Ari & I
Posted Wednesday, January 22, 2003 by vgdesign

White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer -Tuesday, January 21, 2003
by Russell Mokhiber

Mokhiber: Ari, UPI reported last week that Prime Minister Sharon of Israel has given the green light to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, to engage in targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries. The report says that Mossad has in the past engaged in assassinations in Belgium, Norway, and other European countries, but never in the United States. Is the administration aware of this new Israeli policy and has the administration agreed to it?

Ari Fleischer: That's the first I've heard of it, so I have no comment to offer on it.

Mokhiber: Could we get comment from you?

Ari Fleischer: I'll see if there is something on it. >>More

Bush Takes Tax Cut Plan on Road, Backs Snow
Posted Wednesday, January 22, 2003 by symbolman

Stands in front of censored boxes to defend another screwy appointee

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - With public doubts about his handling of the economy growing, President Bush on Wednesday took his tax cut plan to middle America and predicted his Treasury secretary nominee, John Snow, would be confirmed despite a drunken driving arrest and a child custody dispute.

Addressing employees at JS Logistics, a trucking and warehouse firm in St. Louis, Bush appealed to the U.S. Congress to quickly pass his $674 billion tax cut package, including benefits for cash-strapped small businesses, ``for the sake of economic vitality and growth.''

Bush delivered his message in front of a fake wall of cardboard boxes stamped ``Made in U.S.A.'' The real boxes, set to Bush's side, had their ``Made in China'' stamps blotted out.

The White House said it did not intend to cover up the markings on the boxes. ``It appears it was an overzealous volunteer. We'll take it up with the appropriate channels,'' White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said. >> More

[Nice media catch.]

SECRECY SURROUNDS A BUSH BROTHER'S ROLE IN 9/11 SECURITY
Posted Wednesday, January 22, 2003 by symbolman

By Margie Burns - American Reporter Correspondent - Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON, Jan 19, 2003 -- A company that provided security at New York City's World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., and to United Airlines between 1995 and 2001, was backed by a private Kuwaiti-American investment firm with ties to a brother of President Bush and the Bush family, according to records obtained by the American Reporter.

Two planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001 were United Airlines planes, and another took off from Dulles International Airport; two, of ocurse, slammed into the World Trade Center. But the Bush Administration has never disclosed the ties of a presidential brother and the Bush family with the firm that intersected the weapons and targets on a day of national tragedy.

Marvin P. Bush, a younger brother of George W. Bush, was a principal in the company from 1993 to 2000, when most of the work on the big projects was done. But White House responses to 9/11 have not publicly disclosed the company's part in providing security to any of the named facilities, and many of the public records revealing the relationships are not public.

Nonetheless, public records reveal that the firm, formerly named Securacom, listed Bush on its board of directors and as a significant shareholder. The firm, now named Stratesec, Inc., is located in Sterling, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., and emphasizes federal clients. Bush is no longer on the board.>> More

[Where are the media on any of this? Not to mention the Bush brothers will monetarily benefit from Terrorism Insurance legislation! Does anyone recall "Silverado"?]

MSNBC "Are you still beating your wife?" Question
Posted Wednesday, January 22, 2003 by symbolman

MSNBC is promoting what used to be known as "Soviet style" questions.

What kind of question is this? Maybe they should have Wolf Blitzer rewrite their querys on the fly for them.>> More

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee Pushes for the Repeal of the Authorization for Use of Force Against Iraq
Posted Wednesday, January 22, 2003 by vgdesign

H. Con. Res.2

Washington, DC - Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee last week introduced legislation that would repeal the Use of Force Against Iraq Resolution that was signed into law last October. "Public Law 107-243 was enacted into law on October 16, 2002 prior to the deployment of United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq, and at a time when the current nuclear crisis in North Korea had not reached its present level of dangerous tension," said Congresswoman Jackson Lee.

Congresswoman Jackson Lee's legislation, H. Con. Res.2, seeks to repeal Public Law 107-243 in order to ensure that Congress is afforded the opportunity to re-examine the threat posed by Iraq, which would include taking the time to review fully and accurately the findings of the international weapons inspectors prior to the engagement of military forces. Passage of H. Con. Res. 2 would also provide Congress the time to consider any exit strategy that must be developed prior to deploying troops, as well as the serious domestic impact that a possible war with Iraq would involve. The domestic considerations include the impact on our already struggling economy and the high numbers of troops needed over an indefinite period of time. Such concerns raise the issue of our security at the most basic level when, for example, some municipalities are already losing nearly 10% of their police forces due to officers who have been activated with the reserves of the armed forces. >>More

Target: Scott Ritter - The War Party Gets Ugly
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by stranger

There's nothing at all fishy about a "sealed" court record leaked to reporters, complete with an alleged "mug shot" of Ritter broadcast on television and republished by MSNBC. It's all a coincidence that this comes out just as the war crisis reaches its climax – or anti-climax – and the administration is desperate to come up with a half-way convincing rationale for war. What are you – a conspiracy theorist? Everybody knows the U.S. government is inherently and constitutionally incapable of pulling off such a dirty rotten lowdown trick. After all, isn't that why they hate us – because we're so wonderfully "free?" Free to be spied on; free to be set-up and smeared if we defy the powers-that-be; "free" to be entrapped by cyber-cops who randomly chose the single most convincing opponent of the War Party to snare in a web of deception.

The reaction to this is really a sight to behold. The same "conservative" movement that reveled and rolled around in the muck of the Clinton years like a pig in a deluxe pen, luxuriating in the filth that bubbled up like a perpetual hot bath, is all abuzz. With all the defiant malignity of Lucianne Goldberg and her son, what's-his-name, rolling the latest Clintonian dirtball around on their tongues as if it were the last bon bon in the box, they are drooling over this one. (Look at bottom-feeder Jonah Goldberg lap it up.)

It's sickening, really, to even contemplate what is going on here, but we should look at this ugliness full in the face. Because in forcing ourselves to see it, we can see the War Party – the gang of lying, thieving, conniving thugs with delusions of grandeur who dominate this administration – in its essence.

Look on the face of evil, and, if you don't turn to stone, remember it well. Because this what we're up against, in America: an evil that is almost demonic in its pure malevolence, a dark destructive spirit that feeds on pain and is animated by the will to crush its enemies underfoot. This is the face of an enemy that must be defeated.

This extensively annotated article by AntiWar.com's Justin Raimondo is a must-read.

New York Times discovers the opposition to war in Iraq
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by symbolman

In a January 20 editorial entitled “A Stirring in the Nation,” the New York Times issued a belated and hypocritical welcome to the mass movement that has emerged against the Bush administration’s drive to war against Iraq.

The editorial manages to evade the most essential question: how to account for what is acknowledged as “the largest antiwar rally at the Capitol since the Vietnam era” under conditions of overwhelming support for war by the politicians of both major parties as well as the mass media, including the Times itself?

From the outset, the Times, the erstwhile mouthpiece of establishment liberalism, has accepted uncritically the pretexts for war advanced by the Bush administration. Its chief foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman has gone so far as to publish proposals for how best to provoke an invasion and apologias for the US seizure of Iraq’s oil wealth.

Until now the Times has done its best to conceal mass opposition to a new war in the Persian Gulf. When tens of thousands demonstrated in Washington and San Francisco last October, the newspaper failed to even publish a news report on the protests.>> More

BuzzFlash Talks Roe v. Wade with the President of NOW
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by symbolman

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW - Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women (NOW)

On January 22nd, 1973, the Supreme Court, by a vote of seven to two, granted women the legal right to an abortion. Thirty years later, the decision remains one of the most controversial issues in American politics and society. The far majority of Americans view the abortion issue with a level of compassion and understanding that this most important of decisions should be left to a woman to decide and control her own body. America is ready to get beyond the abortion debate, and move on to other important issues, but the right-wing and the Republican Party continues to put the emergency brake on social progress. On this historical day, BuzzFlash is honored to bring you an interview with National Organization for Women President, Kim Gandy.>> More

Fisk: War journalists should not be cosying up to the military
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by stranger

It looks like a rerun of the 1991 Gulf War. Already American journalists are fighting like tigers to join "the pool", to be "embedded" in the US military so that they can see the war at first hand – and, of course, be censored. Eleven years ago, they turned up at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, already kitted out with helmets, gas capes, chocolate rations and eyes that narrowed when they looked into the sun, just like General Montgomery. Half the reporters wanted to wear military costume and one young television man from the American mid-west turned up, I recall well, with a pair of camouflaged boots. Each boot was camouflaged with painted leaves. Those of us who had been in a desert -- even those who had only seen a picture of a desert – did wonder what this meant.

Well, of course, it symbolised fantasy, the very quality upon which most viewers now rely when watching "live" war – or watching death "live" on TV.

Thus, over the past four weeks, the massed ranks of American television networks have been pouring into Kuwait to cosy up to the US military, to seek those coveted "pool" positions, to try on their army or marine costumes and make sure that – if or when the day comes – they will have the kind of coverage that every reporter and every general wants: a few facts, good pictures and nothing dirty to make the viewers throw up on the breakfast table. I remember how, back in 1991, only those Iraqi soldiers obliging enough to die in romantic poses – arm thrown back to conceal the decomposing features or face down and anonymous in the sand – made it on to live-time. Those soldiers turned into a crematorium nightmare or whose corpses were being torn to pieces by wild dogs – I actually saw an ITV crew film this horrific scene – were not honoured on screen. ITV's film, of course, couldn't be shown – lest it persuade the entire world that no one should go to war, ever, again. >>More

"Rush on Protestors : Anti-American, Fascist."
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by symbolman

Time to BOYCOTT Rush - A Call to Action

"Seriously, add up all the groups of Americans that Rush and his fellow "shouting heads" love to hate, and you end up with about 95% of the people of this country. If that doesn't make him anti-American, I don't know what else could.

Add it up:

"Liberals"
Gays
Immigrants
Minorities
The Poor
Everyone who doesn't belong to a far right fundie "church"
California
New York
Everyone who votes Democratic
Everyone who votes Green
Everyone who opposes the idea of an American Empire
Everyone who mentions 'pilonidal cysts'

etc, etc, etc ...

Rush and his ilk are among the most rabidly anti-American people in the country, and, imho, it's far past time to start calling them on their hatred of their fellow Americans."

[He went TOO far this time, folks. He's calling all of the peace-loving American people "anti-american" and worse - "fascists". It's time to BOYCOTT his sponsors, products and call his Bosses. This has gone on long enough.>> HERE is the List of Limbaugh's SPONSORS and Bosses - Let's shut him up or shut him down.

TBTM's Letter To Wolf Blitzer.
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by stranger

Mr. Blitzer,

I couldn't believe my eyes when I visited your site for the second time to check the results of your online poll.

You changed the question!

Is this how CNN operates nowadays - if you don't like the answer to a certain question, you just ask a different question?

Much was made of Aaron Brown's comments a few days ago, taking issue with the wide-spread perception that CNN is hoping for war in Iraq.

It's the little things - like changing a poll question when the results aren't to your liking - that are making Mr. Brown look either ill-informed or untruthful.

Every time I think your network can't sink any lower, you surprise me.

Take Back The Media

Wolf Blitzer changes poll questions in mid-stream.
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by stranger

TBTM logged on to Wolf Blitzer's CNN home page at about 12:30 Eastern to check on the Question Of The Day. The question was 'Do you think the US has a good reason to launch a first strike against Iraq?' At the time I voted in the non-scientific poll, the results were 25% 'yes' and 75% 'no.'

Well, at about 3:50 Eastern, we returned to Wolf's page to get an update, and lo and behold, the question has been changed! Now, the question is 'Whose views more accurately reflect your veiws regarding the Iraqi crisis, GW Bush or Edward Kennedy?'

Kennedy is currently ahead 74% to 26%. Looks as though Wolf realized he couldn't use the poll results to pimp war, so he changed the question in an attempt to bring down the anti-war numbers a bit.

It's the little, dishonest things that CNN does that belie Aaron Brown's assertion that they aren't trying to promote war in any way they can. >>Go vote in Wolf's pathetic poll!

And Email Wolf and ask him about the poll question while you're at it!

New Right Wing Media tactic - running away
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by symbolman

A Media Watch Report: RBHam Nails it

"First it was ben Stein on talkback Live after Arianna Huffington painted him into a logical corner, he gave Arianna the finger and then during the ensuing commercial break left the studio in a huff.

Next, Ollie North stormed out of Randi Rhodes studio when the Liberal talk show host had him over a barrel - he wouldn't admit he'd committed any crimes during the Iran-Contra scandal and Randi wouldn't let him lie his way out of it.

Now we have Neil BOORtz stalking away from Donahue in a huff when he realized the studio audience weren't appreciating his race baiting act during a debate on reparations.

So now we know Karl Rove's last blast fax point - when cornered and there's no way the right winger can escape the heat, as a last resort -RUN AWAY!">> More

[A must read site! We have the mp3 and transcript of Randi Roades VS Oliver North right HERE]

Carlyle's tentacles embrace Asia
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by vgdesign

By Tim Shorrock, Asia Times

WASHINGTON - When Thailand, South Korea and other Asian countries stood on the brink of bankruptcy in 1999, one of the first United States banks on the scene was the Carlyle Group, the Washington private equity fund known primarily for its US investments in defense and real estate.

That year, George Bush Sr, the former US president and Carlyle's senior adviser for Asia, convened the first meetings of Carlyle's Asia Advisory Board in Bangkok to discuss the region's potential for foreign investment. Since then, Carlyle has become one of the largest foreign investors in South Korea and Taiwan and is quickly positioning itself to become a major player in mergers and acquisitions in Japan. It also hopes to capitalize on China's entry into the World Trade Organization to make a big investment splash on the mainland.

Through its US$750 million Asia fund, it has made four acquisitions. They include KorAm Bank, one of South Korea's largest private banks, in which Carlyle invested $145 million for a controlling interest in 2000; Taiwan Broadband, the island's fourth-largest cable company, in which Carlyle has invested $187 million; Mercury Communications, a South Korean telecom manufacturer recently spun off from the bankrupt Daewoo Group, for $49 million; and Pacific Department Stores, a joint venture with a Taiwan group that operates a chain of retail stores in mainland China, for $43 million.
...
At the same time, Bush Sr has not been hesitant about offering advice to his son about issues that could affect Carlyle's investments in Asia. Last spring, after President Bush stuck a knife in Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy" by saying North Korea couldn't be trusted, Bush Sr sent the president a memo written by Donald Gregg, his former national security adviser who once served as CIA station chief in Seoul, urging the new administration to ease its hardline policies.
>>More

THE COLD TEST
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by vgdesign

What the Administration knew about Pakistan and the North Korean nuclear program - by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Last June, four months before the current crisis over North Korea became public, the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a comprehensive analysis of North Korea's nuclear ambitions to President Bush and his top advisers. The document, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, was classified as Top Secret S.C.I. (for "sensitive compartmented information"), and its distribution within the government was tightly restricted. The C.I.A. report made the case that North Korea had been violating international law—and agreements with South Korea and the United States—by secretly obtaining the means to produce weapons-grade uranium.
...
The Bush Administration was put on notice about North Korea even before it received the C.I.A. report. In January of last year, John Bolton, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, declared that North Korea had a covert nuclear-weapons program and was in violation of the nonproliferation treaty. In February, the President was urged by three members of Congress to withhold support for the two reactors promised to North Korea, on the ground that the Pyongyang government was said to be operating a secret processing site "for the enrichment of uranium." In May, Bolton again accused North Korea of failing to coöperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the group responsible for monitoring treaty compliance. Nevertheless, on July 5th the President's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who presumably had received the C.I.A. report weeks earlier, made it clear in a letter to the congressmen that the Bush Administration would continue providing North Korea with shipments of heavy fuel oil and nuclear technology for the two promised energy-generating reactors.
...
One American intelligence official who has attended recent White House meetings cautioned against relying on the day-to-day Administration statements that emphasize a quick settlement of the dispute. The public talk of compromise is being matched by much private talk of high-level vindication. "Bush and Cheney want that guy's head"—Kim Jong Il's—"on a platter. Don't be distracted by all this talk about negotiations. There will be negotiations, but they have a plan, and they are going to get this guy after Iraq. He's their version of Hitler." >>More

Republicans Scrap Old Vows As Media Naps
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by vgdesign

By Joe Conason - The New York Observer

Expectations for the Congressional leadership have reached such a dismal level that they can now get away with almost anything, while the Washington press corps yawns. So House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his genial instrument, Speaker Dennis Hastert, are free to repeal inconvenient reforms, junk previous commitments and consolidate their power without worrying that anyone will hold them accountable.

That old Contract with America—the document signed in September 1994 by nearly every House Republican, including the present leadership—has been relegated to the dustbin of history, along with its author, Newt Gingrich. The "contract" turns out to have been the same kind of reliable guarantee that comes with a TV mail-order potato-peeler or an Internet investment scam.
>>More

Clooney isn't joining Dubya's gang
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by vgdesign

NY Daily News - Daily Dish - Rush & Molloy

George Clooney says President Bush would fit in just fine with New Jersey's favorite crime family.

"The government itself is running exactly like the Sopranos," he tells Charlie Rose tonight in a full-bore assault on Dubya's foreign policy.

The "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" director says Bush has cut deals with France and Russia so the UN Security Council won't complain when "we go into a war [with Iraq] and kill a lot of innocent people."

Quips Clooney: "[Bush says,] 'France, you're getting the pipelines.'

"Are we going to try and talk [to Saddam Hussein] ... without jumping in and killing people first?" asks Clooney. "I don't believe we're going to wait until the last resort to do it. That's what bothers me."

Speaking of "Three Kings," his sardonic 1999 movie about Operation Desert Storm, Clooney tells Rose, "you couldn't get [that] made now."

No one may be more pleased to see Rose letting Clooney vent than Richard Gere. Last week, when he appeared on the talk show with "Chicago" co-star Renee Zellweger, Gere accused his pal Rose of editing out his past rants about Henry Kissinger.

"That's not true," said Rose, who counts Kissinger as a regular guest. >>More

On Media Giantism
Posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by symbolman

As for diversity — don't 16,000 local radio stations provide much of the vaunted diversity of views and tastes that Americans want?

Take a listen to what's happened to local radio in one short wave of deregulation: the great cacophony of different sounds and voices is being amalgamated and homogenized. (The following figures were published by Gannett's USA Today, which kind of blunts my point about big-media squeamishness, but its account of the F.C.C.'s ruination of independent radio is damning.)

Back in 1996, the two largest radio chains owned 115 stations; today, those two own more than 1,400. A handful of leading owners used to generate only a fifth of industry revenue; now these top five rake in 55 percent of all money spent on local radio. The number of station owners has plummeted by a third. Yesterday's programming diversity on the public's airwaves has degenerated to the Top 40, as today's consolidating commodores borrowing public property say "the public interest be damned."

Granted, Rush Limbaugh's views differ from those heard on liberal NPR, just as an indie movie producer can make money for a cookie-cutter conglomerate with a film going against the grain. But while political paranoids accuse each other of vast conspiracies, the truth is that media mergers have narrowed the range of information and entertainment available to people of all ideologies.>> More

Intervention: Blow-by-blow Account of Media Coverage of DC demo.
Posted Monday, January 20, 2003 by stranger

Within the first hour of the Washington rally, MSNBC presents several live reports, well done reports that include interviews with demonstrators. C-Span has continuous coverage, a camera focuses on the speakers’ platform -- right now a Middle Eastern Muslim -- and occasionally sweeps the crowd. These two networks, in the very beginning, are presenting the most and the best coverage. And in the end, the same will be true.

Fox prefers “Forbes On Fox” -- cutting taxes instead of stopping a war, monitoring the stock market instead of covering democracy. There was a time when war profiteers were considered the scum of a society, the nearest limb could become their neck swing. But today media considers making bucks off war acceptable, normal, the nature of the free market place.

CNN is covering everything, everything except the rally. >> More