sides. The lead Suburban in our convoy loomed up behind an old, puttering sedan driven by an older man with a young woman and three children.
As we approached at typical breakneck speed, the Blackwater driver honked furiously and motioned to the side, as if they should pull over. The kids in the back seat looked back in horror, mouths agape at the sight of the heavily armored Suburbans driven by large, armed men in dark sunglasses. The poor Iraqi driver frantically searched for a means of escape, but there was none. So the lead Blackwater vehicle smashed heedlessly into the car, pushing it into the barrier. We zoomed by too quickly to notice if anyone was hurt..."


The Raw Story: CNN: US-occupied Iraq crippled by rampant corruption
"In Congressional hearings on corruption in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faces an uphill battle. A newly leaked document by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad suggests how bad Iraqi government corruption might be. In the hearings, an unhappy Chairman Waxman demanded answers from one State Dept. official: 'Why can you talk about the positive things and not the negative things? Shouldn't we have the whole picture?' The official was not willing to discuss the negative aspects of Iraqi corruption in the hearing and under oath, saying that he would only answer those questions 'in an appropriate setting.' CNN reports on an earlier draft of the corruption study, which says that the Iraqi government 'is not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anti-corruption laws.' The report goes on to slam Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office, saying it has 'demonstrated an open hostility to the concept of an independent agency to investigate or prosecute corruption cases,'..."

The Military Industrial Complex:

Democracy Now! - Made Love, Got War: Norman Solomon on Close Encounters with America's Warfare State
"...'The warfare state doesn't come and go. It can't be defeated on Election Day. Like it or not, it's at the core of the United States - and it has infiltrated our very being.' That's a quote from media critic and best-selling author Norman Solomon's new book...
The book traces the panic generated by the launch of Sputnik exactly 50 years ago to the current warmongering with Iran. It is the story of the US government's preoccupation over the past half-century with 'the business of killing and being killed'..."

Democracy Now! - Mr. Prince Goes to Washington: Blackwater Founder Testifies Before Congress
"Mr. Prince goes to Washington. That's right, Erik Prince, the founder and chairman of Blackwater USA, testified before Congress on Tuesday in his first extended public appearance. Prince was called before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform amid a public firestorm over the role of private military firms operating in Iraq and a string of probes into Blackwater's conduct..."

Censoring Politcal Speech:

New York Times Editorial: The Verizon Warning
"We have long been concerned about the potential threat to free speech and a free press as communications migrate from old-fashioned telephone lines, TV broadcasts and printing presses to digital networks controlled by unregulated private companies. The threat stopped being theoretical recently when Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile services.
Verizon did the right thing after the problem was disclosed: it promptly dropped a misbegotten policy and said its new policy is to open its network to any legal communication. But alarm bells should be ringing on Capitol Hill, where industry lobbying, legislative goldbricking and Republican aversion to regulations have bottled up much-needed laws on digital communications..."

Democracy Now! - Headlines for October 4, 2007
"Bush Vetoes Expansion to Children’s Health Care

President Bush has followed through on a promise to veto a bill expanding health care to millions of low-income American children. On Wednesday, Bush quietly issued the fourth veto of his presidency on a measure expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as S-CHIP. The bill would have spent thirty-five billion dollars over five years, funded by a tax increase on cigarettes...

...Secret Justice Dept. Memos Effectively OK’d Torture

The New York Times has revealed the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued a series of secret legal opinions effectively sanctioning the use of torture. The first opinion came shortly after Gonzales arrived in February 2005. Just months earlier the Justice Department had publicly declared torture 'abhorrent.' But the secret opinion under Gonzales gave a green light to a series of harsh interrogation tactics including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. At the time, outgoing deputy attorney general James Comey said the department would be 'ashamed' when the opinion was publicly revealed. Less than one year later, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion declaring that no CIA techniques violated proposed laws banning 'cruel, inhuman and degrading' treatment. The New York Times also reports the harshness of the approved tactics was so unprecedented that agents in secret CIA prisons overseas repeatedly asked Washington lawyers what was allowed. New details have also come out about the interrogation of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Insiders say Mohammed gave several 'exaggerated or false statements' after some one hundred harsh tactics were used over a two-week period..."

Team Bush's Next Target: Iran

Sy Hersh: White House Intensifying Plans to Attack Iran
"In his latest article in the New Yorker magazine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports there has been a significant increase in the tempo of planning for war with Iran inside the Bush administration. Hersh says the White House recently requested the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw longstanding plans for a possible attack. Hersh also reports the Bush administration's rationale for bombing Iran has shifted from Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program to Iran's role in Iraq..."


Medical Safety

NY Times: Report Assails FDA Oversight of Clinical Trials
"The Food and Drug Administration does very little to ensure the safety of the millions of people who participate in clinical trials, a federal investigator has found.
In a report due to be released Friday, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, Daniel R. Levinson, said federal health officials did not know how many clinical trials were being conducted, audited fewer than 1 percent of the testing sites and, on the rare occasions when inspectors did appear, generally showed up long after the tests had been completed.
The F.D.A. has 200 inspectors, some of whom audit clinical trials part time, to police an estimated 350,000 testing sites. Even when those inspectors found serious problems in human trials, top drug officials in Washington downgraded their findings 68 percent of the time, the report found. Among the remaining cases, the agency almost never followed up with inspections to determine whether the corrective actions that the agency demanded had occurred, the report found.
'In many ways, rats and mice get greater protection as research subjects in the United States than do humans,' said Arthur L. Caplan, chairman of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Animal research centers have to register with the federal government, keep track of subject numbers, have unannounced spot inspections and address problems speedily or risk closing, none of which is true in human research, Mr. Caplan said.
Because no one collects the data systematically, there is no way to tell how safe the nation's clinical research is or ever has been...
...The case of Audine Graybill demonstrates the flaws in the system. According to the F.D.A., in the spring of 2005, she decided to try an experimental drug to treat mania associated with bipolar disorder. The consent form that she signed on May 29 stated that she could change her mind at any point in the study.
She checked into High Pointe Healthcare in Oklahoma City, a psychiatric center owned by a psychiatrist, Dr. David Linden. On June 3, Ms. Graybill changed her mind and asked to leave.
Dr. Linden refused to let her go.
On June 6, she was given the experimental medicine. Ms. Graybill's lawyer, Anthony Sykes, obtained a writ of habeas corpus for her to appear in court and took the writ to the hospital, where the staff refused to honor it and said it would not give it to Dr. Linden, Mr. Sykes said.
Mr. Sykes tracked Dr. Linden to another office and had him served with the writ, Mr. Sykes said. Within hours, Dr. Linden's lawyer called Mr. Sykes and said Ms. Graybill was free to go. Mr. Sykes took her home on June 7.
Ms. Graybill could not be reached.
More than nine months later, an F.D.A. inspector appeared at Dr. Linden's research center and uncovered myriad other problems.
The agency sent its warning letter more than two years after Ms. Graybill's experience.
Last November, the Oklahoma Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision suspended Dr. Linden's license for three months because he had sex with two patients and gave them genital herpes infections, according to board records. Dr. Linden, who also owns a psychiatric center in Las Vegas, did not return repeated telephone messages.
Dr. Linden has conducted clinical trials for most major pharmaceutical companies and continues to do research, according to his Web site..."


On Torture:

Democracy Now! - More Health Care Professionals Involved In Design, Structuring of Torture Than in Providing Care for Survivors
"...DOUGLAS JOHNSON: ...I think the experience for all of us is that we care for people who the rest of the community would consider innocent victims of torture, but all of those survivors would tell you that they would have said anything, anything at all that was wanted of them, eventually, to get the torture to stop. And so, they’ll confess, they’ll give the information that’s fed to them, because the person who most needs a confession is the torturer. Without that confession, the torturer has no justification for what they’ve done. And the only way that torture states manage the dissidence and the moral -- morale and the minds of their torturers is that a confession emerges. And that’s one of the key reasons why truth doesn’t emerge from torture. Anything could emerge. Sometimes it’s a danger.
But one of the big problems of the focus on the ticking time bomb is it’s really an enormous distraction. The focus on just what’s happening in the interrogation center and the tactics of interrogation have obscured, for most of us, and especially our policymakers, what the strategic results of torture are. And one of those key strategic results is this: I spent some time with Alberto Mora, who had been the Navy legal counsel who fought against the torture policy, someone you should have on your show, when we were visiting members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and he emphasized that the reason we have the Geneva Accords, of course, emerging from the way Allied troops were dealt with by the Nazis and the Japanese prison camps, was the notion that if a soldier knows that they will be treated humanely, when they are trapped and they have no place to go, they have at least the opportunity of surrendering, but if they know they will be treated cruelly, if they will be tortured, if they will be otherwise treated without dignity, then the total incentive for them is to fight to the last man.
And under those circumstances, and under the circumstances we now have in Iraq, when we are overpowering a group with firepower, we have given them the total incentive to fight to the last man. And that endangers American troops right now. Americans die from this policy, because we have falsely thought that the creation of fear keeps us safe, rather than endangers us..."