Torturers in the White House: Why Is This Story Being Ignored?

We now have confirmation that the President of the United States gave the OK to torture. Where is the media? Where are the Democrats?





The biggest news of the last week went virtually uncovered by the mainstream, print media. ABC News first reported last Wednesday that top Bush Administration officials, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, and George Tenet, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld met to discuss which particular torture techniques should be used against Al Qaeda suspects in U.S. custody.

The group signed off on specific techniques, including sleep deprivation, slapping, pushing, and waterboarding, and gave instruction "so detailed … some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed, down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic."

If John McCain is seriously considering Condoleezza Rice as a running mate, the former POW should keep in mind that Rice not only condoned torture, but chaired the National Security Council's "Principals Committee" meetings to plan the details of torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was so troubled by the meetings, he was moved to object: "Why are we discussing this in the White House?" he asked, according to ABC. "History will not judge this kindly."

On Friday, ABC added this blockbuster: Bush himself was aware of the meetings. Unlike Ashcroft, he had no compunctions. There was nothing "startling" about the revelations that his top advisers were directing the waterboarding of individual prisoners, Bush told ABC's Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue and I approved," Bush said.

Why is this not bigger news?

Remember when the nation was brought to a virtual standstill over Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern?

We now have confirmation that the President of the United States gave the OK for his national security team to violate international law and plot the sordid details of torture. The Democrats in Congress should be raising the roof.

House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers, to his credit, has suggested subpoenaing the members of the Principals Committee, calling their actions "a stain on our democracy."

Conyers also threatened last week to subpoena John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer whose recently declassified 2003 torture memos attempted to give legal cover to practices such as waterboarding.

Such techniques, as long as their sole purpose wasn't sadism, were acceptable, Yoo wrote. Being a sadist was presumably necessary but not sufficient qualification for employment in the Bush White House.

In his new book The Terror Presidency, Yoo's colleague Jack Goldsmith writes about his evolution from friend and supporter of the officials who brought us to this pass to a conscientious objector to their illegal and morally corrupt practices.

Back when he worked for Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Goldsmith wrote a memo warning that Bush Administration officials could be indicted by the International Criminal Court for their actions in the war on terror.

After he went to work for Justice, Goldsmith began standing up to the torture cabal at the White House -- to his enduring discomfort. In one incident, recounted in his book and in a September profile by Jeffrey Rosen of the New York Times Magazine, he knocked heads with Dick Cheney's advisor (now his chief of staff) David Addington. Goldsmith delivered the bad news that terror suspects were, in fact, covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention against torture of civilians: "'The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,'" Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith. 'You cannot question his decision.'"

Goldsmith also criticized the torture memos for their "extremely broad and unnecessary analysis of the President's Commander-in-Chief power" and for their extremely loose definition of torture as limited to causing a level of pain akin to organ failure.

Pointing out that the Administration was violating the War Crimes Act of 1996, the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Goldmith withdrew Yoo's torture memos -- and promptly resigned his post.

Even after losing that flimsy legal cover, Bush and the other members of the Principals Committee appear unrepentant and undeterred.

Goldsmith, who now teaches law at Harvard, is no civil libertarian, but like John Ashcroft and John McCain, he has spoken out against executive lawlessness. No doubt he would have plenty to tell the House Judiciary Committee.

And perhaps the International Criminal Court as well.

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The Man Who Would Be Bush

The Man Who Would Be Bush Robret Scheer, Truthdig. Posted April 16, 2008.

How do we explain voter support for McCain in light of the nation's widespread, bipartisan rejection of the Bush administration?











Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? As millions surrender their homes and sacrifice other standards of our nation's economic and political reputation to the caprice of the Bush-Cheney imperium, a majority of voters tell pollsters that they might vote for a candidate who promises more of the same.

Assuming that likely voters are not now thinking of yet another Republican president simply because John McCain is the only white guy left standing -- an excuse as pathetic in its logic as the decision four years ago to return two Texas oil hustlers to the White House because they were not Massachusetts liberals -- must mean that tens of millions of Americans have taken leave of their senses.

If not the white-guy syndrome, why would even a shocking minority of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters say they prefer McCain to the other Democrat? How otherwise to explain the nation's widespread bipartisan rejection of the Bush presidency and yet a willingness to let McCain continue in that vein?

To be sure, as a senator, McCain has exhibited flashes of independence on behalf of taxpayers, as in his support of campaign-finance reform in which he partnered with Democrat Russ Feingold. McCain's investigations of the military-industrial complex's shameless exploitation of terrorism fears set a high standard, as in exposing the air-tanker scandal that dispatched a Boeing exec and a former Pentagon employee to prison. But his political ambition is showing. Although he previously harshly criticized the enormous waste in the Iraq occupation, today, as a presidential candidate, he opens the door to a hundred years of taxpayer dollars tossed down the drain in Iraq. The man who was tortured now hugs a leader who authorized the same.

By so unabashedly embracing the most glaringly failed U.S. president ever, McCain has surrendered the right to be considered an independent candidate, judged on his own merits and personal history. A vote for McCain is a vote for that rancid recipe mixing religious bigotry, imperial arrogance and corporate greed that he had stood against in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election when he challenged George W. Bush, but to which he now has capitulated.

Too harsh? Then consider just how tight the space is between the rocks of our failed Mideast policy and the hard place of our impending financial disaster. The sudden out-of-control spike in the cost of oil -- the key short-term market variable, the specter that stokes inflation fear and limits moves to avoid recession -- is not a natural disaster or in any realistic way the result of inefficiency in the use of energy. What more than doubled the price of petroleum in the short run was not that too many of us bought Hummers, but rather that the political stability of the region that contains the bulk of that oil was deliberately and recklessly roiled.

In the name of fighting the 9/11 terrorists, the Bush administration overthrew the one Arab government most adamantly opposed to the Saudi financiers of that son of their system, Osama bin Laden. Instead of confronting the royal leaders of a kingdom that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers, we invaded a nation that supplied not a single one. While Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein, who had no ties to the hijackers, he embraced the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the only three nations in the world that had diplomatically recognized and supported the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida.

Consider that historical marker at a time when the UAE and Saudi Arabia bankers are buying major positions in distressed U.S. financial and other key corporate institutions. I know, it all sounds too conspiratorial, like imagining that we might wake up from this national nightmare and discover that the CEO of Halliburton, who replaced Dick Cheney when the latter selected himself to be Bush's vice president, now has his headquarters in Dubai, tucked safely into the obscenely oil-revenue-rich UAE that our troops were sent to Iraq to protect.

There is no national outrage, or even seriously sustained media interest, over the fact that Cheney's old company profited enormously from ripping off U.S. tax dollars going into the Iraq occupation. Nor is there even much curiosity about the shenanigans of Halliburton, which is doing business with Arab oil sheiks at a time when the U.S. banks these Middle Eastern oil interests bought into are moving to foreclose on American homeowners.

It's just the sort of egregious betrayal of the trust of the taxpayers that Sen. McCain would have gone after, before he sought to don the soiled robes of the Bush presidency.

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Mukasey Admits Government Knew

Mukasey Admits Government Knew Of Call About 9/11, Before 9/11
Echelon spy network would have intercepted, catalogued all transmissions

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, April 1, 2008


During a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Thursday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey tacitly admitted that the U.S. government intercepted a call about 9/11 - before 9/11.

Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, he said, "we knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mukasey is then reported to have "grimaced, swallowed hard, and seemed to tear up as he reflected on the weaknesses in America’s anti-terrorism strategy prior to the 2001 attacks. "We got three thousand. . . . We’ve got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that," he said, struggling to maintain his composure."

(Article continues below)

Despite Mukasey using the example to justify warrantless wiretapping of Americans by claiming the government was unable to intercept the call, the fact is that no law would have prevented the government from listening in on the call. Existing FISA provisions would have covered the interception of the call.

In addition, it would be naive to consider that Echelon - the global spy network run by the NSA - did not intercept and catalogue the call. In 1999, the Australian government admitted that they were part of an NSA-led global intercept and surveillance grid in alliance with the US and Britain that could listen to "every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission," on the planet.

Furthermore, two days after 9/11, Germany’s daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the Echelon spy network had provided warnings of the terror attack 6 months in advance.




It is admitted that the CIA had tracked the alleged hijackers to an Al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000 and then let them back into the US. The U.S. government was fully aware of their movements without the need for a phone tap and allowed them safe passage around the globe.

As Newsweek reported, five of the named hijackers "received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s".

Under these circumstances, the contention that the U.S. government intercepted such a call but was unable or unwilling to listen to it due to legal restrictions is completely inconceivable.

Mukasey’s admission is therefore further evidence that the U.S. government was responsible for - at the very bare minimum - "malfeasant complicity in the 9/11 attacks," as Keith Olbermann stated on his MSNBC show yesterday.



Olbermann thinks it likely Mukasey is simply embellishing in order to propagandize for warrantless wiretapping, but the fact that the hijackers were carefully tracked every step of the way before 9/11 by the U.S. government and indeed trained at their military installations, in addition to Echelon having recorded phone conversations about 9/11 six months before the attack, strongly suggests that Mukasey unintentionally told the truth - and unequivocally let slip U.S. government foreknowledge of 9/11.

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Antarctic Polar Bear Relocation to Begin on Earth Day

Currently listening : Rabo de Nube By Charles Lloyd Release date: 11 March, 2008

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MDMA

Breaking the Drug Taboo: Group of Traumatized Veterans Get Ecstasy Treatment

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted February 11, 2008.

An experimental study that treats PTSD veterans with the drug MDMA could make life after war a lot more livable.











"We need to be positioning ourselves now to provide the assistance that our veterans need," said House Committee on Veterans' Affairs chairman Bob Filner (D-CA) during a hearing, called "Stopping Suicides: Examining the Mental Health Challenges Facing the Department of Veterans Affairs," held in December 2007. "Not only for those brave men and women who are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also for our veterans from previous conflicts. We cannot afford to put this issue off."

Filner's choice of words is instructive, as are his sentiments: With upwards of 25 million veterans in the United States, not counting those overseas in the morally murky theater of Iraq and Afghanistan who may return home sometime after the 2008 presidential election, that's a lot of assistance and funding needed to head off what he called a "rate of veteran suicide [that] has reached epidemic proportions," to the point that it has doubled the suicide rate of civilians. Safeguards already put into place have failed, for a variety of reasons, and given the severity of the mental and physical problems carried by returning soldiers, some daring out-of-the-box thinking is not only desperately needed, but required.

Enter the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and its currently funded trials using 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methamphetamine -- otherwise known as MDMA, or ecstasy -- to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although the U.S. Army had carried out lethal dose studies of MDMA back in the 1950s, work which was not classified until the close of the 1960s, it was only centered on animals and was mixed in with a variety of other compounds. At the closure of that research, MDMA languished in clinical obscurity until its rise as a club drug in the '80s and '90s brought it the kind of attention that dooms better drugs to Schedule I classifications -- that is, illegality -- and lesser drugs to approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But MAPS founder and president Rick Doblin became aware of MDMA in 1982, and since then has been convinced of its therapeutic uses. Accordingly, his organization has coordinated and/or funded recent studies into MDMA treatment of PTSD and has its eyes set on a higher goal.

"We're looking to make MDMA into a prescription medication in the United States, United Kingdom and elsewhere," he explained by phone.

So far, MAPS has gone a long way to helping legitimize MDMA treatment for PTSD, as well as anxiety in cancer patients and more. The organization is supporting and funding Dr. Michael Mithoefer's double-blind sessions and protocol on MDMA/PTSD, initially approved by the FDA in 2001 and due to conclude this June, as well as co-sponsoring a pilot MDMA/PTSD study with the Swiss Medical Association for Psycholytic Therapy and coordinating research at Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital into MDMA's ability to aid the suffering of terminal cancer patients.

In short, MAPS is putting its money where your mouth is, in hopes of saving your brain and heart. And their help can't come fast enough, given hundreds of thousands of troops have already returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan to face everything from a possible economic recession to homelessness, homicide and suicide, with hundreds of thousands on the way behind them. According to some estimates, America can expect a minimum of 300,000 cases of PTSD, at a cost of over $600 billion, rivaling the cost of the wars themselves. And that's just the military wing of PTSD's vast network, which leans all too heavily on those who have suffered horrific experiences such as rape, violence, abuse and more. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a deadly assassin when it comes to the humanity's overall mental health, and its costs are extensive and lasting. This is why some physicians and professionals are keeping an eye on MDMA treatment, which so far has proven to be almost uniformly successful in helping patients work through their crippling traumas with the help of ecstasy's cathartic yet calming influence.

"I've seen each and every one of these patients, and, just as a clinical psychologist, it is impressive to see the degree of treatment response these folks have had," explained testing expert Mark Wagner, a clinical psychologist at the Medical University of South Carolina, to the Washington Post after serving as an independent evaluator of Mithoefer's work. "I didn't see a single individual who thought: 'Oh, yeah, this is great fun. I'm going to try to go out and use this for recreational use.' All of them took this very seriously and therapeutically."

Indeed, out of all of the MDMA research underway, it seems to be Mithoefer's work, conducted in a warmly lit cottage in South Carolina with his wife and registered nurse Annie, that seems best positioned to aid MDMA's American crossover from a Schedule I danger to a FDA-approved wonder drug. But that's just the beginning of a long, bureaucratically tangled road to redemption. "Michael's study is the furthest along," added Doblin, "and after June, we'll do the data analysis and submit our findings to the FDA. After that, we will work with the FDA to come up with ideas about phase three studies, and that's when we have to spend the millions of dollars and treat hundreds of patients."

Mithoefer's current study, in phase two and working with barely over 20 patients, is crucial, according to Doblin, "to prove safety and efficacy." Safety and efficacy are the prime obstacles standing in MAPS and MDMA's way, especially since the drug was given the Schedule I assignation in 1985, shortly after it was nicknamed "ecstasy" in 1984. Since then, studies have come and gone in hopes of proving its lethality, but, as with its cousin-in-controversy cannabis, nothing conclusive came of it. Doblin, Mithoefer and other interested physicians and figures from around the world have stepped forward to subject it to rigorous testing, and have found little to complain about. In fact, they've found quite a bit to celebrate, which has not sat well with the shrinking contingency of drug warriors intent on keeping MDMA from people who may need it.

"I find it important to discriminate between medical research and drug policy," asserted Pal-Orjan Johansen, a Ph.D. candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's department of psychology who has worked with Michael and Annie Mithoefer on MDMA treatment and research, via email. "One area cannot be used to promote the other, and vice versa. It is inconsistent with traditional medical ethics or outright unethical to block treatment development and research based on drug policy."

It may be unethical, but it certainly isn't inconsistent, at least within the last century, which found several drugs with specific medicinal properties, including MDMA and cannabis, nevertheless criminalized by governments across the world. And while it is true that some have loosened their hypocritical restrictions on such substances, many still harbor puritanical paranoias about them. In America, it has been far easier to obtain prescriptions for medicine that can kill you outright, such as oxycontin or vioxx, than for drugs that can chill you out. And that's before one even engages more dangerous legal substances, such as nicotine or alcohol, which have wrecked lives and ruined bank accounts. One could argue, with some success, that it would be inconsistent with traditional medical ethics to legalize such substances, even though their positives seem to far outweigh their negatives.

But, of course, this argument, stretching back for decades if not centuries, is not about ethics or health, but about money. Just ask Doblin, who's happy that Mithoefer's work has passed phase two with flying colors but nervous about the coming challenges of a much more expansive, and expensive, phase three.

"Where do we get five million dollars?" he answered with a question, when asked what will be phase three's biggest obstacle. When asked if a new administration, one less in love with the idea of wars on abstracts, would come to the rescue, Doblin was equally sanguine. "The change in administration won't make a difference. We're doing this now with the Bush administration. The level we're working at now is made up of mostly scientists interested in science over politics. From our perspective, the FDA is a delight to work with, because they focus on that science. It's not until it comes to policy that the political influences come in. But we're many, many years away from that."

For now, Doblin and his cadre of outside-the-box doctors are focusing on the data, which is growing by the day, and pointing to a possible light at the end of PTSD's long, dark tunnel. And that means navigating the labyrinth of not just the FDA, but also the medical establishment's program of rigorous testing and analysis.

"We are preparing a protocol to submit to the FDA in February to train therapists for phase three studies," he explained. "We're going to ask permission to administer MDMA to therapist trainees, so they know what the drug is about, and so they can practice with one another. We're transcribing audio and video of all the sessions, and developing a treatment manual. We're initiating contact with another group interested in MDMA for cognitive behavioral therapy."

So, what if it works? What if MDMA treatment of PTSD comes to pass, and everyone from rape and abuse victims to returning soldiers demand the catharsis that comes from ecstasy to help them normalize their turbulent lives? The scenario scares some politicians and physicians alike, but their fears of rampant XTC ravers gumming up the public works may, in the end, prove unfounded.

"It's not going to be a normal prescription drug like the antidepressants," promised Doblin. "It's only going to be administered under therapist supervision. There would be a chain or network of clinics where use would be limited to special training. Patients would be requited to spend the night in the facility. It's not like cannabis. Our approach is catharsis, enhancing the psychotherapeutic interchange. We want patients to integrate their trauma into their normal lives."

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Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com

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Aboard the Condoleeza Rice

Aboard the Condoleezza Rice
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By Robert Scheer

Whadda you mean "we," Mr. TV Pundit? When you say "we" are doing better in Iraq or, even more absurd, that "we" were right to invade that country in the first place, are you putting Joe Blow American in the same bag as the top officers of Exxon, which made $40.6 billion in profit last year thanks to the turmoil in the energy markets? That royal "we" is good for the royals who control our government, but its persistent use embodies a pernicious lie that betrays the core ideal of representative democracy.

Ever since "we" invaded Iraq, most of us have gotten nothing to show for it other than an enormously increased national debt that we will be paying off for decades to come and an economy that is sputtering into recession. Oil sold for $22.81 the year before the war was launched against a country with the world's second-largest holding, and the average price last year was almost three times that, at $64.20.

With oil bouncing up to $100 in the fourth quarter, Exxon recorded the highest corporate quarterly return ever. Chevron, the country's second-biggest oil company, saw profits rise 29 percent that quarter, contributing to an enviable profit of $18.7 billion for 2007. Clearly, what's good for big oil is not good for most Americans, few of whom would look back on 2007 with favor.

It's easy for the Bush big shots to equate the fortunes of big oil with that of the nation. After all, George W. got to be president only because his failed career in the Texas oil industry exposed his charms to the big energy guys, who then bankrolled his political career. Dick Cheney was an out-of-work defense secretary when picked to be CEO of Halliburton, which has profited mightily from its dealings with Exxon, not to mention running the Iraq franchise.

And the image we should all recall is of the Chevron tanker named Condoleezza Rice. Only in America would we think it not a conflict of interest that Rice was paid handsomely for being on the board of Chevron from 1991 until she resigned to go to work in the Bush White House. How worried can she be about the deteriorating position of the United States in the world when her oil company buddies are doing so well?

We are conned since early childhood to look with dark suspicion upon anyone who points a finger of accountability at the robber barons of the corporate world. It is for that reason that Exxon's outrageous profits made in exploiting an energy crisis that has hurt so many ordinary Americans barely elicits media outrage of any sort. Nor does this fact get much play in the presidential race. To her credit, Hillary Clinton took umbrage over Exxon's then record-setting profit of $39 billion last year, stating: "I want to take those profits and put them into an alternative energy fund ... that will actually begin to move us toward the direction of independence."

From the hysterically negative response of the right-wing media, you would have thought she had hailed the second coming of Karl Marx. No wonder this year with even higher profits there was no similar outcry from any of the leading candidates. They should be outraged because the taxpayers they are supposed to represent are forking over a lot of money for the military in order to make the world safe for Exxon.

The lifeline of Exxon is not its oil drilling skills but rather the power of the U.S. government, particularly the military, that can be marshaled to intimidate those nations that would dare challenge Exxon's right to profit exorbitantly. Whether it's about pushing for a pipeline crossing Afghanistan or tying up Venezuela's foreign assets in international courts, as Exxon managed to do last week, the U.S.-based oil giants strut with the full confidence that Uncle Sam will back them up.

But who will back up Uncle Sam except ordinary American soldiers and taxpayers who sacrifice to fight and fund battles that have nothing to do with their national interest? What a sorry record U.S. oil companies have compiled in places like Venezuela, Nigeria and the Persian Gulf down through the decades. But throughout those imperial adventures backed by U.S. gunboat diplomacy, there was the illusion that the plundered loot would be shared with the folks back home. The next time you fork it over at the pump remember the $40.6 billion Exxon got, and you will get the point that "they" and "we" are hardly in the same boat.

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Brownshirts
Current mood: adventurous

Here Come the Brownshirts, Again
Does the Republican Party Have Aces Up Its Sleeves?

By Paul Craig Roberts
The Brownshirt Party has chosen John "hundred year war" McCain as its presidential candidate. Except for Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and Billy Kristol, McCain is America's greatest warmonger.
Israel is making plans to start cutting Gaza's electricity supply in the coming days.

In a McCain Regime, Cheney will be back in office with another stint as Secretary of War. Norman "Bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran" Podhoretz will be Undersecretary for Nuclear War with General John "Nuke them" Shalikashvili as his deputy. Rudy Giuliani will be the Minister of Interior in charge of Halliburton's detention centers into which will be herded all critics of war and the police state. Billy kristol will be chief White House spokesliar.

The whole gang will be back--Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmster, Feith, Libby, Bolton. America will have a second chance to bomb the world into submission.

With the majority of voters sick of war, sick of lies, sick of fraud from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, and sick of stagnant and falling incomes, McCain is poised to capture 20 per cent of the vote--the Christian Zionists, the rapture evangelicals, and the diehard macho flag-waving thugs who believe America is done for unless "Islamofacists" are exterminated.

The accumulated lies, deceptions, war crimes, the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons, Bush's police state assault on civil liberty, countless numbers of Iraqi and Afghan men, women, and children murdered for the sake of American and Israeli hegemony, and the collapsing US economy indicate a political wipeout for the Brownshirt Party. In a country with an informed and humane population, the Republican Party would be reduced to such a small minority that it could never recover.

What will happen in America? Polls show that Americans have had it with Bush, and the 2006 congressional election showed that the voters have had it with Republicans. But the Republicans have seen the message and ignored it, and the people and the Democrats have continued to tolerate and to enable that which they claim to oppose.

Meanwhile Bush holds on to his determination to find a way to bomb Iran, dismissing along with the neocons the unanimous National Intelligence Estimate that there is no Iranian weapons program, just as Bush and the neocons dismissed the Iraq weapons inspectors who reported truthfully that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. What the American people and the Democrats have not understood is that a party with an agenda could care less for the facts.

The Democrats are far from pure, but they lack the fervor and determination that only ideology can provide. The Democrats might have issue-specific ideologies, but they lack an over-arching ideology that makes it imperative for them, and only them, to be in power.

In contrast, the Brownshirt Party is fueled by the neocon ideology of American (and Israeli) supremacy. The neocon ideology of supremacy is more far-reaching than Hitler's. Hitler merely aimed for sway over Europe and Russia. The neocons have targeted the entire world.

Neocons have prepared plans for war against China. They are ringing Russia with military facilities and paying millions of dollars to leaders of former constituent parts of the Soviet Union to sign up with NATO, which the neocons have turned into a mechanism for drafting Europeans to serve American Empire.

All this work, the neocon Project for a New American Century, the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the demonization of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, the ghettoization of the West Bank and Gaza, the police state measures that Bush has succeeded in putting on the books, the concentration of power in the executive branch, these are successes from which the Brownshirts will not walk away.

Possibly the neocons and their Brownshirt followers are so delusional that they do not realize that their glorious aims are not shared. Maybe they are no different from Americans, maxed out on credit and unable to make mortgage payments, who believe that next week they will win the lotto.

On the other hand maybe the Brownshirts have a plan.

What could the plan be?

They can steal the election with the Diebold electronic voting machines and proprietary software that no one is allowed to check. There are now enough elections on record with significant divergences between exit polls and vote tallies that a stolen election can be explained away. The Democrats have been house trained to acquiesce to stolen elections. The voters, whose votes are stolen, dismiss the evidence as "conspiracy theories."

Or what about a well-timed orchestrated "terrorist attack" to drive fearful Americans to the war candidate. False flag events are stock-in-trade. Hitler used the Reichstag fire to turn German democracy into a dictatorship overnight.

And what about the widespread spying on Americans? The Bush regime's explanation for its violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes no sense. Bush's violation of the law is clearly a felony, grounds for impeachment, arrest, indictment, and a prison sentence. Moreover, no intelligence purpose was achieved by Bush's illegal acts. The FISA law only requires the executive branch to come to a secret court to explain its purpose and obtain a warrant. The law even allows the executive branch to spy first and obtain the warrant afterward. The purpose of the warrant is to prevent an administration from spying for political purposes. The only reason for Bush to refuse to obtain warrants is that he had no valid reason for the spying.

Does this mean that during the presidential campaign we will hear from Attorney General Michael Mukasey that candidate Hillary is under investigation for a Whitewater-related offense, or that candidate Obama is linked to an alleged crime figure or Islamist?

The neocons control most of the print and TV media, and the right-wing radio talk hosts are no friends of Democrats. As Americans have fallen for every other fraud perpetrated upon them, they are likely to be suckers as well for "investigations" or rumors of investigations of the Democratic candidate. Hillary is widely disliked and easy to distrust. Obama is a new face with which voters have little experience. He is partly black and has a funny name.

John McCain is a graduate of the US Naval Academy. His father and grandfather were admirals. On his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam in one of America's orchestrated wars, he was shot down and injured. He was a POW for 5.5 years, and tortured by the North Vietnamese.

McCain has been in Congress and thus in the public eye since 1983. The only scandal with which he is associated is that he was one of "the Keating five," one of five senators associated through campaign contributions with S&L owner and real estate investor Charles Keating and alleged interveners in his behalf. Keating was entraped by prosecutors, but was later exonerated by a federal judge.

Adolf Hitler never had the support of a majority of the German electorate. In the November 1932 election, he received 33.1 percent of the vote. His peak was March 6, 1933, with 43.9 percent following the Reichstag fire a few days before on February 27, blamed on the communists. Hitler's minority support in a democracy did not prevent him from becoming dictator of Germany.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Currently reading : Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog By Ted Kerasote Release date: 02 July, 2007

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Grateful Obama

Grateful Dead and Deadheads reunite for Obama
Tue Feb 5, 2008 3:46am EST




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By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Saying Barack Obama embodies political hope absent since Robert Kennedy was slain 40 years ago, three surviving members of the Grateful Dead rock band reunited on Monday for the first time in four years to back the presidential candidate.

"Every few generations a guy like this comes along," drummer Mickey Hart told a news conference a day before California's primary, in which Obama, a senator from Illinois, faces New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. "It seems like desperate times and we're desperate people."

The counter-culture band, known for its loyal "Deadhead" fans, broke up in 1995 after the death of its leader, guitarist Jerry Garcia. They have since played together occasionally, most recently in 2004.

At a San Francisco concert in front of 2,400 fans, singer-guitarist Bob Weir, 60, said the band had never before, performed on behalf of a presidential candidate, although they have often embraced liberal social causes.

"The last time hope was in the air, it was ended by a bullet," Weir said, referring to Kennedy, who was assassinated on the night he won the California Democratic primary in 1968. "We've been reluctant to do political events all along."

Bassist Phil Lesh, 67, said he met Obama, who told him he has some Grateful Dead songs on his iPod music player, last year.

The concert started with a short video from Obama, filmed on an airplane, thanking the band. A thick cloud of marijuana smoke wafted through the air then and throughout the concert, and some fans engaged in free-style dance as though magically transported from 1968.

Obama's dapper, clean-cut image contrasted with the tied-dyed shirts and long, shaggy hair of fans who lined up for hours to attend the "Deadheads for Obama '08" event.

"Long live the Dead!" said Ron Svetlik, 51, who said he had attended more than 200 Grateful Dead concerts, starting in 1974.

The home builder said he had already voted by mail for the Green Party candidate, but added: "If I had to cast a write-in ballot, I'd put Jerry Garcia."

The three band members neither promised more concerts nor ruled them out. "It's a lot like family," Weir said, referring to complicated relationships dating back more than 40 years. "What we have is thicker than blood."

(Editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Currently listening : All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions By Jerry Garcia Release date: 20 April, 2004

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George Mcgovern
Current mood: energetic

Why I Believe Bush Must Go
By George McGovern
The Washington Post

Sunday 06 January 2008

Nixon was bad. These guys are worse.

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.

Today I have made a different choice.

Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.

But what are the facts?

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged - perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion - by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks - another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world - more than a billion people.

Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.

Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies - especially the war in Iraq - have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) - and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws - that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate... . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law - and repeatedly violates the law - thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."

I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered

Currently reading : The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism By Naomi Klein Release date: 18 September, 2007

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SwiftBoaters
Current mood: awake

The Return of the SwiftBoaters




More than three years after John Kerry's bitter defeat, at the dawn of what looks like a far more promising campaign cycle for the Democrats, the party is still haunted by the specter of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Once upon a time, "Swift boat" denoted an obscure military vessel, but thanks to the activities of this group it has come to represent movement conservatism's penchant for ruthlessly (and effectively) smearing any and all political opponents, from a sitting senator and war hero to an 11-year-old boy with a cranial fracture.

Research by The Nation into Federal Election Commission records of the group's top twenty donors reveals that they've been remarkably active in this cycle, contributing and bundling nearly $200,000 to presidential candidates. This does not bode well. During the last presidential campaign, the wealthy backers of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--now rebranded as Swift Vets and POWs for Truth--didn't do their real dirty work until the general election, where as a tax-exempt 527 group they operated outside the restraints of direct campaign contributions. We may wish we were done with the Swift Boaters, but they aren't done with us.

In 2004 the top twenty donors all gave (with one exception) at least $50,000 to the group. The top three--Houston home builder Bob Perry, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens and billionaire drugstore impresario and investor Harold Simmons--gave a combined $9.5 million ($4.45 million, $3 million and $2 million, respectively). Calculating the influence of these and the slightly less wealthy Swift Boat donors during this cycle is a touch more complicated than simply adding up their contributions. Each one exerts far more influence as a bundler, given the federal restrictions on individual giving, which limit donors to a maximum of $4,600 per cycle. So The Nation looked not only at the contributions of the donors themselves but also at those of their family members and employees. It's an imperfect method, since some employees are clearly contributing of their own volition (such as one employee of a Simmons company who gave money to Hillary Clinton), but it gives a rough estimate of who's backing whom and to what extent.

The most notable recipient of Swift Boat largesse is John McCain, erstwhile front-runner and Stand Up Guy. When the Swift Boat ads were first unleashed, McCain was alone among his Republican colleagues to condemn them. A fellow Vietnam veteran, a good friend of Kerry's and a former target of smears about his own service, McCain called the ads "dishonest and dishonorable," a "cheap stunt," and he urged Bush to condemn them. But in pursuit of the GOP nomination, McCain ditched the mantle of maverick for that of hack, and his once-floundering, possibly rejuvenated campaign has been aided along the way by $61,650 from Swift Boat donors and their associates. "There is such a thing as dirty money," said Senator Kerry in a statement, after The Nation informed him of McCain's FEC records. "I'm surprised that the John McCain I knew who was smeared in 2000 and thought so-called Swift Boating was wrong in 2004 would feel comfortable taking their money after seeing the way it was used to hurt the veterans I know he loves." (McCain's office did not return calls for comment.)

McCain's Swift Boat bounty is exceeded only by that of Mitt Romney, who has raked in $70,550. Romney's success with Swift Boat donors is significant because he has surpassed even McCain in his demonstrated willingness to do or say anything in pursuit of the presidency and because he has emerged as the GOP establishment's favored candidate. Last year, when McCain held that position, the Arizona senator received significant backing from Swift Boat donors. But many have subsequently switched their allegiance. Pickens, who donated to McCain in June 2006, is now an enthusiastic Giuliani donor and fundraiser (Giuliani ranks third in Swift Boat funding, with $47,950). Perry, who also recorded several donations to McCain's PAC in 2005 and 2006, is now a major donor and fundraiser for Romney. If the list of top Swift Boat donors is expanded to fifty, Romney's fundraising edge is even more pronounced. (Neither Romney nor Giuliani's campaign returned calls for comment.)

Also noticeable among the recipients of Swift Boat largesse is one who received only a single donation: Mike Huckabee. Despite meager fundraising and little national name recognition, the former Arkansas governor has experienced a bubble-like expansion of support and media attention, taking the lead in Iowa and approaching a steady lead in national polls. But the lack of Swift Boat contributions lends credence to the claim that Huckabee is viewed warily by the money men who call the shots in the modern GOP. Despite proposing a radically regressive tax change and taking Grover Norquist's antitax pledge, he's been attacked savagely by the Club for Growth and eviscerated by columnist George Will for "comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs," among them "free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America's corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity."

This all supports the notion that the people behind the Swift Boat operation are chiefly concerned with the continued upward redistribution of wealth that is, more or less, the contemporary GOP's raison d'être. In 2006 Perry ponied up $5 million to start the Economic Freedom Fund, a 527 group devoted to attacking Democratic incumbents, and landed a large donation from prominent Swift Boat donor Carl Lindner. All of which is to say that the Swift Boaters aren't some kind of side show, a coterie of vicious mudslingers operating at the edges of respectability. They are the show. They are modern conservatism's core funders and beneficiaries. With conservatives staring straight into the abyss, their activities in this election cycle could very well make the Swift Boat smears look tame by comparison.

This report was produced with support of The Nation Institute Investigative Fund. Additional research was provided by Nicholas Jahr.

Currently listening : Washington Square Serenade (DIG) By Steve Earle Release date: 25 September, 2007

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