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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15465884.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Become a fanatic? No way, Azzam
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
An open letter to Azzam:
I must admit I'm intrigued; no one's ever invited me to become a fanatic
before.
Of course, it wasn't just me, but all 299 million Americans you wereaddressing in the video posted last week on a militant Islamic website. Youwere featured with al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri. ''Azzam theAmerican,'' read the caption.
Al Qaeda apparently gave you that nickname, but according to the FBI -- which would really like to chat with you -- your real name is Adam YahiyeGadahn. You're 28, a Californian who has trained at al Qaeda camps inPakistan. The group is believed to regard you as someone who can speak toAmericans in their own idiom.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701504_pf.html
The Washington Post Company
Confirmation of CIA Prisons Leaves Europeans Mistrustful
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 8, 2006; A08
PARIS, President Bush's transfer of terrorism suspects out of secret CIA prisons to the Guantanamo detention facility would do little to repair transatlantic distrust that has grown in recent years, political analysts in France and other European countries said Thursday.
"How willing a really liberal Democrat is to listen to George Bush -- that's about how willing the French are," said Nicole Bacharan, an expert on French-American relations at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris.
Bush's acknowledgment Wednesday of the CIA prisons' existence -- and his refusal to say where they were -- touched off new demands in Europe for a full accounting of the locations. The Washington Post reported last year that some were in Eastern Europe, but it did not name countries at the request of U.S. officials.
Poland and Romania, called likely locations by European investigators, issued new denials Thursday that such prisons were on their soil.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-gerhardt8sep08,0,1343068.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
How to Punish Rumsfeld
Impeachment by a Republican Congress is dead on arrival, but critics willhave a better shot after November.
By Michael Gerhardt
MICHAEL GERHARDT, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina LawSchool, is the author of "The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis."
September 8, 2006
VERY FEW Cabinet secretaries have done what Donald Rumsfeld has done. He isboth the youngest and oldest person to serve as secretary of Defense (havingserved previously in the job more than 30 years ago under President Ford),and, at least this time around, he has become one of the most despisedCabinet secretaries ever.
In fact, the number of people who have come to hate Rumsfeld has grown somuch in the Senate and elsewhere that it's become necessary to take a stepback to contemplate by what means the Constitution might allow them to vent their hatred.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_4281616
God invoked often on floor of House
Politics: Religion permeates rhetoric in election year.
By Lisa Friedman, From our Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - On a recent day in Congress, lawmakers invoked God on the floor of the House of Representatives 182 times.The issues being debated were both substantive and symbolic: stem-cell research, the legality of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance
and preserving a cross on a San Diego war memorial.
Together, they highlight the intensity with which religion has come to permeate modern American politics - and the increasing ease with which lawmakers use religious rhetoric to energize their constituents and score election points.
"The rise of religion in politics was the biggest story of the last 30 years, and political scientists just missed it," said Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/09/just_try_voting_here.html
Mother Jones
Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's worst places to cast a ballot (or try)
Machines that count backward, slice-and-dice districts, felon baiting, phone jamming, and plenty of dirty tricks Sasha Abramsky
September/October 2006 Issue We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws -- a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. How wrong a notion this was has become painfully apparent since 2000: As it turns out, except for a
rudimentary federal framework (which determines the voting age, channels money to states and counties, and enforces protections for minorities and the disabled), U.S. elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions,
various technology choices, and partisan trickery. In some places voters still fill in paper ballots or pull the levers of vintage machines; elsewhere, they touch screens or tap keys, with or without paper trails. Some states encourage voter registration; others go out of their way to
limit it. Some allow prisoners to vote; others permanently bar ex-felons, no matter how long they've stayed clean. Who can vote, where people cast ballots, and how and whether their votes are counted all depends, to a large extent, on policies set in place by secretaries of state and county elections supervisors -- officials who can be as partisan, as dubiously qualified, and as nakedly ambitious as people anywhere else in politics. Here is a list -- partial, but emblematic -- of American democracy's more glaring weak spots.
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/083106Z.shtml
There Is Fascism, Indeed
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC
Wednesday 30 August 2006
The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.
Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis-and the sober contemplation-of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our employees - with a total omniscience; a total
omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/48683.html
Army recommends death penalty for soldiers print
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL | Associated Press
September 2, 2006
PHOENIX (AP) - An Army investigator has recommended that four soldiers accused of murder in an Iraqi raid face the death penalty.
Lt. Col. James P. Daniel Jr. made the recommendation in report obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.
Daniel found several aggravating factors that warrant a sentence of death in the case of four soldiers accused of killing three men during a May raid in Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and Spc. Juston R. Graber, all of the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, were accused in the deaths.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700128_pf.html
GOP Senators' Bid to Confirm Bolton Is Called Off
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006; A03
Republican efforts to formally confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations hit an unexpected snag yesterday when a Republican senator in a tough reelection bid said he could not support the diplomat until the Bush administration answers his questions on Middle East policy.
The protest by Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) is only the latest development in the long-running battle to get Bolton confirmed to the post he now holds on a temporary basis. Last year, Chafee supported Bolton's confirmation, but the opposition of Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) prompted President Bush to name him to the U.N. post as a recess appointment.
This summer, Voinovich declared that his concerns over Bolton's temperament have been satisfactorily answered by the diplomat's performance at the United Nations. That conversion prompted Bush and GOP leaders to resubmit Bolton's name for confirmation. But Chafee informed Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) of his change of heart yesterday, forcing Lugar to call off the confirmation vote or face the possibility of a 9 to 9 deadlock in the 18-member panel.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700850.html
At Cathedral, Iran's Khatami Urges Dialogue
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006; A10
Amid noisy protests and tight security, former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami issued a call at the Washington National Cathedral yesterday for leaders in both the West and the Islamic world to launch a historic dialogue to "rescue life from the claws of the warmongers and violence-seekers and ostentatious leaders."
But Khatami, who served as president between 1997 and 2005, signaled that the time is not yet right for direct dialogue between the United States and Iran. He warned that the language of threats needs to end for any negotiation to have a chance -- an indirect reference to US. and U.N. pressure to impose new sanctions on Iran because of disputes over its nuclear program.
Khatami said Iran is prepared to discuss the suspension -- both the timing and the scope -- of its uranium enrichment in negotiations.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700978_pf.html
'Vegetative' Woman's Brain Shows Surprising Activity
Tests Indicate Awareness, Imagination
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006; A01
According to all the tests, the young woman was deep in a "vegetative state" -- completely unresponsive and unaware of her surroundings. But then a team of scientists decided to do an unprecedented experiment, employing sophisticated technology to try to peer behind the veil of her brain injury for any signs of conscious awareness.
Without any hint that she might have a sense of what was happening, the researchers put the woman in a scanner that detects brain activity and told her that in a few minutes they would say the word "tennis," signaling her to imagine she was serving, volleying and chasing down balls. When they did, the neurologists were shocked to see her brain "light up" exactly as an uninjured person's would. It happened again and again. And the doctors got the same result when they repeatedly cued her to picture herself wandering, room to room, through her own home.
"I was absolutely stunned," said Adrian M. Owen, a British neurologist who led the team reporting the case in today's issue of the journal Science. "We had no idea whether she would understand our instructions. But this showed that she is aware."
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/business/08crop.html?pagewanted=print
September 8, 2006
Redesigning Crops to Harvest Fuel
By ANDREW POLLACK
More miles to the bushel.
That is the new mission of crop scientists. In an era of $3-a-gallon gasoline and growing concern about global warming from fossil fuels, seed and biotechnology companies see a big new opportunity in developing corn and other crops tailored for use in ethanol and other biofuels.
Syngenta, for instance, hopes in 2008 to begin selling a genetically engineered corn designed to help convert itself into ethanol. Each kernel of this self-processing corn contains an enzyme that must otherwise be added separately at the ethanol factory.Just last week, DuPont and Bunge announced that their existing joint venture to improve soybeans for food would also start designing beans for biodiesel fuel and other industrial uses.
And Ceres, a plant genetics company in California, is at work on turning switch grass, a Prairie States native, into an energy crop."You could turn Oklahoma into an OPEC member by converting all its farmland to switch grass," said Richard W. Hamilton, the Ceres chief executive.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701617_pf.html
'Values' We Have to Hide Abroad
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, September 8, 2006; A17
If the secret prisons where U.S. agents interrogated "high-value" terrorism suspects with "alternative" techniques are so legitimate and legal, if they're so fully consistent with American values and traditions, then why are they overseas?
That's one thing the Decider didn't tell us Wednesday in his forceful yet obfuscatory speech confirming the existence of the CIA prisons and announcing the transfer of 14 detainees to Guantanamo Bay, including boldface-name miscreants such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaida.
The president at least gave a reason why the locations of the prisons are still being kept secret, even if it wasn't the whole story. He said secrecy was needed to protect our allies from terrorist retribution, which might well be true. But governments of the host countries are probably more
worried about the ire of the citizens who elected them, given the unpopularity of the Bush
administration's foreign policy in much of the world, and some doubtless are concerned that the secret prisons violate host-country laws and international treaties.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/opinion/08friedman.html
September 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Central Truth
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
To listen to the latest Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld speeches, you'd think that our biggest problem in Iraq is a violent minority of "extremists," defying the democratic will of the Iraqi people. And you'd think that our biggest problem at home is a misguided group of Democratic appeasers, who want to cut and run in the great totalitarian struggle of the 21st century.
I wish it were so. Unfortunately, we are in trouble in Iraq now not because of what the "fringes" there, or here, believe, but because of what the center in both places has been willing to tolerate or unwilling to change.We have a "center problem."
Let me explain: We are stalled in Iraq not because of something some fringe antiwar critics said, or did, but because of how the Bush team, the center of U.S. policy, approached Iraq from the start. While it told the public - correctly, in my view - that building one example of a tolerant,
pluralistic, democratizing society in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world was really important in the broader war of ideas against violent radical Islam, the administration acted as though this would be easy and sacrifice-free.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090500939_pf.html
End Open-Ended Litigation
By Ted Frank
Special to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town
Thursday, September 7, 2006; 12:00 AM
The Patagonian toothfish sold much better once a marketing association renamed it Chilean sea bass, though most such fish are neither Chilean nor bass. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America, which acquired a bad reputation over the years, is apparently seeking a similar rebirth by renaming itself the American Association for Justice. But a perusal of some recent cases pushed by the plaintiffs' bar show much more of an interest in benefiting trial lawyers than in fairness or justice.
One of the fundamental rules of fairness, from the kindergarten playgrounds to corporate boardrooms, is that a deal is a deal. But more and more, trial lawyers are trying to undo this concept retroactively in lawsuits that posit that a deal isn't a deal if it can be rewritten in a way to provide benefits to yesterday's consumers (and, not incidentally, their attorneys). Such
lawsuits are not only unfair and unjust; in the long run, they end up hurting future consumers.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601749_pf.html
Senators Denounce Scientist's Stem Cell Claims
Confusion Over Harm to Embryos In Study at Issue
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 7, 2006; A04
Two senators who strongly support human embryonic stem cell research lashed out yesterday at the scientist who recently reported the creation of those cells by a method that does not require the destruction of embryos, saying the scientist and his company have harmed the struggling field by overstating their results.
"It's a big black eye if scientists are making false and inaccurate representations," a combative Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations labor, health and human services subcommittee, which he chairs.
Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass., defended his work and the company's statements. "Our paper is 100 percent correct," said the visibly shaken scientist, referring to the highly publicized article that appeared in the Aug. 24 issue of the journal Nature.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/opinion/08krugman.html?pagewanted=print
September 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Whining Over Discontent
By PAUL KRUGMAN
We are, finally, having a national discussion about inequality, and right-wing commentators are in full panic mode. Statistics, most of them irrelevant or misleading, are flying; straw men are under furious attack. It's all very confusing - deliberately so. So let me offer a few clarifying
comments.
First, why are we suddenly talking so much about inequality? Not because a few economists decided to make inequality an issue. It's the public - not progressive pundits - that has been telling pollsters the economy is "only fair" or "poor," even though the overall growth rate is O.K. by historical standards.
Political analysts tried all sorts of explanations for popular discontent with the "Bush boom" - it's the price of gasoline; no, people are in a bad mood because of Iraq - before finally acknowledging that most Americans think it's a bad economy because for them, it is. The lion's share of the
benefits from recent economic growth has gone to a small, wealthy minority, while most Americans were worse off in 2005 than they were in 2000.
Some conservatives whine that people didn't complain as much about rising inequality when Bill Clinton was president. But most people were happy with the state of the economy in the late 1990's, even though the rich were getting much richer, because the middle class and the poor were also making substantial progress. Now the rich are getting richer, but most working
Americans are losing ground.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601819_pf.html
Clinton Administration Officials Assail ABC's 'The Path to 9/11'
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 7, 2006; A09
Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a preemptive strike against an ABC-TV "docudrama," slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.
Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright called one scene involving her "false and defamatory." Former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said the film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions." And former White House aide Bruce R. Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said: "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."
ABC's entertainment division said the six-hour movie, "The Path to 9/11," will say in a disclaimer that it is a "dramatization . . . not a documentary" and contains "fictionalized scenes." But the disclaimer also says the movie is based on the Sept. 11 commission's report, although that report contradicts several key scenes.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/washington/08legal.html?hp&ex=1157774400&en=c5d9dc0b49f27295&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The New York Times
September 8, 2006
The Legal Debate
Interrogation Methods Rejected by Military Win Bush's Support
By ADAM LIPTAK
Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening.
The proposal is in the last 10 pages of an 86-page bill devoted mostly to military commissions, and it is a tangled mix of cross-references and pregnant omissions.
But legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures.
"It's a Jekyll and Hyde routine," Martin S. Lederman, who teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University, said of the administration's dual approaches.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/opinion/08fri1.html?pagewanted=print
September 8, 2006
Editorial
Rated R, for Obscure Reasons
Given the large role they play in shaping the culture, it is remarkable how little is known about movie ratings. Who decides whether a movie is rated PG or NC-17? What criteria do they use? How does the appeals process work? Those are some of the questions posed by an illuminating new documentary, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," directed by Kirby Dick. Mr. Dick's film makes
a compelling case that there needs to be greater transparency in the ratings process, and significant reforms.
The ratings system is operated by two industry groups, the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theater Owners. The system is private, but the public has a strong interest in it, since the ratings play a large role in shaping movie content. Films rated NC-17 can have a hard time attracting audiences. Producers are often willing to make
substantial cuts or changes in movies to get a more commercially viable rating.
Mr. Dick's documentary investigates how the ratings system works, and the picture is not pretty. Most of the raters are anonymous, so the public cannot assess whether they are qualified or impartial judges. In the movie, Mr. Dick goes to elaborate lengths to learn the raters' identities. One thing he turns up is that even though the M.P.A.A. says they are all "parents," some, perhaps many, are parents of adult children, hardly what the M.P.A.A. has been suggesting when it says it has parents evaluating films for other parents.
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Forwarded from Rusty Gordon and Davy Whims
The Whimsy Loops
twpchwpb@BellSouth.Net
THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
SEPTEMBER 3, 2006
Voting booth '06 is dark and deep
By: DIANE ROBERTS
It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes.
That's traditionally been attributed to Josef Stalin. It's not likely he ever said it, however, what with his general hostility toward voting. It wouldn't sound all that cute in Russian, either.
But surely the sentiment has been uttered early and often here in Florida, where screwy elections have virtually become an art form. Only six years ago Florida suffered a plague of butterfly ballots, a storm of dangling and pregnant chads, monumentally messed-up voter rolls, start-and-stop-recounts, labyrinthine lawsuits and the dubious ministrations of then-secretary of state, now Senate candidate, Katherine Harris. Banana republics called Florida a "banana republic;" Fidel Castro offered to send us "democracy educators."
Now here you are in 2006, standing before the touchscreen, filling out the optical scan form, mailing your absentee ballot, are you confident that your vote will be counted accurately and fairly? Sue Cobb, the current secretary of state, would have you believe that all is well. This, despite a federal judge's ruling in the suit brought by the League of Women Voters that a
state law restricting the ability of nonprofits, unions and civic groups, any except political parties, which are exempt, to register voters was unconstitutional. Still, she expects "a smooth election cycle this fall." In her television spots and public service announcements, Cobb is soothing, reassuring. She is, she says, "comfortable."
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2340352,00.html
The Sunday TimesSeptember 03, 2006
Friends of Hillary hint she may pull out of presidential race
Sarah Baxter
FRIENDS of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite herstatus as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination forpresident, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the WhiteHouse race and seek to lead her party in the Senate.
The former first lady longs to return to the White House with husband Billas consort. Only last week she told television viewers America would be ledby a woman one day. "Stay tuned," she said.
First, however, she has to win the election. Some Democratic party elders - the American equivalent of the Tories' "men in grey suits" - say Clinton mayback out of the race of her own volition.
"I would not be surprised if she were to decide that the best contributionshe can make to her country is to forget about being president and become aconsensus-maker in the Senate," said a leading Democratic party insider."She believes there is no trust between the two political sides and that we can't function as a democracy without it."
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41083/
The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers
Halliburton has become synonymous with war profiteering, but there are lots of other greedy fingers in the pie. We name names on 10 of the worst.
By Charlie Cray
AlterNet
Sept. 5, 2006
The history of American war profiteering is rife with egregious examples of incompetence, fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement, bribery and misconduct. As war historian Stuart Brandes has suggested, each new war is infected with new forms of war profiteering. Iraq is no exception.
From criminal mismanagement of Iraq's oil revenues to armed private security contractors
operating with virtual impunity, this war has created opportunities for an appalling amount of corruption. What follows is a list of some of the worst Iraq war profiteers who have bilked American taxpayers and undermined the military's mission.
No. 1 and No. 2: CACI and Titan
In early 2005 CIA officials told the Washington Post that at least 50 percent of its estimated $40 billion budget for that year would go to private contractors, an astonishing figure that suggests that concerns raised about outsourcing intelligence have barely registered at the
policymaking levels.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090706K.shtml
Europeans Seek More Info on Secret Jails
The Associated Press
Thursday 07 September 2006
London - President Bush's disclosure that terrorism suspects had been held in CIA-run prisons drew approval Wednesday from activists and defense attorneys, but some called for details on the secret lockups.
Bush said in a White House speech that a small number of high-value detainees - including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed - had been kept in CIA custody, in order to be "held secretly, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts."
International lawmakers and civil rights campaigners have long called on Bush to acknowledge the United States used a network of secret prisons and have transferred prisoners between them on covert flights.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, called Bush's acknowledgment of CIA secret prisons "progress," but said their existence was already known.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/090606.html
Election 2006 & World War III
By Robert Parry
Consortium News
www.consortiumnews.com
Sept 7, 2006
As Americans go to the polls in two months, they should have one thought fixed in their minds: they will be voting on whether to commit the nation to fighting World War III against large segments of the world's one billion
Muslims. Beyond the cost in blood and treasure, this war will mean the end
of the United States as a democratic Republic.
Those are the stakes that were made clear by George W. Bush in an alarmist speech to an association of U.S. military officers on Sept. 5. He declared that the United States must battle not only likely or even possible threats from terrorists, but the most fantastical dreams of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda about a mystical global "caliphate."
Adopting some of the most extreme rhetoric favored by his neoconservative advisers, Bush also broadened the "war on terror" beyond al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists and the Sunni-dominated Iraqi insurgency to include the Shiite-run Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and the Shiite government of Iran.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/07/the_torturers_apprentice.php
The Torturer's Apprentice
Ray McGovern
September 07, 2006
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer, then a CIA analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Addressing the use of torture Wednesday, President George W. Bush played to the baser instincts of Americans as he strained to turn his violation of national and international law into Exhibit A on how "tough" he is on terrorists. His tour de force brought to mind the charge the Athenians
leveled at Socrates-making the worse case appear the better. Bush's remarks made it abundantly clear, though, that he is not about to take the hemlock.
As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches and with the midterm elections just two months away, the president's speechwriters succeeded in making a silk purse out of the sow's ear of torture. The artful offensive will succeed if-but only if-the mainstream media is as cowed, and the American people as dumb, as the president thinks they are. Arguably a war criminal
under international law and a capital-crime felon under U.S. criminal law, Bush's legal jeopardy is even clearer than when he went AWOL during the Vietnam War. And this time, his father will not be able to fix it.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006609070311
Politics kill gay rights battle
BY PETER BRONSON | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
"Cincinnati has gone belly-up liberal."
That's not a deranged talk-show host in Idaho who doesn't know Lake Eriefrom the Ohio River. It's the man liberals love to loathe, Phil Burress,venting his frustration about the failure of a petition drive to let votersrepeal the city's latest gay rights ordinance.
And it was seconded by another man whose picture is on "progressive" dartboards: Rep. Tom Brinkman, who ran the petition drive. "The city haschanged," Brinkman said. "Republicans continue to vote with their feet."
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/iraq-for-sale-_b_28849.html
Huffingtonpost.com
Iraq For Sale: Will a Movie Fuel a Democratic Return to Power?Democrats looking for another way to nationalize the midterm elections need look no further than their movie multiplexes and DVD players.
Robert Greenwald's latest film, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (coming soon to a theater -- and a living room -- near you) is a devastating expose of how the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress have allowed private corporations free rein in Iraq, leading to billions of dollars in profits at the expense of American troops, American taxpayers, and the people of Iraq.
Along with being a resounding condemnation of these war profiteers and their political enablers, the hits-you-in-the-gut documentary also highlights their shocking incompetence -- and makes a mockery of the GOP's "we can keep you safer" 2006 framing. How, by privatizing not just the rebuilding of Iraq but many vital operations such as training Iraqi police, providing security
for U.S. officials, and interrogating prisoners?
The Republicans have turned Iraq into a corporate welfare gravy train, funneling billions to corporations that think nothing of cutting corners by sending their own employees onto the mean streets of Iraq without properly armored vehicles or supplying contaminated water to U.S. soldiers or charging $45 for a six-pack of soda -- all while leaving the people of Iraq
dealing with wide-scale food, gasoline, and electrical shortages (to say nothing of a security situation so bad, people are having to change their names to avoid being killed).
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http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2006/09/06/02gates.h26.html?levelId=1000&rale2=KQE5d7nM%2FXAYPsVRXwnFWYRqIIX2bhy1%2BKNA5buLAWGoKt77XHI2terRpWBSgktL4bXgTCDsilHK%0A6qjkv0kqbN2CY7%2BPyKneOGCox4W7qofh%2F9BFEakU7ZHII%2Fmu01CUEpLNhfZ%2FY5RTSAFMoROfwTsH%0AAsyDLJnT9czpjKHi7khQUPRB5iYdtzXCuAMuQ3ov4edyjRiwwj30tl%2FIGneqb%2BH%2F0EURqRTtkcgj%0A%2Ba7TUJQeYmNFXnHsAfaK7IXNewERJkjOda2rzSA%2B3OCj%2BvO831s9poYBSvNcyXJfTSjmSJkJQm4G%0AxM3OrIrUticW1tX8tv3FV8fLj4%2FDOMwUxgylH3j2RbdxlZAjMat8lInXJPumlvegeQ08Fkg9Nmau%0APZcuuq%2FYEhd1uWiRyCP5rtNQlGQmorKkjSeK4aSRVu4LyeXkqhiUNhQ1QoSrVNOpQdeB6jlajB%2Bj%0AR9SpXoVp1Aki6OSqGJQ2FDVChKtU06lB14GCeFRRf7HABAJGR9q9MpaKBn%2FILJyqNlEPFqQ0Z3Lk%0Au72SAxxsAEIoYw0RSPzBxmb6ewGJ%2B%2BewBivZOjy%2B5jseZcIr8XhnUJQ9xZUqFE4AflFBNCdbqM89%0AEy%2FXuVyX%2BmrEd%2BH2K5w72O4Rf1PdoZMV8jb%2Btid4broVufU4I2LUeRwWJwEgazFCooeM9ESwTIs8%0ARRMpu6xiD%2BDs0lA%2Bc1AJlgRLQRh4qp3KX%2FzwR7cQUg%3D%3D&print=1
Education Week
Published: September 6, 2006
College Board Launches Model for Improving High Schools
By Lynn Olson
The College Board will partner with three large urban districts to launch a new model for improving high schools through a $16 million commitment announced last week by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Further information on the high school initiative is available from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Under the plan, the New York City-based nonprofit organization-best known
for the SAT college-admission test-will work with 11 high schools in Chicago, the District of Columbia, and Duval County, Fla., to raise graduation and college-readiness rates by implementing its new "EXCELerator" model for school improvement.
By the 2007-08 school year, the board expects to bring its high school model
to an additional 19 schools, serving as many as 45,000 students. With
support from the Seattle-based Gates Foundation, the board currently
operates 11 small schools in New York City and elsewhere in New York state.
Focus on Rigor
The EXCELerator model is designed to upgrade achievement in existing schools, in part through the introduction of a rigorous academic program, based on the College Board's SpringBoard and Advanced Placement curricula.
It also emphasizes greater personalized support for students; ongoing professional development for superintendents, principals, teachers, and counselors; extensive use of data; and stronger school-based college and career planning.
"Obviously, the College Board has a great track record in providing professional development and curriculum in high schools," said Marie Groark, a spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation, "and they have demonstrated in New York thus far a very strong record in starting new schools. So, if you combine the two, it seemed like the College Board had the opportunity to bring all those things together . to really make a difference in some of the high schools struggling around the country."
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