Today's article and item links:
The Campaign Frame: Sex, Lies and Crooked Guys: Jeffrey Feldman takes on Rudy's woes.
IRAN: IRAN Links: Thirteen links to Iran-related discussions, research papers, facts, opinion and commentary.
posted by CLB at 8:33 AM
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Today's article and item links:
"...we have been working with the good folks at Brave New Films to get the New York City Council to investigate the way the administration of Rudy Giuliani handled the replacement and deployment of the FDNY radios that proved to be such a source of tragedy on 9/11. We delivered a petition urging action with almost 20,000 signatures to Councilman Eric Gioia on Monday and were very pleased at his initial reaction. Today we have even more video of the Councilman stating in very strong terms that he not only supports such an inquiry but is doing all he can to get the ball rolling.
At the same time the White House is pushing to vastly expand the job-killing, wage-destroying NAFTA trade model, we get this from
Bloomberg News (full story attached below):
"President George W. Bush may veto legislation to expand benefits for
workers harmed by international trade because it would cover more
workers than necessary
"Co-reported alongside the news that Hunt Oil Company of Dallas had entered into an oil development contract in Iraqi Kurdistan was the fact that Hunt Oil's head honcho was a multi-million dollar contributor to the planned George W. Bush Presidential Library project."
A top US scholar of wartime Japan said Wednesday that the Bush administration's "war on terror" bore close parallels to Japan's past militarism through a defiance of international law.
Herbert Bix, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his landmark biography of wartime emperor Hirohito, said he believed US aerial bombings and alleged use of torture in Afghanistan and Iraq constituted war crimes.
"The current American rampage in Iraq and elsewhere, not to mention the Bush administration's threats of war against Iran, so clearly replicates Imperial Japan during the period when its leaders willfully disregarded international law and pursued the diplomacy of force," Bix said during a visit to Tokyo.
Labels: 9/11, Andrew Myer, Framing, Free trade, Giuliani, Iran, Theocracy
posted by CLB at 3:30 PM
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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.
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.
Labels: Environment, Freedom Watch, Giuliani, Moveon
posted by CLB at 9:21 AM
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Rudy Giuliani’s top fundraiser, hedge fund giant Paul Singer, revealed himself today as the sole financial backer of a stalled ballot drive to turn California into a motherlode of Republican votes in 2008.SNIP
The Gay Old Party contributed 30 years of sweat and treasure to strategize the SCOTU installation of the single-purpose, one-use corporation known as Bush/Cheney, to destroy democracy as we know it and they will do whatever it takes to finish the job. What is that job? Why of course, drowning representative government (competitors for power--you and me) in a BATHTUB!!!The ballot initiative, if approved, would have changed how California apportions its electoral college votes. Under the states’ current winner-take-all system, the Democratic nominee has traditionally pocketed all 55 electoral votes in the left-leaning state — the nation’s largest electoral prize.
Instead, electoral votes would be apportioned to the winner in each congressional district — a change likely to shift up to 22 of those 55 votes into the GOP column, given the number of safely Republican districts in the state.
For the GOP, it would be a bonanza, akin to adding a large, new Republican state to the map.
posted by CLB at 10:15 AM
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Today's article and item links:
MOVEON: MoveOn.org Didn't Invent BetrayUs- The Troops Did!: Oh, oh-- please somebody make it stop! And while you're at it make sure the Senate and press gets this memo! Also, excellent piece from George Lakoff on Betrayal framing.
IMHO: Next Stop, Kent State: I love Greg Palast, but taking a book, even one as dangerous as Armed Madhouse, to a protest in the year 2007 is like taking a knife to a gun fight. But it could get worse. Remember murdered students at Kent and Jackson State in the 1970's?
Labels: Andrew Myer, DoJ, Giuliani, Loose Change, Moveon, Scott Ritter
posted by CLB at 9:23 AM
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NAFTA Superhighway Has Giuliani As Key Player: "At the center of negotiations for multiple legs of the Superhighway Corridor throughout Texas, is none other than Rudolph Giuliani’s law firm which landed the Comprehensive Development Agreement for a widening of Interstate-35, now referred to as the TTC-35, in addition to the Master Development Plans for State Highways 121 and 130 among other legs of the TTC. All negotiations for Cintra were and are presently handled by the law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, LLP, of which Republican Presidential candidate, Rudolph Giuliani, has been a senior executive partner since March 2005. His law firm is the exclusive legal counsel for Cintra. Bracewell & Giuliani is comprised of 400 attorneys, based in Houston, TX with offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., London and Kazakhstan."-SNIP-
Particularly unnerving, given Guiliani’s personal experience on 9-11, is his defense of open borders at any cost while condoning the NAFTA Superhighway Corridor and by extension the North American Union, without the purview or consent of the U.S. Congress or the will of the American people.Note: As currently written, the deal with Cintra would allow the Spanish-owned company to SET TOLLS and retain ALL PROFITS for FIFTY YEARS.
We should have seen it coming when Giuliani enacted Special Order 40 in 1994, during his tenure as Mayor of New York City, in ordering law enforcement officers to no longer check the legal status of suspects caught violating the law. We should have seen it coming when Rudolph Giuliani single-handedly decided that illegal aliens were not lawbreakers and also quit upholding the law. And unfortunately we now do see it coming. But sadly, he may now actually be handed the opportunity to no longer defend and abide by the U.S. Constitution of the United States of America.
Labels: Giuliani, NAFTA, Superhighway Corridor, TTC
posted by CLB at 3:36 PM
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We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.And at what point, Rudi, does legal authority cede to your other acceptable definition of authority, personal responsibility? Or is it that wrapped in your nutshell is the belief that one's only personal responsibility is to cede to authority?
posted by CLB at 10:22 AM
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