The NYT’s covers Ashcroft’s recusing himself from the Plame investigation and appointing Justice Dept. colleague Patrick Fitzgerald to the case.
No headlines found concerning France’s possible indictment of Dick Cheney in their ongoing probe of Halliburton.
According to Doug Ireland in Will the French Indict Cheney?:
Naomi Klein attended “ReBuilding Iraq 2, a gathering of 400 businesspeople itching to get a piece of the Iraqi reconstruction action.”
Her write-up is titled Risky Business. Klein reports that insurance companies are taking a pass on what is termed “political risk” insurance, Paul Bremer’s speciality before taking on his new assignment.
In response, the Bush administration has set-up something called Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to help their friends overcome this snag in the reconstruction process:
Arms And The Man gives you other angles to consider if you’ve read Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.’s article in the NYT and are sorry you ever doubted the maligned, misunderstood Halliburton.
Howard Dean is such a baby.
Maybe he should ask Barbara Bush for her help instead.
Is this a threat?
Here is information on who opposed the war when.
Continue reading ‘How conventional’
Judith Miller rings the anthrax alarm here. Before Bioport and others receive the $5.6 billion she claims is urgently needed to encourage the development of new vaccines, shouldn’t we address the mounting criticisms the military is stockpiling, and its unwillingness to put a priority on the health of its soldiers as opposed to the corporations military programs profit?
Sign On San Diego has an article about Anthony Fusco, the Camp Pendleton Marine who was demoted for refusing to be vaccinated for anthrax. In order to avoid a bad conduct charge, Fusco eventually submitted to the vaccination. Now, in light of the federal ruling that mandatory vaccination is illegal, he wants an apology and a settlement process started.
In Doctoring Orders, John Richardson, a veteran fighter pilot of the Gulf War, former policy analyst for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and military fellow at Harvard University, and presently a consultant to the National Gulf War Resource Center, details his ongoing fight with what he calls the “deep, systemic problems” with “the “civilian control”of military medicine” and emphasises the case of Army Specialist Rachel Lacy who received 5 shots in one day and later died.
And from my e-mail:
Please read the following letter from Renee Thurlow and then please call Senator Specter’s WA DC office at (202) 224-4254 and tell his Judiciary Committee that you would like him to Sponsor the VERPA Act 2003 Bill, then call your State Representatives (www.congress.org) and tell them the same thing.
Please forward this to all of your Family and Friends too!
Thank you.
Barb Cragnotti
VERPA Legislative Coordinator
www.verpa.org
Continue reading ‘The military is bad for your health’
HAARP and its critics are not entirely news to me. I read the occasional articles as they appear in my internet travels but my curiosity has never been piqued enough to go where the alarmists’ finger-pointing have suggested.
I’ve spent the better part of the past few days attempting to understand the controversy in order to form an opinion. I’ve been under and overwhelmed by the volume of material out there, unconvinced by some ‘facts’, lacking a physics and other degrees necessary to understand the rest. So my thumb and forefinger remain pensively poised on the brim of my hat unwilling to toss it into the conspiracists’ ring and this is what I’ve gathered while peering from beneath its cynical ‘show me the money’ tilt.
Ignoring the Obvious
The article “Earthquakes: Natural or Man-Made?“, written by Jason Jeffrey and appearing in New Dawn No. 57, November-December 1999, is linked often by those who believe HAARP has “applications ranging from “Star Wars” missile defense schemes to weather modification plots and perhaps even mind control experiments.”
Jeffrey cites the 1976 earthquake that devastated China as a probable man-made one, yet he doesn’t address ‘China’s Campaign to Predict Quakes‘ published September 13, 1996. The “vast, 30-year effort to monitor the earthquakes that regularly shake China” was credited with predicting the quake. Thanks to those who utilised the study and implemented preparedness efforts, all lives except one heart attack victim were spared in Qinglong County, while the disaster claimed 240,000 [ official toll?] in Tangshan, a region 115 km away that failed to take the same precautions.
When the earthquake hit, Qinglong County was ready. Days before a magnitude 7.8 leveled the neighboring big city of Tangshan in northeastern China, county officials had decided to act on anomalous data collected by the State Seismological Bureau (SSB) that pointed to a major earthquake in the region during the latter half of July 1976. They set up a 24-hour command post, beefed up monitoring, strengthened safety measures at schools and other public places, and flooded the community with information about what to do before, during and after an earthquake. Many villages ordered residents out of their home and into makeshift sheds or fields.
Tom Bearden’s name appears often when researching HAARP. When Jeffrey refers to the ‘Tesla Effect’ he cites its mention in an unnamed article in the January 1978 edition of Bearden’s magazine ‘Specula’. That article apparently supported the conclusions issued during that same month and year by Andrija Puharich, MD, LL.D., in a detailed research paper titled, Global Magnetic Warfare A Laymans View of Certain Artificially Induced Unusual Effects on the Planet Earth During 1976 and 1977.
I have no link for that very popular paper. One reason is the twenty or so sites that point to it don’t seem to have one either. And I have no idea why Jeffrey seems convinced that “earthquake lights caused by piezoelectric phenomena“, an occurrence he himself writes has been recorded since ancient times, should now be considered the ‘Tesla Effect’.
Wikipedia is rather snarky and entirely dismissive of HAARP detractors: [HAARP's] “towers are similar in appearance to the abortive Wardenclyffe Tower of Nikola Tesla, another favourite topic of the conspiracy theories, one that is particularily interesting considering they don’t look even remotely like the Wardenclyffe Tower.”
I don’t have the education to determine if men like Beardon interpret Nikola Tesla‘s work and possible applications of it in a worthwhile manner. Nor do I have the kind of security clearance necessary to research the extent the U.S. and other govt.’s have advanced his discoveries.
I doubt Wikipedia or its contributors do either. But while I’m of the opinion Wikipedians exert an underserved resoluteness in their support of HAARP’s altruistic trustworthiness, that same insincerity befalls those who throw out theories like this in their efforts to alarm others of it: HAARP was ‘turned on‘ December 21 and may have intentionally caused the Iran earthquake?
Sifting Through Some Facts
The Iran earthquake and wondering what role bombing campaigns and nuclear testing may have played in its occurrence is the thought that led me to begin this post so many days ago.
I’m going to send this much up now and finish up another time.
Lines between the have and have-nots in America are rarely drawn as vividly or so unfairly than those chalked up in its criminal justice system. Get with the program, whatever life hands you, or become a number the system draws upon when budgets are crunched.
Too many Americans habitually reserve a jaded reverence for renters at the top of the heap; smugly extract stench tolls from those caught beneath its transient weight.
Al Tompkins links to this AP report describing what some have-nots in Arkansas are looking forward to this Christmas.
‘Special favours’ include two apples, two oranges, and a $5 dollar bill; a ‘traditional’ holiday meal and the day off for most from work duties. These ‘humane’ gestures are paid for with fees collected from telephone calls and confiscated monies.
Visits from loved ones and their gifts are taboo. Carolers from religious groups in the community are welcomed.
If small towns in Arkansas are a reflection of the rural communities I know and love at least a few of those yuletide singers will have histories that rival some of the inmates they entertain. It wasn’t faith in God that kept them from sharing a prisoner’s fate. More than likely it was an exchange of words and money with the Asst. DA over drinks at the local tavern.
Hallelujah.
Florida’s Governor Jeb Bush has dedicated the country’s first faith-based prison in a ceremony attended by nearly 800 inmates of 26 faiths.
Lawtey Correctional Institution:
It’s ironic that affirmative action of this sort is championed so often by the right. It’s obscene that a patriarch with Jeb Bush’s familial history would be the one to lord over its inception.
I don’t suggest that faith can’t be a sustaining comfort to those who are experiencing rough times.
But prayer alone won’t conjure the jobs that might keep some from committing crimes, or produce the necessities that enable us to sustain employment, like affordable housing, reliable transportation, and child care.
It won’t purchase a stay in expensive rehabilitation facilities or even more importantly, a favourable ruling from the local judge so we might have that option.
And it won’t convince the decision makers in Arkansas that absent a visit from loved ones that would compromise their employees’ holiday season, a concert that includes songs by John Prine would be much more humane than yet another chorus of ‘Away In A Manger’ imparted by the local hypocrites.
It was Christmas in prison
and the food was real good
we had turkey and pistols
carved out of wood
and I dream of her always
even when I don’t dream
her name’s on my tongue
and her blood’s in my stream.
Chorus:
Wait awhile eternity
old mother nature’s got nothing on me
come to me
run to me
come to me, now
we’re rolling
my sweetheart
we’re flowing
by God!
She reminds me of a chess game
with someone I admire
or a picnic in the rain
after a prairie fire
her heart is as big
as this whole goddamn jail
and she’s sweeter than saccharine
at a drug store sale.
Chorus:
The search light in the big yard
swings round with the gun
and spotlights the snowflakes
like the dust in the sun
it’s Christmas in prison
there’ll be music tonight
I’ll probably get homesick
I love you. Goodnight.
Chorus:
Pataki Pardons Lenny Bruce Posthumously
“You know there’s no crooked politicians. There’s never a lie because there is never any truth…”
- Lenny Bruce (1925 – 1966)
In the speech Jan. 28, President Bush cited British intelligence in asserting that Hussein had tried to buy uranium from an unnamed country in Africa. The White House later said the claim should not have been made, after reports that the intelligence community expressed doubts it was true. After reviewing the matter for several months, the intelligence board — chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft — has determined that there was “no deliberate effort to fabricate” a story, the source said. Instead, the source said, the board believes the White House was so anxious “to grab onto something affirmative” about Hussein’s nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable.
I see. So I wasn’t lying to my parents when I told them that party I wanted to go to was really just a little get-together with my study group.
I was merely highlighting the affirmative.
When will the Bush administration affirm the identity of the source behind Valerie Plame’s outing?
Has Rumsfeld opened the door and let in the draft?
TIME reports Donald Rumsfeld is commissioning studies to determine if there is a need for a “larger army” and will recommend “with alacrity” an expansion should the findings fall in favour of it. He “remains firmly opposed to a draft.” Where will these troops come from if volunteers fail to fill the ‘void’?
Accessing another BuzzFlash link I find that George signed a bill on Saturday expanding FBI powers.
Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich co-sponsored legislation in an attempt to prevent this extension of the Patriot Act.
Matthew Bargainer once posted on AntiWar Blog that a Kucinich/Paul ticket in 2004 was a ‘half-baked, but surprisingly tasty‘ idea.
I suggest it’s an idea that should be studied quickly in sincerity.
I suppose the antiwar movement can continue to focus its energies on plans for protest marches commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion and the nomination of George to the 2004 Republican ticket. But what will it accomplish in the long-run?
A catalyst needs to be introduced at the very least to gauge the attention span of the roughly 60% of Americans who aren’t stimulated enough by the usual suspects to get off their duffs and participate in the election process.
What about an Independent ticket? Paul/Kucinich? Kucinich/Paul?
For no other reason than to finally determine where the real majority of Americans stand on these issues, don’t we need to pursue this?
“Filmmaker Robert Greenwald is urging rampant, unauthorized copying of his documentary criticizing the Bush administration’s reasons for invading Iraq.”
Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War
You’ve read about Al Hurra, “The Free One“, a Virginia based news outlet being hurriedly constructed by the US govt. with plans for outlets in Iraq to be funded with $40 million from the recently passed $87 billion?
Here you can read why past attempts to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of Arabs with propaganda have failed.
Here you can read reactions to yet another Bush administration initiative in their ongoing efforts to control the news coming out of Iraq.
Carol Watson’s posting on AntiWar Blog, commenting on a Juan Cole entry.
Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go.
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