Conservative Revolutionary American Party

What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

2006-01-26T04:40:00.000-08:00

Jan 20, 2006 -- Almost everywhere geologists have looked - which means everywhere by now, at least at some level of exploration - there is no oil because one or more of the key geological requirements is missing, (for example source rock) . Only one well drilled in every 10 finds oil. Only one in a hundred finds an important oilfield. And the more wells that are drilled in a province or country, the smaller the oilfields generally tend to become. "We've looked around the world many times. I'd say there is no North Sea out there. There certainly isn't a Saudi Arabia." In February 2005, Matthew Simmons speculated that the Saudis may have damaged their giant oilfields by over-producing them in the past: a geological phenomenon known as "rate sensitivity". In oilfields where the oil is pumped too hard, the structure of the oil reservoir can be impaired. In bad cases, most of a field's oil can be left stranded below ground, essentially unextractable. "If Saudi Arabia has damaged its fields, accidentally or not," Simmons said, "then we may already have passed peak oil." Chris Skrebowski believes that, from as early as 2007, the volumes of new oil production are likely to fall short of the combined need to replace lost capacity from depleting older fields and to satisfy continued growth in demand. In fact, given the time frames with which offshore oilfields are developed and depleted, it seems certain that there will be nowhere near enough oil to meet the combined forces of depletion and demand between 2008 and 2012. If there were, it would be from projects we would know about today (oil companies liking as they do to boast to their shareholders about every sizeable discovery). Given the inevitable time-lag from discovery to production, there is now no way to plug that gap. There is worse: people in the oil industry must know this. They should be alerting governments and consumers to the inevitability of an energy crunch, and they aren't. "The perception of looming decline may be worse than the decline itself," Campbell said. "There will be panic. The market overreacts to even small imbalances. Prices are set to soar in the absence of spare capacity until demand is cut by recessions. We will enter a volatile epoch of price shocks and recessions in increasingly vicious circles. A stock-market crash is inevitable." "If the economic recovery continues," Skrebowski added, "supply will get very tight from 2008 or 2009. Prices will soar. There is very little time and lots of heads are in the sand." Oil in the Caspian (an oil field maybe the size of North Sea) is central to every scenario that envisages oil supply meeting demand off into the 2020s. The oil industry has long regarded the Baku- Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey . Turkey has had 17 major shocks in the past 80 years, and the pipeline is supposed to last for 40 years. As for competition over diminishing supplies: The Pentagon established a Central Command in 1983, one of five unified commands around the world, with the clear task of protecting the global flow of petroleum. "Slowly but surely," Michael Klare concludes, "the US military is being converted into a global oil-protection service." Beyond the Middle East Five, the Bush strategy of supplier diversification will look to eight main sources, which Klare calls the Alternative Eight: Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and Angola. These countries and their oil operations are characterised by one or more of the following attributes: corruption, organised crime, civil war, political turmoil short of civil war, and ruthless dictators. The US military is being forced into deeper relationships with such regimes, including joint military exercises. The bottom line for Klare is this. "Any eruption of ethnic or political violence in these areas could do more than entrap our forces there. It could lead to a deadly confrontation between the world's military powers." Because obviously, in a world as enduringly addicted to oil as ours is, others are going to be looking for their own supplies. Russia and China will be among them. http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article339928.ece Adapted from Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis, by Jeremy Leggett, published by Portobello Books. ----------- (In addition:) emerging shortages of several major industrial commodities including cement, steel, and (perhaps most importantly) copper – the essential ingredient of electrical transmission lines. Then there is the problem of compound growth or the fact that at current growth rates within two decades (2026) there will be as many internal combustion powered vehicles in China as there are on the entire planet today (with very relaxed emission control standards). Cal Tech Vice Chancellor David Goodstein in 2003 that it takes 30 years to replace an energy infrastructure even if a solution is found. Michael Ruppert http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012306_world_stories.shtml# 1 New Study Raises Questions About Sustainability Of Metal Resources Researchers studying supplies of copper, zinc and other metals have determined that these finite resources, even if recycled, may not meet the needs of the global population forever. According to the study, if all nations were to use the same services enjoyed in developed nations, even the full extraction of metals from the Earth's crust and extensive recycling programs may not meet future demand. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060123122555.htm Iran's Bourse, the Dollar and "Pre-emptive" War We all know (hopefully) from reading Dr. Gordon Prather 3 times a week here at Antiwar.com and World Net Daily (and even from rags like the Washington Post) that if the government of Iran began to enrich uranium for nuclear bomb making purposes right now, it would take them 10 years to make one simple gun-type nuke (Prather's term) (and nevermind the delivery system). In other words, all the hype about some imminent nuclear danger is a pack of lies. Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., the great witness to the Office of Special Plans, has said repeatedly that she believes one of the principal reasons for the invasion of Iraq was that in the year 2000 Saddam Hussein had begun demanding Euros instead of dollars as payment for "his" oil. Now there is this incredible article by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D., along the lines of Dr. Prather's piece this weekend speculating that the reason the neocons and the Israeli government keep asserting Iran will have nukes and require bombing by March is because they are about to open a new oil and gas exchange - the Iranian Bourse, and will be demanding payment in Euros. This is bad news for the US dollar because the Saudis et al. demand dollars for their oil and the powers of the Earth must therefore hold large amounts of US currency. Iran, a state run by people who for some reason aren't happy with us, plan to demand Euros in their new exchange. That could lead to the government banks of the world to diversify their holdings and a flooding of the US with our government's paper money that has been held in those foreign accounts. Then comes inflation - bad inflation. The War Party may have decided that the time is now for pushing the nuke program lie and striking while the getting's good. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2608 http://www.countercurrents.org/us-petrov200106.htm In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose or the best of N&V at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newsviewsnolose2 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmptyDemocratCaucusWA/

Suitable for Framing?

2006-01-26T04:34:00.000-08:00

By Peter Teague, AlterNet. Posted January 26, 2006.

True reframing means letting go of the thinking behind the multimillion-dollar institutions on which many of us depend for a living.

It's a funny thing about the term "framing:" The more it gets used, the less we seem to understand what it means. Three years after George Lakoff emerged from academia to help make framing a household word among progressive activists, most of us are now thoroughly confused about what a frame is, or how to distinguish a frame from a slogan, message or spin. Consider this recent teaser for AlterNet's new blog, Echo Chamber:

Some current frames: The president broke the law by authorizing spying; this Republican Congress is the most corrupt in history; Alito is an extremist judge who will set the country back decades and can still be defeated. Are these frames working? Are they the right message? Stay tuned to the Echo Chamber to find out.

More accurate questions would have been: Are these frames? Are they messages? Is there a difference?

What we learned from Lakoff early on is that framing begins at a deep conceptual level. It is really about how we understand the world and our place in it; how we define problems and solutions; how we organize ourselves to achieve our goals; and how we talk about all of it.

Despite attempts to fight the tide, framing has come to mean finding better words and images to communicate with various audiences (the president broke the law by authorizing spying). The problem (and I think it's serious), is that we're proposing "frames" that are actually messages within frames, that evoke frames of which we remain oblivious. In the name of fixing a problem (we don't have a clue what the frames are in which we're operating) we're actually perpetuating it.

I think getting this right matters, because what framing really points us to is a deep rethink that forces us to challenge our assumptions and identities and that will require a reorganization of many of our efforts. It is not sloganeering, messaging or spinning, all of which leave our assumptions, identities and institutions comfortably in place.

Genuine re-framing is the hard work that progressives will have to do if we are to have any hope of offering a serious challenge to right-wing domination of American politics. It is the work that must precede message framing: Message framing without deep conceptual reframes is like hanging pictures in a house in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward right now. Without exposing the mold and the rot, taking things down to the foundations where necessary, and then framing new walls, windows and doors, we're not going to build a home that will last.

What will this hard work involve? For starters we'll need to identify and then question some of our underlying core assumptions. A prime example: The assumption that we can build an effective counterweight to conservative and corporate hegemony from the conglomeration of several different issue or identity-based "movements."

We now have decades of experience with this theory -- that if each issue movement does a good job, then it will all come together in some bright tomorrow. But despite the massive growth of progressive "civil society," we're no closer to the birth of a genuine movement than we were 25 years ago. Only by exposing the fallacy will we be free to think differently, to focus on articulating our goals in terms of shared American values, to be explicit about building a majoritarian movement.

There has never been any illusion that any of the academic theorizing about framing made sense without organizations and leaders who could do the real work of reframing. But this gets very tough, because if we do this right, it has to mean challenging basic assumptions about what the problems and solutions are, and this may in turn demand radical rethinking of our organizations and alliances.

For example, we might be less sanguine about leaving the issue of global warming to the environmental experts if, instead of understanding it in terms of too much carbon in the atmosphere, we thought about it in terms of solutions, including:

The potential for a transition to a clean energy economy.
The creation of millions of high-skill, high-wage jobs.
Taking responsibility for our common future.
Developing and sharing new technologies with the developing world.
The transformative effects of energy democracy versus energy domination.

To suggest a genuine reframe inevitably means we'd actually have to think about letting go, not just of identities, but also the thinking behind multimillion-dollar institutions on which many of us depend for a living. This is why I think most of the mainstream reframing efforts now under way will stop well short of what's needed. The framing experts have proven unwilling or unable to lay out the unvarnished truth about what's at stake, and even if they did, our large institutional leaders won't, and probably can't, make the kind of changes necessary; they may have too much invested in the status quo to be the change we want to see in the world.

This will leave the real work to those on the margins, where change usually takes place. And this is exactly where it's happening. For example, the best of the metro advocacy and organizing groups are challenging the narrow confines of traditional issue categories. They are working on the things that are of primary concern to their communities and developing broader visions of what those communities can be. They're bringing labor, community and faith groups together and linking up to build real power in some of the largest states. These organizations don't need framing experts to urge them to let go and move on. They're operating in new and effective ways without needing to do a lot of explaining (other than to funders, who remain a problem); it just makes sense.

While the mainstream groups and their consultants seek to contrast "conventional frames" and "new frames" within each traditional issue category, the best of the new work turns the tables: Forget the categories, focus on cross-cutting solutions that appeal to broad audiences, and then begin to build a bigger movement by bringing together folks who are open to busting out. This is genuine reframing, in my understanding, as opposed to setting out new policy proposals or messages within the existing categories.

This all points to the possibility of a new movement that will manage the alchemy that has eluded us for so long: to be greater than the sum of our parts. We can't underestimate the magnitude or the challenges involved in what we're trying to accomplish. And I'm convinced that we make it infinitely more difficult if we fail, at the outset, to challenge our assumptions, beliefs and identities. Only then will we be able to build a new politics in which environmental, social and economic justice activists, business people, civil rights organizers, health care reformers, children's advocates, labor unionists, peace campaigners, veterans and all the rest of us will find a home.

This is what framing really needs to be about for progressives: bringing these elements and elements we haven't even imagined yet into a new movement that includes us and transcends us.

Peter Teague is a program officer at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. The nonprofit Independent Media Institute, AlterNet's institutional parent, receives funding from the Foundation.

FIRST WINTER OLYMPICS:

2006-01-26T04:23:00.000-08:00

With the Winter Olympics coming up I thought that this bit of historical background was appropriate.........Enjoy the games.................PEACE................Scott

January 25, 1924

On January 25, 1924, the first Winter Olympics take off in style at Chamonix in
the French Alps. Spectators were thrilled by the ski jump and bobsled as well as
12 other events involving a total of six sports. The "International Winter
Sports Week," as it was known, was a great success, and in 1928 the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially designated the Winter Games,
staged in St. Moritz, Switzerland, as the second Winter Olympics.Five years
after the birth of the modern Olympics in 1896, the first organized
international competition involving winter sports was staged in Sweden. Called
the Nordic Games, only Scandinavian countries competed. Like the Olympics, it
was staged thereon every four years but always in Sweden. In 1908, figure
skating made its way into the Summer Olympics in London, though it was not
actually held until October, some three months after the other events were
over.In 1911, the IOC proposed the staging of a separate winter competition for
the 1912 Stockholm Games, but Sweden, wanting to protect the popularity of the
Nordic Games, declined. Germany planned a Winter Olympics to precede the 1916
Berlin Summer Games, but World War I forced the cancellation of both. At the
1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, ice hockey joined figure skating as an
official Olympic event, and Canada took home the first of many hockey gold
medals. Soon after, an agreement was reached with Scandinavians to stage the
IOC-sanctioned International Winter Sports Week. It was so popular among the 16
participating nations that, in 1925, the IOC formally created the Winter
Olympics, retroactively making Chamonix the first.In Chamonix, Scandinavians
dominated the speed rinks and slopes, and Norway won the unofficial team
competition with 17 medals. The United States came in third, winning its only
gold medal with Charles Jewtraw's victory in the 500-meter speed-skating event.
Canada won another hockey gold, scoring 110 goals and allowing just three goals
in five games. Of the nearly 300 athletes, only 13 were women, and they only
competed in the figure-skating events. Austrian Helene Engelmann won the pairs
competition with Alfred Berger, and Austrian Herma Planck Szabo won the women's
singles. The Olympics offered a particular boost to skiing, a sport that would
make enormous strides within the next decade. At Chamonix, Norway won all but
one of the nine skiing medals.

NOT SO NEW BLOG

2005-10-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore"

A great quote but a little over the top for the way that I feel concerning this blog. My frustartion has gotten the better of me though and I'm ready to move. I've established a new blog and here is the address.

http://crap713two.blogspot.com/

Come see me for the same old "CRAP" that you've come to know and love so well!!!

So I say goodbye to "CRAPI" and hello to "CRAPII"

I didn't realize that blogs had sunset clauses............LOL...........PEACE................Scott

Subj: On the front line

2005-10-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

Subj: On the front line
>
> +++++++++
> "A friend of my cousins who's a Physician in NO, sent this to him and
> asked
> to pass it on to all who want to know what's really going on down there.
> Note
> there are many typos and misspellings. I know he's
> exhausted...........Audley"
>
> *******
> (this is now the physician writing.....)
>
> "Thanks to all of you who have sent your notes of concern and your
> prayers.
> I am writing this note on Tuesday at 2PM . I wanted to update all of you
> as
> to the situation here. I don't know how much information you are getting
> but I am certain it is more than we are getting. Be advised that almost
> everything I am telling you is from direct observation or rumor from
> reasonable
> sources. They are allowing limited internet access, so I hope to send
> this
> dispatch today.
>
> Personally, my family and I are fine. My family is safe in Jackson, MS,
> and I am now a temporary resident of the Ritz Carleton Hotel in New
> Orleans. I
> figured if it was my time to go, I wanted to go in a place with a good
> wine
> list. In addition, this hotel is in a very old building on Canal Street
> that
> could and did sustain little damage. Many of the other hotels sustained
> significant loss of windows, and we expect that many of the guests may
> be
> evacuated here.
>
> Things were obviously bad yesterday, but they are much worse today.
> Overnight the water arrived. Now Canal Street (true to its origins) is
> indeed a
> canal. The first floor of all downtown buildings is underwater. I have
> heard
> that Charity Hospital and Tulane are limited in their ability to care for
> patients because of water. Ochsner is the only hospital that remains
> fully
> functional. However, I spoke with them today and they too are on
> generator and
> losing food and water fast. The city now has no clean water, no sewerage
> system,
> no electricity, and no real communications. Bodies are still being
> recovered floating in the floods. We are worried about a cholera
> epidemic. Even the
> police are without effective communications. We have a group of armed
> police here with us at the hotel that are admirably trying to exert some
> local law enforcement. This is tough because looting is now rampant.
> Most of
> it is not malicious looting. These are poor and desperate people with no
> housing and no medical care and no food or water trying to take care of
> themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the people are armed and
> dangerous.
> We hear gunshots frequently. Most of Canal street is occupied by armed
> looters who have a low threshold for discharging their weapons. We hear
> gunshots frequently. The looters are using makeshift boats made of
> pieces of
> styrofoam to access. We are still waiting for a significant national
> guard
> presence.
>
> The health care situation here has dramatically worsened overnight.
> Many
> people in the hotel are elderly and small children. Many other guests
> have
> unusual diseases. They are unfortunately . 'We have better medical
> letter.
> There are ID physicians in at this hotel attending an HiV convention.
> We
> have commandeered the world famous French Quarter Bar to turn into a
> makeshift
> clinic. There is a team of about 7 doctors and PA and pharmacists. We
> anticipate that this will be the major medical facility in the central
> business
> district and French Quarter.
>
> Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under
> police
> escort. The pharmacy was dark and full of water. We basically scooped
> the
> entire drug sets into gargace bags and removed them. All uner police
> excort.
> The looters had to be held back at gun point. After a dose of
> prophylactic Cipro I hope to be fine.
>
> In all we are faring well. We have set up a hospital in the the French
> Quarter bar in the hotel, and will start admitting patients today. Many
> with be
> from the hotel, but many will not. We are anticipating to dealing with
> multiple medical problems, medications and and acute injuries. Infection
> and
> perhaps even cholera are anticipated major problems. Food and water
> shortages
> are iminent.
>
> The biggest question to all of us is where is the national guard. We
> hear
> jet fignters and helicopters, but no real armed presence, and hence the
> rampant looting. There is no Red Cross and no salvation army.
>
> In a sort of cliché way, this is an edifying experience. One is rapidly
> focused away from the transient and material to the bare necessities of
> life.
> It has been challenging to me to learn how to be a primary care
> phyisican.
> We are under martial law so return to our homes is impossible. I don't
> know how long it will be and this is my greatest fear. Despite it all,
> this is
> a soul edify experience. The greatest pain is to think about the loss.
> And how long the rebuid will. And the horror of so many dead people .
>
> PLEASE SEND THIS DISPATCH TO ALL YOU THING MA Y BE INTERSTED IN A
> DISPATCH From the front. I will send more according to your interest.
> Hopefully
> their collective prayers will be answered. By the way suture packs,
> sterile
> gloves and stethoscopes will be needed as the Ritz turns into a MASH
>
> Greg Henderson, MD "
> ++++++++

THE PROGRESS REPORT

2005-10-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, and Christy Harvey

September 2, 2005

VALUES
The Forsaken

ADMINISTRATION
Incompetent Response

UNDER THE RADAR
Go Beyond The Headlines

For news and updates throughout the day, check out our blog at ThinkProgress.org.
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HOW TO HELP: Charity Navigator has assembled a list of highly rated charities working to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

VALUES
The Forsaken

Great natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina do indeed "wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done." In one sense, they remind us of our common vulnerabilities. As Sari Lankan tsunami victim Nimal Premasiri said of the American hurricane victims, "God has made us equals in birth, life and death." Yet such disasters also "expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and unacknowledged inequalities." In the past week, the media has been slow to acknowledge the sharp inequalities revealed in Katrina's wake. Yesterday, CNN correspondent Jack Cafferty criticized his colleagues for ignoring the "elephant in the room" -- "the race and economic class of most of the victims the media hasn't discussed much at all." In truth, the images from the Superdome and from across the Gulf Coast of mostly poor and black Americans did much to reinforce the "growing sense that race and class are the unspoken markers of who got out and who got stuck." There, on camera, "the tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken." But images aren't enough. The story of Katrina's effect on the growing American underclass must still be told.

POVERTY AND NEW ORLEANS: Nearly a third of New Orleanians live below the poverty line. "Only a handful of large American cities have lower household incomes." Conditions are even worse for children. Fully half of the kids in Louisiana live in poverty -- the only state with a higher child poverty rate is Mississippi, another victim of Katrina. One quarter of New Orleans residents -- some 134,000 people -- don't own a car. The city is 67 percent African American, but the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, "which was inundated by the floodwaters," is more than 98 percent black. There, "only 6 percent of residents are college graduates," compared to the national average of 22 percent. "Average household income in that neighborhood is $27,499 a year, not even half the national average of $56,644. One-quarter of the Lower Ninth Ward's households earn less than $10,000 a year." The city was already vulnerable.

STRANDED -- AND STARING DOWN KATRINA: By Monday, harsh rain and 145 mph winds were bearing down on New Orleans. Tens of thousands "found themselves left behind by a failure to plan for their rescue," despite the fact that they were "living in tumbledown neighborhoods that were long known to be vulnerable to disaster if the levees failed." One CNN reporter noted, "A lot of the people we spoke to [who were stranded], these are people who work for a living. They're making minimum wage, they're supporting families. They don't have a car. They wanted to evacuate before the storm came, but they couldn't evacuate because they tell us they didn't have transportation." Time and again, residents despaired that Katrina had struck when it did, just a few days shy of payday. David Schuster observed, "Those are the people who died because they couldn't afford a tank of gas." Katrina had already demonstrated "what experts have known all along -- disasters do not treat everyone alike," said NBC's Bob Faw. "Surviving is easier for whites who have than for blacks who don't."

HORROR AT THE SUPERDOME: Those escaping the city by foot headed to the Superdome. "They were told, 'Go over there. Don't worry. You're going to get food and water and you're going to get transportation out of town,'" MSNBC reported. Instead, the refugees found a disorganized scene that quickly devolved into chaos: "A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers. 'We pee on the floor. We are like animals,' said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again. At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for. There is no sanitation. The stench is overwhelming." At one point, a despondent crowd gathered outside the stadium and simply began to chant "We want help! We want help!" Later, a woman stood on the front steps of the New Orleans convention center and "led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, 'The Lord is my shepherd...'"

DESPERATION TURNS TO LOOTING: Meanwhile, residents stuck in the city -- many of whom had been without food or water for days -- began looting local stores. "Much of what's being taken are essentials: anything edible, disposable diapers, water and clothes," reports noted. Yet looped images of people ransacking stores for electronics and luxury items were a staple of network coverage. Ironically, these events revealed the character of several prominent conservatives as much as anyone. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan: "I hope the looters are shot." Glenn Reynolds, the most popular conservative blogger: "People [looting valuables] should be shot." Atlanta talk show host Neil Boortz: "Now I'm serious here ... not just saying this for effect. Shoot to kill."

RECOVERY WILL BE HAMPERED BY POVERTY: Already we know that recovery efforts following Katrina will be massive. President Bush has acknowledged that "New Orleans is more devastated than New York was" after the September 11 terrorist attacks. "We need an effort of 9-11 proportions," former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial said yesterday. "A great American city is fighting for its life." Yet the widespread poverty in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast means reconstruction will face an additional setback. "If this [level of disaster] were to happen in California, okay, fine. There's a number of incentives to sort of rebuild that area." NBC's Kevin Corke pointed out yesterday. "Imagine trying to do that in rural Mississippi. It's going to be difficult, and I think that there's a sense ... that this is going to take us into several administrations, I imagine, as they continue to try to bring back this area."

ADMINISTRATION
Incompetent Response

Disaster experts and Louisiana government officials charged the administration "failed to plan for a serious levee breech and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slow." The San Francisco Chronicle writes, "Disturbing images of thousands of Americans dehydrated, hungry and unable to escape an uninhabitable city are prompting angry questions about whether the richest nation in the world is doing everything it can to respond to New Orleans' disaster." CNN commentator Jack Cafferty emotionally disparaged the federal response: "No one -- no one -- says the federal government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamitous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime." The lack of straight answers regarding the administration's preparedness in the past, present, and future has only given rise to increasing public concern that that the federal government is not and has not been doing enough to help Katrina victims.

LOCAL OFFICIALS SEE NO COMMAND OR CONTROL: Local government officials in the disaster region are telling the story of an inadequate federal response to the hurricane recovery effort. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said federal officials "don't have a clue what's going on down here." Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said federal assistance has been problematic. "We would have wanted massive numbers of helicopters on Day One," Blanco said, while also calling for more troops. "This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control," said Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans's emergency operations. "We're just a bunch of rats. That's how they've been treating us." Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) noted he was calling the White House, pleading for more resources. "The state resources were being overwhelmed, and we needed direct federal assistance, command and control, and security -- all three of which are lacking." Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) said there was a failure think about a "holistic approach to the evacuation effort." "Help, help, help," came the plea from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. "This is a desperate S.O.S."

ADMINISTRATION IN DISARRAY: The response from the Bush administration has been an array of dizzying signals about its priorities and concern. FEMA Director Michael Brown, responding to the "horrible, horrible conditions" in the New Orleans Convention Center, said, "the federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today." Secretary Chertoff, when asked about the victims in the convention center, said, "I have not heard a report of people in the convention center who don't have food and water." In an interview with CNN, Chertoff offered little compassion for people who died or were trapped in cities due to the flooding. "Some people chose not to obey that [mandatory evacuation] order. That was a mistake on their part." In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush and other state officials criticized FEMA's decision to deny federal assistance to hurricane victims in that state.

CONCERNS OVER LEVEE FUNDING: The Washington Post reported that federal budget cuts last year "stopped major work on New Orleans east bank hurricane levees for the first time in 37 years." The problem resulted because the Bush administration "requested less money for programs to guard against catastrophic storms in New Orleans." President Bush has declared that no one "anticipated the breech of the levees," but a former FEMA official said earlier this year, "New Orleans was the No.1 disaster we were talking about." Disaster experts and frustrated officials "said a crucial shortcoming may have been the failure to predict that the levees keeping Lake Pontchartrain out of the city would be breached, not just overflow." Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, defended the administration by suggesting full funding would not have prevented the levee breech, but he admitted that had the flood control project been finished, "we could more efficiently move the water out of the system because it's a big drainage project." Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said, "There was a failure by [Bush] to meet the responsibility here.... Somebody needs to say it."

Under the Radar

VALUES -- HASTERT SUGGESTED NOT REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS: Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said yesterday that it made no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild New Orleans. "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," said Hastert. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco responded, "To kick us when we're down and destroy hope, when hope is the only thing we have left, is absolutely unthinkable for a leader in his position." Hastert later attempted to clarify his remarks, saying he was not advocating the city "be abandoned or relocated" and that his "sincere concern" was with how the city would be rebuilt. Hastert's clarification did not include an apology.

ADMINISTRATION -- FEMA REFUSES TO ALLOW FLORIDA AIRBOATS TO HELP WITH RESCUE AND RECOVERY EFFORTS: FEMA Director Michael Brown has acknowledged the agency's inadequate response to the hurricane recovery efforts. Floridians want to help by volunteering 500 airboat pilots to help rescue hurricane victims and transport relief workers. But FEMA won't let them in. Robert Dummett, state coordinator of the Florida Airboat Association, said, "We cannot get deployed to save our behinds" because FEMA will not authorize them to enter New Orleans. Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) thinks providing airboats to the region is "a perfect solution to the chaos and difficulty getting people out of their flooded homes." James Brown, a manager of 14 airboats, said, "We're willing to go, we're able to go, but it's all up to FEMA."

LABOR -- THE GOOD LIST: Monday is Labor Day, a celebration of the American worker. Many companies "profess that they must implement massive layoffs, slash benefits, employ temporary and cheap labor, and hire unionbusters to prevent workers from forming unions in order to remain profitable in today’s marketplace." Other businesses know better. American Rights at Work has released a list "to recognize successful partnerships between employers and their employees’ labor unions that are working well in the global economy." Check it out.

CIVIL RIGHTS -- CALIFORNIA SENATE VOTES TO LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE: In a step forward for gay rights, the California State Senate "approved legislation Thursday that would legalize same-sex marriages." The bill now moves to the state assembly "which narrowly rejected a gay marriage bill in June." Right-wing legislators in California have gone on the attack. State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth "suggested that 'higher power' opposed the legislation." A spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "would not comment about how the governor would act if the bill is sent to his desk."

Western States Sue Bush Administration over Decision to Open Pristine Forests

2005-10-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

By Terence Chea
The Associated Press

Wednesday 31 August 2005

San Francisco - California, New Mexico and Oregon sued the Bush administration Tuesday over the government's decision to allow road building, logging and other commercial ventures on more than 90,000 square miles of untouched forests.

In the lawsuit, attorneys general for the three states challenged the US Forest Service's repeal of the Clinton administration's "roadless rule" that banned development on 58.5 million acres of national forest, mostly in western states.

The administration's move puts at risk "some of the last, most pristine portions of America's national forests," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. "Road building simply paves the way for logging, mining and other kinds of resource extraction."

In January 2001, just eight days before he left office, President Clinton put almost one-third of the nation's 192 million acres of national forest off-limits to road construction, winning praise from conservation groups and criticism from the timber industry.

But in May, the Bush administration replaced the regulation with a new policy requiring states to work with the Forest Service to decide how to manage individual forests. Governors were given 18 months either to petition the agency to keep their states' forests protected or to open the undeveloped areas to roads and development.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that the Bush administration's repeal of the roadless rule violated federal law because the government did not conduct a complete analysis of the new regulation's environmental impact.

The attorneys general who filed the suit are all Democrats.

Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary for natural resources and environment, called the lawsuit "unfortunate and unnecessary."

"The quickest way to provide permanent protection is through the development of state-specific rules, not by resuscitating the 2001 rule," Rey said.

He pointed out that the Clinton-era rule has been struck down in federal court. In 2003, a federal judge in Wyoming ruled that the executive branch had overstepped its authority by effectively creating wilderness areas on US Forest Service land. In July, the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed environmentalists' appeal of that ruling, saying the new Bush rule made the issue moot.

Why New Orleans Is in Deep Water

2005-10-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Why New Orleans Is in Deep Water
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

Thursday 01 September 2005

Austin, Texas - Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now.

To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.

This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.

This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."

Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the National Rifle Association would argue, "Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people.

One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, "The Democrats did it," or, "It's all Reagan's fault." Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river's delta.

But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies - ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.

Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.

Does this mean we should blame President Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Category 3 or Category 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under. At this point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe the First Rule of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging).

Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to hold off for a while, it's quite likely no one would even remember what the Bush administration did two months ago. The national press corps has the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik, Turkey, in A.D. 325.

Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant "major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."

The commander of the corps' New Orleans district also immediately instituted a hiring freeze and canceled the annual corps picnic.

Our friends at the Center for American Progress note the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans such as "Floods: A National Policy Concern" and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management." Unfortunately, the office was targeted by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.

In fact, there is now a governmentwide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans - it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.

Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.

The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)

This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.

The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.

Personal Update

2005-10-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

I have been having a lot of trouble recently posting to this blog. I can't seem to figure out what the problem is. I've asked blogger for assistance and all I get is the automated response. If I can't get the problem solved this weekend I'm going to abandon this blog and establish CRAPII.

I want to thank all of you who have recently e-mailed me and said how much you're enjoying this blog and to keep up the good work. You don't know how much that is appreciated. Sometimes I'll be "blogging" along for weeks on end with no feedback and wonder if I'm just wasting my time. Then I get a response from someone who says that they have found something useful or inspirational here and that just brightens my day.

I'm still trying to figure out all the technology so that this blog can be more interactive but being a novice "techie", and someone who works away from the house for 12 hours or more a day, it makes it a little difficult to try and figure out the intricacies of the software. I really am more of a big picture and idea guy than I am a tech but I'll keep trying to figure it all out. Again, thanks for your support and if I have to start a new blog I'll try to post the new address here.

PEACE.....................Scott

TRUTHOUT

2005-09-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

Brace for More Katrinas, Say Experts
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/083105EA.shtml
For all its numbing ferocity, Hurricane Katrina will not be a unique event, say
scientists, who say that global warming appears to be pumping up the power of
big Atlantic storms. More and more scientists estimate that global warming,
while not necessarily making hurricanes more frequent or likelier to make
landfall, is making them more vicious.

Economy Creating Fewer Jobs for Women, Younger Workers
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/083105WB.shtml
The economic recovery is shorting women and young people. A new study by the
Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), "Gender Bias in the Current
Economic Recovery - Declining Employment Rates for Women in the 21st Century,"
compares employment growth at this point in the recovery with its performance in
prior economic recoveries.

'Thousands Dead' in New Orleans
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083105Q.shtml
Hurricane Katrina is thought to have killed hundreds, probably thousands of
people in New Orleans, the city's mayor, Ray Nagin said. There will be a total
evacuation of the 50,000 to 100,000 people left in the city. It is estimated
that 15,000 a day can be evacuated. More than 20,000 people are still staying in
the Superdome where sanitary conditions are rapidly deteriorating.

How Katrina Turned Off the Oil
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083105R.shtml
A detailed facility-by-facility report on Gulf Coast refineries and pipelines.
The amount of lost production is enormous. Roughly 1.9 million barrels per day
of refining capacity on the Gulf Coast went off-line, with many plants down
completely and others operating at reduced rates.

Anti-War Band Wins MTV Awards
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083105S.shtml
Green Day, the anti-war rockers, swept the MTV Video Music Awards in a sign that
American popular culture is turning against the US presence in Iraq.

In Katrina's Wake

2005-09-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

DID GOD SEND THE HURRICANE?
Deborah Caldwell, Beliefnet
This natural disaster is bringing together a perfect storm
of environmentalist and religious doomsday sayers.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24878/

WHY THE LEVEE BROKE
Will Bunch, Attytood
Washington knew exactly what needed to be done to protect
the citizens of New Orleans from disasters like Katrina.
Yet federal funding for Louisiana flood control projects
was diverted to pay for the war in Iraq.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/

KATRINA'S ECONOMIC IMPACT
Mark Trumbull, Christian Science Monitor
As it ripples through the economy in coming weeks, the
storm's effects could be big enough to spur wide-ranging
changes to our energy infrastructure.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24868/

VALUES / WEATHER

2005-09-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

VALUES
Bush Asks Not

Speaking to a nation that was in the midst of confronting monumental challenges such as poverty and war, President John F. Kennedy said in his 1961 inaugural address, "My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country ... ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you." Speaking from the Rose Garden to a nation that is simultaneously fighting a war and dealing with perhaps the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history, President George W. Bush failed to issue any such call for sacrifice. The New York Times writes in an editorial, "Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice."

BUSH COULD SACRIFICE TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY: Marshall Loeb, editor of Money and Fortune magazines, writes, "The President could show that he, too, is prepared to sacrifice for Katrina's victims, perhaps by rolling back some of his planned tax cuts. The nation can ill afford to pay for a war, tax reductions and this disaster recovery at the same time." But Bush has given no indications he will back off his ideological agenda of more tax cuts which primarily benefit the wealthy. Pete Peterson, former secretary of Commerce under Nixon, wrote, "After 9/11, [the administration] faced a choice between tax cuts and getting serious about the extensive measures needed to protect this nation against further terrorist attacks. They chose tax cuts." And again, as the Iraq war commenced, Bush faced a similar choice. But catering to the arguments of conservative ideologues like Tom DeLay, who argued, "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes," Bush again failed to call for sacrifice and instead chose tax cuts. Despite the devastating economic impact of Katrina, conservatives are already positioning themselves for a vote next Tuesday on the next priority item: repealing the estate tax -- a tax paid by the wealthiest one percent of Americans who inherit at least $1.5 million.

BUSH COULD CALL FOR CONSERVATION: The president of American Petroleum Institute, Red Cavaney, said, "The impact of this devastating storm on oil and natural gas operations will be significant and protracted.... Let us understand: This is not an easy thing." His solution? "Right now would be a good time for everybody to sort of ramp up your energy conservation," Cavaney said, even offering energy-saving tips which could help increase fuel efficiency. AAA is also urging motorists to drive less and conserve fuel. President Bush had an opportunity yesterday to publicly elevate the need for energy conservation, but failed to make the call for sacrifice. Bush implored citizens to "understand this storm has disrupted the capacity to make gasoline and distribute gasoline" but offered no suggestions as to how Americans should cope with the crisis. He should take his cue from Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina, who said recently, "I am asking all North Carolinians to conserve gas."

IF YOU ASK, THEY WILL RESPOND: Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, Sen. John McCain complained, "After 9/11, people wanted to serve and they were told to go shopping or get on an airplane.... That's not the answer they wanted to hear. This is an opportunity to serve." Americans have demonstrated time and again that, in the face of tragedy, they will respond with true compassion. Already, the Red Cross has announced that it has collected $21 million in donations for the victims of Katrina, "a figure comparable to the response for tsunami victims following the devastation in Asia earlier this year." "The outpouring of support has been amazing," said Kara Bunte, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross. "People are now starting to see the images on TV and want to help." Americans also responded with amazing compassion in the two months following 9/11, providing approximately 1.6 million blood donations and contributing over $1.3 million to charities and relief agencies. Americans can and will do more to sacrifice; they simply need a president who will ask.

WEATHER
Questions of Preparedness

Hurricane Katrina will likely be the worst natural disaster in our nation's history. If indeed thousands have perished, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin predicted yesterday, it will also be the deadliest natural disaster in the United States in at least a century, since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. And as one Louisiana paper put it, "No one can say they didn't see it coming." There have been "decades of repeated warnings about a breach of levees or failure of drainage systems that protect New Orleans from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain." It's "inappropriate to 'blame' anyone for a natural disaster," the Washington Post rightly observes. "But given how frequently the impact of this one was predicted, and given the scale of the economic and human catastrophe that has resulted, it is certainly fair to ask questions about disaster preparations." Below, a few of those questions:

WHERE WERE THE PLANS FOR EMERGENCY DISASTER RELIEF?: The response to Hurricane Katrina "is exposing serious failures by government leaders and crisis planners before Katrina's arrival and flawed execution by relief agencies as the disaster unfolded," the Wall Street Journal reports this morning. Communication failures have been widespread, local officials "found they lacked critical equipment and materials to use in repairs if levees breached," and even "basic emergency management" has been lacking. For instance, former FEMA chief James Lee Witt told reporters yesterday that "in the 1990s, in planning for a New Orleans nightmare scenario, the federal government figured it would pre-deploy nearby ships with pumps to remove water from the below-sea-level city and have hospital ships nearby." Now federal officials say a hospital ship won't leave its port in Baltimore until tomorrow, and isn't expected to arrive for seven days. "These things need to be planned and prepared for; it just doesn't look like it was," Witt said. Other reporters offered a chilling, first-hand perspective: "[A] striking feature of the situation there was the scant presence of civil authority. We did see police controlling some intersections but we saw no military authority and no Red Cross or other health authority. It did not appear that any disaster center had been established by the authorities to communicate with the public. There appeared to be very little, if any, response yet to the enormous challenge of housing, feeding and supporting a devastated population."

WHY WAS GULF COAST DISASTER PREPARATION SUCH A LOW PRIORITY?: The planning failures were not limited to the short-term emergency response. As Louisiana Rep. Bobby Jindal (R), one of three members of Congress whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, said yesterday: "If we had been investing resources in restoring our coast, it wouldn't have prevented the storm but the barrier islands would have absorbed some of the tidal surge." Unfortunately, the resources were not invested -- either in coastal restoration or the levees -- despite years of pleas. On June 8, 2004, the emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, complained about a lack of funding for the levees, a long stretch of which had sunk by four feet: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." The money never came through, and last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers "essentially stopped major work" on the levee system that has now been breached. "It was the first such stoppage in 37 years." Additionally, federal flood control spending for southeastern Louisiana was "chopped from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in 2005," Knight-Ridder reports, even as "federal hurricane protection for the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity in the Army Corps of Engineers' budget dropped from $14.25 million in 2002 to $5.7 million this year." The cuts were strenuously opposed by Louisiana representatives, who "urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House."

WHY WERE FEMA'S PREPAREDNESS MISSIONS DISMANTLED?: "The advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA," one expert writes. In particular, the White House targeted the agency's "mitigation" programs -- "the measures taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters" -- which emergency specialists consider "a crucial part of the strategy to save lives and cut recovery costs." Shortly after coming into office, "key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years, [were] slashed and tossed aside." FEMA's Project Impact, "a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration," was canceled outright by the Bush administration on February 28, 2001 -- ironically, the very same day of the 6.8 magnitude Nisqually earthquake in Washington state, which provided one of the "best examples of the impact the program had" in protecting people. Indeed, FEMA employees were officially "directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission."

WHY WERE INEXPERIENCED POLITICAL APPOINTEES PICKED TO HEAD FEMA?: Since taking office, President Bush "has appointed, in succession, his 2000 campaign manager and an Oklahoma lawyer whose only emergency management experience prior to joining FEMA was as an assistant city manager." According to one emergency expert, these officials "showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed [former FEMA chief James Lee Witt]," who led emergency management in Arkansas and "reoriented FEMA from civil defense preparations to a focus on natural disaster preparedness and disaster mitigation." Indeed, Washington Monthly editor Daniel Franklin yesterday noted, "The difficulties of coordination seem to indicate we've returned to the bad old days where the FEMA administrator position is given away on the basis of political favor, rather than hard experience."

UNDERNEWS

2005-09-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

SEP 1, 2005
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source

E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com
1312 18th St. NW #502 Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779

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WORD
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Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little. - Epicurus

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THE SECOND BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS
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Sam Smith

THE SECOND BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS is already underway: a struggle over
how to respond to the greatest natural disaster of our history. It is
far too early to draw conclusions but soon enough for a few questions:

- What will be the iconographic role of this disaster? Will it - as it
should - eclipse 9/11 as the central moment of contemporary history, or
will it be subtly reduced to second place so the business at hand in
Washington - i.e. whatever war it is conducting - can continue to retain
semiotic hegemony? What is the relative importance of 16 acres in New
York City versus tens of thousands in Louisiana?

- How much will we be willing to pay to restore one of our major cities
and its citizens compared to what we have paid to create a manmade
disaster in Iraq or to end constitutional government in the wake of
9/11? Current estimates of pending special appropriations set the number
at something less than 10% of what we are spending annually in Iraq. If
that how we value ourselves?

- Will the meaning of this disaster, like 9/11, be repeatedly distorted
by various parties of interest in a manner that blasphemes the memory of
its victims and perverts its history?

- What effect will the fact that many of the victims of 9/11 were white
and powerful while many of the victims of New Orleans' disaster were
black and so poor they couldn't get out of town alter the story we come
to tell of the event? Does the mayor's decision to remove police from
search and rescue so they could fight looting suggest a demographic
subtext? Is the marketplace worth more than life itself? In what ways
would the response to this disaster have been different if it its major
victims had been lighter and wealthier? If the stranded had been in Palm
Beach, what would we have done?

- If FEMA put a Category 5 hurricane in New Orleans on the same level as
a terrorist attack in New York City or an earthquake in San Francisco,
why did the White House and the Department of Homeland Security only
show substantial interest in, and fund remedies for, the New York
version of potential catastrophe? Does this qualify as criminal
negligence?

- If everyone knew that New Orleans was an accident waiting to happen
why were so few precautions taken? As just one example, why were not
residents encouraged to have or provided inflatable rafts and life
jackets in their homes along with the sort of food supplies promoted
following 9/11?

- Why does the government and the media persist in the notion that a
major disaster requires centralized control - if not martial law -
imposed from Washington? It is clear already that the most competent
response to this disaster came at the local and state level and that the
feds weren't even able to provide food, water, shelter and other
logistical supplies in a timely matter. Both common sense and the 10th
Amendment dictate that in a major disaster control should devolve to the
governors, not to some covertly selected cabal in Washington. It is
interesting to note that while FEMA and the Pentagon were still trying
to get their act together, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell called the
governor of Mississippi to say that 2,500 of his National Guard troops
were on their way. In other words, a Democratic and a GOP governor from
vastly different states got matters coordinated even as the
monolithically incompetent Bush regime was still figuring out what to
do.

- What lessons can be learn from the fact that the Coast Guard was the
best organized federal agency - rescuing 2600 people in few days with
only 4,000 personnel? As Jim Ridgeway notes in the Village Voice, "it
was the Coast Guard commander in New York who organized one of the most
extraordinary operations maritime rescues since Dunkirk on 9-11, pulling
together, ferries, tugs, yachts, and all sorts of other boats to
evacuate half a million people from downtown New York." One explanation:
the Coast Guard is highly decentralized (like local fire departments)
with a lot of authority vested at the local level. It also places a high
emphasis on competence, again like fire departments. When you are in a
disaster your best friends are highly qualified rescuers who can make
decisions without waiting for headquarters to tell them what to do.

- Will we finally learn from this experience that we - despite our
invasions and our Ipods - are still part of nature, and must respect and
work with it rather than ignoring and exploiting it? Or will we continue
to view nature as just another problem for FEMA and the Corps of
Engineers to solve?

- Will we finally suppress the pathological arrogance that has gotten us
into such trouble in recent years and try a little well-founded humility
for a change?

- Will it matter? The first Battle of New Orleans was fought several
weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Maybe this battle will prove
too late as well.

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KATRINA
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WILL BUNCH, ATTYTOOD - The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity
Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which
remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi,
project manager. That project consists of building up levees and
protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi
River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes. The
Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the
president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've
got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to
raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of
settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're
going to have to pay them interest."

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that
the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland
security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay.
Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are
doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue
for us.". . .

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The
Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to
dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be
opposed by the White House. . . In its budget, the Bush administration
proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's
chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth
of what local officials say they need."

Washington knew that this day could come at any time, and it knew the
things that needed to be done to protect the citizens of New Orleans.
But in the tradition of the riverboat gambler, the Bush administration
decided to roll the dice on its fool's errand in Iraq, and on a tax cut
that mainly benefited the rich. Now Bush has lost that gamble, big time.

http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/

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FRED FELDMAN, CAMPUS ANTIWAR NETWORK - The New Orleans mayor has ordered
police to stop "looting" in a city which he says will be uninhabitable
for at least the next three months. . .

The cops are being given a license to kill, in circumstances in which
the whole black population of the city has been systematically
criminalized by the media nationally. The campaign to scapegoat the
black survivors in the ruined city is likely to reach a bloody new
stage? The victims of the catastrophe -- labeled as "the worst in us" --
are to be sacrificed to the political cover-up of the perpetrators of
the catastrophe (who represent, of course, the best we have to offer).

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ROBERT D. MCFADDEN AND RALPH BLUMENTHAL, NY TIMES - Chaos gripped New
Orleans on Wednesday as looters ran wild, food and water supplies
dwindled, bodies floated in the floodwaters, the evacuation of the
Superdome began and officials said there was no choice but to abandon
the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina, perhaps for months. . .

With police officers and National Guard troops giving priority to saving
lives, looters brazenly ripped open gates and ransacked stores for food,
clothing, television sets, computers, jewelry and guns, often in full
view of helpless law-enforcement officials. Dozens of car-jackings,
apparently by survivors desperate to escape, were reported, as were a
number of shootings.

On Wednesday night, Mayor Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers, most of
the city's force, to turn from search and rescue to stopping the
looting. "They are starting to get closer to the heavily populated areas
- hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," he said in a
statement issued to The Associated Press. . .

Hundreds were still huddled on rooftops or isolated on patches of
ground, where they have awaited rescue for two days without food or
water. An armada of small boats was out, rescuing many from flooded
areas in the poorest sections of New Orleans. . . Some perched on
sections of Interstate 10 that were still standing, though much of the
highway had collapsed. Cars shimmered eerily underwater, and basketballs
floated on the surface, along with children's swimming floats, trees and
other debris.

The bulk of the city's refugees were in or around the Superdome, which
has become a shelter of last resort for more than 20,000 people. Gov.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana said conditions there had become
desperate, with food, water and other supplies running out, with toilets
overflowing and the air foul, with temperatures hitting 100 degrees and
tempers flaring.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/
la-na-levees1sep01,0,5235285,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

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RALPH VARTABEDIAN LA TIMES - Draining the billions of gallons of water
that has inundated New Orleans could take three to six months,
substantially longer than some experts have expected, the Army Corps of
Engineers said.

Col. Richard Wagenaar, the corps' senior official in New Orleans, said
that the estimate was based on planning done as Hurricane Katrina
approached and that it remained the corps' best estimate. He is
directing the agency's recovery efforts. The estimate depends on
favorable weather. Additional rain or other problems could cause more
delays, Wagenaar warned. . .

Walter Baumy, a chief engineer, said that the corps was confronted by
riverbeds clogged with loose barges and debris and that it could not
find contractors able to maneuver heavy equipment into the flood zone. .
.

The city's 22 pumping stations are not operating, and most are
underwater. Not until the city naturally drains a little can the corps
begin restoring pumping capacity, Wagenaar said. . .

Corps officials think water rose over the top of the canal wall and
cascaded down to its base, scouring a hole that undermined the
foundation, said Al Naomi, the corps' senior project engineer in New
Orleans. "It exceeded the design surge," he said. "It just blew out the
wall."

The dirt levees and reinforced concrete flood walls are designed to hold
back an 11 1/2-foot storm surge, not including waves spilling over the
top. The Katrina surge is believed to have been significantly higher
than that. . .

A mathematical model on storm surges pioneered by Notre Dame University
professor Joannes Westerink increased concern that the levee system was
exposing New Orleans to a major catastrophe in the case of any storm
bigger than a Category 3. "In a slow-moving Category 5 hurricane, the
levees are not going to hold," Westerink said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-levees1sep01,0,7854368.story?coll=la-home-headlines

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GREAT THOUGHTS OF GW BUSH WHILE FLYING ABOVE NOLA - "It's devastating,"
POTUS said as he watched, according to Scott McClellan. "It's got to be
doubly devastating on the ground."

NY TIMES - They had flocked to the arena seeking sanctuary from the
winds and waters of Hurricane Katrina. But understaffed, undersupplied
and without air-conditioning or even much lighting, the domed stadium
quickly became a sweltering and surreal vault, a place of overflowing
toilets and no showers. Food and water, blankets and sheets, were in
short supply. And the dome's reluctant residents exchanged horror
stories, including reports, which could not be confirmed by the
authorities, of a suicide and of rapes.

By Wednesday the stink was staggering. Heaps of rotting garbage in
bulging white plastic bags baked under a blazing Louisiana sun on the
main entry plaza, choking new arrivals as they made their way into the
stadium after being plucked off rooftops and balconies. The odor
billowing from toilets was even fouler. Trash spilled across corridors
and aisles, slippery with smelly mud and scraps of food.

"They're housing us like animals," said Iiesha Rousell, 31, unemployed
after four years in the Army in Germany, dripping with perspiration in
the heat, unable to contain her fury and disappointment at being left
with only National Guardsmen as overseers and no information about what
might lie ahead.

Once inside the dome, refugees were told that for their own safety they
could not leave - the flood waters climbed four feet up the walls
outside - and many likened the shelter to a prison.

Michael Childs, 45 and a housepainter, went a step further. "It's worse
than a prison," said Mr. Childs, who knew something about the subject,
having spent three months in the Orleans Parish Prison on a
drunken-driving charge. "In prison you have a place to urinate, a place
for other bathroom needs. Here you get no water, no toilets, no lights.
You get all that in prison."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01dome.html

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JACK SHAFER, SLATE - I can't say I saw everything that the TV
newscasters pumped out about Katrina, but I viewed enough repeated
segments to say with 90 percent confidence that broadcasters covering
the New Orleans end of the disaster demurred from mentioning two topics
that must have occurred to every sentient viewer: race and class.

Nearly every rescued person, temporary resident of the Superdome,
looter, or loiterer on the high ground of the freeway I saw on TV was
African-American. And from the look of it, they weren't wealthy
residents of the Garden District. This storm appears to have hurt blacks
more directly than whites, but the broadcasters scarcely mentioned that
fact. . .

To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and class issue. I
heard them ask the storm's New Orleans victims why they hadn't left town
when the evacuation call came. Many said they were broke—"I live from
paycheck to paycheck," explained one woman. Others said they didn't own
a car with which to escape and that they hadn't understood the
importance of evacuation.

But I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by
getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk
leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and
pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way
to replace them. No insurance, no stable, large extended family that
could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to
return to after the storm.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2124688/?nav=ais

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REPENT AMERICA - Just days before "Southern Decadence", an annual
homosexual celebration attracting tens of thousands of people to the
French Quarters section of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina destroys the
city. "Southern Decadence" has a history of filling the French Quarters
section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the
public streets and bars. . . On the official "Southern Decadence"
website it states that the annual event brought in "125,000 revelers" to
New Orleans last year, increasing by thousands each year, and up from
"over 50,000 revelers" in 1997. . .

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God
destroyed a wicked city," stated Repent America director Michael
Marcavage. "From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New Orleans
was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of
sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge," he
continued.

New Orleans is also known for its Mardi Gras parties where thousands of
drunken men revel in the streets to exchange plastic jewelry for drunken
women to expose their breasts. This annual event sparked the creation of
the "Girls Gone Wild" video series.

"We must help and pray for those ravaged by this disaster, but let us
not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the
wickedness in their city for so long," Marcavage said. "May this act of
God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and
bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God," Marcavage
concluded.

http://www.repentamerica.com/pr_hurricanekatrina.html

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ROBERT KENNEDY JR, HUFFINGTON POST - As Hurricane Katrina dismantles
Mississippi's Gulf Coast, it's worth recalling the central role that
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto
Protocol and kiboshing President Bush's iron-clad campaign promise to
regulate CO2.

In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie Todd
Whitman's strong statement affirming Bush's CO2 promise former RNC Chief
Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House.

Barbour, who had served as RNC Chair and Bush campaign strategist, was
now representing the president's major donors from the fossil fuel
industry who had enlisted him to map a Bush energy policy that would "be
friendly to their interests. His credentials ensured the new
administration's attention.". . .

"A moment of truth is arriving," Barbour wrote, "in the form of a
decision whether this Administration's policy will be to regulate and/or
tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy
still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with
Clinton-Gore." He derided the idea of regulating CO2 as "eco-extremism,"
and chided them for allowing environmental concerns to "trump good
energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years.". . .

On March 13, Bush reversed his previous position, announcing he would
not back a CO2 restriction using the language and rationale provided by
Barbour. Echoing Barbour's memo, Bush said he opposed mandatory CO2
caps, due to "the incomplete state of scientific knowledge" about global
climate change.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/afor-they-that-sow-the-_b_6396.html

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PAUL SIMAO, REUTERS, BILOXI - The legalization of gambling in Biloxi
created an economic boom in the early 1990s and the city developed a
reputation as a place where a person could get a decent-paying job in
the casino or hospitality business. But not everyone prospered. In the
devastated streets and atop the rubble piles where their homes stood
before Katrina blew through, a bitter refrain is increasingly heard.
Poor and low-income residents complain that they have borne the brunt of
the hurricane's wrath.

"Many people didn't have the financial means to get out," said Alan
LeBreton, 41, an apartment superintendent who lived on Biloxi's seaside
road, now in ruins. "That's a crime and people are angry about it."

Many of the town's well-off heeded authorities' warnings to flee north,
joining thousands of others who traveled from the Gulf Coast into
northern Mississippi and Alabama, Georgia and other nearby states.

Hotels along the interstates and other main roads were packed with these
temporary refugees. Gas stations and convenience stores -- at least
those that were open -- sold out of water, ice and other supplies within
hours.

But others could not afford to join them, either because they didn't own
a car or couldn't raise funds for even the cheapest motel. . .

Resentment at being left behind in the path of one of the fiercest
hurricanes on record may have contributed to some of the looting that
occurred in Biloxi and other coastal communities. A number of private
residences, including some in upscale neighborhoods, were targeted,
residents said.

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050901/2005-09-01T021157Z_01_MOL181874_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BT-WEATHER-KATRINA-POVERTY-DC.html

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ANN GERHART, WASHINGTON POST - There are four levels of hell inside the
refugee city of the Superdome, home to about 15,000 people since Sunday.
On the artificial-turf field and in the lower-level seats where Montrel
sat sweltering with her family, a form of civilization had taken hold --
smelly, messy, dark and dank, but with a structure. Families with cots
used their beds as boundaries for personal space and kept their areas
orderly, a cooler on one corner, the toys on another, almost as if they
had come for fireworks and stayed too long.

The bathrooms, clogged and overflowing since Monday, announced the
second level of hell, the walkway ringing the entrance level. In the
men's, the urinal troughs were overflowing. In the women's, the bowls
were to the brim. A slime of excrement and urine made the walkway slick.
"You don't even go there anymore," said Dee Ford, 37, who was pushed in
a wading pool from her flooded house to the shelter. "You just go
somewhere in a corner where you can. In the dark, you are going to step
in poo anyway."
. . .

"With no hand-washing, and all the excrement," said Sgt. Debra Williams,
who was staffing the infirmary in the adjacent sports arena, "you have
about four days until dysentery sets in. And it's been four days today."
. . .

Within the skyboxes, on the third level of hell, life was dark 24 hours
a day, a place for abandonment and coupling. Also up there was "a sort
of speakeasy," said Michael Childs, who had some beer in an empty Dannon
water bottle. "You got to know where to go," he said, and grinned. "And
you just put your bottle under the spigot. It is disgusting in here, and
I lost everything I had, and I'm glad to have found a little beer."

On the fourth level, the darkest and highest of all, the lurkers lived,
scary in the shadows. The fourth level, people explained, was for the
gangsters and the druggies. The rumors sprang from there: Two girls had
been raped; one girl had been raped and one killed. Someone was
abducting newborns. A man had jumped from there and died. A murder had
occurred.

"None of that," said Maj. Bush, who had been at the Superdome, along
with about 200 other Guard members and a few New Orleans policemen,
since Monday. An older man did jump to his death, but not from the
fourth level. Two residents died, and two were born, both births
attended by a physician. Bush did not know if either child had been
named Katrina.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/31/AR2005083102801.html

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BOING BOING - My friend Ned Sublette passes along an email attributed to
a rescue worker in New Orleans. Ned says: "The poorest 20% of the city
was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious
bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation
plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned
vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners
knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly
black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the
political will -- weren't there to get them out. White per capita income
in Orleans parish, 2000 census: $31,971. Black per capita: $11,332.
Median *household* income in B.W. Cooper Housing Projects, 2000:
$13,263.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/30/email_attributed_to_.html

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WASHINGTON POST - Nagin also estimated that 50,000 to 100,000 people
stayed in the city of 485,000 despite earlier evacuation orders, and
said they would now be evacuated at the rate of 14,000 to 15,000 a day.
He said the city would "not be functional" for about three months.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/31/AR2005083101804.html

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LINTON WEEKS WASHINGTON POST - Benigno E. Aguirre of the Disaster
Research Center at the University of Delaware has been watching and
reading about looters in Louisiana. "It may look from the outside as if
they are stealing or breaking the law," says Aguirre, "when in fact some
of them are trying to survive." On the other hand, he says, some of the
thieves are garden-variety crooks. "There is always a very small number
of people that are predisposed to crime, and they see a disaster as an
opportunity to act."

There are the disenfranchised who jump at the chance to get even with
those who have more stuff than they do. "Disasters can become
opportunity for class warfare, and that kind of appropriation of other
people's property should be prosecuted," he says,

There are looters, he says, but "people use the concept of looting
without making distinctions."

Many may be people taking drastic measures required by drastic times.
And some, he says, are the in-an-emergency equivalent of
hunters/gatherers, foraging for food, fresh water, medicine, matches,
batteries, everyday essentials that are just not available. Not at home,
not at shelters. . .

Here's a recent exchange between Nancy Grace and Anderson Cooper of CNN:

"It's my understanding," Grace said, "that there has been rampant
looting. In fact, martial law declared in other areas. Have you seen
looting?"

Cooper replied, "I wouldn't call it looting. What I have seen is
desperate people kind of wandering around here in downtown Gulfport.
There are a lot of police here in Gulfport, so you can't get away with
looting. But I have seen people picking stuff up from the wreckage. I
saw a man with two bottles of olive oil. He was hoping to try to cook
something up. He says he has no water. He doesn't really have much of a
place to go. So there are a lot of people just desperately in need."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/31/AR2005083102681_pf.html

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SCOTT GOLD, LA TIMES - A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack
vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending
machines smashed by teenagers. . . "We pee on the floor. We are like
animals," said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son,
Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula
provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she
was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty
and use them again.

At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three
people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death,
saying he had nothing left to live for. . .

"There is feces on the walls," said Bryan Hebert, 43, who arrived at the
Superdome on Monday. "There is feces all over the place."

Most refugees are given two 9-ounce bottles of water a day and two boxed
meals: spaghetti, Thai chicken or jambalaya. One man tried to escape
Wednesday by leaping a barricade and racing toward the streets. The man
was desperate, National Guard Sgt. Caleb Wells said. Everything he was
able to bring to the Superdome had been stolen. His house had probably
been destroyed, his relatives killed.

"We had to chase him down," Wells said. "He said he just wanted to get
out, to go somewhere. We took him to the terrace and said: 'Look.' "
Below, floodwaters were continuing to rise, submerging cars. "He didn't
realize how bad things are out there," Wells said. "He just broke down.
He started bawling. We took him back inside."

The soldiers — most are sleeping two or three hours a night, and many
have lost houses — say they are doing the best they can with limited
resources and no infrastructure. But they have become the target of many
refugees' anger.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-superdome1sep01,0,2041291,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

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AUDREY HUDSON, WASHINGTON TIMES - About 4,000 Coast Guardsmen are
helping with relief efforts. . . With only a skeletal fleet of 25 rescue
helicopters based in Louisiana and Alabama, three-man crews, including
rescue swimmers, are flying nonstop and have rescued more than 1,250
victims in the flood-swollen region. [Now up to 2600- TPR] The highly
trained swimmers are using axes to break through roofs before pulling
soaking wet victims to safety, who are then airlifted to hospitals for
medical care or to the closest dry patch of land. "Unfortunately, in a
situation like this, you're seeing the Coast Guard do what it does best
-- saving lives," Petty Officer 3rd Class Larry Chambers said. "The
importance of life is job one for us. "When they see the orange and
white bird and those guys in orange uniforms coming down for them, they
feel a lot better," Petty Officer Chambers said. . .

http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050831-102439-6981r

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MORE ECHOES OF NEW ORLEANS
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MORE ECHOES OF NEW ORLEANS

[Thanks to various readers]

Whippoorwill's singing, on a soft summer breeze;
Makes me think of my baby, I left down in New Orleans,
I left down in New Orleans;
Magnolia, you sweet thing, you're driving me mad
Got to get back to you, babe;
You're the best I ever had;
You're the best I ever had;
You whisper "Good morning," so gently in my ear;
I'm coming home to you, babe;
I'll soon be there;
I'll soon be there.

- John J. Cale

NOLA

It's not so much the relentless photographs of floods, the debris of our
lives smashed and scattered, or even the obsession I have developed to
read something - anything, about Lessepps Street where Lee Grue lives.

Kalamu ya Salam made it to Houston, is mostly off line, Ahmos ZuBolton
died last year, so it's not personal ties or the memories I have of the
Big Easy, or the story this morning about the Crescent Hotel in the
Quarter that brought up generators one last time to cook a hot breakfast
for everyone, anyone, a piano player performing Stormy Weather.

It's not sweet memories -- eating Eggs Benedict at Brennans when I was
ten. My parents took us on a long car trip from Illinois to California
then down through Texas, across to New Orleans and then back home
through the Smoky Mountains, America the Beautiful, and now devastation,
or walking into a perfume shop and buying a bottle of White Shoulders
which lasted well into my teens because Mother insisted it was just for
special events, like church, weddings, graduations, funerals. . . -
Susan Bright

http://earthfamilyalpha.blogspot.com/2005/08/nola.html

Back water rising, coming in my windows and doors
I leave with a prayer in my heart: back water won't rise no more

[Attributed to Blind Lemon Jefferson]

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ECOLOGY
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SOME GREAT APE SPECIES MAY E GONE WITHIN A GENERATION

BBC - Some of the great apes - chimps, gorillas, and orangutans - could
be extinct in the wild within a human generation, a new assessment
concludes.
Human settlement, logging, mining and disease mean that orangutans in
parts of Indonesia may lose half of their habitat within five years.
There are now more than 20,000 humans on the planet for every
chimpanzee. . .

"All of the great apes are listed as either endangered or critically
endangered," co-author Lera Miles from the World Conservation Monitoring
Centre near Cambridge told the BBC News website. "Critically endangered
means that their numbers have decreased, or will decrease, by 80% within
three generations." One critically endangered species is the Sumatran
orangutan, of which around 7,300 remain in the wild.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4202734.stm

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FIELD NOTES
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STRIKES AND BOYCOTTS OF MAJOR HOTELS AROUND THE COUNTRY
http://www.hotellaboradvisor.info/hotelguidestrike.asp

ACLU ONLINE

2005-09-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

The fight to reform the Patriot Act is not over -- we need your help this September if we are to get any increased protections for civil liberties.

Tell 5 friends to take action and as a special thank-you, we'll send you a free DVD of "Beyond the Patriot Act," the premiere episode of the new TV series, The ACLU Freedom Files. Click here to urge your friends to push for Patriot Act reform.
Congress returns next week, and we expect the senators and representatives on the Patriot Act "conference committee" to quickly hash out a final bill for the president's signature.

Right now, the Senate version of the bill to renew the expiring parts of the Patriot Act, although flawed, is a marked improvement over the version passed by the House of Representatives. We cannot endorse the Senate bill, but we support the steps it takes to reform some of the most troubling parts of the act.

We are asking ACLU members and supporters to urge Congress to protect the improvements made in the Senate version. We will continue to fight for more improvements in the coming years but this bill represents the best chance for reform this year.

We are encouraged, for instance, by some of the Senate bill's reforms in Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the so-called "library records provision."

While the House bill would extend Section 215 without any meaningful changes, the Senate bill would require that there be a statement of facts about why requested personal records are relevant to a foreign intelligence investigation, and that it should provide a right to challenge an order for personal records--and the permanent secrecy of such an order--under long established standards.

The fight to reform the Patriot Act would have been over before it started without your ongoing help. Please continue to support the ACLU.

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director

We don't usually file lawsuits under seal, but when it comes to the Patriot Act, we weren't given any choice. Here's what we can tell you right now: the ACLU is representing a member of the American Library Association in a challenge to the constitutionality of "national security letter" authority, which was expanded by the Patriot Act.

Our client, an institution that maintains records about books borrowed by library patrons and about their Internet usage, was ordered by the FBI to produce records without any judicial review. The FBI demand was disclosed in a lawsuit we filed in Connecticut, but because of a heavy FBI gag order, we are forbidden to discuss the details of the case.

As Congress approaches a vote on whether to expand the Patriot Act, the public has a right to know how it is being used. To open the discussion, we are seeking an emergency court order to lift the gag so our client can participate in the public debate. We're encouraged that the judge has ordered the hearing open to the public.

"If our client could speak, he could explain why Congress should adopt additional safeguards that would limit Patriot Act powers," said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson, the lead lawyer in the case.

Learn more about the National Security Letters and what you can do to urge Congress to amend the Patriot Act. Go to: http://www.aclu.org/nsl

Read Anthony Romero's blog where he responds to a recent New York Times editorial about National Security Letters. Go to: http://blog.reformthepatriotact.org/

Next week, along with Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films, we are launching a new TV series titled The ACLU Freedom Files. This 10-part series premieres September 8 on Link TV with the 30-minute episode, "Beyond the Patriot Act," as the House and Senate review the renewal, expansion or changes to the Patriot Act.

Aiming to strip away the sound bytes to reveal how civil liberties affect real people every day, the series features clients and the attorneys who represent them, as well as actors, activists and comedians. It is produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Jeremy Kagan.

The series will be available on DVD and will be shown on college campuses as well as via new media, technology and grassroots networks such as video blogs, podcasts, community premieres and house parties.

For more on show topics, times and channels, visit: www.aclu.tv

Last week the federal government decided to suspend the flow of taxpayer dollars to the Silver Ring Thing, a nationwide ministry that uses abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education as a means to bring "unchurched" students to Jesus Christ.

"We are pleased that the Department of Health and Human Services today recognized that the Silver Ring Thing was blatantly misusing public dollars," said Julie Sternberg, a senior staff Attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit in May challenging the misuse of more than one million dollars awarded by the federal government to the Silver Ring Thing since August 2003. Days later, silverringthing.com altered its Web site in an effort to conceal religious content.

See how the silverringthing.com changed its Web site and learn more about our involvement in full sex education for public classrooms by visiting: http://www.takeissuetakecharge.org

Hearings opened last week in our challenge to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's policy of obstructing scientific research that could lead to marijuana being approved as a prescription medicine.

Our Drug Law Reform Project is representing University of Massachusetts Professor Lyle Craker, Ph.D., in his appeal of the DEA's refusal to grant him a license to grow research-grade marijuana. Drugs like heroin and cocaine are more readily available to researchers than marijuana.

"Almost 80 percent of Americans support making medical marijuana legal, and the Supreme Court has indicated that federal regulatory agencies are the proper channel for medical marijuana patients," said Allen Hopper, a staff attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project.

The next round of hearings will take place during the last week of September. Meanwhile, learn more about Professor Craker's case and our drive to legalize medical marijuana. Go to: www.aclu.org/medicalmarijuana

The ACLU is again appearing before a federal judge this week seeking the release of 74 photographs and three videos depicting the abuse of prisoners held by the United States at Abu Ghraib. Earlier this month, the court ordered the government to reveal blacked-out portions of its legal papers arguing against the release of images.

So what didn't the government want us to see? Among other things, portions of an affidavit by Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which he argues that "the democratic idea of public accountability is misunderstood in other parts of the world."

"Accountability isn't 'misunderstood' by the world, it's misunderstood by the Bush Administration and it hasn't happened. That's why the American public has a right to see these images for itself," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Instead of hiding evidence of the military's misconduct and failure of leadership from the public, the government should appoint an independent counsel to uncover the full truth about the extent of the abuse and who is responsible."

Read documents the government did not want the public to see at: http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/

Among politicians, journalists and entertainers, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero was listed in Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America.

The August 22 cover story features Romero as "The Champion of Civil Rights" and cites his leadership of the bipartisan fight against the Patriot Act, not only as a staunch advocate for civil liberties but for the many immigrants falling victim to the act's use since 9/11.

The complete article is available online at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1093634,00.html

TRUTHOUT ON KATRINA

2005-09-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

Rescuers: Boat Operation Suspended
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105A.shtml
As police and National Guard troops struggled to restore order Thursday in New
Orleans, emergency teams suspended boat rescue operations because conditions in
the flooded city were too dangerous, rescuers said. Thousands are still stranded
in New Orleans.

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105I.shtml
Local officials are now saying, the article reports, that had Washington heeded
their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building
up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly
as bad as it turned out to be."

Disasters Keep Coming but FEMA Phased Out
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105J.shtml
In the days to come, as the nation copes with the disastrous aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded how important it is to have a federal
agency capable of dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort. ... Which
makes it all the more difficult to understand why the country's premier agency
for dealing with such events - FEMA - is being, in effect, systematically
downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Sidney Blumenthal | "No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105L.shtml
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three
most likely disasters in the US. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans
flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

National Guard at Breaking Point in Iraq and Gulf
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105M.shtml
On Aug. 1, a spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard lamented to a local
reporter that the state might be stretched for security personnel in the event
of a big hurricane. Dozens of high-water vehicles, generators and Humvees were
employed in Iraq, along with 3,000 Louisiana National Guard troops.

NOW | Katrina: Why the Devastation Was So Bad
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105P.shtml
NOW investigates why the devastation of Katrina was so bad.

Bush "Casual to the Point of Carelessness" on Katrina
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105Z.shtml
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially
given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and
wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president
appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality
more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration.

Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

A force of nature and an array of wrong-headed policies combined to create the
disaster that has flooded the South. The Bush Administration's gutting of FEMA
and its slashing of funding for flood control certainly isn't helping matters.

But, as David Corn proposes, the Administration can help make amends by putting
off the GOP effort to kill the estate tax for millionaires and investing a
portion of those funds in reconstruction in New Orleans and along the Gulf
Coast. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?bid=3&pid=18631

It would also be appropriate if the cash-rich oil industry kicked in to help a
devastated region in which it has made so much money. Over the past year and a
half, the four largest oil companies--ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Royal
Dutch/Shell Group and BP Group PLC--have pocketed close to $100 billion in
profits. Yet, as John Nichols writes, instead of sharing the pain, they appear
to be moving to squeeze every cent they can out of the crisis.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=18765

Also seeming to enjoy the disaster is Rush Limbaugh, using it to make infantile
jokes, as Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in Editor's Cut. But, as vanden Veuvel
argues, instead of lame quips, "We should be asking serious questions about why
the Iraq War has led the White House to divert funds from an urgent project to
upgrade levees and pumping stations in Louisiana, and why there aren't enough
National Guard troops on hand in what is one of the worst natural disasters in
US history."
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=18079

And don't miss these new Nation online pieces....

Dilip Hiro contends that by insisting on its right to develop the full range of
nuclear technology, Iran has become a Third World hero.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/hiro

Sonia Shah argues that the lush film, The Constant Gardner, glosses over the
constant vigilance necessary to police drug trials.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/shah

Liza Featherstone agrees that it sounds like an episode of The Simpsons, but
says that the Bank of Wal-Mart is for real.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/featherstone

Robert Scheer says that Bush may crow about a new constitution, but he can't
deny that autocrats, theocrats and terrorists are clearly in control.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/scheer0830

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Robert Greenwald's new documentary has the potential to raise much more
awareness about what's wrong with Wal-Mart and why. The film is a powerful,
emotional and entertaining way to help trigger change in the way the company
conducts business in the US and across the globe. And you can help. Click below
for details.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow?bid=4&pid=9485

Finally, please visit http://www.thenation.com/ to post comments to Nation
blogs, to view news-wire links updated twice each day, for info on nationwide
activist campaigns, Nation History offerings, exclusive online reports, and
special weekly selections from The Nation magazine!

Best Regards,
Peter Rothberg, The Nation

P.S. If you like The Nation online, please consider subscribing to the magazine
at our discounted rate. It's the only way to read ALL of what's in The Nation
week after week--both in print and online. http://www.thenation.com/ensubscribe

WEATHER / ECONOMY

2005-09-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

WEATHER
Coping With Katrina

"The devastation is greater than our worst fears," declared Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Two days after Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast region, elected officials and aid workers are beginning to assess the totality of the damage done by the storm. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said up to 80 deaths have been reported in Harrison County alone; some estimate the number is closer to 110. Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu reported that at least 50 to 100 people were dead in New Orleans. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans is submerged under water, with some sections of the city experiencing standing water as deep as 20 feet. Approximately 3 million residents along the Gulf Coast remain without power, and tens of thousands have no phone service. Residents who returned to their homes in parts of three states -- Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama -- were without safe drinking water, had limited shelter and food, faced the threat of looting and downed power lines, and had poor access to medical care. Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway said, "This is our tsunami."

THE SUPERDOME FACES WORSENING CONDITIONS: As of Wednesday morning, the Superdome in New Orleans housed approximately 20,000 to 30,000 stranded civilians. Conditions deteriorated as the population inside the dome grew. Bathrooms were filthy, urinals were backed up, electricity was out, air conditioning was not available, and part of the roof collapsed. Scores of sick patients from nearby evacuated hospitals were moved into the Superdome, where four individuals later died. Yet despite an environment that the Washington Post termed a "festering hellhole," many in the Superdome were more than happy to have a refuge from the chaos erupting outside. National Guard soldiers did their best to accommodate the massive crowd. But with the increased threats of flooding putting the city of New Orleans at greater risk, Gov. Blanco ordered the evacuation of the dome within the next two days.

HOW TO HELP: Charities and the federal government are launching what aid agencies predict could be "the longest and costliest relief effort in U.S. history." Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is urging those who want to help to make cash donations. Cash donations "allow volunteer agencies to issue cash vouchers to victims so they can meet their needs. Cash donations also allow agencies to avoid the labor-intensive need to store, sort, pack and distribute donated goods. Donated money prevents, too, the prohibitive cost of air or sea transportation that donated goods require." Here is the list of agencies that FEMA is directing people to contact (if you decide to give to a different charity, beware of scams).

ECONOMY
The American Underclass

Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary John Snow acknowledged that "the fruits of strong economic growth are not spreading equally." New data from the Census Bureau on income, poverty and health coverage support his claim. The statistics reveal a growing economic underclass living in poverty, lacking health coverage and stuck with stagnating wages.

MORE AMERICANS LIVING IN POVERTY: Last year, 37 million Americans -- 12.7 percent of the population -- lived in poverty. The figures represent "the fourth straight year that the report found an increase in the U.S. poverty rate." In 2000, there were 5.5 million fewer people below the poverty line. Nevertheless, the Bush administration spun the poverty rates as "good news," noting that there were other times in American history when the poverty rate was higher.

MORE AMERICANS WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE: The Census Bureau report found "the number of uninsured Americans stood at 45.8 million in 2004, an increase of 800,000 people over the number uninsured in 2003." It's the fourth straight year the ranks of the uninsured swelled. Overall, "six million more people lacked health insurance in 2004 than in 2000." Sadly, those figures understate the extent of the problem. Rising poverty rates meant more Americans were eligible for Medicaid and other government health insurance programs. Increased enrollment in government programs "helped offset the reduction in private employer-sponsored insurance." However, even as the proportion of Americans without employer-sponsored coverage decreases, public insurance programs as they are currently structured cannot provide a safety net for everyone. For example, 350,000 single adults lost health insurance between 2003 and 2004 -- and these individuals generally do not qualify for Medicaid coverage, no matter how small their income. Only a comprehensive effort to address these inequities within the health care system can reverse these long-term trends.

STAGNATING AND DECLINING WAGES: The median income in 2004 was unchanged from the previous year. It's the fifth straight year median income failed to increase, the first time that's happened since the government began collecting the data in 1967. Many people saw their earnings decrease. For example, the median income for all non-elderly households decreased by $600 as compared to 2003. In the Midwest, median household income fell by $1,277. Phillip L. Swagel, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, acknowledged that "the gains from the recovery haven't really filtered down. The gains have gone to owners of capital and not to workers."

MEANWHILE, CEO PAY SKYROCKETS: As millions of Americans struggled, corporate CEOs enjoyed another banner year. In 2004, the average CEO made 430 times as much as the average worker, up from a ratio of 301-to-1 in 2003. If the minimum wage had grown at the same rate as CEO pay since 1990, "the lowest paid workers in the US would be earning $23.03 an hour today."

White People's Burden

2005-09-25T09:39:00.000-07:00

By Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2005.

It's time for white Americans to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, they are the problem.

Editor's Note: This essay is excerpted from The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege, forthcoming from City Lights, September 2005.

The United States is a white country. By that I don't just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are (for now but not forever). What makes the United States white is not the fact that most Americans are white but the assumption -- especially by people with power -- that American equals white. Those people don't say it outright. It comes out in subtle ways. Or, sometimes, in ways not so subtle.

Here's an example: I'm in line at a store, unavoidably eavesdropping on two white men in front of me, as one tells the other about a construction job he was on. He says: "There was this guy and three Mexicans standing next to the truck." From other things he said, it was clear that "this guy" was Anglo, white, American. It also was clear from the conversation that this man had not spoken to the "three Mexicans" and had no way of knowing whether they were Mexicans or U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage.

It didn't matter. The "guy" was the default setting for American: Anglo, white. The "three Mexicans" were not Anglo, not white, and therefore not American. It wasn't "four guys standing by a truck." It was "a guy and three Mexicans." The race and/or ethnicity of the four men were irrelevant to the story he was telling. But the storyteller had to mark it. It was important that "the guy" not be confused with "the three Mexicans."

Here's another example, from the Rose Garden. At a 2004 news conference outside the White House, President George W. Bush explained that he believed democracy would come to Iraq over time:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

It appears the president intended the phrase "people whose skin color may not be the same as ours" to mean people who are not from the United States. That skin color he refers to that is "ours," he makes it clear, is white. Those people not from the United States are "a different color than white." So, white is the skin color of the United States. That means those whose skin is not white but are citizens of the United States are ...? What are they? Are they members in good standing in the nation, even if "their skin color may not be the same as ours"?

This is not simply making fun of a president who sometimes mangles the English language. This time he didn't misspeak, and there's nothing funny about it. He did seem to get confused when he moved from talking about skin color to religion (does he think there are no white Muslims?), but it seems clear that he intended to say that brown people -- Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims, people from the Middle East, whatever the category in his mind -- can govern themselves, even though they don't look like us. And "us" is clearly white. In making this magnanimous proclamation of faith in the capacities of people in other parts of the world, in proclaiming his belief in their ability to govern themselves, he made one thing clear: The United States is white. Or, more specifically, being a real "American" is being white. So, what do we do with citizens of the United States who aren't white?

That's the question for which this country has never quite found an answer: What do white "Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white? What do we do with peoples we once tried to exterminate? People we once enslaved? People we imported for labor and used like animals to build railroads? People we still systematically exploit as low-wage labor? All those people -- indigenous, African, Asian, Latino -- can obtain the legal rights of citizenship. That's a significant political achievement in some respects, and that popular movements that forced the powerful to give people those rights give us the most inspiring stories in U.S. history.

The degree to which many white people in one generation dramatically shifted their worldview to see people they once considered to be subhuman as political equals is not trivial, no matter how deep the problems of white supremacy we still live with.In many comparable societies, problems of racism are as ugly, if not uglier, than in the United States. If you doubt that, ask a Turk what it is like to live in Germany, an Algerian what it's like to live in France, a black person what it's like to live in Japan. We can acknowledge the gains made in the United States -- always understanding those gains came because non-white people, with some white allies, forced society to change -- while still acknowledging the severity of the problem that remains.

But it doesn't answer the question: What do white "Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white?

We can pretend that we have reached "the end of racism" and continue to ignore the question. But that's just plain stupid. We can acknowledge that racism still exists and celebrate diversity, but avoid the political, economic, and social consequences of white supremacy. But, frankly, that's just as stupid. The fact is that most of the white population of the United States has never really known what to do with those who aren't white. Let me suggest a different approach.

Let's go back to the question that W.E.B. Du Bois said he knew was on the minds of white people. In the opening of his 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois wrote that the real question whites wanted to ask him, but were afraid to, was: "How does it feel to be a problem?" Du Bois was identifying a burden that blacks carried -- being seen by the dominant society not as people but as a problem people, as a people who posed a problem for the rest of society. Du Bois was right to identify "the color line" as the problem of the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it is time for whites to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question at heart of color. It's time for white people to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, we are the problem. We have to ask ourselves: How does it feel to be the problem?

The simple answer: Not very good.

That is the new White People's Burden, to understand that we are the problem, come to terms with what that really means, and act based on that understanding. Our burden is to do something that doesn't seem to come natural to people in positions of unearned power and privilege: Look in the mirror honestly and concede that we live in an unjust society and have no right to some of what we have. We should not affirm ourselves. We should negate our whiteness. Strip ourselves of the illusion that we are special because we are white. Steel ourselves so that we can walk in the world fully conscious and try to see what is usually invisible to us white people. We should learn to ask ourselves, "How does it feel to be the problem?"

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

UNDERNEWS

2005-09-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

UNDERNEWS
AUG 31, 2005
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source

E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com

1312 18th St. NW #502 Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779

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WORD
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The people have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to
want and the courage to take. - Emma Goldman

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IRAQ WAR MAY HAVE LOST US NEW ORLEANS

WILL BUNCH, EDITOR & PUBLISHER - New Orleans had long known it was
highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In
fact, the federal government has been working with state and local
officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and
flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995
killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban
Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with
carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building
pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250
million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the
Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New
Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a
trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending
pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at
the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At
least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005
specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of
hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The
Times-Picayune web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it
coming. . . .Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious
questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President
Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was
needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in
New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that
the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland
security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay.
Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are
doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue
for us.". . .

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

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THE DISASTER THEY KNEW WAS COMING

PROGRESS REPORT - In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as "among the three
likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country," directly
behind a terrorist strike on New York City. . . While it happened,
President Bush decided to ... continue his vacation, stopping by the
Pueblo El Mirage RV and Golf Resort in El Mirage, California, to hawk
his Medicare drug benefit plan. On Sunday, President Bush said, "I want
to thank all the folks at the federal level and the state level and the
local level who have taken this storm seriously."

Two months ago, President Bush took an ax to budget funds that would
have helped New Orleans prepare for such a disaster. The New Orleans
branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suffered a "record $71.2
million" reduction in federal funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its
2001 levels. Reports at the time said that thanks to the cuts, "major
hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local
engineering firms. . . . Also, a study to determine ways to protect the
region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now." (Too bad
Louisiana isn't a swing state. In the aftermath of Hurricane Frances --
and the run-up to the 2004 election -- the Bush administration awarded
$31 million in disaster relief to Florida residents who didn't even
experience hurricane damage.)

The Gulf Coast wetlands form a "natural buffer that helps protect New
Orleans from storms," slowing hurricanes down as they approach from sea.
When he came into office, President Bush pledged to uphold the "no net
loss" wetland policy his father initiated. He didn't keep his word. Bush
rolled back tough wetland policies set by the Clinton administration,
ordering federal agencies "to stop protecting as many as 20 million
acres of wetlands and an untold number of waterways nationwide." Last
year, four environmental groups issued a joint report showing that
administration policies had allowed "developers to drain thousands of
acres of wetlands." The result? New Orleans may be in even greater
danger: "Studies show that if the wetlands keep vanishing over the next
few decades, then you won't need a giant storm to devastate New Orleans
-- a much weaker, more common kind of hurricane could destroy the city
too."

Forward-thinking federal plans with titles like "Issues and Options in
Flood Hazards Management," "Floods: A National Policy Concern," and "A
Framework for Flood Hazards Management" would be particularly valuable
in a time of increasingly intense hurricanes. Unfortunately, the agency
that used to produce them -- the Office of Technology Assessment -- was
gutted by Gingrich conservatives several years ago. As Chris Mooney (who
presciently warned of the need to bulk up hurricane defenses in New
Orleans last May) noted, "If we ever return to science-based
policymaking based on professionalism and expertise, rather than
ideology, an office like OTA would be very useful in studying how best
to save a city like New Orleans -- and how Congress might consider
appropriating money to achieve this end."

National Guard and Reserve soldiers are typically on the front lines
responding to disasters like Katrina -- that is, if they're not fighting
in Iraq. Roughly 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is currently
deployed in Iraq, where guardsmen and women make up about four of every
10 soldiers. Additionally, "Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees,
refuelers and generators" used by the Louisiana Guard are also tied up
abroad. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support
the homeland security mission," Louisiana National Guard Lt. Colonel
Pete Schneider told reporters earlier this month. "Recruitment is down
dramatically, mostly because prospective recruits are worried about
deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan or another country," the AP reported
recently. "I used to be able to get about eight people a month," said
National Guard 1st Sgt. Derick Young, a New Orleans recruiter. "Now, I'm
lucky if I can get one."

http://www.issues2000.org/default.htm

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TRIAGE

NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE - As Jerry Rayes piloted his boat down St.
Claude Avenue, just past the Industrial Canal, the eerie screams that
could barely be heard from the roadway grew louder as, one by one, faces
of desperate families appeared on rooftops, on balconies and in windows,
some of them waving white flags. . . A woman screamed as Rayes boated
by: "Hey! Damn! Hey!" "You can't save everybody," he said, as he passed
street signs barely visible above the water along with scores of felled
trees and downed power lines. "That's all we heard for hours this
morning."

As he motored toward St. Claude Avenue, which looked like a bayou rather
than a thoroughfare, his boat passed Fats Domino's
pink-and-yellow-trimmed house on Caffin Avenue. About a half a dozen men
screamed from the balcony, flailing their hands for help. He passed them
by.

"What am I going to do? I got to go to the parish," he said. "There's
way too many people out there and to few boats."

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/t-p/katrina.ssf?/hurricane/katrina/stories/083005_a1_wipecomm.html

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POLITICS
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ANTIWAR MOVEMENT CALLED COMMUNIST AT CONSERVTIVE WASHINGTON FORUM

DANA MILBANK AND ALAN COOPERMAN, WASHINGTON POST - Cindy Sheehan:
anti-American communist? That was the accusation coming yesterday from
the Heritage Foundation, which hosted author John J. Tierney Jr. for a
forum titled "The Politics of Peace: What's Behind the Anti-War
Movement?" Cindy Sheehan's protest was called unprecedented -- and more.
Tierney researched the movement for a book and came up with some choice
descriptions. "I have to say it is communist," he told an audience at
the conservative think tank, also describing the groups involved as
"revolutionary socialistic" and "cohorts" of North Korea, Saddam Hussein
and Fidel Castro's Cuba. "We're really dealing with . . . a
comprehensive, exhaustive, socialistic anti-capitalistic political
structure," he said.

Tierney, of the Institute of World Politics, identified five groups:
ANSWER, Not in Our Name, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, and
Move On. He said these groups "come from the Workers World Party" and
are an "umbrella" for smaller groups, such as the "Communist Party of
Kansas City" and the "Socialist Revolutionary Movement of the Upper
Mississippi." Of the last two, he said, "I'm just making these up."

Tierney singled out Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq and who camped out
at President Bush's ranch this month to protest the war. "I've never
heard of a woman protesting a war in front of a leader's home in my
life," he said. "I've never heard of anything quite so outrageous."

Heritage's Dana Dillon introduced Tierney by saying that "the discussion
today does not oppose the antiwar movement per se or question the
patriotism or loyalty or common sense of Americans on either side of the
debate." But the blurb promoting the event on Heritage's Web site said
of the movement: "At root, they are anti-American rather than anti-war."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001862.html

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HEALTH & SCIENCE
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46 MILLION NOW LACK HEALTH INSURANCE

TODD ZWILLCIH, FOX NEWS - The number of Americans without health
insurance rose by 800,000 last year, reaching a record high of nearly 46
million, the U.S. Census Bureau reported. Officials blamed the increase
in part on the continuing erosion of workplace-sponsored health
insurance. A majority of Americans still get their coverage by sharing
costs with their employer, though a smaller and smaller percentage of
American jobs are now accompanied by medical benefits.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,167856,00.html

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WHY PLACEBOS WORK

ROBERT C. COWEN, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - When an inert placebo acts
like a drug, is it just a psychological illusion? Or is it a real
biological effect? Research reported last week suggests that it's both.
The mere belief that they had received a pain killer was enough to
release the brain's natural painkilling endorphins in the patients
tested, scientists say. This opens a new line of research into the
placebo puzzle. The effect has been demonstrated often enough to show
that some patients appear to benefit from such belief. But there hasn't
been enough evidence to convince skeptics that anything more than the
so-called power of suggestion is at work. That's changing. "The findings
of this study are counter to the common thought that the placebo effect
is purely psychological due to suggestion and that it does not represent
a real physical change." says University of Michigan neuroscientist
Jon-Kar Zubieta. He is principal author of the study published Aug. 24
in The Journal of Neuroscience. . .

Reporting their work in Science, the research team pointed out that such
circumstantial evidence has given plausibility to "the idea that sensory
experience is shaped by one's attitudes and beliefs." They acknowledge
that, while pain does have "sensory components," it is "a
psychologically constructed experience."

In his book "The Anatomy of Hope," Harvard Medical School physician
Jerome Groopman notes that "a change of mind-set can alter
neurochemistry both in a laboratory setting and in the clinic." He says
he found relief himself from persistent back pain in the hope inspired
by an empathetic fellow physician. He explains that "belief and
expectation - the key elements of hope - can block pain by releasing the
brain's [pain killing] endorphins and enkephlins, mimicking the effects
of morphine."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0831/p14s01-stss.html

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WORDS
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ROGER MORRIS - Ignorant of the issues, cravenly afraid of risking
privilege for principle, hostage to corrupt advisors and a corrupted
calculus of national interest, Democrats not only mistake the public
mood and fail the minimal duty of opposition, but join the folly. From
Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, Capitol Hill barons to camp-following
bloggers, they stand bravely for more fodder more efficiently fed to the
calamity, huddling earnestly to the right of the most egregious
right-wing aggression in our history. Add to the Iraqi disaster the
defining debacle of our second intellectually and morally derelict
party. . .
http://www.egp360.net/

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FURTHERMORE. . .
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KATIE ZEZIMA, NY TIMES - The State of Vermont has installed a system
that uses plants and organisms to clean wastewater at a rebuilt rest
stop on Interstate 89 here, 10 miles northwest of White River Junction,
and then pumps the treated water back to the toilets for reuse. State
officials said the system, called a living machine, not only advanced
so-called green construction, but also allowed the rest area to stay
open and the country's first Vietnam veterans memorial, erected in 1982,
to remain at the site
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/31/national/31toilet.html

MORE EVIDENCE THAT POWER POINTS CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082901444.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FINDING AND LOOTING
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/ap/index.php#finding-versus-looting-123124

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FIELD NOTES
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WEBSITE FOR MEN TEACHERS
http://www.MenTeach.org/

ON KATRINA

2005-09-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

Kelpie Wilson | America's Tsunami
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083105I.shtml
The scientific record shows that hurricanes come in cycles and scientists say
you can't tell whether a particular hurricane is the result of global warming,
although higher temperatures are a definite cause of more intense and violent
storms.

Floods Ravage New Orleans
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083105K.shtml
Two levees burst Tuesday, flooding the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, which had already leveled much of the Gulf Coast from
Louisiana to Alabama in one of the nation's worst natural disasters.

Crude Oil Rises to Record after Hurricane Damages Platforms
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083105N.shtml
Crude oil rose to a record for a second day after Hurricane Katrina shut about
92 percent of production in the Gulf of Mexico.

Bush Gives New Reason for Iraq War

2005-09-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

By Jennifer Loven
The Associated Press

Wednesday 31 August 2005

Says US must prevent oil fields from falling into hands of terrorists.

Coronado, California - President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.

The president, standing against a backdrop of the USS Ronald Reagan, the newest aircraft carrier in the Navy's fleet, said terrorists would be denied their goal of making Iraq a base from which to recruit followers, train them, and finance attacks.

"We will defeat the terrorists," Bush said. "We will build a free Iraq that will fight terrorists instead of giving them aid and sanctuary."

Appearing at Naval Air Station North Island to commemorate the anniversary of the Allies' World War II victory over Japan, Bush compared his resolve to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's in the 1940s and said America's mission in Iraq is to turn it into a democratic ally just as the United States did with Japan after its 1945 surrender. Bush's V-J Day ceremony did not fall on the actual anniversary. Japan announced its surrender on Aug. 15, 1945 - Aug. 14 in the United States because of the time difference.

Democrats said Bush's leadership falls far short of Roosevelt's.

"Democratic Presidents Roosevelt and Truman led America to victory in World War II because they laid out a clear plan for success to the American people, America's allies, and America's troops," said Howard Dean, Democratic Party chairman. "President Bush has failed to put together a plan, so despite the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, we are not making the progress that we should be in Iraq. The troops, our allies, and the American people deserve better leadership from our commander in chief."

The speech was Bush's third in just over a week defending his Iraq policies, as the White House scrambles to counter growing public concern about the war. But the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast drew attention away; the White House announced during the president's remarks that he was cutting his August vacation short to return to Washington, D.C., to oversee the federal response effort.

After the speech, Bush hurried back to Texas ahead of schedule to prepare to fly back to the nation's capital today. He was to return to the White House on Friday, after spending more than four weeks operating from his ranch in Crawford.

Bush's August break has been marked by problems in Iraq.

It has been an especially deadly month there for US troops, with the number of those who have died since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 now nearing 1,900.

The growing death toll has become a regular feature of the slightly larger protests that Bush now encounters everywhere he goes - a movement boosted by a vigil set up in a field down the road from the president's ranch by a mother grieving the loss of her soldier son in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan arrived in Crawford only days after Bush did, asking for a meeting so he could explain why her son and others are dying in Iraq. The White House refused, and Sheehan's camp turned into a hub of activity for hundreds of activists around the country demanding that troops be brought home.

This week, the administration also had to defend the proposed constitution produced in Iraq at US urging. Critics fear the impact of its rejection by many Sunnis, and say it fails to protect religious freedom and women's rights.

At the naval base, Bush declared, "We will not rest until victory is America's and our freedom is secure" from Al Qaeda and its forces in Iraq led by Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

"If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks," Bush said. "They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition."

5 FROM TRUTHOUT

2005-09-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Could Turn City into Toxic Cesspool
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905Q.shtml
Though Hurricane Katrina didn't deliver a direct hit on New Orleans Monday,
there still were fears that the storm could turn one of America's most charming
cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even
coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries.

The New York Times | Destroying the National Parks
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082905EA.shtml
The New York Times editorializes against the Bush administration's rewrite of
national park management rules, saying "it essentially undermines the protected
status of the national parks."

Why Big Labor Hasn't Aided Striking Machinists
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082905LA.shtml
Northwest Airlines may hire its replacement workers permanently. If Northwest
succeeds in breaking the union, it could be a watershed in the history of the
American labor movement.

Revealed: How Bra Wars Devastate World's Poor
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082905LB.shtml
Imports of more than 80 million items of clothing are being blocked by hastily
imposed EU quotas designed to protect the continent from the recent deluge of
cheaper Chinese goods. Western demand for cut-price clothes is stimulating wage
reductions and worsening labor conditions across the world.

The Boston Globe | For Women and Children
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082905WA.shtml
Boston Globe editors support a bill introduced by New York Democrat Nita Lowey
that would provide aid to protect women and children from being raped, killed,
or forced into servitude as soldiers, domestics and sex slaves in foreign wars
and disasters.

4 FROM ALTERNET

2005-09-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

A WAR OF WORDS
Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
The language Bush has used in recent speeches about Iraq and
Cindy Sheehan illustrates why his message (and approval
rating) is starting to fail.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24740/

DON'T FORGET ABOUT US
Andrea Batista Schlesinger, ColorLines
America's young people need to be engaged in a real
conversation about Social Security -- before it's too late.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24742/

WHY GANG INTERVENTION DOESN'T WORK
Hector Gonzalez, Silicon Valley DeBug
A youth gang mentor argues that teens will only leave gangs
after they define solutions for their problems by
themselves and for themselves.
http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/24234/

CAN'T KILL P2P
Annalee Newitz, AlterNet
People want to get their music online, and currently P2P is
the best way to get it -- not because it's free, but
because it's there.
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/24748/

THE PROGRESS REPORT

2005-09-18T07:06:00.000-07:00

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, and Christy Harvey

August 30, 2005
WEATHER
Here's the Story of a Hurricane
BUDGET
Tax Cuts Come Home to Roost
UNDER THE RADAR
Go Beyond The Headlines
For news and updates throughout the day, check out our blog at ThinkProgress.org.
Sign up | Contact us | Permalinks/Archive | Mobile | RSS | Print

WEATHER
Here's the Story of a Hurricane

In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as "among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country," directly behind a terrorist strike on New York City. Yesterday, disaster struck. One of the strongest storms in recorded history rocked the Gulf Coast, bringing 145 mph winds and floods of up to 20 feet. One million residents were evacuated; at least 65 are confirmed dead. Tens of thousands of homes were completely submerged. Mississippi's governor reported "catastrophic damage on all levels." Downtown New Orleans buildings were "imploding," a fire chief said. Oil surged past $70 a barrel. New Orleanians were grimly asking each other, "So, where did you used to live?" (To donate to Red Cross disaster relief, click here or call 1-800-HELP-NOW). While it happened, President Bush decided to ... continue his vacation, stopping by the Pueblo El Mirage RV and Golf Resort in El Mirage, California, to hawk his Medicare drug benefit plan. On Sunday, President Bush said, "I want to thank all the folks at the federal level and the state level and the local level who have taken this storm seriously.” He’s not one of them. Below, the Progress Report presents "How Not to Prepare for a Massive Hurricane," by President Bush, congressional conservatives, and their corporate special interest allies.

SLASH SPENDING ON HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS IN NEW ORLEANS: Two months ago, President Bush took an ax to budget funds that would have helped New Orleans prepare for such a disaster. The New Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suffered a "record $71.2 million" reduction in federal funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels. Reports at the time said that thanks to the cuts, "major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. ... Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now." (Too bad Louisiana isn't a swing state. In the aftermath of Hurricane Frances -- and the run-up to the 2004 election -- the Bush administration awarded $31 million in disaster relief to Florida residents who didn't even experience hurricane damage.)

DESTROY NATURAL HURRICANE PROTECTIONS: The Gulf Coast wetlands form a "natural buffer that helps protect New Orleans from storms," slowing hurricanes down as they approach from sea. When he came into office, President Bush pledged to uphold the "no net loss" wetland policy his father initiated. He didn't keep his word. Bush rolled back tough wetland policies set by the Clinton administration, ordering federal agencies "to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands and an untold number of waterways nationwide." Last year, four environmental groups issued a joint report showing that administration policies had allowed "developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands." The result? New Orleans may be in even greater danger: "Studies show that if the wetlands keep vanishing over the next few decades, then you won't need a giant storm to devastate New Orleans -- a much weaker, more common kind of hurricane could destroy the city too."

GUT THE AGENCY TASKED WITH DEVELOPING HURRICANE RESPONSES: Forward-thinking federal plans with titles like "Issues and Options in Flood Hazards Management," "Floods: A National Policy Concern," and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management" would be particularly valuable in a time of increasingly intense hurricanes. Unfortunately, the agency that used to produce them -- the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) -- was gutted by Gingrich conservatives several years ago. As Chris Mooney (who presciently warned of the need to bulk up hurricane defenses in New Orleans last May) noted yesterday, "If we ever return to science-based policymaking based on professionalism and expertise, rather than ideology, an office like OTA would be very useful in studying how best to save a city like New Orleans -- and how Congress might consider appropriating money to achieve this end."

SEND OUR FIRST RESPONDERS TO FIGHT A WAR OF CHOICE: National Guard and Reserve soldiers are typically on the front lines responding to disasters like Katrina -- that is, if they're not fighting in Iraq. Roughly 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is currently deployed in Iraq, where guardsmen and women make up about four of every 10 soldiers. Additionally, "Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators" used by the Louisiana Guard are also tied up abroad. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," Louisiana National Guard Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider told reporters earlier this month. "Recruitment is down dramatically, mostly because prospective recruits are worried about deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan or another country," the AP reported recently. "I used to be able to get about eight people a month," said National Guard 1st Sgt. Derick Young, a New Orleans recruiter. "Now, I'm lucky if I can get one."

HELP FUEL GLOBAL WARMING: Severe weather occurrences like hurricanes and heat waves already take hundreds of lives and cause millions in damages each year. As the Progress Report has noted, data increasingly suggest that human-induced global warming is making these phenomena more dangerous and extreme than ever. "The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service," science author Ross Gelbspan writes. "Its real name is global warming." AP reported recently on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis that shows that "major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific ... have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent" since the 1970s, trends that are "closely linked to increases in the average temperatures of the ocean surface and also correspond to increases in global average atmospheric temperatures during the same period." Yet just last week, as Katrina was gathering steam and looming over the Gulf, the Bush administration released new CAFE standards that actually encourage automakers to produce bigger, less fuel efficient vehicles, while preventing states from taking strong, progressive action to reverse global warming.

BUDGET
Tax Cuts Come Home to Roost

When Congress returns from its August break next Tuesday, congressional committees will be charged with cutting approximately $35 billion from mandatory spending programs through an annual process called budget reconciliation. Vital programs important to the daily lives of many Americans, such as Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, student loans, and other forms of government assistance, are likely to suffer drastic and consequential cuts. The budget-cutting measures are necessitated by, as President Bush noted, a need to "reduce our deficit." In turn, the deficit-cutting measures are needed because the Bush tax cuts, which predominantly favor the wealthy without providing much economic stimulus, have played such a large role in creating the deficit, and Bush is stubbornly refused to rolling them back (instead, Bush is calling for the tax cuts to be made permanent). Even conservatives, such as Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, acknowledge that "[budget] reconciliation will be painful." One Senate veteran of budget fights said the battles this fall over budget cuts could "become an explosive cocktail" for Congress.

WHAT IS BUDGET RECONCILIATION? In the course of the annual budget process, Congress is required to pass a budget resolution, generally by April 15th of each year. The budget resolution, which in essence provides a framework for how Congress will spend the nation's money each fiscal year, often contains instructions to various committees of the House and Senate to make changes, or reconcile, the laws governing entitlement (or mandatory) spending programs. Such reconciliation instructions are measures that Congress imposes upon itself to enforce fiscal discipline and to remain within its spending cap (though the Bush administration has used the process to pass ideological tax cuts more than impose fiscal austerity). The budget cap passed by Congress this year allows for $2.6 trillion in spending for the next fiscal year, an amount which requires $35 billion in cuts to entitlement programs over the same period of time in which $70 billion in tax cuts will be distributed. The reconciliation bills, unlike ordinary discretionary spending measures, cannot be filibustered in the Senate, which makes them a favored vehicle for passing sought-after legislation.

MEDICAID MAY BE LEFT TO WITHER ON THE VINE: As stipulated by the budget reconciliation instructions, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley will be forced to find as much as $10 billion in savings primarily by cutting Medicaid, thus "trimming anticipated growth [in the program] by as much as 13 percent at a time when states such as Tennessee and Missouri are throwing tens of thousands of people off their Medicaid rosters." Because the Finance Committee is not required to cut one certain program to find the $10 billion in savings, it is possible that other entitlement programs under the committee's jurisdiction, such as Medicare and welfare programs, may also fall under the budget ax. States such as Michigan, which stands to lose approximately $300 million if the Medicaid cuts are enacted, are preparing to "turn away tens of thousands of its neediest citizens" or raise taxes or cut other vital state services. For Michigan, $300 million amounts to paying for 360,000 of 900,000 children who are now enrolled in the state's Medicaid program, or 40,000 of its 270,000 blind and disabled adults.

PROPONENTS OF ARCTIC WILDLIFE REFUGE DRILLING ATTEMPT TO USE BUDGET GIMMICKRY: Last April, congressional leaders used a back door tactic to allow drilling in the arctic as part of the federal budget resolution. But the fight to protect the refuge isn’t over. Drilling proponents must include a provision to open the refuge to drilling as part of the budget reconciliation process. Supporters claim that opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling will secure $2.4 billion in royalties and other payments. But even if drilling were allowed, it would represent less than a year’s supply of our nation’s oil and would take 10 years to make it to market – hardly an impact that is relevant to this year’s federal budget. Two dozen House Republicans signed an Aug. 4 letter to House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo outlining their opposition to using the budget reconciliation process to open ANWR, giving hope that the drilling plan will receive more thoughtful consideration. Allen Smith writes in the Boston Globe, "Congress should refuse to authorize Arctic Refuge development. The $2.4 billion fails to meet any standard for inclusion in the FY 2006 Budget, which the Congressional Research Service reports will further increase our national deficits if passed into law." Come to the rally to save ANWR on Sept. 20 in Washington, DC.

OTHER VITAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES FACING PAINFUL CUTS: According to the Washington Post, the Senate Agriculture Committee is considering cutting $600 million from food stamps. Early this month, 68 minority House members wrote a letter to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte stating, "There is no way to reduce food stamp spending without eliminating the eligibility for vulnerable groups of people or lowering benefits in ways that increase the threat of hunger for millions of struggling families, seniors, and people with disabilities." Also, Senate aides are "crafting legislation to cut $7 billion from the federal student loan program" just as students return to college. Groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are weighing in against increasing federal pension insurance premiums by billions of dollars as part of the reconciliation package, calling that plan "a steep tax increase on pension providers." And another fight that may be brewing, according to Congressional Quarterly, is whether the reconciliation package will include cuts to welfare programs or omit increases for child care funding. Funding for Section 8 housing is also on the chopping block.

Under the Radar

CORRUPTION -- KENTUCKY GOV. PARDONS NINE MEMBERS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION: In Kentucky, a grand jury found that several members of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration "violated the state’s personnel law that bars them from hiring or firing merit employees solely for political reasons." Fletcher found an easy way to solve the problem -- pardon everyone. Yesterday, Fletcher "pardoned nine current and former officials who have been indicted along with anyone who 'might … be charged.'" Fletcher said, “Mistakes were made but at no time was there a cynical scheme.” Fletcher himself is scheduled to appear before the grand jury today, but said he will refuse to answer any questions.

ECONOMY -- PARIS HILTON WANTS A TAX BREAK: The push to eliminate inheritance taxes for the ultra-rich is kicking into high gear. USA Today reports that "[c]onservative and business groups bent on permanently repealing the federal tax on multimillion dollar estates are mounting an intensive advertising and lobbying campaign this week that's designed to influence a Senate vote early next month." The tax is "paid by only the wealthiest 1% of Americans — those who inherit estates worth at least $1.5 million." Killing it "has been the focus of a decade-long struggle by some of the nation's largest businesses started by families, including Wal-Mart stores, Mars candies and Campbell's Soup." Although very few people pay it, "repealing the tax after 2010 could cost more than $70 billion a year in today's dollars, resulting in spending cuts or a larger federal budget deficit."

RIGHT WING -- HANNITY IN TIGHTS: A new comic book "features radio pundits Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, and Oliver North as biomechanically tricked-out members of a conservative underground resistance" combating liberalism. The comic, called "Liberty for All," is a response to a paper written by Michael Medved and Michael Lackner which claimed ''Marvel Comics and other publishers are disseminating comic books that actively promote a destructive cynicism and distrust of the United States government." Check out a sample.

PUBLIC HEALTH -- BLOWING SMOKE: As the rest of the world deals with cigarette smoking as a public health crisis, the United States sits on the sidelines. Yesterday, China -- the largest grower and the biggest consumer of tobacco in the world -- ratified the international tobacco control treaty, leaving the United States as the only major tobacco-producing country not to ratify it. The treaty commits nations to "require large, graphic health warnings on cigarette packs; implement measures to protect non-smokers from secondhand smoke; increase the price of tobacco products; and regulate the content of tobacco products." William V. Corr, the executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said ratification would "send a strong message to the rest of the world that we will not support these efforts and instead put protection of public health ahead of tobacco industry interests."

EDUCATION -- BUSH LOSES FOCUS: According to a Wall Street Journal poll, "a 57% majority of Americans said the president had been placing too little emphasis on education." The results aren't surprising considering the administration has focused its attention "on the war in Iraq and, domestically, its struggle to overhaul Social Security." Meanwhile, the president's proposal to expand the No Child Left Behind program is garnering little support, even among Bush's allies in Congress. Rep. Michael Castle (R-DE), who chairs the Education Subcommittee, said Bush's proposal was "dead for this year." For a fresh perspective, check out this education report from American Progress and the Campaign for America's Future.

UNDERNEWS

2005-09-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

UNDERNEWS
AUG 30, 2005
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source

E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com

1312 18th St. NW #502 Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779

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SHEPARD SMITH: You’re live on FOX News Channel, what are you doing?

MAN: Walking my dogs.

SMITH: Why are you still here? I’m just curious.

MAN: None of your fucking business.

SMITH: Oh that was a good answer, wasn’t it? That was live on
international television. Thanks so much for that. You know we
apologize.

http://thepoliticalteen.com/video/noneofyourfuckingbiz.wmv

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CHAVEZ PLANS DISCOUNTED FUEL TO AMERICA'S POOR

HECTOR CARREON, LA VOZ DE AZTLAN, VENEZUELA - The Mexico City newspaper
that has been covering the Reverend Jesse Jackson's visit to Venezuela,
El Universal, is reporting that President Hugo Chavez is offering
gasoline and heating fuel at very low and affordable prices to the poor
and needy in the USA.

Hugo Chavez said yesterday that he will be apportioning 1.5 million
barrels of oil daily at 40% less than market price through the
Venezuelan government own Citgo in the USA.

Citgo will refine the oil into gasoline and heating fuel and make it
available to the unemployed, the poor and old folks who find it
difficult to heat their homes in the winter. . .

President Hugo Chavez said that he estimates that his offer will benefit
from between 7 to 8 million needy Americans. He added that his embassy
in Washington D.C. has already received 140 applications for the program
because Americans are being "defrauded" and "gouged" by greedy U.S. oil
companies like Chevron and others.

Chavez plans to implement the program through 8 refineries and 14
thousand gas stations that Citgo owns in the USA.

http://www.aztlan.net/chavez_gas_for_poor.htm

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CRIME REPORT
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KPMG OFFICIALS INDICTED IN AMERICA'S BIGGEST SCAM EVER

CARRIE JOHNSON, WASHINGTON POST - Federal prosecutors yesterday unsealed
conspiracy charges against eight former KPMG LLP officials and a lawyer
accused of helping wealthy clients evade billions of dollars in taxes in
what authorities called the largest criminal tax fraud case in history.

The charges are expected to be the first in a wave of actions against
professionals who profited from aiding high-net-worth customers shield
income from the Internal Revenue Service during the economic boom,
prosecutors said. The tax evasion deals, which required the
participation of accountants, lawyers, investment bankers and their
wealthy clients, cost the government at least $2.5 billion.

The indictment of the individuals occurred as a federal judge yesterday
approved a deal to defer prosecution of KPMG itself. At a Washington
news conference, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales acknowledged that
the government had considered "collateral consequences," including the
fate of 18,000 employees, in striking the $456 million pact with the
accounting firm over its role in marketing the tax shelters. . .

IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson said the tax avoidance schemes amounted
to a "direct assault" on the American tax system and enriched already
wealthy clients and KPMG partners.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082900822.html

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LATIN AMERICA
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CHAVEZ CALLS ROBERTSON A TERRORIST, WANTS TO EXTRADITE HIM

REUTERS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his government
would take legal action against Pat Robertson and potentially seek his
extradition after the U.S. evangelist called for Washington to
assassinate the South American leader. . . "I announce that my
government is going to take legal action in the United States . . . to
call for the assassination of a head of state is an act of terrorism."
Chavez said in a televised speech. . . He said Venezuela could seek
Robertson's extradition under international treaties and take its claim
to the United Nations if the Bush administration did not act.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N2886425.htm

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LABOR
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NO LABOR SOLIDARITY IN NORTHWEST AIRLINES STRIKE

HARRY KELBER, LABOR EDUCATOR - Refusing to accept concessions that would
eliminate 2,000 jobs and cost them $176 million in reduced wages and
benefits, 4,430 mechanics at Northwest Airlines went on strike on Aug.
20.

The strikers, members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association,
an independent union, were immediately replaced by 1,500 temporary
mechanics whom the airline had hired and trained over several months at
a cost of more than $100 million, as part of an 18-month plan, not only
to reduce labor costs, but to restructure their jobs for greater
efficiency.

Northwest had threatened that unless its employees made wage and benefit
concessions totaling $1.1 billion, it would seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection, an action taken by United Airlines, U.S. Airways and several
smaller airlines.

Thus far, the carrier has obtained $265 million in wage cuts from its
pilots and $35 million from salaried employees. AMFA members, who are
paid $36.39 an hour, balked at paying the $176 million that the airline
had demanded as their share of the concession package.

Northwest, the fifth largest in the airline industry, has about 38,000
employees, including the striking mechanics. It announced it would be
paying its replacements — and any striker who returned to work — a
$27.17 hourly rate, about a 25 percent drop from the mechanic's rate
before the strike. The airline said that its terms for a contract were
not subject to negotiation.

"Northwest wanted a strike, and now they have one," said O. V. Delle
Femina, the national director of the mechanics' union. The strike was
called after a 30-day cooling-off period, required by the Railway Labor
Act, which also covers airlines, had expired. There was no indication
when talks between the company and the union would resume.

AFL-CIO unions at Northwest ordered their members to cross the picket
lines and remain on the job. The International Association of
Machinists, whose members include baggage handlers and other ground
personnel, had a special reason to weaken the strike, since the AMFA had
beaten it in a representation election at Northwest. Pilots and flight
attendants also did not honor the picket lines. . .

With little support from unions and the public, AMFA is relying on a
significant increase in cancellations and flight delays due to poor
servicing of Northwest's aircraft to force the airline to negotiate a
fair contract.

Even if it succeeds in terminating the strike, the airline still remains
financially strapped and as yet unable to raise the $1.1 billion it
needs to avert bankruptcy.

The AMFA is a small, independent union that the AFL-CIO's Machinists and
a few other unions detest. Is that a good reason to deny these strikers
our support, when they are fighting to prevent the loss of 2,000 of
their 4,430 jobs and a wage concession of $176 million? What message
will labor's enemies get if union members help Northwest bust this
justified strike?

Is labor solidarity no longer in fashion?

http://www.laboreducator.org/nwair.htm

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ON THE JOB WITH FRANKLIN SCHNEIDER

FRANKLIN SCHNEIDER, WASHINGTON CITY PAPER - These days I work as a
writer at a technology company in the D.C. area. When my new boss came
on, it was made known through office back channels that each person in
the department was expected, like primates laying meat at the feet of a
new alpha male, to visit him in his office for an "asset assessment"
session.

When I finally got around to meeting with him- I'd been the last one to
schedule - he was sitting at his desk looking at a stack of papers. From
his expression, they might have been autopsy photos, but as I drew near
I saw they were printouts of some of my articles.

After a few preliminary questions, he said that the first thing he
wanted me to do was to draw up a spreadsheet documenting my creative
process.

At first, I was confused. "You mean my writing process? Like,
introduction, thesis, body, conclusion?" I asked.

"No, no, you're thinking too small," he said. "I want you to formalize
your actual creative process in a spreadsheet." The idea, he said, was
to create a step-by-step blueprint that anyone (read: my eventual
replacement) could use to produce an idea, any idea. He gave me an
example. "Let's say that the first step is getting a 'notion,' probably
from some media source. Next, you have to hone that 'notion' into a
'concept.' Once you have a 'concept,' you have to laterally build it up
or something. Get the idea?"

I was speechless. Creativity for Dummies, in the form of an Excel
spreadsheet. Was this so different from medieval alchemy? I'd seen the
guy he wanted to bring in - a born bean-counter whose idea of creativity
was probably to market books as doorstops - and I was sure that once I
made the creativity blueprint, once I commodified the one contribution I
had to make, I'd be given the boot. . .

Read a human-resources manual today. Whereas the field used to be about
health plans and 401(k)s, now all the talk is about the Myers-Briggs
personality profile, Jungian archetypes, loyalty contracts, ways to
interpret body language. The next frontier of loss reduction, of control
and efficiency, is the individual.

At my present job, we have after-hours jamborees every Monday, and the
weekly announcements end with a passive-aggressive disclaimer along
these lines: "Participation is not required, but attendance will be
taken." Week after week, some grinning consultant prods us into
reluctant, insincere camaraderie as the stony-faced VPs look on.
Role-playing, song-and-dance routines, comedy improve - they do it at
Harvard Business School, so it must work.

During these little hoedowns, I always make a point of surveying the
faces of my co-workers. Young or old, senior or entry-level, sales or
creative, they exude glum resignation, a flash of resentment now and
then. It's the expression of someone being forced to sing naked at
gunpoint.

At another jamboree, we had to form circles and toss oranges back and
forth to each other in order to hone our "multitasking and management"
abilities. As the ringleader VP circulated among the chaos, gleefully
clapping her hands, the guy next to me was muttering about all the work
he had to do; he was months behind, with a deadline hanging over his
head, and they had him playing catch.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/cover/2005/cover0826.html

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BUSH'S SECRET DINNER WITH THE PRESS

DAN FROOMKIN, WASHINGTON POST - About 50 members of the White House
press corps accepted President Bush's invitation last night to come over
to his house in Crawford, eat his food, drink his booze, hang around the
pool and schmooze with him -- while promising not to tell anyone what he
said afterward. It's something of a Bush tradition, a way of saying
thank you to journalists for whom an extended stay in the Crawford area
is anything but a vacation. . .

I'm told that several reporters expressed squeamishness about last
night's event, particularly as the press-pool vans drove by antiwar
protester Cindy Sheehan's "Camp Casey" site. And later, a small handful
watched askance as the rest fawned over Bush, following him around in
packs every time he moved. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/08/26/BL2005082600706_pf.html

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BUSHWHACKS
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BUSH REGIME DRAFTS PLAN TO WRECK NATIONAL PARKS

NY TIMES EDITIORIAL - Recently, a secret draft revision of the national
park system's basic management policy document has been circulating
within the Interior Department. It was prepared, without consultation
within the National Park Service, by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant
secretary at Interior who once ran the Chamber of Commerce in Cody,
Wyo., was a Congressional aide to Dick Cheney and has no park service
experience.

Within national park circles, this rewrite of park rules has been met
with profound dismay, for it essentially undermines the protected status
of the national parks. The document makes it perfectly clear that this
rewrite was not prompted by a compelling change in the park system's
circumstances. It was prompted by a change in political circumstances -
the opportunity to craft a vision of the national parks that suits the
Bush administration. . .

Mr. Hoffman's rewrite would open up nearly every park in the nation to
off-road vehicles, snowmobiles and Jet Skis. According to his revision,
the use of such vehicles would become one of the parks' purposes. To
accommodate such activities, he redefines impairment to mean an
irreversible impact. To prove that an activity is impairing the parks,
under Mr. Hoffman's rules, you would have to prove that it is doing so
irreversibly - a very high standard of proof. This would have a
genuinely erosive effect on the standards used to protect the national
parks.

The pattern prevails throughout this 194-page document - easing the
rules that limit how visitors use the parks and toughening the standard
of proof needed to block those uses. Behind this pattern, too, there is
a fundamental shift in how the parks are regarded. If the laws
establishing the national park system were fundamentally forward-looking
- if their mission, first and foremost, was protecting the parks for the
future - Mr. Hoffman's revisions place a new, unwelcome and unnecessary
emphasis on the present, on what he calls "opportunities for visitors to
use and enjoy their parks.". . .

Mr. Hoffman would explicitly allow the sale of religious merchandise,
and he removes from the policy document any reference to evolution or
evolutionary processes. He does everything possible to strip away a
scientific basis for park management. His rules would essentially
require park superintendents to subordinate the management of their
parks to local and state agendas. He also envisions a much wider range
of commercial activity within the parks.

In short, this is not a policy for protecting the parks. It is a policy
for destroying them.

The Interior Department has already begun to distance itself from this
rewrite, which it kept hidden from park service employees. But what Mr.
Hoffman has given us is a road map of what could happen to the parks if
Mr. Bush's political appointees are allowed to have their way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/opinion/29mon1.html

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OTHER NEWS
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STATES RESTRICT ABORTIONS

Ceci Connolly, Washington Post - This year's state legislative season
draws to a close having produced a near-record number of laws imposing
new restrictions on a woman's access to abortion or contraception. Since
January, governors have signed several dozen antiabortion measures
ranging from parental consent requirements to an outright ban looming in
South Dakota. Not since 1999, when a wave of laws banning late-term
abortions swept the legislatures, have states imposed so many and so
varied a menu of regulations on reproductive health care.

Three states have passed bills requiring that women seeking an abortion
be warned that the fetus will feel pain, despite inconclusive scientific
data on the question. West Virginia and Florida approved legislation
recognizing a pre-viable fetus, or embryo, as an independent victim of
homicide. And in Missouri, Gov. Matt Blunt (R) has summoned lawmakers
into special session Sept. 6 to consider three antiabortion proposals.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/28/AR2005082800981.html

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ANOTHER WHISTLEBLOWER IS PUNISHED

WASHINGTON POST - A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal
critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton Co. a
multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq was removed from
her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday. Bunnatine
Greenhouse was told last month by corps commander Lt. Gen. Carl Strock
that she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top
rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance
reviews. . . Greenhouse went public last year with her concerns over the
volume of Iraq-related work given to Halliburton by the corps without
competition. She told Congress that the independence of the corps'
contracting process had been compromised.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5583741.html

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CONFUSED SIGNALS FOR THE YOUNG IN SWAZILAND

REUTERS - The king of Swaziland’s daughter was whipped by a palace
official at a party of teenage virgins ahead of a festival where more
than 50,000 maidens are available to become her father’s 13th wife,
media said on Sunday. Princess Sikhanyiso, 17, told the Times of
Swaziland a palace official whipped girls, including beauty queen Miss
Swaziland, at the party as a punishment after they refused to turn down
the music. She was pictured showing her bruises. Thousands of
bare-breasted virgins will dance for Africa’s last absolute monarch in
Monday’s Reed Dance ceremony, which King Mswati III has used to choose
new brides.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_30-8-2005_pg9_1

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BOOKSHELF
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WAR MADE EASY
How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
Norman Solomon

JULES SIEGEL, BOOKS@ARTS - "War Made Easy" should really be subtitled
"War reporting doesn't just suck, it kills." It makes you feel like
demanding a special war crimes tribunal for corporate media executives
and owners who joined the roll-up to Shock and Awe as non-uniformed
psywar ops. To be sure, this would raise the issue of whether or not
following orders might suffice for the defense of obedient slaves such
as Mary McGrory and Richard Cohen who performed above and beyond the
call of duty.

"He persuaded me," she gushed the morning after Powell spoke at the
United Nations. "The cumulative effect was stunning." In the same
Washington Post edition Richard Cohen wrote, "The evidence he presented
to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it
absolutely bonechilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that
Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but
without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a
Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise."

Solomon demonstrates how this kind of peppy pre-war warm-up degenerates
into drooling and heavy breathing once the killing begins. As if
observing a heavy metal computer game, the pornographers of death
concentrate on the exquisite craftsmanship and visual design of the
murder machines, and the magnificence of the fiery explosions they
produce.

"When the Gulf War's massive bombardment began," he writes, "a CNN
correspondent remarked on the 'sweet beautiful sight' of bombers leaving
runways in Saudi Arabia. CBS correspondent Jim Stewart told viewers
about 'two days of almost picture-perfect assaults.'"

Los Angeles Times reporter Jacques Leslie was invited onto a helicopter
to watch a B-52 strike in Vietnam. "Suddenly gray clouds took shape on
the ground in front of us and billowed to a height of a thousand feet or
more," Leslie later wrote in a memoir. "I was surprised to feel so
little: no horror, no pain, just marvel at the dubious wonders of
technology. Had men been killed beneath the smoke? Did they mean
anything to me? I knew I should be appalled, but I felt only numbness:
it was like watching people die on television."

http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts/war_made_easy/

ORDER
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0471694797/progressiverevieA/

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FURTHERMORE. . .
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MAGGIE MULVIHILL, BOSTON HERALD - Gov. Mitt Romney, who has comforted
the grieving loved ones of soldiers killed in Iraq and promoted National
Guard recruitment, said he has not urged his own sons to enlist - and
isn't sure whether they would. The Herald posed the question as Romney
- a potential 2008 White House contender and backer of President Bush's
Iraq policy - was honored by the Massachusetts National Guard after he
signed a bill extending pay for state workers on active duty. "No, I
have not urged my own children to enlist. I don't know the status of my
childrens' potentially enlisting in the Guard and Reserve," Romney said,
his voice tinged with anger.

http://news.bostonherald.com/localPolitics/view.bg?articleid=99837

JON STEWART TAKES ON CHRSTOPHER HITCHENS
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/08/25.html#a4634

News and Views you don't have to lose:

2005-09-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

Robertson's Call for Assassination of a Foreign Leader is a Crime

26 August 2005 Had he been a Democrat, he'd probably be hiring a criminal attorney.

The Federal Threat Statute: Fines and Prison for Threats to Kidnap or Injure
It is a federal felony to use instruments of interstate or foreign commerce to threaten other people. The statute is clear, and simple. Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 875(c), states: "Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." (Emphases added.)

The interstate or foreign commerce element is plainly satisfied by Robertson's statements. Robertson's 700 Club is listed as broadcasting in thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia, not to mention ABC Family Channel satellites which cover not only the United States but several foreign countries as well. In addition, the program was sent around the world via the Internet.

First, Robertson said he wanted to assassinate President Chavez. His threat to "take him out," especially when combined with the explanation that this would be cheaper than war, was clearly a threat to kill.

By Wednesday, Robertson was backing down: "I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out,'" Robertson claimed on his Wednesday show. "'Take him out' could be a number of things including kidnapping." Under the federal statute, a threat to "kidnap" is expressly covered. Under the federal statute, a threat to "kidnap" is expressly covered.

Robertson's manner, his choice to return to the subject repeatedly in his discourse, and the seriousness with which he stated the threat, all strike me as leading strongly to the conclusion that this was a true threat. Only media pressure partially backed him off. And his "apology" is anything but a retraction.
Will Robertson be investigated or prosecuted by federal authorities? Will he be called before Congress? Will the President, or the Secretary of State, publicly chastise Robertson? Are those three silly questions about a man who controls millions of Republican votes from Christian conservatives?

A misdemeanor offense?

The broad prohibition against threatening or intimidating foreign officials, which is a misdemeanor offense. This is found in Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 112(b), which states: "Whoever willfully - (1) ... threatens ... a foreign official ..., [or] (2) attempts to... threaten ... a foreign official .. shall be fined under this titled or imprisoned not more than six months, or both."

The text of this misdemeanor statute plainly applies: No one can doubt that Robertson "attempted" to threaten President Chavez.

Yet the statute was written to protect foreign officials visiting the United States - not those in their homelands. Does that make a difference?

By John W. Dean
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082705C.shtml

Non-intelligent design

When scientists and other members of the reality-based community declare that evolution is (a natural law) the only valid and provable account of our planet's history, intelligent design boosters don't cite the Bible. Instead, they earnestly insist that no one ought to claim a monopoly on truth, and that in the interests of intellectual and moral pluralism, "alternatives" to evolution should get a fair hearing in schools.

This week, Arizona Sen. John McCain became the latest Republican politician to urge that "all points of view" be presented to students studying the origins of life.

It's a tad ironic that conservatives and the religious right are now arguing that intelligent design should be taught on the grounds of intellectual pluralism. Needless to say, from the perspective of virtually all reputable scientists, evolution isn't just one theory among many, it's the only scientifically proven account of the origin and development of life on Earth. Denying evolution isn't merely "another perspective." It's like insisting that the sun revolves around the Earth, or that the moon is inhabited by little green guys. Whatever happened to truth?

If the right is sincerely dedicated to supporting pluralism and openness, surely they'd have no further objection to sex education classes that urge condom use, for instance, as long as abstinence-only arguments get equal time. And presumably they wouldn't mind if teachers tell kids that homosexuality is a legitimate form of human behavior, as long as teachers also explain that some people consider it a sin. Nor would conservatives have any basis to object to education about abortion rights, as long as their perspective is also represented.

Because if intelligent design must be taught just because a few crackpot scientists are on board with it, we'll also have to teach about the UFO landings at Roswell and the numerous Elvis sightings that occur each year.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082705H.shtml

University of California Sued over Creationism

A group representing California religious schools has filed a lawsuit accusing the University of California system of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints. The complaint centers on classes that incoming students are required to take to meet basic UC admissions standards.

Science, English, history and social science courses that Calvary offers were rejected by UC officials, and two biology textbooks produced by Christian publishers were deemed unacceptable, the lawsuit says.

The Calvary school lawsuit complains that in January 2004 a UC official informed Christian high schools that two Christian biology textbooks weren't acceptable, and that the schools' science course outlines were "not consistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community."

UC officials rejected a proposed Calvary course, "Christianity's Influence on American History," because the class outline "is not consistent with the empirical historical knowledge generally accepted in the collegiate community" and its focus was "too narrow/too specialized," the lawsuit says.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20050827-9999-1n27school.html
In Silence a Challenge to Patriot Act

Highlighting concerns of civil rights groups, a lawsuit challenging the FBI's use of the USA Patriot Act filed by a member of the American Library Association is largely under wraps, the US public forbidden to know its details.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082705Z.shtml

SLAPPing Speech

August 24, 2005 -- Molly Ivins mentioned PR Watch's THE WEEKLY SPIN in her recent column
about "strategic lawsuits against public participation" (SLAPPs), in
which corporations file harassment lawsuits to silence their
critics. Ivins cites the experience of Consumers Union, publisher of
Consumer Reports, which "has already spent $10 million defending
itself against a lawsuit filed by Isuzu Motors Ltd. because, eight
years earlier, Consumer Reports rated the Isuzu Trooper 'not
acceptable' for safety reasons. And the case has not yet reached
trial. And that is the real menace of SLAPP suits. It's not that
corporations win them, but that they cost critics so much money that
the critics are silenced -- and so is everyone else who even thinks
about raising some question about a corporate product or practice."

In Las Vegas, a local doctor was sued for his allegation that a city hospital violated the state's cost-containment law.
In Baltimore, members of a community group faced a $252 million lawsuit after circulating a letter questioning the property-buying practices of a local housing developer.
In West Virginia, an environmental activist was sued for $200,000 for criticizing a coal-mining company for activities that were poisoning a local river.
In Pennsylvania, a farmer was sued after testifying to his township supervisors that a low-flying helicopter owned by a local landfill operator caused a stampede that killed several of his cows.
In Washington state, a homeowner found that she couldn't get a mortgage because her real-estate company had failed to pay taxes owed on her house. She uncovered hundreds of similar cases, and the company was forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. In retaliation, it sued the woman for slander and dragged her through six years of legal harassment before a jury found her innocent.
In Missouri, a high-school English teacher was sued for $1 million after complaining to a weekly newspaper that an incinerator burning hospital waste was a health hazard.
SOURCE: AlterNet, August 19, 2005
http://www.prwatch.org

Thomas Friedman is a famous columnist on the New York Times. Friedman's latest bark is about free speech, which his country's constitution is said to safeguard. He wants the State Department to draw up a blacklist of those who make "wrong" political statements. He is referring not only to those who advocate violence, but those who believe American actions are the root cause of the current terrorism. The latter group, which he describes as "just one notch less despicable than the terrorists", includes most Americans and Britons, according to the latest polls.

Friedman wants a "War of Ideas report" that names those who try to understand and explain, for example, why London was bombed. These are "excuse makers" who "deserve to be exposed".

The "excuse makers" would also include the CIA, which has warned that "Iraq [since the invasion] has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalised' terrorists'." Onto the Friedman/Rubin blacklist go the spooks!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082305K.shtml

SPINNING Nuclear Energy

Despite securing up to $13 billion in federal subsidies in the
recently passed energy bill, according to estimates by Public
Citizen, the nuclear industry continues its PR offensive. The major
industry group Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) is "soliciting help
from PR agencies to assist in removing all major legislative and
regulatory impediments to a nuclear renaissance," an $8 million PR campaign
reports PR Week.

http://prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=240184&site=3

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose

7 from TRUTHOUT

2005-09-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Storm Turns Focus to Global Warming
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083005A.shtml
Although most mainstream hurricane scientists are skeptical of any connection
between global warming and heightened storm activity, the growing intensity of
hurricanes and the frequency of large storms are leading some to rethink
long-held views.

Louisiana National Guard's 8 Long Days
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083005D.shtml
Nearing the end of their tour in Iraq, National Guard troops from Louisiana face
an uncertain homecoming. With only eight days left before their tours end, the
biggest worry on these soldiers' minds is 10,000 miles away. "We were going to
have a homecoming," said Carrigee. "Now we don't know if we'll have homes to go
home to."

Democrats Demand Probe of Demotion
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083005E.shtml
Congressional Democrats demanded an investigation Monday into the demotion of a
senior US military contracting official who publicly criticized a controversial
no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton Corp. for work in Iraq.

Gordon Livingston | Iraq Looking More and More Like Vietnam
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083005G.shtml
As if the resemblance between Iraq and Vietnam were not enough, President Bush,
Livingston argues, has closed the circle for us. Never mind that the original
rationale for the war - preventing Iraq from using its stockpiles of weapons of
mass destruction against us - has evaporated; the issue now is that
ever-reliable call to arms: freedom, ours and the Iraqis'.

William Rivers Pitt | Here's the Funny Part
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083005I.shtml
George W. Bush coughed up his latest rationale for continuing the Iraq war - I
think this is the fourth or fifth one of these to this point - by saying that
because so many American soldiers have been killed, we have to keep sending
American soldiers to get killed as a means of honoring the American soldiers who
have been killed. William Rivers Pitt says this is big talk from a guy who
spends more time on vacation than a French aristocrat.

Intelligent Design Has No Place in the Science Curriculum
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083005N.shtml
At least 19 states are now debating the use of intelligent design in public
education, and President Bush commented in August that he thought both evolution
and intelligent design "ought to be properly taught."

California Patrol Won't Seize Marijuana Used as Medicine
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/083005O.shtml
In a turnaround, one of the state's biggest law enforcement agencies says it is
taking a hands-off approach to the possession and use of marijuana for medical
purposes.

PIZARRO EXECUTES LAST INCA EMPEROR:

2005-09-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

August 29, 1533

Atahuallpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, dies by strangulation at the
hands of Francisco Pizarro's Spanish conquistadors. The execution of Atahuallpa,
the last free reigning emperor, marked the end of 300 years of Inca
civilization.High in the Andes Mountains of Peru, the Inca built a dazzling
empire that governed a population of 12 million people. Although they had no
writing system, they had an elaborate government, great public works, and a
brilliant agricultural system. In the five years before the Spanish arrival, a
devastating war of succession gripped the empire. In 1532, Atahuallpa's army
defeated the forces of his half-brother Huascar in a battle near Cuzco.
Atahuallpa was consolidating his rule when Pizarro and his 180 soldiers
appeared.Francisco Pizarro was the son of a Spanish gentleman and worked as a
swineherder in his youth. He became a soldier and in 1502 went to Hispaniola
with the new Spanish governor of the New World colony. Pizarro served under
Spanish conquistador Alonso de Ojeda during his expedition to Colombia in 1510
and was with Vasco Núñez de Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513.
Hearing legends of the great wealth of an Indian civilization in South America,
Pizarro formed an alliance with fellow conquistador Diego de Almagro in 1524 and
sailed down the west coast of South America from Panama. The first expedition
only penetrated as far as present-day Ecuador, but a second reached farther, to
present-day Peru. There they heard firsthand accounts of the Inca empire and
obtained Inca artifacts. The Spanish christened the new land Peru, probably
after the Vire River.Returning to Panama, Pizarro planned an expedition of
conquest, but the Spanish governor refused to back the scheme. In 1528, Pizarro
sailed back to Spain to ask the support of Emperor Charles V. Hernán Cortés had
recently brought the emperor great wealth through his conquest of the Aztec
Empire, and Charles approved Pizarro's plan. He also promised that Pizarro, not
Almagro, would receive the majority of the expedition's profits. In 1530,
Pizarro returned to Panama.In 1531, he sailed down to Peru, landing at Tumbes.
He led his army up the Andes Mountains and on November 15, 1532, reached the
Inca town of Cajamarca, where Atahuallpa was enjoying the hot springs in
preparation for his march on Cuzco, the capital of his brother's kingdom.
Pizarro invited Atahuallpa to attend a feast in his honor, and the emperor
accepted. Having just won one of the largest battles in Inca history, and with
an army of 30,000 men at his disposal, Atahuallpa thought he had nothing to fear
from the bearded white stranger and his 180 men. Pizarro, however, planned an
ambush, setting up his artillery at the square of Cajamarca.On November 16,
Atahuallpa arrived at the meeting place with an escort of several thousand men,
all apparently unarmed. Pizarro sent out a priest to exhort the emperor to
accept the sovereignty of Christianity and Emperor Charles V., and Atahuallpa
refused, flinging a Bible handed to him to the ground in disgust. Pizarro
immediately ordered an attack. Buckling under an assault by the terrifying
Spanish artillery, guns, and cavalry (all of which were alien to the Incas),
thousands of Incas were slaughtered, and the emperor was captured.Atahuallpa
offered to fill a room with treasure as ransom for his release, and Pizarro
accepted. Eventually, some 24 tons of gold and silver were brought to the
Spanish from throughout the Inca empire. Although Atahuallpa had provided the
richest ransom in the history of the world, Pizarro treacherously put him on
trial for plotting to overthrow the Spanish, for having his half-brother Huascar
murdered, and for several other lesser charges. A Spanish tribunal convicted
Atahuallpa and sentenced him to die. On August 29, 1533, the emperor was tied to
a stake and offered the choice of being burned alive or strangled by garrote if
he converted to Christianity. In the hope of preserving his body for
mummification, Atahuallpa chose the latter, and an iron collar was tightened
around his neck until he died.With Spanish reinforcements that had arrived at
Cajamarca earlier that year, Pizarro then marched on Cuzco, and the Inca capital
fell without a struggle in November 1533. Huascar's brother Manco Capac was
installed as a puppet emperor, and the city of Quito was subdued. Pizarro
established himself as Spanish governor of Inca territory and offered Diego
Almagro the conquest of Chile as appeasement for claiming the riches of the Inca
civilization for himself. In 1535, Pizarro established the city of Lima on the
coast to facilitate communication with Panama. The next year, Manco Capac
escaped from Spanish supervision and led an unsuccessful uprising that was
quickly crushed. That marked the end of Inca resistance to Spanish rule.Diego
Almagro returned from Chile embittered by the poverty of that country and
demanded his share of the spoils of the former Inca empire. Civil war soon broke
out over the dispute, and Almagro seized Cuzco in 1538. Pizarro sent his half
brother, Hernando, to reclaim the city, and Almagro was defeated and put to
death. On June 26, 1541, allies of Diego el Monzo--Almagro's son--penetrated
Pizarro's palace in Lima and assassinated the conquistador while he was eating
dinner. Diego el Monzo proclaimed himself governor of Peru, but an agent of the
Spanish crown refused to recognize him, and in 1542 Diego was captured and
executed. Conflict and intrigue among the conquistadors of Peru persisted until
Spanish Viceroy Andres Hurtado de Mendoza established order in the late 1550s.

'A New Label on a Bottle of Poison'

2005-09-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

By Diane Farsetta PR Watch Posted August 29, 2005.

The Pentagon's military training academy formerly known as the School of the Americas is trying to change its reputation through a PR campaign and outreach to its opponents.

Sometimes even the slickest public relations effort doesn't improve a person's or an institution's image. Think of the U.S. State Department's $15 million "Shared Values" ad campaign, which tried to assuage anti-American sentiment in Muslim countries.

More commonly, PR campaigns enjoy partial successes. That appears to be the case with the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC, formerly called the School of the Americas or SOA), a Defense Department facility at Fort Benning, near Columbus, Georgia. While media coverage and Congressional attitudes haven't improved appreciably since WHINSEC launched a major PR effort three years ago, the Institute has achieved a partial détente with some academic figures and human rights organizations.

According to its mission, WHINSEC provides "professional education and training to military, law enforcement, and civilians to support the democratic principles of the Western Hemisphere." Unlike the dozens of other U.S.-based military training facilities, though, the Institute receives a significant amount of public scrutiny. This mostly negative attention is due in large part to protests, outreach and lobbying activities organized by the School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch).

Since 1990, SOA Watch has worked "to close the SOA/WHINSEC and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy that the SOA represents." The organization points to hundreds of cases where WHINSEC graduates have been found guilty of or implicated in human rights abuses, including the November 1989 killing of six Jesuit priests and two associates in El Salvador and the February 2005 murder of eight members of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community in Colombia.

WHINSEC public affairs officer Lee Rials rejected any culpability in these cases, telling PR Watch, "No one's been able to show even one person that took a course here and committed a crime that was related to the course." Yet there are ongoing contacts with trainees, according to WHINSEC's website: "When students return to their own countries, the U.S. military groups there maintain ties with them as part of the U.S. military-to-military engagement plan."

Eventually, the fallout from alumni crimes -- along with revelations that the Institute had used training manuals describing "'coercive techniques' such as those used to mistreat the detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq," as described by the National Security Archive, which made the manuals public last year -- became too much to ignore. In 2000, the then-School of the Americas became WHINSEC, ostensibly because the SOA "had fulfilled its Cold War era mission." Critics dismissed the change as a PR ploy.

In mid-2002, "to counter negative political rhetoric that detracts from the mission of both WHINSEC and the Army," the Defense Department approved a $246,000 "consistent, programmed, proactive public affairs effort in direct support of the Institute." Dubbed WHINSEC's "Strategic Communications Campaign Plan," it was also ridiculed as "putting a new label on a bottle of poison" by SOA Watch communications coordinator Christy Pardew.

(SOA Watch obtained a copy of the PR plan from California-based journalist and activist Aaron Shuman, who was given it by WHINSEC's Rials. SOA Watch shared the plan with PR Watch; it can be downloaded from the SourceWatch article on the Institute.)

Measuring Success

Three years later, have its PR efforts improved WHINSEC's public image? Based on media coverage and Congressional attitudes, the answer is no.

One major goal of the WHINSEC plan is that "media coverage of the WHINSEC is characterized as neutral to positive." An annex to the plan provides a baseline measurement, by evaluating opinion/editorial pieces on WHINSEC published from April 1999 to April 2000. Of these, 77 percent were judged "negative," 9 percent "balanced" and 14 percent "positive." A similar analysis by PR Watch of pieces published from January to mid-July 2005 that mention WHINSEC found a similar trend; 68 percent were negative, 23 percent neutral and 9 percent positive.

Another PR goal -- listed as the first of four "desired 'end states' of WHINSEC communications" -- is that the "Congressional audience will not support legislation to close the WHINSEC." However, a bill in the House of Representatives that would do just that, HR 1217, had 115 cosponsors by the 2005 summer recess. Although the PR plan calls Congress "a crucial audience," Rials downplayed the importance of HR 1217, saying that WHINSEC was established by Congress through the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001.

However, WHINSEC has been successful in obtaining "third-party (non-Army) public support" -- though the Institute may wish it were more public. Its PR plan includes outreach to academic, religious and political leaders and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as "key influencers" and targeting human rights NGOs, educational institutions and think tanks as "key audiences."

These groups might seem unlikely to respond to overtures from WHINSEC, but they have -- after sustained, persistent courting via various channels.

WHINSEC's early attempts at securing third-party backing were abysmal failures, according to the Board of Visitors, a Congressionally mandated WHINSEC oversight and advisory body. The Board's December 2002 meeting minutes note that "the Institute had sent over 35 invitations to NGOs" for WHINSEC's second annual Hemispheric Security Conference, "but none had been accepted." WHINSEC's Simon Bolivar Award for Democracy and Human Rights Award and Lecture Series, a recently-launched annual event, also enjoyed little support. The Board of Visitors "recommended continuing to invite NGOs to submit nominations, even though solicitation of some 50 NGOs this year yielded no response," read the minutes.

Adam Isacson, a senior associate at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC, said it's no surprise that WHINSEC's initial outreach fell flat. "They faxed out invites for several years," he told PR Watch, "but they weren't to anyone's attention," just addressed to whichever organization. Isacson said several Washington-based groups with Latin America programs, including his own, received but ignored these WHINSEC contacts.

WHINSEC's outreach to the academic community saw more rapid gains. One of the many talking points in its PR plan stresses "the academic environment of the WHINSEC." This environment "encourages relationships between military and civilian students and faculty dedicated to building stronger societies through constructive interaction and peaceful change," the plan states.

In keeping with that theme, WHINSEC announced in May 2003 that "the first Canadian academic to serve as a Fellow" there, Dr. Dennis Rempe, received a prestigious award for his doctoral dissertation. Another WHINSEC press release noted that Professor Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon from Washington College of Law and Padre Alvarez, a dean of the Jesuit University in Bogota, Colombia, participated in WHINSEC's "Human Rights Week" in July 2003.

An April 2004 release titled "WHINSEC Hemispheric Security Conference Draws Eminent Educators" named Norwich University's Russell Ramsey and Hal Kearsley, the University of Georgia's Thomas Whigham, the University of California at Irvine's Cesar Sereseres, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's Robert Buckman as U.S. academic presenters.

During this time, human rights NGOs remained aloof. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has given lectures and taught courses at WHINSEC on the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law since at least 1997, seems to be the exception.

However, as predicted in the Board of Visitors' 2002 meeting minutes, "relatively soon the NGO community will begin to respond." According to WHINSEC's website, the Georgia-based Carter Center nominated Peru's Dr. Jorge Santistevan de Noreiga for the Institute's Simon Bolivar award. He became the award's first recipient, prior to September 2002 (exactly when is unclear). Participants in WHINSEC's Command and General Staff Course visited the Carter Center in the summer of 2003.

The next sign of thaw came in late 2004, when WHINSEC Commandant Colonel Gilberto Perez accompanied the head of U.S. Southern Command, General Bantz Craddock, to Washington DC. They held a joint meeting with NGOs working on Latin America, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Center for International Policy. The conversation focused on Colombia and the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with "not much talk about WHINSEC," Adam Isacson told PR Watch.

The turning point in WHINSEC's relations with NGOs appears to have been a January 2005 workshop at Fort Benning itself, titled "Democracy and Human Rights at WHINSEC." The event was organized by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, part of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The Carr Center's website says that it "uses its convening power to create a safe space for human rights organizations and other policy actors to engage in constructive self-criticism and to forge new partnerships" (emphasis in original).

Unlike most previous attempts to involve NGOs, this one was successful. Human Rights Watch, the Carter Center and the Center for International Policy participated in the WHINSEC workshop, according to Isacson. He said that the invitation came from the Carr Center, though the event was "probably" a WHINSEC initiative.

In a blog entry written directly afterwards, Isacson said he attended the workshop "to learn more about the part of the Institute's mission that sounds most like something [the Center for International Policy] would support: training in human rights, civil-military relations and the military's role in a democracy." His assessment was that WHINSEC did have "a genuine interest in making human rights more than just window-dressing to improve the school's image."

However, Isacson also had serious concerns. Foremost was that WHINSEC "training doesn't explore the importance of tolerating -- not to mention protecting -- those who relentlessly criticize and seek deep reforms, but do not violate the law: human rights defenders, labor organizers, investigative journalists, whistleblowers and denouncers of abuse and corruption, among others." Another concern was that "collaboration with or toleration of other groups that do the dirty work," such as Colombia's pro-government paramilitaries, "do not appear to be a prominent training topic." That's an especially glaring deficiency, since Colombia sends more students to WHINSEC than any other country.

Four months later, WHINSEC moved to institutionalize its interactions with NGOs. In May 2005, about 20 students in WHINSEC's cadets school traveled to Washington DC for a joint meeting with several organizations, including the Center for International Policy and SOA Watch. SOA Watch's Christy Pardew told PR Watch that her organization had "a pretty big conversation" about whether to participate, but finally decided that "it was important for us to go and act as observers."

The meeting, about two hours long, featured "lots of debate" and was "pretty fun," said Isacson. Pardew recounted that one Colombian student "raised his voice, asking, 'Why are we here to discuss that human rights is good? We all know that our career is over if we commit a human rights abuse.'" She found the student's comment rather ironic, given how infrequently Colombia has prosecuted its military for abuses. Similar meetings with NGOs are planned as a routine part of future WHINSEC cadets courses.

Perhaps the feather in WHINSEC's cap, though, is Human Rights Watch's decision to give a lecture during the Institute's "Human Rights Week" in August 2005 -- the organization's first-ever involvement in a WHINSEC course. Bonnie Docherty, a researcher in Human Rights Watch's Arms Division and the person who gave the lecture, told PR Watch that her presentation was based on "our battle damage assessment to Iraq that we have given in many forums. In Iraq, we found that the United States killed or injured hundreds of civilians with their use of cluster munitions in populated areas."

Docherty said her goal was "to explain that militaries can and should abide by international human law," which historically "Latin American militaries have abused." Human Rights Watch saw the WHINSEC course as "a good opportunity for us to train officers on [international humanitarian law] standards and to show the impact of their actions on civilians," she explained. Human Rights Watch has not made an ongoing commitment to WHINSEC, seeing the lecture as a "one-time event," according to Docherty. She stressed, "Our participation is not an endorsement of the group we are training."

SOA Watch's Pardew commented on Human Rights Watch's involvement in the WHINSEC course by saying, "There are a lot of NGOs working to ensure that there is more human rights training. They're in a position of being able to encourage that, while still realizing that it's nowhere where it needs to be."

Isacson responded similarly when asked how the Center for International Policy decided whether and how to engage with WHINSEC. "You don't want to give a tacit seal of approval," he told PR Watch. "So, you make clear that we still don't think that this institution is necessary and we don't want our pictures in your promotional materials. And they agree to that."

Such systematic and sustained outreach to human rights NGOs directly contradicts what WHINSEC's public affairs officer, Lee Rials, told PR Watch. "I don't want to sound lazy," he said, "but I'm not doing too much work now, in terms of having to go out and seek people" to support WHINSEC. In fact, Rials called soliciting support from outside organizations an inappropriate activity for WHINSEC staff: "We'd almost consider that lobbying."

"Democracy in Action" or Whitewashing?

The larger question is whether WHINSEC's partial PR success might help deflect attention away from where the United States carries out the vast majority of its foreign military training. While the Center for International Policy's Adam Isacson credits the "laser-like pressure from SOA Watch" with forcing Fort Benning to become more transparent, he admitted, "I wish we could find out more about other training, other programs."

Isacson estimates that there are around 100 other U.S.-based facilities training foreign military personnel. WHINSEC trains just 700 to 800 of the 14,000 Latin American military members trained annually in the United States. Even the Institute's PR plan lists the five other Defense Department training facilities "that concentrate on Latin America": the Center for Hemispheric Studies at Fort McNair in Washington DC, the Inter-American Air Force Academy at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, the Navy Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, the U.S. Army Helicopter School Battalion at Fort Rucker in Alabama, and the U.S. Army Helicopter Maintenance Company at Fort Eustis in Virginia.

Moreover, both Isacson and SOA Watch's Christy Pardew warned that more and more U.S. military training is being done overseas. "Why keep on doing those courses in Georgia," Isacson asked rhetorically, "when you can just send the Special Forces down there, where no one's watching?"

Is WHINSEC being promoted as "Democracy in action" (as one of its PR plan's talking points claims) while more questionable practices are outsourced elsewhere? Perhaps that's what the Institute's Strategic Communications Campaign Plan means when it lists "counter[ing] negative perceptions of the Army" as one of its two overarching objectives.

Diane Farsetta is senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy.

Over a barrel

2005-09-18T06:04:00.000-07:00

If ever there were a time to declare war on America's dependence on oil, now would be it.

The days of cheap gas prices are gone, forever.
That doesn't mean oil companies aren't getting rich off the trend of ever-increasing wholesale prices for oil in the past two years. They are. Exxon-Mobil posted record profits in the last quarter, and other big oil companies have followed suit. And at the pump, the wild fluctuations in prices follow neither rhyme nor reason. In May, prices in the Midwest were 50 cents a gallon cheaper than on the West Coast; now, they've caught up. Prices on the poorer south side of Seattle can be up to 20 cents a gallon cheaper than on the north side. Diesel, which used to cost less than regular gas, now consistently costs more -- because the truckers and delivery drivers that rely on it cannot cut back their consumption no matter how pricy it gets.

Blame George Bush, but even more than Bush, blame China. China and India, the world's two most populous countries, are poised to surpass the United States in terms of total oil consumption, with few environmental controls or global warming limits. When increased demand meets fixed or declining supply, prices rise. China at present has the world's most vibrant and successful economy, and a rapidly expanding middle class that wants to enjoy all the perks that the wealthy West has enjoyed for years.

At the same time, George Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq has effectively taken production of Iraq's massive oil reserves off the world market much of the time, as sabotage from the insurgency has effectively crippled Iraq's oil exports. Globally, oil reserves are declining, with some experts claiming that the world's capacity to produce oil has already peaked. The easiest oil has already been extracted; what's left is in places like the Arctic or the landlocked Caspian. In the 21st century, oil will only get scarcer.

In such a scenario, something's got to give, and the first thing has been the cost of oil -- only recently breaking $50 a barrel, now approaching $70. At the pump, the ever-increasing cost of gas has had a ripple effect on America's economy.

If ever there were a time to declare war on America's dependence on oil, now would be it. But the Bush/Cheney energy bill, just passed by the Republican Congress, resolutely ignored all this in favor of an exhaustive supply of price supports and perks for the oil and gas industries. While the rest of the developed world has been moving ahead with the development of new technologies for renewable energy, the United States' official policy is, basically, to enrich George Bush's oilpatch friends, with predictable consequences for the environment, the economy, and the price at the pump.

More ominously, the increasing consumption of oil and gas by China, India, and other emerging economies simply isn't sustainable. The damage to the environment, including contributions to global warming, is tremendous; beyond that, the supply simply isn't available. What is available is often in the hands of governments that are or can easily become at odds with Washington: the Islamic world, the former Soviet republics, or Pat Robertson's bete noire, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. All these countries have been busy cutting deals with Japan, China, Europe, and other consumers for long-term access to oil. United States foreign policy is essentially being held hostage to this sweepstakes; it's why, for example, Saudi Arabia can spawn bin Laden and most of the 9-11 hijackers, and Washington looks the other way.

In the short term, it's hard to imagine that any other president would have fared much better than Bush -- save his fiasco in Iraq -- in forestalling the steadily increasing cost of oil. But in the long run, eight years of negligence by the Bush Administration will prove terribly costly. The lack of action on climate change alone is simply criminal, but in general, America needs to reduce its economic dependence on oil, period. Bush has moved in exactly the opposite direction, leaving oil companies with a free hand to rack up their record profits. Unless they can somehow reduce or give up driving and participation in an oil-based industrial economy, consumers at the pump are pretty much powerless to do anything about it.

Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange. He can be reached by email at geovlp@earthlink.net -- please indicate whether your comments may be used on WorkingForChange in an upcoming "letters" column.

The United States' official policy is, basically, to enrich George Bush's oilpatch friends.

(c) Working Assets Online. All rights reserved.

HEALTH

2005-09-18T06:01:00.000-07:00

No Plan B

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration indefinitely postponed its decision on whether the emergency contraceptive Plan B, more commonly known as the "morning-after pill," could be sold to women without a prescription. Nearly two years have passed since the drug was approved for over-the-counter (OTC) use by an independent panel of experts, then rejected by FDA partisans catering to the president's right-wing base. With this latest delay, the Bush administration has fundamentally undermined its claim to represent the "culture of life." Top medical groups believe that fully half of the nation's annual 3 million unintended pregnancies and 1.3 million abortions could be prevented if Plan B were available without a prescription. President Bush's FDA is again putting politics over science, women's health, and responsible abortion prevention.

ANOTHER BROKEN PROMISE: The FDA's latest delay is especially aggravating since the agency's current commissioner, Lester Crawford, was confirmed for his position only after promising Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA) that a decision on Plan B would be made by September 1. (Clinton and Murray are now calling for additional Plan B hearings.) The September deadline was itself a delay. "Under federal regulations, the Food and Drug Administration was required to reach a decision on Plan B by January," the New York Times reports. Now even some former Bush administration officials are alarmed. "At some point, the statute requires that the agency make a decision," Dr. Eve E. Slater, an assistant secretary of health from 2001 to 2003, told the Times. "You can't just delay forever." The Plan B decision has become "overly politicized, and it shouldn't be," Dr. Slater added.

SCIENCE IS "OVERWHELMING": The safety and effectiveness of the Plan B pill has not been seriously questioned since 1999, when the drug was first approved for prescription use. "More than 70 leading medical and public health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, say it's safe and should be available without a prescription or any age restrictions." (Why without a prescription? Primarily because the pill needs to be taken within 72 hours of sex, and it is often impossible for women to get an appointment and a prescription from a doctor in that time.) Moreover, a study by the University of California of more than 2,000 California women concluded easy access to the emergency contraceptive "did not lead them to engage in more risky sexual behavior." Panel drug expert Alastair Wood said "the science was overwhelming" on Plan B. Another expert said the FDA's decision not to approve over-the-counter status was "blatantly contrary to the science and the facts."

AGE CHECK NO ARGUMENT: In USA Today, the director of a cultural conservative group, Family-Pac Federal, cheered the FDA ruling, saying that if Plan B were approved for OTC purchase by adults, "Hard-working and over-stressed pharmacists would be turned into bartenders trying to determine a woman's age and identification. Welcome to the world of teenage fake IDs, Walgreens." Except Walgreens and other pharmacies already inhabit that world. In a report earlier this month, the Associated Press noted that if OTC sale of Plan B was approved, "Cash registers could be programmed to block purchase pending an age check. That's doable: Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chain, just last month took that step to prohibit sales to minors of cold medicines containing a sometimes-abused ingredient."

DO AS WE SAY (THEN WE'LL REJECT YOU ANYWAY): The FDA justified the latest delay by claiming that the application submitted by Barr Laboratories Inc., the makers of Plan B, had "raised complicated and unresolved issues about whether current regulations allow a drug to be legally sold by prescription only for teenagers but over the counter for all others." So why did Barr submit an application requesting adults-only OTC sale of Plan B in the first place? Because the FDA told them to. After Barr's first application was rejected in May 2004, "the FDA advised Barr Laboratories to submit another application that allowed over-the-counter sales only to women older than 17. That was the plan that was deemed to be impossible to resolve yesterday," the Washington Post reports.

Hugo Chavez: A Walk in the Footsteps of Arbenz, Allende

2005-09-18T05:55:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Rosa Maria Pegueros
Common Dreams

Monday 29 August 2005

For more than forty years, Cuban leader Fidel Castro has been the target of countless United States- and CIA-sponsored assassination attempts. I shudder to think what might have happened if Cuba had been endowed with large reserves of oil. Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez may learn the consequences of such a blessing very soon.

If television evangelist Pat Robertson's controversial statements suggesting that the U.S. send in a covert operative to take out Chavez were not just the words of a madman but a trial balloon floated for the administration, the firestorm that met them should stay the president's hand even though, in the bellicose preacher's words, "It is cheaper than starting another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. . .and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.

We may have "the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," as Robertson says, but with the administration's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its saber-rattling towards Korea and Iran, one would think Bush has his hands full.

Hugo Chavez has set up medical clinics in the poorest neighborhoods in his country, staffing them with Cuban doctors, not that that United States has offered any medical assistance. He has created school music programs that have resulted in lower street crime and a resurgence of classical music: The would-be delinquents are spending their time practicing the violin instead of knocking over old ladies. The nerve of that guy! Wasting our money-or at least the money we pay for oil from Venezuela-on such effete solutions to social problems!

More to the point, his administration has kept entrepreneurs from controlling the oil industry and sucking out all the profits to make themselves wealthy. Chavez has kept a tight rein on it, reinvesting the money for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. He has successfully responded to the needs of its citizens in ways that have made his socialist ideas very popular; the people have elected him twice and overcome a coup against him.

The proper role of the government is to protect and make the best use of a nation's resources for its citizens. There is nothing in our Constitution about making the most money for a politician's supporters. In fact, the Constitution specifically mandates that we "promote the general Welfare." There's nothing communist about it.

The United States has a number of genuine problems with Hugo Chavez. First of all, government control of the oil industry shuts out entrepreneurs and foreign investors-think of Standard Oil, Gulf Oil, and Exxon. Secondly, it has the second largest oil reserve in the Americas. Canada, with 171 billion barrels of oil is first, though second in the world to Saudi Arabia. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Venezuela holds the ninth place in oil reserves with 77 billion barrels of oil. It is also extremely important to the U.S. in part because of its proximity. Recently, we have purchased more of Venezuela's oil than anyone has.

Chavez's trolling for other markets threatens America's access to Venezuelan oil even more though both he and his representatives have been very clear that they are not planning to reduce exports to the U.S. Considering the presumably diminishing Saudi Arabian oil reserves, as well as China's and our increasing demand for oil, this is not an abstract threat except, he says, if we attempt to assassinate or overthrow him.

The Saudis, possessors of the largest oil reserves in the world are extremely secretive about the amount of oil still available in their reserves. The U.S. government estimates that they have 261 billion barrels of oil but we cannot know for sure. They have good reason to play their cards so close to the vest: If they were to confirm that they are approaching their peak of production, it might spur the west to serious efforts to create alternative forms of fuel such as solar, wind and nuclear power. If those forms were to become widely available, it could cut into the Saudi market. It makes one wonder if Iran's claim that it is developing nuclear power because it is an alternative form of power is true. While Iran holds the world's fourth largest reserve of oil, with 126 billion barrels of oil, it would be exercising a rare form of prescience in planning for a future when that oil will be gone.

Aside from America's concerns about oil, Chavez has made a number of pronouncements that have irritated the administration and its friends. He has responded strongly to rumors that the U.S. is planning to invade Venezuela saying that he would stand up to any such invasion. Just what would Bush expect him to say?

Venezuela is right to publicize these rumors. If Cuba's experience with the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis and subsequent assassination attempts on Castro; the CIA-sponsored coups against Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and against Allende in Chile in 1972 are any measure of our government's willingness to disregard international law for our own ends, Chavez cannot take these rumors lightly particularly with the trigger-happy Bush at the helm.

It is not just the history of American state-sponsored terrorism about which Venezuela is justified in worrying but the arrogant expectation that any government or leader that disagrees with us poses a risk to the American way of life. Latin American leaders are especially endangered.

As Pat Robertson observed, "We have the Monroe Doctrine, and we have other doctrines that we have announced, and without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil that could hurt us very badly.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt officially repudiated the Monroe Doctrine in 1934 ending U.S. interventionism in Latin America and replacing it with his "Good Neighbor" policy. Those damnable Democrats! But remember that President Gerald Ford issued an Executive Order that banned U.S. government agents from assassinating foreign leaders.

In September 2001, in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center, President Bush rescinded that order and lowered the standard of proof for assassinations to those merely "suspected" of being terrorists. But long before George W. Bush became president the U.S had disregarded its Good Neighbor policy with interventions in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, to name a few.

Golda Meir famously said, "Even paranoids have enemies." Whatever mainstream America may think of Hugo Chavez, he is right to be wary.

--------

Dr. Rosa Maria Pegueros is an associate professor of history at the University of Rhode Island. She may be reached at pegueros@uri.edu.

Operating Instructions

2005-09-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

Beth Shulman
August 29, 2005

Beth Shulman is the author of The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans (The New Press, 2003) and works with the Russell Sage Foundation’s Future of Work and Social Inequality projects.

The temperature was 105 degrees on a California farm one day recently, but Salud Zamudio-Rodriguez’s boss refused to let him take a rest from picking bell peppers and get out of the sun. Instead, he and the other migrant workers were ordered to double their speed to get the field picked clean that day. Soon, Zamudio-Rodriguez collapsed of heat exhaustion, and later he died.

Two other migrant farm workers died from heat exposure earlier this year, and as a result the California legislature is debating a bill that would require growers to add rest periods and shade to protect farm workers when temperatures exceed 95 degrees. But conservatives are opposing the measure as unnecessary interference with the market system. Have they no shame?

The idea that corporations should have total discretion in how to treat their workers is a growing and retrograde trend in America. Maryland Gov. Robert L. Erlich opposes legislation that would require organizations with more than 10,000 workers to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits or contribute the money to the state’s health program for the poor. It is “bad policy…that a state will dictate to businesses the type and level of health insurance,” Erlich said.

Such views deny the reality of American economic life. First, it’s a myth that we have any kind of free market. Government regulations already set principles that dictate who can do what to whom, and government enforces those principles through the courts. Laws of property, tort and contract are social creations enforced by government. As Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “Economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.”

Second, corporations are also created by government. Their very existence is dependent on our laws, including their legal status as “persons.” In exchange for the rights and privileges of personhood, American society has the right to hold corporations as accountable for their actions as ordinary citizens.

Third, and most important, it is the central role of government—and of the elected officials in it—to set rules we can all live by that are consistent with American values. Corporations are not elected. Their focus is on the bottom line. But as a society, as communities and individuals, we have different values. Just as other countries determine the rules under which multinational corporations must operate there, we have an obligation to determine such rules here.

The role of government is to promote the general welfare, and that includes leveling the economic playing field so corporations can compete on the basis of their productivity and creativity, not on who can impoverish the most workers. If we as a society don’t determine the rules of their game, corporations will write their own. Do we really want to leave it up to Enron or Wal-Mart to determine whether work will provide the basics of a decent life?

Citizens had a role in determining that corporations could not compete by using child labor, or dumping environmental waste in rivers, or discriminating against certain groups, or paying wages below a certain level. We still have the obligation today to determine corporations’ operating conditions. We can declare through our elected representatives that corporations must provide health insurance or pay into a state plan, provide a certain number of paid sick days or ensure that their workers are safe.

Today the state’s role is even more critical, for corporations are pushing more and more risk onto the American labor force. Even at a time of record profits and productivity, job volatility is a significant problem for millions of American workers. Wages have stagnated, more than 44 million Americans live without health insurance, employer-provided traditional pension plans have dramatically declined, and jobholders get less and less time off. Work is providing fewer and fewer of the basic necessities that Americans have always assumed it would provide.

What happens when we don’t set appropriate rules that safeguard ordinary Americans? We get more brutal cases like that of Zamudio-Rodriguez. It is the role of our society to set rules that ensure that workers are rewarded for their hard work and that corporations treat workers with dignity and respect—not to mention basic human decency.

6 from Truthout

2005-09-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman | Greenspan and the Bubble
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905F.shtml
Most of what Alan Greenspan said at last week's conference in his honor made
very good sense, Krugman remarks. But his words of wisdom come too late. There's
a rough ride ahead for the US economy. And it's partly Mr. Greenspan's fault.

Halliburton Whistle-Blower "Removed" by Army
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905J.shtml
A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's
decision to give Halliburton a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in
Iraq was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective
Saturday.

Crawford, Texas: A Divided Nation Bares Its Pain and Fury
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905L.shtml
Camp Casey "is the road from Baghdad to the airport and he won't go down it,"
Cindy Sheehan proclaimed. "He didn't even know there were people in the country
who opposed him until we came down and ruined his vacation. This is America
standing up and saying: we've had enough."

Venezuela May Seek Robertson's Extradition
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905M.shtml
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his government would take legal
action against Pat Robertson and potentially seek his extradition after the US
evangelist called for Washington to assassinate the South American leader.

Tom Engelhardt | Catapulting the Propaganda
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905N.shtml
As his poll figures continue on a downward spiral, Tom Engelhardt says Bush has
found it necessary to put extra effort into "catapulting the propaganda." Though
he struck a new note or two in each speech, these were exceedingly familiar,
crush-the-terrorists, stay-the-course, path-to-victory speeches.

Strategizing a Christian Coup d'Etat
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905O.shtml
A group of believers wants to establish Scriptures-based government one city and
county at a time.

KING'S "I HAVE A DREAM" SPEECH:

2005-09-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

August 28, 1963

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the African American
civil rights movement reaches its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr.,
speaks to more than 200,000 people attending the March on Washington. The
demonstrators--black and white, poor and rich--came together in the nation's
capital to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans and
to appeal for an end to racial segregation and discrimination.The peaceful rally
was the largest assembly for a redress of grievances that the capital had ever
seen, and King was the last speaker. With the statue of Abraham Lincoln--the
Great Emancipator--towering behind him, King evoked the rhetorical talents he
had developed as a Baptist preacher to articulate how the "Negro is still not
free." He told of the struggle ahead, stressing the importance of continued
action and nonviolent protest. Coming to the end of his prepared text (which,
like other speakers that day, he had limited to seven minutes), he was
overwhelmed by the moment and launched into an improvised sermon.He told the
hushed crowd, "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia,
go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities,
knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed." Continuing, he
began the refrain that made the speech one of the best known in U.S. history,
second only to Lincoln's 1863 "Gettysburg Address":"I have a dream," he boomed
over the crowd stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument,
"that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created
equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of
former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down
together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state
of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a
dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have
a dream today."King had used the "I have a dream" theme before, in a handful of
stump speeches, but never with the force and effectiveness of that hot August
day in Washington. He equated the civil rights movement with the highest and
noblest ideals of the American tradition, and for many Americans--white and
black--the importance of racial equality was seen with a new and blinding
clarity. He ended his stirring, 16-minute speech with his vision of the fruit of
racial harmony:"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village
and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up
that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of
the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are
free at last!'"In the year after the March on Washington, the civil rights
movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th
Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished the poll tax and thus a barrier
to poor African American voters in the South; and the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and
education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. In October 1964,
Martin Luther King, Jr., was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 4, 1968, he
was shot to death while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee--he
was 39 years old. The gunman was escaped convict James Earl Ray.

WHY NEW ORLEANS IS WORRIED

2005-09-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

This was published August 28th, prior to the onslaught of Katrina..........Scott

WHY NEW ORLEANS IS WORRIED

NEW ORLEANS TIMES PICAYUNE - Georges, a Category 2 storm that only
grazed New Orleans, had pushed waves to within a foot of the top of the
levees. A stronger storm on a slightly different course -- such as the
path Georges was on just 16 hours before landfall -- could have realized
emergency officials' worst-case scenario: hundreds of billions of
gallons of lake water pouring over the levees into an area averaging 5
feet below sea level with no natural means of drainage.

That would turn the city and the east bank of Jefferson Parish into a
lake as much as 30 feet deep, fouled with chemicals and waste from
ruined septic systems, businesses and homes. Such a flood could trap
hundreds of thousands of people in buildings and in vehicles. At the
same time, high winds and tornadoes would tear at everything left
standing. Between 25,000 and 100,000 people would die, said John Clizbe,
national vice president for disaster services with the American Red
Cross.

"A catastrophic hurricane represents 10 or 15 atomic bombs in terms of
the energy it releases," said Joseph Suhayda, a Louisiana State
University engineer who is studying ways to limit hurricane damage in
the New Orleans area. "Think about it. New York lost two big buildings.
Multiply that by 10 or 20 or 30 in the area impacted and the people
lost, and we know what could happen."

Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months
to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be
much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins.

The scene has been played out for years in computer models and
emergency-operations simulations. Officials at the local, state and
national level are convinced the risk is genuine and are devising plans
for alleviating the aftermath of a disaster that could leave the city
uninhabitable for six months or more. The Army Corps of Engineers has
begun a study to see whether the levees should be raised to counter the
threat. But officials say that right now, nothing can stop "the big
one."

Like coastal Bangladesh, where typhoons killed 100,000 and 300,000
villagers, respectively, in two horrific storms in 1970 and 1991, the
New Orleans area lies in a low, flat coastal area. Unlike Bangladesh,
New Orleans has hurricane levees that create a bowl with the bottom
dipping lower than the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. Though providing
protection from weaker storms, the levees also would trap any water that
gets inside -- by breach, overtopping or torrential downpour -- in a
catastrophic storm.

"The worst case is a hurricane moving in from due south of the city,"
said Suhayda, who has developed a computer simulation of the flooding
from such a storm. On that track, winds on the outer edges of a huge
storm system would be pushing water in Breton Sound and west of the
Chandeleur Islands into the St. Bernard marshes and then Lake
Pontchartrain for two days before landfall. . .

"As the eye impacts the Mississippi coastline, the winds are now blowing
south across the lake, maybe at 50, 80, 100 mph, and all that water
starts to move south," he said. "It's moving like a big army advancing
toward the lake's hurricane-protection system. And then the winds
themselves are generating waves, 5 to 10 feet high, on top of all that
water. They'll be breaking and crashing along the sea wall."

"All of a sudden you'll start seeing flowing water. It'll look like a
weir, water just pouring over the top," Suhayda said. The water will
flood the lakefront, filling up low-lying areas first, and continue its
march south toward the river. There would be no stopping or slowing it;
pumping systems would be overwhelmed and submerged in a matter of hours.

"Another scenario is that some part of the levee would fail," Suhayda
said. "It's not something that's expected. But erosion occurs, and as
levees broke, the break will get wider and wider. The water will flow
through the city and stop only when it reaches the next higher thing.
The most continuous barrier is the south levee, along the river. That's
25 feet high, so you'll see the water pile up on the river levee."

As the floodwaters invade and submerge neighborhoods, the wind will be
blowing at speeds of at least 155 mph, accompanied by shorter gusts of
as much as 200 mph, meteorologists say, enough to overturn cars, uproot
trees and toss people around like dollhouse toys. . .

Stranded survivors will have a dangerous wait even after the storm
passes. Emergency officials worry that energized electrical wires could
pose a threat of electrocution and that the floodwater could become
contaminated with sewage and with toxic chemicals from industrial plants
and backyard sheds. Gasoline, diesel fuel and oil leaking from
underground storage tanks at service stations may also become a problem,
corps officials say.

A variety of creatures -- rats, mice and nutria, poisonous snakes and
alligators, fire ants, mosquitoes and abandoned cats and dogs -- will be
searching for the same dry accommodations that people are using.

Contaminated food or water used for bathing, drinking and cooking could
cause illnesses including salmonella, botulism, typhoid and hepatitis.
Outbreaks of mosquito-borne dengue fever and encephalitis are likely,
said Dr. James Diaz, director of the department of public health and
preventive medicine at LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans.

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf?/washingaway/thebigone_1.html

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GOP MOVES TO SLASH PUBLIC FUNDING

[Note the Post's editiorial position on this matter as indicated in the
last sentence below]

JONATHAN WEISMAN WASHINGTON POST - Lawmakers are drafting proposals that
would cut billions of dollars from the growth of Medicaid, slice into
student loans just as students return to college, pare back food stamps
and trim farm price supports in the midst of a midwestern drought.

The raft of bills, due out of 16 committees in the House and Senate by
Sept. 16, will present the Republican Party its toughest test of fiscal
austerity in nearly a decade. For years, the party has embraced the
rhetoric of small government while overseeing legislation that has
helped boost federal spending by more than a third since the GOP took
control of Congress 10 years ago. Now, Republican lawmakers will be
faced with the tough votes needed [sic] to slow that growth and enact
the first cuts in entitlement spending since 1997. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/27/AR2005082700696.html

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MID EAST
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THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF IRAN'S ENTRY INTO NUCLEAR ENERGY

DAVID KAY, CTR FOR STRATEGIC AND INTNL STUDIES, 2004 - The first nuclear
reactor given to Iran was given by the United States in 1967 - a
five-megawatt trigger reactor, research reactor, under the Eisenhower
Atoms for Peace Program. . . The other thing that Americans forget is
that in 1974, the shah announced a policy of 23,000 megawatts of nuclear
energy in Iraq. The US reaction? Henry Kissinger beat down the door to
be sure that two US constructors, General Electric and Westinghouse, had
a preferred position in selling those reactors. We did not say, "it's a
stupid idea, why would you want to do that when you are flaring gas and
you have immense oil reserves?" We said, "That is very interesting; it's
an example of how the Iranian economy is moving and becoming modern."
Imagine in Iranian ears how it sounds now when we denigrate that
capacity. They remember. We were sellers of nuclear reactors and wanted
to be sellers of nuclear reactors to the shah.

DAVID ISENBERG, ASIA TIMES - Consider that just a year or so prior to
the 1979 Iranian revolution, the country was producing more than 6
million barrels a day of oil and its domestic consumption was less than
10% of that output. Its annual natural gas production (almost all in the
form of associated gas) was roughly about 12 billion cubic meters of
which some 9.5 billion cubic meters was exported to the Soviet Union and
only 20% was consumed domestically. Iran's population was about 35
million. Meanwhile, Iran had signed a number of nuclear power
construction contracts with France and Germany and was negotiating with
others for additional ones. The stated objectives of these undertakings
were to generate electricity and desalinate water. But according to the
pre-revolution politicians there was also always an attempt to explore
the nuclear technology for military purposes. But there was no overt
opposition to the shah's nuclear ambitions because of friendly relations
between Iran and US.

In fact, president Gerald Ford signed a directive in 1976 offering
Tehran the chance to buy and operate a US-built reprocessing facility
for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was for a
complete "nuclear fuel cycle" - reactors powered by and regenerating
fissile materials on a self-sustaining basis.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH24Ak02.html

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OTHER NEWS
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GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS

RICHARD INGHAM, SOJO MAIL - In 1972, the king of Bhutan declared that
his Himalayan country (which is the size of Switzerland) would
henceforth measure progress with gross national happiness instead of
gross national product. It is still the only country in the world to do
so. . . In inventing their government, Bhutan's leaders asked themselves
how to maintain balance between materialism and spiritualism while
seeking the clear benefits of science and technology; the possible loss
of tranquility and happiness with the advance of uncontrolled modernism
was an abiding concern. . .

In 1998, the government's master plan was developed, named the four
pillars of happiness. Then-Prime Minister Thinley said these pillars -
sustainable economic development, conservation of the environment,
promotion of national culture, and good governance - create conditions
"in which every individual will be able to pursue happiness with
reasonable success."

The plan is working, and Bhutan's success with the environmental pillar
alone is remarkable. A few years ago, the residents of a village famous
for its migratory cranes proudly installed electricity in their village.
It was soon discovered, however, that some cranes were flying into the
power lines. The villagers tore them down and switched to solar power.

Although all four pillars would find their advocates in America, it is
unlikely the pillars could be incorporated whole cloth into our notion
of public good. One of the reasons the pillars and gross national
happiness work in Bhutan is the country's distinct philosophy and social
cohesion; no such singular vision and cohesion exist in America.

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=news.display_article&mode=C&NewsID=4925

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FURTHERMORE. . .
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WHAT CITIES CAN DO TO GET THROUGH THE ENERGY CRISIS
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/082405_world_stories.shtml#2

GET YOUR CASINO CHIPS AT WAL-MART. . . AND GET SAVED AS WELL
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=416096&redirect_query=casino+chips

4 from Truthout

2005-09-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

Leak Shows Blair Told of Iraq War Terror Link
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082805A.shtml
Despite repeated denials by Number 10 that the war made Britain a target for
terrorists, a letter from Michael Jay, the Foreign Office permanent
under-secretary, to the cabinet secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, makes the
connection clear.

Frank Rich | The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082805D.shtml
In the wake of Ms. Sheehan's protest, the facts on the ground in America have
changed almost everywhere. Frank Rich states that, for one, the president has
been forced to make what for him is the ultimate sacrifice: jettisoning chunks
of vacation to defend the war in any bunker he can find in Utah or Idaho.

Sean Penn | Day One in Iran: Culture in Deep Conflict
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082805E.shtml
In June, Sean Penn and two friends traveled to Tehran. It was Penn's first trip
to the country. What he found was a culture in conflict. Although the nation is
ruled by a very conservative, tradition-bound government, Penn talked to many
younger Iranians who have a strong interest in Western culture and want their
own country to liberalize its policies on individual rights. The five-part
series is presented in full.

How Photos Became Icon of Civil Rights Movement
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082805F.shtml
If the lynching of Emmett Till was, as the historian David Halberstam called it,
the first great media event of the civil rights movement, it became so largely
because of the photographs of that monstrous face.

DAILY GRIST

2005-09-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

Raider of the Last Parks
Proposal to change national-park rules stirring up controversy

National parks are cool and all, but you know what they really need? More people on cell phones! That -- along with more snowmobiling and off-roading -- could happen under revisions to National Park Service policy proposed by Bush appointee Paul Hoffman, deputy assistant secretary of the interior. His plan, leaked to the press this week, would cut back on environmental protections on numerous fronts, from allowing cell-phone towers to reducing air quality standards to permitting more mining and grazing. While the Department of Interior is trying to cast the proposal as a mere effort at dialogue, past and present National Park Service employees aren't buying it. A group of 400 NPS retirees has announced a campaign to block the changes, and current directors are openly voicing dismay over them. Says J. T. Reynolds, superintendent of Death Valley National Park, "They are changing the whole nature of who we are and what we have been. I hope the public understands that this is a threat to their heritage."

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Julie Cart, 26 Aug 2005

Gorge Push
Northwest's Columbia River Gorge challenged by smog, acid fog

Hundreds of miles north of California's cow-poot-clogged San Joaquin Valley (yes, that was just an excuse to mention cow poots), the Columbia River Gorge along the border between Oregon and Washington is facing its own battle of the haze, with views of nearby Mount Hood often obscured by smog. Acid rain and fog have become problems too, corroding petroglyphs and harming animals and plants. Likely culprits include car exhaust, coal-plant emissions, and ammonia fumes from a dairy complex, among others. Though the Columbia River Gorge Commission -- established by Congress in 1986 to protect the gorge, a national scenic area, from development -- has called for its air to be "protected and enhanced," no one seems to know exactly what that means or who is responsible for making it happen. Conservationists are getting restive and say they may consider using litigation to get action on cleaning up the gorge's air.

straight to the source: The Oregonian, Michael Milstein, 26 Aug 2005

Play Your Cardigans Right
Americans look with dread toward this winter's heating bills

Skyrocketing energy costs aren't just kicking Americans in the gas tank -- they're punching Americans right in the bills. The home-heating bills, that is. Folks are expected to spend $600 billion this year on oil purchases (including home heating oil), about $210 billion more than two years ago, and $167 billion on natural gas, up from $120 billion in 2004. Though the overall impact on the economy is in dispute, some economists call it a "consumption tax" that will eventually have a ripple effect, forcing consumers to cut back in other areas. Experts recommend undertaking conservation measures like fixing leaks and putting weather stripping around doors. "You can turn the heat down a little and wear an extra sweater," said Gary Fay, treasurer of his local church in Proctor, Vt., which is looking at a $10,000 shortfall in its budget this year thanks to the soaring cost of heating oil, "but in the end you really need to heat yourself." Word.

straight to the source: The New York Times, Jad Mouawad, 26 Aug 2005

Cost in Translation
Why organics still cost so damn much

We keep hearing that once organic food expands to a large enough market, prices will fall. But it keeps not happening -- organic buyers still pay an average of 20 percent more for their groceries. Christy Harrison peers into the tangle of shifting regulations, subsidies, and production challenges to figure out why eating better still costs more, and when that may finally change.

new in Main Dish: Cost in Translation

Marsh o'Potamia
Once-vast marshlands being restored in Iraq

The marshlands of Iraq, drained nearly dry by Saddam Hussein, are making a surprisingly robust comeback. Seen by some as the inspiration for the biblical Garden of Eden, the lush wetlands once covered nearly 3,600 square miles near the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Mid-century drainage projects took a toll, but the marshes were primarily destroyed by Hussein -- and that was the least of his retaliation against the local Marsh Arabs, who supported a Shiite Muslim rebellion following the 1991 Gulf War. Locals began breaching the dikes after Hussein's government fell in 2003, and about 37 percent of the area has been reflooded -- a "phenomenal rate," according the United Nations. Japan is funding an $11 million project to provide clean drinking water and sanitation to about 100,000 Iraqis who still live in the marsh area, help renew the marshes, and train 250 Iraqis in wetlands management.

straight to the source: BBC News, 24 Aug 2005

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 24 Aug 2005

And Miles to Go Before I NEPA
U.S. government sued over climate impacts of overseas energy projects

U.S. efforts to find fossil-fuel supplies overseas will create significant climate disruption, harming not only people in those countries but folks at home, according to a lawsuit filed against the federal government by a coalition of green groups and U.S. cities. Ranging from Greenpeace to the city of Oakland, Calif., coalition members want fossil-fuel development projects in developing nations on five continents to be halted while their impacts are assessed under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Bush administration tried to have the suit dismissed, but U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White recently ruled it could proceed. White found that coalition members had shown sufficient evidence that their "concrete interests" are threatened by the projects, and that the risks might be meliorated if the environmental studies are performed. Oakland, for instance, is concerned about future flooding, storm surges, and drought. The Bush administration has not yet decided whether to appeal.

straight to the source: The Sacramento Bee, Claire Cooper, 25 Aug 2005

Downward Freezing Dog
Freezing AC is status symbol at some Asian offices

In some tropical Asian cities, it's become a symbol of luxury to keep offices at an arctic chill. Hong Kong may be the world's coldest city when you're indoors, say researchers, who found the average office temperature is between 70 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit (72 to 78 is considered the optimum human-comfort range indoors). Workers in one office contend with 64-degree summer cooling -- so cold they do yoga in the bathroom to warm up. Patricia Shiu, who actually uses a space heater under her desk to stay warm at her frigid workplace, has joined a resistance movement of "thermal crime" spotters who helped Friends of the Earth compile a list of Hong Kong's most over-chilled buildings. Not only is it an egregious waste of energy, says FOE, but excessive air conditioning is sexist, favoring men in suits and ties over women in their lighter-weight garb. Since launching its campaign, the group says it's been getting a lot of technical inquiries from building managers who don't know how to change the temperature on their AC systems.

straight to the source: The Wall Street Journal, Geoffrey A. Fowler, 24 Aug 2005 (access ain't free)

The Great White Soap
USDA will certify organic soaps and cosmetics

In a victory for consumers' all-natural kissers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided it will allow worthy lip balms, lotions, and other personal-care products to carry the "USDA Organic" label after all, as well as dietary supplements and pet food. The department had decided this spring that while it was well equipped to evaluate the organic purity of milk, meat, and other foods, it wasn't ready to wade into the worlds of cosmetics and dog chow. David Bronner (of Dr. Bronner's soap fame) and the Organic Consumers Association sued the agency in June, saying in part that the government's organic imprimatur is one of the only ways responsible companies can make their products stand out from the "all-natural" hype. The USDA says it's a daunting task to evaluate the many non-food products desiring certification. "It takes a while to sit down and look at this and say, 'All right, how do we make this work?'" said Barbara Robinson, head of the department's National Organic Program. But, in the end, she asked, "What difference does it make if you brush your teeth with it or eat it?"

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Roger Vincent, 25 Aug 2005

Go Truck Yourself
Bush admin unveils weak new fuel-economy rules for light trucks

The Bush administration surveyed the landscape -- gas prices rising, fears of oil dependence spreading -- and concluded that bold leadership was required. So it invaded an oil-rich country. Heh, well ... on to Plan B! Yesterday, the administration proposed a new set of auto fuel-economy rules. Tightening the standard for passenger cars? Uh, no, that would stay at an average of 27.5 miles per gallon. Finally imposing some requirements on mega-SUVs like the Hummer H2? Wrong again. Instead, most SUVs, pickups, and minivans would be divided into six categories based on size, each with its own fuel-economy requirements. The administration says the plan would increase the average mileage of these vehicles a whopping 2.8 mpg by 2011, to 24 mpg. Amazing but true! Despite the obvious logic of the plan, it has critics, some of whom point out that it would actually provide an incentive for auto manufacturers to make their light trucks larger, so they'd be bumped into categories with lower mileage standards. "The proposal is almost embarrassing in terms of its effect on fuel consumption," said Eric Haxthausen of Environmental Defense.

straight to the source: The New York Times, Danny Hakim and John M. Broder, 24 Aug 2005

straight to the source: The Washington Post, Margaret Webb Pressler, 24 Aug 2005

Breed Between the Lines
World population heading rapidly toward 7 billion

The global population will reach 7 billion by about 2012 and continue to rise for many decades, according to a new report from the Population Reference Bureau, a private research organization. "Almost 99 percent of population growth today and for the foreseeable future will be in ... developing countries," said Carl Haub, a demographer with the bureau. In contrast, birthrates are declining in many developed countries, a trend that could ultimately lead to wealthy nations having less money to spend on foreign aid for poorer nations, according to Haub. In the U.S., though, fertility rates are holding steady and population is expected to rise from 296 million today to 420 million by 2050, meaning the nation would hold onto its status as the world's third most-populous country. India is expected to overtake China and assume the No. 1 slot by the middle of the century.

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Harry Dunphy, 23 Aug 2005

straight to the source: Hindustan Times, 23 Aug 2005

straight to the report: 2005 World Population Data Sheet

Jack Frost Nippon at Your Nose
Japan will encourage office workers to bundle up for the winter

Japan's summer "Cool Biz" campaign, which encourages office workers to shed their coats and ties and wear lighter clothing so less energy need be spent on air conditioning, has proven such a success that now the nation's Environment Ministry is plotting to follow it up with a "Warm Biz" campaign for fall and winter. Businesses will be asked to keep the heat at 68 degrees Fahrenheit in the cooler seasons, and employees will be asked to dress cozily. The "Cool Biz" campaign has been a boon to men's clothing stores, which have reported brisk sales in bright-colored polo shirts, light slacks, and coordinating accessories. Now retailers can look forward to hawking turtleneck sweaters, thick socks, and clothes that can be layered for warmth. "There are various combinations of dress that we envision," said an Environment Ministry official, "but thermal underwear is definitely going to be crucial."

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 23 Aug 2005

straight to the source: The Wall Street Journal, Andrew Morse, 23 Aug 2005 (access ain't free)

All Up in Our Business
Grist launches business column, contemplates "biz" puns

As is so often the case, President Calvin Coolidge said it best: "The business of the nation is business." C-Cool (as we call him) had a point there, so we're happy to announce the launch of a new business section that will examine commerce through a green lens. To kick things off (oh, and there will be more, friends), there's Full Disclosure, a new monthly column by sustainable-biz gurus John Elkington and Mark Lee. This month they have a look at China, which as you may have heard is growing its economy very big, very fast, very dirtily.

new in Full Disclosure: China Syndromes

Born to Rewild
Conservationists propose bringing elephants to U.S., bears to U.K.

Imagine: lions and elephants roaming free across the same Great Plains of the U.S. that their ancestors -- big cats, mastodons, and mammoths -- populated 13,000 years ago. That's the "Pleistocene Park" vision that a group of conservation scientists proposed in the journal Nature last week. Since people are increasingly leaving the plains, the logic goes, why not bring back the animals? Such a strategy could help maintain a healthy grasslands ecology and keep these species from going extinct outside of zoos, the scientists argue. The proposal is part of a movement to "rewild" landscapes by bringing back large, sometimes ferocious wild animals to areas they (or their distant relatives) long ago abandoned. In the U.K., a similar scheme calls for reintroducing wolves, bears, boars, and other long-vanished animals. The trend has produced skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic. "Just when you think the world has gotten as weird as it can get, something like this comes along," said Steve Pilcher of the Montana Stockgrowers Association.

straight to the source: Christian Science Monitor, Peter N. Spotts, 18 Aug 2005

straight to the source: CNN.com, Associated Press, 18 Aug 2005

straight to the source: Nature.com, Josh Donlan, 17 Aug 2005

straight to the source: The Independent, Peter Marren, 22 Aug 2005

Thirst-Case Scenarios
Shortages of safe water a growing global problem

About 1.1 billion people worldwide can't get clean drinking water and 2.4 billion lack access to basic sanitation, the International Herald Tribune reports in a series on the looming global problem of freshwater scarcity. The U.N. wants to halve these numbers by 2015, but current progress suggests that target won't be met -- it would effectively mean hooking up more than 100,000 people to clean water sources every day for the next 10 years. In much of the world, centralized irrigation and municipal water sources have taken the place of older water-management methods, but they're also putting more stress on the supply. The paradox, say experts, is that improving water quality and provision increases development, which puts further strain on freshwater supply. Make water cheap and abundant and people waste it; make it expensive and difficult to obtain and people die. The proper balance is tough to strike. Gulp.

straight to the source: International Herald Tribune, Patricia Brett, 20 Aug 2005

straight to the source: International Herald Tribune, Michael J. Strauss, 20 Aug 2005

straight to the source: International Herald Tribune, Anand Giridharadas, 20 Aug 2005

straight to the source: International Herald Tribune, Sam Nortey Jr., 20 Aug 2005

Gloom and Doom Meets the Dismal Science
Economics the next big thing in green activism

Green activists are increasingly embracing environmental economics, combining profit-oriented pragmatism with eco-idealism to make powerful cases for saving the environment. Although the field has been evolving for the past 40 or so years, activists really started to take note in the 1990s when a sulfur-dioxide emissions-trading program in the U.S. proved highly effective at reducing acid rain. Today, many of the big green groups -- along with government agencies -- employ environmental economists, and market-based arguments for good environmental policies and practices are increasingly successful. Rainforest Action Network has convinced three prominent banks to account for the cost of pollution when considering loans. RAN's Michael Brune argues that firms can do better business "by investing in sustainable energy, where they don't run the risk of lawsuits or federal regulation or the reputation of being associated with environmentally controversial projects."

straight to the source: The Wall Street Journal, Jessica E. Vascellaro, 23 Aug 2005 (access ain't free)

see also, in Grist: The Wealth of Nature, a series on ecological economists, by Lissa Harris

The Nyet Set
Russian skeptics bet British scientist $10K that earth will cool

Guess this counts as putting your money where your mouth is: Two Russian climate-change skeptics have bet a U.K. climate scientist $10,000 that the earth will cool over the next decade. Solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev believe that changes in sunspot activity are a more significant factor in climate shifts than greenhouse-gas emissions. Since the sun is expected to be in a less-active phase over the next few decades, they believe global temperatures will drop, and they're willing to wager against Brit climatologist James Annan. The three scientists have agreed to use data on average global surface temperatures recorded by a U.S. research center to figure out who's right. The climatologist is already counting his winnings. "There isn't much money in climate science," Annan says, "and I'm still looking for that gold watch at retirement."

straight to the source: The Guardian, David Adam, 19 Aug 2005

All The Ooze That's Fit to Print
The Gray Lady discovers peak oil

The peak-oil phenomenon made a mainstream-media splash this weekend in an extensive New York Times Magazine cover story. Devotees of this once-obscure issue won't find much that's new, but the article effectively summarizes the grim state of affairs. Output at many of the world's biggest oil fields has been declining steadily, and all eyes are now turned to Saudi Arabia, by far the world's largest oil producer, which refuses to allow independent audits of its reserves. The country's regime says it can still boost supply considerably, but many oil analysts have come to doubt those claims. Global oil supply and demand have been converging for years and are now tightly matched, which means any disruption in supply -- a natural disaster, terrorist attack, or unexpected decline in production at one of the big oil fields -- could mean sudden price spikes and catastrophic oil shocks throughout the world. If, as many expect, total supply begins an inexorable decline, the developed world's entire way of life could be jeopardized. Whee!

straight to the source: The New York Times Magazine, Peter Maass, 21 Aug 2005

see also, in Grist: A review of Kenneth Deffeyes' Beyond Oil

Snort!
Grist launches funnies section, laughs at own jokes

We're laughing it up here at Grist HQ, and not over the latest story on species loss or climate disruption (ha ha ha, whew, good times!). No, this week we're doing what all cool people do: laughing at our own jokes. Namely the jokes in our new humor section -- Snort! -- which is so funny it needs an exclamation point. Come check out this week's featured cartoon. And if you've got an eco-themed cartoon of your own that you'd like to share, send it to cartoons@grist.org and we'll let you know if it's Snort!-worthy.

new in Snort!: Stumped

Fang, Fang, Fang on the Door, Baby
Judge orders feds to restore Northeastern gray wolves

The U.S. government must intensify efforts to restore gray wolves to the Northeast, a federal court ruled on Friday. U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha said the Bush administration's decision to lump the sparse gray wolf population of the Northeast in with healthier populations in the upper Midwest, where restoration efforts have been more successful, was a "stark departure" from its original wolf-restoration plan and a violation of the Endangered Species Act to boot. The feds declared in 2003 that nothing more needed doing to return wolves to Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont -- a first move toward delisting eastern gray wolves entirely. But no backsies, Murtha told the government on Friday: You said that Northeast wolves are a distinct population and you can't go redefining them now to make them look healthier than they are. Environmental activists hailed the decision as a big victory.

straight to the source: Rutland Herald, Associated Press, David Gram, 20 Aug 2005

straight to the source: The New York Times, Felicity Barringer, 20 Aug 2005

BEHIND THE BUSHES

2005-09-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

BUSH REPORTED INCREASINGLY OUT OF CONTROL

DOUG THOMPSON, CAPITOL HILL BLUE - While President George W. Bush
travels around the country in a last-ditch effort to sell his Iraq war,
White House aides scramble frantically behind the scenes to hide the
dark mood of an increasingly angry leader who unleashes obscenity-filled
outbursts at anyone who dares disagree with him. "I'm not meeting with
that goddamned bitch," Bush screamed at aides who suggested he meet with
Cindy Sheehan, the war-protesting mother whose son died in Iraq. "She
can go to hell as far as I'm concerned!"

Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades
over those who protest the war, calling them "motherfucking traitors."
He reportedly was so upset over Veterans of Foreign Wars members who
wore "bullshit protectors" over their ears during his speech to their
annual convention that he told aides to "tell those VFW assholes that
I'll never speak to them again if they can't keep their members under
control."

White House insiders say Bush is growing increasingly bitter over
mounting opposition to his war in Iraq. . . "Who gives a flying fuck
what the polls say," he screamed at a recent strategy meeting. "I'm the
President and I'll do whatever I goddamned please. They don't know
shit.". . .

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_7267.shtml

___________________________________________________________________________________

BUSH REGIME UGES FEAR OF HOMELESS AS HIDDEN TERRORISTS

MARK SHERMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS - Asking for increased vigilance in the
wake of the London bombings, the government is warning that terrorists
may pose as vagrants to conduct surveillance of buildings and mass
transit stations to plot future attacks. "In light of the recent
bombings in London, it is crucial that police, fire and emergency
medical personnel take notice of their surroundings, and be aware of
'vagrants' who seem out of place or unfamiliar," said the message,
distributed via e-mail to some federal employees in Washington by the
U.S. Attorney's office. . .

The warning is similar to one issued by the FBI before July 4, 2004 that
said terrorists may attempt surveillance disguised as homeless people,
shoe shiners, street vendors or street sweepers. . .

Homeless people easily blend into urban landscapes, the message said.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/08/22/
terrosists_may_pose_as_homeless_for_surveillance_government_says/

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BUSHWHACKS
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AGREE WITH BUSH OR THE TERRORISTS WIN

EDITOR & PUBLISHER - Meeting briefly with reporters Monday aboard Air
Force One, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman subbing for Scott
McClellan, said that President Bush believes that those who want the
U.S. to begin to change course in Iraq do not want America to win the
overall "war on terror.". . .

Speaking to reporters, Duffy said that Bush "can understand that people
don't share his view that we must win the war on terror, and we cannot
retreat and cut and run from terrorists, but he just has a different
view. . .

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001019573

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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE OFFICIALS BEAT BACK BUSH CAPO'S PLAN TO HURT
SYSTEM

FELICITY BARRINGER, NY TIMES - A high-ranking appointee at the Interior
Department proposed fundamentally changing the way national parks are
managed, putting more emphasis on recreational use and loosening
protections against overuse, noise and damage to the air, water,
wildlife or scenery. But a group of senior National Park Service
employees rejected the proposal at a meeting this month.

The 194 pages of revisions to the park service's basic policy document
suggested by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the
department, could have opened up new opportunities for off-road use of
snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles throughout the park system,
including Yellowstone National Park, whose roads the Interior Department
has kept open to snowmobiles.

Mr. Hoffman's proposals often involved seemingly minor word changes but
their effect was nonetheless sweeping. Illegal uses, Mr. Hoffman
proposed, must "irreversibly" harm park resources, instead of just
harming them. Instead of obligating managers to eliminate impairments to
park resources, he proposed that they should "adequately mitigate or
eliminate" the problems. . .

The draft would also have added potential hurdles to the procedures for
designating new parks. And in its discussion of park service system
resources and educational programs, it would have eliminated virtually
every reference to the theory of evolution. . .

David Barna, a spokesman for the park service, said Thursday that 16
senior employees of the service met in Santa Fe, N.M., on Aug. 8 to
discuss the suggested changes and decided to scrap them in favor of a
more modest rewrite. "We did not take his document and try to rewrite
it," Mr. Barna said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/politics/26park.html

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OTHER NEWS
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NCAA GIVES IN TO SEMINOLES ON USE OF THEIR NAME

NY TIMES - The N.C.A.A. removed Florida State from the list of
universities banned from using what it called "hostile and abusive"
mascots and nicknames. There was never any doubt where the Seminole
Tribe of Florida stood on Florida State University's nickname. The tribe
helped university boosters create the costume for the Chief Osceola
mascot, approving the face paint, flaming spear and Appaloosa horse that
have no connection to Seminole history. . .

"The N.C.A.A. executive committee continues to believe the stereotyping
of Native Americans is wrong," Bernard Franklin, the association's
senior vice president for governance and membership, said in a
statement. "However, in its review of the particular circumstances
regarding Florida State, the staff review committee noted the unique
relationship between the university and the Seminole Tribe of Florida as
a significant factor."

"The N.C.A.A. recognizes the many different points of view on this
matter, particularly within the Native American community," Franklin
added. "The decision of a namesake sovereign tribe, regarding when and
how its name and imagery can be used, must be respected even when others
may not agree."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/sports/24mascot.html

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MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH IN WAR AGAINST GNOME TERRORISM

KIRSTY SCOTT, GUARDIAN - Police are trying to reunite numerous garden
gnomes with their owners after discovering an "Aladdin's cave" of
ornaments during a raid on a house in Alloa. Officers investigating
complaints that gnomes, plant pots and animal figures were disappearing
from gardens across central Scotland raided the house in
Clackmannanshire and found more than 40 ornaments, including rabbits,
hedgehogs, birds, frogs and a terrier. A total of 62 plant pots and 25
solar lights were also recovered, together with a decorative
wheelbarrow. Central Scotland police said there had been a spate of
reported thefts in Stirling, Clackmannanshire and Falkirk.

A spokeswoman for the force said the raid had been part of an 11-day
anti-crime operation involving CID officers, the tactical crime and
drugs unit and operational staff in Stirling area command. She added:
"We can confirm that two females have been charged in relation to the
discovery and a report has been sent to the procurator fiscal."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,1555825,00.html

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WORDS
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JON STEWART - He keeps saying 'sacrifice' and the 'war on terror,' and
you turn around and he's in a field of poppies with Lance Armstrong.

CORPORADOS / LABOR

2005-09-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

WAL-MART VS. COSTCO SMACKDOWN

WAL-MART WATCH - Bloomberg News columnist Graef Crystal looks at the
salaries offered by Wal-Mart and Costco, and examines the wide disparity
between the compensation packages of their respective CEOs. Crystal
points out the difference at the bottom of the corporate ladder and
works his way up to the top:

"Costco, the fourth-largest U.S. retailer, pays fulltime employees an
average hourly wage of $17; Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, pays
$9.68."

As for their CEOs, total 2004 pay for James Sinegal of the Issaquah,
Washington-based Costco was $2.7 million; for H. Lee Scott of the
Bentonville, Arkansas, Wal-Mart it was $17.9 million.

He also suggests that Scott's salary isn't necessarily in line with the
stock performance of his company:

"Now if money really motivates executive performance, you would expect
to see Scott lapping the field over Sinegal in total returns to
investors. Just the opposite has occurred.

"Scott became CEO of Wal-Mart on Jan. 14, 2000. Measuring from Jan. 13,
2000, to the market close this Aug. 19, Wal-Mart's cumulative total
return was negative 25.5 percent. That was considerably lower than the
negative 8.2 percent cumulative return on the Standard & Poor's 500
Index for the same period.

"As for Costco, its cumulative return was negative 5.4 percent,
relatively more favorable than that of both Wal-Mart and the S&P 500."

And here's his final "scorecard":

"So here's the scorecard during the overlapping tenure of the two CEOs.
For Costco, the employees won. The shareholders also won in the sense
that, during the period covered by Scott's tenure, Costco's total
return, though negative, was better than that of the S&P 500 and much
better than Wal-Mart's. But Sinegal lost. For Wal-Mart, the employees
lost, the shareholders lost and Scott won."

http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/mo_money_mo_problems/

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_crystal&sid=arNjFjq0qpd0

MORE STORIES

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D10FA3B540C748DDDAE0894DD404482&incamp=archive:search

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0450/041215_news_costco.php

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LABOR
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CHAVEZ PRESSES CO-MANAGEMENT IN VENEZUELA

IAIN BRUCE, BBC - The heat and the noise are almost unbearable in the
casting room of Line 3 at Alcasa. This is one of two big aluminium
plants in the south-eastern city of Puerto Ordaz, where most of
Venezuela's basic industries are concentrated.

It is also the test bed for a new experiment in co-management, which
President Hugo Chavez says is a key step towards a "socialism of the
twenty-first century".

Alcides Rivero, who works here as a maintenance electrician, says
co-management means that for the first time in this company's 37 years
of existence, the workforce has control. "It's us, the workers", he
says, "who decide on questions of production and technology, and it's us
who elect who will be our managers."

Marivit Lopez, from the personnel department, explains that the workers
are also drawing up a "participatory budget" for 2006. "The different
departmental works councils are discussing and amending the existing
proposal so that we get a budget that really fits the company's needs,"
she says. . .

According to the man steering this whole process, one of the aims of
co-management is to break down the barriers between intellectual and
physical labor; between those who do the thinking and those who do the
work. Carlos Lanz, recently appointed president of Alcasa, and himself a
former guerrilla leader, says the results are already visible.
"Democratic planning is such a powerful lever that even with rather
outdated technology we have managed to increase production by 11%," he
says.

Mr Lanz points out that this is not the co-management of European social
democracy, which in his view has been limited to giving the workers
shares and a seat on the board. "This is about workers controlling the
factory and that is why it is a step towards socialism of the
twenty-first century."

So far, Venezuela's co-management plans have been confined to state
owned companies like Alcasa, and to two small private companies that had
already gone bankrupt. . .

Early this year the government took over the Venepal paper factory and
the Valvulas valve factory. They were relaunched under co-management,
with 51% of the shares owned by the state and the workers organized in a
co-operative holding the remaining 49%.

But last Mayday President Hugo Chavez said he wanted to go further. He
suggested that many more private companies might qualify for government
assistance if they too involved their workers in the management.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4155936.stm

Help Repay Indian Families the Money They're Owed

2005-09-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

PLEASE PASS ON!!

Native families have been deprived of land and lease revenues for over a century, keeping many in stark poverty generation after generation. Financial audits, congressional and Government Accountability Office reports, and media investigations document that billions of dollars have been mismanaged and misappropriated.

Senators McCain (AZ) and Dorgan (ND) have introduced the Indian Trust Reform Act of 2005 (S. 1439) to repay as many as 500,000 American Indians. I just wrote to my senators asking them to cosponsor this bill, and I hope you'll do the same.

Click on this URL to take action now
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/2/?a=7968506&i=44571866

If your email program does not recognize the URL as a link,
copy the entire URL and paste it into your Web browser.

Week In Review

2005-09-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

August 26, 2005 - WOMEN'S EQUALITY DAY EDITION

Today, Americans celebrate Women's Equality Day, which marks the passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, giving women the right to vote. In 1971, the United States Congress designated August 26 "Women's Equality Day," under the leadership of then-Democratic Congresswoman Bella Abzug (NY). A culmination of a 70-year struggle for women suffragists, this day of recognition serves as a reminder to all Americans of women's continued struggle to gain full equality in the United States.

With 80 women Members of Congress and thousands of women legislators around the country, we have made great strides. As we reflect on the gains women have made, the Senate prepares to consider the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, and we are reminded of just how critical it is that we have a nominee who will continue to move forward, not turn back the hands of time for women in America.

As the White House continues to stonewall on key memos written by Roberts, serious questions regarding his commitment to women's rights remain. His earlier writings reflect a disturbing trend of hostility towards women's rights, including addressing the pay gap, access to educational opportunity and Title IX. As a sign of respect for women in America and all that they contribute to our nation every day, President Bush should release these critical documents so that we can know the full story.

JOHN ROBERTS ON CLOSING THE WAGE GAP

PROGRESS: Since the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the wage gap has closed by half a cent on the dollar per year. Yet, there is much work to do. According to the 2004 United States Census, currently, women earn just 76 cents on the dollar compared with men. The Census Bureau reported that in 2003, median annual earnings for full-time working women declined to $30,724 - while men's earnings remained unchanged, at $40,668. [University Wire, 4/21/05; Institute for Women's Policy Research, 8/27/04]

Roberts Argued Against Closing the Wage Gap: In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."[Washington Post, 8/19/05]

JOHN ROBERTS ON EDUCATION

PROGRESS: Women students have outnumbered male students since 1978. In 2000 there were 2 million more women than men enrolled in college. In the United States, 200,000 more women than men earned a bachelor's degree in 2004. While men comprise 51 percent of the college-age population in the United States, women account for 54 percent of full-time college students, earn more than 56 percent of the bachelor's degrees every year, and graduate in four years or less at a rate 10 percent higher than that of men. [Pell Institute; Bradenton Herald, 5/22/05; National Center for Education Statistics; University Wire, 4/15/05]

Roberts Questioned Women Going To Law School: His remark on whether homemakers should become lawyers came in 1985 in reply to a suggestion from Linda Chavez, then the White House's director of public liaison. Chavez had proposed entering her deputy, Linda Arey, in a contest sponsored by the Clairol shampoo company to honor women who had changed their lives after age 30. Arey had been a schoolteacher who decided to change careers and went to law school. Roberts said in his memo that he saw no legal objection to her taking part in the Clairol contest. Then he added a personal aside: "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide." [Washington Post, 8/19/05]

JOHN ROBERTS ON TITLE IX

PROGRESS: Title IX allowed more than 2.8 million girls to compete in high school sports in 2004 -- a 900 percent increase since 1972. In 1971-72, only 294,000 girls in comparison to 3.7 million boys played varsity sports in the nation's high schools. Thirty years later, in 2001-2002, boys' participation had increased slightly, to less than 4 million. That year, 2.8 million girls played high school varsity sports. In 1971-72, men in college sports outnumbered women by 170,384 to 29,977 -- nearly six to one. Thirty years later, women's participation had increased more than five-fold, and the numbers were 212,140 men to 155,513 women. [The Herald-Sun, Durham, NC, 7/24/05]

Roberts Proposed Limiting the Role of Title IX: In a memorandum to the attorney general in August 1982, he expressed support for a federal district court decision limiting the reach of a law against sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal aid. Judge Roberts said the law, called Title IX, applied only to specific programs that received federal aid, not to the entire university that maintained the programs. "Under Title IX federal investigators cannot rummage willy-nilly through institutions but can only go as far as the federal funds go," he wrote. [New York Times, 7/27/05]

What little we know about John Roberts's record on women's issues is troubling. Want to learn more? A new report from the National Women's Law Center offers a non-partisan review of his positions. You can see the facts for yourself at http://www.nwlc.org/. The White House needs to release key documents so that our Senators can fulfill their constitutional duty to thoroughly evaluate John Roberts.

YOU SPOKE! WE WANT THE FACTS ABOUT JOHN ROBERTS
More than 80,000 people signed on to the DNC's Freedom of Information request for all the work done by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts on 16 crucial cases during his tenure in the first Bush administration's Office of the Solicitor General. This week we delivered your signatures -- tens of thousands of them -- as part of our request.

The Bush Administration now has less than 20 days to respond to our FOIA request. We'll continue to update you as we learn more, and tell you about some of the other important issues covered in the cases we requested.

NEW RESEARCH SHOWS IMPACT OF WOMEN VOTERS
Women's roles in politics have gained new visibility, according to the Center for Women in Politics (CAWP), a nonpartisan group that looks at women's roles including as voters, donors and political candidates. On Women's Equality Day, CAWP has prepared a snapshot that shows "women have outvoted men for many years and that, as a group, they frequently vote differently from men." CAWP data shows that in 2005, 85 years after winning our right to vote:

More women than men register to vote. Some 68.7 million women were registered to vote in 2000 compared to 59.4 million men.
In every presidential election since 1964, the number of female voters has exceeded the number of male voters. In 2004, 67.3 million women, compared with 58.5 million men, reported voting.
Women outvoted men in 2004 - both in terms of turnout rates and actual numbers - in every racial and ethnic group: African American, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, and white. For Asian/Pacific Islanders, 2004 was the first election where women voted at a higher rate than men.
A gender gap - defined as the difference between the proportion of women and the proportion of men voting for the winning candidate - has appeared in every presidential election since 1980, averaging 7.7 percentage points from 1980 to 2000.
You can view the entire report and view additional research about women voters and candidates at: http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/.

BUSH LOOSING TRUST WITH WOMEN ON IRAQ
President Bush's is loosing the support of America's women on the issue of Iraq. In fact, a new Gallup Poll conducted in August for CNN and USA Today shows over 60 percent of women feel the US needs to bring some or all of its troops home immediately. Before President Bush can expect to regain the trust of America's women, he needs to outline a clear strategy for success in Iraq.

Bush is not listening to military experts telling us what's happening on the ground or to the concerns of people here at home. It's time for the President to show some leadership, for the sake of our troops, their families, and America's security.

BUSH HAS ABONDONED NATIONAL GUARD AND RESERVE TROOPS
New research from DNC Research show Bush has failed to provide for our troops. From equipment shortages to lack of adequate heath care, National Guard and Reserve troops are being shortchanged, just as they risk their lives to keep us safe. Democrats stand with our citizen-soldiers in making sure they have the equipment and training they need and in keeping our commitment to our veterans after they return home.

PAYCUTS SHORTCHANGE MILITARY FAMILIES
Activated National Guard And Reserve Soldiers Took Paycuts. Surveys in 2004 showed that 40 percent of reservists and National Guard soldiers make less money while mobilized than they earned in their civilian jobs. Surveys of all Guard and reserve personnel found that among mobilized troops whose pay was cut, the average reduction was $3,000, although some took pay cuts in the tens of thousands. [Washington Post, 11/11/04]

GAO Report Cites Massive and Widespread Pay Problems for Activated National Guard Soldiers. A January 2004 GAO report studied six different Army Guard units and found Army Guard soldiers were being denied timely and accurate payroll payments. The report found that, "Overall, 450 of the 481 (94 percent) Army Guard soldiers from our six case study units had at least one pay problem associated with their mobilization. [GAO Report, "Army National Guard Personnel Mobilized to Active Duty Experienced Significant Pay Problems," 1/28/04]

NATIONAL GUARD AND RESERVE SHORTED EQUIPMENT
The GAO Found Army Reserve Facing Increasing Equipment Shortages. In July 2005, the GAO found that "Army Reserve units are not generally allotted all of the equipment they need to deploy." Since September 11th, commanders have required deploying units to have 90 percent of their required equipment, yet in February 2005 the Army Reserve reported it had about 76 percent of the equipment it requires, an estimate that includes older equipment. [GAO, "An Integrated Plan is Needed to Address Army Reserve Personnel and Equipment Shortages." Rpt # GAO-05-660, 7/12/05]

National Guard Units In US Recently Forced To Give Up Equipment. Already suffering from manpower shortages, the National Guard's overstretched forces are being confronted with another problem: not enough equipment to supply Guard troops at home. "To fully equip troops in Iraq, the Pentagon has stripped local Guard units of about 24,000 pieces of equipment. That has left Guard units at home, already seriously short of gear." [Detroit Free Press, 6/13/05]

Soldiers Forced To Buy Their Own Equipment. "Some Army maintenance chiefs, in desperation, are using their own credit cards to make purchases. One soldier, who asked not to be identified, listed boots, goggles and protein bars as particularly coveted items." [MSNBC.com, 4/15/04]

REPUBLICANS LIMIT HEALTH CARE FOR RESERVISTS
GOP Declared a Few Months of Health Coverage Good Enough for Reservists. Congressman Douglas Hunter, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, removed a provision from the Defense Department budget that would extend TRICARE health coverage to all reservists and their families. In an attempt to justify his actions, Hunter stated that, in fact, Reservists and their families have TRICARE coverage from 90 days before mobilization until at least 120 days after they return, so extended coverage was not needed. [Biloxi Sun Herald, 5/28/05]

Republicans Cited Mistrust as Reason to Deny Healthcare to Reservists. In a further attempt to rationalize the removal the provision from the Defense Department authorization bill, Chairman Hunter declared that civilian employers will "game the system" and take advantage of the reservists' benefits. [Biloxi Sun Herald, 5/28/05]

DEMOCRATS STAND WITH OUR TROOPS
Think there isn't a difference in the political parties - think again. Below are what Democrats are fighting for to honor the sacrifice of our troops and their families. Write a letter to the editor today! Send these principles to your friends and neighbors! Post fliers at your local library, coffee shop and public bulletin boards!

Democrats Want the Bush Administration to Be Straight With Our Troops. Democrats want the Defense Department to report on the lessons learned in connection with deployment, extension of duty, and troop rotations. We want the Defense Department to keep its commitment to limit the length of service for our National Guard and reserve troops.

Democrats Want Soldiers to Be Protected. Democrats believe that troops should have the proper equipment and safe transportation to do their jobs properly. While they put their lives on the line, they should have access to all the protection they need.

Democrats Want Pay Security for Military Families. Democrats want to minimize the financial hardship faced by those called to active duty.

Democrats Want Health Care for All Reservists and their Families. Many reservists and junior enlisted personnel have no health care coverage while demobilized. Democrats want to make sure that those who serve our country are not left behind once they leave the battlefield.

DEMOCRATS TAKING THE LEAD
VIRGINA LAUNCHES WOMEN'S OUTREACH PROGRAM

To commemorate Women's Equality Day, Leslie Byrne, the Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor in Virginia, kicked off a new women's vote outreach program called TAKE FIVE in '05. Byrne unveiled the Take Five in '05 program to "empower volunteer leaders all over Virginia to reach out to their female neighbors who don't vote in every election," There are 740,284 Virginia women who voted in 2004 but not in 2001, which was the last statewide election. Byrne and the Democratic ticket know grassroots outreach will help women voters understand what's at stake in November. Virginia will elect a Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General and members of the Virginia House of Delegates on November 8, 2005.

In addition to being a barrier breaker as the first woman elected to Congress from Virginia, Byrne has a personal connection to Women's Equality Day. As President of the Fairfax League of Women Voters, Byrne was a leader in getting a historical marker put up in Lorton to honor the suffragists who were imprisoned in the workhouse there in 1917. "Those women stood up to physical abuse and force-feeding so that the women Take Five in '05 will contact would have the right to vote today," Byrne said.

The differences between Byrne and her Republican opponent on issues important to women voters are stark - he has voted against requiring insurers to cover birth control, against protections for seniors in nursing homes and for putting children in homes with histories of domestic violence. Want to learn more about Leslie Byrne for Lt. Governor or the TAKE FIVE in '05 campaign? Visit http://www.lesliebyrne.org or email takefivein05@earthlink.net.

WOMEN AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: A POWERFUL PARTNERSHIP
It's time for the annual DNC Women's Leadership Forum Issues Conference. Women leaders will gather in Washington, DC on Sept. 28-30 to hear the latest in polling, planning and purpose from the Democratic Party. Also offered are communication trainings and more information on getting involved in revitalizing our local and precinct level outreach in your community. To learn more and register for the conference, visit http://www.democrats.org/wlfconference.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war and I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger, and this is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, and we have other doctrines that we have announced, and without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another 200-billion-dollar war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

- Pat Robertson, advocating the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Monday, August 22, 700 Club, CBN

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

A Message from Congressman Adam Smith

2005-09-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Scott,

Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about proposed
exemptions from public health and environmental laws for the
Defense Department. I appreciate you taking the time to share
your thoughts and concerns with me on this important matter.
You will be pleased to know that these exemptions were not
included in the final version of H.R. 1815, the FY06 Defense
Authorization bill that passed the House on May 25, 2005. I share
you concerns that the inclusion of these exemptions could lead to
serious environmental damage. The Defense Department
submitted a request for broad exemptions from the Clean Air Act,
the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Superfund
law regulating the disposal of toxic waste. The Pentagon argues
that these provisions are necessary to ensure readiness.
As you may know, the FY04 Defense Authorization bill, H.R.
1588, included similar exemptions from environmental laws.
Despite my efforts and the efforts of many of my colleagues, the
legislation included provisions that provided broad exemptions to
the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection
Act. There were amendments offered to strip these provisions
from the legislation during the House Armed Services Committee
mark-up, but they failed to pass. I was disappointed that these
provisions were included in the final version of the FY04 Defense
Authorization bill. The Senate Defense Authorization bill (S.
1050) that passed 98-1 on the same day included the Pentagon's
request to alter the Endangered Species Act to prohibit critical
habitat designations on military lands that already have an
Integrated Natural Resource Management Plan.
Please be assured that I am greatly concerned with the health of
our environment. I was pleased to see that these most recently
proposed provisions were not included in the final version of the
FY06 Defense Authorization bill. I strongly oppose the inclusion
of these environmental provisions. As a member of the House
Armed Services Committee, I am focused on the need to ensure
our servicemen and women have all the tools and resources they
need to train and defend our nation. Also, I believe the military
should not be exempt from the same standards as other entities.
The readiness of our troops is a critical objective of military
training, but I believe this goal can be accomplished without
bypassing important environmental protections.

Again, I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts with me
about this legislation. If you have any additional questions,
comments, or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Adam Smith
Member of Congress

OIL WARS

2005-09-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

PEAK OIL COMPLEXITIES

PEAK OIL has struck us as one of those phrases that academics and
activists like infinitely more than ordinary human beings. This doesn't
mean that oil hasn't peaked, only if you want people to do something
about it, obscure jargon backed by bell curves is probably not the best
way to go about it. It is the peak in gas prices, for example, that has
recently stirred the most interest in the subject. It's not unlike the
phrase 'smart growth.' We have yet to meet anyone who has said something
like, "What this neighborhood needs is some smart growth."

There is another problem: we are dealing with theories and projections
that assume more is known than is actually is the case. Here are two
assessments of the topic from a left and liberal perspective that
illustrate some of the issues still at large.

One of them is by your editor's brother, Lewis Smith, former director of
energy for Puerto Rico, but any conflict of interest is moderated by the
fact that we often disagree.

DOUG HENWOOD, LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER - There were just six mentions of
the phrase "peak oil" in Nexis' major newspapers in the first half of
2002; there were 89 in the first half of 2005. The theory is that the
world has reached its climax in oil production, and output from here is
only going to go downhill. This explains both the spike in energy prices
over the last few years, the war in Iraq, and maybe even 9/11. . .

Prophecies of resource depletion have been around almost since humans
began thinking of nature as a set of resources. The 19th century English
economist William Stanley Jevons, one of the founders of the modern
discipline, was convinced that England would soon run out of coal: "It
is thence simply inferred that we cannot long continue our present rate
of progress." He dismissed the possibility that petroleum could serve
as a substitute for coal. Britain would find itself cold, dark, and
depopulated. Similar prognostications have been around since oil started
flowing.

No doubt we will run out of it someday. But there's still 40 years of it
in the ground—and the industry isn't trying that hard to find more of
it. Worldwide, about 2,700 rigs are drilling for oil; that's doubled
from the lows of 2000, but it's still less than half the peak of 6,148
in 1982. Major oil companies have kept their exploration budgets in
check to please their stockholders, who prefer high profits to busy
rigs. Thanks to that tightfistedness, expertise and equipment are now in
short supply. The number of petroleum engineers in the U.S. -
historically the home to much of the world's talent - is half what it
was 20 years ago. These human and material shortages are driving up
costs and slowing down fresh exploration.

The politics of peak oil are strange. Among its partisans are industry
people, who like the deeper tax and regulatory breaks and higher prices
that would result if it were widely believed. But a lot of greens have
embraced it, apparently hoping that we'll react rationally, and finally
come to our senses about SUVs, sprawl, and melting icecaps - providing a
nice shortcut around messy political agitation. That's very optimistic.
It could be that fear of peak oil might inspire a furious rush to find
more oil - and make dirtier fuels like coal and nuclear seem more
attractive.

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/

LEWIS L SMITH, US ASSN FOR ENERGY ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER - In physical
terms, the answer is "No". In economic terms, the answer is "Yes". But
nobody really knows when, notwithstanding the current outpouring of
fearless forecasts of an early peak for world crude-oil production. The
great majority of the prognosticators lack crucial information with
regard to specific oil fields. As a result, they must base their
forecasts on national data and indirect techniques of estimation. This
is perilous in an industry where current statistics are not very
precise, precise statistics are not very current, much information is a
matter of "national security" and death can come swiftly to the
inquisitive, as certain consulting firms already know.

Worse yet, there exist conflicting versions of certain important time
series, such as the monthly production of crude oil by Saudi Arabia.
Indeed the tendency of most producing countries to lie about their own
oil industries - even to the OPEC Secretariat - is an open secret. Of
those with information "from the mouth of the borehole", very few are
talking, and even fewer know anything about fields outside their own
country. . .

To make a reliable forecast of the "peak oil year" for the whole world,
one must have the following information for all of the major oil fields
— pumping history, injection history [additives, gas, water] and current
information with regard to some 15 physical parameters which describe
each field's present condition. Moreover, one must chose the correct
decline curve for the years past the peak, forecast the success of
exploration, development and production-enhancement activities already
under way, forecast the potential impact of those not yet started and
forecast the impact of new technologies not yet available commercially.
. .

As if the foregoing were not enough, there are three "jokers" in the
"oil deck". The first consists of the enormous fields of stranded
natural gas throughout the world. . .

The second is the mine-mouth conversion of coal into gas. The relevant
technologies are also commercial and spreading slowly. . .

The third consists of the natural gas molecules trapped in the enormous
fields of methane hydrates known to lie beneath the arctic tundra and
the sea floors. It is already technically possible to extract methane
from tundra hydrates, and various enterprises are working on the
remaining problems. Needless to say, some of the gas from these two
sources will eventually be used to produce middle distillates.So the
future supply of diesel, kerosene, nafta and certain other "petroleum
products" does not depend solely on the future supply of crude oil. We
will have middle distillates at least for the foreseeable future, though
not always at the right price. . .

Given the above, the safest thing to say is that world crude-oil
production will peak, sometime between eight o'clock tomorrow morning
and thirty years from now. However, despite so much uncertainty, we can
still make a strong case for drastically reducing the world's dependence
on oil and doing so as quickly as possible. In the first place, there
are the long lead times and long delays which characterize the planning,
permitting, construction and startup of so many energy projects, whether
based on petroleum or on alternate sources of energy. . .

Secondly there are the environmental impacts of fossil-fuel combustion,
even when all current regulations are complied with, which is often not
true. . . Moreover, despite the ostriches in high places who incessantly
repeat the mantra of "junk science" like a stuck record, every day
brings new evidence of global warming. . .

Thirdly there are the hidden costs of petroleum fuels to the economies
which consume them, costs which are widely excluded from their market
prices. In Puerto Rico, we have identified some six different kinds [and
there are probably more]. . .

But the fourth and most important reason of all, is the following. More
than 36% of the world's production of crude oil comes from - and more
than 61% of its "proven" reserves are found in - a region which we may
call "the Oil Belt.". . . This region extends from Algeria to Iran and
includes the Middle East and the Sudan. It is a region full of time
bombs. . . Whenever one of these "bombs" goes off, the price of oil goes
up and doesn't always come back down to where it was before. And it
usually goes up quickly and comes down slowly, as it takes less than two
minutes for news to spread around the world, and less than ten seconds
for oil traders to act on it. . .

In the case, of the USA, it would have been a lot cheaper in both lives
and money to raise gasoline-economy requirements for motor vehicles,
subsidize hybrid vehicles, adopt peak-load pricing for electricity
consumers, push energy conservation hard et cetera than to invade Iraq.

http://www.usaee.org/pdf/aug05.pdf

CHECK THESE OUT

2005-09-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

Wave of Marine Species Extinctions Feared
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082505EA.shtml
Dozens of biologists believe the seas have reached a tipping point, with scores
of species of ocean-dwelling fish, birds and mammals edging toward extinction.
Despite scientists' warnings, only one US saltwater fish has been added to the
list of protected species.

Forest Service Admits 'Serious' Mistake in Logging Rare Tree Preserve
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082505EB.shtml
The Forest Service admitted to making a "serious" mistake that allowed 17 acres
inside a rare tree reserve to be logged as part of the salvage logging of timber
burned by the Biscuit Fire in Oregon in 2002.

Car Owners in the Driver's Seat
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082505EC.shtml
Alternative car activist Felix Kramer explains how an Internet campaign
spearheaded by consumers may finally convince the automotive industry to start
manufacturing Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles and other innovative designs.

Daydreaming Activity Linked to Alzheimer's
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082505HB.shtml
The parts of the brain that young, healthy people use when daydreaming are the
same areas that fail in people who have Alzheimer's disease, researchers
reported on Wednesday in a study that may someday help in preventing or
diagnosing the disease.

A Maverick Union Chief Now in Search of Unity
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082505LA.shtml
Mechanics on strike against Northwest Airlines are not getting the support from
other unions that they would like. Critics say it is because the anti-solidarity
practices of their union, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, are
coming back to haunt them.

Unions Go Abroad in Fight with Wal-Mart
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082505LB.shtml
Union leaders are meeting in Chicago this week to plan a campaign to stop
Wal-Mart from exporting its low-wage jobs across the globe. In Canada, Germany
and Japan, unions are using protests, the courts and political pressure to
thwart the giant retailer's expansion.

USAID Sued over Anti-Prostitution Policy
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082505WA.shtml
A US-based family-planning charity is challenging Washington's
"anti-prostitution" policy, calling it an unconstitutional infringement of
speech that is undermining efforts to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS. The charity's
president said that the policy "represents posturing by American politicians who
are increasingly seen around the world as patronizing, bullying, and obsessed
with sex."

Go directly to our issues page: http://www.truthout.org/issues.shtml

THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE

2005-09-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

TALKING POINTS

The world - and it is a small world indeed - is at your fingertips. Let them do the satellite tracking.

The Age of Surveillance is in full swing, and it is we who are swinging. In contrast to the dystopic visions of yesterday's sci-fi writers, in which the people endure constant surveillance by governments or corporations, today's technologies of surveillance are increasingly decentralized and increasingly publicly available. Mark Crispin Miller's elegant revision of George Orwell -- "Big Brother is you, watching" -- seems strangely apt in a world where it's becoming easier and easier for us to see what our fellow human beings are doing.

The occasion for such ruminating is the advent of Google Earth, a software program that allows the user to view any spot on the globe, from various "altitudes," through the eyes of orbiting satellites. The "streaming" images that Google Earth provides are not quite real-time, but they are three-dimensional, and they include both terrain features and man-made environments. Want to see the Eiffel Tower? Zoom in. Tierra del Fuego or the Sahara? Zoom in.

Since the software is free for public consumption, the technology is not quite what the military enjoys, and the resolution gives out if you zoom in too close. But it is still possible to identify individual cars and individual houses -- or if you choose to "look" at, say, Baghdad, individual bomb craters. The program also supports a kind of bulletin-board system, whereby users can post and read messages regarding various geographic locations and what we might call their incident history. Here is the more stirringly technical version of how Google describes its latest world-conquering innovation:

* Massively scalable architecture publishes terabytes of geo-data to thousands of users from single server cluster

* 3D view provides a complete picture of the area of interest by fusing imagery, elevation data, GIS data, and your own points and annotations

* Fluid and responsive interaction streaming technology enables easy exploration of massive datasets

* Collaboration and sharing are enabled through built in tools to email views, placemarks and annotations using flexible XML format
All this is a natural -- or rather inevitable -- extension, we might suppose, of the inexorable miniaturization and domestication of high-end computer technologies, a process that is making our society seem more like Star Trek every day. And it also seems entirely predictable that, among its other features, Google Earth provides ready information on such geographic features as shopping malls, golf courses, and coffee houses. MapQuest, eat your heart out.

But this goes beyond Google Earth. In part, that's because other companies are getting in on the act. Microsoft, Google's arch-competitor, has released an early version of a program called Virtual Earth, which also combines mapping and searching technologies. And a software company in Palo Alto, A9, is developing a database of "BlockView" images, or street-level photographs of different American cities. Although this project is only available in a beta version, it raises the prospect down the road of somehow combining with satellite viewing programs and making the public presence of just about anyone, just about anywhere, visible to a faceless array of arm-chair watchers.

The broader philosophical and social questions here are not far to seek, but they may be harder to answer than we would expect. How will widely available satellite and photographic imagery change our understanding of public space? The image and the ideal of the agora, from ancient Greece, is one in which public openness enables discourse, commerce, knowledge -- in short, the work of civilization. Can our new image technologies reinvigorate that ideal, or will they pervert it? Who wins and who loses? To what degree will these technologies help to distribute power more broadly, and to what degree will they concentrate power in fewer hands?

One obvious concern is security, with the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands all expressing trepidation over making publicly available imagery of sensitive sites such as nuclear reactors and government buildings. For the time being, at least, these concerns haven't grown to a chorus, but as the technology improves, the move to censor imagery will likely grow.

In the meantime, the more generalized fear is of the loss of privacy we all face, and many people, as Tom Lehrer put it long ago, are "beginning to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." Indeed, it is even possible to argue that what is at stake is our sense of privacy itself -- in other words, that what we will lose is actually the fear of our loss of privacy, and that we will become reconciled to living under the ever-watchful eye of the global panopticon. This darker perspective will be explored in more depth in the next issue of the Uncommon Denominator.

Here, let's first ask whether there are any positive practical implications to public-use surveillance imagery. Given that this particular genie probably won't go back into the bottle, and that those who can profit from it in different military and corporate bureaucracies will continue to expand its use, is there any way in which this technology can be put to good use? What is its democratic potential, its potential for strengthening ordinary people against the encroachments of the powerful?

The best way to approach this question is to ask, What are we not supposed to see? What visual information about the surface of the earth is meant to be kept from public view, and why?

And the answer to these questions leads us quickly to environmental issues.

The physical transformations of the biosphere that modern industrialism and population growth have entailed can be shocking. That is why business interests, and the governments they collude with, go to great lengths to prevent people from seeing such things as agricultural feed-lots, or strip-mines, or logging sites. We're supposed to believe that such places are the unfortunate but inevitable cost of development, and of our lifestyle, but they are not inevitable, and if people could actually lay eyes on them, the potential exists for a mobilization of public sentiment against business-as-usual.

Out of sight, out of mind. In sight, in mind. Here's what a factory farm really looks like, or an offshore oil well. Here are the mountains 5 years ago; here they are after the coal and logging companies got to them. Hmmm…Greenland, as its ice-pack melts, is not looking quite as large as it used to. And let's not forget the grim human environments that have emerged in such places as the slums around Mexico City, Lagos, or Jakarta. All of these places, all of these images, vividly illustrate the patterns and the consequences of modernity humanity's relationship to the world and its resources. They also illustrate the difference in power between the haves and the have-nots.

The politics of visual evidence has deep roots in the American reform tradition. In nineteenth-century abolitionist and temperance literature, reformist authors wanted their readers to visualize the horrors of the plantation and the saloon. With the rise of photography, and its creative use by Jacob Riis, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and others, the realities of both the city tenement and the country farm could be brought home to the American middle class. During the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam war, television images of violence here and abroad shocked many viewers out of their ethical torpor. Today, satellite technology might possess the same potential for showing us, in literal ways, those goings-on in the world which the forces of greed and conservatism would prefer to conceal from us. At present, the technology may not be sufficiently sophisticated to achieve everything we hope, but if we move in that direction, and if we look beyond its merely commercial potential, democratized satellite imagery could begin to shape the environmental debate.

One of the moments that marked a turning point in modern environmental consciousness was the picture taken, from outer space, in the 1960s, of the Earth. This photograph suggested, at a visceral level, that whatever one's political or theological views might be, all humankind inhabited the same blue-green orb sailing through the vast, cold wastes of the universe. Could we be at a juncture where readily available visual access to every spot on the globe, from our next-door neighbor's patio to the tip of Mt. Everest, has a similarly revelatory impact?

CHECK IT OUT

In the spirit of universal surveillance (see "Talking Points" above), we'd like to recommend three websites that provide nitty-gritty information, not just hot air, about the role of money in American politics.

The most in-depth and serious of these sites is OpenSecrets.org, sponsored by the Center for Responsive Politics. It provides vast amounts of financial data regarding contributions to Congressional and Presidential races, corporate PACs, 527 committees, the FEC, lobbyists and legislation, and on and on. Budget time for this site, and be prepared to learn a lot.

Then there's PoliticalMoneyLine, which is not quite as comprehensive, but easier to use and to read. Of particular interest is the Donor Geography map, which allows you easily to zero in on state, then city, then last name, in tracking down the flow of dollars into the electoral process.

Finally, there's FundRace 2004 Neighbor Search, which markets itself as a means "to find those who live near you that have made presidential campaign contributions," and makes it easy to do so. The site also provides a red/blue detailed map of the United States based not on votes but on financial contributions.

Check 'em out.

19TH AMENDMENT ADOPTED:

2005-09-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

August 26, 1920

The 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is formally adopted
into the U.S. Constitution by proclamation of Secretary of State Bainbridge
Colby. The amendment was the culmination of more than 70 years of struggle by
woman suffragists. Its two sections read simply: "The right of citizens of the
United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by
any State on account of sex" and "Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation."America's woman suffrage movement was
founded in the mid 19th century by women who had become politically active
through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848,
200 woman suffragists, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott,
met in Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss women's rights. After approving
measures asserting the right of women to educational and employment
opportunities, they passed a resolution that declared "it is the duty of the
women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective
franchise." For proclaiming a women's right to vote, the Seneca Falls Convention
was subjected to public ridicule, and some backers of women's rights withdrew
their support. However, the resolution marked the beginning of the woman
suffrage movement in America.The first national woman's rights convention was
held in 1850 and then repeated annually, providing an important focus for the
growing woman suffrage movement. In the Reconstruction era, the 15th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution was adopted, granting African American men the right to
vote, but Congress declined to expand enfranchisement into the sphere of gender.
In 1869, the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Susan B. Anthony
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to push for a woman suffrage amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. Another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, led
by Lucy Stone, was formed in the same year to work through the state
legislatures. In 1890, these two groups were united as the National American
Woman Suffrage Association. That year, Wyoming became the first state to grant
women the right to vote.By the beginning of the 20th century, the role of women
in American society was changing drastically: Women were working more, receiving
a better education, bearing fewer children, and three more states (Colorado,
Utah, and Idaho) had yielded to the demand for female enfranchisement. In 1916,
the National Woman's Party (formed in 1913 at the Congressional Union for Woman
Suffrage) decided to adopt a more radical approach to woman suffrage. Instead of
questionnaires and lobbying, its members picketed the White House, marched, and
staged acts of civil disobedience.In 1917, America entered World War I, and
women aided the war effort in various capacities that helped break down most of
the remaining opposition to woman suffrage. By 1918, women had acquired equal
suffrage with men in 15 states, and both the Democratic and Republican parties
openly endorsed female enfranchisement.In January 1918, the woman suffrage
amendment passed the House of Representatives with the necessary two-thirds
majority vote. In June 1919, it was approved by the Senate and sent to the
states for ratification. Campaigns were waged by suffragists around the country
to secure ratification, and on August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state
to ratify the amendment, giving it the two-thirds majority of state ratification
necessary to make it the law of the land.The package containing the certified
record of the action of the Tennessee legislature was sent by train to the
nation's capital, arriving in the early hours of August 26. At 8 a.m. that
morning, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed it without ceremony at his
residence in Washington. None of the leaders of the woman suffrage movement were
present when the proclamation was signed, and no photographers or film cameras
recorded the event. That afternoon, Carrie Chapman Catt, head of the National
American Suffrage Association, was received at the White House by President
Woodrow Wilson and Edith Wilson, the first lady.

Americans Can’t Get Enough | How to Win an Unwinnable War

2005-09-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

Top Stories from AlterNet for August 26, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/
__________________________________________________________________
*** Check out what's new in THE MIX, AlterNet's staff blog!
--> Matthew Wheeland on Bush’s horrible plan for fuel efficiency
http://alternet.org/blogs/themix/24585/

*** The Latest from PEEK, the Best of the Blogs:
--> Evan Derkacz on how TIME helped re-elect Bush
http://alternet.org/blogs/peek/24594/
__________________________________________________________________

NEVER ENOUGH
Laura Barcella, AlterNet
In his book American Mania, a psychiatrist urges us to stop
our endless quest of accumulation -- unless we want to
witness a mass psychological and economic meltdown.
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/24545/

ACHIEVING 'TOTAL VICTORY' IN AN UNWINNABLE WAR
Scott Ritter, AlterNet
Doing what's necessary for a lasting peace in Iraq won't be
easy -- and it doesn't include bringing the troops home
now.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/24599/

WOMEN ON THE LIST
Sheila Gibbons, Women's eNews
Forbes' latest roster of the world's most powerful women
reads like a list of who's not making news.
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/24518/

A DEGREE OF SECURITY
Leah Samuel, ColorLines
Is the government training community college students for
war?
http://www.alternet.org/rights/24547/

EMPATHY, NOT SYMPATHY
Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet
It's time to put the 'War on terror' in historical
perspective.
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/24600/

CRY 'HAVOC' AND LET SLIP THE GODS OF WAR
Will Durst, AlterNet
It's refreshing that at least Pat Roberts is speaking the
truth about our foreign policy.
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/24579/

These stories and more are available on AlterNet.
http://www.alternet.org/

3 on the Environment

2005-09-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Administration Announces Weak New Mileage Standards
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082405EA.shtml
Amidst rising oil and gas prices, the Bush Administration yesterday announced
its new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for light trucks.
Environmentalists say the proposed rule changes will do nothing to help American
motorists at the pump, nor will they reduce America's dependence on imported
oil.

Feds Cut Land for California Tiger Salamander
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082405EB.shtml
Federal wildlife officials said Tuesday that they would cut by nearly half the
amount of land set aside for the California tiger salamander, saying it would be
too costly to restrict development in those areas to protect the threatened
amphibian.

Renewal through Renewable Energies
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082405EC.shtml
Giving just due to the essential role of renewable energies in our societies
that are so very dependent on fossil energies, is long overdue.

GREAT QUOTES / 10

2005-09-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

Here's another group of quotes. It's amazing that I'm already up to #10. Check the archives for #1 thru #9. Enjoy and/or find inspiration, absurdity, inventiveness, etc.....................PEACE................Scott

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more
simply without - Ernest Hemingway

"A day without new knowledge is like a day without sunshine." - Chico McGill

"So this 'ownership society' they like to talk about, it basically means if you've got it you'll be fine; if you don't you're on your own." - Senator Clinton (D-NY) speaking to the Alliance for retired Americans

"When in doubt, tell the truth." - Mark Twain

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities. — Voltaire

"It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious." - Edsel Murphy

When you're finished changing, you're finished. - Benjamin Franklin

"It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars." - Garrison Keillor

There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that
takes a once-captive's new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel
with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land -
Mark Twain

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it". Eugene Debs

"Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it." - Alfred Hitchcock

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. —
Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower

How about a nice Blue Moss?
-- Firesign Theatre

"To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself." - Francis Marion Crawford

ALTERNET NEWS

2005-09-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

INVESTIGATING PAT ROBERTSON
Deborah James, AlterNet
His frightening public call to assassinate Hugo Chávez is
consistent with the U.S. government's hostile stance toward
Venezuela -- but that doesn't mean it should go unpunished.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24541/

HOW TO GET OUT OF IRAQ
Tom Hayden, In These Times
The door is swinging wide open for the peace movement -- and
politicians in the Democratic Party -- to offer an exit
strategy for Iraq.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/24539/

WINTER SOLDIERS' STORIES
Nina Berman, AlterNet
A rereleased 1971 documentary offers firsthand accounts of
Vietnam soldiers who witnessed -- and committed -- barbaric
acts of brutality as part of their 'tour of duty.'
http://www.alternet.org/movies/24437/

CAR OWNERS STRAP IN TO THE DRIVER'S SEAT
Felix Kramer, AlterNet
Hybrid car enthusiasts have stoked their passion through
online discussion communities. Those groups are now shaping
the future of the automobile.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24542/

MAKING THE GRADE: Inspired Ideas for America's Schools

2005-09-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

-->> An AlterNet package exploring modern education: <<--

*COLLEGES THAT GET IT RIGHT
Washington Monthly
What does America need from its universities? A new college
ranking report attempts to answer this question based on
guidelines of social mobility, ethics and service.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24524/

*IN KIDS WE TRUST
Kim Ridley, Ode
A new movement is increasingly grabbing attention:
democratic schools. What happens when children get a say in
their own education?
http://www.alternet.org/story/24548/

*LET'S TALK ABOUT TEXTS
Zack Pelta-Heller, AlterNet
The cost of college textbooks has long been spiraling out of
control. Now, student groups and legislators are working
bring them back down to earth.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24544/

*AMERICA'S TOP 10 GREEN SCHOOLS
Jane Holtz Kay, The Green Guide
These schools are leading the way from the toxic one-room
schoolhouse of yore to holistic and healthy classrooms.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24530/

THE PROGRESS REPORT

2005-09-17T08:05:00.000-07:00

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, and Christy Harvey

August 25, 2005

ENERGY
Administration Fuels High Prices

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Bolton Already Obstructing Reform

UNDER THE RADAR
Go Beyond The Headlines

For news and updates throughout the day, check out our blog at ThinkProgress.org.
Sign up | Contact us | Permalinks/Archive | Mobile | RSS | Print

ENERGY
Administration Fuels High Prices

Yesterday, with gas over $3 a gallon in many areas of the country, the Bush administration unveiled new fuel efficiency standards. The administration proposal squanders an opportunity to reduce demand for fuel - and actually encourages automakers to produce bigger, more fuel inefficient vehicles. Worse, the rules secretly undermine state efforts to do better. California recently approved a plan that "will require a 30 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from cars and light trucks by 2016, a target that will most likely be met by big increases in fuel efficiency." The approach is gaining popularity and "George Pataki of New York and other Eastern governors have pledged to emulate it." But buried on page 150 of the regulations is this provision: "[A] state may not impose a legal requirement relating to fuel economy, whether by statute, regulation or otherwise, that conflicts with this rule. A state law that seeks to reduce motor vehicle carbon dioxide emissions is both expressly and impliedly preempted." In other words, the Bush administration has indicated it is determined to undercut California and all other states seeking to improve the administration's feeble proposal. If the administration is successful we will all pay the price.

ADMINISTRATION THWARTS BILLIONS IN FUEL SAVINGS: The California plan "would save far more at the pump for the state's residents than the White House plan." The plan would deliver Californians "annual net gas savings of more than $1 billion by early next decade." (States like New York, that were expected to adopt similar proposals could have expected similar savings.) In all likelihood, that projection significantly understates the actual savings. It's based on "low projections for gas prices" -- around $1.50 a gallon -- that "woefully understate the potential benefits of fuel efficiency."

NEW FUEL EFFICIENCY STANDARDS ENCOURAGE PRODUCTION OF INEFFICIENT VEHICLES: For the past 30 years "fuel economy regulations have divided each automaker's annual production into two categories, cars and light duty trucks." The new Bush administration regulations "would divide the current light truck fleet [including SUVs] into six classes, with each class being determined by wheelbase (length) and track width (width)." (The largest vehicles -- like the Hummer H2, Ford Excursion, and some models of the Chevy Suburban -- remain completely exempt.) That system "encourages automakers to build larger vehicles in order to qualify for weaker fuel economy standards, resulting in lower fleet wide fuel economy." Thus, even the extraordinarily modest fuel savings that the administration predicts -- 10 billion gallons of gas savings over nearly two decades (less than a month's supply) -- is purely speculative. For example "Ford could add less than an inch to the dimensions of its Explorer Sport Trac and move it from a class with a fuel target of 24.5 m.p.g. to one with 23.3 in 2011 models." Automakers have shown a willingness to game the system in the past: "When the current regulatory system was created three decades ago, 80 percent of the vehicles automakers produced were cars. Today, more than half are light trucks, partly a result of the category's lesser fuel requirements."

EXISTING TECHNOLOGY COULD CREATE REAL SAVINGS: The administration proposal "would raise the fuel economy standards for light trucks - a vehicle category which includes pickup trucks and SUVs - by a trivial 1.8 miles per gallon over the 2008 to 2011 vehicle model years." We can do much, much better. According to the Sierra Club "technology exists today to make all vehicles average 40 miles per gallon fleet wide within ten years. Taking this step would save the average driver $2,200 in fuel savings over the lifetime of their vehicle." Alternatively, a simple, attainable proposal to close the gap in fuel standards between cars and light trucks would "cut fuel costs for truck buyers by at least 25 percent, equivalent to reducing gasoline prices to below $2.00 per gallon from today’s record high of more than $2.60."

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Bolton Already Obstructing Reform

It hasn't taken John Bolton long to undermine U.N. reform efforts. Weeks before world leaders from 170 countries are to gather in New York to discuss "the most sweeping changes at the United Nations in its 60-year history," the U.S. delegation led by Bolton has "thrown the proceedings in turmoil" with demands for a "drastic renegotiation" of the draft reform plan. Never mind that the current document is the result of "nearly a year of intensive negotiations" in which the United States "has been a regular participant" and so "has had a major impact on the document to date." Bolton has decided to introduce at the last minute more than 750 amendments that would "eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations [and] scrap provisions that call for action to halt climate change and urge nuclear powers to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arms." Bolton was sent to the UN not to reform it, but to weaken it, and he’s already hard at work.

SENDING REFORM BACK TO STEP ONE: Bolton has also suggested that one option "would be to return to square one and launch line-by-line negotiations on the document." With diplomats warning that the "most determining factor is shortage of time" between now and September's summit, this strategy is a clear effort to throw a wrench in the gears of U.N. reform. A top U.N. General Assembly today warns of just that: "[T]he big risk now is that [other countries] will see this big shopping list as an opportunity to return with their own shopping lists and then the whole thing may unravel." It seems that Bolton’s real motive is to turn the September world summit into a fiasco, either by making sure that nothing is agreed to, or that the consensus document is devoid of any significant reform.

THE WAR ON THE WAR ON POVERTY: As President Bush has pointed out, "Persistent poverty and oppression can lead to hopelessness and despair. And when governments fail to meet the most basic needs of their people, these failed states can become havens for terror." Yet John Bolton wants to eliminate most of the portions of the draft document that address alleviating global poverty. His amendments "call for striking any mention of the Millennium Development Goals, and the administration has publicly complained that the document's section on poverty is too long." Moreover, Bolton has told foreign delegates that he is concerned "about a provision of the agreement that urges wealthy countries, including the United States, to contribute 0.7 percent of their gross national product in assistance to poor countries."

FOR BOLTON, SIZE MATTERS: The Bush administration's true commitment to U.N. reform can also be judged by the importance it has placed on the draft document's length. The administration's official response to the draft, released earlier this month, includes sentences such as "the document is too long and not worded in a manner that heads of state normally agree to or endorse," "The development section is over 15 pages long," and "the section on security...focuses far too much on disarmament rather than nonproliferation; it is also too long." In recent days, John Bolton has suggested "that the entire document could be scrapped and replaced with a brief statement," or at most "a punchier three-page version." How in the world do you construct a more dynamic and effective U.N. with a three page document? The fact is you don’t.

BOLTON OPPOSES TOUGH POSITION AGAINST GENOCIDE: Apparently the Bush administration hasn't learned the lessons taught by the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the ongoing genocide in Darfur, during which the international community failed to intervene effectively in cases of mass human rights violations. The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration "opposes language that urges the five permanent members of the Security Council not to cast vetoes to halt genocide, war crimes or ethnic cleansing." (American Progress feels differently, and has launched the Responsibility to Protect program to present our case.)

Under the Radar

LEGION DECLARES WAR ON ANTIWAR: The American Legion, a veterans’ organization with 2.7 million members, has “declared war” on antiwar protestors, Editor and Publisher reports. During remarks at the group’s national convention in Honolulu, the Legion’s commander Thomas Cadmus called for an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war, even though they are protected by the Bill of Rights. “The American Legion,” he said, “will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples.” The delegates at the convention then voted to use whatever means necessary to “ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism.”

ENERGY -- HIGHER COST OF GAS MEANS TAXPAYERS PAYING MORE TO TRANSPORT BUSH: Rising gas prices means that it costs more to transport President Bush and his staff. Unlike most Americans, Bush doesn't have to foot the bill. "Almost every vehicle Bush uses is custom-made to add security and communications capabilities, and the heavier weight of these guzzlers further drives up gas and jet fuel costs." The White House refused a request for comment on the overall effect of higher fuel prices on its budget. While Bush may not have much say over the types of transportation his entourage uses, Bush drives a Ford F250 pickup truck on his ranch in Crawford that requires approximately $75 to fill the tank. The AP writes, "Reducing his appearances outside the White House and making other gestures toward fuel conservation could help cut down on costs."

NATIONAL SECURITY -- CIA LEAK INVESTIGATION PROVIDES VALUABLE GLIMPSE INTO SMEAR TACTICS OF WHITE HOUSE: The Los Angeles Times reports that the information which has become public to date through the investigation of the Valerie Plame outing reveals a White House that is adept at smearing its critics. "Beyond the whodunit, the affair raises questions about the credibility of the Bush White House, the tactics it employs against political opponents and the justification it used for going to war." Meanwhile, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin continues to reinvent facts in an effort to defend his client. "The one thing that's absolutely clear is that Karl was not the source for the leak and there's no basis for any additional speculation," Luskin said. Recall this is the same Luskin who said Rove "did not disclose any confidential information about anybody to [Time reporter Matt] Cooper" and that Rove had testified "absolutely truthfully" about all his conversations with reporters about Plame.

BAD NEWS FOR THE HOUSING BOOM: The New York Times reported this morning that rents are again rising across the country—an indication that the housing boom could be reaching its peak. According to Global Real Analytics, a research company in San Francisco, rents in about 85% of large metropolitan areas climbed last year. With mortgage rates growing, the rise in rent is a sign that people are increasingly looking to lease apartments and houses rather than buy. Indeed, a government report issued yesterday seems to second that idea: while the price of a newly built home rose over winter and spring, it fell by more than 15,000 dollars from June to July.

IRAQ -- MORE MIXED MESSAGES ON TROOP WITHDRAWALS: The Financial Times reports that General Douglas Lute, director of operations at CENTCOM, said yesterday that the U.S. could be expected to pull a significant number of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months. Citing General John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. troops in the region, Lute maintained that the reductions would be part of a general effort shift the burden to Iraqi forces. Said Lute: “We believe at some point, in order to break this dependence on the…coalition, you simply have to back off and let the Iraqis step forward.” But two weeks ago, President Bush said that no decision has yet been made on troop withdrawals. And just yesterday, Bush said that an immediate withdrawal would “only embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America and free nations.” “So long as I'm the President,” Bush continued, “we will stay, we will fight, and we will win the war on terror.”

A New Future for American Education

2005-09-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

Campaign for America's Future | www.ourfuture.org

Getting Smarter, Becoming Fairer

With just a slight shift in priorities, America can give every child the opportunity to succeed. The Institute for America's Future and the Center for American Progress have charted a new direction for the future of American public education. Please take a moment to see our new solutions and challenge your member of Congress to join you in fighting for them. GO »

As our children go back to school this fall, they begin a school year defined by the needs of a 19th century agricultural society, and enter classrooms structured to fit the assembly line needs of an early 20th century industrial society. It's no wonder so many of our kids aren't getting the education they need to thrive in the global economy of the 21st century.

The President's approach to education reform -- in the wake of No Child Left Behind -- has focused more on how to measure failure than on the transformations needed for success. The president is failing to fully fund his own flawed program by $39 billion and continues to break his promise to raise Pell Grants, the central college aid program. Adding insult to injury, conservatives in Congress are pushing an education budget that won't even keep up with inflation, while spending $4 billion a month in Iraq and pushing to eliminate taxes on the estates of the wealthiest Americans.

America's public schools need reforms that will ensure students gain the tools and opportunities they need to succeed. Along with our partners at the Center for American Progress, we are pleased to introduce Getting Smarter, Becoming Fairer: A Progressive Education Agenda for a Stronger Nation -- the product of a remarkable task force of business, academic and political leaders.

Please take a moment to learn more about the bold solutions we've proposed and challenge your member of Congress to join you in fighting for them.

http://www.ourfuture.org/education_solutions.cfm

Our new progressive education agenda calls for...

More Learning Time: Every student has a right to quality pre-school and kindergarten, after-school educational opportunities and a school year that maximizes learning.

Quality Teachers and Principals: All students have a right to be taught by skilled educators. Every teacher and principal should receive high quality training before they enter school, have on-the-job training opportunities and be rewarded for excellence. With teachers in high demand in the modern economy, we will need to pay them more, and provide them with career opportunities, if we hope to retain the best.

An Equal Education: Every student has the right to learn on equal footing with their peers -- undistracted by health, housing and other economic and social concerns. The savage inequality in school funding must be challenged, and teachers should receive financial incentives to teach in the schools with the most at risk children.

A Quality, Rigorous Education: Every student should be provided a quality education, with demanding curriculum standards in core subject areas. Voluntary national standards can help parents hold schools accountable.

Affordable College: No student should be priced out of the college or advanced technical training they need to succeed in the modern economy.

Please take a moment to learn more about the new progressive vision for public education and challenge your Representative and Senators to fight for solutions that put American children back at the top of our country's list of priorities.

http://www.ourfuture.org/education_solutions.cfm

The right to a high quality public education is central to the American promise. Equal education depends on providing every child with the tools to learn and the opportunity to succeed. The right wing assault on public education, its continued opposition to the investment that we need and its preference for subsidizing private schools rather than building modern, first class public schools is a disservice to our nation's children. Conservatives would punish schools for their failure rather than provide the reforms and resources needed to make them succeed. Our children pay the price for their folly.

The current state of American public education speaks poignantly to the need for new solutions. Too many poor children lack adequate nutrition. An astonishing 14 million children are left to take care of themselves alone after the school day ends. We're losing one-third of our new teachers after only three years. The poorest students with the greatest needs get the most inexperienced teachers, often with no certification in the subjects they teach. And, college costs are soaring out of reach for more and more working families.

There is another way. Please take a look at our bold reform agenda, help us get it in front of lawmakers' eyes, and challenge them to endorse and champion a new direction. It is time to put our children first.

http://www.ourfuture.org/education_solutions.cfm

Thank you so much for helping us open a new era of progressive reform, so that we may ensure that No Child Left Behind is a reality, not a rhetorical throwaway line.

Sincerely,

Robert L. Borosage, Co-Director
Campaign for America's Future

CATCHING UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-09-12T04:56:00.000-07:00

Well it certainly is time consuming trying to get caught up. I took some time off to concentrate on my campaign for Western District V.P. of the UBC. That went down in defeat in Las Vegas on August 25th. I then came jome to a new job and just trying to recover from the time and energy spent over the last 4 months preparing for the convention and election. We didn't get what we wanted but we made a difference. I will be posting a complete report when I finally get around to writing it. I will do that shortly. I was hoping to get caught up to Katrina this weekend but I didn't quite make it. Time has a way of getting away from you when you let life intrude like having a grandsons birthday and having to take them to baseball games and such things..............LOL.............Anyway, I have to go to work and I'll continue to get caught up as time allows. Thanks for the comments from everyone and keep spreading the word...........PEACE.............Scott

Questioning the President

2005-09-12T04:53:00.000-07:00

Questioning the President
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com

Thursday 25 August 2005

A servile Congress has let Bush go on permanent vacation. But with US security hanging in the balance, it's time to ask the hard-hitting questions.

President Bush talks to the press with Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne in Donnelly, Idaho, Tuesday.

President Bush took a brief break this week from his monthlong vacation to deliver speeches in Utah and Idaho calling for staying the course in Iraq. Because American soldiers have died there, we must continue. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for," Bush said in Salt Lake City on Monday.

He moved his vacationing in between to the Tamarack Resort in Donnelly, Idaho, where he made a short statement to the traveling White House press corps. He described the drafting of the Iraqi constitution as an "amazing event" in its guarantees of democracy and women's rights, and compared its deliberations to those at the Philadelphia convention that gave rise to the U.S. Constitution. "We had a little trouble with our own conventions writing a constitution," he said. Then he took a few questions.

"She expressed her opinion. I disagree with it," Bush said about Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a 24-year-old soldier killed in Iraq, who had camped outside the president's ranch asking for a meeting to hear her critical comments on the war. "I met with a lot of families. She doesn't represent the view of a lot of the families I have met with. And I'll continue to meet with families."

Later, Bush asked, "We've got somebody from Fox here, somebody told me?"

"Does the administration's goal -- I'll ask you about the Iraqi constitution. You said you're confident that it will honor the rights of women."

"Yes."

"If it's rooted in Islam, as it seems it will be -- is there still the possibility of honoring the rights of women?"

"I've talked to Condi, and there is not -- as I understand it, the way the constitution is written is that women have got rights, inherent rights recognized in the constitution, and that the constitution talks about, you know, not 'the religion,' but 'a religion.' Twenty-five percent of the assembly is going to be women, which is a -- is embedded in the constitution. OK. It's been a pleasure."

"What else are you going to do? Are you going to bike today?"

"I may bike today. Been on the phone all morning. Spent a little time with the CIA man this morning, catching up on the events of the world. And, as I said, I talked to Condi a couple of times. And tonight I'm going to be dining with the governor and the delegation from Idaho; spend a little quality time with the first lady here in this beautiful part of the world. May go for a bike ride."

"Fishing?"

"I don't know yet. I haven't made up my mind yet. I'm kind of hanging loose, as they say." With that, the questions ended and the vacation continued.

While Bush has allowed only abbreviated and controlled access for the press, he has been coddled by the Republican Congress, despite the spike in public disapproval of his conduct of the Iraq war.

In February 1966, Sen. J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, held the first hearings on the Vietnam War, which were televised nationally for six days. The public was riveted by the penetrating questioning of administration officials and the debates among the members of the committee. Fulbright had been a friend of President Lyndon Johnson for years. Johnson, after all, had been the Senate majority leader, and Fulbright was a fellow Southerner. But the escalation of the war and the absence of a clear strategy of resolution prompted Fulbright to call the hearings. He held additional hearings in August 1966, in October-November of 1967 and, when Richard Nixon became president, in April-May 1971 for 11 days. Fulbright believed that it was his constitutional duty to exercise oversight of the executive.

No similar Senate hearings on the origins, conduct and strategy of the Iraq war have been held. During the Johnson period, the Democrats controlled both chambers of the Congress. But Fulbright did not feel that partisan discipline under the whip of the White House was a higher principle than performing as a check and balance. Fulbright was a Democrat raising pointed questions about the policy of a Democratic president. But no Republican Senate chairman has seen fit to follow the Fulbright example. The one-party Republican rule of the Congress has resulted in the stifling of inquiry. Abandoning its powers and duties, the Republican Senate as a body refuses to hold the executive accountable.

The Democrats, suffering the debilities of the minority, are a congressional party without authority to initiate committee hearings. They cannot set an agenda or command television cameras. Their Republican colleagues have shunted them to the sidelines; the White House is deaf to their entreaties. Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, after fact-finding missions to Iraq, has offered numerous ideas to the administration, none of which have been accepted. Biden's good-faith effort at offering helpful practical advice has been ignored as though he had said nothing.

The opposition party cries in the wilderness. There is no specific policy on Iraq coming from the Democrats that the administration will heed other than blind support. It is impossible for the Democrats to be expected to arrive at answers to problems about which they, like the public, have been denied essential information. Why should Democrats produce polished answers when the administration won't or can't explain itself? Developing hard-and-fast positions on particular difficulties in Iraq will not make the White House hear them. The Democrats' greatest potential strength now is simply to ask questions.

The unanswered questions of consequence that might be asked, if there were a responsible Congress to pose them, are many, extending from Iraq to Iran, from public diplomacy to intelligence, and to the fate of our military.

On Iraq: Why was it necessary for the Bush administration to impose an arbitrary deadline on the drafting of the Iraqi constitution, the single most important document for a new Iraq? The constitution appears to undermine the administration's commitment to a unitary state and to democracy, and enshrines Islamic law as a basis of governmental legitimacy. Why didn't the administration allow the Iraqi communities to attempt to arrive at acceptable compromises on their own timetable?

Recent reports, including in the Washington Post, document the growth of sectarian militias that engage routinely in abductions, assassinations and other violence against domestic opponents. In many towns and cities, these militias have supplanted or run national security and police forces. What plans does the administration have to contain or disband them? Are there any plans for integrating these militias into national security forces so that they lose their sectarian identity and command structure? If there are no such plans, what analyses has the administration done to determine the future effectiveness of an Iraqi national security force in this environment?

On the U.S. military: Retired four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey, reflecting the views of many senior officers, has stated that "the wheels are going to come off" the military in Iraq in 24 months and that the Reserve and National Guard systems are approaching meltdown. What is the administration's strategy for ensuring combat readiness and preparedness? Are the various conflicting statements by administration and military commanders on the withdrawals of some troops dictated by this meltdown or by some assessment, not yet publicly articulated, of the security conditions in Iraq?

Gen. Schoomaker, the chief of staff of the Army, has declared that U.S. troops may be stationed in Iraq for at least four more years. Where will these troops be found?

As of May 2005, the U.S. military has plans to build four large bases in Iraq -- each designed to hold a brigade-size combat team, aviation units and other support personnel -- that have the air of permanence. Does the administration intend to establish these as permanent U.S. bases? What is the long-term strategy behind their construction? How will the current levels of U.S. forces in the region extended over a period of six years affect other potential security contingencies?

On Iran: When asked about military action, President Bush has stated that all options are on the table regarding Iran. Has the administration drawn up military options? What are the assessments of military analysts of likely outcomes in exercising such options?

The administration has emphasized that Iran is a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, a major supporter of terrorism, and a notorious violator of human rights. Recent reports in the press have documented that Iran is the principal funder of the leading Shiite political parties and militias in Iraq. Iran has also expanded its influence in Lebanon through Hezbollah's gains in legislative elections. What assessments has the administration made about Iran's response to any U.S. military action against it?

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has declared he would not support such an action. Which allies have agreed to support the administration's military option in Iran? What responses has the administration planned to deal with a military action against Iran within international bodies including the United Nations Security Council and NATO?

On U.S. intelligence: Has the administration commissioned a National Intelligence Estimate for military options against Iran? Has the new director of national intelligence John Negroponte assured the intelligence community that its objectivity and integrity will be protected from any political pressure? Will the DNI prominently raise caveats from intelligence analysts where there are disagreements? Will any new NIE be shared with the Congress in a timely fashion before any debate of any action is undertaken?

The administration has used Republican members of the House of Representatives in the past to attack senators of both parties for raising serious questions about the administration's policies. (Rep. Duncan Hunter's attack on Sen. John Warner for conducting hearings on Abu Ghraib is a notable example.) Will the president take steps to ensure that the oversight responsibilities of the Congress are not compromised or inhibited? Will he make every effort to inform his political aides that they are not to interfere with the congressional oversight process so that information and analysis are not twisted by political criteria?

On oil: The president recently signed an energy bill that provided no new measures for lessening U.S. dependence on foreign oil. In the absence of a commitment to achieve more energy independence, what measures does the administration propose to Arab nations to guarantee a steady supply and stable price of oil? The administration's advocacy of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration would have only a marginal and transient impact. What conservation measures does the administration propose?

On U.S. alliances: A number of member states in the coalition involved in the Iraq war and occupation have withdrawn their troops. Has the administration drawn up plans for our military to fill these gaps now and in the future? What policies does the administration plan to create a more cooperative environment, especially within the Western alliance? Does the president plan to consult fully with our historic allies on military options in the future? Has the administration shared its military options involving Iran with key allies? If the administration does not plan to change its policies on extra-legal actions, such as going to war without advance consultation, how does it propose to strengthen our traditional alliances? With Iran and Iraq under the sway of Shia fundamentalism, how does the administration plan to encourage the cooperation of other Arab nations in the region?

On public diplomacy: Longtime Bush political aide Karen Hughes has recently been confirmed as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Two previous appointees have resigned this post in frustration. With U.S. prestige at an all-time low throughout the world, according to several polls conducted by independent organizations such as the Pew Trust and the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Institute, what policies does the administration plan to change to reverse this trend?

Given that the draft Iraqi constitution enshrines Shiite Islamic law restricting the rights of women, how does the new undersecretary explain the administration's acquiescence in such an obviously undemocratic development? How does the undersecretary explain the administration's goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East given that the process of constitution drafting in Iraq has alienated secular Iraqis, Sunnis and Kurds and aligned the U.S. with the dominant Shiite factions heavily influenced by Iran? In pursuing its stated goal of democratization the administration has particularly focused on Sunni-ruled nations -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. What does the undersecretary offer as incentives to these nations in the light of the administration's failure to protect Sunni and women's rights in Iraq?

The Pentagon continues to block a federal court order to publicly release photographs and videotapes of torture committed at the Abu Ghraib prison. The president has threatened to veto the military appropriations bill if an amendment sponsored by three Republican senators, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner, that would outlaw torture and abuse of prisoners is attached. How does the administration foresee any change in the international perception of the U.S. image if it continues to follow these policies?

The president's policy has involved his abrogation of U.S. adherence to the Geneva Conventions that protect prisoners against torture. Will the administration pledge to comply with these conventions in the future? Will the administration permit the International Red Cross unfettered access to all prisoners under U.S. supervision?

These are only some of the pressing questions that might be asked by members of Congress. The Republican Congress has left a vacuum of responsibility. Raising these matters would not merely foster necessary public debate. It would stir to life the legislative branch and begin to show what an energetic Democratic majority might do on the public's behalf.

Sen. Fulbright was the first to critique the pathology of the imperial presidency that he called "the arrogance of power." He also stands as a political exemplar. Fulbright's fearlessness, skepticism and precision present a historical model for the Democrats, even if they lack his committee chairmanship.

Only by asking questions can the Democrats hope to determine the substance of Bush's increasingly evanescent and futile policies to which they are supposed to respond. Only by asking questions can they demonstrate that they understand the nature of the Congress and should be granted control in it. Question time is their opportunity and obligation.

--------

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

American Legion Declares War on Protestors - Media Next?

2005-09-12T04:50:00.000-07:00

Editor & Publisher

Wednesday 24 August 2005

New York - The American Legion, which has 2.7 million members, has declared war on antiwar protestors, and the media could be next. Speaking at its national convention in Honolulu, the group's national commander called for an end to all "public protests" and "media events" against the war, even though they are protected by the Bill of Rights.

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.

The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

In his speech, Cadmus declared: "It would be tragic if the freedoms our veterans fought so valiantly to protect would be used against their successors today as they battle terrorists bent on our destruction."

He explained, "No one respects the right to protest more than one who has fought for it, but we hope that Americans will present their views in correspondence to their elected officials rather than by public media events guaranteed to be picked up and used as tools of encouragement by our enemies." This might suggest to some, however, that American freedoms are worth dying for but not exercising.

Without mentioning any current protestor, such as Cindy Sheehan, by name, Cadmus recalled: "For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories. We must never let that happen again….

"We had hoped that the lessons learned from the Vietnam War would be clear to our fellow citizens. Public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm's way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies."

Resolution 3, which was passed unanimously by 4,000 delegates to the annual event, states: "The American Legion fully supports the president of the United States, the United States Congress and the men, women and leadership of our armed forces as they are engaged in the global war on terrorism and the troops who are engaged in protecting our values and way of life."

Cadmus advised: "Let's not repeat the mistakes of our past. I urge all Americans to rally around our armed forces and remember our fellow Americans who were viciously murdered on Sept. 11, 2001."

Conservative Revolutionary American Party

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