Duty to Warn

AUSTIN, Texas -- Stephen Colbert, correspondent for “The Daily Show,” the only news program to watch during the Republican convention, found the theme of this convention like a homing pigeon: “Unmitigated gall.”

        This convention alone would be enough to convince me that John Edwards is right about “two Americas,” except I don’t think he’s gone far enough. These folks are in from another planet. They’re living in an alternative reality. When is a fact a fact to these people? When did anyone ever find evidence Saddam Hussein had dog to do with Sept. 11?

        It’s all very well to claim our invasion of Iraq may yet bring about peace and democracy in the Middle East -- hey, miracles happen -- but when Rudy Giuliani assured us this “idealism” is in fact triumphing as he speaks, one must question the man’s grip on sanity. Even the president is now claiming the disastrous occupation is the result of “catastrophic success.” That seems to mean he thinks we won the war too fast.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Another record. We have already lost more American soldiers (488) in Iraq in 239 days of this year than we did in 287 days last year (482), when there was a war on and before our mission was accomplished.

        The grind of the numbers is so relentless. Price of gasoline -- pressing $50 a barrel. Poverty rate -- increased again, third year in a row. Number of Americans without insurance -- increased again, third year. Part of the "vibrant economy” Bush touts daily now. And the news from Iraq just keeps getting worse and worse.

        Then, to liven things up, someone from Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office is accused of passing classified information to the Israelis via the lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Be interesting to see whether Laurence A. Franklin, the alleged spy, gets as much publicity as did Clinton's former NSC adviser Sandy Berger did for allegedly taking notes on classified documents for his 9-11 Commission testimony. The Justice Department has announced no charges will be filed against Berger, and the matter is closed.

Which America do you want? The America where citizens wishing to hear their elected leaders speak in person must first pledge their loyalty before being admitted? The America where citizens instead wishing to display dissent are banished to "free speech zones" across town?

The America where if the president says something confidently and often enough it does not have to make sense to be believed? The America where whatever the president says presently automatically negates whatever he said previously?

The America where bringing civility to Washington means the vice-president can tell a senator to "go f*** himself" on the senate floor? The America where CIA agents are illegally outed as revenge for dissent?

The America where deficits are exploding and leaving a mess all over our future? The America where, according to the vice-president, "deficits don't matter"?

The America where the gap between the thrivingly rich and the miserably poor is widening into a chasm? The America where transnational corporations merit more rights and influence than citizens?

"Happy is the country which requires no heroes," Bertolt Brecht commented. Today, by that standard, the United States is a very unhappy country.

These days, the public's genuine eagerness for heroes is difficult to gauge. If media output is any measure, the hero industry is engaged in massive overproduction. Whether the "products" are entertainers, star athletes or politicians, the PR efforts are unrelenting. Some brands catch on.

In mass culture, the media consumer is constantly encouraged to swoon for personalities who seem to turn glitz into a verb. From MTV to the mall multiplex, the role models are on the market, glorious in two dimensions.

AUSTIN, Texas -- We were bound to get at least one good laugh out of Swift Boat Veterans for Humongous Lies, and what a pip it is. Upon being identified as the lawyer both for the Bush-Cheney campaign and the Swift Boat Liars, Benjamin Ginsberg bravely offered his resignation to the campaign, which has said repeatedly it has NO connection to the Liars.

        He made the following poignant argument in a letter to the president, which I know will touch you as deeply as it did me (emphasis added): "I cannot begin to express my sadness that my legal representations have become (SET ITAL) a distraction for the critical issues at hand in this election. (END ITAL) I feel I cannot let that continue, so I have decided to resign as national counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, (SET ITAL) doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focused." (END ITAL)

        Do you love it?

AUSTIN, Texas - It's an early Labor Day SURPRISE! Congratulations, if you make between $23,660 and $100,000, you have just very likely lost your right to overtime pay, courtesy of the Bush administration.

        If this comes as news to you, thank your friendly media, who are much too busy reporting lies abut John Kerry's heroism in Vietnam to bother with this story affecting your life. But next time you hear someone say, "Oh, I just don't care much about politics," you might want to recall this particular connection -- especially if it means you have to go out and get another job.

        This stunner is brought to you by President Bush and his big-business campaign donors. The Senate has voted twice to stop the change, so there's no point in raising hell with them. The House of Representatives, the "people's house," dodged the question. So Bush's Department of Labor just up and issued hundreds of pages of new rules on who gets overtime pay.

It’s obvious that no mainstream news reporter has the gumption to seriously question Vice President Dick Cheney’s ethics when he was chief executive of Halliburton, the oil-field services company that is currently embroiled in a scandal with the Pentagon due to its questionable accounting practices related to its work in war-torn Iraq.

Pity those journalists because this is the stuff Pulitzer’s are made of. What’s even more remarkable is that there’s reams of documents in the public domain showing how Cheney cooked the books when he was CEO of Halliburton, which makes the vice president look like Ken Lay’s twin brother. The evidence is beginning to collect dust. To tell the story of how Cheney’s Halliburton used accounting sleight of hand to fool investors all you need to do is connect the dots, which is what this story will do.

Let’s start with a bit of old news. A couple of weeks ago Halliburton agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to settle a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe related to a 1998 change in the way Halliburton accounted for construction revenue.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Remember what it was like just before the war? Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- Colin Powell told us to the pound how many tons of this, that and the other -- Saddam had a reconstituted nuclear program, he had numerous ties to Al Qaeda, and he was an imminent threat.

        As the president put it, we couldn't afford to wait until the smoking gun was a mushroom cloud.

        "To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just another attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand the question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action; fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man. ... .Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect."

The most abhorrent thing found during my research has been the discrepancy between the effects of prosecution of those who have stolen from the federal and state governments versus those who have stolen from individuals or other corporations. The most disconcerting fact is that many of the corporations that have been convicted of anti-trust violations, fraud, environmental crimes, as well as campaign financing fraud are still in business. Many of the corporations are thriving, because they were able to claim their fines and criminal penalties as "net loss" and avoid tax liability. Others, the ones I call most devious, used a calculated bankruptcy claim to avoid payment of the penalties imposed. And, other devious corporate executives simply changed the name of their corporation and avoided the public forum as well as the civil and criminal obligations directed by the courts.

This article was co-written with Jeff Cohen

The U.S.-centric nature of American politics often affects the U.S. left. It's hard to get out of USA mindsets long enough to grasp the global implications of decisions made here at home. Yet the effects of U.S. government policies are so enormous across the planet that some people have suggested -- with more than a little justification -- that every person on Earth should get to vote in U.S. presidential elections.

On the international left, no one has more credibility as an unwavering opponent of U.S. foreign policy than Tariq Ali. Raised in Pakistan, he was a leader of Britain's Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the 1960s, and is now a prominent London-based writer and an editor at New Left Review. His recent books include "Bush in Babylon" and "The Clash of Fundamentalisms." As progressives in the United States try to make sense out of the current presidential campaign, Ali's perspective on the global significance of Bush's electoral fate deserves serious consideration.