WEEKEND REPORT

September 28, 2003

Weapons of Minute Destruction

Fox News, the official fascist network, is reporting tonight: "U.S. Soldiers Uncover Huge Weapons Stash in Iraq".

Is this it? The long-awaited discovery of the grim Weapons of Mass Destruction over which Bush ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqi "soldiers" desperately trying to defend their country against an invader? Is this the great cache of chemical weapons leftover from the days when the US sent the tyrant the means to "gas his own people"? Is this the store of nuclear weapons that could have crossed the atlantic to destroy America that we heard so much about incessantly for months as the administration prepared its conquest of the rich oil fields of Iraq? The Weapons of Mass Destruction that the Iraqis mysteriously did not use when faced with a mortal threat?

Well, not quite. For those who bother to read beyond the headline, the assurance of the moral righteousness of Bush's cause fades quickly. These weapons of mass destruction consisted of gunpowder, that Chinese innovation of thousands of years ago, used to make homemade bombs. This is the best they can do. Oh well, now that the invasion is an established fact, time to put our differences behind us -- that is give up your positions and support us, the ones that refused to compromise and still refuse to compromise. And keep that oil flowing.

Architect of mass death Paul Wolfowitz said the administration is trying to "get more Iraqis on the front lines, get them dying for their country so fewer Americans have to." (Washington Post) Yeah, let's get more of those Iraqis dying. What a great idea. Now the fools of the Bush administration are going around the world trying to "sell" their war to other governments, trying to get other countries to send their young men to die to help America's occupation of the Middle East. If Wolfowitz efforts to get people from other countries to die for the neocon cause goes awry, it will be Americans that will "have to" die. Wolfowitz says, "we will be there until the job is done."

In fact, Bush has found little enthusiasm of his uncompromising offer to other countries to have their people die for a hare-brained war that will remain totally under the control of the maniacs show started it. "The Bush administration wanted control and it wanted international help on U.S. terms," writes Peter Slevin, in The Washington Post. "A difficult few days of personal diplomacy at the United Nations last week confirmed that President Bush cannot have both, so he has settled for control."

Now the CIA is asking the Justice Department to investigate the White House to see who leaked the identity of one of its agents -- a major crime. Columnist Robert Novak, who reported the identity of the agent, said it was reported to him by "senior White House officials." The agent was the wife of Joseph Wilson, who was acting ambassador to Iraq before the first Gulf War. It was leaked in retaliation for Wilson's public statements that the White House had information discrediting the nuclear allegations Bush made in his last State of the Union address. MSNBC and Washington Post.

September 29, 2003

Paul Krugman, the NY Times' accidental columnist hired to write about the economic boom and now one of few in the mainstream willing to openly accuse the Bush administration of lying, found an old textbook written by Henry Kissinger which seems to foretell what is happening in the U.S. The book describes what happens when a radical revolutionary group challenges a stable political system that it does not accept the legitimacy of. Kissinger uses Napoleon as an example and, Krugman says, implicitly refers to the rise of fascism in the 1930s, but it describes what has happened with the Bush administration. Aspects of the system it rejects are "social security; the idea of pursuing foreign policy through international institutions; and perhaps even the basic notion that political legitimacy comes from democratic elections - as opposed to, say, from God," according to The Guardian. Krugman points out that there is a "fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge the radicalism of the threat we're facing." Those who point out what is happening are considered "alarmists." Those who take the radical Republicans at their word are called "shrill." And journalists, Krugman says, "find it very hard to deal with blatantly false arguments. By inclination and training, they always try to see two sides to an issue, and find it hard even to conceive that a major political figure is simply lying." Krugman's book The Great Unraveling is now available.

Speak out for verifiable voting systems by supporting the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (H.R. 2239). For information, see verifiedvoting.com

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is coming out in the campaign for verifiable election systems.

Condoleezza insists the White House had recent intelligence that Iraq did have the Weapons of Mass Destruction we heard so much about, not just the ten-year-old stuff we heard about. Sort of like Nixon's "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War, which got him elected in 1968. It was really a secret plan to thwart Johnson's attempt to end the war, and Nixon kept the war going several more years. Rice's spin is in response to House Intelligence Committee findings that the administration's case for war was based on "outdated, 'circumstantial' and 'fragmentary' information with 'too many uncertainties' to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda," according to the Washington Post. See New York Times for Condi's double talk.

Only a third of Arizona voters polled would give Bush a second term. Arizona Republic

An administration in disarray. Manila Times

Military Families Speak Out is making noise on behalf of soldiers who have been betrayed. See Alternet.

Howard Zinn makes it clear, Iraq is not liberated, but occupied. And it's not just "Saddam loyalists" who are resisting. According to Knight-Ridder report, "In dozens of interviews during the past five days, most residents across the area said there was no Ba'athist or Sunni conspiracy against U.S. soldiers, there were only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops."

Bush, not the brightest bulb in the first place, is now protected from reality by a presidential bubble. New York Times

Tens of thousands around the world protest U.S. occupation of Iraq. Boston Globe

Nearly a hundred thousand protestors marched in London calling for Blair's resignation. See Al Jazeera.

"The United States on Friday activated 10,000 National Guard troops for service in Iraq and put another 5,000 on alert for likely call-up after its appeal for foreign military help met no immediate response," says the New York Times.

According to the Boston Globe, "The interim Iraqi government, set up by the United States to advise its senior administrator in Baghdad, has surprised Washington recently with a series of increasingly contentious positions as it presses for self-rule, from a push for sweeping economic changes to a move toward normalizing trade relations with Syria and Iran, countries branded by US officials as exporters of terrorism.

NEWS LOG

September 30, 2003

Freedom of Information

On the front page left column in the Wall Street Journal print edition today is an article called "Conspiracy Theories Get Hearing in Germany". It discusses, among other things, a book by Andreas Von Bulow that suggests that "The U.S. government taged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington to justify wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." The cornerstone of the theory is his doubt that bin Laden launched the attacks. "That is something that is simply 99% false," he is quoted as saying. Von Bulow is a former cabinet minister and a parliamentarian for 25 years.

"If we're being asked to participate in a new world war that's going to last years, then I expect that the cause of [the Sept. 11 attacks] be explained in the minutest detail," he said. And the fact is, the explanations don't add up.

Many other authors are receiving attention in France, Italy and Spain for essentially the same theories. It's an interesting dynamic in the global village. Even though information in the U.S. has been effectively controlled, elsewhere in the world it is harder to suppress. Then it leaks back to the U.S.

And in other news:

The issue over the White House leaks revealing the identity of a CIA agent is heating up, one of many to come back to bite the White House in a situation that is increasingly beyond its control. The Washington Post refers to a rarely invoked statute making it a crime to reveal the identity of a CIA agent. The law imposes maximum penalties of 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines for the unauthorized disclosure of covert agents' identities by government employees who have access to classified information. The White House, of course, denies the leak and calls the charge "ridiculous", according to the New York Times. We'll see about that. MSNBC reports that the Democrats say John Ashcroft can't credibly investigate the matter.

"Will the 2004 Election be Stolen With Electronic Voting Machines?" The Buzzflash interview with Bev Harris, who is on the case about the electronic voter fraud of partisan voting machine manufacturer Diebold.

According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll Californians have lost their minds and want to put a muscleman in as governor.

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