DUMB AND DUMBER "I will seize the opportunity to achieve big goals."~~ George W. Bush
By Sheila Samples
Information Clearing House --My friend Bernie says a lot of folks have George Bush figured all wrong. "Sure he lies," Bernie said, "every time he opens his mouth. But -- think about it. Even when Bush is lying he ends up telling us what he's gonna do. He can't help himself -- he just blurts it out. But by the time we understand what he's saying -- he's already made a stinkin' mess and moved on to the next one."
Bernie says he's sick and tired of Bush running crazily through Americans' lives, shouting at the top of his lungs -- "September the 11th! The terrorists are coming!" while bragging insanely about his carnivorous game plan for the entire universe. "What's the matter with the people in this country?" Bernie asked in frustration, "why can't they figure out this bozo?"
"Look, Bernie," I said, "maybe we're reading too much into Bush's psyche. He's not really that complicated. Once the corporate giants, the evangelicals and the cowardly warmongering neoconservatives had everything in place to seize power in this country and to move onto the world stage and the killing it would take to get the world population down to a manageable size so they could control its resources, they needed a front man -- a dispensable fool -- one of their own from which there would be no blowback. With Bush, they got a 'two-fer,' I told Bernie. "Bush was not only chillingly insensitive, morally vacant, mean-spirited and incapable of regret, but because of his grandoise visions, it was easy to convince him that he was called by God and history to save, or to rule, the world.
"Remember," I reminded Bernie, "as a kid, Bush was a stubborn, spoiled brat who got his jollies by ramming lighted firecrackers into frogs' mouths and watching them explode. In college, he showed his penchant for torture when he initiated guys into his fraternity by 'branding' them with red-hot irons made from metal clothes hangers. You take a mean-spirited bully who won't compromise, won't negotiate, has no experience, no curiousity, no ability to succeed at anything, and he suddenly discovers he's the most powerful man in the world -- what do you expect him to do?"
"Just what he's doing," Bernie said, "blow stuff up and torture folks. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of that bunch who like to call themselves the 'Vulcans' may be running things, but Bush is perched in the cat-bird seat, and he's where the buck stops. Just think of all the opportunities he's managed to seize in the last six years -- stole two elections, lost two catastrophic wars, created a virtual assembly line for terrorists throughout the world, and whipped up a violent civil war in Iraq. His lack of war planning and negligible troop support is directly responsible for the deaths of more than 2,700 American citizens and of untold thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians..."
Bernie paused, shaking with fury. "Do the people in this country even care about the thousands of injured soldiers and marines who return from this gang's illegal war, faced with learning to walk on metal stilts -- hug their families with metal hooks? Do they ever think of the thousands more infected with depleted uranium who will suffer the agony of long and painful deaths, the helpless anguish when, for generations, their babies are born without eyes, without limbs, and other ghastly deformations?
"Bush is drunk with power," Bernie said as he stood up and headed for the door. "He's destroyed the image and pride of our armed forces, destroyed our Constitution, destroyed three branches of government that have served us well for 230 years, destroyed the lives of countless Muslim-American citizens. He's rotted the soul of this nation, and given himself the power to rule as he pleases -- and nothing pleases him more than bloody, humiliating torture. He's not the dumb decider," Bernie added, "he's the mad destroyer."
Bernie's right. But even as everything Bush touches blows up in his face, he continues to say his will -- his resolve -- cannot be broken because history is calling, and God chose him to lead a global struggle to rid the entire civilized world of evil. Christians should remember that God does not suffer fools. Christians who can look out across the smoldering Iraqi landscape, see smoke rising from burning bodies of those who did nothing to deserve such an inhumane fate, and believe for one instant that God plays any part in Bush's greedy fantasy need to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness for such blasphemy.
Still, it's difficult to determine who's dumb and dumber here -- the American people or our foolish president. I cannot believe people don't realize that Bush gives the same damn speech over and over, word for word, and has for five years. He uses the singed flesh of the people slain on 9-11 to justify killing so many, many innocents throughout the world -- September the 11th...we're on the hunt...got the evildoers on the run...we're bringing them to justice...September the 11th...freedom's on the march...we don't kill 'em over there, they'll follow us home and we'll have to kill 'em over here...September the 11th...September the 11th...they kill without mercy because they hate our freedoms...September the 11th. His speeches are replete with hate, and with horror, fear, death, suffering, plotters, planners, and hateful ideologies..
Bush is obsessed with "September the 11th" -- so much so that he cannot force himself to refer to it as a mere 9-11. He revels in the delightful horror of that dreadful day upon which he became The Decider, the commander-in-chief -- history's most important war president. That day swept all Americans up in a state of collective insanity from which no healing process is allowed to begin. This nation's current ills -- its shame and disgrace -- spring from 9-11, and even as Bush flees from it, he clutches it tightly to his bosom. It owns him. And it will ultimately devour him.
Bush reveals the truth of 9-11 in so many ways, from body language to bungled spoken words. As recently as his Sept. 15 press conference, while belligerently demanding the right to torture and kill whomever he pleases, like some perverse imp, Bush justified torture by blurting out...
"For example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed described the design of planned attacks of buildings inside the U.S. and how operatives were directed to carry them out. That is valuable information for those of us who have the responsibility to protect the American people. He told us the operatives had been instructed to ensure that the explosives went off at a high -- a point that was high enough to prevent people trapped above from escaping."
So we are left yet again to ponder the meaning of Bush's words while he eyes Iran and checks options on his table and paws through his tool box with the hallucinatory goal of killing his way to glory.
A fool. With a fool's goal.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net.
READING THE GAS PUMP NUMBERS What Do Falling Oil Prices Tell Us about War with Iran, the Elections, and Peak-Oil Theory
By Michael T. Klare
"TomDispatch" --What the hell is going on here? Just six weeks ago, gasoline prices at the pump were hovering at the $3 per gallon mark; today, they're inching down toward $2 -- and some analysts predict even lower numbers before the November elections. The sharp drop in gas prices has been good news for consumers, who now have more money in their pockets to spend on food and other necessities -- and for President Bush, who has witnessed a sudden lift in his approval ratings.
Is this the result of some hidden conspiracy between the White House and Big Oil to help the Republican cause in the elections, as some are already suggesting? How does a possible war with Iran fit into the gas-price equation? And what do falling gasoline prices tell us about "peak-oil" theory, which predicts that we have reached our energy limits on the planet?
Since gasoline prices began their sharp decline in mid-August, many pundits have attempted to account for the drop, but none have offered a completely convincing explanation, lending some plausibility to claims that the Bush administration and its long-term allies in the oil industry are manipulating prices behind the scenes. In my view, however, the most significant factor in the downturn in prices has simply been a sharp easing of the "fear factor" -- the worry that crude oil prices would rise to $100 or more a barrel due to spreading war in the Middle East, a Bush administration strike at Iranian nuclear facilities, and possible Katrina-scale hurricanes blowing through the Gulf of Mexico, severely damaging offshore oil rigs.
As the summer commenced and oil prices began a steep upward climb, many industry analysts were predicting a late summer or early fall clash between the United States and Iran (roughly coinciding with a predicted intense hurricane season). This led oil merchants and refiners to fill their storage facilities to capacity with $70-80 per barrel oil. They expected to have a considerable backlog to sell at a substantial profit if supplies from the Middle East were cut off and/or storms wracked the Gulf of Mexico.
Then came the war in Lebanon. At first, the fighting seemed to confirm such predictions, only increasing fears of a region-wide conflict, possibly involving Iran. The price of crude oil approached record heights. In the early days of the war, the Bush administration tacitly seconded Israeli actions in Lebanon, which, it was widely assumed, would lay the groundwork for a similar campaign against military targets in Iran. But Hezbollah's success in holding off the Israeli military combined with horrific television images of civilian casualties forced leaders in the United States and Europe to intercede and bring the fighting to a halt.
We may never know exactly what led the White House to shift course on Lebanon, but high oil prices -- and expectations of worse to come -- were surely a factor in administration calculations. When it became clear that the Israelis were facing far stiffer resistance than expected, and that the Iranians were capable of fomenting all manner of mischief (including, potentially, total havoc in the global oil market), wiser heads in the corporate wing of the Republican Party undoubtedly concluded that any further escalation or regionalization of the war would immediately push crude prices over $100 per barrel. Prices at the gas pump would then have been driven into the $4-5 per gallon range, virtually ensuring a Republican defeat in the mid-term elections. This was still early in the summer, of course, well before peak hurricane season; mix just one Katrina-strength storm in the Gulf of Mexico into this already unfolding nightmare scenario and the fate of the Republicans would have been sealed.
In any case, President Bush did allow Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to work with the Europeans to stop the Lebanon fighting and has since refrained from any overt talk about a possible assault on Iran. Careful never explicitly to rule out the military option when it comes to Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, since June he has nonetheless steadfastly insisted that diplomacy must be given a chance to work. Meanwhile, we have made it most of the way through this year's hurricane season without a single catastrophic storm hitting the U.S.
For all these reasons, immediate fears about a clash with Iran, a possible spreading of war to other oil regions in the Middle East, and Gulf of Mexico hurricanes have dissipated, and the price of crude has plummeted. On top of this, there appears to be a perceptible slowing of the world economy -- precipitated, in part, by the rising prices of raw materials -- leading to a drop in oil demand. The result? Retailers have abundant supplies of gasoline on hand and the laws of supply and demand dictate a decline in prices.
Finding Energy in Difficult Places
How long will this combination of factors prevail?
Best guess: The slowdown in global economic growth will continue for a time, further lowering prices at the pump. This is likely to help retailers in time for the Christmas shopping season, projected to be marginally better this year than last precisely because of those lower gas prices.
Once the election season is past, however, President Bush will have less incentive to muzzle his rhetoric on Iran and we may experience a sharp increase in Ahmadinejad-bashing. If no progress has been made by year's end on the diplomatic front, expect an acceleration of the preparations for war already underway in the Persian Gulf area (similar to the military buildup witnessed in late 2002 and early 2003 prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq). This will naturally lead to an intensification of fears and a reversal of the downward spiral of gas prices, though from a level that, by then, may be well below $2 per gallon.
Now that we've come this far, does the recent drop in gasoline prices and the seemingly sudden abundance of petroleum reveal a flaw in the argument for this as a peak-oil moment? Peak-oil theory, which had been getting ever more attention until the price at the pump began to fall, contends that the amount of oil in the world is finite; that once we've used up about half of the original global supply, production will attain a maximum or "peak" level, after which daily output will fall, no matter how much more is spent on exploration and enhanced extraction technology.
Most industry analysts now agree that global oil output will eventually reach a peak level, but there is considerable debate as to exactly when that moment will arise. Recently, a growing number of specialists -- many
joined under the banner of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil -- are claiming that we have already consumed approximately half the world's original inheritance of 2 trillion barrels of conventional (i.e., liquid) petroleum, and so are at, or very near, the peak-oil moment and can expect an imminent contraction in supplies.
In the fall of 2005, as if in confirmation of this assessment, the CEO of Chevron, David O'Reilly, blanketed U.S. newspapers and magazines with an advertisement stating, "One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over... Demand is soaring like never before... At the same time, many of the world's oil and gas fields are maturing. And new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically, and even politically. When growing demand meets tighter supplies, the result is more competition for the same resources."
But this is not, of course, what we are now seeing. Petroleum supplies are more abundant than they were six months ago. There have even been some promising discoveries of new oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, while -- modestly adding to global stockpiles -- several foreign fields and pipelines have come on line in the last few months, including the $4 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Turkey's Mediterranean coast, which will bring new supplies to world markets. Does this indicate that peak-oil theory is headed for the dustbin of history or, at least, that the peak moment is still safely in our future?
As it happens, nothing in the current situation should lead us to conclude that peak-oil theory is wrong. Far from it. As suggested by Chevron's O'Reilly, remaining energy supplies on the planet are mainly to be found "in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically, and even politically." This is exactly what we are seeing today.
For example, the much-heralded new discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, Chevron's Jack No. 2 Well, lies beneath five miles of water and rock some 175 miles south of New Orleans in an area where, in recent years, hurricanes Ivan, Katrina, and Rita have attained their maximum strength and inflicted their greatest damage on offshore oil facilities. It is naive to assume that, however promising Jack No. 2 may seem in oil-industry publicity releases, it will not be exposed to Category 5 hurricanes in the years ahead, especially as global warming heats the Gulf and generates ever more potent storms. Obviously, Chevron would not be investing billions of dollars in costly technology to develop such a precarious energy resource if there were better opportunities on land or closer to shore -- but so many of those easy-to-get-at places have now been exhausted, leaving the company little choice in the matter.
Or take the equally ballyhooed BTC pipeline, which shipped its first oil in July, with top U.S. officials in attendance. This conduit stretches 1,040 miles from Baku in Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, passing no less than six active or potential war zones along the way: the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan; Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia; the Muslim separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia; and the Kurdish regions of Turkey. Is this where anyone in their right mind would build a pipeline? Not unless you were desperate for oil, and safer locations had already been used up.
In fact, virtually all of the other new fields being developed or considered by U.S. and foreign energy firms -- ANWR in Alaska, the jungles of Colombia, northern Siberia, Uganda, Chad, Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East -- are located in areas that are hard to reach, environmentally sensitive, or just plain dangerous. Most of these fields will be developed, and they will yield additional supplies of oil, but the fact that we are being forced to rely on them suggests that the peak-oil moment has indeed arrived and that the general direction of the price of oil, despite period drops, will tend to be upwards as the cost of production in these out-of-the-way and dangerous places continues to climb.
Living on the Peak-Oil Plateau
Some peak-oil theorists have, however, done us all a disservice by suggesting, for rhetorical purposes, that the peak-oil moment is… well, a sharp peak. They paint a picture of a simple, steep, upward production slope leading to a pinnacle, followed by a similarly neat and steep decline. Perhaps looking back from 500 years hence, this moment will have that appearance on global oil production charts. But for those of us living now, the "peak" is more likely to feel like a plateau -- lasting for perhaps a decade or more -- in which global oil production will experience occasional ups and downs without rising substantially (as predicted by those who dismiss peak-oil theory), nor falling precipitously (as predicted by its most ardent proponents).
During this interim period, particular events -- a hurricane, an outbreak of conflict in an oil region -- will temporarily tighten supplies, raising gasoline prices, while the opening of a new field or pipeline, or simply (as now) the alleviation of immediate fears and a temporary boost in supplies will lower prices. Eventually, of course, we will reach the plateau's end and the decline predicted by the theory will commence in earnest.
In the meantime, for better or worse, we live on that plateau today. If this year's hurricane season ends with no major storms, and we get through the next few months without a major blowup in the Middle East, we are likely to start 2007 with lower gasoline prices than we've seen in a while. This is not, however, evidence of a major trend. Because global oil supplies are never likely to be truly abundant again, it would only take one major storm or one major crisis in the Middle East to push crude prices back up near or over $80 a barrel. This is the world we now inhabit, and it will never get truly better until we develop an entirely new energy system based on petroleum alternatives and renewable fuels.
The New York Times disclosure of an official National Intelligence Estimate, which states that the Iraq invasion has worsened the global terrorist threat, carries an unspoken subtext – that the Bush administration is either woefully ignorant of how to combat terrorism or finds the terrorist threat a useful tool for managing the American public.
That’s because on one level, the NIE, representing the consensus view of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, recognizes the obvious: that the invasion of Iraq has spawned a new generation of Islamic extremists who are determined to strike at the West, that Iraq has served as both a recruitment poster and a training ground for jihadists.
“The Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse” since Sept. 11, 2001, summarized one U.S. intelligence official in referring to the NIE, which was completed in April 2006. [NYT, Sept. 24, 2006]
But to many Americans, this conclusion comes as no surprise. Indeed, it was one of the central arguments of the antiwar movement before the invasion more than three years ago, that an unprovoked invasion of Iraq would inflame anti-Americanism and increase the terrorist threat at home and abroad.
Indeed, I wrote an article before the war essentially making that argument.
“The war’s devastation and the U.S. occupation also could play into the hands of [Osama bin Laden, who] spelled out in a recent message that he plans to gain a propaganda advantage from any U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, by presenting himself as the defender of the Arab people,” I wrote in February 2003. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Iraq’s Liberation Day.”]
Widespread Warnings
And it wasn’t just journalists and bloggers offering warnings about the war’s potential to fuel extremism and deepen the terrorist threat. Respected leaders both inside and outside the U.S. government offered dire warnings over the war’s potential consequences.
For example, retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, who served as a Middle East envoy for George W. Bush, warned in October 2002 that by invading Iraq, “we are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started.”
Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser in the first Bush administration, said a strike on Iraq “could unleash an Armageddon in the Middle East.” Former South African President Nelson Mandela said Bush was “introducing chaos into international affairs.”
But George W. Bush brushed aside these warnings and proceeded with the invasion.
As the war and occupation have dragged on, more concerns were raised that heavy-handed U.S. tactics would further inflame Arab anger. Those worries were realized in the devastation of Fallujah, the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, and the massacre at Haditha – not to mention the grisly daily death toll of Iraqi civilians.
Yet, every step along the way, the Bush administration and its allies have bullied their domestic critics. Americans who raised questions before the war were sneered at as “cowards,” “dupes” and “traitors.”
Then, when the rosy predictions of Iraqis showering U.S. troops with flowers proved false, the administration berated the Iraq War critics some more, accusing them of “defeatism” and insisting that “staying the course” was the only appropriate option.
More recently, the critics have been mocked as “cut-and-runners,” while Bush calls the Iraq War the “central front” in the “war on terror,” which, in turn, he says is “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century.”
But the downward spiral of the Iraq War and the worsening worldwide terrorism threat are negatives only if one assumes that creating a more peaceful and secure world was the original goal.
If the goal included changing the character of the United States as a free and open society – and consolidating one-party Republican control over the federal budget – then the administration’s policies would seem to be working like a charm.
In the United States, which Bush calls part of the “battlefield” in the “global war on terror,” fear has prompted millions of Americans to surrender constitutional rights willingly and accept government intrusions that would have been unthinkable before 9/11.
Fanned Fears
These domestic fears have been fanned by government claims of last-minute police actions to stop new acts of al-Qaeda terrorism, which later turn out to be over-hyped public relations stunts.
Since opting to charge alleged “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla with crimes unrelated to original allegations that he was an “enemy combatant” – to avoid a Supreme Court showdown over presidential powers – the Bush administration was dealt another blow on Aug. 21 when a federal judge in Miami threw out one of the administration’s charges against the alleged al-Qaeda operative.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke dropped a conspiracy charge against Padilla, saying that it violated constitutional prohibitions against double jeopardy. But the judge left intact two other terrorism-related counts against the former Chicago gang member.
Nevertheless, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the original allegations against Padilla – an American citizen who was held without charges for 3 ½ years – were deeply flawed. The Padilla case also showed how readily the Bush administration cast aside constitutional guarantees of a speedy trial in which the government must present its evidence in public, one of the most fundamental rights dating back to English common law.
In the administration’s other much-touted victory against “homegrown” terrorists, the case of the so-called Miami Seven accused of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, it appears that the alleged plot consisted of little more than loose talk. The accused had almost no ability to pull the scheme off and the case looks more like entrapment by federal agents.
According to court records, government informants provided money and a meeting place for the seven Miami men, gave them video cameras to conduct surveillance, and suggested that the first target of terrorism be a Miami FBI office. Lawyers for the defendants say their clients were lured into the scheme and had no contact with real al-Qaeda members.
Despite the criticism of FBI tactics, it appears that the trend may be towards an even more draconian approach to counter-terrorism efforts. On Aug. 29, the FBI showcased to reporters a new database with more than 659 million records.
The “Investigative Data Warehouse,” as it is called, includes terrorist watch lists, intelligence cables and financial transactions culled from more than 50 FBI and other government agency sources.
Unveiling the database was intended in part to address criticism that the FBI’s technology was outdated as the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approached. But the database raised concerns from privacy advocates who worry about how long the government stores such information and about the right of citizens to know what records are being kept.
For instance, anyone who has ever lost or had a passport stolen could be considered suspect, and anyone who has been put on the government’s notoriously inaccurate “no-fly” list also could be flagged in the FBI’s database. The system includes 250 million airline passenger records, stored permanently.
Gurvais Grigg, acting director of the FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, said every data source is reviewed by security, legal and technology staff members, and a privacy impact statement is created in order to safeguard civil liberties.
But David Sobel, senior counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the FBI’s use of an internal privacy assessment undercuts the intent of the Privacy Act.
NSA Wiretaps
Also of concern is how this new database might use information from the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic surveillance program. The National Counterterrorism Center’s terrorist watch list includes at least 325,000 people, and according to an NCTC official, the database includes names of suspected terrorists provided by all intelligence organizations, including NSA.
The NSA program has raised concerns because Bush is asserting that his presidential powers during the “war on terror” trump the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The eavesdropping is being conducted without court oversight in apparent violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Security Act, passed in response to the COINTELPRO scandal of the 1970s.
At the end of a Senate investigation into domestic intelligence violations, Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, specifically cautioned against the vast potential for abuse if the NSA targeted American citizens.
The NSA’s “capability at any time could be turned around on the American people,” Church warned, “and no American would have any privacy left … There would be no place to hide.” [NYT, Dec. 25, 2005]
All of the intelligence organizations, including the FBI, CIA and the NSA, are overseen by the Director of National Intelligence, a position created in early 2005 and now filled by former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte.
But the DNI’s independence has always been in doubt. In calling on Congress to create the post of DNI in 2004, Bush made it clear that the director would serve “at the pleasure of the President.”
Creating the post of DNI also required extensive revision of the 1947 National Security Act, a Cold War-era law which has undergone further revision since the creation of the DNI. In legislation passed by the House this year, the National Security Act was amended to grant the DNI more power and authority.
The legislation, now before the Senate, provides the DNI new authority to “have access to all national intelligence … concerning the human intelligence operations of any element of the intelligence community,” and authorizes personnel designated by the DNI “to make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of such personnel.”
The new arrest powers follow similar authority granted to the U.S. Secret Service. In the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005, the Secret Service was granted the same power in identical language.
Expanded Powers
Civil libertarians question the steady expansion of government powers within the Executive Branch. This concern has deepened with the tendency of agencies, such as the Secret Service, to engage in law enforcement activities that are political in nature.
During the Bush presidency, the Secret Service has shielded the President from dissenters. Since 2001, the Secret Service has been establishing “free speech zones” for protesters to gather, while police have arrested people who express opposition to Bush’s policies outside of the designated areas.
At a Florida Bush rally in 2001, three demonstrators – including two elderly women – were arrested for holding up small protest placards outside the “free speech zone.” In 2003, also in Florida, seven protesters were arrested when they refused to be cordoned off into a protest zone hundreds of yards from a Bush rally at USF Sun Dome.
In general, these demonstrators have been arrested by local police at the behest of the Secret Service, but this could change with the new powers granted to the Secret Service by the Patriot Act reauthorization of 2006.
Not only does the law grant the Secret Service new powers of arrest, but it also increases fines and penalties for individuals who “willfully and knowingly … enter or remain in any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of a building or grounds where the President … will be temporarily visiting.”
Beyond expanding powers for the DNI and the Secret Service, Congress also is moving to grant the President more authority over the National Guard.
Governors across the nation are complaining about a bill that has passed the House of Representatives that would expand Bush’s authority to take over National Guard troops in case of a natural disaster or a “homeland security threat.”
The legislation was criticized by Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, as symptomatic of a wider federal effort to make states no more than “satellites of the national government.”
Huckabee, who is chairman of the National Governors Association, said the legislation would end the historic link between the states and their Guard units and “violates 200 years of American history.”
Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, pointed out that for “230-plus years governors have had control of their National Guard and have done a good job,” but “all of a sudden, there are one or two lines in a bill that no one has debated and no one has discussed to take that authority away.”
While the governors express frustration over the usurpation of authority that has traditionally belonged to the states, there is a larger concern. That is the trend toward centralized authoritarianism that will be accelerated by granting Bush total control over the National Guard.
This trend may speed up even more if Congress effectively grants amnesty to the administration over violations of the Geneva Conventions, and essentially gives the President new authority to interpret Common Article 3, which sets standards for treatment of prisoners of war.
Although billed as a “compromise,” the Republican-sponsored legislation provides the Executive Branch legal cover for authorizing interrogation techniques that are widely considered violations of domestic and international law.
War on Iran?
As alarming as the drift towards increased authoritarianism may be, it could pale against what might be in store if the Bush administration attacks Iran over its nuclear program.
In a report for the Century Foundation, retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner asserted that “the summer of diplomacy is over,” and argued that “the diplomatic activity of the past several months was just a pretext for the military option.”
Dave Lindorff, writing in The Nation, reported that the Bush administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major “strike group” of ships to sail to the Persian Gulf, just off Iran’s western coast.
Lindorff points out that “the Eisenhower Strike Group, bristling with Tomahawk cruise missiles, has received orders to depart the United States in a little over a week.” Navy sources confirmed that the armada is due off the coast of Iran on or around Oct. 21.
The strongest argument against the possibility of the U.S. striking Iran is that such an attack doesn’t make any sense.
Skeptics point out that the military option would likely be counterproductive, if not catastrophic. There are fears that Iran (and perhaps Venezuela) would cut off oil shipments, possibly sending the price of oil to upwards of $200 a barrel. Iran also could launch strikes on Israel, and take revenge against American forces in Iraq.
Furthermore, there is the possibility that Hezbollah sleeper cells exist in the United States, and could be activated by Iran in the event of a U.S. attack. Press reports indicate that the FBI has launched new probes in New York and other cities targeting alleged members of Hezbollah, in anticipation of a U.S.-Iran showdown.
If the U.S. does launch an attack, it seems clear that the terrorism threat faced by Americans at home and abroad will dramatically increase. For such reasons, many observers argue that an attack on Iran is unlikely.
But Gardiner points out that not making sense won’t limit what the Bush administration does. “The ‘making sense’ filter was not applied over the past four years for Iraq, and it is unlikely to be applied in evaluating whether to attack Iran,” Gardiner writes.
It also could be that “making sense” means something different for the Bush administration than it does for average Americans.
Although the Iraq War has cost about 2,700 American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars from the Treasury, the war has created great business opportunities for well-connected corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel, which have registered substantial profits from the occupation and “rebuilding” of Iraq.
Also, although U.S. intelligence agencies now agree that the terrorist threat has ballooned due to the Iraq War, the Bush administration has found the conflict useful in simultaneously expanding its powers, abrogating constitutional rights and justifying more government secrecy.
Those trends seem likely to continue – and even accelerate – as the “war on terror” remains a powerful excuse for transforming the United States from a historically free and open society to a frightened nation where citizens eagerly trade their constitutional rights for government promises of more security.
Ever wondered just why it is that Americans seem so intellectually challenged when it comes to knowledge of the world outside America and the truth about their political leaders? You've heard the claim that the US media is "government-controlled", but is it true?
Newsweek, courtesy of an advertisement on the MSNBC website, makes the case clear:
Israelis deliberately fired several rounds of shells onto a crowded beach ripping to pieces this 12 year old girl's entire family before her very eyes.
But, instead of this incident and many more in between, our Zionist controlled media inserts their celebrated Shalit "kidnapping" following EVERY new grisly murder of Palestinian civilians by bloodthirsty Israelis, in order to "remind" readers how it allegedly all started. They even include Israel's 'cause celebre' in photo captions to justify images of dead children - killed by Israel's war machine, and paid for by our tax dollars.
An Israeli warplane bombed and destroyed a home in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, [September 27, 2006] killing a teenage girl in a neighboring building and wounding 10 other people, Palestinian medics said.
The Israeli army confirmed it had fired at a house camouflaging a weapons-smuggling tunnel in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, and that its occupants had been warned [MINUTES] beforehand to leave.
Dr. Ali Mousa, the director of Rafah's hospital, told Reuters a girl, 14, died when a block from the house that Israel bombed twice ricocheted into a neighboring building causing it to collapse.
He said 10 other people were wounded by the blast, most of them women and children who suffered broken bones, bruises and shrapnel wounds.
The Israeli strike came hours after a rocket fired from Gaza wounded an off-duty Israeli soldier in the southern Israeli town of Sderot.
Israel has stepped up military operations in Gaza, a coastal strip it had withdrawn from last year, after Palestinian militants captured a soldier in a June 25 cross-border raid.
TOO BAD IT'S A LIE.
It all started June 9th, on a beach in Gaza.
The tears have not yet left the innocent face of one astonished girl, Huda Ghalia, 12, who lost 7 members of her family yesterday, while they enjoyed their weekend at the shore in the town of Beit Lahia, north of Gaza.
These enjoyable moments did not continue for long. Soon, the Israeli navy gunboats shot two bombs among the beachgoers.
Ali hailed a taxi and called for his family members to leave quickly, as soon as possible, and they collected their luggage, the children collected their toys, and they fled the now-dangerous beach.
"Suddenly, a rocket hit our family. I was only several meters away. The rocket fell among my mother, father, sisters and brothers. The dust was so intense that I couldn't see anything," she said, while laying on her bed at Kamal Udwan Hospital.
Seven members of the family were killed on the spot - the father Ali, 45, his son Haitham, 6 months, daughter Hanadi, 18 months, daughter Sabreen, 3, daughter Ilham, 7, daughter Alia, 25 and Ali's second wife, Raifa, 26. Several other women and children were wounded.
"I was so scared and ran away for several meters, and then I came back. I saw my brothers and sisters bleeding. I saw a head and hands but did not realize to whom they belonged. I saw my father - he was dead, lying on the dunes."
Eyewitness, Moneer Ghabin, said that he saw the "unbelievable and horrible" scene at the sea soon after the bombardment.
"Huda was running between the sand dunes as if she were looking for something. She was weaving between the bodies, and the body parts, of her family. She was scared, astonished, surprised and crying," Ghabin said.
Ayham, 20, another of Ali's sons, said that he was talking to his father just seconds before the attack.
"When the shell hit us, I do not know what happened. Within seconds, I realized that my family had been turned into a heap of flesh. Unconsciously, I carried someone's hand or leg - I'm not sure whose. I did not know what to do, and do not know why it happened," Ayham said.
Samir Kullab, 33, was carrying his bag leaving the shore. As his children followed, he said that the Israelis committed this crime because "they feel angry to see Palestinians enjoying their lives."
Kullab said that he could not understand why it happened and promised that he will never come, or allow his children to come, to see the sea again.
And to this day, the bloody massacre continues, unabated.
Nothing can justify this wholesale slaughter of innocents.
Spread the word. Israel must pay for its war crimes.
Coincidence? I don't think so. And neither do 42% of Americans polled.
Almost half of all Americans believe the November elections have more influence than market forces. For them, the plunge at the pump is about politics, not economics.
Retired farmer Jim Mohr of Lexington, Ill., rattled off a tankful of reasons why pump prices may be falling, including the end of the summer travel season and the fact that no major hurricanes have disrupted Gulf of Mexico output.
“But I think the big important reason is Republicans want to get elected,” Mohr, 66, said while filling up for $2.17 a gallon. “They think getting the prices down is going to help get some more incumbents re-elected.”
According to a new Gallup poll, 42 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the Bush administration “deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline so that it would decrease before this fall’s elections.”
Fifty-three percent of those surveyed did not believe in this conspiracy theory, while 5 percent said they had no opinion.
Almost two-thirds of those who suspect President Bush intervened to bring down energy prices before Election Day are registered Democrats, according to Gallup.
White House spokesman Tony Snow addressed the issue Monday, telling reporters that “the one thing I have been amused by is the attempt by some people to say that the president has been rigging gas prices, which would give him the kind of magisterial clout unknown to any other human being.”
“It also raises the question, if we’re dropping gas prices now, why on earth did we raise them to $3.50 before?” Snow said.
But, in all fairness to Snow-blow, this is NOT just about Bush & Cheney and their Oil & Blood-soaked cronies. There are other forces behind the scenes.
Crude oil prices dropped below $60 a barrel for the first time in six months on Monday before rebounding a bit as nervous speculators retreated from the commodity markets, spooked by the improving picture for oil supplies and cooling economies.
[ "The market" ] reacted at first to news that Iran was willing to enter negotiations about its nuclear program and that BP would resume pumping oil ahead of schedule from part of its site in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. But underlying economic jitters, particularly fears about a United States slowdown, also contributed to the price drop, analysts said.
By "the market", they mean the gambling casino we euphemistically call "the financial market."
The price of a barrel of light crude oil for delivery in November fell as low as $59.52 a barrel in New York. By late afternoon in London, it was trading at $60.55 and it closed in New York at $61.45, ending up 90 cents. Oil prices have fallen about 20 percent since July, after being driven up by hedge funds and traders concerned about supply squeezes because of geopolitical unrest and hurricanes.
Whether oil prices will drift back up or continue their general slide is a matter of fierce debate. [in other words, a matter of choice]
“The oil market’s fundamentals have finally asserted themselves,” the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London said in a report on Monday. Markets reached a point recently where “the upward momentum of oil prices disappeared, and it will therefore take a combination of special factors to bring it back,” said the group, which was founded by a former Saudi petroleum minister.
When he says "fundamentals", he means 'free market forces.' And when he says "a combination of special factors" he means THIS.
But, then you must ask - Who or What prevents market fundamentals from 'asserting themselves?'
Noncommercial buyers, which are generally pension, mutual and hedge funds, poured money into oil and other commodities in recent years, in part because they thought that the growing emerging-market economies had created a so-called supercycle that guaranteed price increases. In recent weeks, they have exited the market rapidly as prices started to fall when the hurricane season proved to be less severe than had been feared and several producers increased supplies or announced new oil discoveries.
The net number of long contracts, not including options, held by noncommercial buyers — bets that the price of crude oil will increase — is 22,000, down from 83,000 on Aug. 15, according to an analysis by PFC Energy of the most recent report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “It is a huge reversal in position,” said David Kirsch, an oil markets analyst with PFC in Washington.
Kamal Murari, global head of energy marketing for Dresdner Kleinwort, said: “The move down that’s taken place has been sharp and sudden. The fact that it’s moved as significantly as it has means that any forced liquidation has been mostly priced into the market,” he said. Some of the selling in the oil market may be linked to the recent well-publicized losses in the natural gas markets, Mr. Murari said, as some funds may have been forced to liquidate assets across energy. Most market participants think OPEC will be concerned enough to take steps to stem further declines if the prices fall to $55 a barrel, he said.
Think about it. Some funds were FORCED to liquidate. And those forced liquidations were "mostly priced into the market." BY WHOM??
The members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, have been in contact by telephone since their last meeting on Sept. 11 to discuss falling prices but have no plans for an emergency meeting on the subject, a spokesman said on Monday. Questions about the future growth of the United States economy are also pushing investors out of the oil market. American consumers are often referred to by economists as the engine that drives the world’s markets, and when they stop spending, other economies are affected. United States home prices are cooling down, giving consumers less confidence and stripping them of paper gains.
In the United States, market experts estimate that the falling oil prices will help soften the effect of the weakening housing market. “The sudden change in oil price direction in the last month has reduced the total cost of oil to the United States economy by $40 billion a year,” said Lawrence J. Goldstein, the president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation. The fall in oil prices has added back one-quarter to one-half of a point of growth to the United States gross domestic product, Mr. Goldstein estimates.
If the fall in oil prices increases US GDP, increases in oil prices does the exact opposite - bringing our economy to its knees.
The same exact thing can be said of the Federal Reserve's interest rates. And in each case - energy and money - each industry is TOTALLY controlled by a handful of individuals.
This is no exaggeration.
Americans are being remote-controlled by the two levers that affect us most - our energy supply and our money supply.
If you believe in FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY - the only way to win it back is by spreading the truth about our economy - the TRUTH that THEY don't want YOU or ANYONE ELSE to KNOW.
I predicted before the last American Presidential election that Bush would have to reduce the price of gasoline or he would lose. He didn’t force the price of gasoline down and, of course, he did lose. He ‘won’ only because of electoral crookedness (which appears to be the strategy for the upcoming election cycle in November). There is only so far that you can rig the computer voting machines before everybody notices and the hue and cry for reform removes the crooked machines permanently, thus making it difficult for Giuliani to win the next Presidential election, so Rove has apparently decided it will be necessary to temporarily reduce the price of gas until the elections are over. We are seeing this now at the pumps (stock up before November!). You might think this would be tricky to do, but the way that commodities are priced makes it surprisingly easy to manipulate the price of gas. Undernews quotes the goldbug site Le Metropole Cafe:
“In yesterday's WSJ in Section C there is a very, very interesting item in the article, Some Investors Lose Their Zest For Commodities. The article notes that over that past few months, commodity funds have been liquidating commodity holdings. But here's the stunner: ‘Consider the Goldman Sachs commodity index, one of the most popular vehicles for betting on raw materials. In July, Goldman Sachs tweaked the index's content by cutting its exposure to gasoline. Investors tracking the index had to adjust their portfolios accordingly ‘which sent gasoline futures prices tumbling.’
Prior to Goldman's July GSCI revision, unleaded gas accounted for 8.45% of the GSCI. Now unleaded gas is only 2.30%. This means commodity funds had to sell 73% of its gasoline futures to conform to the reformulated GSCI. . .
Here we have Goldman, qua keeper of the commodities index, manipulating markets simply by adjusting index components. It is noteworthy in several respects. First, we are used to the notion of them front running market sensitive information announced by third parties, but here a glorified hedge fund - albeit one dominating central banks and finance ministries worldwide - maintains market-moving indices itself. . . . Second, it lends credence to the theory that the current well-publicized commodities decline is just a well-timed, well-orchestrated head fake to benefit the incumbents in the run up to the midterm elections - someone noted recently that Bush's ratings vary inversely with gas prices. . .”
As Undernews notes in its headline, the American Treasury Secretary moved to his current job directly from being Chairman and CEO of the Goldman Sachs Group. He took a $38 million pay cut to change jobs. John Bolton was instrumental in convincing him to do so. He replaced John Snow, who committed the unpardonable sin of being more interested in the health of the American economy than being completely loyal to the Bush regime.
EXCLUSIVE Army officer quits in disgust over Afghan shambles & reveals: Our troops are called The Borrowers because they have to cadge ammo The heat is so intense that guns are melting British food is being stolen by Taliban looters
A SENIOR soldier is quitting the Army in disgust at the way frontline troops in Afghanistan have been let down.
The officer decided to leave after Tony Blair told exhausted troops they were in the war-torn country for "reconstruction".
He told how he and colleagues were furious with the message - because they had spent all their time in vicious battles with Taliban rebels.
The officer - a member of 16 Air Assault Brigade - has now turned whistle-blower to give a shocking account of how shortages have hit troops on the frontline.
He reveals how British soldiers were reduced to borrowing ammunition from Canadian forces also serving in the lawless Helmand province.
He says guns are melting in intense 50C heat, leaving soldiers unable to use them to defend themselves. Lives are being put at risk, he claims, because vital communication kits are being rationed. He also tells how Taliban fighters steal soldiers' food supplies because there aren't enough British troops to guard them.
The officer says he decided to speak out after they were told by Tony Blair in June: "This mission is a reconstruction mission - supported by the military." The officer said: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It is not a reconstruction exercise in Afghanistan. Every day lives are put at risk on the frontline. But we haven't got the proper equipment.
"Hearing that message was a kick in the guts for me and the rest of the boys. The truth is not being told and there is anger on the frontline about the lack of supplies."
The officer is the second in three weeks to quit the Army over the Afghanistan campaign. Earlier this month Captain Leo Docherty - aide to Colonel Charlie Knaggs, commander of British operations in Helmand - resigned claiming our strategy was "barking mad".
And this week the RAF's role in Afghanistan also came in for criticism - in leaked emails - by Major James Loden who condemned the force as "utterly, utterly useless".
Our whistle-blower arrived in the southern Helmand
district believing troops would be restoring key services like schools and supplies of food and water.
But instead they were caught up in battles with Taliban snipers and militant Afghans trying to protect opium plantations.
The officer said: "Morale was good, but it quickly emerged that there was a shortage of weaponry and equipment for that battle." He told how during a ferocious daytime battle with Taliban fighters British troops realised their ammunition in 50 Calibre machine guns was not working properly. Canadian troops had to lend the desperate British soldiers 5,000 rounds. "It really hit the morale of our troops," he said.
Speaking of their SA 80 guns, which melted in the heat, he said: "You would go to pull the trigger and a piece of the gun would come away in your hand."
Night-time battles brought further dread to the troops. "There is a chronic lack of thermal image equipment, which allows you to plot the enemy at night," he said. "Without it you fight blind in a vast desert you don't know."
Communication equipment, including Harris 117 radios, which allow soldiers to call HQ for help and backup, was also being rationed. The officer revealed that Snatch Two Land Rovers, used to transport troops and kit in battle, often broke down. "They were not made for battles in the desert. Every day, two or three vehicles were being repaired because axles were breaking under the strain. It made you an open target."
A shortage of troops also meant Afghans were paid £1,000 a journey to transport British food, water and mechanical supplies across Helmand. "The Taliban were stopping drivers and looting vehicles every week. I dread to think how much money the British Army is losing from supplies going missing," the officer said.
Soldiers were sent to steal photocopying paper from American troops, because the British didn't have any. "It sounds ridiculous but we had to do it. The Americans started nicknaming us The British Borrowers," he said.
And he added: "I think dozens of soldiers and higher personnel will walk away from the Army after Afghanistan. I thought long and hard about my decision to leave. But there is a chronic lack of understanding from the Government and Ministry of Defence about the frontline in Afghanistan."
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "We don't believe these views represent a widespread problem on the ground in Afghanistan.
"The weapons and equipment are constantly reviewed and procedures are in place to meet the demands of troops on the frontline."
COOPER: You have repeatedly implied that the Holocaust never happened. And it certainly seems to be the -- and implied that more research needs to be done on whether or not it did happen.
I mean, the argument could be made that the genocide was perhaps the most well-documented genocide of the 20th century. Do you really believe that the Holocaust never happened?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): If this event happened, where did it happen? The where is the main question. And it was not in Palestine. Why is the Holocaust used as a pretext to occupy the Palestinian lands?
COOPER: But do you understand why it's deeply offensive to people...
(CROSSTALK)
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): That subject, how is it connected to the occupying regime in Jerusalem?
COOPER: You do realize, though, why it would be deeply offensive to so many people that you use -- that you even say "if it ever happened"?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): Well, you don't speak here for all Americans. In the past two or three days, I have met with many members of the media and the press here, some who are even related to the U.S. government. But the questions are the same across the board.
COOPER: Why -- why can't you believe there was a Holocaust and support Palestinians?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): No, that's not a reason at all.
The subject of the Holocaust is a different subject. I raised two or three questions that were very clear about it. I said that, in World War II, 60 million people lost their lives. They were killed. Two million of them were non-civilians, so to say, military. The rest were civilian populations.
And they all lost their lives. Their lives were all cared for and respected. But why is it that we concentrate so much on the lives of a – a group of – among the 60 million?
The second question is, assuming that this happened, why don't they allow more research and studies to be done about it? If it is a truth that happened, then we – we will need more clarity about it. And they are – must be impartial groups, or whoever who is interested should be able to do the research. Why is that prevented?
COOPER: President Bush, at the U.N. spoke -- tried to speak directly to the Iranian people yesterday. And he said...
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): Did you get the answer you wanted about the Holocaust?
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
COOPER: No, I didn't, but I know my time is limited.
I -- it is a fascinating subject. I mean, I think what people in America are...
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): Are you asking the questions that are on your mind or questions that are given to you by others?
COOPER: Actually, in America, we have a free press, unlike in – in – in parts of Iran.
But I'm asking the questions that I'm interested in. But I – I know your time is short. I would -- frankly, I would love to talk to you for two hours. But...
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): Well, given that all the questions are very similar, it speaks for itself.
COOPER: At the U.N., you spoke with great passion of – of brotherhood, of peace and respect for all nations.
Yet, in Tehran last year, you spoke about wiping Israel off – off the face of the – the map, wiping Israel off the face of the map. That doesn't sound to many people in the United States, not just in the government – to many people here, who heard that through the media, that doesn't sound like great respect for other nations.
Do you want to wipe Israel off the face of the map?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): I'm surprised why American politicians are so sensitive and biased with – with regards to Israel. What is – is there a relationship, to speak with such prejudice?
Everyone is prevented about questioning the regime. Whenever a question is raised, some American politicians react very strongly to it, whereas we know there's a lot being said about many countries around the world.
Lebanon was bombarded. In Ghana, people were killed with laser bombs. But it doesn't seem to have created concern among American politicians as much. But when somebody questions or criticizes the Zionist regime, there's so much reaction. Could you tell me why this is the case?
I would think it would be a good question to ask from American politicians, the extent of the prejudice we -- we see with them about Israel, given the massacres committed by Israel, killing people in their own homes. Should they not be subject to criticism? Should nobody complain and raise objections about the violations of rights and the murders that they commit? Are they free to do such acts?
Should they not act within the framework of any law?
COOPER: To -- to some in America, though, that is going to sound like you're not answering the question. I mean, the – the question really is – is, do you believe Israel has a right to exist?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): I say that it is an occupying regime.
We say we must -- you must allow the Palestinian nation to decide for itself what its fate should be. There are five million displaced Palestinians, four million who live under the threat of bombardments, or actual bombardments and attacks.
So, let Palestinian people decide for themselves. We support the vote of the people. And whatever the result is, we must all accept. Why should there be objection to this proposal, or -- or, so to say, with the vote of the people to indicate their will? Do -- don't the people in Palestine have the right to live? Are they not human beings? They live in their own homeland. In their own homeland, they are under attack.
COOPER: The same statement could be said of – of Jewish people in Israel, that they're living in what they say is their homeland. Don't they have a right to exist?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): Yes, in Palestine, there were a group of Jews that live. But where did they come afterwards, the larger groups that came to Palestine?
We know what the trend was. A group of people came from other places to that land. Where does the father of Mr. Olmert come from, for example? Some of the ministers in Israel are, in fact, of Iranian origin, with no background, historical background, in Palestine. But they're there, ruling.
COOPER: So, you're saying, really, they don't belong there; they should go somewhere else?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): I am saying, let the Palestinian people decide. The Palestinian people should decide what to do.
And among Palestinians, there are Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Our question is, what about the rights of the Palestinian people? They lived there, and they were displaced and forced to leave their own homeland, under the threat of a gun, and, regretfully, with the support of the American government.
What is happening to the Palestinians? Do they not have the right? Shouldn't we be thinking about that? Their young people are being killed on the streets. Homes are being destroyed over their heads, even in Gaza, even in the West Bank.
After all, they are human beings, too. They have the life – the right to life and to live in their own homeland. Others have come from far and beyond and are now there ruling there and governing that land.
Why did they go there? They should return to where they came from. Or, even if they don't, they should at least allow the Palestinian nation to decide about that and the future.
So, what I'm saying is quite clear. We want peace to be established there. We care for the Jews who live under pressure there as well, because they, too, are living outside their own homes, from where they belong, their homeland, actually. That is not their homeland.
“The devil is right at home…. The devil himself is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came right here…And it still smells of sulfur today.” Hugo Chavez; address to the UN General Assembly 9-20-06
My oh my, has Hugo Chavez caused a furor. Looking at the news reports filed in the last 24 hours, one would think that he snuck a dirty-bomb into the United Nations rather than gave a speech. In fact, the plucky Chavez may have delivered the finest 30 minute presentation that august assembly has ever heard. In that short span of time he publicly throttled the Global Emperor in front of 6 billion people and left his bruised and bloodied carcass splattered across the canvas like Roberto Duran in Round 9 of the middleweight championship match…..
“No mas, no mas no mas”…
And what about the performance? Is Chavez part of a theatre troupe or is he just earning his chops as a method actor? Whatever it is; it seems to be working. After skewering Bush as “the devil” and sniffing around for sulfur (the traditional sign of Lucifer) Chavez performed his ablutions with a sign of the cross and an angelic expression worthy of Botticelli.
If you’re a lefty, it just doesn’t get any better than this.
Chavez should give lessons in public speaking. His appearance was like a clap of thunder; waving Chomsky with one hand and pummeling Bush with the other. He managed to heap more muck on “Guantanamo Nation” than anyone since Harold Pinter gave his blistering Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on 12-7-05. That’s when Pinter said:
“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have ever talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised quite a clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It is a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
Chavez matched Pinter word for word, exposing the hypocrisy, lies and brutality of an administration that never stops lecturing about freedom and liberation even though it grinds out mountains of carnage everywhere it goes.
And where was Bush when Chavez delivered his broadside ….hiding behind Karen Hughes skirts, picking out a new eye-liner for his next televised harangue against Muslims, retrieving his Yale pom-poms from the dry-cleaners?
Our benighted leader always seems to disappear whenever the prospect of danger arises. He skedaddled when his number came up for the Alabama National Guard and he lit-out for the safety of a Nebraska cornfield when the planes hit the towers. He even vamoosed at a trade summit in Argentina when Chavez threatened “to sneak up behind him and give him a bear-hug.” That really put a spring in old Bush’s step as he quickly scuttled to the safety of Airforce One.
One thing is certain, whenever there’s peril, President “gone-to-soon” will be speeding off in a trail of vapor.
In any case, Bush was not missed at the UN massacre yesterday. Chavez held-forth like a preacher at a brothel; scattering the bodies and kicking open the windows to let the sunlight in. He delivered one, ferocious roundhouse punch after another….
Boom, boom, boom…until the crowd rose in a thunderous 5 minute ovation. (which was carefully omitted from the TV coverage)
“What would the people of the world tell (Bush) if they were given the floor?” Chavez asked. “What would they have to say? I have some inkling of what they would say, what the oppressed people think. They would say, ‘Yankee imperialist, go home.”
“He spoke to the people of Lebanon,” Chavez added. “Many of you have seen, he said, how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut were delivered with laser precision….This is imperialist (and) genocidal; the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, ‘We’re suffering because we see homes destroyed.’”
Ouch; no wonder Bush “high-tailed it” out of the UN before the ensuing bloodbath.
Chavez is like a battering ram punching holes in the wall of silence which surrounds King George. Right after his speech I checked in at CNN and, as I expected, Bush-apologist Wolf Blitzer was spinning in his wingtips frantically trying to stitch together the tattered image of the Dear Leader. A quick peek at Google News confirms that the entire arsenal of corporate media is now engaged in the hopeless task of salvaging Bush’s wretched presidency.
But the damage is done. Chavez played the match on Bush’s home turf and beat him like a drum. Bush is probably still quivering under his desk.
“There are other ways of thinking,” Chavez opined. “There are young people who think differently and this has happened in a mere decade. It has been shown that ‘the end of history’ was a false assumption, and the same is true of Pax Americana and the establishment of a ‘capitalist neo-liberal world. The system has only generated more poverty. Who believes in it now?”
Yes, who believes it now? Who believes in a party which has only produced two ideas in its entire history; tax cuts and war? Who believes that endless bombardment and martial law can be passed off as democracy and liberation? Who believes that a rogue’s gallery of liars, war-profiteers and gangsters can work in the public’s interest?
“We want ideas to save our planet from the imperialist threat. And, hopefully in this very century, in not to long a time, we will see a new era, and for our children and grandchildren, a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.”
Yes, Hugo, we want peace with our neighbors, peace with our friends, and peace with our enemies. We’re sick of war and the men who want war; and that includes every feckless politico in Congress, Democrat and Republican alike.
“The hegemonistic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very existence of the human species. We appeal to the people of the United States and of the world to halt this threat which is like a sword hanging over our heads.”
There’s no time to lose. We have to dump Bush NOW and get on with the pressing issues of global warming, peak oil, nuclear proliferation, poverty and AIDS.
Chavez is right; the present model for global rule is broken and corrupt. We need a change.
Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it.
Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, 'Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States.'" [Holds up book, waves it in front of General Assembly.] "It's an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what's happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet.
The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading from this book, but, for the sake of time," [flips through the pages, which are numerous] "I will just leave it as a recommendation.
It reads easily, it is a very good book, I'm sure Madame [President] you are familiar with it. It appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house.
The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.
"And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here." [crosses himself] "And it smells of sulfur still today.
Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.
I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.
An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: "The Devil's Recipe."
As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.
The world parent's statement -- cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.
They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.
What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.
What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?
The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I'm quoting, "Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom."
Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.
The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is waking up. It's waking up all over. And people are standing up.
I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.
Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.
The president then -- and this he said himself, he said: "I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace."
That's true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They'll say yes.
But the government doesn't want peace. The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.
It wants peace. But what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?
He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?
This is crossfire? He's thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.
This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, "We're suffering because we see homes destroyed.'
The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples -- to the peoples of the world. He came to say -- I brought some documents with me, because this morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed all these peoples directly.
And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? What would they have to say?
And I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, "Yankee imperialist, go home." I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.
And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my friends, last year we came here to this same hall as we have been doing for the past eight years, and we said something that has now been confirmed -- fully, fully confirmed.
I don't think anybody in this room could defend the system. Let's accept -- let's be honest. The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It's worthless.
Oh, yes, it's good to bring us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches, like Abel's yesterday, or President Mullah's . Yes, it's good for that.
And there are a lot of speeches, and we've heard lots from the president of Sri Lanka, for instance, and the president of Chile.
But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that we re-establish the United Nations.
Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have to assume the responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.
The first is expansion, and Mullah talked about this yesterday right here. The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, (inaudible) developing countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanent members. That's step one.
Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.
Point three, the immediate suppression -- and that is something everyone's calling for -- of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council.
Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.
Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we've always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.
Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.
Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this battle within the United Nations by recognizing the United Nations, as members of it that we are, and lending it our voice, our thinking.
Our voice is an independent voice to represent the dignity and the search for peace and the reformulation of the international system; to denounce persecution and aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.
This is how Venezuela has presented itself. Bolivar's home has sought a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council.
Let's see. Well, there's been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council.
The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.
And I would like to thank all the countries that have kindly announced their support for Venezuela, even though the ballot is a secret one and there's no need to announce things.
But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they strengthened the convictions of many countries. And their support strengthens us.
Mercosur, as a bloc, has expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur. Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur.
And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean brothers, the African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or China and many others.
I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, and on behalf of the truth, because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council, will be expressing not only Venezuela's thoughts, but it will also be the voice of all the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.
Over and above all of this, Madam President, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. A poet would have said "helplessly optimistic," because over and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning.
As Silvio Rodriguez says, the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. And this has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?
What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.
We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better world.
Venezuela joins that struggle, and that's why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.
President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.
And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.
And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner.
And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government.
And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.
And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to combating terrorism and violence. And we are one of the people who are fighting for peace.
Luis Posada Carriles is the name of that terrorist who is protected here. And other tremendously corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here under protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinated people during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but I think God reached down and our people came out into the streets and the army was too, and so I'm here today.
But these people who led that coup are here today in this country protected by the American government. And I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.
We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we were just there a few days ago. We just came from there happily.
And there you see another era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of the Nonaligned, adopted a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don't worry, I'm not going to read it.
But you have a whole set of resolutions here that were adopted after open debate in a transparent matter -- more than 50 heads of state. Havana was the capital of the south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, the group of the nonaligned with new momentum.
And if there is anything I could ask all of you here, my companions, my brothers and sisters, it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum to the Nonaligned Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony and prevent further advances of imperialism.
And as you know, Fidel Castro is the president of the nonaligned for the next three years, and we can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.
Unfortunately they thought, "Oh, Fidel was going to die." But they're going to be disappointed because he didn't. And he's not only alive, he's back in his green fatigues, and he's now presiding the nonaligned.
So, my dear colleagues, Madam President, a new, strong movement has been born, a movement of the south. We are men and women of the south.
With this document, with these ideas, with these criticisms, I'm now closing my file. I'm taking the book with me. And, don't forget, I'm recommending it very warmly and very humbly to all of you.
We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.
And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to put the United Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We've proposed Venezuela.
You know that my personal doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief of security had to be left in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all.
