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Video: Alternative
Views
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
Views
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Saturday, April 30, 2005
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Bush Corruption Binds Vatican, Saddam, bin Laden in Deadly Web
Another Truth is Way Stranger than Fiction Story from the Bush Dynasty: it appears that blacksheep of the family, S&L swindler and whore monger Neil Bush was on a shadowy Vatican Commission along with Pope Ratso and the son of one of the founders of the Syrian Baath party! I just saw Godfather 3 which has a shadowy Vatican group in business with corporate interests, the Italian government and the Mafia which gives context to this story, that will probably never get into the US media:
Excerpt:"The network links a bewildering line-up of players -- the Bushes, the Vatican, bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and China's Communist overlords, among others -- in a staggering array of crime and turpitude: prostitution, pedophilia, mass death and war profiteering. Yet this is not some grand "conspiracy theory," a serpent's egg hatched in Bilderberg or Bohemian Grove. It's simply the way the Bush boys do business, trawling the globe for sweetheart deals and gushers of blood money from the war and terror they foment.
At the center of this particular nexus is the unlikely figure of Neil Bush, the feckless, fraudulent brother of the current president. Neilsy, as he's known in the family, is most famous for costing American taxpayers $1 billion to bail out a savings-and-loan he had ruined with secret insider loans to his own business partners. For this massive fraud, he was fined -- by his father's administration -- the princely sum of $50,000, which was actually paid by one of his dad's political bagmen, of course.
You see, the Bushes are robber barons, not capitalists: They never risk any of their own money in the competition of the marketplace. Nor do they ever pay the price when their deals go belly-up. Just ask George W., whose first business was jump-started with secret cash from the bin Ladens, laundered through their U.S. frontman, James Bath -- who was also hired by W.'s dad, then-CIA director George Bush Sr., to set up offshore companies for shifting CIA money and aircraft between Texas and Saudi Arabia, the Texas Observer reported."
The article also points out that Pope Ratzo was the cover-up guy for Church pedaphilia scandal! Excerpt: "Meanwhile, Ratzinger spent his time on the Swiss board trying to bury the Vatican's massive pedophilia scandal, the London Observer reported this week. In a secret 2001 letter, he ordered Church officials to prevent police from learning about abuse allegations -- a theological innovation more commonly known in the United States as "obstructing justice." Given this criminal high-wire act, perhaps the good cardinal thought it prudent to cultivate some personal ties with a presidential sibling.Whatever Neilsy and Das Panzerkardinal were up to in Switzerland, Ratzinger repaid their camaraderie with a decisive intervention in brother George's 2004 election, issuing a fatwa that essentially condemned any Catholic voting for John Kerry to eternal hellfire. With the Vatican's iron hand on the scales, Bush reaped an extra six percent of the Catholic vote -- a huge boost in a tight race."
I briefly knew Ratzinger when he was a theology professor at Tubingen where I studied in the late 1960s and the theology students hated him immensely. He was virulently reactionary and on the right on every conceivable issue. I'll never forget his burning eyes that evoked fanaticism and when I read Dostoevsky's "Tale of the Grand Inquisitor" I thought constantly of Ratzo. Well, the Bush Gang have their Pope as well...
The Smirking Chimp
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The New York Times > : Swindler on a Gusher
UNBELIEVABLE that the Bush-Cheney Gang chose Ahmad Chalabi, major neocon tool and one of the big crooks of the region, as OIL Minister!!! No blood for oil?! Chalabi running Iraqi oil for Cheney et al?! the HUBRIS of the Bush-Cheney Gang is astonishing
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Swindler on a Gusher
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Bush's Snake Oil Plan
Bush's social security cuts portend drastic cuts for many people. Excerpt: "According to an analysis by House Democratic staff, when fully phased in, Bush's "progressive indexing" would be a disaster for the middle class: A worker earning $37,000 per year before retirement would see a benefit cut of 28 percent. Someone earning $58,000 would suffer a 42 percent cut. And someone earning $90,000 would face benefit cuts of 49 percent. "
These are huge cuts and ABC News last night highlighted them in bold graphics which no doubt created fear and trembling among vast sectors of the population; watch for Bush's poll numbers to drop significantly and Repugs back away from this radical attack on social security, which was Bush's goal all along
http://www.alternet.org/story/21903/
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Friday, April 29, 2005
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Arnold Stumbles, Bumbles, and Tumples
Guvernator Arnie the Terminator is always having a rough ride. Tim Grieve again:
"The Terminator takes a fallGeorge W. Bush isn't the only Republican to be getting some bad poll news lately.
A new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California has Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's approval ratings dropping 20 points since January. The poll shows that only 40 percent of California's adults approve of Schwarzenegger's job performance -- an approval rating that's a fair chunk worse than the numbers Bush is getting on the national level.
Schwarzenegger isn't plagued with Bush's problems -- people don't think Arnold lied about the reasons for a war or is conning them on Social Security -- but the Gubernator has got some troubles of his own. Schwarzenegger started the year threatening to put four "reform" measures on the statewide ballot if Democrats in the state legislature didn't approve them first. Since then, he's caved in on one, a plan to privatize the state's pension plan, and he seemed to concede on Wednesday that he's going to have to negotiate with Democrats on another, his plan to change the way California does redistricting. A third Schwarzenegger proposal -- his plan to put teachers on a merit pay plan -- isn't all that likely to get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. And on Wednesday, Schwarzenegger was forced to announce that his frustrated education chief, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, will be quitting in June. Add to that a gaffe about the need to "close the border" with Mexico -- Schwarzenegger apologized, saying that he might need to "go back to school" to work on his English -- and a split between some of his conservative advisors and his more liberal wife, and Schwarzenegger is suddenly looking more like a girlie man than the political superstar the GOP hoped he would be.
Pollster Mark Baldassare tells the Sacramento Bee that Schwarzenegger is still popular among Republicans, but that he's losing support among the Democrats and independents who helped put him in office. "Since January, the governor has been less able to communicate effectively with the people, particularly outside of his party, that he's representing their interests," Baldassare said. "People on the other side have been more effective in communicating that he's not."
-- Tim Grieve
[11:44 EDT, April 28, 2005]
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Bad News Bush
As Tim Grieve reports, Bush is having bad times:
"Bush's headline performanceThe president's prime-time appearance last night is taking a pummeling in the media today, and we were compelled to take note of some of the finer headlines. Here are some of our faves.
"Reality TV Trumps Bush Press Conference""His party may dominate Washington, but President Bush did not dare go head to head last night with 'The Apprentice'," reported NPR's Morning Edition. "TV networks said they wouldn't carry last night's presidential press conference if it went past 9 p.m., pre-empting reality TV."
As many have noted today, the White House P.R. crew wisely opted to bump up last night's scheduled appearance, and Bush even joked about getting out of the way in a timely manner. (Perhaps he was imagining all of TV-going America declaring "You're fired" in unison?) Three networks cut away from the conference early anyway.
"Bush on Offensive as Ratings Hit Floor"It's always instructive to hear from our friends and allies abroad; The Australian weighed in with the long view from the Land Down Under:
"President George W.Bush sought to wrest back control of his second-term agenda yesterday amid a dramatic drop in the opinion polls that is threatening his legislative program and the Republicans' dominance of Congress. ... The President's intervention with an hour-long press conference comes amid an increasingly poisonous environment on Capitol Hill, which has become as polarised as US political veterans can remember."
"Not Exactly Must-See TV"The American public "got snookered last night," said the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin.
"Strong-armed, beguiled and wheedled into pre-empting an hour of prime-time national programming last night for President Bush's news conference, the networks were assured they would be getting must-see TV. Instead, they got a clip show. The White House had promised that Bush would unveil new specifics about how he proposes to resolve Social Security's future funding shortfalls. And he did that -- but only briefly, and using language that was disingenuous at best."
The sum total of new information offered, says Froomkin, "could have easily fit into a commercial break."
But the top prize has to go to the New York Times for skipping the obvious riffs about the boob on the tube, and going with the weather channel instead:
"After 99 Days, Bush Uses News Conference to Test Winds"
To test them, or just to blow a bunch of it?
-- Mark Follman
[14:48 EDT, April 29, 2005]
-->
Has the tipping point come?There comes a moment -- it happened to George H.W.Bush, it happened to Bill Clinton -- when reporters in the mainstream media make the pivot against a president. All actions become desperate. All pronouncements become suspect.
One hundreds days into his second term, it's a little early to stick a fork in George W. Bush. But boy, has the tide turned on a president who was so recently the swaggering darling of the national news. The White House had to beg some of the networks to air last night's prime-time news conference; it was the first night of sweeps week, and NBC and Fox couldn't bear the thought that Donald Trump or "The O.C." might be bumped by a not particularly popular commander in chief with little new to say. Bush's media handlers, who value nothing more than the president's reputation for resoluteness, caved in at the last minute and moved up the presser by half an hour so that most of the prime-time entertainment could appear on schedule. Bush made a joke about it all toward the end of the press conference, but, as the New York Times notes, a lot of viewers didn't see it: NBC and CBS had already cut away.
If he reads the papers today, Bush might find himself wishing that the print reporters had left early, too. Forget the analysis pieces, almost all of which focus on the sorry shape of the president's second-term agenda; notice the hostile tone in the straight news stories today.
Under a front-page headline that reads, "Bush Cites Plan That Would Cut Social Security Benefits," the Times says Bush's press conference "represented an effort to regain control of the national dialogue at a time when Mr. Bush is struggling to push his Social Security plan ahead on Capitol Hill, his approval ratings are falling, the economy is showing signs of slowing and Democrats have become more combative."
The Washington Post leads with the headline, "Bush Social Security Plan Would Cut Future Benefits," and its main news story describes a president clamoring for relevance. The press conference "came at a time of uncertainty for a president facing sagging poll numbers, a slowing economy and general unease about his domestic agenda," the Post says, citing White House aides who say Bush is "concerned his agenda is being eclipsed by congressional bickering."
The Boston Globe says Bush met the press "amid an array of problems, including the stalled nomination of some of his judicial nominees, and of John Bolton to become US ambassador to the United Nations, ethics questions surrounding a key ally, House majority leader Tom DeLay, a sliding stock market, continuing violence in Iraq, and record energy prices."
And the Los Angeles Times headlines its coverage, "Bush Recasts Message on Social Security," then ticks off a litany of problems for which the president apparently has no plan: "The nation's economic growth has slowed. . . . The price of gasoline has soared. . . . Bush's overall popularity has sagged in public opinion polls. . . . The president acknowledged no anxiety over those trends, beyond his concern over gas prices and the economy. 'I'm an optimistic fellow,' he said."
If Bush continues to get coverage like this, he'd better be.
-- Tim Grieve
[11:48 EDT, April 29, 2005]
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Robert Parry, “The Left’s Media Miscalculation,” Consortiumnews.com
As Robert Parry argues, the Right in the US has moved from a position of marginality after the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964 to political hegemony through developing a network of think tanks, media projects, and print publications that have advanced conservative ideas and helped educate and organize a conservative movement. The Left and progressives also need to develop a strong networks of think tanks and alternative media to combat the Right in the struggle for hegemony in the US and globally.
Consortiumnews.com
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Thursday, April 28, 2005
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005
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Jack Miles: 'The unholy alliance against the filibuster'
there have been reports recently on how Pope Ratzo did the hit on Kerry in 2004, mobilizing rightwing Catholics against him. Here's one account:
"During the last election, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote a letter to U.S. bishops while the campaign was in progress, instructing them to deny Communion to any Catholic candidate unwilling to criminalize abortion. Ratzinger's letter did not win anything close to unanimous agreement, even among the American bishops, yet he succeeded in creating a public question about John Kerry's status as a Roman Catholic.The shift among Catholic voters in 2004 was small in absolute numbers — President Bush increased his support among Catholics by 6 points from 2000 to 2004 — yet, according to one analyst, it was large enough to turn the election in Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico. Arguably, then, Ratzinger won the election for Bush."
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=20878
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Michael Dietz: 'Becoming Jeff Gannon'
Here's the most detailed story yet on the life and strange career of fake White House reporter Jeff Gannon. This story indicates the long-time and deep porn and gay escort side of Gannon.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=20871
There have also been reports that Gannon spent a tremendous amount of time in the White House over a two-year period. Was he servicing Bush Administration closeted gays as has been alleged? The Karl Rove Frontline documentary last week indicated that despite the gay-bashing politics of the Bush administration a large number of gays were in the inner circle. Was Gannon their guy? Read on and ponder from Salon:
"Finding GannonWe love watching Scott McClellan work as much as the next guy -- but apparently not quite as much as Jeff Gannon once did. Documents just released by the Secret Service show that Gannnon/Guckert visited the White House more than 200 times between 2003 and early 2005, attending 155 of 196 press briefings but also showing up many times when the president and much of the press corps were somewhere else.
Raw Story has the story and a glimpse at the documents. The documents come from the Secret Service, which turned them over to Reps. John Conyers and Louise Slaughter in response to a Freedom of Information Act request the two Democrats filed.
On a first read, the documents raise a few questions that we'd like to see McClellan address. First, if White House day passes -- and the abbreviated security check that goes along with them -- are meant for the occasional use of reporters who don't need a permanent "hard" pass, why was Gannon allowed to use such day passes more than 200 times in less than two years? Is anyone else allowed, in effect, to turn a day pass into a "hard" pass, or was Gannon alone in his near-constant day pass access?
Second, in the post-9/11 world, is it too much to ask that the Secret Service keep track of who is coming and going at the White House? As Raw Story notes, the Secret Service security logs produced to Conyers and Slaughter contain some days where Gannon appears to leave the White House never having arrived in the first place. On other days, Gannon is shown arriving but not leaving. Maybe it's just sloppy bookkeeping, but how hard can it be to get this stuff right? The White House isn't exactly Grand Central Station, and the Secret Service checks everyone who comes and goes. Is there a reason other than ineptitude for missing many of Gannon's entries and exits? And if it's just ineptitude, what is the president going to do about that?
-- Tim Grieve
[09:42 EDT, April 25, 2005]
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Bush support plummets
Salon summarizes recent polls and analyses that shows Bush support rapiding declining. Excerpt: "How low can you go?George W. Bush may have won the election in November, but the president and his party are losing the war for the hearts and minds of Americans. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll has bad news for the Republicans on virtually every front.
The Republican plan to end the filibuster in order to get Bush's judicial nominees through the Senate? The public opposes it, 66 percent to 22 percent. Are Democrats right to block some of Bush's judges? The public says yes, 48 percent to 36 percent. Are judges in America too liberal, too conservative or just about right? Seventy percent say they're too conservative or just about right; only 26 percent say they're too liberal.
The president's plan to privatize Social Security? In mid-March, the poll found Americans in support of the proposal, 56-44. Now they're opposed, 51-46.
But wait, there's more. The Post says its poll "also registered drops in key Bush performance ratings, growing pessimism about the economy and continuing concern about U.S. involvement in Iraq." While Bush still gets good numbers for his war on terrorism, there's bad news there, too: Americans are so concerned about the economy -- and gas prices, for which they blame him more than the oil companies -- that terrorism is no longer at the top of the public's list of priorities, the poll found.
If the president has a plan for turning around public opinion, we haven't seen it yet. He's campaigning again today for Social Security reform, this time in Texas -- with Tom DeLay at his side."
And: "Advantage: Democrats?You hate to get ahead of yourself on these things -- God knows, Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory more than once before -- but it's sure beginning to seem like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill are flat-out out-maneuvering Bill Frist and the Bush White House.
Check out the big news stories from the last couple of days.
1. Although George W. Bush gave Tom DeLay a big Air Force One embrace Tuesday, Republicans in the House seem to be conceding defeat on their plan to protect their leader from an ethics investigation. In the face of the Democrats' steadfast refusal to let the House ethics committee operate after Republicans changed the committee's rules to protect DeLay, House Republican leaders blinked Tuesday, saying that they're ready to cancel the rule changes they made so that an investigation of DeLay can begin. A Republican advisor tells the Washington Post that the move is Dennis Hastert's way of "trying to put this behind us and get us back to regular order." Acknowledging the effectiveness of the Democrats' stand, the advisor said that Hastert will pay a political price for switching the ethics rules again, "but if he had not done this, the cost would continue to increase."
2. Although the White House continues to insist that John Bolton is "exactly the right man" for the job of U.N. ambassador, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have remained united in their opposition, and it seems likely that at least a couple of Republicans will join them in voting against Bolton's confirmation -- if it ever comes up for a vote. On Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats on the committee agreed to broaden the Bolton investigation with a series of formal interviews over the next 10 days.
3. Although the president continues to barnstorm the country in support of his plan to privatize Social Security, the proposal -- to the extent the president has made a proposal -- appears all but dead on arrival in Washington. The Senate Finance Committee began work on the Social Security reform Tuesday, but with Democrats united against private accounts and the Republicans divided, it seems that Bush's proposal is going nowhere. As Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday, "We've hit a wall."
4. And although it's still too soon to tell whether Frist has the votes to put an end to filibusters of judicial nominees in the Senate, the Democrats seem to be outplaying him in the court of public opinion. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that the public opposes the nuclear option by a three-to-one, 66 percent to 22 percent margin. And by proposing a sly compromise solution -- under it, Democrats would allow confirmation of four of the seven judges who were blocked and re-nominated, but they'd also restore the right to "blue slip" judges -- Reid put Frist in the position of looking intransigent and unreasonable when he refused the offer Tuesday.
There have been dark spots for the Democrats; they rolled over too easily on some of Bush's second-term nominees, and by lining up to support the bankruptcy bill, they sold out some of the working folks they're always claiming to protect. And Frist may ultimately have the votes to prevail on the nuclear option; if he does, the Republicans' ability to ram through any judge they like will make the Democrats' tactical victories seem inconsequential. But at the moment, even those of us who expressed doubts about Harry Reid's intestinal fortitude early on have to acknowledge that the Democrats are doing something right.
-- Tim Grieve
[09:39 EDT, April 27, 2005]
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Tuesday, April 26, 2005
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Filibuster Rule Change Opposed
growing opposition to all Bush policies and his popularity continues to decline, a hopeful trend
Filibuster Rule Change Opposed
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Monday, April 25, 2005
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Friday, April 22, 2005
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NASA & Pentagon Surveillance of Leading Anti-Nuke Group
As the Global Network (GN) prepares for its 13th annual space organizing conference in New York City, on April 29-30, a call came into our office today from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The ACLU office in Brevard County, Florida (where NASA and the Kennedy Space Center are located) called to inform the Global Network that an ACLU investigation of the Brevard County Sheriff's department has revealed 600-700 pages of internal files documenting extensive infiltration and surveillance of the Global Network and other anti-war activities in the county during recent years. The files contained descriptions of Global Network members as being "anti-American."
The ACLU investigation, which began last January, also revealed that NASA was gathering information on European demonstrations against the launching of weapons and nuclear power in space during recent years. In addition, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), based in Tampa, Florida, had infiltrated the Global Network as late as October of 2002 during the organization's annual Keep Space for Peace Week.
According to the ACLU the investigations centered on Global Network Coordinator Bruce Gagnon and Global Network members Mary Beth Sullivan and Maria Telesca. In addition to infiltration of the organization, the ACLU noted that the investigations included background checks, driving histories, address histories, as well as other information gathering activities.
The ACLU has requested permission to pursue legal action on behalf of Bruce, Mary Beth, and Maria. The ACLU intends to attempt to retrieve all surveillance files gathered on Global Network members and to pursue a possible lawsuit.
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 729-0517
(207) 319-2017 (Cell phone)
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Our blog)
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Tuesday, April 19, 2005
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Disney's Carib Indian cannibals deserve boycott
From: Indian Country
Walt Disney Pictures is premising its sequel to its film ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' on the supposed cannibalism of Carib Indians. This is disgusting. It is a bit beyond the time when the present-day children of the Carib people of the Antilles need to be hit in the face, one more time, with the wanton and highly-disputed idea that they descend from cannibals.
Leaders from at least three communities of Caribs - Salybia in Dominica, Santa Rosa in Trinidad and a community in St. Vincent - have registered their strong objections to Disney executives, who have not responded in any positive way to the critique. Scholars and others are adding their voices to the challenge.
While the controversy over the Caribs' alleged cannibalism is as old as the conquest of the Americas, most observers agree that the Disney movie, slated for worldwide audiences, is beyond the pale as a vehicle to inculcate the historical stereotype upon even more generations of Carib and Caribbean children.
Filming of the sequel is scheduled to begin this month in Dominica. Its predecessor, the first production in the ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' series, was a 2003 blockbuster that grossed $653 million worldwide. Some 3,000 Caribs live in the Carib territory on the island of Dominica, which has a population of 70,000. Tens of thousands of Carib descendants, now known as Garifuna, live on the coasts of Belize, Honduras and Guatemala, as well as in the North American diaspora.
Chief Charles Williams of the Carib community in Dominica has denounced the concept of his people being depicted as cannibals. This stereotype has ''stigmatized'' Caribs for 500 years and is still used both as a form of personal insult and as justification for mistreating his people, Williams said; the movie will further ''popularize'' the historical insult against his people.
Among other Native leaders, the chief of the Carib community at Arima in Trinidad, Ricardo Bharath, also strongly condemned the planned movie. He was joined by Adonis Christo, the community's shaman or medicine man. The oral tradition among their people doesn't support cannibalism as a historical fact, they asserted.
''Do you want to know who the real cannibals are?'' Bharath asked the Inter Press Service. ''They are the ones in modern-day society who are eating down our mountains, raping the environment, polluting the waters,'' he said. Stated Christo: ''Our people defended their families and friends. They defended their homes. They defended their lands.''
There are early references by Europeans to ritual cannibalism among the first encounters with the Caribs. But Brinsley Samaroo, head of the History department of the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, is among those who believe the claim is largely a European invention of ''manufactured history.''
In the historical record, one finds a letter from a Dr. Chanca, who accompanied Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to the Caribbean. Chanca speculated that some young men held prisoners by a Carib group were being fattened to the slaughter for feasting.
Neither the wanton killing and rape by Spanish colonists of the first group of Caribs encountered - recorded during the same trip by others on the ship - nor the Caribs' fierce, valiant defense of their territories and people are apparently proper subjects for a Disney movie.
The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Historical and Archaeological Society has called for a boycott of the sequel by moviegoers if Disney does not modify the script. Paul Lewis, the society secretary, charged that perpetuating the image of Caribs as cannibals sets back a serious effort in the region to provide a more ''honest share of [Caribbean] history'' to the indigenous people.
The governments of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica, who will benefit somewhat from the production activities in their countries, have not objected. In fact, the tourism minister of Dominica has defended the proposed film, which would bring some economic benefits to people on the island and which is, as he put it, only a ''work of fiction.''
Some Caribs, as can be expected, have applied for work as extras in the movie, a fact that has made some crow that this somehow exonerates Disney for its production. But that is all just public relations. Reality is that a huge company like Disney should know better in 2005 than to besmirch a living people with its most negative historical stereotype.
Clearly, Disney moviemakers need to consider the negative impacts of the dramatic storylines they choose to project to such a huge audience. It is not acceptable to create and recreate villains out of Native people while exulting and romanticizing the lives of pirates who in real life were murderers and thieves without regard for anyone. Call it what you may, ''fiction'' or dramatic or poetic license, it smacks of racism to us.
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Monday, April 18, 2005
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Sunday, April 17, 2005
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US sent banned corn to Europe for four years
Independent UK
All imports of United States corn have been stopped at British ports following the discovery that the US has been illegally exporting a banned GM maize to Europe for the past four years.
The unprecedented move, which has angered the Bush administration, follows efforts to hush up and play down the scandal on both sides of the Atlantic. For weeks the official food watchdog failed to look for imports of the maize, which is banned on health grounds. It has been forced to take action by the European Commission.
The two main opposition parties yesterday blamed the delay on a pro-GM and pro-US bias in the Food Standards Agency, and pledged to correct it if they came to power.
The scandal - the worst yet involving GM imports - centres around maize named Bt 11, modified to repel a pest called the corn borer. It also contains a gene conferring resistance to antibiotics. All such crops are banned in Europe because of fears that the resistance could spread to consumers via the food chain.
Syngenta, the biotech company that developed the maize, told the US government last December that the crop had been grown over 37,000 acres of the country since 2001, because it had been confused with a similar, approved, maize. It was fined $375,000 (£200,000) for the blunder.
But the Bush administration failed for three months to inform European customers that they were importing a banned maize. The scandal was admitted only after it was exposed by the scientific magazine Nature, on 22 March. Even then the US failed to mention that the maize contained the gene for antibiotic resistance.
Europe is estimated to have imported about 1,000 tons of the banned maize, as animal feed. The EC says it cannot eliminate danger to people who consumed meat or dairy products from livestock. It has no idea where in Europe the banned maize has gone or whether the US stopped exporting it.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said only "very small" amounts of maize were involved, echoing a statement from Syngenta, and there was "no actual indication" any had ended up in the UK. The Food Standards Agency refused pleas to try to identify the maize in Britain. Itsimport was stopped on Friday and supplies in transit are being tested at the ports.
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Saturday, April 16, 2005
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George W. Bush Elected Pope! Catholic Cardinal's Stunned!
http://www.thehandstand.org/archive/april2005/articles/wdavis.htm
The almost 120 Cardinals from around the world that gathered to choose a successor in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel were stunned and expressed amazement.
Cardinal Mohoney the Vatican spokesperson had this to say, "We in the conclave are all shocked. We cast our vote's using these new electronic voting machines.The results overwhelmingly favored George W. Bush over all the Catholic candidates. The last Pope, John Paul, was a superb linguist, fluently speaking 11 languages, this one can't speak fluently in one language. We just don't know what to say."
The White House has announced that Dick Cheney will assume command as President of the world tomorrow morning, when "W' travels to Rome to begin his duties as Pope.
George W. Bush had this to say moments ago as he spoke from the Rose Garden,
"I am honored to be the spiritual lighthouse, and the first War Pope.
I promise Evangelical Catho-licks and Prostates alike that I will be embodied in salvation and fair in the performance of my duties.
I am a Unitifier, not a Divide-a-cater.
I am obliged to try to save as many lost souls as I can, at least the
Devout Wealthy Elite Souls, as it is well known that Heaven is a very select place, indeed, it is more exclusive than even the best of country clubs.
It is a members only Heaven.
I may have to put a fence around it.
I will preform miracles in a fair and balanced manner.
Just as God used to wipe out entire races of people without warning, burning whole towns of perverts, killing off an entire nations, and drowning everybody without a ticket to board Noah's Ark,
I shall deliver the world from Evil Empires as I unleash the Apocalypse Wrath of Revelations.
I will ensure the Rapture and the Reunion with our beloved deceased family members and with our departed purebred pets.
I will not allow those awful Liberal Sissy Homosapiens to marry each other and I will put and end to the Clergy marrying Choirboys.
I will lead the Crusades against all them towel-headed heathens, demon-possessed voodoo-hoodoo barbarians who's Pseudo-religions that don't except Christ as the Light of Democracy, and who worship fake, made-up gods. They shall suffer my Godly Conservative Wrath and I will Destroy them with my Cherubic Armies of Angels and they shall burn for eternity in Hell, because Me and God don't take no prisoners!
Remember, it is written in the Gospel of Luke, or.... maybe it's Larry, ugh, 12, ugh,5 or something, that Jesus told us we are to live our lives in FEAR of God and the Terrorists, for God and the Terrorists have the power not only to kill us, but to torture us forever in Hell.
And to you Non Believers and Democrats, I say,
I can't wait to see you burn in Hell, I mean it.....I can't wait!!!"
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Friday, April 15, 2005
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Mike Whitney: 'The Federal Reserve and the path to ruin'
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=20712&mode=nested&order=0
Ex-Fed Chairman Paul Volker is just the latest of the political heavyweights to signal that the American economy is headed for the
rocks. Volker's views appeared this week in the Washington Post and are amazingly consistent with what we have been reading here on Smirking Chimp. In an article titled "On Thin Ice" the former Fed-master pointed to the "huge imbalances" that are creating "circumstances as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember."
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Thursday, April 14, 2005
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Environmental (In)Justice
How Exxon and Its Rent-a-Cops Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's Environmental Champions
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR of CounterPunch
Academic class goes to Cajun country to document the toxic destruction of poor communities by big oil in the famous "cancer alley" and gets threatened with charges of terrorism and arrested. Then, the long-standing government official who helped coordinate their trip, is suddenly forced to resign or be terminated without benefits.
In the '50s down south people used to get killed for messing around where their noses weren't wanted. Now they just get harrassed by cops, charged with terror as they are terrorized, and removed from office.
Let's call it progress...
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005
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The Religious Right Determining U.S. Foreign Policy
Via Rightweb
A collection of advocates for right-wing think tanks and fundamentalist groups now populate U.S. delegations to the UN. For example, the official U.S. women's delegation includes: Nancy Pfotenhauer, president of the Independent Women's Forum, which is opposed to spending tax dollars to relieve violence against women and opposes women's comparable pay efforts and affirmative action programs; and Winsome Packer, former executive assistant to the vice president of the Heritage Foundation. Such appointments clearly signaled a change of management at the State Department.
Bush's appointments to nongovernmental organization (NGO) observer status to the UN come from right-wing religious groups:
• Janet Parshall, author of Tough Faith: Trusting God in Troubled Times and Light in the City: Why Christians Must Advance and Not Retreat, who hosts a conservative talk show and frequently attacks women's rights advocates such as Gloria Steinem and Patricia Ireland.
• A devout Presbyterian, Patricia P. Brister, who served as chairman of the Republican Party of Louisiana and chairman of Bush/Cheney '04 in Louisiana.
• Susan B. Hirschmann, a lobbyist, who is a former chief of staff for Tom DeLay and former executive director of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, a conservative political action group that helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment and is a vociferous opponent of the feminist movement.
Such appointments illustrate a religious focus on foreign policy that is a break with the traditional separation of church and state, a policy that began to change with Pat Robertson and the creation of the Moral Majority. Backed by social conservatives, neoconservative ideologues, and the religious right, Ronald Reagan declared that foreign policy would henceforth rest on moral clarity combined with military might.
"From the earliest days in America, fundamentalists stuck with separation of church and state and saw no role for fundamentalist Christians in politics," said Wilfred M. McClay, professor of history and humanities at the University of Tennessee. "The Baptists feared that 'who pays the piper calls the tune.' But in the 1970s, the Moral Majority broke this pattern."
In the 1980s and 1990s, some estimate that right-wing foundations poured over $1 billion into conservative think tanks, organizations, and lobbying efforts. According to the Media Transparency grants database, in 1994 these conservative "philanthropies" and think tanks controlled $1.1 billion in assets. From 1992 to 1994, they awarded $300 million in grants and targeted $210 million to support a wide variety of projects and institutions.
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Tuesday, April 12, 2005
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Let them eat bombs
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,1457651,00.html
The doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling
Terry Jones
Tuesday April 12, 2005
The Guardian
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.
These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them.
A year later, Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United Nations, tried to put a brave face on it. When a TV interviewer remarked that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it."
But clearly George Bush didn't. So he hit on the idea of bombing them instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks - but none of it seems to do any good. Iraqi children simply refuse to be better nourished, healthier and less inclined to die. It is truly baffling.
And this is why we at the department are appealing to you - the general public - for ideas. If you can think of any other military techniques that we have so far failed to apply to the children of Iraq, please let us know as a matter of urgency. We assure you that, under our present leadership, there is no limit to the amount of money we are prepared to invest in a military solution to the problems of Iraqi children.
In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.
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Monday, April 11, 2005
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DK on the Pope Media Spectacle and Jim Connolly, The Pope Who Revived the Office of the Inquisition
Here's my analysis of the Pope media spectacle:
just as rightwing religious extremists used the mainstream corporate media to promote their “Culture of Life” ideology during the Terri Schiavo affair, so too did the media allow the Catholic Church to promote a conservative version of its theology and elevate its spokesperson to Divinity and Greatness. Although George Stephanopoulos had the temerity to question Boston archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law concerning whether or not the Pope was quick and decisive enough concerning the Church sexual abuse scandal, Cardinal Law quickly brushed off the question and few commentators raised the embarrassing issue in their discussions of John Paul’s Papacy.[i] Likewise, while there were copious references to his theological conservativism and general anti-modernity stance, there were few discussions of how many Catholics neglected his teaching on the prohibition of birth control and abortion, his polemics against homosexuality, or the role of women in the Church.[ii]
On the other hand, while there was much praise of his admirable concern for the oppressed and marginalized, poverty, and world peace, there was little on his strong opposition to the death penalty or his principled opposition to Bush Senior and Junior’s Iraq interventions. In fact, the term “culture of life” was introduced by Pope John Paul II in a 1995 text “The Gospel of Life” which included polemics against capital punishment, gun culture, and war, as well as against abortion, euthanasia, and genetic engineering of humans. The Bush administration and religious right have appropriated the latter part of John Paul’s teaching, but not the first part that conflicts with their rightwing political agenda.
Bush’s conservative project was to enlist Catholic support in alliance with part of the Pope’s agenda and he used the notion “culture of life” as a political mantra to appeal to Catholics as well his evangelical Christian base. It worked in the 2004 election as Bush received 54% of the Catholic vote, the first time that a majority of Catholics voted against Democrats and a Catholic candidate. The mainstream corporate media aided the Bush agenda in the Schiavo spectacle and presentation of the Pope’s last days, death, and funeral by failing to note contradictions between John Paul’s concept of the “culture of life” and the Bush administration and US conservative position. Thus, both the Schiavo and Pope’s death coverage were driven by the ideological conservativism that is emerging as the hegemonic discourse of the corporate media, especially television.
The days leading up to John Paul II’s funeral continued the sustained advertisement for Catholic conservatism and completely dominated media coverage. The spectacle of millions of pilgrims and mourners assembling in Rome and places like Poland and Mexico to mourn the Pope’s passing dominated TV for the days leading up to his funeral. Day after day, conservative Catholic voices, mainly men, dominated the media. Cable news shows played religious music as background to the discussion which celebrated the Pope’s life and teaching and propagated his conservative theology, without debating key issues.
In particular, for days MSNBC swept aside all news coverage to have round the clock coverage of the Pope’s death and funeral that amounted to a tremendous unpaid publicity for the conservative wing of the Catholic Church. An unending cast of Catholic conservatives praised the Pope as did the NBC Irish Catholic hosts and pundits like Tim Russert, Brian Williams, Chris Mathews, and Pat Buchanon. Even the usually cynical and critical Keith Olberman adopted reverential tones, played solemn church music as a background to his program, and with his guests participated in a hymn of praise and devotion to the departed Pope.
John Paul’s burial and memorial service were presented by the television networks as “the biggest funeral in the history of the world.” For the entire day, the spectacle was televised live, with the cable networks featuring two-hour specials replaying the highlights of the day and discussion shows featured little else. There were repeated portrayals of the crowd carrying banners “Santo Subito” (“Sainthood Now!) and chanting the phrase calling for immediately canonization of John Paul as a Saint and even Magnum, the Great.
On Saturday, April 9, the day after the Pope’s burial, newspapers devoted large spreads of pages and full-page pictures to the spectacle. As Andy Rooney pointed out on the Sunday night 60 Minutes the dominant theme in newspapers throughout the world was that the Pope now rests in peace. Rooney showed scores of newspaper front pages throughout the world with this headline and largely the same picture of the Pope lying in repose just before burial, attesting either to incredible ability of Vatican PR to shape a global message or homogeneity of global media that reproduce the same frames.Yet the weekend after the Pope’s burial, there were reports on divisions over the Pope’s legacy and conflict within the Church concerning whether his conservative positions would be continued. For instance, CBS News had a report on April 9 concerning how the Pope’s uncompromising conservativism had created a crisis within the Church and deep divisions over abortion and birth control, homosexuality, the role of women within the church, and the need for liberalization to keep recruiting priests and maintain worshippers. There was talk on the segment that John Paul’s concentration of power at the top of the Vatican and appointment of mediocre yes-men who followed his line to high Vatican posts had weakened the church internally and disempowered local and regional churches. Stories also circulated concerning how John Paul had purged the Church of progressive elements and alienated many Catholics through his uncompromising conservative policies
Jim Connolly carries out a strong critique of how the Pope purged the Catholic Church of progressive forces and installed conservatives.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=105&ItemID=7608
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Thursday, April 07, 2005
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Wednesday, April 06, 2005
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Public growing wary of GOP moral agenda and the rise of conservative Christians
The public continues to worry about rightwing GOP agenda and aggressive imposition of conservative Christian ideology
The Smirking Chimp: "Public growing wary of GOP moral agenda and the rise of conservative Christians"
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005
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ZNet | Culture | Pope John Paul II, a reactionary in shepherd's clothing.
Z-Net published two critiques of Pope John Paul II’s Papacy of the sort absent in the mainstream media; here is my analysis of the TV specticle of the Pope's death:
While the Terri Schiavo spectacle was depressing and exploitative, the media presentation of the Pope’s death was ennobling, celebatory, and a great opportunity for the propagation of Catholic religious ideology. During his last days, every medical announcement was accompanied by a theological message: the Pope was greatly suffering, as Jesus did; the suffering Pope was pleased to hear read documents of the stages of Christ’s Passion, thus equating the Pope with Jesus, as Catholic doctrine propagated; a Vatican spokesman announced that the “Pope’s faith is so strong and full, and the experience of God so intensively lived, that he, in these hours of suffering already sees and already touches Christ; and just before he died the Vatican announced that the Pope was serene in the face of death knowing that he was soon going to join his Heavenly Father, propagating the Christian myth of the afterlife. Finally, when he died on April 2, 2005, the Pope was said to have exhibited great courage in the face of death and showed how to die a good death, having served his Church faithfully, he was ready to pass on with dignity to the next stage.
The Pope’s death was a major media spectacle and great P.R. for a beleaguered and declining Catholic Church. Thousands rushed into Vatican Square to mourn the Pope’s death and celebrate his life. The US TV networks had their anchors and top reporters on the scene and ran repeatedly prepared footage on the Pope’s exemplary life. Catholic officials were interviewed in-depth on the Pope’s life and significance and ordinary people were brought on camera to testify of their love for the Pope.
On his Sunday morning ABC Talk show, George Stephanopoulos intoned that John Paul was “the most famous Pope the world has ever seen” and many programs featured George W. Bush’s praise of the Pope as a champion of the “march of freedom” and “Word of God,” covertly identifying the Pope with his own self-image. On CBS’s 60 Minutes there were homages to the Pope and one official said that only two Popes, Leo and Gregory in the fifth and sixth centuries, were deemed “the Great” and that there was talk of bestowing this honor on Pope John Paul; many programs discussed the probability of a fast-track to Sainthood for the Pope. There were repeated references on all the networks concerning the great “charisma” of Pope John Paul, but the accompanying footage showed him tonelessly reading precanned speeches in a barely understandable English and I do not recall any TV footage of John Paul speaking spontaneously. But despite the absence of confirming footage, commentators repeatedly extolled John Paul’s eloquence, charisma, and greatness.
Hence, just as rightwing religious extremists used the mainstream corporate media to promote their “Culture of Life” ideology, so too did the media allow the Catholic Church to promotes a conservative version of its theology and elevate its spokesperson to Divinity and Greatness. Although George Stephanopoulos had the temerity to question Boston archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law concerning whether or not the Pope was quick and decisive enough concerning the Church sexual abuse scandal, Cardinal Law quickly brushed off the question and few commentators raised the embarrassing issue in their discussions of John Paul’s Papacy. Likewise, while there were copious references to his theological conservativism and general anti-modernity stance, there were few discussions of how many Catholics neglected his teaching on the prohibition of birth control and abortion, his polemics against homosexuality, or the role of women in the Church.
On the other hand, while there was much praise of his admirable concern for the oppressed and marginalized, poverty, and world peace, there was little on his strong opposition to the death penalty or his principled opposition to Bush Senior and Junior’s Iraq interventions. Thus, both the Schiavo and Pope’s death coverage were driven by the ideological conservativism that is emerging as the hegemonic discourse of the corporate media, especially television.
Douglas Kellner
and here's Barry Healey, “Pope John Paul II, a reactionary in shepherd's clothing
ZNet | Culture | Pope John Paul II, a reactionary in shepherd's clothing.
Also Terry Eagleon, "A British Obituary of Pope John Paul II
The Pope has blood on his hands,"
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=105&ItemID=7578
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Sunday, April 03, 2005
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Two analyses of the Terri Schiavo Affair by Douglas Kellner and Sam Parry
Here's my analysis of the Terry Schiavo affair and another below by Sam Parry. The whole situation is, however, highly volatile and could play out in many different ways.
During March 2005, the Terri Schiavo death spectacle dominated US media and politics. For fifteen years, Schiavo had been in a deep coma after a stroke. and after much litigation between the husband and the family, doctors and the courts agreed that Terri had no chance of recovery, was in a “persistently vegetative state” with no consciousness, and that her husband had the right to take her off of life-support systems according to her expression that she would not want to live hooked up to machines. Schiavo’s family battled the husband and twice got courts to return her to feeding-tube machines after judicial decisions ruled that she could be taken off.
When courts ruled on February 25, 2005 that Schiavo could be taken off of life support, once again her parents appealed and after being turned down by all courts, Congress passed an emergency bill that would allow Schiavo’s parents to petition the federal courts to have to reinstate her feeding tube, and George W. Bush rushed from vacation on his Texas ranch to sign the bill. Once again, courts ruled against this intervention, including the Supreme Court that denied the parents’ appeal, judging that law dictated the appropriate court had ruled in support of the husband’s right to terminate his wife in accordance with her wishes.
The hypocrisy of George W. Bush and the Republican establishment on the Terry Schiavo case was truly incredible: although he claims to be “pro-life,” Bush carried out a record 152 executions when Governor of Texas, barely bothering to review the cases because he "trusted the courts." He signed a bill as Texas Governor in 1999 that gave hospitals the right to hospitals to pre-emptively take patients off of life-support systems when they could not pay their bills. Further, the Texas Congressman Tom Delay who was most militant in attacking the courts and assailing the “murder” of Terri Schiavo had pulled the plug on his own father when he has seriously injured and faced a life on a life-support machine.
Although the Schiavo case was probably the most reviewed case in recent history by doctors and the courts, the Republican right and their Christian evangelical allies jumped in to exploit the issue with many fanatic "right to life" advocates spreading false medical information, defaming the husband carrying out his wife's wishes, and creating a quasi-fascist mob scene, fuelled by intense media coverage, that caused multiple threats against the husband’s life and the judge who ruled in his favor. On Fox television, there were fake medical experts who said that they had personally observed “life” in Schiavo and that with proper care she could recover; the Senate majority leader, medical doctor Bill Frist, declared that upon watching a video tape he was convinced she was conscious and might recover; and an assorted array of other quacks were marched out to the approving Fox news hosts, including a psychic whose TV show had failed, intoning that Schiavo was conscious, did not want to be taken off of life support, and that doing so was murder. Another bevy of commentators vilified the husband who ordered the termination of her life-support system and judges who ruled that this was his legal right and the rational thing to do after the intense medical scrutiny and multiple court hearings.
Polls indicated that up to 80% of those queried reacted against the Republican intervention and Bush’s approval record dropped a record seven points in one week to an all-time low of 43% and the Republican establishment backed off of the case. Yet while reaction against the rightwing mob and Bush has been encouraging, the wave of irrationalism, hypocrisy, mob thuggery, and constant noise of the rightwing Republican media echo chamber has been highly disturbing. The spectacle of Schiavo slowly dying was extremely gruesome and macabre, while the constant media exposure of this event showed the ghoulish extremes that the media would go to in order to attract audiences and the ways that small groups of rightwing fanatics are able to drive the media agenda.
While dying is the most personal of all individual and family events, and people caught up in the drama should have their privacy the media spectacle relentlessly focused on every twist and turn of the Schiavo case, at the same time when the Pope was in a terminal condition and the media also engaged in hysterical death watch over his condition until his death a few days after Schiavo died. The gruesome spectacle shows the corporate media at their worst sending hordes of reporters on a death watch in Florida after the courts ruled that she should be taken off life-support systems. Until her death on March 31, there were hours of daily coverage of the ordeal and numerous pictures of the poor woman on life support, being visited by her parents who were complicit in the media spectacle, and allied with rightwing extremists like antiabortion fanatic Randall Terry who was an official spokesperson for the family. Terry had for years threatened women going into getting abortions, organized mobs to picket and sometimes assaulted abortion clinics and doctors. This fanatic extremist had been frequently arrested and even jailed for his fanaticism, his followers had bombed and burned abortion clinics and killed doctors who performed abortion and yet there he was, everyday on mainstream television, spouting his extremist views and exploiting the grief of a tragic case of a young woman dying.
Much of the same rightwing mob, who railed against judicially-sanctioned murders and denied the hard fought struggles for a right to end one’s life with dignity and according to conditions of one’s own choosing, does not care about state executions, the killing of over 100,000 civilians in Iraq, or other government-sponsored torture and murder. Yet they went into hysteria over a poor hopelessly vegetative and dying woman and continued to threaten those who sanctioned the act with Tom DeLay railing that “the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
Thus the highly personal question of rights for life and death were hi-jacked by extremist and opportunistic politicians who poisoned a serious debate with their venom and, in DeLay’s case, hypocrisy since he ordered the termination of his own father’s life. The media allowed rightwing extremists to define the terms of debate and to advocate their extremist positions making a gruesome and vulgar spectacle of the whole sad affair.
Here's Sam Parry's analysis:
The Smirking Chimp
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ZNet | Iraq | Life in Falluja
the US destroyed Falluja to save it; several US reporters have gone and presented upbeat presentations of Falluja "returning to life" while overlooking that most of the city is destroyed; the Italian woman reporter who was captured, released and barely survived what appears as an assassination attempt allegedly has much to report on Falluja
ZNet | Iraq | Life in Falluja
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Saturday, April 02, 2005
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Chris Floyd: 'Operation Infinite Injustice: The State terrorism of Bush's gulag'
State terrorism of Bush Reich. “Whoever doesn’t make continual reference to the torture chambers all around us is a criminal,” Akhamtova in William Vollman, Europe Central
The Smirking Chimp: "Chris Floyd: 'Operation Infinite Injustice: The State terrorism of Bush's gulag'"
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Friday, April 01, 2005
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Ed Naha: 'Bush: This land ain't your land, this land is mine! Mine! Mine!!!!'
Bush administration environmental policy is a disaster covered over by slogans and fake science. Excerpts:
"The ANWR drilling is just the latest of BushCo.'s attacks on what (used to be) "our land."
Here's Robert F. Kennedy's view of it, as published in "Earthlght Magazine"
"If you go to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s web site you will see over 400 major environmental rollbacks that have been promoted by this administration over the last three and half years. It is a concerted, deliberate attempt to eviscerate thirty years of environmental law. It is a stealth attack, one that’s been hidden from the public.
"We found, in 2003, a memo from Frank Luntz, the president’s pollster, to the president saying that if you go through with the evisceration of America’s environmental law, you are going to alienate not just Democrats but the Republican rank and file. Eighty-one percent in both parties want clean air, they want stronger environmental laws and they want them strictly enforced. Luntz said that to the president, and he said, if we do this we have to do a stealth attack. He recommended using Orwellian rhetoric to mask this radical agenda: They want to destroy the forest, they call it the Healthy Forest Act, they want to destroy the air they call it the Clear Skies Act. Most insidiously, they have installed the worst, most irresponsible polluters in America, and the lobbyists from those companies, as the heads of virtually all the agencies and sub-secretariats and even Cabinet positions that regulate or oversee our environment. The head of the Forest Service is a timber industry lobbyist who is probably the most rapacious timber industry lobbyist in American history. The head of public lands is a mining industry lobbyist who believes that public lands are unconstitutional. The head of the Air Division at the EPA is a utility lobbyist who has represented the worst polluters in America for twenty years. The head of Superfund is a woman whose former job was advising companies how to evade Superfund. The second in command of EPA is a Monsanto lobbyist - these are not exceptions, these are the rules across the agencies."
So much for this land is our land. Sorry, Woody. You’re going to have to keep spinning in your grave for a while longer.
BushCo is to environmentalism as garlic is to a vampire.
Among the anti-Earth policies he's coddled?
The EPA shows a 75% decline in the number of Federal lawsuits against companies violating National Environmental laws.
There's a 36% increase in annual beach closings due to unsafe water quality because of sewage.
Hazardous Waste cleanups are down. (Ignore them.)
Perchlorate Contamination (rocket fuel) is, now, widespread. It's now leached into the water consumed by over 20 million Americans, with more than 90% of lettuce and milk sampled nationwide showing levels of perchlorate that maybe be unsafe to children. (Eat that salad and launch!)
Our air is dirtier.
There's been a 52% decrease in EPA clean-up inspections of refineries. (Ka-boom!)
The new Mercury dictate was, essentially, drafted by lawyers representing the utility industries using mercury. Despite scientific studies linking mercury emission from coal-fired plants to autism, this new law ignores those facts and allows mercury belching facilities to "cap and trade," allowing the worst polluters to trade government "chips" with lesser polluters to keep the their own mercury level down, balancing out the "national level" but creating local "hot spots." (Can you say “duhhh?”)
Martha Keating, a former mercury expert at EPA who is now a senior scientist at the Clean Air Task Force, joined others in saying that proper enforcement of the current Clean Air Act would be far more effective than the new mercury rule. “If the Clean Air Act was implemented as it should be, we would get significant reductions of mercury, upwards of 90 percent,” she said on National Public Radio. “So [the new rule] in our mind is a rollback.”
“It is unconscionable EPA is allowing power companies to trade in a powerful neurotoxin–it is unprecedented and illegal,” says William S. Becker, executive director of the bipartisan State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators. Becker also heads the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials
Ah, but there's more! The December 2004 "Healthy Forest Act" nullifies basic wildlife protections dating back to Reagan. Under the new rule, the Forest Service will be able to eradicate many fish and wildlife populations. And build a lot of roads. (Timber!!! Let my SUV in!)
And drinking water contamination will be unregulated. (Would you like brown or slightly orange water with your meal, ma’am?)
And public lands will be open to energy companies
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Exit poll analysis points to 2004 election corruption
A stolen election in 2004? I'm not yet convinced it wasn't once again stolen by the ReThugs
The Smirking Chimp: "Exit poll analysis points to 2004 election corruption"
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