VOLUME 32 ISSUE 19 — 16 DECEMBER 1997 134-Year-Old Man Attributes Longevity To Typographical Error NEW ORLEANS—Area dock worker Bert Greer celebrated his 134th birthday Friday with a quiet party at his home, surrounded by family. Asked the secret to his astounding longevity, the feisty Greer credited "healthy eating, a good walk every evening, and a Social Security worker's accidental striking of an extra digit while typing in my age." The remarkable Greer, who remembers meeting President Lyndon Johnson as a young boy, said he has "no plans to retire any time soon."
The Federal Election Commission has imposed record fines totaling at least $719,000 against Democrats involved in the party's 1996 fund-raising scandals, according to published reports.
FEC documents described how Democratic fund-raisers demanded illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals in China and other countries in exchange for meetings with then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
Among those who were penalized by the FEC were the Democratic National Committee, $115,000; the Clinton-Gore campaign, $2,000; and the Buddhist Progressive Society, $120,000, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Saturday.
They said the DNC also agreed to surrender an additional $128,000 representing illegal campaign donations that were not returned.
More than 20 people and corporations acting as conduits for the illegal contributions also were fined, the newspapers said, citing FEC documents.
They've all agreed to pay, according to the records.
The total amount of fines would have been much higher except some of the companies have shut down and others were dummy operations used as conduits for money from Canada, China, Venezuela and other countries, the Post said.
The FEC dropped the cases involving another $3 million in illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee because the respondents either "are out of the country and beyond our reach, or (are) corporations that are defunct," according to FEC papers cited by the Post.
Kent Cooper, a former elections commission official, told the Times the commission limited the fines to some people who said they could not afford to pay more. He said the total assessed appeared to have been surprisingly low.
By John M. Goshko Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 14 1997; Page A01
Iraq dramatically raised the stakes in its confrontation with the United Nations today by expellingsix Americans on a U.N. weapons inspection team, leading the world body to instruct the entire team to leave the country.
In response to Iraqi orders,the Americans reportedly arrived in Jordan. Seventy-two non-American members of the weapons inspection team are to depart Baghdad by plane Friday, leaving behind a small, caretaker staff.
I'm deeply concerned about the Middle East and the continuing crimes the Palestine people are suffering at the hands of Israel.
But you don't give a rat's ass about Isreal suffering from the continued suicide bombers?
They continue to occupy their lands, bulldoze their homes, come into their cities with hundreds of tanks and soldiers, and arrest and interrogate hundreds of citizens.
As a nation, they have no land because there is no Palistinian nation.
These "crimes" that you speak of are only done in retaliation for the suicide bombing. That is why it is done after they bomb and not before.
Hopefully President Bush will firmly tell Ariel Sharon that he must treat his neighbors as equals.
Since the ones you want treated equally are commiting suicide bombings, you would be whining about the Isrealites committing suicide bombing raids on the people that you suport.
His blatant racism must be put down! What kind of democracy can that be?
What about the racism of the ones that you support? Is that alright?
Much of the unrest in the Arab world is caused by this, and perhaps even 9/11!
There was unrest in the Arab world for centuries. That is what caused racism in the area and quite possibly 9/11.
Another tremendously ominous issue President Bush has set in motion is talk of attacking Iraq and bringing down the current regime.
Sorry, but that all started with the invasion of Kuwait and the quest by Sadam to take over the Middle East. It continued to build up over the next decade with the defiances committed by Sadam until he could no longer be tolerated.
This would be as un-American an act, and as tyrannical, as anything we could do! For us to use our God-given power, wealth, military might and soldiers to perpetrate an unprovoked, destructive attack on another sovereign country would be a horrendous mistake!
It would be a dereliction of duty not to protect us from those who wish harm on the U.S.
The destabilization that could result from such an action could cause terrible chaos in the rest of the world, including our country. It could drive up the price of oil to a level that would create a worldwide depression the likes of which has never been seen before, not to mention the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
We heard that all before the invasion of Afghanistan. None of your wishes came true then either.
What an amazing piece of shit this whole op-ed is. Full of lies and half-truths. Yet you hang on every word.
Had they known they'd soon become extinct, perhaps the dinosaurs would have gone out in one last crude, reptillian orgy of self-expression.
Roaring, thrashing, making the very earth shake.
Maybe that's how it is with today's political reactionaries, trapped in unviable inability to evolve, faced with the prospect of global progressive change that will soon leave them forever in the past.
They sense their time is nearly done, but in the time they've got left...they'll let us all fearfully experience their remaining might.
Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld are like meateaters from the Jurassic era.
Nevermind that they've been to college, run businesses, held the reins of government. They're still as beastly-primitive as creatures draped in the mists of a prehistoric bog.
Look into their eyes.
See the uncomprehending dullness in Dubya.
The malice in Cheney and Rumsfeld.
The total lack of any enlightened spark in Ashcroft.
Yes, they certainly comprise a dying breed, but their passing won't come easily.
Consider their latest, benighted "accomplishment", a declaration of U.S. military intent that would vamp on all of humanity with first-strike wars of aggression, whenever the White House and Wall Street arbitrarily deemed their interests jeopardized.
Even if more perspicaious souls saw that such threats were either illusory, or the impulses of exploited peoples around the planet to gain remedial redress of their grievances -- as freedom fighters, not terrorists.
This attempt to control the world by those whose stay in it is fleeting...is terribly alarming, for these raging dinosaurs have nuclear weapons, and a desperation that makes the prospect of their use troublingly much less than unthinkable.
How are we, the bigger-brained, adaptable inheritors of tomorrow to respond to this danger that could destroy our planet, and all life, even as the troglodytes destroy themselves?
We may be smaller, weaker, more vulnerable, but we're also far more numerous, and cunning in a positive way. We have the capability to organize and unite. To overpower.
And that shouldn't be limited to the venues of open, bitter conflict.
It also needs to be addressed in terms of making spirtual appeals to the refined faculties that reside within that great segment of our species that isn't doomed to an evolutionary dead end.
We must fight the warmakers with the David's sling of children laughing at play, at peace, enjoying the glories of young life without threat. All hearts respond to such a picture, and all humanity will rise to assure that it becomes reality.
And let bird songs and babbling brooks permeate our sensibilities as we watch energy-industry lobbyists try to bend Congress into a self-serving abrogation of environmental protection, for abject profit. A warm, sweet breeze on the collective cheek of humankind can be profoundly radicalizing, when it threatens to be replaced by a sooty cloud.
Precisely how and why the dinosaurs became abruptly extinct is open to conjecture. Various explanations are offered. Earth's sudden cooling due to atmospheric changes caused by a huge meteor's explosive impact seems to be the most accepted theory.
We, however, have the distinct advantage of knowing exactly why today's political dinosaurs will vanish.
Those who tenaciously cling to a past fraught with privilege born of injustice cannot prevail.
There is a constant, self-regenerating aspect to human existence that cries for justice and equity -- for the empowerment of the dispossesed from whom the greedy have stolen so much, to form the sordid basis of their narrow, ill-gotten wealth.
It isn't so much a wish for vengeance as a requirement for grace.
A need to be in harmony with that unspoken imperative in every person of good will on this planet.
Namely, to walk through life on a righteous path, head held high.
The dinosaurs can only dodderingly lumber to their deaths.
EVEN IN DEFEAT, PROGRESSIVES ARE ASSURED OF A PLACE IN THE FUTURE
I am proud to tell you tonight that I’m not getting off the history train just yet.
There is still work to be done.
Somewhere tonight, a man is making himself a bed of newspapers and cardboard on the sidewalks of the city.
Somewhere tonight, a child is too hungry to do his homework.
Somewhere tonight, an elderly couple must make the unfair choice between food and medicine.
Somewhere tonight, a woman lives in fear of domestic violence.
And somewhere tonight, men in powerful positions are taking the first steps toward sending our country into war.
Somewhere tonight, powerful interests are working to silence those that are a threat to their power.
Every day in Congress I kept those images in mind. Images of real people with real problems. And real abuses of real power.
Today, even in defeat, I have been lifted.
Lifted upon the shoulders of the people of Georgia.
I have been lifted – by Christians, Muslims and Jews.
I have been lifted on the wings of hope and justice and peace.
And for this position I have a clear view of the horizon.
And I see a better place.
I see a place where we’re going, friends and neighbors – and it may not be the Promised Land – but it is a place where America keeps her promises.
I see an America of opportunity for our young people, dignity for our workers and security for our seniors.
We are all on the train called History – and we are ringing the bell called Freedom.
Since I was first elected in 1992, I have been a voice for the voiceless, a champion for our children, a warrior for the weak and a challenger to the indifferent establishment.
And even though I won’t be in Congress for a couple of years, I will continue to be a voice, a champion, a warrior and a challenger. I will continue to speak truth to power and put what’s right, what’s true, what’s fair and what’s just over all else.
Someone once said that when one door closes, another door is opened.
Some doors have opened for me tonight.
I believe God has a plan. And I believe with His guidance I will continue to do what is right, and I look forward to continuing to ride the history train.
The Washington Post's distortion about the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors...
More like FAIR's distortion...
This is the opening of your link: Since January 1999, the Washington Post has spun a tall tale about the 1998 collapse of U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq and the U.S.-British airstrikes that followed.
They can't even get the date right! The article I refered to was on Friday, November 14 1997; Page A01.
It is alright if you ignore the Post with this slanderous piece though, but how about then President Clinton?
...Plainly, it sent the right message: comply now with the U.N. resolutions and let the UNSCOM inspection team go back to work. Iraq's announcement this morning to expel the Americans from the inspection team is clearly unacceptable and a challenge to the international community...
So you can twist and lie all you want to Dennis, but the facts are still out there for all who care to search them out.
This is what socialism is all about Dennis, lies and distortions. This is what you wish upon us, your children and grandchildren. Lies and distortions.
Remember my post in which I said that, if moderates and ordinary Americans from all walks of life don't quickly come to firmly oppose Bush's Iraq (and beyond) war plans, the revolutionary Left will dominate the issue and drive all U.S. politics toward Marxist assuumptions?
Well, ponder the implications of this editorial from The Militant, organ of the Socialist Workers Party, which organized one of the two big antiwar coalitions that shook the '60s:
NO SUCH THING AS "WE AMERICANS"
The war that Washington is steadily moving toward in the Mideast is not about Saddam Hussein. It is about U.S. imperialism taking over Iraq and gaining supremacy over the vast oil and natural gas reserves throughout the region.
As in every previous imperialist conflict, the U.S. rulers today are driven toward more wars in order to conquer markets and territories, and to restore the declining rates of profit of their capitalist system.
The fundamental argument that the billionaire families of the U.S. ruling class--the owners of Exxon, J.P. Morgan Chase, and other giant corporations--use to draw working people and others behind their wars is that "we Americans" face common problems. But that "we" is a lie.
Capitalist politicians argue that "our" oil supply is at stake in the Mideast and that taking over Iraq--or even Saudi Arabia--will protect "our country" from being cut off and economic disaster. They try to suck working people and the middle class into the view that "we" may be attacked by "them" with "weapons of mass destruction."
But the real "we" are working people around the world. Workers and farmers from Iraq to Mexico to France to the United States have everything in common. And we have nothing in common with them--the capitalists who rule the United States, who profit by exploiting our labor power and plundering the peoples of the world. It’s not our government. It’s their government, their army, their corporations. Likewise, a U.S. war of conquest in the Mideast is an assault on us, on fellow working people there.
As Malcolm X, the outstanding revolutionary leader, so clearly stated on behalf of millions, "I am not an American, I am a victim of Americanism."
The trade union officialdom promotes the reactionary trap of American patriotism, as it did at this year’s Labor Day rallies, which were orchestrated as pro-government, pro-war actions--with a few themes of labor struggles thrown in for cover. The labor officials’ acceptance of the framework of "we Americans"--bosses and workers--is simply a product of their class collaboration with the employers. One pro-war argument with a social veneer that union officials sometimes promote is that war spending "is good for the economy" and means jobs.
In times of war, the bosses demand that working people "sacrifice" for the interests of "our country" and stop fighting to defend our wages, working conditions, and unions. But as the bosses press their assault, there will be no class peace. The fights that workers wage--whether they be union organizing drives, strikes, protests against cop brutality or against attacks on the right to abortion--cut through the attempts by the exploiters to blur these opposing class interests.
An increasing number of working people involved in this resistance will be among those most interested in discussing the socialist perspective of organizing a movement of workers and farmers that can make a revolution, take political power out of the hands of the warmakers, and join with millions in transforming the world.
"We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain social stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru. Increasingly the role our nation has taken is the role of those who refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment."
--Martin Luther King, Jr. ["A Time to Break the Silence" speech given at Riverside Church New York City April 4, 1967]
ARTHUR:      How do you do, good lady? I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Who's castle is that? WOMAN:      King of the who? ARTHUR:      The Britons. WOMAN:      Who are the Britons? ARTHUR:      Well, we all are. We are all Britons, and I am your king. WOMAN:      I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective. DENNIS:      You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working      classes-- WOMAN:      Oh, there you go bringing class into it again. DENNIS:      That's what it's all about. If only people would hear of-- ARTHUR:      Please! Please, good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle? WOMAN:      No one lives there. ARTHUR:      Then who is your lord? WOMAN:      We don't have a lord. ARTHUR:      What? DENNIS:      I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the      week,... ARTHUR:      Yes. DENNIS:      ...but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting... ARTHUR:      Yes, I see. DENNIS:      ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,... ARTHUR:      Be quiet! DENNIS:      ...but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major-- ARTHUR:      Be quiet! I order you to be quiet! WOMAN:      Order, eh? Who does he think he is? Heh. ARTHUR:      I am your king! WOMAN:      Well, I didn't vote for you.
Undoubtedly you've noticed how vehemently, even viciously, my interpretations about what Bush is up to in Iraq, and well beyond, have been attacked on these boards.
I've been repeatedly called a liar (at best) and such things as "our resident Soviet" or a "supporter of terrorism".
Maybe some of you have wondered why such accusations don't upset me.
Well, it's because I reacted in exactly the same way toward the folks who patiently tried to show me, during the early part of the Vietnam era, that what America was doing in Southeast Asia was a travesty and a crime.
I simply couldn't believe it.
Every fiber of what I later had to admit was my thoroughly propagandized being rebelled at the notion that "my country" could be engaged in genocide for geo-political control and economic domination.
Oh, I accused the "peaceniks" of everything imaginable.
But chiefly that they were misrepresentataional minions of the very "Communist conspiracy" that Lyndon Johnson claimed we were fighting.
I simply didn't know -- couldn't know -- any of the key truths about Vietnam, such as that 80% of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh in free elections had we abided by the 1956 Geneva agreement and allowed them to happen, in a unified Vietnam, the creation of which Washington thwarted.
I didn't know that Eisenhower understood "tin, tungsten and rubber" were our real reasons for being there.
And I certainly didn't believe the stories of mass-scale U.S. murder of innocent civilians, just as many don't believe what we did/are doing in Afghanistan, and Iraq.
But finally the Quaker American Friends Service Committee, and Catholic-originated Ramparts magazine, got through to me. The first presented evidence of routine atrocities, which would not become widely known until several years later, after My Lai surfaced. The second published an issue with soul-numbing color photographs of napalmed children.
My heart wouldn't let my mind live a lie any longer, and I hit the streets to resist the Vietnam War -- that terrible blight on our nation's honor -- for the next eight years.
Granted, Saddam isn't Ho (who modeled Vietnam's constitution after our own), and 9/11 proves America no longer has a monopoly on (state) terrorism, but the essential reality remains, underscored so emphatically by Bush's just-released National Security Declaration.
Namely, that reactionary elements in U.S. power will repress and kill anyone, anywhere, to satisfy the profit lust of those in whose behalf they mislead...and will invariably, shamefully tell us it's all being done for "democracy" and "freedom".
More civilians killed in Afghanistan than died on 9/11; a conservatively estimated 100,000 Iraqis blown away during the Gulf War (commonly in "turkey shoots" like the Highway of Death); more than a million Iraqi civilian fatalities -- largely children -- "thanks" to our embargo.
And now we're embarked on an official policy of preemptive first strikes against, first, Iraq, and subsequently anyone some Washington/Wall Street Enron-head doesn't like... probably for just saying: "Ripping us off is wrong. Stop it!"
In the secret places of my frothing critics' minds, they know I'm right.
But the idea of having to accept the truth from a radical is very unsettling to them.
I concede that one of my hardline detractors will remain a hidebound reactionary forever.
But the others are good people with decent proclivities, and the seed of truth is stirring within them.
After enough nights of lying awake in darkened bedrooms, digesting the full implication of what they've just seen on the news, they'll become what undeniable reality finally forced me to become so many years ago.
A schmuck and and a goombah!
Seriously...
Your conscience is already making you aware of what I mean.
Now Clinton is guilty of conservatism? Oh the horror. Say it isnt so.
Here is some more links for you Dennis, although I dont think that you will read them either because they are obviously sites controlled by conservatives.
Iraq orders US inspectors out Iraq, Politics, 11/13/1997
...On Wednesday, Iraq gave the 10 American weapons inspectors in Baghdad a week to leave the country. The order applied only to members of the U.N. disarmament commission...
...Saddam, who provoked the standoff by expelling American members of the U.N. weapons inspection team, met with his Cabinet yesterday and said he hoped a conflict could be averted...
...With Iraq demanding the removal of all American weapons inspectors from the country, the United Nations instead issued the withdrawal of all its inspectors...
The Security Council late Thursday evening condemned "in the strongest terms the unacceptable decision of the Government of Iraq" to expel personnel of "a specified nationality" working with the United Nations Special Commission overseeing the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (UNSCOM).
Fine Dennis, Sadam never ever kicked out anybody. And that was not part of the reason for the attacks. All those sites and people quoted were liars and the "yellowtimes" is the only truthful one out there.
All American inspectors are "spies" as well and the impeachment of Clinton had nothing to do with perjury. No amount of information will change your mind ever. You just go on defending those wonderful socialist like Sadam and Slobo. Everything they do is just "righteous rebellion" and they are actually wonderful people.
New evidence proves that Saddam Hussein has continued his efforts to assemble an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Special report by Peter Beaumont in London and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Peter Beaumont in London and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow Sunday September 22, 2002
The Observer
In the days before Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf war, the vast sprawl of anonymous factory buildings that makes up the Badr General Establishment was a central hub in its efforts to design and build a nuclear bomb.
As Iraq has admitted to the United Nations, it was here, 20 miles south of Baghdad, that the bustling teams of technicians and machinists worked on components for the gas centrifuges and molecular pumps that were intended for Iraq's enrichment cascade for the fissile material for its nuclear bomb. It was here too that Iraq's missile technicians worked on modification and production of the Scud B missiles that they hoped would carry a warhead.
With Iraq's capitulation to the allied forces, Badr - like the State Enterprise for Heavy Equipment Engineering and dozens of other enterprises run under the auspices of the Ministry for Military Industrialisation - was supposed to be closed down and monitored under the UN ceasefire resolutions designed to dismantle Iraq's ability to retain, design and build weapons of mass destruction.
But the scientists and managers from Badr had different orders from Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. What they have been up to goes to the heart of US and UK concern that Saddam has been trying to assemble the expertise and materials to build weapons of mass destruction, for the men from Badr turned up at a factory in Minsk in the former Soviet republic of Belarus.The Iraqi delegation that arrived at the Belstroyimpex headquarters in July 1995 was a high-powered one, travelling under the aegis of the Badr General Establishment.
They carried a shopping list of high-specification machine tools, including diamond cutters, a powder-metal production line and a plasma-spray machine - all potentially components for nuclear weapons and a ballistic-missiles programme. The delegation was careful to cover its tracks, keeping the visit and the deals signed secret from the UN. Iraq went to greater lengths still to hide these purchases from the UN sanctions regime, smuggling them into Iraq via the Jordanian free port of Aqaba, and trying to hide the equipment once it reached Iraq.
The Iraqi deal with Belstroyimpex was not unique. As arms inspectors and independent researchers have established in the past two years, the deal was only a small part of an intensive effort by companies and organisations linked to the Iraq's Ministry of Military Industrialisation to acquire forbidden technologies and materials from Belarus and over a dozen other countries.
It is an effort, say diplomatic sources, that continued just two months ago, when Iraq's deputy Prime Minister, and Minister for Military Industrialisation, Abdul Tawab Mulla Howeish, was in Minsk to sign a new protocol authorising scientific and technical exchanges between the two states. Indeed as lately as 1998 - before their forced departure from Iraq - UN inspectors discovered machine tools delivered from Belarus at the Saddam Artillery Plant, where they found Iraqi technicians installing 14 new machines for manufacturing 75-millimetre lenses with a military use. The crates were marked 'Republic of Belarus, Vitebsk Machine Building Plant'.
The Iraqi activity in Belarus is the most worrying evidence that Iraq is still pursuing a covert procurement programme . It may not be the 'smoking gun' that proves that Saddam has acquired the fissile material to build his bomb, but it is evidence that he is trying hard.
Firm evidence exists that in the decade since the end of the Gulf war Saddam quickly rebuilt his secret procurement networks, casting his net from the UK to eastern Europe, South East Asia and as far as Africa, operating through a complex network of front companies and middlemen.
Iraqi agents have been active in Ukraine, Russia, Romania and in the former Yugoslavia. They have been spotted in Congo, Kenya, Jordan and Syria, in Malaysia and Indonesia. It has not always been a subtle or successful effort. Indeed some analysts say privately that the chaotic and piecemeal effort of Saddam's procurement network smacks of desperation. Its persistence is what is worrying Britain and the US.
And it is these procurement efforts that will provide the backbone of Tony Blair's dossier on the threat posed by Iraq when it is released this week. That dossier is likely to argue that Saddam's current efforts have strong parallels with the massive Iraqi procurement programme in the 1980s when Saddam began scouring the world to build his secret conglomeration of chemical, biological and nuclear-weapons factories.
'There has been an awful lot of background noise,' said one European diplomat. 'There is a lot of Iraqi procurement effort going on. Some of it is very inconclusive. But what is worrying is the accumulating evidence of the kind of stuff they have been - and continue to be - after. That has been a constant since the end of the Gulf war. It may not amount to evidence of a bomb, or a new missile system, but it is certainly evidence that they still desperately want it.'
A senior British diplomat in the region said: 'There has been concern that relations between Iraq and Ukraine and Belarus have been getting warmer over the last few months. There has been heightened activity and people going back and forth.' He said he had seen 'reports' from a variety of sources, including spies, of arms deals between the two nations and Iraq.
Among those deeply concerned about Belarus and Ukraine is Tim McCarthy, who served with the UN Special Commission on Iraq (Unscom) from 1994 to 1999 and completed 13 missions in Iraq, serving as deputy chief inspector for the missile team. Now a senior analyst at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in the US, he studied much of the available evidence about the Belarus connection.
'My concern was high about Belarus, for a number of reasons. One of the deals that the Iraqis have done was with the Minsk Tractor Factory. Public reports have stated that civilian tractors are produced. But it also produces missile launchers for Pakistan. The real [Belarussian] expertise comes with the missile launchers, and that is disconcerting to say the least.' McCarthy said Belarus had drawn up numerous agreements with Iraq. 'The equipment that Belarus had agreed to give Iraq would be considered to be a very real non-proliferation problem.'
Among the deals that most concerned him, however, was for a so-called plasma-spray machine used in anti-corrosion treatment of components used in nuclear weapons. 'The nuclear proliferation people were very concerned about that. We have very strong documentary evidence [about the deals]. It was production line stuff that would have been very hard for the Iraqis to acquire legally under the UN sanctions regime.'
At the head of Iraq's secret procurement effort is Abdul Tawab Mulla Howeish. A wiry and mustachioed military officer in his late forties - who also holds the rank of Deputy Prime Minister - Howeish, has come to be one of the most important figures in Saddam's regime, inevitably visible in every photo opportunity given by Saddam to Iraq's state-controlled media.
And it has been Howeish who has been most visible in recent Iraqi delegations to Belarus. It was his Ministry - under its previous head - that coordinated Iraq's massive secret procurement drive in the 1980s. The only difference, note inspectors who have been trying to unravel Iraq's new procurement programme, is that the names of the front companies - and the states prepared to deal with Iraq - have changed.
One of best assessments of Iraq's procurement effort has been supplied by former US weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Despite being one of the fiercest critics of the hawkish Bush line on Iraq, Ritter has noted the way in which Iraq set up a series of front companies in Jordan, Syria, Malaysia, and other countries that acted as official buyers of banned weapons and systems, which later found their way to Iraq.
'We [UN weapons inspectors] were following, in '97 and '98, information that held that Iraq was working very closely with the government of Syria to use Syrian procurement networks in place with Belarus, with Ukraine, with Russia. The Syrians would acquire military technology, military equipment, military hardware, in contracts between these nations and Syria, and then Syria would transfer this material to Iraq in a covert fashion. And the method of payment was Iraqi oil.'
Among companies that have already been revealed as being behind attempts to procure suspicious contracts are the Al Bushair trading company and the Al Saddirah Company - both identified in private memos by UN inspectors as the intermediaries in a number of deals to acquire banned technology in Belarus in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Among those who have compiled their own dossier on Iraq's new procurement networks are two American researchers, Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, and Kelly Motz, of Iraq Watch, who published the 'Shopping for Saddam' report last year. Much of the evidence they collected was based, they say, on unpublished information collected by UN weapons inspectors detailing their suspicions about Iraq's continued efforts to hide a large-scale and covert rearmament programme.
'What [the research] showed is that Saddam's procurement network is alive and well and has been working steadily despite the sanctions,' said Milhollin. 'There are a lot of companies out there willing to break the embargo.'
Motz said: 'We are seeing everything from just some basic negotiations that probably didn't go anywhere once the firms figured out what was trying to be purchased to contracts that were actually implemented and goods that were found in Iraq by the inspectors. We have contracts for missile engine components, for guidance components for missiles. We actually found some high-end machine tools that are useful for making nuclear weapons, military goods such as [conventional] helicopters and aircraft which were clearly embargoed.'
At about the same time that the men from the Badr General Establishment were on their way to Belarus, UN inspectors uncovered further evidence of Iraq's secret procurement efforts - gyroscopes from dismantled Russian inter-continental ballistic missiles that were smuggled into Iraq, then dumped in a river when they were found to be incompatible with their missile systems. A second shipment of 115 gyroscopes was discovered in Jordan in October 1995.
What is clear is that despite consistent setbacks over the past eight years, Iraq's secret procurement effort is still active across the globe. Further evidence of this trend was supplied in the past fortnight. US Vice President Dick Cheney has added his own voice to the debate, claiming the US has intercepted efforts by Iraq to buy hundreds of highly machined aluminium tubes it says were destined for an Iraqi gas centrifuge enrichment system.
'You can say many things about what Iraq is up to,' said one diplomat familiar with the material. 'You can argue about what weapons he has, if any, how many, and if they will ever work. You can argue about whether he will takes two months or 10 years to build or acquire a nuclear bomb. But what you cannot argue with is the evidence that that Saddam has set up his secret weapons procurement network once again. That is the real worry.'
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16, 1998 (IPS) -- U.S. and British military forces struck at Iraq Wednesday leaving the United Nations - a key player in resolving previous standoffs involving Iraq - on the sidelines.
A White House spokesman announced briefly shortly after 2200GMT that military action had begun and that President Bill Clinton would address the nation later.
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair went on television to announce the operation, codenamed ''Desert Fox'', had started in retaliation for Iraq's latest refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.
As with the previous action against Iraq in 1991, television viewers were treated to pictures from Baghdad over the Cable News Network (CNN) but showed little activity beyond anti- aicraft fire which lighted the sky over the Iraqi capital. within 30 minutes the guns had fallen silent.
Iraq's outgoing U.N. ambassador, Nizar Hamdoon, had resigned himself to the attack, regardless of whether the U.N. Security Council approved the action. ''Clearly the Security Council is not going to provide such an authorisation,'' Hamdoon said, adding that a U.S. attack is expected regardless.
''We reserve our rights to whatever retaliation, whatever self- defense we might take,'' the Iraqi envoy added.
The U.N. Security Council met to consult on the latest crisis, which began late Tuesday when Richard Butler, the chairman of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) which monitors Iraq's disarmament, reported that Baghdad had not kept its promises to the world body.
''There is absolutely no excuse or pretext to use force against Iraq,'' Chinese Ambassador Qin Huasun said after the meeting. Qin assailed Butler's critical report as ''apparently one-sided'' and added that many Council members questioned Butler's decision to pull all U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Yet even as the Council discussed the crisis, U.S. defense officials said U.S. troops were ''in execute mode'' in the Persian Gulf, awaiting President Bill Clinton's orders. More than 24,000 U.S. troops and dozens of ships and warplanes are stationed near Iraq.
The U.S. strike came in for stiff criticism among groups wondering what the operation could accomplish.
''There is no reason to believe that further bombings or sanctions will do anything to bring about a change of government in Iraq,'' argued the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a Wednesday statement. ''In fact, it is entirely unclear what the precise purpose of such an attack would be.''
''One cannot help but be sickened by the prospect of a military attack on the eve of (a House of Representatives vote on) Clinton's impeachment and in the midst of the holiday season,'' professor Simona Sharoni of American University argued...
---
Too biased a source for you? Then what does the most respected news organization in the world say happened?
"16 December 1998: The UN orders weapons inspectors out of the country after Unscom chief Richard Butler issued a report saying the Iraqis were still refusing to co-operate. US air strikes on Iraq begin hours later."
---
Let's not confuse the prior series of contentious differences between Iraq and the UN, which centered mainly on Baghdad's very well founded fears that spies were among the inspectors, with the action that finally ended the inspection presence in Iraq.
Namely, the decison by OUR SIDE to pull the inspectors out.
Dan tried to demagogue the issue into a smear in which he openly charged me of lying.
The next few days are going to see a blitz of supposed "proof" that Iraq is an allegedly greater threat to humanity than a hypothetical finding of AIDS and West Nile Virus jointly carried by house flies.
Demand actual, verifiable evidence, not just claims of evidence.
Industrial "tubes" and tractor-plant contracts, plus a mysterious "Syrian connection", if they exist at all (remember Rumsfeld's disinformation department), don't justify scuttling America's 200-year tradition of being a defensive rather than aggressive nation.
And it certainly doesn't justify a loss of 37,000 U.S. lives, which has been projected as the death toll for our forces if a 250,000 person force is sent to attack the Iraqis in their cities.
Remember, it's your kids.
If they must die violent deaths half way across the world, then the cause had better be infinitely, truly more convincing and compelling than what's been so thinly offered to date.
The Bush administration seems unable to conduct foreign policy without resorting to threats of violence. The plan to engage in pre-emptive warfare against nations suspected of being enemies of the United States is the most recent, and extreme, example. Threatening others with unprovoked attack is damaging America's credibility, increasing our isolation and undermining our ability to offer productive statecraft in an unstable world. It is a morally bankrupt policy that deserves to be rejected by all Americans of conscience and common sense.
For more than 200 years, the United States has condemned the use of military first strikes. The current attempt to justify the invasion and overthrow of other nations merely because they are suspected of being America's enemies breaks with this noble tradition. One must ask, has the Bush administration become so obsessed with winning the war against terrorism that it is willing to sacrifice America's democratic values?
A nation that provides moral and ethical leadership is one that is able to transcend self-interest in order to serve the common good. Our current foreign policy has no capacity for transcendence; it is concerned only with the preservation of American power and privilege. In this time of moral confusion, America needs patriots who will call our nation back to its ideals. Patriotism is not a matter of chanting, "U-S-A!", flying American flags from our auto antennas or vilifying the evil regime-of-the- month. Loving America means using our role as the world's only superpower to enlist a movement for global justice and peace. This critical ethical challenge cannot be met by conducting military first strikes against other nations. It can be meaningfully engaged through the creation of a patient foreign policy that nonviolently eliminates the root causes of terrorism that cause so many to suffer and die around the world.
--THE REV. PETER MONKRES, Grand Marais (Duluth News Tribune letter)
'Mrs. Toogood' is sorry. White Trash (am I not supposed to ask why she has so many kids at age 25?? did she steal the stuff she was trying to return is that why she was so angry at her kid?? Does her family suport MY support??).. We know the future her THREE kids have in front of them. Her kids have a 1 in 30 chance of success. Government no matter how powerful cannot solve the problem of fucked up families.
Massachusetts has a problem. Whites and Asians (it seems not the Toogood whites) are doing OK on the high school test requirement but others are not. A puzzle? The family, the family, the family is what shapes our kids. You sow what you reap.
Oh yea, we're the radicals here LOL Hoooowl. That's freakin hillarious.
Undoubtedly you've noticed how vehemently, even viciously, my interpretations about what Bush is up to in Iraq, and well beyond, have been attacked on these boards.
I've been repeatedly called a liar (at best) and such things as "our resident Soviet" or a "supporter of terrorism".
......the man who is perhaps most responsible for making Egypt, and the Arab world generally, the thriving,peaceful, and prosperous envy of the civilized world it is today — once said:.........
-- Jim Wrenn, editor of Poli.Sat.Com, inspired by word that former President Clinton's office in Harlem is now telling people responding to ads for internships that all positions have been filled.
WASHINGTON — In his speech in San Francisco Monday, former Vice President Al Gore, lambasting the current President Bush for trying to distract attention to failings in the war on terror by launching an attack on Iraq, said the first President Bush ended the 1991 Gulf War too soon.
"Back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War, and I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration's hasty departure from the battlefield," Gore told an enthusiastic crowd at the Commonwealth Club.
However, on April 18, 1991, Gore felt differently, according to his own remarks. Speaking on the floor of the Senate, of which he was a member, Gore said then-President George H.W. Bush acted correctly in ending the Persian Gulf War when he did.
"I want to state this clearly, President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam Hussein's survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus that the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was accomplished, combat should stop."
Not really but the media are giving him plenty of press for some reason, hey why not a big interview with Dan Quale too. ? Or other failed presidential hopefuls, I can't wait for the big Dukakis interview and press conference, that ought to be a hoot.
I guess when you're trying to revive a political career you have to do something.
Those people he was speaking to did. They loved him. I saw the end of it on C-Span. I actually found him to be pretty likeable and personable, in contrast to how he normally seems. And very respectful of Bush's role as President, which I can't imagine being if I was in his place.
I'm sure they did care, they probably paid alot of money to hear him speak. There are plenty of political foes that I would enjoy hearing speak, hearing him would not be one of them let alone paying to do so. But tell me why he rates press. If he runs again then I can see it.
He was a popular Senator. Former Senators rate press.
He was Vice-President for 8 years. Formber V.P.'s rate press.
He was a presidential candidate in the previous election, less than 2 years ago. He came closer to winning without actually winning than any presidential candidate in the history of our country, and was part of the most contended, complicated presidential election in our history. In the short-term view, he is a major figure in our nation's history. In the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, he was Gore. That's huge.
He is the frontrunner in the polls for the Democrats in 2004.
He is an unannounced potential candidate in 2004, and the media season for that race opens in less than 2 months. He plans to make his decision in December.
A sizable number of people in our country believe that he actually won the election.
This was his first major speech since campaign 2000 stating clear policy positions and opinions.
I'm not cheerleading (or even cheering) for Gore or anything, but he clearly rates press.
FWIW, I don't think a national leader of either of the two parties can speak effectively on the "War on Terror" or on Iraq without considerable hypocrisy and contradiction.
FWIW, I don't think a national leader of either of the two parties can speak effectively on the "War on Terror" or on Iraq without considerable hypocrisy and contradiction.
I disagree, there are those from both sides of the aisle that have always held for the most part the same stance on Iraq. Then there are others from both sides as well who's posistion seems to change depending on who is living in the white house.
Another Democrat is in trouble. This time they secretly taped, transcribed and turned over to the press a campaign meeting of a Republican candidate for the U.S. senate. link
This shouldn't be a big deal. If some of the so called "established rights" and "protections" are rolled back, that will only put them into the political arena i.e. Congress and the state legislatures where such issues belong. The reason the extreme left wingers are concerened is that their agenda does not get anywhere with an electorat that has more common sense than they do.
However, even critics concede they can't prove that Estrada is staunchly conservative and therefore, in their opinion, unfit for the federal bench. But Kuntz said it's up to Estrada to prove he is worthy of the bench.
And yet more proof of the political nature of the Demagogues on the Senate Judicairy Committee:
According to Ashcroft, there are 77 vacancies currently in the courts -- 10 more than at the close of the 106th Congress in 2000.
The Senate Judiciary Committee confirms that, during the first two years of Bush's term, the Democratic-led Senate confirmed 78 judges. During the first two years of former president Bill Clinton's tenure, Democrats confirmed 128 judges.
http://www.onion.com/archive/archive_nib02.html
VOLUME 32 ISSUE 19 — 16 DECEMBER 1997 134-Year-Old Man Attributes
Longevity To Typographical Error NEW ORLEANS—Area dock worker Bert
Greer celebrated his 134th birthday Friday with a quiet party at his
home, surrounded by family. Asked the secret to his astounding
longevity, the feisty Greer credited "healthy eating, a good walk
every evening, and a Social Security worker's accidental striking of
an extra digit while typing in my age." The remarkable Greer, who
remembers meeting President Lyndon Johnson as a young boy, said he
has "no plans to retire any time soon."
COMPARE GEORGE TO ADOLF
George is not a socialist like the NAZI regime was.
Democrats in 1996 fund-raising scandals face record fines by FEC
Saturday, September 21, 2002
(09-21) 06:55 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
The Federal Election Commission has imposed record fines totaling at least $719,000 against Democrats involved in the party's 1996 fund-raising scandals, according to published reports.
FEC documents described how Democratic fund-raisers demanded illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals in China and other countries in exchange for meetings with then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
Among those who were penalized by the FEC were the Democratic National Committee, $115,000; the Clinton-Gore campaign, $2,000; and the Buddhist Progressive Society, $120,000, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Saturday.
They said the DNC also agreed to surrender an additional $128,000 representing illegal campaign donations that were not returned.
More than 20 people and corporations acting as conduits for the illegal contributions also were fined, the newspapers said, citing FEC documents.
They've all agreed to pay, according to the records.
The total amount of fines would have been much higher except some of the companies have shut down and others were dummy operations used as conduits for money from Canada, China, Venezuela and other countries, the Post said.
The FEC dropped the cases involving another $3 million in illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee because the respondents either "are out of the country and beyond our reach, or (are) corporations that are defunct," according to FEC papers cited by the Post.
Kent Cooper, a former elections commission official, told the Times the commission limited the fines to some people who said they could not afford to pay more. He said the total assessed appeared to have been surprisingly low.
"THE IRAQIS DID NOT KICK THE INSPECTORS OUT..."
Dennis, why do you continue to perpetuate this LIE?
Iraq Expels 6 American Inspectors; U.N. Orders Team to Leave Baghdad
By John M. Goshko
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14 1997; Page A01
Iraq dramatically raised the stakes in its confrontation with the United Nations today by expellingsix Americans on a U.N. weapons inspection team, leading the world body to instruct the entire team to leave the country.
In response to Iraqi orders,the Americans reportedly arrived in Jordan. Seventy-two non-American members of the weapons inspection team are to depart Baghdad by plane Friday, leaving behind a small, caretaker staff.
I'm deeply concerned about the Middle East and the continuing crimes the Palestine people are suffering at the hands of Israel.
But you don't give a rat's ass about Isreal suffering from the continued suicide bombers?
They continue to occupy their lands, bulldoze their homes, come into their cities with hundreds of tanks and soldiers, and arrest and interrogate hundreds of citizens.
As a nation, they have no land because there is no Palistinian nation.
These "crimes" that you speak of are only done in retaliation for the suicide bombing. That is why it is done after they bomb and not before.
Hopefully President Bush will firmly tell Ariel Sharon that he must treat his neighbors as equals.
Since the ones you want treated equally are commiting suicide bombings, you would be whining about the Isrealites committing suicide bombing raids on the people that you suport.
His blatant racism must be put down! What kind of democracy can that be?
What about the racism of the ones that you support? Is that alright?
Much of the unrest in the Arab world is caused by this, and perhaps even 9/11!
There was unrest in the Arab world for centuries. That is what caused racism in the area and quite possibly 9/11.
Another tremendously ominous issue President Bush has set in motion is talk of attacking Iraq and bringing down the current regime.
Sorry, but that all started with the invasion of Kuwait and the quest by Sadam to take over the Middle East. It continued to build up over the next decade with the defiances committed by Sadam until he could no longer be tolerated.
This would be as un-American an act, and as tyrannical, as anything we could do! For us to use our God-given power, wealth, military might and soldiers to perpetrate an unprovoked, destructive attack on another sovereign country would be a horrendous mistake!
It would be a dereliction of duty not to protect us from those who wish harm on the U.S.
The destabilization that could result from such an action could cause terrible chaos in the rest of the world, including our country. It could drive up the price of oil to a level that would create a worldwide depression the likes of which has never been seen before, not to mention the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
We heard that all before the invasion of Afghanistan. None of your wishes came true then either.
What an amazing piece of shit this whole op-ed is. Full of lies and half-truths. Yet you hang on every word.
So sad.
THE EXTINCTION OF CONSERVATISM
Had they known they'd soon become extinct, perhaps the dinosaurs would have gone out in one last crude, reptillian orgy of self-expression.
Roaring, thrashing, making the very earth shake.
Maybe that's how it is with today's political reactionaries, trapped in unviable inability to evolve, faced with the prospect of global progressive change that will soon leave them forever in the past.
They sense their time is nearly done, but in the time they've got left...they'll let us all fearfully experience their remaining might.
Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld are like meateaters from the Jurassic era.
Nevermind that they've been to college, run businesses, held the reins of government. They're still as beastly-primitive as creatures draped in the mists of a prehistoric bog.
Look into their eyes.
See the uncomprehending dullness in Dubya.
The malice in Cheney and Rumsfeld.
The total lack of any enlightened spark in Ashcroft.
Yes, they certainly comprise a dying breed, but their passing won't come easily.
Consider their latest, benighted "accomplishment", a declaration of U.S. military intent that would vamp on all of humanity with first-strike wars of aggression, whenever the White House and Wall Street arbitrarily deemed their interests jeopardized.
Even if more perspicaious souls saw that such threats were either illusory, or the impulses of exploited peoples around the planet to gain remedial redress of their grievances -- as freedom fighters, not terrorists.
This attempt to control the world by those whose stay in it is fleeting...is terribly alarming, for these raging dinosaurs have nuclear weapons, and a desperation that makes the prospect of their use troublingly much less than unthinkable.
How are we, the bigger-brained, adaptable inheritors of tomorrow to respond to this danger that could destroy our planet, and all life, even as the troglodytes destroy themselves?
We may be smaller, weaker, more vulnerable, but we're also far more numerous, and cunning in a positive way. We have the capability to organize and unite. To overpower.
And that shouldn't be limited to the venues of open, bitter conflict.
It also needs to be addressed in terms of making spirtual appeals to the refined faculties that reside within that great segment of our species that isn't doomed to an evolutionary dead end.
We must fight the warmakers with the David's sling of children laughing at play, at peace, enjoying the glories of young life without threat. All hearts respond to such a picture, and all humanity will rise to assure that it becomes reality.
And let bird songs and babbling brooks permeate our
sensibilities as we watch energy-industry lobbyists try to bend Congress into a self-serving abrogation of environmental protection, for abject profit. A warm, sweet breeze on the collective cheek of humankind can be profoundly radicalizing, when it threatens to be replaced by a sooty cloud.
Precisely how and why the dinosaurs became abruptly extinct is open to conjecture. Various explanations are offered. Earth's sudden cooling due to atmospheric changes caused by a huge meteor's explosive impact seems to be the most accepted theory.
We, however, have the distinct advantage of knowing exactly why today's political dinosaurs will vanish.
Those who tenaciously cling to a past fraught with privilege born of injustice cannot prevail.
There is a constant, self-regenerating aspect to human existence that cries for justice and equity -- for the empowerment of the dispossesed from whom the greedy have stolen so much, to form the sordid basis of their narrow, ill-gotten wealth.
It isn't so much a wish for vengeance as a requirement for grace.
A need to be in harmony with that unspoken imperative in every person of good will on this planet.
Namely, to walk through life on a righteous path, head held high.
The dinosaurs can only dodderingly lumber to their deaths.
EVEN IN DEFEAT, PROGRESSIVES ARE ASSURED OF A PLACE IN THE FUTURE
I am proud to tell you tonight that I’m not getting off the history train just yet.
There is still work to be done.
Somewhere tonight, a man is making himself a bed of newspapers and cardboard on the sidewalks of the city.
Somewhere tonight, a child is too hungry to do his homework.
Somewhere tonight, an elderly couple must make the unfair choice between food and medicine.
Somewhere tonight, a woman lives in fear of domestic violence.
And somewhere tonight, men in powerful positions are taking the first steps toward sending our country into war.
Somewhere tonight, powerful interests are working to silence those that are a threat to their power.
Every day in Congress I kept those images in mind. Images of real people with real problems. And real abuses of real power.
Today, even in defeat, I have been lifted.
Lifted upon the shoulders of the people of Georgia.
I have been lifted – by Christians, Muslims and Jews.
I have been lifted on the wings of hope and justice and peace.
And for this position I have a clear view of the horizon.
And I see a better place.
I see a place where we’re going, friends and neighbors – and it may not be the Promised Land – but it is a place where America keeps her promises.
I see an America of opportunity for our young people, dignity for our workers and security for our seniors.
We are all on the train called History – and we are ringing the bell called Freedom.
Since I was first elected in 1992, I have been a voice for the voiceless, a champion for our children, a warrior for the weak and a challenger to the indifferent establishment.
And even though I won’t be in Congress for a couple of years, I will continue to be a voice, a champion, a warrior and a challenger. I will continue to speak truth to power and put what’s right, what’s true, what’s fair and what’s just over all else.
Someone once said that when one door closes, another door is opened.
Some doors have opened for me tonight.
I believe God has a plan. And I believe with His guidance I will continue to do what is right, and I look forward to continuing to ride the history train.
Thank you, and good night.
--From Cynthia McKinney's concession speech
http://www.fair.org/activism/post-expulsions.html
The Washington Post's distortion about the expulsion of UN
weapons inspectors...
The Washington Post's distortion about the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors...
More like FAIR's distortion...
This is the opening of your link: Since January 1999, the Washington Post has spun a tall tale about the 1998 collapse of U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq and the U.S.-British airstrikes that followed.
They can't even get the date right! The article I refered to was on Friday, November 14 1997; Page A01.
It is alright if you ignore the Post with this slanderous piece though, but how about then President Clinton?
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT BILL SIGNING CEREMONY
THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release November 13, 1997
...Plainly, it sent the right message: comply now with the U.N. resolutions and let the UNSCOM inspection team go back to work. Iraq's announcement this morning to expel the Americans from the inspection team is clearly unacceptable and a challenge to the international community...
So you can twist and lie all you want to Dennis, but the facts are still out there for all who care to search them out.
This is what socialism is all about Dennis, lies and distortions. This is what you wish upon us, your children and grandchildren. Lies and distortions.
That's conservatism, folks.
It "twists and lies" like a whirling dervish, then insultingly accuses
its thoughtful, moral critics of dishonesty.
Once again...
WHO terminated the UN inspection process to make way for Operation Desert Fox?
Remember my post in which I said that, if moderates and ordinary Americans from all walks of life don't quickly come to firmly oppose Bush's Iraq (and beyond) war plans, the revolutionary Left will dominate the issue and drive all U.S. politics toward Marxist assuumptions?
Well, ponder the implications of this editorial from The Militant, organ of the Socialist Workers Party, which organized one of the two big antiwar coalitions that shook the '60s:
NO SUCH THING AS "WE AMERICANS"
The war that Washington is steadily moving toward in the Mideast is not about Saddam Hussein. It is about U.S. imperialism taking over Iraq and gaining supremacy over the vast oil and natural gas reserves throughout the region.
As in every previous imperialist conflict, the U.S. rulers today are driven toward more wars in order to conquer markets and territories, and to restore the declining rates of profit of their capitalist system.
The fundamental argument that the billionaire families of the U.S. ruling class--the owners of Exxon, J.P. Morgan Chase, and other giant corporations--use to draw working people and others behind their wars is that "we Americans" face common problems. But that "we" is a lie.
Capitalist politicians argue that "our" oil supply is at stake in the Mideast and that taking over Iraq--or even Saudi Arabia--will protect "our country" from being cut off and economic disaster. They try to suck working people and the middle class into the view that "we" may be attacked by "them" with "weapons of mass destruction."
But the real "we" are working people around the world. Workers and farmers from Iraq to Mexico to France to the United States have everything in common. And we have nothing in common with them--the capitalists who rule the United States, who profit by exploiting our labor power and plundering the peoples of the world. It’s not our government. It’s their government, their army, their corporations. Likewise, a U.S. war of conquest in the Mideast is an assault on us, on fellow working people there.
As Malcolm X, the outstanding revolutionary leader, so clearly stated on behalf of millions, "I am not an American, I am a victim of Americanism."
The trade union officialdom promotes the reactionary trap of American patriotism, as it did at this year’s Labor Day rallies, which were orchestrated as pro-government, pro-war actions--with a few themes of labor struggles thrown in for cover. The labor officials’ acceptance of the framework of "we Americans"--bosses and workers--is simply a product of their class collaboration with the employers. One pro-war argument with a social veneer that union officials sometimes promote is that war spending "is good for the economy" and means jobs.
In times of war, the bosses demand that working people "sacrifice" for the interests of "our country" and stop fighting to defend our wages, working conditions, and unions. But as the bosses press their assault, there will be no class peace. The fights that workers wage--whether they be union organizing drives, strikes, protests against cop brutality or against attacks on the right to abortion--cut through the attempts by the exploiters to blur these opposing class interests.
An increasing number of working people involved in this resistance will be among those most interested in discussing the socialist perspective of organizing a movement of workers and farmers that can make a revolution, take political power out of the hands of the warmakers, and join with millions in transforming the world.
I guess Dr. King told "lies" too:
"We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain social stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru. Increasingly the role our nation has taken is the role of those who refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment."
--Martin Luther King, Jr. ["A Time to Break the Silence" speech given at Riverside Church New York City April 4, 1967]
Now we see the violence inherent in the system
ARTHUR:
     How do you do, good lady? I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Who's castle is that?
WOMAN:
     King of the who?
ARTHUR:
     The Britons.
WOMAN:
     Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR:
     Well, we all are. We are all Britons, and I am your king.
WOMAN:
     I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS:
     You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working
     classes--
WOMAN:
     Oh, there you go bringing class into it again.
DENNIS:
     That's what it's all about. If only people would hear of--
ARTHUR:
     Please! Please, good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle?
WOMAN:
     No one lives there.
ARTHUR:
     Then who is your lord?
WOMAN:
     We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR:
     What?
DENNIS:
     I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the
     week,...
ARTHUR:
     Yes.
DENNIS:
     ...but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting...
ARTHUR:
     Yes, I see.
DENNIS:
     ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,...
ARTHUR:
     Be quiet!
DENNIS:
     ...but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major--
ARTHUR:
     Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN:
     Order, eh? Who does he think he is? Heh.
ARTHUR:
     I am your king!
WOMAN:
     Well, I didn't vote for you.
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/python/Scripts/HolyGrail/grail-03.html
MY CRITICS ARE BEING "RADICALIZED"
Undoubtedly you've noticed how vehemently, even viciously, my interpretations about what Bush is up to in Iraq, and well beyond, have been attacked on these boards.
I've been repeatedly called a liar (at best) and such things as "our resident Soviet" or a "supporter of terrorism".
Maybe some of you have wondered why such accusations don't upset me.
Well, it's because I reacted in exactly the same way toward the folks who patiently tried to show me, during the early part of the Vietnam era, that what America was doing in Southeast Asia was a travesty and a crime.
I simply couldn't believe it.
Every fiber of what I later had to admit was my thoroughly propagandized being rebelled at the notion that "my country" could be engaged in genocide for geo-political control and economic domination.
Oh, I accused the "peaceniks" of everything imaginable.
But chiefly that they were misrepresentataional minions of the very "Communist conspiracy" that Lyndon Johnson claimed we were fighting.
I simply didn't know -- couldn't know -- any of the key truths about Vietnam, such as that 80% of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh in free elections had we abided by the 1956 Geneva agreement and allowed them to happen, in a unified Vietnam, the creation of which Washington thwarted.
I didn't know that Eisenhower understood "tin, tungsten and rubber" were our real reasons for being there.
And I certainly didn't believe the stories of mass-scale U.S. murder of innocent civilians, just as many don't believe what we did/are doing in Afghanistan, and Iraq.
But finally the Quaker American Friends Service Committee, and Catholic-originated Ramparts magazine, got through to me. The first presented evidence of routine atrocities, which would not become widely known until several years later, after My Lai surfaced. The second published an issue with soul-numbing color photographs of napalmed children.
My heart wouldn't let my mind live a lie any longer, and I hit the streets to resist the Vietnam War -- that terrible blight on our nation's honor -- for the next eight years.
(Critics, conclusion)
Granted, Saddam isn't Ho (who modeled Vietnam's constitution after our own), and 9/11 proves America no longer has a monopoly on (state) terrorism, but the essential reality remains, underscored so emphatically by Bush's just-released National Security Declaration.
Namely, that reactionary elements in U.S. power will repress and kill anyone, anywhere, to satisfy the profit lust of those in whose behalf they mislead...and will invariably, shamefully tell us it's all being done for "democracy" and "freedom".
More civilians killed in Afghanistan than died on 9/11; a conservatively estimated 100,000 Iraqis blown away during the Gulf War (commonly in "turkey shoots" like the Highway of Death); more than a million Iraqi civilian fatalities -- largely children -- "thanks" to our embargo.
And now we're embarked on an official policy of preemptive first strikes against, first, Iraq, and subsequently anyone some Washington/Wall Street Enron-head doesn't like...
probably for just saying: "Ripping us off is wrong. Stop it!"
In the secret places of my frothing critics' minds, they know I'm right.
But the idea of having to accept the truth from a radical is very unsettling to them.
I concede that one of my hardline detractors will remain a hidebound reactionary
forever.
But the others are good people with decent proclivities, and the seed of truth is stirring
within them.
After enough nights of lying awake in darkened bedrooms, digesting the full implication of what they've just seen on the news, they'll become what undeniable reality finally forced me to become so many years ago.
A schmuck and and a goombah!
Seriously...
Your conscience is already making you aware of what I mean.
Thats conservatism, folks.
Now Clinton is guilty of conservatism? Oh the horror. Say it isnt so.
Here is some more links for you Dennis, although I dont think that you will read them either because they are obviously sites controlled by conservatives.
Iraq orders US inspectors out
Iraq, Politics, 11/13/1997
Arabic News.com
...On Wednesday, Iraq gave the 10 American weapons inspectors in Baghdad a week to leave the country. The order applied only to members of the U.N. disarmament commission...
The State News MSUs Independent Voice
AUSTRALIA CONDEMNS IRAQI EXPLUSION OF U.S. UNSCOM INSPECTORS
MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS ALEXANDER DOWNER
...Saddam, who provoked the standoff by expelling American members of the U.N. weapons inspection team, met with his Cabinet yesterday and said he hoped a conflict could be averted...
...With Iraq demanding the removal of all American weapons inspectors from the country, the United Nations instead issued the withdrawal of all its inspectors...
The Anti-Defamation League
The Security Council late Thursday evening condemned "in the strongest terms the unacceptable decision of the Government of Iraq" to expel personnel of "a specified nationality" working with the United Nations Special Commission overseeing the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (UNSCOM).
Hellenic Resources Network
I am out of time for now, but I can add more later if you like.
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=692&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
WHO ordered the TERMINATION of UN inspection as a prelude to Operation Desert Fox?
Don't give me any diversionary fluff about individual or spy-case instances from an earlier juncture.
It was Bill Clinton, Mr. Republicanlite, who pressured the UN out to
clear the way for his attacks on Iraq.
The same bastard who launched cruise missile volleys on congregated camel caravans in Afghanistan.
And on an aspirin factory in Sudan.
Here's a link to an expose on that outrage.
And all you wimps wanted to impeach him for...was for having a
sizzling lovelife!
http://www.wvgazette.com/display_story.php3?sid=200209213
Well, this is interesting...
The Charleston Gazette has Senator Byrd suggesting Bush's war plans are
a cover-up for domestic issues.
Exactly what former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter has been charging.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/browne23.html
Lies, lies, lies, and more damned lies (from our leaders)...
Fine Dennis, Sadam never ever kicked out anybody. And that was not part of the reason for the attacks. All those sites and people quoted were liars and the "yellowtimes" is the only truthful one out there.
All American inspectors are "spies" as well and the impeachment of Clinton had nothing to do with perjury. No amount of information will change your mind ever. You just go on defending those wonderful socialist like Sadam and Slobo. Everything they do is just "righteous rebellion" and they are actually wonderful people.
Revealed: Iraq's quest to build nuclear bomb
New evidence proves that Saddam Hussein has continued his efforts to assemble an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Special report by Peter Beaumont in London and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Peter Beaumont in London and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Sunday September 22, 2002
The Observer
In the days before Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf war, the vast sprawl of anonymous factory buildings that makes up the Badr General Establishment was a central hub in its efforts to design and build a nuclear bomb.
As Iraq has admitted to the United Nations, it was here, 20 miles south of Baghdad, that the bustling teams of technicians and machinists worked on components for the gas centrifuges and molecular pumps that were intended for Iraq's enrichment cascade for the fissile material for its nuclear bomb. It was here too that Iraq's missile technicians worked on modification and production of the Scud B missiles that they hoped would carry a warhead.
With Iraq's capitulation to the allied forces, Badr - like the State Enterprise for Heavy Equipment Engineering and dozens of other enterprises run under the auspices of the Ministry for Military Industrialisation - was supposed to be closed down and monitored under the UN ceasefire resolutions designed to dismantle Iraq's ability to retain, design and build weapons of mass destruction.
But the scientists and managers from Badr had different orders from Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. What they have been up to goes to the heart of US and UK concern that Saddam has been trying to assemble the expertise and materials to build weapons of mass destruction, for the men from Badr turned up at a factory in Minsk in the former Soviet republic of Belarus.The Iraqi delegation that arrived at the Belstroyimpex headquarters in July 1995 was a high-powered one, travelling under the aegis of the Badr General Establishment.
They carried a shopping list of high-specification machine tools, including diamond cutters, a powder-metal production line and a plasma-spray machine - all potentially components for nuclear weapons and a ballistic-missiles programme. The delegation was careful to cover its tracks, keeping the visit and the deals signed secret from the UN. Iraq went to greater lengths still to hide these purchases from the UN sanctions regime, smuggling them into Iraq via the Jordanian free port of Aqaba, and trying to hide the equipment once it reached Iraq.
The Iraqi deal with Belstroyimpex was not unique. As arms inspectors and independent researchers have established in the past two years, the deal was only a small part of an intensive effort by companies and organisations linked to the Iraq's Ministry of Military Industrialisation to acquire forbidden technologies and materials from Belarus and over a dozen other countries.
It is an effort, say diplomatic sources, that continued just two months ago, when Iraq's deputy Prime Minister, and Minister for Military Industrialisation, Abdul Tawab Mulla Howeish, was in Minsk to sign a new protocol authorising scientific and technical exchanges between the two states. Indeed as lately as 1998 - before their forced departure from Iraq - UN inspectors discovered machine tools delivered from Belarus at the Saddam Artillery Plant, where they found Iraqi technicians installing 14 new machines for manufacturing 75-millimetre lenses with a military use. The crates were marked 'Republic of Belarus, Vitebsk Machine Building Plant'.
The Iraqi activity in Belarus is the most worrying evidence that Iraq is still pursuing a covert procurement programme . It may not be the 'smoking gun' that proves that Saddam has acquired the fissile material to build his bomb, but it is evidence that he is trying hard.
Firm evidence exists that in the decade since the end of the Gulf war Saddam quickly rebuilt his secret procurement networks, casting his net from the UK to eastern Europe, South East Asia and as far as Africa, operating through a complex network of front companies and middlemen.
Iraqi agents have been active in Ukraine, Russia, Romania and in the former Yugoslavia. They have been spotted in Congo, Kenya, Jordan and Syria, in Malaysia and Indonesia. It has not always been a subtle or successful effort. Indeed some analysts say privately that the chaotic and piecemeal effort of Saddam's procurement network smacks of desperation. Its persistence is what is worrying Britain and the US.
And it is these procurement efforts that will provide the backbone of Tony Blair's dossier on the threat posed by Iraq when it is released this week. That dossier is likely to argue that Saddam's current efforts have strong parallels with the massive Iraqi procurement programme in the 1980s when Saddam began scouring the world to build his secret conglomeration of chemical, biological and nuclear-weapons factories.
'There has been an awful lot of background noise,' said one European diplomat. 'There is a lot of Iraqi procurement effort going on. Some of it is very inconclusive. But what is worrying is the accumulating evidence of the kind of stuff they have been - and continue to be - after. That has been a constant since the end of the Gulf war. It may not amount to evidence of a bomb, or a new missile system, but it is certainly evidence that they still desperately want it.'
A senior British diplomat in the region said: 'There has been concern that relations between Iraq and Ukraine and Belarus have been getting warmer over the last few months. There has been heightened activity and people going back and forth.' He said he had seen 'reports' from a variety of sources, including spies, of arms deals between the two nations and Iraq.
Among those deeply concerned about Belarus and Ukraine is Tim McCarthy, who served with the UN Special Commission on Iraq (Unscom) from 1994 to 1999 and completed 13 missions in Iraq, serving as deputy chief inspector for the missile team. Now a senior analyst at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in the US, he studied much of the available evidence about the Belarus connection.
'My concern was high about Belarus, for a number of reasons. One of the deals that the Iraqis have done was with the Minsk Tractor Factory. Public reports have stated that civilian tractors are produced. But it also produces missile launchers for Pakistan. The real [Belarussian] expertise comes with the missile launchers, and that is disconcerting to say the least.' McCarthy said Belarus had drawn up numerous agreements with Iraq. 'The equipment that Belarus had agreed to give Iraq would be considered to be a very real non-proliferation problem.'
Among the deals that most concerned him, however, was for a so-called plasma-spray machine used in anti-corrosion treatment of components used in nuclear weapons. 'The nuclear proliferation people were very concerned about that. We have very strong documentary evidence [about the deals]. It was production line stuff that would have been very hard for the Iraqis to acquire legally under the UN sanctions regime.'
At the head of Iraq's secret procurement effort is Abdul Tawab Mulla Howeish. A wiry and mustachioed military officer in his late forties - who also holds the rank of Deputy Prime Minister - Howeish, has come to be one of the most important figures in Saddam's regime, inevitably visible in every photo opportunity given by Saddam to Iraq's state-controlled media.
And it has been Howeish who has been most visible in recent Iraqi delegations to Belarus. It was his Ministry - under its previous head - that coordinated Iraq's massive secret procurement drive in the 1980s. The only difference, note inspectors who have been trying to unravel Iraq's new procurement programme, is that the names of the front companies - and the states prepared to deal with Iraq - have changed.
One of best assessments of Iraq's procurement effort has been supplied by former US weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Despite being one of the fiercest critics of the hawkish Bush line on Iraq, Ritter has noted the way in which Iraq set up a series of front companies in Jordan, Syria, Malaysia, and other countries that acted as official buyers of banned weapons and systems, which later found their way to Iraq.
'We [UN weapons inspectors] were following, in '97 and '98, information that held that Iraq was working very closely with the government of Syria to use Syrian procurement networks in place with Belarus, with Ukraine, with Russia. The Syrians would acquire military technology, military equipment, military hardware, in contracts between these nations and Syria, and then Syria would transfer this material to Iraq in a covert fashion. And the method of payment was Iraqi oil.'
Among companies that have already been revealed as being behind attempts to procure suspicious contracts are the Al Bushair trading company and the Al Saddirah Company - both identified in private memos by UN inspectors as the intermediaries in a number of deals to acquire banned technology in Belarus in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Among those who have compiled their own dossier on Iraq's new procurement networks are two American researchers, Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, and Kelly Motz, of Iraq Watch, who published the 'Shopping for Saddam' report last year. Much of the evidence they collected was based, they say, on unpublished information collected by UN weapons inspectors detailing their suspicions about Iraq's continued efforts to hide a large-scale and covert rearmament programme.
'What [the research] showed is that Saddam's procurement network is alive and well and has been working steadily despite the sanctions,' said Milhollin. 'There are a lot of companies out there willing to break the embargo.'
Motz said: 'We are seeing everything from just some basic negotiations that probably didn't go anywhere once the firms figured out what was trying to be purchased to contracts that were actually implemented and goods that were found in Iraq by the inspectors. We have contracts for missile engine components, for guidance components for missiles. We actually found some high-end machine tools that are useful for making nuclear weapons, military goods such as [conventional] helicopters and aircraft which were clearly embargoed.'
At about the same time that the men from the Badr General Establishment were on their way to Belarus, UN inspectors uncovered further evidence of Iraq's secret procurement efforts - gyroscopes from dismantled Russian inter-continental ballistic missiles that were smuggled into Iraq, then dumped in a river when they were found to be incompatible with their missile systems. A second shipment of 115 gyroscopes was discovered in Jordan in October 1995.
What is clear is that despite consistent setbacks over the past eight years, Iraq's secret procurement effort is still active across the globe. Further evidence of this trend was supplied in the past fortnight. US Vice President Dick Cheney has added his own voice to the debate, claiming the US has intercepted efforts by Iraq to buy hundreds of highly machined aluminium tubes it says were destined for an Iraqi gas centrifuge enrichment system.
'You can say many things about what Iraq is up to,' said one diplomat familiar with the material. 'You can argue about what weapons he has, if any, how many, and if they will ever work. You can argue about whether he will takes two months or 10 years to build or acquire a nuclear bomb. But what you cannot argue with is the evidence that that Saddam has set up his secret weapons procurement network once again. That is the real worry.'
POLITICS-UN: Iraq Attacked Again
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16, 1998 (IPS) -- U.S. and British military forces struck at Iraq Wednesday leaving the United Nations - a key player in resolving previous standoffs involving Iraq - on the sidelines.
A White House spokesman announced briefly shortly after 2200GMT that military action had begun and that President Bill Clinton would address the nation later.
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair went on television to announce the operation, codenamed ''Desert Fox'', had started in retaliation for Iraq's latest refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.
As with the previous action against Iraq in 1991, television viewers were treated to pictures from Baghdad over the Cable News Network (CNN) but showed little activity beyond anti- aicraft fire which lighted the sky over the Iraqi capital. within 30 minutes the guns had fallen silent.
Iraq's outgoing U.N. ambassador, Nizar Hamdoon, had resigned himself to the attack, regardless of whether the U.N. Security Council approved the action. ''Clearly the Security Council is not going to provide such an authorisation,'' Hamdoon said, adding that a U.S. attack is expected regardless.
''We reserve our rights to whatever retaliation, whatever self- defense we might take,'' the Iraqi envoy added.
The U.N. Security Council met to consult on the latest crisis, which began late Tuesday when Richard Butler, the chairman of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) which monitors Iraq's disarmament, reported that Baghdad had not kept its promises to the world body.
''There is absolutely no excuse or pretext to use force against Iraq,'' Chinese Ambassador Qin Huasun said after the meeting. Qin assailed Butler's critical report as ''apparently one-sided'' and added that many Council members questioned Butler's decision to pull all U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Yet even as the Council discussed the crisis, U.S. defense officials said U.S. troops were ''in execute mode'' in the Persian Gulf, awaiting President Bill Clinton's orders. More than 24,000 U.S. troops and dozens of ships and warplanes are stationed near Iraq.
The U.S. strike came in for stiff criticism among groups wondering what the operation could accomplish.
''There is no reason to believe that further bombings or sanctions will do anything to bring about a change of government in Iraq,'' argued the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a Wednesday statement. ''In fact, it is entirely unclear what the precise purpose of such an attack would be.''
''One cannot help but be sickened by the prospect of a military attack on the eve of (a House of Representatives vote on) Clinton's impeachment and in the midst of the holiday season,'' professor Simona Sharoni of American University argued...
---
Too biased a source for you? Then what does the most respected news organization in the world say happened?
"16 December 1998: The UN orders weapons inspectors out of the country after Unscom chief Richard Butler issued a report saying the Iraqis were still refusing to co-operate. US air strikes on Iraq begin hours later."
---
Let's not confuse the prior series of contentious differences between Iraq and the UN, which centered mainly on Baghdad's very well founded fears that spies were among the inspectors, with the action that finally ended the inspection presence in Iraq.
Namely, the decison by OUR SIDE to pull the inspectors out.
Dan tried to demagogue the issue into a smear in which he openly charged me of lying.
Sad...
The next few days are going to see a blitz of supposed "proof"
that Iraq is an allegedly greater threat to humanity than a hypothetical finding of AIDS and West Nile Virus jointly carried by house flies.
Demand actual, verifiable evidence, not just claims of evidence.
Industrial "tubes" and tractor-plant contracts, plus a mysterious "Syrian connection", if they exist at all (remember Rumsfeld's disinformation department), don't justify scuttling America's 200-year tradition of being a defensive rather than aggressive nation.
And it certainly doesn't justify a loss of 37,000 U.S. lives, which has been projected as the death toll for our forces if a 250,000
person force is sent to attack the Iraqis in their cities.
Remember, it's your kids.
If they must die violent deaths half way across the world, then the cause had better be infinitely, truly more convincing and compelling than what's been so thinly offered to date.
REJECT POLICY OF FIRST STRIKES
The Bush administration seems unable to conduct foreign policy without resorting to threats of violence. The plan to engage in pre-emptive warfare against nations suspected of being enemies of the United States is the most recent, and extreme, example. Threatening others with unprovoked attack is damaging America's credibility, increasing our isolation and undermining our ability to offer productive statecraft in an unstable world. It is a morally bankrupt policy that deserves to be rejected by all Americans of conscience and common sense.
For more than 200 years, the United States has condemned the use of military first strikes. The current attempt to justify the invasion and overthrow of other nations merely because they are suspected of being America's enemies breaks with this noble tradition. One must ask, has the Bush administration become so obsessed with winning the war against terrorism that it is willing to sacrifice America's democratic values?
A nation that provides moral and ethical leadership is one that is able to transcend self-interest in order to serve the common good. Our current foreign policy has no capacity for transcendence; it is concerned only with the preservation of American power and privilege. In this time of moral confusion, America needs patriots who will call our nation back to its ideals. Patriotism is not a matter of chanting, "U-S-A!", flying American flags from our auto antennas or vilifying the evil regime-of-the- month. Loving America means using our role as the world's only superpower to enlist a movement for global justice and peace. This critical ethical challenge cannot be met by conducting military first strikes against other nations. It can be meaningfully engaged through the creation of a patient foreign policy that nonviolently eliminates the root causes of terrorism that cause so many to suffer and die around the world.
--THE REV. PETER MONKRES, Grand Marais (Duluth News Tribune letter)
Dennis
'Mrs. Toogood' is sorry. White Trash (am I not supposed to ask why she has so many kids at age 25?? did she steal the stuff she was trying to return is that why she was so angry at her kid?? Does her family suport MY support??).. We know the future her THREE kids have in front of them. Her kids have a 1 in 30 chance of success. Government no matter how powerful cannot solve the problem of fucked up families.
Massachusetts has a problem. Whites and Asians (it seems not the Toogood whites) are doing OK on the high school test requirement but others are not. A puzzle? The family, the family, the family is what shapes our kids. You sow what you reap.
Oh yea, we're the radicals here LOL Hoooowl. That's freakin hillarious.
Well if the shoe fits.
......the man who is perhaps most responsible for making Egypt, and the Arab world generally, the thriving,peaceful, and prosperous envy of the civilized world it is today — once said:.........
go here
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg092402.asp
America's constitutional representative democracy is under attack. This plot is not being carried out by terrorists or an opposing army, but by greedy and power hungry lawyers who seek to over throw our constitutional representative democracy and install in its place a system governance by litigation in which lawyers rule supreme.
HARLEM HAREM
The office in Harlem for Clinton
tells applicants seeking positions:
The time has expired
'cause Bubba has hired
an intern for ev'ry position."
-- Jim Wrenn, editor of Poli.Sat.Com, inspired by word that former President Clinton's office in Harlem is now telling people responding to ads for internships that all positions have been filled.
We should not use any voting machine unless it prints out a receipt confirming that the machine registered your votes for the candidates you chose. If the machine doesn't do that, the technology is subject to all kinds of fraud and we should junk the voting machines altogether to go back to paper ballots.
Al Forrest Gump Gore.
WASHINGTON — In his speech in San Francisco Monday, former Vice President Al Gore, lambasting the current President Bush for trying to distract attention to failings in the war on terror by launching an attack on Iraq, said the first President Bush ended the 1991 Gulf War too soon.
"Back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War, and I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration's hasty departure from the battlefield," Gore told an enthusiastic crowd at the Commonwealth Club.
However, on April 18, 1991, Gore felt differently, according to his own remarks. Speaking on the floor of the Senate, of which he was a member, Gore said then-President George H.W. Bush acted correctly in ending the Persian Gulf War when he did.
"I want to state this clearly, President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam Hussein's survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus that the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was accomplished, combat should stop."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,64035,00.html
That's weird. I wonder if he's aware of his previous stance was on the matter?
Does anybody care what he thinks anyway?
Not really but the media are giving him plenty of press for some reason, hey why not a big interview with Dan Quale too. ? Or other failed presidential hopefuls, I can't wait for the big Dukakis interview and press conference, that ought to be a hoot.
I guess when you're trying to revive a political career you have to do something.
Those people he was speaking to did. They loved him. I saw the end of it on C-Span. I actually found him to be pretty likeable and personable, in contrast to how he normally seems. And very respectful of Bush's role as President, which I can't imagine being if I was in his place.
Hi Lance,
I'm sure they did care, they probably paid alot of money to hear him speak. There are plenty of political foes that I would enjoy hearing speak, hearing him would not be one of them let alone paying to do so.
But tell me why he rates press. If he runs again then I can see it.
I'm not cheerleading (or even cheering) for Gore or anything, but he clearly rates press.
Good points Lance,
I'll concede that. However, it's too bad he put his foot in his mouth. His speech was filled with alot of hypocrisy and contradiction.
FWIW, I don't think a national leader of either of the two parties can speak effectively on the "War on Terror" or on Iraq without considerable hypocrisy and contradiction.
I disagree, there are those from both sides of the aisle that have always held for the most part the same stance on Iraq. Then there are others from both sides as well who's posistion seems to change depending on who is living in the white house.
Good point, Thanks.
Another Democrat is in trouble. This time they secretly taped, transcribed and turned over to the press a campaign meeting of a Republican candidate for the U.S. senate. link
Daschle's milking this for all he can.
"Miguel Estrada has a reputation for an extreme conservatism that gives rise to concerns that he will, if confirmed, roll back established rights and protections," said Marcia Kuntz of the Alliance for Justice.
This shouldn't be a big deal. If some of the so called "established rights" and "protections" are rolled back, that will only put them into the political arena i.e. Congress and the state legislatures where such issues belong. The reason the extreme left wingers are concerened is that their agenda does not get anywhere with an electorat that has more common sense than they do.
from the above story:
And for all you left wingers that believe that the Demogogues are only providing payback for Republican reject of judicial nominees consider this:
Another big lie you extremists believe in has been shattered.
And yet more proof of the political nature of the Demagogues on the Senate Judicairy Committee: