Impeachment NOW!

After searching through more than 600,000 documents Iraqi captured in 2003, the Pentagon has concluded that there was no "direct operational link" between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Al Qaeda.

Fancy that…

Furthermore, while the study does indicate that Saddam Hussein did much to support "terrorism" in the Middle East and used it "as a routine tool of state power", the report says "the predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq" who were seen as Saddam's enemies.

Saddam was indeed a very ruthless and hateful man. Then again, Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense declared that there was "bulletproof" evidence of a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda and railroaded the US congress into an unending war that has thus far resulted in nearly 4,000 American KIAs, untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties and cost the US people more $500 billion, apparently crippling the US economy.

Additionally, Admiral William Fallon, the US military commander for the Middle East, has stepped down from his post amid reports he disagreed with Bush, over his policies on Iran. An article in Esquire magazine last week said Fallon was opposed to the US taking military action against Iran over its nuclear program. Fallon also told Esquire his reported disagreements with Bush over his policy on Iran could lead to his dismissal in favor of someone "more pliable".

Let’s cut to the chase.

It is time to call for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney before they lead the US into an armed conflict with yet another Asian country. Let us not in good conscience allow one more life to be shamefully wasted to serve the war-mongering and megalomaniacal greed of these men and their associates.

Write your congressman, your senator, your governor, your newspaper, Senators Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain demanding that impeachment proceeding be initiated at once. Go to http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer and sign the petition. (see side-bar link) and send the link to everyone you know.

Then, let’s find out how we can bring formal criminal charges against Rumsfeld, Rice and all of the other principals accomplices in this most horrific malfeasance and betrayal of public trust.

Enough is enough and this is far more than enough.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BC09965E-724A-45E0-BDF6-CC4681C87BFB.htm

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7D51BAB4-5FE3-4CD9-86F7-5E6C062EAED0.htm

Irony & Activism

"Of the corporate institution, for the corporate institution and by the corporate institution".

It doesn’t just roll off the tongue, does it?

If Lincoln had made his Address in the present era of ‘Corporatism’ – government policy directed by and politicians ‘funded’ by corporations and their lobbyists - that’s how he would have had to word his catch-phrase had he wished to convey any truth at all.

What can we do about it?

Now, think about it. Isn’t that an odd question to ask if you firmly believe (or even suspect) that you live in a free, egalitarian democratic republic built on personal liberty and are guaranteed the redress of grievances by the supreme law of the land, the Constitution of the United States?

Noam Chomsky, MIT professor emeritus, gives talks on US foreign policy all over the world. Again and again, Americans ask him, “What can we do about it? What can we do to effect change in US policy?”

Note this: he’s never asked that question anywhere else in the world; Nicaragua, Palestine, the UK, Canada or elsewhere.

Only in America.

Professor Chomsky responds by commenting on the irony of citizens in the US even asking the question. The ‘cradle of liberty’, the ‘bright shining beacon of hope’, the ‘grand experiment’, ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ yet its citizens, who by law, by tradition and by the decree issued in the Declaration of Independence, are consumed by a sense of helplessness.

The answer?

Americans need to simply start holding informal meetings about the issues that concern them; local issues, State-wide issues, Federal, International, environmental, etc. Meet in twos and threes with family, friends, co-workers, church members, etc and talk about what needs to be done to help our nation.

Of course, this would mean skipping half an evening of television or an hour session at the Playstation to do some research and attend the meeting.

Maybe that’s too much to ask.

http://www.corporatism.org/

Debt - the American Way

It never rains but it pours.

Credit card debt in America reached a record high of nearly $800 billion dollars last November. A new report from the Center for American Progress warns that a rise in credit card defaults could produce economic fallout on par with the current mortgage crisis. Approximately 35 million credit card customers can no longer afford to make more than the minimum payment every month.

Meanwhile defaults on home mortgages have reached another all-time high. The Mortgage Bankers Association say nearly 80% of all home loans in America were past due or in foreclosure at the end of last year. The Federal Reserve also announced that Americans’ percentage of equity in their homes has fallen below fifty percent for the first time since 1945.

But that’s not all!

The price of oil hit a new high Thursday nearly reaching $106 a barrel, a 300% increase over 7 years ago, at the start of Bush’s neo-con regime.

And that’s only part of it. The record oil price came as the US dollar struck a new low against all major currencies.

The Bush administration pats itself on the back for sending out checks for a few hundred dollars to each American family to off-set the collapse of the dollar.

What a bunch of great guys.

On the other hand, the US government gives out more than $5 billion a year in direct aid to Israel. Has done for more than a generation.

$13,812,154 a day.

That works out to more than $10,000 per Israeli per annum.

You got bought off cheap, sucka.

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville

Oh, by the way, Dubya probably had to borrow the money he deigned to dole out to you. So, as US taxpayers, you’ll be expected to pay all of it back.

With interest. Just hope Dubya didn’t put it on his credit card.

http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/table.html

http://www.americanprogress.org/

http://www.mortgagebankers.org/

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/7/headlines

Friends Like These

I was watching a CNN report about the attack by a lone gunman at Mercaz Harav yeshiva, a religious school in Jerusalem. 8 were killed and 9 others wounded. This was cited as the deadliest in Jerusalem in over four years. At the time, little other information about the shooting was available. No group or faction has thus far claimed responsibility for the attack.

CNN televised a boiler-plate statement by the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, denouncing the horrific act of terror. Then, as Mr Gillerman left the podium, another man walked to the microphone. CNN did not bother to televise his statement. My curiosity was piqued. This second man, obviously a UN official or representative, must have been about to make a statement regarding the same incident.

In point of fact, the man was Libya’s Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Al-Dabbashi who explained why Libya had vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning the attack but I had to wait until the following day, on ‘Democracy Now!’, to hear the statement by Deputy Ambassador. The statement in effect was that the resolution should be “balanced” by including condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza because the shooting at the yeshiva, atrocious as it was, followed one of the bloodiest weeks in Gaza in years as Israeli troops had killed at least 120 Palestinians over the past week, mostly civilians.

Ibrahim Al-Dabbashi stated, “For us the human lives are the same. We don’t judge the incident in itself. We judge about the killing. We think there is no superhuman and human from second grade or something like that. We think that the lives of the Palestinians are the same as those of the Israelis.”

Why was the Deputy Ambassador’s statement not deemed important enough by CNN to broadcast? To my mind, this is one more example of how the US media skews its reportage to favor the Israeli side of this terrible conflict.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations decried Libya’s stance stating, “The Security Council was unable to reach a decision, a unanimous decision on condemning the massacre that happened in Jerusalem tonight. Unfortunately, this is what happens when the Security Council is infiltrated by terrorists.”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Let’s do a simple cold-hearted body count: 120 Palestinians were killed last week in Gaza by the Israeli military using tanks, helicopter gunships and F-16 fighters whereas 8 Israelis were killed by a single shooter in Jerusalem with a single assault rifle.

Where will more tears be shed, in Gaza or in Jerusalem? Where was the more egregious crime committed?

To continue this morbid tally, at least 4,528 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000 compared to 1,031 Israelis; a factor of 4 to 1.

982 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis forces while 119 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians during the same time frame; a factor of almost 9 to 1.

An additional 31,815 Palestinians have been injured since that date compared to 6,845 Israelis; a factor of nearly 5 to 1.

Despite the lop-sided body count, Israel insists that it is the victim and Palestine is the accursed terrorist state.

Since 1980, 33 resolutions condemning Israel’s continuing, flagrant violations of international law and the Geneva conventions as regards the occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people have been put before the UN Security Council. All of them have been vetoed by the US.

Where are the sanctions against Israel? Iraq was invaded for much less.

With friends like Israel...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3516295,00.html

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/israel-palestine/2008/0305killingspree.htm

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/7/headlines

http://www.uscrusade.com/forum/config.pl/noframes/read/1372

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/membship/veto/vetosubj.htm

Dub-ya & Wicked Dick

“The voters of Brattleboro, Vermont have voted to seek an indictment of the president and vice president and arrest them if they show up in town. No specific crimes are mentioned, but organisers of the anti-Bush effort have referred to perjury, obstruction of justice and war crimes related to the Iraq conflict.”

"Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities....

"and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police, pursuant to the above mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecuted or extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?"

Dub-ya and Wicked Dick are wanted men in the Vermont town – wanted for crimes against the US Constitution. With the great number of Iraqi civilians dead and wounded at the cost of untold billions of dollars, it’s time more moral and constitutionally-minded citizens follow Brattleboro’s lead.

Washington, D.C. would be a perfect place for such a measure to be introduced and enacted.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/05/georgebush.usa

http://www.rubyan.com/politics/2006/09/bushcheney_escape_war_crimes_p.html

http://www.peoplejudgebush.org/crimes.shtml

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/10/war-crimes-act-of-1996-bush-rumsfeld.html

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/impeachment-demands-spread-across-usa

http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer

Cost Analysis

$16 billion dollars is being spent every month on the undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

$43,835,616.00 per diem – give or take.

In 2007, Washington gave $6.8 million a day to Israel – mostly in the form of military aid. More than a quarter of a million dollars an hour.

The Pentagon plans to bleed the stone for $515.4 billion in 2009; $42.9 billion a month; $9.9 billion a week; $1.4 billion a day; $58.8 million an hour; $980,000 a minute; $16,000 a second.

The blink of an eye.

Tell us again about the cost of ‘freedom’ and the price of ‘national security’.

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp#InContextUSMilitarySpendingVersusRestoftheWorld

http://www.counterpunch.org/chretien04072006.html

US Politics

You know, my grandfather, Papa, was a real pro wrestling fan way back when. Killer Kowalski, Mad Dog Vachon, Gorgeous George. Crusher. Haystacks Calhoun.

He was totally rapt with the action bristling from that little black ‘n white picture tube.

By ten years old, I suspected that what was taking place was something other than a pure athletic competition. To Papa, it was real. I couldn’t tell him otherwise.

It was stage play. Sure people got hurt – two bruisers going at it in tights, somebody was bound to get banged up. Andy Kaufman found that out.

But win or lose, each wrestler got paid because they both worked for the same company. Whichever grappler got the champion’s belt depended on what back-room deals were made.

It’s the same today; the owners of the ‘league’ market muscle-bound goons as entertainment.

Is it sport? No. The outcome of a sporting contest is not known beforehand. If the outcome is pre-determined, it’s called a ‘fix’. The fix is in and the sport is out.

There have been more than a dozen US presidential campaigns during my life-time. Several, I have actually paid some attention to. Some I’ve even voted in.

The US presidential race, to me, is just a more wordy, less physical form of the Sunday afternoon wrestling shows that kept my Papa on the edge of his chair.

More stage craft than states craft. More showmanship than statesmanship. More PR than policy.

And when the ‘pin’ is made and the votes are counted will the results have already been determined?

Well, you figure it out. Presidential campaigners go begging for upwards of $500,000,000US to get a job that pays $200,000.

$500 million bucks comes with strings attached and those purse strings lead straight back to the fixers.

The fix is not for which of two representatives of big business gets to live in the White House for a few years. Whichever one will be awarded the temp job in the Oval Office, the new administration's policies have been determined in advance by the fixers. And, dollars to donuts, they will have little to do in the long run with what was promised on 'Meet the Press' except those that would further sweeten the pot for the moneyed elite.

Is it politics? Sure, down and dirty.

Is it democracy? Not even close.

OpenSecrets.org - Race for the White House

Dems, What About the Military Budget?