Democracy and free press are being devoured by what Cornell West calls "free market fundamentalism," "aggressive militarism" and "escalating authoritarianism." Who cares? Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) cares. George Soros cares. Michael Moore cares. Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership is pushing for a DNC chairman who will make "pro-life" voters feel more comfortable...Please wake up, the Constitution is on fire...These debates about whether the Democratic Party should move to the right or the left are RIDICULOUS. The electoral system has been co-opted and the mainstream news media is wholly complicit...The Democratic Party will never take the
White House, the Senate or the House again unless we fight and win on election reform and media reform. Win these battles and everything else will fix itself...The only other issues that matter now are
global warming (i.e., renewable energy resources), terrorism (read Scheuer's Imperial Hubris and Clarke's Against All Enemies to understand), and fiscal responsibility (i.e. debt reduction, strengthening the dollar and refusing to break what is not broken about social security)...
Remember, 2+2=4.
Here are updates on The Theft of the 2004 Election and
several other ways in which the Bush abomination is
trashing the national security, economic security and
environmental security of the U.S. and by extension
global security...Of course, these issues are being
wholly ignored or worse yet distorted by the US
regimestream news media, full partners in a triad of
special interest (i.e., energy, weapons, media,
pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) with the Bush Cabal
and its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party...
Theft of 2004 Election
Bob Fertik, www.democrats.com: Widespread voter outrage over stolen elections is spreading. Even the NY Times - which co-conspired with the Bush campaign in Stolen Election 2000 and has largely ignored Stolen Election 2004 - says we must Count Every Vote.
Incredibly, there is also a protest movement among Presidential Electors. Normally Electors are like cicadas: they come out of the ground every 4 years, perform a single act, and go back into the ground. But not this time!
Electors across US break traditional pro forma ritual to use electoral college to protest election...
The movement includes Electors from Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, and California.
The Electors from Massachusetts - led by Tom Barbera - unanimously adopted a resolution condemning election fraud...We call on the Congress of the United States and most especially our own honorable representatives, the members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation to
Act to commit Congress to investigate all voting complaints that might have any validity that they receive.
Act to commit Congress to remedy any voting rights violations or electoral fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts.
File in Congress and commit their resources to passage of systematic remedies.
In Ohio, recount problems continue. In Lima, Green Party witnesses say a recount of presidential votes should not be allowed to continue today because an initial recount on Thursday did not follow Ohio law - especially in the non-random selection of test precincts to meet the 3% manual count requirement..
Who actually won Oklahoma? Mark Faulk would really like to know.
Tulsa World on Oklahoma Vote Totals: We Have No Idea
by Mark Faulk
Nov 30, 2004
Why then did the Tulsa World report that Kerry was leading in 57 counties with 70% of the vote counted, and why then did Kerry actually lose in every one of those counties when the final vote was tallied? Because when the final votes were tallied, Kerry actually LOST votes in all 57 counties, 37,9982 to be exact, while Bush GAINED an incredible 393,825 votes in the same counties. That's right, as the Oklahoma Independent Media Center put it, "Voting Machines Count Backwards in Okla". http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=344
Faulk did what journalists should do - he investigated by calling the people responsible for reporting election results, including Tulsa World Executive Editor Joe Worley, who eventually returned Faulk's call.
"Actually, we've spent a good part of our day looking into that very issue. We subscribe to the AP wire service, and that's where those numbers usually come from, where they're supposed to come from. However, as of right now, we have no idea where we got our numbers from. When we do find out, we'll make a statement in the Tulsa World newspaper, and I'll answer any other questions at that time."
Wait a second here.....let me get this straight. The Tulsa World printed the election totals from what many considered the most important Presidential election of the last forty years, and they don't know where those numbers come from? They had Kerry leading in 57 counties with numbers that actually went in reverse from their published figures, and after two days of looking, they still can't figure out who gave them those numbers?
In the end, the "voting scandal" in Oklahoma might turn out to be nothing, but that's not the real issue here. The real issue is the pattern of deceit, confusion, and misinformation that this election has spawned, not just in Oklahoma, but nationwide. Unless we demand a full and thorough accounting of all the votes that have been miscounted, lost, stolen, or simply misplaced, we can never be certain whether our most important right as an American, our right to vote, is still intact. In Oklahoma, we still have our paper ballots, and they don't have "hanging chads". We can, and should, demand a full recount. Unfortunately, many states don't have that luxury, if we allow our entire voting system to be taken over by an electronic voting system controlled by a few questionable companies, our vote won't matter, and our elections will become nothing more than another commodity to be bought and sold by those in power.
James Heddle agrees, in an essay called "Against the House" published by Ray Beckerman.
A political system more crooked than a Las Vegas casino cannot qualify as a "democracy," much less as the "leader of the free world." And those who continue to play in it look to me like conscious or unconscious colluders, or just plain chumps. Until you accurately diagnose and acknowledge the disease, you cannot even begin to cure it...
My simple point is this - until a majority of progressive activists and intellectual opinion-makers drop the delusions and cop to the fact that we are playing in a game intentionally and adroitly rigged against us, we will not win, we will not govern, we will not be prepared to govern, because we will not deserve to govern. Good losers -- like John "Quick Concession" Kerry and the "professional losers" of the DNC -- will predictably go on losing. Just like the chain-smoking, gin-sipping, polyester-clad grandma pumping endless quarters into the slot machine.
Greg Palast, www.gregpalast.com: I'd just stepped out of my black helicopter to read that one of my favorite journalists, David Corn, had attacked my analysis of the vote in Ohio as the stuff of "grassy knoll conspiracy theorists." ("A Stolen Election," The Nation, November 29 issue.)
Oh, my! And all because I wrote that the uncounted ballots in Ohio -- more than a quarter million designated "spoiled" or "provisional" -- undoubtedly contain enough votes to overturn George Bush's "victory" margin of 136,000.
Corn says, "Palast wrongly assumes that an overwhelming majority of these ballots contain votes for Kerry." Now why would I think such a thing? Maybe because the precinct-by-precinct analysis of "spoiled" votes (those which machines can't count) by Professor Mark Salling of Cleveland State University, the unchallengeable expert on Ohio voting demographics, concludes that "spoiled" punch cards in Ohio cities come "overwhelmingly" from African-American neighborhoods.
Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman,
Columbus Free Press: The epic legal battle over Ohio's
presidential vote count is back in the state Supreme
Court, with an election challenge claiming George W.
Bush was wrongly declared the winner on Nov. 2 and
seeking a court-ordered reversal of that victory.
Meanwhile, efforts to recount Ohio's vote may have
been fatally tainted by the Republican Party, raising
questions of what the GOP has to hide, and prompting
demands for criminal prosecution.
New affidavits point to possible criminal activity by
top Ohio election officials, raising yet more
questions about the 2004 vote. Rhonda J. Frazier, a
former employee of the Ohio Secretary of State's
office, has confirmed in an affidavit taken by Cynthia
Butler, working with freepress.org, that the Office
had secret slush funds…
Shelby County Board of Elections, obtained through the
Freedom of Information Act, admitted that data
critical to a meaningful recount had been discarded,
possibly illegally. Sworn testimony from election
observers in Greene County indicated that ballots had
been left loose on tables in an unlocked, unguarded
building, open to manipulation and theft, prior to a
recount. And in Lucas County and Hocking County, it
was revealed that technicians from the Diebold and
Triad companies had inexplicably taken control of
voting machines and dismantled them, rendering
verifiable recounts impossible.
On Wednesday, December 15, U.S. Representative John
Conyers posted an affidavit from Douglas W. Jones, a
professor of computer science and a voting technology
consultant. In Professor Jones' opinion, the bizarre
behavior by the Triad Company, which provides computer
software and voting machines in 41 of Ohio's 88
counties, may have tainted the entire recount effort.
Rebecca Cook, Associated Press: A judge Friday
granted a state Republican Party request to block the
counting of hundreds of recently discovered King
County ballots in the governor's race, which the GOP's
candidate is winning by just a few dozen votes.
Even if the election workers wrongly rejected the
ballots - 150 of which were discovered Friday - it is
too late for King County to reconsider them now,
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Arend
said.
The issue of the ballots could prove pivotal: With
all but King County finished with a hand recount,
Republican Dino Rossi was leading Democrat Christine
Gregoire by 50 votes.
From reading state law and state Supreme Court
decisions, "it is clear to me that it is not
appropriate to go back and revisit decisions on
whether ballots should or should not be counted,"
Arend said.
Democrats appealed to the state Supreme Court, and
King County Elections Director Dean Logan said the
county also planned to appeal.
"These are legitimate voters who cast legitimate
ballots," he said. "It's just a travesty if we do not
include these ballots."
Bush Abomination’s #1 Failure: National Security
Ray McGovern, www.truthout.org: Hu Jintao, China's
powerful president, is first-page
material-particularly when he takes an unprecedented
step in putting flesh on China's effort to develop
what Hu calls a "strategic collaborative relationship"
with Russia. And what could be more eye-catching than
agreeing to stage the first-ever joint military
exercise next year, a commitment announced on Monday
during Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's visit
to Beijing.
Although the Associated Press and Reuters promptly
disseminated this major story, the Washington Post
ignored it, and the New York Times sandwiched it into
page A-6 on Tuesday, where it was boiled down to a
two-sentence gist at the end of a survey article,
"World Briefing."
According to AP, quoting the official China News
Service, the joint military exercises will be held in
China. Russian forces in China for an exercise! Not
too many years ago, one would have been laughed to
scorn at the very suggestion, given the historical
enmity between the two countries.
>From my perspective as an intelligence analyst
responsible for reporting on Sino-Soviet relations
during the sixties and early seventies, I believe the
rapprochement between Russia and China-now extending
to military cooperation-is among the most important
sea changes on the geopolitical scene in the past
half-century. The fact that it has happened
incrementally, I suppose, tends to obscure its
strategic significance. And with Condoleezza Rice now
in the role that Henry Kissinger once played so
deftly, it seems altogether likely that the dangers
inherent in the new equation will escape notice and
the opportunities will be squandered.
Gérard Davet, Le Monde: Iraq is not yet a jihad
country, but the networks for channeling "foreign
volunteers" are already in place. According to the
first figures communicated by the CIA to western
intelligence agencies, only 40 foreign individuals
were counted among the 2,000 prisoners arrested in
Falluja during the November fighting, which killed
2,200 on the Iraqi side…
More and more, candidates for martyrdom who come
from radical internationalist cells, then integrate
networks which become operational. These networks
mount suicide attacks, like those against the UN in
Baghdad in August 2003, or against Italian forces in
Nassyria, in November 2003. "Their operation rests on
the principle of 'cascading networks,'" summarizes a
specialist in the area. "It is based above all on
personal relationships between the people who drive
these networks. Their overarching objective is to
obtain great flexibility." Police operations do
nothing about them; these networks remain active, all
the more so as they are put in place by real logistics
professionals, educated by their experiences in
Chechen or Afghan networks. Consequently, intelligence
services target the names, Abderrazak Madjoub, an
Algerian implicated in European networks, questioned
in Germany in November 2003, and Abu Hammam, alias
"Mohammed Ali", arrested by British Special Forces
October 10, 2004, thanks partly to information
communicated by the DGSE.
The number of these volunteers remains difficult to
evaluate. According to the secret services, they would
be between 1,000 and 2,000, mostly from Jordan, Syria,
Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, but also from Kuwait. Several
places appear to be strategic in the eyes of terrorism
specialists. First of all, Lebanon, where the
Palestinian refugee camp Ain El-Helouai would serve as
a rear base for certain networks channeling volunteers
towards Iraq under the aegis of two officials: the
Yemeni Ibn Al-Shahid Al-Yemeni, arrested October 16,
2003 by the Lebanese, and the Syrian Fahd Ajami
Akkach. In north Lebanon, the Salafist leader Dai
Al-Islam Chabal would play the role of recruiter.
Bush Abomination #2 Failure: Economic Security
PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times: Privatizers who laud the
Chilean system never mention that it has yet to
deliver on its promise to reduce government spending.
More than 20 years after the system was created, the
government is still pouring in money. Why? Because, as
a Federal Reserve study puts it, the Chilean
government must "provide subsidies for workers failing
to accumulate enough capital to provide a minimum
pension." In other words, privatization would have
condemned many retirees to dire poverty, and the
government stepped back in to save them.
The same thing is happening in Britain. Its Pensions
Commission warns that those who think Mrs. Thatcher's
privatization solved the pension problem are living in
a "fool's paradise." A lot of additional government
spending will be required to avoid the return of
widespread poverty among the elderly - a problem that
Britain, like the U.S., thought it had solved.
Britain's experience is directly relevant to the Bush
administration's plans. If current hints are an
indication, the final plan will probably claim to save
money in the future by reducing guaranteed Social
Security benefits. These savings will be an illusion:
20 years from now, an American version of Britain's
commission will warn that big additional government
spending is needed to avert a looming surge in poverty
among retirees.
So the Bush administration wants to scrap a retirement
system that works, and can be made financially sound
for generations to come with modest reforms. Instead,
it wants to buy into failure, emulating systems that,
when tried elsewhere, have neither saved money nor
protected the elderly from poverty.
Bush Abomination’s #3 Failure: Environmental Security
Nigel Purvis, International Herald Tribune: After
seven years in critical condition, the Kyoto global
warming treaty has a new lease on life, thanks to its
recent ratification by Russia. Supporters and skeptics
alike agree that the treaty will not solve the climate
problem. Its environmental limits are meager, expire
in 2012 and do not apply to developing nations, where
global warming emissions are growing most rapidly.
Kyoto's true importance rests in what it tells us
about America's changing relationship with the world
and the future of climate change diplomacy.
Kyoto demonstrates that America's allies are
increasingly shaping the international agenda without
it. When the Bush administration rejected Kyoto in
2001, it assumed that other nations would follow suit,
but more than 120 nations have ratified it….
Kyoto also illustrates the fact that the international
community questions more than ever America's moral
authority and its commitment to universal values,
including environmental stewardship. Anti-Americanism
is already on the rise in "old Europe" because of
Bush's policies on Iraq. U.S. resistance to action on
global warming only solidifies America's image abroad
as a nation of parochial, selfish and wasteful SUV
drivers. Although America remains the brightest beacon
of freedom, it must treat seriously the perception
abroad that its light has dimmed…
Given Bush's unalterable opposition to the treaty,
the United States is unlikely to rejoin international
talks anytime soon. That matters less, however, than
whether the United States begins to take seriously its
responsibility to lead the world through strong new
domestic climate policies. Leaving aside the
environmental rationale for Kyoto, the treaty's entry
into force is a warning of the political and economic
risks to the United States of continued inaction.
Complicity of the Corporatist News Media
Danny Schechter, Mediachannel.org: The central
question is: how did an institution with a brave
history of safeguarding democracy become a threat to
its survival?
It has not been a good year for journalists and
journalism. 54 reporters died answering the call of
duty, the highest death toll in a decade according to
the Committee to Protect Journalists…
The big fear, as journalists die, is that journalism
itself may soon follow. Some years back, I read a book
about the emergence of the "post journalism era"
cataloging the abandonment of a commitment to real
news in the news business. It spoke of how packaging
and "mechanics" and compression and infotainment
defines the new uber-merged corporate media order.
At the time, that indictment seemed alarmist, and
premature.
Not any more.
The Committee for Excellence in Journalism's State of
the Media Report itemizes the institutional shifts
that dwarf all the flash media scandals that ripple
through the news -- from Dan Rather's apparent demise
to the mea culpas of mainstream media regarding their
jingoistic war coverage, from the Sinclair
Broadcasting fiasco to the continued affront to
journalism represented by the Fox News Channel.
The Committee's State of the Media report showed a
system that is devolving and losing credibility. Here
were a few of the main findings:
1. A growing number of news outlets are chasing
relatively static or even shrinking audiences for
news. That audience decline, in turn, is putting
pressures on revenues and profits, which leads to a
cascade of other implications. The only sectors seeing
general audience growth today are online, ethnic and
alternative media.
2. Much of the new investment in journalism today is
in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most
sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom.
While there are exceptions, in general journalists
face real pressures trying to maintain quality.
3. In the 24-hour cable and online news format, there
is a tendency toward a jumbled, chaotic, repetitive
and partial quality in some reports, without much
synthesis or even the ordering of the information.
4. Journalistic standards now vary even inside a
single news organization. Companies are trying to
reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience
for news not in one place, but across different
programs, products and platforms. To do so, some are
varying their news agenda, their rules on separating
advertising from news and even their ethical
standards.
www.mediamatters.org: CNN co-host Tucker Carlson and
The Washington Post bolstered the Bush
administration's crisis rhetoric on Social Security by
providing misleading accounts of the federal program's
"solvency."
On the December 16 edition of CNN's Crossfire, Carlson
purported to "correct" former Clinton national
economic adviser Gene Sperling's statement that
"Social Security does not become insolvent until
2042." Carlson responded: "In 2018, just to correct
you ... that's, again, only 14 years. Benefits will
overtake revenues."
In a December 17 article in The Washington Post, after
noting that President Bush "said Social Security will
be paying out more than it collects" by 2018, staff
writer Peter Baker reported that congressional
Democrats are "[c]iting different accounting than the
president's" to "argue" that under the current system
Social Security will "still be solvent for nearly 50
years."
In fact, Sperling is correct in noting that Social
Security is projected to remain solvent until 2042,
according to the same authoritative U.S. government
report upon which Carlson relied: the 2004 annual
report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age
and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust
Funds (OASDI). 2042 is the year that the Social
Security trust fund is projected to run out; the year
Carlson cited, 2018, represents the time when the
program's payouts to retirees are projected to exceed
tax revenue…
The Post's Baker, on the other hand, misleadingly
suggested that one's view of when Social Security
becomes insolvent is a matter of partisan opinion. It
is not…
John P. O’Neill Wall of Heroes
Amy Goodman interviews Roy Krieger, DemocracyNow!: AMY
GOODMAN: Roy Krieger is with us. He’s a D.C.-based
lawyer representing the undercover CIA operative who’s
filing the lawsuit…Well, can you explain exactly what
happened?
ROY KRIEGER: Well, actually, I'm very limited in what
I can say because, as you can see, and as you said
from the -- rather on the complaint, it is heavily
redacted. I can only comment on the unclassified or
un-redacted portions of the complaint. The CIA has
pulled down the veil of secrecy on this case and
classified the enormous amount of information that in
my experience in the past seven years of dealing with
the CIA, I have never filed a lawsuit in which they
have redacted this much of the material out of it.
They took out over 400 words from a 2,400-word
document. I'm quite limited in what I can say. I
cannot even confirm or deny that we're talking about
Iraq or any other country other than to say that it
involves weapons of mass destruction in the Near East
during the pre-war period. And our client, as you
commented was retaliated against after he refused a
request from his supervisors in the
counter-proliferation division on several different
occasions to falsify or misstate intelligence that had
been collected by him.
Randy Kraft, Morning Call, www.mcall.com: ''Being
against the war is the only way to be for the
troops,'' said Hoffman. ''We're doing them no good by
sending them over there.''
The 25-year-old Marine veteran is a co-founder of Iraq
Veterans Against the War, a 5-month-old organization
that claims 150 members, including some on active duty
in Iraq. It wants the immediate withdrawal of all
occupation forces from Iraq, ''real'' reconstruction
aid for that country and properly funded and
administered veterans' benefits.
''I need to make sure this stops,'' he said. ''The
honest truth needs to be told in order for this war to
end. We've got to get these guys home now before
another guy is killed on either side.
''This war would be over right now if people really
understood the horror of it.''
Like Vietnam, said Hoffman, the only way to end the
war will be for millions of Americans to get out on
the streets every week and demand that it end…
Jim Hogue, Baltimore Chronicle: The connections of
the Bush administration to the cover-up of the 9/11
attacks provide the material for the most important
topic that our media could address. But it doesn't.
Why?
It is fair to say that the Bush administration,
through the efforts of Attorney General John Ashcroft,
has confirmed its complicity in the 9/11/01 attacks.
In his legal appeal to Judge Reggie Walton to silence
FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, Ashcroft has
inadvertently, through the very language of the
appeal, provided eloquent proof of treason and
misprision of treason within the highest levels of
government.
Their refusal to release the report of the Inspector
General, and their original gag order to “block
discovery in a lawsuit of any information that, if
disclosed, would adversely affect national security”
raises obvious questions (still unasked by the
mainstream and progressive media) as to WHO is being
protected. The gag order itself provides the answer to
another obvious question (still unasked by the
mainstream and progressive media) as to WHY the gag
order was sought.
In Ms. Edmonds' unimpeachable testimony to the Senate
Judiciary Committee almost three years ago, she named
countries and people who had contributed to the
attacks of 9/11. At the time, the FBI had evidence
from Colleen Rowley, The Phoenix memo, and other FBI
translators. Twenty-five more whistleblowers have
joined them. Who would be damaged by the release of
the reports? Who is being protected?
Nearly three years ago, Sibel Edmonds provided
unimpeachable testimony to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. Why is she still under a gag order? Who's
being protected?
Illegitimate, Incompetent, Corrupt
Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian: Though it is early days
since Bush's re-election, the way in which he will
handle the difficulties of imperial management which
so vex him is already apparent.
No sooner was the election over than the
administration began the finger-pointing at the UN
secretary general, Kofi Annan, who had called the
invasion of Iraq "illegal". News was leaked that his
son had been a consultant to a company involved with
the UN oil-for-food programme, though Annan said he
knew nothing about it. The outgoing US ambassador to
the UN, John Danforth, was sent out to declare that
Annan's resignation was a live issue.
The relevant facts about the oil for food programme
were pushed to one side. James Dobbins, the former US
ambassador to Afghanistan, wrote in the Washington
Post: "First, no American funds were stolen. Second,
no UN funds were stolen. Third, the oil-for-food
programme achieved its two objectives: providing food
to the Iraqi people and preventing Saddam Hussein from
rebuilding his military threat to the region."
Then the Post published a story that the US was
wire-tapping Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of
the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, in an
operation to discover that he was secretly aiding Iran
in hiding its nuclear weapons programme. In fact,
ElBaradei was working with the Europeans in
negotiating a resolution with the Iranians. It was
this diplomacy that neoconservatives were seeking to
discredit. Compliance with internationally monitored
nuclear development of Iran isn't the objective of the
neocons; they want regime change, Iraqredux.
The techniques of the permanent campaign, especially
negative attacks, recently applied in the re-election
contest, are being transferred seamlessly and
shamelessly to international relations…
On Wednesday Bush gave honours for failure, with his
bestowal of the presidential medal of freedom on Tommy
Franks, the former CentCom commander, who allowed
Osama bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora; on George
Tenet, former CIA director, who jumped on the
bandwagon for the Iraq war, informing Bush that the
WMD claims were "a slam dunk"; and on L Paul Bremer,
former chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority,
who disbanded the Iraqi army, among other blunders.
Failure will be celebrated as success in the second
term.
The farcical unravelling of the nomination of former
New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik as
secretary of homeland security further illuminated the
administration's methods. The fact that Kerik
neglected to pay taxes on a nanny who was an illegal
immigrant was a convenient alibi. Beyond his
extramarital affairs, secret marriage and love nests,
he appears also to be married to the mob - on the take
from the Gambino crime family. Yet Bush had been
attracted to Kerik's Rambo-like aggression; the White
House vetting process seems to be as credulous as the
Mickey Mouse Club; and the impulse to cover up
instant.
BBC: Cuba has put up photos of abused Iraqi prisoners
in front of the US interests section in Havana after
the US displayed Christmas decorations there. The
Cuban display includes images of Iraqis at the Abu
Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and the word "fascists".
Restore the Vote in America! Restore a Free
Independent News Media in America! Restore the
Republic!
Theft of 2004 Election
http://blog.democrats.com/node/2046
Stolen Election 2004: Monday Update
by Bob Fertik on 12/20/2004 11:29am. - revised 12/20/2004 2:16pm
Widespread voter outrage over stolen elections is spreading. Even the NY Times - which co-conspired with the Bush campaign in Stolen Election 2000 and has largely ignored Stolen Election 2004 - says we must Count Every Vote.
Incredibly, there is also a protest movement among Presidential Electors. Normally Electors are like cicadas: they come out of the ground every 4 years, perform a single act, and go back into the ground. But not this time!
Electors across US break traditional pro forma ritual to use electoral college to protest election
Across the US electors in at least five states, for the first time in history, turned the heavily scripted and ritualized electoral college proceedings into a forum for political action. Frustrated by the relative inattention to wide spread real voting violations now numbering in the tens of thousands, Electors called for congressional investigation and legislative action.
The movement includes Electors from Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, and California.
The Electors from Massachusetts - led by Tom Barbera - unanimously adopted a resolution condemning election fraud.
We believe that as electors we have a unique opportunity and obligation to insure that justice does not again become so delayed as to be denied. We call on the Congress of the United States and most especially our own honorable representatives, the members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation to
Act to commit Congress to investigate all voting complaints that might have any validity that they receive.
Act to commit Congress to remedy any voting rights violations or electoral fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts.
File in Congress and commit their resources to passage of systematic remedies.
In Ohio, recount problems continue. In Lima, Green Party witnesses say a recount of presidential votes should not be allowed to continue today because an initial recount on Thursday did not follow Ohio law - especially in the non-random selection of test precincts to meet the 3% manual count requirement.
[Allen County elections director Keith] Cunningham, like most other elections directors in the state, selected which precincts to count for the initial 3 percent. Ohio law says the precincts should be picked randomly but doesn't further define the process.
What part of "random" does Cunningham not understand? Cunningham also denied access to poll books - the sign-in sheets that prove who actually voted - claiming insufficient staff. But other counties had no problems complying with the law.
Some counties, such as Athens County, drew precincts from a jar and made poll books available the day of the recount of 3 percent, Daley said.
Triad's machine tampering in Hocking County continues to make waves, including a mention in today's NY Times editorial. According to Wired's Kim Zetter in Ohio Recount Stirs Trouble, Triad president Brett Rapp says Triad technician Michael Barbian did not put a "patch" on the computer, but deputy director of elections Sherole Eaton insists that's exactly the word he used.
"I wouldn't just come up with that. I don't use that term or know what it means," she said. She added that Barbian used the same word with the 70-year-old chair of Hocking County's elections board, who she said also wouldn't have come up with the term on his own.
Unfortunately Zetter completely ignores the non-computer element of Barbian's fraud - his conspiracy to conduct a fraudulent recount by advising Eaton and the other election officials to post a "cheat sheet" with the original tallies and ignore a different recount result. Urge Kim Zetter to investigate the full story.
Who actually won Oklahoma? Mark Faulk would really like to know.
Tulsa World on Oklahoma Vote Totals: We Have No Idea
by Mark Faulk
Nov 30, 2004
Why then did the Tulsa World report that Kerry was leading in 57 counties with 70% of the vote counted, and why then did Kerry actually lose in every one of those counties when the final vote was tallied? Because when the final votes were tallied, Kerry actually LOST votes in all 57 counties, 37,9982 to be exact, while Bush GAINED an incredible 393,825 votes in the same counties. That's right, as the Oklahoma Independent Media Center put it, "Voting Machines Count Backwards in Okla". http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=344
Faulk did what journalists should do - he investigated by calling the people responsible for reporting election results, including Tulsa World Executive Editor Joe Worley, who eventually returned Faulk's call.
"Actually, we've spent a good part of our day looking into that very issue. We subscribe to the AP wire service, and that's where those numbers usually come from, where they're supposed to come from. However, as of right now, we have no idea where we got our numbers from. When we do find out, we'll make a statement in the Tulsa World newspaper, and I'll answer any other questions at that time."
Wait a second here.....let me get this straight. The Tulsa World printed the election totals from what many considered the most important Presidential election of the last forty years, and they don't know where those numbers come from? They had Kerry leading in 57 counties with numbers that actually went in reverse from their published figures, and after two days of looking, they still can't figure out who gave them those numbers?
In the end, the "voting scandal" in Oklahoma might turn out to be nothing, but that's not the real issue here. The real issue is the pattern of deceit, confusion, and misinformation that this election has spawned, not just in Oklahoma, but nationwide. Unless we demand a full and thorough accounting of all the votes that have been miscounted, lost, stolen, or simply misplaced, we can never be certain whether our most important right as an American, our right to vote, is still intact. In Oklahoma, we still have our paper ballots, and they don't have "hanging chads". We can, and should, demand a full recount. Unfortunately, many states don't have that luxury, if we allow our entire voting system to be taken over by an electronic voting system controlled by a few questionable companies, our vote won't matter, and our elections will become nothing more than another commodity to be bought and sold by those in power.
James Heddle agrees, in an essay called "Against the House" published by Ray Beckerman.
A political system more crooked than a Las Vegas casino cannot qualify as a "democracy," much less as the "leader of the free world." And those who continue to play in it look to me like conscious or unconscious colluders, or just plain chumps. Until you accurately diagnose and acknowledge the disease, you cannot even begin to cure it...
My simple point is this - until a majority of progressive activists and intellectual opinion-makers drop the delusions and cop to the fact that we are playing in a game intentionally and adroitly rigged against us, we will not win, we will not govern, we will not be prepared to govern, because we will not deserve to govern. Good losers -- like John "Quick Concession" Kerry and the "professional losers" of the DNC -- will predictably go on losing. Just like the chain-smoking, gin-sipping, polyester-clad grandma pumping endless quarters into the slot machine.
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=402&row=0
A STOLEN ELECTION
THE VIEW FROM MY BLACK HELICOPTER
The Nation
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
E-Mail Article
Printer Friendly Version
by Greg Palast
I'd just stepped out of my black helicopter to read that one of my favorite journalists, David Corn, had attacked my analysis of the vote in Ohio as the stuff of "grassy knoll conspiracy theorists." ("A Stolen Election," The Nation, November 29 issue.)
Oh, my! And all because I wrote that the uncounted ballots in Ohio -- more than a quarter million designated "spoiled" or "provisional" -- undoubtedly contain enough votes to overturn George Bush's "victory" margin of 136,000.
Corn says, "Palast wrongly assumes that an overwhelming majority of these ballots contain votes for Kerry." Now why would I think such a thing? Maybe because the precinct-by-precinct analysis of "spoiled" votes (those which machines can't count) by Professor Mark Salling of Cleveland State University, the unchallengeable expert on Ohio voting demographics, concludes that "spoiled" punch cards in Ohio cities come "overwhelmingly" from African-American neighborhoods.
The Republican Secretary of State of Ohio does not disagree, by the way; he intends to fix the Jim Crow vote-counting problem in Ohio Š sometime after the next inaugural ball.
The second group of uncounted ballots, "provisionals," were also generated substantially in African-American areas, the direct result of a Republican program to hunt down, challenge and suppress the votes cast in black-majority precincts.
What happened in Ohio is one-fiftieth of a nationwide phenomenon: the non-count of African-American votes, about a million of them marked as unreadable in a typical presidential race. (See, Palast, "Vanishing Votes," The Nation, March 17, 2004.)
I will admit, David, I can't tell you exactly how each of those disenfranchised voters would have cast their ballots. Indeed, one Republican statistician claims these uncounted ballots are cast mostly by African-American supporters of George Bush.
Nevertheless, most of us conspiracy nuts on the Grassy Knoll hold to our wild belief that most black citizens whose ballots were spoiled or rejected tried to vote for the tall guy from Massachusetts.
Greg Palast is the author of, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." His investigation of race and voting in America was partly funded by The Nation Institute.
http://blog.democrats.com/node/2020
Stolen Election 2004: Saturday Update
by Bob Fertik on 12/18/2004 1:16pm. - revised
12/18/2004 4:09pm
After working through the night, Cliff Arnebeck's
lawsuit - Moss v. Bush - was re-filed on Friday,
keeping Ohio election fraud on the front-burner in the
weeks leading to Congress's January 6 action to accept
- or reject - Ohio's electors.
Ohio vote count battles escalate amidst new evidence
of potential criminal activity
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
December 18, 2004
The epic legal battle over Ohio's presidential vote
count is back in the state Supreme Court, with an
election challenge claiming George W. Bush was wrongly
declared the winner on Nov. 2 and seeking a
court-ordered reversal of that victory.
Meanwhile, efforts to recount Ohio's vote may have
been fatally tainted by the Republican Party, raising
questions of what the GOP has to hide, and prompting
demands for criminal prosecution.
New affidavits point to possible criminal activity by
top Ohio election officials, raising yet more
questions about the 2004 vote. Rhonda J. Frazier, a
former employee of the Ohio Secretary of State's
office, has confirmed in an affidavit taken by Cynthia
Butler, working with freepress.org, that the Office
had secret slush funds. Frazier says it also failed to
comply with the requirements of "The Voting Reform
Grant" that required all the voting machines in Ohio
to be inventoried and tagged for security reasons.
"I was routinely told to violate the bidded contracts
to order supplies from other companies for all 17
Secretary of State offices throughout the State which
were cheaper vendors, leaving a cash surplus
differential in the budget," Frazier states, "After
complaining about the office's repeated practices of
violating grants and contracts I was fired."
Numerous instances of misconduct by the Secretary of
State and county election supervisors have been
uncovered during the Cobb/Badnarik investigation.
A letter from the Shelby County Board of Elections,
obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,
admitted that data critical to a meaningful recount
had been discarded, possibly illegally. Sworn
testimony from election observers in Greene County
indicated that ballots had been left loose on tables
in an unlocked, unguarded building, open to
manipulation and theft, prior to a recount. And in
Lucas County and Hocking County, it was revealed that
technicians from the Diebold and Triad companies had
inexplicably taken control of voting machines and
dismantled them, rendering verifiable recounts
impossible.
On Wednesday, December 15, U.S. Representative John
Conyers posted an affidavit from Douglas W. Jones, a
professor of computer science and a voting technology
consultant. In Professor Jones' opinion, the bizarre
behavior by the Triad Company, which provides computer
software and voting machines in 41 of Ohio's 88
counties, may have tainted the entire recount effort.
A Triad employee took apart a computer used in the
recounting process and inserted new parts as well as
alleged modifications of the software. "As a result,
the incident in Hocking County could compromise the
statewide recount and undermine the public's trust in
the credibility and accuracy of the recount," Jones
stated in an affidavit.
Numerically, the recount so far has shown little
difference from the original count. According to AP,
With 65 of Ohio's 88 counties reporting final recounts
to The Associated Press on Friday, Bush had gained 395
votes and Kerry has gained 554 votes. The running
tally accounts for 4.4 million votes cast, or about 74
percent of the total certified vote from the Nov. 2
election.
Officials said hanging chads that came loose when
punch-card ballots were handled again or rerun through
tallying machines account for most of the additional
votes.
But as Greg Palast likes to say, it ain't the
"re-count" but the "no-count" that often matters most.
Mathematician Tim Lohrentz carefully calculated the
number of disenfranchised voters in Frankling County
(Columbus) due to the shortage of voting machines:
The level of crowdedness did make a difference.
Overall, voter turnout (percent voting of active
voters) was 12.5 percentiles higher in precincts that
were not crowded compared to precincts that were
extremely crowded. Using these differences, the
analysis calculated an estimate of the number of
disenfranchised voters, assuming that each precinct
had sufficient voting machines, i.e. was not crowded.
All told, over 22,000 voters were likely kept from
voting due to long lines at the polling stations. Of
these, about 70 percent or over 15,000 were in heavily
Democratic precincts. Because Democratic voters are
more vulnerable to long lines than Republican voters,
an even higher percentage of these 22,000 votes would
likely have been cast for the Democratic candidate.
Disenfranchising voters is a crime. When will Franklin
County Board of Elections director Matt Damschroder be
prosecuted?
Speaking of Republican criminals, Rep. Tom Feeney (FL)
could find himself behind bars sometime soon for
asking programmer Clint Curtis to write a program to
"flip" votes in touchscreen machines. Curtis' story
has moved from the blogosphere to Feeney's hometown
paper, the Seminole Chronicle.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121904Y.shtml
Ohio Voters Refile Election Challenge
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
The Associated Press
Friday 17 December 2004
Columbus, Ohio - Voters who claim problems with
Ohio voting machines Nov. 2 indicated fraud refiled a
request with the Ohio Supreme Court on Friday to
overturn the presidential results.
The 37 voters cite reports of machine errors,
double-counting of some ballots and a shortage of
voting machines in predominantly minority precincts as
reasons to throw out the election results.
The challenge is backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson
and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney for the
Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who
accused the campaign of President Bush of "high-tech
vote stealing."
The group filed the request Monday, the day the
Electoral College cast votes for Bush. Chief Justice
Thomas Moyer of the state Supreme Court threw out the
complaint Thursday, saying the voters improperly
included a second election challenge in the complaint.
Ohio and its 20 electoral votes were the
difference in the presidential race. On Dec. 6, Ohio
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell declared
President Bush the official winner in the state by
119,000 votes over Democrat John Kerry.
Elections officials are conducting a recount at
the request of third-party presidential candidates,
but neither the Bush nor Kerry campaigns expect it to
change the outcome.
With 65 of Ohio's 88 counties reporting final
recounts to The Associated Press on Friday, Bush had
gained 395 votes and Kerry has gained 554 votes. The
running tally accounts for 4.4 million votes cast, or
about 74 percent of the total certified vote from the
Nov. 2 election.
Officials said hanging chads that came loose when
punch-card ballots were handled again or rerun through
tallying machines account for most of the additional
votes.
________________________________________
Go to Original
Judge Blocks Washington State Ballot Count
By Rebecca Cook
The Associated Press
Saturday 18 December 2004
Tacoma, Wash. - A judge Friday granted a state
Republican Party request to block the counting of
hundreds of recently discovered King County ballots in
the governor's race, which the GOP's candidate is
winning by just a few dozen votes.
Even if the election workers wrongly rejected the
ballots - 150 of which were discovered Friday - it is
too late for King County to reconsider them now,
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Arend
said.
The issue of the ballots could prove pivotal: With
all but King County finished with a hand recount,
Republican Dino Rossi was leading Democrat Christine
Gregoire by 50 votes.
From reading state law and state Supreme Court
decisions, "it is clear to me that it is not
appropriate to go back and revisit decisions on
whether ballots should or should not be counted,"
Arend said.
Democrats appealed to the state Supreme Court, and
King County Elections Director Dean Logan said the
county also planned to appeal.
"These are legitimate voters who cast legitimate
ballots," he said. "It's just a travesty if we do not
include these ballots."
Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane said the judge made
the right decision.
"If King County were allowed to keep adding more
ballots, elections would never end," Lane said.
As for those whose ballots aren't counted, she
said: "That is King County's fault. We cannot be held
responsible for the fact that King County made a
mistake."
State Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerry Alexander
said the high court is prepared to take up the case
next week.
Rossi won the Nov. 2 election over Gregoire by 261
votes in the first count and by 42 after a machine
recount of the 2.9 million votes cast.
Additional votes have been tallied in a hand
recount sought by Democrats. By Friday night, Rossi
had gained eight votes in the hand recount for an
overall lead of 50, with every county reporting except
King, a Democratic stronghold.
King County officials and Democrats want to
include 723 newfound ballots in the hand recount,
saying they are valid ballots that were mistakenly
rejected because of county workers' errors.
"From the beginning, this has been about fixing
mistakes and counting every legitimate ballot,"
Gregoire said in a statement Friday. "The people of
Washington deserve an accurate count."
Republicans sued, saying it was too late to add
ballots to the recount now.
Arend granted the GOP a temporary restraining
order to stop elections workers from taking the newly
discovered ballots out of their outer envelopes, which
bear the voter's signature. County elections officials
had said ballots would not be separated from their
security envelopes until the lawsuit was decided.
Jack Oxford is one of the voters whose ballots
Arend said should not be counted.
"She said, 'Jack, your vote doesn't count,'" said
Oxford, 50, an electrical field supervisor from
Enumclaw. "I'm very upset, very distressed."
Early this week, county workers found 573 ballots
that elections officials say were mistakenly rejected
because there was a problem with how the voters'
signatures had been scanned into the county's computer
system. County workers should have checked for a paper
signature to verify the ballot during the original
count, but instead they were put in the reject pile.
Workers found another 150 ballots Friday after
officials noticed that none of the 573 ballot
envelopes contained names beginning with the letters A
or B, and only two started with C.
The plastic trays containing ballots from voters
with last names beginning with A, B and C were
apparently overlooked because they were under other
trays, said Bill Huennekens, King County elections
superintendent.
"It is a serious mistake we made, but we are going
to do the right thing for the citizens of King
County," Huennekens said. "We've conducted this
election in an open and transparent manner. We're not
trying to hide anything."
State GOP spokesman Chris Vance called those
ballots "very suspicious."
The King County Canvassing Board has yet to decide
the fate of 22 other uncounted ballots, found this
week in the side bins of plastic base units in which
polling machines sit.
-------
Bush Abomination’s #1: National Security
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/2953885
Dec. 18, 2004, 11:16AM
Text of Democratic response by Sen. Durbin
>From Chronicle wire reports
Hello. This is Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.
If this holiday season finds you at a post office,
take a look at the people in line with you. Most of
them are mailing packages across the state and across
the country, but many are sending packages to their
soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Inside many of those boxes headed for the war zones
you'll find gifts like homemade cookies and family
photos, but you'll also find expensive items no
military family should ever have to buy like body
armor and Kevlar vests.
It turns out the most valuable gift America's service
members and their families receive this holiday season
may just be the question put to Secretary Rumsfeld by
that stand-up soldier from the Tennessee National
Guard. You remember what he asked the secretary: Mr.
Secretary, why are American soldiers in Kuwait and
Iraq forced to scavenge in junk piles for steel plates
to protect their Humvees and trucks?
It's a question a lot of us have been asking for some
time now.
Just over a year ago, I made my first visit to Walter
Reed Army Medical Center to meet with wounded soldiers
from Iraq.
The first soldier I met with was 28 years old, out of
the Army National Guard in Ohio. He lost a leg in
Iraq. I asked him, Is there anything I can do for you?
And he said, Senator, make those Humvees safer so
other soldiers won't have to go through what I did.
That was over a year ago.
Now, Congress has given this administration every
penny that it's requested for Iraq and Afghanistan,
yet today, 21 months after the invasion of Iraq we
still have 3,500 Humvees without protective armor,
making these vehicles and our soldiers in them prime
targets for road- side bombs and rocket-propelled
grenades.
The Department of Defense estimates almost 1 in 5 of
the lives lost in Iraq were in Humvees.
And the Humvees aren't the only problem. About 80
percent of the other vehicles our troops are using in
Iraq are also unarmored.
As of late October, an estimated 44,000 soldiers in
Iraq and Afghanistan still did not have adequate body
armor, and last year, Chinook helicopters were
activated from Guard units in Illinois, Iowa, and
Ohio, without the proper anti-missile defense
equipment.
The Pentagon says the lack of protective equipment is
a matter of logistics.
No, it's not. It's a matter of leadership. We've seen
a litany of serious miscalculations from Pentagon
leaders, stretching back to the earliest stages of
this war when Secretary Rumsfeld ignored warnings from
top military experts that success in Iraq would
require far more troops and that our troops were
likely to be met with strong resistance, not parades
and flowers.
Those responsible for planning this war weren't
prepared for the reality on the ground, and many of
our soldiers have paid the price.
Nearly 1,300 U.S. service members have died in Iraq,
and more than 10,000 have been injured, many of them
severely. Last month was the deadliest month yet for
U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
When Secretary Rumsfeld met with those soldiers in
Kuwait, he invited them to ask tough questions. Well,
they sure did. Now he owes them, and all Americans,
some straight answers.
How in the world can the Pentagon have billions of
dollars for no-bid contracts for companies like
Halliburton, but not enough money to provide basic
protective equipment for our troops?
Why did we discontinue the production of armor plating
before all of our Humvees in Iraq were protected?
We can, and we should, armor every Humvee and every
truck our troops use in Iraq and Afghanistan. No more
excuses, no more delays. We can save hundreds of lives
and prevent thousands of serious injuries.
Our fighting men and women have accepted the
responsibility to risk their lives for America.
Shouldn't their government accept the responsibility
to protect them?
The Tennessee soldier who confronted Secretary
Rumsfeld about the shortage of armored Humvees told
the New York Times the other day, and I quote, I'm a
soldier. I'll do this thing on a bicycle if I have to,
but we need help. He's right.
Secretary Rumsfeld, we have the Army we want; now
let's give them the equipment they need.
In this holiday season, as we pray for peace on Earth,
let's do everything in our power to bring peace of
mind to our service men and women and bring them home
safely.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121704D.shtml
Hu's Not on First
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 17 December 2004
Hu Jintao, China's powerful president, is
first-page material-particularly when he takes an
unprecedented step in putting flesh on China's effort
to develop what Hu calls a "strategic collaborative
relationship" with Russia. And what could be more
eye-catching than agreeing to stage the first-ever
joint military exercise next year, a commitment
announced on Monday during Russian Defense Minister
Sergei Ivanov's visit to Beijing.
Although the Associated Press and Reuters promptly
disseminated this major story, the Washington Post
ignored it, and the New York Times sandwiched it into
page A-6 on Tuesday, where it was boiled down to a
two-sentence gist at the end of a survey article,
"World Briefing."
Russian Forces in China?
According to AP, quoting the official China News
Service, the joint military exercises will be held in
China. Russian forces in China for an exercise! Not
too many years ago, one would have been laughed to
scorn at the very suggestion, given the historical
enmity between the two countries.
From my perspective as an intelligence analyst
responsible for reporting on Sino-Soviet relations
during the sixties and early seventies, I believe the
rapprochement between Russia and China-now extending
to military cooperation-is among the most important
sea changes on the geopolitical scene in the past
half-century. The fact that it has happened
incrementally, I suppose, tends to obscure its
strategic significance. And with Condoleezza Rice now
in the role that Henry Kissinger once played so
deftly, it seems altogether likely that the dangers
inherent in the new equation will escape notice and
the opportunities will be squandered.
Gradual Rapprochement between Beijing and Moscow
The process of substituting conciliation and
cooperation for unmitigated hostility started in
earnest under Gorbachev, although his predecessors did
take some halting steps in that direction. It takes
two to tango, and we analysts were surprised when
Gorbachev's Chinese counterparts proved receptive to
his overtures and welcomed a mutual agreement to thin
out troops along the 7,500-kilometer border. In more
recent years, however, the impetus toward
rapprochement has been the mutual need to
counterbalance the "one remaining superpower in the
world."
The more President George W. Bush and his
"neo-conservative" helpers throw their weight around
in the Middle East and elsewhere, the more incentive
China and Russia see in moving closer together. Gone
is the "great-power chauvinist" epithet they used to
hurl at each other, although it would seem a safe bet
that the epithet is resurrected from time to time in
private conversations between Chinese and Russian
officials regarding current U.S. policy.
Border Hostilities and Irredenta
The announcement of military exercises came just
two months after Moscow and Beijing settled the last
of the border disputes. Those had led to armed clashes
in the sixties and seventies especially along the
extensive riverine border where islands were claimed
by both sides. The backdrop, though, was China's claim
to 1.5 million square kilometers taken from China
under what it called "unequal treaties" dating back to
the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. This irredentism, a
staple of Chinese anti-Soviet rhetoric in those days,
has been muted.
In the late sixties the USSR reinforced its ground
forces near China from 13 to 21 divisions. By 1971 the
number had grown to 44 divisions, and Chinese leaders
began to see a more immediate threat from the USSR
than from the U.S.. Enter Henry Kissinger, who visited
Beijing in 1971 to arrange the precedent-breaking
visit by President Richard Nixon the following year.
What followed was some highly imaginative diplomacy
orchestrated by Kissinger and Nixon to exploit the
mutual fear China and the USSR held for each other and
the imperative each saw to compete for improved ties
with Washington.
Triangular Diplomacy
The Soviet leaders seemed to sweat it the most.
Washington's clever exploitation of the triangular
relationship helped facilitate major, verifiable arms
control agreements between the U.S. and USSR and the
Four Power Agreement on Berlin. The USSR even went so
far as to blame China for impeding a peaceful solution
in Vietnam.
It was one of those felicitous junctures at which
CIA analysts could in good conscience chronicle the
effects of the Nixon-Kissinger approach and conclude
that it seemed to be having the desired effect.
Because it clearly was.
In early 1972, between President Nixon's first
summits in Beijing and Moscow, our analytic reports
underscored the reality that Sino-Soviet rivalry was,
to both sides, a highly debilitating phenomenon. Not
only had the two countries forfeited the benefits of
cooperation, but each felt compelled to devote huge
effort to negate the policies of the other. A
significant dimension had been added to this rivalry
as the U.S. moved to cultivate simultaneously better
relations with both. The two saw themselves in a
crucial race to cultivate good relations with the
U.S..
The Soviet and Chinese leaders could not fail to
notice how all this had increased the U.S. bargaining
position. But we analysts saw them cemented into an
intractable adversarial relationship by a deeply felt
set of emotional beliefs, in which national,
ideological, and racial factors reinforced one
another. Although the two countries recognized the
price they were paying, neither could see a way out.
The only prospect for improvement, we said, was the
hope that more sensible leaders would emerge in each
country. At the time, we branded that a vain hope and
predicted only the most superficial improvements in
relations between Moscow and Beijing.
We Were Wrong
Nothing is totally impervious to change. Mao
Zedong's and Nikita Khrushchev's successors proved to
have cooler heads, and in 1969 border talks resumed.
It took years to chip away at the heavily encrusted
mutual mistrust, but by the mid-eighties we were
warning policymakers that "normalization" of relations
between Moscow and Beijing had already occurred-slowly
but surely, despite continued Chinese protestations
that such would be impossible unless the Russians
capitulated to all China's conditions. For their part,
the Soviet leaders had become more comfortable
operating in the triangular environment and were no
longer suffering the debilitating effects of a
headlong race with China to develop better relations
with Washington.
Little did we dream, though, that as soon as
October 2004 Russian President Vladimir Putin would
visit Beijing to finalize the agreement on border
issues and announce that relations had reached
"unparalleled heights." Putin also signed an agreement
to jointly develop Russian energy reserves, which
China welcomes as a way to help provide fuel for its
burgeoning economy.
Military Cooperation
It is the military cooperation that is the most
worrisome. China has become Russia's arms industry's
premier customer, with the Chinese buying this year
about $2 billion in weapons, many of them top of the
line. For Russia these sales are an important source
of export earnings and keep key segments of its
defense industry afloat. Beijing, cut off from arms
sales from the West, has come to rely on Russia more
and more for sophisticated arms and technology.
Those of us analysts immersed in Sino-Soviet
relations used to poke fun at the Sino-Soviet treaty
of February 14, 1950, which was defunct well before
its 30-year term. Given the acrimony in the
relationship and the fact that the anniversary fell on
Valentine's Day the de rigueur exchange of official
congratulatory messages seemed amusingly ironic.
Nevetheless, we dutifully perused the messages for any
hint of warmth; year after year we found none.
There is a new treaty now, and the relationship it
codifies is no joke-the more so since so few are aware
of the significant improvement it symbolizes. True,
the treaty of friendship and cooperation, signed in
Moscow by Presidents Putin and Jiang Zemin on July 16,
2001 lacks teeth. There is no provision, for example,
as in the 1950 treaty, for "military and other
assistance" in the event one is attacked. But the new
treaty does reflect agreement between China and Russia
to collaborate in diluting what each sees as U.S.
domination of the post-Cold War international order.
(And that was before the U.S. attack on and occupation
of Iraq.)
Earthquakes Begin Slowly
Like subterranean geological plates shifting
slowly below the surface, changes with immense
political repercussions can occur so gradually as to
be imperceptible-until the earthquake. The consensus
in academe has been that, despite the rapprochement
between China and Russia over the past several years,
both still have greater interest in developing good
relations with the U.S. than with each other.
That was certainly the case decades ago. I'm not
so sure it is now. Either way, the implications for
U.S. foreign policy are immense. Let us hope that
there are still some experienced intelligence analysts
around to look closely at this issue and lay out their
unvarnished conclusions for U.S. policymakers.
________________________________________
Ray McGovern began his 27-year career with the CIA
as the analyst for Soviet relations with China and
Southeast Asia. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604H.shtml
"Holy War" Recruitment Networks Are in Place
By Gérard Davet
Le Monde
Wednesday 15 December 2004
Iraq is not yet a jihad country, but the networks
for channeling "foreign volunteers" are already in
place. According to the first figures communicated by
the CIA to western intelligence agencies, only 40
foreign individuals were counted among the 2,000
prisoners arrested in Falluja during the November
fighting, which killed 2,200 on the Iraqi side.
The American secret services even advance the
figure of 2% jihadists, a datum susceptible to upward
review based on interrogations now in progress. In
fact, American officers estimate that fighters could
have dissimulated their true origins.
French hostages Christian Chesnot and Georges
Malbrunot's detention in Iraq for 118 days will have
at least produced this advantage: it has led the
French intelligence services to increase their
operational capacities in the region. This increase in
power, in workforce as well as technical capacities,
has since allowed the Direction générale de la
sécurité extérieure (DGSE) [General Directorate of
External Security, the French CIA] to identify five
French citizens present in Iraq: Boubakeur El-Hakim,
imprisoned in Damascus since August, Redouane
El-Hakim, deceased July 17, Tarek Ouinis, deceased
September 17, Abdel Halim Badjoudj, who died in a
suicide attack October 20, and finally, Fawzi D.,
designated as the emir of a group of about 20 Falluja
fighters. "You must look at this phenomenon in
perspective," is the assurance from intelligence
milieus, "the French network remains marginal."
The networks, however, are expanding little by
little. The presence of Arab volunteers goes back to
the end of 2002, at the Iraqi regime's initiative.
Since summer 2003, "Holy War" has become a real
motivating force. Hassan Ghul's arrest January 22 in
Iraq brought the first concrete proof of an Al-Qaeda
presence in the country. He is none other than one of
those close to the leadership committee of the
structure created by Osama bin Laden, and was able to
enter in contact with Saif Al-Adel, the organization's
number 3. His specialty would have been funneling
volunteers into jihad countries.
"Cascading Networks"
More and more, candidates for martyrdom who come
from radical internationalist cells, then integrate
networks which become operational. These networks
mount suicide attacks, like those against the UN in
Baghdad in August 2003, or against Italian forces in
Nassyria, in November 2003. "Their operation rests on
the principle of 'cascading networks,'" summarizes a
specialist in the area. "It is based above all on
personal relationships between the people who drive
these networks. Their overarching objective is to
obtain great flexibility." Police operations do
nothing about them; these networks remain active, all
the more so as they are put in place by real logistics
professionals, educated by their experiences in
Chechen or Afghan networks. Consequently, intelligence
services target the names, Abderrazak Madjoub, an
Algerian implicated in European networks, questioned
in Germany in November 2003, and Abu Hammam, alias
"Mohammed Ali", arrested by British Special Forces
October 10, 2004, thanks partly to information
communicated by the DGSE.
The number of these volunteers remains difficult
to evaluate. According to the secret services, they
would be between 1,000 and 2,000, mostly from Jordan,
Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, but also from Kuwait.
Several places appear to be strategic in the eyes of
terrorism specialists. First of all, Lebanon, where
the Palestinian refugee camp Ain El-Helouai would
serve as a rear base for certain networks channeling
volunteers towards Iraq under the aegis of two
officials: the Yemeni Ibn Al-Shahid Al-Yemeni,
arrested October 16, 2003 by the Lebanese, and the
Syrian Fahd Ajami Akkach. In north Lebanon, the
Salafist leader Dai Al-Islam Chabal would play the
role of recruiter.
Syria, given its immediate proximity to Iraq, is
also fingered. Islamist groups there are charged with
contacting youths of European or Maghrebi origin who
have come to follow Koranic studies in religious
institutes of radical Salafist persuasion: the
Al-Fatah Al-Islami School, or the Zohra Institute in
Damascus. They incite the students to go to Iraq. That
was notably the case with Boubakeur El-Hakim, a French
citizen today in Syrian custody.
Two preachers are the subjects of very strict
surveillance: Imam Abdelaziz Al-Khatib, of the
Al-Darwishiya Mosque and the Al-Kabbahdjia Institute
in Damascus, and Imam Abu Al-Daaqaa, of the Aleppo
Mosque, both of whom step up their virulent
anti-Western speeches.
Syria remains the main transit country for jihad,
from along the frontier region of Husaybah. Several
reasons combine to create this phenomenon. It is very
easy to obtain a temporary stay visa in Syria as long
as you come from one of the Arab League member states.
Moreover, it is quasi-impossible for the Syrian
authorities to keep the entire border with Iraq under
adequate surveillance, given the degree to which local
security services rot with corruption. Finally, the
presence in the region of networks for clandestine
emigration and narcotics trafficking allows trails to
be obscured. Europe also shelters these networks.
Intelligence agencies have detected them in Germany,
Italy, Belgium, and Spain. They are in permanent
contact among themselves, moving around, and melting
into the landscape.
In Iraq, a whole infrastructure has also been
developed. The country now possesses, like Pakistan,
"guest houses", located notably in Baghdad and
Falluja. They are specialized, like certain mosques,
in welcoming foreign nationals, particularly Yemenites
and Lebanese, who have come to fight "the American
enemy." The Ibn Taymiyya Mosque in Baghdad would be
part of that network.
The Al-Zarkawi group would thus have several
"guest houses' in Baghdad, Falluja, and Mosul. In a
September sermon broadcast on Al-Jazira, the war chief
Abu Mussab Al-Zarkawi did not forgo the opportunity to
boast about the merits of his "foreign volunteers."
Bush Abomination #2 Failure: Economic Security
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/opinion/17krugman.html?oref=login&oref=login
Buying Into Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 17, 2004
As the Bush administration tries to persuade America
to convert Social Security into a giant 401(k), we can
learn a lot from other countries that have already
gone down that road.
Information about other countries' experience with
privatization isn't hard to find. For example, the
Century Foundation, at www.tcf.org, provides a wide
range of links.
Yet, aside from giving the Cato Institute and other
organizations promoting Social Security privatization
the space to present upbeat tales from Chile, the U.S.
news media have provided their readers and viewers
with little information about international
experience. In particular, the public hasn't been let
in on two open secrets:
Privatization dissipates a large fraction of workers'
contributions on fees to investment companies.
It leaves many retirees in poverty.
Decades of conservative marketing have convinced
Americans that government programs always create
bloated bureaucracies, while the private sector is
always lean and efficient. But when it comes to
retirement security, the opposite is true. More than
99 percent of Social Security's revenues go toward
benefits, and less than 1 percent for overhead. In
Chile's system, management fees are around 20 times as
high. And that's a typical number for privatized
systems.
These fees cut sharply into the returns individuals
can expect on their accounts. In Britain, which has
had a privatized system since the days of Margaret
Thatcher, alarm over the large fees charged by some
investment companies eventually led government
regulators to impose a "charge cap." Even so, fees
continue to take a large bite out of British
retirement savings.
A reasonable prediction for the real rate of return on
personal accounts in the U.S. is 4 percent or less. If
we introduce a system with British-level management
fees, net returns to workers will be reduced by more
than a quarter. Add in deep cuts in guaranteed
benefits and a big increase in risk, and we're looking
at a "reform" that hurts everyone except the
investment industry.
Advocates insist that a privatized U.S. system can
keep expenses much lower. It's true that costs will be
low if investments are restricted to low-overhead
index funds - that is, if government officials, not
individuals, make the investment decisions. But if
that's how the system works, the suggestions that
workers will have control over their own money - two
years ago, Cato renamed its Project on Social Security
Privatization by replacing "privatization" with
"choice" - are false advertising.
And if there are rules restricting workers to
low-expense investments, investment industry lobbyists
will try to get those rules overturned.
For the record, I don't think giving financial
corporations a huge windfall is the main motive for
privatization; it's mostly an ideological thing. But
that windfall is a major reason Wall Street wants
privatization, and everyone else should be very
suspicious.
Then there's the issue of poverty among the elderly.
Privatizers who laud the Chilean system never mention
that it has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce
government spending. More than 20 years after the
system was created, the government is still pouring in
money. Why? Because, as a Federal Reserve study puts
it, the Chilean government must "provide subsidies for
workers failing to accumulate enough capital to
provide a minimum pension." In other words,
privatization would have condemned many retirees to
dire poverty, and the government stepped back in to
save them.
The same thing is happening in Britain. Its Pensions
Commission warns that those who think Mrs. Thatcher's
privatization solved the pension problem are living in
a "fool's paradise." A lot of additional government
spending will be required to avoid the return of
widespread poverty among the elderly - a problem that
Britain, like the U.S., thought it had solved.
Britain's experience is directly relevant to the Bush
administration's plans. If current hints are an
indication, the final plan will probably claim to save
money in the future by reducing guaranteed Social
Security benefits. These savings will be an illusion:
20 years from now, an American version of Britain's
commission will warn that big additional government
spending is needed to avert a looming surge in poverty
among retirees.
So the Bush administration wants to scrap a retirement
system that works, and can be made financially sound
for generations to come with modest reforms. Instead,
it wants to buy into failure, emulating systems that,
when tried elsewhere, have neither saved money nor
protected the elderly from poverty.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604G.shtml
Bush Abomination’s #3 Failure: Environmental Security
The Real Importance of the Kyoto Treaty
By Nigel Purvis
The International Herald Tribune
Wednesday 15 December 2004
Leaving America behind.
Washington - After seven years in critical
condition, the Kyoto global warming treaty has a new
lease on life, thanks to its recent ratification by
Russia. Supporters and skeptics alike agree that the
treaty will not solve the climate problem. Its
environmental limits are meager, expire in 2012 and do
not apply to developing nations, where global warming
emissions are growing most rapidly. Kyoto's true
importance rests in what it tells us about America's
changing relationship with the world and the future of
climate change diplomacy.
Kyoto demonstrates that America's allies are
increasingly shaping the international agenda without
it. When the Bush administration rejected Kyoto in
2001, it assumed that other nations would follow suit,
but more than 120 nations have ratified it.
While Europe's inability in the 1990s to stop
ethnic cleansing in the Balkans reinforced its junior
partner status on security matters, Kyoto shows that
Europe can lead in other areas. The European Union,
fresh from its successful eastward enlargement, feels
increasingly confident as an international peer of the
United States on nonmilitary matters. Complying with
Kyoto may prove more difficult than Europe envisions,
but Europe has achieved what it regards as a major
foreign policy victory and this signals the growing
risk of an even sharper-edged trans-Atlantic rivalry.
Kyoto also illustrates the fact that the
international community questions more than ever
America's moral authority and its commitment to
universal values, including environmental stewardship.
Anti-Americanism is already on the rise in "old
Europe" because of Bush's policies on Iraq. U.S.
resistance to action on global warming only solidifies
America's image abroad as a nation of parochial,
selfish and wasteful SUV drivers. Although America
remains the brightest beacon of freedom, it must treat
seriously the perception abroad that its light has
dimmed.
Kyoto's rebirth reaffirms, in addition, that
climate change will remain a permanent fixture of
international diplomacy, thus signaling to U.S.
industry that strong federal action is inevitable even
as Bush's re-election lengthens its current reprieve.
The coming into force of the treaty increases pressure
on the United States to lead even as it remains
outside the treaty's ambit. The United States, after
all, is responsible for just under a quarter of global
climate emissions. Opposition from industry to
mandatory domestic climate action will not dissipate
overnight, but Kyoto's implementation abroad will
demonstrate the true cost of climate policies and help
U.S. policymakers determine what action is
economically feasible.
Finally, Kyoto makes it more likely that over the
next decade Europe will use trade policy to push the
United States toward stronger climate action. The
European Parliament has debated taxing U.S. imports to
protect domestic manufactures from foreign competitors
who are not subject to climate change costs. The World
Trade Organization has made clear that when an
environmental trade restraint is enacted to implement
a multilateral environmental agreement such as Kyoto,
the restraint is more likely to withstand scrutiny.
Given Bush's unalterable opposition to the treaty,
the United States is unlikely to rejoin international
talks anytime soon. That matters less, however, than
whether the United States begins to take seriously its
responsibility to lead the world through strong new
domestic climate policies. Leaving aside the
environmental rationale for Kyoto, the treaty's entry
into force is a warning of the political and economic
risks to the United States of continued inaction.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nigel Purvis, an environment scholar at the
Brookings Institution in Washington, served as a
senior climate change negotiator in the Clinton and
George W. Bush administrations.
Complicity of the Corporatist News Media
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert301.shtml
Media Crisis 2004: Summing Up and Moving Forward
By Danny Schechter
Mediachannel.org
NEW YORK, December 17, 2004 -- It is that time of the
year again, the time for closing out the news year, a
time of summing up, and looking ahead. A year ago, at
this time, I wrote:
"You know the drill. Every network assigns someone to
create a master reel with their hottest video and most
poignant moments, usually brought to a close with a
collage of well-known personalities and politicians
who bit the big one and are no more set to teary
music. In that moment, news becomes nostalgia and the
present belongs to history."
As regular readers know, the MediaChannel has been
here every day with a collage of our own, usually
drawn from the news-not-in-the-news, or
not-in-the-news-yet or news of news half told. Our
focus is on the messenger and the media in an ongoing
effort to understand how it is we have so much
information available and yet the public knows so
little about what is really going on.
Its safe to say that for many 2004 will be heralded as
the year of the blogger, and of more media scandals
than you can shake an I-Pod at.
Missing in the media march down memory lane is likely
to be the trends that are reshaping the media itself.
The central question is: how did an institution with a
brave history of safeguarding democracy become a
threat to its survival?
It has not been a good year for journalists and
journalism. 54 reporters died answering the call of
duty, the highest death toll in a decade according to
the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Many were killed in Iraq, Others died at home, like
investigative journalist Gary Webb by his own hand.
What type of despair drives a talented and committed
reporter like him to kill himself? We will, I suspect,
soon find out. I suspect it is more than just personal
despair in light of how his exposes of CIA backed drug
pushers were targeted by a mainstream media gang bang.
(A CIA internal probe later validated one of his key
findings.)
The big fear, as journalists die, is that journalism
itself may soon follow.
Some years back, I read a book about the emergence of
the "post journalism era" cataloging the abandonment
of a commitment to real news in the news business. It
spoke of how packaging and "mechanics" and compression
and infotainment defines the new uber-merged corporate
media order.
At the time, that indictment seemed alarmist, and
premature.
Not any more.
The Committee for Excellence in Journalism's State of
the Media Report itemizes the institutional shifts
that dwarf all the flash media scandals that ripple
through the news -- from Dan Rather's apparent demise
to the mea culpas of mainstream media regarding their
jingoistic war coverage, from the Sinclair
Broadcasting fiasco to the continued affront to
journalism represented by the Fox News Channel.
The Committee's State of the Media report showed a
system that is devolving and losing credibility. Here
were a few of the main findings:
1. A growing number of news outlets are chasing
relatively static or even shrinking audiences for
news. That audience decline, in turn, is putting
pressures on revenues and profits, which leads to a
cascade of other implications. The only sectors seeing
general audience growth today are online, ethnic and
alternative media.
2. Much of the new investment in journalism today is
in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most
sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom.
While there are exceptions, in general journalists
face real pressures trying to maintain quality.
3. In the 24-hour cable and online news format, there
is a tendency toward a jumbled, chaotic, repetitive
and partial quality in some reports, without much
synthesis or even the ordering of the information.
4. Journalistic standards now vary even inside a
single news organization. Companies are trying to
reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience
for news not in one place, but across different
programs, products and platforms. To do so, some are
varying their news agenda, their rules on separating
advertising from news and even their ethical
standards.
The last item makes projecting a consistent sense of
identity and brand more difficult for news
organizations, reinforcing a public perception that
the news media lack professionalism and a sense of any
duty to the public interest.
No one is happy with our fragmented and polarized
media system. The surveys show it. The right bashes
the so-called "liberal media" while the left goes
after their right-wing media counterparts. Is there
really a distinction any more? Junk News seems to
drive out quality news. Young people defect from all
news to the Comedy Channel. Shouldn't both sides
bridge the political divide to help overhaul a media
system that now threatens us all?
Ted Turner says his Cartoon network has three times as
many viewers as the Cable News Network he is more
famous for birthing. The satirical Onion gets to the
heart of the news better than most real outlets. This
week they joke that convicted murderer Scott Peterson
will be sentenced to ten years of endless exposure on
LIFETIME channel programs and recreations of the
killing of his wife.
While some trivialize media as a problem, others are
trying to do something about it. That is one of the
big stories about the media not yet in the media: the
emergence of a media and democracy movement. Watch for
a year of media activism and advocacy from such groups
as Media For Democracy, MediaChannel, Free Press,
Common Cause, Media Matters for America, the Center
for Digital Democracy, the Consumers Union, FAIR and,
possibly, MoveOn.org.
These groups are here to stay - often struggling to
sustain their good work in a media environment hostile
to their vision.
If the media won't fight for its own soul and
survival, others -- like us and our many readers,
affiliates and members worldwide -- are committed to
do it for them.
-- News Dissector Danny Schechter is the
"blogger-in-chief" of Mediachannel.org. His new film
WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)exposes media
complicity in the War in The War in Iraq. See
www.wmdthefilm.com.
© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.
http://mediamatters.org/items/20041217001
Carlson, Wash. Post misinformation on Social
Security's "solvency" furthered Bush administration's
crisis rhetoric
CNN co-host Tucker Carlson and The Washington Post
bolstered the Bush administration's crisis rhetoric on
Social Security by providing misleading accounts of
the federal program's "solvency."
On the December 16 edition of CNN's Crossfire, Carlson
purported to "correct" former Clinton national
economic adviser Gene Sperling's statement that
"Social Security does not become insolvent until
2042." Carlson responded: "In 2018, just to correct
you ... that's, again, only 14 years. Benefits will
overtake revenues."
In a December 17 article in The Washington Post, after
noting that President Bush "said Social Security will
be paying out more than it collects" by 2018, staff
writer Peter Baker reported that congressional
Democrats are "[c]iting different accounting than the
president's" to "argue" that under the current system
Social Security will "still be solvent for nearly 50
years."
In fact, Sperling is correct in noting that Social
Security is projected to remain solvent until 2042,
according to the same authoritative U.S. government
report upon which Carlson relied: the 2004 annual
report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age
and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust
Funds (OASDI). 2042 is the year that the Social
Security trust fund is projected to run out; the year
Carlson cited, 2018, represents the time when the
program's payouts to retirees are projected to exceed
tax revenue. At that time, the government will have to
supplement revenues with the Social Security trust
fund to meet payment obligations to retirees, but the
system will not be insolvent.
The Post's Baker, on the other hand, misleadingly
suggested that one's view of when Social Security
becomes insolvent is a matter of partisan opinion. It
is not. Bush is talking about one thing -- what is
projected to happen in 2018 -- and the Democrats are
talking about another -- when the system is projected
to become insolvent. By conflating the two issues,
Baker suggested that the Democrats are being partisan
in their assertions about projected insolvency. In
fact, Sperling's and the Congressional Democrats'
assertions reflect, respectively, the presumably
nonpartisan (though the Bush administration is
well-represented) Social Security Board of Trustees
and the at-least-equally nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office, which projects insolvency by 2052,
rather than 2042.
>From the December 16 edition of CNN's Crossfire:
SPERLING: I do believe that, even though Social
Security does not become insolvent until 2042, we as a
country would be better to take on the problem now.
[...]
CARLSON: In 2018, just to correct you, in 2018, which
is only 14 years from now, according to the board of
trustees of overseers of Social Security, that's,
again, only 14 years. Benefits will overtake revenues.
So that's actually pretty soon.
>From Baker's December 17 Washington Post article,
"Bush Lays Out a Plan to Revise the Social Security
System":
Bush made clear [in the White House economic
conference] that he intends to expend considerable
political energy in pushing for a partial
privatization of Social Security to help secure the
program, which faces sizable shortfalls over the next
few decades. By 2018, he said, Social Security will be
paying out more than it collects, and over the long
term the system faces a $10.4 trillion unfunded
liability. ... Congressional Democrats dismissed the
conference as a public relations exercise distorting
fiscal reality. Citing different accounting than the
president's, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid
(Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.)
argued that Social Security would still be solvent for
nearly 50 years.
— A.S.
Posted to the web on Friday December 17, 2004 at 6:12
PM EST
Copyright © 2004 Media Matters for America. All rights
reserved.
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John P. O’Neill Wall of Heroes
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-b4-5hoffmandec17,0,5893661.story?coll=all-newslocal-hed
>From The Morning Call -- December 17, 2004
Emmaus grad speaks against war in Iraq
Michael Hoffman spent two months there with Marines.
By Randy Kraft
Of The Morning Call
If you have one of those magnetic ''support our
troops'' ribbons on your car, Michael Hoffman suggests
you grab a marker and add a few words: ''Bring them
home now.''
Hoffman, who graduated from Emmaus High School in
1997, returned to the school Thursday night to speak
out against the war in Iraq.
''Being against the war is the only way to be for the
troops,'' said Hoffman. ''We're doing them no good by
sending them over there.''
The 25-year-old Marine veteran is a co-founder of Iraq
Veterans Against the War, a 5-month-old organization
that claims 150 members, including some on active duty
in Iraq. It wants the immediate withdrawal of all
occupation forces from Iraq, ''real'' reconstruction
aid for that country and properly funded and
administered veterans' benefits.
''I need to make sure this stops,'' he said. ''The
honest truth needs to be told in order for this war to
end. We've got to get these guys home now before
another guy is killed on either side.
''This war would be over right now if people really
understood the horror of it.''
Like Vietnam, said Hoffman, the only way to end the
war will be for millions of Americans to get out on
the streets every week and demand that it end.
More than 80 people attended the program, sponsored by
the school's chapter of Amnesty International. Hoffman
spoke for nearly 90 minutes, taking questions from the
mostly supportive audience for most of that time.
He said the primary reason we're fighting in Iraq is
to get its oil. He maintained the war was never really
about finding weapons of mass destruction, capturing
Saddam Hussein or establishing democracy.
Hoffman served in Iraq for nearly two months during
the invasion last year. He helped aim a battery of
155mm howitzers at targets 10 to15 miles away. He
never was told what they were shooting at, only given
coordinates. His battery fired about 700 rounds a day,
pounding its way across the country.
''Artillery is nameless and faceless,'' said Hoffman,
adding he's haunted every day, wondering: ''Who did I
kill?'' He knows he helped to kill innocent Iraqis.
''We haven't learned the lessons from Vietnam,'' said
Hoffman. ''Most of our enemies are average Iraqis
fighting back against this occupation. We have
violated their sovereignty.''
If another country invaded the United States, bombing
and killing innocent women and children who had
nothing to do with the war until their lives were
taken, ''wouldn't we all be up in arms defending our
country?''
He claimed the majority of troops on the ground in
Iraq feel ''we shouldn't be there. They don't see the
point. We're not doing any good.'' A member of the
audience disagreed, saying the military overwhelmingly
supported Bush in the last election.
Hoffman said Bush went to war before the military was
properly equipped. He said the administration has
disregard for people who are willing to serve.
He said American soldiers are fighting only to protect
their lives and the lives of their friends because
someone is shooting at them.
Hoffman is the son of Rick and Susan Hoffman of
Macungie. His father, who videotaped his appearance,
said he is proud of his son both because of what he is
doing now and because he served in a war he did not
believe in.
Michael Hoffman said the United States should not
abandon Iraq, but should end the military occupation.
He said Iraqis can establish democracy, if they want
it and if we ''stop occupying them and trying to do
the job for them.''
randy.kraft@mcall.com
610-820-6557
-------
CIA Agent Says Bosses Ordered Him To Falsify WMD
Reports
Thursday, December 16th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/16/1445203
An undercover intelligence officer, who is suing the
CIA, says his managers