I posted this up on LJ and my blog and a bunch of other places, so if you've already seen it there, sorry.
Ok... so I'm reading The Elegant Universe and I was thinking about Special Relativity... Bear with me here, while i try to phrase this question. So, objects are always moving at light speed through the (so-called) 4th dimension (Time) and what we think of as motion is really just a measure of how much of an object's speed is being diverted to the passage through the other three dimensions. Therefore, a photon that was created at the Big Bang is always the same age because it is always moving at light speed... but how is this possible? The photon is moving around the other 3 dimensions of the universe. I can see the glow of my montor, I can see around my room, which tells me that light is reaching earth and my eyes. And since nothing is stationary, this light is moving. So it is diverting some of it's speed (in fact, all of it's speed since nothing is faster than light) towards motion through space. I am moving through spacetime, I am aging, I am seeing light. So light must move through time, even if it does not decay. Otherwise, if light doesn't age, then all points in time are really the same and time does not exist... which is a logical impossiblilty since time obviously exists. So how can we say time does not age?
Similarly, what about photons 'created' after the Big Bang? (I know Matter is neither created nor destroyed but yoy see what I'm getting at.) Are they the same age as the ones 'created' at the Big Bang? They can't be, because they were created at different points in 'time' but time has no meaning for something that does not age...
So, are we saying that since all of light's speed is diverted through moving through space that it does not actually move through time? Because that seems to me as a logical impossiblilty, too. The light changes during the course of a day... and I understand that objects in motion experience time differently, but time is still progressing, just at a difference perceptual rate for different objects. My "clone" moving at twice my speed through spacetime would experience the same lifespan and events as I do, just at what would seem faster to me. And I would seem slower to them. But time is still passing!
And I have to say the definition of the word 'time' as the measure of a certain number of cycles on a clock is utterly idiotic. Yes, I know to truly define time requires a linguistic jump that we can't make and that is the most bare bones definition we can get but come on... the definition defies your own logics. Clocks have ticked and time has passed since the Big Bang yet light has not aged... it's not possible.
I really need to not argue with Einstien.
Anyway, if there are any total math and/or science nerds on my friend's list who can help me understand this, I'd be much obliged. Thanks.
Friday, December 10, 2004
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
30 things to do
30 things to do before the inauguration:
1. Get that abortion you've always wanted.
2. Drink a nice clean glass of water.
3. Cash your social security check.
4. See a doctor of your own choosing.
5. Spend quality time with your draft age child/grandchild.
6. Visit Syria, or any foreign country for that matter.
7. Get that gas mask you've been putting off buying.
8. Hoard gasoline.
9. Practice a religion of your own choosing.
10. Borrow books from library before they're banned - Constitutional law books, Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, Tropic of Cancer, etc.
11. If you have an idea for an art piece involving a crucifix - do it now.
12. Come out - then go back in - HURRY!
13. Jam in all the Alzheimer's stem cell research you can.
14. Stay out late before the curfews start.
15. Go see Bruce Springsteen before he has his "accident".
16. Go see Mount Rushmore before the Reagan addition.
17. Use the phrase - "you can't do that - this is America".
18. If you're white - marry a black person, if you're black - marry a white person.
19. Take a walk in Yosemite, without being hit by a snowmobile or a base-jumper.
20. Enroll your kid in an accelerated art or music class.
21. Start your school day without a prayer.
22. Pass on the secrets of evolution to future generations.
23. Learn French.
24. Attend a commitment ceremony with your gay friends.
25. Take a factory tour anywhere in the US.
26. Try to take photographs of animals on the endangered species list.
27. Visit Florida before the polar ice caps melt.
28. Visit Nevada before it becomes radioactive.
29. Visit Alaska before "The Big Spill".
30. Visit Massachusetts while it is still a State
1. Get that abortion you've always wanted.
2. Drink a nice clean glass of water.
3. Cash your social security check.
4. See a doctor of your own choosing.
5. Spend quality time with your draft age child/grandchild.
6. Visit Syria, or any foreign country for that matter.
7. Get that gas mask you've been putting off buying.
8. Hoard gasoline.
9. Practice a religion of your own choosing.
10. Borrow books from library before they're banned - Constitutional law books, Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, Tropic of Cancer, etc.
11. If you have an idea for an art piece involving a crucifix - do it now.
12. Come out - then go back in - HURRY!
13. Jam in all the Alzheimer's stem cell research you can.
14. Stay out late before the curfews start.
15. Go see Bruce Springsteen before he has his "accident".
16. Go see Mount Rushmore before the Reagan addition.
17. Use the phrase - "you can't do that - this is America".
18. If you're white - marry a black person, if you're black - marry a white person.
19. Take a walk in Yosemite, without being hit by a snowmobile or a base-jumper.
20. Enroll your kid in an accelerated art or music class.
21. Start your school day without a prayer.
22. Pass on the secrets of evolution to future generations.
23. Learn French.
24. Attend a commitment ceremony with your gay friends.
25. Take a factory tour anywhere in the US.
26. Try to take photographs of animals on the endangered species list.
27. Visit Florida before the polar ice caps melt.
28. Visit Nevada before it becomes radioactive.
29. Visit Alaska before "The Big Spill".
30. Visit Massachusetts while it is still a State
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
The lion man
I just laughed so hard I cried....
The story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6396422 -or- [http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1163530.html
The (hilarious) pics: http://www.local6.com/slideshow/news/3887895/detail.html?qs=;s=1;p=news;dm=ss;w=320
And as a tease... try to guess what the moron is doing with the lion before you read the story...
The story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6396422 -or- [http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1163530.html
The (hilarious) pics: http://www.local6.com/slideshow/news/3887895/detail.html?qs=;s=1;p=news;dm=ss;w=320
And as a tease... try to guess what the moron is doing with the lion before you read the story...
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Holy crap, this is the best thing I have ever heard in my life... how did I miss this????
The CNN.com story
This has to be a hoax...
The CNN.com story
This has to be a hoax...
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
FBI Informant attempts suicide at White House
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An FBI informant who set himself on fire in a suicide attempt Monday has been upgraded to serious condition at Washington Hospital Center, a spokesman said. He tried to ignite himself in front of the White House.
The FBI refused to discuss the matter.
Government sources confirmed Mohamed Alanssi has been an FBI informant for several years, as he claimed in a letter sent to The Washington Post. In that letter, Alanssi threatened to commit suicide because, he said, he was unhappy with the way the FBI treated him.
Alanssi had recently conducted several interviews with the Post about his life as an informant. He did so after his name was leaked to the media -- an action that he said resulted in harassment of his family in Yemen.
The government sources said Alanssi was a key informant in the arrest of Mohammed Al Moayad, a fellow Yemeni who was taken into custody last year in a sting operation in Frankfurt, Germany.
Facing charges in the United States, Moayad is accused of raising funds and providing material support for terrorist organizations. Alanssi was scheduled to testify in January at Moayad's trial in New York.
The sources said a claim by Alanssi that the FBI paid him $100,000 last year for his efforts is "about right."
In his letter to the Post, he said he had wanted to see his family, which still resides in Yemen, before testifying. He claimed the FBI agent in charge of his case ignored "my request to see my family. He doesn't care about mine and my family's lives."
The government sources said Alanssi's request was not ignored and that several options were proposed to him. They said one possibility was having him meet his family not in Yemen but in another country they refused to name for "security reasons."
Alanssi saw it differently, saying in his letter, "At the end this is the reward from FBI for my cooperate (sic) with them for capturing the bad people who linked with Al-Qaeda."
Officials said Alanssi first came to the United States from Yemen on July 23, 2001, arriving on a tourist visa in New York, and left on January 7, 2002. When he returned from Yemen on October 21, 2002, he was met at New York's JFK Airport by the FBI, which took custody of him, took his Yemeni passport and granted him "humanitarian parole."
Such unusual status is generally given to people who are in the United States for urgent medical reasons but may also be granted to someone who will provide a "significant public benefit," which sources said could include assisting law enforcement agencies.
The FBI refused to discuss the matter.
Government sources confirmed Mohamed Alanssi has been an FBI informant for several years, as he claimed in a letter sent to The Washington Post. In that letter, Alanssi threatened to commit suicide because, he said, he was unhappy with the way the FBI treated him.
Alanssi had recently conducted several interviews with the Post about his life as an informant. He did so after his name was leaked to the media -- an action that he said resulted in harassment of his family in Yemen.
The government sources said Alanssi was a key informant in the arrest of Mohammed Al Moayad, a fellow Yemeni who was taken into custody last year in a sting operation in Frankfurt, Germany.
Facing charges in the United States, Moayad is accused of raising funds and providing material support for terrorist organizations. Alanssi was scheduled to testify in January at Moayad's trial in New York.
The sources said a claim by Alanssi that the FBI paid him $100,000 last year for his efforts is "about right."
In his letter to the Post, he said he had wanted to see his family, which still resides in Yemen, before testifying. He claimed the FBI agent in charge of his case ignored "my request to see my family. He doesn't care about mine and my family's lives."
The government sources said Alanssi's request was not ignored and that several options were proposed to him. They said one possibility was having him meet his family not in Yemen but in another country they refused to name for "security reasons."
Alanssi saw it differently, saying in his letter, "At the end this is the reward from FBI for my cooperate (sic) with them for capturing the bad people who linked with Al-Qaeda."
Officials said Alanssi first came to the United States from Yemen on July 23, 2001, arriving on a tourist visa in New York, and left on January 7, 2002. When he returned from Yemen on October 21, 2002, he was met at New York's JFK Airport by the FBI, which took custody of him, took his Yemeni passport and granted him "humanitarian parole."
Such unusual status is generally given to people who are in the United States for urgent medical reasons but may also be granted to someone who will provide a "significant public benefit," which sources said could include assisting law enforcement agencies.
Oppose the national id card plan
ACLU, Conservative and Liberal Allies Denounce National ID Card Plan in Intelligence Reform Bill
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today joined with organizations from across the political spectrum to run a full-page open letter advertisement in the Washington Times, asking the conference committee on intelligence reform to remove the national ID provisions from its final 9/11 intelligence reform legislation. The conferees are currently working to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill.
"When groups this diverse unite against an issue, it is clearly about poor policy - not partisan politics," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "A national ID is a bad idea. It would strip Americans of their rights to privacy while doing nothing to protect America from future terrorist attacks."
The ad urges the committee to remove provisions from the final intelligence reform package that would create a national ID card. A national ID card, the open letter says, would create an unprecedented invasion of the privacy rights guaranteed by the Constitution and would allow the government to constantly monitor everyone with a driver’s license or identification card.
A national ID card would do little to stop terrorist attacks and would cost billions of dollars to develop and implement. Similar attempts to create a national ID were rejected by every Congress and Administration that has considered it since President Ronald Reagan.
In addition, the creation of a national ID card system would not prevent the use of faulty documents, such as birth certificates, to obtain government ID. Such a system would not have thwarted the September 11 hijackers, many of whom reportedly had identification documents on them, and were in the country legally.
The letter was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, American Library Association, Gun Owners of America, Republican Liberty Caucus, American Immigration Lawyers Association, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Free Congress Foundation, and approximately 40 other organizations.
"We all want a country that is as safe as possible," said Marvin Johnson, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "But ‘Big Brother’ provisions such as a national ID card would only serve to restrict our freedoms and invade our privacy and do nothing to ensure our security."
To view the advertisement, go to:
See advertisement here
ACLU statement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today joined with organizations from across the political spectrum to run a full-page open letter advertisement in the Washington Times, asking the conference committee on intelligence reform to remove the national ID provisions from its final 9/11 intelligence reform legislation. The conferees are currently working to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill.
"When groups this diverse unite against an issue, it is clearly about poor policy - not partisan politics," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "A national ID is a bad idea. It would strip Americans of their rights to privacy while doing nothing to protect America from future terrorist attacks."
The ad urges the committee to remove provisions from the final intelligence reform package that would create a national ID card. A national ID card, the open letter says, would create an unprecedented invasion of the privacy rights guaranteed by the Constitution and would allow the government to constantly monitor everyone with a driver’s license or identification card.
A national ID card would do little to stop terrorist attacks and would cost billions of dollars to develop and implement. Similar attempts to create a national ID were rejected by every Congress and Administration that has considered it since President Ronald Reagan.
In addition, the creation of a national ID card system would not prevent the use of faulty documents, such as birth certificates, to obtain government ID. Such a system would not have thwarted the September 11 hijackers, many of whom reportedly had identification documents on them, and were in the country legally.
The letter was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, American Library Association, Gun Owners of America, Republican Liberty Caucus, American Immigration Lawyers Association, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Free Congress Foundation, and approximately 40 other organizations.
"We all want a country that is as safe as possible," said Marvin Johnson, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "But ‘Big Brother’ provisions such as a national ID card would only serve to restrict our freedoms and invade our privacy and do nothing to ensure our security."
To view the advertisement, go to:
See advertisement here
ACLU statement
Saturday, November 13, 2004
They managed to find an attorney general worse than Ashcroft
ACLU Calls for Full and Thorough Gonzales Confirmation Hearings; Says Senators Should Press on 9/11-Related Issues and Reproductive Rights
November 10, 2004
Statement of Anthony Romero, ACLU Executive Director
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union stands by its 80-year record of uncompromising non-partisanship. Accordingly, the ACLU takes no official position on the appointment of Mr. Alberto Gonzales to replace Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The board, staff and more than 400,000 members of the ACLU do call, however, for a full and thorough Senate confirmation process that scrutinizes Mr. Gonzales' positions on key civil liberties and human rights issues. Particular attention should be devoted to exploring Mr. Gonzales' proposed policies on the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, the Guantanamo Bay detentions, the designation of United States citizens as enemy combatants and reproductive rights.
Mr. Gonzales should be queried, moreover, on his January 25, 2002 memo, authored in his capacity as White House counsel, which described certain legal protections guaranteed in the Geneva Conventions to persons captured during military hostilities as "obsolete" and "quaint." His confirmation hearings should also examine in detail Mr. Gonzales’ approval of the now-disavowed Justice Department memoranda that condoned the torture and incommunicado and indefinite detention of detainees captured during the Afghanistan conflict.
It is the Senate’s duty to make certain that the next Attorney General is committed to enforcing the civil rights laws that are critical to protecting the American value of fairness. It is imperative that the Senate demands that the next leader of the Department of Justice restore the strength and integrity of the Civil Rights Division.
John Ashcroft’s tenure has made clear that the post of Attorney General holds the key to our most fundamental freedoms. It is not enough for the White House to simply put a fresh face on the same old policies of violating civil liberties and human rights. Members of the Senate must ensure that any Attorney General will understand, respect, and uphold the basic rights of our democracy.
ACLU on Gonzales
ACLU Calls On President to Appoint Fair-Minded Replacement for Ashcroft; New Attorney General Must Ensure America Remains Safe and Free
November 9, 2004
Statement of Anthony D. Romero,
ACLU Executive Director
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON -- The Attorney General is the nation’s official guardian of civil liberties but during his tenure, Attorney General John Ashcroft has been one of the most divisive forces in the entire Bush Administration. Mr. Ashcroft's legacy has been an open hostility to protecting civil liberties and an outright disdain for those who dare to question his policies. We need to do more than just replace John Ashcroft; we need a wholesale reexamination of Justice Department policies that trample on civil liberties and human rights.
In his pursuit of a radical agenda, Mr. Ashcroft has insisted that the U.S. government could unilaterally detain American citizens without charge and access to counsel. He has also trampled on the rights of immigrants and, in the face of a scathing report from his own inspector general, Mr. Ashcroft merely uttered triumphal statements that showed no remorse. Before Congress, Ashcroft resisted efforts to scrutinize the manner in which Patriot Act powers were being used or possibly abused. And he showed outright hostility to the democratic process when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that critics of the Bush Administration would merely "aid the terrorists."
President Bush has said he hopes to unify the nation. Nothing could serve that purpose more than appointing a new Attorney General who is committed to protecting the very freedoms that make our country unique as we continue to work to make ourselves safer. We need an Attorney General who recognizes that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive and who recognizes that we can -- and must -- be both safe and free.
Ashcroft has been a polarizing force within the Republican Party. In fact, former House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey once called Ashcroft "out of control." With key parts of the Patriot Act set to expire next year, the next Attorney General must be willing to listen to the millions of Americans who live in communities that have passed resolutions asking that the Patriot Act be brought back in line with the Constitution. Proper checks and balances against government abuse must be restored. The American people deserve no less.
The Administration has long known that John Ashcroft’s unpopularity would make it harder to pursue its agenda -- but it is not enough to simply change the public face of the Department of Justice. Putting a fresh face on the Administration’s old policy of violating civil liberties and human rights in the name of national security is not sufficient. The President must appoint an Attorney General who understands and respects the basic rights of our democracy.
We need a new attorney general
Join the ACLU Action Alert
November 10, 2004
Statement of Anthony Romero, ACLU Executive Director
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union stands by its 80-year record of uncompromising non-partisanship. Accordingly, the ACLU takes no official position on the appointment of Mr. Alberto Gonzales to replace Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The board, staff and more than 400,000 members of the ACLU do call, however, for a full and thorough Senate confirmation process that scrutinizes Mr. Gonzales' positions on key civil liberties and human rights issues. Particular attention should be devoted to exploring Mr. Gonzales' proposed policies on the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, the Guantanamo Bay detentions, the designation of United States citizens as enemy combatants and reproductive rights.
Mr. Gonzales should be queried, moreover, on his January 25, 2002 memo, authored in his capacity as White House counsel, which described certain legal protections guaranteed in the Geneva Conventions to persons captured during military hostilities as "obsolete" and "quaint." His confirmation hearings should also examine in detail Mr. Gonzales’ approval of the now-disavowed Justice Department memoranda that condoned the torture and incommunicado and indefinite detention of detainees captured during the Afghanistan conflict.
It is the Senate’s duty to make certain that the next Attorney General is committed to enforcing the civil rights laws that are critical to protecting the American value of fairness. It is imperative that the Senate demands that the next leader of the Department of Justice restore the strength and integrity of the Civil Rights Division.
John Ashcroft’s tenure has made clear that the post of Attorney General holds the key to our most fundamental freedoms. It is not enough for the White House to simply put a fresh face on the same old policies of violating civil liberties and human rights. Members of the Senate must ensure that any Attorney General will understand, respect, and uphold the basic rights of our democracy.
ACLU on Gonzales
ACLU Calls On President to Appoint Fair-Minded Replacement for Ashcroft; New Attorney General Must Ensure America Remains Safe and Free
November 9, 2004
Statement of Anthony D. Romero,
ACLU Executive Director
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON -- The Attorney General is the nation’s official guardian of civil liberties but during his tenure, Attorney General John Ashcroft has been one of the most divisive forces in the entire Bush Administration. Mr. Ashcroft's legacy has been an open hostility to protecting civil liberties and an outright disdain for those who dare to question his policies. We need to do more than just replace John Ashcroft; we need a wholesale reexamination of Justice Department policies that trample on civil liberties and human rights.
In his pursuit of a radical agenda, Mr. Ashcroft has insisted that the U.S. government could unilaterally detain American citizens without charge and access to counsel. He has also trampled on the rights of immigrants and, in the face of a scathing report from his own inspector general, Mr. Ashcroft merely uttered triumphal statements that showed no remorse. Before Congress, Ashcroft resisted efforts to scrutinize the manner in which Patriot Act powers were being used or possibly abused. And he showed outright hostility to the democratic process when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that critics of the Bush Administration would merely "aid the terrorists."
President Bush has said he hopes to unify the nation. Nothing could serve that purpose more than appointing a new Attorney General who is committed to protecting the very freedoms that make our country unique as we continue to work to make ourselves safer. We need an Attorney General who recognizes that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive and who recognizes that we can -- and must -- be both safe and free.
Ashcroft has been a polarizing force within the Republican Party. In fact, former House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey once called Ashcroft "out of control." With key parts of the Patriot Act set to expire next year, the next Attorney General must be willing to listen to the millions of Americans who live in communities that have passed resolutions asking that the Patriot Act be brought back in line with the Constitution. Proper checks and balances against government abuse must be restored. The American people deserve no less.
The Administration has long known that John Ashcroft’s unpopularity would make it harder to pursue its agenda -- but it is not enough to simply change the public face of the Department of Justice. Putting a fresh face on the Administration’s old policy of violating civil liberties and human rights in the name of national security is not sufficient. The President must appoint an Attorney General who understands and respects the basic rights of our democracy.
We need a new attorney general
Join the ACLU Action Alert
Amnesty International on Iraq
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
12 November 2004
Iraq: Fears of serious violations of the rules of war in Falluja
Amnesty International is deeply concerned that the rules of war protecting civilians and combatants have been violated in the current fighting in Falluja. Dozens of civilians have reportedly been killed during the fighting between US and Iraqi forces and insurgents. Amnesty International fears that civilians have been killed, in contravention of international humanitarian law, as a result of failure by parties to the fighting to take necessary precautions to protect non-combatants. The humanitarian situation in the city is said to be precarious.
Twenty Iraqi medical staff and dozens of other civilians were killed when a missile hit a clinic on 9 November, according to reports from a doctor who survived the strike. It is not known whether the missile was fired by the US-led forces or by insurgents. Also on 9 November, according to press reports,a 9-year-old boy reportedly died after being hit in the stomach by shrapnel. His parents were unable to take him to hospital because of the ongoing fighting. He died a few hours later as a result of blood loss and was buried by his parents in their garden because it was too dangerous to go out. One woman and her three daughters were reportedly killed when their house was bombed.
On 11 November a British television programme, Channel Four News, broadcast footage in which a US soldier appeared to have fired one shot in the direction of a wounded insurgent who was off screen. The soldier then walked away and said "he's gone". Under International humanitarian law the US forces have an obligation to protect fighters hors de combat. Amnesty International calls on the US authorities to investigate this incident immediately.
Amnesty International is concerned that US military spokespersons have provided estimates of the number of deaths among insurgents -- said to be in the hundreds -- but not of civilian fatalities or injuries. The organization urges all sides involved in the military confrontation to take every possible precaution to spare civilians.
Insurgents are also reported to have violated rules of internaitonal humanitarian law. In one incident, some Iraqis are reported to have come out of a building waving a white flag. When a Marine approached this group, insurgents opened fire on the Marines from different directions. A US military official in Iraq also accused insurgents of storing weapons in mosques and schools. Insurgents were reported as firing from a mosque on 10 November.
All violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law must be investigated and those responsible for unlawful attacks, including deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, and the killing of injured persons must be brought to justice.
More than 10,000 US marines and 2,000 Iraqi security forces launched, on Monday night, an attack on Falluja which has been under insurgents’ control since April 2004. At least half of Falluja’s residents reportedly left the city before the attack. However, according to press reports tens of thousands of civilians are still inside. There are concerns that a humanitarian crisis is looming with acute shortages in food, water, medicine and with no electricity. There are also many wounded people who could not receive medical care because of the fighting. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society stated that it had asked the Iraqi interim government and US forces for permission to deliver relief goods to civilians in Falluja and to send a medical team to the main hospital but had received no response.
In a statement published on 4 November, Amnesty International reminded the United States of America (USA) and the interim Government of Iraq that they are legally bound to observe at all times the rules of all applicable human rights and humanitarian law treaties to which they are states parties, as well as rules of customary international law binding on all states. The organization also urged armed groups in Falluja to respect the legally binding rules of international law.
Click here for more information
Read full report here
12 November 2004
Iraq: Fears of serious violations of the rules of war in Falluja
Amnesty International is deeply concerned that the rules of war protecting civilians and combatants have been violated in the current fighting in Falluja. Dozens of civilians have reportedly been killed during the fighting between US and Iraqi forces and insurgents. Amnesty International fears that civilians have been killed, in contravention of international humanitarian law, as a result of failure by parties to the fighting to take necessary precautions to protect non-combatants. The humanitarian situation in the city is said to be precarious.
Twenty Iraqi medical staff and dozens of other civilians were killed when a missile hit a clinic on 9 November, according to reports from a doctor who survived the strike. It is not known whether the missile was fired by the US-led forces or by insurgents. Also on 9 November, according to press reports,a 9-year-old boy reportedly died after being hit in the stomach by shrapnel. His parents were unable to take him to hospital because of the ongoing fighting. He died a few hours later as a result of blood loss and was buried by his parents in their garden because it was too dangerous to go out. One woman and her three daughters were reportedly killed when their house was bombed.
On 11 November a British television programme, Channel Four News, broadcast footage in which a US soldier appeared to have fired one shot in the direction of a wounded insurgent who was off screen. The soldier then walked away and said "he's gone". Under International humanitarian law the US forces have an obligation to protect fighters hors de combat. Amnesty International calls on the US authorities to investigate this incident immediately.
Amnesty International is concerned that US military spokespersons have provided estimates of the number of deaths among insurgents -- said to be in the hundreds -- but not of civilian fatalities or injuries. The organization urges all sides involved in the military confrontation to take every possible precaution to spare civilians.
Insurgents are also reported to have violated rules of internaitonal humanitarian law. In one incident, some Iraqis are reported to have come out of a building waving a white flag. When a Marine approached this group, insurgents opened fire on the Marines from different directions. A US military official in Iraq also accused insurgents of storing weapons in mosques and schools. Insurgents were reported as firing from a mosque on 10 November.
All violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law must be investigated and those responsible for unlawful attacks, including deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, and the killing of injured persons must be brought to justice.
More than 10,000 US marines and 2,000 Iraqi security forces launched, on Monday night, an attack on Falluja which has been under insurgents’ control since April 2004. At least half of Falluja’s residents reportedly left the city before the attack. However, according to press reports tens of thousands of civilians are still inside. There are concerns that a humanitarian crisis is looming with acute shortages in food, water, medicine and with no electricity. There are also many wounded people who could not receive medical care because of the fighting. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society stated that it had asked the Iraqi interim government and US forces for permission to deliver relief goods to civilians in Falluja and to send a medical team to the main hospital but had received no response.
In a statement published on 4 November, Amnesty International reminded the United States of America (USA) and the interim Government of Iraq that they are legally bound to observe at all times the rules of all applicable human rights and humanitarian law treaties to which they are states parties, as well as rules of customary international law binding on all states. The organization also urged armed groups in Falluja to respect the legally binding rules of international law.
Click here for more information
Read full report here
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
When Banal and Mediocre Just Isn't Good Enough: Why Kerry Lost
Its been a pretty rocky week since the election. The news media, never ones to be reactionary, are wondering if this signals the end of the Democratic Party while pundits everywhere are creaming their jeans at the thought of a [Hillary] Clinton/Obama ticket in '08 versus a Gulliani/Cheney line-up.
Liberals the world over are depressed and miserable. The wind seems to have gone out of the sails of the peace movement and proponents of freedom and equity have declared that, for the next four years at least, there is none to be found.
I say, that is a bunch of bullshit.
I guarantee you, Karl Rove has read the Art of War.
We MUST not give up, as I have been stressing. In the next couple of months, protests are going to be disorganized and have few attendees. Movements for social progress the world around are going to be more like extraordinarily morbid support groups than bastions of progressive societal change. It doesn't matter. We ALL must do our part. Voting alone isn't good enough. Bitching on the internet isn't good enough. If you want change, you must be willing to be a part of it.
But I think I've said all of this before. So I want to, now go into why I feel Kerry lost and what we can do to win in 2008. And let it be known that when I say 'we,' I do not mean the democrats. I mean any person who believes in liberty and justice for all. I do not believe these people won this past election. So let's examine why:
The Failures of the Kerry Campaign
I think that about sums is up.
As I have been saying for a while now, the Kerry camp ran a campaign that was almost as horrid as the Gore 2000 camp, if not worse. Yes, he railed ass in the debates but do any of you remember August (I know it's a long time ago) and the weeks of not combating the devastating attacks of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? This was a gamble on Kerry's part, a plan to withhold advertising dollars until the last second so he would have a bigger war chest in the final weeks of the campaign. It was a good gamble, but they still should have done something to fight of the Swift Boaters instead of sitting around doing a 'deer in headlight' impression until the end of August and their spending freeze.
And then there is the economy. National exit polls showed voters wound up trusting Bush more than Kerry on the economy by 48 to 46 percent. How you trust a man who spent our biggest surplus and created our biggest deficit is beyond me.
Precisely. The Democrats are supposedly America's populist party, known for their sweeping reforms for the little guy. They are the party of minorities - be they racial, gender, sexual, religious, or anything else. Getting the support of the middle and lower class has always been a given for the Democrats and getting minority support was like Super Sizing at McDonald's; it was just something that you always did.
Well, McDonald's ain't supersizing and the Dems are losing their hold over minority voters.
The Conservative Rebellion has been able to take more and more of the "class victimization" rallying cry away from the Democrats. They have found a brilliant way to bring in lower class voters without alienating their big business base - and it's us. The new class war is one in which the working and middle class [especially in the South and Midwest] is held down by the haughty, egomaniacal 'Liberal Elite.' And since the Dems have abandoned the field to try and chase down the "Professional" vote, the GOP scooped it up effortlessly, with just a few token nods to their decorative Christian values.
In addition to their utter inability in focus on the economy (or anything in specific) in the last few weeks of the campaign, they allowed the issue of gay rights to take away their minority voting bloc.
Tricksy hobitses… I have to take a moment and acknowledge the sheer calculating brilliance with which the Republican party won this election. I may despise everything they stand for, but I can appreciate their methods. The GOP used wedge issues to polarize the electorate. In laymen's terms, this means they used issues people are passionate about to drive people to their candidate. A New York Times poll from August last year confirmed the backlash Gallup found, especially among blacks and Latinos, with strong majorities opposing gay marriage - 65 to 28 for blacks, 54 to 40 for Latinos. Out of numbers like these came the Bush-Rove anti-gay strategy.
And this strategy worked like roofies at a frathouse. The Republicans let passionate liberals fight to get gay rights ballot initiatives in place in 11 states; Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, and Utah. And what were the swing states, kids? Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas, Oregon, Florida, Arizona, and Washington.
Let's see... in 2000, Arkansas went to Gore by 5%, but analysis suggests it was more because Gore didn't pursue it than any solid inclination towards Bush. Oregon, which has gone democratic 5 elections in a row now, was a win of less than a percentage point for Gore in 2000. Michigan, with its failing manufacturing economy, was another 5% Gore win in 2000.
And then there is Ohio, the Florida of '04.
There have been hundreds of articles recently devoted to the astounding phenomenon of "moral values," which 21% of voters said determined their vote - more than either Iraq or the economy. And it's a subject that bears examining, because "moral values" is buzz-speak for "socially acceptable justification of personal bigotry." Simply put, people went out and voted because they didn't like faggots. It allowed Bush to win, as well as the Republicans to pick up more seats in Congress and more governorships across the nation. It whipped the religious right into a frenzy and got them out to vote in droves. Combined with the losses in minority and working class communities over this issue, it cost us the nation.
But this term "moral values" shows you how in line and in step the Right is. They are like Nazi shook troops or British Red Coats, lined up perfectly in rows, marching to the beat of the Drums of War. Ok, that may be a little flowery, but you get what I am saying. The point is, they are organized and locked in as a unit. Liberals are not. And this feeds into my next argument, about "the Lesser of Two Evils."
John Powers of the LA Weekly said it best.
I've already argued my point of view on the "Lesser of Two Evils" ideology, so let me just gloss it over by saying we have lost two elections in a row by sticking to this strategy. And now that I've gone out and proven there was no third party impact at all this year (shame on us, third party supporters), we all need to accept that this "Anybody but Bush" strategy is not only idiotic but it's completely unworkable.
If the Democrats are going to win they need a new Democratic luminary, a Kennedy or a Clinton. People are suggesting Hillary or Obama and I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, we just took about 15 steps back from social equity. Do you really think the nation is ready for a woman or a minority President?
Well… maybe. If the Democrats were to be that balls out and say "Fuck you and your inability to accept social change. Let's go in '08! Bigotry vs. Tolerance. What side are you on?" they may actually pull it off. It's kind of like the "Terrorists vs. Patriots" ideology of this campaign. You're not voting for Hillary? What are you, some kind of a bigot?
But at the same time, we're going to been in the middle of a World and/or Civil War [ha, like us lazy Americans will get off our couches to start one] in 2008, never mind a fiscal disaster. People are still bigoted enough to believe a woman can't handle war and a black person cannot handle money.
When we need is a Southern Governor with a Midwestern General (or vice versa) to win it, but that would be compromising our morals to run who we think would win Middle America and we CANNOT DO THIS AGAIN!
Let's go back to crazy Howard Dean, a populist candidate if there ever was one (well, from the modern Democratic party, anyway.) He may have actually made it. He may have just been crazy and charismatic enough to beat Dubya. Whether or not this is true, the Democratic party made a conscious decision to go to bat for the guy they thought would be the most palatable to the Middle America Swing Vote. Kerry was about as Presidential as you could get; an eloquent speaker, a war-hero, and a long time senator. When the conservative propaganda machine got done with him he was a blustering, cowardly, flip-flopper. And he was French.
In the words of my big brother, "Let that be the lesson: don't do that! Next time, elect the best candidate, not just the least offensive one."
Robert Reich, one of my darling Clintonistas, made a good point. "Bush refers to good and evil as moral absolutes while Kerry discusses a 'right way' and a 'wrong way' to accomplish tasks." Most people aren't political junkies like me (and probably you, if you've read this far). They start to drift when you get away from the HEADLINE ARGUMENT, as it were. But everyone wants to be right, morally or otherwise. Bush never got deep. He just got right.
Taking more from my brother, the Democrats must become the party of "Popular Morals" just as the Republicans have become the party of "Religious Morals."
Also, we need to stop attacking Bush for being an idiotic pig fucker who can't eat a pretzel without a trip to the ER (even if it is damn funny.) And here is why:
That's right, kids. Every time we pick on Captain Moron for his profound lack of intellect, we make the idiots that worship him even more fanatical. Sad, but true. We have to combat the marketing genius of the GOP on their home turf. Let the blogosphere and pop culture hammer the Prez. Liberal media and Liberal candidates, keep clear. And if you think about it, all of his slip ups started in the midst of the 2000 campaign, when they went for the Good Ole Boy vote. Before that, he spoke just like Yale graduate. Something for you conspiracy theorists out there…
Then there is, of course, Iraq. And Kerry failed here too.
Now, to toss some more blame around. WHY OH WHY was Edwards the Democratic Veep on the ticket? I don't get it! Some of you may have missed all my ranting about the Nermal of VP candidates and I can't find the link to my ranting, but I'll sum it up. Edwards was a first term senator, with absolutely no legacy behind him. The GOP was able to capitalize on the trial lawyer angle while the Dems could not get the Southern Boy too deliver North Carolina, nor a SINGLE southern swing state.
Note for '08: No More Nermal.
And then there is Osama. With his perfectly crafted October Surprise, he tried to influence the election… and probably succeeded. Was he pulling for Bush or Kerry? I say Bush. If you were the head of a worldwide terrorist organization would you want to lose your number one recruiting tool around the world? It shocked everyone when he turned up, looking like he'd spent the past three years at Club Med. I really, really thought we had him.
Scary that we don't, frankly.
Now, let me take a moment to acknowledge the sheer Machiavellian grace and scope of Karl Rove's 'perpetual campaign.' We must not sink to his level, but we must learn that getting into gear 1 year before the election is too late. Our campaign to win our country back started November 3rd, 2004. Let that not be forgotten.
This win is going to be a windfall for anti-Bushies (who publish a Bush bashing book at something like 1 every 4.3 seconds) and a huuuuuuuge problem for FOX News. Sure, their boy won… but now he's going to have to face the mess he's made and it's not going to be easy, republican congress or not. (Once again may I point out that both Nixon and Regan had a hell of a time getting their second term agenda through with even more of a mandate than Dubya's imaginary one.) Let's all hope and pray for a civil war within the Republican party and impeachment by this time next year!
Of course, our beloved President Clinton already did the same thing to the Democrats starting in 1992. Be it the groundwork for the current anti-gay movement (the Defense of Marriage Act), the republican sponsored rollbacks of welfare, or the Free Trade Nightmare of NAFTA, Clinton decimated party unity. So, when you're all out praying for another 16 years of Slick Willy, go back and look at what he really did.
I'm not even going to address the whole "Kerry Really Won" nonsense that is floating around beyond this: Is it true? Probably. Does it matter? Not in the slightest. That ship has sailed, kids. The fight is that way, let us march to it with heads, swords, and spirits high.
And if the Democrats can't get their shit together in '08 DON'T VOTE FOR THEM. I've stood by my "vote for who is the best person, not who you think will win" platform for 2 elections now and I'm urging you to consider doing the same. No more Anybody But Bush, because it isn't working.
This is the hope and the rationale behind the third party candidates. They aren't running to ensure Bush will get re-elected. They are running to expand the field of choice and that is always, always a good thing.
The Democrats have spent several years now trying to be Republican Lite. You can't out-hawk the Hawks, boys. If you don't present a clear alternative instead of a "not quite as bad as the loopy fundies in the corner" bid, we'll vote for someone else. The fact that anyone voted 3rd party when the "fate of the free world" was at stake proves this.
If the Democrats hope to win, they must find a way to short-circuit the overwhelming support the Right has in the very people who traditionally vote democrat. They MUST combat the Republican's 'cultural populism' and exploitation of wedge issues - sorry, 'moral values'- with genuine economic populism that will once again win back the lower and middle class. They must provide a clear alternative to the Republican party by exploiting the diversity and egalitarianism of the Democratic party. And they must make it clear the irony of the situation; those of us who are well off living in urban areas of the Coasts will profit from Bush. Those living in poor, rural areas in the middle of the country will suffer. They must not continue their disastrous shift to the Right.
Otherwise, they are going to be just as surprised in '08 when the Masses in the Middle, now poorer and angrier than ever, choose to vote for The Greater Evil once more.
My favorite quote that I have read so far comes once again from my Big Brother and I will close with it.
Liberals the world over are depressed and miserable. The wind seems to have gone out of the sails of the peace movement and proponents of freedom and equity have declared that, for the next four years at least, there is none to be found.
I say, that is a bunch of bullshit.
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War
I guarantee you, Karl Rove has read the Art of War.
We MUST not give up, as I have been stressing. In the next couple of months, protests are going to be disorganized and have few attendees. Movements for social progress the world around are going to be more like extraordinarily morbid support groups than bastions of progressive societal change. It doesn't matter. We ALL must do our part. Voting alone isn't good enough. Bitching on the internet isn't good enough. If you want change, you must be willing to be a part of it.
But I think I've said all of this before. So I want to, now go into why I feel Kerry lost and what we can do to win in 2008. And let it be known that when I say 'we,' I do not mean the democrats. I mean any person who believes in liberty and justice for all. I do not believe these people won this past election. So let's examine why:
The Failures of the Kerry Campaign
"Kerry ran a tactical campaign, devoid of vision or explicable alternatives, utterly lacking in message discipline, and riddled with misjudgments -- it was one of the most incompetently run presidential campaigns by a Democrat in my lifetime." – Doug Ireland
I think that about sums is up.
As I have been saying for a while now, the Kerry camp ran a campaign that was almost as horrid as the Gore 2000 camp, if not worse. Yes, he railed ass in the debates but do any of you remember August (I know it's a long time ago) and the weeks of not combating the devastating attacks of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? This was a gamble on Kerry's part, a plan to withhold advertising dollars until the last second so he would have a bigger war chest in the final weeks of the campaign. It was a good gamble, but they still should have done something to fight of the Swift Boaters instead of sitting around doing a 'deer in headlight' impression until the end of August and their spending freeze.
And then there is the economy. National exit polls showed voters wound up trusting Bush more than Kerry on the economy by 48 to 46 percent. How you trust a man who spent our biggest surplus and created our biggest deficit is beyond me.
"Kerry's biggest blunder was his failure to focus like a laser on the economy in the final weeks of the campaign, despite polls showing it was the number one issue on voters' minds. The lethal character of Kerry's scatter-shot, flailing, themeless campaign close can be clearly seen in the Ohio exit polls. In the Buckeye State, 62% of the voters said the economy was "not good" -- BUT asked who they'd trust with the economy, they were evenly split between Bush and Kerry, 48-48%. The national number on that question actually favored Bush, who got 48% on the economy to Kerry's 46%."- Doug Ireland
Precisely. The Democrats are supposedly America's populist party, known for their sweeping reforms for the little guy. They are the party of minorities - be they racial, gender, sexual, religious, or anything else. Getting the support of the middle and lower class has always been a given for the Democrats and getting minority support was like Super Sizing at McDonald's; it was just something that you always did.
Well, McDonald's ain't supersizing and the Dems are losing their hold over minority voters.
The Conservative Rebellion has been able to take more and more of the "class victimization" rallying cry away from the Democrats. They have found a brilliant way to bring in lower class voters without alienating their big business base - and it's us. The new class war is one in which the working and middle class [especially in the South and Midwest] is held down by the haughty, egomaniacal 'Liberal Elite.' And since the Dems have abandoned the field to try and chase down the "Professional" vote, the GOP scooped it up effortlessly, with just a few token nods to their decorative Christian values.
In addition to their utter inability in focus on the economy (or anything in specific) in the last few weeks of the campaign, they allowed the issue of gay rights to take away their minority voting bloc.
Tricksy hobitses… I have to take a moment and acknowledge the sheer calculating brilliance with which the Republican party won this election. I may despise everything they stand for, but I can appreciate their methods. The GOP used wedge issues to polarize the electorate. In laymen's terms, this means they used issues people are passionate about to drive people to their candidate. A New York Times poll from August last year confirmed the backlash Gallup found, especially among blacks and Latinos, with strong majorities opposing gay marriage - 65 to 28 for blacks, 54 to 40 for Latinos. Out of numbers like these came the Bush-Rove anti-gay strategy.
And this strategy worked like roofies at a frathouse. The Republicans let passionate liberals fight to get gay rights ballot initiatives in place in 11 states; Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, and Utah. And what were the swing states, kids? Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas, Oregon, Florida, Arizona, and Washington.
Let's see... in 2000, Arkansas went to Gore by 5%, but analysis suggests it was more because Gore didn't pursue it than any solid inclination towards Bush. Oregon, which has gone democratic 5 elections in a row now, was a win of less than a percentage point for Gore in 2000. Michigan, with its failing manufacturing economy, was another 5% Gore win in 2000.
And then there is Ohio, the Florida of '04.
"Nowhere did the strategy work better than in Ohio, where the southern tier of counties is the cultural equivalent of a Deep South state, steeped in religiously inculcated homo-hate. Ohio is also a state where traditionally Democratic working-class Catholic voters — whom Kerry failed to bind to him with an economic program that could arouse their passions — were peeled off in sufficient numbers to reduce Kerry’s margins in the larger cities. And the sweeping anti-gay referendum in Ohio — which outlaws civil unions or any lesser legal recognition of same-sex couples, as well as gay marriage — passed by 2 to 1." - Doug Ireland.
There have been hundreds of articles recently devoted to the astounding phenomenon of "moral values," which 21% of voters said determined their vote - more than either Iraq or the economy. And it's a subject that bears examining, because "moral values" is buzz-speak for "socially acceptable justification of personal bigotry." Simply put, people went out and voted because they didn't like faggots. It allowed Bush to win, as well as the Republicans to pick up more seats in Congress and more governorships across the nation. It whipped the religious right into a frenzy and got them out to vote in droves. Combined with the losses in minority and working class communities over this issue, it cost us the nation.
But this term "moral values" shows you how in line and in step the Right is. They are like Nazi shook troops or British Red Coats, lined up perfectly in rows, marching to the beat of the Drums of War. Ok, that may be a little flowery, but you get what I am saying. The point is, they are organized and locked in as a unit. Liberals are not. And this feeds into my next argument, about "the Lesser of Two Evils."
John Powers of the LA Weekly said it best.
"In a polarized country fraught with fear, the electorate will ultimately vote for something rather than nothing. Like him or not, President Bush is Something."
I've already argued my point of view on the "Lesser of Two Evils" ideology, so let me just gloss it over by saying we have lost two elections in a row by sticking to this strategy. And now that I've gone out and proven there was no third party impact at all this year (shame on us, third party supporters), we all need to accept that this "Anybody but Bush" strategy is not only idiotic but it's completely unworkable.
If the Democrats are going to win they need a new Democratic luminary, a Kennedy or a Clinton. People are suggesting Hillary or Obama and I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, we just took about 15 steps back from social equity. Do you really think the nation is ready for a woman or a minority President?
Well… maybe. If the Democrats were to be that balls out and say "Fuck you and your inability to accept social change. Let's go in '08! Bigotry vs. Tolerance. What side are you on?" they may actually pull it off. It's kind of like the "Terrorists vs. Patriots" ideology of this campaign. You're not voting for Hillary? What are you, some kind of a bigot?
But at the same time, we're going to been in the middle of a World and/or Civil War [ha, like us lazy Americans will get off our couches to start one] in 2008, never mind a fiscal disaster. People are still bigoted enough to believe a woman can't handle war and a black person cannot handle money.
When we need is a Southern Governor with a Midwestern General (or vice versa) to win it, but that would be compromising our morals to run who we think would win Middle America and we CANNOT DO THIS AGAIN!
Let's go back to crazy Howard Dean, a populist candidate if there ever was one (well, from the modern Democratic party, anyway.) He may have actually made it. He may have just been crazy and charismatic enough to beat Dubya. Whether or not this is true, the Democratic party made a conscious decision to go to bat for the guy they thought would be the most palatable to the Middle America Swing Vote. Kerry was about as Presidential as you could get; an eloquent speaker, a war-hero, and a long time senator. When the conservative propaganda machine got done with him he was a blustering, cowardly, flip-flopper. And he was French.
In the words of my big brother, "Let that be the lesson: don't do that! Next time, elect the best candidate, not just the least offensive one."
Robert Reich, one of my darling Clintonistas, made a good point. "Bush refers to good and evil as moral absolutes while Kerry discusses a 'right way' and a 'wrong way' to accomplish tasks." Most people aren't political junkies like me (and probably you, if you've read this far). They start to drift when you get away from the HEADLINE ARGUMENT, as it were. But everyone wants to be right, morally or otherwise. Bush never got deep. He just got right.
Taking more from my brother, the Democrats must become the party of "Popular Morals" just as the Republicans have become the party of "Religious Morals."
"Kerry chose to go for the head, to talk to people and reason with them. Which is all well and good, and shows a great respect for the electorate, but was clearly not the right answer. I think that Liberals need to accept that it's okay for people to want to be moral, and that people who might follow a different moral compass on some social issues can follow the same one on the direction of the country." - Quinn
Also, we need to stop attacking Bush for being an idiotic pig fucker who can't eat a pretzel without a trip to the ER (even if it is damn funny.) And here is why:
"And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community." - New York Times
That's right, kids. Every time we pick on Captain Moron for his profound lack of intellect, we make the idiots that worship him even more fanatical. Sad, but true. We have to combat the marketing genius of the GOP on their home turf. Let the blogosphere and pop culture hammer the Prez. Liberal media and Liberal candidates, keep clear. And if you think about it, all of his slip ups started in the midst of the 2000 campaign, when they went for the Good Ole Boy vote. Before that, he spoke just like Yale graduate. Something for you conspiracy theorists out there…
Then there is, of course, Iraq. And Kerry failed here too.
"History will record that John Kerry lost the election on the day he voted the Constitution-shredding blank check for Bush's war on Iraq. He was hobbled throughout the campaign by this vote, which shackled him to a me-too posture that included endlessly repeated pledges to "stay the course" in Iraq and "win" the occupation. Kerry could not, therefore, develop and present a full-blown critique of Bush on Iraq, nor offer a genuine alternative to him on it. The non-existent Kerry "plan" (based on the hubris that he could con foreign allies into sending their troops to bleed and die for the U.S. crimes at Abu Ghraib) wasn't bought by the voters. Bush won by making the link between Iraq and the war on terrorism -- the Big Lie which Kerry could not effectively counter, because he'd bought into it at the beginning. And it was on that endlessly hammered lie that Bush won the country on the Iraq issue -- the exit polls Tuesday night showed that voters thought the Iraq war was part of the war on terror by 52-44%." - Doug Ireland
Now, to toss some more blame around. WHY OH WHY was Edwards the Democratic Veep on the ticket? I don't get it! Some of you may have missed all my ranting about the Nermal of VP candidates and I can't find the link to my ranting, but I'll sum it up. Edwards was a first term senator, with absolutely no legacy behind him. The GOP was able to capitalize on the trial lawyer angle while the Dems could not get the Southern Boy too deliver North Carolina, nor a SINGLE southern swing state.
Note for '08: No More Nermal.
And then there is Osama. With his perfectly crafted October Surprise, he tried to influence the election… and probably succeeded. Was he pulling for Bush or Kerry? I say Bush. If you were the head of a worldwide terrorist organization would you want to lose your number one recruiting tool around the world? It shocked everyone when he turned up, looking like he'd spent the past three years at Club Med. I really, really thought we had him.
Scary that we don't, frankly.
Now, let me take a moment to acknowledge the sheer Machiavellian grace and scope of Karl Rove's 'perpetual campaign.' We must not sink to his level, but we must learn that getting into gear 1 year before the election is too late. Our campaign to win our country back started November 3rd, 2004. Let that not be forgotten.
This win is going to be a windfall for anti-Bushies (who publish a Bush bashing book at something like 1 every 4.3 seconds) and a huuuuuuuge problem for FOX News. Sure, their boy won… but now he's going to have to face the mess he's made and it's not going to be easy, republican congress or not. (Once again may I point out that both Nixon and Regan had a hell of a time getting their second term agenda through with even more of a mandate than Dubya's imaginary one.) Let's all hope and pray for a civil war within the Republican party and impeachment by this time next year!
Of course, our beloved President Clinton already did the same thing to the Democrats starting in 1992. Be it the groundwork for the current anti-gay movement (the Defense of Marriage Act), the republican sponsored rollbacks of welfare, or the Free Trade Nightmare of NAFTA, Clinton decimated party unity. So, when you're all out praying for another 16 years of Slick Willy, go back and look at what he really did.
I'm not even going to address the whole "Kerry Really Won" nonsense that is floating around beyond this: Is it true? Probably. Does it matter? Not in the slightest. That ship has sailed, kids. The fight is that way, let us march to it with heads, swords, and spirits high.
And if the Democrats can't get their shit together in '08 DON'T VOTE FOR THEM. I've stood by my "vote for who is the best person, not who you think will win" platform for 2 elections now and I'm urging you to consider doing the same. No more Anybody But Bush, because it isn't working.
"Once the whining over Ohio dies out, what will laughably be called the war for the "soul" of the once-again-defeated Democratic Party will commence — a struggle so drearily predictable that the whole exercise can be easily scripted in advance. On the one side, the corporate shills of the Democratic Leadership Council, who will argue that the outcome demands a repositioning of the party to the right. On the other, the "progressives," who will re-float their own formula that success resides in simply moving the Democrats leftward (as evidenced by what? The 2 percent primary draw of Dennis Kucinich). Both notions are simplistic and insufficient. The Democrats have not won the sort of absolute national majority pocketed by Bush in more than a quarter of a century. The party doesn't need to be reformed or repositioned. It needs to be rethought and reborn." - Marc Cooper
This is the hope and the rationale behind the third party candidates. They aren't running to ensure Bush will get re-elected. They are running to expand the field of choice and that is always, always a good thing.
The Democrats have spent several years now trying to be Republican Lite. You can't out-hawk the Hawks, boys. If you don't present a clear alternative instead of a "not quite as bad as the loopy fundies in the corner" bid, we'll vote for someone else. The fact that anyone voted 3rd party when the "fate of the free world" was at stake proves this.
If the Democrats hope to win, they must find a way to short-circuit the overwhelming support the Right has in the very people who traditionally vote democrat. They MUST combat the Republican's 'cultural populism' and exploitation of wedge issues - sorry, 'moral values'- with genuine economic populism that will once again win back the lower and middle class. They must provide a clear alternative to the Republican party by exploiting the diversity and egalitarianism of the Democratic party. And they must make it clear the irony of the situation; those of us who are well off living in urban areas of the Coasts will profit from Bush. Those living in poor, rural areas in the middle of the country will suffer. They must not continue their disastrous shift to the Right.
Otherwise, they are going to be just as surprised in '08 when the Masses in the Middle, now poorer and angrier than ever, choose to vote for The Greater Evil once more.
My favorite quote that I have read so far comes once again from my Big Brother and I will close with it.
In the coming months, there is going to be a lot of talk about how the Democratic party can pick up from this. Don't listen to the nay-sayers that tell you that it won't, that this is the death knell of the Democratic party. These are the same people who called Pennsylvania for Bush. Your party will rise up again. In order to do so, however, it will need to change its approach, become less like Republican Party Lite, find its own "moral compass" and preach that message loudly. That's the only way that it will ever win those states that we on the coasts may not think much of, but without which no national election can be won. An appeal to the sense of moral rightness, and to the faith in America to make the right choices, can be made with reason backing it. The fact that Bush has made such an appeal successfully, twice, without any reason or fact to back him up should be evidence enough that, with the proper facts behind it, a well crafted message that appeals to the sense of what is right in everyone (or 52% of everyone) will succeed.
It seems as though such an appeal has to succeed, now that the attempt at dry rhetoric and inoffensive "at least he's not Bush"ness has failed. Maybe next time we can look for the best candidate, instead of the not-worst.” - Quinn
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
The most accurate quote ever
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind...And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." -William Shakespeare
Did Nader Lose It For Kerry?
Ok, so this is mostly for Darth Ninja…
For all you Nader haters out there, I broke down this election in terms of numbers. I added in all of Nader, Badnarik, Peltier, and Cobb’s votes to Kerry and all of Peroutka’s to Bush to see if it would have changed a goddamn thing.
And it didn’t. 3rd parties had zero impact on this election. And that is unacceptable, in my book. I wish we could be blamed for losing the election or winning it. But we can’t.
All of this data is from CNN.com. No poll I could found carried write in candidates.
Alabama: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,176,355
Kerry: 702, 303
winner: Bush = 9 electoral votes
Alaska: [went to Bush]
Bush: 153,519
Kerry: 92,080
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Arizona: [went to Bush]
Bush: 908,211
Kerry: 745,219
winner: Bush = 10 electoral votes
Arkansas: [went to Bush]
Bush: 568,784
Kerry: 474,004
winner: Bush = 6 electoral votes
California: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 4,424,482
Kerry: 5,520,143
winner: Kerry = 55 electoral votes
Colorado: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,059,144
Kerry: 964, 215
winner: Bush = 9 electoral votes
Conneticut: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 688,428
Kerry: 873,075
winner: Kerry = 7 electoral votes
Delaware: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 171,823
Kerry: 203,165
winner: Kerry = 3 electoral votes
District of Columbia: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 19,007
Kerry: 186,281
winner: Kerry = 3 electoral votes
Florida: [went to Bush]
Bush: 3,915,731
Kerry: 3,583,042
winner: Bush = 27 electoral votes
Georgia: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,889,832
Kerry: 1,363,363
winner: Bush = 15 electoral votes
Hawaii: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 194,109
Kerry: 234,422
winner: Kerry = 4 electoral votes
Idaho: [went to Bush]
Bush: 408,254
Kerry: 187,831
winner: Bush = 4 electoral votes
Ilinois: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 2,313,415
Kerry: 2,858,620
winner: Kerry = 21 electoral votes
Indiana: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,474,475
Kerry: 979,516
winner: Bush = 11 electoral votes
Iowa: [went to Bush]
Bush: 747,265
Kerry: 742,545
winner: Bush = 7 electoral votes
Kansas: [went to Bush]
Bush: 720,312
Kerry: 433,767
winner: Bush = 6 electoral votes
Kentucky: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,071,711
Kerry: 724,392
winner: Bush = 8 electoral votes
Louisiana: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,106,958
Kerry: 828,052
winner: Bush = 9 electoral votes
Maine: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 310,934
Kerry: 368,214
winner: Kerry = 4 electoral votes
Maryland: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 955,054
Kerry: 1,243,505
winner: Kerry = 10 electoral votes
Massachusetts: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,067,163 <~~~~ And that is SHAMEFUL, Massholes!
Kerry: 1,820,920
winner: Kerry = 12 electoral votes
Michigan: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 2,311,255
Kerry: 2,511,659
winner: Kerry = 17 electoral votes
Minnesota: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,348,289
Kerry: 1,471,508
winner: Kerry = 10 electoral votes
Mississippi: [went to Bush]
Bush: 667,995
Kerry: 445,971
winner: Bush = 6 electoral votes
Missouri: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,458,059
Kerry: 1,263,671
winner: Bush = 11 electoral votes
Montana: [went to Bush]
Bush: 267, 235
Kerry: 182, 231
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Nebraska: [went to Bush]
Bush: 487,008
Kerry: 232,311
winner: Bush = 5 electoral votes
Nevada: [went to Bush]
Bush: 416, 077
Kerry: 402, 143
winner: Bush = 5 electoral votes
New Hampshire: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 330,848
Kerry: 344,466
winner: Kerry = 4 electoral votes
New Jersey: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,590,389
Kerry:1,823,951
winner: Kerry = 15 electoral votes
New Mexico: [went to Bush]
Bush: 371,512
Kerry: 369,878
winner: Bush = 4 electoral votes
New York: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 2,782,457
Kerry:4,087,653
winner: Kerry = 31 electoral votes
North Carolina: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,910,936
Kerry: 1,497,382
winner: Bush = 15 electoral votes
North Dakota: [went to Bush]
Bush: 196,513
Kerry: 115,255
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Ohio: [went to Bush]
Bush: 2,807,761
Kerry: 2,673,995
winner: Bush = 20 electoral votes
Oklamhoma: [went to Bush]
Bush: 959,655
Kerry: 504,077
winner: Bush = 7 electoral votes
Oregon: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 828,155
Kerry: 902,474
winner: Kerry = 7 electoral votes
Pennsylvania: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 2,762,825
Kerry: 2,910,897
winner: Kerry = 21 electoral votes
Rhode Island: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 161, 960
Kerry: 253, 600
winner: Kerry = 4 electoral votes
South Carolina: [went to Bush]
Bush: 929,465
Kerry: 660, 825
winner: Bush = 8 electoral votes
South Dakota: [went to Bush]
Bush: 233,651
Kerry: 154,536
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Tennessee: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,384,460
Kerry: 1,046,831
winner: Bush = 11 electoral votes
Texas: [went to Bush]
Bush: 4,519,023
Kerry: 2,866,479
winner: Bush = 34 electoral votes
Utah: [went to Bush]
Bush: 619,147
Kerry: 241,330
winner: Bush = 5 electoral votes
Vermont: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 120,710
Kerry: 189, 266
winner: Kerry = 3 electoral votes
Virginia: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,671,216
Kerry: 1,408,036
winner: Bush = 13 electoral votes
Washington: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,015,217
Kerry: 1,206,583
winner: Kerry = 11 electoral votes
West Virginia: [went to Bush]
Bush: 418,151
Kerry: 326,943
winner: Bush = 5 electoral votes
Wisconsin: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,477,122
Kerry: 1,514,407
winner: Kerry = 10 electoral votes
Wyoming: [went to Bush]
Bush: 167,762
Kerry: 74,547
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
For all you Nader haters out there, I broke down this election in terms of numbers. I added in all of Nader, Badnarik, Peltier, and Cobb’s votes to Kerry and all of Peroutka’s to Bush to see if it would have changed a goddamn thing.
And it didn’t. 3rd parties had zero impact on this election. And that is unacceptable, in my book. I wish we could be blamed for losing the election or winning it. But we can’t.
All of this data is from CNN.com. No poll I could found carried write in candidates.
Alabama: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,176,355
Kerry: 702, 303
winner: Bush = 9 electoral votes
Alaska: [went to Bush]
Bush: 153,519
Kerry: 92,080
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Arizona: [went to Bush]
Bush: 908,211
Kerry: 745,219
winner: Bush = 10 electoral votes
Arkansas: [went to Bush]
Bush: 568,784
Kerry: 474,004
winner: Bush = 6 electoral votes
California: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 4,424,482
Kerry: 5,520,143
winner: Kerry = 55 electoral votes
Colorado: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,059,144
Kerry: 964, 215
winner: Bush = 9 electoral votes
Conneticut: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 688,428
Kerry: 873,075
winner: Kerry = 7 electoral votes
Delaware: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 171,823
Kerry: 203,165
winner: Kerry = 3 electoral votes
District of Columbia: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 19,007
Kerry: 186,281
winner: Kerry = 3 electoral votes
Florida: [went to Bush]
Bush: 3,915,731
Kerry: 3,583,042
winner: Bush = 27 electoral votes
Georgia: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,889,832
Kerry: 1,363,363
winner: Bush = 15 electoral votes
Hawaii: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 194,109
Kerry: 234,422
winner: Kerry = 4 electoral votes
Idaho: [went to Bush]
Bush: 408,254
Kerry: 187,831
winner: Bush = 4 electoral votes
Ilinois: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 2,313,415
Kerry: 2,858,620
winner: Kerry = 21 electoral votes
Indiana: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,474,475
Kerry: 979,516
winner: Bush = 11 electoral votes
Iowa: [went to Bush]
Bush: 747,265
Kerry: 742,545
winner: Bush = 7 electoral votes
Kansas: [went to Bush]
Bush: 720,312
Kerry: 433,767
winner: Bush = 6 electoral votes
Kentucky: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,071,711
Kerry: 724,392
winner: Bush = 8 electoral votes
Louisiana: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,106,958
Kerry: 828,052
winner: Bush = 9 electoral votes
Maine: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 310,934
Kerry: 368,214
winner: Kerry = 4 electoral votes
Maryland: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 955,054
Kerry: 1,243,505
winner: Kerry = 10 electoral votes
Massachusetts: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,067,163 <~~~~ And that is SHAMEFUL, Massholes!
Kerry: 1,820,920
winner: Kerry = 12 electoral votes
Michigan: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 2,311,255
Kerry: 2,511,659
winner: Kerry = 17 electoral votes
Minnesota: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,348,289
Kerry: 1,471,508
winner: Kerry = 10 electoral votes
Mississippi: [went to Bush]
Bush: 667,995
Kerry: 445,971
winner: Bush = 6 electoral votes
Missouri: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,458,059
Kerry: 1,263,671
winner: Bush = 11 electoral votes
Montana: [went to Bush]
Bush: 267, 235
Kerry: 182, 231
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Nebraska: [went to Bush]
Bush: 487,008
Kerry: 232,311
winner: Bush = 5 electoral votes
Nevada: [went to Bush]
Bush: 416, 077
Kerry: 402, 143
winner: Bush = 5 electoral votes
New Hampshire: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 330,848
Kerry: 344,466
winner: Kerry = 4 electoral votes
New Jersey: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,590,389
Kerry:1,823,951
winner: Kerry = 15 electoral votes
New Mexico: [went to Bush]
Bush: 371,512
Kerry: 369,878
winner: Bush = 4 electoral votes
New York: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 2,782,457
Kerry:4,087,653
winner: Kerry = 31 electoral votes
North Carolina: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,910,936
Kerry: 1,497,382
winner: Bush = 15 electoral votes
North Dakota: [went to Bush]
Bush: 196,513
Kerry: 115,255
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Ohio: [went to Bush]
Bush: 2,807,761
Kerry: 2,673,995
winner: Bush = 20 electoral votes
Oklamhoma: [went to Bush]
Bush: 959,655
Kerry: 504,077
winner: Bush = 7 electoral votes
Oregon: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 828,155
Kerry: 902,474
winner: Kerry = 7 electoral votes
Pennsylvania: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 2,762,825
Kerry: 2,910,897
winner: Kerry = 21 electoral votes
Rhode Island: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 161, 960
Kerry: 253, 600
winner: Kerry = 4 electoral votes
South Carolina: [went to Bush]
Bush: 929,465
Kerry: 660, 825
winner: Bush = 8 electoral votes
South Dakota: [went to Bush]
Bush: 233,651
Kerry: 154,536
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Tennessee: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,384,460
Kerry: 1,046,831
winner: Bush = 11 electoral votes
Texas: [went to Bush]
Bush: 4,519,023
Kerry: 2,866,479
winner: Bush = 34 electoral votes
Utah: [went to Bush]
Bush: 619,147
Kerry: 241,330
winner: Bush = 5 electoral votes
Vermont: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 120,710
Kerry: 189, 266
winner: Kerry = 3 electoral votes
Virginia: [went to Bush]
Bush: 1,671,216
Kerry: 1,408,036
winner: Bush = 13 electoral votes
Washington: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,015,217
Kerry: 1,206,583
winner: Kerry = 11 electoral votes
West Virginia: [went to Bush]
Bush: 418,151
Kerry: 326,943
winner: Bush = 5 electoral votes
Wisconsin: [went to Kerry]
Bush: 1,477,122
Kerry: 1,514,407
winner: Kerry = 10 electoral votes
Wyoming: [went to Bush]
Bush: 167,762
Kerry: 74,547
winner: Bush = 3 electoral votes
Whadya know, the youth turnout wasn't as shitty as I thought
From rock the vote:
2004 Youth Voter Turnout: 51.6 %
Youth turned out at a rate not seen in a long time—possibly since 1972 when the age was lowered to 18. Close to 21 million people between the ages of 18 and 29 voted—that’s nearly 5 million more than in 2000, and more than half of all young people in the USA.
Some in the media are suggesting that young people didn't vote. They are flat wrong, and you need to fight back. Tell your friends that their enthusiasm and determination paid off with record youth turnout on Election Day.
If you voted for Bush, you helped seal the win for President—and you should be proud.
If you voted for Kerry, you kept your candidate in the race and the country up all night as they counted your voted—and you should be proud.
Whether your candidate won or lost, you know what you need to do. Stay involved. Keep on top of the issues. Get even more people to the polls next time.
Rock the Vote takes your issues to the politicians. Stay with us as we fight to improve healthcare coverage, reduce college debt and make voting easier.
You rocked the vote this Election.
We'll help you keep rocking it.
2004 Youth Voter Turnout: 51.6 %
Youth turned out at a rate not seen in a long time—possibly since 1972 when the age was lowered to 18. Close to 21 million people between the ages of 18 and 29 voted—that’s nearly 5 million more than in 2000, and more than half of all young people in the USA.
Some in the media are suggesting that young people didn't vote. They are flat wrong, and you need to fight back. Tell your friends that their enthusiasm and determination paid off with record youth turnout on Election Day.
If you voted for Bush, you helped seal the win for President—and you should be proud.
If you voted for Kerry, you kept your candidate in the race and the country up all night as they counted your voted—and you should be proud.
Whether your candidate won or lost, you know what you need to do. Stay involved. Keep on top of the issues. Get even more people to the polls next time.
Rock the Vote takes your issues to the politicians. Stay with us as we fight to improve healthcare coverage, reduce college debt and make voting easier.
You rocked the vote this Election.
We'll help you keep rocking it.
Monday, November 08, 2004
A history lesson about Iraq
Welcome to Wonderland: the story of Iraq
"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake
up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the
red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole
goes."
- Morpheus,
The Matrix, Warner Bros, 1999
It happens that the story of Iraq was a part of my way out of the Dream
World. Maybe it can help you.
I started studying it in 2000 after listening to a lecture
CD on the topic by famous activist scholar.
I couldn't believe what the man said. Or rather, I didn't want to. But
he was so logical. So convincing. I remember being disturbed by what he
said for at least a couple months. But I just sat on it. I couldn't deal
with it.
Finally I went to the university library to prove him wrong.
I failed. He was telling the truth. This page is what I found.
You've noticed, of course, that the Iraq story has entered a new chapter
since then. Once you know the history below, you'll find it much easier
to understand the spring of 2003.
Let's go.
The Official Story
Let's start with the Official Story -- the things you hear all
the time:
- We attacked Iraq (and have sanctions on Iraq) because Hussein is
a murderous dictator who used chemical weapons against his own
people - The US defended the innocent country of Kuwait against
aggression, because we will not let aggressors pick on small
countries - The US attacked Iraq's military with surgical precision.
The war and the sanctions which followed were carefully crafted to
avoid civilian casualties. - The US wanted, and still wants, the people of Iraq to overthrow
Hussein - The US works to promote democracy and human rights in the
world
Questions
And here are some questions you might consider about the whole
affair:
- Why did we leave Hussein, the latest Hitler, in power--when we
were willing to take out Noriega, a minor thug, in Panama? - Before our attack in 1991, we said repeatedly that we wanted the
Iraqi people to overthrow Hussein--but when the Iraqis rebelled
against Hussein immediately after our attack, we gave no help at
all and allowed Hussein to crush them. Why? - Hussein is indeed a monster, having used chemical weapons
against his own people in 1988. Why did we do nothing when
that happened, if we care about human rights? - Likewise, the Turkish government has carried out vicious attacks
against their Kurdish people. Why aren't we concerned about
their human rights violations? Shouldn't we use
sanctions against Turkey too? - If we are concerned about weapons of mass destruction held by
countries that attack their neighbors, why aren't we concerned
about Israel's nuclear weapons?
Now let's see if we can make sense of these "facts" and
questions.
The Truth -- Iran 1951 to late 70's
To understand the Iraq story, we need to start with Iran. In
1951, Iran had a parliamentary government, a type of representative
democracy like that of Britain and Canada. One of the ministers,
Mossadegh, organized the parliament to take over the oil industry
(primarily from the British). In other words, they decided it was
not fair for their major natural resource to be controlled by
foreigners. Now they didn't just take it. They offered the
British 25 percent of the profits and allowed the British employees
to keep working there.
This wasn't good enough, so the CIA began working to overthrow the Iranian
government, and in 1953 Iran's parliamentary democracy was overthrown
and replaced by a dictator, the Shah. [For a brief, fascinating
insight into the CIA, read Morpheus' interview with a former, disillusioned, US intelligence
agent .]
You might think the "liberal media" would have a problem with
this. Instead, one year later, on August 6, 1954, a New York
Times editorial said: "Underdeveloped countries with rich
resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be
paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical
nationalism." And what is "fanatical nationalism"? Again, it's the
crazy idea that a small country should have control of its own
resources.
The Official Story, of course, was that the independent
Mossadegh really planned to turn over the oil and power to the
Soviet Union. The facts do not support this (see Blum, Killing
Hope, pp 64-72). But what if they did? Did the
Iranian people benefit from their "rescue" from the communist
menace? No--they got the Shah and his secret police, SAVAK,
who ruled the country with terror, torture, and murder for the next
quarter century--WITH OUR SUPPORT. As Blum explains:
Amnesty International summed up the
situation in 1976 by noting that Iran had "the highest rate of
death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts
and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the
world has a worse record in human rights than Iran." (Killing
Hope, p 72)
Incidentally, the US got control of 40 percent of Iranian oil in
the deal.
This situation persisted until the late 70's when a popular revolution
overthrew the Shah and put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power. The Shah,
our good friend, was given asylum. (I remember seeing him shaking hands
with our leaders on TV) The Ayatollah, for (now) obvious reasons,
began calling the US the "Great Satan." Later, in 1979, Iranian students
took over the US embassy there, taking the employees hostage for a year
because they claimed that the US was attempting to overthrow their government
again , using the embassy to coordinate efforts.
Many Americans remember the late 70s and early 80s when this was happening.
I was one of them, Neo. I never heard why the Iranians thought we
were the "Great Satan" -- in fact it was suggested repeatedly that they
were just crazy "Arab" extremists who hated us for no good reason. They
never explained that we overthrew the Iranian government before and that
we were trying to do it again. This was verified in the fascinating email of a former Iranian-American citizen in
his mid-30s, who remembers this story clearly from his teenage years when
his parents took him back to Iran, when he could only read English and
the English news. So he watched one thing with his own eyes, but read
another. Incredible.
The Truth -- Iraq
Once you understand the truth behind Iran, Iraq is easier to
understand.
1970's to 1989
Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq in the late 1970s.
Eventually, Hussein got into a war with Iran. The US supported
Hussein because Iran had become our enemy (for having removed our
dictator). Our support for Iraq was quite strong as can be shown by
the fact that in May 1987, an Iraqi missile hit the USS Stark
killing 37 sailors. They got a tap on the wrist for this -- which
shows our government was really committed.
In 1988, the USS Vincennes was patrolling the Gulf and shot down
an Iranian civilian airliner in a commercial flight corridor. 290
people died. This was an accident, according to The Official
Story. Although most of us believed it, Iran didn't and
subsequently gave up.
Shortly afterwards, Hussein committed the worst atrocities of
his career -- he used chemical weapons against his own people, the
Kurdish citizens in the north. An estimated ten thousand Kurds died
from the chemical weapons attack and another 40,000 died from
conventional weapons used at the same time. Despite outcries in the
international community, comparing Hussein's use of chemical
weapons to Hitler, the United States did nothing to respond to
these atrocities. In fact, in 1989, during our invasion of Panama,
the US expedited loans to Iraq to "put us in a better position to
deal with Iraq" on human rights violations. Notice that later, we
had a different method, sanctions, that we used to deal with "human
rights violations".
1990 to present
In 1990, Hussein complained of "slant drilling" by Kuwait. In
other words he was saying that Kuwait was angling their oil
drilling rigs to tap into oil that was actually underneath Iraq. [A
young friend of mine was actually in the Persian Gulf. One of his
fellow soldiers, who used to work oil rigs in the south, actually
saw the Kuwaiti rigs and confirmed this.]
After much the saber-rattling, it appeared Iraq was about to
invade. During congressional hearings, a Bush administration
official was asked whether we had any treaties that would require
us to intervene if Iraq attacked. He said "no" and the next day
Iraq invaded--August 2, 1990.
President Bush (senior) and Margaret Thatcher (Great Britain)
immediately compared Hussein to Hitler and expressed hope for a
popular uprising to depose him. This hope was repeated several
times in the next few months. In January 1991, our government
launched Desert Storm, the attack in which one hundred thousand
Iraqi soldiers were killed and along with some 100 US soldiers.
Immediately after we ended our attack, there were uprisings
against Saddam. We were there in force, but we did nothing to stop
the vicious Iraqi counterattack that crushed the rebellion with
extreme violence and kept Saddam in power.
Interestingly, the media did notice this, and in July 1991,
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times had this to say:
"Sooner or later, Mr. Bush argued, sanctions would force Mr.
Hussein's generals to bring him down, and then Washington would
have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without
Saddam Hussein."
Curiously, Mr. Friedman didn't seem to find this idea disturbing
at all -- that the "best of all worlds" was not a democracy but an
iron-fisted dictatorship. And later you can find reporters in the
New York Times and in many other publications extolling our
greatness and our commitment to human rights in the world.
Interesting.
The sanctions against Iraq continued -- during which roughly one million people
have died for lack of food, sanitation, and medicine. Most of these people
are children. See this link for a detailed description of the state of
the Iraqi people after several years of sanctions.
Was this intentional? Yes. Thomas Nagy
published his findings in the September 2001 issue of The
Progressive--describing declassified Defense Information Agency
documents. As he states:
Over the last two years, I've discovered documents of the
Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that, contrary
to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used
sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after
the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis,
mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway. The
primary document, "
Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities ," is dated January 22,
1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying
clean water to its citizens.
Don't trust Nagy--read it yourself. If the Defense Department takes
it offline, see this copy.
From time the time we have increased our bombing attacks, such as in December
1998. An explanation was needed for this, and we got one. In a New
York Times article , then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
made this remarkable statement:
" We have come to the determination that the Iraqi people would
benefit if they had a government that really represented them."
Assuming she was telling the truth, I'll leave it to you to consider
what it means that in December 1998, the US finally decided that the most
recent incarnation of Hitler was not the best ruler for the Iraqi people.
April 2003
Now, people are dying in Iraq. But, of course -- they were dying before.
But from sanctions, and depleted uranium, not current bombs and bullets.
If you're keeping track of the body count, the Clinton administration
is still in the lead by quite a ways. But the Bush administration is fighting
to catch up.
So, How Dangerous Was Iraq?
Saddam Hussein was painted as a great danger to the planet to encourage us
to go to war. Now of course he was a danger, but the danger was greatest
when we were supporting him the most during the late 80's. That's when
he had the most power and when he committed his most atrocious crimes.
He already had chemical weapons at
that time, and we knew it .
A rough estimate of the danger can be determined by simply
looking at the results of the Gulf War. But we could have known
that before by looking at the relative military spending of the US
and Iraq as seen in this chart.
Conclusions
So what were the Gulf War and the sanctions really about? What
story is left when you have debunked the others?
What comes to mind when you think of the "Middle East"? What should come
to mind is oil. The Truth was hinted at for a long time, but
finally admitted by Bush's National Security Advisor in a BBC special
on the 5-year anniversary of the Gulf War.
Actually, if we knew our history, we'd not be surprised. In the
1940's, US planners identified the Middle East as the greatest
source of strategic power in world history. Which meant, in their
minds, that the US has to control it, like the British had
previously.
But there's a problem: there are people there, and sometimes
they want to benefit from their own resources, as Iran demonstrated
in 1951. That's why we support weak dictators throughout the Gulf
region--to make sure the people of the region are suppressed so
they don't get much benefit from their major natural resource--and
we do.
Which explains why we overthrew the Iranian democracy in 1953,
and why an Iraqi junta is the "best of all worlds." Democracy in
the Gulf is too dangerous, because it might force us to make major
changes in energy policy. We might have to really, seriously
promote energy conservation, wind and solar power. It would affect
US oil and automobile corporations.
It would also affect us personally. Oil prices might
finally approach the levels Europe has been living with for years.
Germans, for example, pay around $4/gallon. How many
people are we willing to murder to keep prices below $5/gallon?
Yes, Hussein was our kind of dictator, until he got out of line.
It took until 2001 for me to finally understand what happened.
Interestingly, the famous American political analyst, Noam Chomsky,
got it right off the bat. In his important book, Deterring
Democracy , 1991, he said this:
By any standards, Saddam Hussein is a monstrous figure, .... But
his villainy is not the reason for his assumption of the role of
Great Satan in August 1990. It was apparent long before, and did
not impede Washington's efforts to lend him aid and support....
Hussein became a demon in the usual fashion: when it was finally
understood, beyond any doubt, that his independent nationalism
threatened US interests. His record of hideous atrocities then
became available for propaganda needs, but beyond that, it had
essentially nothing to do with his sudden transition in August 1990
from cherished friend to new incarnation of Genghis Khan and Hitler
"http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/chomsky/dd/dd-c06-s14.html#SEC6.8">
(p 210-211) .
The Official Story, Revised
-
Hussein is a murderous dictator who used chemical weapons against
his own people--with our support.
-
The US defended the (not quite) innocent country of Kuwait against
aggression, and we will not let aggressors pick on small countries,
if those countries send us oil and profits.
-
The US attacked Iraq's military with surgical precision. It
also intentionally destroyed the country's civilian infrastructure,
including its water supply. The sanctions were designed to prevent
the country from rebuilding the capacity to provide safe water, in
addition to other vital civilian functions--a violation of the Geneva
Convention--which has lead to roughly a million deaths since the war.
-
The US wants the people of Iraq to overthrow Hussein (just kidding)
-
Iraq is a dangerous threat to our world (... and democracy
would make them even more dangerous.)
For more information on Iraq and the sanctions, check out these sources:
- Iraq
1990-1991. A chapter from the book, Killing Hope by William
Blum. Excellent review in a reasonably short space. Lots of references. - Iran
1953. Because you need to know Iran to understand Iraq. Excerpts
from another chapter in Blum's Killing Hope. References from
the book are not present in this web excerpt. - Voices in the Wilderness.
One of the first groups to oppose the sanctions against the people of
Iraq. - Iraq Peacebuilding Program
by the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers). - Iraq Under
Siege, edited by Anthony Arnove. If you want an entire book
on the topic.
Which leads to a most disturbing lesson:
The US foreign / economic policy is designed to project US power
into the world and control the world's resources -- not to promote human
rights or democracy. Dictators are fine as long as they give us what
we want. Democracies are not ok if we don't like their economic plans,
and we are quite willing to overthrow them if it suits our interests.
In fact, dictators have a particularly nice feature: when we get tired
of them, their real atrocities can be used as an excuse for invading
the country. Iraq is but one example of a long tradition that we would
all know if our society were operating properly.
These policies are quite in line with US corporate interests, which
is not surprising, given the extent of corporate power over our society,
as briefly described on the Why-US home
page.
Other Examples
There are many instances since World War II where our government
has overthrown the governments of other democracies or interfered
in their elections. An excellent book that describes these
is Killing Hope, by former State Department man, William Blum. Have your favorite
anti-depressant ready.
A few examples:
-
Italy, 1948.
-
Guatemala, 1954. Overthrew their democratic government. 200,000
people have been murdered since. -
Vietnam and surrounding countries, 1950-73. Destroyed the
"virus" of independent nationalism. 2,000,000 dead. -
Chile, 1973 (we put Pinochet, the ruthless dictator, in
power). Incidentally, their democratically elected president, Allende,
was assassinated in the coup on September 11, 1973 -- a day which now
lives in infamy for more than one reason. -
Nicaragua, 1980's. Our dictator, Somoza, was fine, but when a popular revolution
toppled him, we brought in the "freedom fighters" to destroy their
country. (for some important details, read Morpheus'
fascinating interview with a former, disillusioned, US intelligence
agent.) -
El Salvador, 1980....
-
Haiti, 1991
-
.... and many, many more
The Middle East in general is another part of the story. Israel-Palestine
is a difficult, emotional topic--certainly one of the "third rails" of
US politics. As you know, we really aren't supposed to think about this
situation. But there are at least two good reasons to consider that we
aren't getting the full story:
- The huge Israeli peace movement. For example, in May 2002,
there was a huge
demonstration for peace in Tel Aviv of 50-150,000 people in a country
of 6 million. That would be like a protest of 1-3 million people here. - The hundreds of Israeli "refusniks" -- Israeli soldiers
who refuse to go to the occupied territories because they claim they'll
be ordered to commit major human rights violations. Since the Israeli
fighting forces are known for their toughness and discipline -- this
is a major, major signal. Well worth trying to understand. Here's an
example,
from a refusnik, written in Feb 2002.
Of course, there is another reason we should try to understand what's
happening there: our support of what's happening there is a major reason
(not the only, however) we are hated in the Arab world. We'd better know
what we're supporting.
Chomsky gave this talk in March
2001 on Iraq, Turkey, and Israel-Palestine . Not fun to read,
but important. You'll wonder how this information, which is all
public, somehow did not make it into the public mind. The Matrix
is truly amazing.
Another important Chomsky article is "http://www.why-us.org/nc_israel_pal.shtml">this one specifically on Israel-Palestine . It
has plenty of references if you'd like to check his sources.
In short, the Awful Truth is this: the US foreign policy
machine chose option #2 in the great decision,
post-WW II . They chose to rule the world with an iron fist.
But they didn't bother to tell us--We, The People. And somehow,
most of us never noticed.
to Wonderland 2:
The Desert of the Real
Saturday, November 06, 2004
New York Times Killed "Bush Bulge" Story
FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/bush-bulge.html
PRESS RELEASE:
New York Times Killed "Bush Bulge" Story
Five days before the presidential election, the New York Times killed a
story about the mysterious object George W. Bush wore on his back
during
the presidential debates, journalist Dave Lindorff reveals in an
exclusive
report on this week's CounterSpin, FAIR's weekly radio show. The
spiked
story included compelling photographic and scientific evidence that
would
have contradicted Bush's claim that the bulge on his back was just a
matter of poor tailoring.
"The New York Times assigned three editors to this story and had it
scheduled to run five days before the election, which would have raised
questions about the president's integrity," said Lindorff. "But it was
killed by top editors at the Times; clearly they were chickening out of
taking this on before the election."
Lindorff says two other major newspapers, the Washington Post and the
Los
Angeles Times, also decided not to pursue the story, which featured a
leading NASA satellite photo imaging scientist's analysis of pictures
of
the president's back from the first debate.
The Times' bulge story is the latest example of possible
self-censorship
by major news media during the election campaign. In September, CBS's
60
Minutes decided to delay until after the election an investigative
segment
that questioned the Bush administration's use of forged Niger uranium
documents in making its case for the Iraq war, saying that "it would be
inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election"
(New York Times, 9/25/04; FAIR Action Alert, 9/28/04).
And on September 10, CNN reporter Nic Robertson said of a CNN
documentary
on Saudi Arabia, "I don't want to prejudge our executives here at
CNN...
but I think we can be looking forward to [it] shortly after the U.S.
elections." The segment is now scheduled to air this Sunday, five days
after the election.
Lindorff first broke the story of "the bulge" in Salon (10/8/04). His
latest report, "Was Bush Wired? Sure Looks Like It," was published
October
30 on MotherJones.com
(http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/11/10_407.html).
CounterSpin provides a critical examination of major media stories
every
week, exposing issues the mainstream press misses. It is heard on more
than 130 noncommercial stations across the United States and Canada,
and
can also be heard on FAIR's website.
To listen to Lindorff's CounterSpin interview (available in Real Audio
in
MP3 format), go to:
http://www.fair.org/counterspin/110504.html
The interview begins 17 minutes and 30 seconds into the show.
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/bush-bulge.html
PRESS RELEASE:
New York Times Killed "Bush Bulge" Story
Five days before the presidential election, the New York Times killed a
story about the mysterious object George W. Bush wore on his back
during
the presidential debates, journalist Dave Lindorff reveals in an
exclusive
report on this week's CounterSpin, FAIR's weekly radio show. The
spiked
story included compelling photographic and scientific evidence that
would
have contradicted Bush's claim that the bulge on his back was just a
matter of poor tailoring.
"The New York Times assigned three editors to this story and had it
scheduled to run five days before the election, which would have raised
questions about the president's integrity," said Lindorff. "But it was
killed by top editors at the Times; clearly they were chickening out of
taking this on before the election."
Lindorff says two other major newspapers, the Washington Post and the
Los
Angeles Times, also decided not to pursue the story, which featured a
leading NASA satellite photo imaging scientist's analysis of pictures
of
the president's back from the first debate.
The Times' bulge story is the latest example of possible
self-censorship
by major news media during the election campaign. In September, CBS's
60
Minutes decided to delay until after the election an investigative
segment
that questioned the Bush administration's use of forged Niger uranium
documents in making its case for the Iraq war, saying that "it would be
inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election"
(New York Times, 9/25/04; FAIR Action Alert, 9/28/04).
And on September 10, CNN reporter Nic Robertson said of a CNN
documentary
on Saudi Arabia, "I don't want to prejudge our executives here at
CNN...
but I think we can be looking forward to [it] shortly after the U.S.
elections." The segment is now scheduled to air this Sunday, five days
after the election.
Lindorff first broke the story of "the bulge" in Salon (10/8/04). His
latest report, "Was Bush Wired? Sure Looks Like It," was published
October
30 on MotherJones.com
(http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/11/10_407.html).
CounterSpin provides a critical examination of major media stories
every
week, exposing issues the mainstream press misses. It is heard on more
than 130 noncommercial stations across the United States and Canada,
and
can also be heard on FAIR's website.
To listen to Lindorff's CounterSpin interview (available in Real Audio
in
MP3 format), go to:
http://www.fair.org/counterspin/110504.html
The interview begins 17 minutes and 30 seconds into the show.
Students at Colo. High School Protest Bush
Students at Colo. High School Protest Bush
BOULDER, Colo. - About 85 high school students upset about the nation's direction were camping out in the school library, demanding an audience with Republican leaders.
Students began their protest Thursday and school officials said they could stay through Friday when representatives of their Democratic congressman, U.S. Rep. Mark Udall (news, bio, voting record), and U.S. Senator-elect Ken Salazar, were expected to visit.
The students said they also wanted to meet with thier superintendent's representatives along with Republicans Gov. Bill Owens and U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (news, bio, voting record).
Some of the students left telephone messages with Republican leaders.
"We want them to reassure us that our fears are misguided and that the government is doing everything in its power to prevent our futures from being destroyed," said senior Brian Martens, who wore a hand-lettered T-shirt which said he was the "senior executive of the subcommittee on protesting stuff."
Students said they are not protesting the election, but are worried about the national debt, military recruitment in schools and the environment.
Read full story here
BOULDER, Colo. - About 85 high school students upset about the nation's direction were camping out in the school library, demanding an audience with Republican leaders.
Students began their protest Thursday and school officials said they could stay through Friday when representatives of their Democratic congressman, U.S. Rep. Mark Udall (news, bio, voting record), and U.S. Senator-elect Ken Salazar, were expected to visit.
The students said they also wanted to meet with thier superintendent's representatives along with Republicans Gov. Bill Owens and U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (news, bio, voting record).
Some of the students left telephone messages with Republican leaders.
"We want them to reassure us that our fears are misguided and that the government is doing everything in its power to prevent our futures from being destroyed," said senior Brian Martens, who wore a hand-lettered T-shirt which said he was the "senior executive of the subcommittee on protesting stuff."
Students said they are not protesting the election, but are worried about the national debt, military recruitment in schools and the environment.
Read full story here
17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists...by Michael Moore
11/5/04
Dear Friends,
Ok, it sucks. Really sucks. But before you go and cash it all in, let's, in
the words of Monty Python, 'always look on the bright side of life!' There
IS some good news from Tuesday's election.
Here are 17 reasons not to slit your wrists:
1. It is against the law for George W. Bush to run for president again.
2. Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since
Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
3. The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults
(Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always
wrong and you should never listen to them.
4. In spite of Bush's win, the majority of Americans still think the
country is headed in the wrong direction (56%), think the war wasn't worth fighting (51%), and don't approve of the job George W. Bush is doing (52%). (Note to foreigners: Don't try to figure this one out. It's an American thing, like Pop Tarts.)
5. The Republicans will not have a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the
Senate. If the Democrats do their job, Bush won't be able to pack the
Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues. Did I say "if the Democrats do
their job?" Um, maybe better to scratch this one.
6. Michigan voted for Kerry! So did the entire Northeast, the birthplace of
our democracy. So did 6 of the 8 Great Lakes States. And the whole West
Coast! Plus Hawaii. Ok, that's a start. We've got most of the fresh water,
all of Broadway, and Mt. St. Helens. We can dehydrate them or bury them in
lava. And no more show tunes!
7. Once again we are reminded that the buckeye is a nut, and not just any
old nut -- a poisonous nut. A great nation was felled by a poisonous nut.
May Ohio State pay dearly this Saturday when it faces Michigan.
8. 88% of Bush's support came from white voters. In 50 years, America will
no longer have a white majority. Hey, 50 years isn't such a long time! If
you're ten years old and reading this, your golden years will be truly
golden and you will be well cared for in your old age.
9. Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on Tuesday, cannot get married
in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won't
have to buy now.
10. Five more African Americans were elected as members of Congress,
including the return of Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. It's always good to
have more blacks in there fighting for us and doing the job our candidates
can't.
11. The CEO of Coors was defeated for Senate in Colorado. Drink up!
12. Admit it: We like the Bush twins and we don't want them to go away.
13. At the state legislative level, Democrats picked up a net of at least 3
chambers in Tuesday's elections. Of the 98 partisan-controlled state
legislative chambers (house/assembly and senate), Democrats went into the
2004 elections in control of 44 chambers, Republicans controlled 53
chambers, and 1 chamber was tied. After Tuesday, Democrats now control 47
chambers, Republicans control 49 chambers, 1 chamber is tied and 1 chamber
(Montana House) is still undecided.
14. Bush is now a lame duck president. He will have no greater moment than
the one he's having this week. It's all downhill for him from here on out --
and, more significantly, he's just not going to want to do all the hard work
that will be expected of him. It'll be like everyone's last month in 12th
grade -- you've already made it, so it's party time! Perhaps he'll treat the
next four years like a permanent Friday, spending even more time at the
ranch or in Kennebunkport. And why shouldn't he? He's already proved his
point, avenged his father and kicked our ass.
15. Should Bush decide to show up to work and take this country down a very
dark road, it is also just as likely that either of the following two
scenarios will happen: a) Now that he doesn't ever need to pander to the
Christian conservatives again to get elected, someone may whisper in his ear
that he should spend these last four years building "a legacy" so that
history will render a kinder verdict on him and thus he will not push for
too aggressive a right-wing agenda; or b) He will become so cocky and
arrogant -- and thus, reckless -- that he will commit a blunder of such
major proportions that even his own party will have to remove him from
office.
16. There are nearly 300 million Americans -- 200 million of them of voting
age. We only lost by three and a half million! That's not a landslide -- it
means we're almost there. Imagine losing by 20 million. If you had 58 yards
to go before you reached the goal line and then you barreled down 55 of
those yards, would you stop on the three yard line, pick up the ball and go
home crying -- especially when you get to start the next down on the three
yard line? Of course not! Buck up! Have hope! More sports analogies are
coming!!!
17. Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the
candidate dubbed "The .1 Liberal in the Senate." That's more than the total
number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore.
Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for
a trend it should be this -- that so many Americans were, for the first time
since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has
always been filled with evangelicals -- that is not news. What IS news is
that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact,
that's BIG news. Which means, don't expect the mainstream media, the ones
who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November
2, 2004. In fact, it's better that they don't. We'll need the element of
surprise in 2008.
Feeling better? I hope so. As my friend Mort wrote me yesterday, "My
Romanian grandfather used to say to me, 'Remember, Morton, this is such a
wonderful country -- it doesn't even need a president!'"
But it needs us. Rest up, I'll write you again tomorrow.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
Dear Friends,
Ok, it sucks. Really sucks. But before you go and cash it all in, let's, in
the words of Monty Python, 'always look on the bright side of life!' There
IS some good news from Tuesday's election.
Here are 17 reasons not to slit your wrists:
1. It is against the law for George W. Bush to run for president again.
2. Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since
Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
3. The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults
(Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always
wrong and you should never listen to them.
4. In spite of Bush's win, the majority of Americans still think the
country is headed in the wrong direction (56%), think the war wasn't worth fighting (51%), and don't approve of the job George W. Bush is doing (52%). (Note to foreigners: Don't try to figure this one out. It's an American thing, like Pop Tarts.)
5. The Republicans will not have a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the
Senate. If the Democrats do their job, Bush won't be able to pack the
Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues. Did I say "if the Democrats do
their job?" Um, maybe better to scratch this one.
6. Michigan voted for Kerry! So did the entire Northeast, the birthplace of
our democracy. So did 6 of the 8 Great Lakes States. And the whole West
Coast! Plus Hawaii. Ok, that's a start. We've got most of the fresh water,
all of Broadway, and Mt. St. Helens. We can dehydrate them or bury them in
lava. And no more show tunes!
7. Once again we are reminded that the buckeye is a nut, and not just any
old nut -- a poisonous nut. A great nation was felled by a poisonous nut.
May Ohio State pay dearly this Saturday when it faces Michigan.
8. 88% of Bush's support came from white voters. In 50 years, America will
no longer have a white majority. Hey, 50 years isn't such a long time! If
you're ten years old and reading this, your golden years will be truly
golden and you will be well cared for in your old age.
9. Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on Tuesday, cannot get married
in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won't
have to buy now.
10. Five more African Americans were elected as members of Congress,
including the return of Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. It's always good to
have more blacks in there fighting for us and doing the job our candidates
can't.
11. The CEO of Coors was defeated for Senate in Colorado. Drink up!
12. Admit it: We like the Bush twins and we don't want them to go away.
13. At the state legislative level, Democrats picked up a net of at least 3
chambers in Tuesday's elections. Of the 98 partisan-controlled state
legislative chambers (house/assembly and senate), Democrats went into the
2004 elections in control of 44 chambers, Republicans controlled 53
chambers, and 1 chamber was tied. After Tuesday, Democrats now control 47
chambers, Republicans control 49 chambers, 1 chamber is tied and 1 chamber
(Montana House) is still undecided.
14. Bush is now a lame duck president. He will have no greater moment than
the one he's having this week. It's all downhill for him from here on out --
and, more significantly, he's just not going to want to do all the hard work
that will be expected of him. It'll be like everyone's last month in 12th
grade -- you've already made it, so it's party time! Perhaps he'll treat the
next four years like a permanent Friday, spending even more time at the
ranch or in Kennebunkport. And why shouldn't he? He's already proved his
point, avenged his father and kicked our ass.
15. Should Bush decide to show up to work and take this country down a very
dark road, it is also just as likely that either of the following two
scenarios will happen: a) Now that he doesn't ever need to pander to the
Christian conservatives again to get elected, someone may whisper in his ear
that he should spend these last four years building "a legacy" so that
history will render a kinder verdict on him and thus he will not push for
too aggressive a right-wing agenda; or b) He will become so cocky and
arrogant -- and thus, reckless -- that he will commit a blunder of such
major proportions that even his own party will have to remove him from
office.
16. There are nearly 300 million Americans -- 200 million of them of voting
age. We only lost by three and a half million! That's not a landslide -- it
means we're almost there. Imagine losing by 20 million. If you had 58 yards
to go before you reached the goal line and then you barreled down 55 of
those yards, would you stop on the three yard line, pick up the ball and go
home crying -- especially when you get to start the next down on the three
yard line? Of course not! Buck up! Have hope! More sports analogies are
coming!!!
17. Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the
candidate dubbed "The .1 Liberal in the Senate." That's more than the total
number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore.
Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for
a trend it should be this -- that so many Americans were, for the first time
since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has
always been filled with evangelicals -- that is not news. What IS news is
that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact,
that's BIG news. Which means, don't expect the mainstream media, the ones
who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November
2, 2004. In fact, it's better that they don't. We'll need the element of
surprise in 2008.
Feeling better? I hope so. As my friend Mort wrote me yesterday, "My
Romanian grandfather used to say to me, 'Remember, Morton, this is such a
wonderful country -- it doesn't even need a president!'"
But it needs us. Rest up, I'll write you again tomorrow.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
NO VOTER FRAUD!
Blackboxvoting.org has launched the LARGEST Freedom of Information Act request in history. They are seeking to see into the code in the voting machines for a full audit in every state.
At the same time, not to be undone, the Bush administration is trying to roll back the Freedom of Information Act SPECIFICLY in voting information. I hope that you would all go to BLACKBOXVOTING.ORG to see more info.
At the same time, not to be undone, the Bush administration is trying to roll back the Freedom of Information Act SPECIFICLY in voting information. I hope that you would all go to BLACKBOXVOTING.ORG to see more info.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
STAR WARS EPISODE III TRAILER!!!!!
http://czanik.com/graphics/video/ep3trailer-Large.mov
The 'Nosferatu' nod is pretty stupid, but aside from that...
The 'Nosferatu' nod is pretty stupid, but aside from that...
VICTORY 2004: PRESIDENT'S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
VICTORY 2004: PRESIDENT'S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH INVITING THE 55 MILLION AMERICA-HATERS WHO VOTED AGAINST GOD TO BEND OVER AND TAKE IT LIKE A PRISON BITCH
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Thank you all for coming. We had a long night - and a great night. (Applause.) And now, just hours later, here I am already addressing a beautiful crowd of paranoid, fist-pumping, soon-to-be tax-exempt gazillionaires. (Applause.) Yes, as I look around I see that there are finally no self-loathing Negroes in front or behind me, which can only mean one thing: the election is OVER! (Applause.)
Earlier today, Senator Kerry called me to admit that he is a pansy-assed loser. He was very gracious. And so was I. Hell, I even held my hand over the receiver so he couldn't hear me cracking up over all the fruity liberal garbage he was spouting about "healing" and "uniting" the people. (Laughter.)
Oh - I didn't say that, did I?
Because... umm... I don't want to be a divider, I want to be a divider. Wait. Damn. I done pooped that up, too. Take two, dudes. I don't want to be a pussy uniter. I want to be a divider. (Applause.) Good Lord Almighty it feels so dang good to finally be able to say that in public. I ain't running again, so I don't have to say anymore of that bullcrap I used to spout to get elected – like, "Jeb, tear up them nigra ballots, boy!" I kid. No, seriously, the only type of uniting I'm going to be doing is when Democrats curl their Jockeys to their ankles and bend on over! YEE-HAW!
Now, don't get me wrong here: sure, I'll follow this dumb tradition of Presidents saying nice stuff about the same lousy fucker who just tried to stab me in the back. Because so what if my entire political career was built on exploiting wedge issues to inflame and polarize our electorate? By giving some lip service to "unity" today, I'll be able to play the victim next year when Democrats balk over my nominating a KKK grand wizard to the Supreme Court. (Applause.)
So yeah, on the record, Senator JFK Masshole was an admirable, honorable candidate. Off the record, that babbling killjoy tried to sell a story that would put the dead to sleep. I mean, Jesus Christ, where'd that boy study Presidential politics? My marketing whizzes sold the right story, and the little people bought it. That story was "Once upon a time... George W. Bush killed the Bogey Man, then made everyone rich. The end."
I'd like to thank the following folks for enabling my megalomania and understanding how my bloodlust and decorative Christian morals can coexist in a world where truth adapts to my omnipotence - and not visa versy. Thanks first to my wife, who proves every day that Zoloft-laced Smirnoff Ice gimlets can indeed drown out the screams of thousands of Islamiac babies I done pan-fried because they got caught between my divine wrath and Paul Wolfowitz's funny-lookin', but nonetheless lethal little cock.
Thanks also to my twins for bringing in the bimbo, girls-gone-wild, Young Stepford Wife, and "I've had an abortion but I draw the line at you having one" votes. And thanks to Karl, Karen, Ken, Matthew, and Mark for making Josef Goebbels, Joe McCarthy and Lee Atwater squeal with joy in the bowels of hell. It's too bad history has a pernickety habit of eventually peeling off the duds of the liars, the charlatans, and wolves in Good Samaritan's clothing. Otherwise, you guys would be memorialized with marble statues perched atop pyramids built from the bones of Iraqi civilians and terminally ill oldsters too poor to enjoy the luxury of treating their worthless clogged arteries with bottle of generic aspirin.
But most of all, I'd like to thank every scared shitless, emotionally impotent suburbanite who bought my empty promises of an America based on compassion, Christian mercy, and bashing the shit out of those disgusting faggots! (Applause.)
As I stand before you today, tripping my balls off with power, I promise you three things: I will abolish the income tax, and institute a flat tax that unburdens the rich of paying their fair share and forces white trash to pay an extra 12% for baby formula, Kraft mac and cheese, and Parliament menthols. I promise to privatize Social Security by creating a vast Federal Mutual Fund run by my compadres in regulation-free Houston and filling the financial gap between now and the distant future with leprechaun gold. And finally, I promise to hunt Osama Bin Laden down... and shake his hand.
In closing, before I get down to the hard work of bleeding money from social programs in order to underwrite the McJesus Industry, re-segregating the public school system, gang-banging Mother Earth for short-term profit, convincing blue collar labor monkeys that their tax cuts aren't just Band-Aids on a slit throat, and most of all, feeding the Southern Military Welfare State more tax dollars by inventing more Middle Eastern meat-grinders, I wanted to give a little shout-out to all the 48 percent of Americans who supported Senator Droopy McGook-Killa:
I formally invite all of you to commence unquestioning worship of yours truly. If, on the other hand, you nice sodomites in Jew York, San Fag Crisco, and Mick-cago got diaper rash from my holy mandate (and super-sexy popular vote), please, by all means, move your chickenshit asses to Canada, or France, or some atoll in the South Pacific. Because, let's face it, the Democratic Party is the party of scaredy-cat cowards, and crybabies. A party where the broads shave thrice daily, and the men got cunt lips. So run for the border my friends... the GOP and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Thank you, and God Bless George W. Bush's America!
(Applause.)
Brought to you by the good folks at GeorgeWBush.org
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Thank you all for coming. We had a long night - and a great night. (Applause.) And now, just hours later, here I am already addressing a beautiful crowd of paranoid, fist-pumping, soon-to-be tax-exempt gazillionaires. (Applause.) Yes, as I look around I see that there are finally no self-loathing Negroes in front or behind me, which can only mean one thing: the election is OVER! (Applause.)
Earlier today, Senator Kerry called me to admit that he is a pansy-assed loser. He was very gracious. And so was I. Hell, I even held my hand over the receiver so he couldn't hear me cracking up over all the fruity liberal garbage he was spouting about "healing" and "uniting" the people. (Laughter.)
Oh - I didn't say that, did I?
Because... umm... I don't want to be a divider, I want to be a divider. Wait. Damn. I done pooped that up, too. Take two, dudes. I don't want to be a pussy uniter. I want to be a divider. (Applause.) Good Lord Almighty it feels so dang good to finally be able to say that in public. I ain't running again, so I don't have to say anymore of that bullcrap I used to spout to get elected – like, "Jeb, tear up them nigra ballots, boy!" I kid. No, seriously, the only type of uniting I'm going to be doing is when Democrats curl their Jockeys to their ankles and bend on over! YEE-HAW!
Now, don't get me wrong here: sure, I'll follow this dumb tradition of Presidents saying nice stuff about the same lousy fucker who just tried to stab me in the back. Because so what if my entire political career was built on exploiting wedge issues to inflame and polarize our electorate? By giving some lip service to "unity" today, I'll be able to play the victim next year when Democrats balk over my nominating a KKK grand wizard to the Supreme Court. (Applause.)
So yeah, on the record, Senator JFK Masshole was an admirable, honorable candidate. Off the record, that babbling killjoy tried to sell a story that would put the dead to sleep. I mean, Jesus Christ, where'd that boy study Presidential politics? My marketing whizzes sold the right story, and the little people bought it. That story was "Once upon a time... George W. Bush killed the Bogey Man, then made everyone rich. The end."
I'd like to thank the following folks for enabling my megalomania and understanding how my bloodlust and decorative Christian morals can coexist in a world where truth adapts to my omnipotence - and not visa versy. Thanks first to my wife, who proves every day that Zoloft-laced Smirnoff Ice gimlets can indeed drown out the screams of thousands of Islamiac babies I done pan-fried because they got caught between my divine wrath and Paul Wolfowitz's funny-lookin', but nonetheless lethal little cock.
Thanks also to my twins for bringing in the bimbo, girls-gone-wild, Young Stepford Wife, and "I've had an abortion but I draw the line at you having one" votes. And thanks to Karl, Karen, Ken, Matthew, and Mark for making Josef Goebbels, Joe McCarthy and Lee Atwater squeal with joy in the bowels of hell. It's too bad history has a pernickety habit of eventually peeling off the duds of the liars, the charlatans, and wolves in Good Samaritan's clothing. Otherwise, you guys would be memorialized with marble statues perched atop pyramids built from the bones of Iraqi civilians and terminally ill oldsters too poor to enjoy the luxury of treating their worthless clogged arteries with bottle of generic aspirin.
But most of all, I'd like to thank every scared shitless, emotionally impotent suburbanite who bought my empty promises of an America based on compassion, Christian mercy, and bashing the shit out of those disgusting faggots! (Applause.)
As I stand before you today, tripping my balls off with power, I promise you three things: I will abolish the income tax, and institute a flat tax that unburdens the rich of paying their fair share and forces white trash to pay an extra 12% for baby formula, Kraft mac and cheese, and Parliament menthols. I promise to privatize Social Security by creating a vast Federal Mutual Fund run by my compadres in regulation-free Houston and filling the financial gap between now and the distant future with leprechaun gold. And finally, I promise to hunt Osama Bin Laden down... and shake his hand.
In closing, before I get down to the hard work of bleeding money from social programs in order to underwrite the McJesus Industry, re-segregating the public school system, gang-banging Mother Earth for short-term profit, convincing blue collar labor monkeys that their tax cuts aren't just Band-Aids on a slit throat, and most of all, feeding the Southern Military Welfare State more tax dollars by inventing more Middle Eastern meat-grinders, I wanted to give a little shout-out to all the 48 percent of Americans who supported Senator Droopy McGook-Killa:
I formally invite all of you to commence unquestioning worship of yours truly. If, on the other hand, you nice sodomites in Jew York, San Fag Crisco, and Mick-cago got diaper rash from my holy mandate (and super-sexy popular vote), please, by all means, move your chickenshit asses to Canada, or France, or some atoll in the South Pacific. Because, let's face it, the Democratic Party is the party of scaredy-cat cowards, and crybabies. A party where the broads shave thrice daily, and the men got cunt lips. So run for the border my friends... the GOP and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Thank you, and God Bless George W. Bush's America!
(Applause.)
Brought to you by the good folks at GeorgeWBush.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
