U.S. National

Politics leaves its boot-print on almost every aspect of our lives. From our schools to health care, jobs and the environment, it seems we can never win when up against the powers that be. Casting our votes for the evil of two lessers, as dutifully citizens do every election cycle, surely leaves us with a lesser by the end of the day. So you would think "hope" should be brushed to the waste side as naïve optimism, clamored to by only the most stubborn of idealists.

Halliburton and its former chief executive, Vice President Dick Cheney, could become President Bush's Achilles heel come the November presidential election.

On Monday, the Pentagon said it launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Halliburton Inc. subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root overcharged the federal government upwards of $65 million for fuel delivered into Baghdad during the Iraq war.

Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall has repeatedly said that the company did not intentionally overcharge the government. To hear her tell it, Halliburton was being a good corporate citizen because the company's accountants, who she said uncovered evidence of the overcharges during a routine audit last year, immediately brought it to the attention of Pentagon officials. But Halliburton's got a rap sheet a mile long so when the company says it's innocent its hard to take their word for it.

We were all lied to. We're used to it. If Westmoreland's body counts and Watergate and Iran Contra and the Savings and Loan and the first Gulf War didn't teach some of us, then I guess some of us were never meant to learn. The fact is that some of us bought it, and some of us didn't. It's a big, glaring, important distinction, one that, without indulging hyperbole, divides the whole of history and places us on one side or the other.

    Cast in the Gary Cooper role in this western drama is the American citizen, all of whom just wish to live the simple life. Unfortunately and unforgivingly, that myth is a bust. Yet, we are all living in a time when frontier- justice rules the day.          

    With the first vote cast in the Iowa Caucus, the horserace for the presidency begins in earnest. Honestly, even the most pragmatic citizen realizes that whatever the outcome on Election Day, it will be the result of nothing more than a “Hobson’s” choice, in that we are offered a choice of taking what is offered or nothing at all.          

    Folks, we are not witnessing the re-affirmation of “The Miracle at Philadelphia”. It’s more like being a voyeur to a surreal survival reality American Idol show. I’ve preemptively taken precautions and purchased, and am now donning knee-high boots.          

U.S. Cong. Dennis Kucinich has scored a resounding victory in the online straw poll held by alternative news site Truthout.org. With almost 25,000 votes cast, the maverick Presidential candidate from Ohio had secured 44.5% of the total, more than 12 points ahead of his closest rival, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. For the Kucinich campaign, this is a significant development. Truthout is frequented by many mainstream progressives, similar to the constituency that gave Dean an impressive victory in last Spring's MoveOn.org poll.

You'd think that President Bush would be facing, to quote Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a long, hard slog in his bid to recapture the White House for a second term what with all the information trickling out of the president's administration the past few months showing that senior administration officials knowingly mislead the American public about the reasons for launching a preemptive attack against Iraq.

But, unfortunately, there's too much infighting taking place among the nine Democrats campaigning for their party's presidential nomination and not enough attention to the administration's misdeeds. Too bad, because this is the type of ammunition that even the weakest Democratic candidate should be able to easily spin to convince voters that Bush should be replaced come November.

When the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) met on Tuesday January 6, 2004, it only took them about fifteen minutes to vote down the proposal from United Purifying Technologies (UPT). After four people from SouthWest Neighbors Protecting Our Environment (SWNPOE) testified briefly, and two SWACO board members spoke against it, the board defeated a resolution to offer a lease to UPT. This ended the possibility that the Trash Burning Power Plant property on Jackson Pike would be used as a tire pyrolysis facility.

The citizens of southwest Columbus got up in arms about the proposal from a start-up company that consists of one person, president Jeff Troth, and a plan that he has been trying to implement for over a decade. When the Ohio EPA issued a draft air permit to UPT on July 17, 2003, it vaulted the proposal to the forefront of the projects being considered by the SWACO to pay off the debt the City of Columbus still owes on the construction of the plant that has been idle since late 1994.

A Review of We are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism, Edited by Notes from Nowhere collective; Verso Books, 2003

      (AGR)-- There is a rumbling beneath the global foundation of money and power. Sometimes you have to listen carefully, putting your hand to the floor to feel the vibration of thousands of people hacking away at their concrete cage as they organize their neighborhoods into self-governed communities, or when South African activists illegally hook up water to a family's house that could not afford to pay the water bill. Other times you can't help but notice as the foundation cracks in places like India as farmers burn a field of genetically modified cotton planted by Monsanto; or when thousands of activists lay siege to the IMF/World Bank meetings in Prague. For those who have not felt this rumbling of discontent, reading We are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism may very well feel like an earthquake.

COLUMBUS, OHIO---"I'm running for Queen of the World," says Bette Midler, who may already have won the title.  "I'm sure I can do a better job than that schmuck in the White House."

For those of you unfamiliar with the Yiddish language, the word "schmuck" has many translations, but "duly elected competent and honorable President of the United States" is not among them. 

As for Ms. Midler, words---even in Yiddish---fail to describe her talent, range, wit and humor, though "Divine" is a good start.  Her Saturday night "Kiss My Brass" show here at a packed Nationwide Arena (population: about 7,500) was a total knockout.  Anyone in a city about to be graced by her amazing tour (check www.bettemidler.com) should get thee to the venue. 

Environmental Groups Promise to Expose Truth Behind Bush's Pro-Logging Agenda and Stop Projects that Don't Protect Communities or Restore Forests

MISSOULA, MT - Today, at 8:40 am MST, President Bush signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (HR 1904). Like the double-speak rhetoric offered by his "Clear Skies Initiative," which relaxes pollution standards for air quality, this legislation leaves homes and communities vulnerable to wildfire, severely limits public participation and does not ensure protections for ancient, old-growth forests or roadless wildlands.

"President Bush has ignored common sense home protection measures and limited citizen participation in order to increase commercial logging on 20 million acres of our National Forests, a stated goal of his administration since day one. You can rest assured that we will do everything in our power to stop projects that don't protect communities or restore our public forests," promised Matthew Koehler with the Native Forest Network in Missoula, Montana.