Bring regime change home
Remarks prepared for World Can't Wait rally at White House, Feb. 4, 2006.
There are protests outside at least two houses today, the White House and Bush's luxury estate near Crawford, Texas. Bush can run, but he cannot hide.
He tries to hide behind fear, our fear. The only tool in his bag is making us afraid. We have to resist becoming afraid, but we have to be able to talk about the fact that Bush and Cheney have made us much less safe. They have turned world opinion against us. They have turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists. They have turned Afghanistan into a drug production kingdom. Terrorist incidents are up so dramatically that the Bush Administration no longer publishes those statistics.
There are protests outside at least two houses today, the White House and Bush's luxury estate near Crawford, Texas. Bush can run, but he cannot hide.
He tries to hide behind fear, our fear. The only tool in his bag is making us afraid. We have to resist becoming afraid, but we have to be able to talk about the fact that Bush and Cheney have made us much less safe. They have turned world opinion against us. They have turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists. They have turned Afghanistan into a drug production kingdom. Terrorist incidents are up so dramatically that the Bush Administration no longer publishes those statistics.
U.S. detention camps for political subversives
In another shining example of modern day corporate fascism, it was announced recently that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had been awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.
The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps will also be used "as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency."
Discussions of federal concentration camps is no longer the rhetoric of paranoid Internet conspiracy theorists, it is mainstream news.
Under the enemy combatant designation anyone at the behest of the US government, even if they are a US citizen, can be kidnapped and placed in an internment facility forever without trial. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has spent over four years in a Navy brig and is only just now getting a trial.
In 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.
The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps will also be used "as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency."
Discussions of federal concentration camps is no longer the rhetoric of paranoid Internet conspiracy theorists, it is mainstream news.
Under the enemy combatant designation anyone at the behest of the US government, even if they are a US citizen, can be kidnapped and placed in an internment facility forever without trial. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has spent over four years in a Navy brig and is only just now getting a trial.
In 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.
Hole in the future
For those impervious to the suffering of others, a dollar figure sometimes helps bring it home. Two honest economists have recently put one on the Iraq war, and in so doing shown a spotlight on the black hole in the center of our future.
If $1 trillion makes you gag, try $2 trillion.
The latter number is the "moderate," as opposed to the conservative, price tag that Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes have put on the war, which they calculated by factoring in some - but by no means all - of its real costs, such as lifelong care for brain-injured U.S. troops.
The most outrageous deception in the selling of this war three years ago is not the claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction or had links to al-Qaida, but the blithe assertion that the war could be fought for chump change; it was supposed to be pay-as-you-go, financed by liberated oil revenue. White House economic advisor Larry Lindsey was sacked for saying the adventure could cost the country as much as $200 billion; of course, the total, even by conventional calculation, has gone well beyond that.
If $1 trillion makes you gag, try $2 trillion.
The latter number is the "moderate," as opposed to the conservative, price tag that Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes have put on the war, which they calculated by factoring in some - but by no means all - of its real costs, such as lifelong care for brain-injured U.S. troops.
The most outrageous deception in the selling of this war three years ago is not the claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction or had links to al-Qaida, but the blithe assertion that the war could be fought for chump change; it was supposed to be pay-as-you-go, financed by liberated oil revenue. White House economic advisor Larry Lindsey was sacked for saying the adventure could cost the country as much as $200 billion; of course, the total, even by conventional calculation, has gone well beyond that.
"Fixed" intelligence from Feith's "Gestapo Office" the CIA and the Bush administration's impeachable lies about Iraq's prewar links to al Qaeda
Except in the cynical, zealous or spiritually clouded minds of his right wing devotees, it's become a well-established (if under reported) fact that President George W. Bush is a serial liar, if not a congenital liar.1 For example, after The New York Times very belatedly leaked Mr. Bush's unconstitutional order permitting the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without obtaining the required court-approved warrants, Bush defended his directive as a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism.
Cindy Sheehan terrorizes Bush and his trained clapping seals at the State of Disunion speech
Diabolic… Cindy Sheehan armed with a concealed T-shirt
boldly snuck into Bush’s State of Disunion Speech.
How did she get in? In a plot to terrorize Bush, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Dem from California, nothing more need be said, but I will say more, invited, even gave Cindy Sheehan a ticket to the speech – Gallery 5, seat 7, row A, while the treacherous Sheehan attended an ‘alternative state of disunion’ by the suspected terrorist organization Code Pink.
Why haven’t these people been arrested and stored in secret jails yet? Code Pink is a group controlled by radical feminist Peace Niks. They’ve been protesting Bush’s invasion of Iraq – along with millions of little people all over the country since even before Bush started his war.
Once upon a time Code Pink almost made their protest mainstream when a Code Pink member returning after Bush’s Invasion of Iraq reported on the bloodshed on the Republican News Hour with Jimmy Lehrer. Luckily the News Hour realized their error and cut her off in mid sentence forcing Code Pink underground to work with the likes of the radical Cindy Sheehan.
How did she get in? In a plot to terrorize Bush, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Dem from California, nothing more need be said, but I will say more, invited, even gave Cindy Sheehan a ticket to the speech – Gallery 5, seat 7, row A, while the treacherous Sheehan attended an ‘alternative state of disunion’ by the suspected terrorist organization Code Pink.
Why haven’t these people been arrested and stored in secret jails yet? Code Pink is a group controlled by radical feminist Peace Niks. They’ve been protesting Bush’s invasion of Iraq – along with millions of little people all over the country since even before Bush started his war.
Once upon a time Code Pink almost made their protest mainstream when a Code Pink member returning after Bush’s Invasion of Iraq reported on the bloodshed on the Republican News Hour with Jimmy Lehrer. Luckily the News Hour realized their error and cut her off in mid sentence forcing Code Pink underground to work with the likes of the radical Cindy Sheehan.
Bush: All wind, no power
Back at the start of the 1970s, President Nixon made a determined bid to split the antiwar movement. His strategy was to present himself as an environmentalist, a friend of Mother Earth. He celebrated Earth Day, founded the Environmental Protection Agency and, in so doing, proved himself a greener president than any since. (Watergate soon overwhelmed him, and the environmental movement displayed no appetite to defend their crusader.)
Listening to Bush on Tuesday night, I wondered whether he was trying to play the same game. How many Greens today dreamed they would hear George Bush call for more investment in "revolutionary solar and wind technologies," let alone "cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years."
Listening to Bush on Tuesday night, I wondered whether he was trying to play the same game. How many Greens today dreamed they would hear George Bush call for more investment in "revolutionary solar and wind technologies," let alone "cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years."
Responses to State of the Union Address
The Institute for Public Accuracy has a PDF critique of the State of the Union for public distribution
at: http://accuracy.org/s2006.pdf. Please spread the word about this to activists.
Being a national activist
Remarks prepared for California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus meeting in Los Angeles, Jan. 28, 2006
I was asked to speak about "Creating National Action as an Individual," so here are a few thoughts. Back in May, five of us individuals brought a bunch of groups together as a coalition called "After Downing Street" www.afterdowningstreet.org We used the internet and radio and lots of activism to force the Downing Street Minutes into the news. Our success came from tapping into passion among a large section of the public for exposing the war lies and pushing the idea of impeachment.
We helped organize hearings in Congress and helped promote various bills that created debate but were killed in committee. We helped move opinion against the war by exposing its fraudulent basis. We helped make it safe for Congressman Conyers to create an investigation into grounds for impeachment. It wasn't five people who did this, though, it was hundreds of thousands. And it wasn't an organization, but a coalition with organizations as members.
I was asked to speak about "Creating National Action as an Individual," so here are a few thoughts. Back in May, five of us individuals brought a bunch of groups together as a coalition called "After Downing Street" www.afterdowningstreet.org We used the internet and radio and lots of activism to force the Downing Street Minutes into the news. Our success came from tapping into passion among a large section of the public for exposing the war lies and pushing the idea of impeachment.
We helped organize hearings in Congress and helped promote various bills that created debate but were killed in committee. We helped move opinion against the war by exposing its fraudulent basis. We helped make it safe for Congressman Conyers to create an investigation into grounds for impeachment. It wasn't five people who did this, though, it was hundreds of thousands. And it wasn't an organization, but a coalition with organizations as members.
What an idiot!
Bush jumpstarts the alternative energy movement with his own hot air demonstration
When Gore Vidal endorsed last night's demonstrations against Bush’s ridiculous I-am-the-state theatrical stunt, he added the pithy comment: "Go back to Crawford. We’ll help raise the money for a library, and you’ll never even ever have to read a book." As always, Vidal has perfectly framed the argument for resistance to this anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-thought, anti-agenda. And while the networks and pundits and media shills gawk and preen and profit off the spectacle of this horrific failure, this loser in the most profound sense of the term, this puppet plutocrat who brings nothing to the table except for his legendary ability to drink everyone under it—an as-yet-unindicted war criminal with more blood on his hands than the tyrants from whom he liberates the world in the name of (and at the direction of) his Lord and Savior—we must make our own noise, in the name of the unnumbered and unidentified dead whose corpses pave the way to Heaven for Bush and his psychopathic band of theocrats.
When Gore Vidal endorsed last night's demonstrations against Bush’s ridiculous I-am-the-state theatrical stunt, he added the pithy comment: "Go back to Crawford. We’ll help raise the money for a library, and you’ll never even ever have to read a book." As always, Vidal has perfectly framed the argument for resistance to this anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-thought, anti-agenda. And while the networks and pundits and media shills gawk and preen and profit off the spectacle of this horrific failure, this loser in the most profound sense of the term, this puppet plutocrat who brings nothing to the table except for his legendary ability to drink everyone under it—an as-yet-unindicted war criminal with more blood on his hands than the tyrants from whom he liberates the world in the name of (and at the direction of) his Lord and Savior—we must make our own noise, in the name of the unnumbered and unidentified dead whose corpses pave the way to Heaven for Bush and his psychopathic band of theocrats.
Enron: The Bush Administration's first scandal
Opening arguments in the long-awaited criminal trial of former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay and company president Jeffrey Skilling is expected to start soon now that a jury has been selected for the case.
For many people familiar with the high-flying energy company's meteoric rise and sudden downfall four years ago, Enron and the company's crooked "E" logo have come to represent corporate greed, corruption and excess.
But more important, Enron should be symbolic for something else: it was the first in a long list of corporate scandals involving the Bush administration and numerous members of Congress.
Back in August 2001, just two months before Enron imploded in a wave of accounting scandals in which thousands of employees lost their jobs and their pensions, and which wiped out $60 billion in shareholder value, an Enron lobbyist tipped off the Bush administration about the company's impending financial problems.
For many people familiar with the high-flying energy company's meteoric rise and sudden downfall four years ago, Enron and the company's crooked "E" logo have come to represent corporate greed, corruption and excess.
But more important, Enron should be symbolic for something else: it was the first in a long list of corporate scandals involving the Bush administration and numerous members of Congress.
Back in August 2001, just two months before Enron imploded in a wave of accounting scandals in which thousands of employees lost their jobs and their pensions, and which wiped out $60 billion in shareholder value, an Enron lobbyist tipped off the Bush administration about the company's impending financial problems.