October 31, 2007 IRAN Links

• Before his press conference today, President Bush met exclusively with a group of GOP congressional leaders. According to Fox News, which spoke with some of the members at that discussion, Bush unequivocally promised that he would attack Iran if Iran “were ever to attack Israel.” Bush told the lawmakers, “I know I would respond. … In order for diplomacy to be effective, all options have to be on the table.”

Hat tip: Think Progress



UPDATE:

• Website: Council for a Livable World: CLW Mission (in part);

Council for a Livable World was founded in 1962 by eminent nuclear physicist Leo Szilard and other scientists who worked in the pioneer days of atomic weapons.

The goal of these men and women, who knew firsthand the nature of nuclear weapons, was to warn the public and Congress of the threat of nuclear war and lead the way to rational arms control and nuclear disarmament.

The mission of the Council has remained simple and pragmatic.

The Council provides Senators and Members of Congress with sophisticated technical and scientific information that helps them make intelligent decisions about weapons of mass destruction.

Email subscription available.

Nader Sues Democrats

Consumer advocate and 2004 independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader sued the Democratic Party on Tuesday, contending officials conspired to keep him from taking votes away from nominee John Kerry.

--SNIP--

Among other things, the lawsuit alleges that the DNC tried to bankrupt Nader's campaign by suing to keep him off the ballot in 18 states. It also suggests the DNC sent Kerry supporters to crash a Nader petition drive in Portland, Ore., in June 2004, preventing him from collecting enough signatures to get on the ballot.

The lawsuit seeks "compensatory damages, punitive damages and injunctive relief to enjoin the defendants from ongoing and future violations of the law."

Bush To Pass Laws By Presidential Decree

Are you paying attention to this? To Implement Policy, Bush to Turn to Administrative Orders:

"The White House plans to try implementing as much new policy as it can by administrative order while stepping up its confrontational rhetoric with Congress after concluding that President Bush cannot do much business with the Democratic leadership, administration officials said. According to those officials, Bush and his advisers blame Democrats for the holdup of Judge Michael B. Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general, the failure to pass any of the 12 annual spending bills, and what they see as their refusal to involve the White House in any meaningful negotiations over the stalemated children's health-care legislation."

Let me just rephrase it in American TV speak: Bush will be writing laws you will have to obey.

Let me try again: Bush will eradicate the Congress by ignoring it.

I still don't have it exactly. Let me try one more time: AAAAAAAARRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Yeah. That's it.

‘Don't Tase me, bro’ Student Silenced by Fear!!!

What's more pathetic, this student being terrorized for asking a weak over-privileged Senator an inconvenient question or for this journalism student to be so weak? He'll have a fine place at ABC some day.

This also sets a dangerous anti-free speech precedent for colleges'. Are we now to believe that the only appropriate activities on a campus are those contained in the handbook on "How to Ask Meaningless Appropriate Questions?" These are how the new generation will be trained? Rewards for spineless bowing and scraping?

‘Don't Tase me, bro’ student won't be charged: "A University of Florida student who was filmed being shocked by police with a Taser stun gun after persistently questioning Sen. John Kerry will not face criminal charges and has apologized for his actions, his attorney said Tuesday."

October 30, 2007 IRAN Links

• From The Nation: The path back to sanity begins by repealing the Kyl-Lieberman amendment and prohibiting military action in Iran without Congressional approval.
  

• Kucinich question's Bush's meantl health: Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich questioned President Bush's mental health in light of comments he made about a nuclear Iran precipitating World War III.

  "I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health," Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, said in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial board on Tuesday. "There's something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact."

Strike Prevention Task Force: October 29, 2007 IRAN Links

In my commitment to prevent a strike on Iran I have decided that a pre-strategy action of simply disseminating daily news about developments on the issue is a reasonable first step. In that spirit I offer, without comments, today's IRAN Links:

• Iran has access to evidence of U.S. support for terrorist groups in the Middle East, a senior Iranian official was quoted as saying on Sunday. "Escalation of terrorism in the region is one of the direct results of the presence of occupiers in Iraq, particularly America," said Saeed Jalili, Iran's new chief nuclear negotiator, "And there are documents and information available proving America's support for terrorist groups in the region," he said, without giving details.
  

• Iran began a crucial round of talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday to clarify its nuclear activity amid disagreement between the IAEA chief and the West over judging Tehran's intentions.
  

• Chief UN atomic watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said overnight he had no evidence Iran was building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric. "I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear weapons program going on right now," the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told CNN.
  

• Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Sunday expressed hope that Washington would stop supporting terrorism. Terrorist activities in northern Iraq have increased following the presence of foreign forces in that country, the Iranian said reiterating, "Such activities are carried out through foreign support."

Hat tip: Citizens For Legitimate Government



UPDATE:

• A majority of likely voters – 52% – would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election, a new Zogby America telephone poll shows.

Hat tip: Mark Crispin Miller



UPDATE:

• WEBSITE: IRAN NUCLEAR WATCH
  

Website by an Iranian publishing "... news, analysis and resources relating to Iran's nuclear program and US-Iran relations." Update subscriptions are available.



UPDATE:

• Washington's latest sanctions on Iran up the pressure on America's European allies to follow suit and tighten the screws on the Islamic state or see it attacked, analysts say.

  "The principal intention of the announcement was to send a signal as much to the Europeans, the Chinese and the Russians, as well as to the Iranians," said Karim Sadjapour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think-tank.

HAT-TIP: Raw Story

Action Point with Cynthia Black 10-28-2007: The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• Beyond MOVEON: First: MoveOn.org Didn't Invent BetrayUs- The Troops Did! Then, Moveon created: Americans for Exit. THEN, Limbaugh got busted with his "Soldiers who don't go to Iraq to die are 'phony' faux paux. Also, Michelle Malkin took a shot at MoveOn.org with "Sue me"! LAST WEEK, we're back to "[W]e're going to find out where your kids go to school" Limbaugh! AND TODAY? Rush sells his Congressional letter of condemnation to a millionaire using 501-c3 trust funds claiming it's a " free-speech" document!! Cronyism all-'round Rush-- you show 'em all how!!!
  

• From the Mukasey File: FIRST, Crony for the next Republican President? The religious right hates him but Giuliani loves him. AND NOW he's running into trouble: Senators clash with nominee about torture.
  

• MUST READ: Endorsing Irresponsible Journalism: another excellent piece from David Sirota:

  "Barely anyone reports when paid Washington lobbyists pose as statesmen to stealthily shill for their corporate clients, because that's just what happens day-to-day in D.C. Similarly, we see the Dean of Serious Washington Journalists mentioning the irresponsible choices of his fellowreporters, but mentioning it in a way that actually praises onecandidate as "exquisite" for exploiting that irresponsibility -rather than railing on the irresponsibility within his own industry."
  

• Framing the Debate --The "Islamofascism" PR Assault on America: "Islamofashion" from Jeffrey Feldman

• From the "I Think I'm Gonna Scream Now" File:Secretary of "Ferragamo" Rice Unfazed By Bloody Hands: Can't you just hear Condi's internal thoughts now? "Oh please, I've shed more blood over a girl-on-girl breakfast. Get a gag and then we'll talk". Here's the YouTube of Medea Benjamin arrest speech.

• Update to The Andrew Meyers File: Disturbing video remix "Baby Don't Taze Me"; OCALA.COM ain't nothing. Now use of tazer found "justified!

New Senate Bills Immunizes NSA Email and IM Co-Operation

NSA cooperation: OK for e-mail, IM companies?:

"A new Senate bill would protect not only telephone companies from lawsuits claiming illegal cooperation with the National Security Agency. It would retroactively immunize e-mail providers, search engines, Internet service providers and instant-messaging services too. The broad language appears in new legislation that a Senate committee approved by a 13-to-2 vote on Thursday during a meeting closed to the press and public. It enjoys the support of the panel's Democrats and Republicans. It goes further in crafting an impenetrable legal shield than similar proposals in the House of Representatives, such as the so-called Restore Act (PDF), which immunizes only 'communications service providers.' Bowing to pressure from President Bush, House Democrats postponed a vote on the Restore Act last week."

And how is the NSA unlike the KGB?

FILE: PROJECT IRAN: Reality v. Bush

Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad?: from Newsweek:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

and...

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

Action Point with Cynthia Black 10-21-2007: The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• Beyond MOVEON: First: MoveOn.org Didn't Invent BetrayUs- The Troops Did! Then, Moveon created: Americans for Exit. THEN, Limbaugh got busted with his "Soldiers who don't go to Iraq to die are 'phony' faux paux. LAST WEEK, Michelle Malkin took a shot at MoveOn.org with "Sue me"! And this week, we're back to "[W]e're going to find out where your kids go to school" Limbaugh!
  

• From the Rudy "Broomstick" Giuliani File: The Real Rudy: Brave New Films keeps the truth comin' -- this time a film on Rudy giving 9-11 firefighters mobiles that did *not* "phone home."
  

• The Arizona Cowboy Justice File? Remember last week -- TB Patient Flees U.S. "Abuse" For Russia: "A tuberculosis patient, whose months-long incarceration in an Arizona hospital jail ward led to sharp criticism, has left the United States, unable to "take the abuse" any more..."? Oh, and this the week before? Family Blames Police in Airport Death: "Gotbaum's body bears several bruises and marks, including a neck bruise that could have been caused if the shackle chain asphyxiated her. Manning, a high-profile lawyer who represented the government against failed savings and loan executive Charles Keating, has previously won settlements against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in wrongful-death lawsuits." Well, now there's this: Sheriff's Deputies Arrest "New Times" Owners: oh, and Joe wants the online readers of New Times too. Huh. All that and spying and average citizens reading habits too... still wondering what an "imperial" Giuliani presidency will look like?
  

• MUST READ: Dems Fume About the Tyranny of the Tiny Minority and The Invisible Culture of Corruption: from David Sirota:

  "...the letter now blanketing Capitol Hill is a masterpiece of deceit. Forty-three former Democratic officeholders signed this letter, which demands Congress pass trade deals with Peru, Panama and Colombia —pacts that will expand the job-killing, wage-destroying NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)."

• From the "Gore's Nobel Prize" File: Erring on the Side of Tabloidism: I may not want him for my president, but that has nothing to do with covering news properly!

• ENVIRONMENT -- Report on the Slow Heat Death of the Human Race: Top 100 Ways Global Warming Will Change Your Life: We're going to pick one today, to discuss. What's your favorite?

• Framing the Debate --How To Talk About Blackwater: "The Prince" from Jeffrey Feldman, FRONTLINE: "Private Warriors" from Bill Moyers and "Blackwater Down": by Jeremy Scahill.

• UPDATE ON The 5%'ers Own 'Lil Moveon.org: Freedom's Watch Watch: Founding Donors Get Name-Dropped By GOP Frontrunners HUFFPO reporter Michael Roston brings us the skinny on the group investing in things like the the invasion of Iran, among others...
  

Action Point with Cynthia Black 10-14-2007: The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• Beyond MOVEON: First: MoveOn.org Didn't Invent BetrayUs- The Troops Did! but the Senate voted to "censure" 'them' (all 3.3 million) instead. Then, Moveon didn't balk but instead created: Americans for Exit: "...a powerful new project that will remind our representatives that those of us against the war are America." THEN, Limbaugh got busted with his "Soldiers who don't go to Iraq to die are 'phony' " diatribe and winger talkers like Glen Beck pee'd all over themselves trying to carry his water! THIS WEEK, Michelle Malkin is the whining winger peeing in her panties to take a shot at MoveOn.org! "Sue me" she taunts. Still trying to take the heat off Rush? How sweetsie.

• Today's Guest Michael Erard: from his article The Beast Within:

  "Though we might make 7 to 22 slips of the tongue a day, we typically only notice about one a week, and the majority of disfluencies don't even register to our ears. This suggests that we're evolved to perceive a message despite any "noise" in an utterance, and that we filter out most distractions automatically. So noticing someone's "uhs" and "ums" says as much about your filter as about the speaker's style."
  

• Torture on Trial: Immoral, Not Inept:

  "Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly, human rights attorney William Quigley, Fr. Louis Vitale, OFM and Fr. Stephen Kelly, SJ will speak next Tuesday evening, October 16, at a public program in Tucson, Arizona. The two Roman Catholic priests are due in U.S. District Court in Tucson the following morning to face federal and state charges resulting from their arrest last November at Ft. Huachuca, in Sierra Vista, Arizona, during a protest of the Fort's connection to U.S. military use of torture."

• ENVIRONMENT: Rachel Carson Calendar: from a little blog named What Would Rachel Say?

  "Your generation must come to terms with the environment.Your generation must face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance and evasion of truth. Yours is a grave and a sobering responsibility, but it is also a shining opportunity. You go out into a world where mankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery -- not of nature, but of itself. Therein lies our hope and our destiny. In today already walks tomorrow." --Rachel Carson, Scripps College Commencement, June 12, 1962

• I Just Want to Scream File: New Security Strategy Emphasizes Disaster Preparedness: remember "We have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here"? Well, now it appears we have to fight them here:

  "We remain particularly concerned about the employment of improvised explosive devices (IEDs)" in the United States, the report says, echoing a February presidential homeland security directive."

• Remember When People Fled Russia for the USA?! TB Patient Flees U.S. "Abuse" For Russia:

  "A tuberculosis patient, whose months-long incarceration in an Arizona hospital jail ward led to sharp criticism, has left the United States, unable to "take the abuse" any more..."

• From the OH MY GOD!! File: Do You Know Jesus Loves You? just follow the link, hit play. Make ab-sol-ute-ly certain you are sitting down, first.

• MUST READ: Confronting the Hollow Men: from David Sirota:
  

  "...Roll Call, the tiny-circulation Washington newspaper, reported that Republican senators were fretting about "new polling data showing tax cuts are no longer priority No. 1" with voters. One senior GOP aide admitted that when it comes to tax cuts, "We've worn out the message."

• Quiz For Choice: NARAL Pro-Choice Quiz: I was shocked how little I knew about the candiate's stands on choice!

• Gore's Nobel Prize: Well-Crafted Phoniness: from this week's topic on The Campaign Frame with Jeffrey Feldman.

• Amanda Terkel, Deputy Research Director at Center for American Progress joins us to discuss some of this week's most pressing legislation, War Profiteering Prevention Act and the Restore Act and irksome behaviors; Right Wing Attacks 12-Year Old Boy.

Action Point with Cynthia Black 10-07-2007: The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• Beyond MOVEON: First: MoveOn.org Didn't Invent BetrayUs- The Troops Did! but the Senate voted to "censure" 'them' (all 3.3 million) instead. Then, Moveon didn't balk but instead created: Americans for Exit: "...a powerful new project that will remind our representatives that those of us against the war are America." THEN, Limbaugh got busted with his "Soldiers who don't go to Iraq to die are 'phony' " diatribe and winger talkers like Glen Beck pee'd all over themselves trying to carry his water!

• Mukasey Revisited: Chrony for the next Republican President? Giuliani loves him, that's bad enough, but what other skeletons are in his closet? My interview subject for today Peter Lance knows: Bush nominee helped mask FBI's pre-9/11 failures and kept al Qaeda's infiltration of US intelligence from view. Today and in future shows Peter and I will be reviewing this timeline leading up to 9-11 (32pg. PDF), from his book Triple Cross and available on his website.

• The Casual Cruelty of Republican Pundits: Casual Cruelty and Limbaugh Portrays Vets As Terrorists: From this week's topic on The Campaign Frame with Jeffrey Feldman.
  

• OMB Watch Regulatory Resource Center: The Resource Center will provide the public, media, lawmakers and non-governmental organizations with a central location to learn about the federal regulatory process. The Resource Center will include background material as well as advocacy resources for those who want to make their voices heard. And it's easy to use!!!

• From The File Formerly Known as Andrew Meyers/ Star Simpson: Family Blames Police in Airport Death:

  "The family of a woman who died after being detained at the Phoenix airport has hired an attorney to monitor the police investigation into her death and is sending a representative to her autopsy."

  More. Is it me, or if I continue to follow this thread every week, will I find out we are killing more people preventing terrorism than terrorists in America are killing themselves?
  

• MUST READ: Immoral, Not Inept: by David Sirota "The Bush administration and the Republican Party are often criticized for refusing to aggressively use the "soft power" of international diplomacy. But alas, the attacks are misguided. This crew is more than willing to use "soft power" — not in Iraq, but in Central America, and not in an effort to bring American troops home, but in a ploy unfolding this weekend to enrich its big campaign contributors through the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)."

• ENVIRONMENT: From the Slow Heat Death of the Human Race File: Conservationists Lose Battle to Stop Tasmanian Pulp Mill: Global heating will not occur in the United States alone. It is occurring globally. So let's (finally) read, think and act on the issue, as international citizens:

  One of the most vigorous opponents of the mill is Greens Senator Bob Brown, who represents Tasmania. "Gunns pulp mill will have a forest furnace attached to it, which will burn 500,000 tonnes of forest wood per annum, next to a pulp mill which at the outset is going to have 80 percent of its resource stock of native forests," Brown said in a speech last month.

  "In other words, they are going to create a massive factory to burn the carbon banks or chemically break up the carbon banks now sitting there in the Tasmanian valleys and mountains holding back climate change, and they are going to promote the transformation of those great saving forests into an added hit on the global climate change phenomenon," Brown said.

Report on the Slow Heat Death of the Human Race: Top 100 Ways Global Warming Will Change Your Life: Carried forward from last week. This time, read it.

• INCOMING: Freedom's Watch; the 5%'ers Own 'Lil "Moveon": Big Coffers and a Rising Voice Lift a New Conservative Group: Ah, how cute. Dick Cheney's butt buddies are putting their monies where there mouths are-- endless Oil Wars. Funny how much 3 million Americans can scare the Billionaire's Crony Club. Is there any reason Moveon membership has not targeted the revenue machines of the Boys Crony Club and simply Pushed Back? Boycotting say Coors, or Club Med or whatever little vacation, sin or other mega-millions generating stream it would take to cripple the geezers?

Thousands of Protesters Executed

Thousands?

Thousands of protesters executed in Burma: reports: "Thousands of protesters, including monks, have been executed and their bodies dumped in Burma's jungle, a British newspaper reports. Citing a former intelligence officer for the country's ruling junta, the Daily Mail reported late Monday that security forces were ordered to take part in a massacre of the revered monks. 'Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand,' Hla Win, a senior official who defected, told the newspaper from his border hideout as he fled to Thailand. The junta, however, has confirmed only 10 deaths so far."

And why aren't American troops dispatched to protect these freedom-loving voices before they are annihilated?

Migrant Worker's Life Saving Seized

Pathetic for America to treat anyone in this manner:

US seizes migrant's life savings: "Pedro Zapeta spent 11 years scrubbing pots in a Florida restaurant, dreaming of the day when he would have enough money to buy a small plot of land in his native Guatemala and build a house for his mother and sisters. When he was ready, he stuffed his $59,000 (�29,000) life savings in a duffel bag and headed for the airport. But he never made it home. US customs inspectors seized the cash, suspecting that Mr Zapeta was a drugs courier, and immigration officials arrested him for being in the country illegally. Now, after a two-year legal battle in Miami, Mr Zapeta is to be deported while the US treasury keeps the money he earned washing dishes at an average hourly rate of $5.50."

Freedom's Watch-- The 5%'ers Own 'Lil "Moveon"

Ah, how cute. Dick Cheney's butt buddies are putting their monies where there mouths are-- endless Oil Wars.

Big Coffers and a Rising Voice Lift a New Conservative Group:

Freedom’s Watch, a deep-pocketed conservative group led by two former senior White House officials, made an audacious debut in late August when it began a $15 million advertising campaign designed to maintain Congressional support for President Bush’s troop increase in Iraq.

SNIP--

The idea for Freedom’s Watch was hatched in March at the winter meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalapan, Fla., where Vice President Dick Cheney was the keynote speaker, according to participants. Next week, the group is moving into a 10,000-square-foot office in the Chinatown section of Washington, with plans to employ as many as 50 people by early next year.

One benefactor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the group was hoping to raise as much as $200 million by November 2008. Raising big money “will be easy,” the benefactor said, adding that several of the founders each wrote a check for $1 million. Mr. Blakeman would not confirm or deny whether any donor gave $1 million, or more, to the organization.

Funny how much 3 million Americans can scare the Billionaire's Crony Club.

Is there any reason Moveon membership has not targeted the revenue machines of the Boys Crony Club and simply Pushed Back? Boycotting say Coors, or Club Med or whatever little vacation, sin or other mega-millions generating stream it would take to cripple the geezers? I'm down for that...