Photos from Today

Hinchey - We have never had a less ethical administration in US history.

Forgot the photo credits: W Malkus!

Hinchey ended with a call for the end of the Bush Administration...crowd on its feet.

Randi Rhodes is being introduced.

HEEEERE'S RANDI!

Randi is here to talk about treason...

The President says that the terrorists chose to make their stand in Iraq -

But the truth is that the President chose to make his stand in Iraq.

Randi - leave Guantanamo open, we'll need it!

Randi is scared that if Karl Rove resigns, that would leave Bush with NO BRAIN and NO HEART!

So they have to go together

I'm headed to Seattle Labor Temple - will report on Congressmen McDermott & Inslee etc.

Rove - was deposed and interview by the Grand Jury. He testified that he heard Valerie Plame's name from a reporter.

Rove apparently lied under oath. Fitzgerald feels that he was lied to, and he's ticked.

Rove's attorney, Robert Ruskin, is claiming that he didn't Rove didn't know that Plame was covert.

Rove is claiming that he never spoke to Matthew Cooper. Robert Novak is claiming that he got the name from a senior White House official.

Duncan Hunter - there's couldn't have been any torture at Gitmo, since the prisoners got to order off a menu...

Matt - he hasn't eaten at some of the resturants that I have...

Go to house.gov or johnconyers.com

for a timeline that John Conyers has put together

Bush was talking about taking down that "man who tried to kill my father" as early as Jan 30, 2001 - according to Paul O'Neill's book

the timeline documents Bush's long-term obsession with Saddam

Matt - Psychotherapy or some good drugs would have been so much cheaper...

I'm sitting next to Bob Geiger, of the Yellow Dog Blog.

www.yellowdogblog.net

Randi - Clinton was impeached for lying about sex, but Bush is f--king the world!

Randi's birthday was the night of Bush's 2003 State of the Union address

Randi - Cheney's a vampire!

Randi's advice:

from Congressman Conyers: he has put together a timeline on Rovegate/Treasongate--it's 36 pages long--go to http://www.johnconyers.com to see it.

On Jan. 20, 2001, former Treasury Secty Paul O'Neill has said there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein had to go. There were plans for the oil fields, parceling Iraq out.

Gen. Clark--immediately after 9-11, there was an effort to get into Iraq.

She is unfolding the tale...

Everybody has a job to do here...she just took on a heckler, and she was incredibly respectful of the federal government and the job that legislators have to do.

Randi continues to document the timeline

35,000 Americans soldiers have been wounded in Iraq. Many have been maimed in explosions, involving land mines. They are missing limbs, or some have lost their sight.

35,000 Americans wounded.

That's a shocking number. The Bush Administration never mentions these numbers.

Randi thinks the angle we need to focus on is treason. Treason is the word in the Constitution that comes before "high crimes and misdemeanors"

Hi Karen, Matt, and Marjorie G.,

You guys ROCK.

Wish I were there, but this is the next best thing!

She's on to Novak. Novak wrote a second column outing Valerie Plame's CIA shell company, Brewster-Jennings. Count Novakio claimed that Brewster-Jennings was not a real company.

He blew the cover of the entire company.

"BREAK THE HOLD OF REPUBLICAN POWER"--Randi Rhodes

Torture has occured - a violation of Federal Law.
Congress was lied to in order for Bush to go to war.
Treason was committed

Bob Fertig is closing up. He is asking a question about the scope of the special prosecutor's enquiry. Can Fitzgerald's enquiry be expanded?

Holtzman: the pressure can be raised to a level where Alberto Gonzalez will be forced to name a special prosecutor

Randi - the CIA sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department, which is why Ashcroft was forced to name a special prosecutor.

Rove was Ashcroft's campaign manager when he lost his last Senatorial race is Missouri.

Another reminder: Impeachment is a mode for all government officials. Liz Holtzman makes the point that it is specifically about ABUSE OF POWER.

Hinchey really going after the MSM...

Hinchey - Reagan Adminstration repealed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, the US Congress reinstated it, and Reagan vetoed the bill.

Hinchey: A Diverse and antagonistic media - we need to fight like hell to get that back.

HINCHEY: FIGHT LIKE HELL!

Randi - it's about us, about us acting.

Liz Holtzman - We cannot wait until 2006 comes around!

We have to educate your representative, and insist that they turn up the heat whenever one of the guilty parties comes in front of Congress

The Town Hall has ended, and people are now thanking the speakers on the stage.

THIS JUST IN FROM SUZ IN DETROIT where she is attending a rally on the Downing Street Memo

John Conyer's said "ALL this ties in together..
ALL of it...TREASONGATE, the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity.....the DOWNING ST. MEMO......
This is NOT a few rogues that are coming forward with information, it is coming out of The WHITE HOUSE."

SUZ couldn't talk long, she went back into the meeting......will check in again with us when she can......I am reporting from a message she left on my cell, she will have more information on it later......

SUZ will be posting shortly live from the meeting in Detroit......stay tuned.....

Yes, yes, yes, yes.... All things we have read about, blogged about, posted links about.... Dammit, we're better educated about current events than any journalists and anchors in MSM who repeat the same gibberish about Bu$hCo on every newscast I've ever seen since 2000.

What's wrong with this picture?!?

Mainstream Media Whores who pander to the White House: Wake up and start printing the truth, or go find another profession in which you can ply your trade.....!!!

And more or less connecting to Downing Street Memos, a news story from Great Britain (sorry, it's long, but dang, it's good and worth the read!):

Just as Blair is unfit to be Prime Minister, Bu$h is unfit to be president of the US.....

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305X.shtml

Blair Is Unfit to Be Prime Minister
By John Pilger
The New Statesman, UK

25 July 2005 Issue

Terror and the UK - The senseless repercussions of interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine demand that we renew our anger at our leaders. Our troops must come home. We owe it to all those who died in London on 7 July.

In all the coverage of the bombing of London, a truth has struggled to be heard. With honourable exceptions, it has been said guardedly, apologetically. Occasionally, a member of the public has broken the silence, as an east Londoner did when he walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. "Iraq!" he said. "We invaded Iraq and what did we expect? Go on, say it."

Alex Salmond tried to say it on Today on Radio 4. He was told he was speaking "in poor taste . . . before the bodies are even buried". George Galloway was lectured on Newsnight (BBC2) that he was being "crass". The inimitable Ken Livingstone contradicted his previous statement, which was that the invasion of Iraq would come home to London. With the exception of Galloway, not one so-called anti-war MP spoke out in clear, unequivocal English. The warmongers were allowed to fix the boundaries of public debate; one of the more idiotic, in the Guardian, called Blair "the world's leading statesman".

And yet, like the man who interrupted CNN, people understand and know why, just as the majority of Britons oppose the war and believe Blair is a liar. This frightens the British political elite. At a large media party I attended, many of the important guests uttered "Iraq" and "Blair" as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.

The bombs of 7 July were Blair's bombs.

Blair brought home to this country his and Bush's illegal, unprovoked and blood-soaked adventure in the Middle East. Were it not for his epic irresponsibility, the Londoners who died in the Tube and on the No 30 bus almost certainly would be alive today. This is what Livingstone ought to have said. To paraphrase perhaps the only challenging question put to Blair on the eve of the invasion, it is now surely beyond all doubt that the man is unfit to be prime minister.

How much more evidence is needed? Before the invasion, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that "by far the greatest terrorist threat" to this country would be "heightened by military action against Iraq". He was warned by 79 per cent of Londoners who, according to a YouGov survey in February 2003, believed that a British attack on Iraq "would make a terrorist attack on London more likely". A month ago, a leaked, classified CIA report revealed that the invasion had turned Iraq into a focal point of terrorism. Before the invasion, said the CIA, Iraq "exported no terrorist threat to its neighbors" because Saddam Hussein was "implacably hostile to al-Qaeda".

Now, an 18 July report by the Chatham House organization, a "think tank" deep within the British establishment, may well beckon Blair's coup de grâce. It says there is "no doubt" the invasion of Iraq has "given a boost to the al-Qaeda network" in "propaganda, recruitment and fundraising" while providing an ideal targeting and training area for terrorists. "Riding pillion with a powerful ally" has cost Iraqi, American and British lives. The right-wing academic, Paul Wilkinson, a voice of western power, was the principal author. Read between the lines and it says the prime minister is now a serious liability. Those who run this country know he has committed a great crime; the "link" has been made.

Blair's bunker-mantra is that there was terrorism long before the invasion, notably 11 September. Anyone with an understanding of the painful history of the Middle East would not have been surprised by 11 September or by the bombing of Madrid and London, only that they had not happened earlier. I have reported the region for 35 years, and if I could describe in a word how millions of Arab and Muslim people felt, I would say "humiliated". When Egypt looked like winning back its captured territory in the 1973 war with Israel, I walked through jubilant crowds in Cairo: it felt as if the weight of history's humiliation had lifted. In a very Egyptian flourish, one man said to me, "We once chased cricket balls at the British club. Now we are free."

They were not free, of course. The Americans re-supplied the Israeli army and they almost lost everything again. In Palestine, the humiliation of a captive people is Israeli policy. How many Palestinian babies have died at Israeli checkpoints after their mothers, bleeding and screaming in premature labor, have been forced to give birth beside the road at a military checkpoint with the lights of a hospital in the distance? How many old men have been forced to show obeisance to young Israeli conscripts? How many families have been blown to bits by America-supplied F-16s with British-supplied parts?

The gravity of the bombing of London, said a BBC commentator, "can be measured by the fact that it marks Britain's first suicide bombing". What about Iraq? There were no suicide bombers in Iraq until Blair and Bush invaded. What about Palestine? There were no suicide bombers in Palestine until Ariel Sharon, an accredited war criminal sponsored by Bush and Blair, came to power. In the 1991 Gulf "war", American and British forces left more than 200,000 Iraqis dead and injured and the infrastructure of their country in "an apocalyptic state", according to the United Nations. The subsequent embargo, designed and promoted by zealots in Washington and Whitehall, was not unlike a medieval siege. Denis Halliday, the United Nations official assigned to administer the near-starvation food allowance, called it "genocidal".

I witnessed its consequences: tracts of southern Iraq contaminated with depleted uranium and cluster bomblets waiting to explode. I watched dying children, some of the half a million infants whose deaths Unicef attributed to the embargo - deaths which US Secretary of State Madeline Albright said were "worth it". In the west, this was hardly reported. Throughout the Muslim world, the bitterness was like a presence, its contagion reaching many young British-born Muslims.

In 2001, in revenge for the killing of 3,000 people in the Twin Towers, more than 20,000 Muslims died in the Anglo-American invasion of Afghanistan. This was revealed by Jonathan Steele in the London Guardian and was never news, to my knowledge. The attack on Iraq was the Rubicon, making the reprisal against Madrid and the bombing of London entirely predictable: the latter "in response to the massacres carried out by Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan ...", claimed a group called the Organization for El Qaeda in Europe. Whether or not the claim was genuine, the reason was. Bush and Blair wanted a "war on terror" and they got it.

Omitted from public discussion is that their state terror makes al-Qaeda's appear miniscule by comparison. More than 100,000 Iraqi men, woman and children have been killed, not by suicide bombers, but by the Anglo-American "coalition", says a peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet, and largely ignored.

In his poem "From Iraq", Michael Rosen wrote:

We are the unfound
We are uncounted
You don't see the homes we made
We're not even the small print or the bit in brackets . . .
because we lived far from you,
because you have cameras that point the other way . . .
Imagine, for a moment, you are in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. It is an American police state, like a vast penned ghetto. Since April last year, the hospitals there have been subjected to an American policy of collective punishment. Staff have been attacked by US marines, doctors have been shot, emergency medicines blocked. Children have been murdered in front of their families.

Now imagine the same state of affairs imposed on the London hospitals that received the victims of the bombing. When will someone draw this parallel at one of Blair's staged "press conferences", at which he is allowed to emote for the cameras about "our values outlast [ing] theirs"? Silence is not journalism. In Fallujah, they know "our values" only too well. And when will someone invite the obsequious Bob Geldoff to explain why his hero, Blair's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" amounts to less than the money the Blair government spends in a week, brutalizing Iraq?

The hand-wringing over "whither Islam's soul" is another distraction. Christianity leaves Islam for dead as an industrial killer. The cause of the current terrorism is neither religion nor hatred for "our way of life". It is political, requiring a political solution. It is injustice and double standards, which plant the deepest grievances. That, and the culpability of our leaders, and the "cameras that point the other way", are the core of it.

On 19 July, while the BBC governors were holding their annual general meeting at Television Centre, an inspired group of British documentary filmmakers met outside the main gates and conducted a series of news reports of the kind you do not see on television. Actors played famous reporters doing their "camera pieces". The "stories" they reported included the targeting of the civilian population of Iraq, the application of the Nuremberg Principles to Iraq, America's illegal rewriting of the laws of Iraq and theft of its resources through privatization, the everyday torture and humiliation of ordinary people and the failure to protect Iraqis archaeological and cultural heritage.

Blair is using the London bombing to further deplete our rights and those of others, as Bush has done in America. Their goal is not security, but greater control. The memory of their victims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere demands the renewal of our anger. The troops must come home. Nothing less is owed to those who died and suffered in London on 7 July, unnecessarily, and nothing less is owed to those whose lives are marked if this travesty endures.

THANK YOU KAREN AND MATTHEW for reporting from NY's meeting today!!!!!!! For those of us who can't be with you, we appreciate the fact that you have kept us informed....!!!

(((Hugs))) - Now go have a nice tall glass of iced tea and cool off.... :-)

Patience, my dear NonnyO, Rome wasn't built in a day! Keep doin' what you're doin'. Investigate, research, share, you are educating more and more people every day!

I had the opportunity to get into discussions this past week with some people who intimidated me a year ago when I didn't know much. I didn't back down this time.......knowledge is power!!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050723/ap_en_mo/faux_faulkner

Spoof of Bush Wins Faux Faulkner Contest

:-) Oh, this is too, too FUNNY!!!!!!!!!! :-)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/22/AR2005072201658.html
Hunting Witches
Saturday, July 23, 2005; Page A16

"THIS IS HIGHLY usual," declared a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee when asked this week whether the request by committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) for information from three climate scientists was out of the ordinary. He and his boss are alone in that view. Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman rejects the existence of climate change, demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion. The scientists, co-authors of an influential 1999 study showing a dramatic increase in global warming over the past millennium, were told to hand over not only raw data but personal financial information, information on grants received and distributed, and computer codes.
~~~~~
Click on link for more.
{{{ Jeez... just when you think it can't get any more ridiculous....}}}

Follow the money trail........Not My President's Family posted this link last night - it is awesome and detailed.

First meet the family:
http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

Now meet the Carlyle Group:

http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html

Oh, what a tangled web we weave.....

knowledge is power!!!!

Posted by: Truth Shall Prevail at July 23, 2005 04:57 PM

YES!!! :-)

The pen is mightier than the sword....

In ancient Celtic cultures the person more important than even the druid was the Bard. She or He had the power to shame and ridicule people with satire....

I hope you caught the info on the previous two threads here today. The Karen Hughes thing has me baffled... and she was questioned by Fitzgerald, too...... I thought she had gone to ground in a cave somewhere never to be heard from again after the '04 campaign.....

Curiouser and curiouser, eh????

Can you see the loud-mouthed brazen ass Hughes as a diplomatic person or an envoy in the Mideast (like Condisleazy - why are the neoCons sending women to make deals with men in strictly patriarchal cultures?!?!?)...? Too cowardly or too inept to do a woman's job?!?

NonnyO,

Yes, I read the past two threads. I don't get the "why" of Karen Hughes, either. What is her new title? Months ago it was reported she was brought back to help with foreign PR. She might be used to buffer the religious right, as she was interviewed on Pat Robertson's 700 Club right before election '04.

This in from Suz in Detroit:

Lila from "Farenheit 9-11" spoke earlier today as well. She said "We've been sound asleep since Vietnam. We need to start connecting the dots.
I had to learn to connect the dots after losing my spouse. Part of the strategy of those in power has been to strip us (the citizens - the population) of resources. They made it much harder for the people to have power. The result was more poverty and despair, a lack of hope. That's how they built their new military. (More poor kids volunteer for service in the armed forces for economic reasons - a job, help paying for college later, et.)

An important thing to remember is to not be isolated. Connect with other learned people. Hug each other - get in each other's space if you have to, but connect. It is empowering, you learn, you educate and activate."

THIS IN FROM SUZ IN DETROIT:

Mr. James Marcinkowski, former Case Officer, CIA, also spoke today at the rally for the Downing Street Memo anniversary.

He said he trained with Valerie Plame, and worked with her for twenty years. Their identity was kept secret for twenty years. "This whole incident was about politics and power. We need to be empowered, and the media needs to take their responsibility seriously and each day that goes by without an investigation, without accountability, damages our national security.

Everything that a CIA agent does is built on trust. They have to have a high level of trust with those they work with - their lives and the lives of countless others depends on it....This administration breeched that trust. This is absolutely unprecendented - the White House, people at the very top level of power here, breeched the trust, and they did it out of revenge, thinking nothing of it.

I guarantee you were have lost trust around the world as a result. We are losing contacts because every operative wonders if the U.S. cares, and will protect them. It leads to inaction, and this inaction is killing us. This has been ongoing for two years."

Suz will post more quotes from Mr. Marcinkowski a bit later.....

I just got back from work. Thanks for making me feel like I am in the middle of all of these important events.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yes, yes, yes, yes.... All things we have read about, blogged about, posted links about.... Dammit, we're better educated about current events than any journalists and anchors in MSM who repeat the same gibberish about Bu$hCo on every newscast I've ever seen since 2000.

Posted by: NonnyO at July 23, 2005 04:50 PM
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nonny,

You are so right. People should be required to spend five minutes a day (right Karen?) reading your informative posts.

MORE FROM SUZ IN DETROIT:

Tony Trupiano spoke after Rep. Conyers:

"The President is a liar. He had hired crafty liars who will stop at nothing to get their way. Their arrogance has created the largest terror ring the world has ever known."

MORE:

"We don't need to be Democrats, we don't need to be Republicans, we need to be MESSENGERS.

We need to spread the word "NOT IN MY HOUSE".
The White House is my house. It is your house. Today is the beginning of the end of the Bush administration." - Tony Trupiano

SUZ had very poor access to the internet at today's meeting. She will fill us all in when she gets home and gets things a bit settled at home.

Cheney Lobbying Against Anti-Torture Legislation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305A.shtml
The Bush administration has been lobbying to block legislation that
would bar the US military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment" of detainees, hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and using
interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.

{{{ Only one word comes to mind: WHY?!?!? People with a conscience (a) would not torture anyone ever (most wouldn't even know how because it never enters their minds); and (b) people with a conscience would never condone torture being done to anyone at any time for any reason under any circumstances..... The only conclusion I can come to is that Cheney the Dick has no conscience....}}}

Posted by: Karen at July 23, 2005 03:37 PM

Is there a more direct link to the time-line you mention? I can't find it on Conyer's site.

I had no internet access but took notes, had a good seat & have a good memory, took the first bus home & am uploading photos right now.

You can check
http://www.democracycellproject.net
http://www.downingstreet.org
http://www.backbonecampaign.org
http://www.silencedmajority.blogs.com
because I'm going to hit 'em all eventually.

Posted by: oncall at July 23, 2005 06:05 PM

OC, you are too kind and you flatter me....

I would ADD, however, that people should read ALL posts and follow ALL links posted by ALL the bloggers on this - and other - particularly informative web sites.

When I joined the old Kerry blog I was as dumb as a post (IMHO) about many things political after 2000. I knew from years of just following news stories that something was missing since the debates of 2000 in mainstream media, and I had been able to read between the lines in many news stories (I'd studied media manipulation in one of my honors seminars, too, which met the first time the evening Bu$h 41 got Congress to declare war on Iraq the first time - media manipulation and how words are used to manipulate others have fascinated me for years, not to mention etymology....). If it had not been for clicking on links and reading everything (quite literally!) that was on those links, and everything that people wrote on the old Kerry blog, I'd never have gained any political information about things that have gone on behind the scenes in this country.

Now I'm connecting dots... some of those dots go back at least 40 years or more - long before pResiNitwit even thought of running this country....

Thank you for your kindness, but I must remind you that without you, your insight, your contributions to this blog... and that of everyone else on this blog... I would be pretty well lost in the woods on a lot of issues.

I think each of us has a little niche of special interests and posting links to the most informative of those stories can be enormously beneficial to many other people....

Thank you for all you do for this blog...!!! :-)

{{{ The results of the withheld story (stories?) in the OH newspaper....}}}

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/22/AR2005072201709.html
Defense Lawyer Gave Reporter FBI Memo in Corruption Case

Bush Revives Push to Restructure Social Security
ATLANTA - With his mother by his side, President Bush renewed his drive to restructure Social Security and assured seniors that the proposal wouldn't affect their benefits. By Edwin Chen.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush23jul23,0,7396700.story
{{{ Invitation only audiences, and he has to have his mommy with him.... awwwww, isn't that precious?!?}}}

Stricter Bill Introduced For Fannie, Freddie
Rules May Have Problems With House, Democrats
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/22/AR2005072202049.html
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) yesterday released legislation that could force mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to significantly reduce their combined $1.5 trillion investment portfolios.

GOP Pushes Fund to Clean Water
WASHINGTON - In a bid to remove the chief stumbling block to long-debated energy legislation, House Republicans proposed creating a multibillion-dollar fund to pay for cleaning water supplies fouled by a gasoline additive. The cost would be shared by the oil industry and federal and state governments. By Richard Simon.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-energy23jul23,0,2694258.story
Excerpt:

The legal protections for MTBE producers have been championed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), whose state is one of the additive's main producers.

Industry officials have contended that Congress was responsible for promoting the use of MTBE by requiring cleaner-burning gasoline in the nation's smoggiest regions. Supporters of the provision argue that the legislation would not prevent all MTBE-related lawsuits, such as for negligence or mishandling of the additive, but would prevent plaintiffs from claiming that MTBE is a defective product.

{{{ My knee-jerk reaction before I got to the last two paragraphs is that it favored big business entirely, so it was bad legislation.... and getting to the last two paragraphs and noting that [unethical crook] DeLay's name positively makes this bill something to vote against.... especially since the description in last paragraph makes it almost impossible to sue the producers of MTBE if one must use cause-and-effect to prove a case against MTBE producers in a court of law....}}}

Kerry Seeks Release of Roberts' Documents
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305C.shtml
As the Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts continued courting senators, Sen. John Kerry urged the White House to release "in their entirety" all documents and memos from Roberts' tenure in two Republican administrations.

{{{Hmmmmm..... he includes documents pertaining to Roberts' time in FL after the 2000 election....}}}

Answer to my own question: LOL

Here is the direct link:

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/conyerstimeline.pdf

Poll: Many Fear Iraq Hurting Terror Fight
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305D.shtml
A growing number of Americans fear the war in Iraq is undermining the fight against terrorism and raising the risk of terrorist attacks in this country, a poll found.

{{{ YA THINK?!?!? }}}

oncall,

I just got off the phone with someone from Conyers' team, because I could not find the link either. He said he would email me with it--somehow he thought it might be on rawstory as well.

Rep. Conyers' people are so excited about today--they had over 350 parties and they want blog items from each one! So if you went to one, or hosted one, get ready!

This MAY turn out to be one HUGE national discussion about next steps.

FOr those of you who are keeping up with the events from all over the country--what do YOU think we should be paying attention to?

FOr those of you who are keeping up with the events from all over the country--what do YOU think we should be paying attention to?

Posted by: Karen at July 23, 2005 06:37 PM

I think we should be paying attention to and highlighting the CULTURE OF LIES AND LIARS that has taken over the government.

I am looking for a bumper sticker that has a single message: It is all a lie. (with Bush's logo in the background).

FOr those of you who are keeping up with the events from all over the country--what do YOU think we should be paying attention to?

Posted by: Karen at July 23, 2005 06:37 PM

Pay attention to WHATEVER documents (Downing Street Memos, TreasonGate paperwork), details, stories, people, legal details (in particular), timelines (kudos to whoever for putting all that work into it!), that will (1) lead to impeaching the whole Bu$hCo administration... and (2) getting MSM to WAKE UP and smell the coffee so people besides bloggers finally become informed about the extent of the crimes and misdemeanors of this administration!!!!!! Connect the dots, MSM, connect the dots.... and then report, report, report (report reality for a change, not reality shows that are scripted!!!).

IMHO.... :-)

Good start, oncall!

Here is the link to the timeline:

http://politerra.com/images/Iraqchronologyrawstory.pdf

FOr those of you who are keeping up with the events from all over the country--what do YOU think we should be paying attention to?

Posted by: Karen at July 23, 2005 06:37 PM

Activism of all sorts to expose the lies and corruption. It all goes back to a good year or more before the war in Iraq started. Putting enough heat on Congress and the media to report it and do something about it. And, being sure to tie it all in together.

Our country has been highjacked and betrayed.

I am looking for a bumper sticker that has a single message: It is all a lie. (with Bush's logo in the background).

Posted by: oncall at July 23, 2005 06:43 PM

I'll bet I can make one for you. I'll play with one and send you a proof.

(Might have to make minor changes to his logo so that we don't violate copyright laws...)

just got off the phone with someone from Conyers' team, because I could not find the link either. He said he would email me with it--

KAREN, could you forward that email to me, I can't get the pdf (thanks oncall!
(some error message about a bridge??)

i sure would appreciate it!

posted really at 12:59PM Hawaii time

Michael T. Klare | The Iran War Buildup
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305F.shtml
Excerpt:
There is no evidence that President Bush has already made the decision to attack Iran if Tehran proceeds with uranium-enrichment activities viewed in Washington as precursors to the manufacture of nuclear munitions. Top Administration officials are known to have argued in favor of military action if Tehran goes ahead with these plans - a step considered more likely with the recent election of arch-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's president - but Bush, so far as is known, has not yet made up his mind in the matter. One thing does appear certain, however: Bush has given the Defense Department approval to develop scenarios for such an attack and to undertake various preliminary actions. As was the case in 2002 regarding Iraq, the building blocks for an attack in Iran are beginning to be put into place.
~~~~~~~

This is a good piece to read... the author is obviously skeptical about the whole thing and sees a correlation to the LIES we were told in the "build-up" to the Iraq war.

My Question: And WHO, pray tell, would actually fight any war in Iran if that stupid decision is ever made?!? Our military is short staffed already. Coalition of the "willing?" Hey, if Tony gets a 'vote of no confidence' in Parliament, he's out within 30 days... no help from there... That leaves no one else, unless he hires all mercenaries to fight his war - and who would pay them? I'm not forgetting Halliburton and/or the Carlyle group currently have business dealings going on in Iran, even if shrubbie has already been starting to bomb sensitive targets in Iran like he did in Iraq before he declared war (that information does not make MSM nightly infotainment news...).

I think King George better pull back his horns... and his war talk...... He's cried wolf too often, LIED too often... to the citizens of the US, and to everyone else in the world...!!!

FOr those of you who are keeping up with the events from all over the country--what do YOU think we should be paying attention to?

Posted by: Karen at July 23, 2005 06:37 PM

I believe we need to use the hearing yesterday and Johnson's address today to say we do not want ANY ACTION ON ROBERTS OR ANYTHING until these lying issues (also the re-writing scientists findings) UNTIL these matters are resolved.

I am terribly worried about all our democrats selling their souls to the lobbyists, all the letters and calls i have made have done nothing.

We need the whole democratic organization behind us to do this...

Mark Weisbrot | Rove Scandal Could Stick
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305G.shtml
Mark Weisbrot argues that the difference between this and other Scandals that have hit this White House is: this one has a federal special prosecutor (Patrick Fitzgerald) working on it. And Fitzgerald seems serious.

Excerpt:
Karl Rove's actions against Valerie and Joseph Wilson were just one small part of the Bush Administration's effort to deceive the public and make the case for war. But for now, this is the only part that is subject to legal scrutiny. And it's not going away anytime soon.

{{{ From his pen to the Goddess Justice's fingers reading braille.... Please, oh, please read carefully and precisely... and may the Grand Jury be one thousand percent sure of their findings so that all evidence that goes into pursuing any potential charges is able to be proved in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt....}}}

we do not want ANY ACTION ON ROBERTS OR ANYTHING until these lying issues (also the re-writing scientists findings) UNTIL these matters are resolved.
Posted by: faith1 at July 23, 2005 07:10 PM

Oh, EXCELLENT POINT, Faith!!! :-)

The majority of Democrats have compromised themselves to the point they no longer have any spines.... It's about danged time the Republicans start to "compromise".... and it's more than past time for the White House inhabitants start telling the truth - and if the Dems stick to their principles for a change and tell the White House that without truth and explanations, nothing gets done in Congress....

Hmmmmmm.....

Posted by: faith1 at July 23, 2005 07:00 PM

I just sent you the PDF version without having to link to internet.

Faith,

I agree with your point however, I don't think we will make any difference if the opposition delays Robert's and Bolton's confirmations. I think we have to keep hammering home that we will not tolerate the lies and obfuscation that has become the modus operandi for this administration. By doing that, their nominations will be less secure.

As I mentioned before, I think Bolton is chin deep in the Plame affair. By going after any relationship that Bolton may have to this act of treason, we will have effectively blocked his ambassadorship to the U.N.

I have sent report on Seattle event to this site & it should be up at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org & http://www.silencedmajority.blogs.com.

I sent it to Backbone Campaign as requested but can't the link I need doesn't seem to be working but they have it (& photos) via email so we will get it as disseminated as possible.

Will also be back to discuss but am reading Conyers stuff, etc. - trying to digest what went on all over the country today because I think it was a very important first step.

I'll also be anxious to hear what happened at the house parties & the breakout groups. A couple of ours had to do with breaking through the corporate media blackout & on putting pressure on our Governor to get our National Guards back home.

I also want to put in a plug for the Backbone Campaign, as they have alot of fabulous projects going.

Watch this short piece. Stay for the end.

http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=19378

I've just returned from our Downing Street Minutes meet-up, here in Vancouver, WA. There were 45 people, and several of them were Republicans.

That's right. We had Repulicans in our group. And the guy who hosted us was an Independent Libertarian who voted for Bush. He's decided since reading the DSMinutes that he'll join the Democratic Party for the next round of elections. He's really pissed about this war.

Today is the first day of healing. Many of us spoke about the need for healing, for getting over the continuous bashing of good men and women who work in the other party - to paraphrase Richard Dreyfuss, there are many good Republicans, but these guys are not among them. Good Republicans are starting to realize that the price has been too high.

Many, many thanks to Ambassador Wilson for emphasizing that this is NOT a Democrat issue, it's an American issue. Republican voters are only just now finding out that this administration betrayed their trust and lied us into a war of choice. One Republican gentleman suggested that we need a class action lawsuit against the main stream media, charging not only negligence but willful witholding of information from Americans. The damages? Let them pay for the war.

America is angry.

This is the issue that will allow us to reach across the aisle and have men and women of good conscience from all parties join us. Let's not waste it. Instead, let's find common ground and focus there to repair the damage Bush has done to our country.

Remember Ambassador Wilson's words: This is not about him or his wife or the reporters... they're all collateral damage. This is about the cover-up of the web of lies that got American into war on false pretenses. Repeat three times, and then again and again to whomever will listen, whenever there is opportunity.

Former Agents Push Bush for Action on Rove
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305Z.shtml
President Bush's failure to take action against a top aide involved in the outing of a covert CIA operative sends "the wrong message" overseas, former US intelligence officials said on Friday.

{{{ Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, another man named Lang... were the three who testified in Waxman's and Dorgan's hearing yesterday. There were others, including someone who could not reveal their real name(s) because it would blow the lid off of current covert ops, who sent a written statement supporting what the ex-CIA officers said. The people at the hearing yesterday, like the people who testified at Conyers' Downing Street Memos hearing, are all heroes and heroines (IMHO). I will not soon forget their courage......}}}

Posted by: faith1 at July 23, 2005 07:00 PM

I just sent you the PDF version without having to link to internet.

Posted by: oncall at July 23, 2005 07:40 PM

Oncall, I can't open PDF files. Is the version you sent faith already in hotmail form? If it is, and it's not too time consuming, would you please mail it to me, too?

Oncall, referring back to our conversation of the other day....

I took attendance at our meeting, and one thing I noticed is that people heard about the event from different sources - various email lists, peace efforts, blogs, AAR, senate sites, etc. But - not one person mentioned having heard about it through any kind of youth group, which explains why there was not one person there between the ages of 18-30.

Perhaps the youth of the country have their own set of meetings and events.... but I think we need to join up!

ONCALL

thankyou, but can't open it, my software problem i am sure, trying to get more disk space and always screw up something

maybe this should go up on the forum (not trying to make you work oncall)

36 or so pages is alot!!!

--------- about stopping roberts, we could just use that as an excuse to get it out all over the media WHY WE ARE DOING IT...

then have a chance to get all public to learn a bit more about that hearing.

We were asked to call/email/write our congressmen and ask them to sign on to Resolution 375:

"Please call your Congressman and ask him/her to co-sponsor House Resolution 375 which requires the State Department and White House to "transmit all information relating to communication with officials of the United Kingdom between January 1, 2002, and October 16, 2002, relating to the policy of the United States with respect to Iraq."

Start your phones.

Posted by: Truth Shall Prevail at July 23, 2005 05:27 PM

Regarding the quote from Lila in Detroit today,
Lila lost her son, (not her spouse), one month after the invasion in Iraq. My bad.

Oncall, if faith can't open hers then I probably can't either. Never mind..... :)

DiAnne, we had someone from the backbone campaign at our meeting. She was full of good ideas. I also recommend them.

Anyone familiar with the site that had this posted?
------------------------
July 22, 2005

SCOOP: John Bolton Was Regular Source for Judith Miller WMD and National Security Reporting

TWN has just learned from a highly placed source -- and in the right place to know -- that John Bolton was a regular source for Judith Miller's New York Times WMD and national security reports.

The source did not have any knowledge on whether Bolton was one of Miller's sources on the Valerie Plame story she was preparing, but argues that he was a regular source otherwise.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000798.html

This was posted and discussed on DU.

The plot thickens.

Has Fitzgerald, within his scope of the investigation, the ability to go after source of the false Niger document. Has he? If it's risk-taker Michael Lee-something from the AEI, we would have something about falsified intelligence, a conspiracy and intention.

Ignore previous post - I read the blog backwards when i'm catching up! Sorry.

Was anyone at the event in Los Angeles with Maxine Waters? Sounded like that was the place to be - I'd love to see pictures.

TELL CONGRESS THE PRESIDENT HAS NO RIGHT OF TORTURE

There is a strong bipartisan move afoot in Congress to limit the power of the president to torture detainees in our name, specifically to bar the U.S. Military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". Does it surprise anyone that this out of control administration is threatening to VETO the whole defense bill if can't continue to commit war crimes? If we do not speak out they are our crimes as well. Why don't you tell your members of Congress to stand tall and stand together?

http://www.usalone.com/guantanamo.htm

This is especially meaningful in the context of the hearings Friday where seasoned intelligence operatives stepped forward to testify that GOOD intelligence comes from building relationships over decades with foreign sources on a TRUST basis, not by pulling off the people's fingernails. It is precisely the rest of the world's confidence in our intelligence agencies that the outing by administration officials of one of our own top secret undercover agents has so wantonly destroyed for petty political purposes. And they did it AGAIN by outing a key inside source whose information would have prevented the recent British transit attacks. We are getting bad intelligence from administration policies that are doing nothing but destroy our country and our respect in the civilized world. Please tell Congress to demand that the torture must STOP.

Cheney Lobbying Against Anti-Torture Legislation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305A.shtml
The Bush administration has been lobbying to block legislation that would bar the US military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.

ACLU Says Gov't Withholding Abu Ghraib Images
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072305B.shtml
The American Civil Liberties Union accused the government Friday of putting another legal roadblock in the way of its bid to allow the public to see photographs and videos stemming from the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

Frank Rich's NYT column this weekend. This man deserves a Pulitzer, he is not letting up.
Here's a sample, but read entire column, its a keeper:

July 24, 2005
Eight Days in July
By FRANK RICH

PRESIDENT BUSH'S new Supreme Court nominee was a historic first after all: the first to be announced on TV dead center in prime time, smack in the cross hairs of "I Want to Be a Hilton." It was also one of the hastiest court announcements in memory, abruptly sprung a week ahead of the White House's original timetable. The agenda of this rushed showmanship - to change the subject in Washington - could not have been more naked. But the president would have had to nominate Bill Clinton to change this subject.

When a conspiracy is unraveling, and it's every liar and his lawyer for themselves, the story takes on a momentum of its own. When the conspiracy is, at its heart, about the White House's twisting of the intelligence used to sell the American people a war - and its desperate efforts to cover up that flimflam once the W.M.D. cupboard proved bare and the war went south - the story will not end until the war really is in its "last throes."

Only 36 hours after the John Roberts unveiling, The Washington Post nudged him aside to second position on its front page. Leading the paper instead was a scoop concerning a State Department memo circulated the week before the outing of Joseph Wilson's wife, the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame, in literally the loftiest reaches of the Bush administration - on Air Force One. The memo, The Post reported, marked the paragraph containing information about Ms. Plame with an S for secret. So much for the cover story that no one knew that her identity was covert.

But the scandal has metastasized so much at this point that the forgotten man Mr. Bush did not nominate to the Supreme Court is as much a window into the White House's panic and stonewalling as its haste to put forward the man he did. When the president decided not to replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a woman, why did he pick a white guy and not nominate the first Hispanic justice, his friend Alberto Gonzales? Mr. Bush was surely not scared off by Gonzales critics on the right (who find him soft on abortion) or left (who find him soft on the Geneva Conventions). It's Mr. Gonzales's proximity to this scandal that inspires real fear.

snip~
THE second narrative to be unearthed in the scandal's early timeline is the motive for this reckless vindictiveness against anyone questioning the war. On May 1, 2003, Mr. Bush celebrated "Mission Accomplished." On May 29, Mr. Bush announced that "we found the weapons of mass destruction." On July 2, as attacks increased on American troops, Mr. Bush dared the insurgents to "bring 'em on." But the mission was not accomplished, the weapons were not found and the enemy kept bringing 'em on. It was against this backdrop of mounting desperation on July 6 that Mr. Wilson went public with his incriminating claim that the most potent argument for the war in the first place, the administration's repeated intimations of nuclear Armageddon, involved twisted intelligence.
snip~
In July 2005, there are still no W.M.D.'s, and we're still waiting to hear the full story of how, in the words of the Downing Street memo, the intelligence was fixed to foretell all those imminent mushroom clouds in the run-up to war in Iraq. The two official investigations into America's prewar intelligence have both found that our intelligence was wrong, but neither has answered the question of how the administration used that wrong intelligence in selling the war. That issue was pointedly kept out of the charter of the Silberman-Robb commission; the Senate Intelligence Committee promised to get to it after the election but conspicuously has not.

The real crime here remains the sending of American men and women to Iraq on fictitious grounds. Without it, there wouldn't have been a third-rate smear campaign against an obscure diplomat, a bungled cover-up and a scandal that - like the war itself - has no exit strategy that will not inflict pain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
or here~
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24rich.html?hp

Amy

Original article is at http://la.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/133465.php Print comments.
Maxine Waters teaches about the Downing Street Memo

Washington, DC - Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-35) announced that she will be the featured speaker at a town hall meeting and teach-in on the third anniversary of the Downing Street Memo this Saturday, July 23rd at the Covenant Worship Center, 425 S. La Brea Avenue in Inglewood, California from noon until 3:00 pm.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters Featured Speaker at Teach-In
On Downing Street Memo This Saturday
Washington, DC - Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-35) announced that she will be the featured speaker at a town hall meeting and teach-in on the third anniversary of the Downing Street Memo this Saturday, July 23rd at the Covenant Worship Center, 425 S. La Brea Avenue in Inglewood, California from noon until 3:00 pm.

The Congresswoman, who has been a leading voice in calling for the Administration to conclude the war in Iraq, stated, “As the Co-Founder of the Out of Iraq Caucus, I call on the United States to reexamine its role in the Iraqi War. I will continue the ongoing discussions regarding the war, including the implications of the Downing Street memo.”

The Downing Street memo refers to the now infamous minutes taken at a meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and senior British officials at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s official office in London, regarding President Bush’s determination to go to war. According the memo, some of his advisors felt it was clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action…that “the intelligence was fixed around the policy.”

Added the Congresswoman,“It is time that we demand answers from this administration about the war in Iraq. Over 1700 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq. We need to reunite our US service members with their families.”

Joining the Congresswoman at the town hall will be Fernando Suarez del Solar, whose son Jesus was killed in the first weeks of the war; Tim Goodrich, Co-Founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War; Jane Bright of Military Families Speak Out and Gold Star Families for Peace, as well as other elected officials and community leaders.

The Out of Iraq Caucus was established this year in order to bring to the House of Representatives an on-going debate about the war in Iraq and the Administration’s justifications for the decision to go to war, to urge the return of U.S. service members to their families as soon as possible, and to provide a voice in Congress for the individuals and groups who support these efforts. To date, the Caucus has 63 congressional members.

This Saturday’s town hall has been scheduled in conjunction with over 200 events to be held nationwide by at least 7 other members of Congress and a wide variety of other organizations. This event is supported by NAACP, Mexican American Political Association, Office of the Americas, CODEPINK, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and many other community groups and peace organizations.

--I have info form Seattle but still waiting to hear whether Karen wants it as a story or comment. See also http://www.afterdowningstreet.org & http://www.silencedmajority.blogs.com (pictures too).

I just returned from the Los Angeles event with Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and posted the report on my personal blog. For your info, I am copy-pasting it here too.

I just came back from the Los Angeles event, which took place in the primarily African-American city of Inglewood, near the airport.

As I arrived, I could see several groups setting up booths outside. There were Democratic clubs from various sections of Los Angeles County, as well as the Code Pink women dressed in pink slips and a few socialist/communist groups too.

The venue was a church, and it was very well air-conditioned; I actually needed my suit jacket until people started packing the place in. The event began with a movie where Bush's rationales for war were debunked, one by one.

The event was hosted by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who had a very fiery speech highlighting her anti-war record, and praising fellow Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland, who was the only member of Congress to oppose the Afghanistan war resolution, saying that it gave the President too much power. She named many members of Congress who were participating in her Out of Iraq quorum, including Dennis Kucinich, Barney Frank, Mike Honda, Raul Grijalva, and others.

A rapper by the name of Willie B. livened things up between some speakers.

There were many speakers presenting today. Among them were a half-Indian, half-Sri Lankan man who was opposed to the war - and lamented his ancestral countries' heavy participation in corporate sweatshops. There was a Methodist reverend who fired people up by emphasizing that the corporate media should not merely be hated, it should be changed by the people. There were high school students who were conscientious objectors of war, who did a sit-in against the war even despite the school administration's pressures to make them quit. There was a mother of a soldier, who was commemorating the second anniversary of her son's death tomorrow. There were many others but they are all blurring in my memory.

The crowd was very diverse, though I would have preferred to see more of Los Angeles's huge Asian community. (Perhaps they ARE indeed so right-wing.) Very visible were the Code Pink women in pink slips with messages about Bush and Rove, and a large number of veterans of America's foreign wars, from WWII to Kosovo.

I did not get to mingle with the crowd too much - because I wanted to come back to post this for my blog and for the Democracy Cell Project blog.

The participants did an impromptu phonebanking targeting media companies. Each participant was given a list of five media contacts to call using a cell phone. I was able to leave a message with the Washington Times (yes, the Moonie paper) and CBS Morning News.

In the end, this was a huge success, with over 1,000 attendees. Although none of the mainstream media came, C-SPAN and Pacifica Radio (90.7 KPFK FM in Los Angeles) were among the media outlets covering the event. Even though I didn't network much (yes, I am shy in real life), I did have a good time - being away from my Republican suburb is in itself a good thing.

Amy

Sorry - that LA one is a pre article, not a post article. If you return to LA IndyMedia in awhile, I would expect that people will start putting up photos & reports.

Posted by: Amy at July 23, 2005 08:34 PM

Amy,

I received an e-mail from a friend last night about this. It was linked to the site you posted. I don't know anything about the site. I suspect Dick and Karen would have some insight into how reputable they are. You posted one of their links yesterday as well.

July 22, 2005
JOHN BOLTON TESTIFIED BEFORE GRAND JURY IN VALERIE PLAME INVESTIGATION

David Schuster of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews made a whopper revelation about grand jury testimony in the Valerie Plame-outing investigation: John Bolton has testified about the top secret document that Colin Powell had aboard Air Force One.

TWN has confirmed with MSNBC that it it standing by its story.

Shuster's report yesterday:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000797.html

not my president,

Is the stranger your paper?
Moved here to Hawaii from Seattle...
all family is there.

The Stranger and Seattle Weekly are the two weeklies and they are awesome - alternative, interesting, never a dull moment!

Our dailies aren't too bad - the PI is said to be more liberal than the Times. We have it pretty good here. Come visit!!

Faith

I live next door to Kona Kitchen and will do Karaoke there later tonight. The owner is the star from Karate Kid II. It's Little Hawaii, around here! I also intend to eat their oriental chicken salad.

Everett Community Radio has a Hawaiian radio sho that features a variety of types of music. It's really cool to listen too - not touristic.

Amy, OnCall

Here is who runs the Washington Note.
Apparently NPR thinks they're ok.

Steven Clemons is publisher of the popular political blog, TheWashingtonNote.com, and a long-term policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He is currently Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, where he was previously Executive Vice President. Clemons currently co-directs the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program with well-known foreign policy thinkers Sherle Schwenninger and Michael Lind.

Clemons specializes in U.S. foreign policy matters, with significant experience both in Asia-Pacific and transatlantic policy matters, as well as broad international economic and security affairs. Prior to his current position, Steve Clemons served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute. He has also served as Senior Policy Advisor on Economic and International Affairs to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and was the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center and established it in Washington, D.C. Prior to moving to Washington, Clemons served for seven years as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California and co-founded with Chalmers Johnson the Japan Policy Research Institute, of which he is still Director.

Steve Clemons is a Member of the Board of the Clarke International Policy Center at Dickinson College, a liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and founded in 1783. He also writes frequently on matters of foreign policy, defense, and international economic policy. His work has appeared in most of the major leading op-ed pages, journal, and magazines around the world.

The man who was shot 5 times and kiiled by London police, who thought he might be a suicide bomber: It was a horrible mistake: London police over re-acted and kiiled an innocent man:

Man Killed in London Not Linked to Blasts

By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer
5 minutes ago

LONDON - Police identified the man who was chased down in a subway and shot to death by plainclothes officers as a Brazilian and said Saturday they no longer believed he was tied to the recent terror bombings.

Friday's shooting before horrified commuters prompted criticism of police for overreacting and expressions of fear that Asians and Muslims would be targeted by a "trigger-happy culture" after two well-coordinated attacks in two weeks.

Police expressed regret for the death of the man at the Stockwell subway station, identified Saturday as Jean Charles de Menezes, 27. Witnesses said he was wearing a heavy, padded coat when plainclothes police chased him into a subway car, pinned him to the ground and shot him about five times in the head and torso.

continue~
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050724/ap_on_re_eu/britain_underground

New America Foundation

http://www.newamerica.net/http://www.newamerica.net/

Economic Strategy Institute

http://www.econstrat.org/

Liberal think tanks? They don't seem like neocons, at any rate!

Perhaps Judith Miller was protecting John Bolton.

{{{ This is quite a long essay, but well worth reading in its entirety. }}}
America the Beautiful
The Pain of Patriotism
By Joel Miller
We must erase the insult to the men and women who built this country that liberty fears to speak her mind and justice is forced to sell herself to the highest bidder.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9553.htm

Excerpts:
Part 2 - The Myth of Democracy
We all know the saying, 'All that glitters is not gold.' Hardly anyone knows that this is the second part of a popular Renaissance phrase. ... The entire saying went, 'The devil hides behind the cross, all that glitters is not gold.' The devil in this case referred to the Catholic clergy who dominated life in general, religious life in particular, and suppressed the people with taxes, politics and ideology to support their own decadent life style characterized by magnificent luxury, unrestrained depravity, shameless corruption and grating hypocrisy.

From the perspective of history the glaring contradictions between words and deeds seem incredible. How could church officials dance in decadence while preaching the virtues of Christianity? How could the people have put up with such dissonance, with such lies and pretenses? We need merely take a step back and view our own times to see how this was possible.

Paraphrasing the Renaissance saying, we could say, 'The dictator hides behind democracy, all that glitters is not gold.'

Our own rulers can't speak without lacing their statements with words of freedom and democracy. They declare themselves the representatives of these values in the same way as the degenerate clergy declared themselves representatives of Jesus and Christian values.

Despite the ramblings of our rulers democracy does not characterize the politics of the countries they call the democracies. There is no democracy in the 'democracies'. It's a myth.

The rulers get away with selling the myth of democracy by constantly pouring diversions of entertainment, gossip, sensations, scandals and games into a distorted model of representative politics originally designed to capture the will of the people. The citizens are made to believe in democracy, but know only vaguely what it is about. Not one person in a thousand can explain the basics of democracy despite its simplicity. When asked for an explanation, they speak in abstractions or name parts of the democratic process. What they don't say, know or understand is: democracy is a system of government driven by the will of the people.
..........
If the will of the majority is not reflected in decisions of government, that government cannot be considered democratic. Period. The Greek 'demo' means people, and 'cracy' means rule. If the people don't rule, if the majority doesn't determine decision, democracy isn't at work. A system doesn't run counter to its design.
..........
How often do the rulers have to take our money and resources and channel it through to a wealthy minority before we realize that this is not democracy! How can the rulers commit the greatest of all crimes - a war of aggression - against our wishes and protests without us realizing that these criminals are the enemy of democracy, not its representatives? How can we watch them lie to us; break international law; flaunt the UN's charter and mandate; ignore the principles of the Nuremburg Tribunal; trample on the Geneva Conventions, spit in the face of world opinion; invade, occupy and destroy a poor and practically defenseless country, before we realize that their 'democracy' is merely as a fig leaf on their naked tyrannical dictatorship? How broad and high do they have to build their monument of hypocrisy, claiming to promote democracy in Iraq while devastating the country and killing its people, before we say, 'These monsters do not represent us.'?

Let me underline a simple and universally accepted commandment: Thou shall not start a war.

War is the greatest of all crimes and those who initiate one qualify as the greatest of all criminals. The invasion of Iraq constitutes a felony of war. If the USA is a democracy, it's citizens are complicit in the crime. They are assessories to the fact, aiding and abetting war criminals. If the USA is not a democracy, it is the duty of the citizens and patriots to stop the criminals who are warring in their name and bring them to justice.

If not a democracy, what is it? A theocracy (rule of the religious)? A plutocracy (rule of the wealthy)? A kleptocracy (rule of thieves)? It's not important how we label them. The name changes nothing. Refer to them as Neocons, Bushites or the American Taliban as long as you are aware that the rulers of the United States of America follow a path of aggression and conquest in order to enrich themselves and maintain their power, and that their greed-fueled quest for domination places them on a collision course with the needs and desires of the American people. Not to mention the people of the rest of the world.
..........
Part 3 - We is the key

The word 'we' is the key to breaking the hold the rulers have on America. As long as we buy into their fiction that they represent us, we wear their leash around our necks. "We are at war," they say. 'We' must do this and 'we' must do that. We, we, we... they speak in our name and treat us like a number. They speak in our name but act in their own interest diametrically opposed to ours. They speak in our name but take from us, suppress us, lie to us, weaken us, spy on us, cheat us, poison us, kill us, censor us, threaten us and our existence and make us objects of hate and targets of terror throughout the world.

They war in our name! How much clearer can it get? If the American people were in possession of democracy they'd pull out of Iraq faster than a politician can pull a bribe from hand to pocket.

I live next door to Kona Kitchen and will do Karaoke there later tonight. The owner is the star from Karate Kid II. It's Little Hawaii, around here! I also intend to eat their oriental chicken salad.

by: not my president at July 23, 2005 09:02 PM

know the place, wish i could come, but busy here
in the real kona coast.
you come here???

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
or here~
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24rich.html?hp

Posted by: on.to.victory4Dems at July 23, 2005 08:51 PM

This was one of the most fascinating parts in the article. Karl Rove in a Corner is a fascinating article about the pathologic Karl Rove. I have pasted a link that does not require a prescription to Atlantic
Monthly

But the 2000 election was not Rove's closest race. That had come earlier, and serves as a greater testament to his skill. In 1994 a group called the Business Council of Alabama appealed to Rove to help run a slate of Republican candidates for the state supreme court. This would not have seemed a plum assignment to most consultants. No Republican had been elected to that court in more than a century. But the council was hopeful, in large part because Rove had faced precisely this scenario in Texas several years before, and had managed to get elected, in rapid succession, a Republican chief justice and a number of associate justices, and was well on his way to turning an all-Democratic court all Republican. Rove took the job.

http://tianews.blogspot.com/2004/05/karl-rove-in-corner-by-joshua-green.html

nonnyo,

another good one, thanks!

Ally
Thanks for putting up the LA story! I'm going to go ahead & put Seattle's here now, as it's getting late on the east coast & I haven't heard from Karen. If you want to see the photos, go to http://www.silencedmajority.blogs.com & it's also posted at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org. You can also post there - it should tell how on their website.

Here goes:

Jim McDermott: Seattle Labor Temple
Submitted by dianne on Sat, 18:47. Activism

Greetings!

I was unable to blog directly from the Labor Temple but kept my eyes andears open & rushed home via the first bus possible, to upload my photos &get on-line! (I'll also be posting at http://www.democracycellproject.net, http://www.backbonecampaign.org & http://www.silencedmajority.blogs.com)

I had always intended to read the Downing Street Memo in full but hadn'tcompleted the task, so the skit - sponsored by the Backbone Campaign - was stunning in its overt plotting behind the backs of the British & Americanpeople. The readers wore the costumes and nametags of Jack Straw, Geoff Hoonand other British dignitaries/neocons & Tony Blair was played by a puppet that looked like something between a poodle and a lamb.

I was sitting in the front row between a guy from Vets for Peace/ Washington Truth in Recruiting & a guy who was scaring the heck out of me with conspiracy theoriees. To my left, really close up, was the familiar face of Congressman Jim McDermott. He's familiar because he's from my district, he was in Fahrenheit 9/11, I've voted for him many times, & I was not surprised to see that he was reading the New York Times.

Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign introduced Jim and mentioned that he was the first recipient of the Backbone Award (there are also Spinless Awards). When Jim accepted the invitation, he didn't check with his scheduling people - he just said yes, he'd be glad to speak.

When Congressman McDermott was going to return to Iraq on a fact-finding mission (he had been there multiple times before, investigating depleted uranium effects after the lst Gulf War), he first met in Washington DC with the Ambassador to Iraq. He was told that even if Saddam let the weapons inspectors back in, it was expected that Bush would go into Iraq regardless. This was in September of 2002. The war started in March of 2003. Now the Downing Street Memo proves that what McDermott heard was true.

At that time, in September of 2002, Jim decided to call a press conference to let it be known that the President would mislead us into war. A month later, Jim went to Iraq and was asked by George Stephanopolous whether he still believed this. He said yes, knowing full well that if he didn't, they'd pull out his statement from a month before. This unleashed an assault from the rightwing press such as FOX and Limbaugh and earned him the moniker "Bagdad Jim."

Yet he points out that if the American people had really known and absorbed the truth, we would never have gone to war! Absolute untruths were first told on the floor of the House, then by the President to the people in the form of the State of the Union Address.

Thanks to Ambassador Joe Wilson's piece in the New York Times, the truth was told about the Niger/uranium claim. This unleashed another full-scale assault, this time on both Wilson and his wife.

Recently, Jim sat with retired CIA officers who are very unhappy about the fact that an officer's identity has been "outed" and that the President won't protect agents. This