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Firewalls In Democracy
A week ago, I discovered that I was Rip Van Winkle and had slept through 2002, figuratively speaking that is. I discovered my kinship with old Rip during an adventure I had with Aaron, Representative Schwartz's legislative aide. Most of you are familiar with that story.
But bear with me while I retell just a little for any of our kind lurkers out there.
During a conversation with Aaron, he mentioned a court behind the Supreme Court. I thought he was nuts! What kind of secret court is there behind the Supreme Court? I was positive that statement alone was blatantly false.
But then he mentioned Griffin Bell and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act of 1978. When I researched more information about Griffin Bell and FISA, I discovered there were many times FISA was actively protecting us from both terrorists and spies, and they were simultaneously protecting us from anyone violating the 4th Amendment of the Constitution as well. And they remained a secret.
I also discovered instances where Janet Reno had to work with FISA and the CIA in order to investigate Aldrich Ames, the American agent who was a spy for Russia.
Sure, there were times when Janet Reno or others had to go back to the drawing board; but two things must be made clear: the requests always met the legal standard of probable cause that was necessary to get a warrant for a wire tap and Reno's office worked with FISA to get that warrant. What also must be quite clear is that this court remained a secret until President Bush took office because each of those Presidents and their administrations utilized it carefully, judiciously, with justice in mind, and without political intent. And in the prior 24 years, not one requested wiretap was refused by the FISA court.
This is not true of President Bush's actions.
And THAT was my "Ah ha" moment.
Then I discovered that according to the United Press International, President Bush decided to circumvent FISA because the FISA Court was finding the applications defective. Defective? The only thing you need for a FISA warrant is the name of the person and a reason why they are suspect. That's it. The applications were being turned down because they were asking the court for continual fishing expeditions, or, in the alternative, they were trying to keep who they wanted to spy on secret. In other words, the FISA court was following the Constitutional requirements for judicial oversight, but this was not good enough for the Justice Department of the Bush administration. Read it for yourself:
U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.
A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.
The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation.
But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.(emphasis added is author's.)
Though admittedly, I was shocked when Aaron first told me about some hidden and secret court, I've come to respect the job they've done over the last twenty-five years. They have consistently provided the firewall necessary to maintain the constitutional intent of three branches of government, equal in power, with checks and balances on those powers.
This is the firewall between democracy
and fascism.
Nobody is saying that we shouldn't use the means at our disposal to keep America safe. That is the defense the administration is using to obfuscate the real argument and remove the focus from their illegal and unconstitutional activities.
The argument is not about the wiretaps. It's about the warrants. It's about the firewalls between democracy and fascism.
It's time for us to help our friends and neighbors to wake up from their Rip Van Winkle lives. We need to help them to have their own "Ah ha" moment, and teach them ordinary everyday activism.
The heart of democracy is being argued, and we all need to get in the fight.
Nice piece, Suz.
I like the part about the argument being about warrants, not wiretaps.
I think that is especially important to stress to people.
If the Bush Administration is able to keep the focus on wiretaps (i.e. the terrorist's activities) and off the warrants (acting illegally when they didn't need to), they will win in the court of public opinion.
It's about the warrants. Warrants are what separate us from Stalin. From Nixon. From fascism.
Ask yourself this...are we only NOW unsafe after 9-11 or has our country always been attacked by foreign nations, spies, and other bad guys?
We've lived through wars, we've lived through McCarthyism, and we've lived through Nixon and the Cold War. YET the 4th amendment has stood the test of time.
Are we willing to give up that right--the basis of freedom and the basis of democracy.
IMPEACH the WHOLE batch of them!
Posted by: spinnaker at December 29, 2005 10:52 AM
I agree Spinnaker. The warrents are so easy to get too!
I mean only TWO things are needed:
1. A NAME
2. A REASON
So which of those was the Bush administration leaving out?
And don't forget all you kind lurkers--FOIA yourself. (Freedom of Information Act) You can find out if your name was one of those wiretapped without a warrent.
Save Democracy--Be the media and FIGHT back!
Here's the link for the FOIA.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/privacy_tips.asp
Bush/Nixon ad - ACLU financed - NY Times full page & ACLU is top on conservative enemy list
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/29/05855/837
--- This is an incredibly provocative piece, written by one of those professors conservatives would like to get rid of.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1674403,00.html
The tragic irony of the 21st century is that just as faith in technology collapsed on the world's stock markets in 2000, it came to power in the White House and Pentagon.
For the Project for a New American Century's ambition of "full-spectrum dominance" - in which its country could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theatre wars" - was a monster borne up by the high tide of techno euphoria of the 1990s.
Ex-hippies talked of a wired age of Aquarius. The fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of the Internet, we were told, had ushered in Adam Smith's dream of overflowing abundance, expanding liberty and perpetual peace. Fukuyama speculated that history was over, leaving us just to hoard and spend. Technology meant a new paradigm of constant growth without inflation or recession. But darker dreams surfaced in America's military universities. The theorists of the "revolution in military affairs" predicted that technology would lead to easy and perpetual US dominance of the world.
Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters advised on "future warfare" at the Army War College - prophesying in 1997 a coming "age of constant conflict". Thomas Barnett at the Naval War College assisted Vice-Admiral Cebrowski in developing "network-centric warfare". General John Jumper of the air force predicted a planet easily mastered from air and space.
American forces would win everywhere because they enjoyed what was unashamedly called the "God's-eye" view of satellites and GPS: the "global information grid". This hegemony would be welcomed as the cutting edge of human progress. Or at worst, the military geeks candidly explained, US power would simply terrify others into submitting to the stars and stripes.
Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance - a key strategic document published in 1996 - aimed to understand how to destroy the "will to resist before, during and after battle". For Harlan Ullman of the National Defence University, its main author, the perfect example was the atom bomb at Hiroshima.
But with or without such a weapon, one could create an illusion of unending strength and ruthlessness. Or one could deprive an enemy of the ability to communicate, observe and interact - a macro version of the sensory deprivation used on individuals - so as to create a "feeling of impotence". And one must always inflict brutal reprisals against those who resist. An alternative was the "decay and default" model, whereby a nation's will to resist collapsed through the "imposition of social breakdown".
All of this came to be applied in Iraq in 2003, and not merely in the March bombardment called "shock and awe". It has been usual to explain the chaos and looting in Baghdad, the destruction of infrastructure, ministries, museums and the national library and archives, as caused by a failure of Rumsfeld's planning. But the evidence is this was at least in part a mask for the destruction of the collective memory and modern state of a key Arab nation, and the manufacture of disorder to create a hunger for the occupier's supervision. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in May 2003, US troops broke the locks of museums, ministries and universities and told looters: "Go in Ali Baba, it's all yours!"
For the American imperial strategists invested deeply in the belief that through spreading terror they could take power.
The G8 and a few others are the "Kantian core", writes Barnett, warming over the former Blair adviser Robert Cooper's poisonous guff from 2002; their job is to export their economy and politics by force to the unlucky "Hobbesian gap". Imperialism is imagined as an industrial technique to remake societies and cultures, with technology giving sanction to those who intervene. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the recently indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, learned from Leo Strauss that a strong and wise minority of humans had to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than persuasion or compromise. They read Le Bon and Freud on the relationship of crowds to authority. But most of all they loved Hobbes's Leviathan. While Hobbes saw authority as free men's chosen solution to the imperfections of anarchy, his 21st century heirs seek to create the fear that led to submission. And technology would make it possible and beautiful.
On the logo of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, the motto is Scientia est potentia - knowledge is power . The IAO promised "total information awareness", an all-seeing eye spilling out a death-ray gaze over Eurasia. Congressional pressure led the IAO to close, but technospeak, half-digested political theory and megalomania still riddle US thinking. Barnett, in The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action, calls for a "systems administrator" force to be dispatched with the military, to "process" conquered countries.
The Afghanistan war of 2001 taught the wrong lessons. The US assumed this was the model of how a small, special forces-dominated campaign, using local proxies and calling in gunships or airstrikes, would sweep away opposition. But all Afghanistan showed was how an outside power could intervene in a finely balanced civil war. The one-eyed Mullah Omar's great escape on his motorbike was a warning that the God's-eye view can miss the human detail.
The problem for the US today is that Leviathan has shot his wad. Iraq revealed the hubris of the imperial geostrategy. One small nation can tie down a superpower. Air and space supremacy do not give command on the ground. People can't be terrorised into identification with America. The US has proved able to destroy massively - but not create, or even control. Afghanistan and Iraq lie in ruins, yet the occupiers cower behind concrete mountains.
The spin machine is on full tilt to represent Iraq as a success. Peters, in New Glory: Expanding America's Supremacy, asserts: "Our country is a force for good without precedent"; and Barnett, in Blueprint, says: "The US military is a force for global good that ... has no equal." Both offer ambitious plans for how the US is going to remake the third world in its image. There is a violent hysteria to the boasts. The narcissism of a decade earlier has given way to an extrovert rage at those who have resisted America's will since 2001. Both urge utter ruthlessness in crushing resistance. In November 2004, Peters told Fox News that in Falluja "the best outcome, frankly, is if they're all killed".
But he directs his real fury at France and Germany: "A haggard Circe, Europe dulled our senses and fooled us into believing in her attractions. But the dugs are dry in Germany and France. They deluded us into prolonging the affair long after our attentions should have turned to ... India, South Africa, Brazil."
While a good Kleinian therapist may be able to help Peters work through his weaning trauma, only America can cure its post 9/11 mixture of paranoia and megalomania. But Britain - and other allied states - can help. The US needs to discover, like a child that does not know its limits, that there is a world outside its body and desires, beyond even the reach of its toys, that suffers too.
(The writer, Dr Richard Drayton, a senior lecturer in history at Cambridge University, is the author of Nature's Government, a study of science, technology and imperialism). RHDrayton@yahoo.co.uk
My file probably starts off with stuff that has been scanned from originals on typed on an IBM Selectric!
not my president: Thanks for the ACLU ad link. It's good to see that my contributions are being used well. And for any of our posters or readers who are not members of the ACLU, the membership fee is only $35 per year. It's the only organization that I give to every month, and I never feel that my money is wasted. I joined the week after W was "selected" as POTUS in 2000, and have increased my contributions every year since.
It's worth it, if only for the fun I have watching the looks on the faces of cashiers down here on good old Republican Pensacola when they ask for my driver's license and see my ACLU card in my wallet right next to it.
Join up- it will make you feel good about yourself.
--I just found a brochure that I got when in Boston at the DNC convention in 2004 and it's "On the Campaign Trail with John F. Kennedy" - it's so refreshing!
"I am telling you now what you are entitled to know: that my decisions on every public policy will be my own - as an American, a Democrat, and a free man."
"I believe in human dignity as the source of ntional purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith."
"And this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administratoin, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."
Linda
My husband only goes with me to the biggest rallies & not meetings. He votes, reads the New Yorker and newspaper but seldom the blogs. I did find out that he is a card-carrying ACLU member and donated $100. I thought that was really cool. He even put the little decal on his car.
Ok, I'm so old that my orginal file was typed on a Remington manual. TOP THAT!
Americans must go to other Nations and see the damage being done in our Name. This Administration has single handedly wiped out decades of good will with bull headed and short sighted decisions, with no real goal in mind or strategy.
This was done with complicity of the Senate and Congress, refusing to this day to accept their role. Their JOB is to say NO, ENOUGH!.....but they have lost their compass and flounder concerned with polls and appearances.
A Citizen becomes Powerfull when they have the courage to stand against the Machine and Rage...Barbara Jordon did not have big oil behind her, did not have defense contractors paying her bill...she had the Constitution, thats it. But that little piece of paper gave her the right, the authority and the courage to stand against a President and demand Justice, for all are created equal under the Law.
Why are Elected Officials hiding under their desks...come out, and rage against the machine.
Toolmaker,
We hope when January comes around the daily news will be filled with protests about the warrentless spying.
And we must work hard to drown out the noice machine of the neoCONS before they con more people.
2006 is the beginning of the push for democracy. Let's make sure we're ready to fight for democracy.
Suz great post, great graphics, great thoughts.
I remember how all of the conservatives and many civil libertarians like Bob Barr constantly attacked Janet Reno, who while I at times questioned her judgment, I never questioned her adherance to the RULE OF LAW even when it annoyed the hell out of many of us. She understood the importance of the consitution, the rule of law and our respect for an independent judiciary. This crowd respects none.
Remember that phrase that the Anne Coulters of the world constantly threw in our face for 2 years. This crowd has no respect for the Rule of Law. If they don't like the make up of Congress they break state laws to illegally ReDistrict. If they don't like rulings from dozens of judges in Florida regarding the Terrie Schiavo matter they try and intimidate the State District Judges of Florida and, call them activist judges and asign DeLay to crisscross the nation threatening impeachment. If they don't like the UN or the FISA Court they either bug them or do everything conceivale to undermind and eventually destroy them like Bush is attemting with his illegal eavesdropping.
Strangely polls I have read say somewhere around 50% of the country approve of Bush's lawlessness in easvesdropping. That means that the traditional media is not communicating the real threat that eavesdropping on Americans is to our democracy. They are once again dropping the ball.
Seems to me that the DNC and DCC ought to seriously consider the drumbeat of replacing this crowd to Restore the Rule of Law in this country. Our founding fathers believed and I think it true today that the only thing seperating the colonies from the tyranny of England was a strong independent judicial system as a check on the other 2 branches of government based upon fundamental human rights including the right to be secure in our homes and persons against illegal search and seizure. What would Jefferson, Adams or Franklin think of colonists spying on other colonists. That should be our test today.
If that were happening in 1776 there never would have been an American Revolution.
Seems to me that is what it really means to be a conservative; to preserve those inalienable rights in our constitution. I know longer think of the right as extremists. Sounds like their efforts to undermind an independent judiciary borders more on anarchy. This effort to undermind the judiciary started in Dec. 2000 when Baker and Bush succesfully did everything possible in the Florida judiciary to stop the recount and they have become drunk with power to twist the judiciary to fulfill their Heritage Society grand vision. There appears to be no stopping of their efforts to slowly undo the fundamental structure of our government to maintain an independent judiciary. I call that anarchy.
Its really about time to restore the Rule of Law to Washington and respect for the Rule of Law. The US Constitution was not written nor did our forefathers spill blood for it to be a document to be ignored by our President, Attorney General or Congressmen or twisted to suit their political agenda. The Constitution is truly more important than Bush, DeLay, or Gonzalez and Janet Reno understood that.
Well, we all knew if we checked out the Kerry website we may be investigated. News about web cookies. Even I, the clueless techie, understands web cookies and privacy issues:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051229/ap_on_hi_te/spy_agency_privacy
NSA Web Site Places 'Cookies' on Computers By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
Thu Dec 29, 7:24 AM ET
NEW YORK - The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.
These files, known as "cookies," disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week, and agency officials acknowledged Wednesday they had made a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue raises questions about privacy at a spy agency already on the defensive amid reports of a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States.
"Considering the surveillance power the NSA has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington, D.C. "But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy."
Until Tuesday, the NSA site created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035 — likely beyond the life of any computer in use today.
Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on.
"After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies," he said.
Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user preferences. For instance, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter passwords at sites that require them.
But privacy advocates complain that cookies can also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is actually collected.
In a 2003 memo, the White House's Office of Management and Budget prohibits federal agencies from using persistent cookies — those that aren't automatically deleted right away — unless there is a "compelling need."
A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy.
Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who had drafted an earlier version of the cookie guidelines, said clear notice is a must, and `vague assertions of national security, such as exist in the NSA policy, are not sufficient."
Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the NSA cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal. The (guideline) doesn't say anything about doing it accidentally."
The Bush administration has come under fire recently over reports it authorized NSA to secretly spy on e-mail and phone calls without court orders.
Since The New York Times disclosed the domestic spying program earlier this month, President Bush has stressed that his executive order allowing the eavesdropping was limited to people with known links to al-Qaida.
But on its Web site Friday, the Times reported that the NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained broader access to streams of domestic and international communications.
The NSA's cookie use is unrelated, and Weber said it was strictly to improve the surfing experience "and not to collect personal user data."
Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., questions whether persistent cookies would even be of much use to the NSA. They are great for news and other sites with repeat visitors, he said, but the NSA's site does not appear to have enough fresh content to warrant more than occasional visits.
The government first issued strict rules on cookies in 2000 after disclosures that the White House drug policy office had used the technology to track computer users viewing its online anti-drug advertising. Even a year later, a congressional study found 300 cookies still on the Web sites of 23 agencies.
In 2002, the CIA removed cookies it had inadvertently placed at one of its sites after Brandt called it to the agency's attention.
Get this:
"Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the NSA cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal. The (guideline) doesn't say anything about doing it accidentally."
MISTAKES HAPPEN?
Is that what it's called now? Wrong...this is intentional as you can see from the scope of the warrentless searches.
Its really about time to restore the Rule of Law to Washington and respect for the Rule of Law. The US Constitution was not written nor did our forefathers spill blood for it to be a document to be ignored by our President, Attorney General or Congressmen or twisted to suit their political agenda. The Constitution is truly more important than Bush, DeLay, or Gonzalez and Janet Reno understood that.
Posted by: Ira at December 29, 2005 01:24 PM
I agree Ira.
(And thanks for the nice comments earlier.)
And I hope to God you're wrong about the 50%. And the media intends to continue to hide the truth. As long as they make money they're happy.
Jason Leopold | Bush-NSA Spying in Defiance of Congress, Court
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122905I.shtml
President Bush says he has the legal authority to authorize the National Security Agency to continue eavesdropping on citizens and monitoring emails without judicial oversight, but many Democratic and Republican lawmakers are questioning whether the president violated the law in doing so.
The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122905J.shtml
Former Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards (Okla.), usually a defender of lobbying and Congress, said there have always been members who get caught "stuffing money in their pants." But he said this is different - a "disgusting" and disturbingly broad scandal driven by lobbyists whose attitudes seemed to be "government to the highest bidder."
Sidney Blumenthal | The Year in Politics
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122905K.shtml
Sidney Blumenthal writes that Bush began 2005 celebrating his electoral victory and proclaiming a "turning point" in Iraq. But in every crisis he faced this year - from Terri Schiavo to Hurricane Katrina to Iraq - the tide turned against him.
Administration Takes Padilla Back to Supreme Court
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122905L.shtml
The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court today to allow for the immediate transfer of Jose Padilla from a military brig to civilian custody to stand trial on terrorism charges, challenging an appellate court ruling last week that blocked the move.
Jim Lobe | Anti-Imperialists Beware - Bush Is Reading Again
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122905M.shtml
Jim Lobe writes that Bush is known to read so little - both for official business and for diversion - and to be so impressed by the few books he does read that it is imperative for people who are paid to know what's happening in Washington to find out what's on the president's nightstand when he turns out the light.
DoJ Suing for White Voter Rights
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122905N.shtml
Using the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the government has alleged that Macon, Mississippi, local elections officials discriminated against whites. It is the first time the Justice Department has ever claimed that whites suffered discrimination in voting because of race.
US No Longer Promoting Landmine Abolition
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122905O.shtml
In 1994, the United States was the first nation to call for the elimination of landmines that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent people around the world. Today, Washington not only stands in opposition to an international treaty banning the use and production of antipersonnel landmines, but intends to make new ones, too.
Robert Steinback: Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122905Z.shtml
One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help. If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack, our president would admit that he broke US law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution - and then expected the American people to congratulate him for it - I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.
The Hightower Report
BY JIM HIGHTOWER
TAKE CHENEY AWAY
It's time that we Americans finally admit the obvious: Dick Cheney is insane.
I say this with no malice, but in the sincere hope that his loved ones and close political cohorts will do the compassionate thing, gently leading him off the national stage to some quiet, dark, soft spot where he can rest for a very long time and try to collect his wits.
Of course, Dick has never been too tightly wrapped. He's a sour, snarly sort of guy, quick to snap at anyone who crosses him. Then there's that sneering smile of his, slashing across his face like the smile of a landlord who just evicted another widow. Also, we've long been exposed to a high level of Cheney's chronic sense of omnipotence (manifested in his blatant acts of cronyism with Halliburton) and to his frequent bouts of psychotic delusion (such as his maniacal insistence that the occupied people of Iraq would gratefully shower our troops with rose petals).
But recently, Dick seems to have gone from being merely unbalanced ... to unhinged. For example, he has been the twisted force so ferociously trying to stop Congress from declaring as official policy that the U.S. government will not engage in torture. Even the Republican-controlled senate voted 90 to 9 against torture, but this has not deterred Cheney, who has continued snarling and snapping like a mad dog to keep torture in the tool kit of American foreign policy.
Speaking of snapping, Dick has also been frothing at Democrats who've been making the obvious point that the Bush-Cheney regime misled the nation about its reasons for invading Iraq. He snarled that such Democrats are "dishonest and reprehensible," as well as "corrupt and shameless." Excuse us, Dick, but you've just attacked 57% of the American people, who now agree that you Bushites "deliberately misled" us about the war.
Cheney's favorable ratings are already down to 19%. Mad Cow disease ranks higher! Time to take Dick away.
And one for Monkey...
IBM and THE MIDDLE CLASS
The internal memo is dated April 2005 and tagged "IBM Confidential."
The reason for the hush-hush treatment is that this document is written confirmation of corporate America's intention to offshore our nation's middle-class future, shipping out jobs in engineering and other sciences that require advanced degrees and pay top wages. IBM, the world's largest information technology corporation, has become the leading practitioner of shopping the globe for the cheapest high-tech workers, knocking down the wage floor to the lowest common denominator.
Because of the wrenching economic, social, and political impacts this will have on U.S. society, IBM has not wanted to concede publicly that undermining middle-class opportunities is a corporate goal. This leaked memo, however, confirms that while the top honchos are cutting 13,000 of these high-tech jobs in America and Europe this year, it will add 14,000 in the low-wage tech centers of India.
Experienced software programmers in our country earn maybe $75,000 a year, creating a sound middle-class base for our economy and communities. But to hell with such democratic notions of the Common Good, say the profiteers – we can replace American programmers with ones from India who'll do the work for $15,000 a year. That's $60,000 per job, per year, that the corporate and investor elites can take out of the middle class and put in their own pockets.
Adding insult to injury, a top IBM executive says that the corporate rush to India is not merely a chase for the cheapest workers, but "It's mostly about skills." He then proceeds to lecture America's high-tech workers: "You are no longer competing just with the guy down the street, but also with people around the world."
And there you have a sparkling clear statement of what corporate America thinks of you and has in store for you. How do its members think they'll hold a society together when they knock down all of our wages to $15,000 a year?
Suz I had hoped that I had misread this Zogby poll but unfortunately I do not believe I did.
Could you imagine Americans telling pollsters this about Richard Nixon in 1972.
"Nation Split Over Bush Communication Intercept; New Zogby Interactive Poll Shows
"UTICA, New York - A narrow plurality of likely voters nationwide believe President Bush acted within his Constitutional powers when he authorized the interception of international communications without the approval of a federal judge, but the public is closely divided on the issue, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
"Nearly half – 49% - said they think he has the power to authorize the intercepts, while 45% said he does not, the Zogby survey showed."
Either the public does not appreciate the significance of this story and its threat to the US Constitution or the media is doing a poor job reporting it, or perhaps both suz, which truly is a sad commentary on this country. Heck would voters if given the chance to vote and ratify the entire US Consitution do so today?
When Americans no longer cherish their rights under the US Constitution or Bill of Rights just what is left of us as a nation? How are we then any different then any emerging third world country other than through our material wealth?
Posted by: Ira at December 29, 2005 02:07 PM
Ira,
When Nixon was in office, people were skeptical because the media was telling the people the truth and letting them decide for themselves.
Now, the media is framing the words and presenting a faux scenario. They give few follow up questions, and they refuse to refer to the Constitutional rights Americans are given. Additionally, they always let neoCON lies stand unquestioned while they interrupt Democrats and repeat inaccurate statements even after being proven false.
We're fighting a different battle. But imo, where we can fight more powerfully is with the independent thinker, even if they think both parties are bad, they will realize there is a difference between neoCONS and Democrats.
Ira
This is my point exactly. I don't think that the people understand the question. When Nixon was in office, the question was made clear.
It's not about the wiretapping. It's about the warrants. It's about the law.
If we don't get that point across, the court of public opinion is lost.
The polling results, by the way, are encouraging to me. Bush's results should be MUCH higher. Much, much higher. Just think about how far we have come since the immediate aftermath of 9-11. People would have polled at 90%. Now they are clearly asking more questions. They don't trust Bush on this issue anymore, and that lack of trust will be his downfall, literally.
If this were two years ago, the democrats wouldn't have stood a chance in hell of winning this point. Now, with all of the revelations of lying and the machinations of the Mayberry Machiavellis, people are STARTING from the point of being suspect of the powers of the Executive Branch.
And also think about this-over time, as the issue becomes less obfuscated by the emotional boogeymen of terrorists under the bed, people will become more rational in thought. People aren't even watching the news right now. They are on vacation mentally.
The democrats have about another four days to clarify their argument on this. To that extent, time is on our side.
spinaker: the idea that 50% of Americans believe that Bush is right to skirt the US Consitution and the 4th Amendment is not reassuring to me at all. Perhaps I am naive as lawyer to believe that there is nothing more sacred than our Constitution but my guess is that our high schools teach American history and the US Constitution so poorly that many Americans have absolutely no idea what the 4th Amendment is even about and why the US Constitution is so important to us as a nation. Its hard to imagine that other civilized countries would react so poorly to that question regarding their nation and its heritage. I again querry whether 90% of Americans if given the opportunity to ratify the US Constitution today would do so. 50% just doesn't cut it in my book. Again what are we as a nation without absolute adherance and respect of the US Constitution and suz you were absolute right to post about the Firewall in Democracy, it is the most important question I have seen raised here in a long time. It is truly the essence of what we are all about as Americans and as political activists.
Posted by: Indy at December 29, 2005 01:55 PM
Re: IBM
Part of the problem is that American investors have been conditioned to expect (or chase) double-digit returns.
This is not a sustainable expectation.
If your double-digit returns are from government bills or bonds, you have rampant inflation.
Neither is it possible for mature companies to generate double-digit returns over the long term without screwing over their workers, their retirees, and their customers.
The other half of the problem is that too many companies' executive-level employees have too large of their income/salary/bonuses tied up in stock options and stock performance. Those employees are thus concerned much more with how the company's stock performs than with the fundamentals of the company. [Some parts of bonuses are tied to real fundamentals, but more often than not, have a stock-price component.] So a company can be hemorraging customers and employees, and conducting corporate fraud, and the execs still get fat bonuses.
Isn't it good to tie employee pay to company stock options? Doesn't this make them work harder for the company, since their income depends on the success of the company? The problem is, the second sentence does not follow logically from the first.
Stock prices can have little to no correlation with how well-run, popular with employees or customers, or even how profitable a company is. Much stock movement is generated by a sort of gambling among investors who are simply chasing returns. Investors are looking for something that will give them a double-digit rate of return, so they jump on something they think will be a "hot stock" - which doesn't mean that the company is all that great, but it means that they are gambling a whole lot of other people will want to buy the stock and drive the price up. [Investors can of course gamble the other way with short-selling and put and hold options.]
This leads to all sorts of manipulation at a company that drive up a stock price but do nothing for the company's health. For example, just as double-digit returns are unsustainable, so is double-digit growth for a mature company. It is a problem of scope. To go from one store to ten stores, you build 9 more stores. To achieve that same rate of growth, you have to build 90 more stores the next year. Then 900 the year after that. That is why rate of growth typically levels off. But a company that is no longer rapidly growing (and doesn't have a fat dividend) is not a favorite for investors. So the company (assuming they are pushing their stock price at the expense of most everything else) either has to squeeze pennies from every pore in order to pay a healthy dividend...or it has to mortgage everything it owns and engage in rapid growth for which it is likely not prepared (and as a result, often ends up saturating the market).
Since I run the risk of raising problems without providing solutions, I pose these options:
1. Educate the public that double-digit growth is not sustainable or attainable over the long term (average).
2. Take legislative or shareholder action to reduce the amount of stock options granted, especially to company executives.
3. Offer incentives for companies to tie compensation solely to company fundamentals.
4. Discourage (through tax penalties) investments that are not long-term "buy and hold" investments.
Other ideas?
the autist formerly known as monkey is unavailable to comment
"Isn't it good to tie employee pay to company stock options?"
Absolutely I just don't think that should be a role the government should be involved in. In that sense I believe in the free market with some reservations of corporate governance.
"Stock prices can have little to no correlation with how well-run, popular with employees or customers, or even how profitable a company is."
Yea Exxon earned $100 billion dollars in a quarter and its stock is dead in the water. But one reassuring thought that as much as Walmart squeezes their profit margin and stomps on their employees, their stock has gone absolutely nowhere in the past 2 years I imagine partly because of their lousy public perecption. Stocks like Google tend to be more emotionally driven then based upon fundamentals.
Much stock movement is generated by a sort of gambling among investors who are simply chasing returns. Investors are looking for something that will give them a double-digit rate of return, so they jump on something they think will be a "hot stock" - which doesn't mean that the company is all that great, but it means that they are gambling a whole lot of other people will want to buy the stock and drive the price up.
Yep and that is not going to change.
"Since I run the risk of raising problems without providing solutions, I pose these options:
1. Educate the public that double-digit growth is not sustainable or attainable over the long term (average).
That has already happened since Bush has been in office money managers expect meager to slow growth in our economy.
2. Take legislative or shareholder action to reduce the amount of stock options granted, especially to company executives.
That should be left to shareholders.
3. Offer incentives for companies to tie compensation solely to company fundamentals.
Sarbanes/Oxley and expensing options was supposed to take care of that.
4. Discourage (through tax penalties) investments that are not long-term "buy and hold" investments.
That is why consevatives don't want any tax on capital gains. Capital gains have gone down every year in the last 5 and I just don't see where people are any more willing to hold for the long term; it seems weirdly to accomplish just the opposite.
As long as investors see institutions like GM on the verge of bankruptcy few money managers other than value investors have the guts to hold onto positions for a long term. Stability in our fortune 500 companies and thus long term investing won't return Veritas until we solve our national healthcare crisis which is crippling American corporation's competitiveness. JK tried to deal with that in '04 but I can't count a handful of people outside of this blog that truly appreciated that and what it would do for business. When fortune 500 CEOs come to D.C. and pound on doors demanding true healthcare reform then we will finally see stability in our investment markets--at least that is the way I see it.
Other ideas?
ladytechie:
My original file was hand-written.
By candlelight.
With a quill pen.
Uphill. Both ways.
where is Walt Kelly now that we need him,
Otter
I find it difficult, though not at all unsatisfying, to grok that this particular cadsministration has so sufficiently soiled itself as to have both the left and the right *and* the middle scolding it unstintingly, with no holds Barred.
neuekonserdammerung,
Otter
Oh otter- you're such a spoiled young thing. Mine wasn't even written, it was carved inside the walls of a cave, using pictures of animals to tell the story.
And mine was Pre-wax.
Candles. Harumph.
JK- I used to be a repug, ya know?
Dang - Reverend Billy has been arrested, at Disneyland, home of Fun, Magic and Fantasy.
The article is here and if you scroll down two articles you'll see our article where he was as the Mall of America, with Bert bearing Witness.
http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/
Feel free to offer your condolences, praises or offers for bail bond.
Does this argument sound a bit like the old Monty Python 4 scotsmen joke?
You know, when I was a kid lived in a cardboard house, and had to get up thirty minutes before I went to bed the night before........
I just came from the bakery (family discount), where I read the local paper.
Sad to see the beautiful art deco lettering come down off the historic Bon Marche, to be replaced with blocky generic Macy's logo. Sad to read that oxycontin deaths are up here, as in much of the country, and identify theft r/t meth.
However, the Business section was beautiful (national, not local):
page one has the Pillsbury doughboy guy from Enron & he's only 45 but looks about 70 or so - the same physiognomy as Cheney or Rove, sort of
&
page three has the perp march of the Quest guy
So there is some justice in the world.
There is also a year-end column by Marianne Means that is really good - please promise me you'll read it if I don't post the whole thing (in which case I would beg you also to please read it rather than scroll past).
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/253717_means29.html
a teaser:
As this year ends, the tired tiger, hunkered down in his lair in Crawford, Texas, is a much weaker political beast than he was at the beginning of the year. He isn't declawed yet, but he is no longer the terror of the Washington jungle.
One year ago, George Bush was an arrogant, hard-nosed, power-greedy president who boasted that his re-election had given him great political capital, and he intended to use it. It was not an unreasonable claim, at the time. But he blew it with bad judgment, bad timing, bad luck and bad politics.
Please email her & congratulate her. I am.
This just in from the Otterworld Braking News As It So Happens department:
An increasing drippage of unplugged leaks from within the ranks of the Shrub cadsministration are giving new credence to persistent rumors that the shadowy, secretive firm of Chensfeld, Rumsey & Co. has used cutting-edge bioengineering techniques to develop a new class of clandestine spy ruminates in order to help its principals cover their big fat assets in the globule war against terra.
Acronymically referred to by those in the spook trade as a Minimally-Overt Operative Subspecies -- aka M.O.O.S. -- these cud-chewing counterespionagists have recently been put out to pasture across the country to serve as a first line of defense against surprise attacks by terrorists due to their ability to hide in plain sight (because, after all, who'd'a thunk it.)
According to a series of hints dropped to the press by high-placed officials who requested anonymity because they don't want to be laughed right out of the break room at NSCIFBDFS headquarters, the deployment of this group of genetically-engineered bovinacious by-watchers was the end result of a super-secret multi-billion your-tax-dollars-at-work project conducted under the aegis of an allegedly non-governmentally-affiliated think tank known as ‘The Project For A Gnu American Sentry’.
When pressed by reporters to comment on the accuracy of these livestock leaks, El Presidente Arbustito repeatedly replied, "Huh? What's that? I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question."
no gnus is good news,
Otter
Otter, short of immortality... I concede your files as being older than mine....
but you have baffled both Google and me
What pray tell does this mean?
neuekonserdammerung,
I swear man...
The more I think out this secret surviellance crap the more paranoid I get.
You know if a whole convy of blacked out suvs pulled up and men in monkey suits rushed my house I doubt I would ever even register surprise.
WHAT freaking country is this again..???
Neuekonserdammerung (n.) -- A variation on the term "Gotterdammerung," the title of an opera by Richard Wagner that translates as "The Twilight Of The Gods".
Or, in other words:
Better watch out for that there last step, all you pesky neocons, 'cause it's a real doozy.
shrubya: don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya,
Otter
37% of the American people have no opinion whatever about Tom DeLay. I'd venture to say they haven't a clue as to who he is. So, why is it a surprise that 50% of the American people think it's ok for GWB to illegally use wiretaps and violate the constitution?
It occurred to me, as a citizen of the Great Banana Republic of Florida, that the Bush brothers have spent the last 8 years or so intentionally dumbing down the American electorate about civic issues.
No child left behind was the vehicle for this dumbing down- requiring so many tests of children in basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, that teachers now have no time left to teach American Government. Our own county is considering taking our high schools from a 7 period day back to a 6 period day- they've already eliminated Civics as a requirement for graduation along the way.
I'm beginning to think it's intentional. As long as the American electorate doesn't know it's rights, it's not likely to know when they're violated. The school systems in Florida are now beginning the school year in early August, just in order to teach the students what they need to know before the FCAT testing at mid year. The FCAT focuses on the basics of education only, but if a school fails in FCAT testing, they lose financing from the state, so it's literally all the teachers are allowed to teach.
I wonder sometimes if it's more important for a student, who may grow up to be a mechanic or a bus driver, to learn to write a 2000 word essay with no errors, or to know his rights as a citizen of this nation. I think the Bushes have decided that citizenship and civil rights are the last thing they want students to focus on, and it may very well be intentional.
I think NCLB is a tool to actually dumb down our chlidren, rather than to lift them up.
That's just my opinion anyway.
Do you know WHY they think it is ok by the Constitution...??
Because roughly that EXACT SAME 30% either did not or could not READ the Constitution.
Next time some little wanker starts in on GWs CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS... stop them... Ask them to tell you what is the 4th amendment and why is it important...??
If you are met by silence ask them to explain to you the 5th amendment... the 8th..?
My favorite.. The Ninth Amendment...???
Which amendment was repealed by which amendment...??
This is BASIC stuff... if they suddenly go quiet.. SCREAM AT THEM...
I CAN NOT ARGUE THE CONSTITUTION WITH SOMEONE WHO NEVER READ IT!!!!
Watch their faces.. its priceless...
It works everytime..
50% I meant sorry was multi tasking.
I used ta not be ebble ta reed tha Konsteetooshun.
Then I heard about this pogram called "Hooked On Politics."
I dint used ta be a Liberalistic Democratical Activista.
But now I are one.
You better look out, Shrubya, 'cause here I comes.
awareness + activism = freedom,
Otter
awareness + activism = freedom
Posted by: Otter at December 29, 2005 04:48 PM
AMEN BROTHER OTTER!!!!!!!
Hell yeah
Excuse me DCP mods...
I know yall are in here somewhere watching...
One question...
Have you ever thought of filing FOIA on well known journalists that we suspect may be getting paid off...??
Like Olielly of Novacula for starters...
I mean if they were being paid by ANY official gov sources.. if their presence is in GOV records...
It would be very interesting to know either way.
FOIA on ,......
Judy Miller...
Hmmm,wonder if they thought she was also 'miss run amok'...??
Christy, why not just go ahead and file the relevant FOIA requests on all those lying liars yourself? You're a citizen, you have the right to know. And you have the right to make sure we know what you get back in response, too. I can't wait to hear what you come up with.
get up stand up stand up for your rights,
Otter
(And while you're at it, don't forget to check on Ann Coulter, aka 'The Wicked Witch of the Wonks'...)
get up stand up don't give up the fight,
Otter
I was looking at the FOIA request form the other day.. I skimmed through most of it but I am under the impression they need info on my search that I have no way of getting..
SS#s and addresses.. things like that.
You know I really thought about doing one on myself..
I almost did... But then I had a wierd thought,
I mean for one I am ALREADY paranoid and for two I already know what I have done in my life and I do not GIVE A DAMN what they might write up in some little secret room while whacking off on the Constitution.
You know honestly... I do not give a damn what they may or may not have on me.
And to clarify I am ONLY paranoid cause with them keeping files on mothers of 5 and tapping peoples telephones without warrents, cause, or results... THAT is the ONLY reason I am paranoid in the FIRST PLACE.
Whatever they may have in that little file... I hope it burns their eyes to look at it.
Hmm. And you think that that the DCP Mods can get that info where you can't? Sorry, kiddo, they may be serious activistas but they ain't any more omniscient than you are...
*wink*
you + me = we,
Otter
Based on your online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2005 was:
1. integrity
Pronunciation: in-'te-gr&-tE
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English integrite, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French integrité, from Latin integritat-, integritas, from integr-, integer entire
1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY
2 : an unimpaired condition : SOUNDNESS
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : COMPLETENESS
synonym see HONESTY
Click on each of the other words in the Top Ten List for their definitions in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
2. refugee
3. contempt
4. filibuster
5. insipid
6. tsunami
7. pandemic
8. conclave
9. levee
10. inept
Can anyone use them all in a sentence, about 2005? To the winner I will send a t-shirt that you can't get any more.
ONLY ONE sentance..????
That is almost unfair
"I have nothing but contempt for the conclave of inept, insipid bureaucrats in Washington who are so lacking in integrity that, despite their glib promises, they tried to filibuster the actual delivery of aid to the refugee(s) of the tsunami in Indonesia with its ensuing pandemic of horrible illnesses, while simultaneously spurning those victims who got drowned out of house and home when the levee(s) broke after Katrina laid waste to the coastlines here at home."
impeach 'em all and let their god sort 'em out,
Otter
OMG Otter...
See what happens when you take your paws out of your mouth..???
Thats... amazing..
You rock.
Hey, who you callin' a rock??
I ain't no stoopid rock, I is a amphiblioustical mammal!
grrr,
Otter
You could be my rock Otter.
My pet rock.
*fnord*
Having overtopped the levees of Constitutional restraint, Republican refugees from reality
locked themselves in conclave on the Hill to select the next defrauder of the unfree world,
desperate to filibuster against the tsunami of war protesters surging against them (those
true patriots fed up with the growing pandemic of insipid responses from inept officials
who showed nothing but contempt for their country and its citizens): when white smoke
finally fluttered above, restless Americans of integrity saw not defeat, but surrender.
Sure hope that DiAnne has got plenty of t-shirts...
otters rule, rethugs drool,
Otter
"It was a dark and stormy night...
"Suddenly, a shot rang out. A maid screamed. A pirate ship appeared on the horizon."
hey, they only pay me peanuts around here,
Otter
Posted by: Otter at December 29, 2005 05:45 PM
Funny, I thought you were an otter and not a beagle.
Apparently they're both furry good writers.
Which, now that I think of it, reminds me of the evening that I met my future ex-wife.
It was on a small college campus in a small city on the shore of a great lake. I had been out on a date with her then-roommate and best friend at the time.
It was winter then, and it was windy and bitterly cold. The moon kept dodging in and out of the clouds, intermittently illuminating the crystalline snow and the leaveless trees along our way.
My date du nuit took me back with her to her college domicile, but she led me past the doorway proper to the first-floor window of her room so that we could sneak in over the sill and bypass the resident advisor who inhabited the room right down the hall.
Yes. You guessed it.
It was a stark and dormy night...
ahem ahem,
Otter
Pentagon propaganda program orders soldiers to promote Iraq war while home on leave
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Dec 29, 2005, 05:44
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Good soldiers follow orders and hundreds of American military men and women returned to the United States on holiday leave this month with orders to sell the Iraq war to a skeptical public.
The program, coordinated through a Pentagon operation dubbed “Operation Homefront,” ordered military personnel to give interviews to their hometown newspapers, television stations and other media outlets and praise the American war effort in Iraq.
Initial reports back to the Pentagon deem the operation a success with dozens of front page stories in daily and weekly newspapers around the country along with upbeat reports on local television stations.
“We've learned as a military how to do this better,” Captain David Diaz, a military reservist, told his hometown paper, The Roanoke (VA) Times. “My worry is that we have the right military strategy and political strategies now but the patience of the American public is wearing thin.”
When pressed by the paper on whether or not his commanding officers told him to talk to the press, Diaz admitted he was “encouraged” to do so. So reporter Duncan Adams asked:
“Did Diaz return to the U.S. on emergency leave with an agenda -- to offer a positive spin that could help counter growing concerns among Americans about the U.S. exit strategy? How do we know that's not his strategy, especially after he discloses that superior officers encouraged him to talk about his experiences in Iraq?”
Replied Diaz:
“You don't. I can tell you that the direction we've gotten from on high is that there is a concern about public opinion out there and they want to set the record straight.”
Diaz, an intelligence officer, knows how to avoid a direct answer. Other military personnel, however, tell Capitol Hill Blue privately that the pressure to “sell the war” back home is enormous.
“I’ve been promised an early release if I do a good job promoting the war,” says one reservist who asked not to be identified.
In interviews with a number of reservists home for the holidays, a pattern emerges on the Pentagon’s propaganda effort. Soldiers are encouraged to contact their local news media outlets to offer interviews about the war. A detailed set of talking points encourages them to:
--Admit initial doubts about the war but claim conversion to a belief in the American mission;
--Praise military leadership in Iraq and throw in a few words of support for the Bush administration;
--Claim the mission to turn security of the country over to the Iraqis is working;
--Reiterate that America must not abandon its mission and must stay until the “job is finished.”
--Talk about how “things are better” now in Iraq.
“My worry is that we have the right military strategy and political strategies now but the patience of the American public is wearing thin,” Diaz told The Roanoke Times.
“It’s way better now (in Iraq). People are friendlier. They seem more relaxed, and they say, ’Thank you, mister,’” Sgt. Christopher Desierto told his hometown paper, The Maui News.
But soldiers who are home and don’t have to return to Iraq tell a different story.
“I've just been focused on trying to get the rest of these guys home,” says Sgt. Major Floyd Dubose of Jackson, MS, who returned home after 11 months in Iraq with the Mississippi Army National Guard's 155th Combat Brigade.
And the Army is cracking down on soldiers who go on the record opposing the war.
Specialist Leonard Clark, a National Guardsman, was demoted to private and fined $1,640 for posting anti-war statements on an Internet blog. Clark wrote entries describing the company's commander as a "glory seeker" and the battalion sergeant major an "inhuman monster". His last entry before the blog was shut down told how his fellow soldiers were becoming increasingly opposed to the US operation in Iraq.
“The message is clear,” says one reservist who is home for the holidays but has to return and asked not to be identified. “If you want to get out of this man’s Army with an honorable (discharge) and full benefits you better not tell the truth about what is happening in-country.”
But Sgt. Johnathan Wilson, a reservist, got his honorable discharge after he returned home earlier this month and he’s not afraid to talk on the record.
“Iraq is a classic FUBAR,” he says. “The country is out of control and we can’t stop it. Anybody who tries to sell a good news story about the war is blowing it out his ass. We don’t win and eventually we will leave the country in a worse shape than it was when we invaded.”
© Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7918.shtml
-----
"I’ve been promised an early release if I do a good job promoting the war," says one reservist who asked not to be identified.
-----
That, right there, has got to be one of the most chilling indictments of the cynical, manipulative Chensfeld-Rumsey citizen-disinformation strategy that I have ever read.
rowrbazzle!,
Otter
Whatever they may have in that little file... I hope it burns their eyes to look at it.
Posted by: Christy at December 29, 2005 05:10 PM
Hahahahaha Hell yes
Pentagon Shakes Up Emergency Hierarchy
Re Posted!!!!!!!! Are you scared Shitless Yet? Are you aware?
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 29, 2005
Filed at 11:01 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Heading a military service isn't quite the position of power it used to be. In a Bush administration revision of plans for Pentagon succession in a doomsday scenario, three of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's most loyal advisers moved ahead of the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
A little-noticed holiday week executive order from President Bush moved the Pentagon's intelligence chief to the No. 3 spot in the succession hierarchy behind Rumsfeld. The second spot would be the deputy secretary of defense, but that position currently is vacant. The Army secretary, which long held the No. 3 spot, was dropped to sixth.
The changes, announced last week, are the second in six months and reflect the administration's new emphasis on intelligence gathering versus combat in 21st century war fighting.
Technically, the line of succession is assigned to specific positions, rather than the current individuals holding those jobs.
But in its current incarnation, the doomsday plan moves to near the top three undersecretaries who are Rumsfeld loyalists and who previously worked for Vice President Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary.
The changes were recommended, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, because the three undersecretaries have ''a broad knowledge and perspective of overall Defense Department operations.'' The service leaders are more focused on training, equipping and leading a particular military service, said Whitman.
Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said the changes make it easier for the administration to assert political control and could lead to more narrow-minded decisions.
''It continues to devalue the services as institutions,'' said Donnelly, saying it will centralize power and shift it away from the services, where there is generally more military expertise.
Under the new plan, Rumsfeld ally Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary for intelligence, moved up to the third spot. Former Ambassador Eric Edelman, the policy undersecretary, and Kenneth Krieg, the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, hold the fourth and fifth positions.
The first to succeed Rumsfeld remains the deputy secretary, a position currently vacant because the Senate has not confirmed Bush's nominee -- current Navy Secretary Gordon England.
Senators have already approved Donald Winter to be England's replacement as Navy chief, and it is expected that Bush will eventually move England into the No. 2 Pentagon job without congressional approval through a recess appointment.
The new succession order bumps the Navy secretary to near the bottom of the line of succession -- eighth behind the deputy, the three Pentagon undersecretaries and the Army and Air Force secretaries.
The Army secretary historically has been third in line, right behind the deputy secretary.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, intelligence gathering has taken center stage. Earlier this year, Bush named former ambassador John Negroponte as the country's first director of national intelligence, charged with overseeing the government's 15 highly competitive spy agencies.
In spring 2003, Rumsfeld installed Cambone -- one of his closest aides -- in the new job of intelligence undersecretary.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Defense-Doomsday-Succession.html?oref=login
"Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
dismount the bam dastards,
Otter
Shrubya can ride to and fro as much as he wants -- but if he is still waiting for the aye of the tiger, then he's going to be waiting for a very long time.
chimpeach,
Otter
Calling All Bloggers: These Documents need publishing
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/716
More Torture Memos
Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray is defying a gag-order and publishing torture memos on his blog relating to the coordination between the Uzbek, British, and American governments. As Kos says, it's brutal :
Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.
Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.
http://www.thetalentshow.org/archives/002244.html
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/716
I'm at the Apple store. Very impressive technology here and there are lines out the door so they won't care about me.
I just read about the 16 year old kid who wanted to do "immersion journalism" so snuck off to Baghdad. It's quite a tale! I don't have the link just here, but you'll come across it.
Now I'm going to read from bottom to top.
I've taken the "Hooked on Politics" course mentioned by Otter so now I'm qualified to go to Barnes & Noble and read the Constitution.
Veritas and Otter will get t-shirts for sure.
Send me your addresses on the Forum.
DiAnne:
So your point would be that two plus too equals forum?
I'm an adder not a divider,
Otter
Oprah........................ Umah
Otter.......................... Adder
Kinda has a ring to it doesn't it? Just ask David Letterman.
Hmm. Maybe self-identifying as an "adder" isn't such a Good Thing after all...
I'm a lutra not a serpens,
Otter
P.S. -- every now and again I just gotta toss out the occasional shoutout and give props to the rest of my posse, too:
http://otterworld.com
http://otters.net
http://www.otternet.com
here's to the fast and the furry-ous,
Otter
I just finished a series of Madonna And baby paintings....
Crap I think Im blind.
Otter...
In just the last two nights I have been called schizophrenic and a sicko in here...
Why do I get all the fame when it is obvious YOU are the one who is insane..??
Am I insane? No, we aren't!
say wha?,
Otter
Why an OTTER...??
Why not a... beaver..??
Or a MUSKRAT..??
Why not a beaver? That should be obvious. Beavers are reliable, yes; but they have absolutely no sense of fun. Joyless mud-serfs, that's what they are.
And as for muskrats, well, Shakespeare had them pegged: "'Tis but a tail towed by an idiot, full of sand and furry, dignifying nothing."
otters is as otters does,
Otter
Otter...
I think I love you man.
That is just wicked funny.
Shittokki
Fear destroys what bin Laden could not
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/13487511.htm
Ouch
Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to ``protect us.''
Good article - email this guy
ROBERT STEINBACK
rsteinback@MiamiHerald.com
Just got this from my uncle. I presume he's making fun of it. I told him they should air it. He cc'd the wife of a former presidential candidate on the Republican ticket.
From: American Family Association
Subject: Tell Your Local NBC Station To Refuse 'The Book of Daniel'
NBC considers new show featuring a completely dysfunctional family a positive portrayal of Christ and Christians
On January 6, NBC will begin a new series entitled The Book of Daniel. While the public has not seen the program, NBC is promoting "The Book of Daniel" as a serious drama about Christian people and the Christian faith. The main character is Daniel Webster, a drug-addicted Episcopal priest whose wife depends heavily on her mid-day martinis. Webster regularly sees and talks with a very unconventional white-robed, bearded Jesus. The Webster family is rounded out by a 23-year-old homosexual Republican son, a 16-year-old daughter who is a drug dealer, and a 16-year-old adopted son who is having sex with the bishop's daughter. At the office, his lesbian secretary is sleeping with his sister-in-law.
>
NBC and the mainstream media call it "edgy," "challenging" and "courageous." The series is written by Jack Kenny, a practicing homosexual who describes himself as being "in Catholic recovery," and is interested in Buddhist teachings about reincarnation and isn't sure exactly how he defines God and/or Jesus. "I don't necessarily know that all the myth surrounding him (Jesus) is true," he said.
Then they tell how to "take action," but I think I'd consider interrupting my 15 year hiatus from television to watch this!
The best way I can think of to keep these jerks from infiltrating our govt is to make fun of them. In my city, a coalition of religious people are working FOR gay rights, not against them. So it's not religion per se that I have a problem with - it's these holier-than-thou prigs who are more worried about this than the fact that Iraqis have minimal electricity, water and are having to export gas. One man who makes $10/day has nothing left for food after buying gas & kerosene. Not very Christian or Muslim or any other religion to consider this "liberation."
Posted by: not my president at December 29, 2005 09:25 PM
Don't look now, but this may just be a designed strategy to make NBC look the part of that "crazy liberal media".
This ain't edgy, it's wedgy.
Good I hope NBC does become crazy edgy and liberal.
I was just exposed to CNN at the grocery store - Paula Zahn was on, discussing some divorce. I couldn't tell it wasn't FOX til I looked at the caption.
Otter, don't mean to scare you, but I found this story via one of the links you posted.
Are Killer Whales Eating Sea Otters in Aleutian Islands ?
Recent studies cannot explain the 80% drop in sea otter populations in the Aleutian Islands as due to lack of food or contaminants. It appears that a likely scenario is predation by killer whales. An October report titled "Killer Whale Predation on Sea Otters Linking Oceanic and Nearshore Ecosystems" by J. A. Estes, M. T. Tinker, T. M. Williams, and D. F. Doak is in Science Magazine's October 16, 1998 edition. Key finding: in less than a decade over 40,000 sea otters may have been eaten by a small group of killer whales in the Aleutian Islands (compares to current population of 2,000 sea otters in all of the California coast).
Story on this report linked for your convenience.
http://www.otternet.com/news/
email sydney_blumenthal@yahoo.com
Victory in name only
Empty talk of turning points has failed to stop Bush's election triumph being reduced to ashes
Friday December 30, 2005 The Guardian
In his second inaugural address, George Bush four times summoned the image of fire - "a day of fire", "we have lit a fire", "fire in the minds of men", and "untamed fire". Over the course of the first year of his second term, all four of the ancient Greek elements have wreaked havoc: the fire of war, the air and water of Hurricane Katrina, the earth ravaged by whirlwinds raging from Iraq to Florida, from Louisiana to Washington. Through obsession or obliviousness, rigidity or laziness, Bush got himself singed, tossed about, engulfed, and nearly buried.
He began the year proclaiming "a turning point" in Iraq. In every crisis he faced, he assumed that everything would turn his way, as it always had in the past. He ended the year declaring "victory" within reach.
The first shift in Bush's political fortunes came with his unprecedented intervention in the case of Terry Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, whose husband's attempt to have her feeding tube removed was upheld after 14 appeals in Florida courts, five federal law suits, and four refusals to hear the case by the supreme court.
Bush rushed to sign a bill transferring the case from state to federal courts. For weeks Republicans strutted and the Democrats cowered. Then, on March 21, the spell carried over from the election campaign was broken: an ABC News poll found that 63% backed the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube and 67% believed that politicians urging she be kept alive were demagogic and unprincipled.
By now Bush's plan to privatise social security was moribund. He languished over his long summer vacation besieged by Cindy Sheehan, whose son had died in Iraq. She camped by the road leading to the president's ranch, asking him to explain the "noble cause" for which her son had given his life. Bush refused.
After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, Bush's aides held a fraught debate about which one of them would have to tell the president he should cut short his vacation. Four days after the hurricane landed, Bush left his ranch, and on Air Force One watched a custom DVD of television news coverage assembled by his staff. He had not bothered to see any of it on his own.
He praised his feckless chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown - "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" - and nominated his former personal attorney and White House legal counsel Harriet Miers for the supreme court. Though friends offered testimony of her evangelical religiosity, conservatives did not trust her because she had once made gestures toward women's and civil rights, and Bush got her to withdraw.
Bush hoped to erase the year's infamies with the election in Iraq on December 15, his ultimate turning point. He delivered five major speeches crafted by his new adviser on the National Security Council, Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and co-author of Choosing Your Battles, based on his public opinion research showing that "the public is defeat phobic, not casualty phobic". In one speech, Bush mentioned "victory" 15 times, against a background embossed with the slogan "Plan for Victory," and the White House issued a document entitled National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.
Since the election of the Shia slate that will hold power for four years, dedicated to an Islamic state allied with Iran, the president and his advisers have fallen eerily silent. As his annus horribilis draws to a close, Bush appears to have expended the turning points. Welcome to victory.
"As his annus horribilis draws to a close, Bush appears to have expended the turning points."
Ok, now that's info I could have done without.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5511647,00.html
This is the teen who went to Iraq - I mentioned it from the Apple Store but didn't have the link.
Marc Trager
I had the same thought! (won't repeat it)
marc:
That's "annus" -- *"annus"*, with two N's.
It's a latin word meaning "year", not some alien message from Uranus or something. Sheesh.
yer a sick sick monkey,
Otter
I caught a program teaser while watching local weather that Diane Sawyer is doing a Primetime show on Pope Joan starting at 9 p.m. central time. I've read two books about Pope John VIII (a woman, aka Pope Joan), and despite the best efforts of the Catholic church to delete her from history, some references to her still exist.... I have about eight minutes to decide if I should watch the show or not, and wondering if I do whether or not I'll have a broken TV if they don't quote the historical data about her....