Business to get out GOP vote - Fortune 500 firms mobilize to take on pro-Dem unions
Posted Monday, August 11, 2003 by symbolman

Approximately 170 corporations, including some 60 Fortune 500 companies, are participating in an ambitious plan to mobilize employees in the presidential and congressional elections 15 months away.

In addition to the 170 companies, the project also includes about 100 trade associations. Close to 100 of the 270 groups have joined this year. The project was masterminded by the Business Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC), which gave $172,000 to Republican candidates in 2002 and less than $9,000 to Democrats.

Participants, including companies such as ExxonMobil, Procter & Gamble and International Paper, and trade associations such as The Business Roundtable and The Financial Services Roundtable, have already contacted 1.5 million employees, said Greg Casey, BIPAC president.>> More

We love how the Right Wing always scream there is no "Class War". WELL, HERE IT IS PEOPLE. Servants, Meet your Masters. We advise each and every one of you to BOYCOTT ALL these Companies. If you don't, they will OWN YOU and the COUNTRY. Remember, they gave $172,000 dollars to the Repubs and $9000 to the Demos. WHY? So, like with ENRON they can claim that both sides got money. Wake up America!

Here's the link to their>> Smoke and Mirrors.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL: THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT
Posted Monday, August 11, 2003 by symbolman

This is a paradox. This is a conundrum. But it is the story of Bush.

He has been a failure at almost everything he has ever attempted as an adult, but he has been a success at his "image" of being a Bush.

He gets full credit for his pedigree, without being held accountable for his actions or words.The media is almost like the owner of the offspring of a "Best of Show" prize winning poodle. The only problem is that the son of the poodle, so to speak, has chewed up and destroyed all the furniture in the house. When a neighbor comes and asks in astonishment, "Your poodle did all this damage?" the owner responds, "Of course not, he would never be so destructive. He is the son of a prize winning pedigree poodle. It's not in his genes to do such a thing. "Well, George W. Bush is the son of a poodle, and this isn't just entertainment.">> More

BUZZFLASH is good for what AILS YOU - they have the Most MUST READS on the web!Don't miss this one!

Samuel Dash: Today We Face Another 'Watergate'
Posted Monday, August 11, 2003 by vgdesign

Samuel Dash is professor of law and director of the Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure at Georgetown University Law Center. He served as chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee.

Thirty years ago the Senate of the United States prevented President Richard Nixon from destroying constitutional democracy in our country. Watergate was a wrenching turning point in our history and its lessons must be learned and re-learned.

Now our lives as a free people are also being threatened by an administration bent on grabbing unprecedented power, a timid Congress and an uninformed electorate. That is why the Watergate experience remains so relevant to our republic today.

Watergate was much more than a bungled burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building by agents of President Nixon to obtain information that would help Nixon get re-elected in the presidential election of 1972.

It was the culmination of a series of criminal acts authorized by Nixon and carried out by his in-house secret espionage team to maintain his power, smother dissent and punish his enemies. Former Attorney General John Mitchell, who headed Nixon's re-election campaign and authorized the Watergate burglary and wiretaps, called these criminal acts by the president and his aides "the White House horrors," which had to be covered up if the president was to be re-elected. >>More

Veterans Organize To Bring Troops Home!
Posted Monday, August 11, 2003 by vgdesign

“Veterans For Peace” is gearing up to become a major national force to oppose the Bush Administration both at home and overseas - By Stewart Nusbaumer, Intervention Magazine

At the Veterans for Peace annual convention this weekend in San Francisco, the most pressing issue was not veterans’ affairs or government benefits or even homeless veterans, although these and more subjects were discussed. What fired up these aging veterans was the threat to our civil rights, and even more, the continuing war in Iraq.
...
Amongst these veterans, there is a sense of growing crisis, a feeling that America is in danger of changing irrevocably for the worse. “We are facing the greatest struggle of our lives,” Vietnam veteran Dave Cline told a packed room of veterans. “What Johnson and Nixon did on a regional level, Bush is now attempting to do on a global level.”

“Most Americans were against this war, but they were manipulated, they were systemically lied to," said Cline, who is the current President of Veterans For Peace. "Veterans attempted to stop the war, we organized a teach-in, a demonstration and lobbying effort in the nation’s capital. We worked hard.”

But the mainstream corporate media highlighted those veterans who supported the war, especially retired colonels and generals (paid by the media because of their contacts with the Pentagon), and tended to ignore veterans who opposed the war, often former enlisted soldiers and sailors.

“What was truly surprising about this veterans’ effort to stop the Iraq War,” said Jan Barry, an organizer of Veterans Against Iraq War a new group that worked in a coalition with other veteran groups in opposition to the war in Iraq, “is how many career military veterans and politically conservative veterans opposed the invasion of Iraq. Opposition to this war is very deep and very broad in the veterans' community.”

But this anti-war message was muffled and even ignored by the media. >>More

'Liberal' Papers More Likely to Criticize Clinton
Posted Monday, August 11, 2003 by vgdesign

While 'Conservative' Ones Leave Bush Alone - By Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher

NEW YORK -- So-called "liberal" newspapers tend to be more open-minded and willing to criticize a like-minded U.S. president than their "conservative" counterparts, according to a report released last week.

In a study for The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, Michael Tomasky looked at 510 editorials over the past decade.

He found that on their editorial pages The New York Times  and The Washington Post  criticized the Clinton administration 30% of the time.

By contrast, The Wall Street Journal  and The Washington Times  opposed the Bush White House 7% of the time. >>More

Powell at Center of FCC Storm
Posted Monday, August 11, 2003 by vgdesign

Like his father, he's had to deny rumors of resignation - By James Toedtman, Newsday

Michael Powell might be forgiven for getting stranded in Egegik, Alaska.

For the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Egegik is almost as far from Washington as he could get - 3,668 miles away. He's at a fishing village on the narrow Alaskan Peninsula that has a population of 116, two water wells and only half the homes equipped with plumbing. It is so isolated that it was used as a refuge during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Yet in early June, Powell said, he and his small plane were "stranded on the tundra" when the gravel runway began to thaw.

It was unintended, Powell insists. But it gave him a brief respite from controversies that have intensified this year, his second as FCC chairman.

Powell and his colleagues are being buffeted by fierce political crosswinds brought about by a collapsing telecom boom, free-marketeers' demand for less regulation and mind-numbing technological advances. The seven- year high-stakes battle has grown even more intense as proposed regulatory changes work their way through Congress and the courts.

Today the FCC is responsible for nothing less than shepherding the telecommunications transition from what Commissioner Michael Copps has dubbed "POTS - Plain Old Telephone System - to PANS - Purely Awesome New Stuff." >>More

Complain to the main lines about cutting off Gore's Speech
Posted Sunday, August 10, 2003 by symbolman

A Media Worker Fights back!

"I work in broadcasting (for a major television distributor, I'll leave it at that), and I am thoroughly disgusted by the utter complicitness of these corporate whores. Worse, I feel like I'm betraying my countrymen by working to keep this propaganda on-air.

When they cut off Gore's speech the other day, that infuriated me.

So, here are some internal phone numbers. Use them as you see fit. If you feel like making some calls, bitching at some corporate whores, causing general annoyance, well, heck, I can't stop any of ya..."

Note: Master Control is sometimes referred to as TOC (technical operations center).
------------
C-SPAN 1/2
------------
General: 202-626-4844 (Angie Palmer)
Marketing: 202-626-4874 (Peter Kiley)
C-SPAN Master Control: 202-626-4471
------------------
FOX News Channel
------------------
General: 212-301-5440
FNC Master Control: 212-301-3500
----
CNN
----
General (24 hours): 404-827-1510
General #2: 404-827-2574 (Lauralyn Waters)
CNN Master Control: 404-827-1558
-------
MSNBC
-------
General: 818-840-3525 (Kathy Trullender)
Ms. Trullender's Fax: 818-840-3063
MSNBC Master Control: 201-583-5400

Thank you Brave Media Worker - Whoever you are! Let them have it folks! Tell them you want the TRUTH! That a Scandal involving BUSH would sell like hotcakes! That they could have a Pulitzer with minimal effort and go down in History!

The Governor of the Future? (Film of Schwarzenegger being naughty available online)
Posted Sunday, August 10, 2003 by symbolman

What's with the Phoney remake of the Reagan Ranch for Bush?
Posted Sunday, August 10, 2003 by symbolman

A Take Back the Media Watcher writes to Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post and Reliable Sources at CNN

"I was wondering with all the coverage of the Crawford ranch dominating the media why nobody has bothered to give us its history.

When was it built, when did the President buy it, etc. I find it odd how the media has no interest in this aspect of the Ranch.

Its truly amazing that the media is complicit in this phony scheme. I have read that the ranch was purchased in 1999 and the house was finished in time for the campaign.

It seems apparent that the media is covering up this phony remake of the Reagan ranch. Besides how many rich people actually clear their own Brush. Why is the media an accomplice in this photo-op travesty?"

What IS with this "Green Acres" set? And here's a good question for the folks out there - Does ANYONE have a pic of Bush on a HORSE? I contend that he is AFRAID of Horses and I'm willing to bet that Horses DON'T LIKE HIM. He's got the BOOTS and the BELT BUCKLE and the HAT - WHERE IS THE HORSE? Let's see BUSH on a Horse, or quit calling him a COWBOY. He's a disgrace, a liar, and a coward - especially the way he treats our fine Troops.

Broadcasters Bank on a Combination of Interests
Posted Sunday, August 10, 2003 by vgdesign

Parties Seeking FCC Approval of Hispanic Broadcasting Merger Are Big Donors to Bush Campaign - By Thomas B. Edsall and Sarah Cohen, Washington Post

Executives and employees of companies seeking federal approval of a controversial merger that would create a Republican-controlled Hispanic media giant are pouring contributions into President Bush's reelection campaign.

If approved, the merger of Univision Communications Inc. and the Hispanic Broadcasting Corp. would give one firm as much as 80 percent of the Hispanic television and radio audience in many of the nation's large markets.

Major participants in the proposed $2.8 billion merger -- pending before the Federal Communications Commission -- include individuals and corporations that have played central roles in Bush's business and political career.

The driving force behind the fundraising, A. Jerrold (Jerry) Perenchio, chairman and chief executive of Univision, has already qualified as a Bush "Pioneer" by raising at least $100,000 in donations of no more than $2,000 apiece, the legal maximum. >>More

Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence
Posted Sunday, August 10, 2003 by symbolman

His name was Joe, from the U.S. government. He carried 40 classified slides and a message from the Bush administration.

An engineer-turned-CIA analyst, Joe had helped build the U.S. government case that Iraq posed a nuclear threat. He landed in Vienna on Jan. 22 and drove to the U.S. diplomatic mission downtown. In a conference room 32 floors above the Danube River, he told United Nations nuclear inspectors they were making a serious mistake.

At issue was Iraq's efforts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes. The U.S. government said those tubes were for centrifuges to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb. But the IAEA, the world's nuclear watchdog, had uncovered strong evidence that Iraq was using them for conventional rockets.

Joe described the rocket story as a transparent Iraqi lie. According to people familiar with his presentation, which circulated before and afterward among government and outside specialists, Joe said the specialized aluminum in the tubes was "overspecified," "inappropriate" and "excessively strong." No one, he told the inspectors, would waste the costly alloy on a rocket.>> More

This is a very important MUST READ. Well researched and DAMNING. Pass this around - Bush is on his way OUT, but first he needs to be IMPEACHED - along with CHENEY who pushed Nuke lies as well - if we don't IMPEACH them our country's Veracity is IMPEACHED.

William Safire On Language: 'FRUITCAKE'
Posted Sunday, August 10, 2003 by vgdesign

In the powerful Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives (the adjective powerful  has long been fused to the committee name), a memorable imbroglio recently shocked the more sensitive denizens of the people's House. ''It wasn't a day in which the dialogue amongst us was equal to the challenge of governance,'' said Representative Nancy Johnson, a Republican from Connecticut.

Students of the political language refer to it as ''the fruitcake  episode.''

The Democrats on the committee had staged a walkout to protest a too-speedy markup of a pension bill, leaving behind one member -- Pete Stark of California, who is given to colorful language -- to delay proceedings. When Stark grew agitated at a ruling by the chairman, Representative Scott McInnis of Colorado, a Republican, muttered, ''Shut up.''

This provoked an explosion from the 71-year-old Stark: ''Oh, you think you are big enough to make me, you little wimp?'' The official transcript continues: ''Come over here and make me. I dare you. You little fruitcake.'' In case his distinguished colleague had not been paying attention, Stark added, ''I said you are a fruitcake.''

The police were summoned but wanted no part of the brouhaha; reporters delightedly appeared; and lexicographers wondered which insult was the more stinging -- wimp  or fruitcake ?
>>More

Point by Point, a Look Back at a 'thick' File, a Fateful Six Months Later
Posted Sunday, August 10, 2003 by vgdesign

By Charles J. Hanley, The Associated Press

On a Baghdad evening last February, in a stiflingly warm conference room high above the city's streets, Iraqi bureaucrats, European envoys and foreign reporters crowded before a half dozen television screens to hear the reading of an indictment.

"There are many smoking guns," Colin Powell would say afterward.

For 80 minutes in a hushed U.N. Security Council chamber in New York, the U.S. secretary of state unleashed an avalanche of allegations: The Iraqis were hiding chemical and biological weapons, were secretly working to make more banned arms, were reviving their nuclear bomb project. He spoke of "the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to the world."

It was the most comprehensive presentation of the U.S. case for war. Powell marshaled what were described as intercepted Iraqi conversations, reconnaissance photos of Iraqi sites, accounts of defectors, and other intelligence sources.

The defectors and other sources went unidentified. The audiotapes were uncorroborated, as were the photo interpretations. No other supporting documents were presented. Little was independently verifiable.
...
How does Powell's pivotal U.S. indictment look from the vantage point of today? >>More

Military Families, Veterans Demand End to Occupation of Iraq, Immediate Return of All U.S. Troops to Home Duty Stations
Posted Saturday, August 9, 2003 by vgdesign

News Advisory: Bring Them Home Now

Galvanized to action by George W. Bush's inane and reckless "Bring 'em on" challenge to armed Iraqi's resisting occupation, Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace and other organizations based in the military community will launch Bring Them Home Now, a campaign aimed at ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq and returning troops to their home bases at a press conference on August 13 in Washington, D.C.

U.S. military casualties from the occupation of Iraq have been more than twice the number most Americans have been led to believe because of an extraordinarily high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths in the ranks that have gone largely unreported in the media. The other underreported cost of the war for US soldiers is the number of American wounded - 827, officially, since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. (Unofficial figures are in the thousands.) About half have been injured since Bush's triumphant claim on board the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln at the beginning of May that major combat was over.

The mission of the Bring them Home Now campaign is to unite the voices of military families, veterans, and GIs themselves to demanding: an end to the occupation of Iraq and other misguided military adventures and an immediate return of all US troops to their home duty stations. >>More

The special relationship: Blair and Bush
Posted Saturday, August 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By 56K, The Sideshow Annex

The common assumption about Tony Blair is that he supports the war in Iraq because he is Bush's poodle. But there is some evidence to suggest that his support for this war may go back rather further in time and is linked to his relationships with neo-conservative consultant and influence peddler Irwin Stelzer and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

These excerpts from Neil Chenoweth's Rupert Murdoch, the Untold Story of the World's Greatest Media Wizard shed light on Tony Blair's relationship with Murdoch and Irwin Stelzer.

... Irwin Stelzer, an American consultant best known as director of regulation at the American Enterprise Institute and adviser to power companies. In 1989, while he was first cultivating a rising British Labour politician named Tony Blair, Stelzer was on what is reported to have been a $1.5 million-a-year contract as consultant to News Corp ... >>More

Blair 'intervened in hardening up dossier on Iraq'
Posted Saturday, August 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By James Morrison and Jo Dillon, The Independent

A senior BBC journalist was told that Tony Blair was "involved" in sending the September Iraq dossier back to the Joint Intelligence Committee to harden up its content. The source of the report is understood not to have been the late David Kelly.

The likely existence of an additional intelligence source for the BBC's reports on the disputed Iraq weapons dossier comes as the Government fights a rearguard action to regain public trust on the eve of the Hutton inquiry.
...
News that a fourth BBC journalist, the diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason, had direct contact with a source who underlined the intelligence community's concerns about the Government's use of information on Iraq's alleged WMD programme in the run-up to war strengthens the corporation's hand.

In mentioning Mr Blair by name, it goes further than Mr Gilligan's report - a fact that will not be lost on Lord Hutton. Mr Mason first relayed details of his source's claims in a little-noticed BBC World Service report on 5 June. In it, he said:
"A well-informed source close to British intelligence told me that Downing Street had sent drafts of the document back to the Intelligence Committee six or eight times with a request that the language should be strengthened. Mr Blair himself was said to have been involved in this process at one point." >>More

Investigation into The Circumstances Surrounding The Death of Dr. David Kelly
>>The Hutton Inquiry

Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Posted Saturday, August 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By Justin Huggler in Baghdad, The Independent

The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.

"We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them 'Stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting."

The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: "Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq."

But in this city Iraqi civilians still die needlessly almost every day at the hands of nervous, trigger-happy American soldiers. >>More

Napalm by another name: Pentagon denial goes up in flames
Posted Saturday, August 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By Ben Cubby, The Sydney Morning Herald

The United States military has admitted it used napalm-type weapons in Iraq.

A Pentagon spokesman had told the Herald  it did not have any stocks of napalm, but it seems the denial was a quibble.

The Pentagon no longer officially uses the brand-name Napalm, a combination of naphthalene and palmitate, but a similar substance known as fuel-gel mixture contained in Mark-77 fire bombs was dropped on Iraqi troops near the Iraq-Kuwait border at the start of the recent war.

"I can confirm that Mark-77 fire bombs were used in that general area," said Colonel Mike Daily, of the US Marine Corps.

Colonel Daily said that US stocks of Vietnam-era napalm had been phased out, but that the Mark-77s had "similar destructive characteristics".

On March 22 a Herald  correspondent, Lindsay Murdoch, travelling with US marines, reported that napalm was used in an attack on Iraqi troops at Safwan Hill, near the Kuwait border.

His account was based on statements by two US marines officers on the ground. But Lieutenant-Commander Jeff Davis, from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Defence, called Murdoch's story "patently false". >>More

["It's easy to imagine an infinite number of situations where the government might legitimately give out false information." - Theodore Olson, U.S. Solicitor-General]

Baghdad Blogger -- A U.S. Soldier's Internet Diary
Posted Saturday, August 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By Paul Woodward, The War in Context

Salam Pax is still the best known Baghdad blogger, but another picture of life in the city newly emerges, this time from a blogger who arrived there just a few weeks ago.

The weblog is Turningtables, its author is a U.S. Army sergeant camped outside one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.

Soldiers on active duty are often reluctant to say how they feel, but at a time when U.S. casualties are mounting, the justification for the war is open to question, and "pockets of resistance" are beginning to look more like guerilla warfare, Turningtables unmasks the fears that usually lie hidden behind a soldier's expressionless face.

...it's a sad state that originates when the death of soldiers becomes common everyday news...and it stops being surprising...and shocking...and horrible...when it takes a really gruesome story to remind you that you are in the middle of this shit...and you can't go home...YOU CAN'T GO HOME...you want to curl up and quit...

Sergeant Sean has been keeping his journal since early June and the life he describes will ring true for many a soldier >>More