DeepCool
For What It's Worth

There's somethin' happening here,
What it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun over there,
Tellin' me I gotta beware.
I think it's time we stop,
Hey, what's that sound,
Everybody look what's going down.
- For What It's Worth, Stephen Stills, 1966


Oh, I Get It... It's A Religious War!

Uncle Sam VS the Ayatollahs, or VS the Taliban Mullahs, or the Wahabi Clerics featuring Usama bin Laden...
It sure seems like there is a common thread here. The US squares off against cultural relics of late Bronze Age belief systems one after another.

In 'Believe It, or Not', Nicholas D. Kristof helps illustrate why many Europeans look at this conflict as a return to the dark era of the religious wars of their early history. From that perspective this is a very scary development. I think so too... Read his article here.

Is Bush Jr. Out Of The Loop Too?
IraqGate Looms

Like a horror movie villain, the Iran-Contra scandal is back in the news. Many of those involved in the Reagan-era scandal are back in power in the W administration (some were pardoned by his Dad). Iran-Contra was an end run by radical militarists around the limits of the constitution and the expressed wishes of Congress. It involved all manner of nasty illegal shennangins that Bush Sr., the former CIA head and sitting Vice President was unaware of as he was theoretically "out of the loop". It is widely considered the greatest Consitutional crisis of the 20th century.2 Bushes - Out of the loop?

Iraq may turn into the "Son of Iran-Contra". A recently retired (and courageous) Air Force lieutenant colonel who served in Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith's office as a senior Middle East specialist wrote a scathing expose of the workings of the Office of Special Plans (OSP), the Defense Policy Board (DPB), and the rest of the Rumsfeld/Cheney crowd. The article, 'Flawed decision-making - Cliques, groupthink dominate work of Defense Department' can be read here.

There are two related pieces by Jim Lobe, Asia Times Washington Correspondent, The first, entitled 'Insider fires a broadside at Rumsfeld's office' is specifically about that article and includes this statement:"Kwiatkowski's comments echo the worst fears of some lawmakers, who have begun looking into the OSP's role in the administration's mistaken assumptions in Iraq. Some are even comparing it to the off-the-books operation run from the National Security Council (NSC) during the Ronald Reagan administration that later resulted in the Iran-Contra scandal."

The second, 'Iran-Contra, amplified' leads off with, " A specter of the Iran-Contra affair is haunting Washington. Even some of the people and countries are the same. And the methods - particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy - are definitely the same.

It should be cause for alarm that a search of Google News' 4500 English language news sources on "Karen Kwiatkowski" (use the quotes) returns few hits. Other than a few political sites, a paper each in Pakistan, Lebanon, and Hong Kong (the Lobe stories), and a related Knight Ridder story in the San Jose (CA) Mercury, the sole American coverage of this brave expose is in found in the Charlotte (NC) Observer. This is the new norm for subjects deemed 'un-newsworthy' by the powers that control our 'free' press.

All of this should not be too surprising. After all, Rummy and Dick have been at the pinnacle of power in this country since the Nixon years when the duo were tasked with making sure that War On Poverty funds went to organizations approved by the right. It is a failing of American culture that we deem these boosters of world domination by the US, Star Wars, Bunker Busters, tactical nukes, and foes of arms control, test bans, military cuts, and more, neo-conservatives. They change hats and the media loses track of them, and they are forever neo.

I am grateful for reporters like Jim Lobe and Greg Palast who, since they are published outside of the US, are able to cover these stories and for whistle blowers like Kwiatkowski who do so at great personal risk.
 

Naval Aviator Bush Action Figure!
Naval Aviator Bush Action Figure
Actual Toy (from kbtoys.com)





The Der Spiegel interview, 'A Form Of Looting', with 2001 Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof that Al Gore mentioned in his speech is available here. On its own, this scary assessment of our national finances is cause for extreme arlarm and immediate action.

Follow the Money! A Kansan named Stan Cox created a great visual aid that helps us really understand who benefits from the Bush economic scheme in an article titled 'Astronomical Incomes'. Its visual impact will surprise even those who know the numbers.

In 'Some Advice for Democrats', David Morris starts off with "The Republican Party enjoys the best of all possible worlds. It gets to rail against government while dramatically expanding the power and reach of government. The Democratic Party shouldn't let them get away with it." It is a very compelling article and can be read here.

What do they want anyway? William Greider, a very well known writer and editor, shows - in scholarly detail that they want to take the country back to the turn of the last century in his article, 'Rolling Back the 20th Century' located here. It is long but very very good.

Spinning Iraq - How they sold the war. Jim Lobe says "With demands for a full-scale investigation of the manipulation of intelligence by the administration of President George W Bush mounting steadily, it appears increasingly clear that key officials and their allies outside the administration decided to use the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext for going to war against Iraq within hours of the attacks themselves" in his article, 'Schemers have their way'. Read it here.

Pepe Escobar lists many of the folks who pushed the war on Iraq in 'This war is brought to you by...' and another Lobe article, 'How neo-cons influence the Pentagon' connects the dots between the schemers and the Pentagon and the methods used to control it. He delves into the reasons why they might be doing all this in 'Neocons dance a Strauss waltz'.

Al Gore's Great Speech At NYU

Al Gore at NYU

Former Vice-President Al Gore gave a major policy speech at NYU in New York City this Thursday morning, sponsored by MoveOn.org, the online grassroots democracy group.

The speech was his first major address on Iraq and Administration policy since opposing the Bush plan for war, in San Francisco last September. He also addressed economic and environmental challenges facing the country.

It was terrific! I ask that you take the time to listen as I believe it is a very important call to arms and it is both moving and inspirational as well.

Here is his closing thought... A good (and needed) summary of what we are trying to achieve:

"I believe that we must stand for a future in which the United States will again be feared only by its enemies; in which our country will again lead the effort to create an international order based on the rule of law; a nation which upholds fundamental rights even for those it believes to be its captured enemies; a nation whose financial house is in order; a nation where the market place is kept healthy by effective government scrutiny; a country which does what is necessary to provide for the health, education, and welfare of our people; a society in which citizens of all faiths enjoy equal standing; a republic once again comfortable that its chief executive knows the limits as well as the powers of the presidency; a nation that places the highest value on facts, not ideology, as the basis for all its great debates and decisions. "

Those with high speed internet may want to watch a very good streaming video copy of the speech. It can be viewed at MoveOn.org's site here (it requires RealPlayer). It is about an hour long and cannot be saved to disk.

For those less advantaged, I was able to extract the the audio portion of the speech. It is fairly large, so I made two versions, both of which are lacking the introductions and any post event audio and are about 40 minutes long.

First, the stereo version, which is 16 megabytes but of high quality is here: AlGoreNYU.mp3

Second, a smaller mono version, 4.5 megabytes and AM radio quality, is here: AlGoreNYU-Mono.mp3

Finally, the official text version of the speech here:

(to download and save to disk rather than listen or view, click with the rightmouse button on the link and select 'Save Target As' or 'Save Link' - Mac users do a Command click)
















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