when all else fails, provoke

Memo Reveals U.S. Plan to Provoke an Invasion of Iraq

Nothing we all probably didn't already know. Just seems like it's been a while since we've read about it in such stark terms...

sad, I think...

...that people consider Barack Obama* "inspiring" when people like Mike Gravel (and Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul and Ralph Nader) are also running for president. Yet those folks get no support from their parties because they speak about actual issues and run their candidacies based upon their own principles and a sincere agenda. Pandering is demanded by both parties and, it could be argued, by most of the voting public who seem to respond only to mindless jingoism and empty plans and promises.

I'm supposed to be taking the year off from my political soapboxing, but I couldn't resist posting this message from my man, Mike...

Two days ago I attended an event to address both one of the most disturbing and overlooked consequences of the Iraq War. Attended by both scientists and Iraq veterans, I heard how depleted-uranium weapons and ammunition have turned Iraq into a nation littered with radioactive fallout. We gathered across the street from General Dynamics in Scranton, PA-a war profiteer whose profits have spiked in the wake of the illegal Iraq War. The Nation magazine estimates over 11,000 US soldiers to have been killed from exposure to uranium since the first Iraq War. That does not even address the vast destruction to the Iraqi people and their country. Onset of cancer, permanent respiratory and neurological conditions, deformities in the children of our servicemen-make no mistake: Depleted-Uranium (DU) is the Agent Orange of the Iraq War.

How did we get here, that our industries are poisoning and killing our own troops? The fundamental problem is pervasive and the result of our militarized culture. On Earth Day, it was clearer than ever that we cannot sufficiently tackle the myriad environmental problems we face without bringing the Military-Industrial-Complex to heel. The links between nuclear power (against which I fought and succeeded a generation ago) and our malignant warfare industry is undeniable and inextricable.

Yet it is very possible to shake the military-industrial-complex's grip on our society. It will only come from empowering the people with The National Initiative. Our Congress is controlled by this complex lock, stock and barrel, and we have seen both the Democrats and Republicans dissolve into war parties, neither offering a definitive plan to end the War in Iraq. Nor will they end American Imperialism, which will ultimately bring future wars, havoc and destruction to the innocent. I count our delicate planet and natural world among those innocent victims.

I adamantly believe that, as a nation, we can get off of gasoline in 5 years, and the world can get off of carbon in 10. We have such great ability and capacity, yet we are squandering our treasure and resources on war and killing. I remember how American Industry could produce only one ship per year in 1941. Three years later, heeding the call to WWII, it was one per week. That same spark is possible to heal the environment, if we turn the military-industrial-complex on its head. Our society's massive abilities and capacities have been hijacked by war, but we can reclaim them for limitless sources of innovation. Zero-emissions transportation, revitalized infrastructure and mass transit system to counter congestion and spur real productivity-these possibilities go overlooked when we foolishly wage wars for finite, carbon-spewing fossil fuels. Rather, we must harness the resources before our eyes: the sun, wind, and the people's creativity.

Dwight Eisenhower, who predicted the military-industrial-complex, said that "one day, the people will want peace so badly that they will push the government aside." That reality is before us by unleashing the creativity of the American people with The National Initiative. Today, I believe in that possibility more than ever.

*PS - Not that this has anything to do with the above sentiments from Senator Gravel, but am I the only person who actually agrees with most (not all, but most) of what Obama's "spiritual advisor," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has had to say...?

callous Dallas

Here's a story that's distressing/depressing on a number of different levels...

After complaints, Dallas shelter ensures humane handling of dogs

So while San Antonio is on a two-year mission to become a no-kill city, its more "cultured" and well-known neighbor to the north has taken this approach to animal services. Not exactly progressive or compassionate, to say the least. But then those aren't qualities widely respected in our fair burg. I'd say it's also a decent representation of the priorities of our city leaders. As a whole, they're completely consumed with all things shiny and new...anything they feel will bolster our appearance of cosmopolitan culture. Any initiative to address the well-being, health, happiness and financial interests of average constituents - let alone a bunch of fucking animals, for crying out loud - isn't even an afterthought. It's simply not a consideration to begin with.

Where do we even begin addressing this city's shallow indifference in general? Its policies toward taking care of the less fortunate...humans and non-human animals alike...?

My sister has worked for the Dallas Zoo for most of her adult life. I respect what she does and I respect much of the work that zoos in general perform. I do think they perform a valuable service as a whole. I've always thought of zoos as being much more than just entertainment facilities, at least to those who visit in search of more than entertainment. They provide education, important research in terms of study and behavior, and in some cases they can be essential in the fight to preserve species.

Having said all that, though, I must also admit to having a few misgivings about zoos and the function they sometimes find themselves serving to the general public. There was a picture on the last page of the November issue of The Sun that not only crystallized my misgivings, but just frankly broke my heart. The image was taken by an absolute genius of photography by the name of John Rosenthal. I hope he doesn't mind my sharing it here...


Speaking (yet again) about the greatness of The Sun, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite "sunbeams" from the tail end of that same November issue. For those of you who know me, you know the last thing I ever attempt to do is convert anyone to anything...and I'm not doing that here. I just enjoy the following comments not only because they speak to me and some of my sentiments, but also simply because I think they're worth consideration. For all of us.

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars, and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons. - Douglas Adams

There's a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig - an animal easily as intelligent as a dog - that becomes the Christmas ham. - Michael Pollan

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. - Alice Walker

Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, wear them, eat them - without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. - Carl Sagan (one of my all-time heroes)

And my favorite - a comment that concisely expresses my general outlook on daily living...for better and worse...

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight. - Albert Schweitzer

Yes, please...think. Consider. At least occasionally.

...he said, before driving off in his SUV

Short but sweet...

Awareness is Overrated

And, of course, he's right. In my own defense, at least with regard to the title of this post, I do refer to it as The Hypocritical SUV. But, in a better defense, I also think I took Jack E. Jett's brilliantly twisted idea today in a comment on an Unfair Park post and made it brillianter and twisteder by sort of re-proposing it as a larger form of protest / performance art / something goofy to do rather than just throwing my hands up in disgust. Yet again. Because my arms are getting tired from doing that...

And, while I don't expect anyone to take my comment on the Observer post seriously, I was being serious. You know...it's unique, it's something nobody in the world would expect or even know how to react to, and it's just such a clusterfuck of sarcastic weirdness directed at a particular target there's no way anyone could ignore it.

But that's my very small contribution for the day...

monkeys fly out of my butt

I Should Pay More Tax

Pretty impressive that he should take it upon himself to make those observations and comment on them publicly, I think. And, obviously, it's a painfully clear indication of just whom our representatives are actually representing.

So why has no one in the U.S. media picked up on this story...?

children of the grave

I usually stick something that Chris Floyd has written on this site at least a couple times a month. As much as I love him - what he stands for, what he does and how he does it - his only flaw is that he can, on occasion, throw out a few adjectives here and there that are a bit...strong, over the top, shrill. Every once in a while, one of his statements can get derailed by the fact that it sounds like something Kim Jong Il - or Saddam in his heyday - would release to the press.

But, with that in mind, I invite you all to read the following. And I challenge you all to find something - anything - worthy of dispute...

Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph and the Hard Way Ahead

Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone.

So now what...?

these days, it's not hard to be an angry American...

war

Gleaned from the fabulous backpage section of The Sun magazine (March issue) called Sunbeams...

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. - Major General Smedley Butler

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own. - Philip Caputo

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die. - Mary Roberts Rinehart

Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties. - George W. Bush, prior to the invasion of Iraq

Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball. - King Charles V the Wise

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. - George Orwell

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on. - Kurt Vonnegut

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more war. - Abbie Hoffman

(acs note: Okay, so that one's a bit nonsensical - and probably not even true anymore considering the lack of conscience among the folks involved these days - but Abbie's a longtime hero of mine...)

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace. - John Lennon

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. - Barbara Ehrenreich

Jesus...

Why are religious people so insecure? I mean, was there really a problem before…?

House votes to add God to Texas pledge

The Texas pledge of allegiance would change to include the words "one state under God" under legislation overwhelmingly approved Friday by the House. The bill by Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, was sent to the Senate on a 124-12 vote.

Opponents said the inclusion of religion in a state-sanctioned pledge amounted to religious oppression – particularly since it's recited in school every morning.

The pledge would now be: "Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God and indivisible."

Fuck you. Idiots.

great minds

If you have a computer that's halfway decent, I highly encourage you watch this terrific interview of Jon Stewart by Bill Moyers. If you can't, though, there's a transcript directly below the clip. My personal favorite moment is when Stewart compares the secrecy surrounding Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes versus our government's disturbing secrecy with virtually every issue. Wonderful stuff...

Moyers interviews Stewart

it's the criminals (or evil), stupid...!

This is a really interesting article from last week about the Virginia Tech shootings, and similar episodes from the recent past…

A Volatile Young Man, Humiliation and a Gun

"God I can't wait till I can kill you people." – a message on the Web site of the Columbine killer Eric Harris

In the predawn hours of Monday, Aug. 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, a former marine and Eagle Scout in Austin, Tex., stabbed his wife to death in their bed. The night before he had driven to his mother's apartment in another part of town and killed her.

Later that Monday morning, Whitman gathered together food, water, a supply of ammunition, two rifles, a couple of pistols, a carbine and a shotgun and climbed the landmark 30-story tower on the campus of the University of Texas.

Beneath a blazing sun, with temperatures headed toward the mid-90s, Whitman opened fire. His first target was a pregnant teenager. Over the next 80 or so minutes he killed 14 people and wounded more than 30 others before being shot to death by the police.

More than four decades later we still profess to be baffled at the periodic eruption of murderous violence in places we perceive as safe havens. We look on aghast, as if the devil himself had appeared from out of nowhere. This time it was 32 innocents slaughtered on the campus of Virginia Tech. How could it have happened? We behave as if it was all so inexplicable.

(acs note: Some folks are content on some level to ascribe such behavior to simple “evil.” But then those kinds of people excel at simplistic, religious-based sociology. Not to sound too elitist, but this post – and probably this blog – ain’t for those people.)

But a close look at the patterns of murderous violence in the U.S. reveals some remarkable consistencies, wherever the individual atrocities may have occurred. In case after case, decade after decade, the killers have been shown to be young men riddled with shame and humiliation, often bitterly misogynistic and homophobic, who have decided that the way to assert their faltering sense of manhood and get the respect they have been denied is to go out and shoot somebody.

Dr. James Gilligan, who has spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts, and as a professor at Harvard and now at N.Y.U., believes that some debilitating combination of misogyny and homophobia is a "central component" in much, if not most, of the worst forms of violence in this country.

"What I've concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal," he said, "is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one's manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act."

Violence is commonly resorted to as the antidote to the disturbing emotions raised by the widespread hostility toward women in our society and the pathological fear of so many men that they aren't quite tough enough, masculine enough - in short, that they might have homosexual tendencies.

In a culture that is relentless in equating violence with masculinity, "it is tremendously tempting," said Dr. Gilligan, "to use violence as a means of trying to shore up one's sense of masculine self-esteem."

The Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui, was reported to have stalked female classmates and to have leaned under tables to take inappropriate photos of women. A former roommate told CNN that Mr. Cho once claimed to have seen "promiscuity" when he looked into the eyes of a woman on campus.

Charles Whitman was often portrayed as the sunny all-American boy. But he had been court-martialed in the Marines, was struggling as a college student and apparently had been suffering from depression. He told a psychiatrist that he absolutely hated his father, but he started his murderous spree by killing his wife and his mother.

The confluence of feelings of inadequacy, psychosexual turmoil and the easy availability of guns has resulted in a staggering volume of murders in this country.

There are nearly 200 million firearms in private hands in the U.S., and more than 30,000 people - nearly 10 times the total number of Americans who have died in Iraq - are killed by those guns each year. In 1966 Americans were being killed by guns at the rate of 17,000 a year. An article in The Times examining such "rampages" as the Charles Whitman shootings said:

"Whatever the motivation, it seems clear that the way is made easier by the fact that guns of all sorts are readily available to Americans of all shades of morality and mentality."

We've learned very little in 40 years.

impeach the motherfuckers

APRIL 28 NATIONWIDE IMPEACHMENT ACTIONS

TEXAS - Arlington

NOTE: The event's actually been moved to Sunday the 29th at 2:00 pm.

We're going to merge the event with a May Day rally we were planning on taking place on the 28th because May Day falls on a Tuesday. The event will be composed of games which will be decided democratically by the group. It may be kickball, soccer, capture the flag... it is really up to the group and resources present. Free Food by Food Not Bombs. There is a possibility of a skit by Code Pink. We will be having tabling by IWW, Peaceful Vocations (counter-recruitment in FW schools!), unions, anarchists, zine distros, etc. It will be at Cravens Park [Cravens Park Drive (near Green Oaks Cravens park intersection)] from 1 or 2 PM until late. They welcome help making signs and banners and bringing food. E-mail alan.seth@gmail.com.

Please visit the website - A28 - for more information on events scheduled around the country, photos like the one above, and some additional information on what they hope can be accomplished. I'm damn sure gonna be there.

without a trace

Here’s a nice little fact sheet / reference thingy from my new favorite political watchdogs…

CREW Issues New Fact Sheet: The Facts Behind The White House Email Scandals

Washington - Following up on the WITHOUT A TRACE report, today Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) issued this fact sheet to clarify the ongoing White House email scandals.

There are two separate email scandals:

- Top White House officials’ use of RNC email accounts and RNC destruction of those emails
- Five million EOP emails missing from White House (EOP) server from period 3/03 to 10/05

RNC Email Scandal:

- Top White House officials, including Karl Rove, used RNC and other outside email accounts to conduct White House business

- Those officials took no steps to ensure that the emails were preserved, as the Presidential Records Act requires

- Emails show that officials were aware that if they used outside email accounts, their email messages would not be preserved

- Even though DOJ sent White House a preservation request for records related to CIA leak investigation in September 2003, RNC continued to purge all emails every 30 days until August 2004

White House Email Scandal:

- In late 2001 or early 2002, Bush administration discontinued automatic email archiving/preservation system put in place by Clinton administration (ARMS)

- Bush administration failed to put another system in place that would appropriately and effectively save email records in a records management system

- Instead, Bush administration extracts email messages from the EOP server and stores them in files on a file server

- There are no effective internal controls on this system to ensure complete set of messages; messages can be modified or deleted

- In October 2005, White House discovered emails were missing from this system, briefing White House Counsel (Harriet Miers) on the problem as well as Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s staff

- EOP’s Office of Administration (OA) did independent analysis to determine extent of missing email problem – found hundreds of days of email missing between March 2003 and October 2005, for a rough total estimate of five million missing emails

- White House Counsel was briefed on this and given plan of action to recover missing emails

- White House never implemented plan to recover missing emails (even in face of preservation order from DOJ)

- White House has still not put effective email archiving system in place, even though it knows current system is not effective and has led to at least five million missing emails

Bush administration is still not telling the truth:

- Dana Perino has said problem with EOP server occurred when White House switched from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook – this is untrue; emails are missing for a 2½ year period starting in March 2003 and ending in October 2005

- Dana Perino has said no intentional loss of any document – but by October 2005, White House knew system wasn’t working and knowingly and willfully refused to implement plan to recover five million emails missing from EOP server, instead leaving in place a system that does not work

- Dana Perino has said system set up to comply with Presidential Records Act by automatically preserving EOP emails – but White House is using system that doesn’t effectively preserve email and that doesn’t comply with archiving standards (see 36 C.F.R. Part 1234 – guidance for preserving email under Federal Records Act) and doesn’t work (e.g. five million missing emails)

“Buying the War”

Record of Iraq War Lies to Air April 25 on PBS

Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq war to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. Watch PBS from 9:00 to 10:30 PM on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes will actually save you time because you'll never watch television news again - not even on PBS, which comes in for its own share of criticism.

While a great many pundits, not to mention presidents, look remarkably stupid or dishonest in the four-year-old clips included in "Buying the War," it's hard to take any spiteful pleasure in holding them to account, and not just because the killing and dying they facilitated is ongoing, but also because of what this video reveals about the mindset of members of the DC media.

It's great to see an American media outlet tell this story so well, but it leads one to ask: When will Congress tell it? While the Democrats were in the minority, they clamored for hearings and investigations, they pushed Resolutions of Inquiry into the White House Iraq Group and the Downing Street Minutes. Now in the majority, they've gone largely silent. The chief exception is the House Judiciary Committee's effort to question Condoleezza Rice…about the forged Niger documents.

But what comes out of watching this show is a powerful realization that no investigation is needed by Congress, just as no hidden information was needed for the media to get the story right in the first place. The claims that the White House made were not honest mistakes. But neither were they deceptions. They were transparent and laughably absurd falsehoods. And they were high crimes and misdemeanors.

The program opens with video of President Bush saying "Iraq is part of a war on terror. It's a country that trains terrorists. It's a country that can arm terrorists. Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country."

Was that believable or did the media play along? The next shot is of a press conference at which Bush announces that he has a script telling him which reporters to call on and in what order. Yet the reporters play along, raising their hands after each comment, pretending that they might be called on despite the script.

Video shows Richard Perle claiming that Saddam Hussein worked with al Qaeda and that Iraqis would greet American occupiers as liberators. Here are the Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, William Safire from The New York Times, Charles Krauthammer and Jim Hoagland from The Washington Post, all demanding an overthrow of Iraq's government. George Will is seen saying that Hussein "has anthrax, he loves biological weapons, he has terrorist training camps, including 747s to practice on."

But was that even plausible? Bob Simon of "60 Minutes" tells Moyers he wasn't buying it. He says he saw the idea of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda as an absurdity: "Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn't believe it for an instant."

Knight Ridder Bureau Chief John Walcott didn't buy it either. He assigned Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay to do the reporting and they found the Bush claims to be quite apparently false. For example, when the Iraqi National Congress (INC) fed The New York Times's Judith Miller a story through an Iraqi defector claiming that Hussein had chemical and biological weapons labs under his house, Landay noticed that the source was a Kurd, making it very unlikely he would have learned such secrets. But Landay also noticed that it was absurd to imagine someone putting a biological weapons lab under his house.

But absurd announcements were the order of the day. A video clip shows a Fox anchor saying, "A former top Iraqi nuclear scientist tells Congress Iraq could build three nuclear bombs by 2005." And the most fantastic stories of all were fed to David Rose at Vanity Fair Magazine. We see a clip of him saying, "The last training exercise was to blow up a full-size mock-up of a US destroyer in a lake in central Iraq."

Forged documents from Niger could not have gotten noticed in this stew of lies. Had there been some real documents honestly showing something, that might have stood out and caught more eyes. Walcott describes the way the INC would feed the same information to the vice president and secretary of defense that it fed to a reporter, and the reporter would then get the claims confirmed by calling the White House or the Pentagon. Landay adds: "And let's not forget how close these people were to this administration, which raises the question, was there coordination? I can't tell you that there was, but it sure looked like it."

Simon…tells Moyers that when the White House claimed a 9/11 hijacker had met with a representative of the Iraqi government in Prague, "60 Minutes" was easily able to make a few calls and find out that there was no evidence for the claim. "If we had combed Prague," he says, "and found out that there was absolutely no evidence for a meeting between Mohammad Atta and the Iraqi intelligence figure…if we knew that, you had to figure the administration knew it. And yet they were selling the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam."

Moyers questions a number of people about their awful work, including Dan Rather, Peter Beinart and then Chairman and CEO of CNN Walter Isaacson. And he questions Simon, who soft-pedaled the story and avoided reporting that there was no evidence.

Landay at Knight Ridder did report the facts when it counted, but not enough people paid attention. He tells Moyers that all he had to do was read the UN weapons inspectors' reports online to know that the White House was lying to us. When Cheney said that Hussein was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, Landay knew he was lying: "You need tens of thousands of machines called 'centrifuges' to produce highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. You've got to house those in a fairly big place, and you've got to provide a huge amount of power to this facility."

Simon says he knew the claims about aluminum tubes were false because "60 Minutes" called up some scientists and researchers and asked them. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post says that skeptical stories did not get placed on the front page because they were not "definitive."

Moyers's wonderful movie is marred by a single line - the next to the last sentence - in which he says, "The number of Iraqis killed, over 35,000 last year alone, is hard to pin down." A far more accurate figure could have been found very easily.

Cannot wait to see this. And it's about goddamn time somebody in the...well, close to the mainstream media finally is calling them all out on it. Yes, we have greedy, elitist thugs - thoroughly corrupt and without the slightest bit of conscience (Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz and, probably least of all, Bush) - using propoganda Hitler would have envied to create this ongoing, racist, corporate-funded massacre. But if there's any group responsible for that agenda to proceed unchallenged, it's the American media. They have collectively forgotten their calling, if they ever had one. And they deserve as much of the blame as those dickheads in Washington. Folks like Bill Moyers are our only hope of ever regaining and independent, free press. Go, Big Bill...!

oops…

That’s what usually causes the shit to hit the fan with regard to political crimes…when financial irregularities start to become impossible to cover up. The only thing I keep wondering is what took so fucking long…?

Selected highlights for your entertainment…

A damning report issued last month by the nonpartisan research arm of Congress says the Department of Defense continues to overstate its financial needs, by tens of billions of dollars, to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The agency also casts serious doubt on President Bush's statements that money to fund the war will dry up by the end of the month if his budgetary demands are not immediately met.

The 45-page report, "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11," prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service, warned lawmakers that before they release additional funds to the Pentagon for the Iraq war, they should first demand that Defense Department officials provide an accurate accounting of how the money is being spent.

Since 2001, the Pentagon has grossly mismanaged the $510 billion spent thus far on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; has used money earmarked for equipment upgrades to finance fighting on the battlefield, and has refused to provide Congress with a transparent accounting of the money it has spent and intends to spend, according to the CRS report.

…Exacerbating the issue is the fact that the Department of Defense "has periodically revised the figures shown for each operation in previous years, suggesting questions about the validity of its figures," the report says, adding that some of the department's supplemental requests for 2007 include "$2 billion from some unknown source."

Last July, David Walker, comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Affairs. He told lawmakers that a lack of actual costs, supporting documentation and routine reporting problems by the Pentagon with regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "make it difficult to reliably know what the war is costing, to determine how appropriated funds are being spent, and to use historical data to predict future trends."

But the Defense Department "has not been willing to provide Congress" with the data it uses to predict its operating costs on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. As such, Congressional researchers have recommended in their report that Congress ask the Department of Defense Inspector General to audit the Pentagon in order to resolve these various gaps and discrepancies in cost data related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The report recommends that Congress should consider taking drastic measures to rein in the administration's out-of-control spending and draw on history for guidance.

…Furthermore, before agreeing to provide the Pentagon with additional funds for Iraq, lawmakers should insist that the Defense Department provide a detailed financial report on the reasons its costs for funding the war have more than doubled from last year.

…Documents turned over to Congress by the Defense Department to justify its financial needs in Iraq and the so-called global war on terror "have been sparse," and government agencies, including the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office, "have all found various discrepancies in DOD figures - including understating budget authority and obligations, mismatches between [budget authority] and obligations data, double-counting of some obligations, questionable figures, and a lack of information about basic factors that affect costs such as troop strength ..."

…The Department of Defense "has provided little rationale or explanation for its requirements or change in requirements for replacing war-worn equipment or extensive upgrades. In some cases, requirements do not appear to be strictly related to war needs," the report says.

Congressional researchers have warned Congress that the Defense Department's $1.9 billion supplemental request for "military construction" in its 2007 budget is twice as much as what it received in 2005 and may be controversial if approved by lawmakers, because it would indicate an "intent to set up permanent bases in Iraq and ... not clearly an emergency. "

To read the full story, click on this below…
Congressional Report: Gross Mismanagement of Iraq Funds

there goes my hero...

Amanda has Keith Olbermann…I have Bill Moyers. God, how great would it be if Moyers was our president…?

Excerpts from A Time for Anger, a Call to Action (a speech given by Bill Moyers on February 7, 2007 at Occidental College in Los Angeles)

I have come across the continent to talk to you about two subjects close to my heart. I care about them as a journalist, a citizen and a grandfather who looks at the pictures next to my computer of my five young grandchildren who do not have a vote, a lobbyist in Washington, or the means to contribute to a presidential candidate. If I don't act in their behalf, who will?

One of my obsessions is democracy, and there is no campus in the country more attuned than Occidental to what it will take to save democracy. Because of your record of activism for social justice, I know we agree that democracy is more than what we were taught in high school civics - more than the two-party system, the checks-and-balances, the debate over whether the Electoral College is a good idea. Those are important matters that warrant our attention, but democracy involves something more fundamental. I want to talk about what democracy bestows on us, the revolutionary idea that democracy is not just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency. "I believe in democracy because it releases the energies of every human being" - those are the words of our 28th president, Woodrow Wilson.

I've been spending time with Woodrow Wilson and others of his era because my colleagues and I are producing a documentary series on the momentous struggles that gripped America a century or so years ago at the birth of modern politics. Woodrow Wilson clearly understood the nature of power. In his now-forgotten political testament called The New Freedom, Wilson described his reformism in plain English no one could fail to understand: "The laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the week." He wrote: "Don't deceive yourselves for a moment as to the power of great interests which now dominate our development... There are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States. They are going to own it if they can." And he warned: "There is no salvation in the pitiful condescensions of industrial masters... prosperity guaranteed by trustees has no prospect of endurance."

Now Wilson took his stand at the center of power - the presidency itself - and from his stand came progressive income taxation, the federal estate tax, tariff reform, the challenge to great monopolies and trusts, and, most important, a resolute spirit "to deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts."

How we need that spirit today! When Woodrow Wilson spoke of democracy releasing the energies of every human being, he was declaring that we cannot leave our destiny to politicians, elites, and experts; either we take democracy into our own hands, or others will take democracy from us.

We do not have much time. Our political system is melting down…failing to deal with basic realities. Despite Thomas Jefferson's counsel that we would need a revolution every 25 years to enable our governance to serve new generations, our structure - practically deified for 225 years - has essentially stayed the same while science and technology have raced ahead. A young writer I know, named Jan Frel, one of the most thoughtful practitioners of the emerging world of Web journalism, wrote me the other day to say: "We've gone way past ourselves. I see the unfathomable numbers in the national debt and deficit, and the way that the Federal government was physically unable to respond to Hurricane Katrina. I look at Iraq; where 50% of the question is how to get out, and the other 50% is how did so few people have the power to start the invasion in the first place. If the Republic were functioning, they would have never had that power."

Yet the inertia of the political process seems virtually unstoppable. Frel reminds me that the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee can shepherd a $2.8 trillion dollar budget through the Senate and then admit: "It's hard to understand what a trillion is. I don't know what it is." Is it fair to expect anyone to understand what a trillion is, my young friend asks, or how to behave with it in any democratic fashion?" He goes on: "But the political system and culture are forcing 535 members of Congress and a President who are often thousands of miles away from their 300 million constituents to do so. It is frightening to watch the American media culture from progressive to hard right being totally sold on the idea of one President for 300 million people, as though the Presidency is still fit to human scale. I'm at a point where the idea of a political savior in the guise of a Presidential candidate or congressional majority sounds downright scary, and at the same time, with very few exceptions, the writers and journalists across the slate are completely sold on it."

Because our system feeds on campaign contributions, the powerful and the privileged shape it to their will. Only 12% of American households had incomes over $100,000 in 2000, but they made up 95% of the substantial donors to campaigns and have been the big winners in Washington ever since.

…The oldest story in America (is) the struggle to determine whether "We, the People" is a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality - one nation, indivisible - or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.

For years now a small fraction of American households have been garnering a larger and larger concentration of wealth and income, while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented power over who wins and who loses. Inequality in America is greater than it's been in 50 years. In 1960 the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30 fold. Today it's more than 75 fold.

Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society were benefiting proportionally. But that is not the case. Throughout our industrial history incomes grew at 30% to 50% or more every quarter, and in the quarter century after WWII, gains reached more than 100% for all income categories. Since the late 1970s, only the top 1% of households increased their income by 100%.

Once upon a time…the American ideal of classless society was one in which all children have roughly equal chance of success regardless of the economic status of the family into which they were born. That's changing fast. The Economist Jeffrey Madrick writes that just a couple of decades ago, only 20% of one's future income was determined by the income of one's father. New research suggests that today 60% of a son's income is determined by the level of his father's income. In other words, children no longer have a roughly equal chance of success regardless of the economic status of the family into which they are born. Their chances of success are greatly improved if they are born on third base and their father has been tipping the umpire.

"Things have reached such a state of affairs," the journalist George Orwell once wrote, "that the first duty of every intelligent person is to pay attention to the obvious." The editors of The Economist have done just that. The pro-business magazine considered by many to be the most influential defender of capitalism on the newsstand, produced a sobering analysis of what is happening to the old notion that any American child can get to the top. A growing body of evidence - some of it I have already cited - led the editors to conclude that with "income inequality growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age and social mobility falling behind, the United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society." The editors point to an "education system increasingly stratified by social class" in which poor children "attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries" and great universities that are "increasingly reinforcing rather than reducing these educational inequalities." They conclude that America's great companies have made it harder than ever "for people to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchies by dint of hard work and self-improvement."

It is eerie to read assessments like that and then read the anthropologist Jared Diamond's book, ‘Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail.’ He describes an America society in which elites cocoon themselves "in gated communities, guarded by private security guards, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools." Gradually, they lose the motivation "to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security, and public schools." Any society contains a built-in blueprint for failure, warns Jared Diamond, if elites insulate themselves from the consequences of their own actions.

[acs note: This just in…Ford CEO Paid $39.1 Million for Four Months]

This is a marked turn of events for a country whose mythology embraces "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as part of our creed. America was not supposed to be a country of "winner take all." Through our system of checks and balances we were going to maintain a healthy equilibrium in how power works - and for whom. Because equitable access to public resources is the lifeblood of any democracy, we made primary schooling free to all. Because everyone deserves a second chance, debtors, especially the relatively poor, were protected by state laws against their rich creditors. Government encouraged Americans to own their own piece of land, and even supported squatters' rights. In my time, the hope of equal opportunity became reality for millions of us. Although my parents were knocked down and almost out by the Great Depression, and were poor all their lives, my brother and I went to good public schools. The GI Bill made it possible for him to go to college. When I bought my first car with a loan of $450 I drove to a public school on a public highway and stopped to rest in a public park. America as a shared project was becoming the engine of our national experience.

Not now. Beginning a quarter of a century ago a movement of corporate, political, and religious fundamentalists gained ascendancy over politics and made inequality their goal. They launched a crusade to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have held private power. And they had the money to back up their ambition.

Let me read you something:

‘When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it is ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price and most of them never see it coming. This is what happens if you don't contribute to their campaigns or spend generously on lobbying. You pick up a disproportionate share of America's tax bill. You pay higher prices for a broad range of products from peanuts to prescriptions. You pay taxes that others in a similar situation have been excused from paying. You're compelled to abide by laws while others are granted immunity from them. You must pay debts that you incur while others do not. You're barred from writing off on your tax returns some of the money spent on necessities while others deduct the cost of their entertainment. You must run your business by one set of rules, while the government creates another set for your competitors. In contrast, the fortunate few who contribute to the right politicians and hire the right lobbyists enjoy all the benefits of their special status. Make a bad business deal; the government bails them out. If they want to hire workers at below market wages, the government provides the means to do so. If they want more time to pay their debts, the government gives them an extension. If they want immunity from certain laws, the government gives it. If they want to ignore rules their competition must comply with, the government gives its approval. If they want to kill legislation that is intended for the public, it gets killed.’

I'm not quoting from Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book. I'm quoting Time Magazine. From the heart of America's media establishment comes the judgment that America now has ‘government for the few at the expense of the many.’

We are talking about nothing less than a class war declared a generation ago, in a powerful polemic by the wealthy right-winger, William Simon, who had been Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury. In it he declared that "funds generated by business... must rush by the multimillions" to conservative causes. The trumpet was sounded for the financial and business class to take back the power and privileges they had lost as a result of the Great Depression and the New Deal. They got the message and were soon waging a well-orchestrated, lavishly-financed movement. Business Week put it bluntly: "Some people will obviously have to do with less... .It will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more." The long-range strategy was to cut workforces and their wages, scour the globe in search of cheap labor, trash the social contract and the safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control, deny ordinary citizens the power to sue rich corporations for malfeasance and malpractice, and eliminate the ability of government to restrain what editorialists for the Wall Street Journal admiringly call "the animal spirits of business."

Looking backwards, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. What has been happening to working people is not the result of Adam Smith's invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious literalism opposed to any civil and human right that threaten its paternalism, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us.

To create the intellectual framework for this revolution in public policy, they funded conservative think tanks that churned out study after study advocating their agenda.

To put muscle behind these ideas, they created a formidable political machine. One of the few journalists to cover the issues of class, Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post, reported that "During the 1970s, business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperate action in the legislative area." Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. And they built alliances with the religious right - Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition - who gleefully contrived a cultural holy war that became a smokescreen behind which the economic assault on the middle and working classes would occur.

From land, water, and other resources, to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, a broad range of America's public resources have been undergoing a powerful shift toward elite control, contributing substantially to those economic pressures on ordinary Americans that "deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation and civic life."

What's to be done?

The only answer to organized money is organized people.

In a real democracy, ordinary people at every level hold their elected officials accountable for the big decisions, about whether or not to go to war and put young men and women in harm's way, about the pollution of the environment, global warming, and the health and safety of our workplaces, our communities, our food and our air and our water, the quality of our public schools, and the distribution of economic resources. It's the spirit of fighting back throughout American history that brought an end to sweatshops, won the eight-hour working day and a minimum wage, delivered suffrage to women and blacks from slavery, inspired the Gay Rights movement, the consumer and environmental movements, and more recently stopped Congress from enacting repressive legislation against immigrants.

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass said that "if there is no struggle, there is no progress." Those who profess freedom, yet fail to act - they are "men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning, they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."

For most of our history this country's religious discourse was dominated by white male Protestants of a culturally conservative European heritage - people like me. Dissenting voices of America, alternative visions of faith, or race, of women, rarely reached the mainstream. The cartoonist Jeff McNally summed it up with two weirdoes talking in a California diner. One weirdo says to the other. "Have you ever delved into the mysteries of Eastern Religion?" And the second weirdo answers: "Yes, I was once a Methodist in Philadelphia." Once upon a time that was about the extent of our exposure to the varieties of Religious experience. No longer. Our nation is being re-created right before our eyes, with mosques and Hindu Temples, Sikh communities and Buddhist retreat centers. And we all have so much to teach each other. Buddhists can teach us about the delight of contemplation and 'the infinite within.' From Muslims we can learn about the nature of surrender; from Jews, the power of the prophetic conscience; from Hindus, the "realms of gold" hidden in the depths of our hearts," from Confucians the empathy necessary to sustain the fragile web of civilization. Nothing I take from these traditions has come at the expense of the Christian story. I respect that story - my story ?even more for having come to see that all the great religious grapple with things that matter, although each may come out at a different place; that each arises from within and experiences a lived human experience; and each and every one of them offers a unique insight into human nature. I reject the notion that faith is acquired in the same way one chooses a meal in a cafeteria, but I confess there is something liberating about no longer being quite so deaf to what others have to report from their experience.

Over the past few years as we witnessed the growing concentration of wealth and privilege in our country, prophetic religion lost its voice, drowned out by the corporate, political, and religious right who hijacked Jesus.

That's right: They hijacked Jesus. The very Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed, "The Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor" - this Jesus, hijacked by a philosophy of greed. The very Jesus who fed 5000 hungry people - and not just those in the skyboxes; the very Jesus who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast; who raised the status of women and treated even the hated tax collector as a citizen of the Kingdom. The indignant Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple - this Jesus was hijacked and turned from a friend of the dispossessed into a guardian of privilege, the ally of oil barons, banking tycoons, media moguls and weapons builders.

To you students at Occidental, let me say: I have been a journalist too long to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. I believe the only way to be in the world is to see it as it really is and then to take it on despite the frightening things you see. The Italian philosopher Gramschi spoke of the "the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will." With this philosophy your generation can bring about the Third American Revolution. The first won independence from the Crown. The second won equal rights for women and for the sons and daughters of slavery. This third - the revolution of the 21st Century - will bring about a democracy that leaves no one out. The simple truth is we cannot build a political society or a nation across the vast divides that mark our country today. We must bridge that divide and make society whole, sharing the fruits of freedom and prosperity with the least among us. I have crossed the continent to tell you the Dream is not done, the work is not over, and your time has come to take it on.

hazardous greed - the neocon agenda strikes again

Taken straight from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's website...

In July of 1970, the White House and Congress worked together to establish the EPA in response to the growing public demand for cleaner water, air and land. Prior to the establishment of the EPA, the federal government was not structured to make a coordinated attack on the pollutants that harm human health and degrade the environment. The EPA was assigned the daunting task of repairing the damage already done to the natural environment and to establish new criteria to guide Americans in making a cleaner environment a reality.

The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and the environment. Since 1970, EPA has been working for a cleaner, healthier environment for the American people.

The Agency supports environmental education projects that enhance the public's awareness, knowledge, and skills to make informed decisions that affect environmental quality.

Uh-huh. Now let's compare this to a recent proposal unveiled by our esteemed and respected protectors of the environment...

More than a half-million tons of hazardous waste annually could escape federal environmental regulations under a new proposal from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

...The deregulations would...no longer require companies to send hazardous materials to a permitted recycler. Instead, EPA is proposing that waste producers make 'reasonable efforts' to determine that off-site recyclers are 'legitimately' recycling the hazardous materials.

Somebody please argue with me that the only reason this is being proposed is not at the behest of jerkwad corporations trying to increase their profits by any means possible...and that the jerkwads in question don't have "our" government in their pockets. Quite simply, there is no other conceivable motive for this kind of proposal. As with everything else the neocons push for, greed is the sole catalyst. I hope like hell someone in congress has the stones to challenge this proposal in the most straightforward and obvious way - by comparing it to the EPA's own mission statements. But I'm not holding my breath.

So much for the "P" in EPA. In the meantime, you can read the entire article here...

EPA Moves to Deregulate Hazardous Waste

“You’re a hyperlink!”

…as my good friend Elena (who, along with husband Robert are the funniest couple I’ve ever known) told me. I am a hyperlink, therefore I am…? Prolly not.

Anyway, this is a follow-up post to the cockfighting/Amazon brouhaha on the Dallas Observer’s Unfair Park blog about the new law in New Mexico…

One Less Cock to Fight

acs 1, brainless chickenshit conservative 0

…in my humble estimation, of course. And many, many thanks are owed to my debating partner in crime, The Amazing Bill, who is infinitely more patient and polite than I obviously am. Bill rocks.

Anyway, here are all the comments on the ACLU / Hutto prison article on Unfair Park. To paraphrase the dumbass in question, calling someone a moron is probably the last resort put forth by someone that has no argument.

(And, yes, I know “dumbass” is the equivalent. But he started it. Or ended it, as the case may be…)

“They treat us like we’re nothing”
17 Comments

Whatever you think about illegal immigration, you understand that the people we are discussing here are coming here fleeing persecution? We are then jailing some of them, some of whom are children, right? How do I feel about that as an American, as a Christian? Well, I’m appalled. It reflects badly on our country and as us as citizens that we just look away. Shame on us. Shame.

1) Comment by bill h — March 6, 2007 @ 3:25 pm


…Which is why it’s so good that you do what you do, Bill. You kick ass. Sez me.

By the way, does anyone happen to know who runs the facility in question? Is it a private company by chance…?

2) Comment by Danny — March 6, 2007 @ 3:56 pm


According to the ACLU
“Pursuant to a contract between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, Inc. (CCA), Hutto is a converted maximum-security prison that bills itself as a “Family Residential Facility.”
Thanks for the kind word Danny.

3) Comment by bill h — March 6, 2007 @ 4:21 pm


Thanks, Bill. You just defined where the problem lies, at least to my mind…

Somebody PLEASE tell me why we’re allowing our government to source out industries with moral (at the very least) obligations - but no legal regulations, of course - to uphold international (or American) laws regarding human rights, military intelligence, homeland security, the Geneva Conventions, immigration laws, etc., to private corporations. When you do, this is the kind of shit that happens.

Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay, the tens of thousands of contract employees running around Iraq and Afghanistan with automatic weapons and absolute no oversight whatsoever…All this story is is what happens when unregulated privitization happens on U.S. soil. I really, sincerely hope Amnesty International is paying attention to this story also. Not that the current administration gives a shit what those folks think…

This completely sickens me.

4) Comment by Danny — March 6, 2007 @ 5:26 pm


Now I know why this country is in trouble. It’s reporters that distort the facts and the ACLU that perpetuates them.

First these people chose to bring these children to this country, they are not American citizens. The parents are resisting voluntary deportations and this facility houses them in the interim approximately 30 to 60 days at most. Do you really think they would return for their hearing? Duh…

This was an effort to keep the families together while their status was determined. The alternative is to separate into segregated facilities or go back to “Catch and Release”.

This facility is a converted minimum custody prison, but it is modern and clean. No one is abused.

If you believe everything the Observer and ACLU reports you have a real problem with reality. Next time instead of tugging at the heart strings, tug at the truth.

5) Comment by Kestrel — March 7, 2007 @ 7:48 am


Kestrel, (beautiful name, lovely falcon, often seen around town.)

It’s important to bear in mind that some of these people are Asylum applicants. They are resisting deportation, because they are claiming persecution in their country of origin. Asylum applicants are often not detained and typically do return for their hearings. I’ve personally seen that many many times.

6) Comment by bill h — March 7, 2007 @ 8:24 am


For years we had a wonderful catch and release policy on our southern border. We’ll release you just promise to show up for your hearing. How many showed up for their hearing not many. It’s time to get tough on illegal immigration, as far as I’m concerned they can all sit in detention pending their hearings

7) Comment by Tom — March 7, 2007 @ 10:56 am


Billy h,

Come now, Canada, Lithuania, Honduras, maybe Somalia if they are christian and tell everyone they love Americans, but the fact is most will not seek political asylum until they are detained for immigration violations.

The nonsense in the article about Medical care. They have a small clinic on site, although not staffed 24/7 medical care is available if needed.

They have outdoor play grounds, indoor Gym, and TV. Clothing is provided if needed plus a healthy diet, really shameful No Butler or Spa.

Billy, maybe you would be willing to open your home to these people, It’s possible they are security threats. You know Hezbollah trains their suicide bombers very young. If you are willing to expose my family to a possible threat, shouldn’t yours face the same threat.

8) Comment by Kestrel — March 7, 2007 @ 2:54 pm


I’m making a very narrow point. I’m addressing my comments primarily about Asylum seekers.

The families and children of Asylum seekers should not, in my opinion be jailed. The following report from the Washington Post discusses one of the people incarcerated.

Kestrel, I have known alot of Asylum seekers, all of whom were free, waiting on Court Dates. they could have disappeared and did not, showing up for court dates, because they believe in our system of justice. Some, no all, of them entered the country illegally, because it was virtually impossible for them to enter legally. Somalis in particular come from a country of no infrastructure. Some of them had been tortured, jailed because of their pro-democracy activities, or for being Christian. Many of them turned themselves in to the authorities, as did some of these people. Yes, I realize that some people abuse the system. Yes, I realize that there are security risks. I am expressing my own opinion that it is a risk, I think we should take.

“The report recommended that ICE parole asylum-seekers while they await the outcome of their hearings. It also said that immigrant families not eligible for parole should be released to special shelters or other homelike settings run by nonprofit groups and be required to participate in electronic monitoring or an intensive supervision program that would use a combination of electronic ankle bracelets, home visits and telephone reporting.

The 72-page report also criticized the educational services for children; the food service and rushed feeding times for children; the health care, especially for vulnerable children and pregnant women; the therapeutic mental health care as insufficient or culturally inappropriate; and the recreation time as inadequate for children. The review said that families were being held for months in Hutto and for years in the case of the longer-established Berks facility.

The report also cited inappropriate disciplinary practices used against adults and children, including threats of separation, verbal abuse and withholding recreation or using temperature control, particularly extremely cold conditions, as punishment.

Hosen, who traveled with Mustafa on an inner tube across the Rio Grande from Mexico and insisted that a stranger in Texas call the Border Patrol so she could surrender to authorities, lived in Hutto from June 30 to Jan. 30.

Granted political asylum and now living temporarily in a home for immigrant women and children in Austin, Hosen said that she and other parents in Hutto were threatened regularly with separation from their children for minor infractions such as youngsters running inside the prison. She lost 30 pounds while detained, and her son lost weight and suffered from diarrhea. Concerned about her son’s health, Hosen asked for a multivitamin for him but was denied the request, she said.”

billy

9) Comment by bill h — March 7, 2007 @ 3:49 pm


What you are talking about is spending more Tax dollars on people that shouldn’t be here. If someone catered to my every whim I wouldn’t want to leave either.

The facility in Taylor is for temporary detention for hearings. Most have hearings within 45 days. If they are there longer it’s because they appeal the decision of the magistrate. So, if they are held for long periods it’s because they chose to stay. No They don’t cook Anjara, Sopa De Mondongo or Chicken Taquitos. There is playground equipment and soccer balls. Yes, some toys too. Again, They can leave at any time they volunteer to self deport. The Hilton it’s not Motel 8 maybe.

I don’t have the luxury to rely on journalist for perceived truths, they have an agenda the majority of the time. I do believe what I’ve seen and experienced myself. If you are relying on a report from the ACLU, you need to trash it and go see for yourself. If it were up to the ACLU we would have already lost this country to anarchism.

If we don’t protect our sovereignty as a country we won’t have a country.

10) Comment by Kestrel — March 7, 2007 @ 5:11 pm


I understand your frustration, but the issue is whether our country will continue to provide sanctuary for refugees. I think we should. You say,”What you are talking about is spending more Tax dollars on people that shouldn’t be here.” It is not true that people coming here fleeing persecution, shouldn’t be here.

I don’t think it’s coddling, to provide a non- custodial place for people to live, as they pursue their legal rights to apply for asylum. Our Country has always welcomed people fleeing persecution. For goodness sake, that’s who the Pilgrims were.

You seem to have first hand knowledge of the facility, that I don’t have. I haven’t seen it, and maybe you have. My point is that it is custodial, a prison, even a nice one, is not a place for kids and families, who are seeking refuge here. You and I will just have to agree to disagree as to what should happen while they wait for their day in court

Okay, on to something else,

blessings

billy

11) Comment by bill h — March 7, 2007 @ 7:36 pm


Most refugees of political persecution flee to adjoining countries. Somalia refugees usually go across the border to Ethiopia, much safer than trying for the United States, especially after the Battle of Ras Kamboni.

Well, anyway Homeland Security is a vital interest of mine and these are dangerous times. Compassion with weighted caution must be exercised to keep us safe.

Enjoyed the discussion.

God Bless,

KESTREL

12) Comment by Kestrel — March 7, 2007 @ 10:32 pm


I can’t decide which makes me feel more ill…the story itself or the flat-out racist, hateful and closed-minded comments from Kestrel. Kes, if your condescension in general and your indifference and hostility toward persons not lucky enough to be born in the U.S. is a reflection of ANY measurable portion of American society, then I am truly embarrassed to share this soil with you.

And I know you were addressing Bill’s comments, but the original point I was trying to make is that most of this can be traced directly to the privatization of the most sensitive and crucial industries. Our government is so consumed with making obscenely rich corporations even richer by “awarding” them the operations of functions and institutions that SHOULD BE overseen by the federal government. Human rights, military intelligence and operations, prison systems, veterans’ health care - most of which should have to uphold international laws and regulations (if not basic common sense and decency) - are all sold to the highest bidder. And usually those bidders have direct ties to the folks “awarding” the jobs. Which is very convenient, of course.

As an example (and speaking of veterans’ health care), here’s a blurb from an email I received today from Americans United for Change. Yes, I’m sure you’ll dismiss it the way you have any other information that doesn’t agree with your narrow views, but at some point doesn’t the information begin to gel into something resembling an accurate snapshot of what is going on? Or is it simply not true because you say it isn’t…?

=============

What do you get when you mix Halliburton and health care? Walter Reed.

The stories of abysmal living conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center are bad enough. But there’s more to the story.

To cut costs, the support services and facilities management at Walter Reed were outsourced to a company called IAP — which is run by a former Halliburton official and whose board consists of people like Dan Quayle. If IAP sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s the same contractor that was asked to deliver relief services to Katrina victims but came up short.

The lack of responsibility is not a new development, nor is it an isolated incident. Stories similar to Walter Reed have cropped up all across the country, and it’s important that people know the truth behind what really happened.

The privatization of support services has proven grossly ineffective and lacks the kind of accountability that our government is founded upon. In the case of Walter Reed, it drove out skilled doctors, psychologists, and caseworkers in favor of penny-pinching government contractors.

First it was Iraq, then Katrina, and now this. The disturbing stories from Walter Reed Medical Center have unleashed huge amounts of criticism, name-calling, and finger-pointing — but little accountability. This nickel-and-dimed approach to serving those in need is par for the course in the Bush Administration.

Americans United for Change
www.americansunitedforchange.org

13) Comment by Danny — March 8, 2007 @ 10:59 am


Danny,

Racism is an argument put forth by someone that has no argument. Anyway, enforcing laws are not racist, the law is blind. I think a dose of truth might have that sickening effect on you. I’ll try not to give it to you in such a large dose.

You need not be embarrassed, you can leave the cover of the blanket of freedom; I have provided for you and cuddle close to the likes of Hugo Chavez. People like yourself makes grandiose comments on the human condition without the true experience or knowledge of it.

As for Walter Reed the civilians fall under military control and supervision, this was an absolute failure of those in command. Our warriors deserve the best and nothing less.

If you had been paying attention my argument with Billy was, being informed and not trusting everything the media and ACLU spoon feeds you. But, you wanted to jump in with personal attacks of racism. So, don’t be surprised at my response. I deal with the real world were ever it might take me, I would suggest you do the same.

14) Comment by Kestrel — March 8, 2007 @ 7:42 pm


No, “racism” is an argument put forth in response to actions or attitudes that are racist. For example, presumptuous comments like, “They don’t cook Anjara, Sopa De Mondongo or Chicken Taquitos…” One could also argue that immediately accusing someone you don’t agree with of being a commie pinko (”the likes of Hugo Chavez”) is a pretty cheap, meaningless shot. Not to mention the fact that most people stopped doing that sort of thing at least twenty years ago. Which, perhaps not coincidentally, seems to be where your ideals seem most comfortable. But if you want to remove talk of racism and Hugo Chavez from the argument, that’s certainly preferable to me.

This “truth” to which you refer…Do you have anything more specific you’d like to provide? Personally, I would never make the assumption that any of my beliefs are “truth”…merely what I believe to be true. You can certainly change my perspective by providing a bit more information. For someone to refer to anything they’re saying as “truth” is a pretty clear indication that they’ve hung the “do not disturb” sign outside the door to their mind a long time ago. Unlike the impression I get of you, I’ll gladly change my opinion when I have evidence that compels me to do so.

You’re correct in stating the law is blind. As well it should be. Which makes it all the more imperative that we as people are not. We create the laws to govern ourselves, but we also change or overturn them when we feel the moral justification to do so. No laws exist in perpetuity. Unfortunately, a sad example of this is probably your leader Dubya and his disregard for habeas corpus. We’re seeing the ugly results of our current administration’s intentional disregard for human rights, international law, and basic human dignity…all over the world – or at least in places where we can make some money – and back here at home.

You’re also absolutely correct with regard to my tendency to make grandiose comments (in fact, I think I just did it again…oops). I’ll give you that. But I do so in the hopes that, if someone thinks I’m full of shit, they can not only tell me so, but they can also tell me WHY I’m full of shit. I’ve there’s something going on that I don’t know about (and I’m not completely naïve…I know there always is), by all means, please…fill me the fuck in. I’m here to learn, not preach. Even if I do occasionally fall into the trap of coming off as preachy…

You keep telling people to be informed, to not believe everything “the media and ACLU” tells us. I couldn’t agree more. Is the basis for your assumption that Bill and I are doing so simply the fact that we don’t agree with you? What information have you read that has allowed you to form the “truth” you so proudly possess? And what exactly is the “true experience or knowledge” you keep referring to? Please…enlighten us.

And stop fucking calling him “Billy.” His name is Bill, he’s a good man and he deserves to be spoken to with more respect than you seem willing to give anyone else.

15) Comment by Danny — March 9, 2007 @ 1:31 pm


You haven’t a clue you moron.

16) Comment by Kestrel — March 9, 2007 @ 10:22 pm


I think you just told us everything we need to know about you and your “truth”…whoever you are. Nicely done.

17) Comment by Danny — March 12, 2007 @ 9:20 am

fuckety fuck fuck...

…as my friend, Ginger would say.

I hatehateHATE Daylight Saving Time. And this year we get an extra month of the shit…starting three weeks early, for Chrissakes. I think I just last week managed to get all my clocks changed over to Standard Time, and now I have to go through it all over again this coming weekend.

An extra hour of daylight in Texas is no fun. Whatsoever.

Daylight Saving Time Is Arriving Early (and Staying Longer)


And then there’s this…

Rocker denies receiving HGH prescription

Great. He goes to the World Series and spends the bulk of his career with the Braves, but now he’s remembered for his brief stint with the Rangers. John Hart continues to be a total douchebag and he doesn’t even work here anymore…

Fuckers. Just a general “fuckers” directed toward my enemies for the day.