by Anthony Ioven
Henry Clay once told the US Senate, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America."
Elizabeth Hayden is what is right in America.
Elizabeth's husband, Jim, was on United flight 175 when it slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
9/11 truly did change everything for Elizabeth and her children.
In today's Boston Globe, Elizabeth writes about the unimaginable pain she has endured these last four and a half years, and her loss of hope, and even of her faith.
She also writes about Zacarious Moussaoui, who was supposed to be among the Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked America that September morning, killing her husband and thousands of others. After his arrest on unrelated charges three weeks before the attack, Moussaoui could have exposed the plot, saving Jim and all the others from a horrible death. He chose not to.
If anyone is entitled to revenge, it is Elizabeth Hayden. But here is her view of a Moussaoui death sentence:
Does Zacarious Moussaoui deserve the death penalty? Absolutely...Should Moussaoui receive the death penalty? Absolutely not.
...
It is a human response to be enraged against those who plotted to take the lives of so many innocent victims. To strike back is an instinctual human reaction toward such an outrageous violation against mankind. Yet to impose the death penalty diminishes our own humanity. Do we want to characterize ourselves as a nation committed to pure vengeance with nothing more to be gained? For we surely cannot think that imposing the death penalty will act as a deterrent against other terrorists. Cloaked in the rationalization of carrying forth the will of God, the terrorists let their fear and hatred consume their last ounce of humanity. Let us not follow in their footsteps.
Let us instead distance ourselves from the evil wrapped in their warped behavior. Let us maintain a strand of humanity that will bond us to the value of life. Let us define ourselves as principled people not acting out of fear and hatred, but a people who under the most challenging of circumstances can transcend evil and prevail with reason and justice. Let us strive to have love for one another.
Elizabeth Hayden may have temporarily lost her hope and faith, and nothing I or anyone can say will change that. But it will be Elizabeth Hayden, and people like her, who one day will cause our hope and faith in America to be restored.
by Anthony Ioven
Next  week the Massachusetts House will vote on a bill to allow slot machines to be operated in each of the state's four race tracks.
Proponents of the bill argue that slots will be a boon to the Massachusetts economy. But yesterday, House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi spoke against the bill, claiming that the economic benefit of gaming would be minimal, and that it comes at a high "social cost" as well.
DiMasi is wrong on both counts. For years, Massachusetts residents have been traveling to the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos in nearby Connecticut. And last I checked, that state hasn't fallen into the sea or suffered Biblical floods or plagues of locusts. But gaming money from Massachusetts has certainly been flooding into Connecticut.
But the issue isn't economics. It's simply another case of government sticking it's long nose where it doesn't belong. Gaming should be regulated, not banned. It isn't government's place to tell adults what they can and cannot do for their own personal pleasure and amusement. That's especially true of the State of Massachusetts, whose highly successful state lottery grossed $4.2 billion in FY 2003.
Mind your own business, Massachusetts. Let the people play.
by Anthony Ioven
The  stories coming out of Iraq keep getting worse and worse. Now there are reports of atrocities committed by American troops against civilians:
Two weeks ago, in the village of Abu Sifa, Harat Khalaf saw American soldiers storming his brother's house, firing machine guns as they entered. Khalaf heard more firing inside the house, and women and children screaming. Then silence.
Immediately after the soliders left, the house exploded:
According to Iraqi police, 11 bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the house, among them four women and five children aged between six months and five years. An official police report obtained by a US reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers said: "The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people."
Last November, in Haditha, the US military reported than one Marine and 15 civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. But the police and townspeople said the civilians were actually killed by Marines on a rampage to avenge the death of their comrade. According to witnesses:
[T]he 15 civilians, including seven women and three children still in their nightclothes, had been killed in their homes in the wake of the bombing.
These atrocities may be just the tip of the iceburg:
The Pentagon claims to have investigated at least 600 cases of alleged abuse by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to have disciplined or punished 230 soldiers for improper behaviour. But a study by three New York-based human rights groups, due to be published next month, will claim that most soldiers found guilty of abuse received only "administrative" discipline such as loss of rank or pay, confinement to base or periods of extra duty.
...
Most other cases ended with sentences of two, three or four months. "That's not punishment, and that's the problem," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, which is compiling the study with two other groups.
"Our concern is that abuses in the field are not being robustly investigated and prosecuted, and that they are not setting an example with people who cross the line," said Sifton. "There is a clear preference by the military for discipline with administrative and non-judicial punishments instead of courts martial. That sends the message that you can commit abuse and get away with it."
Apparently it's true — the fish rots from the head.
by Faith Hope
So  I'm watching little league practice with my friend and she says So what do you think of Saddam planning to use camels of mass destruction against American troops and of course I'm not an idiot so I say Very funny and she says No really he was planning to load camels with bombs and point them towards invading troops and I say That's ridiculous - no way.
Way.
Sounds to me like a pretty pathetic way to defend your country against the World's Only Superpower. But what I really can't understand is — what was he saving his real weapons of mass destruction for?
Oh well gotta run...
by Anthony Ioven
I can't get the story out of my mind. An Afghan Muslim, Abdul Rahman, admits to becoming a Christian, and as a result could be put to death. Is this the liberty President Bush boasts about bringing to Afghanistan?
And it's not just the radical fringe who wants Rahman executed:
"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate.
Even if Rahman is set free, there's a good chance he'll be killed by ordinary Afghans, who will be encouraged to "pull him into pieces" on the street.
At Antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo reminds us that the Iraqis are also not quite sure what to make of the gift of liberty. He quotes the Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leader of the majority Shi'ite sect, doing his best Ann Coulter imitation on the subject of homosexuality:
The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.
Raimondo is indignant that this extreme intolerance is possible in an Afghanistan and Iraq that have been "liberated" at great cost to the American taxpayer:
The paradox of American power is playing a cruel joke on the "liberators," as well as the "liberated." In exporting "democracy" to the Middle East, we have enthroned a political force that executes – executes! – religious dissenters and homosexuals. We have spent $201 billion – up to last year – "liberating" Afghanistan so Abdul Rahman could face the death penalty, and $250 billion and counting in Iraq (with the total cost estimated by some as close to $1 trillion) to stop Muslim men from sodomizing each other at the first opportunity.
Not to mention the great cost in lives. Lives lost so Afghans and Iraqis could be free to persecute whoever they wish.
by Anthony Ioven
Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and occasional contributor to The Boston Globe, is IM-not-so-HO one of the most knowledgeable and insightful writers on economic issues in America.
 His column today in the Globe talks about GM's simply astonishing plan to buy out virtually all of its 131,000 GM and Delphi workers in the United States.
Stop and think about that. All its US workers — gone.
This story can't be emphasized enough. Kuttner points out its significance on a number of levels:
Kuttner asks and answers the obvious question: "Who would make the cars? A new generation of lower-paid workers."
This is exactly what The American Prospect meant when it warned recently that outsourcing could ultimately affect 50 million American jobs:
That doesn't mean all those jobs are going to be exported. It does mean that the Americans performing them will be in competition with people who will do the same work for a whole lot less.
And that means Americans who do those jobs will be paid a whole lot less, as appears will be the case soon at GM.
What do the unions say about the loss of jobs and wages? "It is a mark of GM's fragility that the UAW considers this about the best deal the union can get."
The productivity of the US worker isn't GM's problem. According to the Economic Policy Institute, productivity of the US economy in general is up 70% since 1973. But:
Economist Robert Gordon recently calculated that nearly all the fruits of that productivity went to the very top income brackets.
Gee, are you as surprised as I am?
GM's bottom-line blowout is an argument that universal health care makes good economic sense as well as being the right thing to do:
GM's foreign competitors live in nations with universal health insurance, giving domestic automakers a cost disadvantage from the get-go.
Just last year, we learned that GM is spending more on health care than on steel: "That's not an exaggeration. This year, General Motors will spend about $2.7 billion on steel and $5.6 billion on health care."
The me-firsters on the Right like to claim that US manufacturing jobs are in jeopardy because labor costs are too high. Kuttner disagrees, and points out that "total labor costs for automakers are actually about $10 an hour higher in Germany." And why aren't those automakers having the same problems as GM? Simple — "by making terrific cars."
Quality. What a concept. Who'd have thought...
by Deep Post
I have it on the highest authority that the following conversation between President Bush and the Official White House Nanny took place today in the Oval Office:
POTUS: Nanny, don't you ever knock? I'm the goddamn president, and this here's the goddamn Oval Office. What if I had an intern under the desk, huh?
Nanny: Georgie, what are you hiding?
POTUS: What, this? Root beer. Leamme alone, now. I'm workin'. Go.
Nanny: I'll do no such thing. Why are you drinking from a bottle in a paper bag?
POTUS: Reminds me of the good ol' days. Hey, why don't you go ask Cheney to take you quail hunting on the South Lawn.
Nanny: You put that bag down immediately or I'll pick up the phone right now and call Laura.
POTUS: ...Shoulda put you in Gitmo years ago.
Nanny: Good boy. But what's wrong, Georgie? You look so miserable.
POTUS: I don't know, Nanny. What's happening to me? My numbers are in the toilet. People want to censure me, they even want to...to... i-i-i-i-i-
Nanny: Impeach you, dear. People also want to impeach you.
POTUS: Yeah, that. And then the other day, Helen Thomas yelled at me in front of everyone. What's happening? Time was, all I had to do was say lower taxes or 9/11, and people would cheer like little wind-up dolls. Now...
Nanny: Things will get better, Georgie. I promise...
POTUS: And here I am tryin' to convince people that we're fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to spread liberty to those God-forsaken hellholes, and what do the Afghans do? They want to decapitate some guy — for becoming a Christian, for Christ's sake. Believe that? The government of Afghanistan wants to chop someone's head off for converting to Christianity, while US soldiers are on Afghan soil fighting for their right to do it.
Nanny: Why don't you stop them? Call President Karzai and —
POTUS: Condi tried. Karzai's afraid of losing support. Not to mention his own head.
Nanny: Why don't you try using your head, Georgie. That's why God gave it to you. Why not, why not have Karzai say the man can't be executed because he's — I don't know, insane or something.
POTUS: Nanny, that's what a coward would do. We're the United States of America. We're the world's only superpower. Hell, God sheds his goddamn grace on us. Do you expect us to make up some lame excuse that everyone will see through, in a pathetic attempt to save face?
Nanny: Yes. We've always been very good at that.
POTUS: Fine, fine. Have Condi call Karzai. And give me back my...root beer. I need something to wash down my pride with.
by Anthony Ioven
In his first dissenting opinion, new Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts proved he has no more integrity than the man who nominated him.
In a 5-3 decision yesterday, the Court ruled that police may not enter a home when one resident invites them in but another says no.
It's no surprise that the case for lowering the bar for police entry into private homes had the backing of the Bush administration, whose favorite pastime is finding new and interesting ways to invade the privacy of Americans. And it's no surprise that Roberts is only too happy to be of service to the administration's Big Brother ambitions. But Roberts defended his opinion the way Bush defended the invasion of Iraq — with a lie.
In his ruling, designed to further weaken privacy laws, Roberts claimed he was, in fact, trying to project women and other victims of domestic abuse:
The majority's rule apparently forbids police from entering to assist with a domestic dispute if the abuser whose behavior prompted the request for police assistance objects.
Justice David Souter, in a surprisingly blunt criticism of the Chief Justice, accused Roberts of trying to undo "the centuries of special protection for the privacy of the home." Further:
Souter called [Roberts'] argument a "red herring," saying that police would still have legal authority to enter homes where one partner was truly in danger.
That's one for our side. And it's about time.
by Anthony Ioven
In yesterday's Boston Globe, Joan Vennochi finds fault with Russ Feingold for creating "a dilemma for Democrats":
Whipping up white-hot partisan frenzy wins adoration from lefty bloggers. But by the tenets of conventional political wisdom, it is a risky general election strategy.
This is the kind of reasoning that makes ordinary citizens disgusted with politics. Right and wrong don't matter. Breaking the law doesn't matter. All that matters is positioning yourself for the next election.
But if right and wrong don't matter to us anymore, what difference does it make who we elect?
Fatcat Politics posted a list of the Democratic senators who support Feingold's resolution to censure Bush (exactly two — Boxer and Harkin). Compare that to the list below it, the Democratic senators who supported the resolution to censure Clinton (22).
American politics is long on spin and election strategy, and woefully lacking in substance. Is it any wonder we stumble our way into illegal wars, leave 46 million Americans uninsured, allow corporations to ship American jobs overseas with no real penalties, ruin the environment, and pretend that money is not thoroughly corrupting the political process?
by Anthony Ioven
Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein is no longer killing and torturing innocent Iraqis. We are.
Three years ago our soldiers were told they would be cheered in the streets as liberators. Instead they are the targets of a brutal insurgency.
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. But new terrorists are discovered day, spawned from the rubble of their destroyed homes, businesses, and lives.
After three years of occupation, Iraq's electricity output is at its lowest level since the invasion. As one "liberated" Baghdad housewife put it, "We're living miserably."
At home, America once again is tearing itself apart over an unjust war.
Those who believe America can do no wrong find themselves defending torture, rendition, imprisonment without due process, illegal surveillance of US citizens — and above all, the invasion of a country that did us no harm and posed no threat.
And those who dare criticize these indefensible acts find themselves condemned as traitors giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Three years after "shock and awe," it is America that is in shock. Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Our credibility around the world is disintegrating. Iran and North Korea continue to thumb their noses at us. In Afghanistan the Taliban is terrorizing the countryside. Osama bin Laden is still free.
Heckuva job, Georgie...
by Anthony Ioven
The  other day 604 asked why the Electoral College is still a vital cog in our political machinery. It is an undemocratic relic of a time long gone, and it virtually disenfranchises two-thirds of voters in presidential elections.
Today I'll ask a tougher question.
Why do we need a Senate?
Why do we need redundant houses of Congress? Why isn't one set of lawmakers enough? And if one isn't enough, why not have three? Or eight? Why not have multiple presidents, for that matter? And multiple Supreme Courts?
The Senate should be tossed in the scrapheap of history, just like the Electoral College should. And largely for the same reason — senators do not represent their constituencies equally:
If a presidential election is considered illegitimate because the winner of the popular vote is not the winner of the electoral vote, is legislation passed by the Senate also illegitimate because it was passed by senators representing a minority of the population? Wyoming’s two senators can cancel out California’s senators, who represent 69 times more people. Is that "fair"?
It's time to update America's 18th-century political machinery.
by Anthony Ioven
On  Sunday, after Russ Feingold announced his intention to bring a censure resolution to the Senate floor, Bill Frist wasted no time in reciting Right-Wing Talking Point number 37 — Attack all criticism of the president as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Frist, shown here doing his best Steven Colbert impersonation, pandered to Rush Limbaugh fans across America with his pseudo-patriotic claptrap:
As I was listening to [Feingold's announcement], I was hoping deep inside that the leadership in Iran and other people who really have the U.S. not in their best interests, were not listening because of the terrible, terrible signal it sends.
...
We are right now in a war, in an unprecedented war - where we do have people who really want to take us down . . . So the signal that is sends, that there is in any way a lack of support for our Commander-in-Chief, who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that we know is making our homeland safer, is wrong.
Someone ought to remind Senator Frist that it isn't just Russ Feingold who's sending a "terrible signal" to the world. It's millions of Americans:
Only 37% of Americans view Bush favorably — the lowest rating of his presidency
60% of Americans say the war in Iraq hasn't been "worth it"
46% of Americans favor Feingold's censure resolution
The same poll found that 43% of voters favor impeachment of the president
What kind of a signal does that send to our enemies, Senator Frist?
In fact, it tells our enemies that we are still a free nation, in spite of this administration's best efforts.
by Anthony Ioven
The American political system is badly broken. It chases and rewards money, not ideas or character. It protects the two institutionalized parties and penalizes all others. It thrives on superficiality and spin, and avoids critical thought at all cost.
And of course, any patriotic American will tell you it's the best system of government in the history of the world. And God help you if you publicly disagree.
This double-barreled shotgun of egocentricity and intimidation is what keeps us from fixing the system. Hell, we can't even find the will to fix the easy and obvious problem — the Electoral College.
There is no rational excuse whatsoever for maintaining what the New York Times correctly calls "an anti-democratic relic." It not only undermines the principle of "one man - one vote," but it forces the national debate to focus on what is important to the relatively few "battleground" states:
In 2004, only 13 states, with 159 electoral votes, were [battleground states]. As a result, campaigns and national priorities are stacked in favor of a few strategic states. Ethanol fuel, a pet issue of Iowa farmers, is discussed a lot. But issues of equal concern to states like Alabama, California, New York, and Indiana [are] not.
The Electoral College is an idea whose time has come and has long gone. Why do we still cling to it? Simple — egocentricity and intimidation.
A group called National Popular Vote, which apparently recognizes our irrational defense of All Things American (even undemocratic and outdated things like the Electoral College), has a plan not to abolish the Electoral College, but simply to ignore it. You can read about the plan here.
At best, the plan is what the computer industry would call a kludge, a cobbled and somewhat embarrassing workaround. The elegant solution is simply to dump it.
But Americans are too egocentric or intimidated to do that. And a kludge is better than no solution at all.
by Anthony Ioven
The judge who is presiding over Zacarias Moussaoui's sentencing trial is weighing whether she should throw out the possibility of a death sentence for Moussaoui due to what CNN is calling a "blunder" committed by a government lawyer.
Blunder? When OJ prosecutor Christopher Darden made Simpson try on the bloody glove without being sure it would fit — that was a blunder. A dumb mistake.
But in the Moussaoui trial, the lawyer in question, Carla Martin, didn't just slip up. She deliberately tried to skew the outcome of the trial by coaching witnesses. Not two, not four — seven witnesses.
Attorney Martin emailed the witnesses transcripts of opening statements and testimony, in direct violation of the judge's order that witnesses "may not attend or otherwise follow trial proceedings; for example, may not read transcripts, before being called to testify."
The judge was displeased:
"In all the years I've been on the bench, I have never seen such an egregious violation of a rule on witnesses."
Martin was a lawyer for the Transportation Security Administration and not part of the prosecutorial team, but that doesn't lessen the damaging effect of her action.
Martin acted in flagrant violation of a court order. But should anyone be surprised? She is part of an administration that considers ignoring the law a point of macho pride.
I don't know if Martin thought she was justified in attempting to influence seven witnesses because God was on her side or because we're the good guys and they're the bad guys, or whether it was simply due to some twisted concept of patriotism.
I do know that this administration has created an atmosphere of exactly this kind of ends-justifies-the-means lawlessness. People may be disgusted by Martin's attempt to influence witnesses. But few will be surprised.
by Anthony Ioven
Senator Russ Feingold is proving once again that he deserves a shot at the Presidency in 2008. In fact, he may be the only Democrat worth considering.
Feingold plans to introduce a resolution in the Senate to censure President Bush for violating the 1978 FISA law on wiretapping. The resolution also charges the president "repeatedly misled the public" by claiming that his administration was getting warrants for wiretaps. This is what the president said in 2004 on the subject, long before the FISA story broke:
Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.
That's a flat-out lie. It may not be as titillating as I did not have sex with that woman..., but it is just as audacious. And it does have real and troubling consequences for the nation.
Politics being what it is, Feingold's resolution, if it even gets off the ground, has no chance of success. But this is an election year. Thirty-three senators (15 Republicans, 17 Democrats, 1 Independent) are up for re-election. Let them go on the record on whether it's ok for a president to knowingly break the law and brazenly lie about it.
Let's hope the Senate gets to vote on censure. In November, it is our turn. If we send senators back to Washington who believe the president is above the law, then we will get the government we deserve.
by Anthony Ioven
 | Scaredy-cat Dems |
You think you've lost patience with the do-nothing Democrats? Well, Molly Ivins has had it:
I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there.."
And she was just getting started. Her rant reached climax at mid-column:
Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, "unpatriotic" by a bunch of rightwingers.
Take "unpatriotic" and shove it.
And that's what the Democrats should have been saying since 9/11 changed everything.
Except they're cowards.
Ivins lists three "good issues" that Democrats need to run with:
If Democrats really want to "change everything" for the better, tackling these three issues is the way to start. Sure, very powerful moneyed interests will kick and scream and threaten. But with courageous Democratic leadership, Americans would support all three. It could work. Democrats could lead America back on the right road.
Except they're cowards.
by Anthony Ioven
Yesterday  Catholic Charities of Boston announced that it will end its adoption services rather than arrange adoptions for gay couples. Refusing to place children with gay couples violates a Massachusetts law prohibiting discrimination against gays.
Catholic Charities has provided adoption services since 1903.
The Catholic Church prohibits placing children with gay couples because it believes it is "immoral." Catholic Charities, forced to choose between state law and the laws of the Church, chose the latter. How could they possibly do otherwise and remain a Catholic organization?
Too often, Catholics who face similar choices in their everyday lives don't act out of respect for the teachings of the Church, as Catholic Charities did, but out of convenience. For example, you can't use contraception or support abortion rights and be a good Catholic. It's as simple as that.
The Church is trapped in a medieval mindset. Prohibitions against abortion, contraception, pre-marital sex between adults, gay marriage, gay adoptions, women priets, the right of priests to marry — these prohibitions belong to another century, like not eating meat on Friday. But as long as these prohibitions are part of Catholic doctrine, Catholics have two choices — comply with them or leave the Church.
When priests find themselves at Sunday mass preaching to the choir and very few others, the Church may finally wake up.
by Anthony Ioven
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl eagerly rock 'n roll all night long. Girl becomes pregnant.
What happens next is entirely up to the girl. And that's wrong.
When an unmarried woman becomes pregnant, her partner becomes a virtual non-person. If the woman decides to abort the child or put it up for adoption, the man has no say, even though it is as much his child as hers.
If the woman decides to keep the child, the man is bound by law to support it, even though, given
choice, he may well have preferred to abort.
Should a man be forced to support a child he doesn't want, any more than a woman should be forced to bear a child she doesn't want?
The question is about to be put before a Michigan court in a suit brought by the National Center for Men on behalf of 25-year-old Matt Dubay, who has been ordered to pay $500 a month for his ex-girlfriend's daughter:
There's such a spectrum of choice that women have — it's her body, her pregnancy and she has the ultimate right to make decisions," said Mel Feit, director of the men's center. "I'm trying to find a way for a man also to have some say over decisions that affect his life profoundly."
Is that so unreasonable?
by Anthony Ioven
After the shock-and-awe invasion of Iraq in 2003, and President Bush's Mission Accomplished speech a few months later, and the relentless and bloody insurgency that has captured the attention of the world ever since, we have all but forgotten what is arguably the greater crime against the people of Iraq — the US-led sanctions of the 90s.
The exact number of Iraqi deaths is in dispute, but clearly the sanctions were responsible for a "humanitarian disaster" that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Who can forget the stunning coldness of Madeline Albright's 1996 assessment of the sanctions' success:
"60 Minutes" asked then-U.N. ambassador Madeline Albright about the death toll of 500,000 children. She responded: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it."
How can we call ourselves a Christian nation?
In 1999, Dr. Richard Garfield of Columbia University published a study disputing the 500,000 number. According to Garfield, deaths of children under five years old attributable to sanctions ranged from a "conservative" 106,106 to "most likely" 227,713.
Does the lower estimate make you feel any better about all those dead kids?
In 1998, Denis Halliday, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, resigned his position in protest. He called the sanctions "genocide."
Too strong a word? Hardly. Halliday claims "between 1 million and 1.5 million Iraqis died from malnutrition or inadequate health care resulting from economic sanctions."
What in God's name gives us the right?
by Anthony Ioven
Kathy at Stone Soup Musings raises a vital point about outsourcing and globalization, one that the current administration and the previous one all but ignored:
I'm all for raising the living standards of people across the world, but it needs to be done incrementally, equitably and fairly by people at all income levels. So far, most of the sacrifice seems to be coming at the expense of the lower and middle classes.
People who lose their jobs to outsourcing are the obvious and immediate victims of globalization. But there is a larger price being paid as well, as this letter in yesterday's Boston Globe makes clear:
[I]t is all too obvious that India has become a colony for foreign corporations. If the Western world ever changes its mind about doing business in India, the consequences will be calamitous.
It is time to stop pretending that corporations should enjoy the same rights and protections of a free society as you and me. Their actions have a profound effect on individuals and entire countries, yet they are responsible to no one but their shareholders and their bottom line.
I've never been able to figure out whether corporations exist to benefit their customers, or we exist to benefit the corporations. But this new, 21st century form of colonization, not by countries but by multinational corporations, settles the question.
Corporate colonialists have allegiance not to nations, or rights, or ideals — only to themselves. Under corporate colonialism, national boundaries, and nations themselves, are irrelevant.
Colonialization and exploitation go hand in hand. If we don't recognize and manage this evolving, corporate-controlled globalism, we will all become its subjects.
by Anthony Ioven
Lose the Noose has just wrapped up a week-long blogfest on the theme of corporate corruption — Corruptco. Links to the Corruptco posts are here.
It will be time well spent this weekend to visit the site and read through these informative and provocative (and sometimes a little frightening) contributions.
Why? Let the proprietor of Lose the Noose, Lily Branford, explain:
The consumaculture is numbing our minds- so what is to be done about it? Our collective behavior is like the smart kid in high school that gets high, eats cheez doodles.. and watches cartoons all day. Potential, and so much to offer, but yet, he sort of sits and watches cartoons all day. Inertia. Thats America. We are not evil or stupid or uncaring- we are stuck in some kind of rut. Or are we evil and uncaring? Damn.
I'd like to believe the former. But America is still a work in progress, so we'll see.
The Corruptco blogfest was a great idea, Lily — thanks for doing it.
by Anthony Ioven
I'm still thinking about the Corruptco Blogfest, and the incredible potential for change it represents...
By bringing so many like-minded people together on a particular topic, Lily has shown us something — a possible way out of the rut she rightly points out that we're in. It's a rut of accepting The Way Things Are, not because we are evil or stupid or uncaring, but because finding solutions to the problems that face America today is simply too overwhelming a task for a single human being.
I see bloggers as being isolated in little, individual corners of America. Alone, we blog on about corporate corruption, politics, rights abuses — anything and everything. And there are many, many bright, informed bloggers out there. But those blogs are a thousand points of scattered light. We read them, enjoy them, learn from them, and move on.
But by focusing all that light on a given issue, maybe it's possible for us not only to expose the issue, as we do now, but to collectively find a way to resolve it.
The Internet is a vast community, an unprecedented communications resource. If we could find a way to organize hundreds of posters to interactively brainstorm a particular issue — say, how to take money out of political campaigns, or how to change our two-party political system into a true multi-party system — we might discover that there really are ways to update America for the better.
I don't know how it could be done. But I've had the idea in the back of my mind for a while — using the web to compound brainpower.
Lily's Corruptco blogfest proved that inviting posts on a single issue could yield impressive results, and did. I'm just wondering if there's a way to take the concept a step further — to stop being that cheez-doodles-eating kid Lily talked about and use that tremendous potential she sees in us.
by Anthony Ioven
That's the good news. The bad news is we're the ones who used it.
Depleted uranium munitions were used extensively in the Gulf War back in 1991 — about 320 tons worth. Despite evidence that DU poses a serious contamination risk and remains radioactive in the environment virtually forever, DU shells were later used in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
In our second go-round with Iraq, we used the WMD yet again:
An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been kept secret.
The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.
Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to limit their use of DU weapons [during the 2003 invasion of Iraq], and to clean up afterwards.
Hundreds of thousands of DU shells were fired by coalition tanks and planes during the conflict, and there has been no comprehensive decontamination.
So let's see — we invaded Iraq to prevent it from using WMDs that it turned out it didn't have, and to help us obliterate their army, we used our own WMD on them.
How can Americans sleep at night?
Apparently,
with no problem whatsoever. The government just placed a multi-million-dollar order for thousands more rounds of the WMD, from weapons manufacturer Alliant Techsystems. Alliant likes to brag about the weapon's "outstanding accuracy and lethality."
Here's something else Alliant can be proud of:
Depleted uranium remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years. The byproduct of manufacturing nuclear weapons or reactors, the rounds contaminate water and soil. Along some highways in Iraq where the weapon was used during in the first Gulf War, radiation levels register 1,000 times normal background radiation levels. Cancer levels in Iraq are attributed to the shells
I have a better slogan for Alliant's DU shells — The weapon that keeps on killing.
Cross-posted today at Blognonymous.
by Anthony Ioven
The latest voices to be heard calling for us to get the hell out of Iraq belong to the US troops serving there.
According to a Zogby poll:
72% want US troops out of the country within a year.
Of the 72%, 22% want our troops out within the next six months, and 29% want withdrawal "immediately."
42% are unsure of the purpose of their mission.
Just 23% called for our troops to remain "as long as they are needed."
That the young men and women fighting in Iraq are not the blind, unquestioning loyalists that the Bush administration portrays them as is encouraging. This is not:
The poll also shows that...85 percent believe a major reason they were sent into war was "to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the Sept. 11 attacks."
Some have charged that the administration is totally incompetent. Not true. They are masters at misleading people into believing that black is white and down is up.
Cross-posted today at Blognonymous.
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March's Posts
'Let Us Not Follow In Their Footsteps'
Jackpot
Rampage
Camels of Mass Destruction?
Theocracy Rising
As GM Goes . . .
Our Very Own Taliban
No Means No
The Politics of Self
The Cakewalk, Plus Three
Senator, Please Yield the Floor
Another Frist Misdiagnosis
A Political Kludge
Rules are for Losers
'The President Has Broken the Law'
Good Golly Miss Molly
Stuck in the '600s
My Body, My Bucks
Worse than War?
Corporate Colonialsim
Lose the Noose - The Corruptco Blogfest
Lily's Got Me Excited
WMD Found in Iraq
Shut Up and Shoot
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