2007 February/ update 6

The Delusionary Executive

"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." -Winston Churchill

"The violent destruction of life and property incident to war; the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free." -Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist #8

"George W. Bush has repeatedly asserted and exercised authority that he does not possess under the Constitution he swore to uphold. He has announced that he intends to continue exercising power according to his claim of a mandate that erases the separation and balancing of power among the branches of government, frees him from any real obligation to obey laws passed by Congress, and permits him to ignore any provisions of the Bill of Rights that may prove inconvenient." - Joe Conason, "It Can Happen Here"

"If we could manage to get past the tedious and the odious - like the empty speculation on whether a woman can win, or whether Barack Obama is black enough - we might be able to engage the essential issue facing the U.S. at this point in our history.
And that is whether, once the Bush administration has finally and mercifully run its course, the country goes back to being a reasonably peaceful, lawful, constructive force in the world, or whether we continue down the bullying, warlike, unilateral, irresponsible, unlawful and profoundly ineffective path laid out by Bush, Cheney & Co. The question is not so much whether a Republican or a Democrat takes the White House in the next election; it's whether the American people can take back their country." -Bob Herbert, NYTimes, 2/19/07,"The Real Patriots"

WAR ALERT: Bush & Cheney Appear Determined to Attack Iran
The administration's former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs, Hillary Mann, said: "They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for."
Zbigniew Brzezinski warns the Senate: "A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. ...
"A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan." -Zbigniew Brzezinski Feb 1, 2007. Senate Comm. Foreign Relations (pdf).
This comes as the Guardian newspaper reports US preparations for an air strike against Iran have reached an advanced stage. The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring.
The latest salvo in the scenario: courtesy of NYTimes' Michael Gordon, of Iraq-WMD-lies fame, quoting high "unnamed" sources: Iran is giving advanced IEDs to the Shiia in Iraq. Never mind that it's Sunnis who are using IEDs to blow up our convoys. Never mind that the Shiias run the government we set up, and are not yet fighting us. Go tell Alice...
Experts and ex-officials have warned them of a disaster. Senators warned them of a "constitutional crisis" if they do it. Allies have warned them not to do it. Generals have warned them not to do it.
But it seems the plan moves ahead, no matter that this time, Mr Bush, the self-proclaimed "Educator in Chief", is not doing so well with his part of the job- selling the war in advance to a gullible press and public- (as in "catapult the propaganda"). Each day brings denials of warlike intentions, but also new 'evidence' of Iranian arms transfers; the pressure ratchets up inexorably, the plan is in motion, if even poorly sold. Can it be stopped?
Preparations continue for an air assault. Newsweek is also reporting that the U.S. is likely to send a third Navy carrier to the Persian Gulf. Since Bush-Cheney sold nuclear tipped bunker busters to Israel recently, we can assume the Israelis will participate.
And yet key democratic candidates, Clinton and Edwards, who have already come out against the Iraq War, still pander to AIPAC and the AEI with earnest assurances that, when it come to Iran, 'everything is on the table' and that Iran 'cannot be permitted to develop nuclear weapons'; thus maneuvering themselves into position for a sucker punch when sometime in the next months there's an 'incident', a riposte, and bingo, we're bombing, for all the reasons these Dems endorsed. They'll get their war, and the suckered Dems will be neutered in the presidential campaign. 'I supported the War in Iraq, until they botched it, then I was against it; I supported the War in Iran, until they launched it, now I oppose it...' Good luck!

Who has something intelligent to say about Iran? Try Wesley Clark: "Is War with Iran Inevitable?"
Prof. Juan Cole follows the details at Informed Comment
Craig Unger in Vanity Fair:"From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq"
Guardian: "Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring"

2007 January 15

Desperate Measures for a Failed Occupation
As we predicted in these pages 4 years ago, Iraq has become a horrific quagmire, and it appears impossible to judge whether its worse to stay or worse to leave...
On the horns of this dilemma, Bush-Cheney have opted to escalate the "war", a reckless gambler's move, which, given the minimal confidence he enjoys among the public, the congress, the military, and our allies around the world, seems almost pathological.
Secure Baghdad by kicking in MORE doors in house to house searches? More heavily armed and jumpy non-Arabic-speaking soldiers at random checkpoints throughout the city? And when we find Shia and Sunni shooting at each other, do we take sides, or do we shoot at them all, or do we walk away? Are we really going to confront the Mahdi Army, as hinted? Or will the Shia militias drop back, allowing the Shia government to work with us in persecuting the Sunni? That would draw the Saudis in. What a mess!
There's more: Bush's plan calls for using Kurdish troops in Baghdad to suppress the Sunni - Shia violence. That's right, come on you Kurds, get off the sidelines and join the fray! Now, behind the Kurds are the Turks, eyeing nervously the potential for the emergence of an independent Kurdistan. When Rice recently warned the Turks to stay out, PM Erdogan practically laughed in her face; "We have a 350 km border with Iraq. We have historic relations ... the United States is 10,000 km away from Iraq, and yet is it not intervening in Iraq's internal affairs?"
But most dangerously, this surge plan may be a smokescreen to give cover to a policy of escalation against Iran, laying the groundwork for dual ends, to blame the Iraqi fiasco on Iranian meddling, and to reach a level of provocation where hostilities can be initiated on a broad scale against Iran without first going to the Congress or the UN. Note that a second aircraft carrier group has been sent to the region, and the new Centcom commander is an admiral. Iranian 'diplomats' have been seized in Erbil (Kurdistan) and Baghdad. Last week an American nuclear attack submarine surfaced under a Japanese oil tanker just off the Iranian coast.
For those of us outside the Bush Bubble, this course of action seems sheer lunacy. Is he just bereft of good judgement, or is he mad, sociopathic? Is he drinking again? Is it the Armageddon thing? His circle of abuse is set to widen once more; when are we going to put a stop to it? There was a moment during the Watergate scandal when doubts arose over Nixon's mental state; from that point on the impeachment momentum accelerated. We may be seeing such a point in the near future. This is not lost on Congress. With the new Democratic majority, and many Republicans awaking to the danger, watching Congressional Hearings on C-Span these days is pretty intense.

A note regarding impeachment. The airwaves are full of people saying if we impeached Bush, we'd only get Cheney, or liberal talk hosts cackling over Nancy Pelosi becoming president if we got Cheney out too. Actually, the Ford presidency shows how it works: No-one wanted Nixon's Veep, the ridiculous Spiro Agnew, to become president, so corruption charges were brought against him and he resigned. Then, in accordance with section 2 of the 25th amendment, the President nominated a new Vice-President, to be confirmed by Congress. That was Ford.
The worst reason for not impeaching Bush and Cheney is that their clock will almost have run out anyway. Impeachment is the way- the only way- we can officially and for the record state that specific crimes were committed and that they constitute unacceptable behavior for our leaders, and that we condemn and renounce them forever. And we must do that.

more on the Iranian dimension: The Washington Note
And the Baghdad situation: Juan Cole
And this excellent piece: The Iraq Insurgency- anatomy of a tribal rebellion

Saddam Hung by Shia Militia
Saddam was hung by a jeering clutch of hooded Shiite militiamen, who chanted Moktadr! Moktadr! as Saddam tried to pray. To rub salt in the Sunni wound, the execution was held on the Sunni first day of the holiday Id, a day of forgiveness; the Shiia celebrate Id beginning Sunday.(story and cell-phone video link here)

Want US Citizenship? The Fast Track is Iraq Boston Globe reports on Dec 26: "The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks - including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and put more immigrants on a faster track to U.S. citizenship if they volunteer - according to Pentagon officials." This is a really bad idea- preferential citizenship for foreigners willing to fight and kill in an illegal and senseless war for a couple years before coming to America... just great.

"I say 'No More!'"
Philip Martin has been a Marine for 2 years, and has spent 7 months in the al-Anbar province of Iraq. He went on more than 180 combat patrols in and outside of the city of Fallujah, where he was hit with 2 IEDs, and was involved in a number of firefights. He wrote this letter while stationed in Twentynine Palms, CA, and is due to return to Iraq for a second deployment in April 2007. He is 21-years-old.

"I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego..." (read all)

War Crimes: Mahmoudiya Rape-Massacre Trials
These crimes occurred March 12, 2006, in Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad.

According to the federal affidavit, PFC Steven D. Green and four other soldiers with Bravo Company, First Battalion, 502nd Infantry, in the Army's 101st Division, planned the attack after spotting Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, a 14 year-old Iraqi schoolgirl, at a traffic checkpoint they were manning near Mahmoudiya. On the day of the attack, Green and the other soldiers drank alcohol and dressed in black before going to the girl's house. They broke in, and Green took the girl's father, mother, and her 5 year old sister in a room and killed them all. Green, then the others, gang-raped the 14 year-old girl, then Green shot her "two or three times in the head". They set the girl's body on fire, then went about covering up the crime.

The Washington Post reported that the rape victim's mother, Fakhriya Taha Muhse, worried her daughter had attracted the attention of U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint she had to go through every day. The girl had told her mother the soldiers made advances at her, and that she was afraid. The mother asked a neighbor if the girl could sleep at his house. The neighbor agreed, but the girl and her family were attacked the next day. The neighbor told the Post he was one of the first people to arrive at the house after the attack and found the girl dead in a corner, her hair and a pillow burned and her dress pushed up to her neck.

"Pvt. Green and his buddies, had planned the operation in advance: rape the girl, kill her, set her on fire, kill the witnesses, blame it on the insurgents. It almost worked. Only after an act of grotesque counter-barbarism -- the torture and beheading of two American soldiers from the very same unit, possibly in revenge- did a guilt-ridden fellow soldier spill the beans about the Mahmoudiya atrocity, during a post-beheading session with a stress counselor." ("Hadji Girl")

Pfc. Steven D. Green, who is accused of being the ringleader, grew up in the west Texas oil town of Midland, as did President Bush and his wife Laura. Green was an unemployed 19-year-old high school dropout who had just racked up his third alcohol-related conviction. He enlisted in the Army to avoid certain jail time. In early 2005, a few weeks later, Private Green immersed himself in a baptismal pool in the back of an Army chapel of the Church of Christ in Fort Benning, Ga., one of hundreds of young recruits who 'embraced Jesus' as they prepared for war. By the end of 2005, Green was found to have "homicidal ideations" after seeking help from an Army Combat Stress Team in Iraq. Green said he was angry about the war, desperate to avenge the death of comrades and driven to kill Iraqi citizens, and was prescribed a mood elevator.

"In an op-ed column in the Washington Post July 30, Andrew Tilghman, a reporter for Stars and Stripes, wrote that Green had made numerous statements about wanting to kill Iraqis during several encounters in Mahmudiya in the weeks before March 12. "I came over here because I wanted to kill people." Green went on to tell Tilghman, "The truth is, it wasn't all I thought it was cracked up to be. I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience. And then I did it, and I was like, 'All right, whatever'... I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was like nothing. Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza.' Even more remarkable is Tilghman's reaction to these sociopathic comments: he decided not to include it in his account of daily combat experiences in Mahmudiya because Green's sentiments were not particularly unusual: "This was not the first group I had run into that was full of young men who shared a dark sense of humor and were clearly desensitized to death." (Kate Randall)

- Pfc Steven Green was honorably discharged from the military in mid-May as a result of an "anti-social personality disorder" before the crime came to light. He now faces 17 counts of rape, murder and obstruction of justice in federal district court in Paducah, Kentucky
- Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, pled guilty to rape and murder to avoid the death penalty, and was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
- Spc. James Barker, 24, pled guilty to rape and murder to avoid the death penalty and was sentenced to 90 years in military prison.
- Pfcs. Jesse Spielman, 22, and Bryan Howard, 19, await courts-martial.

More References:
Redefining Quality Among Army Recruits- NPR
Harper's Interview Eli Flyer on Military Recruiting and Abuses in Iraq
"U.S. is recruiting misfits for army- Felons, racists, gang members fill in the ranks" SFChronicle
ArabWoman Blues (blog)
"An Open Letter to America's Soldiers from the Ranks: The Looming Shadow of Nuremberg" T. Swindell, Counterpunch

Related: The U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division has opened an investigation into a video, originally linked via a now defunct account on YouTube, which purports to show a former guard from Abu Ghraib talking about torture techniques employed at the American-run prison. The man also recounts the gang rape of a female teenage detainee, in which one guard "pimped" the girl to others for $50 each. As he recalls, "I think at the end of the day he'd made like 500 bucks before she hung herself."
Related: According to the Pentagon, there were 2,374 reported cases of sexual assault against women in uniform over the past year (2006). The reporting rate for the U.S. Armed Forces in sexual assault cases is 22-23 percent. That'd make about 10,000 rapes of our own female soldiers per year...

"The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder".-Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), May 14, 2004, after viewing some of the classified Abu Ghraib evidence.

War Crimes: Haditha
Several marines now face charges of "unpremeditated murder" in the Haditha Massacre, described in detail in "Rules of Engagement", Vanity Fair, November 2006. Some excerpts:
"...Daddy was shot through the heart. He was 43. Mommy was shot in the head and chest. She was 41. Aunt Huda was shot in the chest. She was 27. My sister Nour was shot in the right side of her head. She was 15. My sister Saba was shot through the ear. She was 11. My brother Muhammad was shot in the hand and I don't know where else. He was 10. My sister Zainab was shot in the hand and the head. She was five. My sister Aysha was shot in the leg and I don't know where else. She was three..."
-William Langewiesche, "Rules of Engagement", Vanity Fair, November 2006.

(read the full article)

"Victor O'Reilly told me, 'It is my belief that the insurgency was substantially created by the tactics used by the occupying force, who were initially the saviors, in their search for Saddam. Ambitious generals, who should have known better, created a very aggressive do-what-is-necessary culture. Frustrated troops, with no familiarity with the language or culture, naturally make mistakes. And in a tribal society if you shoot one person it spreads right through the system.'" -James Fallows, "Why Iraq Has No Army", Atlantic Monthly

Endgame for Bush
After the election, the crisis intervention finally comes... The toll so far: Rumsfeld, Cambone, Zelikow, and Bolton out. Cheney weakened. Frist and Santorum at end-of-career. Abramov singing to the feds. Dems to take over Congressional oversight committees, with subpoena powers. The Bush-père and Baker 'Iraq Study Group' muscles in to try to salvage Iraq, and US foreign policy in general, which is in a greater mess than at any time in living memory, and quite possibly, historical memory. Bush-fils makes noises of resistance and determination. Bush-pere breaks down during speech: "The true measure of a man is how you handle [sob] victory [sob] and defeat." (view video at Crooks and Liars)   The Iraq Study Group report: (pdf 160 pps) - (executive summary)

But Iraq may already have spun out of US control, as a horrific civil war of reciprocal massacres widens the gulf daily between the Sunni and the Shia, massacres often carried out by uniformed elements of the Iraqi government with loyalties to one side or the other. Since Bush won't call this a civil war, commanders still speak of US troops battling "insurgents", but in fact that means battling first one side and then the other; this high-level resistance to truth on the ground has managed to make our troops everyone's enemy and, simultaneously, irrelevant to the outcome of the 'war'.
There was a moment this week when it looked like the policy was going to tilt to the Shia, following the failed outreach to the Sunnis, but then a quick reaction from America's Gulf allies, all Sunnis, and the lid was on that idea. For example, Saudi Arabia suggested they would not permit a wholesale massacre of Sunnis by the Shia of Iraq.

Keep up on Iraq with Dahr Jamail and Riverbend

Our previous pieces re Iraq Occupation are still pertinent:
January 2005: Iraq: The Election and Beyond / January 2005: Iran / April 2004: Iraq- A Bad Idea Gets Worse / March 2004: Truth or Consequences / June 2003: Quicksand / May 2003: Bait Taken / April 2003: Hot Potato

FISA warrants are easy to get. Even after the fact. Refusal rate around .02 of 1 percent. So why bother bypassing them and getting every one upset?
1. To assert president's authority to do whatever he wants to do (in order to protect us of course).
2. So as not to leave records of who was being wiretapped. This is the big one. Because they were wiretapping people for other reasons. Like Nixon, to see who didn't like them, or who disagreed on policies; and journalists, to find out who their sources were and 'plug the leaks'- silence the whistleblowers. And officials everywhere, making sure everyone towed the line; anyone in fact, to get some dirt on people - always useful when it comes to 'arm-twisting' ... you get the picture. You don't ask for a warrant because you don't want a record of who your targets were.

click for clip (excerpt Eminem's Mosh Continues)


Osama Bin Forgotten?
Recently we learned that the CIA's Bin Laden unit was disbanded; also that Bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI for 9/11 (see wanted poster). And that Pakistan has signaled that Bin Laden and his coterie can remain unmolested in Waziristan so long as they remain "men of peace", and do not engage in terrorism. Pakistan also released thousands of Taliban as part of the deal. Someone, presumably AlQueda, released a kind of commemorative videotape on Sept 11 showing Bin Laden and the Martyrs preparing for the attacks; on the same day a Bush anniversary photo-op and speech from Ground Zero... and the ABC 4-hour commercial-free, right-winger scripted (and funded?) fakumentary, "Path to 9/11" blaming it all on the Clinton administration ( ! ). Cheney always says the enemy is media-sophisticated; funny - they seem to be working it together...

"The goal has never been to get bin Laden"- General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, 6 April 2002.
"I don't know where he is. I - I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." - George W Bush, 13 March 2002

"There is a kind of an urban myth here in Washington about how this administration hasn't stayed focused on Osama bin Laden. Forget it." -George Bush 9/06

.   .   .

Attitude
Maybe it's a symptom of the age of information overload; most people these days apparently don't care to be burdened with endless facts and the weighing of contradictory claims... the short cut is attitude. So instead of learning about something and forming a judgement, they consider other peoples' attitudes and choose the one they identify with. Right-wing punditry is all about attitude. So is FOX News. So is Bushian foreign policy. So is the Republican national election narrative. (The Democrats simply don't have an attitude of any kind.) Try a Google search for 'Bush + "my attitude"'.

By this point we find ourselves so steeped in delusional attitude - 'we are the greatest country on earth, you're a traitor if you don't agree, and anyone who obstructs us is bad', that even opposition party leaders believe they stray from this puerile mantra at their own peril. And Americans have fallen for it in vast numbers it seems; maybe its the media, the constant drumbeat of fear and silliness; maybe it's the collapsed education system that's spawned such gullibility. Thus a great country withdraws into a bubble of delusion; it is pathetic to see the nation that midwifed the United Nations, launched the Peace Corps, and put men on the moon, so shamed by it's political leadership as to have become a pariah in the community of nations, a feared and tiresome bully, not a respected leader. I've posted a sampling of the national discussions I think we should be having (Notes Toward an American Renaissance); but I'm pretty sanguine on whether we as a nation, at the rate we're going, will ever get around to such advanced considerations. (Ed.)

.   .   .

America may have found it's new Edward R. Murrow, and his name is Keith Olbermann, the only MSM journalist with the courage to aggressively denounce the behavior of this government, which he does relentlessly from his perch at MSNBC's Countdown. Watch video clips of his best recent statements: 'Bush Owes Us an Apology', 'This Hole in the Ground', 'Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?', 'There Is Fascism, Indeed', 'Terror and Politics in America'.

.   .   .

Stage Three: Iran?

The Bush administration is gearing up for stage 3 of the Oil War... regime change in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with the world's second largest oil and gas reserves, gateway to the the central asian oilfields as well as neighbor to Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Kazakstan, Russia, and strategically controlling the entire Persian Gulf. Invasion? Impossible (for most people) to imagine- Iran is too big, too well armed, nothing like the dilapidated Iraq the US military swept through 3 years ago. But massive aerial bombardment... ah there's our strength! It is reported widely that US forces are already operating inside Iran, gathering target information and finding tactical allies among ethnic minorities. And though most republicans and some democrats are parroting the old line "the military option is only a last resort if diplomacy fails", we've heard that one before, at a time when the Bush regime had already decided to attack Iraq; and besides, we know well what "diplomacy" means to this government: 'Do as we say or we'll bomb you.' And we wonder if they may be just disconnected enough from reality to think they could do this to positive result, and gain support to boot for the upcoming fall elections. (Lord Rumsfeld says it's all "henny penny"; and whatever that means, he said the same thing during the disastrous post-invasion breakdown of order in Iraq. "Stuff happens!")

One can only wish our policy leaders were chess players. Even a mediocre chess player can track three moves out- if you break off talks with North Korea but don't attack because they have the bomb, you attack Iraq which doesn't yet have the bomb, you ally with Pakistan and reward India both of which got the bomb and violated the NPT, you know you're going to have to deal with Iran. We should have made nice with Tehran already four years ago when Bolton stiffed North Korea, long before Ahmadinejad was elected, back when there still was a pro-western democracy movement in that country. Instead Bush included Iran in the "axis of evil". Dumb move. (this excerpted from previous issue)

Here is Ahmadinajad's May '06 letter to Bush and here is his November '06 letter to the American people.

.   .   .

Scholars for 9/11 Truth
January 27 2006 press release: "An influential group of prominent experts and scholars have joined together alleging that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11... These experts contend that books and articles by members and associates have established that the World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions and that the available relevant evidence casts grave doubt on the official story about the attack on the Pentagon. They believe that the government not only permitted 9/11 to occur but may even have orchestrated these events to facilitate its political agenda."
"Founders include Robert M. Bowman, Former Director of the U.S. "Star Wars" Space Defense Program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and a former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missions; Morgan Reynolds, former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor for President George W. Bush, and former Director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis; and Andreas von Buelow, former assistant German defense minister, and director of the German Secret Service."
Website, Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Update: Scholars for 911 Truth Member Michael Zebuhr killed
"Police said two men in their 20's approached the group, stole Zebuhr's mother's purse and as they left, fired two shots into Zebuhr's forehead for no apparent reason" (story) (latest)

Loose Change
New 9/11 documentary by Dylan Avery. Free viewing online, DVD available.

Here's the Decider-in Chief responding [sic] to 911 doubts: Bush-911.mov

.   .   .

Over-Loaded Update:
Paul Krugman: "Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains. But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint..." (PK NYT)

"From 1950 to 1970, for every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162, according to the Times analysis. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar earned by those in the bottom 90 percent, each taxpayer at the top brought in an extra $18,000."
(Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind-NYTimes)

The number of billionaires around the world rose by 102 to a record 793 over the last year, and their combined wealth grew 18% to $2.6 trillion, according to Forbes magazine's 2006 rankings of the world's richest people.

.   .   .

click to enlarge

Watch "Zozobra" at YouTube

"Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'?" -George Bush

Greenwald film: Iraq For Sale
"Thats what you do in a democracy, you investigate and you find out where there's corruption, you find out where there's profiteering, and you make sure there's hell to pay!" (Greenwald on Olbermann)

Elif Shafak, University of Arizona assistant professor and one of Turkey's leading authors has been acquitted of insulting Turkishness in her book "The Bastard of Istanbul".

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."
"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said, "There's a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
-Reported by Doug Thompson re an 11/05 meeting with congressional leaders on the Patriot Act.

"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not competent to lead America's armed forces... he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to America's mission in Iraq... Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego... Rumsfeld must step down." -Major General Paul Eaton (ret.). Eaton was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.
(statement NYT, IHT)
(about Gen. Eaton)

TV Characters Rise Up
James Spader, on the "Boston Legal" TV show: "Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial- or any trial, war on false pretenses... we as a citizenry are apparently not offended..."
A great speech!
download quicktime

"There is only one reason that I am in the Oval Office and not in a bar. I found faith. I found God." George W. Bush (...story)

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George W. Bush, quoted in "Bush at War"

"I'm a war president." Bush. Meet the Press 2/13/04


"Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president." Bush, campaign speech July 2004

Mr. Bush in New Orleans
"You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." Bush at a Washington dinner, March 2001

"See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
Bush in Greece May 2005 (ref)

"Am I a malignant genius in the background whom nobody sees come out of his cave? That's a good way to work, in fact."-Dick Cheney to USA Today, 2004

Bush flips the bird, Washington, 8/05
It's not the first time the POTUS is on tape giving the old "one-finger victory salute"

Download the video

.   .   .

Saint Condi of Stanford
Still hopes she can
talk her way out of it
.   .   .  
DIVAMAX: Domains for Business, Blogs and Communities
MK17.com
SacredSex.com
TantricDiva.com
SexyPunk.com
PriceSlam.com

And Many more at

The buzz: Valerie Plame was outed by Cheney to destroy the CIA's anti proliferation network in Iraq and Iran so that no-one could credibly dispute claims Cheney wished to make in preparation for the attacks on those countries.

Fat Cats
Iraq: Qui Bono? Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, on retiring in December, got a retirement package estimated at $398 million in total. Raymond has been compensated more than $686 million from 1993 to 2005; that's $144,573 per day. Exxon had record-breaking annual profits last year of $36 billion. 1st quarter 2006 profits were up 7% to a further record of $8.4 billion. (Counterpunch- Ralph Nader)
Note that Raymond was among the Big Oil CEOs consulting Cheney on his "energy plan" in late spring 2001 (replete with plans for dividing up Iraqi oil), and now sits as VP of the American Enterprise Institute, the pampered roost of die-hard neo-cons, the most vociferous supporter of the Iraq War, and author of the "surge" strategy adopted instead of the Baker-Hamilton plan. AEI is funded by Exxon-Mobil. Note that AEI has recently offered bribes of $10,000 to columnists and 'experts' to write articles undermining the science of global warming. (more on these connections from Juan Cole)