MY POV

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Benjamin Franklin

How Bush really feels about you.

"If there were such a thing as Intelligent Design, we wouldn't have George W. Bush."

Christy Marx

The Mars Society

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
34th President of the USA
a Republican, in a letter written to his brother on November 8, 1954

"...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...."

Benito Mussolini

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln
November 12, 1864

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man."

Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

James Madison
(1751-1836)
4th President of the United States

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."

Heinrich Heine
Almansor, 1823

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965)

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarschall

"Authoritarian societies inevitably crumble because they silence the critics who could save them from errors of blind hubris. Dissent is not a luxury to be indulged in the best of times, but rather an obligation of free people, particularly when the very notion of dissent is unpopular."

Robert Scheer

"FASCISM: a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism."

American Heritage Dictionary

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it
because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King

"My life is my message."

Gandhi

Posted: 31 Aug. 2006

Uh, right. And war is peace and black is white. From The Center for American Progress.

"Many Democrats accuse the president of advocating 'stay the course' in Iraq, but the White House rejects the phrase."
-- Washington Post, 8/31/06

VERSUS

"We will stay the course."
-- President Bush, 8/30/06


GAY RIGHTS -- PENTAGON UNIVERSITY ELECTS FIRST OPENLY GAY STUDENT COUNCIL PRESIDENT: For the first time, a Defense Department university has elected an openly gay student council president, the Service Members Legal Defense Network (SLDN) announced yesterday. The student body of Uniformed Services University (USU), which includes uniformed personnel in the armed forces, this week voted for Patrick High to represent graduate students at the school. High served nine years in the Illinois Army National Guard and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at USU. His election "is just the latest in a series of signs that those serving in our armed forces are ready to welcome openly gay colleagues," said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of SLDN. "High was elected based on his qualifications for the post, and that same criteria should be the guiding force throughout the military." Earlier this summer, a West Point graduate received a prestigious academic award for his thesis opposing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," the ban on lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members. The number of dismissals under "Don't Ask" increased from 668 in 2004 to 742 last year, even has the U.S. Army's personnel readiness has degraded to levels not seen "since the Vietnam era." In May, Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, USA (Ret.), the first woman to achieve the rank of three-star general in the Army, called for repeal of the law, saying it is "a hollow policy that serves no useful purpose."

Please read (or watch) this commentary by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

Then read this interview with Ray McGovern, who was a CIA analyst for 27 years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Part one
Part two

Posted: 30 Aug. 2006

From Grist online.

Lebanese oil spill continues to spread

Six weeks after Israel bombed a Lebanese power plant, spilling 10,000 to 15,000 tons of heavy fuel oil into the Mediterranean Sea, the disaster continues to be disastrous. The slick has traveled an estimated 90 miles north, affecting every one of Lebanon's approximately 200 beaches, and may reach Syria and Turkey. Lebanon's coastline has traded in throngs of tourists for beach-cleanup volunteers; in Beirut, 18 miles from the original site of the spill, they gaze upon black sand and yellowish-green water, breathe in the scent of petroleum, and look in vain for any sign of live fish. Lebanese divers have found oil up to four inches thick on the seabed; sea turtle hatchlings at an island nature reserve will have to crawl through an oil slick to reach the water; and coastal towns with fishing- and tourism-dependent economies are struggling mightily. Ongoing conflict has delayed cleanup, which Lebanon's Environment Ministry estimates will cost $150 million over the next year. Worst of all, there's really nothing funny to say about any of it.

From The Center for American Progress.

IRAN
Nuclear Deadline

"Almost from the beginning of Bush's presidency," two groups within the administration -- realists seeking to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, and ideologues more interested in regime change -- have been "waging an intense struggle over Iran, while the U.S. government went month after month without an official policy." Iran has not sat idly by. "While the U.S. has been playing poker in the region, Iran has been playing chess," says Nadim Shehadi of the British think tank Chatham House, which has issued a report stating there is "little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East." Tomorrow, U.S. policy towards Iran will enter a new phase, as Iran will likely ignore a U.N. Security Council deadline to suspend aspects of its nuclear program, and the Bush administration will begin a press for targeted sanctions. But sanctions will not solve the problem, particularly with oil at $70 per barrel. On the current course, Iran will become a nuclear weapons power if it wants to. The Bush administration urgently needs to commit to harnessing all elements of U.S. power to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, including tough sustained diplomacy, which Vice President Cheney and others seem determined to avoid. As Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said recently, the alternative -- a military strike on Iran -- would be "disastrous, catastrophic," and "would inflame the Middle East in ways we can’t imagine today."

INTELLIGENCE MANIPULATION ON IRAN BEGINS: Last week, staff on the House Intelligence Committee released a "garishly illustrated and luridly written document" implying that Iran is "developing nuclear weapons a lot faster than intelligence agencies have the guts to admit." The report was not considered by the full committee, but instead released by committee chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who last June was trumpeting intelligence that he claimed was evidence of the long-sought Iraqi WMD (an assertion that even the Pentagon rejected out of hand). The report's lead author was Frederick Fleitz, "who did his apprenticeship on politicization" beneath then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton during the run-up to war in Iraq, "and became his principal aide and chief enforcer while on loan from the CIA." While serving under Bolton, Fleitz notoriously wrote in a private email that he had "explained" to a State Department intelligence analyst that it was "a political judgment as to how to interpret" data on WMD (in Cuba, in this case) and that the intelligence community "should do as we asked." Fleitz's new report on Iran apparently contains multiple significant factual errors, and seems intended to signal to the intelligence community that congressional leadership "wants scarier assessments that would justify a more confrontational approach to Tehran," even if the facts don't justify it. But it also likely serves a political function; as the New York Times notes, the report is "partly a campaign document" designed to carry out a "strategy of scaring Americans" just two months before the midterm elections.

DESPITE LACK OF SOLID INTEL, NEOCONSERVATIVES CONTINUE PUSH FOR WAR: Sound, comprehensive intelligence is desperately needed on Iran. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) has warned that "we have not made the progress on our oversight of Iran intelligence, which is critical," and Roberts' staff director Bill Duhnke says there is "no organized commit­tee staff effort to look at Iran right now." Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, has said "our sources are stale and our case is thin" on Iran. Nevertheless, neoconservatives continue to loudly beat the drums for war in Iran. Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, who has argued that Iranians would embrace a U.S. attack, predicted recently that "we could be in a military confrontation with Iran much sooner than people expect." The National Review's Stanley Kurtz declares, "The lesson is that we face two choices: preemptive war with Iran, or a nightmare world on the brink of nuclear war and nuclear terror for the foreseeable future." Yet the "consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies" is that Iran is "about a decade away" from acquiring a nuclear weapon, meaning that the situation today is "not a nuclear bomb crisis, it is a nuclear regime crisis." In that case, what is needed is clear, accurate intelligence and the ability to exercise every economic, political, and diplomatic option on the table to persuade Iran that developing nuclear weapons is not in its long-term interest.

SANCTIONS ALONE WON'T GET THE JOB DONE: It appears increasingly unlikely that the U.N. Security Council will vote to impose sanctions on Iran if it misses its deadline tomorrow. Preparing for this possibility, the Bush administration has reportedly spent several weeks organizing an independent coalition of European and Asian countries "to freeze Iranian assets and restrict trade." This is a positive step that could demonstrate a degree of international solidarity over Iran's nuclear ambitions, and make clear there is at least a minimum price to pay for flaunting the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Association. But the apparent failure to persuade Russia and China to support initial sanctions against Iran falls directly in the lap of U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, whose diplomatic skills have proved dangerously incompetent. Moreover, the reliance on a "coalition of the willing" highlights "the current weakness of Washington's position because of its controversial role in a series of conflicts in the Middle East."

Posted: 27 Aug. 2006

From Grist online.

Bush administration will open 8 million Alaskan acres to oil drilling

As only makes sense following a disaster in northern Alaska involving oil spills and corroded pipelines, the Bush administration next month plans to open 8 million northwestern Alaska acres to oil and natural gas development. The area, in the National Petroleum Reserve, contains "a significant amount of oil that will help decrease our dependence on imported oil," says Julia Dougan of the Bureau of Land Management, by which she meant, "dude, we're jonesing." Included are 373,000 acres near wetland-rich Teshekpuk Lake, which is also hunting grounds for native Inupiat residents. "The Teshekpuk Lake area is biologically rich nursery grounds for birds from many continents and mammals which sustain our Inupiat families and communities, and must be protected from leasing activities," says resident Rosemary Ahtuangaruak. As the U.S. is a democracy, we're sure the concerns of the Inupiat will be given full and careful consideration while the first wells are being dug.


EPA must consult wildlife officials about pesticide use

Yesterday a federal judge overturned a two-year-old regulation that allowed the U.S. EPA to approve pesticides without consulting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about toxic impact on rare animals and plants. Ruling in favor of nine environmental groups, U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenor declared that the Bush administration had "plainly violated" the Endangered Species Act. The case is a bit of déjà vu: In 2001, the same green groups clashed with the same EPA over the same issue, and the same Coughenor ended up ordering the agency to evaluate the impacts of 55 pesticides on salmon. Instead, the agency created the rule that allowed it to bypass the USFWS, leading the green groups to sue again. Coughenor wrote that there was "overwhelming evidence on the record" that slackening the pesticide-approval process could harm endangered species. The EPA responded that there was overwhelming evidence off the record that the chemical industry didn't feel like dealing with a bunch of silly rules about "species."

Posted: 25 Aug. 2006

From organicconsumer.org

TIP OF THE WEEK: THE MOST DANGEROUS INGREDIENTS IN CONVENTIONAL FOODS

1) Sodium nitrite -- causes cancer, found in most processed meats like hot dogs, bacon, sausage. Used to make meats appear red (a color fixer chemical).

2) Hydrogenated oils -- causes heart disease, nutritional deficiencies, general deterioration of cellular health, and much more. Found in cookies, crackers, margarine and many "manufactured" foods. Used to make oils stay in the food, extending shelf life. Sometimes also called "plastic fat."

3) Excitotoxins -- aspartame, monosodium glutamate and others (see below). These neurotoxic chemical additives directly harm nerve cells, over-exciting them to the point of cell death, according to Dr. Russell Blaylock. They're found in diet soda, canned soup, salad dressing, breakfast sausage and even many manufactured vegetarian foods. They're used to add flavor to over-processed, boring foods that have had the life cooked out of them.

Source: A new book by Mike Adams, entitled "Grocery Warning" takes a scientific look at a plethora of problematic ingredients in the everyday foods we eat.

Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_705.cfm

Posted: 24 Aug. 2006

New Zogby Poll - It's Nearly Unanimous
Voters Insist on Right To Observe Vote Counting
By Michael Collins Piper

WASHINGTON, DC -- A recent Zogby poll documents ground breaking information on the attitudes of American voters toward electronic voting. They are quite clear in the belief that the outcome of an entire election can be changed due to flaws in computerized voting machines. At a stunning rate of 92%, Americans insist on the right to watch their votes being counted. And, at an overwhelming 80%, they strongly object to the use of secret computer software to tabulate votes without citizen access to that software.

The American public is clear in its desire for free, fair, and transparent elections. An 80%-90% consensus on the right to view vote counting and opposition to secrecy by voting machine vendor is both rare and remarkable in American politics. If only the public knew that these options are virtually non existent in today's election system.

Viewing vote counting will soon become a process of watching computers, somewhat akin to watching the radio, but without sound. Secret vote counting with computer software that citizens cannot review is now a fait accompli. Most contracts between boards of elections and voting equipment manufacturers bar both elections officials and members of the public from any access to the most important computer software; the source code that directs all the functions of the voting machines, including vote counting.

As a result of the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), a majority of these voters will be using touch screen voting machines with a lesser amount using special paper ballots counted by optical scanning devices. There are very few localities using paper ballots for the November 2006 election. If the federal government gets its way, they will be a thing of the past.

The supreme irony is that HAVA was sold to Congress as the solution to the problems of the Florida 2000 election. Of course, we now know that as many as 50,000 black Floridians were wrongly removed from the voting rolls through a highly suspect "felon purge" that missed felons but captured legitimate registered voters. And we know further that over 100,000 ballots in mostly black precincts were disqualified due to the old voter suppression standby, "spoiled ballots. " Neither of those voting rights and civil rights problems is addressed by HAVA. It's all about "the machines."

A Zogby Poll was commissioned and sponsored by election rights and business law attorney Paul Lehto of Everett. Washington. This author, Michael Collins, Editor, www.electionfraudnews.com was a contributing sponsor. It consisted of 1018 interviews over a five day period beginning August 11, 2006. For further details, please see the "Appendix" at the end of this article.

This article focuses on three key questions from the survey. The responses reveal public attitudes as they were measured very recently. The outcome should give policy makers and bureaucrats serious pause for reflection upon just exactly what they have done to America's system of elections and just how far from public beliefs they have strayed.

**********

Voters Aware of Risks of Electronic Voting ­ Changing an Entire Election

How aware are you that there have been reports of flaws in electronic voting or computerized voting machines that make it possible to tamper with one machine in such a way as to change the results of an entire election?

Very aware 28.5%
Somewhat aware 31.8 Aware 60.3%
Somewhat unaware 14.9
Very unaware 22.8 Unaware 37.7
Not sure 1.9

The response shows a wide spread awareness of the potential for flawed voting machines to overturn an entire election. This is highly significant since the change in election outcome represents a violation of the expressed will of the people. Elections using touch screens computers or optical scan tabulators would seem to present entry level doubt concerning any election, particularly the type of nail biters that are common in America over the past few years.

All subgroups were near or exceeded 50% or greater in awareness ( very, somewhat) of the risks of electronic voting.

The breakdown politically is instructive. Combining the " very" and somewhat aware responses shows a near parity by political identification: Democrats 59.9%; Republicans 58.3%; and Independents, the highest at 63.8% awareness. Dividing the sample by political ideology shows Libertarians with the highest level of awareness concerning the risks of computerized voting, 81%, and Moderates with the lowest at 55.9%. Of interest, Liberals and those describing themselves as Very Conservative were nearly identical in their awareness at 62.7% and 61% respectively.

**********

Near Universal Demand to See the Votes Counted

In some states, members of the public have the right to view the counting of votes and verify how that process is working. In other states, citizens are in effect barred from viewing vote counting even if they would like to view the process. Which of the following two statements are you more likely to agree with ­ A or B?

Statement A: Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes. 91.8%

Statement B: Citizens do not have the right to view and obtain information about how elections officials count votes. 5.9 Neither/Not sure 2.3

Most all likely voters (92%) agree that citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials' count votes (Statement A). Just 6% feel citizens do not have this right (Statement B).

Four fifths of respondents within every demographic group selected the right for citizen review and access, Statement A. This includes overwhelming majorities of both Kerry (92.8%) and Bush supporters (90.8%); independents (96.9%); Catholics (92.8%), Protestants (90.8%), Jews (87.2%), and those with no religious affiliation (93.3%); and two points above the average, NASCAR fans, 93.9%.

If and when citizens begin demanding this widely assumed option, they will be gravely disappointed. Viewing vote counting in the era of electronic voting means something different than it did in the days of paper ballots. In the case of touch screen devices, the vote count consists of poll workers or technicians taking data tapes out of a computerized touch screen device. With optical scan ballots and voting machines, tabulation (vote counting) involves pressing a button for a total count after the special paper ballots have been scanned through the computerized scanning device.

The process of removing public review of voting and vote counting began in earnest with the 2002 Help America Vote Act. In a previous article with Paul Lehto, the clear intent to herd local and state governments into the seemingly happy pasture of touch screen voting devices is described in depth. In essence, the three step process of forcing locals to accept touch screen devices, stripping voters and government agencies of their rights to review and understand voting, and locking that system in place for the indefinite future is nearly complete.

The 2006 election represents the brave new world of electronic voting. The American people want something entirely different: free, fair, and transparent elections with full citizen participation and review. The following questions and responses provide convincing evidence to support that claim.

**********

Voters Opposed to Secret Software to Count Votes

With computerized electronic voting machines, votes are counted using proprietary or confidential software from corporate vendors that is not disclosed to citizens. Do you agree or disagree that it is acceptable for votes to be counted in secret without any outside observers from the public?

Agree 13.7%
Disagree 79.8
Not sure 6.5

There is overwhelming objection to vendor specific secret software used to count votes outside the purview of public observation. This is a sentiment shared by no less than 70% of the people in any sub-group in the survey. This includes every political party; political ideology; race, religion; age group; educational level; and income group. This included 85.5% of rural residents and 79.8% of NASCAR fans.

Once again, the public is in for a profound disappointment. Nearly every state and county board of elections has a contract with the voting machine vendors that prohibit access to and review of voting machine "source code," the software that controls all of the key functions of vote counting. These contracts are freely entered into by government officials and in place for a period of months or years. Even with full access to source code, the level of expertise and manpower necessary to police malicious acts, which we know can occur, makes such disclosure a Pyrrhic victory; a distraction from the return to real ballots, counted by real people, open to full supervision and inquiry.

**********

The Public's Right to Know and Their Right to Know What They Don't Know

The Zogby Poll makes it clear that the public insists on the right to view vote counting. At 92% agreement with Statement A above, the public clearly thinks that it should have this option. There is also strong agreement that computerized voting should be transparent; that secret software, meaning secret vote counting is totally unacceptable.

What will people think and do when they find out that these rights are (a) not granted universally either in law or by custom and (b) that even if they are granted, they are virtually unobtainable due to the nature of computerized voting? Invisible ballots cannot be observed by voters. Computer software calculations cannot be observed by voters. Inquiring about and receiving information on these invisible processes requires an act of faith of epic proportions. Voters are expected to believe summary data and tables from election officials who routinely deny and/or discourage access to vote counting and who sign contracts with private vendors like Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S, that surrender the right of officials or the public to inspect the most important software in the voting machines, the source code.

There has been a virtual media blackout on in depth coverage of these issues by the national corporate media. The work of Lou Dobbs and Catherine Crier are notable and powerful exceptions. Lou Dobbs' coverage includes online polls that consistently show 80% and greater preference for a complete dismissal of voting machines and a return to paper ballots.

The public has the right to observe the entire election process. It's called transparency. The public has a right to get information on how that process works in order to satisfy the requirement for free and fair elections. These rights are unavailable and the public does not even know it. If and when these issues are covered by the broader media with insight and attention, there may very well be the type of outrage at the loss of our liberties that we have seen from Lou Dobbs and Catherine Crier. That would be a most unpleasant event for those who have bargained away voting rights for the sake of a free Federal grant to buy voting machines people inherently distrust.

*** # # # # ***

Copyright. Permission to reproduce in whole or part with attribution to the author, Michael Collins, a link to "Scoop," and attribution of polling results to Zogby International.

Michael Collins is a writer who focuses on clean elections and voting rights. He is the editor of the election fraud web site, www.ElectionFraudNews.com. He has written articles on a number of topics for "Scoop" Independent News including: The Disenfranchisement of Katrina's Survivors; The Unanswered Question: Who Really Won In 2004? ; Secret Vote Counting, a scathing critique of HAVA; and Kennedy's Challenge, a detailed response to Salon's attack on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. article on stolen election 2004. Special thanks to Stella Black for editorial assistance; Paul Lehto for very helpful suggestions; and acknowledgement and thanks to the Zogby professional (R) who did such an outstanding job summarizing complex data.

From Grist online.

Warmer climate could lead to increased bubonic plague

Ever feel like we live in End Times? Well, you may be right. Apparently, in coming years we can expect more bubonic plague -- yes, plague, as in "bring out your dead!" Researchers publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that a rise of just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the springtime temperature led to a 59 percent increase in plague prevalence (currently, up to 3,000 cases are reported each year around the world). The researchers focused their study in Kazakhstan, where the primary host of the plague is the great gerbil (no, really). The gerbils carry fleas, which carry the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which causes the plague, which gets transmitted to humans by the fleas. Yersinia likely triggered both the Black Death, which killed more than 20 million people in the Middle Ages, and a 19th century pandemic in Asia that killed tens of millions. Depressingly, both outbreaks occurred during warm, wet climatic periods. Hmm, warm, wet climate ... sounds familiar. If you need us, we'll be in the bunker, hiding from the gerbils.

Posted: 21 Aug. 2006

A true man of conscience, a rare thing.

Putting the Iraq War on Trial
An Army officer who refused duty in Iraq goes to court with a novel argument: he had a duty to disobey because the war is illegal
By ELI SANDERS/SEATTLE

When he refused to deploy to Iraq in June, Army Lt. Ehren Watada said he was following his conscience and upholding his duty not to obey illegal orders. But that didn't impress military officials, who promptly charged him with violating Army rules and sent him on a path toward a likely court-martial.

In doing so, they set up an unusual collision between a man who is believed to be the first officer to refuse duty in Iraq and a military justice system that is now effectively being asked to rule on the war's legality.

In a packed hearing room on this Army base south of Seattle Thursday, lawyers for Lt. Watada used the opportunity to put the war itself on trial, trying to prove he was right to see the war as "manifestly illegal," and as a result, to refuse to participate. "A soldier has an obligation to disobey illegal orders," said Francis Boyle, a Harvard-trained professor of international law who testified on behalf of Lt. Watada and whose mentor wrote the Army's field manual for land warfare. "Under the circumstances of this war, if he had deployed, he would have been facilitating a Nuremberg crime against peace."

Boyle, along with a former United Nations Undersecretary-General and a retired army colonel, argued that the U.S. decision to attack Iraq in 2003 without U.N. authorization made the war illegal from the beginning. He went further, arguing that the failure of the Bush Administration to find either weapons of mass destruction or a provable link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks showed that Congress was persuaded "by means of fraud" when it voted to authorize the war.

Lt. Watada, 28, is from Honolulu and was part of a Stryker unit that deployed to Iraq on June 22 — without him. He joined the Army after Sept. 11 and initially served in South Korea, where he received stellar marks from his superiors. As recently as last summer he was willing to go to Iraq. But the more he learned about the war, the more doubts he had, according to his public statements.

In January, after he became convinced that the war was illegal, he tried to resign rather than go to Iraq, but the Army wouldn't let him do so. As a compromise, he asked to be sent instead to Afghanistan, a war he supports. His request was not granted.

READ THE REST.

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?
By Thomas C Greene in Washington

Binary liquid explosives are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers. It would be tedious to enumerate the movie terrorists who've employed relatively harmless liquids that, when mixed, immediately rain destruction upon an innocent populace, like the seven angels of God's wrath pouring out their bowls full of pestilence and pain.

The funny thing about these movies is, we never learn just which two chemicals can be handled safely when separate, yet instantly blow us all to kingdom come when combined. Nevertheless, we maintain a great eagerness to believe in these substances, chiefly because action movies wouldn't be as much fun if we didn't.

Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?

We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.

Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard. Better killing through chemistry

Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.

First, you've got to get adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large quantity of the three per cent solution sold in pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab before a single infidel has been harmed.

But let's assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration, or cook it from a dilute solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you've got them on hand.

Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It's all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don't forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're going to need them.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 20 Aug. 2006

How the Brain Helps Partisans Admit No Gray
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer

President Bush came to Washington promising to be a uniter, but public opinion polls show that apart from a burst of camaraderie after Sept. 11, 2001, America is more bitterly divided and partisan than ever.

We'll leave the pundits to pontificate on the politics, and instead explore a more interesting phenomenon: People who see the world in black and white rarely seem to take in information that could undermine their positions.

Psychological experiments in recent years have shown that people are not evenhanded when they process information, even though they believe they are. (When people are asked whether they are biased, they say no. But when asked whether they think other people are biased, they say yes.) Partisans who watch presidential debates invariably think their guy won. When talking heads provide opinions after the debate, partisans regularly feel the people with whom they agree are making careful, reasoned arguments, whereas the people they disagree with sound like they have cloth for brains.

Unvaryingly, partisans also believe that partisans on the other side are far more ideologically extreme than they actually are, said Stanford University psychologist Mark Lepper, who has studied how people watch presidential debates.

Although it is satisfying to think that your side is right and the other side consists of morons, the systematic errors that can be documented in partisan perception suggest something deeper than deliberate tunnel vision. (Last Monday, this space was devoted to the curious phenomenon of the "hostile media effect," in which pro-Israeli and pro-Arab partisans shown the same TV clips both came to the conclusion that the news accounts were heavily biased in favor of the other side.) What explains these distortions in perception?

READ THE REST.

Posted: 17 Aug. 2006

Wise words from a President of genuine integrity and compassion.

"The US and Israel Stand Alone"

Former US president Jimmy Carter speaks with DER SPIEGEL about the danger posed to American values by George W. Bush, the difficult situation in the Middle East and Cuba's ailing Fidel Castro.

Former US president Jimmy Carter: "I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon."

Former US president Jimmy Carter: "I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon." SPIEGEL: Mr. Carter, in your new book you write that only the American people can ensure that the US government returns to the country's old moral principles. Are you suggesting that the current US administration of George W. Bush of acting immorally?

Carter: There's no doubt that this administration has made a radical and unpressured departure from the basic policies of all previous administrations including those of both Republican and Democratic presidents.

SPIEGEL: For example?

Carter: Under all of its predecessors there was a commitment to peace instead of preemptive war. Our country always had a policy of not going to war unless our own security was directly threatened and now we have a new policy of going to war on a preemptive basis. Another very serious departure from past policies is the separation of church and state, which I describe in the book. This has been a policy since the time of Thomas Jefferson and my own religious beliefs are compatible with this. The other principle that I described in the book is basic justice. We've never had an administration before that so overtly and clearly and consistently passed tax reform bills that were uniquely targeted to benefit the richest people in our country at the expense or the detriment of the working families of America.

READ THE REST.

From Common Cause.

Hands Off the Internet

If there were an award for Astroturf lobby campaigns, Hands Off the Internet (HOTI) would win hands down.

With its pithy name, viral web cartoons, high profile spokesman (former White House press secretary Mike McCurry) and barrage of print and television advertising, HOTI has been effectively injecting the telephone industry's arguments on net neutrality into the public debate in recent months.

And they manage to do it while hiding their relationship with their corporate backers. K Street Confidential columnist Jeffrey Birnbaum wrote in The Washington Post that "no one can determine who is supporting Hands Off the Internet by looking at its ads alone. To find out, one must dig into its Web site."[1]

A little searching on the HOTI site reveals that AT&T, Cingular, BellSouth and other telephone companies are all "member organizations," but the level of financial support offered by those corporations is never disclosed.[2] One can guess that it must run into the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to support HOTI's extensive advertising campaign. In a single month, HOTI spent $693,658 on television advertising alone, according to independent researchers at the Campaign Media Analysis Group.[3] That's more than $20,000 a day on TV commercials. The group has also been running full-page ads regularly in papers like The Washington Post and Roll Call.

HOTI ads "are the epitome of doublespeak," according to Birnbaum.[4] For example, one print ad attempts to frame the Hands Off the Internet message in pro-consumer terms. "Net neutrality means consumers will be stuck paying more for their Internet access to cover the big online companies' share," the ad claims.[5] But every major consumer group supports net neutrality, and opposes HOTI's plan to give telephone and cable companies gatekeeper status over the Internet.[6]

HOTI's web-based advertising campaigns look and feel like something a consumer or grassroots group might publish. Their catchy, flash animation web videos try to persuade citizens that the government and Google are trying to control the Internet through net neutrality. The benefits that would accrue to the telephone and cable industry if telecom legislation passes without net neutrality language are never discussed, of course.

GO HERE TO READ FOOTNOTE REERENCES.

From Grist online.

More Alaska drilling proposed as DOT considers new pipeline regulations

Spurred by oil giant BP's many Alaska leaks, the Department of Transportation will soon propose tighter rules for minor petroleum pipelines. BP's North Slope lines were exempt from certain federal regulations because they operated at low pressure in a rural area, and weren't near commercially navigable waters. Thus, despite as much as 14 years of neglect, BP may not have violated any federal regs. The new rules could make life easier for DOT's fewer than 100 inspectors, who are responsible for 200,000 miles of pipeline. Low-pressure lines account for half the oil spilled nationwide, by volume, so the rule expansion will come none too soon: the Interior Department is set to open tens of thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive North Slope wetlands to new oil drilling. Now, when the inevitable spills send oil all over that land, we'll all have the comfort of knowing that federal regulations were violated and oil companies will get a stern talking-to. Whew.


Hemp farming could be legalized in California

Farmers could legally grow industrial hemp under a bill approved by the state Senate of, obviously, California. But isn't hemp, like, totally marijuana? Didn't Nancy Reagan warn us about this? No, no, says (Republican!) state Sen. Tom McClintock, in the best analogy we've ever heard: Hemp "bears no more resemblance to marijuana than a poodle bears to a wolf." The legislation would require that hemp be tested before harvesting to make sure it has only a trace amount of THC, the intoxicant in marijuana. Hemp-growing is illegal in the U.S., for all kinds of logical reasons we can't think of right now, and the bill would attempt to skirt a federal crackdown by requiring farmers to sell only to California processors. Hemp can be used in clothing, cosmetics, food, paper, rope, jewelry, luggage, sports equipment, toys, and food -- it's high in essential fatty acids, protein, B vitamins, and fiber. But we sacrifice all that, because of the dope thing. It makes sense. If you're high.

Posted: 16 Aug. 2006

Just when you think Bush couldn't have been any more stupid or arrogant, you come across something like this....

Ambassador claims shortly before invasion, Bush didn't know there were two sects of Islam
Christian Avard

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his "Axis of Evil" speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!"

Research by RAW STORY has confirmed a surprising lack of public statements from the president regarding the branches of Islam, but did uncover at least one mention of their existence. A fact sheet released by the White House in December of 2001 does indeed use the term Sunni to describe a Lashkar-E-Tayyib, "the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad." Other mentions, not originating from the White House, were common in government documents and proceedings, as well as in media coverage of the middle east.

Other reports also place Bush announcing newfound knowledge of the differences between Muslim groups shortly before entering the Iraq war.

In an interview with RAW STORY, Ambassador Galbraith recounted this anecdote from his book to exemplify "a culture of arrogance that pervaded the whole administration."

"From the president and the vice president down through the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, there was a belief that Iraq was a blank slate on which the United States could impose its vision of a pluralistic democratic society," said Galbraith. "The arrogance came in the form of a belief that this could be accomplished with minimal effort and planning by the United States and that it was not important to know something about Iraq."

READ THE REST.

From Grist online.

Water crisis doesn't care if countries are rich or poor

Water crisis: not just for poor countries anymore. Industrialized nations must make drastic policy changes if they wish to maintain water supplies, warns the World Wildlife Fund today. In cities from Seville to Sydney to Sacramento, water has become a hot political issue as supply declines thanks to everything from global warming to wetlands loss. A report by the International Water Management Institute, also published today, said that a third of the world faces water shortages; water use has increased by six times in the last century and will double again by 2050, mostly from agricultural use. WWF suggests a combination of solutions -- conserving, repairing infrastructure, reducing pollution, and requiring agriculture interests in rich countries to pay more for water and be held accountable for efficient use -- but noted that implementing common-sense measures "in the face of habitual practices and intense lobbying by vested interests has been very difficult." You think?

Posted: 15 Aug. 2006

ARMED MADHOUSE - (Eds. note: This piece is part of a serialization of Greg Palast’s newest book, Armed Madhouse. Palast’s Armed Madhouse book tour is co-sponsored by Working Assets.)

THE FEAR: Including Marines in a tube, learning to speak Terrorist, Bush’s Khan job, National Security Document 199-I and Osama’s Mission Accomplished.

What are you afraid of? Our Fear Salesman-in-Chief has something for everyone.

So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See?

…and Bush says, "Whad’l'ya have, pardner?" and Osama says…

But wait a minute. I’d better shut my mouth. The sign here in the airport says, "Security is no joking matter." But if security’s no joking matter, why does this guy dressed in a high-school marching band outfit tell me to take off my shoes? All I can say is, Thank God the "shoe bomber" didn’t carry Semtex in his underpants.

I’m a bit nervous. It’s an "ORANGE ALERT" day. That’s a "low threat" notice. According to the press release from the Department of Homeland Security, low-threat Orange means that there will be no special inspections of passengers or cargo today. Isn’t it nice of Mr. Bush to alert Osama when half our security forces are given the day off? Hmm. I asked an Israeli security expert why his nation doesn’t use these pretty color codes.

He asked me if, when I woke up, I checked the day’s terror color.

"I can’t say I ever have. I mean, who would?" He smiled. "The terrorists." America is the only nation on the planet that kindly informs bombers, hijackers and berserkers the days on which they won’t be monitored. You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to get a jump on George Bush’s team.

There are three possible explanations for the Administration’s publishing a good-day-for-bombing color guidebook.

1. God is on Osama’s side.

2. George is on Osama’s side.

3. It’s about the oil.

A gold star if you picked #3.

Osama’s Mission Accomplished

On Thursday, May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Forgetting to undo the parachute clips around his gonads, our President walked bowlegged on the ship’s deck in a green jumpsuit looking astonishingly like Ham, first chimp in space. The scene was so exciting that the media failed to notice that the War on Terror had ended on the previous Tuesday.

On that day, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld quietly acknowledged that he was withdrawing America’s armed forces from Saudi Arabia.

I’m always surprised at the debate over "What drives Osama? What does Al-Qaeda want?" There should be no confusion: Al-Qaeda states its mission, like most enterprises, on its Web site. Osama had it written out in English, in capital letters, so it wouldn’t be difficult to miss the point.

DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST THE AMERICANS OCCUPYING THE LAND OF THE TWO HOLY PLACES—EXPEL THE INFIDELS FROM THE ARAB PENINSULA The "two holy places" are Mecca and Medina, and their "land" is Saudi Arabia. That’s what Osama wanted: U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden issued his demand on August 23, 1996; and on April 29, 2003, the Tuesday before the President was chauffeured by fighter jet onto the deck of the Abe Lincoln, Mr. Bush gave bin Laden exactly what he wanted: U.S. troops sent packing from the Land of the Holy Places.

That’s astonishing. Until George W. Bush, the United States of America has never, ever, removed all our military bases from a foreign land no matter how much locals bitched or moaned. We even keep troops in Okinawa over the island’s strong objections, and World War II ended sixty years ago.

Am I accusing George Bush Jr. of being the first President of the United States to cravenly accede to the demands of terrorists? No, Reagan got there first, in 1984, when he gave in to Hizbollah’s demand and ordered our Marines to retreat from Lebanon.

No matter, President Bush was correct in announcing, "Mission Accomplished." However, it was not America’s mission that was accomplished. It was Osama’s.

Coming soon: Part II of Armed Madhouse, "What Does Osama Want?"

From Grist online.

Oil spills from Japanese and Philippine tankers

It's been an oil-spillarific few days. A Japanese tanker, en route from Jordan, collided yesterday with a distressed cargo ship and spilled about 1.4 million gallons of crude into the eastern Indian Ocean. The ship's owner claims the spill has been contained and there's no need to clean it up, as the oil will naturally disperse into the sea. Um? A Philippine tanker sunk Friday, and the over half-million gallons of oil it was carrying have already created an oil slick over 17 miles long, the worst spill in Philippine history. The crud has reached the coastline of the island of Guimaras, which declared a "state of calamity"; a marine sanctuary on another island was tainted by crude oil four inches thick. Meanwhile, Lebanon will today begin mopping up the biggest spill in its history, which leaked into the Mediterranean Sea from a power plant bombed in mid-July and has tainted 87 miles of coastline. Oil. Love it!

Posted: 14 Aug. 2006

The government keeps playing those games of delusion.

What's the real federal deficit?
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

The federal government keeps two sets of books.

The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.

The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included — as the board that sets accounting rules is considering — the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.

Congress has written its own accounting rules — which would be illegal for a corporation to use because they ignore important costs such as the growing expense of retirement benefits for civil servants and military personnel.

Last year, the audited statement produced by the accountants said the government ran a deficit equal to $6,700 for every American household. The number given to the public put the deficit at $2,800 per household.

A growing number of Congress members and accounting experts say it's time for Congress to start using the audited financial statement when it makes budget decisions. They say accurate accounting would force Congress to show more restraint before approving popular measures to boost spending or cut taxes.

"We're a bottom-line culture, and we've been hiding the bottom line from the American people," says Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., a former investment banker. "It's not fair to them, and it's delusional on our part."

The House of Representatives supported Cooper's proposal this year to ask the president to include the audited numbers in his budgets, but the Senate did not consider the measure.

Good accounting is crucial at a time when the government faces long-term challenges in paying benefits to tens of millions of Americans for Medicare, Social Security and government pensions, say advocates of stricter accounting rules in federal budgeting.

"Accounting matters," says Harvard University law professor Howell Jackson, who specializes in business law. "The deficit number affects how politicians act. We need a good number so politicians can have a target worth looking at."

The audited financial statement — prepared by the Treasury Department — reveals a federal government in far worse financial shape than official budget reports indicate, a USA TODAY analysis found. The government has run a deficit of $2.9 trillion since 1997, according to the audited number. The official deficit since then is just $729 billion. The difference is equal to an entire year's worth of federal spending.

READ THE REST.

From Grist online.

Immigration crackdown exacerbates organic-farm labor shortage

Organic farmers are desperately struggling to find workers, caught between rising demand and an ever-more-severe labor shortage. More than half of the 1.8 million farmworkers in the U.S. are here illegally, and increased border patrols have reduced the number of immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Service-sector jobs in the city are easy to find, and the work required by organic farms -- pulling up weeds by hand -- is backbreaking. "No one wants to do this work," says California organic ag foreman Eber Diaz. "I've never seen a situation where it was so difficult to find people." Traditional farmers can get by with up to 20 percent fewer workers by wiping out weeds with pesticides, but for organic farmers, it's human labor or nothing. The situation has made immigration reformers out of many organic farmers; they're pushing for a guest worker program like the one currently stalled in D.C. As for actually paying workers what the work is worth, well, what are we, communists?

Posted: 11 Aug. 2006

Retroactive War Crime Protection Proposed
by Pete Yost

The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policymakers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal.

The move by the administration is the latest effort to deal with treatment of those taken into custody in the war on terror.

At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA, and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials. A separate law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, applies to the military.

The Washington Post first reported on the War Crimes Act amendments Wednesday.

One section of the draft would outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." A copy of the section of the draft was obtained by The Associated Press.

The White House, without elaboration, said in a statement that the bill "will apply to any conduct by any U.S. personnel, whether committed before or after the law is enacted."

Two attorneys said that the draft is in the revision stage but that the administration seems intent on pushing forward the draft's major points in Congress after Labor Day. The two attorneys spoke on condition of anonymity because their sources did not authorize them to release the information.

"I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous," said a third attorney, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

Fidell said the initiative is "not just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations."

Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration," said a fourth attorney, Scott Horton, who has followed detainee issues closely. "The administration is trying to insulate policymakers under the War Crimes Act."

READ THE REST.

This is fantastic news, the kind of news that could transform the planet.

Solar cells change electricity distribution
By DAVE FREEMAN AND JIM HARDING
GUEST COLUMNISTS

In separate announcements over the past few months, researchers at the University of Johannesburg and at Nanosolar, a private company in Palo Alto, have announced major breakthroughs in reducing the cost of solar electric cells. While trade journals are abuzz with the news, analysis of the potential implications has been sparse.

We approach this news as current and former public electric utility executives, sympathetic with consumer and environmental concerns. South Africa and California technologies rely on the same alloy -- called CIGS (for copper-indium-gallium-selenide) -- deposited in an extremely thin layer on a flexible surface. Both companies claim that the technology reduces solar cell production costs by a factor of 4-5. That would bring the cost to or below that of delivered electricity in a large fraction of the world.

The California team is backed by a powerful team of private investors, including Google's two founders and the insurance giant Swiss Re, among others. It has announced plans to build a $100 million production facility in the San Francisco Bay area that is slated to be operational at 215 megawatts next year, and soon thereafter capable of producing 430 megawatts of cells annually.

What makes this particular news stand out? Cost, scale and financial strength. The cost of the facility is about one-tenth that of recently completed silicon cell facilities.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 8 Aug. 2006

Informational Anarchy

By Anonymous Liberal -- Real democracy can only exist if a nation's citizenry remains reasonably well-informed about the major issues of the day. That is why, historically, censorship and control of the media have been the favorite tools of those intent on subverting democratic processes for their own purposes. Under this 'old model', power was maintained by limiting the exposure of the citizenry to important information. For this reason, defenders of democracy are always on the lookout for evidence of censorship and always wary of any governmental efforts to harass or intimidate the press.

This phenomenon was on display just recently when a number of prominent conservative commentators (and even a few GOP politicians) openly called for the criminal prosecution of reporters and editors at the New York Times. These outlandish statements were predictably condemned by other commentators and politicians--from across the political spectrum--as being wholly un-American and antithetical to the very concept of democratic government.

This response is entirely accurate, of course, but I fear that it reflects a failure to appreciate the real nature of the threat. There is no doubt that censorship and similar tools have been used effectively in the past to undermine democratic processes. But every major development in mass communication (from the printing press to television to the internet) has made this sort of top-down model less workable. In today's world of global telecommunications and the worldwide web, it is virtually impossible to embargo information. There are just too many sources of information at the public's disposal. Censorship is most effective when people don't know it is occurring. Otherwise it tends to backfire. But in the information age, the sort of monopolistic control of information necessary to utilize censorship effectively is just too difficult to achieve, particularly in a country like the United States.

But the proliferation of information sources has created another threat, one that is far more problematic than censorship, at least at this point in our history. I'll call that threat, for lack of a better term, "informational anarchy."

Until relatively recently, most Americans received their news from a handful of sources, primarily the major newspapers and television networks. This arrangement was far from ideal for a number of reasons, most notably because it put an awful lot of power in the hands of a select few. But it did have one important benefit: the major news outlets controlled enough of the information flow that everyone in America was more or less exposed to the same basic facts. In this way, whether they intended to or not, the news outlets served as the unofficial referees of our political discourse. They set the groundrules, called the fouls, and forced the political parties to engage each other on the same basic informational playing field.

But this is no longer the case. The advent of talk radio, cable tv, and the internet--coupled with the relentless GOP attack on the media's credibility and supposed biases--has greatly limited the capacity and willingness of the major news outlets to perform any sort of meaningful refereeing of political debate in this country. The result is informational anarchy, political white noise.

There are two ways of keeping the truth from people. You can either withhold it from them (the old model) or you can hide it in plain sight by burying it in a sea of disinformation. This latter strategy has become the new paradigm. Whereas the autocrats of past eras would try to keep the public in the dark by limiting the flow of information, their modern counterparts operate by overloading the public with conflicting information. Damaging facts are countered by flooding the airwaves with contrary assertions and, at the same time, actively working to discredit, vilify, or co-opt any institution that might possibly be viewed as a neutral arbiter of truth (the media, academia, the judiciary, etc.). Whereas the old model sought to control what information people were exposed to, the new model seeks to render people unable to identify the truth, even when it is right in front of their faces.

A good example of how this new model works was the recent breathless announcement by Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Pete Hoekstra that Saddam's elusive WMD stash had at long last been discovered in Iraq. This claim was, of course, complete rubbish. The degraded munitions at issue were actually leftovers from the Iran-Iraq war that were long ago buried in the desert and forgotten. The Bush administration itself immediately batted down the story, stating definitively that these were not the WMD discussed in the leadup to the invasion. David Kay, the man who scoured Iraq for WMD after the invasion, observed that most Americans had chemicals under their kitchen sinks that were more toxic than these degraded relics.

But none of that mattered. Santorum and Hoekstra's claim was repeated by enough sources (generally partisan outlets like Fox News, talk radio, and right wing blogs) that it seems to have had a significant effect on public opinion. A recent poll found that 50% of Americans still believe that Iraq possessed WMD (up from 36% last year). That's a rather stunning statistic. It indicates that we are no longer operating under a system where people's political opinions are based on the same facts. The facts themselves are now politicized. Moreover, as this episode illustrates, the major news outlets no longer have the power to definitively debunk even the most ludicrous of claims, at least with respect to a sizable percentage of the population.

When Republicans attack the New York Times, this is their goal. They don't really expect that their criticism will result in censorship or the prosecution of journalists, but by repeatedly attacking the paper as liberally-biased and even treasonous, they hope to discredit it and thereby diminish its ability to persuade people. Bertrand Russell once said:

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.

From The Center for American Progress.

Beyond the Pale

Yesterday, British Petroleum (BP) announced the closure of its Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope, the "nation's largest oil field," because it had detected corrosion in a major pipeline. The company said it will replace 16 miles of pipeline, and some analysts believe it "could take six months or perhaps a year for production to return to normal." Oil prices jumped $2 to $77 a barrel for crude oil, and gas prices "began to rise as much as 5 cents a gallon in some cities." "Analysts predicted an additional rise of at least another 5 cents in the coming days, particularly on the West Coast." The incident once again demonstrated the harmful symptoms of America's addiction to oil. One year ago today, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act into law, promising it would "take pressure off price for American consumers." Today, the "numbers are starting to add up," with disruptions "currently afflicting the world’s oil markets in Nigeria, Iraq, Venezuela," the Gulf of Mexico, and now Alaska. Conservatives used the supply disruption to push for more drilling once again. "This problem, like the hurricanes last fall," Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NW) said yesterday, "underscores the pressing need to expand domestic oil and gas production." What America really needs is a new direction.

NO SURPRISE ABOUT PIPELINE CORROSION: In a press release, BP announced the shutdown came "following the discovery of unexpectedly severe corrosion and a small spill from a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line." But there was nothing unexpected about the problems in the oil lines. Last March, "the largest oil spill ever in the energy-rich North Slope" occurred after a corroded pipe leaked up to 267,000 gallons of crude at Prudhoe Bay. Government reports concluded that six other places along the pipeline also had the same corrosion, and last month, BP had to shut down 12 Prudhoe Bay oil wells after whistleblowers revealed the leaks. ("It takes two leaks before they figure out that corrosion is a significant issue," said David Pursell of Houston's Pickering Energy Partners in Houston. "One time is not enough?") The Department of Transportation ordered BP to use a "smart pig," a device used to test for pipeline abnormalities, after the March leak. BP had not conducted such a test since 1992, and "regulators say more frequent tests should have been done." BP's Alaska President admitted as much yesterday, promising the company would be "adjusting considerably our corrosion program." The EPA "has launched a criminal probe to determine whether the company was negligent in managing the pipeline."

BP FACES BIG PROBLEMS: The closure is the latest stain on BP's "carefully-crafted 'Beyond Petroleum' image." A criminal investigation into the March oil spill is ongoing. In 2005, an explosion at a Texas City refinery killed 15 people, leading the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to fine the company a "record $21.4 million for more than 300 alleged violations." (OSHA fined the company another $2.4 million for safety violations in Ohio, and BP is now a part of OSHA's "Enhanced Enforcement Program" for serial violators.) Last year's hurricanes damaged BP's Thunder Horse offshore drilling platform in the Gulf, but a "recent test showed two underwater leaks...and it was not expected to be back online until early 2007." The Federal Trade Commission has also accused BP traders -- one of whom has pled guilty -- of "conspiring to corner the propane market and sparking a sharp rise in the price of the heating fuel." But BP's problems haven't hurt the bottom line. Last quarter, BP pocketed $7.27 billion, or $900 a second, in profits.

CONSERVATIVES STILL HIGH ON OIL DRILLING: Much like they did after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, conservatives seized on yesterday's supply disruption to push their misguided plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "Oil companies may now have a tougher time reassuring lawmakers" following the Prudhoe Bay episode, but it hasn't stopped the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page from calling on Congress to "use the BP mess as an excellent reason" to drill in the Refuge. The Department of Energy's own analysis has found drilling in the Arctic Refuge would "only slightly reduce America’s dependence on imports and would lower oil prices by less than 50 cents a barrel." (This decrease would translate to a measly one penny per gallon reduction in gas prices twenty years from now.) The environmental costs would be great; drilling in Alaska's North Slope has already led to "4,532 spills between 1996 and 2004 totaling more than 1.9 million gallons of toxic substances, most commonly diesel, crude oil, and hydraulic oil."

WEANING OURSELVES OFF OIL: There are better ways for America to quit. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that only a one miler per gallon increase in America's fuel economy would make up for the lost supply from Prudhoe Bay and would save American consumers $18 billion a year. In California, a state that will suffer disproportionately from the Prudhoe shut-down because "refineries there are designed to process the Alaskan crude," voters will have a chance to force oil companies to pay their fair share towards investments in clean energy. (Oil companies such as Chevron have already spent $10.5 million to oppose the campaign.) The goal of Proposition 87 supporters is to reduce California's oil use by 25 percent over 10 years. Learn more about Proposition 87 here.


Under the Radar

IRAQ -- IRAQI PRIME MINISTER DENOUNCES U.S.-BACKED OPERATION: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has vehemently denounced a raid conducted by American military personnel and Iraqi troops into the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, home to influential radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Arguing that the operation "used weapons that are unreasonable to detain someone -- like using planes," Maliki said he was "very angered and pained" at the events. The raid, which killed three and wounded at least 18, including an American soldier, was conducted to counter the growing influence of Sadr's Mahdi Army, which "has been accused of carrying out frequent assassinations and kidnappings of Sunni Arabs." Sadr is a "major figure in the majority Shiite community and a pillar of support for al-Maliki," and has "re-emerged as a key force" since his battles with U.S. troops in 2004, making his militia one of the "principal targets of the American forces" as it brings an additional 5,000 troops into Baghdad. Sadr recently staged a large demonstration to support Shiite Hezbollah, but with a "secondary motive...to show his power to mobilize large crowds of his supporters, mostly angry young men, on very short notice." In addition, Sadr's party "won 30 seats in parliament in this year's elections, and so he can apply political pressure as well as military pressure." For his part, Maliki has refused to crack down on Shiite militias like Sadr's, even going so far as to consider "a limited amnesty that would likely include guerrillas who had attacked U.S. troops." Following Tuesday's raid, Maliki "apologized to the Iraqi people for the operation, saying, 'This won't happen again.'"

RADICAL RIGHT -- CONSERVATIVE THINK TANK FIRES FELLOW FOR CRITICIZING BUSH: Last month, the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank in Washington, DC, fired Senior Research Fellow John Hulsman. Heritage refuses to say exactly why they let him go, but the New Republic reports the "reasons for Hulsman's departure" are "perfectly evident"; he criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy. Hulsman previously had kept his dissent to himself, but "years of insurgency, civil war, and general chaos" in Iraq led him to speak out. In an essay last year for The National Interest, Hulsman took issue with President Bush's policy in Iraq, stating, "[N]eoconservatives, through their policies of expending blood and treasure for problematic gains such as Iraq, are significantly retarding America's ability to act against the true barbarians at the gate -- Al-Qaeda and Islamist extremists." Hulsman also criticized the Bush administration's refusal to talk to regimes it dislikes, specifically Iran: "America, on the other hand, having determined the mullahs in Iran were evil, disdained to engage them. But we cannot only conduct diplomatic relations with Canada." These critiques may seem mild, but as Christopher Preble of the Cato Institute explains: "At Heritage, anything that smacks of criticism of Bush will not be tolerated."


Think Fast

Democracy not on the march, says Justice Kennedy. "Our best security, our only security, is in the world of ideas, and I sense a slight foreboding," Kennedy said in a speech. "Make no mistake, there's a jury that's out. In half the world, the verdict is not yet in" on Western-style democracy.

What friends are for: Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) reportedly met with Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) last week to "urge him to step aside, reminding him that" if he lost his seat, "Ney could not expect a lucrative career on K Street to pay those tuition bills [for his children], along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees piling up."

Despite bipartisan objections, the Bush administration is producing the first new landmines "in over 10 years," placing the U.S. "on the same short list of nations that includes Iran, North Korea and Burma, a list of countries producing landmine weapons banned by an international treaty."

New study shows that children on Medicaid or with no insurance have a death rate twice as high as that of children with private insurance. "Nationwide, providing more primary and preventive care to those children could save an estimated $5 billion a year."

Posted: 7 Aug. 2006

From Grist online.

Sweden shuts down four nuke reactors after near-meltdown of one

The near-meltdown of one of Sweden's 10 nuclear reactors has resulted in the closure of three additional reactors over safety concerns. It's also fueled a raging debate in the country over the future of nuclear power. After a short-circuit of the national grid kept power from reaching a reactor at the Forsmark plant 125 miles north of Stockholm, only two of the four diesel generators meant to provide backup power for a safe shutdown came online -- barely enough to contain a disaster, critics said. Analysts say that without power, if none or even just one of the generators had come on, a meltdown was possible in some 90 minutes. "It's a bit like a lottery," said nuclear engineer and consultant Lars-Olov Hoglund. (Just what you like to hear from nuclear engineers!) In the 1980s, anti-nuke activism was all the rage in the country. Looks like that retro fashion may be back in style.


Many nail polishes contain shady ingredients

A question for all you women, girls, drag queens, trannies, metrosexuals, goths, punks, and so on: have you ever wondered what's in that nail polish? If you're in the U.S., one ingredient is likely the nefarious dibutyl phthalate, or DBP, which has been linked to cancer in lab critters and to underdeveloped genitals and other fertility problems in newborn boys. The FDA doesn't require that cosmetics be tested for long-term effects before coming to market; nor is it requiring companies stop using DBP. Activist groups like the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics have stepped into the breach, trying to persuade manufacturers to sign a "Compact for Safe Cosmetics" pledging to replace suspect chemicals with safer alternatives. Seems reasonable, but few big-name companies in the U.S. have signed on. And you thought the beauty myth was poisonous.

From The Center for American Progress.

The Chuck Wagon Speaks

Convicted ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) has admitted accepting $2.4 million in bribes from Brent Wilkes and other lobbyists. Today, in his first on-the-record interview since the scandal broke, Wilkes argues that this is just the way business is done in Washington. Wilkes was taught the ropes by Bill Lowery, a former representative who is now a lobbyist with extremely close connections to powerful House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA). Lowery explained to Wilkes that lobbying is a "two part deal": "Jerry [Lewis] will make the request. Jerry will carry the vote. Jerry will have plenty of time for this. If you don’t want to make the contributions, chair the fund-raising event, you will get left behind." Lowery also advised Wilkes "that presenting the checks during the sessions was not how things were done"; instead, "Lowery taught him the right way to do it: hand over the envelope in the hallway outside the suite, at least a few feet away." The Cunningham prosecution, the Jack Abramoff scandal and other ethical improprieties caused congressional leaders to make noise about reform earlier this year. (Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) said that "to regain the trust of the American people in this institution we must go further than prosecuting the bad actors. We need to reform the rules so that it is clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what is ethically acceptable.") With the public's attention turned to other matters, however, those efforts have been diluted, and now abandoned.

LOBBYING REFORM ABANDONED: Six months ago, as the details of the Jack Abramoff scandal emerged, ethics reform was all the rage. Now, it's "all but forgotten." Both the House and the Senate passed weak bills, and that effort "shows no signs of resulting in a conference committee producing anything with teeth."

AFGHANISTAN -- SECURITY REMAINS ELUSIVE IN INSURGENCY-RIDDLED SOUTH: Only one week after NATO took over command of southern Afghanistan from U.S. forces, a sharp spike in violence is already "taxing" the international coalition. In the "worst upsurge of violence" since 2001, the Taliban recently overran two districts before being beaten back. The NATO force is larger than the American contingent that previously patrolled the area, but officials now worry that they will have to "pull back to avoid being spread so thin that they do not have a decisive amount of force anywhere." One senior officer in the region was quoted as saying that British troops are already "on the brink of exhaustion" and have suffered "great hardship." The violence comes as Tom Koenigs, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, warned reporters that he doubted the insurgency was going to be over in a year. "There is a virtual unlimited reservoir of Taliban fighters," he added. "It is not possible to defeat the movement by inflicting heavy losses on it." Unfortunately, troops have not yet been able to do any reconstruction projects, which were somewhat neglected by the American forces due to a "shortage of troops." As a result, popular discontent has grown, and opium harvests are at their "biggest ever" in the region. "It was better when the Taliban were in power," says Haji Khan, a village elder. "There is no peace, no security. Things have got much worse over the past year."

Posted: 5 Aug. 2006

No matter what state you live in, this affects your right to an honest democratic voting process.

The Diebold Bombshell
by David Dill, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons

Most computer scientists have long viewed Diebold as the poster child for all that is wrong with touch screen voting machines. But we never imagined that Diebold would be as irresponsible and incompetent as they have turned out to be.

Recently, computer security expert Harri Hursti revealed serious security vulnerabilities in Diebold's software. According to Michael Shamos, a computer scientist and voting system examiner in Pennsylvania, "It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system."

Even more shockingly, we learned recently that Diebold and the State of Maryland had been aware of these vulnerabilities for at least two years. They were documented in analysis, commissioned by Maryland and conducted by RABA Technologies, published in January 2004. For over two years, Diebold has chosen not to fix the security holes, and Maryland has chosen not to alert other states or national officials about these problems.

Basically, Diebold included a "back door" in its software, allowing anyone to change or modify the software. There are no technical safeguards in place to ensure that only authorized people can make changes.

A malicious individual with access to a voting machine could rig the software without being detected. Worse yet, if the attacker rigged the machine used to compute the totals for some precinct, he or she could alter the results of that precinct. The only fix the RABA authors suggested was to warn people that manipulating an election is against the law.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 4 Aug. 2006

It has little to do with "National Security" and everything to do with the Bush regime covering their worthless behinds.

U.S. threatens suit if Maine probes Verizon ties to NSA
By KEVIN WACK, Portland Press Herald Writer

The Bush administration is threatening to sue if Maine regulators decide to investigate whether Verizon Communications illegally turned over customer information to the National Security Agency.

Verizon customers in Maine have asked the state's Public Utilities Commission to investigate whether the telecom giant violated privacy laws by cooperating with a domestic surveillance program. The PUC is expected to decide Monday whether to open such a probe.

In a July 28 letter to the PUC, the U.S. Department of Justice cites national security as a key reason for its opposition to a state investigation. The seven-page letter suggests a lawsuit is likely if Maine regulators decide to investigate.

"We sincerely hope that, in light of governing law and the national security concerns implicated by the requests for information, you will decline to open an investigation and close these proceedings, thereby avoiding litigation over the matter," the letter reads.

The Justice Department and Verizon both declined to comment on the letter Thursday.

The Justice Department's stance drew criticism from Maine groups that favor an investigation. They believe that if state secrets are at risk, precautions can be taken to ensure they aren't revealed.

"The federal Department of Justice is trying to kill the proceeding even before it begins, and I don't think that's proper," said Wayne Jortner, senior counsel in the Maine Public Advocate's Office, which represents citizens in cases involving public utilities.

"Verizon may have broken the law, and the Department of Justice is overstepping its bounds in trying to intimidate the state PUC from investigating the potential violation," said Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. "And I do think it sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent for the federal government to threaten to sue the state, (which is) merely doing its job."

The Maine complaint, filed in May by 22 Verizon customers, is one of several similar cases around the country. The cases were sparked by news reports alleging that phone companies have cooperated with government surveillance efforts by providing the domestic phone call records of millions of Americans.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 3 Aug. 2006

From People for the American Way

Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is at it again, making voting – and registering to vote – as difficult as possible for some Ohioans. But People For the American Way Foundation is undaunted, as we fight to put an end to unreasonable obstacles to voting and continue to register voters in disenfranchised communities, despite the enormous hurdles.

Help us save the 2006 election in Ohio before it’s too late. By making a secure online contribution today, you can help us give a voice to the same communities Secretary of State Blackwell’s policies hurt. Your donation will go toward our efforts both to end Blackwell’s restrictions and to register thousands of Ohio voters, even in the face of increased hardship and cost.

Click here to make a contribution of $25, $50, or more to end voter suppression tactics in Ohio.

In 2004, Sec. of State Blackwell’s early attempts at voter suppression were evident when he tried to require that voter registration forms only be counted if turned in on special paper that no one uses, after thousands of new voters had already been registered on normal paper. Public outrage and pressure – including from thousands of PFAW Foundation activists – forced that requirement to be withdrawn, but severe restrictions by Blackwell and others on the counting of provisional ballots and misallocation of election equipment disenfranchised thousands of mostly poor, African American and young voters on Election Day.

Now, in 2006, the Secretary of State is making it extremely difficult for pro-voter groups like People For the American Way Foundation to register citizens in those communities, by imposing burdensome restrictions that we’re fighting on every level – in court, at the grassroots and in coordination with local election officials. And as we fight to break down the barriers, we’re intent on defying the odds and registering tens of thousands of African American voters through our Victory Through Voting program in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

And it doesn’t stop at voter registration. Blackwell has also circulated a misleading description of Ohio’s voter identification requirements to county election officials, causing confusion that will ultimately result in eligible voters being turned away from the ballot box. In response, People For the American Way is pressuring the Secretary of State’s office to end the misinformation and educate county election officials about the actual voter ID requirements under Ohio law.

We only have a few short months to stop these attempts at disenfranchisement before they succeed. If you want to protect voting rights and share our outrage at these tactics, please show your support with a secure online contribution.

From Grist online.

China plans massive diversion of Tibetan river water

The Chinese never met a problem they couldn't solve with a few billion dollars and a massive engineering project out of scale with anything ever attempted before by humanity. The latest is a $37 billion undertaking which would divert water from rivers in the high reaches of Tibet -- which, when you think about it, don't really need all that water anyway -- through an elaborate, 190-mile series of canals and tunnels to the western reaches of the over-tapped Yellow River, which feeds the water-parched northern regions of China. The diversion would initially carry about 1 trillion gallons a year, rising to 4.5 trillion gallons over time. Construction could start as soon as 2010. The technical challenges are formidable: for one, the proposed route would divert water from an altitude of 13,600 feet, where it's usually frozen. Much of Tibet's water comes from glaciers that are in the midst of melting, so, as Tibet expert Tashi Tsering understates it, "This project is definitely not meant to develop Tibet."

From The Center for American Progress.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS -- U.S. OFFENDED BY CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM ON MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT: The United States "sharply rebuked" the No. 2 U.N. official, Mark Malloch Brown, yesterday for his suggestion that America should allow others to share the lead in solving the Lebanon crisis. Here is what Brown said to perturb the administration: "What is troubling to me is the US and UK now carry with them a particular set of baggage in the Middle East. The challenge for them is to recognize that ultimately they have to allow others to share the lead in this effort diplomatically and (in putting together) a stabilization force." In response, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We are seeing a troubling pattern of a high official of the U.N. who seems to be making it his business to criticize member states and, frankly, with misplaced and misguided criticisms." Brown explained in response, "I was really in fact in the interview calling for the U.S. to reach out to France and others to make sure it was demonstrating a broad multilateral coalition and within a single news cycle of my calling for that, it was doing it." Such a coalition will be necessary to get a Security Council commitment for a stabilization force on the Lebanon-Israel border. The Bush administration has repeatedly shown that it can dish out criticism of the U.N., but it can't take it.

MINIMUM WAGE -- SENATE MILLIONAIRES RESIST A STRAIGHTFORWARD MINIMUM WAGE VOTE: Following the House's approval of a bill last week that would link large cuts in the estate tax (aka the Paris Hilton Tax) to an increase in the minimum wage, the Senate will now consider the legislation. In a move Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) called "political blackmail," conservative House leaders connected a minimum wage increase with what AFL-CIO lobbyist Bill Samuel called "the mother of all poison pills:" a large cut in the estate tax, which only affects 5 out of every 1,000 estates. Six weeks ago, Senate conservatives voted down a measure that would have raised the minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Now, they will only consider an increase if it is linked to tax cuts for multimillionaires. Unsurprisingly, those conservative Senate leaders pushing hardest for further cuts in the estate tax are multimillionaires themselves. For example, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) boasts assets between $10,584,000 and $39,260,000 in blind trusts. If one were to work a normal 40-hour week for 52 weeks a year for minimum wage, it would take between 988 and 3,665 years to amass Frist's fortune. While Frist has stringently supported large tax cuts for fellow multimillionaire trust babies and annual $3,300 pay raises for himself and his Senate colleagues, he has thus far refused to give a small raise to the nearly 8 million Americans who live on $5.15 an hour. See a list of Senate millionaires who have resisted raising the minimum wage here.

Posted: 2 Aug. 2006

From Black Box Voting

If you are worried about Election 2006, this message is for you. The Black Box Voting CITIZEN'S TOOL KIT contains 20 modules, listed below. Begin actively managing your elections by choosing one thing to do. This is your chance to suggest improvements to the tool kit.

Choose one action ­ any action. This is YOUR tool kit to help you and your group take action and monitor upcoming elections, so contribute input as desired.

A FRAME OF REFERENCE: You own your government, it's not the other way around.

When you own something, it's up to you to manage it. The Citizen's Tool Kit was created through combined expertise with many of our nation's most effective and experienced citizens, to help you learn the citizen management skills that work. If you depend on others to do this for you, you may just lose your country.

TELLING IT TO YOU STRAIGHT: WE'RE IN TROUBLE

Our electoral system is fundamentally broken. It's NOT going to be fixed by November. And we don't have a lot of time to make things right.

What happens when the owner of a business doesn't do anything to manage it? Pretty soon it doesn't exist. Let's not kid ourselves: The same thing can happen to our democratic republic.

We need to take this seriously. Your children and grandchildren will inherit the government you give to them. If you don't take action, who will?

Black Box Voting is not going to organize you, fix the government for you, or manage your efforts. We WILL provide you with the tools to have a real impact, either individually or by gathering together in small groups of 5 to a dozen people. We will provide you with mentoring if you need it. This is not a top-down initiative, it's roots-up, and it's your turn to reach for sunlight.

If you've been under the impression that the American citizenry can win back our elections by clicking "send" on an e-mail or writing letters to our representatives, or even by passing a law, think again. Those of us who have been in the trenches know: Laws are being ignored willy-nilly, public records are being withheld from citizens, and the voting machines we're using are junk.

If you aren't convinced, here is a presentation you can review -- it's pictures and captions, a quick read (but due to so many pictures, a slightly slow download, allow a few minutes even on high-speed connections):
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit-presentation.pdf
You can also use this presentation to explain the situation to others.

* * * * *

Be part of the solution: Please sign up for the NATIONAL HAND COUNT REGISTRY:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-profile.cgi?action=register

From The Center for American Progress.

MINIMUM WAGE
Political Blackmail

On Friday, the Senate will vote on a bill that increases the minimum wage for the first time in nine years. Conservatives "who never voted for the minimum wage before, you'll see them vote for this," explained Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). Why? Because the minimum wage increase -- which is at its lowest buying power in 51 years -- is being coupled with an unnecessary and costly reduction in the estate tax for the super-wealthy, a windfall for a small number of powerful legions in the conservative base. The Senate leadership, demonstrating that it cannot act on behalf of low-wage workers without bribing the rich, has said it will prevent any attempts to strip the estate tax provision from the bill and allow a straightforward vote on the minimum wage increase. In a moment of candor last week, Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) revealed the political motives behind the bill, informing proponents of the minimum wage increase that "you have seen us really outfox you on this issue tonight." Editorials across the nation, however, have taken note, decrying the pairing of the minimum wage with the estate tax as a "cynical move," a "political ploy," and a "minimum wage, maximum gall" effort that "screams of unfairness, hypocrisy and economic disaster." Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) added, "It’s political blackmail to say the only way that minimum wage workers can get a raise is to give a tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans. Members of Congress raised their own pay -- no strings attached. Surely, common decency suggests that minimum wage workers deserve the same respect."

WHY THE PARIS HILTON TAX CUT SHOULD BE A DEAL-BREAKER: The estate tax reduction -- aka the "Paris Hilton tax cut" -- would exempt the first $10 million of a couple’s estate ($5 million for an individual) from taxation entirely by 2015. Amounts above this and up to $25 million would be taxed at the capital gains rate, while amounts above $25 million would be taxed at 30 percent. Wealthy heirs who stand to receive a $10 million inheritance would receive a tax break of as much as $2.76 million. Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy John Irons explains that the "the heirs of the $10 million estate would get a tax break worth as much as 183 years of the income of a full-time minimum wage earner." The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reports that while 6.6 million minimum wage earners nationwide stand to gain an average benefit of $1,200 if the increase passes, a small number of ultra-wealthy beneficiaries (8,200 individuals) stand to reap an average of $1.3 million. CBPP also concluded that the estate tax provision would cut government income by $753 billion in the first 10 years, forcing lower spending for Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment insurance, which help low-wage workers. (By comparison, the White House estimates the federal deficit for this year will be $296 billion.)

OVER A MILLION LOW-WAGE WORKERS WOULD GET A WAGE CUT: While the proposed minimum wage-estate tax cut bill raises the wage for most employees, it results in a wage cut for approximately 1.1 million workers. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explains that the proposed bill would strike down state laws that require employers to "pay a full minimum wage without relying on tips from customers to reach the minimum level." Currently, seven states -- Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington -- mandate that their employers pay the applicable minimum wage without factoring in tips. If the bill is passed, employers in these states could begin paying their minimum wage earners as little as the federally-allowable $2.13 an hour for tipped employees, assuming tip earnings make up the difference to add up to the federal minimum wage. EPI calculates that states that have those laws will see the minimum wage for tipped employees (restaurant workers, hotel maids, parking attendants, etc.) fall as much as $5.50 per hour. "Everything that has been achieved in seven states to support low-wage workers who earn tips is destroyed by this bill," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). "This bill would slash the salaries of thousands of workers."

FRIST STANDS TO PERSONALLY BENEFIT: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) said the proposed legislation would be the only opportunity this year to increase the minimum wage. Frist declared, "It's now or never," stating his unwillingness to strip the estate tax reduction from the bill. His stance is sullied by the fact that he possibly stands to personally benefit from a cut in the estate tax -- a tax that he has been trying to escape for years. Frist Family Foundation, whose sole trustees are Bill Frist and his wife, had more than $2 million in assets in 2004. Up until 2001, the foundation had very little money. At that time, Frist transferred stocks of HCA Inc. that he inherited from his mother to the foundation. The move appears to have been an effort by Frist to dodge paying the estate tax on his inherited HCA stock. "Janne Gallagher, vice president and general counsel at the Washington-based Council on Foundations, said assets that go directly from an estate into a private family foundation, as in this case, are generally not taxed, unlike money distributed directly to heirs. She said once in the foundation, the money is largely tax exempt." The only charitable contribution the foundation made was an $877,000 donation to a private boys' school in Nashville that Frist once attended.

SWEETENING THE POT WITH SPECIAL INTEREST TAX BREAKS: In June, a Senate vote to permanently repeal the estate tax failed by three votes needed to receive the 60 vote required to overcome a filibuster. Indications are that this Friday's vote on the minimum wage-estate tax bill will be similarly close. Realizing three votes are needed in the Senate, the House-passed version of the bill includes a number of new special-interest tax breaks, unrelated to the estate tax, that are clearly intended to buy votes. "The bill is sprinkled with incentives drafted with particular lawmakers in mind. A rural bonds provision is aimed at Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR). A tax break for timber interests is a possible lure for Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). A provision benefiting coal mines is targeted at Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)." In June, Pryor, Cantwell, and Byrd all voted against the the irresponsible estate tax cut, which would have cost the government $71.6 billion a year by 2015. Their support will be crucial in turning back this ill-conceived piece of political blackmail.

TAX CODE -- RIGHT-WING GROUPS DECRY EXPOSING TAX HAVEN FRAUD AS 'BLAMING THE VICTIM': A Senate investigation released yesterday, which took 18 months and sifted through 2 million documents, concluded that "sham companies hiding the assets of super-wealthy Americans and corporations offshore are costing the U.S. Treasury as much as $100 billion a year in lost taxes." The use of offshore tax shelters is so extensive, the investigation found, that "law enforcement cannot control the growing misconduct." In response to the report, a range of conservative groups -- including the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity -- actually lined up to defend the tax shelters. "Clearly designed to criticize taxpayers who use low-tax jurisdictions for tax-planning purposes," a release from the groups said, the Senate's work was an effort to "blame the victim" -- i.e., the super-wealthy Americans -- who are suffering under "punitive tax rates." Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said yesterday, "I get incensed by people who use tax havens to not pay their taxes while the average guy has to pay his taxes because they are taken out of his pay before he gets it." IRS Commissioner Mark Everson also conceded