At least three more US soldiers have died in Iraq. For what? The neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich. Nothing more…Today, Jan. 17, 2005, is Martin Luther King Day, a day to be grateful for, a celebration of all that is truly great in the American experiment, the principles that the most enlightened of our forefathers fought for, the promise that Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedy brothers, Medgar Evers, those four little girls in that church in Alabama, those three civil rights workers found in that river in Mississippi and many others (including Sen. Paul Wellstone) have died for... Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005, will be a day of national mourning for a
Republic stolen by corporatists (a more apt word than
“fascists” Mussolini suggested), in plain site, with
the complicity of the US mainstream news media and the
capitulation of much of the leadership of the
Democratic Party (with the exception of Jesse Jackson,
the Congressional Black Caucus, Sen. Barbara Boxer,
Rep. Jerold Nadler (D-WTC) and a few others…Here are
some damning news items and op-ed pieces to review and share with others. This vigil is almost over. The last LNS Post Coup II Supplement will publish on Jan. 21, 2005. The LNS's Editor-in-Chief and his Foreign Correspondent, Dunston Woods, will resurface after a brief hiatus with a new site, a new mission and a new agenda. The LNS will continue on-line as an archive(remember the searchable database) of courage and cowardice in what were perhaps the final days of the Republic. Remember, this battle is not over ideology, it is a battle for REALITY itself – because that what the Bush Abomination and its full partners in the Corporatist News Media are dismantling now, REALITY itself..
Theft of 2004 Election
Steve Freeman, SF Chronicle: In three national
elections over the past 13 months, the official count
was sharply at odds with an independent national exit
poll. As in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and
Ukraine, U.S. exit polls projected a clear victory for
the challenger. John Kerry was projected to win the
national popular vote by a 2 percent to 3 percent
margin and was ahead in nearly every closely contested
state. Of course, the official counts, as in the other
nations, showed an almost mirror image victory for the
incumbent party candidate.
The citizens of Georgia and Ukraine refused to accept
the official tallies, protested vigorously and , with
international support, overturned the election, but
U.S. voters have passively accepted the results of
their election and gone back to business, oblivious to
the discrepancy and blind to the implications.
A 5 percent shift in a poll like this is
extraordinary. Exit pollsters do not have to guess
about who is actually going to vote, or whether they
might change their mind. Exit polls can achieve larger
samples cost-effectively: the national election-day
sample had more than 13,000 respondents, meaning that
it should have accurately forecast the result within
plus or minus 1 percent.
Leila Atassi, Cleveland Plain Dealer: Lawyer Ray
Beckerman was so stunned that he nearly crashed his
car into a light pole when he heard Sen. John Kerry
was expected to concede the election.
All at once, the election night volunteerism, which
Beckerman thought would be a nice community service,
had lit a fire beneath the 56-year-old commercial
litigation attorney. Within two months, Beckerman
would become one of the nation's foremost bloggers on
Ohio's voting irregularities, devoting 90 percent of
his time to his cause.
The lawyer had spent election night in Columbus,
manning the Democratic Party hot line to advise voters
reporting trouble at the polls. He and 19 other
lawyers heard more than 1,000 stories from people who
waited up to 10 hours to vote, never received absentee
ballots, had provisional ballots rejected or said they
were interrogated by poll challengers for no reason.
John Conyers, Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary
Committee: I want to thank you for the time and energy
you have already given to help me in my pursuit of the
truth about the 2004 Presidential election,
particularly the truth about what happened in Ohio. I
also want to let you know what I will be working on in
the coming months.
I believe what we achieved on January 6 will be a
seminal event in the history of progressive politics,
and significantly advance the cause of electoral
reform. For this challenge to Ohio’s electors to have
occurred, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the
internet activists, who spread the story of my efforts
and supported me in every way possible. I am also
thankful to the alternative media, including talk
radio and blogs that gave substantial attention and
investigation to these matters when all but a handful
in the mainstream media refused to examine the facts.
I cannot thank all of you personally, but you know who
you are.
With the exigency of January 6 behind us, I wanted to
let you know what I will be doing in the coming
months. First, my investigation of Ohio voting
irregularities is not over. In an effort to get as
much information confirmed and circulated in advance
of January 6, many valuable leads still need to be
pursued and I pledge to do so. Substantial
irregularities have come to light in other states
during the course of this investigation and I will
also pursue those leads. While there has been powerful
opposition to my efforts and personal attacks against
me as a result of my efforts, I want to assure you I
remain steadfast.
Second, there are other matters involving wrongdoing
by Administration officials that I will continue to
pursue. Among other things, I will continue to seek
answers about the role of senior Bush Administration
officials in outing an undercover Central Intelligence
Agency operative. I will also continue to examine the
sources of the fraudulent case for the Iraq war, which
intersects with the outing of this operative…
John Nichols, Capital Times: At the grass-roots
level, there appears to be growing support for a
count-every-vote,
eliminate-every-opportunity-for-fraud standard that
would radically alter the way in which the United
States runs elections.
And to some small extent, this enthusiasm for election
reform has been communicated to those members of
Congress who are still interested in what their
constituents say - as was evidenced by Thursday's
decision on the part of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer,
D-Calif., to support the objection by members of the
House to the certification of Ohio's electoral votes…
The point, said Tubbs Jones, was to expose the
fundamental flaws in the current system and to
highlight the need for reform. It was, Boxer added, a
matter of "electoral justice."
Unfortunately, that point was lost on every Republican
member of the House and Senate and on the vast
majority of Democrats. When all was said and done,
only one member of the Senate (Boxer) took a stand for
electoral justice by refusing to back certification of
the Ohio results...
Boxer and the 31 House members who objected were not
being courageous. They were simply performing their
duties in the manner that was intended. The founders
of this country gave the legislative branch the
responsibility of certifying election results because
they understood the need for oversight of elections -
especially for a position so powerful as the
presidency. And they trusted that congressional
representatives, who were more directly accountable to
the citizenry, would ensure that partisan pressures
did not trump democracy.
Last Thursday, however, democracy got trumped. The
vast majority of the members of the House and Senate
chose not to live up to the responsibility rested upon
them by the founders…I hope David Cobb, who has worked
so hard on these issues, is right. I hope we are
seeing the birth of a multipartisan movement for
election reform that will establish a universal set of
standards for registering voters, casting votes and
counting ballots, and a deep commitment to ensure that
the system works for all Americans. Because, as
Thursday's failure of responsibility by most members
of Congress illustrated, we are still far short of
electoral justice.
Complicity of the Corporatist News Media
David Brock, www.mediamatters.org: I'm writing today
to bring to your attention a report in the January 7
edition of USA Today that conservative commentator
Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 by the U.S.
government to promote a Bush administration education
initiative -- a financial relationship he failed to
disclose to readers, listeners, and viewers.
If the facts as reported by USA Today are correct, Mr.
Williams was being secretly paid by the Bush
administration to promote government policies at the
same time that he was participating in public debate
on those policies. I presume that you are as troubled
by this gross conflict of interest as I am. I
respectfully ask that you immediately review your
professional relationship with Mr. Williams and take
whatever actions you may deem appropriate, including
severing that relationship, on the grounds that Mr.
Williams's integrity has been irrevocably damaged by
taking money to influence the public debate without
disclosing those payments.
Letter from Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) to the US
GAO: We are writing to request that the Government
Accountability Office examine the use of covert
propaganda by departments and agencies under the Bush
Administration.
In the past year, GAO has released two legal analyses
finding that the Department of Health and Human
Services and the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy violated the congressional prohibition
on publicity and propaganda by distributing fabricated
video news reports. Last week, we learned that the
Department of Education paid a conservative
commentator to support the No Child Left Behind Act in
television and radio appearances.
The federal use of covert propaganda is unethical,
damaging to our democracy and open society, and, as
you know, illegal. While the three incidents described
above are deeply troubling and are a cause for concern
in their own right, it would be abhorrent to our
system of government if these incidents were part of a
pattern of covert propaganda funded with taxpayer
dollars…
In particular, we request that GAO:
1. Survey federal departments and agencies to identify
and describe all contracts signed since January 1,
2001, with public relations firms, advertising
agencies, media organizations, and individual members
of the media. Please include in the description (a)
the costs of each contract, (b) a summary of the
purposes of the contract, (c) the method by which the
contract was awarded, and (d) a description of the
work performed under the contract.
2. In the case of any contract identified under (1)
that relies on subcontracts, identify and describe the
subcontracts. Please include in the description (a)
the costs of each subcontract, (b) a summary of the
purposes of the subcontract, (c) the method by which
the subcontract was awarded, and (d) a description of
the work performed under the subcontract.
3. Assess whether the contracts and subcontracts
comply with the prohibitions on publicity and
propaganda and the requirements of the Anti-Lobbying
Act.
Greg Palast, www.gregpalast.com: "Independent" my ass.
CBS' cowardly purge of five journalists who exposed
George Bush's dodging of the Vietnam War draft was
done under cover of what the network laughably called
an "Independent Review Panel."
The "panel" was just two guys as qualified for the job
as they are for landing the space shuttle: Dick
Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi.
Remember Dickie Thornburgh? He was on the Bush 41
Administration's payroll. His grand accomplishment as
Bush's Attorney General was to whitewash the
investigation of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill, letting
the oil giant off the hook on big damages…
Then there's Boccardi, not exactly a prince of
journalism. This is the gent who, as CEO of the
Associated Press, spiked his own wire service's
exposure of Oliver North and his traitorous dealings
with the Ayatollah Khomeini…
Mapes and Rather did make a mistake, citing a memo
which could not be authenticated. But let's get
serious folks: this "Killian" memo had not a darn
thing to do with the story-in-chief - the President's
using his daddy's connections to duck out of Vietnam.
The Killian memo was a goofy little addition to the
story (not included in my Guardian or BBC reports).
So CBS inquisitors took this minor error and used it
to discredit the story and ruin careers of reporters
who allowed themselves an unguarded moment of courage.
And, crucial to the network's real agenda, this
nonsensical distraction allowed the White House to
resurrect the fake reputation of George Bush as
Vietnam-era top gun.
CBS executives' model was clearly the hatchet job done
on BBC news last year by the so-called "Hutton
Report." In that case, some used-up lordship viciously
attacked the BBC's ballsy uncovering of an official
lie: that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. Lord Hutton seized on a minor error by
one reporter to attempt to discredit the entire BBC
investigation of governmental mendacity…
Yes, I believe heads should roll at CBS: those of the
"news" chieftains who for five years ignored the
screaming evidence about George Bush's dodging the
draft during the war in Vietnam.
At the top of the network's craven and dead wrong
apology to the President is that cyclopsian CBS
eyeball. But I suspect that CBS itself has little
interest in eating its own flesh. This vile
spike-after-broadcast serves only its master, the
owner of CBS, Viacom Corporation.
"From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a
Republican administration is a better deal. Because
the Republican administration has stood for many
things we believe in, deregulation and so on.... I
vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe
that a Republican administration is better for media
companies than a Democratic one." That
more-than-revealing statement, made weeks before the
presidential election, by Sumner Redstone, billionaire
honcho of CBS' parent company, wasn't reported on CBS.
Why not? Someone should investigate.
The War in Iraq is Worse than Immoral or Illegal, It
is Stupid, Insanely Stupid
Frances D'emilio, Associated Press: The Italian
cardinal sent by Pope John Paul II last year to try to
dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq said Monday
the president promised that the U.S. operation would
be "quick."
"When I went to Washington as the pope's envoy just
before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he (Bush) told
me: `Don't worry, your eminence. We'll be quick and do
well in Iraq,'" Laghi told Italian Catholic TV station
Telepace, which was broadcasting pontiff's annual
address to diplomats.
When the United States went to war in Iraq, Laghi
called the attack on Baghdad "tragic and
unacceptable."
"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward
that things took a different course -- not rapid and
not favorable," the prelate told Telepace. "Bush was
wrong."
Charles Laurence, Telegraph (UK): American Army
soldiers are deserting and fleeing to Canada rather
than fight in Iraq, rekindling memories of the
thousands of draft-dodgers who flooded north to avoid
service in Vietnam.
An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since
the invasion of Iraq, reflecting Washington's growing
problems with troop morale.
Jeremy Hinzman, 26, from South Dakota, who deserted
from the 82nd Airborne, is among those who - to the
disgust of Pentagon officials - have applied for
refugee status in Canada.
Dana Priest and Robin Wright, Washington Post: Brent
Scowcroft, national security adviser for President
George H.W. Bush and a leading figure in the U.S.
foreign policy establishment, said yesterday that he
has grown pessimistic about prospects for stability
and democracy in Iraq, a view increasingly expressed
by other foreign policy figures in both parties.
"The Iraqi elections, rather than turning out to be a
promising turning point, have the great potential for
deepening the conflict," Scowcroft said. He said he
expects increased divisions between Shiite and Sunni
Muslims after the Jan. 30 elections, when experts
believe the government will be dominated by the
majority Shiites.
Scowcroft predicted "an incipient civil war" would
grip Iraq and said the best hope for pulling the
country from chaos would be to turn the U.S. operation
over to NATO or the United Nations -- which, he said,
would not be so hostilely viewed by Iraqis.
Bush Abomination’s #1 Failure: National Security
Dana Priest, Washington Post: Iraq has replaced
Afghanistan as the training ground for the next
generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according
to a report released yesterday by the National
Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.
Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a
recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing
technical skills," said David B. Low, the national
intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There
is even, under the best scenario, over time, the
likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not
killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home
is, and will therefore disperse to various other
countries."
Low's comments came during a rare briefing by the
council on its new report on long-term global trends.
It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of
1,000 U.S. and foreign experts. Within the 119-page
report is an evaluation of Iraq's new role as a
breeding ground for Islamic terrorists.
President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war
as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat
terrorism. But the council's report suggests the
conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a
haven for them in the chaos of war.
"At the moment," NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings
said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist
activity."
Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein
had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda
members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming
an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of
the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader
rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular
government.
Seymour Hersh, New Yorker: George W. Bush’s reëlection
was not his only victory last fall. The President and
his national-security advisers have consolidated
control over the military and intelligence
communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations
to a degree unmatched since the rise of the
post-Second World War national-security state. Bush
has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that
control—against the mullahs in Iran and against
targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his
second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be
downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as
one government consultant with close ties to the
Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating
from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.
This process is well under way.
Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq,
the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic
long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the
establishment of democracy throughout the region.
Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the
Administration as evidence of America’s support for
his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the
position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s
civilian leadership who advocated the invasion,
including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of
Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for
Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence
official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met
with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the
election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers
had been heard and the American people did not accept
their message. Rumsfeld added that America was
committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be
no second-guessing…
Rumsfeld will become even more important during the
second term. In interviews with past and present
intelligence and military officials, I was told that
the agenda had been determined before the Presidential
election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s
responsibility. The war on terrorism would be
expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s
control. The President has signed a series of findings
and executive orders authorizing secret commando
groups and other Special Forces units to conduct
covert operations against suspected terrorist targets
in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South
Asia.
The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the
operations off the books—free from legal restrictions
imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A.
covert activities overseas must be authorized by a
Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and
House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted
after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies
involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted
assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon
doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to
Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official
said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too
close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black
reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the
CINCs”—the regional American military
commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the
White House did not respond to requests for comment on
this story.)
In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next
strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You
can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’”
the former intelligence official told me. “But they
say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily,
but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely
on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the
C.I.A. is out of there.”
Bush Abomination’s #2 Failure: Economic Security
Paul Krugman, NY Times: It's the standard Bush
administration tactic: invent a fake crisis to bully
people into doing what you want. "For the first time
in six decades," the memo says, "the Social Security
battle is one we can win." One thing I haven't seen
pointed out, however, is the extent to which the White
House expects the public and the media to believe two
contradictory things.
The administration expects us to believe that drastic
change is needed, and needed right away, because of
the looming cost of paying for the baby boomers'
retirement.
The administration expects us not to notice, however,
that the supposed solution would do nothing to reduce
that cost. Even with the most favorable assumptions,
the benefits of privatization wouldn't kick in until
most of the baby boomers were long gone. For the next
45 years, privatization would cost much more money
than it saved…
A responsible administration would reverse course on
tax cuts and the botched 2003 Medicare drug bill, both
of which pose much greater threats to the government's
solvency than the modest financial shortfall of the
Social Security system. But Mr. Bush has declared his
tax cuts inviolable, and he says that his drug bill
will actually save money. (The Medicare trustees say
it will cost $8 trillion.)
There's an iceberg in front of us, all right. And Mr.
Bush wants us to steam right into it, full speed
ahead.
Bush Abomination’s #3 Failure: Environmental Security
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., AlterNet: It's worth noting
that President Bush largely avoided mentioning his
environmental record during the campaign because it
made him more vulnerable in the eyes of most voters.
All the more reason then to be wary of his
administration claiming a false mandate to continue
pursuing its hostile environmental agenda.
Consider the words of EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt,
who told reporters a few days after Bush's re-election
that the administration's agenda has been "validated
and empowered" by the voters.
A mandate on the environment? Nothing could be further
from the truth.
When people were given the opportunity to vote on a
purely environmental issue, as they did this year in
ballot initiatives around the country, they almost
always voted overwhelmingly in favor of protecting the
environment.
By a more than two-to-one ratio, voters in Washington
state approved a ballot initiative to prevent more
waste from being dumped at the federal Hanford nuclear
site, the nation's most contaminated federal facility.
The decision will require cleanup of the
586-square-mile site before any additional waste is
stored there. That is, if this common-sense measure
survives a legal challenge by the Bush Justice
Department.
In Montana, a conservative state that went for Bush,
voters upheld a ban on using cyanide, a toxic
chemical, in open pit mining. In Colorado, another
"red" state, voters approved a requirement that
utilities must generate 10 percent of their
electricity from renewable sources of energy, like
solar and wind. And let's not forget the revolt of
ranchers, anglers and hunters - particularly out West
- who expressed outrage and bitter disappointment over
the Bush administration's destructive public lands
policies…
In the face of recent rhetoric about an alleged
mandate, it's clear the challenge is greater than
ever. But the important thing is that the fundamental
politics of the environment did not change with this
election. To the contrary, the forces that have worked
to protect our communities remain firmly in place.
There is strong bipartisan support for a safer,
cleaner approach - particularly in the U.S. Senate and
among the nation's governors. And the fight won't just
be about holding the line; in fact, we will see
increasing efforts to move forward on pressing
problems like mercury contamination, water pollution,
ocean restoration and perhaps most importantly, global
warming.
An Illegitimate, Incompetent & Corrupt Regime
Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian: Two days after the
tsunami struck, President Bush, who had made no public
statement, was vacationing at his ranch in Texas, and
a junior spokesman was trotted out. The offer of U.S.
aid was $15m - $2m less than the star pitcher of the
Boston Red Sox was paid that year.
On December 27, UN emergency relief coordinator Jan
Egeland had criticised wealthy nations for
"stinginess". The next day Bill Clinton described the
tsunami as a "horror movie", and explained that
international leadership was required for a sustained
effort once the "emotional tug" waned.
Now the White House spokesman reassured the country
that Bush was "clearing some brush this morning; I
think he has some friends coming in ... that he enjoys
hosting; he's doing some biking and exercising ...
taking walks with the first lady..." The spokesman
said U.S. aid would be increased to $35m, and added a
jibe at Clinton: "The president wanted to be fully
briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a
symbolic statement about 'we feel your pain'. "
Eight days after the tsunami, Bush appeared in the
White House flanked by his father and Clinton, who, he
announced, would lead a private aid effort, and
moreover that U.S. aid would be increased tenfold to
$350m. Attacking Clinton hadn't worked; so Bush
recruited him to deflect criticism...
Bush administration policy has been conflicted,
confused and negligent. The leading neoconservative at
the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of
defence,has tried to overthrow U.S. restrictions on
aid to, and relations with, the Indonesian military.
The neoconservative thrust is undeterred by the
military's obstruction of the FBI investigation into
the murder of two U.S. businessmen in 2002, killings
that appear to implicate the military. When the state
department issued a human rights report on Indonesia's
abysmal record, its spokesman replied: "The U.S.
government does not have the moral authority to assess
or act as a judge of other countries, including
Indonesia, on human rights, especially after the abuse
scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison."
John Pilger, The New Statesman: The west's crusaders,
the United States and Britain, are giving less to help
the tsunami victims than the cost of a Stealth bomber
or a week's bloody occupation of Iraq. The bill for
George Bush's coming inauguration party would rebuild
much of the coastline of Sri Lanka. Bush and Blair
increased their first driblets of "aid" only when it
became clear that people all over the world were
spontaneously giving millions and that a public
relations problem beckoned. The Blair government's
current "generous" contribution is one-sixteenth of
the £800m it spent on bombing Iraq before the invasion
and barely one-twentieth of a £1bn gift, known as a
soft loan, to the Indonesian military so that it could
acquire Hawk fighter-bombers…
The hypocrisy, narcissism and dissembling propaganda
of the rulers of the world and their sidekicks are in
full cry. Superlatives abound as to their humanitarian
intent while the division of humanity into worthy and
unworthy victims dominates the news. The victims of a
great natural disaster are worthy (though for how long
is uncertain) while the victims of man-made imperial
disasters are unworthy and very often unmentionable.
Somehow, reporters cannot bring themselves to report
what has been going on in Aceh, supported by "our"
government. This one-way moral mirror allows us to
ignore a trail of destruction and carnage that is
another tsunami… This other tsunami is worldwide,
causing 24,000 deaths every day from poverty and debt
and division that are the products of a supercult
called neoliberalism. This was acknowledged by the
United Nations in 1990 when it called a conference in
Paris of the richest states with the aim of
implementing a "programme of action" to rescue the
world's poorest nations. A decade later, virtually
every commitment made by western governments had been
broken, making Gordon Brown's waffle about the G8
"sharing Britain's dream" of ending poverty as just
that: waffle. Very few western governments have
honoured the United Nations "baseline" and allotted a
miserable 0.7 per cent or more of their national
income to overseas aid. Britain gives just 0.34 per
cent, making its "Department for International
Development" a black joke. The US gives 0.14 per cent,
the lowest of any industrial state…
"The most spectacular display of public morality the
world has ever seen", was how the writer Arundhati Roy
described the anti-war anger that swept across the
world almost two years ago. A French study now
estimates that 35 million people demonstrated on that
February day and says there has never been anything
like it; and it was just a beginning.
John P. O’Neill Wall of Heroes
James Harding, The Financial Times: A group of
billionaire philanthropists are to donate tens of
millions more dollars to develop progressive political
ideas in the US in an effort to counter the
conservative ascendancy.
George Soros, who made his fortune in the hedge fund
industry; Herb and Marion Sandler, the California
couple who own a multi-billion-dollar savings and loan
business; and Peter Lewis, the chairman of an Ohio
insurance company, donated more than $63m (£34m) in
the 2004 election cycle to organisations seeking to
defeat George W. Bush.
At a meeting in San Francisco last month, the
left-leaning billionaires agreed to commit an even
larger sum over a longer period to building
institutions to foster progressive ideas and people…
The details of the San Francisco meeting are closely
held. Mr Soros and his son Jonathan, the Sandlers and
Mr Lewis asked aides to leave the room as they
discussed the planned financial commitment.
But the still-evolving plan, according to one person
involved, is "joint investment to build intellectual
infrastructure."
The intention is to provide the left with
organisations in Washington that can match the heft of
the rightwing think-tanks such as Heritage Foundation
and the American Enterprise Institute…
Several people said their understanding was that the
billionaires had decided to spend more, rather than
less, than they did in 2004.
Ted Birdis, Associated Press: The FBI never
adequately investigated complaints by a fired contract
linguist who alleged shoddy work and possible
espionage inside the bureau's translator program, even
though evidence and witnesses supported her, the
Justice Department's senior oversight official said
Friday.
The bureau's response to complaints by former
translator Sibel Edmonds was "significantly flawed,"
Inspector General Glenn Fine said in a report that
summarized a lengthy classified investigation into how
the FBI handled the case. Fine said her claims "raised
substantial questions and were supported by various
pieces of evidence."
Edmonds maintains she was fired in March 2002 after
she complained to FBI managers about shoddy wiretap
translations and told them an interpreter with a
relative at a foreign embassy might have compromised
national security by blocking translations in some
cases and notifying targets of FBI surveillance.
In response to the new report, the FBI said Friday it
still was investigating Edmonds' claims. It also said
FBI Director Robert Mueller has reminded senior bureau
officials to protect employees against retaliation for
raising concerns. The government has said Edmonds did
not qualify for formal whistle-blower job protections
because she worked with the FBI under a personal
contract.
"The report substantiated the most serious of Sibel's
allegations and demonstrates that the FBI owes Sibel
an apology and compensation for its unlawful firing of
her rather than hiding behind its false cloak of
national security," said her lawyer, Mark Zaid.
Restore the Sanctity of the Vote! Restore Independent, Aggressive, Principled Journalism! Restore the Republic!
-------
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011205J.shtml
Published on Thursday, January 6, 2005 by the San
Francisco Chronicle
Keeping Our Democracy Alive
Did Voters Really Count in US Election?
by Steve Freeman
In three national elections over the past 13 months,
the official count was sharply at odds with an
independent national exit poll. As in the former
Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine, U.S. exit
polls projected a clear victory for the challenger.
John Kerry was projected to win the national popular
vote by a 2 percent to 3 percent margin and was ahead
in nearly every closely contested state. Of course,
the official counts, as in the other nations, showed
an almost mirror image victory for the incumbent party
candidate.
The citizens of Georgia and Ukraine refused to accept
the official tallies, protested vigorously and , with
international support, overturned the election, but
U.S. voters have passively accepted the results of
their election and gone back to business, oblivious to
the discrepancy and blind to the implications.
A 5 percent shift in a poll like this is
extraordinary. Exit pollsters do not have to guess
about who is actually going to vote, or whether they
might change their mind. Exit polls can achieve larger
samples cost-effectively: the national election-day
sample had more than 13,000 respondents, meaning that
it should have accurately forecast the result within
plus or minus 1 percent.
Polling error beyond statistical margins of error is
possible, of course. That's why we actually count the
votes, and why the count determines the winner. But
when there are serious questions over how elections
are conducted, we look to these exit polls.
So what if an incumbent party controls the election
machinery and there are other reasons to doubt the
count? Irregularities similar to those found in the
Ukrainian election have been documented here.
An investigation by members of the House Judiciary
Committee limited to Ohio alone has substantiated:
-- Deliberate vote suppressions (unmailed and lost
absentee ballots; obstacles to registration, such as
rejection of forms over a technicality; lack of voting
machines in Democratic strongholds resulting in waits
of more than eight hours, while Republican areas had
surplus machines; widespread misinformation about
polling places; overuse of provisional ballots, many
not subsequently counted);
-- Apparent fraud (undercounts in Democratic precincts
where 25 percent of voters reportedly did not vote for
president; unreasonably high numbers of votes recorded
for third-party candidates in 10 heavily Democratic
precincts in Cleveland; extraordinarily high voter
registration and turnout inconsistent with records in
precincts of Appalachian Ohio) and
-- Secret counts and recounts (Warren County locked
out count observers because of a terrorist threat
attributed to the FBI, which the FBI has denied;
recounts conducted in the absence of observers and in
pre-selected precincts, violating state law; testimony
that representatives of a voting system supplier
improperly participated in the recount).
Beyond these conventional manipulations, the United
States has introduced electronic voting, a new system
of potential mass and undetectable manipulation.
Thirty percent of Americans in this election used
electronic voting machines, which produce no
confirmation that votes are recorded as cast -- the
"paper trail." Stanford University computer scientist
David Dill draws the analogy of telling a man behind a
curtain whom you want to vote for and trusting that he
has recorded it faithfully. Voters using electronic
voting machines likewise blindly trust that the
programmer has written code that can and will record
their votes as cast.
The system is made worse yet by a concentrated
electronic voting-machine industry characterized by
overt partisanship, conflicts of interest and a lack
of transparency in nearly every aspect of operations.
So why is the response rebellion in the former Soviet
Union nations but passive acceptance here? It's not
that exit polls are reliable everywhere but here. In
fact, both of the exit polls in the Ukraine were
flawed. One did not adequately cover the strongholds
of the government candidate; the other used
face-to-face interviews, thus asking respondents to
risk retribution. Both polls are alleged to have been
sponsored by the West, principally the United States,
hoping to install a friendly, pro-NATO government. The
U.S. exit poll, in contrast, was independent,
well-funded and run by the most experienced exit
pollsters in the world.
We may believe that "it can't happen here": After all,
we are not only a democracy, but the democracy. Voting
is embedded in all our cultural values and
institutions. Paradoxically, however, U.S. democratic
traditions may have led to unwarranted laxity. Other
countries do not take democracy for granted. They
know, as the founders of our country did, how
vulnerable it is, and that the price of liberty is
eternal vigilance.
The purpose of conducting research and questioning the
election outcome is not partisan -- it is equally
democratic, republican and libertarian. Americans
should take up this cause as neither "for Kerry" nor
"against Bush." Indeed, one reason resistance to the
count has not coalesced is that for the past year, the
country has looked to Kerry and George W. Bush as its
leaders. But it's clear that neither is taking the
lead on protection of voting rights. When I documented
the discrepancy between the official count and
exit-poll predictions, thousands of people e-mailed me
to thank me for stating the obvious. Why weren't
others asking these questions?
The absence of questions does not make a democracy
function; democratic processes do. It has been a long
time since this country has paid a price for liberty.
It seems clear now that a large payment of vigilance
is long overdue.
Steve Freeman is on the faculty of the Center for
Organizational Dynamics at the University of
Pennsylvania. To view his 2004 election research, go
to www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm.
© 2005 San Francisco Chronicle
###
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0106-27.htm
Published on Sunday, January 9, 2005 by the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
Many Americans Refuse to Concede 'Stolen Election'
On Eve of Bush's Inauguration, Challenges Continue
by Leila Atassi
While a two-hour debate raged on the floors of the
U.S. House and Senate over the certification of the
presidential election, more than 400 activists waited
outside to learn which of their leaders would join
their cause.
Under an overcast sky, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told the
activists - still refusing to accept the results of
the November election - not to be bitter.
As he spoke, many of them wept, because for some, the
anger over what they refer to as "the stolen election"
is precisely what won't let them let go.
It has been more than two months since President Bush
declared victory. But the activists who assembled
Thursday in Washington, D.C., and countless others
across the country say they refuse to concede and have
made investigating voter irregularities in Ohio their
top priority - sometimes forsaking their livelihood or
former selves.
A close look at four of the many activists who refuse
to concede the election.
Kerry concession ignites blogger's passion
Lawyer Ray Beckerman was so stunned that he nearly
crashed his car into a light pole when he heard Sen.
John Kerry was expected to concede the election.
All at once, the election night volunteerism, which
Beckerman thought would be a nice community service,
had lit a fire beneath the 56-year-old commercial
litigation attorney. Within two months, Beckerman
would become one of the nation's foremost bloggers on
Ohio's voting irregularities, devoting 90 percent of
his time to his cause.
The lawyer had spent election night in Columbus,
manning the Democratic Party hot line to advise voters
reporting trouble at the polls. He and 19 other
lawyers heard more than 1,000 stories from people who
waited up to 10 hours to vote, never received absentee
ballots, had provisional ballots rejected or said they
were interrogated by poll challengers for no reason.
The next day, Beckerman was on his way back to New
York City, where he has practiced business and
entertainment law for 26 years. He flipped through the
radio stations searching for news that echoed the
reports of the Ohio voters he spoke to the night
before, but heard nothing. Beckerman called his son,
Eli, an astrophysicist in Somerville, Mass., and asked
for an update on the chaos in Ohio.
"Haven't you heard?" his son said. "Kerry's about to
concede."
"I absolutely could not believe he was conceding,"
Beckerman said. "And all over, we later heard that,
except for the long lines, the election went smoothly
in Ohio. Never mind that almost everyone in long lines
had black faces or were in Democratic precincts."
Beckerman wrote his election night experiences in an
e-mail to friends, but within days he learned that his
e-mail, which he titled "Basic Report from Columbus,"
had been circulating on the Internet. Beckerman, who
had written only a general Web log before the
election, decided to shift the focus of his blog to
voter disenfranchisement.
"I decided there must be some kind of grass-roots
organizing to bring this to the attention of the
world," he said.
Beckerman's blog includes a list of upcoming protests
and hundreds of links to material he calls "primary
evidence" of an unfair election in Ohio. The attorney
said that to free up time for his law practice, he
must pull his efforts away from election reform and
focus on pending investigations of the election.
"I have to do this for my children and my children's
children," Beckerman said. "Years from now, if someone
were to ask me what I was doing during this period in
history, I want to say I was fighting it."
Beckerman's blog can be found at:
http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com.
Poll watcher won't rest until she sees reforms
On election night, after Dr. Patricia Blochowiak
finished her duties as a Democratic poll watcher at
Lakeside Baptist Church in East Cleveland, she headed
over to the Sheraton hotel to celebrate with
Cleveland's Democratic Party.
She didn't stay long. She was exhausted. And Ohio, she
figured, would put John Kerry over the top.
"I remember knowing at some point that [John] Edwards
said he wanted to make every vote count, and that
seemed like good news," Blochowiak said.
But while she drafted a letter to lawyers, describing
long lines and the harassment of voters at the East
Cleveland polling place, she heard over the radio that
Kerry had given up. She vowed she would not.
Blochowiak, a family doctor with a history of
advocating peace and sustainable energy, visited
meet-ups for several Democratic candidates last year
before deciding on Kerry.
"I appreciated that he fought in Vietnam and then for
peace when he returned," she said. "And also, as a
physician, I just really believed in his plan for
health-care reform."
The East Cleveland doctor threw herself onto the
campaign trail, serving on the steering committee of
Doctors for Kerry, going door-to-door with literature,
distributing bumper stickers outside of theaters
showing the anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit 9/11" and
housing out-of-state members of Kerry's campaign team.
Blochowiak thought her work was done on election night
and she could return to her work with Global Awareness
Through the Arts (& Sciences), the nonprofit group she
founded to broaden the perspectives of children in
East Cleveland. But it was just the beginning.
Blochowiak observed ballot recounts in Medina,
Jefferson and Cuyahoga counties. None of them, the
doctor said, was done according to state law.
"We were not allowed to see the way the pretest of the
tabulating machines was done," she said. The precincts
were not chosen at random. "In Medina, they were
chosen according to size. The rationale was that
otherwise we'd be here all day."
The unsatisfied doctor helped organize a public
hearing in East Cleveland, where voters related
stories of painfully long lines and unnecessary
harassment at the polls. The transcripts have been
sent to Congress, Blochowiak said, but even after
Bush's inauguration on Jan. 20, she won't rest until
the process of voting has been reformed.
"We need paper ballots that people mark with X's" to
avoid hanging chads, she said. "And counting needs to
be done publicly and on videotape. We cannot have the
votes counted by people who are committed to
delivering the vote to the Republicans."
A history of activism dating from the '60s
Harvey Wasserman was in the middle of his workout when
Kerry conceded the election.
All around him people ran on treadmills, paying little
attention to the health club television - or to the
Columbus-based activist who listened in shock to
Kerry's speech.
"It was short and quick, like a thief in the night,"
Wasserman said. "After he spent all this time and half
a billion dollars to put himself forward as the
candidate who would win the election for the
Democratic Party, to concede less than 24 hours after
the election was a complete abdication of
responsibility."
Before he went to bed on election night, Wasserman
learned that the tide had turned away from Kerry's
victory. But he had no idea that, for the Democrats,
the controversial election would be over so soon - or
that for his corps of activists, it was the beginning
of a struggle to prevent Bush's inauguration.
Wasserman's résumé as an activist and journalist dates
to the early 1960s civil rights movement. In the
1970s, he helped launch the grass-roots anti-nuclear
movement and helped coin the phrase "No Nukes." He
teaches history at Columbus State Community College
and has spent most of his career speaking and writing
against nuclear power and promoting trends in
renewable energy.
Currently, he is senior editor at www.freepress.org,
an alternative Web site, which started as a
publication in 1970 as a forum for activism and
protest against the Vietnam War. Since Nov. 2,
Wasserman has rallied support for investigations into
voting irregularities, organized public hearings in
Columbus, worked on a documentary and called for a
revote in Ohio.
The hearings and demonstrations and a
soon-to-be-released book and the documentary, which
contains what Wasserman called "devastating footage"
from election night, will stand as historic record,
the activist said. But Bush's inauguration won't end
Wasserman's activities.
"The people of progressive politics who are despairing
should remember what happened to Nixon after he was
re-elected in the midst of Watergate," he said. "We
must make sure the crimes of this election are not
lost in their impact. Bush can't steal an election and
walk away without consequences."
'Nobody's giving up,' activists are galvanized
Sheri Myers was in the Orlando, Fla., airport, coming
off of John Kerry's Florida campaign operation, when
she got the call. Her mom phoned to tell her that
Kerry had conceded the election.
"You know that feeling when you're in a relationship,
and you know in your soul that someone has been
cheating on you?" she said, remembering that moment in
the airport terminal. "That's how I felt. I knew
something was terribly wrong."
Myers started Mar Vista Neighbors for Peace and
Justice, a protest group in her Los Angeles
neighborhood, and is a member of Code PINK, a women's
peace organization, which made waves in September when
members were arrested outside the Republican National
Convention.
Myers helped mobilize 200 volunteers in Marion County,
Fla., who worked the phones, drove the elderly to the
polls and distributed literature. But the mission,
Myers said, only intensified after Kerry gave up.
Myers is distributing a DVD as part of a "Voter Fraud
Activist Kit." The video, produced by Columbus
filmmaker Linda Byrket and titled "Ohio/Nov2-Standing
in the Rain with Jim Crow," depicts long lines, voters
waiting in the rain or being told they're at the wrong
precinct, Myers said.
"What we have here is a civil rights violation on a
massive level," she said.
Originally from Delaware, Ohio, Myers spread the word
about the DVD on her e-mail list of 300 activist
friends. She also distributed copies of the DVD along
her bus tour to Washington, D.C., to protest Congress'
certification of the election.
Even as Bush prepares for his inauguration, Myers said
she will galvanize her protest by linking up with
activists in other major cities and bringing them to
Washington.
"Nobody's giving up," she said. "Thousands of people
are gonna come to Washington by the busload, because
now we know how to do it. Nothing is stopping us.
These buses are gonna roll."
© Copyright 2005 The Plain Dealer
###
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0109-01.htm
John Conyers Thanks Internet Activists and Stands Up
to Fight!
by Bob Fertik on 01/10/2005 10:37pm. - revised
01/10/2005 10:41pm
You GO, John!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dear Friend:
I want to thank you for the time and energy you have
already given to help me in my pursuit of the truth
about the 2004 Presidential election, particularly the
truth about what happened in Ohio. I also want to let
you know what I will be working on in the coming
months.
I believe what we achieved on January 6 will be a
seminal event in the history of progressive politics,
and significantly advance the cause of electoral
reform. For this challenge to Ohio’s electors to have
occurred, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the
internet activists, who spread the story of my efforts
and supported me in every way possible. I am also
thankful to the alternative media, including talk
radio and blogs that gave substantial attention and
investigation to these matters when all but a handful
in the mainstream media refused to examine the facts.
I cannot thank all of you personally, but you know who
you are.
With the exigency of January 6 behind us, I wanted to
let you know what I will be doing in the coming
months. First, my investigation of Ohio voting
irregularities is not over. In an effort to get as
much information confirmed and circulated in advance
of January 6, many valuable leads still need to be
pursued and I pledge to do so. Substantial
irregularities have come to light in other states
during the course of this investigation and I will
also pursue those leads. While there has been powerful
opposition to my efforts and personal attacks against
me as a result of my efforts, I want to assure you I
remain steadfast.
Second, there are other matters involving wrongdoing
by Administration officials that I will continue to
pursue. Among other things, I will continue to seek
answers about the role of senior Bush Administration
officials in outing an undercover Central Intelligence
Agency operative. I will also continue to examine the
sources of the fraudulent case for the Iraq war, which
intersects with the outing of this operative.
Third, I intend to develop and introduce legislation
in a number of areas. Most importantly, I intend to
introduce comprehensive election reform legislation in
the coming weeks, and I will fight for its passage at
the earliest possible moment. I intend to hold further
hearings on this issue. I will also continue to fight
the job loss and the loss of retirement security that
has so negatively impacted working families in my
district, and I will fight the economic policies of
this Administration that are the cause of these
serious problems. Finally, the Judiciary Committee
will also be at the center of the efforts to oversee
the U.S.A. Patriot Act and ascertain which, if any,
provisions should be renewed. I expect to lead the
fight against a number of provisions that I believe
compromise our civil liberties.
Again, thank you for all you have done. I look forward
to working with you on these and other important
matters in the weeks and months ahead.
Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr.
http://blog.democrats.com/node/2499
John Nichols
John Nichols: On Ohio vote, Congress shirked its duty
By John Nichols
January 11, 200
About John
John Nichols is a native Wisconsinite, who has written
for The Capital Times for the past decade.
Email John
David Cobb, the Green Party presidential candidate who
has devoted the past two months to the arduous task of
pressing for a full review of the mess that Ohio
officials made of the election in that state, called
Friday afternoon to proclaim a sort of victory.
"I think we've finally got a movement going for
election reform in this country," he said.
To an extent, he's right.
At the grass-roots level, there appears to be growing
support for a count-every-vote,
eliminate-every-opportunity-for-fraud standard that
would radically alter the way in which the United
States runs elections.
And to some small extent, this enthusiasm for election
reform has been communicated to those members of
Congress who are still interested in what their
constituents say - as was evidenced by Thursday's
decision on the part of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer,
D-Calif., to support the objection by members of the
House to the certification of Ohio's electoral
votes.
The objection, and the congressional debates that
followed, were decried by the usual suspects - White
House spokesman Scott McClellan, who has the
distinction of having never told the truth in his
official capacity, dismissed evidence of
disenfranchisement of minority voters as "conspiracy
theories." But the objection also drew enough
thoughtful coverage and editorial comment from
mainstream media to suggest that the fight was worth
it.
A lot more Americans now know about our flawed voting
systems. And a few more Democrats in Congress seem to
have gotten the point that it is not appropriate to
casually certify the results of an election that has
been tainted by evidence of disenfranchisement, voter
suppression and official misdeeds.
While critics tried to remake the congressional
challenge as an attempt to reverse the result of the
2004 election in Ohio, and by extension nationally,
U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, explained
that "this objection does not have at its root the
hope or even the hint of overturning or challenging
the victory of the president."
The point, said Tubbs Jones, was to expose the
fundamental flaws in the current system and to
highlight the need for reform. It was, Boxer added, a
matter of "electoral justice."
Unfortunately, that point was lost on every Republican
member of the House and Senate and on the vast
majority of Democrats. When all was said and done,
only one member of the Senate (Boxer) took a stand for
electoral justice by refusing to back certification of
the Ohio results.
There was more support in the House, from 31 members.
Sadly, none of them was from Wisconsin, a state that
historically has been able to count on its
representatives to take the defense of democracy a
little more seriously than representatives from some
other states.
That Wisconsin's two senators and eight House members
failed to act is not a matter of lack of courage.
Rather, it is a matter of lack of responsibility.
Boxer and the 31 House members who objected were not
being courageous. They were simply performing their
duties in the manner that was intended. The founders
of this country gave the legislative branch the
responsibility of certifying election results because
they understood the need for oversight of elections -
especially for a position so powerful as the
presidency. And they trusted that congressional
representatives, who were more directly accountable to
the citizenry, would ensure that partisan pressures
did not trump democracy.
Last Thursday, however, democracy got trumped. The
vast majority of the members of the House and Senate
chose not to live up to the responsibility rested upon
them by the founders.
Congressional Democrats who failed to support the
objection to the Ohio count - as well as those
moderate Republicans who would like to think of
themselves as anything more than rubber stamps for a
president who has never displayed respect for the
Constitution - need to ask themselves some questions:
What is it about the phrase "electoral justice" that
they don't understand? Is there any level of minority
disenfranchisement that they would take seriously? Do
they really believe that conservative Republicans in
Congress would go along with certification of election
results from a state where there was significant
evidence of disenfranchisement of a Republican-leaning
group, such as evangelical Christians?
They know the answers to those questions. And if they
are honest with themselves, those thinking members of
Congress who failed to object to the certification of
the Ohio results know that they let down the American
people.
So the people will have to respond. I hope David Cobb,
who has worked so hard on these issues, is right. I
hope we are seeing the birth of a multipartisan
movement for election reform that will establish a
universal set of standards for registering voters,
casting votes and counting ballots, and a deep
commitment to ensure that the system works for all
Americans. Because, as Thursday's failure of
responsibility by most members of Congress
illustrated, we are still far short of electoral
justice.
John Nichols is associate editor for The Capital
Times. E-mail: jnichols@madison.com. For more on the
objection to the Ohio results, visit
www.thenation.com.
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/nichols/index.php?ntid=24073
Published: 7:25 AM 1/11/05
Letter from David Brock, RE: Armstrong Williams
January 7, 2005
Kevin Klose
President and Chief Executive
National Public Radio
635 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
David D. Smith
Chief Executive Officer
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, Inc.
10706 Beaver Dam Road
Hunt Valley, MD 21030
Roger E. Ailes
Chairman and CEO
FOX News Channel
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Jonathan Rodgers
CEO
TV One
101 Wayne Avenue, 10th floor
Silver Spring, MD 20910
David D. Williams
President and CEO
Tribune Media Services
435 North Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
Dear Sirs:
I'm writing today to bring to your attention a report
in the January 7 edition of USA Today that
conservative commentator Armstrong Williams was paid
$240,000 by the U.S. government to promote a Bush
administration education initiative -- a financial
relationship he failed to disclose to readers,
listeners, and viewers.
If the facts as reported by USA Today are correct, Mr.
Williams was being secretly paid by the Bush
administration to promote government policies at the
same time that he was participating in public debate
on those policies. I presume that you are as troubled
by this gross conflict of interest as I am. I
respectfully ask that you immediately review your
professional relationship with Mr. Williams and take
whatever actions you may deem appropriate, including
severing that relationship, on the grounds that Mr.
Williams's integrity has been irrevocably damaged by
taking money to influence the public debate without
disclosing those payments.
In my view, the payments, if made -- as well as Mr.
Williams's failure to disclose the payments -- would
disqualify Mr. Williams from appearing in the media as
an independent commentator.
Yours,
David Brock
President and CEO
Media Matters for America
Posted to the web on Friday January 7, 2005 at 5:01 PM
EST
Copyright © 2004 Media Matters for America. All rights
reserved.
Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy
Subscribe to Media Matters Email Updates
http://mediamatters.org/items/200501070009
Rep. Slaughter Demands GAO Investigation into Bush
Administration Propaganda Contracts
Press Release
Tuesday 11 January 2005
Washington, DC - Today, Rep. Louise Slaughter
(NY-28), Ranking Member of the House Committee on
Rules joined House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi,
Rep. Henry Waxman and other members of the House
Democratic leadership in calling for an immediate and
thorough examination of departments and agencies under
the Bush Administration into their use of covert
propaganda.
Last week Rep. Slaughter sent a letter to the
Chief Executives of the Sinclair Broadcasting Group
and TV ONE, demanding that their contracts with
syndicated broadcaster Armstrong Williams be
terminated immediately.
As reported in USA Today, Williams was allegedly
paid $240,000 by the Bush Administration to discuss
the No Child Left Behind program in a favorable light
as a regular part of his radio and television
broadcasts on stations owned by the two broadcast
groups.
"The Armstrong Williams incident is a serious breach
of the public trust. The American people deserve to
know if there are more secret propaganda contracts
being funded with their hard earned money," stated
Slaughter.
The text of the letter follows:
January 11, 2005
The Honorable David M. Walker
Comptroller General
U.S. Government Accountability Office
441 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20548
Dear Mr. Walker:
We are writing to request that the Government
Accountability Office examine the use of covert
propaganda by departments and agencies under the Bush
Administration.
In the past year, GAO has released two legal
analyses finding that the Department of Health and
Human Services and the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy violated the congressional
prohibition on publicity and propaganda by
distributing fabricated video news reports. Last week,
we learned that the Department of Education paid a
conservative commentator to support the No Child Left
Behind Act in television and radio appearances.
The federal use of covert propaganda is unethical,
damaging to our democracy and open society, and, as
you know, illegal. While the three incidents described
above are deeply troubling and are a cause for concern
in their own right, it would be abhorrent to our
system of government if these incidents were part of a
pattern of covert propaganda funded with taxpayer
dollars.
In particular, we request that GAO:
1. Survey federal departments and agencies to identify
and describe all contracts signed since January 1,
2001, with public relations firms, advertising
agencies, media organizations, and individual members
of the media. Please include in the description (a)
the costs of each contract, (b) a summary of the
purposes of the contract, (c) the method by which the
contract was awarded, and (d) a description of the
work performed under the contract.
2. In the case of any contract identified under (1)
that relies on subcontracts, identify and describe the
subcontracts. Please include in the description (a)
the costs of each subcontract, (b) a summary of the
purposes of the subcontract, (c) the method by which
the subcontract was awarded, and (d) a description of
the work performed under the subcontract.
3. Assess whether the contracts and subcontracts
comply with the prohibitions on publicity and
propaganda and the requirements of the Anti-Lobbying
Act.
We recognize that a comprehensive survey of
federal departments and agencies may be a large
undertaking. We ask that you focus your initial
attention on covert propaganda related to the
following seven topics:
The No Child Left Behind Act and its implementation;
The Medicare Modernization Act and its implementation;
Tax legislation signed or proposed by President Bush;
Social Security reform;
The war in Iraq;
Homeland security;
Energy and the environment.
We are available to work with you to refine this
request as you proceed with the investigative work
-
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011305J.shtml
CBS' Cowardice and Conflicts behind Purge
By Greg Palast
GregPalast.com
Tuesday 11 January 2005
Network's craven back-down on Bush draft dodge report
sure to get a standing Rove-ation at White House.
"Independent" my ass. CBS' cowardly purge of five
journalists who exposed George Bush's dodging of the
Vietnam War draft was done under cover of what the
network laughably called an "Independent Review
Panel."
The "panel" was just two guys as qualified for the
job as they are for landing the space shuttle: Dick
Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi.
Remember Dickie Thornburgh? He was on the Bush 41
Administration's payroll. His grand accomplishment as
Bush's Attorney General was to whitewash the
investigation of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill, letting
the oil giant off the hook on big damages.
Thornburgh's fat pay as counsel to Kirkpatrick &
Lockhart, the Washington law-and-lobbying outfit, is
substantially due to his job as a Bush retainer. This
is the kind of stinky conflict of interest that hardly
suggests "independent." Why not just appoint Karl Rove
as CBS' grand inquisitor and be done with it?
Then there's Boccardi, not exactly a prince of
journalism. This is the gent who, as CEO of the
Associated Press, spiked his own wire service's
exposure of Oliver North and his traitorous dealings
with the Ayatollah Khomeini. Legendary AP
investigative reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger
found their stories outing the Iran-Contra scandal in
1986 stopped by their bosses. They did not know that
Boccardi was on those very days deep in the midst of
talks with North, participating in the conspiracy.
Today I spoke with Parry at his home in Virginia.
He was sympathetic to Boccardi who at the time was
trying to spring AP reporter Terry Anderson held
hostage in Iran. But to do so, Boccardi joined,
unwittingly, in a criminal conspiracy to trade guns
for hostages. He then spiked his own news agency's
investigation of it. Parry later discovered a 1986
email from North to John Poindexter in which North
notes that Boccardi "is supportive of our terropism
(sic) policy" and wants to keep the story "quiet."
Poindexter was indicted, then pardoned. Boccardi was
not, and there is no indication he knew he was
abetting a crime. But the AP demoted journalist Barger
and forced him to quit for - the offense of trying to
report the biggest story of the decade. This hardly
gives Mr. Spike the qualification to pass judgment on
working journalists.
And who are the journalists whom CBS has burned at
the corporate stake? The first lined up for career
execution is '60 Minutes' producer Mary Mapes. Besides
the Bush draft dodge story, Mapes produced the exposé
of the torture at Abu Ghraib when other networks had
the same material and buried it.
I admit to a soft spot for Mapes. Four years ago,
BBC Television London broadcast my report that Jeb
Bush had wrongly purged thousands of African-Americans
from the voter rolls, thereby fixing the election for
his big brother. CBS Evening News ran away scared from
the story, as did ABC and other U.S. networks. This
year, when Bush tried to repeat the trick, Mapes
wanted to put it on '60 Minutes.' However, after the
draft dodge story hullabaloo, that was not going to
happen.
And what was the crime committed by Mapes and,
let's not forget, Dan Rather, whose career was also
toasted by the story?
CBS said, "The Panel found that Mapes ignored
information that cast doubt on the story she had set
out to report - that President Bush had received
special treatment 30 years ago, getting to the [Texas
Air National] Guard ahead of many other applicants
...."
Well, excuse me, but that story is stone cold
solid, irrefutable, backed-up, sourced, proven to a
fare-thee-well. I know, because I'm one of the
reporters who broke that story ... way back in 1999,
for the Guardian papers of Britain. No one has
challenged the Guardian report, or my follow-up for
BBC Television, whatsoever, though we've begged the
White House for a response from our self-proclaimed
"war president."
CBS did not "break" this Chicken-Hawk George
story; it's just that Dan Rather, with Mapes'
encouragement, found his journalistic soul and the
cojones, finally, after 5 years delay, to report it.
Did Bush get special treatment to get into the Guard?
Baby Bush tested in the 25th percentile out of 100.
Yet, he leaped ahead of thousands of other Vietnam
evaders because the then-Speaker of the Texas
legislature sent a message to General Craig Rose, head
of the Guard, to let in Little George and a few other
sons of well-placed politicos. (See some of the
documentation at
http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg
and a clip from the BBC Television report at
http://www.gregpalast.com/images/TrailerClips.mov.)
Mapes and Rather did make a mistake, citing a memo
which could not be authenticated. But let's get
serious folks: this "Killian" memo had not a darn
thing to do with the story-in-chief - the President's
using his daddy's connections to duck out of Vietnam.
The Killian memo was a goofy little addition to the
story (not included in my Guardian or BBC reports).
So CBS inquisitors took this minor error and used
it to discredit the story and ruin careers of
reporters who allowed themselves an unguarded moment
of courage. And, crucial to the network's real agenda,
this nonsensical distraction allowed the White House
to resurrect the fake reputation of George Bush as
Vietnam-era top gun.
CBS executives' model was clearly the hatchet j