11.07.2003
Two Sides of the Coin
Hats off to Jessica Lynch. She could play out the role of warrior/heroine, "Mythic Icon of American Right" as the US war machine attempted successfully until now to portray her, a comic book hero who although stabbed and shot, emptied her clip and was captured, suffered abuse at the hands of vicious enemies until freed by her comrades in a deadly night time raid on the heavily manned nearly fortified hospital where she was being tortured... But she bravely tells the truth.
You make me proud, Ms Lynch, because coming out with the truth has to be extremely difficult in your circumstances, I'm sure you are under a great deal of pressure to conform to The Big Lie. You are a Hero. I thank you.
On the otherside of the coin we have Halliburton:
According to energy experts, the cost of buying and transporting fuel from Kuwait to Iraq is less than $1.00 per gallon, meaning that Halliburton is charging US taxpayers, more than double what is fair.[6] It only costs the Iraqi oil company, SOMO, 97 cents per gallon to import oil from Kuwait to Iraq, for example. Reports released today indicate that a department within the US government can buy and transport fuel for less than half the cost that Halliburton is charging.[7]
The situation becomes even more appalling when one considers HalliburtonÂ’s sale of oil to Iraqis at a price between 4 to 15 cents per gallon, meaning that American tax payers are subsidizing 90% of these inflated prices
Please read this link where I found quotation above.
Seems rather traitorous in a time of war, wouldn't you agree. A Congressional Investigation seems in order.
Days before the US invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein's spy chiefs attempted to buy off the Bush administration with huge oil concessions, it was reported yesterday.
But I suppose that would have left Halliburton out in the cold, contract wise.
Country Joe said it best... One Two Three What Are We Fighting For?
Follow the money...
A Note
No computer access until Monday. Use the excellent sources in the sidebar to keep current with the news. Share what you find out, Democracy is only a word if we don't breath life into it...
11/07/2003
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11.06.2003
Money in Politics
OK, so I'm not comfortable with Howard Dean. Although he's is the campaign funds winner for the Dems (to beat Bush the high minded rhetoric about federal matching funds, with you the supporter's acquiescence, fall to the wayside in favor of Pragmatism) and probably can beat the current White House resident.
Here are some links to Open Secret.org to see where some candidates funding comes from. Compare them to Mr Bush.
Bush
Kucinich
Clark
Dean
Al Giardano posted about a Dean /Halliburton connection that I guess is floating around Blogtopia (thanx skippy) but I hadn't seen until today. Looks like it is probably not big news...
The Big News
Mr Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia is in trouble tax evation, and fraud and has been associated with the criminal underworld of Russia. You know that Cheney and Halliburton also seem to have Russian mob connections. Halliburton is connected financially to Tyumen oil, as well as Khodorkovsky's Alpha group which acquired Tyumen under alleged rigged bidding. Then it gets more interesting:
These same executives, Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family were the same ones who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could continue - and expand.
Much more interesting:
It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney James C, Langdon, Jr. at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fund raiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign."
It gets better. Alpha Group and Caryle are connected:
Late Wednesday, before Bush Sr. had even left, traders in New York had already heard word that he was heading to Russia to help clear the way for the sale of a strategic stake in YukosSibneft to ChevronTexaco, which named one of its tankers after Condoleezza Rice, a former board member who is now his son's national security adviser.
But it didn't stop there. The buzz continued Thursday as news spread that Bush was also here to help finalize the creation of a $500 million private equity fund between Russian oil-to-telecoms giant Alfa and one of his present employers, the Carlyle Group, a defense industry insider that counts former U.S. Secretary of State James
Khodorkovsky is on Carlyle's Advisory Board.
Elsewhere we see:Khodorkovsky met with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in July to discuss America's oil policy.
Dick Cheney is a member of the Trilateral Commision,with Lord Owen, Chairman, Yukos International UK, an attendee (you really need to check this list out).
Capitolism around the world, a global vision.
Resource:
Feeding at the Trough
11/06/2003
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11.05.2003
Thinking Through "The Separation Wall"
Imagine having to register for a permit to live in your own home, to travel out of your village...
To better understand what is going on in Palestine/Israel I offer you a link to the work of Eyal Weizman.
I would recommend to you "Ariel Sharon and the Geometry of Occupation..."(You will have to register with Open Democracy to view the piece) The politics of the wall/separation barrier that is being built are complex, and not to be understood from simplistic media accounts, which tend to sensationalize and obsfucate rational analysis.
Gush Shalom offers a clear map of the wall/barrier that allows one to judge for oneself how it will effect Peace negotiations as well as what little it has to do with "The Green Line", Israel's UN mandated 1967 borders.
The World Bank: The separation Fence Will Hurt Palestinians Immensely.
Referred to in the Weizman piece linked above THE KEY TO PEACE: DISMANTLING THE MATRIX OF CONTROL By Jeff Halper offers much needed insight on Palestine/Israel.
Jewish Voice for Peace is another resource for learning about the wall/separation barrier.
Read , consider and judge for yourself. It is a "hot topic", share what you learn.
On November 9 there will be an International Day Against the Wall .
I owe a thank you to GC for initially bringing the Weizman link to my attention, and to BC for The International Day Against the Wall link..
11/05/2003
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In the constant search for connections in the news one can get a bit "crisp"; although the world seems as though it is going to hell in a bucket from 20 different directions we are told the news is cheery because hey, "the GDP is going up" ( what does that mean?). Check out Ad Whore. You gotta laugh. Remember, these are actual ads...
Could the people these ads appeal to be the folks hoodwinked by the Bush administration again and again and again? "How To Sell a War: The Rendon Group deploys ‘perception management’ in the war on Iraq" By Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber will give you the nuts and bolts of the PR/Advertising industry inroads that worked to suffocate Democracy concerning the Attack on Iraq.
Could consumer despair be behind the maxing out of America's credit cards?
"She had never admitted this to anyone before but she said that she spends to help her feel better."
Rhode said that when his company has surveyed the general public, about 30 percent of respondents have said that they spend for the same reason.
It almost seems that the Republican Right works to up our fear and anxiety levels. These seem to be anxious times. Could it be a manner of subtle psychological control?
Compulsive shopping is related to anxiety rather than depression
Don't believe the hype.
Celebrate Life, celebrate Buy Nothing Day, Nov 28th 03
11/05/2003
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When will people learn that Death is Death, not vainglorious prepschool cowboy fantasy?
Or the rough and ready image fix for a miserable failure...
We're talking human lives here.
11/05/2003
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11.04.2003
Zionist Revisionism
Individual Arabs may perhaps be bought off but this hardly means that all the Arabs in Eretz Israel are willing to sell a patriotism that not even Papuans will trade. Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.
That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine” into the “Land of Israel”.
...they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.
--The Iron Wall by Vladimir Jabotinski, 1923
Ruthless.
The above quotation is taken from the work "The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir" by Lenni Brenner (1984) which is available in its entirety here.
The ongoing construction of cement and iron wall that enforces a continued immoral apartheid, 86 years after the Balfour Declaration behooves one to read what Jabotinski knew to be true in 1923.
Please take the time to read the history offered. For the peoples of the US and Israel as well as the beleaguered, occupied Palestinians. Learn the reality, so justice will be served. It is not a "Left or Right" issue. It concerns truth and human decency...
Share what you learn.
11/04/2003
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11.03.2003
Saying "No!" to Corporate Governance
Giant corporations govern, even though they are mentioned nowhere in our Constitution or Bill of Rights. So when corporations govern, democracy is nowhere to be found. There is something else: when people live in a culture defined by corporate values, common sense evaporates. We stop trusting our own eyes, ears, and feelings. Our minds become colonized.
-- Program On Corporations, Law & Democracy
You might not know it, but Corporate inroads to governance have been challenged successfully by people like you and me. Take a look at how folks in conservative western Pennsylvania stood up to the big monied interests that threatened the life (literally) of their rural communities. Read "Consent of the Governed: The reign of corporations and the fight for democracy" by Jeffrey Kaplan as abstracted here from the current issue of Orion Magazine.
There is a movement gaining momentum to challenge the illegitimate "fact" of corporate "personhood". This welcome phenomena rated a number 13 spot on Project Censored's list of under covered news stories. Thom Hartmann has penned an informative article detailing this fiction in his piece "Now Corporations Claim The "Right To Lie""; next they will want the Supreme Court to select them as President.
Addressing the issue of Corporate Governance offers an opportunity to highlight a myriad of wrongs in our present system while offering concrete ways to address the problems.
Share all you learn...
Some Resources:
Richard Grossman, co-founder of POCLAD ( linked above) and long time activist on this issue "Ending Corporate Governance"as well as "Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Corporations as found at the Ratical.Org Ending Corporate governance page.
The Santa Clara Blues: Corporate Personhood versus Democracy by William Meyers (here in .pdf)
WILPF US Abolish Corporate Personhood Organizing Packet Downloadable tools for learning and sharing about this issue. Organize!
Reclaim Democracy
11/03/2003
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11.02.2003
Israeli Art Student Spies
I'm guessing you are not familiar with this headline, at least not in context:
SUSPICIOUS "MIDDLE EASTERNERS" CHEER TERROR ATTACK FROM MOVING VAN
Does the headline bring Israeli folks to mind?
This link shows this and other news accounts talk about some Israeli citizens who were witnessed jumping up and down and cheering as the Twin Towers burned. They were at their vantage point at Liberty State Park before the first plane hurtled into the tower; they were later found to have boxcutters as well as to have taken smiling pictures posed in front of the burning buildings.
Could these Israeli's be linked to Mossad, the Israeli equivalent to our CIA?
Why do we hear so little about such an important subject here in the US, while Ha'aretz covers the controversy?
Here on the radio show Counterspin we have an realaudio file of John Sugg talking about the Israeli Art Student Spies that recieve little media attention here while their stories appear very news worthy.
Antiwar.com has a body of writing and links dealing with the Israeli Art Student Spies as well as any 9/11 connection.
A Salon article on the Art Student Spies by Christopher Ketcham collected on Newsmine, which features related links.
These Spies were deemed important enough to be the subject of a little talked about Drug Enforcement Administration report (scroll down).
Fox News did a 4 part report on these spies which is no longer available from the Fox website. Fortunately What Really Happened has saved the pages ( click"related story" links to see all 4 parts), Cryptome also offers some analysis as well as the transcripts themselves. scroll down.
This is a significant detail from the Clinton Lewisky scandal:
...all readers will be reminded of the telephone tapping story that emerged from Monica Lewinsky?s testimony to U.S. government investigators. She told them that President Clinton had warned her that he believed a foreign embassy was tapping their steamy telephone conversations.
Read this transcript of a no longer available article from Insight Magazine on the compromised state of our governments telecommunications system.
What if a "foreign embassy" had the dirt on the present regime here in the US? Say that a foreign power knew everything about the stealing of the Presidency, private calls documenting the denial of democracy the Corporate Right engineered in 2000? What if the same foreign power had access to Bush and companies backdoor and back channel communications? A scary amount of influence on an administration that already exhibits a blatant disregard for life and the good of our nation...
A timeline of Art Student Spy Activity.( Scroll down to orange section)
Gleaned the Sunday Herald link that inspired this from notes on the eve of the apocalypse
11/02/2003
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