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Wednesday, July 31, 2002
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Tuesday, July 30, 2002
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Independent News
UN chickens out, withholds a damning report on Afghan massacre
Independent News
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USATODAY.com - 9/11 probe panel on deck?
It was not widely reported that House voted for probe into 911 that could implicate Bush administration, as well as FBI, CIA, etc. It remains to be seen if the Senate has the cahones to go ahead with such an investigation and where it goes...
USATODAY.com - 9/11 probe panel on deck?
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Halliburton to Build New Cells at Guantanamo Base
Cheney's ex-company Halliburton gets government contracts to preserve it from bankruptcy and builds concentration camps in Cuba! The Texas company Brown and Root, absorbed by Halliburton, built tiger huts, inhumane cages for prisoners, during Vietnam. The same old shits up to the same old stuff...
Halliburton to Build New Cells at Guantanamo Base
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Profound Effect on U.S. Economy Seen in a War on Iraq
Economic burden of war against Iraq may keep US from fullscale invasion; last time allies paid, US got rid of old munitions, some claim actually made money on it; this time an Iraq war that no one would support or pay for could bankrupt US and send oil market into uncertainities...
Profound Effect on U.S. Economy Seen in a War on Iraq
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Independent Argument
Debate in Britain as to whether Blair should support Bush on war against Iraq
Independent Argument
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Monday, July 29, 2002
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Sunday, July 28, 2002
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Independent Argument
Editorial begging Blair not to support a US attack on Iraq
Independent Argument
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Independent News
Brit lawyers warn Blair about illegality of Iraq attack
Independent News
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Saturday, July 27, 2002
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Friday, July 26, 2002
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An October Surprise?
Samuel Day Fassbinder said: And then this, from the Seattle Times:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0726-04.htm
\"\'If it happened in October, I wouldn\'t be completely surprised,\' said one official involved in the planning.\"
DK responds: this would indeed give new meanings to the October Surprise!
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War Against Iraq
Samuel Day Fassbinder said: If W. is really in such trouble as you say, then we should all be on the lookout for this coming war against Iraq, and intensifying the campaign against it happening.
:
the coming war against Iraq
DK responds: I have long suggested that when the shit hits the fan for Bush and Cheney that war against Iraq will occur as a distraction. It could occur at any time in fact as the scandals concerning the Bush administration are growing, their polls are going down, and the economy and stock market are tanking. So any day now....
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Thursday, July 25, 2002
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BuzzFlash Premiums - The Forbidden Truth
Book just released that documents Bush administration active support of Taliban, will be interesting to see how this plays out in US media; the original French version got a lot of European coverage and some US internet play but has basically been ignored, now that it's in English...
BuzzFlash Premiums - The Forbidden Truth
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Reuters | The World's Leading Provider of Financial Information and News
This is somewhat surprising, Reuters article claims that Bush played an active role in Harken energy company; previous released papers had indicated that Bush had been given documents that indicated that Harken's financial prospects were rapidly dimming so it seems like evidence was accumulating that Bush did engage in insider trading but I cannot imagine that he could actually participate in Harken daily business and make actual contributions...
Reuters | The World's Leading Provider of Financial Information and News
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Wednesday, July 24, 2002
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The Consortium
Bush cannot do the job and major leaders should tell him to step down
The Consortium
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Salon.com
Salon wants YOU to start your own blog!
Salon.com
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Tuesday, July 23, 2002
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The Smirking Chimp
Good news for a change! Bush's re-election prospects declining
The Smirking Chimp
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Comments and Response
Peter Zelchenko said [in response to postings on current economic crisis]: Might there be some continuity to this collapse? All things being linked, what we saw two years ago was a failure of confidence in the most bleeding-edge consumer sector on earth, the dot-coms. In more recent months, we are seeing deep erosions in what can be argued as the next-highest tech consumer sector, telecom, alongside its cohort, energy. The incunabula of these two industries occurred around mid-century.
Most of this has been based on unrealistic toying with finances to effect and celebrate gain, and perhaps the law of diminishing returns is beginning to prevail.
After the most self-indulgent century in history, one could paint a dystopian denouement: a domino effect on industries, in reverse order of technological onset or complexity of innovation -- core factors in the advancement of each of the industries. Next would be automechanical transportation, publishing and entertainment, and consumer electronics. These all rose in the 19th century as, respectively, railroads and other engines; automatic presses and the telegraph; and the gramophone, the electric power grid, and radio. We already have seen consolidation in these sectors in particular over the past 40 years, crescendoing in the last 10 or so.
\"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.\" Is there any precedent here from 1929 which we are in the midst of repeating?
DK responds: While I don't disagree with the specifics of Peter's analysis I think they need historical and political context. For one thing, Bush's giant tax cut, his strange policy on steel tariffs and subsidies for agriculture that went against his free-market ideology disconcerted some investors while foreign and domestic investors were put off by the corporate scandals, Bush administration complicity in them in terms of precedents and policies, and disgust with Bush unilateralism in foreign policy. The cumulative result was drop in foreign investor confidence in US and taking tremendous amounts of money out of the US market. In addition, Bush has fouled up the fiscal policy of the state, on his way to record deficits (from the previous surplus). So where one can derive ups and downs of markets from purely economic cyclical factors, I think in this case Bush administration politics have contributed mightily to our current economic woes.
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A Nation Online
This is interesting, for the Bush administration there is no longer a digital divide, just a nation online. Hence, no more need for federal programs to get computers into kids hands and classrooms, to train in computer literacy and offer support. The Bushsies diappeared the problem!
A Nation Online
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Sunday, July 21, 2002
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washingtonpost.com: Bush's Economic Address, Suffering Slings and (Down) Arrows
Bush's biggest media PR crisis: Nets showing stocker prices going down while he was giving a speech on the economy. Surprising that Fox, usually a Republican propaganda machine, presented such critical imagery which, accurately in my view, associated Bush with economic crisis.
washingtonpost.com: Bush's Economic Address, Suffering Slings and (Down) Arrows
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Saturday, July 20, 2002
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Bush Family Value$
This classic Steven Pizzo/MJ account of Bush family scandals bears rereading AND keeping in mind that much was known of Bush family malfeascence for years but was ignored in mainstream media!
Bush Family Value$
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Guilt by association
This seems to me a good idea, that al Qaeda should be criminalized on a global level, could be basis of more effective global effort rather than unilateral US campaign driven by military imperatives
Guilt by association
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Economist.com
British Economist on the Telecom crash
Economist.com
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Friday, July 19, 2002
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The Bush Economy and Bush-Cheney Economic Scandals
In one of the most stunning economic reversals in U.S. history, the Bush administration gave away record budget surpluses in taxes to the rich and returned to the dangerous levels of budget deficits brought about by the first Reagan and Bush administrations. During the Reagan presidency, the national deficit was doubled to two trillion dollars while in the four years of Bush I, the deficit doubled again to an almost inconceivable record $4 trillion debt, flipping the U.S. from the position of the first major creditor nation to the number one debtor nation. George W. Bush is well on the way to matching his father’s disastrous economic performance as he piles up sky-rocketing deficits, gives away profuse tax cuts to the rich, and provides corporate favors to his allies in the business and military-industrial complex.
While both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been largely immune from personal criticism for their responsibilities concerning the September 11 terror attacks, their business records were sharply scutinized and discussed beginning with a media blitz of investigative and critical reporting in July 2002. During July the stock market tanked, thereby wiping out the savings of millions. Moreover, the Bush administration announced that the national deficit for the next year would be over $165 billion, corporate scandals contined to multiply, and it was becoming clear that the Bush administration was completely mismanaging the economy. ABC News reported on July 15 that since March 2001, the market had lost an unparalleled $7.7 trillion dollars and the news was full of stories of working and middle class families who had lost much of their life savings and who had their retirement funds devastated. Heart-wrenching stories circulated through the media of many average families who saw their dreams of a better future shattered under Bush Junior’s tenure.
Further, there was a perhaps unprecedented contemporary media focus upon the corruptions of corporate capitalism in the light of the Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, and related corporate scandals, and burgeoning reports indicated that Bush and Cheney were allegedly guilty of the same sort of corporate corruption that was daily being vilified in the press. Investor confidence was shaken by reports of foreign investor disgust with U.S. corporate management and growing anger at Bush administration policies, leading to escalating amounts of foreign investment taken out of the U.S. economy. As the economic situations of many worsened, growing attention was focused uoon the Bush administration’s responsibility for people’s economic woes and upon Bush and Cheney’s participation in a life-time of corporate corruption and fraud.
A July 7 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Paul Kruger, “The Insider Game,“ raised the question concerning the longtime allegations that Bush had engaged in insider trading with Harken energy stocks when he was on the company’s board of directors. Bush’s accounts of this event over the years were always contradictory and unconvincing and new material was released that indicated that he had received accounts of Harken’s declining profit situation just before he unloaded his stocks. This constituted a type of insider trading and appeared as the very type of unethical corporate behavior that Bush’s own rhetoric claimed to denounce. As a result, major media outlets began looking into the story, and new twists and nuances emerged almost daily, keeping the story in media focus (for more on Bush economic and political scandals, see Chapter 1, 11.3, and passim).
Moreover, the revelations of Cheney’s checkered career as CEO of Halliburton were much more current and even more shocking. During his last year as CEO before becoming Vice President, Cheney was paid $36 million by the Halliburton corporation in salary, stock options, and bonuses, providing another striking example of CEO overcompensation and excessive corporate greed. There were allegations that Halliburton had engaged in the same sort of profit frauds that Enron and others had been using, and a video of Cheney endorsing the same Arthur Anderson accounting company that had been involved in so many corporate frauds showed that Cheney was deeply complicit in the most corrupt and failed sectors of corporate capital. Stories circulated concerning illegal sales by Halliburton under Cheney’s leadership to Iraq and Libya, states that had been on terrorist lists prohibiting direct U.S. corporate involvement. Moreover, Halliburton’s stock had falled sharply since Cheney’s tenure and many analysts ascribed the failure of the company to Cheney’s merger with Dresser Industries as CEO, a company long connected with the Texas Bush gang. And adding to his headaches, Cheney and Halliburton were sued by the conservative group Judicial Watch, a nemesis of Bill Clinton, that filed a shareholder lawsuit alleging account fraud that led to shareholder losses.
There are two sides to the economic and political scandals that permeate the Bush administration, ideological and practical. The ideology of market neo-liberalism that attacks all regulation and that believes an unregulated market is the royal road to freedom and prosperity helped deregulate the economy and block the sort of meaningful regulation that would have at least mitigated the corporate scandals that erupted into light during the Bush era. The other aspect of Bush administration revealed by the scandals is the obvious tendency of the Bush-Cheney gang to abuse power to enrich their contributers and associates, accompanied by an atmosphere of permissiveness and greed. The result was growing relevations concerning how key players in the Bush administration and their closest corporate allies had enriched themselves through shady business and political practices, using the state to gain wealth and power, in often audacious scams with attendent risks of criminal prosecution.
Many were coming to perceive the Bush administration as one of the most corrupt political cabals in U.S. history and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were emerging as poster boys for greed, sleeze, and corruption. Bush’s entire business career was predicted on exploiting family friends and connections for his personal gain, and in using those who wanted to buy influence from various Bush administrations to invest in his usually failed business ventures. Bush’s first profitful venture in Harken energy involved getting questionable loans from the company to buy stock, and then unloading the stock when he learned that profits would be down and the future of the company was in question. Likewise, Cheney was finally being accurately vilified as the type of corporate CEO who had engaged in exactly the forms of unethical business practices being attacked in the press, and as a man who had enriched himself at the cost of the shareholders and corporation.
Moreover, Bush and Cheney had long used the institutions of government to enrich themselves and their corporate allies and contributers. As Governor of Texas, Bush gave Enron and other favored corporations every tax break, state contract and handout, and regulatory largess that they requested and was doing the same in Washington both before and after September 11. Cheney’s Halliburton firm had received over $2.3 billion in government contracts during his tenure as CEO and was awarded billions in key contracts while Cheney was Vice President, despite many examples of Halliburton subsidiaries overcharging the government and the obvious impropriety of a former CEO using his influence to enrich his company. Indeed, Halliburton’s stock was in such serious crisis because, in part, of Cheney’s poor management, that the company would probably collapse without its pipeline of lucrative government contracts.
Bush administration economic policy can be accurately described as a pro-corporate administration which lets the oil and energy companies write oil and energy policy; allows Wall Street and big banks to formulate banking and investment laws, the credit card companies who had contributed to Bush’s campaign write credit laws, and other major contributors to Bush campaigns to get the laws, regulations (or lack thereof), tax breaks or other federal giveaways that they requested (Kellner 2001). In sum, the Bush-Cheney gang has primarily represented permissability and a hardright de-regulatory market ideology, promoting a wheeling and dealing cowboy capitalism. They have used government to enrich themselves and their corporate allies, and engaged in practices that were destroying investor confidence and greatly harming the U.S. and global economy. Part and parcel of the corruption involving corporate America and its political sector now coming to light, both Bush and Cheney have long engaged in unsavory and failed business and political practices. So far, the consequences of business-as-usual politics have been the free-fall of the U.S. economy and the creation of escalating antipathy toward the U.S. throughout the globe (see Note X).
As the reports of Bush and Cheney’s corruption multiplied in July 2002, the Bush administration continued to leak rumors concerning an impending war against Iraq. Britain Prime Minister Tony Blair came to Washington to discuss the Iraq issue, and speculation mounted that the Bush administration would wage war in Iraq to distract attention from its mounting scandals and the worsening economic situation. It appeared clear that the Bush administration would wage war against Iraq to boost its sagging ratings and to distract attention from its growing scandals and the increasingly critical press coverage, especially of Bush and Cheney who were emerging as symbols of the corporate corruption and deregulatory and permissive politics that had caused current U.S. and increasingly global economic and political woes. The fruits of the theft of election 2000 were increasingly poisonous and whether U.S. democracy would survive was at stake.
[DK This is a selection from my forthcoming book on Terror War; for larger version, see http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/sept11kell.htm
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US Patent Office Homeland Security Expo
From Richard Kahn:
Two things: Check out the USPTO's Homeland Security logo -- eye peering
through a keyhole in front of the flag. Bizarre!
Then, be sure to click through on the "full story" to see the happy
photos of all the designers who are plying their homeland security wares
for patenting and a better nation. Sick! One guy looks like he hasn't
slept in weeks and may be a terrorist himself in his spare time...
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/pulse/epulse/pulse0204_home.
htm
DK: The eye and keyhole is very Orwellian, evoking the sense that Big Brother is Watching! The TIPS citizen-spy program is also Orwellian and was a distinguishing feature of Nazi and Soviet communist societies. Has it come to this in Bush's America?!
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