OLBERMANN DEBUNKS LONDON CAR BOMBING! (video)

OLBERMANN DEBUNKS LONDON CAR BOMBING!

JUNE 29, 2007

see:

Keith Olbermann

John Pilger – Freedom Next Time (video)

Dandelion Salad

In case you missed it.

replaced video Nov. 30, 2012

PHubb on Jul 9, 2007

Australian journalist, author, film maker John Pilger speaks about global media consolidation, war by journalism, US military’s quest for domination/hegemony in the post 9/11 era, false history in the guise of ‘objective’ journalism. Filmed in Chicago at Socialism 2007: Socialism for the 21st Century by Paul Hubbard. June 16, 2007 Broadcast on Democracy Now – The War and Peace Report – August 7, 2007

Act of killing (war) (video no longer available)

Act of killing (war)

h/t: ICH

Roger Morris: The CIA and the Gates Legacy By Tom Engelhardt

posted June 25, 2007 3:08 pm

Tomgram: Roger Morris, The CIA and the Gates Legacy
By Tom Engelhardt

It’s fitting that, as part 3 of Roger Morris’ monumental portrait of Robert Gates, the CIA, and a half-century-plus of American covert action comes to a close, a CIA document dump of previously secret materials from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s has put the years when our Secretary of Defense first entered the Agency back in the news. Assassination plots against foreign leaders, kidnappings, warrantless wiretapping of reporters, the illegal opening of American mail, illegal break-ins, behavior modification experiments on “unwitting” citizens, illegal surveillance of domestic dissident groups and critics of the Agency — it seems never to end.

And yet, you have to read Morris on Gates to realize how much this list still lacks when it comes to the acts of the CIA. It is, after all, one of the ironies of our moment that our (relatively) new secretary of defense now travels the American world — to Kabul and Baghdad in particular, where he frets about Tehran — only to find himself, in essence, confronting (though our media never bothers to say so) the consequences of the misdeeds of his younger self. It’s a grisly record and, not surprisingly, a grisly world has been its result.

If you haven’t read bestselling author (and former National Security Council staffer) Roger Morris’ first two parts on Gates and the CIA — “The Gates Inheritance” and “The World That Made Bob,” then do so and prepare yourself for the mayhem of the world Gates helped make when, in the 1980s, he came into his own. That this is the man meant to save us from the disparate fundamentalisms of Bush the Younger and Dick Cheney tells us a great deal about just how low we’ve sunk. Tom

The Rise and Rise of Robert Gates

The Specialist (Part 3)

By Roger Morris Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, March 8, 1985, an Islamic Sabbath — In Bir El-Abed, an impoverished, crowded Shiite quarter in the southern reaches of the Lebanese capital, Muhammad Husain Fadlallah stops on the street to speak to an elderly woman; and so, the revered 51 year-old cleric, delayed momentarily, will not be home at the usual time when a car bomb explodes at his apartment doorstep with a force felt miles away in the Chouf Mountains and well out in the Mediterranean.

“Even by local standards,” reported the New York Times from car-bomb and shell-shocked Beirut, the explosion “was massive.” Eighty-one people were killed — men, women, and children — and more than two hundred wounded. Fadlallah, the target of the attack, was unhurt. The next day, a notice hung over the devastated area where grief-stricken families were still digging the bodies of loved ones out of the rubble. It read: “Made in the USA.”

Continued…

see:

CIA Terror Bombings, Bob Gates, and The Rise of Hezbollah By Michael Schwartz

he CIA and the Politics of Counterrevolution: Robert Gates, The Specialist (Part 2) By Morris

Roger Morris: The Gates Inheritance Part I By Tom Engelhardt

CIA Terror Bombings, Bob Gates, and The Rise of Hezbollah By Michael Schwartz

Dandelion Salad

By Michael Schwartz
06/28/07 “Huffington Post“

Today is a banner day for aficionados of the CIA. After a 15-year Freedom of Information Act struggle, the National Security Archive has finally forced the CIA to reveal the “family jewels” — a 702 page treasure trove of documents characterized in The New York Times as a “catalog of domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists.” Whether or not you wade through the dense coverage of this frightening archive, we all need to keep our perspective on the role of the CIA in U.S. government activities. While the atrocities reported in the “family jewels” are certainly atrocious in their own right, they are actually a tiny corner of a larger history that includes all manner of crimes against humanity, from mayhem against individuals to full fledged state terrorism.

And there is one thing that the “family jewels” will not reveal: how this decades-long criminal history has impacted international politics. Here is a simple summary: most of the world’s current man-made disasters are in some way or another “blowback” from past crimes committed by the CIA and its brethren in the “intelligence,” “security,” or “defense” apparatuses of the United States government. Sadly, this includes (of course) the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, also the multiplex crises in the rest of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, South Asia, East Asia and…wherever.

A good way to see this is to read Roger Morris’ beautifully presented history three part history of the CIA on TomDispatch, which focuses on the ways in which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates shaped and was shaped by his career in the CIA. I will repeat one example Morris’ comprehensive account that captures so much of the way in which the U.S. has created so much of the ugliness that currently disgraces our world.

This a story about Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group that successfully fended off what American and Israeli military planners expected to be an overwhelming onslaught of air power, an onslaught that killed thousands, flattened whole cities, and compromised the Lebanon’s infrastructure.

Many of us remember that in 1983, during a previous crisis there, an American military barracks was bombed, killing 241 marines who were part of an international peacekeeping force sent there in 1982. That bombing was, as Morris tells the story “itself a bloody reprisal for earlier American acts of intervention and diplomatic betrayal in Lebanon’s civil war” which had been raging since 1975.

No one in the American intelligence community knew for sure (and no one knows to this day) who was actually responsible for the bombing, but CIA director William Casey decided nevertheless to undertake reprisals. He chose as his target a Shia cleric, Muhammad Husain Fadlallah, “because of his reputation for fiery sermons in favor of social justice and national independence — and because allied spy agencies — Israel’s Mossad, Saudi Arabia’s GID, and Phalangist informers — claimed he led a militant Shiite group that bore responsibility for the attack on the Marines.”

That was enough evidence for Casey to commission an attack on Fadlallah. It was also enough for his top deputy, Robert Gates, Head of the Directorate of Intelligence, and in charge of processing all the best information the Agency could gather. As the rumors of the coming attack on Fadlallah spread through the agency, Gates’ agents tried to warn him about the lack of evidence against the cleric (does this sound familiar?). Here is Morris’ story of their efforts:

“In our shop, we knew what Casey would be looking for in revenge for the barracks bombing and what the Israelis and Saudis were pushing,” related one analyst who would later become a senior Agency official. “We laid out all the unknowables and caveats and how we were being whipsawed [by allied spy agencies], and we sent it upstairs for Gates to give to Casey, and we recommended it be bootlegged to the NSC and White House and even to Defense if it came to that.”
When there was no sign that Gates had done anything with their warning, two of the analysts confronted the deputy director. “This is terrible,” one of them told him.

“We are not here to pick a fight with the boss,” Gates answered dismissively. “I’m not particularly concerned about some set-to in Lebanon.”

The CIA did not just try to assassinate Muhammad Husain Fadlallah. Instead the Agency carbombed his entire neighborhood with an explosion that was felt “miles away in the Chouf Mountains and well out in the Mediterranean.” Whether or not the cleric was the perpetrator, the message would be clear to all concerned: attacks on American marines would result in retribution against the whole offending community. It was, in short, an act of state terrorism. Eighty-one people were killed and over 200 wounded in the crowded impoverished Bir El-Abed neighborhood where Fadlallah lived. (Fadlallah himself was unhurt — he had been delayed arriving home that evening because he stopped on the street “to speak to an elderly woman.”)

Though this incident was barely news in the US–and there was not even a hint that the CIA had authored the carbombing — the message was received in Bir El-Abed. The next day, “a notice hung over the devastated area where grief-stricken families were still digging the bodies of loved ones out of the rubble. It read: “Made in the USA.”"

But the people of Bir El-Abed and the surrounding Shia communities extracted the “wrong” conclusion from this message: instead being overwhelmed by the display of American government slaughter, they set out to develop a countervailing violence of their own:

Among those of Fadlallah’s bodyguards not killed in the explosion, 22 year-old Imad Mugniyah would join the emerging Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and, over the next decade, as a shadowy chief of security, direct a series of reprisal attacks against Americans in a bloody chain reaction of terror and counter-terror. Among Fadlallah’s admirers, outraged by the bombing and ever after distrustful of the Americans he had once admired, was a round-faced, 25 year-old theology student of already recognized charisma and organizational skills. He would rise to become Hezbollah’s leader — and, after his forces fought the Israeli invasion of Lebanon to a standstill in the summer of 2006, one of the most popular figures in the Arab world: Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.

This incident took place 20 years ago, long enough for us to track the connection to current mayhem in Lebanon. The public display of the CIA’s “family jewels” should remind us that the myriad CIA actions chronicled there are not isolated incidents. They are a coordinated system that has delivered violence like that perpetrated in Bir El-Abed to every corner of the world in the past 40 years, in myriad forms and under many disguises. These actions have ended the lives hundreds of thousands (in Iraq alone!), ruined the lives of millions, and earned the hatred of tens of millions. By now, the impact of our government’s action is so pervasive, that even the most distant and seemingly disconnected acts of violence are in some way consequences of, or reactions to, the activities of the U.S. government. All in our names. We really need to stop them.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz) and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo).

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

see:

The CIA and the Politics of Counterrevolution: Robert Gates, The Specialist (Part 2) By Morris

Roger Morris: The Gates Inheritance Part I By Tom Engelhardt

PBS’ Bill Moyers takes the gloves off on Rupert Murdoch (video)

From: PBS’ Bill Moyers takes the gloves off on Rupert Murdoch

A Bill Moyers essay on Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal.

PBS: Friday, June 29, 2007 at 9PM (Check Your Local Listings at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/abo…

All Shows are Available Online at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers

see:

Foreclosing on America – Fri pm on PBS (Moyers)

What Makes Michael Moore Tick? Fri pm on PBS (NOW)

Are you a 35 Percenter? You can be. by Lo (Kucinich)

Dandelion Salad

by Lo

I posted the first video made by The 35 Percenters the other day (Dennis Kucinich is so Nice I’d Vote for Him Twice (vid)). You, too, can join us and be a 35 Percenter. All you have to do is post all the videos and/or help in the making of these videos for Dennis Kucinich’s campaign. We must get the word out on his candidacy and the issues he is campaigning on, which are many, including peace, health care, and the environment. He even proposed a bill to Impeach Cheney!

If you want to know more about Kucinich, I’ve posted many articles and videos and they are listed in my archive from my previous blog on Myspace: Dennis Kucinich. All my new posts are in the category: Kucinich-Dennis.

Please join us. We need you. Thanks for your support.

From the first video:

“Only 35% of registered voters who plan to vote for a Democrat in 2008 have ever heard of Dennis Kucinich. We want to change that.

If you’d like to help, please subscribe to our channel, (35percenters) and rate and share our videos. If you’re a blogger, you can join The 35 Percenters by agreeing to post every video that comes out on your blog.

The following is a list of bloggers who are already part of The 35 Percenters:”

The Largest Minority
http://theLargestMinority.com

Blue Gal
http://BGalrstate.Blogspot.com

Blue Man
http://BuildOurParty.Blogspot.com

Monkey Muck
http://MonkeyMucker.Blogspot.com

Dandelion Salad
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com

Peace Garden
http://www.Peacegarden.Blogspot.com

Quaker Dave
http://theQuakerAgitator.Blogspot.com

Phydeaux Speaks
http://www.Phydeauxpseaks.Blogspot.com

The Hermit with Davis Fleetwood
http://thehermitwithdavisfleetwood.bl…

Please visit Dennis Kucinich’ youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/Kucinich2008

See:

Dennis Kucinich is so Nice I’d Vote for Him Twice (vid)

Thank you, Dennis, for offering REAL health care reform (vid)

Kucinich: 9-11 Investigation (vid)

Kucinich and the Other Dems at “Take Back America 2007″ (vid)

NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL (30 second vid; Kucinich)

Dennis Kucinich- full list of Congressional votes (from 1.12.07 thru 5.24.07) (updated by Lo)

On The Issues: Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul by Lo

McMansions, SUVs, Mega-Churches and the Baghdad Embassy by Phil Rockstroh

McMansions, SUVs, Mega-Churches and the Baghdad Embassy

Life Among Dim and Brutal Giants

by Phil Rockstroh / June 28th, 2007

In microcosmic mimicry of the plight of the besieged middle and laboring classes, my parent’s Atlanta neighborhood, as is the case with many others in the vicinity, is being destroyed, in reality — disappeared — by a blight of upper-class arrogance. The modest, post-war homes of the area are being “scraped” from the landscape as an infestation of bloated McMansions rises from the tortured soil. These particleboard and Tyvek-choked monstrosities loom over the remaining smaller houses of the area, as oversized and ugly as mindless bullies, as banal as the dreams of petty tyrants.

In the surrounding suburbs, in a similar manner as McMansions eclipse sunlight, throwing the adjacent houses into half-light, mega-churches eclipse the light of reason, leaving their congregations in an ignorant half-light of dogma and superstition. Of course, these true believer lunatics are wrong about everything, except, perhaps, for their elliptical apprehension regarding the arrival of proliferate cataclysms in the years to come. Oddly, although they promulgate dire warnings on the subject, they seem gleeful at the prospect of wide-spread suffering.

How could they not be? They’ve seized upon a fantasy that allows them to escape from the tyranny of their own life-suffocating belief system. Attempting to subdue the suffocating dread of their corporately circumscribed lives, they wish for the destruction of the entire planet. Hence, their escapist fantasy, by the necessity of narrative, is huge, outrageous — apocalyptic. The progenitor of their End Time tale is this: The believer’s emotional inflexibility begets a form of ontological giantism — a phenomenon that arises when one’s worldview is too small to explain the larger world. Therefore, a story must be created that contains violence and terror on such a massive scale that its unfolding would kill off the entire, problematic world. “That’s right world, there’s not enough room on this planet for both you and my beliefs. One of us has to go.”

Upon the nation’s roadways and interstate highways, the overgrown clown cars of the apocalypse, SUVs, Humvees, and oversized pickup trucks also evince hugeness to compensate for the feelings of those folks inside the grotesque vehicles of being crushed down by alienation and isolation — not only while on the road — but by the realities of an existence within a hapless, oil-dependent empire which is itself powerless against the changing realities of the larger world.

In the ranks of the exploiter class, the fat salaries of CEOs separate them further from the general population of the consumer state (that they take every opportunity to bamboozle) as the American public itself grows fatter and fatter in body mass, vainly attempting to sate an inner emptiness borne of their perceived helplessness before the predation of corporate culture.

Concurrently, in Baghdad, the U.S. embassy, which, when completed, will be the largest “diplomatic” compound on the planet is, in fact, an inadvertent monument to the mindless colossus the U.S.A. has become. The structure is as accurate as the art of architecture can be in its depiction of the spirit of a nation’s people. As big and bloated as our national sense of exceptionalism, it stands in the so-called Green Zone of Baghdad, shielding those who will be bunkered down within it — not only from the murderous madness unfolding outside its highly fortified walls — but from reality itself. A massive emblem of the arrogance of power, the embassy is a testament to how the noxious vapors of cultural self-deception can be made manifest in re-inforced concrete, armed watchtowers and razor wire.

Through it all, like some eternally slumbering Hindu deity, we Americans dream these things into existence. Far from blameless, we continue to allow the elites to exploit us; therefore, we enable and sustain their titanic sense of entitlement. In turn, we accept their paltry bribes and, as a result, our banal, selfish dreams have conjured forth George Bush from the zeitgeist. Ergo, Bush is a man whose impenetrable narcissism is so grotesque and ringed with fortifications, that all on his own he constitutes a walking analog of the American embassy in Baghdad.

In addition, we Americans continue to believe our fables of righteous power: Big is good, goes our John Wayne jack-off fantasy. Our leaders must be large: Only McMansion-like men, such as Mitt Romney, are acceptable. We believe Dennis Kucinich is too diminutive in physical stature to be president — with the length of his body being roughly the size of Romney’s head.

In turn, our national landscape is stretched to the breaking point: Cluttered upon it, gigantic islands of garish light torment the night, scouring away the stars, estranging us from imagination, empathy, and eros, and leaving us only with the insatiable appetites of consumerism. Thus, around the clock, inside enormous, under-inspected, industrial slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, underpaid, benefit-bereft workers ply their gruesome, monstrously cruel trade, then the butchered wares are transported by way of brutal, double and triple-axle trailer, diesel trucks over Stygian interstate highways to sepulchral supermarkets and charnel house restaurant chains. Insuring we flesh-eating zombies are provided with all the water-bloated, steroid-ridden meat and industrially farmed, pesticide-laquered vegetables and starches — The Cuisines Of The Living Dead — we could ever crave … uum, uum, it’s the Thanatotic yumminess of empire’s end. Try our convenient drive through window. Would you like us to super-size your order of commodified death?

Hyperbolic ravings, you say. America is not a culture in love with death.

Let’s see. Drawing upon just one example: The corpses of well over half a million dead Iraqis testify otherwise. Moreover, the continuing Iraqi resistance to our occupation speaks volumes as well. Yet still, most of us cannot hear their elegy of outrage over the din created by the parade of killer clowns that we have mistaken for the pageantry of nationhood.

How does one slow this juggernaut of psychosis and curb these acts of murder/suicide being perpetrated on a global scale? Truth is, we might not be able to stop it because this is what lies beneath our unlimited sense of entitlement and self-defeating arrogance: a death-wish that manifests itself as exceptionalism and may well destroy the nation by means of imperial overreach — which is, of course, the time-established method by which empires dispose of themselves.

Further, this state of affairs is exacerbated by the narcissistic insularity of our media elite. At the end of the day, it’s their tumescent egos that are distorting our societal discourse; their vanities and attendant self-serving pronouncements are little more than steaming cargoes of horseshit, carried and delivered by one-trick-jackasses — jackasses endowed with the singular skill of being able to read a teleprompter … Fred Thompson, your agent is calling: You have an important call from Washington, DC.

Notice this: The more permeating the rot becomes within the system’s structure the more huge and pervasive the edifice of media imagery will grow — and the more trivial its content will become. The closer we come to systemic collapse the more we will hear about celebrity contretemps. Cretinous heiresses and shit-wit starlets, with shoddy mechanisms of self-restraint, people the public imagination, because they carry our infantilism, embody our collective carelessness, and, in turn, suffer public humiliation, as we desperately attempt to displace, upon them, the humiliation of our own daily existence within the oppressive authoritarianism of the corporate state.

Correspondingly, there is a well-known (by those who care to look) link between fascism and corporatism. To Mussolini, the two terms were interchangeable. According to rumor, we defeated fascism, during the first half of the 20th century. Yet, at present, we spend our days sustaining a liberty-loathing, soul-enervating corpocracy. To live under corporatism is, in ways large and small, to be a fascist-in-training. Everyday, hour by hour, the exploitive, neo-liberal concept of work devours more and more of our lives. As a consequence, the true self within is crushed to dust and what remains rises as cultural squalls of low-level fear, with its concomitant need for constant distraction. As all the while, the psyches of the well-off (financially, that is) become inflated, gaudy and ugly; in short, internally, they become human versions of McMansions.

Freedom is a microcosm of the forces of evolution engendered by living in the midst of life — a mode of being that apprehends and is transformed by the beauty, sorrow, and wit of the world. Conversely, authoritarian societies are collectives of accomplished liars and lickspittle ciphers, where one must conceal one’s essential self at all costs and the soul falls into atrophy.

To what extent does authoritarian rule diminish both the individual and a nation? Simply, take a look around you and witness the keening wasteland our nation has become. Furthermore, our emptiness cannot be filled by any amount of wealth or power. This is the reason the obscene amounts of mammon acquired by the privileged classes is never — can never be — enough to satisfy them, for their inner abyss is boundless. In a similar vein, no amount of killing can sate a psychopath’s emptiness. Dick Cheney will scowl all the way to the boneyard, hoping he can ascend to heaven by scaling the mountainous pile of corpses he’s responsible for placing there.

In folk stories, when giants are about, drought and famine withers the land and starvation stalks its people. Accordingly, the ruthless giantism inherent to the Corporate-Military-Mass Media state has withered our inner lives, blighted our landscape, and left us powerless before a huge, demeaning system that devours our time, health and humanity.

The bone-grinding giants of the American corporate and political classes have shot the Golden Goose full of growth hormones, enclosed her in an industrial coop, and hoarded her voluminous output of eggs. Yet, nothing satisfies them.

Meanwhile, online, we struggle in a Jack in the Beanstalk Insurgency, hoping that from things as tiny and seemingly trivial as mere beans — our postings, exchanges and periodic meet-ups — the fall of tyrannical giants might begin.

Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at philangie2000@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Phil.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

Thanks for Dick Cheney by Joel S. Hirschhorn

Thanks for Dick Cheney

Friday, 29 June 2007
by Joel S. Hirschhorn

When someone in high elected office shows the nation how vulnerable our Constitution is, we should be thankful for the wakeup call. Like many ruthless dictators, evil kings, and monster generals, Dick Cheney is the leading practitioner of the ends-justify-the-means mentality, where only his vision of the desired ends counts. And if this means disregarding and disobeying the Constitution, torturing prisoners, killing thousands of American soldiers, disrespecting Congress, destroying our environment, embracing the invasion of illegal immigrants, increasing out national debt, and disregarding the will of the vast majority of Americans, so be it. Serving corporate interests rather than serving the people is Cheney’s brand of patriotism.

Cheney’s self-righteous ego is bigger than George W. Bush’s, and what makes Cheney more striking is that he is enormously smarter and more competent than Bush, his token boss. He is so dangerous and frightening that no impeachment of Bush effort ever stood a chance. Not as long as “President Cheney” enters your consciousness. Cheney became Bush’s shield.

When reality hits the fan we use the-lessons-learned approach to stay sane. With his finger-in-the-eye disdain for what anybody else (or history) thinks of him, Cheney offers a far better lesson learned benefit than the stumbles and fumbles of Bush-the-smirker. Bush is a joke. Cheney is a monster.

Take Cheney’s current view that he is a part of the legislative branch, not the executive, so he does not have to comply with an Executive Order on reporting use of secret materials. It is wildly inconsistent with his prior claims of executive privilege. But Cheney has no use for logical consistency. Only what Cheney wants matters. (The only law that Cheney regularly obeys is gravity.)

When we witness the brazen acts of Cheney and Bush we should envision these types of constitutional amendments.

An amendment could explicitly state that the Vice President is a member of the Executive Branch, and the Office of the Vice President must comply with Executive Orders. And perhaps we should consider a statement of the criteria that the President can invoke for firing the Vice President with the consent of Congress.

And why not consider a different method of breaking ties in the Senate. If someone from the Executive Branch can do it, then why not someone from the Judicial Branch? Why not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? Or, better yet, why not make the constitutional solution what is the House uses. A tie vote means that the question fails. We could eliminate the position of President of the Senate.

As another example, consider the frequent assertion of executive privilege by Cheney and Bush to withhold information that Congress believes it needs. The Constitution does not provide for executive privilege. Considering how strong the presidency has become and the predilection to invoke executive privilege, we need an amendment that explicitly says there is no such thing as automatic executive privilege. Any assertion of it should be presented to the Supreme Court and only it should rule that it is appropriate in a particular case to protect the national interest.

As the final example, consider the clear need for an amendment that prohibits the President from using any kind of signing statement to announce and justify not obeying part of a newly signed law.

We can give thanks for Dick Cheney just like we give thanks eventually that a catastrophe or disaster makes us stronger in the future. He has exposed constitutional weaknesses. The principles that define the best of our nation must be protected through amendments that learn from history. In particular, how the ingenuity and boldness of people has allowed them to disobey and dishonor those principles. Dick Cheney sought and achieved power sufficient to make a mockery of our nation’s finest principles and he was enabled by George W. Bush who apparently sought more guidance from his God than from our Constitution.

One thing is clear. History provides little confidence that Congress will propose constitutional amendments that deserve full public discussion. Now is the time to use what our Constitution offers us: an Article V convention for proposing amendments. If we are to make our federal government work for the good of we the people, then we require the nation’s first Article V convention – the goal of Friends of the Article V Convention at www.foavc.org. Why is it now so appropriate? Because Americans now have so little confidence in Congress, the President, and the Vice President, and because the corruption of politicians by money has reached unprecedented heights.

As much as politicians deserve our mistrust, we the people deserve to have an Article V convention. Politicians fear it because they know the public will support amendments that make the government subservient to us – the sovereign American citizens. Politicians are not supposed to rule us. They are so supposed to justly represent us. But they do not. They represent the moneyed interests that control them. As Thomas Jefferson said, “An elected tyranny is not what we fought for.”

Our Constitution should not allow the government to make us victims and our nation hated by so much of the world. That’s what Cheney should teach us. Now, it’s up to us.

Pray that a petulant Bush does not learn from Cheney, exploit the Constitution by resigning, and create President Cheney.

[Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy and a founder of Friends of the Article V Convention.]

AIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

see:

Impeach Cheney-The vice president has run utterly amok and must be stopped. By Bruce Fein

“Everybody Knows the Clock is Ticking” By Jim Kirwan (Cheney)

DAVIS FLEETWOOD INTERVIEWS DENNIS KUCINICH (vid; Hermit; Impeach Cheney)

TPMtv: Tricky Dick Redux (video)

How Dick Cheney Broke My Mind By William Rivers Pitt

Cheney-Dick

Agency’s Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4 by Robert Lusetich

Agency’s Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4

Robert Lusetich, Los Angeles correspondent
28jun07

EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA’s notorious “Family Jewels” files is a short paragraph outlining “potentially embarrassing Agency activities”.
“Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects.”

Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency’s behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims – including children as young as four – may be the darkest.

“We have no answer to the moral issue,” former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects.

The release of the Family Jewels documents revealed the CIA handsomely funded these real-life Dr Strangeloves and engaged pharmaceutical companies to help its experiments.

The agency appealed to Big Pharma to pass on any drugs that could not be marketed because of “unfavourable side effects” to be tested on mice and monkeys. Any drugs that passed muster would then be used, according to an internal memo, on volunteer US soldiers.

The Family Jewels files do not provide further detail into the numerous mind-control programs, such as MKULTRA, covertly propped up by the agency. In 1953, MKULTRA was given 6per cent of the total CIA budget without any oversight.

Only the tip of a large iceberg had been previously released by the CIA under Freedom of Information Act provisions.

Yesterday’s acknowledgments will comfort those who have long campaigned for truth and restitution.

The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims’ brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium.

“The CIA bought my services from my grandfather in 1952 starting at the tender age of four,” wrote Carol Rutz of her experiences.

“Over the next 12 years, I was tested, trained, and used in various ways. Electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other types of trauma were used to make me complain and split my personality (to create multiple personalities for specific tasks). Each alter or personality was created to respond to a post-hypnotic trigger, then perform an act and (I would) not remember it later.

“This Manchurian Candidate program was just one of the operational uses of the mind-control scenario by the CIA.

“Your hard-earned tax dollars supported this.”

The US began these experiments after World War II when it made a grab for hundreds of Nazi scientists and doctors who had been researching mind control in concentration camps, fearing they would fall into Soviet hands.

US military intelligence leaders were paranoid that they were falling behind the communist bloc in the brainwashing race.

The programs, though carefully hidden, continued into the 1970s – when Helms ordered much of the documentation to be destroyed.

Some conspiratorial theorists believe the CIA completed its goal, initially outlined in the early 1950s, of altering a personality and having someone “perform an action contrary to an individual’s basic moral principles”.

The attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, Lawrence Teeter, has said his client was programmed to assassinate Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, volunteered to take part in CIA mind-control experiments when he was a student at Harvard University in the late 50s.

h/t: ICH

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MKULTRA/Mind Control

Curfew-Bound Fallujah On The Boil Again By Ali al-Fadhily

June 27, 2007

Curfew-Bound Fallujah On The Boil Again

Inter Press Service
By Ali al-Fadhily*

FALLUJAH, Jun 27 (IPS)

Strict curfew and tight security measures have brought difficult living conditions and heightened tempers to residents of this besieged city.

The siege in this city located 60km west of Baghdad has entered its second month. There is little sign of any international attention to the plight of the city. Fallujah, which is largely sympathetic to the Iraqi resistance, was assaulted twice by the U.S. military in 2004.

The second attack in November destroyed roughly three-quarters of the city of 350,000 residents. Now, Fallujah faces assault of another kind by way of a strict curfew where people are closed in from all sides.

Many people who had earlier supported the Iraqi police that works with the U.S. military, now oppose it.

“We gave full support to the police force despite opposition from others to forming this force,” a community leader in the city who asked to be referred to as Ahmed told IPS. “Others told us this force would only serve the occupation forces, but we accused them of being against stability and order. Unfortunately, they appeared to be absolutely right.”

Cars have not been permitted to move on the streets of Fallujah for nearly a month now. A ban was also enforced on bicycles, but residents were later granted permission to use them.

“Thank God and President Bush for this great favour,” said Ala’a, a 34-year-old schoolteacher. “We are the only city in the liberated world with the blessing now of having bicycles moving freely in the streets.”

On May 21 U.S. and Iraqi forces imposed a security crackdown on the city following continuing attacks. Local non-governmental organisations such as the Iraqi Aid Association (IAA) have told reporters that the U.S. military is not allowing them access to the city.

“We have supplies but it is impossible to reach the families. They are afraid to leave their homes to look for food, and children are getting sick with diarrhoea caused by the dirty water they are drinking,” IAA spokesman Fatah Ahmed told reporters. “We have information that pregnant women are delivering their babies at home as the curfew is preventing them from reaching hospital.”

Medical services are inaccessible to most because the hospital is located on the other side of the Euphrates River from the rest of the city. Extra security checkpoints have severely hampered movement within the city, and most businesses have closed. A year ago the local police cut mobile phone services.

The curfew is also restricting residents’ ability to go out and find much needed supplies in the markets. Residents told IPS that there is on average only two hours electricity in 24 hours.

Residents say they are up against killing prices. “Now they are killing us with a new weapon,” a young man with a mask covering his face told IPS. “A jar of gas costs 20 dollars and a kilo of tomatoes costs 1.50 dollar, and people cannot go to work.”

“U.S. snipers on rooftops are enjoying themselves watching us walk around to find a bite of food for our families,” 55-year-old Hajji Mahmood told IPS. “They laugh at us and call us names. They should know Fallujah is still the same city that kicked them away three years ago.”

Life seems completely paralysed with little sign of movement under a blazing sun, with temperatures up to 45 degrees.

“We are sweating to death because some of us went to those damned elections,” said a 40-year-old lawyer, speaking with IPS on condition of anonymity, referring to the Jan. 30, 2005 elections.

“The wise men told us not to, but we believed those crooks of the Islamic Party who promised to make things better,” he said. Many people in the city accuse the Islamic Party supportive of the U.S. of leading the ‘security plan’ in al-Anbar province where Fallujah is located.

A local political analyst offered his views to IPS via the Internet, on condition of anonymity.

“I find it rather strange that to control a city under the flag of providing citizens with peace and prosperity, you deprive them of all signs of life,” he said. “Arab, Muslim and all international community leaders should be ashamed of themselves for not even talking about this crime.”

“Nonetheless, U.S. leaders are just buying more time towards more failure that they hope will magically turn into success. I am hopeless of any peace in Iraq as long as the democrats sold their fight cheap to the Bush administration.”

Lt-Col Azize Abdel-Kader, a Defence Ministry official who coordinates security operations in al-Anbar said the curfew — which runs from 6 pm until 8 am — was necessary to maintain security.

“It is a temporary curfew and we hope it can soon end,” he told reporters in Baghdad last week. “We are looking into ways to let aid agencies enter Fallujah but it is too dangerous for the time being.”

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)

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Dahr Jamail/Ali al-Fadhily

Green Junta? Avoiding An Authoritarian Military-environment Elite

Source: Inderscience Publishers
Date: June 29, 2007

Green Junta? Avoiding An Authoritarian Military-environment Elite

Science Daily — A radical suggestion for creating a global infrastructure that is both sustainable and green might rely on nations working together to find a solution to a range of potentially devastating problems, according to Cardiff University’s Peter Wells. Writing in the International Journal of the Environment and Sustainable Development, published by Inderscience, Wells warns that of a Green Junta that could bring about a right-wing agenda by stealth, in the name of environmentalism.

Attempts to achieve lasting positive change at the local, national, and international level often fails because consensus between many different groups and interested parties is very difficult to achieve. The US and Australia having yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change could be seen as one such failed consensus. Agreement at certain levels is possible, but Wells points out that consensus between multiple stakeholders, while acceptable at a political level, increasingly seems inadequate to the task of creating sustainable societies.

Wells explains that there are several global problems we now face that present us with an increasingly uncertain future. These include, climate change, formerly known as global warming, the North-South imbalance, failing oil reserves, dwindling water resources, reduced biodiversity and species extinction, deforestation, population growth and the rural-urban shift, globalization and over-consumption, and the detrimental distribution of wealth. The increasing impact of these problems on individuals, regionally and globally, he says, suggest a world almost in freefall. “Drastic, rapid and dramatic change is needed,” Wells says.

The failure of global governance, Wells’ research suggests is to blame, but the current political spectrum across the globe cannot hope to bring about the drastic and rapid changes the solution requires. Instead, Wells speculates that a “strong government for a crowded planet” might be the only approach that will work. Such an approach could implement solutions quickly and without having to seek a consensus decision.

However, Wells warns that such a solution might be hijacked by the political right who would seize the opportunity to enforce a more authoritarian approach. “A modern Green Junta is unlikely to arrive with tanks on the streets and the overnight capturing of control,” he explains, “Rather, it creeps upon us through multiple small steps – each one justified by ‘necessity’.”

“Unless we are able to construct rapid and effective decision-making structures then there is a real danger of events being seized and controlled by an authoritarian military-environment elite,” he says, “Unfortunately, current democratic processes seem too slow, too flawed and too compromised in the face of the scale and pace of the threat emerging.”

Wells himself has had personal involvement in the sustainability process for fifteen years and suggests that, “It still feels as though we are collectively not prepared to ask the really difficult questions about what happens next if, as seems likely, all our efforts to head off a crisis come to nothing.” He adds that, “Our impending demise is in this sense the ultimate in a social problem and it requires a collective solution.”

“The Green Junta: or, is democracy sustainable?”, Int. J. Environment and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2007, pp 208-220

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Inderscience Publishers.

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First Bacterial Genome Transplantation Changes One Species To Another

Source:	J. Craig Venter Institute
Date:	June 29, 2007

Source

Science Daily — Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) have announced the results of work on genome transplantation methods allowing them to transform one type of bacteria into another type dictated by the transplanted chromosome. The work, published online in the journal Science, by JCVI’s Carole Lartigue, Ph.D. and colleagues, outlines the methods and techniques used to change one bacterial species, Mycoplasma capricolum into another, Mycoplasma mycoides Large Colony (LC), by replacing one organism’s genome with the other one’s genome.

 

Colonies of the transformed Mycoplasma mycoides bacterium. (Credit: Image courtesy of J. Craig Venter Institute)

“The successful completion of this research is important because it is one of the key proof of principles in synthetic genomics that will allow us to realize the ultimate goal of creating a synthetic organism,” said J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., president and chairman, JCVI. “We are committed to this research as we believe that synthetic genomics holds great promise in helping to solve issues like climate change and in developing new sources of energy.”

Methods and techniques

The JCVI team devised several key steps to enable the genome transplantation. First, an antibiotic selectable marker gene was added to the M. mycoides LC chromosome to allow for selection of living cells containing the transplanted chromosome. Then the team purified the DNA or chromosome from M. mycoides LC so that it was free from proteins (called naked DNA). This M. mycoides LC chromosome was then transplanted into the M. capricolum cells. After several rounds of cell division, the recipient M. capricolum chromosome disappeared having been replaced by the donor M. mycoides LC chromosome, and the M. capricolum cells took on all the phenotypic characteristics of M. mycoides LC cells.

As a test of the success of the genome transplantation, the team used two methods — 2D gel electrophoresis and protein sequencing, to prove that all the expressed proteins were now the ones coded for by the M. mycoides LC chromosome. Two sets of antibodies that bound specifically to cell surface proteins from each cell were reacted with transplant cells, to demonstrate that the membrane proteins switch to those dictated by the transplanted chromosome not the recipient cell chromosome. The new, transformed organisms show up as bright blue colonies in images of blots probed with M. mycoides LC specific antibody.

The group chose to work with these species of mycoplasmas for several reasons — the small genomes of these organisms which make them easier to work with, their lack of cell walls, and the team’s experience and expertise with mycoplasmas. The mycoplasmas used in the transplantation experiment are also relatively fast growing, allowing the team to ascertain success of the transplantation sooner than with other species of mycoplasmas.

According to Dr. Lartigue, “While we are excited by the results of our research, we are continuing to perfect and refine our techniques and methods as we move to the next phases and prepare to develop a fully synthetic chromosome.”

Genome transplantation is an essential enabling step in the field of synthetic genomics as it is a key mechanism by which chemically synthesized chromosomes can be activated into viable living cells. The ability to transfer the naked DNA isolated from one species into a second microbial species paves the way for next experiments to transplant a fully synthetic bacterial chromosome into a living organism and if successful, “boot up” the new entity. There are many important applications of synthetic genomics research including development of new energy sources and as means to produce pharmaceuticals, chemicals or textiles.

This research was funded by Synthetic Genomics Inc.

Background and Ethical Considerations

The work described by Lartigue et al. has its genesis in research begun by Dr. Venter and colleagues in the mid-1990’s after sequencing Mycoplasma genitalium and beginning work on the minimal genome project. This area of research, trying to understand the minimal genetic components necessary to sustain life, underwent significant ethical review by a panel of experts at the University of Pennsylvania (Cho et al, Science December 1999:Vol. 286. no. 5447, pp. 2087 – 2090). The bioethical group’s independent deliberations, published at the same time as the scientific minimal genome research, resulted in a unanimous decision that there were no strong ethical reasons why the work should not continue as long as the scientists involved continued to engage public discussion.

In 2003 Drs. Venter, Smith and Hutchison made the first significant strides in the development of a synthetic genome by their work in assembling the 5,386 base pair bacteriophage φX174 (phi X). They did so using short, single strands of synthetically produced, commercially available DNA (known as oligonucleotides) and using an adaptation of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), known as polymerase cycle assembly (PCA), to build the phi X genome. The team produced the synthetic phi X in just 14 days.

Dr. Venter and the team at JCVI continue to be concerned with the societal implications of their work and the field of synthetic genomics generally. As such, the Institute’s policy team, along with the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), were funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a 15-month study to explore the risks and benefits of this emerging technology, as well as possible safeguards to prevent abuse, including bioterrorism. After several workshops and public sessions the group is set to publish a report in summer 2007 outlining options for the field and its researchers.

About the J. Craig Venter Institute

The J. Craig Venter Institute is a not-for-profit research institute dedicated to the advancement of the science of genomics; the understanding of its implications for society; and communication of those results to the scientific community, the public, and policymakers. Founded by J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., the JCVI is home to approximately 500 scientists and staff with expertise in human and evolutionary biology, genetics, bioinformatics/informatics, information technology, high-throughput DNA sequencing, genomic and environmental policy research, and public education in science and science policy. The legacy organizations of the JCVI are: The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), The Center for the Advancement of Genomics (TCAG), the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives (IBEA), the Joint Technology Center (JTC), and the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation. The JCVI is a 501 (c)(3) organization. For additional information, please visit http://www.JCVI.org.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by J. Craig Venter Institute.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

“Another World is Possible, Another U.S. Is Necessary”: Thousands of Activists Gather in Atlanta for the First-Ever U.S. Social Forum (link)

Friday, June 29th, 2007

“Another World is Possible, Another U.S. Is Necessary”: Thousands of Activists Gather in Atlanta for the First-Ever U.S. Social Forum

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Inspired by previous World Social Forums in Brazil, India and Kenya, over 10,000 grassroots activists have gathered in Atlanta this week for the first United States Social Forum. We begin our Atlanta coverage with Alice Lovelace, the national lead staff organizer for the U.S. Social Forum.

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Over 10,000 grassroots activists have gathered in Atlanta this week for the first United States Social Forum. The theme of the five-day event has been: Another World is Possible. Another U.S. Is Necessary.The gathering has been inspired by previous World Social Forums in Brazil, India and Kenya. We begin our coverage in Atlanta with Alice Lovelace, the national lead staff organizer for the U.S. Social Forum.

• Alice Lovelace. National Lead Staff Organizer for the U.S. Social Forum. She is an Atlanta-based poet and civil rights activist.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877.

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Peace Movement Comes to US Social Forum by David Swanson

Impeach Cheney-The vice president has run utterly amok and must be stopped. By Bruce Fein

Dandelion Salad

By Bruce Fein
ICH
06/28/07 “Slate“

Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president’s insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney’s multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.

Take the vice president’s preposterous theory that his office is outside the executive branch because it also exercises a legislative function. The same can be said of the president, who also exercises a legislative function in signing or vetoing bills passed by Congress. Under Cheney’s bizarre reasoning, President Bush is not part of his own administration: The executive branch becomes acephalous. Today Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington refused to renounce that reasoning, instead laughably trying to diminish the importance of the legal question at issue.

The nation’s first vice president, John Adams, bemoaned: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet common fate.” Vice President John Nance Garner, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, lamented: “The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.” In modern times, vice presidents have generally been confined to attending state funerals or to distributing blankets after earthquakes.

Then President George W. Bush outsourced the lion’s share of his presidency to Vice President Cheney, and Mr. Cheney has made the most of it. Since 9/11, he has proclaimed that all checks and balances and individual liberties are subservient to the president’s commander in chief powers in confronting international terrorism. Let’s review the record of his abuses and excesses: The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes. The Supreme Court rebuked Cheney in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Mr. Cheney claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the president’s say-so alone, a frightening power indistinguishable from King Louis XVI’s execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille. The Supreme Court repudiated Cheney in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists. This lawlessness has been answered in Germany and Italy with criminal charges against CIA operatives or agents. The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies.

The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield. Accordingly, he contends that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida. Thus, Mr. Cheney could have ordered the military to kill Jose Padilla with rockets, artillery, or otherwise when he landed at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, because of Padilla’s then-suspected ties to international terrorism.

Mr. Cheney has championed a presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties

He has advocated and authored signing statements that declare the president’s intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that he proclaims are unconstitutional, for example, a requirement to obtain a judicial warrant before opening mail or a prohibition on employing military force to fight narco-terrorists in Colombia. The signing statements are tantamount to absolute line-item vetoes that the Supreme Court invalidated in the 1998 case Clinton v. New York. The vice president engineered the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. He concocted the alarming theory that the president may flout any law that inhibits the collection of foreign intelligence, including prohibitions on breaking and entering homes, torture, or assassinations. As a reflection of his power in this arena, today the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Cheney’s office, as well as the White House, for documents that relate to the warrantless eavesdropping.

The vice president has orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications. He has summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force, and to frustrate the testimonies of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys.

Cheney scorns freedom of speech and of the press. He urges application of the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists who expose national security abuses, for example, secret prisons in Eastern Europe or the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program. He retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, through Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. Mr. Cheney is defending himself from a pending suit brought by Wilson and Plame on the grounds that he is entitled to the absolute immunity of the president established in 1982 by Nixon v. Fitzgerald. (Although this defense contradicts Cheney’s claim that he is not part of the executive branch.) The Constitution does not expressly forbid the president from abandoning his chief powers to the vice president. But President Bush’s tacit delegation to Cheney and Cheney’s eager acceptance tortures the Constitution’s provision for an acting president. The presidency and vice presidency are discrete constitutional offices. The 12^th Amendment provides for their separate elections. The sole constitutionally enumerated function of the vice president is to serve as president of the Senate without a vote except to break ties.

In contrast, Article II enumerates the powers and responsibilities of the president, including the obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. A special presidential oath is prescribed. Section 3 of the 25^th Amendment provides a method for the president to yield his office to the vice president, when “he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” There is no other constitutional provision for transferring presidential powers to the vice president.

Yet without making a written transmittal to Congress, President Bush has ceded vast domains of his powers to Vice President Cheney by mutual understanding that circumvents the 25^th Amendment. This constitutional provision assures that the public and Congress know who is exercising the powers of the presidency and who should be held responsible for successes or failures. The Bush-Cheney dispensation blurs political accountability by continually hiding the real decision-maker under presidential skirts. The Washington Post has thoroughly documented the vice president’s dominance in a four-part series running this week. It is quite a read.

In the end, President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president. Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

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“Everybody Knows the Clock is Ticking” By Jim Kirwan (Cheney)

DAVIS FLEETWOOD INTERVIEWS DENNIS KUCINICH (vid; Hermit; Impeach Cheney)

Impeachment