Bush wasn't elected; Davis was

My girlfriend made a good point regarding the ludicrous claim that Californian's are stuck with current governor Gray Davis. She rightly points out that Californian's are not stuck with Davis because he was elected once and then just reelected a few months ago. As opposed to Bush, who we have truly all been stuck with, since he was never elected at all; he stole the presidency.

Compare Bush administration's quotes before war on Iraq and al-Qaeda to those after:

Before invasion of Iraq:

Bush lies trying to link al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein


After invasion:

Bush: No evidence Saddam was involved in 9/11 attacks


Wolfowitz Lets Slip that Iraq Was Not Involved in 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda

The evidence is clear; Bush and the other crooks in the White House, and the Pentagon knowingly lied to the American people. He and his adminstration brought disgrace upon the United States of America and they need to be removed from power now!

Hero grandmother from British Columbia held in contempt of court

A grandmother in Canada is being criminalized for doing what I consider to be absolutely legitimate and highly commendable: she is trying to protect old growth trees in British Columbia. This woman is not a criminal, but a hero whose behavior we should all emulate.

Elderly protester found guilty

Fight the Recall of California governor Gray Davis!

Read an article entitled "The dirt on Schwarzenegger" here.

More info:

The Top Ten Conservative Idiots

Arnold's True Colors

More of Bush's buddies profiting from the war in Iraq

Washington Insiders' New Firm Consults on Contracts in Iraq

No one should have their voting rights taken away, that goes for former and current prisoners

This is especially true since the justice system is often anything but just, disproportionately imprisoning minorities and the poor while white collar criminals who rob millions of dollars from Americans remain free.

In addition many people are in prison for non-violent drug related crimes. No one and I mean no one should be in jail because of marijuana or because they are addicted to drugs.

Study: States End Ex-Felons Voting Bans

Update: Schwarzenegger even refuses a one-on-one debate with Davis on Larry King

Todd Harris, a spokesman for the Schwarzenegger campaign, used twisted logic in saying the Davis camp desire for a debate takes a page from the "desperate candidate's handbook."

Hardly, the more rational among us would conclude that a candidate who does everything possible to avoid participating in debate, an indispensable exercise of the democratic process, for fear of being outted as incompetent and wholly unelectable, is on page one of the desperate candidates handbook.

Schwarzenegger Declines Debate Invite

Comic debate was best anti-recall ad Gray Davis could have imagined


Schwarzenegger afraid to debate Davis

Its obvious that Arnold likes picking on women much more than facing a challenge by the incumbent governor Gray Davis. His campaign released a statement refusing to take Davis up on his challenge to a debate "right here, right now."

He is a tough guy when given the questions and spurting out silly one liners and platitudes that truly reveal his ignorance and utter lack of qualification for the highest office in the state of California; however, when given the chance to confront the stitting democratically elected governor of a state which has the sixth largest economy in the world, and the largest population in America, he retreats from the challenge.

This is because Davis would destroy him in a debate. The Schwarzenegger camp knows this. His handlers figure if he can keep his mouth shut for just awhile longer and stick to the prepackaged script they have given him full of trite one liners (the nonsense he built his career on) he can squeek out a win in a society where the dumbest actors get elected and the smartest ones get ignored.

Schwarzenegger is constantly attacking Davis, when Davis isn't right in front of his face; however, in a forum of direct confrontation, like a debate, Schwarzenegger's banal, stupid and baseless attacks would be volleyed right back leaving Scwarzenegger looking like what he is: an untalented actor and one of the worst choices for governor ever presented to the voters of California.


Schwarzenegger Declines Debate Challenge

Barbarian at the Gate

U.S. Atrocities and War Crimes: Revisiting the "Highway of Death" where tens of thousands of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers were massacred by U.S. forces following the 1991 Gulf War

The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on "The Highway of Death"

On Antiwar.com today:

Parents Tell Bush: 'You Lied and Our Sons Died'

CIA wants probe of White House

Republicans question Iraq price tag

The world says no to the U.S. occupation of Iraq

Protests erupted today around the world in a call to end the criminal occupation of the nation of Iraq by the United States and its allies.

London drew the biggest protests, estimated at 20,000 people, with all attending voicing vehement opposition to the occupation. The occupation wasn't the only target as the crowd voiced disgust with the policies of Prime Minister Tony Blair. New polls just released, indicate that fifty percent of the British population want Blair to resign immediately for his involvement in the invasion of Iraq and the events leading to the suicide of David Kelly.

Calling him a war criminal and carrying signs that read "Bliar," it is clear that Blair's political career has been severely, probably irreparably, damaged by his insistence on going to war with Iraq even though the majority of Britons were extremely against any invasion.

Marchers Worldwide Call for Iraq Pullout

Huffington terminates the Terminator!

One of my favorite jibes in the California recall gubernatorial debate last night came from independent candidate Arianna Huffington, she said, "Republicans always talk about sexual morality, but not business morality."

I could not agree more with that statement. In fact, it is a premise for many of my arguments and posts right here on this blog. Moreover, I have actually been working on a blog dedicated entirely to that very point.

Of course, in the United States of America, the land of Enron, TYCO, Global Crossing and countless other lying, and stealing bastards, who put profit above all else, people won't get to hear Huffington's or similar points of view very often in the mainstream media; however, the BBC quoted Huffington's jab at the Republicans right at the beginning of their article on the debate. That is because, by no means perfect, the business climate in Europe isn't as wrought with corruption and recklessness as the U.S. economic system.

The corporate media won't give you so called "progressive" points of view, even those that would seem to be a given (that businesses should act in the public interest or at least not act against it), because such awareness might cause people to question the profit system itself, and the its fragile power structure, ultimately proving a threat to its actual existence.

The idea of actually putting morality into the process of business decision making is something that American corporations would never tolerate. The very suggestion that such an ideal should dictate how business is conducted galvanizes the most threatened members of the oligarchy (corporations and their political and media allies) to employ every effort to suppress it.

Don't believe me? I challenge readers to submit to me any article from the U.S. mainstream press (national, state, city or local) that covered the debate and quoted the candidates, but didn't leave out Huffington's contention that Republicans only care about sexual, and not business morality. If you find any I'll post them.

Quote mentioned:

BBC
LA Times


Not mentioned:

Washington Post
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Seattle Times
New York Times
The San Francisco Examiner
The Boston Globe
USA Today
San Francisco Chronicle
The Chicago Tribune
The Miami Herald
The Minneapolis Star Tribune


Transcript of gubernatorial recall debate

Kennedy says Iraq war was a "fraud" that was "made up in Texas"


In Senate, Kennedy Fuels Sharp Debate

News World International (NWI) reports that Iraq has turned into a "vortex of violence"

A story on NWI, the Canadian twenty-four news organization, today says that the U.S. and its slim coalition are fighting a "guerilla war against mix and match enemies."

In fact, Bush himself has said the violence that the U.S. confronts daily is at least in part due "terrorists who have come to Iraq." I stated this fact in my first post ever on this blog (scroll down to bottom to read it).

The report states that it has been predominantly Saudis that have been coming in in the last few months. That is highly ironic due to the fact that we supposedly fought the war to prevent future terrorism (a boldface lie), but the war actually has greatly increased the likelihood of more terrorism from Arabs (who constituted the majority of the 9-11 hijackers no matter how much the Bush administration tried to imply otherwise) who have specifically gone to Iraq because Saddam's regime has fallen and utter chaos exists there now.

The myth propagated by the Bush administration and its cronies in the government and media establishment that the world is safer now that Saddam is gone, is a boldface lie. A power vacuum now exists in Iraq and Islamic terrorists from all around are filling it.

The violence also comes from guerilla cells formed from Saddam's 400,000 man army (who are now humiliated and unemployed, a deadly mix). These former soldiers are working separately from the Islamic militants.

Two radical Islamic groups, Hezbollah and Ansar al Islam, are also arriving there says Michael Eisenstat of the D.C. Institute for Near East Policy.

The report maintains that the reality is that the longer the fighting goes on in Iraq the more organized the resistance will get. It also points out that collapsed states, like Iraq, often have warring factions that fight themselves; we see this going on in Iraq right now. Such a situation would represent a worst case scenario where interfactional violence could spread like wildfire.

A legitimate Iraqi government (where the Iraqi people elect their leaders) must be created that, says the report, is one of the only ways to keep peace.

The news story says in closing that "if you believe in democracy this needs to happen."

Let the raping of the of the Iraqi economy begin; just don't touch the oil that's for us only

Iraq is open for business! Paul Bremer, unelected ruler, oops I mean civilian administrator of Iraq, has just announced that foreign investment will now be permitted in Iraq.

What this means, essentially, is that huge multinational corporations (most of which will probably be U.S. firms) will be given the opportunity to invest in any part of the economy except for oil.

On its face, it would seem that this would bring help to rebuild Iraq (destroyed because of 2 wars and twelve years of sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands and wrecked the whole country); however, its really about enriching corporations with money from American taxpayers.

National Public Radio (NPR) reported, on Sept. 22, that:

• the problem in Iraq is not lack of foreign investment, but lack of security
  
  
• attempts in short order to privatize would bring terrible corruption and no help for the Iraqi people
  
  
• privatization should be accomplished over years not months (reverse of wht should happen with political control)
  
  

More info:

America Puts Iraq Up for Sale

Washing Away the Truth: Hurricanes and what gets lost in the whirlwind of the mainstream media

The mainstream media reported diligently on every minutiae of Hurricane Isabel, but they seem utterly unconcerned with the daily attacks on our societies' poor, sick, struggling and homeless or on the destruction of our forests, wetlands, air, and water. Such attacks are much more threatening to people and the environment than the rare visit of a swirling weather system; however, the corporate media is unwilling to address these issues, rather they opt for the all too convenient sound bite.

To be sure, there is often tragic loss of life in these storms; however, many more lives are lost from the lack of health care, housing, and sufficient income or from the toxic pollutants we drink, eat, and breath every day. If they wrote and broadcast stories on those issues, they would expose most of their advertisers and the media's own corporate owners as the real threat to us all.

The media uses hyperbole in most of their reporting, exaggerating the threat posed by events that are rare and uncommon (natural disasters, school shootings, violent crime, terrorist attacks, etc.) and minimizing or totally ignoring actual threats, like those to our health and the environment.

As Michael Moore puts forth in his movie, Bowling for Columbine, the result of this media fascination with violence and danger that doesn't match the real life statistics, is to create a climate of fear.

In a scene from his movie, a news crew shows up on a corner in Los Angeles to film something merely because a police chopper was hovering over the area. The problem, Moore finds out, is that they don't know what exactly is going on (they say some guy may have had a gun or there was a "near" drowning). Apparently, the drama of a chopper on the scene is all the news director needed for a story.

Michael Moore asks the news crews cameraman why they don't do a story on "how... you can't see the Hollywood hills because of the pollution." The cameraman agrees, laughing as if to say its a good idea, but the network won't go for it; indeed they probably won't.

Moore then finds a cop and he asks him basically the same question. This time asking if there is anyone that the cop can arrest because the Hollywood sign can't be seen due to the pollution. The cop responds tersely, "absolutely not," Moore then asks "why not... why is that" the officer says nothing as he starts to walk away.

It is clear that addressing the pollution issue would take true grit; the kind that the officer evidently doesn't have. The officer's reluctance to even respond to Moore's point, that serious crimes are being perpetrated on us all as the police spend time on low or non-existent threats, is telling, since, for the officer, acknowledging that polluters are killing us, albeit, more slowly than a gunshot, but deadly nonetheless, would require the officer to question what in fact his duties are and whether he is willing to do what it really takes to defend the public.

He, like most of his law enforcement peers, might no longer be able to rely on the stereotypical crime profiles and unfair treatment they give to the poor and minority communities. They might ultimately have to face the realization that most threatening and dangerous crimes actually don't occur in these communities, but rather in the boardrooms of major corporations. So the officer walks away, just as many others do, looking for the criminals that the media, the wealthy, and the powerful tell us should be locked up.

Fear keeps us: buying guns, spending billions to build bombs, stocking up on supplies for natural disasters, supporting U.S. Imperialism disguised as a "war on terror, " and most importantly for the media and its advertisers; it keeps us watching the news.

While the rest of us suffer the ramifications of a deteriorating economy (job loss, bankruptcies), the total net worth of the 400 richest Americans grew 10% to $955 billion

This is an injustice that must be corrected. There is absolutely no reason why any 400 human beings should have this amount of money.

Their combined net worth is more than the GNP of most entire countries where millions of people live and work.

This fact is a travesty of justice and one of the main reasons why we have terrorism in the world. We are an easy target with our excessive wealth and imperialistic foreign policy which usually supports despots and dictators around the world who brutalize and oppress millions of people.

We are seen as the biggest kid on the block, with a military and economy to prove it. So we are an easy target to the oppressed and destitute of the planet. Jean Chretien, Prime Minister of Canada, caught flak for making a similar argument a couple of years ago after 9-11, probably because it was too close to the truth for many of those in power.

It doesn't help that we also unconditionally support Israel. We rarely, if ever, chide Israel for any of their brutalizing policies against the Palestinians (targeted assassinations, and bulldozing their houses) which we never refer to as terrorism, but is.

Just a couple of days ago at the UN, the United States vetoed a resolution calling on Israel to neither kill nor expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. It would have passed, but for the U.S. veto.

Article: Net Worth of America's Richest Increases

Everyone, and I mean everyone, needs to read the report by Robert Fisk of London's Independent on the current conditions in Iraq.

Its titled, "What is Happening Is An Absolute Slaughter Every Night of Iraqi People," and you can read it here.

Although too little too late, former chief UN weapons Hans Blix thinks any WMDs Saddam may have had were probably destroyed 10 years ago

Blix basically says Iraq war was a fraud.

I wish we saw this kind of candor at the UN security council when Powell made that embarrassing and pathetic attempt to say Saddam had nukes and the like.

Full article:

Blix Attacks 'Spin and Hype' of Iraq Weapon Claims

The facts on the 9th Federal District Circuit Court

The 9th Circuit Court has more actual cases overturned because they hear more cases (11,000 in fact, the largest number of cases in the federal system). Only a tiny amount of the 9th Circuits cases are reviewed by the US Supreme Court; of those 75% are overturned, which is the same rate that the US Supreme Court overturns all the other federal circuit court rulings in the country.

As far as claims that the 9th Circuit is ultra-liberal, it should be known that the pledge of allegiance decision, so lambasted by the right, which said having the phrase "under God" in the pledge was unconstitutional, was actually written by a Republican appointee.

CNN's Robert Novak: hypocrite of the day

While I was just watching CNN's Crossfire, I witnessed Robert Novak just call co-host Paul Begala anti-troops because Begala was commenting on a new report that says the Iraqi people no longer see US forces so much as the people who removed Saddam Hussein, but rather as the soldiers bursting into the homes of their wives and daughters.

Compare that statement to what Mr. Novak said a number of weeks ago when soldiers voiced understandable anger and distress with the attacks and deaths that they were experiencing daily. A situation they were put in by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense) and Rice (National Security Advisor). Novak said at the time that American troops should stop complaining and "shut-up" and "do their job." If that's not anti-troops, I don't know what is.

CNN wastes no time trying to destroy Wesley Clark

They dug up all kinds of dirt and gossip and lobbed it right at General Clark almost immediately after his formal announcement that he would run for president. Did they do this to Bush when he announced his run? They certainly didn't use rumors and hearsay from his detractors no less to disparage Bush right out of the gate.

There was plenty to throw at Bush at the time of his announcement, much more damaging than anything they claim to have on Clark who is a decorated Vietnam War veteran and retired four star general, for example: his dubious record as governor of Texas, his many failed business endeavors, his dereliction of duty and undistinguised record as a member of the Texas Air National Guard, a sweetheart deal set up by his cronies giving him ownership of the Texas Rangers and a huge financial windfall, his drug and alcohol abuse, and his utter lack of intellect.

Blix says intelligence agencies were wrong and that Iraq destroyed all their weapons 10 years ago

No kidding Blix, this is what you should have said in the run up to the war instead of being bullied by the Bush Administration into saying what they wanted.

Click here to read article.

Bank of America certainly does not have "higher standards"

Their slogan "Bank of America: higher standards" is inconsistent with their past policies. Unless they consider involvement in efforts to subvert democratically elected governments and bankrolling ruthless dictators responsible for the death and torture of thousands as acting with 'high standards.' Read "U.S. Responsibility for the Coup in Chile"paragraphs 5-7 by Daniel Brandt to learn of Bank of America's and other major American banks role in events surrounding the coup.

Ford Motor Co. helped Argentina's military dictatorship torture and murder opponents of the regime

Ford supplied the cars used in the death squads which rounded up thousands of people for torture and execution. An article in the New York Times explains how Ford and its senior executives "managed, participated in or covered up the illegal detention."

Ford apparently was involved in the kidnapping of their own workers many of whom were union leaders who the Argentinian government wanted and who Ford wanted out of their way because unionized workers was seen as bad for Ford's profits.

A little Hussein budding in Herat, Afghanistan

Torture, repression, intimidation, and beatings in a closed society where dissent is not tolerated and the leader enriches himself and his cronies to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Oh, and by the way, the US brought him to power. No, I am not talking about Saddam Hussein, this man's name is Ismail Khan, warlord of Herat, Afghanistan.

Human rights watch reports Khan has a "disastrous" human rights record and that he is continuing the work of the Taliban in destroying much of Herat's "open culture" known for "literature and learning."

Despite this dismal human rights record, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Khan "an appealing person." (images of Rumsfelds handshake with Saddam Hussein in the early 1980's come to mind)What he meant by that though I cannot imagine.

Much of Afghanistan is in the hands of warlords supported, and armed by the US and who are every bit as bad as the Taliban. Khan is exceptional though in his wealth and strangehold on power. He brings in over a hundred million of dollars a year from proceeds derived from controlling trade with Iran, which Herat borders.

Human Rights Watch says the US put this tyrant "where he is today" and we have the "responsibility to make him clean up his act." I agree before 20 yrs from now a 90 something year old Rumsfeld, back in the White House somehow, wants to blow the crap out of Afghanistan because our current friend the "warlord" no longer wants to play nice with us. We definately need to stop watering this one and the like in Afghanistan now before its too late.

Alan Greenspan... part of the problem

Why does anyone still have faith in (Federal Reserve Chairman) Alan Greenspan? The guy kept raising interest rates while the bottom was falling out of the economy. Later he played catch-up lowering rates trying to fix a problem that he contributed to and was well on its way already. He also supports making Bush's tax cuts permanent. This guy really has zero credibility at this point.

Lets "recall" Bush

If the people of California can remove a governor who had little to nothing to do with that states economic problems then the rest of us should be able to remove Bush for being directly responsible for:

• an ever growing federal deficit currently at over half a trillion dollars
  
  
• hundreds killed, thousands wounded in a senseless war in Iraq
  
  
• millions of jobs lost
  
  
• terrorist threat growing
  
  
• ruined the image of the United States around the world
  
  
• gutting environmental protections
  
  

Too bad we can't recall Bush; we can, its called impeachment.

The United States Government, Corporations and Foreign Dictators: an alliance of terror
A series of articles on the overthrow of democratically elected governments
US government involvement in Chile's murderous military coup

I believe it was the year 2000, although I can't recall exactly, when I first learned about the coup in Chile that ocurred on September 11, 1973. The coup violently removed Salvador Allende, Chile's democratically elected socialist president, from power and installed a military dictator named Augusto Pinochet. The coup caused the death of at least three thousand people almost immediately, although many Chileans say it is many more, and would lead to the torture and murder of tens of thousands more over the next seventeen years at the hands of Pinochet and his tyrannical regime. All the while Pinochet acted with the full knowledge and support (military and financial) of the United States. It would not be an overstatement of fact to say that without the help of the United States the coup most likely would have never taken place and the killing and torture of countless human beings would have never ocurred. I remember vividly the revulsion and intense anger I felt at the fact that the overthrow of Allende was planned and orchestrated by the US government.

The reasons for the US support of the coup, and its brutal, tyrannical leader Augusto Pinochet, are many. Henry Kissinger, former national security advisor an international war criminal guilty of crimes involving murder and torture in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Indonesia to name a few, said, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."

The people of Chile had elected Allende in a fair and just election which we just happened to not like (parallels can currently be made to president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who the US tried to overthrow in a failed coup last year). In this context, it is easy to question what the real motives of US foreign policy are when the US government maintains that all we want is democracy for people in Iraq and Afghanistan so they have the freedom to choose their own leaders and live in peace.

The deadly logic employed by the US government was that socialism equals communism (or stalinism as it would be more aptly named since its manifestation on the political landscape resembled nothing like what Karl Marx had envisioned). The US government sought to overturn fair and democratic elections in many places around the world (I will go into detail on these countries in future posts) in order, so they said, to prevent a sort of communist contagion.

I argue that what they were really afraid of was socialism itself, the kind Allende's government in Chile was attempting to implement. Except for a few underinformed and misguided reactionaries of the time,
Soviet style communism taking hold around the world, the so called "domino effect" theory was not considered a reality. To be sure, it may have dictated foreign policy decisions to some effect, but it was mainly US corporations desire to exploit land and resources that fueled the imperialistic drive for economic and military control of nations around the world, and especially in this hemisphere.

Allende's government had nationalized the steel, coal and the highly important copper industry. The three U.S. copper giants of the time: Kennecott, Anaconda and the Cerro Corp. were nationalized. These companies had controlled 80 percent of the total Chilean copper production and had been taking profits out of the country in the sum of $80 million a year (Workers World, Population was mobilizing, para. 4) . Copper mining was big business for these and other US comapanies. In fact, in an article by Daniel Brandt entitled, "U.S. Responsibility for the Coup in Chile," Brandt points out that "over a 42 year period the [US] copper companies earned $420 billion on original investments totalling $35 million."

Copper companies weren't the only ones who robbed the Chilean people of their resources and supported their maiming and killing at the hands of the butcher Pinochet. International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) had the largest holding of any single corporation (Brandt, Part 1, para 1). ITT (which had a former director of the CIA on its board) , with the help of the CIA, gave $700,000 help elect Allende's opponent. The president of ITT actually gave the CIA $1 million dollars to help defeat Allende (Brandt, Part 1, para 2).

Many of the biggest US banks, including commercial banks like Chase Manhattan, Chemical, First National City, Manufacturers Hanover, and Morgan Guaranty, all cancelled credits to Chile after Allende's election in 1970 (Brandt, Part 1, para 4). After the coup though, these same banks and others (like Bank of America), opened the flow of money back into Chile, and right into the hands of Pinochet (Brandt, Part 1, para 5).

Other US corporations fell over themselves to invest in Chile now that they felt their interests would be protected. It was of no concern to them that the regime they were dealing with was responsible for the horrific torture and killing of everyone from peasants and union leaders to students and intellectuals.

As was shown, the corporations weren't acting alone. They worked with the US intelligence (CIA) community in destroying the economy and fomenting the coup, but they also had access to the highest levels of the Nixon administration, namely Henry Kissinger. Massive pressure from ITT on Kissinger helped shift policy decisions on Chile from the State Department to the US Treasury Department where many former bank executives (including future Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker) from the aforementioned firms (Chase, Bank of America etc.) were now working (Brandt, Part 1, para 6-7).

The Diplomatic community was also involved in the runup to the coup with the US Ambassador in Chile and the Secretary of Inter-American Affairs (William Rogers at the time) both having connections to ITT. In closed meetings which included representatives from ITT, Ford, Anaconda, Ralston Purina, First National City bank, and Bank of America (Brandt, Part 1, para 7) policy on Chile was decided (similar to closed meetings our current Vice-President Richard Cheney had with energy companies which directly helped shape US energy policy).

International Institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Agency for International Development (AID), and the Export-Import Bank all cancelled credits to Chile after Allende's election (no doubt due to pressure from the US government and its banking cronies). All credits were restored to Pinochet in 1975 (Brandt, Part 1, para 8).

By 1972, it became very difficult for Chile to purchase food, medicine, equipment and parts. This led to a trucker strike which caused more chaos (Brandt, Part 1, para 9). This was just what the US wanted. Nixon himself "wanted a plan for action that would include a military coup and a broad-based destabilization effort that would 'make the economy scream'" (Brandt, Part 2, para 7).

There was no boycott in US military aid (money and weapons), or training (Pinochet and others all spent time in US probably at the School of the Americas in Georgia) by the US (Brandt, Part 1, para 10). The economic boycott only affected items needed by the Chilean people (much like the sanctions in Iraq that killed up to a million people).

Note: I will be adding this post periodically

Further reading:

Allende's Leftist Regime

Kissinger Encouraged Chile's Brutal Repression, New Documents Show

Lessons of the Chile coup

U.S. Responsibility for the Coup in Chile

An answer to Pinochet's defenders

Bush guts environmental rules in place since Nixon

Corporations are sitting pretty nowadays, getting everthing they could ever want and more from the Bush administration. To be sure, its not just my view, but also that of Bill Kovacs, the vice president for environmental issues of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (an organization lobbying for pro-business policies), who states, "We certainly had a number of victories this week; I don't think anyone can deny that." By the way, the week he was referring to was the last week in August before Labor Day. "The virtual dead of political and press night... you can't find a week when people are less likely to pay attention than the end of August," says Phil Clapp, the president of the National Environmental Trust. Its during these times, when most are unaware, that Bush announces most of his environmental policies (of destruction).

What are these rule changes you ask? Here are some:

• Drastically weakening of rules designed to limit pollution from coal-fired power plants
  
  
• Carbon dioxide, proven chief cause of global warming, no longer a pollutant that can be regulated by the EPA
  
  
• EPA now no longer to prohibit ballast (water in ships containing invasive species) from introduction into American waters where they cause major damage to native species
  
  
• Eradication of 25-yr-old rule preventing sale of PCB tainted land
  
  
• An order making it easier to drill for oil and gas on pristine federal lands
  
  
• Rule change resulting in dramatic slowdown in ability to implement regulations protecting the environment
  
  

The changes by the junior Bush administration even has those from the senior Bush White House up in arms. Dan Esty, EPA's deputy chief of staff in the first Bush administration, now heading Yale University's Center for Environmental Law and Policy, called the rule revisions "... not very environmentally sound."

"Breathtaking," is how Chuck Davis, a Colorado State University political scientist who specializes in environmental policy, described the changes in environmental protection taking place.

The way this works is that the preferred route to enacting changes in these laws is through Congress. There is no way though that even the Bush bullies could get rules weakening environmental protection through Congress, so they do it through administrative rule changes. "They leave the laws in place, but undermine the regulations below them, undermine the rules and undermine the agencies," says political science professor Stephen Meyer, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Project on Environmental Politics. He goes on to say, "The details get lost because the average person doesn't have the details or the time to follow it." The ignorance of the masses helps rogue leaders like Bush Inc. We need people paying less attention to sports scores and celebrity and TV nonsense and more time getting educated about their government. A truly worse case scenario for the Bush administration and others bent on destroying our lives and environment is an aware citizenry armed with the knowledge to beat back the bullies who will otherwise stop at nothing.

Read full article here.

Blix says the US overinterpreted its own intelligence

Well, its much worse than that Hans; they lied and made a fool out of you in the process! Former Chief UN Weapons inspector Hans Blix said the US and Britain, "... hoped and would have been happy... if a smoking gun [was] found... when we didn't do that... they were disappointed. And then they overinterpreted their own intelligence." He went on to say the White House was "anxious" and "too willing" to jump to conclusions on showing existence of Iraqi weapons in order to justify an invasion. Blix, " I said in the Security Council that if something is unaccounted for, it doesn't necessarily mean that [it] exist[s]." No kidding Blix, you should have opened up your mouth about this in the run up to the war instead of cowering from those wretches in the White House and on Downing street.

Article:

Blix Says Iraq's Weapons Declaration May Have Been True

Update (to Aug 22 post): Killing of 33,000 salmon by Bush and his political advisor, Karl Rove, to be investigated by Interior Department

Rove, according to an AP article, seeking to bolster Republican support among farmers, briefed dozens of political appointees at the Interior Department over a year and a half ago on diverting water from the Klamath River in Oregon to satisfy the greedy, selfish farmers who wanted it for their crops. The salmon were killed last year in the Northern California portion of the Klamath River. This tragic destruction of precious salmon was due to fatal gill rot disease caused by low river flows resulting from the diversion of the water for the farmers' crop irrigation.

Democratic senator and presidential candidate John Kerry, concerned the White House used the Interior Department as "a division of the Republican National Committee" and may have intimidated the staff appointees, reportedly asked the Inspector General (IG) at the Interior Department to investigate Bush's Klamath water policy after the revelation of Rove's meeting with the political appointees. The IG will be examining whether political interference or suppression of data by Bush and Rove was responsible for the disaster. If found, any such evidence will be immediately sent to the Department of Justice and the Office of Public Integrity since the Interior Department IG has no authority over the White House.

To the 69% of Americans who think Saddam was involved in 9-11, You are making the rest of us look bad

It becomes painfully clearer every day to see why the rest of the world thinks we Americans are stupid. Two years after 9-11, people still think Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks. To be sure, its true that the president and other liers at the White House and Defense Department insinuated from the start that Hussein was involved, but people you must certainly be aware by now that they only did that to try and justify the already predetermined (before 9-11 attacks) decision to invade Iraq. Lets be serious, Dubya is strikingly similar to the dumbest kid in the class we all remember from school. No one took anything that kid or his loser friends said seriously, Bush and the other lying bullies he surrounds himself with should have their opinions similarly dismissed as nonsense.

Its not just the present warmongers occupying our government that have repeatedly and successfully demonized Hussein, turning him in the minds of millions of Americans into an immediate and deadly threat. Its been going on since the Gulf War. Politicians and the media have turned Saddam into the worst monster since Hitler! Of course Saddam is a terrible guy, but he was not involved in any way with the 9-11 attacks, period. Repeated attempts by the White House to link him to the attacks and al-Qaeda have all failed.

I'd like to point out that the murderous dictator Hussein was supported by the United States right up until the invasion of Kuwait. A little known fact, the US signaled Iraq that it would not interfere with Iraq's longstanding issues over Kuwait. What occurred is that in late July 1991, before the invasion of Kuwait, US State Department Spokesperson Margaret Tutweiler stated that "We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait." Further indicating our intent to stay out of what was seen as an internal dispute, US ambassador April Gillespie met with Saddam the next day to explain Tutweiler's statements. She told Saddam, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait," continuing she said, "(Secretary of State) James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction." This has been widely interpreted as giving Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait.

Few Americans know that the Iraqis had always believed Kuwait was part of their country. Although Kuwait as a state (created in 1899) predated Iraq (created in 1920), Iraqi leaders from the Ottoman empire (when Kuwait was part of the province of Basra then controlled by the Ottomans) to General Abdelkarim Qasim (1961) and Saddam Hussein (1990) have laid claimed to Kuwait. In fact, the British, who controlled Kuwait, put 6,000 troops there to prevent an expected Iraqi attack after Kuwaiti independence in 1961. The attack never occurred and Iraq respected Kuwait's boundaries until the 1990 invasion. Despite this long historical border dispute, it seems that US officials, knowing how their words would be interpreted by Hussein, were willing to allow Saddam to move into Kuwait. To be sure, the US may have expected Saddam to seize only some oil wells that were in dispute on the border (the Kuwaitis were using slant drilling equipment to pump billions of dollars of oil from under Iraqi land); however, they were most likely at least aware of the risk of a full scale invasion. Why did we do this? Why had we been appeasing this murdering thug all along? We knew he was using chemical weapons against his own people and against the Iranian soldiers. We gave him the satellite intelligence to make it easier to gas human beings to death. American firms and subsidiaries were involved in selling the chemicals needed to make the weapons of mass destruction we so often speak about. The irony is he hasn't had any in years, but when he did have them we did nothing to stop him from using them. It can even be said that we encouraged his war with Iran. The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran was public enemy number one in those days for the US. Our efforts in supplying Iraq with weapons and intelligence for their aggression against Iran were in part due to protecting Kuwait from the ayatollah's of Iran. It was the US that through its actions helped bring to power brutal dictators and murderous regimes like the Shahs and the ayatollahs who ruthlessly ruled Iran. Kuwait had even agreed to pay part of the cost of its defence to Iraq. When the war was over the Kuwaitis reneged on payment to an Iraq now near bankruptcy. Adding insult to injury, they instead opted to steal Iraqi oil!

We feign concern for the Iraqi people now. I was just listening to Bush's speech talking about freedom for the Iraqi people from Saddam's torture and repression, but he neglected to mention our role in those crimes right up until and after Kuwait. Cheney's Haliburton had, through its subsidiaries, been rebuilding Iraq's oil wells (the same ones destroyed while Cheney was Secretary of Defense in Gulf War 1); meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were dying because of US imposed sanctions that did nothing to weaken Saddam's control on the country; on the contrary, these sanctions allowed him to consolidate his power.

Bush, Cheney and the neo-cons accomplished the ultimate power grab in Iraq. They had their fake causus belli linking Hussein to the 9-11 attacks (no link existed) and claiming he had weapons of mass destruction (never found despite US claims they existed); after all, everybody hates Hussein and Americans were revolted by the terrorist attacks. All Bush and his oil cronies had to do was connect the dots somehow and Iraq was theirs. The truth wasn't important. Nor does it seem were the lives of US soldiers and countless Iraqis. They couldn't find Osama, so they fell back on Saddam and blamed him for whatever they could. This way the Bush administration finally had something they could try and sell to the American people to try and justify their pre-9-11 planned conquest of Iraq. Nothing would stand in the way of this administration's thirst for the profits and power that would ultimately flow from the imperialistic conquest and control of the second largest oil reserve in the world. The US and Britain have been doing this kind of stuff in the Middle East for years (see my post of August 26th). Toppling democratically elected governments, then installing dictators then ousting the dictator. Its all part of the game that the world powers play at the expense of the people caught in the crossfire. When the US looks at the Middle East it doesn't see human beings, but rather oil with people on top of it. They don't care how they get it; just that they do. As former assistant US Defense Secretary Lawrence Korb said referring to the invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War, "If Kuwait grew carrots we wouldn't give a damn... Oil is worth going to war for." So to the 69% that think Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9-11 attacks, lets get it right once and for all; Saddam Hussein didn't grow carrots and we were well aware of that all along.


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