• Timothy Gatto advocates a general strike September 11, 2007:
We have a group of industries and media outlets that work for profit, to the point where they now give hardly anything back to the people. Our economic system has reduced private ownership of land and resources, labor and industry. The unions are not as influential as they once were and they have been reduced to a guild-like structure. The unions in the Northeast still hold some power, but that is ebbing daily.• Home foreclosure is up 93% from this time a year ago:
The government is practically owned and operated by a handful of bankers and industrialists. The people that give them their daily pay, the pharmaceutical companies, industry, insurance companies, automakers and big oil, control the media. You can say it’s always been like this and you would be correct. Still, not to the extent that is taking place today. When a CEO of a corporation that hasn’t even made a profit can command a hundred million-dollar salary, stock options, houses and vacations and other perks, while labor is being paid a few dollars above minimum wage, then the system has gone haywire. If a company isn’t making a profit, the people at the top should be the ones to suffer, not the “little” guy or gal that works a 50 hour week for practically nothing.
So what’s the answer? How can the people that supposedly control the government turn back the clock and make the government responsible to the people? One way is to sabotage the entire operation. There are ways to cripple industries and media outlets by simply boycotting them. Once profits reach a certain point, these people that worship profit will come begging to the people for forgiveness. The only problem with this idea is that people just don’t take the time to understand the predicament that the American people are in.
Besides this immoral war in the Middle East, people are losing their homes because of predatory lending practices. There is no government relief for these people, the government won’t dare to bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile, the real people that are supporting the government, taxpayers like you and me are fed scraps. The politicians’ only interest is to wield more power by getting elected and that takes corporate bankrolling. We know it and they know it, yet the people do nothing.
So the question is what do we do and where do we start? One thing people can do is leave the major two parties and register Green. Even if you don’t end up voting that way or particularly believe in their platform, it sends an undeniable message to the government. You may not know this, but the Green Party is still user friendly enough so that one’s person’s voice can make a difference. Can you imagine your opinion shaping a major political party’s platform?
Another thing you can be participating in the General Strike on September 11, 2007 to the extent you can. This is only a grassroots effort that was started by regular people. Take one day to tell the powers that be that you understand that this nation’s wealth is not being distributed properly. To tell them that you don’t want to participate in their war for oil profits. That the rights taken away from the American people is really not OK with you. That you know the media doesn’t focus on what America really needs to know, and so much more.
Nevada is bearing the brunt of the crumbling US housing market, with about one in every 200 households filing for foreclosure, a survey showed yesterday.In what amounts to a handful of weeks ago, not a long time, when I wrote in blog comments such things as we need to hang some Washington politicians, I was told to mind my manners, and that my deportment left much to be desired. Those were the good old days, now gone forever, and you certainly weren't seeing people write such things as this:
RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for repossessed properties, showed US home foreclosures jumped 9% in July from June, and 93% on a year ago.
The number of default notices and bank repossessions totalled 179,599. Across the US, there is now a foreclosure of one in every 693 homes. [...]
"We are estimating that we will see about 2m foreclosure filings this year," said Rick Sharga, spokesman for RealtyTrac. "We don't see it getting much better before it gets a little bit worse."
• Impeach, Prosecute And Throw Away The Key!:
Whenever any one talks of Impeachment it always directed toward Smirky and his partner in crime old "dead-eye Dick" Cheney. Which I'll admit is a good place to start but not a good place to finish.Ouch, that wasn't very polite at all, was it? But, it was far from the most inflamed article I read this week. Pelosi and Reid took a particularly bloody beating in the blog comments everywhere I looked. It seems the philosopher's sense of subtlety of mind is right out the window, and the articles are none too kind, either.
The House and Senate have not only let them get away with countless acts of treason, sedition, war crimes, crimes against humanity etc. etc. etc. but haven't even done what they swore an oath to do, i.e., uphold the Constitution of the United States. Shouldn't we therefore impeach every member of both houses who haven't upheld the oath that they swore?
A good place to start would be with Nancy Pelosi and other House leaders. Nancy made it plain that the Constitutionally called for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney was "off the table" before she even took power. She made this decision without even considering the crimes committed by these two and their allies. Doesn't that itself call for impeachment? When Congressman Dennis Kucinich produced a bill to Impeach Cheney (H. Res 333) committee head John Conyers, who had sworn before the election to impeach Cheney, wouldn't let the bill out of committee even though he is required by the Constitution to do so. Shouldn't he be impeached as well for failure to uphold the oath that he swore? John, like Nancy, was all for the will of the people before the election but afterwards their real bosses told them "no" so nothing is done. All the Junta's crimes continue today at a frighteningly fast pace and who knows, before too long Congress won't be able to do anything because of "Presidential Directives" HSPD-51 and HSPD-20!
• Dave Lindorff:
It's not just the Constitution that's suffering because of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's nutty and unprincipled "impeachment-off-the-table" position blocking any effort to impeach President Bush or Vice President Cheney for their many crimes and abuses of power.Once again, that's why America sent the democrats to Washington, along with ending the war—and their sorry, sorry asses know it, don't think they don't. But I guess someone in D.C. decided a better strategy for re-election is out of sight, out of mind, and the democrats decided to take that road instead. Besides, work is just so...well, hard.
Her position on impeachment is killing the Democratic Party too, by driving away not just progressive members of the party, but independents who voted for Democrats last November expecting some action in defense of the Constitution.
I see this anger welling up among progressives and independents everywhere I travel, as people say they've simply had it with the Democrats. The support of the party for a bill continuing funding for the war through September was terrible. The Democrats' rush to pass a bill granting Bush the authority to spy without a warrant on Americans, and to expand the power to spy domestically well beyond phones and internet to even include break-ins was a last straw. [...]
When will the Democrats in Washington wake up and realize that it's not impeachment that will hurt the party...it is the lack of it.
• Robert Parry:
Many national Democrats saw last year's election as a political turning point. They cheered the voters' repudiation of a Republican one-party state; they hailed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's ouster the next day; and they were sure that resurgent GOP "realists" would help wind down the Iraq War.At least; that is, unless Bush and Cheney attack Iran, causing a nuclear counterattack on the United States, and they get vaporized along with the rest of us. Before I get to that, let's mention in passing the continuing saga of White House obfuscation and secrecy. Sen. Leahy said the White House is in contempt of Congress for failing to produce documents. But, he said he'll have to wait until Congress reconvenes to hold some roundtable meetings, ad infinitum. Aw, Margaret, can't anybody over there do ANYTHING anymore?
In this Democratic view, George W. Bush was going to be both the lamest of lame ducks and a deadly albatross draped around the neck of the Republican Party in Election 2008. The Democrats believed they could pretty much start measuring their curtains for a move into the White House on Jan. 20, 2009.
But a very different reality is now confronting the Democrats. News of the neoconservative demise proved premature; the meaning of Rumsfeld's departure was misunderstood (he was booted when he privately called for an Iraq War de-escalation); and the Republican "realists" remained outside Bush's inner circle looking in.
Then, the Democratic leaders stumbled and crumbled in the face of a president determined to escalate the war in Iraq, expand his "war on terror" surveillance powers, and ratchet up pressure for a possible new war with Iran.
The hard fact that the national Democrats missed was that the political dynamics of Washington had not changed very much. Plus, their wishful thinking in November 2006 and their irresolute actions throughout 2007 alienated millions of Americans who had hoped a Democratic majority in Congress might make a difference. [...]
On the political front, the leading Democratic presidential candidates have all staked out anti-Iraq War positions, but some - along with a growing list of congressional Democrats - have begun to equivocate in the face of the new pro-war propaganda.
For instance, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, who voted to give Bush war authorization in 2002, is inserting new rhetoric into her speeches praising U.S. military progress under Bush's "surge" strategy.
"We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it's working," Clinton told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 21.
Other Democrats, who spent part of their August recess taking guided tours of Iraq, also have come back hailing military progress.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, not only cited supposed battlefield gains but offered Bush a ready alternative if he wants to guarantee war funding through 2008. Levin recommended the ouster of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an idea that Bush didn't discourage when asked about it.
So, if Bush arranges for Maliki's removal - either with a violent Diem-like coup as happened in Vietnam or by arranging a comfy exile for Maliki - Levin effectively has bought into another year or so of war funding to give a new Iraqi government a chance to succeed.
Some junior Democratic congressmen have returned from Iraq trimming their sails on the war after getting buffeted by both a well-presented military tour of Iraq and an aggressive Republican pressure campaign back home.
For instance, Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-California, expressed a readiness to be more flexible on troop withdrawal timelines after being shown the supposed progress in Anbar province and other areas of Iraq.
"We should sit down with Republicans, see what would be acceptable to them to end the war and present it to the president, start negotiating from the beginning," McNerney said in an interview. [Washington Post, Aug. 22, 2007]
In 1967, Michigan's Republican Gov. George Romney (yes, Mitt Romney's father) famously described how he had returned from a military-arranged tour from Vietnam in 1965 having undergone "the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get."
Now, the Democrats are getting the same treatment, focusing on Anbar and other silver linings in the very dark cloud of Iraq. [...]
It's also galling to some rank-and-file Democrats that the congressional leadership caved in on granting Bush sweeping new surveillance powers so members could rush off for their August recess and send some of their impressionable young members to get choreographed inspection tours of Iraq. [Regarding the wiretapping surrender, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush Gets a Spying Blank Check."]
If national Democrats think that their feckless behavior on war in the Middle East and their timidity in defending the Constitution represent the pathway to victory in 2008, they may find themselves in for a very rude awakening.
• The New York Times:
The fight over the Office of Administration's status is part of a larger battle over access to an estimated five million e-mail messages that have mysteriously disappeared from White House computers. The missing messages are important evidence in the scandal over the firing of nine United States attorneys, apparently because they refused to use their positions to help Republicans win elections. The Office of Administration seems to know a lot about when and how those messages disappeared, but it does not want to tell the public.Like Ohio's "lost" 2004 presidential election records, the destruction of evidence is an absolute indicator of guilt, and should support plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. But, between figuring out whether it's a case of national security, executive privilege, hard drive failure, inadvertent deletion, failure to produce or the eternal question of democrats' right to doubt the GOP's purity of motive, I guess it's like they say around here: "if wishes was horses, beggars'd ride."
What exactly does the administration want to hide? It is certainly acting as if the e-mail messages would confirm suspicions that the White House coordinated the prosecutors' firings and that it may have broken laws. It is hard to believe the administration's constant refrain that there is nothing to the prosecutor scandal when it is working so hard to avoid letting the facts about it get out.
The administration's refusal to comply with open-government laws is ultimately more important than any single scandal. The Freedom of Information Act and other right-to-know laws were passed because government transparency is vital to a democracy. The American people cannot monitor their elected officials, and ensure that they act in the public interest, if government is allowed to operate under a veil of secrecy.
Fortunately, the White House does not have the final say on the Office of Administration. It made its absurd arguments to a federal judge who can restore some logic to the situation by ruling that the Freedom of Information Act applies, and the data must be turned over.
People are highly displeased about it. So where are the impalements? All of this is small compared to this widely circulated but under appreciated story by Robert Baer declaring the Iran war an absolute certainty.
• Time Magazine:
Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.Aha, there's the ubiquitous "administration official," the omniscient, ever-present God-knows-who promising Bush and Cheney will do heaven-knows-what. Notice how you have to respect and obey the way they don't need to talk it over or get anyone's permission.
As with Saddam and his imagined WMD, the Administration's case against the IRGC is circumstantial. The U.S. military suspects but cannot prove that the IRGC is the main supplier of sophisticated improvised explosive devices to insurgents killing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most sophisticated version, explosive formed projectiles or shape charges, are capable of penetrating the armor of an Abrams tank, disabling the tank and killing the crew.
A former CIA explosives expert who still works in Iraq told me: "The Iranians are making them. End of story." His argument is only a state is capable of manufacturing the EFP's, which involves a complicated annealing process. Incidentally, he also is convinced the IRGC is helping Iraqi Shia militias sight in their mortars on the Green Zone. "The way they're dropping them in, in neat grids, tells me all I need to know that the Shia are getting help. And there's no doubt it's Iranian, the IRGC's," he said. [...]
Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to democratic and a friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.
And what do we do if just the opposite happens - a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."
• Ray McGovern cries "bullshit" (maybe):
Our VIPS colleague Phil Geraldi, writing in The American Conservative, earlier noted that in the past Karl Rove has served as a counterweight to Vice President Dick Cheney, and may have tried to put the brakes on Cheney’s death wish to expand the Middle East quagmire to Iran. And former Pentagon officer, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most devoted neo-cons just before the attack on Iraq, has put into words (on LewRockwell.com) speculation several of us have been indulging in with respect to Rove’s departure.Baer and his source are former CIA operatives who won't lose their jobs by declaring the existence of a nonexistent war. They can say whatever they want. But as Ray points out, Bush doesn't know what he's doing. We knew that in 1999.
In short, it seems possible that Rove, who is no one’s dummy and would not want to be required to "spin" an unnecessary war on Iran, may have lost the battle with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on Iran, and only then decided—or was urged—to spend more time with his family. As for administration spokesperson Tony Snow, it seems equally possible that, before deciding he had to leave the White House to make more money, he concluded that his stomach could not withstand the challenge of conjuring up yet another Snow job to explain why Bush/Cheney needed to attack Iran. There is recent precedent for this kind of thing. [...]
Granted, it is speculative that similar factors, this time with respect to war planning for Iran, were at work in the decisions on the departure of Rove and Snow. Someone ought to ask them. [...]
The latest National Intelligence Estimate regarding if and when Iran is likely to have the bomb has been ready since February. It has been sent back four times—no doubt because its conclusions do not support what Cheney and Woolsey are telling the president and, through the domesticated press, telling the rest of us as well.
The conclusion of the most recent published NIE (early 2005) was that Iran probably could not acquire a nuclear weapon until "early to mid-next decade," a formula memorized and restated by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at his confirmation hearing in February. One can safely assume that McConnell had been fully briefed on the first "final draft" of the new estimate, which has now been in limbo for half a year. And I would wager that the conclusions of the new estimate resemble those of the NIE of 2005 far too closely to suit Cheney. [...]
Despite the administration's war-like record, many Americans may still cling to the belief that attacking Iran won’t happen because it would be crazy; that Bush is a lame-duck president who wouldn’t dare undertake yet another reckless adventure when the last one went so badly.
But rationality and common sense have not exactly been the strong suit of this administration. Bush has placed himself in a neoconservative bubble that operates with its own false sense of reality. Worse still: as psychiatrist Justin Frank pointed out in the July 27 VIPS memo "Dangers of a Cornered Bush," updating his book, Bush on the Couch:""We are left with a president who cannot actually govern, because he is incapable of reasoned thought in coping with events outside his control, like those in the Middle East.Scary.
"This makes it a monumental challenge—as urgent as it is difficult—not only to get him to stop the carnage in the Middle East, but also to prevent him from undertaking a new, perhaps even more disastrous adventure—like going to war with Iran, in order to embellish the image he so proudly created for himself after 9/11 as the commander in chief of 'the first war of the 21st century.'"
Finally, Bush declared we should have never left Vietnam (and should still be fighting there, I guess). That rubbed people the wrong way:
• Especially in Vietnam:
"Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?" said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. "Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush."I knew that in 1965 as a kid in grade school.
He said U.S. troops could never have prevailed here. "Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way," Trieu said. [...]
"The price we, the Vietnamese people on both sides, paid during the war was due to the fact that the Americans went into Vietnam in the first place," Ninh said.
