Premeditated Merger: North American Union ‘a couple years away’

Dandelion Salad

Global Research, November 22, 2007

WorldNetDaily.com – 2007-11-19

Bilderberg author who 1st exposed plot in 1996 sees EU replication as imminent

WASHINGTON – The next giant step toward world government will be integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in European Union-style merger in the next few years, says the author of a best-selling book on the power of shadowy international organizations promoting the move.

“I would say [it’s just] a couple of years away,” reports Daniel Estulin, author of “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group.”

Estulin, a Canadian now living in Europe, says the original plans for a North American Union involved the U.S. and Canada as the prime participants. It was motivated primarily by the desire to harvest Canada‘s abundant natural resources.

In his new book, Estulin reveals the first efforts in this plan date back to 1996 when the elite Bilderberg Group first discussed plans for the dismantlement of Canada as an independent nation and proposed its merger – minus Quebec – with the United States into a Greater North America.

“Actually, the North American Union, or rather a Canada-U.S. merger, was initially discussed shortly after the Reagan-Bush candidacy won the White House,” he says in an interview with WND. “Upon taking over the reins of the country, George Bush and Ronald Reagan called in the presidents of the key trans-national companies and asked them for the real picture. The money people told them that if the United States were a corporation it would have to be shut down immediately. It was bankrupt.”

The solution proposed then, according to Estulin, was merger between the U.S. and Canada.

 

“Canada is virgin country with a multitude of natural resources, water, mines, oil, gas, etc.,” he explains. “They decided that it was going to take 14 or 15 years to put the whole project together. In the interval, the economies, social programs and laws of the two countries would be quietly harmonized as much as possible.” Back then, part of that harmonization plan involved the separation of Quebec as an independent state, he says. “Actually, when all is said and done, it all comes down to money,” Estulin says. “Money makes its own rules. If your goal is to make the most money possible using Canada’s natural resources, what would you ask for? Number one, give me control over the sun. Number two, give me control over the air. Number three, give me control over water. Now, we know we cannot control the sun, nor can we control the air. But we can control water. Water, after all, is the most important element that can be controlled.”

But the plot for a North American Union, as exposed in detail in Jerome Corsi’s new bestselling book, “The Late Great USA,” is but a prelude, Estulin says, to the ultimate merger – one-world government.

“Everything is in place,” he says. “Europe is now one country, one currency and one constitution. North America is about to become one. The African Union has had its working model going for over a decade. Asia is openly discussing the near-future Asian Union, being sold to us as an economic inevitability beneficial to all its citizens.”

Estulin sees the current focus in the U.S. on the presidential election of 2008 as something of a farce in light of this trend.

“Does it really matter who wins?” he asks. “As I make very clear in ‘The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,’ every politician of note and promise belongs to the Bilderbergers, CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) or the Trilateral Commission. Unless you are one of them, you can hardly hope to win the presidency. If we vote for the lesser evil, forced upon us by the secret oligarchies and the powerful men behind the curtain, we end up playing the game imposed upon us by them. Democracy, I guess what I really want to say, is a fallacy, an unattainable dream, a useless label trotted out and dusted off by the rulers every four years for the benefit of the great unwashed – us. There are two sides in this equation – the powerful elite who control the world’s wealth and the rest of humanity.”

Estulin “guarantees” today’s Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani will not get the nomination of his party. With less certitude, he speculates the current mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, could still be positioned to head the GOP ticket.

“Bloomberg, according to my sources within Bilderberg, will emerge as a credible candidate of consensus for the discredited American political establishment, your virtual “People’s Choice” candidate,” he says.

What is the agenda behind these groups, which Estulin says are comprised of “self-interested elitists protecting their wealth and the investments of multinational banks and corporations in the growing world economy at the expense of developing nations and Third World countries”?

“The policies they develop,” he writes, “benefit them as well as move us towards a one-world government.”

Those questioning Estulin’s conclusion as mere speculation need only recall organizational financer David Rockefeller‘s own words as recorded in his “Memoirs.”

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will,” he wrote. “If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Estulin’s book, first written in 2005 in Spain, has been translated into 24 languages, most recently this English edition. He has covered the Bilderberg Group as a journalist for more than 15 years.

Why does he singularly devote so much attention to exposing their activities?

“They cannot survive the light, and they know it,” he says. “This is why the powerful people have long insulated themselves from that possibility. You see, the greatest form of control is when you think you are free while you are being manipulated and dictated to. People have been disarmed through the greatest hypnotist the world has ever known – the oblong box almost everyone has in the corner of their living rooms known as the television. By persuading ordinary people that what they can see with their eyes is what is there to see, the men behind the curtain have ensured their own survival, because people will laugh in your face when you explain to them that there is a bigger picture they are not seeing.”

What is his personal prescription for fighting back? He offers a five-point program:

1. Understanding that governments do not represent the people nor have their best interests at heart. 2. Understanding that corporate media’s main job is to hide the transgressions of the most powerful people in the world not shine the light of truth on it.

3. Understanding that the corporate media forms part of the world’s elite societies such as the Bilderbergers, the CFR and the Trilateral Commission.

4. Understanding how money works and how through intelligent use of money we can destroy the Bilderbergers of this world.

5. Getting out of debt now.

see

Bloomberg Crams On Foreign Policy: Proof That He’s Planning ’08 Bid? by Sam Stein

Unmasking the wannabe masters of the universe By Bev Conover

Who Runs The World And Why You Need To Know Immediately By Carolyn Baker (updated)

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Dollar Crash: The Real Challenge For OPEC by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

Dandelion Salad

by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Global Research, November 22, 2007

At its recent summit in Riyadh, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries faced an unprecedented crisis: the price of oil was edging up towards the $100 per barrel mark, as the dollar itself was continuing its inexorable slide on all financial markets.

Although the Saudi hosts were eager to keep the dollar’s agony out of the debate, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez forced it onto the agenda, triumphantly announcing that the dollar decline signalled the end of the American empire. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quipped that the oil producers were delivering their vital goods, and in return, were getting only “a worthless piece of paper.” The idea emerged, that OPEC should study the matter, perhaps seeking an alternative currency or currencies, in which to trade oil.

The word “dollar” was not referenced in the final document, mainly because of (justified) fears voiced by the Saudi hosts, that any such mention might precipitate a further crash of the greenback. B ut the summit did decide to set up a committee, of their oil and finance ministers, to study the matter and come up with recommendations before their next meeting, scheduled for December 5.

Chavez and Ahmadinejad were those pressing most energetically for open debate on the fate of the dollar. “Don’t you see how the dollar has been in a free-fall without a parachute?” Chavez asked. In his address to the conference, the Iranian president stated, “Due to the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, oil transactions should be conducted through a combination of other major hard currencies, and oil bourses should be requested to replace the U.S. dollar with other currencies,” as reported by Mehr News Agency. He also voiced agreement with an idea Chavez had floated, of setting up an “OPEC bank” which would protect the hard currencies of the oil producing states.

Ahmadinejad told reporters following the summit that the leaders were “unhappy with the fall in the value [of the dollar],” adding that “even the American people have lost out.” He reported that “All participating leaders showed an interest in changing their hard currency reserves to a credible hard currency,” and that “some” favored an alternative to the dollar. These “some” emphatically did not include Saudi Arabia, which issued a statement later, that the Kingdom had absolutely no intention of abandoning the dollar.

Nonetheless, the issue was hot enough to make its way, albeit indirectly, into the summit’s final statement. The “Riyadh Declaration” [www.opec.org/] after stressing OPEC’s commitment to maintain stability of the petroleum market, providing “adequate, timely, efficient, economic and reliable petroleum supplies to world markets,” made brief reference to the currency issue. It said the OPEC members resolved to “Instruct our Petroleum/Energy and Finance Ministers to study ways and means of enhancing financial cooperation among OPEC Member Countries, including proposals by some of the Heads of State and Government in their statements to the Summit.” Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hussein Nozari explained that this committee had been decided on, “to study the impact of the dollar on oil prices,” while his Iraqi counterpart Hussein al-Shahristani said the committee would “submit to OPEC its recommendation on a basket of currencies that OPEC members will deal with.”

The question is: what can such a committee achieve? That depends on how it formulates the problem. If the ministers focus on simply replacing the dollar with another currency, or basket of currencies, they will solve nothing. Although Chavez celebrated the fall of the dollar as the “fall of the American empire,” and looked to the day when Latin America and the world would be freed of the U.S. currency, he was blithely ignoring a simple reality: the dollar is not just the currency of the U.S., still the world’s biggest economy; it is the basis of the world financial system. The dollar is the leading currency in international trade, and dominates world financial transactions. It is still the major reserve currency for central banks, even though their percentage of dollar holdings has dropped from 71% in 1999 to 64.8% today. True, central banks have been moving out of the dollar and into other currencies, especially the euro and yen. In August, for the first time in ages, there was a net outflow of dollars and U.S. investments, to the tune of $150 billion, reversing a trend that used to see hundreds of billions flowing into America, to finance its multiple deficits. Those pulling dollars out of the U.S. included China; the assistant governor of the Bnak of China Yi Gang did say on November 15 that the dollar would remain the leader among its $1.4 trillion (!) reserves, however he added that China would “diversify.” Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress, was quoted by the Peoples Daily on November 8, saying “We [China] favor stronger currencies over weaker ones, and will readjust accordingly,” i.e. continue to diversify. Russia has diversified, as have many Persian Gulf countries, including Iran.

But this, in itself, will solve nothing. The crisis of the dollar is the {crisis of the dollar-denominated system}. Unless that reality is addressed, no bandaid measures can provide relief. Just imagine what would happen, were China to pull out of the dollar completely. That would further plunge the dollar into negative territory, but with the result that China’s earnings from its trade with the U.S., would plummet.

Any serious approach to address the dollar crisis, must address the underlying problem: the system is bankrupt and must be radically reformed, in order to prevent the collapse of the dollar system from precipitating a breakdown of the world economy–the production and trade of real goods and services, upon which the well-being of nations and populations depend. Ahmadinejad laid the blame for the dollar collapse on the Bush Administration–all well and good, so far as it goes. But the insane financial, monetary and economic policies which have reached a peak under George W. and his henchmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, have been merely the continuation of a defective policy orientation going back to the early 1960s. It was after the assassination of John F. Kennedy that U.S. (and British) economic policy radically shifted away from emphasis on investment in the production of real goods and services, and vital infrastructure, into pure speculation. Richard Nixon’s decoupling of the dollar from gold in August 1971, created the basis for the floating exchange system, whereby national currencies could and did become the prey of voracious speculators. From then on, the system generated one after another of wild speculative instruments, leading into today’s explosive $750 billion derivatives market, collateral debt obligations, mortgage-backed securities, and the like. Now, a reverse-leveraging process has set in, whereby the croupier is calling in the debts. And the players’ pockets are empty. The biggest banks in the U.S., led by Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, have reported tens of billions of dollars in losses, while their stocks plunge on the markets. No amount of pump-priming and repeated injections of hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system can save it. Ben “helicoptor” Bernanke may think he can fly over America in a plane and flood the country with liquidity, but he is going to run out of gas very soon.

Given this reality, what can a committee of oil and finance ministers of the OPEC countries, as constituted at the last summit, do? Since they do not control monetary policy worldwide, they could not work wonders. But they could make a crucial contribution, by laying bare the true parameters of the crisis, identifying the implications of the dollar crisis for the international systen as a whole. They could go a step further, and propose an immediate international conference of leading nations–emphatically including the leading culprit, the U.S., as well as Russia and China–to map out a program for the reform of the system, which would begin by reviving the best aspects of the Bretton Woods system of 1944. This means reestablishing fixed exchange rates among leading currencies, as the precondition for orderly international trade and an antidote against currency speculation. This would also require a shift in economic policy orientation, away from the liberal, free market spe culative madness, back to sound investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and so forth. Once a new international monetary system were in place, it would be essentially irrelevant, what currency oil producers (or others) would use in their trade.

Were such an OPEC committee to address the issue from this global standpoint, it could go further, and really take the bull by the horns, so to speak. The OPEC summit leaders demonstrated their responsibility to the world economy, by pledging secure supplies. But it is undeniable that each of the leaders who met in Riyadh for the third OPEC summit, knows that, no matter how vast the world’s oil reserves may be, they are ultimately limited. (The same could be said of gas.) This poses the question: what next?

A sane economic policy approach would say: let us look beyond the era of an oil-based economy, to the era of a nuclear-energy based world economy. From an economic standpoint, it is clear that only massive use of nuclear technology can provide the energy required to maintain a growing world economy. The industrialization of Africa, for example, requires this level of energy input. The political insecurity created over recent years by Dick Cheney’s wars against Iraq, and now, threatened, against Iran, has added impetus to the need for securing alternative energy resources. The recent statements by the Gulf Cooperation Council, regarding that group’s desire to develop nuclear energy technology for peaceful purposes, can only be applauded. Egypt, Algeria, and other Arab coutnries have demonstrated similar interest. Iran, whose nuclear program is being exploited as a pretext to launch war, has offered to share its proven technological expertise with other countries. Recent discus sions about the possibility of establishing uranium enrichment facilities jointly in “neutral” countries (eg. Switzerland) have been seriously taken up by Iran, among others. In the perspective of massive development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, the giant oil producers in OPEC, could think of directing their precious resources as the raw materials for petrochemical and other processes.

If the new committee envisioned by the OPEC summit takes up these issues, a new, potentially powerful flank may be opened up in international economic and political relations. These countries control resources on which most of the world depends: why should they not use their clout to redefine the international agenda?

Muriel Mirak-Weissbach is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

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Law and Resistance: The Republic in Crisis and the People’s Response by Prof. Francis A. Boyle

Dandelion Salad

by Prof. Francis A. Boyle
Global Research, November 22, 2007

Transcript of Professor Boyle’s lecture, Northwestern University Law School, November 20, 2007.The event was sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild, Northwestern University Student Law School Chapter and Chicago Chapter of the NLG.

Since the impeachable installation of George Bush Jr. as President by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Gang of Five, the people of the world have witnessed a government in the United States that has demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, or the United States Constitution. Instead, the world has watched a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian and Straussian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign affairs and American domestic policy. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the Bush Jr. administration’s foreign policy constitute ongoing criminal activity under well recognized principles of both international law and United States domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare, which applies to President Bush Jr. himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Depending on the substantive issues involved, these international and domestic crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offences of “crimes against peace”– so far Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and perhaps their longstanding threatened war of aggression against Iran. Their criminal responsibility also concerns “crimes against humanity” and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare: torture at Guantanamo, Bhagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, Fallujah, etc. Furthermore, various members of the Bush Jr. administration have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956) are international crimes in their own right: planning, and preparation—which they are currently doing today against Iran—solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting. Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that the Neo-Conservative Straussian members of the Bush Jr. administration currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether they be Bush Jr., Tony Blair, or Saddam Hussein.

According to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or mercenary contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes. This category of officialdom who actually knew or should have known of the commission of these international crimes under their jurisdiction and failed to do anything about them include at the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command President Bush Jr. and Vice-President Cheney; former U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld; Secretary of State Rice; Director of National Intelligence Negroponte, who was previously in charge of the contra terror war against the people of Nicaragua that murdered 35,000 civilians; National Security Advisor Hadley; his Deputy Elliot Abrams, who was also criminally responsible for murdering 35,000 people in Nicaragua; former U.S. Attorney General Gonzales, criminally responsible for the torture campaign launched by the Bush Jr. administration; and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staffs along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chiefs, especially for Central Command (CENTCOM).

These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 of 1956. Today in international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany. As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and the United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by Bush Jr. administration officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism.

For that very reason, large numbers of American citizens have decided to act on their own cognizance by means of civil resistance in order to demand that the Bush Jr. administration adhere to basic principles of international law, of U.S. domestic law, and of our own Constitution in its conduct of foreign affairs and military operations. Mistakenly, however, such actions have been defined to constitute classic instances of “civil disobedience” as historically practiced in the United States. And the conventional status quo admonition by the U.S. power elite and its sycophantic news media for those who knowingly engage in “civil disobedience” has always been that they must meekly accept their punishment for having performed a prima facie breach of the positive laws as a demonstration of their good faith and moral commitment. Nothing could be further from the truth! Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs! The Bush Jr. administration officials are the outlaws!

Here I would like to suggest a different way of thinking about civil resistance activities that are specifically designed to thwart, prevent, or impede ongoing criminal activity by members of the Bush Jr. administration under well-recognized principles of international and U.S. domestic law. Such civil resistance activities represent the last constitutional avenue open to the American people to preserve their democratic form of government with its historical commitment to the rule of law and human rights. Civil resistance is the last hope America has to prevent the Bush Jr. administration from moving even farther down the path of lawless violence in Southwest Asia, military interventionism in Latin America and Africa, and nuclear confrontation with Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China.

Such measures of “civil resistance” must not be confused with, and indeed must be carefully distinguished from, acts of “civil disobedience” as traditionally defined. In today’s civil resistance cases, what we witness are U.S. citizens attempting to prevent the ongoing commission of international and domestic crimes under well-recognized principles of international law and U.S. domestic law. This is a phenomenon essentially different from the classic civil disobedience cases of the 1950s and 1960s where incredibly courageous African Americans and their supporters were conscientiously violating domestic laws for the express purpose of changing them. By contrast, today’s civil resisters are acting for the express purpose of upholding the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, human rights, and international law. Applying the term “civil disobedience” to such civil resistors mistakenly presumes their guilt and thus perversely exonerates the Bush Jr. administration criminals.

Civil resistors disobeyed nothing, but to the contrary obeyed international law and the United States Constitution. By contrast, Bush Jr. administration officials disobeyed fundamental principles of international law as well as U.S. criminal law and thus committed international crimes and U.S. domestic crimes as well as impeachable violations of the United States Constitution. The civil resistors are the sheriffs enforcing international law, U.S. criminal law and the U.S. Constitution against the criminals working for the Bush Jr. administration!

Today the American people must reaffirm our commitment to the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding our government officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic crimes. We must not permit any aspect of our foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged “war criminals” according to the U.S. government’s own official definition of that term as set forth in U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956), the U.S. War Crimes Act, and the Geneva Conventions. The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes. That is precisely what American civil resisters are doing today!

This same right of civil resistance extends pari passu to all citizens of the world community of states. Everyone around the world has both the right and the duty under international law to resist ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by the Bush Jr. administration and its nefarious foreign accomplices in allied governments such as in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Georgia, etc. If not so restrained, the Bush Jr. administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.

In this regard, during the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, President Bush Jr. terrorized the entire world with the threat of World War III if he could not work his illegal will upon Iran. Then Russian President Vladimir Putin responded in kind by likewise terrorizing the entire world with the prospect of yet another Cuban Missile Crisis if he did not get his way on the needlessly provocative anti-ballistic missile systems that the Bush Jr. administration plans to locate in Poland and the Czech Republic. The publicly threatened U.S./Israeli attack upon Iran could readily set off a chain of events that would culminate in World War III, and could easily go nuclear. It is my opinion that the Bush Jr. administration would welcome the outbreak of a Third World War, and in any event is fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons against Muslim and Arab states and peoples.

After September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In post-9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against People of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas. The Crusades all over again. But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!

We American lawyers must be inspired by the stunning example set by those heroic Pakistani lawyers now leading the struggle against the brutal Bush-supported Musharraf military dictatorship. We American lawyers must now lead the fight against the Bush Jr. dictatorship! This is our Nuremberg Moment!

Thank you.

Francis A. Boyle is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Francis A. Boyle
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.

For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Francis A. Boyle, Global Research, 2007
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Impeachment on the Thanksgiving Table: McClellan’s Dish by Dave Lindorff

Dandelion Salad

by Dave Lindorff
This Can’t Be Happening!
Thu, 11/22/2007

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.

–Excerpt from Scott McClellan’s forthcoming book “What Happened”
(Public Affairs Books, due out in April 2008)

With that one little statement, released on the Public Affairs Books website this week, all excuses for not impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney, not to mention indicting Cheney (who of course has no immunity from prosecution while in office), have evaporated.

Here is rock-solid evidence from a man who, as press secretary, was privy to the inner workings of the White House, of a vile conspiracy involving the two top men in the Bush/Cheney administration, as well as their top three staffpeople, to expose the identity of an important CIA undercover operative, Valerie Plame, and then, when caught, to obstruct a criminal investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, into that crime.

Forget for a moment the administration’s other high crimes and misdemeanors and acts of bribery and treason, though many, like defying laws passed by the Congress, or violating the Nuremburg Charter, are surely far more egregious. This particular set of crimes–conspiracy, obstruction of justice, lying, and of course the underlying crime of abuse of power and perhaps treason (since Plame’s responsibility as a high-rankiing CIA operative was preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly in the Middle East!)–is serious enough.

There is no way that American democracy can continue to survive, even in its current truncated form, if the Congress continues to duck this issue and pretend that it has “more important things to do,” as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her retinue of “leaders” in the House have continued to claim for an entire year in control of the Congress.

To keep impeachment “off the table,” knowing that the president and vice president brazenly lied to the American people and to the Special Counsel’s office about such a serious offense, is to make a mockery of the Constitution and the law.

Bush and Cheney must be impeached at this point if only to save school districts across the nation the cost of having to buy all new American history and civics texts, revised so as to remove all discussion of the notion of Constitutional checks and balances and the word “impeachment.”

It is of course possible that the political reality is that Republicans in Congress have become such an antidemocratic conglomeration of authoritarian yes-men that they would defend their political leaders no matter what their crimes, and that thus impeachment would be a dead end, either in the House or certainly in the Senate. This, however, is no excuse for not calling the president and vice president to account in impeachment hearings in the House, where Democrats have a solid majority.

An impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, with full subpoena power granted to that committee, would lead to revelations and exposures far beyond that of Scott McClellan’s, though putting McClellan under oath on national TV in such a hearing promises to be as enlightening and entertaining as was the testimony in 1974 before the same panel by Nixon White House attorney John Dean.

The critical importance of such hearings to the future of American democracy, and to public understanding of the nature of the coup that has been undermining that democracy should be obvious. It wouldn’t matter what the vote was following such hearings. Certainly articles of impeachment would be voted out of the committee and sent to the floor of the House. Almost as certainly, the House would end up having to support those articles. So Bush and Cheney would at least stand impeached, probably with at least some Republican’s voting for impeachment. They would probably also be forced, like President Clinton before them, to stand trial in the Senate–if Republicans didn’t first succeed in convincing them to resign to spare their party a disaster at the polls next November.

Certainly it’s possible that proponents of conviction in the Senate would not be able to convince the 16 or 17 Republican necessary to win a conviction and removal from office, but it wouldn’t matter at that point. The Bush administration would stand condemned for all time as a gang of criminals and usurpers.

It’s worth noting that following Clinton’s impeachment and trial, which failed to remove him from office, the Oval Office has been off-limits to unchaperoned interns, and it is likely to be a long time before felatio is re-enacted under the Oval Office desk. Similar action against Bush and Cheney would make future Constitutional crimes equally unlikely for the same reason, even without conviction.

This would be even more true if Special Counsel Fitzgerald were to do his duty, as he clearly should, and reopen his Plame investigation with an indictment of Cheney, and with the naming of Bush, like Nixon before him, as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”

For starters, Pelosi must take this moment to declare that impeachment is “back on the table.”

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Radio: Kucinich on Impeachment (link)

Olbermann: O’Reilly vs The USO + Lies and Consequences + Books and Liars + Worst (videos)

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

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

McClellan implicates Bush, Cheney in Plame lie by Tim Grieve

Who owns Dennis? The American people! (video)

Dandelion Salad

Kucinich2008

Video by Tim Mchugh

November 22, 2007

Cheering for Ron Paul By Robert Scheer

Dandelion Salad

By Robert Scheer
The Nation
Nov. 22, 2007

What can you get for a trillion bucks? Or make that $1.6 trillion, if you take the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as tallied by the majority staff of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee (JEC). Or is it the $3.5-trillion figure cited by Ron Paul, whose concern about the true cost of this war for ordinary Americans shames the leading Democrats, who prattle on about needed domestic programs that will never find funding because of future war-related government debt?

Given that the overall defense budget is now double what it was when President Bush’s father presided over the end of the cold war–even though we don’t have a militarily sophisticated enemy in sight–you have to wonder how this president has managed to exceed cold war spending levels. What has he gotten for the trillions wasted? Nothing, when it comes to capturing Osama bin Laden, bringing democracy to Iraq or preventing oil prices from tripling and enriching the ayatollahs of Iran while messing up the American economy.

That money could have paid for a lot of things we could have used here at home. As Rep. Paul points out, for what the Iraq war costs, we could present each family of four a check for $46,000–which exceeds the $43,000 median household income in his Texas district. He asks: “What about the impact of those costs on education, the very thing that so often helps to increase earnings? Forty-six thousand dollars would cover 90 percent of the tuition costs to attend a four-year public university in Texas for both children in that family of four. But, instead of sending kids to college, too often we’re sending them to Iraq, where the best news in a long time is they [the insurgents] aren’t killing our men and women as fast as they were last month.”

[…]

via The Nation

One Million Dead in Iraq – Our Own Holocaust Denial By Mark Weisbrot

Dandelion Salad

By Mark Weisbrot
11/22/07 “ICH‘

Institutionally unwilling to consider America’s responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.

This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.

The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.

Amazingly, some journalists and editors – and of course some politicians – dismiss such measurements because they are based on random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don’t believe in random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all of it.

The methods used in the estimates of Iraqi deaths are the same as those used to estimate the deaths in Darfur, which are widely accepted in the media. They are also consistent with the large numbers of refugees from the violence (estimated at more than four million). There is no reason to disbelieve them, or to accept tallies such as that the Iraq Body Count (73,305 – 84,222), which include only a small proportion of those killed, as an estimate of the overall death toll.

Of course, acknowledging the holocaust in Iraq might change the debate over the war. While Iraqi lives do not count for much in US politics, recognizing that a mass slaughter of this magnitude is taking place could lead to more questions about how this horrible situation came to be. Right now a convenient myth dominates the discussion: the fall of Saddam Hussein simply unleashed a civil war that was waiting to happen, and the violence is all due to Iraqis’ inherent hatred of each other.

In fact, there is considerable evidence that the occupation itself – including the strategy of the occupying forces – has played a large role in escalating the violence to holocaust proportions. It is in the nature of such an occupation, where the vast majority of the people are opposed to the occupation and according to polls believe it is right to try and kill the occupiers, to pit one ethnic group against another. This was clear when Shiite troops were sent into Sunni Fallujah in 2004; it is obvious in the nature of the death-squad government, where officials from the highest levels of the Interior Ministry to the lowest ranking police officers – all trained and supported by the US military – have carried out a violent, sectarian mission of “ethnic cleansing.” (The largest proportion of the killings in Iraq are from gunfire and executions, not from car bombs). It has become even more obvious in recent months as the United States is now arming both sides of the civil war, including Sunni militias in Anbar province as well as the Shiite government militias.

Is Washington responsible for a holocaust in Iraq? That is the question that almost everyone here wants to avoid. So the holocaust is denied.

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US steps up plans for military intervention in Pakistan by Bill Van Auken

Dandelion Salad

by Bill Van Auken
Global Research, November 22, 2007

In the midst of public statements of support for “democracy” in Pakistan and the recent visit to Islamabad by the American envoy John Negroponte, Washington is quietly preparing for a stepped-up military intervention in the crisis-ridden country.

According to the New York Times Monday, plans have been drawn up by the US military’s Special Operations Command for deploying Special Forces troops in Pakistan’s frontier regions for the purpose of training indigenous militias to combat forces aligned with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Citing unnamed military officials, the newspaper reports that the proposal would “expand the presence of military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists.”

American military officials familiar with the proposal said that it was modeled on the initiative by American occupation forces in Iraq to arm and support Sunni militias in Anbar province in a campaign against the Al Qaeda in Iraq group there.

According to the Times report, skepticism that the same strategy can be adapted to the deteriorating situation in Pakistan centers on “the question of whether such partnerships can be forged without a significant American military presence in Pakistan.” The newspaper adds that “it is unclear whether enough support can be found among the tribes.”

While the Pentagon admits to only about 50 US troops currently stationed in Pakistan as “advisors” to the Pakistani armed forces, that number would swell substantially under the proposed escalation. The Times cites a briefing prepared by the Special Operations Command that claims the beefed-up US forces would not be engaged in “conventional combat” in Pakistan. It quotes unnamed military officials as acknowledging, however, that they “might be involved in strikes against senior militant leaders, under specific conditions.”

In other words, American Special Forces units would be used to carry out targeted assassinations and attacks on strongholds of Islamist forces.

In addition to the plan to recruit and train new paramilitary militias in the frontier region, Washington has developed a $350 million program to train and equip the existing 85,000-member Frontier Corps, a uniformed force recruited from among tribes in the Pakistan border region.

There is also considerable skepticism about the prospects for this program. “The training of the Frontier Corps remains a concern for some,” the Times reports: “NATO and American soldiers in Afghanistan have often blamed the Frontier Corps for aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents mounting cross-border attacks. ‘It’s going to take years to turn them into a professional force,’ said one Western military official. ‘Is it worth it now?’”

There are growing concerns in Washington that the martial law regime imposed by the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, at the beginning of this month might unleash revolutionary convulsions that could topple the military regime, which has served as a lynchpin for American interests in the region.

The Bush administration has repeatedly demanded that Musharraf take action against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the areas bordering Afghanistan. Residents on both sides of the border are ethnic Pashtuns. The latest US National Intelligence Estimate released last July charged that Al Qaeda had reestablished “safe havens” in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Taliban-aligned forces have been able to extend their influence from the Waziristan region along the Afghan border further into Pakistan, establishing control to the north over a large portion of the Swat valley in the North West Frontier Province.

According to press reports, over 1,000 civilians, members of the security forces and Islamist fighters have been killed in fighting in the region over the past five months.

Senior Pakistani military officials announced over the weekend that the army had massed nearly 20,000 troops backed by tanks and artillery for a major offensive in the Swat district aimed at wresting control from militias loyal to Mullah Maulana Fazlullah, a pro-Taliban cleric.

Such offensives have proven ineffectual in the past, however, in no small part due to the support that the Islamists enjoy within influential sections of the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus, a relationship that was solidified during the CIA-backed war against the Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

These forces have also gained strength as a result of popular hostility to the slaughter unleashed by the US occupation in neighboring Afghanistan, combined with resentment over the poverty and social inequality produced by the economic policies of the Pakistani regime.

A clear indication of the depths of concern in Washington over the unraveling of its client regime in Pakistan came Sunday in the form of an op-ed piece published by the New York Times under the bylines of Fred Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon. Kagan, a member of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, is a longstanding supporter of the US war in Iraq and was a signatory of the Project for a New American Century letter in 2001 demanding that the Bush administration invade the country in response to 9/11. He drafted a document that served as a blueprint for the recent “surge” that sent 35,000 more US troops into Iraq.

O’Hanlon, a member of the supposedly more liberal and Democratic-oriented Brookings Institute, has also emerged as a prominent supporter of the “surge” in Iraq and last April co-authored a paper with Kagan setting out a “grand strategy” for US imperialism. This envisioned a war against Iran as well as interventions in North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The document urged “finding the resources to field a large-enough standing Army and Marine Corps to handle personnel-intensive missions.”

The Times piece, entitled “Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem,” advocates the immediate consideration of “feasible military options in Pakistan.”

It states: “The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over the outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.”

The article cautions against complacency that the Pakistani military command and the country’s ruling elite will manage to maintain stability. “Americans felt similarly about the shah’s regime in Iran until it was too late,” it warns.

The two military analysts lay out alternate “scenarios” for US interventions. The first, consisting of a full-scale intervention and occupation, would, they say, require more than a million troops, making it politically and militarily unfeasible.

Instead, they suggest a possible Special Forces operation aimed at seizing control of Pakistani warheads and nuclear materials.

They put forward an additional “broader option” that would involve the deployment of “a sizable combat force” with the mission of propping up the Pakistani military and waging war on the pro-Taliban forces in the border regions.

“So, if we got a large number of troops into the country, what would they do?” the article asks. “The most likely directive would be to help Pakistan’s military and security forces hold the country’s center—primarily the region around the capital, Islamabad, and the populous areas like Punjab Province to its south.”

It adds: “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. Beyond propping up the state, this would benefit American efforts in Afghanistan by depriving terrorists of the sanctuaries they have enjoyed in Pakistan’s tribal and frontier regions.”

Whatever limited lip service the US State Department gives to the call for ending the martial law regime imposed by Musharraf in Pakistan, the real aims and methods of the American ruling establishment—Democratic and Republican alike—emerge clearly in the Kagan-O’Hanlon article.

What is now being seriously contemplated is yet another colonial-style war in a region that stretches across the Middle East and Central and South Asia, from Iraq to Pakistan, with the objective of salvaging, with or without Musharraf, the Pakistani military—the corrupt and repressive instrument with which Washington has been aligned for decades.

The crisis in Pakistan is symptomatic of the ever-widening instability created by the two wars—in Afghanistan and Iraq—which Washington has waged to tighten the US grip over the region’s energy resources.

Now, with open and simultaneous discussions of possible military interventions in Iran and Pakistan, what is emerging is the growing threat of a global military conflagration.

Bill Van Auken is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Bill Van Auken
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

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Kucinich: Edwards’ pro-war posture in ’04 raises serious credibility questions

Dandelion Salad

by Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich for President

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

MANCHESTER, NH — Revelations in today’s New York Times regarding John Edwards’ staunch pro-war stance as a Vice Presidential candidate in 2004 “raise serious questions about the credibility of his positions on every issue being debated in this Presidential campaign,” Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said today.

“Voters have every right to ask, ‘Were you telling the truth then, John, or are you telling the truth now?’ And Senator Edwards has a responsibility to answer,” Kucinich said.

In a major story today about the relationship between Edwards and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 campaign, the Times reported, “Mr. Kerry had increasing doubts about the war. But Mr. Edwards argued that they should not renounce their votes — they had to show conviction and consistency.” Edwards was a co-sponsor of the 2002 war authorization resolution, along with Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

“Mr. Kerry yielded to his running mate,” according to the Times story, and told reporters early in the 2004 campaign that he would still have voted for the 2002 war authorization even knowing that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Six weeks later, in a speech at New York University, he reversed himself, over the objections of Edwards, the Times reported.A year later, in an opinion piece published in The Washington Post, Edwards reversed his own position, a move that some Kerry aides described as “politically expedient” in the planned run-up to the 2008 Presidential campaign.

“John Kerry was hammered by the Republicans and by many in the media for changing his positions on the war and other issues in the 2004 campaign,” Kucinich noted. “The fact of the matter is that he wanted to come out against the war in 2004, and John Edwards argued against it.”

“Now,” Kucinich continued, “we have a candidate who voted for the war and voted to fund the war, but says he against it. He voted for the Patriot Act, and now he complains about its abuses. He voted for China Trade in 2000 knowing that Americans would be hurt, and now he’s decrying the unsafe products pouring into this nation from China. He supported nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, now he’s against it.”“Will the real John Edwards please stand up?” Kucinich said.

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AOL Poll: Democratic Nomination and Republican Nomination

Sign the Pledge! Trim Bush from American History By Ted Rall

Dandelion Salad

By Ted Rall
www.TedRall.com

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column that resonated with a lot of people.

Since 2001, I noted, “We’ve lost our right to see an attorney, to confront our accusers, even to get a fair trial. Government agents have kidnapped thousands of people, most of whom have never been heard from again. Bush even signed an edict claiming the right to assassinate anyone, including you and me, based solely on his whims. Torture, the ultimate sign that civilized society has been replaced by a police state,” has been legalized.

None of the major presidential candidates are currently promising to do what it would take to restore democracy: close Gitmo and the CIA torture chambers, get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, revoke the protofascist USA-Patriot and Military Commissions Acts, obey the Geneva Conventions and turn over Bush, his torturers, his Congressional allies and his top civilian and military officials to an international war crimes tribunal for their role in the murders of more than one million Afghans and Iraqis.

The politicians are too timid to do what’s right. But we can bully them into it. Let’s begin America’s long slog toward moral and political redemption by demanding that our next president’s first act be to declare the Bush Administration null and void. Every law and act carried out between 12 noon on January 20, 2001 and January 20, 2009 should just…go…poof.

My readers are cranky, distrustful and smart. (You can read their comments at tedrall.com.) Rallblog readers are all over the place politically: old-school Democrats, Goldwater Republicans, libertarians, socialists, anarchists, even neoconservatives. But they’re speaking out as one about my call to expunge the legacy of the Bush Administration: Yes. Yes. Hell, yes!

Let’s make it happen!

Now is the time. Write (an actual letter, not email) to your favorite presidential candidate and declare that you are a single-issue voter. Swear that, if he or she agrees to sign the following Pledge, your vote is assured. If not, promise to stay home or vote for someone else.

“I, ______________, hereby solemnly pledge that my first act upon assuming the office of President shall be to sign an American Renewal Act of 2009, which shall declare all laws, regulations, executive orders, treaties and actions undertaken by the federal government during the illegitimate and unlawful administration of George W. Bush to be null, void and without effect.”

Sound crazy? So did Thomas Paine in 1775. As a practical and legal matter, however, consigning Bush to the dung heap of history makes more sense than revolting against the British.

First, the law.

George W. Bush’s January 20, 2001 inauguration was unconstitutional. This isn’t because Bush lost the popular vote. Nor is it because he lost Florida and thus the electoral vote. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the Florida recount lawsuit, Bush v. Gore, violated the U.S. Constitution. It’s a states’ rights issue. Elections fall under state law; the highest court that may resolve a legal challenge about an election is a state supreme court. The U.S. Supreme Court–a federal body–didn’t have jurisdiction in the case.

An American Renewal Act is merely a confirmation of two centuries of standard practice.

There are precedents. After France was liberated in 1944, incoming president Charles de Gaulle declared the collaborationist government of Marshall Henri-Philippe Pétain null and void. (It was a stretch. Unlike Bush, who carried out a judicial coup, Pétain came to power legally.) In any case, Pétain vanished from textbooks. Numerous laws passed between 1940 and 1944, dealing with matters like taxes and construction projects, had to be debated and passed all over again.

The Southern secession of 1860 was perfectly legal, yet laws and currency issued by the Confederate government in the South were invalidated by the victorious Union in 1865.

The main argument for erasing Bush and his nefarious deeds is a legal one: official acknowledgment that the 2000 election was stolen gets the U.S. back on the path to democracy. (Should Al Gore should be allowed to serve the term he won in 2000? I don’t know.)

There’s also an ethical principle at stake. As de Gaulle said about Pétain’s partnership with the Nazis, the Bush Administration so disgraced itself and our nation that we have to renounce it in order to restore our moral authority, to be able to face citizens of other, less despicable, countries in the eye.

Another argument is based on power. Imagine that Gore had seized power in 2000 instead. Now imagine that he had turned as rabid as Bush, that he had ruled as far to the left as Bush has to the right. Businesses would have been nationalized. Healthcare would have been socialized; doctors would be federal employees. Taxes on the rich would have soared while the poor got off scot-free. Republican protesters at the Democratic National Convention would have gotten beaten up and thrown into filthy internment facilities for days on end. Crazy Gore would have apologized for foreign policies that provoked the 9/11 attacks. To prove he meant it, he would have sent troops to overthrow the world’s most heinous dictators, all U.S. allies, in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Now imagine that, over the years, Gore’s policies had ruined the economy and mired the military in endless, losing wars. That people had turned again him to the same degree that they’ve rejected Bush. As Frank Rich writes in The New York Times, only 24 percent of Americans approve of the Bush Administration–almost as bad as the image of the U.S. in Pakistan.

You can bet that the Republicans, after they took back power, would carry out the mother of all rollbacks. Gore, the rogue president, would probably wind up in prison. There’s no reason to treat Bush and his policies any more gently.

“We are a people in clinical depression,” writes Rich. “Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon.” Anyone who reads Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA” knows the U.S. was damned far from perfect before Bush came along. But Rich’s broader point is correct. Falling short of lofty ideals is better than forgetting about them.

Demand that the major presidential candidates sign the Pledge for American Renewal. We know the woman and half-dozen men who are leading in the polls want to rule us. But will they lead?

Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.

h/t: After Downing Street

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Torturers: The Next Generation By Ted Rall

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Cornelius: Fool forever (music video)

Dandelion Salad

paimusica

Videoclip promocional de Cornelius, extraído do seu primeiro traballo discográfico”Greatest Hits”.
Videoclip promocional de Cornelius, extraído de su primer trabajo discográfico “Greatest hits”.  Added: October 15, 2007

On Myspace:

cornelius

Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul Visits Reno (video)

Dandelion Salad

unconsious767

http://www.RonPaul2008.com

From KRNV tv:

Decision 2008 takes center stage again today in Northern Nevada, as presidential candidate Ron Paul campaigns for your vote. Paul’s trip ended Tuesday afternoon with a rally at the University of Nevada, Reno, where thousands showed up to show their support.

Paul is not exactly a household name in this election but that’s not slowing him down. Before the rally, Paul backers wrote the entire constitution in chalk in front of Lawlor Events Center. Paul calls himself a proponent of limited government and individual freedom and the only Republican candidate with a strong stance against the War in Iraq.

Original story:
http://www.krnv.com/Global/story.asp?…

Olbermann: O’Reilly vs The USO + Lies and Consequences + Books and Liars + Worst (videos)

Dandelion Salad

heathr234

Bill O’Reilly vs The USO

Bill O’Reilly made tha accusation that the USO has not gotten any other celebrities to entertain the troops in the last year other than himself and Toby Keith. The USO responded to O’Reilly’s statements and asked him to correct the record. Also the Pentagon is backtracking on whether they are going to take back bonus pay from wounded soldiers. Jon Soltz from VoteVets.org weighs in.

Lies and Consequences

Keith talks to Constitutional Law Expert Johnathon Turley about the recent revelations in the Plame case and whether or not there should be additional Congressional hearings or the case reopened on the leak.

Books and Liars

Keith talks to Joe Wilson about the recent revelations to come out of the Scott McClellan book that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove all lied to the public about who outed his wife and the potential ramifications.

Worst Person

And the winner is…..T. Boone Pickens. Runners up Kellyanne Conway and John Gibson.