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: 29 March 2006

Subject: TAKE ACTION TO SAVE ORGANIC STANDARDS

Dear Friend,

The watchdog group Cornucopia Institute published a long-awaited report on organic dairy practices in the USA on March 22, and the facts are rather sobering. The good news is that most organic dairies in the U.S. are following strict organic standards, including giving animals regular access to pasture. The bad news is that several major players in the organic dairy sector are blatantly violating organic standards.

Two of the largest organic dairy companies in the nation, Horizon Organic (a subsidiary of Dean Foods); and Aurora Organic, a supplier of private brand name organic milk to Costco, Safeway, Giant, and others, who together control 65 percent of the market, are purchasing the majority of their milk from feedlot dairies where the cows have little or no access to pasture.

In addition, a routine practice on these giant dairy feedlots, many with thousands of cows, is to continuously import calves from conventional farms, where animals have been weaned on blood, fed slaughterhouse waste and genetically engineered grains, and injected or dosed with antibiotics. Send a message to the National Organic Program of the USDA to stop the labeling of factory farm milk as "organic." More information, related newspaper headlines and petition here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/nosb2.htm

Posted: 28 March 2006

Another example of the Gestapo mentality being promulagated by the Bush regime.

Virginia Training Manual Lists Property Rights Activists As Terrorists Says video cameras, binoculars, sketch pads are terrorist tools

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com

A Virginia training manual used to help state employees recognize terrorists lists anti-government and property rights activists as terrorists and includes binoculars, video cameras, pads and notebooks in a compendium of terrorist tools.

The manual, discovered by the Virginia News Source, is keen to emphasize that terrorists are not only Middle Eastern in scope and the main focus is afforded to domestic terrorism.

Included with Hamas, Al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad, the following groups are identified as terrorist organizations.

In any anti-government and militia movements
Are property-rights activists
Are in any racist, separatist and hate groups
Are an environmental and animal rights activist
Are a religious extremist
Are in a street gang

Presumably, tourists, journalists, hikers, bird-watchers, scuba divers, artists, painters, and anyone who takes a photograph is also now a terrorists according to the official list of terrorist paraphernalia provided.

- sketch pads or notebooks
- maps or charts
- still or video camera
- hand held tape recorder
- binoculars
- SCUBA equipment
- disguises

Reading further into the manual, associations between domestic terrorists and the supporting the American Revolution are subtly made. In Alex Jones' 2001 documentary 9/11: The Road To Tyranny, FEMA officials give a seminar in which they identify George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers as terrorists.

The manual encourages people to report any suspicious activity to an authority figure. Presumably, if property rights activism is deemed suspicious then anyone protesting or communicating about the recent eminent domain issue will be reported and investigated on grounds of terrorism.

READ THE REST.

If you want to keep the internet free, be aware of the powers that are trying to control it.

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing:
Telecom Industry Front Groups and Astroturf

As consumer demand for high-tech services grows, billions of dollars are at stake for telecommunications companies. Much of the battle is being waged in the halls of Congress right now, where our representatives are considering an overhaul of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Cable, telephone and Internet industry giants are fiercely lobbying, using every tool at their disposal to gain a competitive advantage in telecom reform legislation. Some of those tools are easy to spot - campaign contributions, television ads that run only inside the Beltway, and meetings with influential members of Congress. Other tactics are more insidious.

One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is "Astroturf lobbying" -- creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Astroturf lobbying is hardly a new approach. Senator Lloyd Bentsen is credited with coining the term in the 1980s to describe corporations' big-money efforts to put fake grassroots pressure on Congress.[1] Astroturf campaigns generally claim to represent huge numbers of citizens, but in reality their public support is minimal or nonexistent.[2]

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

Water privatization falling out of favor

The privatization of water systems took off globally in the '80s and '90s; now it seems to be going the way of ankle zippers and acid-washed denim. At last week's World Water Forum, delegates voted to issue a decree supporting government responsibility for providing safe drinking water. As if on cue, Argentina last week announced it was severing its contract with the French firm Suez and handing control of its water supply to a new government-run entity. Protests against water privatization have cropped up in many Latin American countries in recent years, and the U.N.'s second world water development report, released last week, points toward one reason: it says the main beneficiaries of privatization have been relatively well-off urban pockets, not the poor. In the current climate of volatility and protest, many big multinational water-management companies are backing away from ventures in developing countries. Ironically, many big multinational bottled-water companies are now seeing their sales in the developing world soar.

From The Center for American Progress.

EDUCATION -- HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER BOEHNER LEADS RIGHT-WING ATTACK ON COLLEGE PROFESSORS: David Horowitz, author of the "Academic Bill of Rights" and the leading voice of the "conservative movement whose supporters say college campuses are increasingly dominated by a liberal ideology," reveals in a column today that House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has taken up the banner of squelching free speech on college campuses. According to Horowitz, Boehner told him: "This is a fight I want." Horowitz's witch hunt against university professors has been described as "Worse Than McCarthy," and like McCarthy, Horowitz has an enemies list of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America." "In the name of establishing intellectual diversity," wrote Yeshiva University professor Ellen Schrecker in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Horowitz and his allies want to impose outside political controls over core educational functions like personnel decisions, curricula, and teaching methods. Such an intrusion not only endangers the faculty autonomy that traditionally protects academic freedom, but it also threatens the integrity of American higher education." (Fight back -- join the Free Exchange on Campus coalition.)

TECHNOLOGY -- CORPORATIONS FIGHTING TO SHUT DOWN NEW ORLEANS' FREE WIRELESS NETWORK: Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans officials announced plans to provide free high-speed Internet access to homes and businesses "to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city." BellSouth and other regional telecommunications firms fought the effort, but New Orleans developed the wireless network anyway. “Now it is the lifeblood for so many businesses,” says Greg Meffert, the city’s chief information officer, who "got downtown businesses back online by opening the city’s wireless mesh network—originally deployed to link surveillance cameras—to anyone who needed it." More than 15,000 people are now believed to use the network. But telecommunication lobbyists are still trying to shut it down, "and Mr. Meffert says it looks like the state legislature will agree." Meffert says he and Mayor Ray Nagin "plan to keep offering the service as long as they feel an emergency exists" whether it's legal or not. Says Meffert: "If I have to go to jail, I guess I will. ... [W]e simply cannot turn off these few lifelines we have to our city and businesses."

JUDICIARY -- ROBERTS APPOINTS CONSERVATIVE EX-STARR DEPUTY TO FISA COURT: According to a report by the Federation of American Scientists, Chief Justice John Roberts has appointed Judge John Bates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Bates is replacing Judge James Robertson, who resigned last December to protest President Bush’s illegal domestic wiretapping program. Bates has a “distinctly conservative cast to his resume.” From 1995 to 1997, he served as Ken Starr’s deputy in the Whitewater investigation, a glorified political witch-hunt that never managed to turn up evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons. In 2001, Bates was appointed to district court by President Bush, where he was assigned the lawsuit by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) seeking details about Vice President Cheney’s secret energy taskforce. In a widely criticized ruling, "Bates, who provided the rationale for subpoenaing any woman to whom Clinton may have talked dirty about Whitewater, dismissed the GAO’s effort to learn with whom Cheney’s task force conferred."

Posted: 19 March 2006

The Science Of Sexual Orientation
Lesley Stahl, CBS

Asked how he would describe himself to a stranger, Jared says, "I'm a kid who likes G.I. Joes and games and TV."

"I would say like a girl," Adam replied to the same question. When asked why he thinks that is, Adam shrugged.

"To me, cases like that really scream out, 'Hey, it's not out there. It's in here.' There's no indication that this mother is prone to raise very feminine boys because his twin is not that way," says Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University and a leading researcher in the field of sexual orientation.

Bailey says he doesn't think nurture is a plausible explanation.

Psychologists used to believe homosexuality was caused by nurture — namely overbearing mothers and distant fathers — but that theory has been disproved. Today, scientists are looking at genes, environment, brain structure and hormones. There is one area of consensus: that homosexuality involves more than just sexual behavior; it’s physiological.

.............

60 Minutes found identical twins Steve and Greg Lofts in New York. They had the same upbringing, have the same DNA — and yet Greg is gay and Steve is straight.

When people meet the twins and find out one of them is gay, Greg says people have asked if he's sure, and how it can be. "Everyone is curious about that," he says.

There were signs, even when they were little kids. Their mother told Stahl that Steve loved sports and the outdoors while Greg liked helping out in the kitchen. But it wasn't until high school that Steve became convinced Greg was gay.

Asked if he said anything to his brother, Steve says, "I did actually. And I think the way I worded it was something like, 'You know, Greg, if you're gay, it's OK with me. And I'll still love you the same.' And he gave a very philosophical answer. He said something like, 'Well, I love the soul of a person and not the physical being.' And in my mind, I was like, 'Yep, he's gay.'"

READ THE REST.

I have heard and read many times that one of the real reasons the Bushies wanted to invade Iraq is that Hussein was threatening to switch from American dollars to Euros. There is no doubt that much of this country's military might, for decades, has been used to prop up the American dollar supremacy. Note: a bourse is defined as "A continental European stock exchange. As a rule such stock exchanges also trade in foreign exchange. The term also applies to commodity exchanges."

Why Iran's Oil Bourse can't break the Buck
by F. William Engdahl

A number of writings have recently appeared with the thesis that the announced plans of the Iranian government to institute a Tehran oil bourse, perhaps as early as this month, is the real hidden reason behind the evident march to war on Iran by the Anglo-American powers. The thesis is simply wrong for many reasons, not least that war on Iran has been in planning since the 1990s as an integral part of the United States' Greater Middle East strategy.

More significant, the oil-bourse argument is a red herring that diverts attention from the real geopolitical grounds behind the march toward war that have been detailed on this website, including in my piece, A high-risk game of nuclear chicken, which appeared in Asia Times Online on January 31.

In 1996, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, two neo -conservatives later to play an important role in formulation of Bush administration's Pentagon policy in the Middle East, authored a paper for then newly elected Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That advisory paper, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", called on Netanyahu to make a "clean break from the peace process". Perle and Feith also called on Netanyahu to strengthen Israel's defenses against Syria and Iraq, and to go after Iran as the prop of Syria.

.............

Since 1979 the US power establishment, from Wall Street to Washington, has maintained the status of the dollar as unchallenged global reserve currency. That role, however, is not a purely economic one. Reserve-currency status is an adjunct of global power, of the US determination to dominate other nations and the global economic process. The United States didn't get reserve-currency status by a democratic vote of world central banks, nor did the British Empire in the 19th century. They fought wars for it.

For that reason, the status of the dollar as reserve currency depends on the status of the United States as the world's unchallenged military superpower. In a sense, since August 1971 the dollar is no longer backed by gold. Instead, it is backed by F-16s and Abrams battle tanks, operating in some 130 US bases around the world, defending liberty and the dollar.

............

A full challenge to the domination of the US dollar as the world central-bank reserve currency entails a de facto declaration of war on the "full-spectrum dominance" of the United States today. The mighty members of the European Central Bank Council well know this. The heads of state of every EU country know this. The Chinese leadership as well as the Japanese and Indians know this. So does Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Until some combination of those Eurasian powers congeal in a cohesive challenge to the unbridled domination of the United States as sole superpower, there will be no euro or yen or even Chinese yuan challenging the role of the dollar. The issue is of enormous importance, as it is vital to understand the true dynamics bringing the world to the brink of possible nuclear catastrophe today.

As a small ending note, a good friend in Oslo recently forwarded me an article from the Norwegian press. At the end of December, Sven Arild Andersen, director of the Oslo bourse, announced he was fed up with depending on the London oil bourse trading oil in dollars. Norway, a major oil producer, selling most of its oil into euro countries in the EU, he said, should set up its own oil bourse and trade its oil in euros. Will Norway - a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - become the next target for the wrath of the Pentagon?

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

I'm gratified to see Google stand up to Big Brother.

Boost for Google in internet privacy case
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Guardian

Privacy campaigners in the US hailed a victory of sorts for internet search engine Google yesterday after a court case focusing on demands from the Bush administration for access to its data appeared to swing in Google's favour.

The White House had served a subpoena on several web search giants demanding data on billions of search requests and website addresses as part of its defence of an online pornography law.

But a US district judge in San Jose, California, indicated repeatedly on Tuesday that he shared Google's concerns about privacy, and he did not want to create the impression government could keep track of individuals searching the internet.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 18 March 2006

There are times when I question whether it's worth the effort to maintain this blog. There are so many other blogs out there that do a much better job of it than I do, and I often doubt that anyone bothers to read this page. But recently I was contacted by someone who had been sent a link to this page, and that was encouraging. It means there are people finding their way here, perhaps not in huge numbers, but are coming here all the same and like it enough to pass on the link. That's enough to keep me going for now.

A few entries back, I quoted Maryland politician Jamie Raskin concerning his stand against discrimination against gays. I fired off a very brief email of support to him. His office asked for permission to post my email, which I gladly gave them. It's there on the bottom of the page now. Cool. For those who want to look: Jamie Raskin.

Check out the WantToKnow website for information on how journalists are being censored from releasing important stories that the Bush regime and other powers don't want you to know. Such as:

Kristina Borjesson—CBS, Emmy award winner. Pierre Salinger announced on Nov. 8, 1996, that he’d received documents proving that a US Navy missile had accidentally downed TWA flight 800. That same day, FBI’s Jim Kallstrom called a press conference. At one point, a man raised his hand and asked why the Navy was involved in the investigation while a possible suspect. “Remove him!” Kallstrom yelled. Two men leapt over to the questioner and grabbed him by the arms. There was a momentary chill in the air after the guy had been dragged out of the room. Kallstrom and entourage acted as if nothing had happened. Jim Kallstrom was later hired by CBS. (pp. 290, 291)

Jane Akre—Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report on hormones in your milk, Fox fired the general manager of our station. The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination. We pleaded with him to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these TV stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” After we refused, Fox’s general manager presented an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000 in “consulting jobs,” but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. After declining, we were fired. (pp. 213 - 219)

Monika Jensen-Stevenson—Emmy-winning producer for 60 minutes. Robert Garwood—14 years a prisoner of the Vietnamese—was found guilty in the longest court-martial in US history. At the end of the court-martial, there seemed no question that he was a monstrous traitor. In 1985, Garwood was speaking publicly about something that had never made the news during his court-martial. He knew of other American prisoners in Vietnam long after the war was over. My sources included outstanding experts like former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Tighe and returned POWs like Captain McDaniel, who held the Navy’s top award for bravery. With such advocates, it was hard not to consider the possibility that prisoners (some 3,500) had in fact been kept by the Vietnamese as hostages to make sure the US would pay the more than $3 billion in war reparations. (pp. 255, 256)

Gary Webb—San Jose Mercury News, Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1996, I wrote a series of stories that began this way: A Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods gangs of LA and funneled millions in drug profits to a guerilla army run by the CIA. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America. The story developed a momentum all of its own, despite a virtual news blackout from the major media. Ultimately, it was public pressure that forced the national newspapers into the fray. The Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times published stories, but spent little time exploring the CIA’s activities. Instead, my reporting and I became the focus of their scrutiny. It was remarkable that the four Washington Post reporters assigned to debunk the series could not find a single significant factual error. A few months later, the Mercury News, under intense CIA pressure, backed away from the story, publishing a long column apologizing for “shortcomings” in the series. The New York Times splashed the apology on their front page, the first time the series had ever been mentioned there. I quit the Mercury News after that. (pp. 143 - 153)

Deranged, Disconnected, and Dangerous
By William Rivers Pitt

There was an article in the Washington Post ten days ago that was, in no uncertain terms, the most frightening and disturbing report I have seen in months. It wasn't about mass casualties in Iraq, or about a looming civil war there, or about terrorism, or the bursting budget, or spying on Americans. It was about a rug.

"Nothing says power like the Oval Office," begins the article. "The paintings of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The bust of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The desk used by both Roosevelts. And then there's the rug. Don't forget the rug. President Bush never does. For whatever reason, Bush seems fixated on his rug. Virtually all visitors to the Oval Office find him regaling them about how it was chosen and what it represents. Turns out, he always says, the first decision any president makes is what carpet he wants in his office. As a take-charge leader, he then explains, he of course made a command decision - he delegated the decision to Laura Bush, who chose a yellow sunbeam design."

The article goes on to describe, in writhing detail, how George W. Bush inserts the Oval Office rug into virtually every conversation he has. If a discussion veers away into matters of import, Bush steers it back to the rug. "He loves his rug," said Nicolle Wallace, the White House communications director, in the Post article. "I've heard him describe it countless times."

The article, to be sure, was meant to be lighthearted. It left me, however, in a state of deep disturbance. All he can talk about is his rug? With everything that is going on these days, he wants to focus on the rug. Dead soldiers? Rug. Civil war? Rug. Complete and total failure? Complete and total rug.

The man is deranged, disconnected, dangerous. It appears, finally, that a significant portion of the country now sees this clearly. Only 33% of Americans, according to the latest Pew poll, approve of Mr. Bush and the job he is doing.

Hey, it only took five years. It has suddenly become all the rage to jump all over this administration. Pundits from every corner, including more than a few conservatives, are apparently waking up to the fact that they stapled themselves to Casey Jones's train. Hell, even right-wing avatar Peggy Noonan is saying that if she knew then what she knew now, she wouldn't have voted for Bush. Here's the kicker, though, and a good explanation for that lingering 33% support: Noonan says she wouldn't vote for Bush because he is actually a liberal. The blind leading the blind has become the deranged following the deranged. Go figure.

Speaking of deranged, and of the 33-percenters, let me show you something. This was put together by one of the administrators of the web forum DemocraticUnderground, who noticed that news reports out of Iraq seem to continuously use the phrase "a recent surge of violence" to describe what is happening there. Feast:

2003

Middle East Online, September 3, 2003: "Meanwhile, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac were to meet in Germany on Thursday to discuss ways for the West to respond to the recent surge in violence in Iraq and the Middle East."

UK Telegraph, October 31, 2003: "Ansar is believed to be channeling into Iraq the foreign fighters who are behind a recent surge in violence in the country, officials say."

KNI News, November 3, 2003: "Bush blamed loyalists to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorists for the recent surge in violence in Iraq."

2004

Reuters, March 4, 2004: "A wave of bomb attacks in Baghdad and Karbala killing at least 171 people earlier this week has highlighted the difficulties in rebuilding the country and restoring peace. But Mr. Blair, speaking after a meeting in Rome with his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi, said the recent surge in violence in Iraq did not constitute civil war."

Radio Free Europe, April 14, 2004: "US President George W. Bush held a major news conference at the White House on 13 April in the middle of the deadliest month for Americans in Iraq since Baghdad fell a year ago. He spoke of the recent surge in violence there, but urged his countrymen not to lose faith. He also said he would adhere to the 30 June deadline for handing over sovereignty to Iraqis."

US State Department, April 15, 2004: "Pace said the recent surge in violence in Iraq is being driven by 'terrorists' who see the June 30 deadline for turnover of sovereignty approaching rapidly and are petrified by the promise of democracy."

READ THE REST! It's astounding.

From Grist on-line magazine.

U.S. oil execs defend record profits -- again -- in Senate testimony

ExxonMobil, Chevron, and the gang took another turn at the Senate's cotillion yesterday, flirting with the Judiciary Committee and making coquettish demurrals about record profits and price gouging. Unlike November's fete with the Senate Commerce Committee, this time oil executives were sworn in (no accounting for modern romance). Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), playing hard to get, noted that while oil-company mergers have lowered industry costs, consumers' costs have increased. Hush, Dianne, whispered the execs; that's just surging demand and higher world oil prices talking. Winking, Chevron Chair David O'Reilly suggested that "streamlining" -- that is, weakening -- the process for approving new refineries, or opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, might help execs get in the mood. But when asked by a clearly jealous Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) if an industry earning record billions in profits needed to keep $2.8 billion in subsidies, the execs could only smile shyly.


Scientists report even less Arctic ice, even more greenhouse gas

In the wake of unprecedented summer melts, Arctic sea ice has failed to grow to its typical winter reach for the second year running. Researchers fear this signals -- stop us if this sounds familiar -- an irreversible amplification of the effects of climate change in the region. Dark, open water absorbs the sunlight (and heat) that bright white ice would reflect; thus, accelerated warming. "We keep looking for the ice to recover, but it isn't," said researcher Mark Serreze. "Coupled with recent findings ... that the Greenland ice sheet may be near a tipping point, it's pretty clear that the Arctic is starting to respond to global warming." You think? Other cheery news: NASA reports that ozone also seems to be contributing to intensified warming in the Arctic, and NOAA reports that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere reached a record 381 parts per million last year. We can hardly wait for tomorrow!


Enviros decry Bush's nomination of Kempthorne to lead Interior

He's a mountain-bike enthusiast, two-term governor, and object of fear and loathing among conservationists. And he just picked another one. Mere days after the resignation of Gale Norton as secretary of the interior, President Bush nominated as her replacement Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne (R), saying he would help "develop the energy potential of federal lands and waters in environmentally sensitive ways." While some headline writers celebrated the ascension of a man named "Dirk" to high office, many environmentalists were dismayed. The Dirkster's gubernatorial record includes suing to overturn Clinton's roadless rule and pushing for changes to weaken the Endangered Species Act. And as an Idaho senator in the 1990s, Dirkheimer earned a lifetime League of Conservation Voters score of 1 percent (that's no typo!). Some Bushie environmental policies could put Tricky Dirk in a tough spot -- think selling off Western lands beloved by his home-state hook-and-bullet crowd -- but for the most part, Bush and his Dirk are peas in a dirty-energy pod.


Drill-happy senators go after the Arctic Refuge yet again

It seems like just three months ago that oil-thirsty congresscritters were pawing at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge like horny adolescents buzzed on wine coolers. Oh, wait, it was just three months ago. The effort to drill in the refuge "keeps coming back like a recurring nightmare," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Tell us about it. Yesterday, the Senate once again passed a budget bill containing projected revenue from refuge drilling. The victory was a slim 51-49, resting on the defection of two key senators. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) was lured to the dark side by the inclusion of $10 billion for Gulf Coast restoration; Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) crossed over in pursuit of $3.3 billion in heating assistance for low-income families. Once again, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) led the opposition. Once again, the bill will face a bruising battle in the House, though the absence of draconian social-service cuts may make this one an easier pill to swallow than the la st one for wavering representatives. We will keep you posted, but we'll take no pleasure in it.

Posted: 14 March 2006

Take Action

*Send an Email - Bush Administration's First Chance to Curb Oil Addiction*

Americans agree with President Bush that it's time to change course on oil consumption. And now President Bush has a major opportunity to act. By April 1st, President Bush must decide on fuel economy standards for 2008-2011 models of SUVs, pickups, and minivans. Increasing fuel economy by just 1 mpg each year would greatly reduce global warming pollution. If extended to the heaviest SUVs and pickups, stronger standards would save an extra 600,000 barrels of oil per day. Ask President Bush to approve strong fuel economy standards. Send an email: http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/oil_addiction/8niiswzp53766k?

From The Center for American Progress.

LABOR -- LABOR DEPARTMENT PROMOTES ANTI-WORKER WEBSITE: The Bush administration's Labor Department has been criticized consistently for turning its back on workers and for siding against unions. Most recently, the department encouraged people to visit the website, UnionFacts.org, a stridently anti-union site that talks about the "political activities, and criminal activity of the labor movement." In a June 15 e-mail, Lynne Gibson, an aide in the public liaison office, encourages people to check it out: "The next [noteworthy item] is a new website, if you were not already aware of it. ... The website is dedicated to providing information on labor unions and their expenditures." The site is a creation of right-wing activist Richard Berman, whose past projects have included representing the alcohol industry by slamming Mothers Against Drunk Driving, convincing pregnant women to eat more white albacore tuna despite warnings of high mercury content, and founding a policy institute opposing a raise in the minimum wage.

PRIVACY -- GOOGLE GOES TO COURT TODAY TO DEFEND USERS' PRIVACY RECORDS: Google heads to a San Jose federal court today to defends its customers' privacy records. The Justice Department lawyers asked the company in January "to turn over millions of users' search requests and one million randomly selected Web site addresses within 21 days of a court decision." Google resisted the subpoena on the grounds that supplying the government with the information would violate users' privacy. Google is also resisting the move because it fears that the records could expose trade secrets on how its search service works. The government, on the other hand, is seeking the information to buttress its defense of the Child Online Protection Act, a federal law that has been designed to keep children from sexually explicit content on the Internet. The Supreme Court previously blocked implementation of that act. "This case comes at a time when people are starting to recognize that the information they put into their computers creates a record," said Lauren Gelman, associate director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. To what extent those records can be demanded by -- and turned over to -- the government will be central question for the court. "The government is not entitled to go on a fishing expedition through millions of Google searches any time it wants, just because it claims that it needs that information," said ACLU staff attorney Aden Fine.

From Grist on-line magazine.

House reps blow taxpayer dough on pricey gas-guzzlers

It's almost April; do you know where your taxes are? Last year, at least $1.05 million in public money went to leasing SUVs, luxury cars, and other vehicles for members of Congress -- just as the Founding Fathers intended. Members of the House are legally allowed to lease cars out of their office budgets to travel in their own districts, a perk that about one-third of reps took advantage of in 2005. Leasing fuel-efficient, inexpensive vehicles could cost taxpayers less than reimbursing representatives for driving their own cars, yet dozens of the vehicles leased in 2005 were gas-guzzlers. The biggest spender in 2005, Rep. Michael Ross (D-Ark.), spent more than $36,000 to lease three vehicles, including a Ford Expedition SUV; the median annual income of his constituents is about $30,000. "Leadership by example," says Gary Ruskin of the Congressional Accountability Project, "has never been a forte of the United States Congress."


Parents strive to protect kids from everyday chemical hazards

There may be no more powerful force for social change in the world than worried parents. And they're turning their attention to lead in lunchboxes, bisphenol A in plastic, and other eco-nasties in their children's daily lives, switching to greener-seeming products -- like cloth totes and wax-paper wrappers for school lunches -- and sharing information. Breeders' buying power can transform the market: green goods retailer Seventh Generation has seen double-digit growth in sales for the past five years, which the company attributes in part to new parents. Making healthy choices for kids may not get easier any time soon, though, as the Bush administration has proposed killing the National Children's Study, a research effort authorized by Congress in 2000 to understand how environmental factors affect asthma, childhood cancer, and other growing health problems. The study -- set to start in 2007 -- will involve tracking 100,000 children from the womb to age 21. Or would have, anyway.

Posted: 13 March 2006

This man is my hero.

On Wednesday, March 1, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify.

At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"

Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

The room erupted into applause.

Jamie Raskin's website

Posted: 9 March 2006

A Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon
by Michael Meyer, Mechanical Engineer

To the members of the Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven:

I would like to give you my input as to the events on September 11, and why it is a physically provable fact that some of the damage done to the Pentagon could not have occurred from a Boeing 757 impact, and therefore the 9/11 Commission report is not complete and arguably a cover-up. I will not speculate about what may have been covered up, I will only speak from my professional opinion. But I will explain why I do not believe the Pentagon was hit by a Boeing 757.

I am a Mechanical Engineer who spent many years in Aerospace, including structural design, and in the design, and use of shaped charge explosives (like those that would be used in missile warheads).

The structural design of a large aircraft like a 757 is based around managing the structural loads of a pressurized vessel, the cabin, to near-atmospheric conditions while at the lower pressure region of cruising altitudes, and to handle the structural and aerodynamic loads of the wings, control surfaces, and the fuel load. It is made as light as possible, and is certainly not made to handle impact loads of any kind.

If a 757 were to strike a reinforced concrete wall, the energy from the speed and weight of the aircraft will be transferred, in part into the wall, and to the structural failure of the aircraft. It is not too far of an analogy as if you had an empty aluminum can, traveling at high speed hitting a reinforced concrete wall. The aluminum can would crumple (the proper engineering term is buckle) and, depending on the structural integrity of the wall, crack, crumble or fail completely. The wall failure would not be a neat little hole, as the energy of the impact would be spread throughout the wall by the reinforcing steel.

This is difficult to model accurately, as any high speed, high energy, impact of a complex structure like an aircraft, into a discontinuous wall with windows etc. is difficult. What is known is that nearly all of the energy from this event would be dissipated in the initial impact, and subsequent buckling of the aircraft.

We are lead to believe that not only did the 757 penetrate the outer wall, but continued on to penetrate separate internal walls totaling 9 feet of reinforced concrete. The final breach of concrete was a nearly perfectly cut circular hole in a reinforced concrete wall, with no subsequent damage to the rest of the wall. (If we are to believe that somehow this aluminum aircraft did in fact reach this sixth final wall.)

It is physically impossible for the wall to have failed in a neat clean cut circle, period. When I first saw this hole, a chill went down my spine because I knew it was not possible to have a reinforced concrete wall fail in this manner, it should have caved in, in some fashion.

How do you create a nice clean hole in a reinforced concrete wall? with an explosive shaped charge. An explosive shaped charge, or cutting charge is used in various military warhead devices. You design the geometry of the explosive charge so that you create a focused line of energy. You essentially focus nearly all of the explosive energy in what is referred to as a jet. You use this jet to cut and penetrate armor on a tank, or the walls of a bunker. The signature is clear and unmistakable. In a missile, the explosive charge is circular to allow the payload behind the initial shaped charge to enter whatever has been penetrated.

I do not know what happened on 9/11, I do not know how politics works in this country, I can not explain why the mainstream media does not report on the problems with the 9/11 Commission. But I am an engineer, and I know what happens in high speed impacts, and how shaped charges are used to "cut" through materials.

I have not addressed several other major gaps in the Pentagon/757 incident. The fact that this aircraft somehow ripped several light towers clean out of the ground without any damage to the aircraft (which I also feel is impossible), the fact that the two main engines were never recovered from the wreckage, and the fact that our government has direct video coverage of the flight path, and impact, from at least a gas station and hotel, which they have refused to release.

You can call me a "tin hat", crazy, conspiracy theory, etc, but I can say from my expertise that the damage at the Pentagon was not caused by a Boeing 757.

Sincerely,
Michael Meyer

Bush declares war on freedom of the press
By DOUG THOMPSON

Using many of the questionable surveillance and monitoring techniques that brought both questions and criticism to his administration, President George W. Bush has launched a war against reporters who write stories unfavorable to his actions and is planning to prosecute journalists to make examples of them in his "war on terrorism."

Bush recently directed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to use "whatever means at your disposal" to wiretap, follow, harass and investigate journalists who have published stories about the administration's illegal use of warrantless wiretaps, use of faulty intelligence and anything else he deems "detrimental to the war on terror."

Reporters for The New York Times, which along with Capitol Hill Blue revealed use of the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and emails of Americans, say FBI agents have interviewed them and criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department admit they are laying "the groundwork for a grand jury that could lead to criminal charges,"

CIA Director Porter Goss told Congress recently that "it is my aim and it is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information. I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserve nothing less."

As part of the investigation, the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency are wiretapping reporters' phones, following journalists on a daily basis, searching their homes and offices under a USA Patriot Act provision that allows "secret and undisclosed searches" and pouring over financial and travel records of hundreds of Washington-based reporters.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security admit there are "ongoing investigations" regarding publication of stories "involving threats to national security" but will not reveal what those investigations include.

In addition to using the USA Patriot Act to pry into the lives of journalists, the Justice Department has also dusted off a pre-World War I law to prosecute people who receive classified information, although the law was aimed at military personnel not civilians.

"This is the first administration that I can remember, including Nixon's, that said we need to think about a law that would put journalists who print national security things up in front of grand juries and put them in jail if they don't reveal their sources," says David Gergen, who served as President Regan's director of communication and also worked in the Nixon and Ford White Houses.

Political scientist George Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon administration, says such use of federal law enforcement authority was illegal when Nixon tried it and still so today.

"We're talking about a basic violation of the Constitutional guarantee of a free press as well as a violation of the rights of privacy of American citizens," Harleigh says. "I had hoped we would have learned our lessons from the Nixon era. Sadly, it appears we have not."

In recent weeks, the FBI has issued hundreds of "National Security Letters," directing employers, banks, credit card companies, libraries and other entities to turn over records on reporters. Under the USA Patriot Act, those who must turn over the records are also prohibited from revealing they have done so to the subject of the federal probes.

READ THE REST.

I hope this courageous man can stick it out.

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS LAUNCHED AGAINST DIEBOLD IN FLORIDA!
Leon County Election Supervisor Alleges 'Breach of Contract' After Security Test Revealed Hackable Elections Possible on Diebold Optical-Scan Systems! E-Voting Monolith and 'Competitors' All Refuse to do Business with County Unless the Elected Ion Sancho is 'Removed from Office'

Ion Sancho is fighting back. Sancho, the Election Supervisor of Leon County, Florida who exposed a number of security flaws in Electronic Voting Machines made by the Diebold corporation of...

Ion Sancho is fighting back.

Sancho, the Election Supervisor of Leon County, Florida who exposed a number of security flaws in Electronic Voting Machines made by the Diebold corporation of North Canton, Ohio, today launched legal "breach of contract" proceedings against the company. The action has been filed on behalf of the Leon County Supervisor of Elections office.

In a conversation moments ago with Sancho, he confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that "we filed a breach action this morning, pursuant to a contract which notifies Diebold we are pursuing all available options."

The breach concerns Diebold's refusal to deliver their latest operating system for the optical scan voting systems which had previously been used in Leon County -- until Sancho discovered an alarming security flaw in the system at the end of last year.

"According to our contract with Diebold," Sancho explained, "we have to give them 30 days notice. And so we are requiring them to answer by March 21, as to how they intend to repair the breach."

The only two other Voting Machine Vendors, ES&S and Sequoia Voting Systems, have now officially refused to do business with Leon County and Sancho in the wake of a series of security evaluations held last year in the county on actual Diebold equipment. With the state threatening Sancho with legal action themselves if he is not able to implement a voting system which requires with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), Sancho had been forced to attempt to do business again with Diebold.

The most infamous of the security evaluations held last year by Sancho was a "hack test" in December of Diebold's optical scan voting system. That mock election test revealed that election results could be completely flipped on Diebold's optical-scan system without a trace of the hack being left behind.

With all three companyies now refusing to do business with him, and pressure being applied from Diebold as well as state and local officials to do "do something about Sancho" - he now finds himself with no other choice but to fight back against Diebold, and face this "titanic clash" head on...

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

Northern Alaska pipeline leak may rank as one of region's largest

Cleanup crews have been working in subzero temperatures to sop up crude oil and soiled snow near northern Alaska's Prudhoe Bay after what looks to be one of the largest spills ever in the region. The source of the crud(e) was discovered last Thursday by a BP oil worker: a quarter-inch rupture in the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, apparently caused by corrosion, 650-odd miles north of Anchorage. While the oil industry maintains it has an aggressive program for monitoring such leaks, this spill is one in a long series of breaches of the aging pipeline since at least 2001. These come in the wake of a 1999 attempt by six pipeline employees to blow the whistle on neglected maintenance. Enviros say this latest leak refutes industry claims that "gentle drilling" practices can keep Alaska's wilderness -- including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- safe from being soaked in petroleum.


House passes industry-beloved food-labeling bill

Yesterday, the House of Representatives stood up to a powerful business lobby to protect public health and safety. Ha ha! Just yanking your chain. Actually, the House approved by 283 to 139 an industry-backed bill that would wipe out over 200 state laws requiring safety and warning labels on foods -- noting the presence of cancer-causing ingredients, for example -- and establish a (weaker) national standard. States would have to petition federal regulators to retain tougher laws. Several of the legislation's major supporters have, believe it or not, close ties to the food industry. Take, for example, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), whose wife lobbies for Altria, the parent company of Kraft Foods. "It's a perfect storm of insider access, big money, and bad policy," said Andy Igrejas of the National Environmental Trust. The measure now moves on to the Senate, where it's expected to face stiffer opposition.

Posted: 5 March 2006

Some stories are just too ludicrous to pass up.

Down With Dildos!
Two state legislators say no to sex toys
by John Spragens

Thank God the state legislature is back in session. When they’re gone, political columnists are forced to take up serious topics like the deputy governor lobbying subordinates on local political issues, U.S. national vulnerability to cyber-attack and the police chief threatening to storm out of a neighborhood meeting. But now that America’s dumbest criminals have reconvened their lawmaking body, it’s easy street for journalistic bottom-feeders to meet deadlines.

To wit: Senate Bill 3794 (House Bill 3798), legislation that would make it illegal to sell, advertise, publish or exhibit to another person “any three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs….” For that matter, if you offer to show someone your dildo collection—or possess a vibrator with the intent to show it to someone—you’d be violating this proposed state law. And don’t even think about wholesaling those three-dimensional sex toys.

Of course, as with all good public policy, state Sen. Charlotte Burks and Rep. Eric Swafford have included a few exemptions for responsible dildo-users. College students and faculty are allowed to enter the sex-toy trade—as long as they are “teaching or pursuing a course of study related to such device,” like Auto-Erotic Stimulation 101. Your doctor or psychologist will similarly be authorized to prescribe the regular use of a sex toy “in the course of medical or psychological treatment or care.” And finally, employees of historical societies, museums, public libraries and—wait for it—school libraries are allowed to traffic in devices named Thruster, The Emperor and The Horny Hare, provided they’re doing their official duties. That means the Carnton Plantation would remain free to put up that “Dildos of the Antebellum” exhibit Robert Hicks has been pitching.

What do Burks and Swafford have against genital stimulation? Your guess is as good as ours. At press time, staff members hadn’t returned messages left Tuesday morning, probably because it’s hard to defend such stupid ideas. Attorneys for the state of Georgia couldn’t defend them either: two weeks ago, a federal appeals court overturned portions of a similar Georgia law on the grounds that advertising bans violate free speech rights.

Nonetheless, this Tennessee legislative tag-team went ahead and introduced their bill last Thursday, and on Monday, it passed a perfunctory first reading. In other Monday developments, Tennesseans died from a lack of health care, remained poorly educated and were among the most obese state populations in the nation.

Did 308,000 Cancelled Ohio Voter Registrations Put Bush Back In the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

While life goes on during the Bush2 nightmare, so does the research on what really happened here in 2004 to give George W. Bush a second term.

Pundits throughout the state and nation---many of them alleged Democrats---continue to tell those of us who question Bush's second coming that we should "get over it," that the election is old news.

But things get curiouser and curiouser.

In our 2005 compendium How the GOP Stole Ohio's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, we list more than a hundred different ways the Republican Party denied the democratic process in the Buckeye State. For a book of documents to be published September 11 by the New Press entitled What Happened In Ohio?, we are continuing to dig.

It turns out, we missed more than a few of the dirty tricks Karl Rove, Ken Blackwell, and their GOP used to get themselves four more years. In an election won with death by a thousand cuts, some that are still hidden go very deep. Over the next few weeks we will list them as they are verified.

One of them has just surfaced to the staggering tune of 175,000 purged voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the traditional stronghold of the Ohio Democratic Party. An additional 10,000 that registered to vote there for the 2004 election were lost due to "clerical error."

As we reported more than a year ago, some 133,000 voters were purged from the registration rolls in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas County (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The 105,000 from Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo exceeded Bush's official alleged margin of victory---just under 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million the Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth Blackwell deemed worth counting.

Exit polls flashed worldwide on CNN at 12:20 am Wednesday morning, November 3, showed John Kerry winning Ohio by 4.2% of the popular vote, probably about 250,000 votes. We believe this is an accurate reflection of what really happened here.

But by morning Bush was being handed the presidency, claiming a 2.5% Buckeye victory, as certified by Blackwell. In conjunction with other exit polling, the lead switch from Kerry to Bush is a virtual statistical impossibility. Yet John Kerry conceded with more than 250,000 ballots still uncounted, though Bush at the time was allegedly ahead only by 138,000, a margin that later slipped to less than 119,000 in the official vote count.

At the time, very few people knew about those first 133,000 voters that had been eliminated from the registration rolls in Cincinnati and Toledo. County election boards purged the voting registration lists. Though all Ohio election boards are allegedly bi-partisan, in fact they are all controlled by the Republican Party. Each has four seats, filled by law with two Democrats and two Republicans.

But all tie votes are decided by the Secretary of State, in this case Blackwell, the extreme right-wing Republican now running for Governor. Blackwell served in 2004 not only as the man in charge of the state's vote count, but also a co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign. Many independent observers have deemed this to be a conflict of interest. On election day, Blackwell met personally with Bush, Karl Rove, and Matt Damschroder, chair of the Franklin County (Columbus) Board of Elections, formerly the chair of the county's Republican Party.

The Board of Elections in Toledo was chaired by Bernadette Noe, wife of Tom Noe, northwestern Ohio's "Mr. Republican." A close personal confidante of the Bush family, Noe raised more than $100,000 for the GOP presidential campaign in 2004. He is currently under indictment for three felony violations of federal election law, and 53 counts of fraud, theft and other felonies in the "disappearance" of more than $13 million in state funds. Noe was entrusted with investing those funds by Republican Gov. Robert Taft, who recently pled guilty to four misdemeanor charges, making him the only convicted criminal ever to serve as governor of Ohio.

The rationale given by Noe and by the Republican-controlled BOE in Lucas and Hamilton Counties was that the voters should be eliminated from the rolls because they had allegedly not voted in the previous two federal elections.

There is no law that requires such voters be eliminated. And there is no public verification that has been offered to confirm that these people had not, in fact, voted in those elections.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

NRC approves nuke-waste dump on Utah Indian reservation

This week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensed the nation's largest -- and only private -- radioactive-waste storage facility, to be located on the (prophetically named?) Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah. It's a major win for the nuclear industry, which desperately needs a dump site for spent fuel rods piling up at power plants around the country. And supporters within the Goshute tribe, which will lease the land, say it will provide jobs and much-needed revenue to spend on decent housing, health care, and more. But environmentalists, some tribe members, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (R), and the state's entire congressional delegation are up in arms over the deal. They say the site -- a valley immediately beneath the low-altitude flight path of 7,000 F-16 jets a year, next to a chemical and biological weapons proving ground, and 40 miles immediately upwind of Salt Lake City -- is much too risky a place to store nuclear waste in aboveground casks.


Organic diet causes pesticide levels to plummet in children, study finds

If you needed that extra nudge to start feeding your kids organic grub, here it is: In a recent U.S. EPA-funded study, 23 Seattle-area youngsters were switched to an all-organic diet, and the levels of pesticides in their bodies declined to essentially zero after only five days. When the kids started eating conventionally grown food again, their pesticide levels shot back up. The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, focuses specifically on a class of pesticides not typically found in residential use, but common in agriculture. While showing that pesticide-free food leads to pesticide-free kids, the study's authors stopped short of declaring conclusively that pesticides (read: neurotoxins) have any negative effect on children (read: developing neurological systems).

Posted: 4 March 2006

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Impeach the bastards. There's good reason.

The Case for Impeachment
Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush
Posted on Monday, February 27, 2006. An excerpt from an essay in the March 2006 Harper's Magazine. By Lewis H. Lapham.

A country is not only what it does—it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates. —Kurt Tucholsky

On December 18 of last year, Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.) introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution inviting it to form “a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.” Although buttressed two days previously by the news of the National Security Agency's illegal surveillance of the American citizenry, the request attracted little or no attention in the press—nothing on television or in the major papers, some scattered applause from the left-wing blogs, heavy sarcasm on the websites flying the flags of the militant right. The nearly complete silence raised the question as to what it was the congressman had in mind, and to whom did he think he was speaking? In time of war few propositions would seem as futile as the attempt to impeach a president whose political party controls the Congress; as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee stationed on Capitol Hill for the last forty years, Representative Conyers presumably knew that to expect the Republican caucus in the House to take note of his invitation, much less arm it with the power of subpoena, was to expect a miracle of democratic transformation and rebirth not unlike the one looked for by President Bush under the prayer rugs in Baghdad. Unless the congressman intended some sort of symbolic gesture, self-serving and harmless, what did he hope to prove or to gain? He answered the question in early January, on the phone from Detroit during the congressional winter recess.

“To take away the excuse,” he said, “that we didn't know.” So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, “Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?” when the Bush Administration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that “somehow it escaped our notice” that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.

A reason with which it was hard to argue but one that didn't account for the congressman's impatience. Why not wait for a showing of supportive public opinion, delay the motion to impeach until after next November's elections? Assuming that further investigation of the President's addiction to the uses of domestic espionage finds him nullifying the Fourth Amendment rights of a large number of his fellow Americans, the Democrats possibly could come up with enough votes, their own and a quorum of disenchanted Republicans, to send the man home to Texas. Conyers said:

“I don't think enough people know how much damage this administration can do to their civil liberties in a very short time. What would you have me do? Grumble and complain? Make cynical jokes? Throw up my hands and say that under the circumstances nothing can be done? At least I can muster the facts, establish a record, tell the story that ought to be front-page news.”

Which turned out to be the purpose of his House Resolution 635—not a high-minded tilting at windmills but the production of a report, 182 pages, 1,022 footnotes, assembled by Conyers's staff during the six months prior to its presentation to Congress, that describes the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq as the perpetration of a crime against the American people. It is a fair description. Drawing on evidence furnished over the last four years by a sizable crowd of credible witnesses—government officials both extant and former, journalists, military officers, politicians, diplomats domestic and foreign—the authors of the report find a conspiracy to commit fraud, the administration talking out of all sides of its lying mouth, secretly planning a frivolous and unnecessary war while at the same time pretending in its public statements that nothing was further from the truth.[1] The result has proved tragic, but on reading through the report's corroborating testimony I sometimes could counter its inducements to mute rage with the thought that if the would-be lords of the flies weren't in the business of killing people, they would be seen as a troupe of off-Broadway comedians in a third-rate theater of the absurd. Entitled “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War,” the Conyers report examines the administration's chronic abuse of power from more angles than can be explored within the compass of a single essay. The nature of the administration's criminal DNA and modus operandi, however, shows up in a usefully robust specimen of its characteristic dishonesty.

READ THE REST.

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