Quoted in The Art of Mental Warfare
"We are like people born in a cage and unable to visualize any world beyond our familiar bars of prejudice and superstition. That opinion the few create in order to control the many has seen to it that we are kept in permanent ignorance of our actual estate."
- Gore Vidal, The Great Unmentionable, Harvard lecture
Showing posts with label two sides of the same coin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label two sides of the same coin. Show all posts
Monday, November 19, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
September 11, time to buy new school clothes and books and roll out a new campaign to sell the same old product
This is the day that commemorates the venality and criminality of politicians and religious leaders, made manifest.
Wake up. Six years later, wake up.
Or, better yet, lighten up, America.
Dwelling on your injuries make you sound all whiny and maudlin, and you ruin the party! Your makeup starts running with all those tears! You're ruining your botox treatment! Here's an idea from a great leader... Go SHOPPING!
Be your selfish self and get on with it.
You've had electricity and clean water for the past six years, right?
Have you been tortured or ethnically cleansed?
Are the kids insurgents, yet?
Grow up, America.
The boogey men, OBL and Dubya are two peas from the same pod. Front men for the perpetual war machine, propagandists, chosen by the real movers for their supposed religiosity and their stage presence. Both of them are rich sons of richie riches, playing with blocks and dress up costumes like they were buildings and uniforms. What do they know of anything?
But they scared you out of your wits, didn't they.
They're pretty certain of themselves, aren't they.
Their product has been tested on focus groups.
But I think they are both losing their appeal, and I think their planners are thinking of retiring their dog and pony shows to move on to bigger and brighter shiny new products...
like Iran, and then on to the Road to Damascus.
Fall is the time to roll out the new shows, Andy!
Isn't it interesting how predictably Madison Avenue their productions have become?
It's like watching the summer reruns, only they're 6 years along now. More like watching Gilligan's Island reruns.
Dubya's speeches are worse than bad. He can barely deliver them. (or more correctly, catapult them.) And OBL has lost all credibility, showing up in a funny beard and asking us to embrace Islam, indeed. He really doesn't know us, does he.
Both of them need another speech writer, another makeup man, stand-ins, props and better costumes.
Another terrorist attack, another election, and the seasons, they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down...
Lucky for their sponsors, they have Congress to pick our pockets and post date their checks...
Wake up. Six years later, wake up.
Or, better yet, lighten up, America.
Dwelling on your injuries make you sound all whiny and maudlin, and you ruin the party! Your makeup starts running with all those tears! You're ruining your botox treatment! Here's an idea from a great leader... Go SHOPPING!
Be your selfish self and get on with it.
You've had electricity and clean water for the past six years, right?
Have you been tortured or ethnically cleansed?
Are the kids insurgents, yet?
Grow up, America.
The boogey men, OBL and Dubya are two peas from the same pod. Front men for the perpetual war machine, propagandists, chosen by the real movers for their supposed religiosity and their stage presence. Both of them are rich sons of richie riches, playing with blocks and dress up costumes like they were buildings and uniforms. What do they know of anything?
But they scared you out of your wits, didn't they.
They're pretty certain of themselves, aren't they.
Their product has been tested on focus groups.
But I think they are both losing their appeal, and I think their planners are thinking of retiring their dog and pony shows to move on to bigger and brighter shiny new products...
like Iran, and then on to the Road to Damascus.
Fall is the time to roll out the new shows, Andy!
Isn't it interesting how predictably Madison Avenue their productions have become?
It's like watching the summer reruns, only they're 6 years along now. More like watching Gilligan's Island reruns.
Dubya's speeches are worse than bad. He can barely deliver them. (or more correctly, catapult them.) And OBL has lost all credibility, showing up in a funny beard and asking us to embrace Islam, indeed. He really doesn't know us, does he.
Both of them need another speech writer, another makeup man, stand-ins, props and better costumes.
Another terrorist attack, another election, and the seasons, they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down...
Lucky for their sponsors, they have Congress to pick our pockets and post date their checks...
Monday, September 10, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Monday, July 09, 2007
why I love Michael Moore
a hometown boy does good, damn good
How many people can you name in the mainstream media who have been as correct, right, prescient, and humane as Michael Moore?
How many people can you name in the mainstream media who have been as correct, right, prescient, and humane as Michael Moore?
Why I love Buzzflash.com
...editorials like these, that make me think!
Nobody Marched To Impeach Bill Clinton!
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Linda Milazzo
NOBODY marched to impeach Bill Clinton. Angry citizens DIDN'T fill the streets, carry signs, and beg a non-responsive Congress to do its Constitutional duty and remove Bill Clinton from his job. Panels WEREN'T held across the nation, moderated by Constitutional scholars who loved their country so much that they traversed its full span to inform packed audiences of the high crimes Bill Clinton had done.
Nope. That DIDN'T happen.
In 1998, thousands upon thousands of Americans DIDN'T call, write, fax, and visit their elected leaders every day imploring them to impeach Bill Clinton. Millions of citizens DIDN'T believe the rest of the world wanted Bill Clinton impeached. Groups of citizen activists DIDN'T band together to camp out at their Representatives' homes and district offices for days, sometimes weeks, holding "Impeach Bill Clinton" signs and wearing "Impeach Bill Clinton" T-shirts. Thousands of cars DIDN'T bear "Impeach Bill Clinton" bumper stickers.
Nope. That DIDN'T happen.
Average citizens DIDN'T travel to Washington, DC to walk the halls of Congress and seek audiences with their elected officials demanding to have Bill Clinton impeached.
Nuh-uh!
"Impeachment Centers" WEREN'T opened dedicated to impeaching Bill Clinton like the one in Los Angeles that opened on the Fourth of July, dedicated to impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Hundreds of people DIDN'T join together in a park on a national holiday for an impeach-Bill-Clinton-rally the way they joined together in a park in Los Angeles on Wednesday for an impeach-Bush-and-Cheney-rally.
In 1998, the people DIDN'T need to inspire Congress to impeach Bill Clinton. The 105th Congress couldn't wait to throw the popular President out of his job. In fact they impeached Bill Clinton even though we-the-people implored them not to.
Of course, there were some Americans in 1998 who bought the smear and destroy campaign by the rabid Republican spin-machine and rabid Republican legislators to impeach Bill Clinton under the guise of restoring the Presidency. These duped citizens were conned by mainstream media's daily theatrics, directed by then-adulterer Congressman Henry Hyde, then-adulterer Speaker Newt Gingrich, then drug-addict Rush Limbaugh, future-indicted Congressman Tom Delay, and Special Pornographer Kenneth Starr. (My apologies to Larry Flynt).
How ironic for Gingrich and Hyde that Clinton was caught with his pants down just as they were dropping theirs. How further ironic that the lynchpin asserting the case for Clinton's impeachment was Ken Starr's obsessively compiled pornographic tome, whereas Americans today have a virtual library of scholarly books on the Constitutional merits of impeaching Bush and Cheney. Thanks to Mr. Starr's salacious expose, it is likely his lurid accounting of a private consensual affair will be his singular most powerful climax.
The fact is, during the 105th Congress's impeachment of Bill Clinton, Clinton's public APPROVAL rating was a positive 73%. Conversely, as the current 110th Congress takes NO action to impeach George W. Bush, Bush's public APPROVAL ratings range between 28% and 36%.
This means the people's well-liked President Clinton was penalized, while the people's despised President Bush is allowed to stay on. If this isn't a failure of democracy of, for, and by the people, then what is?
link for rest of article
A chorus of hypocrites, that's what the right is.
On ANOTHER DAY Buzz flashed this one...
Smartest thing I read all day.
Subject: How Do You Do It BuzzFlashers?
How do you all keep up the faith? In early May I returned from a trip to Vegas with a girlfriend. My husband asked if I had heard the news that week. No, says I because we never turned on a TV or read a newspaper. He then informed me of the vote wherein congress gave Bush a blank check. I went immediately to my computer and deleted ALL my political sites, have hardly watched the news, changed from our best newspaper to the fluff one and turned a deaf ear to anything political. The news of Scooter Libby tempeted me to return to Buzz. I will vote in 2008 because I have always done so and because women fought and won a difficult battle to get the vote. What I will not do is vote for a Republican or a Democrat. Members of congress will do or say anything to get elected or re-elected. I still believe in our democtatic principles but can not find the words to express the contempt I feel for congress!
Sandra Boynton
Rathdrum, Idaho
To All:
This was sent to President Bush yesterday.
King George the First: 3 July 2007
Delighted to know you commuted the jail portion of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence for perjury. He does not deserve jail for covering your and Cheney's part in a felony, the leak of classified CIA information. Now, American people know Libby was the fall guy for both of you.
Along with this, they also know, as long as you are President, the Executive Branch of government will not be held accountable for any crimes. After all you have executed near 1000 Presidential Signing Statements into law which only pertain to "We The People"' and not you or your Executive Branch. This truly earns you the title of King George the First, of the USA since our representative form of government with true justice for all is null and void.
Disgusted,
Colonel Colin J. N. Chauret,
USAF Retired Fighter Pilot 31 Years Active Service, 1942-1973
Universal City, TX
Subject: Impeachment
Of commutation, executive privilege & impeachment
The commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter Libby was the last straw!
The Bush Administration has constantly ignored the rule of law and the constitution. While the commutation is within the guidelines of the law it is a direct affront to the citizens of the the jury comprised of "Scooter's" peers, the legal system and the citizens of the United States. Following a lengthy trail, the jury and the judge found the sentence to be impartial and fair. President Bush -- please excuse "President" and "Bush" in the same phrase -- have never recognized a cognizant or a fair and impartial decision. Because of that philosophy, Bush still decided to commute the 2-1/2 year sentence. To minimize the impact of the commuted sentence he agreed to impose the $250,000 fine and two-year probation ... what he thinks is a politically viable solution. IT'S NOT!
It is time for American citizens to say enough is enough. Commutation, executive privilege and impeachment are no longer "off the table." It is time to take "corrective action!" And it is time to begin articles of impeachment for the "ring leader" -- George W Bush -- as well as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and "Condosleezza" Rice.
This has to happen in order for the USA to regain its reputation -- not only with its citizens, but with the world community.
It is time to act now! IMPEACH ' EM ALL!
AL Ainsworth
Portland, Oregon
Subject: David Brooks: A kinder, gentler bastard
BuzzFlash,
I have long wondered whether the pundit David Brooks was just stupid or an extremely clever master of deception. He projects a kind image by two means; a soft and gentle apologetic persona, and admitting mistakes were made by the extreme right. However, the mistakes are always admitted long after it can do any good. For example, he was a big supporter of the war with Iraq when it mattered. When public opinion needed to be swayed. Now, years later, he admits, that there is a slight possibility it might have been a mistake. That shows, of course, how reasonable he is.
He is oh so gentle, in supporting things like torture, with his gestures and quiet voice, struggling to find a "middle ground." The article he wrote on the Bush pardon of Libby leaves no doubt that he is just a gentler, kinder gentler bastard not at all naive.
Here the facts are well known, at the time of the event. All the evil of the outing of Valerie Plame appears in numerous reports and the sworn testimony during the Libby trial. For him to toe the party line has to be an extremely deliberate and evil act. I am sure a few years from now his rhetoric will soften, when it doesn't matter anymore. But there will be no new facts. He will just use the change in tone to show again how reasonable he is.
A Memo for David Brooks (davidcorn.com)
The soft-on-torture liberal
Subject: The Pledge, The Turn, The Prestige
If you saw the movie “The Prestige,” you have an inkling of the magic act George W. Bush just performed by commuting I. “Scooter” Libby’s legally derived, appealed and reaffirmed jail sentence imposed by a court of law and a jury of his peers.
According to the movie, a magic act consists of three parts. The “Pledge” is the part of a magic act where the magician shows the audience a common object or person and then promises they will see something special happen on stage. In the case of the United States vs. “Scooter” Libby, Mr. Cheney, Bush's stagehand, took Mr. Libby and either convinced him to lie to a Federal Grand Jury or, at the very least, turned the other way while Rove and Libby conspired to block a special investigation of the Valerie Plame national security leak.
The “Turn” is the part where the magician distracts his audience and then proceeds to involve his subject in an amazing feat of magic. In the case of Mr. Libby, the audience was fed a continual stream of disinformation about prosecutor Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame, and Joe Wilson while the affable looking Libby wove a fabric of lies to protect himself and his superiors from spending time in jail. Magically, he claimed his hitherto well-documented keen memory failed him while testifying. He was just confused, his attorneys said. Given his years of service in which he used that very same memory to execute the complexities of his job at the highest levels of government, the loss of memory has become a legendary piece of Houdini history.
The “Prestige” is the final part of the trick, where the magician asks his audience to suspend their disbelief and accept that the magic and reality are one in the same. The willing subject mysteriously escapes one box and appears in another. The audience claps and scratches their heads’ as they leave the theater wondering how it was done.
In three carefully crafted acts our magician, our President, executed his well planned trick. First, he allowed his Vice President and staff to conspire to leak highly classified information. Second, he denied he or any member of his staff participated in the Plame affair and assured us if they did they would be punished according to the law. Third, our President waved his magic pen, ignored the law he told us he would abide by and commuted the jail sentence of his willing subject, I. “Scooter” Libby, who slipped quietly out the back door.
In the end, the “Prestige” had been executed perfectly. But as in any magic act, the reality is always hiding behind the curtain. Everyone knows it. Everyone has come to expect it. Everyone accepts it.
And so we are left wondering, when will George W. Bush and his stage hands be back in town for another performance? Will it be today, tomorrow or perhaps during the next Presidential election? Will the tricks and the tricksters ever leave the stage? Only the magician has the answer and it is unlikely he will ever reveal the secret. Poof!
George Gerber
Doylestown, PA
Nobody Marched To Impeach Bill Clinton!
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Linda Milazzo
NOBODY marched to impeach Bill Clinton. Angry citizens DIDN'T fill the streets, carry signs, and beg a non-responsive Congress to do its Constitutional duty and remove Bill Clinton from his job. Panels WEREN'T held across the nation, moderated by Constitutional scholars who loved their country so much that they traversed its full span to inform packed audiences of the high crimes Bill Clinton had done.
Nope. That DIDN'T happen.
In 1998, thousands upon thousands of Americans DIDN'T call, write, fax, and visit their elected leaders every day imploring them to impeach Bill Clinton. Millions of citizens DIDN'T believe the rest of the world wanted Bill Clinton impeached. Groups of citizen activists DIDN'T band together to camp out at their Representatives' homes and district offices for days, sometimes weeks, holding "Impeach Bill Clinton" signs and wearing "Impeach Bill Clinton" T-shirts. Thousands of cars DIDN'T bear "Impeach Bill Clinton" bumper stickers.
Nope. That DIDN'T happen.
Average citizens DIDN'T travel to Washington, DC to walk the halls of Congress and seek audiences with their elected officials demanding to have Bill Clinton impeached.
Nuh-uh!
"Impeachment Centers" WEREN'T opened dedicated to impeaching Bill Clinton like the one in Los Angeles that opened on the Fourth of July, dedicated to impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Hundreds of people DIDN'T join together in a park on a national holiday for an impeach-Bill-Clinton-rally the way they joined together in a park in Los Angeles on Wednesday for an impeach-Bush-and-Cheney-rally.
In 1998, the people DIDN'T need to inspire Congress to impeach Bill Clinton. The 105th Congress couldn't wait to throw the popular President out of his job. In fact they impeached Bill Clinton even though we-the-people implored them not to.
Of course, there were some Americans in 1998 who bought the smear and destroy campaign by the rabid Republican spin-machine and rabid Republican legislators to impeach Bill Clinton under the guise of restoring the Presidency. These duped citizens were conned by mainstream media's daily theatrics, directed by then-adulterer Congressman Henry Hyde, then-adulterer Speaker Newt Gingrich, then drug-addict Rush Limbaugh, future-indicted Congressman Tom Delay, and Special Pornographer Kenneth Starr. (My apologies to Larry Flynt).
How ironic for Gingrich and Hyde that Clinton was caught with his pants down just as they were dropping theirs. How further ironic that the lynchpin asserting the case for Clinton's impeachment was Ken Starr's obsessively compiled pornographic tome, whereas Americans today have a virtual library of scholarly books on the Constitutional merits of impeaching Bush and Cheney. Thanks to Mr. Starr's salacious expose, it is likely his lurid accounting of a private consensual affair will be his singular most powerful climax.
The fact is, during the 105th Congress's impeachment of Bill Clinton, Clinton's public APPROVAL rating was a positive 73%. Conversely, as the current 110th Congress takes NO action to impeach George W. Bush, Bush's public APPROVAL ratings range between 28% and 36%.
This means the people's well-liked President Clinton was penalized, while the people's despised President Bush is allowed to stay on. If this isn't a failure of democracy of, for, and by the people, then what is?
link for rest of article
A chorus of hypocrites, that's what the right is.
On ANOTHER DAY Buzz flashed this one...
Smartest thing I read all day.
Subject: How Do You Do It BuzzFlashers?
How do you all keep up the faith? In early May I returned from a trip to Vegas with a girlfriend. My husband asked if I had heard the news that week. No, says I because we never turned on a TV or read a newspaper. He then informed me of the vote wherein congress gave Bush a blank check. I went immediately to my computer and deleted ALL my political sites, have hardly watched the news, changed from our best newspaper to the fluff one and turned a deaf ear to anything political. The news of Scooter Libby tempeted me to return to Buzz. I will vote in 2008 because I have always done so and because women fought and won a difficult battle to get the vote. What I will not do is vote for a Republican or a Democrat. Members of congress will do or say anything to get elected or re-elected. I still believe in our democtatic principles but can not find the words to express the contempt I feel for congress!
Sandra Boynton
Rathdrum, Idaho
To All:
This was sent to President Bush yesterday.
King George the First: 3 July 2007
Delighted to know you commuted the jail portion of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence for perjury. He does not deserve jail for covering your and Cheney's part in a felony, the leak of classified CIA information. Now, American people know Libby was the fall guy for both of you.
Along with this, they also know, as long as you are President, the Executive Branch of government will not be held accountable for any crimes. After all you have executed near 1000 Presidential Signing Statements into law which only pertain to "We The People"' and not you or your Executive Branch. This truly earns you the title of King George the First, of the USA since our representative form of government with true justice for all is null and void.
Disgusted,
Colonel Colin J. N. Chauret,
USAF Retired Fighter Pilot 31 Years Active Service, 1942-1973
Universal City, TX
Subject: Impeachment
Of commutation, executive privilege & impeachment
The commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter Libby was the last straw!
The Bush Administration has constantly ignored the rule of law and the constitution. While the commutation is within the guidelines of the law it is a direct affront to the citizens of the the jury comprised of "Scooter's" peers, the legal system and the citizens of the United States. Following a lengthy trail, the jury and the judge found the sentence to be impartial and fair. President Bush -- please excuse "President" and "Bush" in the same phrase -- have never recognized a cognizant or a fair and impartial decision. Because of that philosophy, Bush still decided to commute the 2-1/2 year sentence. To minimize the impact of the commuted sentence he agreed to impose the $250,000 fine and two-year probation ... what he thinks is a politically viable solution. IT'S NOT!
It is time for American citizens to say enough is enough. Commutation, executive privilege and impeachment are no longer "off the table." It is time to take "corrective action!" And it is time to begin articles of impeachment for the "ring leader" -- George W Bush -- as well as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and "Condosleezza" Rice.
This has to happen in order for the USA to regain its reputation -- not only with its citizens, but with the world community.
It is time to act now! IMPEACH ' EM ALL!
AL Ainsworth
Portland, Oregon
Subject: David Brooks: A kinder, gentler bastard
BuzzFlash,
I have long wondered whether the pundit David Brooks was just stupid or an extremely clever master of deception. He projects a kind image by two means; a soft and gentle apologetic persona, and admitting mistakes were made by the extreme right. However, the mistakes are always admitted long after it can do any good. For example, he was a big supporter of the war with Iraq when it mattered. When public opinion needed to be swayed. Now, years later, he admits, that there is a slight possibility it might have been a mistake. That shows, of course, how reasonable he is.
He is oh so gentle, in supporting things like torture, with his gestures and quiet voice, struggling to find a "middle ground." The article he wrote on the Bush pardon of Libby leaves no doubt that he is just a gentler, kinder gentler bastard not at all naive.
Here the facts are well known, at the time of the event. All the evil of the outing of Valerie Plame appears in numerous reports and the sworn testimony during the Libby trial. For him to toe the party line has to be an extremely deliberate and evil act. I am sure a few years from now his rhetoric will soften, when it doesn't matter anymore. But there will be no new facts. He will just use the change in tone to show again how reasonable he is.
A Memo for David Brooks (davidcorn.com)
The soft-on-torture liberal
Subject: The Pledge, The Turn, The Prestige
If you saw the movie “The Prestige,” you have an inkling of the magic act George W. Bush just performed by commuting I. “Scooter” Libby’s legally derived, appealed and reaffirmed jail sentence imposed by a court of law and a jury of his peers.
According to the movie, a magic act consists of three parts. The “Pledge” is the part of a magic act where the magician shows the audience a common object or person and then promises they will see something special happen on stage. In the case of the United States vs. “Scooter” Libby, Mr. Cheney, Bush's stagehand, took Mr. Libby and either convinced him to lie to a Federal Grand Jury or, at the very least, turned the other way while Rove and Libby conspired to block a special investigation of the Valerie Plame national security leak.
The “Turn” is the part where the magician distracts his audience and then proceeds to involve his subject in an amazing feat of magic. In the case of Mr. Libby, the audience was fed a continual stream of disinformation about prosecutor Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame, and Joe Wilson while the affable looking Libby wove a fabric of lies to protect himself and his superiors from spending time in jail. Magically, he claimed his hitherto well-documented keen memory failed him while testifying. He was just confused, his attorneys said. Given his years of service in which he used that very same memory to execute the complexities of his job at the highest levels of government, the loss of memory has become a legendary piece of Houdini history.
The “Prestige” is the final part of the trick, where the magician asks his audience to suspend their disbelief and accept that the magic and reality are one in the same. The willing subject mysteriously escapes one box and appears in another. The audience claps and scratches their heads’ as they leave the theater wondering how it was done.
In three carefully crafted acts our magician, our President, executed his well planned trick. First, he allowed his Vice President and staff to conspire to leak highly classified information. Second, he denied he or any member of his staff participated in the Plame affair and assured us if they did they would be punished according to the law. Third, our President waved his magic pen, ignored the law he told us he would abide by and commuted the jail sentence of his willing subject, I. “Scooter” Libby, who slipped quietly out the back door.
In the end, the “Prestige” had been executed perfectly. But as in any magic act, the reality is always hiding behind the curtain. Everyone knows it. Everyone has come to expect it. Everyone accepts it.
And so we are left wondering, when will George W. Bush and his stage hands be back in town for another performance? Will it be today, tomorrow or perhaps during the next Presidential election? Will the tricks and the tricksters ever leave the stage? Only the magician has the answer and it is unlikely he will ever reveal the secret. Poof!
George Gerber
Doylestown, PA
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Why are we in Iraq when Flint Michigan looks like a bomb dropped?
There is an alternative.
"Let's get out of Iraq and rebuild America first."
--Merle Haggard
"Let's get out of Iraq and rebuild America first."
--Merle Haggard
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The 14 NO votes
The 14 N0 votes:
These are the only loyal opposition left.
The rest have essentially voted for Emperor Bush to do as he pleases, and he pleases to invade Iran and rob the American taxpayer's treasury.
DemocRATs, you will be blamed in years to come for your spinelessness.
Fill your pockets now, boys, then go home and stay there.
Senator Levin, where were you?
Is your loyalty to Israeli lobbyists trumping you oath to the American Constitution?
Boxer (D-CA)
Burr (R-NC)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Dodd (D-CT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
These are the only loyal opposition left.
The rest have essentially voted for Emperor Bush to do as he pleases, and he pleases to invade Iran and rob the American taxpayer's treasury.
DemocRATs, you will be blamed in years to come for your spinelessness.
Fill your pockets now, boys, then go home and stay there.
Senator Levin, where were you?
Is your loyalty to Israeli lobbyists trumping you oath to the American Constitution?
Boxer (D-CA)
Burr (R-NC)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Dodd (D-CT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
no meter on the oil pumps
Refresh my memory... do you recall on the evening of "Shock and Awe" when Dubya got on television before the world to talk to the people of soon to be occupied Iraq, and all he said to them was to not disturb the oil?
And after the preemptive invasion, when the museums and government offices were being looted ("stuff happens"), the Ministry of Oil was the only building in Iraq being protected by American troops?
Remember the insider joke ... "Operation Iraqi Liberation"?
Remember the mainstream media echo chamber trumpeting the "oil for food scandal"? At least the children of Iraq were obese under Saddam. Today with the "oil for chaos" scandal that is not being mentioned in the American Idol obsessed press, Iraqi children are facing water borne parasitic disease, dissappeared medical service, and malnutrition.
Mission Accomplished.
Tell me, how much more looting do Bush's and Cheney's cronies deserve? Will they ever have enough? Fu*%ing insatiable wolves, indeed, that's what they are.
Tell me, how much more chaos would there be if American troops left right now? Will the twit Neocons EVER spill enough blood and shoot enough guns to prop up their manhood?
Sounds like PLENTY of chaos right now.
But, refresh my memory... didn't the NeoCon ideologist Michael Ledeen say that chaos was their goal?
Yes he did.
Dear Senator Levin, I heard today that your biggest financial support comes from AIPAC.
How does the Israeli lobby serve the citizens of the state of Michigan?
Is that why you are the flip side of the same coin? Heads we get crony capitalism and corporate welfare and a fascist military industrial economy, tails we get the same thing.
Why DO you rubber stamp the worst administration in history?
How Much Iraqi Crude Oil is Being Stolen? Mystery of the Missing Meters
By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch
Posted on April 30, 2007(link)The line of ships at the Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) stretches south to the horizon, patiently waiting in the searing heat of the Northern Arabian Gulf as four giant supertankers load up. Close by, two more tankers fill up at the smaller Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT). Guarding both terminals are dozens of heavily-armed U.S. Navy troops and Iraqi Marines who live on the platforms.
These two offshore terminals, a maze of pipes and precarious metal walkways, deliver some 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, at least 85 percent of Iraq's output, to buyers from all over the world. If the southern oil fields are the heart of Iraq's economy, its main arteries are three 40-plus inch pipelines that stretch some 52 miles from Iraq's wells to the ports.
Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at the oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing dhows (boats). Meanwhile, right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT -- has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on "security problems." Others point to the failed efforts of the two U.S. companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is scheduled to publish a report this spring that is expected criticize the companies' failure to complete the work.
Rumors are rife among suspicious Iraqis about the failure to measure the oil flow. "Iraq is the victim of the biggest robbery of its oil production in modern history," blazed a March 2006 headline in Azzaman, Iraq's most widely read newspaper. A May 2006 study of oil production and export figures by Platt's Oilgram News, an industry magazine, showed that up to $3 billion a year is unaccounted for.
"Iraqi oil is regularly smuggled out of the country in many different ways," an oil merchant in Amman told the Nation (U.S.) magazine last month. "Emir al-Hakim [the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq] is spending all his time in Basra selling oil as if it were his own. People there call him Uday al-Hakim, meaning he is behaving the same way Uday Saddam Hussein was acting. Other merchants like myself have to work through him with the big deals or smuggle small quantities on our own. The petroleum is now divided among political parties in power."
The resource curse
The smuggling and black market operations bear striking parallels to Saddam Hussein's tactics for circumventing the UN embargo. Saddam was accused of selling some $5.7 billion worth of petroleum products on the black market over the six years of the Oil-for-Food program while United Nations inspectors turned a blind eye. Today, his successors stand accused of similar abuses.
Iraq sits on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada). From a society that once used its oil revenue to create a social welfare state that provided education, health care and social services, the country has plummeted into the ranks of the poorest countries of the world.
Economists call this the "resource curse." Those blessed with non-renewable resources often benefit the least, because a few wealthy people control the resources, or war prevents almost anyone from the benefiting.
Iraq's main revenue source - earnings from the export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas - is currently managed by the Development Fund for Iraq. DFI's May 21, 2003 document, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, assigns this money to benefit the Iraqi people. The resolution replaces the previous United Nations-run Oil-for-Food scheme that lasted from 1997 until the March 2003 invasion.
Almost four years after the DFI was created, officially logged crude sales have generated more than $80 billion. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) managed the DFI from the immediate aftermath of Saddam's removal until June 28, 2004, when the CPA was disbanded. During those 14 months, the CPA spent $19.6 billion of Iraq's DFI funds. The three succeeding governments have been officially in charge of the DFI revenues, although the influence of the U.S. military and political advisors has remained significant throughout. In the 32 months after the CPA left, the three governments spent $47 billion more.
Halliburton & Parsons
U.S. contractors have played a key role in the repair and upgrading of Iraq's oil infrastructure and expected the industry to pay for reconstruction. In January 2004, under project Restore Iraqi Oil II (RIO II), the Bush administration contracted with Halliburton to fix southern Iraq's oil fields and with Parsons to handle the northern fields. The two companies were supposed to be supervised by yet another contractor, New Jersey-based Foster Wheeler. (The first RIO contract was the infamous, secret no-bid contract issued to Halliburton before the invasion of Iraq. Although RIO II was competitively bid, Sheryl Tappan, a former Bechtel employee wrote a book criticizing the award as unfair.)
Halliburton and Parsons have long histories in Iraq, going back more than 40 years. Brown & Root, which is now part of Halliburton , began work in Iraq in 1961, while Parsons dipped into Iraq's oil sector in the 1950s. Foster Wheeler dates its work in Iraq to the 1930s.
These companies have a lot of experience at the terminals where the black market now thrives. Indeed, Halliburton built the ABOT terminal, then known as Mina al-Bakr, in the early1970s. After it was damaged during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Halliburton repaired the terminal, before it was bombed yet again during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The Khor al-Amaya oil terminal also saw a similar cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Built with Halliburton 's help in 1973, it was heavily damaged by Iranian commandos during the Iran-Iraq war, then again during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and most recently in May 2006 by a major fire that destroyed 70 percent of its facilities. During the sanctions, Ingersoll Dresser Pump Company, a Halliburton subsidiary, had a secret contract to sell Iraq spare parts, compressors, and firefighting equipment for the refurbishment.
( Halliburton also a long history near the Turkish port of Ceyhan, from where Iraq sells oil produced at Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Halliburton runs the nearby U.S. military base at Incirlik, which was the staging ground for Operation Northern Watch that provided air protection for the Kurds during the 1990s.)
Measuring the oil
With billions of dollars to spend and extensive experience with oil infrastructure and Iraqi ports, Haliburton and Parsons seem unable to deal with the routine problem of broken meters at the Southern Iraq terminals.
The kinds of meters they were supposed to repair or replace at ABOT are commonly found at hundreds of similar sites around the world. Because they are custom-built, shipped, then assembled and calibrated on site, the process can take up to a year. But the probelm has persisted for four years.
After the 2003 invasion, the meters appear to have been turned off and there have since been no reliable estimates of how much crude has been shipped from the southern oil fields. (The northern oil fields in Kirkuk, which supply the Beiji refinery in Iraq and export crude to the Turkish port of Adana, has reliable metering but little oil to measure since insurgent attacks largely shut down the facility.)
Lieutenant Aaron Bergman, the U.S. Navy officer in charge of Mobile Security Squadron 7 at ABOT, says export authorities have "guesstimated" how much is being sold, with a back-of-the-envelope formula: Every centimeter a tanker lowers into the water equals 6,000 barrels of oil cargo.
"So you can imagine," he said earlier this month to Stars & Stripes, a newspaper serving the U.S. military, the numbers could be off, "A couple of inches could equal 180,000 barrels of fuel."
"I would say probably between 200,000 and 500,000 barrels a day is probably unaccounted for in Iraq," Mikel Morris, who worked for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Organization (IRMO) at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, told KTVT, a Texas television station.
Neither US officials nor contractors have provided good reasons why, four years into the US occupation, the meters have not been calibrated, repaired, or replaced. One excuse is that the job of calibration requires special devices to assess the current meters and security issues make importing these devises problematic. Yet that and other security-related explanations fall apart given that the oil terminals are under 24 hour high security guard, lie more than 50 miles off-shore, and are accessible only by helicopter or ship.
There are two possible explanations: that the project has been delayed by bureaucracy or that vested interests benefiting from the lack of oil metering (such as smugglers or corrupt officials) have prevented the project from moving forward.
Skyrocketing Costs
The RIO II project, which includes the meter repair work, has come under much criticism, although specific details are scarce.
For example, the Bush administration issued Halliburton the RIO II order in January 2004 and gave detailed task orders in June. But despite not starting work until November 2004, the company charged the government millions of dollars for engineers who sat idle. Halliburton 's $296 million bill included at least 55 percent overhead. (In an estimate due later this month, SIGIR may predicts even higher overhead costs.)
A Parsons joint venture (with Worley of Australia), was also issued a contract in January 2004, given detailed task orders in June, and started work in July 2004. It has also been accused of charging high overhead costs while idle, although not as much as Halliburton . SIGIR estimate pegs its overhead at 43 percent.
In addition, in a series of scathing internal reports uncovered by Congressman Henry Waxman, supervisors Foster Wheeler criticized Halliburton 's cost. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a "cure" notice on January 29, 2005, ordering Halliburton to do a better job or else. After Halliburton did improve its cost controls, the military turned over the southern oil work to Parsons in mid 2005.
When Parsons took over the contracts, two years after the invasion, it hired a Saudi Arabian sub-contractor, Alaa for Industry, to help repair or replace the meters.
The turbine meters were shipped to Kuwait for repairs but do not appear to have been fixed in a timely manner, although some have been fixed and re-installed earlier this year. Unofficial sources suggest that the Kuwaiti bureaucracy delayed the repair work: "The real reason for the hindrance to work at the ABOT is because Kuwait has a vested interest in minimizing Iraqi oil exports," an anonymous source who worked on the project said. His claim could not be verified.
In mid-September 2006, the Iraqi oil ministry abruptly announced that it would pull the plug on the oil metering project, making future monitoring even less certain.
Asim Jihad, the oil ministry spokesman, told Al Hayat: "The American company had failed in keeping its promise to finish installing these meters; also, refusing to reveal the exact cost, except for saying that it is executing it within the American grant to Iraq and the sum of that grant is unknown to us too. This relieves the ministry from its obligation to it. Besides, many international companies presented good offers to implement the project in a record time due to its importance."
The oil ministry then invited British Petroleum and Shell to plan a comprehensive national metering project that would cover not only the oil terminals, but also the productions wells and the even the refineries.
A SIGIR team traveled to ABOT in November 2006 to check on progress. Its unpublished report suggests that the work was less than half complete.
Suddenly, in December 2006, a high-level U.S. team traveled out to ABOT to inspect the meters. In a little-noticed announcement issued on a Saturday just before Christmas, John Sickman, the resident oil expert at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the meters had been fixed and were working fine.
"The measurement using the existing turbine meters and displacement meters at the offshore terminal at ABOT is transparent and the measurement devices are more than adequate," Sickman was quoted in the press release. "Furthermore, the crude oil vessels have measurement and quality samplers."
Indeed this is how the Dutch company Saybolt measured oil export under the United Nations Oil for Food program. The problem even today, according to experts consulted for this report, is that the meters have yet to be calibrated, so the data are basically useless.
Even if the meters are working properly, smuggling could still occur. "It's easy to steal crude if you knew what you were doing," Don Deaver, a petroleum metering expert who worked for Exxon for 33 years, said. "If you meaure too low or too high, someone will lose and some will one gain. It's why you need professionals who understand how the meters work to make sure that nothing is being lost or stolen."
U.S. government officials claim that little is being stolen. SGS (a British consultancy) "is providing independent third party loading certifications onsite for the customers. This, coupled with the recent installation of ultrasonic meter provides more than redundant measurement capability," said Sickman in December.
Days after the press release, in early January 2007, Parsons began work on the meters under a $57.8 million U.S. government-funded contract supervised by Major Dale Winger of the Joint Contracting Command in Basra. Almost as soon as work started, Winger was replaced by Lieutenant Commander Brian Schorn. Reached for this article, Schorn said he was not up to speed on what work had been done, and referred questions to his "front-office" in Baghdad at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Parsons Iraq Joint Venture spokesman Don Lassus also refused to comment. The contract with the military does not permit the release of "any unclassified information," he said, without prior approval of the military.
Today no government officials have been able to establish conclusively whether oil is being smuggled or not. Even the future of the oil metering remains unclear. The latest report issued by SIGIR in January 2007 notes that repair and rehabilitation work at ABOT is scheduled to be finished by May 2007, but "it is unclear whether this project will be completed because of de-obligation requirements" that is to say that the funding could be cut.
Pratap Chatterjee is managing editor of CorpWatch and the author of 'Iraq Inc.' (Seven Stories Press, September 2004).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/51218/
And after the preemptive invasion, when the museums and government offices were being looted ("stuff happens"), the Ministry of Oil was the only building in Iraq being protected by American troops?
Remember the insider joke ... "Operation Iraqi Liberation"?
Remember the mainstream media echo chamber trumpeting the "oil for food scandal"? At least the children of Iraq were obese under Saddam. Today with the "oil for chaos" scandal that is not being mentioned in the American Idol obsessed press, Iraqi children are facing water borne parasitic disease, dissappeared medical service, and malnutrition.
Mission Accomplished.
Tell me, how much more looting do Bush's and Cheney's cronies deserve? Will they ever have enough? Fu*%ing insatiable wolves, indeed, that's what they are.
Tell me, how much more chaos would there be if American troops left right now? Will the twit Neocons EVER spill enough blood and shoot enough guns to prop up their manhood?
Sounds like PLENTY of chaos right now.
But, refresh my memory... didn't the NeoCon ideologist Michael Ledeen say that chaos was their goal?
Yes he did.
Dear Senator Levin, I heard today that your biggest financial support comes from AIPAC.
How does the Israeli lobby serve the citizens of the state of Michigan?
Is that why you are the flip side of the same coin? Heads we get crony capitalism and corporate welfare and a fascist military industrial economy, tails we get the same thing.
Why DO you rubber stamp the worst administration in history?
How Much Iraqi Crude Oil is Being Stolen? Mystery of the Missing Meters
By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch
Posted on April 30, 2007(link)The line of ships at the Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) stretches south to the horizon, patiently waiting in the searing heat of the Northern Arabian Gulf as four giant supertankers load up. Close by, two more tankers fill up at the smaller Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT). Guarding both terminals are dozens of heavily-armed U.S. Navy troops and Iraqi Marines who live on the platforms.
These two offshore terminals, a maze of pipes and precarious metal walkways, deliver some 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, at least 85 percent of Iraq's output, to buyers from all over the world. If the southern oil fields are the heart of Iraq's economy, its main arteries are three 40-plus inch pipelines that stretch some 52 miles from Iraq's wells to the ports.
Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at the oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing dhows (boats). Meanwhile, right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT -- has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on "security problems." Others point to the failed efforts of the two U.S. companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is scheduled to publish a report this spring that is expected criticize the companies' failure to complete the work.
Rumors are rife among suspicious Iraqis about the failure to measure the oil flow. "Iraq is the victim of the biggest robbery of its oil production in modern history," blazed a March 2006 headline in Azzaman, Iraq's most widely read newspaper. A May 2006 study of oil production and export figures by Platt's Oilgram News, an industry magazine, showed that up to $3 billion a year is unaccounted for.
"Iraqi oil is regularly smuggled out of the country in many different ways," an oil merchant in Amman told the Nation (U.S.) magazine last month. "Emir al-Hakim [the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq] is spending all his time in Basra selling oil as if it were his own. People there call him Uday al-Hakim, meaning he is behaving the same way Uday Saddam Hussein was acting. Other merchants like myself have to work through him with the big deals or smuggle small quantities on our own. The petroleum is now divided among political parties in power."
The resource curse
The smuggling and black market operations bear striking parallels to Saddam Hussein's tactics for circumventing the UN embargo. Saddam was accused of selling some $5.7 billion worth of petroleum products on the black market over the six years of the Oil-for-Food program while United Nations inspectors turned a blind eye. Today, his successors stand accused of similar abuses.
Iraq sits on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada). From a society that once used its oil revenue to create a social welfare state that provided education, health care and social services, the country has plummeted into the ranks of the poorest countries of the world.
Economists call this the "resource curse." Those blessed with non-renewable resources often benefit the least, because a few wealthy people control the resources, or war prevents almost anyone from the benefiting.
Iraq's main revenue source - earnings from the export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas - is currently managed by the Development Fund for Iraq. DFI's May 21, 2003 document, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, assigns this money to benefit the Iraqi people. The resolution replaces the previous United Nations-run Oil-for-Food scheme that lasted from 1997 until the March 2003 invasion.
Almost four years after the DFI was created, officially logged crude sales have generated more than $80 billion. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) managed the DFI from the immediate aftermath of Saddam's removal until June 28, 2004, when the CPA was disbanded. During those 14 months, the CPA spent $19.6 billion of Iraq's DFI funds. The three succeeding governments have been officially in charge of the DFI revenues, although the influence of the U.S. military and political advisors has remained significant throughout. In the 32 months after the CPA left, the three governments spent $47 billion more.
Halliburton & Parsons
U.S. contractors have played a key role in the repair and upgrading of Iraq's oil infrastructure and expected the industry to pay for reconstruction. In January 2004, under project Restore Iraqi Oil II (RIO II), the Bush administration contracted with Halliburton to fix southern Iraq's oil fields and with Parsons to handle the northern fields. The two companies were supposed to be supervised by yet another contractor, New Jersey-based Foster Wheeler. (The first RIO contract was the infamous, secret no-bid contract issued to Halliburton before the invasion of Iraq. Although RIO II was competitively bid, Sheryl Tappan, a former Bechtel employee wrote a book criticizing the award as unfair.)
Halliburton and Parsons have long histories in Iraq, going back more than 40 years. Brown & Root, which is now part of Halliburton , began work in Iraq in 1961, while Parsons dipped into Iraq's oil sector in the 1950s. Foster Wheeler dates its work in Iraq to the 1930s.
These companies have a lot of experience at the terminals where the black market now thrives. Indeed, Halliburton built the ABOT terminal, then known as Mina al-Bakr, in the early1970s. After it was damaged during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Halliburton repaired the terminal, before it was bombed yet again during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The Khor al-Amaya oil terminal also saw a similar cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Built with Halliburton 's help in 1973, it was heavily damaged by Iranian commandos during the Iran-Iraq war, then again during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and most recently in May 2006 by a major fire that destroyed 70 percent of its facilities. During the sanctions, Ingersoll Dresser Pump Company, a Halliburton subsidiary, had a secret contract to sell Iraq spare parts, compressors, and firefighting equipment for the refurbishment.
( Halliburton also a long history near the Turkish port of Ceyhan, from where Iraq sells oil produced at Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Halliburton runs the nearby U.S. military base at Incirlik, which was the staging ground for Operation Northern Watch that provided air protection for the Kurds during the 1990s.)
Measuring the oil
With billions of dollars to spend and extensive experience with oil infrastructure and Iraqi ports, Haliburton and Parsons seem unable to deal with the routine problem of broken meters at the Southern Iraq terminals.
The kinds of meters they were supposed to repair or replace at ABOT are commonly found at hundreds of similar sites around the world. Because they are custom-built, shipped, then assembled and calibrated on site, the process can take up to a year. But the probelm has persisted for four years.
After the 2003 invasion, the meters appear to have been turned off and there have since been no reliable estimates of how much crude has been shipped from the southern oil fields. (The northern oil fields in Kirkuk, which supply the Beiji refinery in Iraq and export crude to the Turkish port of Adana, has reliable metering but little oil to measure since insurgent attacks largely shut down the facility.)
Lieutenant Aaron Bergman, the U.S. Navy officer in charge of Mobile Security Squadron 7 at ABOT, says export authorities have "guesstimated" how much is being sold, with a back-of-the-envelope formula: Every centimeter a tanker lowers into the water equals 6,000 barrels of oil cargo.
"So you can imagine," he said earlier this month to Stars & Stripes, a newspaper serving the U.S. military, the numbers could be off, "A couple of inches could equal 180,000 barrels of fuel."
"I would say probably between 200,000 and 500,000 barrels a day is probably unaccounted for in Iraq," Mikel Morris, who worked for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Organization (IRMO) at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, told KTVT, a Texas television station.
Neither US officials nor contractors have provided good reasons why, four years into the US occupation, the meters have not been calibrated, repaired, or replaced. One excuse is that the job of calibration requires special devices to assess the current meters and security issues make importing these devises problematic. Yet that and other security-related explanations fall apart given that the oil terminals are under 24 hour high security guard, lie more than 50 miles off-shore, and are accessible only by helicopter or ship.
There are two possible explanations: that the project has been delayed by bureaucracy or that vested interests benefiting from the lack of oil metering (such as smugglers or corrupt officials) have prevented the project from moving forward.
Skyrocketing Costs
The RIO II project, which includes the meter repair work, has come under much criticism, although specific details are scarce.
For example, the Bush administration issued Halliburton the RIO II order in January 2004 and gave detailed task orders in June. But despite not starting work until November 2004, the company charged the government millions of dollars for engineers who sat idle. Halliburton 's $296 million bill included at least 55 percent overhead. (In an estimate due later this month, SIGIR may predicts even higher overhead costs.)
A Parsons joint venture (with Worley of Australia), was also issued a contract in January 2004, given detailed task orders in June, and started work in July 2004. It has also been accused of charging high overhead costs while idle, although not as much as Halliburton . SIGIR estimate pegs its overhead at 43 percent.
In addition, in a series of scathing internal reports uncovered by Congressman Henry Waxman, supervisors Foster Wheeler criticized Halliburton 's cost. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a "cure" notice on January 29, 2005, ordering Halliburton to do a better job or else. After Halliburton did improve its cost controls, the military turned over the southern oil work to Parsons in mid 2005.
When Parsons took over the contracts, two years after the invasion, it hired a Saudi Arabian sub-contractor, Alaa for Industry, to help repair or replace the meters.
The turbine meters were shipped to Kuwait for repairs but do not appear to have been fixed in a timely manner, although some have been fixed and re-installed earlier this year. Unofficial sources suggest that the Kuwaiti bureaucracy delayed the repair work: "The real reason for the hindrance to work at the ABOT is because Kuwait has a vested interest in minimizing Iraqi oil exports," an anonymous source who worked on the project said. His claim could not be verified.
In mid-September 2006, the Iraqi oil ministry abruptly announced that it would pull the plug on the oil metering project, making future monitoring even less certain.
Asim Jihad, the oil ministry spokesman, told Al Hayat: "The American company had failed in keeping its promise to finish installing these meters; also, refusing to reveal the exact cost, except for saying that it is executing it within the American grant to Iraq and the sum of that grant is unknown to us too. This relieves the ministry from its obligation to it. Besides, many international companies presented good offers to implement the project in a record time due to its importance."
The oil ministry then invited British Petroleum and Shell to plan a comprehensive national metering project that would cover not only the oil terminals, but also the productions wells and the even the refineries.
A SIGIR team traveled to ABOT in November 2006 to check on progress. Its unpublished report suggests that the work was less than half complete.
Suddenly, in December 2006, a high-level U.S. team traveled out to ABOT to inspect the meters. In a little-noticed announcement issued on a Saturday just before Christmas, John Sickman, the resident oil expert at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the meters had been fixed and were working fine.
"The measurement using the existing turbine meters and displacement meters at the offshore terminal at ABOT is transparent and the measurement devices are more than adequate," Sickman was quoted in the press release. "Furthermore, the crude oil vessels have measurement and quality samplers."
Indeed this is how the Dutch company Saybolt measured oil export under the United Nations Oil for Food program. The problem even today, according to experts consulted for this report, is that the meters have yet to be calibrated, so the data are basically useless.
Even if the meters are working properly, smuggling could still occur. "It's easy to steal crude if you knew what you were doing," Don Deaver, a petroleum metering expert who worked for Exxon for 33 years, said. "If you meaure too low or too high, someone will lose and some will one gain. It's why you need professionals who understand how the meters work to make sure that nothing is being lost or stolen."
U.S. government officials claim that little is being stolen. SGS (a British consultancy) "is providing independent third party loading certifications onsite for the customers. This, coupled with the recent installation of ultrasonic meter provides more than redundant measurement capability," said Sickman in December.
Days after the press release, in early January 2007, Parsons began work on the meters under a $57.8 million U.S. government-funded contract supervised by Major Dale Winger of the Joint Contracting Command in Basra. Almost as soon as work started, Winger was replaced by Lieutenant Commander Brian Schorn. Reached for this article, Schorn said he was not up to speed on what work had been done, and referred questions to his "front-office" in Baghdad at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Parsons Iraq Joint Venture spokesman Don Lassus also refused to comment. The contract with the military does not permit the release of "any unclassified information," he said, without prior approval of the military.
Today no government officials have been able to establish conclusively whether oil is being smuggled or not. Even the future of the oil metering remains unclear. The latest report issued by SIGIR in January 2007 notes that repair and rehabilitation work at ABOT is scheduled to be finished by May 2007, but "it is unclear whether this project will be completed because of de-obligation requirements" that is to say that the funding could be cut.
Pratap Chatterjee is managing editor of CorpWatch and the author of 'Iraq Inc.' (Seven Stories Press, September 2004).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/51218/
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Crafting a new story for the attention deficit nation
Iraq
- q + n= Iran
- n= IRA
The news of the Iranian roadside bombs in Iraq that kill our troops you are being innundated with is just another new BS story.
I predict is another Jessica Lynch- Pat Tillman Potemkin type propaganda story, crafted to rouse the Attention Deficit Nation.
Don't trust anything the War Party says on the War Media.
Don't you remember, the story has been hinted around for months now.
I recall hearing it mentioned briefly by the ABC writer- embedded reporter on Diane Rheme's show last week.
But the REAL story is that it is another covert provication to war on Iran.
Dubya is spending millions on propaganda aimed at you and me. Are you awake enough to catch it?
Just Google it for yourself... IRA and IED. These are the same bombs that covert Brit and US spooks taught the IRA to use in their violence, as reported in the Guardian newspaper.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The NeoLiberals screw us too
If you want to know all about AIPAC and the Neocons (and the Neolibs) your best resource is Antiwar.com
Pelosi's Capitulation
by Patrick J. Buchanan
March 20, 2007
If George W. Bush launches a preemptive war on Iran, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bear full moral responsibility for that war.
For it was Pelosi who quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran.
Pelosi's capitulation came in the Appropriations Committee.
What went down, and why?
"Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy," wrote The Associated Press' David Espo and Matthew Lee.
"Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in an interview there is a widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which … has expressed unremitting hostility to the Jewish state.
"'It would take away perhaps the most important tool the U.S. has when it comes to Iran,' she said of the now-abandoned provision.
"'I don't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize in a civilized way,' said Gary Ackerman of New York."
According to John Nichols of The Nation, Pelosi's decision to strip the provision barring Bush from attacking Iran without Congress' approval "sends the worst possible signal to the White House."
"The speaker has erred dangerously and dramatically," writes Nichols. Her "disastrous misstep could haunt her and the Congress for years to come."
Nichols does not exaggerate.
If Bush now launches war on Iran, he can credibly say Congress and the Democrats gave him a green light. For Pelosi, by removing a provision saying Bush does not have the authority, de facto concedes he does have the authority.
Bush and Cheney need now not worry about Congress.
They have been flashed the go sign for war on Iran.
Pelosi & Co. thus aborted a bipartisan effort to ensure that if we do go to war again, we do it the constitutional way, and we do it together.
Nothing in the provision would have prevented Bush, as commander in chief, from responding to an Iranian attack or engaging in hot pursuit of an enemy found in Iraq. Nor would the provision have prevented Bush from threatening Iran. It would simply have required him to come to Congress – before launching all-out war.
Now Pelosi has, in effect, ceded Bush carte blanche to take out Iran's nuclear facilities. It's all up to him and Cheney.
For this the nation elected a Democratic Congress?
Why did Pelosi capitulate? Answer: She was "under pressure from some conservative members of her caucus, and from lobbyists associated with neoconservative groups that want war with Iran and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)," writes Nichols.
The Washington Times agrees as to who bully-ragged Nancy into scuttling any requirement that Bush come to the Hill before unleashing the B-2s on Arak, Natanz, and Bushehr:
"Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received a smattering of boos when she badmouthed the war effort during a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Democratic leadership, responding to concerns from pro-Israel lawmakers, was forced to strip from a military appropriations measure a provision meant to weaken President Bush's ability to respond to threats from Iran."
This episode, wherein liberal Democrats scuttled a bipartisan effort to require Bush to abide by the Constitution before taking us into a third war in the Middle East, speaks volumes about who has the whip hand on Capitol Hill, when it comes to the Middle East.
Pelosi gets booed by the Israeli lobby, then runs back to the Hill and gives Bush a blank check for war on Iran, because that is what the lobby demands. A real candidate for Profiles in Courage.
As for the presidential candidates, it is hard to find a single one willing to stand up and say: If Bush plans to take us into another war in the Mideast, he must first come to Congress for authorization. And if he goes to war without authorization, that will be impeachable.
All retreat into the "all-options-are-on-the-table" mantra, which is another way of saying, "It's Bush's call."
The corruption of both parties is astonishing. Republicans used to be the party of the Constitution: "No more undeclared wars! No more presidential wars!"
Democrats used to be the party of the people. The people don't want this war. They don't want another. The Jewish community voted 88 percent for Democrats in November, and 77 percent oppose the war in Iraq.
So says Gallup. Yet, just because the Israeli lobby jerked her chain, the leader of the Peoples' House has decided she and her party will leave the next war up to Bush.
Sam Rayburn must be turning over in his grave.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10701
Pelosi Invades Iran
Tom Gilroy
01.31.2007
published on the Huffington Post
There's an interesting note in yesterday's New York Times article about the latest efforts of the White House to get around having to answer to the law, the Congress, or the will of the people.
In yet another stunning example of his ceaseless march to circumvent the Constitution and exert a totalitarian grip on every aspect of American life---be it access to information in libraries, gas prices, education, a free Internet, the environment, media, science, privacy, or civil liberties, imprisonment, torture--President Bush signed a directive giving the White House even greater control over the rules and policy statements the government develops to protect public health, workplace safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
In short, our lives.
Historically, agencies like the EPA or OSHA issue regulations under authority granted to them in laws enacted by Congress, but now that Congress is 'democrat' as Bush called it in his State of the Union address---thereby insulting roughly half of the Union---there's suddenly a slim chance that one of these agencies might actually break free from W's stranglehold and get back to doing what its supposed to do; enforce federal regulations----you know, the rules that protect the American people.
Well, the White House can't have that, hence this directive.
Remember, the White House isn't the government.
It is one part of a government that consists of three equally powerful branches, designed to insure an environment of compromise. Those clichés from history class-- 'balance of power' and 'checks and balances'--are drummed into our heads to remind us the Framers felt it central to our democracy and freedom that no branch of government should get more powerful than the others.
But the White House has been doing just that for 6 years.
With the implementation of this new directive, the federal rules and regulations we count on for our safety will only be issued or enforced if the Bush appointee installed to look over the shoulder of the given agency says its okay. Oh, and no one in any agency can tell the public about any findings--scientific or otherwise--unless one of these brown shirts gives the go ahead, either.
Sound like freedom to you?
"Having lost control of Congress," said Peter L. Strauss, a professor at Columbia Law School, "the president is doing what he can to increase his control of the executive branch." The order "achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government."
Does this sound familiar? It should--the Nazis did it, like so many other things we've found ourselves doing lately, like water boarding, removing habeas corpus, and tapping the phones of Quakers.
Ignore for the moment that this is what the president chooses to do with his time when we're averaging about 30 deaths a day in Iraq, and look at this quote from the Times article;
'Business groups welcomed the executive order, saying it had the potential to reduce what they saw as the burden of federal regulations.'Huh? The 'burden of federal regulations?'
Isn't that, you know, the 'burden of obeying the law?'
When did it become the job of the White House to help business get around obeying the law?
You know, I'd like to reduce the burden of federal regulations on me, too, but I can't afford a lobbyist. I'd like to get around the federal law that says I have to pay taxes that pay for torture. I'd also like to get off the airplane I'm kept waiting in on the runway for 45 minutes forced to watch Everybody Loves Raymond. I'd like to start a pot farm and hand out free joints to cancer patients. I'd like to speed through the tollbooth when the line is too long without paying. I'd like to go see what's so scary about Cuba. I'd like to see any doctor I want and have my HMO pay for it. I'd like to shoot down the traffic helicopter hovering over my house every morning at 5 am, and I'd like to waterboard Ann Coulter. The only problem is, federal laws and regulations prohibit these things.
Man, this burden is such a drag. Too bad I'm not a business.
Remember how Bush claimed he'd "taken a thumpin'" after he lost Congress, how he was ready to usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation? When exactly is that era beginning? It's been about a month with this new Congress and already he's gone after Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security (again!), spit in the face of the Iraq Study Group, escalated the war in Iraq in full defiance of the will of the American citizenry, and brought us closer to war with Iran.
And those are just the biggies. They're still undermining the truth about global warming, the FDA just lifted the ban on silicon breast implants for women despite proven health risks, and W's bogus 'health care' fix turned out to be just another transparent ploy to eliminate employer-funded health benefits once and for all.
Phew. Imagine if he didn't want to cooperate.
This is the man Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to impeach. Everywhere you look--other than the think tanks of Washington, that is---from opinion polls to the internet, restaurants to gyms, football games, letters to the editors, church bulletins, graffiti, mass transit---even the comment section of the Wall Street Journal online!--- citizens are demanding the guy has got to go, but Nancy Pelosi's decided impeachment is off the table.
The White House shows no sign of stopping, or even being chastened. It has been long one endless assault on constitutional democracy, and they don't take no for an answer.
Don't want to privatize Social Security? He'll come back with a new plan to privatize it.
Don't approve his appointees? He'll appoint them anyway.
Science says global warming exists? He says it doesn't.
Don't want to send more troops to Iraq? He sends them anyway.
Don't want to invade Iran? ___
It's not a lame duck Madam Speaker is giving a free ride to, it's an armed, insane, arrogant asshole duck and he has his webbed foot on the trigger of a third world war.
Only impeachment can stop him.
Only impeachment can stop this assault on democracy.
Only impeachment can stop the erosion of our constitution, our rights, our international stature, the impoverishment of our schools, the degradation of our air and water, the bankrupting of our future with mountains of debt, and the escalation of death to our soldiers, and to hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
What more is it going to take for Nancy Pelosi to stand up? How low do we have to go? Maybe Madam Speaker can play nice-nice and robotically sit, stand, sit, stand, applaud, sit, and stand with a smile plastered on her face after W insults her and her 'democrat' congress in full view of the nation, but I've had it.
From this day forward, Ms Pelosi and my two Senators--one of whom will be running for President--will receive either an email, a letter or a phone call EVERY DAY demanding the impeachment of the most loathed global figure in the world. EVERY DAY. And I pledge to get one friend a week to take up this challenge.
Will you join me?
Pelosi's Capitulation
by Patrick J. Buchanan
March 20, 2007
If George W. Bush launches a preemptive war on Iran, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bear full moral responsibility for that war.
For it was Pelosi who quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran.
Pelosi's capitulation came in the Appropriations Committee.
What went down, and why?
"Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy," wrote The Associated Press' David Espo and Matthew Lee.
"Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in an interview there is a widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which … has expressed unremitting hostility to the Jewish state.
"'It would take away perhaps the most important tool the U.S. has when it comes to Iran,' she said of the now-abandoned provision.
"'I don't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize in a civilized way,' said Gary Ackerman of New York."
According to John Nichols of The Nation, Pelosi's decision to strip the provision barring Bush from attacking Iran without Congress' approval "sends the worst possible signal to the White House."
"The speaker has erred dangerously and dramatically," writes Nichols. Her "disastrous misstep could haunt her and the Congress for years to come."
Nichols does not exaggerate.
If Bush now launches war on Iran, he can credibly say Congress and the Democrats gave him a green light. For Pelosi, by removing a provision saying Bush does not have the authority, de facto concedes he does have the authority.
Bush and Cheney need now not worry about Congress.
They have been flashed the go sign for war on Iran.
Pelosi & Co. thus aborted a bipartisan effort to ensure that if we do go to war again, we do it the constitutional way, and we do it together.
Nothing in the provision would have prevented Bush, as commander in chief, from responding to an Iranian attack or engaging in hot pursuit of an enemy found in Iraq. Nor would the provision have prevented Bush from threatening Iran. It would simply have required him to come to Congress – before launching all-out war.
Now Pelosi has, in effect, ceded Bush carte blanche to take out Iran's nuclear facilities. It's all up to him and Cheney.
For this the nation elected a Democratic Congress?
Why did Pelosi capitulate? Answer: She was "under pressure from some conservative members of her caucus, and from lobbyists associated with neoconservative groups that want war with Iran and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)," writes Nichols.
The Washington Times agrees as to who bully-ragged Nancy into scuttling any requirement that Bush come to the Hill before unleashing the B-2s on Arak, Natanz, and Bushehr:
"Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received a smattering of boos when she badmouthed the war effort during a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Democratic leadership, responding to concerns from pro-Israel lawmakers, was forced to strip from a military appropriations measure a provision meant to weaken President Bush's ability to respond to threats from Iran."
This episode, wherein liberal Democrats scuttled a bipartisan effort to require Bush to abide by the Constitution before taking us into a third war in the Middle East, speaks volumes about who has the whip hand on Capitol Hill, when it comes to the Middle East.
Pelosi gets booed by the Israeli lobby, then runs back to the Hill and gives Bush a blank check for war on Iran, because that is what the lobby demands. A real candidate for Profiles in Courage.
As for the presidential candidates, it is hard to find a single one willing to stand up and say: If Bush plans to take us into another war in the Mideast, he must first come to Congress for authorization. And if he goes to war without authorization, that will be impeachable.
All retreat into the "all-options-are-on-the-table" mantra, which is another way of saying, "It's Bush's call."
The corruption of both parties is astonishing. Republicans used to be the party of the Constitution: "No more undeclared wars! No more presidential wars!"
Democrats used to be the party of the people. The people don't want this war. They don't want another. The Jewish community voted 88 percent for Democrats in November, and 77 percent oppose the war in Iraq.
So says Gallup. Yet, just because the Israeli lobby jerked her chain, the leader of the Peoples' House has decided she and her party will leave the next war up to Bush.
Sam Rayburn must be turning over in his grave.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10701
Pelosi Invades Iran
Tom Gilroy
01.31.2007
published on the Huffington Post
There's an interesting note in yesterday's New York Times article about the latest efforts of the White House to get around having to answer to the law, the Congress, or the will of the people.
In yet another stunning example of his ceaseless march to circumvent the Constitution and exert a totalitarian grip on every aspect of American life---be it access to information in libraries, gas prices, education, a free Internet, the environment, media, science, privacy, or civil liberties, imprisonment, torture--President Bush signed a directive giving the White House even greater control over the rules and policy statements the government develops to protect public health, workplace safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
In short, our lives.
Historically, agencies like the EPA or OSHA issue regulations under authority granted to them in laws enacted by Congress, but now that Congress is 'democrat' as Bush called it in his State of the Union address---thereby insulting roughly half of the Union---there's suddenly a slim chance that one of these agencies might actually break free from W's stranglehold and get back to doing what its supposed to do; enforce federal regulations----you know, the rules that protect the American people.
Well, the White House can't have that, hence this directive.
Remember, the White House isn't the government.
It is one part of a government that consists of three equally powerful branches, designed to insure an environment of compromise. Those clichés from history class-- 'balance of power' and 'checks and balances'--are drummed into our heads to remind us the Framers felt it central to our democracy and freedom that no branch of government should get more powerful than the others.
But the White House has been doing just that for 6 years.
With the implementation of this new directive, the federal rules and regulations we count on for our safety will only be issued or enforced if the Bush appointee installed to look over the shoulder of the given agency says its okay. Oh, and no one in any agency can tell the public about any findings--scientific or otherwise--unless one of these brown shirts gives the go ahead, either.
Sound like freedom to you?
"Having lost control of Congress," said Peter L. Strauss, a professor at Columbia Law School, "the president is doing what he can to increase his control of the executive branch." The order "achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government."
Does this sound familiar? It should--the Nazis did it, like so many other things we've found ourselves doing lately, like water boarding, removing habeas corpus, and tapping the phones of Quakers.
Ignore for the moment that this is what the president chooses to do with his time when we're averaging about 30 deaths a day in Iraq, and look at this quote from the Times article;
'Business groups welcomed the executive order, saying it had the potential to reduce what they saw as the burden of federal regulations.'Huh? The 'burden of federal regulations?'
Isn't that, you know, the 'burden of obeying the law?'
When did it become the job of the White House to help business get around obeying the law?
You know, I'd like to reduce the burden of federal regulations on me, too, but I can't afford a lobbyist. I'd like to get around the federal law that says I have to pay taxes that pay for torture. I'd also like to get off the airplane I'm kept waiting in on the runway for 45 minutes forced to watch Everybody Loves Raymond. I'd like to start a pot farm and hand out free joints to cancer patients. I'd like to speed through the tollbooth when the line is too long without paying. I'd like to go see what's so scary about Cuba. I'd like to see any doctor I want and have my HMO pay for it. I'd like to shoot down the traffic helicopter hovering over my house every morning at 5 am, and I'd like to waterboard Ann Coulter. The only problem is, federal laws and regulations prohibit these things.
Man, this burden is such a drag. Too bad I'm not a business.
Remember how Bush claimed he'd "taken a thumpin'" after he lost Congress, how he was ready to usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation? When exactly is that era beginning? It's been about a month with this new Congress and already he's gone after Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security (again!), spit in the face of the Iraq Study Group, escalated the war in Iraq in full defiance of the will of the American citizenry, and brought us closer to war with Iran.
And those are just the biggies. They're still undermining the truth about global warming, the FDA just lifted the ban on silicon breast implants for women despite proven health risks, and W's bogus 'health care' fix turned out to be just another transparent ploy to eliminate employer-funded health benefits once and for all.
Phew. Imagine if he didn't want to cooperate.
This is the man Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to impeach. Everywhere you look--other than the think tanks of Washington, that is---from opinion polls to the internet, restaurants to gyms, football games, letters to the editors, church bulletins, graffiti, mass transit---even the comment section of the Wall Street Journal online!--- citizens are demanding the guy has got to go, but Nancy Pelosi's decided impeachment is off the table.
The White House shows no sign of stopping, or even being chastened. It has been long one endless assault on constitutional democracy, and they don't take no for an answer.
Don't want to privatize Social Security? He'll come back with a new plan to privatize it.
Don't approve his appointees? He'll appoint them anyway.
Science says global warming exists? He says it doesn't.
Don't want to send more troops to Iraq? He sends them anyway.
Don't want to invade Iran? ___
It's not a lame duck Madam Speaker is giving a free ride to, it's an armed, insane, arrogant asshole duck and he has his webbed foot on the trigger of a third world war.
Only impeachment can stop him.
Only impeachment can stop this assault on democracy.
Only impeachment can stop the erosion of our constitution, our rights, our international stature, the impoverishment of our schools, the degradation of our air and water, the bankrupting of our future with mountains of debt, and the escalation of death to our soldiers, and to hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
What more is it going to take for Nancy Pelosi to stand up? How low do we have to go? Maybe Madam Speaker can play nice-nice and robotically sit, stand, sit, stand, applaud, sit, and stand with a smile plastered on her face after W insults her and her 'democrat' congress in full view of the nation, but I've had it.
From this day forward, Ms Pelosi and my two Senators--one of whom will be running for President--will receive either an email, a letter or a phone call EVERY DAY demanding the impeachment of the most loathed global figure in the world. EVERY DAY. And I pledge to get one friend a week to take up this challenge.
Will you join me?
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
coincidences
first coincidence:
After I posted this Gil Scott Heron rap on the MIC below, someone gave me a relevant DVD to watch. Lord of War is a panned Nick Cage movie that tells the story of the proliferation of weapons after the end of the cold war, historical fact as the basis for a semifictional story supposedly told by a playa in the military-industrial complex, a weapons dealer.
Sure Cage is stone faced throughout, but the story is the star. It's in the video store now, for your edification.
second coincidence:
The television is on in the middle of the night to soothe a guest, and who is on CSPAN2 book notes but Joseph Cirincione, flogging his new book on nuclear proliferation.
This guy is so smart, he is someone who can hold up his history and say, "I was right about Iraq".
I understood from day one that the Bush Administration was lying about Iraq harboring WMDs, and it was because of a few great individuals: Seymour Hersh,
Scott Ritter, Joe Cirincione. And the bloggers who pointed them out to me, especially the writers on Anti-War.com.
You should realize, the same guys who lied about Iraq are lying about Iran. Go back and Google the facts. Who said what.
The same guys who tried to save us before, and are on record as being right, are trying to save us now.
Try to catch him in a rerun, or online.
Antiwar.com has been doing a great favor for us .mp3 listeners, with its interview show, now called (link) AntiWar Radio. Scott Horton and Charles Goyette have been doing some great and important interviews lately, so go, listen.NOTHING will freeze your blood like hearing Helen Caldicott in the middle of the night describe the devistation of a single H-bomb dropped on a city, and what would follow. She is concise...
...and the Imperial Warlord Bush has dropped us out of all those international treaties based on his takeover of of all three branches that once governed our late Republic, including the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
After I posted this Gil Scott Heron rap on the MIC below, someone gave me a relevant DVD to watch. Lord of War is a panned Nick Cage movie that tells the story of the proliferation of weapons after the end of the cold war, historical fact as the basis for a semifictional story supposedly told by a playa in the military-industrial complex, a weapons dealer.
Sure Cage is stone faced throughout, but the story is the star. It's in the video store now, for your edification.
second coincidence:
The television is on in the middle of the night to soothe a guest, and who is on CSPAN2 book notes but Joseph Cirincione, flogging his new book on nuclear proliferation.
This guy is so smart, he is someone who can hold up his history and say, "I was right about Iraq".
I understood from day one that the Bush Administration was lying about Iraq harboring WMDs, and it was because of a few great individuals: Seymour Hersh,
Scott Ritter, Joe Cirincione. And the bloggers who pointed them out to me, especially the writers on Anti-War.com.
You should realize, the same guys who lied about Iraq are lying about Iran. Go back and Google the facts. Who said what.
The same guys who tried to save us before, and are on record as being right, are trying to save us now.
Try to catch him in a rerun, or online.
Antiwar.com has been doing a great favor for us .mp3 listeners, with its interview show, now called (link) AntiWar Radio. Scott Horton and Charles Goyette have been doing some great and important interviews lately, so go, listen.NOTHING will freeze your blood like hearing Helen Caldicott in the middle of the night describe the devistation of a single H-bomb dropped on a city, and what would follow. She is concise...
...and the Imperial Warlord Bush has dropped us out of all those international treaties based on his takeover of of all three branches that once governed our late Republic, including the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Dear General Pace
Let me get this straight, general. Were you suggesting we drum all of the "immoral" people out of the military? Gays and maybe even adulterers shouldn't be allowed to stay in the military? Maybe you think only holy- as- thou, straight, married, faithful Reptublicans should serve in the military?
Good Idea.
Hmm, what about all the other deadly sinners?
That would be one way to shrink the cancer that is the military-industrial complex.
specially when the DemocRAT side of 'the coin' have betrayed their base.
Good Idea, general.
Good Idea.
Hmm, what about all the other deadly sinners?
That would be one way to shrink the cancer that is the military-industrial complex.
specially when the DemocRAT side of 'the coin' have betrayed their base.
Good Idea, general.
Monday, February 26, 2007
President Bush Spits on American Children for the 6th year
And Congress, in a bipartisan gentlemen's agreement, comply.
Go look at the budget proposal.
Cut the inheritance tax for the Richie Rich heirs of wealthy capitalist families who haven't done pre-emptive tax planning.
Cut the budget for poor children's medical insurance and the supplemental food programs that supply hungry folk with groceries (dollars spent locally, eh? on produce from American farmers, eh?), and heating oil for low income Americans, and most things you expect would be worth supporting in a moral nation...
An already bloated, and yes, earmarked, budget that borrows from your children to pay for today's spending.
A tax redistribution, from the pockets of the middle class, who pay tax, to the military contractors and the top percent of the population, most of whom FRANKLY, aren't worth it, didn't earn it, and were just lucky.
"Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, "When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat." The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. ... I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day."- Amos 8:4-10
Go look at the budget proposal.
Cut the inheritance tax for the Richie Rich heirs of wealthy capitalist families who haven't done pre-emptive tax planning.
Cut the budget for poor children's medical insurance and the supplemental food programs that supply hungry folk with groceries (dollars spent locally, eh? on produce from American farmers, eh?), and heating oil for low income Americans, and most things you expect would be worth supporting in a moral nation...
An already bloated, and yes, earmarked, budget that borrows from your children to pay for today's spending.
A tax redistribution, from the pockets of the middle class, who pay tax, to the military contractors and the top percent of the population, most of whom FRANKLY, aren't worth it, didn't earn it, and were just lucky.
"Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, "When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat." The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. ... I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day."- Amos 8:4-10
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