Hardball: What Did Bush Know and When Did He Know It? (video; CIA Leak)

Time for impeachment yet? ~ Lo

Dandelion Salad

heathr234

Chris Matthews talks to David Shuster about the latest revelations out of former White House Spokesman Scott McClellan’s book that he had “knowingly passed along false information, and five of the highest ranking officials in the administratin were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President’s Chief of Staff, and the President himself”.

Added: November 20, 2007

More stories:

Joe Wilson: Bush either ‘out of touch’ or accessory to a crime

Dodd calls for investigation into Bush role in Plame affair

see

McClellan implicates Bush, Cheney in Plame lie by Tim Grieve

Giant Thanks! Education Solves All Problems. by William Mac (video)

Dandelion Salad

ThisWeekInTime

http://www.ThisWeekinTime.com

William Mac strays away from the normal This Week in Time format to thank his first two donors EVER, which encouraged Jon and William so much, that William decided to explain why in the hell This Week in Time was even started. Added: November 20, 2007

Olbermann: Where Does the Buck Stop? + Conspiracy Theories + Gonzo But Not Forgotten + Funding Fight + Worst (videos)

Dandelion Salad

heathr234

Nov. 20, 2007

Where Does the Buck Stop?

Keith gives his report on the latest revelations about the Scott McClellan book. David Shuster weighs in.

Conspiracy Theories

Keith discusses the potential legal ramifications from McClellan’s book with John Dean in Countdown’s continuing series on broken government.

Gonzo But Not Forgotten

Alberto Gonzales was met with protesters when he appeared for a speaking engagement at the University of Florida in Gainsville. Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post weighs in.

Best Person

Funding Fight

Jack Murtha and David Obey gave a press conference today where they slammed the Pentagon for not being truthful with the American people. Richard Wolffe weighs in on the fight over the funding.

Worst Person

And the winner is….the Pentagon. Runners up Tom DeLay and Glenn Beck.

Virtual Folly Along the Border by Guadamour

GUADAMOUR

by Guadamour
Dandelion Salad
featured writer

Guadamour’s Blog
Nov. 20, 2007

This past Saturday I went riding with some friends. They each rode a horse they recently acquired and I rode my gelded older mule, Toby, and trailed my other mule, Matilda [also know as Diabilita].

We went for about a five hour ride. We road west along an old rail bed, and then turned south towards the border.

I hadn’t ridden that far out for quite awhile [I normally take a shorter ride].

Riding out, Mary remarked about the number of baby bottles and small children’s and infants clothing left by the undocumented border crossers.

I had a contract for two years where I scoured the desert, walking for hundreds if not thousands of miles, picking up trash left by undocumented border crossers.

It was a great position for me because I love hiking in the desert and it allowed me access to land that wasn’t open to the public.

I picked up tons of trash left by border crossers, and quite a little trash left by the Border Patrol.

I learned during that time that the Border Patrol did much more damage to the desert with their ATVs and four-wheel drive vehicles than the border crossers ever did.

I picked up so any different things, that seldom anything would surprise me.

I found unopened cans of sardines, tins of tuna, backpacks of every type and description, every imaginable piece of clothing, including bras and panties.

Various times I found the burlap that bundles of marijuana are wrapped in and fashioned as backpacks. Usually I found items like this alongside the highway where the bundles of dope were quickly stripped out and tossed into the vehicle that was summoned by cell phone [I also found cell phones].

One time, unbeknownst to the smugglers, I watched them load up a vehicle with nine [approximately 50 pound] bundles. The operation didn’t take three minutes.

It wasn’t all trash I carted out from the desert. One time I found ten thousand pesos [nine hundred and three dollars], and on that same day I found a wrist watch that a jeweler friend of mine valued at two hundred dollars.

Anyway, Mary was surprised at the infant items.

We turned and followed the border, and I was surprised, because the grossly ugly fence that closes off Douglas, Arizona from Agua Prieta, Sonora never used to run out that far.

I was even more surprised as we turned back towards town, following the border fence. We came to a large depot of equipment and fencing. This had to represent millions of dollars in material, not to mention the millions more involved in labor costs.

I wondered where the coyote, deer and javelina would cross, because I know that it represents not much more than a SPEED BUMP for border crossers.

To prove that to myself, I drove my trusty four-wheel drive, four cylinder, twenty-three-year-old pick-up along the border on Sunday. I spotted eight border crossers at different locations with no Border Patrol in sight.

Monday I had the opportunity to accompany some Israeli brass out to the normally inaccessible Border Patrol facility. I trailed along with them when they went out there in the daytime and when they made another trip out there after dark.

The Brass were being shown the high tech virtual fence. It was most impressive. In a room with numerous color television monitors, one could see almost every inch of the border and what was moving on it.

When we were there, twenty-three border crossers were seen crossing at different locations.

One could see them as well at night as in the daytime.

I asked what happens then? How do you track them?

I was told agents were dispatched to the precise locations.

I wonder out loud, how long does it take for an agent to get to a location, knowing that the border crossers aren’t going to wait around in any one location.

Then we were introduced to the seven men and women operating areal drones as if they were operating video games.

I learned that the video drone operators were receiving the same salaries as experienced pilots.

The Israelis are anxious to acquire this technology for themselves, and apparently the Federal government is just as anxious to sell it to them.

It is going to cost the US government and its taxpayers billions of dollars a year to operate this equipment and man the fence.

A buddy of mine, who has lived in Agua Prieta for twenty years or better, and who is an expert on the border, and I talked over what I had seen.

We both agree that it is going to slightly change the dynamic of what goes on along the border, but fundamentally it will change nothing.

For a while it will slow things down and make smuggling more expensive, but it will change nothing, because the smuggling will continue.

He and I both agree that the only way to stop the flow of undocumented workers into the country is to invest in Mexico and the rest of the third world.

We are both aware of how corrupt third world governments are, and believe that the only viable way to raise the standard of living in the third word countries is to institute a massive micro-loan program administered by the UN or other such international agency.

If someone wants to get involved in micro lending in a small way and do something about this, and actually earn interest while doing it, they should contact www.kiva.com.

This morning while I was wondering just what I should do with this information, I took a drive east about twenty miles towards New Mexico. There are some plains and lovely rolling grazing land out there, and a couple of bans of small southwestern pronghorn antelope frequent this area. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of them. Their bounding run and their freedom and sense of flight as they hurl over fences always cheers me up.

I didn’t see the antelope, but I saw two different groups of border crossers being picked-up. I didn’t see anyone picking up dope, but if they are picking up border crossers….

Who is your favorite candidate for U.S. President in 2008? (Poll)

Dandelion Salad

Who is your favorite candidate for U.S. President in 2008?

Vote here.

Joe Biden (3008)	4%
Hillary Clinton (10189)	15%
Chris Dodd (2295)	3%
John Edwards (5165)	7%
Rudy Giuliani (5213)	7%
Mike Gravel (1604)	2%
Mike Huckabee (4769)	7%
Duncan Hunter (1911)	3%
Dennis Kucinich (2788)	4%
John McCain (4702)	7%
Barack Obama (8165)	12%
Ron Paul (4513)	6%
Bill Richardson (4428)	6%
Mitt Romney (5217)	7%
Tom Tancredo (1746)	2%
Fred Thompson (4445)	6%

Updated: Nov. 22, 2007 9:17 PM CT

[71554 votes total]
Joe Biden (3116)	4%
Hillary Clinton (10433)	15%
Chris Dodd (2395)	3%
John Edwards (5191)	7%
Rudy Giuliani (5224)	7%
Mike Gravel (1623)	2%
Mike Huckabee (4829)	7%
Duncan Hunter (1934)	3%
Dennis Kucinich (2999)	4%
John McCain (4755)	7%
Barack Obama (8398)	12%
Ron Paul (4663)	7%
Bill Richardson (4432)	6%
Mitt Romney (5328)	7%
Tom Tancredo (1777)	2%
Fred Thompson (4457)	6%

h/t: Dennis Kucinich for President (Official)

Why Israel Has No “Right to Exist” as a Jewish State By Oren Ben-Dor

Dandelion SaladBy Oren Ben-Dor
ICH
11/20/07 “Counterpunch“

Thus Spoke Equality

Yet again, the Annapolis meeting between Olmert and Abbas is preconditioned upon the recognition by the Palestinian side of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Indeed the “road map” should lead to, and legitimate, once and for all, the right of such a Jewish state to exist in definitive borders and in peace with its neighbours. The vision of justice, both past and future, simply has to be that of two states, one Palestinian, one Jewish, which would coexist side by side in peace and stability. Finding a formula for a reasonably just partition and separation is still the essence of what is considered to be moderate, pragmatic and fair ethos.

Thus, the really deep issues–the “core”–are conceived as the status of Jerusalem, the fate and future of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories and the viability of the future Palestinian state beside the Jewish one. The fate of the descendants of those 750000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed in 1948 from what is now, and would continue to be under a two-state solutions, the State of Israel, constitutes a “problem” but never an “issue” because, God forbid, to make it an issue on the table would be to threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. The existence of Israel as a Jewish state must never become a core issue. That premise unites political opinion in the Jewish state, left and right and also persists as a pragmatic view of many Palestinians who would prefer some improvement to no improvement at all.Only “extremists” such as Hamas, anti-Semites, and Self-Hating Jews–terribly disturbed, misguided and detached lot–can make Israel’s existence into a core problem and in turn into a necessary issue to be debated and addressed.

The Jewish state, a supposedly potential haven for all the Jews in the world in the case a second Holocaust comes about, should be recognised as a fact on the ground blackmailed into the “never again” rhetoric. All considerations of pragmatism and reasonableness in envisioning a “peace process” to settle the ‘Israeli/Palestinian’ conflict must never destabilise the sacred status of that premise that a Jewish state has a right to exist.

Notice, however, that Palestinian are not asked merely to recognise the perfectly true fact and with it, the absolutely feasible moral claim, that millions of Jewish people are now living in the State of Israel and that their physical existence, liberty and equality should be protected in any future settlement. They are not asked merely to recognise the assurance that any future arrangement would recognise historic Palestine as a home for the Jewish People.What Palestinians are asked to subscribe to recognition the right of an ideology that informs the make-up of a state to exist as Jewish one. They are asked to recognise that ethno-nationalistic premise of statehood.

The fallacy is clear: the recognition of the right of Jews who are there–however unjustly many of their Parents or Grandparents came to acquire what they own–to remain there under liberty and equality in a post-colonial political settlement, is perfectly compatible with the non-recognition of the state whose constitution gives those Jews a preferential stake in the polity.

It is an abuse of the notion of pragmatism to conceive its effort as putting the very notion of Jewish state beyond the possible and desirable implementation of egalitarian moral scrutiny. To so abuse pragmatism would be to put it at the service of the continuation of colonialism. A pragmatic and reasonable solution ought to centre on the problem of how to address past, present, and future injustices to non-Jew-Arabs without thereby cause other injustices to Jews. This would be a very complex pragmatic issue which would call for much imagination and generosity. But reasonableness and pragmatism should not determine whether the cause for such injustices be included or excluded from debates or negotiations. To pragmatically exclude moral claims and to pragmatically protect immoral assertions by fiat must in fact hide some form of extremism. The causes of colonial injustice and the causes that constitutionally prevent their full articulation and address should not be excluded from the debate. Pragmatism can not become the very tool that legitimate constitutional structures that hinder de-colonisation and the establishment of egalitarian constitution.

So let us boldly ask: What exactly is entailed by the requirement to recognise Israel as a Jewish state? What do we recognise and support when we purchase a delightful avocado or a date from Israel or when we invite Israel to take part in an international football event? What does it mean to be a friend of Israel? What precisely is that Jewish state whose status as such would be once and for all legitimised by such a two-state solution?

A Jewish state is a state which exists more for the sake of whoever is considered Jewish according to various ethnic, tribal, religious, criteria, than for the sake of those who do not pass this test. What precisely are the criteria of the test for Jewishness is not important and at any rate the feeble consensus around them is constantly reinvented in Israel. Instigating violence provides them with the impetus for doing that. What is significant, thought, is that a test of Jewishness is being used in order to constitutionally protect differential stakes in, that is the differential ownership of, a polity. A recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is a recognition of the Jews special entitlement, as eternal victims, to have a Jewish state. Such a test of supreme stake for Jews is the supreme criterion not only for racist policy making by the legislature but also for a racist constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court.The idea of a state that is first and foremost for the sake of Jews trumps even that basic law of Human Freedom and Dignity to which the Israeli Supreme Court pays so much lip service. Such constitutional interpretation would have to make the egalitarian principle equality of citizenship compatible with, and thus subservient to, the need to maintain the Jewish majority and character of the state. This of course constitutes a serious compromise of equality, translated into many individual manifestations of oppression and domination of those victims of such compromise–non-Jews-Arabs citizens of Israel.

In our world, a world that resisted Apartheid South Africa so impressively, recognition of the right of the Jewish state to exist is a litmus test for moderation and pragmatism. The demand is that Palestinians recognise Israel’s entitlement to constitutionally entrench a system of racist basic laws and policies, differential immigration criteria for Jews and non-Jews, differential ownership and settlements rights, differential capital investments, differential investment in education, formal rules and informal conventions that differentiate the potential stakes of political participation, lame-duck academic freedom and debate.

In the Jewish state of Israel non-Jews-Arabs citizens are just “bad luck” and are considered an ticking demographic bomb of “enemy within”. They can be given the right to vote–indeed one member one vote–but the potential of their political power, even their birth rate, should be kept at bay by visible and invisible, instrumental and symbolic, discrimination. But now they are asked to put up with their inferior stake and recognise the right of Israel to continue to legitimate the non-egalitarian premise of its statehood.

We must not forget that the two state “solution” would open a further possibility to non-Jew-Arabs citizens of Israel: “put up and shut up or go to a viable neighbouring Palestinian state where you can have your full equality of stake”.Such an option, we must never forget, is just a part of a pragmatic and reasonable package.

The Jewish state could only come into being in May 1948 by ethnically cleansing most of the indigenous population–750000 of them. The judaisation of the state could only be effectively implemented by constantly internally displacing the population of many villages within the Israel state.

It would be unbearable and unreasonable to demand Jews to allow for the Right of Return of those descendants of the expelled. Presumably, those descendants too could go to a viable Palestinian state rather than, for example, rebuild their ruined village in the Galilee. On the other hand, a Jewish young couple from Toronto who never set their foot in Palestine has a right to settle in the Galilee. Jews and their descendants hold this right in perpetuity. You see, that right “liberates” them as people. Jews must never be put under the pressure to live as a substantial minority in the Holy Land under egalitarian arrangement. Their past justifies their preferential stake and the preservation of their numerical majority in Palestine.

So the non-egalitarian hits us again. It is clear that part of the realisation of that right of return would not only be a just the actual return, but also the assurance of equal stake and citizenship of all, Jews and non-Jews-Arabs after the return. A return would make the egalitarian claim by those who return even more difficult to conceal than currently with regard to Israel Arab second class citizens. What unites Israelis and many world Jews behind the call for the recognition of the right of a Jewish state to exist is their aversion for the possibility of living, as a minority, under conditions of equality of stake to all. But if Jews enjoys this equality in Canada why can not they support such equality in Palestine through giving full effect to the right of Return of Palestinians?

Let us look precisely at what the pragmatic challenge consists of: not pragmatism that entrenches inequality but pragmatism that responds to the challenge of equality.

The Right of Return of Palestinians means that Israel acknowledges and apologises for what it did in 1948. It does mean that Palestinian memory of the 1948 catastrophe, the Nakbah, is publicly revived in the Geography and collective memory of the polity. It does mean that Palestinians descendants would be allowed to come back to their villages. If this is not possible because there is a Jewish settlement there, they should be given the choice to found an alternative settlement nearby. This may mean some painful compulsory state purchase of agricultural lands that should be handed back to those who return. In cases when this is impossible they ought to be allowed the choice to settle in another place in the larger area or if not possible in another area in Palestine. Compensation would be the last resort and would always be offered as a choice. This kind of moral claim of return would encompass all Palestine including Tel Aviv.

At no time, however, it would be on the cards to throw Israeli Jews from their land.An egalitarian and pragmatic realisation of the Right of Return constitutes an egalitarian legal revolution. As such it would be paramount to address Jews’ worries about security and equality in any future arrangement in which they, or any other group, may become a minority. Jews national symbols and importance would be preserved. Equality of stake involves equality of symbolic ownership.

But it is important to emphasis that the Palestinian Right of Return would mean that what would cease to exist is the premise of a Jewish as well as indeed a Muslim state. A return without the removal of the constitutionally enshrined preferential stake is return to serfdom.

The upshot is that only by individuating cases of injustice, by extending claims for injustice to all historic Palestine, by fair address of them without creating another injustice for Jews and finally by ensuring the elimination of all racist laws that stems from the Jewish nature of the state including that nature itself, would justice be, and with it peace, possible. What we need is a spirit of generosity that is pragmatic but also morally uncompromising in terms of geographic ambit of the moral claims for repatriation and equality. This vision would propel the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But for all this to happen we must start by ceasing to recognize the right Israel to exist as a Jewish state. No spirit of generosity would be established without an egalitarian call for jettisoning the ethno-nationalistic notion upon which the Jewish state is based.

The path of two states is the path of separation.Its realisation would mean the entrenchment of exclusionary nationalism for many years. It would mean that the return of the dispossessed and the equality of those who return and those non-Jew-Arabs who are now there would have to be deferred indefinitely consigned to the dusty shelved of historical injustices.Such a scenario is sure to provoke more violence as it would establish the realisation and legitimisation of Zionist racism and imperialism.

Also, any bi-national arrangement ought to be subjected to a principle of equality of citizenship and not vice versa. The notion of separation and partition that can infect bi-nationalism, should be done away with and should not be tinkered with or rationalised in any way. Both spiritually and materially Jews and non-Jews can find national expression in a single egalitarian and non-sectarian state.

The non-recognition of the Jewish state is an egalitarian imperative that looks both at the past and to the future. It is the uncritical recognition of the right of Israel to exist at a Jewish state which is the core hindrance for this egalitarian premise to shape the ethical challenge that Palestine poses. A recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state means the silencing that would breed more and more violence and bloodshed.

The same moral intuition that brought so many people to condemn and sanction Apartheid South Africa ought also to prompt them to stop seeing a threat to existence of the Jewish state as the effect caused by the refugee ‘problem” or by the “demographic threat” from the non-Jew-Arabs within it. It is rather the other way round. It is the non-egalitarian premise of a Jewish state and the lack of empathy and corruption of all those who make us uncritically accept the right of such a state to exist that is both the cause of the refugee problem and cause for the inability to implement their return and treating them as equals thereafter.

We must see that the uncritically accepted recognition of Israel right to exist is, as Joseph Massad so well puts it in Al-Ahram, to accept Israel claim to have the right to be racist or, to develop Massad’s brilliant formulation, Israel’s claim to have the right to occupy to dispossess and to discriminate. What is it, I wonder, that prevent Israelis and so many of world Jews to respond to the egalitarian challenge? What is it, I wonder, that oppresses the whole world to sing the song of a “peace process” that is destined to legitimise racism in Palestine?

To claim such a right to be racist must come from a being whose victim’s face must hide very dark primordial aggression and hatred of all others.How can we find a connective tissue to that mentality that claims the legitimate right to harm other human beings? How can this aggression that is embedded in victim mentality be perturbed?

The Annapolis meeting is a con. As an egalitarian argument we should say loud and clear that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.

Oren Ben-Dor grew up in Israel. He teaches Legal and Political Philosophy at the School of Law, University of Southampton, UK. He can be reached at: okbendor@yahoo.com
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. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Pak nukes already under US control: Report

Dandelion Salad

By Times Of India
ICH
11/20/07 “TOI“

WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are already under American control even as analysts are working themselves into a lather on the subject, a well-regarded intelligence journal has said.

In a stunning disclosure certain to stir up things in Washington’s (and in Islamabad and New Delhi’s) strategic community, the journal Stratfor reported on Monday that the “United States delivered a very clear ultimatum to Musharraf in the wake of 9/11: Unless Pakistan allowed US forces to take control of Pakistani nuclear facilities, the United States would be left with no choice but to destroy those facilities, possibly with India’s help.”

“This was a fait accompli that Musharraf, for credibility reasons, had every reason to cover up and pretend never happened, and Washington was fully willing to keep things quiet,” the journal, which is widely read among the intelligence community, said.

The Stratfor commentary came in response to an earlier New York Times story that reported that the Bush administration had spent around $100 million to help Pakistan safeguard its nuclear weapons, but left it unclear if Washington has a handle on the arsenal.

Over the past fortnight, even since the crisis in Pakistan broke and eclipsed every other geopolitical story, including Iraq, US officials and analysts have been speaking in different voices on the subject of a jihadi takeover of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Some officials have expressed deep concern at the possibility and suggested US is ready with contingency plans to defang Pakistan of its nuclear weapons, while others have tried to assuage Islamabad by saying they believe the country’s military rulers have good custodial control over their crown jewels.

On Monday, a State Department official once again addressed the issue and hinted that Washington was in control of the situation.

“… ultimately, the major responsibility for that falls with the Pakistani government. They have made public comments to the effect that the arsenal is secure, that they have taken a number of different steps to ensure that,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

“We ourselves see no indication to indicate to the contrary. It is secure. We obviously have an interest in seeing that it is secure,” McCormack added.

Stratfor , too, appears confident that the Bush administration has a handle on Pak’s nukes.

Not everyone is so sanguine. In a separate commentary over the weekend that had some US and Pakistani analysts blowing their gasket, two prominent Washington commentators detailed a US military action plan inside Pakistan, possibly with the cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces, to seize the nuclear arsenal if there was imminent danger of an extremist takeover.

“As the government of Pakistan totters, we must face a fact: the United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss,” proposed Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon, analysts at two Washington DC think-tanks. “One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the limited goal of preventing Pakistan’s nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hands.”

Pakistan’s own leaders have spoken about the subject — of nuclear weapons falling into extremist hands –with different emphasis and objectives.

General Pervez Musharraf has suggested continued Western support to his military regime is the best way to prevent the nukes from falling into extremist hands, an “after-me-the-deluge” argument that some analysts see as unabashed blackmail.

The country’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has also invoked the loose nukes scenario to urge US to abandon the military regime, which she says has given rise to growing extremism and fissiparous tendencies that increase the danger of the nuclear arsenal going awry.

Officially though, Islamabad is touchy about any commentary on its nuclear arsenal, and goes into transports of hysteria to assert that it is a responsible country with good command and control over its crown jewels.

In the latest outburst, the country’s out-going foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri asserted that Pakistan is fully capable of securing its nuclear assets and some Western lobbies are busy in creating confusion taking the advantage of ongoing conditions in Pakistan.

The multi-layer security structure of the nuclear assets has a strong command and control system in place and there is no need for anyone at home or abroad to worry about the security of these assets, he insisted.

But judging by the volume of worried commentary and analysis the subject is now getting, there aren’t many takers for such assurances and the last word on the matter hasn’t been said or written.

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. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

The Middle East has had a secretive nuclear power in its midst for years By George Monbiot

Dandelion Salad

By George Monbiot
ICH
11/20/07 “The Guardian“

When will the US and the UK tell the truth about Israeli weapons? Iran isn’t starting an atomic arms race, it’s joining one

George Bush and Gordon Brown are right: there should be no nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The risk of a nuclear conflagration could be greater there than anywhere else. Any nation developing them should expect a firm diplomatic response. So when will they impose sanctions on Israel?

Like them, I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb. I also believe it should be discouraged, by a combination of economic pressure and bribery, from doing so (a military response would, of course, be disastrous). I believe that Bush and Brown – who maintain their nuclear arsenals in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty – are in no position to lecture anyone else. But if, as Bush claims, the proliferation of such weapons “would be a dangerous threat to world peace”, why does neither man mention the fact that Israel, according to a secret briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, possesses between 60 and 80 of them?

Officially, the Israeli government maintains a position of “nuclear ambiguity”: neither confirming nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons. But everyone who has studied the issue knows that this is a formula with a simple purpose: to give the United States an excuse to keep breaking its own laws, which forbid it to grant aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction. The fiction of ambiguity is fiercely guarded. In 1986, when the nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu handed photographs of Israel’s bomb factory to the Sunday Times, he was lured from Britain to Rome, drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents, tried in secret, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He served 12 of them in solitary confinement and was banged up again – for six months – soon after he was released.

However, in December last year, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, accidentally let slip that Israel, like “America, France and Russia”, had nuclear weapons. Opposition politicians were furious. They attacked Olmert for “a lack of caution bordering on irresponsibility”. But US aid continues to flow without impediment.

As the fascinating papers released last year by the National Security Archive show, the US government was aware in 1968 that Israel was developing a nuclear device (what it didn’t know is that the first one had already been built by then). The contrast to the efforts now being made to prevent Iran from acquiring the bomb could scarcely be starker.

At first, US diplomats urged Washington to make its sale of 50 F4 Phantom jets conditional on Israel’s abandonment of its nuclear programme. As a note sent from the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to the secretary of state in October 1968 reveals, the order would make the US “the principal supplier of Israel’s military needs” for the first time. In return, it should require “commitments that would make it more difficult for Israel to take the critical decision to go nuclear”. Such pressure, the memo suggested, was urgently required: France had just delivered the first of a consignment of medium range missiles, and Israel intended to equip them with nuclear warheads.

Twenty days later, on November 4 1968, when the assistant defence secretary met Yitzhak Rabin (then the Israeli ambassador to Washington), Rabin “did not dispute in any way our information on Israel’s nuclear or missile capability”. He simply refused to discuss it. Four days after that, Rabin announced that the proposal was “completely unacceptable to us”. On November 27, Lyndon Johnson’s administration accepted Israel’s assurance that “it will not be the first power in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons”.

As the memos show, US officials knew that this assurance had been broken even before it was made. A record of a phone conversation between Henry Kissinger and another official in July 1969 reveals that Richard Nixon was “very leery of cutting off the Phantoms”, despite Israel’s blatant disregard of the agreement. The deal went ahead, and from then on the US administration sought to bamboozle its own officials in order to defend Israel’s lie. In August 1969, US officials were sent to “inspect” Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant. But a memo from the state department reveals that “the US government is not prepared to support a ‘real’ inspection effort in which the team members can feel authorised to ask directly pertinent questions and/or insist on being allowed to look at records, logs, materials and the like. The team has in many subtle ways been cautioned to avoid controversy, ‘be gentlemen’ and not take issue with the obvious will of the hosts”.

Nixon refused to pass the minutes of the conversation he’d had with the Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, to the US ambassador to Israel, Wally Barbour. Meir and Nixon appear to have agreed that the Israeli programme could go ahead, as long as it was kept secret.

The US government has continued to protect it. Every six months, the intelligence agencies provide Congress with a report on technology acquired by foreign states that’s “useful for the development or production of weapons of mass destruction”. These reports discuss the programmes in India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and other nations, but not in Israel. Whenever other states have tried to press Israel to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the US and European governments have blocked them. Israel has also exempted itself from the biological and chemical weapons conventions.

By refusing to sign these treaties, Israel ensures it needs never be inspected. While the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors crawl round Iran’s factories, put seals on its uranium tanks and blow the whistle when it fails to cooperate, they have no legal authority to inspect facilities in Israel. So when the Israeli government complains, as it did last week, that the head of the IAEA is “sticking his head in the sand over Iran’s nuclear programme”, you can only gape at its chutzpah. Israel is constantly racking up the pressure for action against Iran, aware that no powerful state will press for action against Israel.

Yes, Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad. The president is a Holocaust denier opposed to the existence of Israel. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iran responded to Saddam Hussein’s toxic bombardments with chemical weapons of its own. But Israel under Olmert is also a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad. Two months ago it bombed a site in Syria (whose function is fiercely disputed). Last year, it launched a war of aggression against Lebanon. It remains in occupation of Palestinian lands. In February 2001, according to the BBC, it used chemical weapons in Gaza: 180 people were admitted to hospital with severe convulsions. Nuclear weapons in Israel’s hands are surely just as dangerous as nuclear weapons in Iran’s.

So when will our governments speak up? When will they acknowledge that there is already a nuclear power in the Middle East, and that it presents an existential threat to its neighbours? When will they admit that Iran is not starting a nuclear arms race, but joining one? When will they demand that the rules they impose on Iran should also apply to Israel?

www.monbiot.com

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. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Coreluminus: We are going to war? (music video; over 18 only)

Dandelion Salad

Warning
.
This video contains images depicting the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

djlookwood

we are going to war, we pay taxes, taxes buy bullets, bullets hit people, some ones dies, someone else makes a profit.

Not good.

2 Million marched 5 years ago, 6000 on October 8th 2007.

What gives?

This video says how I feel about this.

Added: October 19, 2007

On Myspace:

Coreluminus

http://www.corneilius.net/

11.19.07 Uncensored News Reports From Across The Middle East (video; over 18 only)

Dandelion Salad

Warning
.
This video contains images depicting the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

Selected Episode

Nov. 19, 2007

linktv

For more: http://www.linktv.org/originalseries
“Abbas & Olmert Hold Last Meeting Before Annapolis Summit” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“30 Years to Sadat’s Visit to Jerusalem” IBA TV, Israel
“Jordanians Gear Up For Elections” Jordan TV, Jordan
“Jordan Passes Law to Constrict Internet Usage” New TV, Lebanon
“Istanbul Hosts International Jerusalem Conference” Syria TV, Syria
“Makes it Harder for Iraqis to Obtain Visas” Baghdad TV, Iraq
“Chavez Meets Ahmadinejad in Tehran” Al-Alam TV, Iran
“Iraqis Flee to Europe” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani

McClellan implicates Bush, Cheney in Plame lie by Tim Grieve

Dandelion Salad

by Tim Grieve
After Downing Street
Salon.com
Nov. 20, 2007

On Oct. 10, 2003, White House press secretary Scott McClellan stood before the cameras and proclaimed Karl Rove and Scooter Libby innocent of any involvement in the outing of Valerie Plame. “Those individuals — I talked — I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that’s where it stands.”

And that’s where it stood, until — well after George W. Bush was reelected — it became clear that both Libby and Rove were very much involved in outing Plame. McClellan has since acknowledged, albeit implicitly, that Libby and Rove had lied to him. Now he seems ready to go much further. In “What Happened,” a chronicle of his years in the White House to be published this spring, McClellan will apparently implicate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card in the false exoneration of Libby and Rove.

From an excerpt posted on McClellan’s publisher’s Web site and discovered by Editor and Publisher:

“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

“There was one problem. It was not true.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”

Update: We’d like to tell you how Dana Perino responded to questions about McClellan’s charge at today’s White House press briefing. And we would, if only anyone in the White House press corps had asked her any.

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. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Scott McClellan’s Book Coming in April — Admits Wrongdoing in Clearing Rove and Libby in CIA Leak Case

Iraq’s Laboratory of Repression By Robert Parry

Dandelion Salad

By Robert Parry
Consortium News
November 20, 2007

The Bush administration is turning Iraq into a test tube for modern techniques of repression, from sophisticated biometrics that track populations to devastating weapons systems that combine night-vision optics from drone aircraft, heat resonance imaging and deadly firepower from the sky to kill suspected insurgents.

These high-tech capabilities, when mixed with loose rules of engagement that allow U.S. troops to kill Iraqis at the slightest sign of hostility, have contributed to what U.S. generals and a growing number of American journalists are hailing as an improving security situation.

Or, as President George W. Bush reportedly told Australia’s deputy prime minister in September, “We’re kicking ass.”

U.S. forces have reported some success, too, in working with Iraqi paramilitary groups allied with Sunni sheiks, a strategy similar to operations used in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s to eradicate leftist guerrillas and their political backers.

Amid these developments and the more favorable U.S. news coverage of the war, some neoconservatives are giddy at the prospect of claiming some measure of victory in Iraq, especially after years of facing hostility from Americans over the worsening carnage, including the deaths of more than 3,800 U.S. soldiers.

With renewed confidence, neocons are back to baiting Democratic war critics for failing to appreciate Bush’s courage and foresight in dispatching more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops for a “surge” under Gen. David Petraeus.

“Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, a neoconservative Independent from Connecticut, in a Nov. 8 speech.

Growing exhaustion with the war among Iraqis is viewed by Bush strategists as another positive indicator.

According to various estimates, the war has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and left some four million – roughly one in six – displaced. Those numbers explain why many Iraqis are desperate for a restoration of some semblance of normal life, even if it is under a U.S.-led occupation that is nearing its fifth anniversary.

Happy Iraqis?

While U.S. generals in Iraq have stressed the gentler aspects of their latest “surge” successes – and the American press has gone along by publishing front-page articles about new signs of normalcy in Baghdad – the darker side of the counterinsurgency has generally been shoved into brief stories deep inside the newspapers.

On Nov. 20, for instance, the New York Times stressed the upside by leading the newspaper with photos of happy Iraqis in a feature article entitled, “Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves.”

If one reads the story to the jump, however, you find that the positive news was that some 20,000 Iraqis – or one-half of one percent of those four million displaced persons – had returned to their abandoned homes and had begun to get their lives back in order.

(Ironically, when the documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” showed similar footage of Iraqis enjoying normal lives in the days before Bush’s “shock and awe” bombing in 2003, director Michael Moore was denounced as a pro-Saddam propagandist. The truth appears to be that even in difficult circumstances, people still get married and try to find some small pleasures.)

Clearly, too, the major U.S. news organizations remain under intense pressure to play up the positive aspects of the American occupation, much as they did during the early days when they broadcast footage of smiling Iraqi children waving at U.S. soldiers and touted how many schoolrooms had received fresh coats of paint. [For details, see our new book, Neck Deep.]

The harsh repression surrounding the “surge” has drawn far less U.S. press attention. The grim reality, however, is that an increasingly desperate American military has stepped up its indiscriminate killing and jailing of Iraqis, especially “military-age males” or MAMS.

A conservative counterinsurgency expert recently sent me a video, spliced together by the U.S. military in Iraq. It showed night-vision aerial surveillance of suspected “terrorists” as they moved about at night with what was described as a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, the muzzle still warm from firing.

The tiny figures of the “terrorists” walked into a forested area where they were mowed down by miniguns from an AC-130. Their truck also was blown to bits.

It’s not clear, however, how the tiny figures were identified as “terrorists,” except that the term is applied loosely in Iraq, even against Iraqis who consider themselves nationalists resisting a foreign occupation of their homeland.

Other tidbits of troubling information – which often end up below the fold on the inside pages of newspapers – reveal how Iraq steadily has been transformed into a more efficient police state than dictator Saddam Hussein could have ever imagined.

For instance, the “surge” has involved widespread arrests of Iraqi MAMS, sweeps that detain thousands of young men on the flimsiest of suspicions.

During a summer 2007 trip to Iraq, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies was briefed on U.S. plans to dramatically expand the number of Iraqis in American detention by the end of 2008.

“The detainees have risen to over 18,000 and are projected to hit 30,000 (by the U.S. command) by the end of the year and 50,000 by the end of 2008,” Cordesman wrote in his trip report, adding that the vast majority were Sunnis. “Shiite detainees are often freed while Sunnis are warehoused,” he wrote.

When MAMS are detained, the U.S. military processes their biometric information, including iris scans, so a database can be built for tracking suspect Iraqis if they are subsequently released.

Americans rarely get a glimpse of this emerging police state, except when it gets a positive spin. On Nov. 8, for instance, reporters were invited to a crowded U.S. detention center at Camp Victory as nearly 500 of these Iraqis were released in a show of good will.

Some of the Iraqis complained that they had been pulled off the streets and were not allowed to contact their families.

“I was detained in March 2007 for no reason,” said one of the former prisoners, Tariq Jabbar, a 25-year-old taxi driver from Zafaraniya, a neighborhood in southeast Baghdad. [NYT, Nov. 9, 2007]

Other Iraqis have been even less lucky. On Nov. 16, a Sunni tribal group that had been cooperating with the U.S. military said American forces attacked and killed 50 of its members on the suspicion that they were insurgents.

The air and ground assault was launched on Nov. 13 near Taji, a town north of Baghdad. After detecting “hostile intent,” helicopters and airplanes strafed buildings and ground troops fired on the Iraqis, the U.S. military said.

“We had some people on the ground who identified these individuals as bad guys, basically,” Lt. Justin Cole told the New York Times. “That’s why we engaged.”

Sheik Jasim Zaidan Khalaf, who is part of the U.S.-backed Awakening Council, said some of his fighters had captured suspected members of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia and were planning to turn them over to American forces when the attack occurred. Frantic phone calls to the American military failed to stop the assault.

“The whole issue started with a mistake,” the sheik said. [NYT, Nov. 17, 2007]

Sniper Killings

Besides refusing to admit a mistake in the Taji attack, the U.S. military, in effect, has endorsed claims by members of elite Army sniper units that they have been granted broad discretion in killing any Iraqi who crosses the path of their rifle scopes.

On Nov. 8, a U.S. military jury at Camp Liberty in Iraq acquitted the leader of an Army sniper team in the killings of three Iraqi men south of Baghdad during the early days of the “surge.” Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley was found not guilty of murder, though he was convicted of planting an AK-47 rifle on one of the dead men and showing disrespect to a superior officer.

In an e-mail interview with the New York Times, Hensley said he was angry with two superior officers who had encouraged him to boost the unit’s kill count and then made him the “fall guy.”

Those rules of engagement apparently allow U.S. soldiers to kill suspected “terrorists” even if the targets are unarmed and not displaying hostile intent.

“Every last man we killed was a confirmed terrorist,” Hensley wrote. “We were praised when bad guys died. We were upbraided when bad guys did not die.” [NYT, Nov. 9, 2007]

In other words, the evidence from these recent cases support the suspicion that President Bush and the U.S. military high command have transformed elite units, such as Special Forces and expert sniper teams, into “death squads” with a license to kill unarmed targets who are believed to be “bad guys.”

Though this reality has been the subject of whispers within the U.S. intelligence community for several years, it surfaced into public view with two attempted prosecutions of American soldiers, including Hensley, whose defense attorneys responded by citing “rules of engagement” that permit the killing of suspected insurgents.

The case of Army sniper Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., who served under Hensley, also revealed a classified program in which the Pentagon’s Asymmetric Warfare Group encouraged U.S. military snipers in Iraq to drop “bait” – such as electrical cords and ammunition – and then shoot Iraqis who pick up the items, according to evidence in the Sandoval case. [Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2007]

(Like Hensley, Sandoval was acquitted of murder but convicted of a lesser charge, the planting of copper wire on one of the slain Iraqis to make it look as if the dead man were involved in making explosive devices.)

Afghan Parallel

Another recent case of authorized murder of an insurgent suspect surfaced at a military court hearing at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in mid-September. Two U.S. Special Forces soldiers took part in the execution of an Afghani who was suspected of leading an insurgent group.

Though the Afghani, identified as Nawab Buntangyar, responded to questions and offered no resistance when encountered on Oct. 13, 2006, he was shot dead by Master Sgt. Troy Anderson on orders from his superior officer, Capt. Dave Staffel.

According to evidence at the Fort Bragg proceedings, an earlier Army investigation had cleared the two soldiers because they had been operating under “rules of engagement” that empowered them to kill individuals who have been designated “enemy combatants,” even if the targets were unarmed and presented no visible threat.

Yet, whatever the higher-ups approve as “rules of engagement,” the practice of murdering unarmed suspects remains a violation of the laws of war and – theoretically at least – would open up the offending country’s chain of command to war-crimes charges.

The troubling picture is that the U.S. chain of command, presumably up to President Bush, has authorized “rules of engagement” that allow targeted killings – as well as other objectionable tactics including arbitrary arrests, “enhanced interrogations,” kidnappings of suspects in third countries with “extraordinary renditions” to countries that torture, secret CIA prisons, and “reeducation camps” for younger detainees.

The U.S. counterinsurgency and security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan also have been augmented by heavily armed mercenaries, such as the Blackwater “security contractors” who operate outside the law and were accused by Iraqi authorities of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in a shooting incident on Sept. 16.

The use of lethal force against unarmed suspects and civilians has a notorious history in irregular warfare especially when an occupying army finds itself confronting an indigenous resistance in which guerrillas and their political supporters blend in with the local population.

In effect, Bush’s “global war on terror” appears to have reestablished what was known during the Vietnam War as Operation Phoenix, a program that assassinated Vietcong cadre, including suspected communist political allies.

Bush’s global strategy also has similarities to “Operation Condor” in which South American right-wing military regimes in the 1970s sent assassins on cross-border operations to eliminate “subversives.”

Despite quiet support for these Latin American “death squads,” the U.S. government presented itself, then as now, as the great defender of human rights, criticizing repressive countries that engaged in extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions.

That gap between American rhetoric and reality widened after 9/11 as Bush waged his “war on terror,” while continuing to impress the American news media with pretty words about his commitment to human rights – as occurred in his address to the United Nations on Sept. 25.

Under Bush’s remarkable double standards, he has taken the position that he can override both international law and the U.S. Constitution in deciding who gets basic human rights and who doesn’t. He sees himself as the final judge of whether people he deems “bad guys” should live or die, or face indefinite imprisonment and even torture.

Effective Immunity

While such actions by other leaders might provoke demands for an international war-crimes tribunal, there would appear to be no likelihood of that in this case since the offending nation is the United States. Given its “superpower” status, the United States and its senior leadership are effectively beyond the reach of international law.

However, even if the Bush administration can expect de facto immunity from a war-crimes trial, the brutal tactics of the “global war on terror” – as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan – continue to alienate the Muslim world and undermine much of Bush’s geopolitical strategy. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Global ‘Dirty War’ by Robert Parry”]

The ugly image of Americans killing unarmed Iraqis also helps explain the enduring hostility of Iraqis toward the presence of U.S. troops.

While the Bush administration has touted the improved security created by the “surge” of additional U.S. troops into Iraq, a survey of more than 2,000 Iraqis by the BBC, ABC News and the Japanese news agency, NHK, discovered mounting opposition to the U.S. occupation.

In August, 85 percent of those polled said they had little or no confidence in American and British occupation forces, up from 82 percent in February, when the “surge” began. Only 18 percent said they thought the coalition forces had done a good job, down from 24 percent in February. Forty-seven percent said occupying forces should leave now, up from 35 percent.

But a core question of the Iraq War always has been how hard the Iraqis would fight. President Bush and the neocons initially got that question wrong in March 2003 when instead of a “cake walk,” U.S. troops encountered surprisingly stiff resistance and, even after taking Baghdad, faced a determined insurgency.

The neocons now believe the U.S. occupation has turned a corner, that rank-and-file Iraqis have suffered so severely that they are ready to accept the continued U.S. military occupation with declining resistance.

In the view of some influential neocons, this “success” in Iraq means it is now time for the United States to turn its attention to other troubled Muslim countries, such as Iran and Pakistan.

Two prominent “think tank” backers of the “surge” – Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon – were given space in the New York Times “Week in Review” section to propose a U.S. military intervention in Pakistan if unrest there spreads.

“If we got a large number of troops into the country, what would they do?” Kagan and O’Hanlon asked. “If a holding operation in the nation’s center was successful, we would probably then seek to establish order in the parts of Pakistan where extremists operate.” [NYT, Nov. 18, 2007]

Having tasted a measure of success in Iraq, the neocons now are raising their sights toward an even wider war in the Muslim world.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

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. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Redacted by Brian De Palma (full video; over 18 only)

Bush’s Global ‘Dirty War’ by Robert Parry

Fallujah Now Under a Different Kind of Siege By Ali al-Fadhily

UN SECURITY COUNCIL MUST LISTEN TO IRAQ’S PEOPLE AND PARLIAMENT – TAKE ACTION!!

Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act Raises Fears of New Government Crackdown on Dissent (link)

Dandelion Salad

Democracy Now!
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act Raises Fears of New Government Crackdown on Dissent

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A little-noticed anti-terrorism bill quietly making its through Congress is raising fears of a new affront on activism and constitutional rights. The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act was passed in an overwhelming 400 to six House vote last month. Critics say it could herald a new government crackdown on dissident activity under the guise of fighting terrorism.

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A little-noticed anti-terrorism bill quietly making its through Congress is raising fears of a new affront on activism and constitutional rights. The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act was passed in an overwhelming 400 to six House vote last month. Critics say it could herald a new government crackdown on dissident activity and infiltration of universities under the guise of fighting terrorism. The bill would establish two government-appointed bodies to study, monitor and propose ways of curbing what it calls homegrown terrorism and extremism in the United States. The first body, a National Commission, would convene for eighteen months. A university-based “Center for Excellence” would follow, bringing together academic specialists to recommend laws and other measures.Critics say the bill’s definition of “extremism” and “terrorism” is too vague and its mandate even more broad. Under a false veil of expertise and independence, the government-appointed commissions could be used as ideological cover to push through harsher laws.Following last month’s approval in the House, the Senate version is expected to go before the Judiciary Committee this week.

• Jessica Lee, reporter for the Indypendent, published by the NYC Indymedia Center. Her latest article is called “Bringing the War on Terrorism Home: Congress Considers How to ‘Disrupt’ Radical Movements in the United States”
• Kamau Karl Franklin, Racial Justice Fellow at the NY-based Center for Constitutional Rights. He is also co-chair of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and serves on the Executive Committee of the National Lawyers Guild.

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

transcript available later today

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. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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The U.S. Congress Legislates Genocide Of The Mind By Jeff Knaebel

Mentes Peligrosas: Confession of an American Thought Criminal By Jason Miller

It’s Time to Fire Washington! by Debbie Lewis (Homegrown Terrorism)

Big Brother: House passes the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act” by Lee Rogers

One Nation Under Siege – What if everything you were ever told was a lie? (vid; over 18 only)

A Blueprint for Impeachment: The Constitution Still in Crisis by Cindy Sheehan

The Real Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Nov. 20, 2007

This pattern of immunity for presidents must stop. Impeaching George Bush for lying to get us into war will not only protect us from him, but also send an unmistakable message to future presidents: Never again. Elizabeth Holtzman, former Congresswoman in the forward to: Constitution in Crisis by Congressman John Conyers, Jr. and Staff

I was recently given an award by the Cranbrook Peace Institute and the ceremonies were held in Detroit, the hometown of Rep. John Conyers. I was pretty surprised that he agreed to introduce me at the event considering that the last time I saw him I was being hauled out of his office in DC in handcuffs and I have been very outspoken about the Democrats failure to hold BushCo accountable. I must give the Congressman a lot of credit to always show up to events where he knows he is going to be harassed about impeachment and he gave me a nice introduction reading part of my testimony in Congress regarding the Downing Street Minutes that Rep. Conyers conducted in a cramped room in the basement of Congress on June 16, 2005. In the intro he called me the “mother of the modern peace movement.”

John Conyers and I have had a cordial relationship that goes back to that June day when we believed that we were taking profound first steps in peacefully and lawfully overthrowing the Bush crime regime. Rep. Conyers wrote the intro to my first book: Not One More Mother’s Child; I am mentioned in his brilliant analysis of the reasons to impeach BushCo and I was with him at the People’s State of the Union in 2006 just hours before I was arrested at the War Pig State of the Union address for wearing a t-shirt. Whenever I am in DC, I just have to call his office and he always makes time to see me. His commitment to our country is decades long: from being a veteran of the military and Civil Right’s campaigns to serving in Congress for over 40 years. He is on the right track by seeking universal, single payer health care. He has been correct on so many issues that progressives hold dear and that’s why it is so puzzling to me and the so many others in the progressive community why he will not institute impeachment proceedings for the criminals who are only getting worse since Conyers wrote the book on impeachment, not better. It’s not as if BushCo has found a new propensity to follow the law and as a matter of fact, the 110th Congress has made a habit of legitimizing and legalizing the crimes.

A brief recount of the reasons Conyers lists for impeachment in his book is: Deception (lies that led to war), manipulation (of intelligence and the tragic events of 9-11), torture (our new AG is not so sure about torture), retribution (against “enemies” i.e.: Valerie Plame and Bunnatine Greenhouse: Halliburton whistleblower), illegal surveillance (which Congress recently approved) and cover-ups. All of the charges are brilliantly documented and proved by John Conyers’ brilliant staff, that has also inexplicably become anti-impeachment along with most of the rest of the failed and failing 110th Congress.

At the peace events in Detroit, I also had the high honor of holding a dialogue with young peace and social justice activists in the Detroit area. A young Hispanic girl had the floor and she recounted the feeling of hopelessness that she and her peers were feeling about the future. She cried when she said: “We feel like we have no future.” If BushCo are allowed to continue their crimes against peace, humanity, civil rights, basic human rights and the environment, unchecked, then the young lady may be tragically correct in her analysis.

The Democratic leadership has made a mockery of our Constitution by excising “awkward” parts out of it. For example, by invoking “Title X” (Contempt of Congress) which is a harsher punishment against protesters that leads to harsher penalties, such as being banished from Capital Hill for a determined amount of time, they have killed the pesky First Amendment Rights to free speech and peaceable assembly.

By confirming Michael Mukasey for Attorney General and approving the Military Commissions Act, Congress has stripped away our Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. By suspending habeas corpus we are denied our Sixth Amendment rights to fair and speedy trials and to confront our accusers with an attorney present. Congress has also abrogated its Constitutionally mandated role of declaring war to a bloodthirsty Executive Branch and have invalidated Article II; Section 4 which states that a President and Vice-President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The Dems were swept back into power off of the backs and energy of the anti-war left and they have betrayed us by surgically removing important parts of the Constitution. Cardinal Mahoney of the Los Angeles Diocese calls such picking and choosing of what to believe or disbelieve in the Church as “Cafeteria Catholicism,” I call disregarding parts the Constitution: “Treason,” and the only way that Congress can redeem itself from infamy is to follow the road map that has been laid out for us centuries ago and declare the phony “War on Terror” over and restore our country to sanity by impeaching the people who have led us down this highway to hell.

We must not let Congress off the hook by allowing them to let BushCo off the hook.

We are collecting handwritten letters to Speaker Pelosi to deliver to her office demanding that Resolution (H Res 799 introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich) to impeach the cruel and callous puppet master, Dick Cheney, be given the attention and resources that are needed to go forward with an indictment in the house and a trial in the Senate on the crimes outlined by the Resolution. We already have a couple thousand and we will deliver them to the Speaker when we reach 10,000. Let’s flood her office with letters as if she is Santa and we want impeachment on our Christmas table.

We need to leave the young people of the world with hope that rule of law will be restored in the US and that future presidents will know that their hands are at least restrained by two co-equal branches when it comes to invading countries contrary to international law, US law, and basic human dignity.

Send your letters demanding the Speaker go forward with HRes 799 to:

Cindy for Congress
1260 Mission St.
San Francisco, Ca 94103

For a sample letter go to: www.CindyforCongress.org

“People before Politics”
Support Cindy for Congress!
www.CindyforCongress.org

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A Request from Cindy Sheehan (Impeachment letters)

Never Again by Cindy Sheehan

Ron Paul asked about Dennis Kucinich as a running mate (video)

Update: Nov. 29, 2007

Apparently the original story was accurate.  See:

Kucinich considers GOP Ron Paul as his running mate by Sabrina Eaton (audio)

Update: Nov. 28, 2007

See After the Rep Debate: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell + Ron Paul VP Question (videos)

Update: Nov. 26, 2007

See: Kucinich suggests a Republican running mate by Sabrina Eaton & Stephen Koff

Dandelion Salad

erkd1

First, sorry about the audio being off. I tried to correct it but made it worse, so I quit while I was ahead ;)

Setting aside our ideological differences, lets hope for a 2008 election between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. Two honorable and honest men who respect our Constitution.

Lets restore sanity to the White House.

Kucinich 2008, and best wishes to those of the GOP supporting Ron Paul.

Added: November 20, 2007

see
Kucinich: Dennis on Health Care; Peak Oil & Elizabeth on Ron Paul; 9-11 Truth (video)

Kucinich-Dennis

Paul-Ron