For Just Pennies a Day, You Can Change a Congress Member's Life

BTW -- Just as a heads-up for those who've asked about this earlier, and/or those who realize that an informed electorate is the best safeguard against bad government, here are today's TV news & views highlights:

THIS WEEK w/ GEORGE STEPHANOPOLOUS, ABC, Sunday 12/4, 9 AM EST:
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) discuss the war in Iraq

MEET THE PRESS, NBC, Sunday 12/4, 10 AM EST:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) discusses progress in Iraq

FACE THE NATION, CBS, Sunday 12/4, 10:30 AM EST:
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) discusses the war in Iraq

FOX NEWS SUNDAY w/ CHRIS WALLACE, FNC, Sunday 12/4, 6:00 PM EST:
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley discuss President Bush's strategy for the war in Iraq

(As always, check your local listings to verify broadcast times and stations in your area.)

because ignorant people elect incompetent presidents,
Otter

Celebrity Death Match Series, part 1 -- initial report:

Senior admin apologist slash spinmeister Hadley is now trying his oververbal best to overcome feisty newsreporter Stephanopholous with a barrage of words that sound really good in process but when taken as a whole mean, un-hunh, what is it good for? absolutely nuthin! (For the record, Stephanolpolous seems disinclined to give his first-time guest enough slack to weave the precious web that deceives before interrupting his flow of flabbygab, if you get my drift...)

Meanwhile, hard-challeninging charger Murtha has just jumped into the ring and is waging a well-fought war of words against his opponent glibgabbing Hadley's precious pre-canned POV's, which given Murtha's obvious personal passion versus Hadley's highly-doctored hagiography seems to be taking its toll as far as your average viewer is concerned. More news from ringside as it happens -- stay tuned for more!

(P.S. -- don't forget tonight's Celebrity Death Match, part 2, in which highly-favored local Babsmeister Boxer takes on Hadley in his second challenge of the day. Don't miss it -- coming it to you live and lively, on a TV near you!)

thanking Goddess that not *everything* on the publicly-owned airwaves is just patented prepackaged pablum bushit these days,
Otter

Celebrity Death Match Series, part 2 -- special report:

Well! Now isn't that just sphesh-ul!

Restless Otter channel-surfing activities during commercial breaks discovered that the Wallace-vs.-Boxer showdown was not only going to be broadcast on FNC tonight, it was actually being broadcast early even as we surfed this ayem. Well, boy howdy! Is this phun or wut?

As I'm sure that none of you will be surprised to hear, the difference between Stephanopolous' reasoned, intelligent, well-informed journalistic approach to questioning Hadley & Murtha on his program was not at all dissimilar to the pre-targeted, teleprompter-driven way that Mr. C. Wallace approached his own interview subjects in terms of Faux News' patented fairway-and-ballast system of so-called reporting.

Yes, Wallace did everything he could to sand-trap Ms. Boxer at every turn, drawing to get her to hook way off the fairway and into the woods of side topics and digression, trying to force her to putt against the grain in order to keep her from sinking her points in the cup. To her credit, she resisted admirably.

Not quite as successfully as one might have hoped, though, given Mr. Wallace's control of the interview timing -- for example, he told Ms. Boxer that she had only two minutes left to answer an off-topic query trying to insinuate that there is a major dissension in the Democratic ranks regarding the party's reaction to Murtha's and Bush's contrasting POV's, then cutting her off to go to a commercial break in less than 1 minute and 28 seconds by wtach because he didn't muich care for her answer -- but what the heck else would you expect forom those craven imperialist lackeys who rule the nest over at Faux News anyway? (Not that there's anything wrong with that, you understand. Ahem.)

Still, a this point the Otterworld judges call the Boxer-Wallace standoff a draw, but say that Murtha did win the Hadley match on Stephanolophous' show on points if nothing else. Today's score so far: Demos 1, Rethugs 0.

Stay tuned to this blog for further field reports on the McCain-Kerry contrasting tag-team matchup coming up in in just a few more minutes here on DCP-Breaking-News-By-Remote-Report(a technologically-deficient lag-time service of www.otterworld.net)...

all views expressed in this post are those of the author only -- your mileage may vary,
Otter

LIVE BLOGGING FROM THE HOWARD ZINN EVENT:

First topic of the day: coffee

Howard doing a plug for Andy Shallal's coffee at Busboys and Poets...

Thanks Otter.. I'm multitasking.. Trying to listen and get breakfast made and post here all at once..

Got Kerry on. One tidbit.. Schliffer (sp?) came up with a bit of Beltway gossip.. if Rumsfield is dumped the prResident would name (of all people) Joe Liberman as Defense Sec. Asked if he thought Liberman would do a better job Kerry replied
"I think lots of people could do a better job than Rumsfield" Point to Kerry !

Next up: Howard announcing the World Can't Wait event. He also mentioned that he received a t-shirt from the actor Viggo Mortenson that has three words on it: IMPEACH, REMOVE, JAIL.

Why he wrote Peoples' History: he couln't find a book that told the truth about American history.

Dear All:

Whenever you here a spin-master saying the words "politics" or "partisan," perk your ears up, because that means something that the public really should have a hand in but doesn't, and, according to the spin-master, shouldn't.

Chuck in Doha

Why he wrote this particular kind of book:

He had known for some time that something was wrong with how history is taught and how the books were used. He had taught at Spelman College and had written a lot abou SNCC and the civil rights movement, becoming a participant-writer in the movement. He had a little tape recorder and was in Selma AL, for Freedom Day-- voter registration day--the idea was to get everyone to show up the night before. There was a huge meeting -- Dick Gregory and a chorus sang and he thought why isn't anyone covering this?

Columbia U. had an oral history project. He wrote to them and said there are amazing things going on--send a team down here.

He got a letter back --it's a fine idea, BUT...
"we really don't have the resources to do that."

He decided to find those voices of the real people--not the leaders and military people--to tell the stories of history from the perspective of those who lived in the times.

"I was learning from the black voices of history and it looks a little different from that point of view."

1.4 million copies of The People's History have been sold. Has he made a lot of money?

Answer: I made all that money over 25 years; so divide it by 25 and you get a "reasonable salary".

Andy asked him about being a bombadier in World War II. WWII has been called a "just" war. Is there such a thing?

Howard says: This is the most difficult question to answer, always. But he will answer it.

Preface to the answer: About a year or so ago, he met an Italian surgeon who wote a book called Green Parrots: Diary of a War Surgeon. He has done reconstructive surgery on war vctims and green parrots is a kind of land mine; it has wings on it and children often pick them up. At the end of the book he writes he does not want to have to do this anymore. He wants to abolish war. He and Howard talked. They began a project about the abolition of war. First step: produce a little book with internationally known writers and artists. We do not want to keep protesting.

The Iraq War will come to an end; so what happens next?

Einstein, horrified by WW I, was at a conference in Geneva discussing "the humanization of war"--what weapons should be allowed? Einstein said "War cannot be humanized."

They will use the book to launch a huge anti-war movement.

Back to WW II: He had been reading about fascism; he was working in the shipyard and volunteered for the "good" war. He dropped bombs in Europe.

It wasn't until the end of the war that he began thinking about what he had done.

People inside of war do not know what the war looks like. Each one only does his/her piece. And once you decide that YOUR side is the "good guys" and the other side is the "bad guys", you can do whatever it takes. You stop thinking. You just do your job.

It was only after the war, when he was reading John Hersey's HIROSHIMA, that he realized what bombing did to people. When you drop bombs from 30,000 feet, you do not see the results of that.

He thought about the fact that the larger number of people killed in war are the everyday people. Howard adds that soldiers are innocent victims of war too.

He had a conversation with a gunner, who said that WW II, like all wars, was essentially an imperialist war. We did not get rid of fascism; we got rid of Hitler. An immediate victory over a tyrant is OK, but look at who is really killed: the VICTIMS of that tyrant.

War is a kind of "high". He remembered V-E day, and V-J Day and it was good, but did not last. The high is not good. War does not solve fundamental problems.

The challenge is to deal with the problems that exist but without killing masses of people in war.

Howard; This is the worst and the most dangerous presidency ever.

He ignores public opinion. Unilaterlism--more of the same as we have had, but worse. We need a bold and clear movement that does not take its lead from the politicians, but is closer to what the people really want and need.

The people are already ready to get out of Iraq.

The movement needs to move ahead of the politicians.

Q and A session now:

Karen thanks for your blogging. It's great to read them.

Almost as if we're there with you and Howard Zinn.

Andy: When Nader ran, Howard advised him to step aside. What does he think about third parties? Insider or outsider?

Howard: I believe in third parties. I told Ralph early on, I didn't think he should run unless he was only going to run in states where it wouldn't matter. The third force isn't necessarily inside the electoral arena. The power should depend on the number of votes it gets in an election. That only makes it looks weak.

There are so many people who agree with the tenets of a third party, but who will not vote with it because they want to win.

He saw voting for Kerry as a step in the right direction, because the Bush admin. is so dangerous. But that was only a first step.

We need both people working inside and on the outside who can be bold and speak for the people.

Thanks so much, Karen! I love Howard Zinn.

Anyone have any questions for Howard?

Howard recommending Wellfleet oysters.

Discussing his play Marx in Soho. Anyone can do it anywhere, for free.

New projects? No writing projects except for the new book, Voices of a People's History, with Anthony Arnove. Lots of nuggets of quotes. Voices of fugitive slaves, mill workers, anarchists, families of people with members at war. No more big books, but he writes columns for The Progressive Magazine.

There is going to be a series on TV (The New Press) called The People's History Series. One book has been published: The People's History of the American Revolution by Ray Raphael. Another one coming out: The People's History of the Civil War.

oops, sorry, NOT a TV series.

A book series.

However, there is a group in NY and Hollywood working on producing stories (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) -- Fox bailed, HBO worked on it for a few years, with scripts by Howard Fast and John Sayles--HBO bailed. Now they are working on some documentaries based on the stories.

Quetion 1 from the audience: What was particular about the protests against the VietNam War was that they were focused on the war. Nowadays there is a pinata of other issues attached and an inability to self-edit.

Do you have advice about how to "cinch" this movement?

Answer: That issue does come up often. He agrees that when you have a demonstration against the war, it should concentrate on that, because that's a unifying factor for people--focus the power of the large numbers on one issue. He does not think that other issues should be neglected. It's a delicate matter. you do not want 20 speakers talking about different issues.

Aside from the focus, do not hesitate to allow people to pursue their agenda before and after--environmental, fominist, race issues need to be heard. It's about the focus on the issue of the moment at that time.

You do not want to lose the energy.

Question 2: Do you think representational voting could solve the third party issue? And how long will it take us to recover from the Bush administration?

Answer: Anything we can do to reform this stupid and corrupt voting system is good. Things need to be battled out on a state level. Campaign finance reform is not the key--first create the social movement that can bypass the electoral structure. The tinkering around shall come later.

How long? I don't know. It will depend on us. John Dewey: Do in order to know what to predict.

(You may all rememebr that that was his answer to Christy's question about the revolution)

Question: People don't read much so how can you get your perspective to people who do not read?

Also--what to say to people in the military?

Answer: We talk to young people, celebrities help. Eddie Vetter, Bruce Springsteen etc. Viggo Mortenson...

He always says yes to radio interviews.

Use everyhting you can.

Question: People don't read much so how can you get your perspective to people who do not read?

Also--what to say to people in the military?

Answer: We talk to young people, celebrities help. Eddie Vetter, Bruce Springsteen etc. Viggo Mortenson...

He always says yes to radio interviews.

Use everything you can.

He feels optimistic about how to get to people--we do as much as we can. The people we reach reach other people as well. Pass it along.

Letter to the Editor, NY Times

>What I find so alarming about the new turn against President Bush ("Even Supporters Doubt President as Issues Pile Up," front page, Nov. 26) is the surprise of those who, until recently, supported Mr. Bush, and their unwillingness to take responsibility for their own political naivete.

I, along with millions of others around the world, knew from the beginning that the weapons of mass destruction argument was bogus and that the invasion of Iraq would become exactly what it is. I don't know a single person who was surprised to learn that the Bush government is incompetent and corrupt.

I hope that the millions who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 and 2004 will acknowledge their responsibility for putting this global menace in office and will seek to do a better job in the next election. We live in a democracy, after all, and if we have a bad president it is because we
have an unwise electorate.

Andrew Zimmerman
Washington, Nov. 26, 2005
The writer is an assistant professor of history at George Washington University.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/opinion/l03bush.html?n=3DTop%2fOpinion%2f
Ed

Here is a response I liked when I sent this out:

The electorate is just like the president in many ways. The president wonders why he was given such bad advice when he should be taking
responsibility for his own failure. No one wants to take responsibility for their actions.

The so-called conservatives own arguments about responsibility can be turned on them using this same approach. They argue that people should take
responsibility for their poverty, drug-addicted parents, etc. Well, they should do the same thing and admit they f*cked up when they voted for Bush.

Question 4: Young black man named Billy--he has found an alternative way of thinking. Suggestions for other books?

Howard: "I do not recommend other books." (laughter)

As for people thinking we're crazy: something you say may have an effect later on. We too often expect immediate results.

This is a longterm project we are engaged in. People change slowly over time. Corroboration is all around.

As for other things to read: Noam Chomsky--not his weighty things with footnotes--only some people can take it!--the little books of interviews are the best way to introduce his thinking.

Arundhati Roy--not only the novels, but the little pamphlets as well. Very understandable.

Read magazines and progressive media.

Johnny Got His Gun had a great effect on him. (Dalton Trumbo).

Nickled and Dimed. Another good clear passionate book.

Autobiography of Malcom X, Richard Wright, etc. especially if you are a white person. "Incident" by Countee Cullen.

Andy mentions that all the books are available in the Busboys and Poets bookstore!

Howard Zinn is right on:

The movement needs to move ahead of the politicians.

(In some countries, the politicians are ahead of the people, but this is certainly not one of them!)

Backbone Campaign person with shadow government project. Zinn nominated for Education Dept. Monday evenings you can call in to a number.

http:///www.backbonecampaign.org

I'm outa here. I have messes to attend to.
No tv. Not even Kerry. Not if they have McCain on at same time. Too circusy. I'll read later or watch soundclips. So depending on you to report back! Keep up the good work, Otter, & also Karen.
I'll check back!

Tomorrow night is the 50th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott and the backbone campaign will have a call with Rev. Yearwood tomorrow night. Check it out.

They also have these as podcasts on their site.

Question: Will he run for President of the US? Will he actively support a candidate for President?

Answer: He would be happy to put his "enormous influence" to bear toward a good candidate. But electoral politics are limited. Put energy into campaigns, but organize social movements which will have an effect on whomever is elected to office.

Don't ignore any arena, but look at history. When important issues have been rectified, they have been made by social movements that have pushed whomever was in office to do something different.

Create a situation in which change is the best option.

Question: Asking a question from a school--catching students up via social justice concerns. Teachers often have a different perspective from families--how to best support teachers?

Answer: Teachers are in vulnerable positions. It's hard to introduce material that is not on the standardized tests. Teachers need to organize too. Talk with colleagues. Students need to support teachers as well.

Internal struggles within the students is a more delicate matter. How to bring about the student body, which begins to think in a different way--it takes a little more time.

It's the same challenge we all face in pursuading other people--language is important. Attend to their own feelings--start with their own point of view. Bring them along slowly. Listen.

Andy brings up the issue of neutrality in teaching: As a teacher, one of the first questions you have to ask yourself is why are you teaching? high test scores? or a new generation that is socially conscious and wants the betterment of the world?

Teachers are not neutral. And make it explicit to your students (and colleagues) that neutrality is collaboration with the system. Things are already moving in a certain direction. Do you let that go on? Or do you stop being neutral? Which side are you on?

There's no such as "just facts." Dickens' HARD TIMES, one of those moments of understanding that there's no such thing as a fact without judgement behind it. Facts are selected out of an infinite amount of facts. Someone made the choice.

That insight is crucial to education. Discuss that honestly with your students.

There is a CD of readings of the Voices of...

What Zinn is saying is that People Power is the only avenue we have left that can effect change, and history bears this out as having been the case previously.

This is a very serious state of affairs.

I am hopeful that people are energized enough to be organized. Does he have pointers on each, especially the organizational process?

(Sorry about the redundancy of the statement "history bears this out as having been the case previously".)

That should read: History has shown that social movements affected change when other avenues were closed to do so; does he have suggestions for further energizing and organizing a social movement?

Polly, great article!!! One of my very favorites!

(Right on, sistah!)

What Would J.F.K. Have Done?

By THEODORE C. SORENSEN and ARTHUR SCHLESINGER Jr.
Published: December 4, 2005
WHAT did we not hear from President Bush when he spoke last week at the United States Naval Academy about his strategy for victory in Iraq?

We did not hear that the war in Iraq, already one of the costliest wars in American history, is a running sore. We did not hear that it has taken more than 2,000 precious American lives and countless - because we do not count them - Iraqi civilian lives. We did not hear that the struggle has dragged on longer than our involvement in either World War I or the Spanish-American War, or that by next spring it will be even longer than the Korean War.

And we did not hear how or when the president plans to bring our forces back home - no facts, no numbers on America troop withdrawals, no dates, no reference to our dwindling coalition, no reversal of his disdain for the United Nations, whose help he still expects.

Neither our military, our economy nor our nation can take that kind of endless and remorseless drain for an only vaguely defined military and political mission. If we leave early, the president said, catastrophe might follow. But what of the catastrophe that we are prolonging and worsening by our continued presence, including our continued, unforgivable mistreatment of detainees?

Each month that America continues its occupation facilitates Al Qaeda's recruitment of young Islamic men and women as suicide bombers, the one weapon against which our open society has no sure defense. The president says we should support our troops by staying the course; but who is truly willing to support our troops by bringing them safely home?

The responsibility for devising an exit plan rests primarily not with the war's opponents, but with the president who hastily launched a pre-emptive invasion without enough troops to secure Iraq's borders and arsenals, without enough armor to protect our forces, without enough allied support and without adequate plans for either a secure occupation or a timely exit.

As we listened to Mr. Bush's speech, our thoughts raced back four decades to another president, John F. Kennedy. In 1963, the last year of his life, we watched from front-row seats as Kennedy tried to figure out how best to extricate American military advisers and instructors from Vietnam.

Although neither of us had direct responsibility on Vietnam decision-making, we each saw enough of the president to sense his growing frustration. In typical Kennedy fashion, he would lean back, in his Oval Office rocker, tick off all his options and then critique them:

Renege on the previous Eisenhower commitment, which Kennedy had initially reinforced, to help the beleaguered government of South Vietnam with American military instructors and advisers?

No, he knew that the American people would not permit him to do that.

Americanize the Vietnam civil war, as the military recommended and as his successor Lyndon Johnson sought ultimately to do, by sending in American combat units?

No, having learned from his experiences with Cuba and elsewhere that conflicts essentially political in nature did not lend themselves to a military solution, Kennedy knew that the United States could not prevail in a struggle against a Vietnamese people determined to oust, at last, all foreign troops from their country.

Moreover, he knew firsthand from his World War II service in the South Pacific the horrors of war and had declared at American University in June 1963: "This generation of Americans has had enough - more than enough - of war."

Declare "victory and get out," as George Aiken, the Republican senator from Vermont, would famously suggest years later?

No, in 1963 in Vietnam, despite assurances from field commanders, there was no more semblance of "victory" than there was in 2004 in Iraq when the president gave his "mission accomplished" speech on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Explore, as was always his preference, a negotiated solution?

No, he was unable to identify in the ranks of the disorganized Vietcong a leader capable of negotiating enforceable and mutually agreeable terms of withdrawal.

Insist that the South Vietnamese government improve its chances of survival by genuinely adopting the array of political, economic, land and administrative reforms necessary to win popular support?

No, Kennedy increasingly realized that the corrupt family and landlords propping up the dictatorship in South Vietnam would never accept or enforce such reforms.

Eventually he began to understand that withdrawal was the viable option. From the spring of 1963 on, he began to articulate the elements of a three-part exit strategy, one that his assassination would prevent him from pursuing. The three components of Kennedy's exit strategy - well-suited for Iraq after the passage of a new constitution and the coming election - can be summarized as follows:

Make clear that we're going to get out. At a press conference on Nov. 14, 1963, the president did just that, stating, "That is our object, to bring Americans home."

Request an invitation to leave. Arrange for the host government to request the phased withdrawal of all American military personnel - surely not a difficult step in Iraq, especially after the clan statement last month calling for foreign forces to leave. In a May 1963 press conference, Kennedy declared that if the South Vietnamese government suggested it, "we would have some troops on their way home" the next day.

Bring the troops home gradually. Initiate a phased American withdrawal over an unannounced period, beginning immediately, while intensifying the training of local security personnel, bearing in mind that with our increased troop mobility and airlift capacity, American forces are available without being stationed in hazardous areas. In September 1963, Kennedy said of the South Vietnamese: "In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it." A month later, he said, "It would be our hope to lessen the number of Americans" in Vietnam by the end of the year.

President Kennedy had no guarantee that any of these three components would succeed. In the "fog of war," there are no guarantees; but an exit plan without guarantees is better than none at all.

If we leave Iraq at its own government's request, our withdrawal will be neither abandonment nor retreat. Law-abiding Iraqis may face more clan violence, Balkanization and foreign incursions if we leave; but they may face more clan violence, Balkanization and foreign incursions if we stay. The president has said we will not leave Iraq to the terrorists. Let us leave Iraq to the Iraqis, who have survived centuries of civil war, tyranny and attempted foreign domination.

Once American troops are out of Iraq, people around the world will rejoice that we have recovered our senses. What's more, the killing of Americans and the global loss of American credibility will diminish. As Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican and Vietnam veteran, said, "The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have." Defeatist? The real defeatists are those who say we are stuck there for the next decade of death and destruction.

In a memorandum to President Kennedy, roughly three months after his inauguration, one of us wrote with respect to Vietnam, "There is no clearer example of a country that cannot be saved unless it saves itself." Today, Iraq is an even clearer example.

Theodore C. Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. were, respectively, special counsel and special assistant to President John F. Kennedy.

Truth,

I can ask him that question when we go back to Busboys, which is in a few minutes. It's Howard Zinn Day there-and it's a zoo!

But I refer you to the quote he gave Christy a few months ago, when I forwarded her question to him: How will we know when the revolution starts?

"Must we know when the revolution starts? Instead of looking, waiting, observing, we should just act and it will gradually become obvious. John Dewey said: 'Don't predict, so you'll know what to do. Do, so you'll know what to predict.'" Howard Zinn

Yes, Polly, another beautiful statement from the rational side of the aisle...

I'm being deluged with articles about the failed implosion of the Zip Feeds Tower in Sioux Falls, SD - where thousands braved bitter chill to see it end up like the Leanng Tower of Grain.

Anyway, surprised to see Editorials & letters in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader which question the premise and conduct of war in Iraq.

& now both ACLU & the FBI are making their own investigations

FBI Is Taking Another Look at Forged Prewar Intelligence
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120405X.shtml
The FBI has reopened an inquiry into one of the most intriguing aspects of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco: how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion.

ACLU to take CIA to Court (over secret prisons)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N03375226.htm

Speaking of investigations:
Keep up the pressure on Delay, Abramoff etc.
& on Rove, Hadley, Libby etc.
It must not be just yesterday's story.
It wasn't enough to prevent the election of Bush but it should be enough to destroy his credibility - unless propaganda succeeds.

Native Texan
Thanks for the Schlessinger & Sorenson article on JFK era & now. Very nice.

Bush Pilots

http://webpages.charter.net/micah/ciair.jpg

courtesy of patriotboy.blogspot.com

This just in from David Swanson afterdowningstreet.org

An International Peace Movement Building

By David Swanson

On Saturday, December 10, in London, England, leaders of the peace movement against the Iraq war from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Iraq will meet to strategize. There is hope that the tide has already turned against the occupation, and that a coordinated international effort will be able to mobilize sufficient public pressure to bring the war to a complete end.

If you can make it to London, sign up here: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

If you can't make it, I think I have an easy second-best course of action for you. One of the speakers at the opening session in London will be Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., and at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Phyllis has just published a book called "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power."
You can buy it here: http://www.interlinkbooks.com/BooksC/challeng_empire.html

This book provides a history of the movement against the current war thus far and a blue print for building an international movement,not just to end this war, but to prevent the next one and to right the economic injustices that plague our globe as well.

"Challenging Empire" is very much a glass-half full book. While acknowledging that the Iraq War was begun and has not yet been ended - and without really speculating as to how the war might have been worse were it not for the public pressure against it - Bennis lays out an argument that the opposition to the war has already won some important victories and has built the basis for a successful challenge to US violation of international law. My recommendation is that you read this book, and my prediction is that you too will see the glass as at least 1/3 full when you're done.

Bennis describes three elements in the movement against empire: people, governments, and the United Nations. And the book is organized into corresponding sections. The first presents a history of the build-up to war and the war, focused on the development and progress of the peace movement. It is far from too early to have written such a history. Most of us who are active in the peace movement can benefit greatly from knowing it. Understanding the origins of various organizations, and reviewing our successes and failures, is necessary if we are going to ultimately succeed. Bennis provides insight into the varying perspectives of groups opposing the war, including providing a convincing analysis of how we can recognize the right of the Iraqi people to resist illegal occupation, but not endorse the efforts of leaders or organizations in Iraq who may themselves be employing tactics that violate international law.

The popular movement against this war has achieved unprecedented levels of success as measured by turnout in the streets, international coordination, and sophistication in communications and lobbying. But there have been obvious shortcomings, and Bennis discusses some of them.

Governments around the world have been forced by their citizens, to various degrees, to oppose the war. Many actively opposed the war before its start and disputed the fraudulent claims used to justify it. Some - following a similar trajectory to that of many Democrats in Congress - lessened their opposition once the war had begun. Of these, many are now being forced into renewed opposition to the U.S. Empire. And a growing list of nations have been able to build on governmental opposition to the war to successfully oppose US plans to expand corporate trade agreements.

The forum through which governments most powerfully expressed their opposition to the war was the United Nations. The UN did what it was designed to do. It responded to democratic pressure and stood for peace and in opposition to illegal war. Once the war had begun, the UN caved in and passed a resolution "recognizing" US and British power in Iraq. But Bennis asks us to focus on the potential in what was achieved through the UN prior to the war.

Not only was the US forced to appeal to the UN for sanction of its planned crimes, not only was Colin Powell obliged to spell out the US lies in deatil, but the UN gave powerful voice to global majority opinion when it refused to buy the hype or condone the planned attack on a sovereign state. The UN is often seen as simply a tool for providing US actions with a patina of legitimacy. And often that is what it is. But that damage is far outweighed by the potential value to the world's second super power (the people) of using the UN to oppose international crimes.

US hypocrisy in using the UN as cover for its crimes is preferable to US scorn for the UN. Our response to it should not be to join in the attack on the United Nations, but rather to work as an international movement of citizen activists and governments to make the UN what it was supposed to be.

Bennis describes meeting with Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Archbishop Desmond Tutu on February 15, 2003, on which occasion Tutu said to Annan: "We are here on behalf of the people marching today in 665 cities around the world. And we're here to tell you that those people marching in those cities all around the world, we claim the United Nations as our own, we claim it as part of our global mobilization for peace."

Bennis articulates specific suggestions for changes at the U.N., including broader representation on the Security Council, less power for veto-wielding members, and less power for the Council, more for the General Assembly. She also suggests the creation of an outside monitoring agency accountable only to the UN. She argues for making the IMF, World Bank, and WTO accountable to the UN's Economic and Social Council as the UN Charter envisioned (rather than accountable only to corporate power). And Bennis proposes training a UN peacekeeping force loyal to the United Nations.

Phyllis argues that such a force should not be used to clean up messes left by Washington. But many who share her aspirations for the UN would in fact like to see it clean up the mess created in Iraq, if such a clean up involves a complete end to the occupation and to US claims on Iraqi resources.

The topic will certainly be discussed in London on December 10th, and I'll be posting reports from there on this website: www.afterdowningstreet.org

Thanks to the technical wizards who helped break this story:

Ghost Flights Over Canada

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Render&c=Article&cid=1133651412559&call_pageid=968332188492

& there have been Ghost Flights Over France.

Condi is now very wrong to go about with "tough talk" - it is a smokescreen. Just so wrong.

Just received from France this moment:

The tracking was in our papers as well, from the company thet lent the planes to their route hour by hour, and all their stops. There will be more in Die Spiegel, in Germany, tomorrow.

http://info.france2.fr/europe/16244642-fr.php

Condi is supposed to give explanations when she is in Europe, but she may find it hard with foreign journalists that she cannot manipulate.

Here is an article on plane spotting:

http://www.planespotting.com/novice/spotting2.html

This is the way that these stories will break. I once knew a train afficionado who could identify any type of train just by the sound. I have an autistic neighbor who can tell me the type of plane flying over, again by the sound.

Trainspotters know all the trains, plane spotters know all the planes. The CIA didn't think enough about the internet, the sophistication of these hobbyists or the fact that they might be ethical enough to question authority & official motives.

From D.U.

A link to hear Howard Zinn

http://music.download.com/howardzinn/3600-8208_32-100028135.html?tag=chart_topdls_artist

** Harry knows (well, knew): **

"Being too good is apt to be uninteresting."

"A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it."

"A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years."

"All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway."

"Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice."

"He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides."

"I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here."

"The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction."

"When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth -- then all Americans are in peril."

"You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now."

"You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on."

"You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break."

"I would rather have peace in the world than be President."

"I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."

"You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog."

-- Harry S. Truman

they sure don't make 'em like they used to,
Otter

Hello again,
We are sitting in a massively crowded room (don't tell the fire marshal!) and Julian Bond is reading Frederick Douglass' speech to the Rochester Anti-Slavery League. He is pointing out that the Fourth of July is an empty holiday to slaves.

Otter,
We are hearing many voices from the past: Susan B. Anthony, LaCasa (the first whistleblower --on Columbus, no less), Henry Turner, etc. All the words resonate so clearly in today's milieu. Still true, on many levels.

Karen,

Thanks for being there! Your reports are very encouraging!

Howard just read Eugene Debs' speech from 1918..the one that speaks of a new awakening.

Marian Wright Edelman is now reading from Yuri Kichiyama's statement about being taken to the detention camps during WW II.

Truth (et al),

I want everyone to feel how inspiring this is, but also how much work we must do--we MUST.

These stories spur us on to create the changes that will make them historic, and not current.

Marian Wright Edelman now reading Fannie Lou Hamer's statement to the Democratic National Convention in 1964, in Washington.

She spoke about her experiences in trying to vote, in Mississippi.

It sounds little like trying to vote in Ohio in 2004, or Florida in 2000.

OK, that story (Fannie Lou's) was incredibly moving, and disturbing. You must read it.

Now Andy is reading Langston Hughes'poem, "Let America Be America Again."

Let's all work together to bring about, shall we?

Ending: Patti Smith's THE PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER!!

Karen,

Maybe Howard Zinn should take this talk on the road.

It would be great to see him in a city in a purple state, in a blue state, in a red state, ect....talking about our freedoms, America, war, etc...

Karen,

Yes, we must. I know it's alot easier to say it than it is to get everyone mobilized, but it is our only hope.

This next year is going to be AWESOME!

Again, thank you.

"Let America Be America Again"
(Langston Hughes, 1902-1967)

-----

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed --
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek --
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean --
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today -- O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home --
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay --
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again --
The land that never has been yet --
And yet must be -- the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine -- the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME --
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose --
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain --
All, all the stretch of these great green states --
And make America again!

-----

yea, so mote it be...
Otter

~from Lambert over at Correntwire.com

Re: New Orleans Reconstruction

Bush lied? What a surprise! (And kudos to the LA Times for covering a story
the rest of our free press seems anxious to drop down the memory hole. No
celebs involved, I guess).

Prospects for a quick municipal comeback peaked 17 days after the hurricane
and flood, when Bush stood before St. Louis Cathedral in historic Jackson
Square and told a national television audience that there is no way to
imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again.

So, downhill after the first 17 days? We should have known the big weenie
was coming. And what's the brand writ large on the big weenie's wrapper?

Privatization.

What Bush said would be one of the largest public reconstruction efforts
ever is becoming a private affair, leaving the tough choices to residents as
their risks increase.

Is privatization going to rebuild New Orleans? Ask a Nobel prize winner.

http://www.correntewire.com/bush_lied_about_new_orleans_reconstruction

~ link to L.A. Times piece ~

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-orleansrisk4dec04,0,7970585,full.story

[Forgive me the possible redundacy here... but after posting that last ringing chorus from Mr. Langston Hughes, I also felt an urge to repost this other well-known call to action from another well-known American spirit, poet, author, patriot... as delivered to hundreds of thousands of listeners on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, in words that still resonate in the hearts and minds of each and every one of us today...]

-----

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi! From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

-- Dr. Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

-----

yea, and again I say to ye: so mote it be,
Otter

[...realizing of course that Dr. King was speaking to a specific target audience on that day, but that his dream also included every Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, pagan, atheist, believer, nonbeliever, brown, pink, golden, and even gray man, woman, & child on this God/dess-given Earth of ours, no matter where and when and how they might be...]

-- and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true,
Otter

~ snip ~

I've assigned partners to each of you who will write faithfully, and I've provided them with salient facts to make the letters more personal.

~ snip ~

The Adopt a Congress Member program is growing every day, as brave Americans step forward to provide emotional support to wayward public servants. The American people are extremely generous.

~ snip ~

Posted by Polly Sigh at December 4, 2005 09:30 AM

Miss Polly,

I found an excellent site where I can buy gifts to send my new pen pal while he is in prison.

Since so many of us here have been assigned pen pal partners, I would like to share this opportunity with the rest of the group.

For example, I think a most thoughtful gift for our God fearing leaders unfortunate enough to get caught would be a bar of "Wash Away Your Sins Bar Soap", which they could use in the shower to keep evil spirits away from them while they're showering.

Or, they could use 8 oz. of tempting "do it again" Easter lily scented "Wash Away Your Sins Heavenly Hand Cleanser" before getting in the chow line. It's sure to ward off evil spirits before any of the other inmates get fancy ideas during chow.

To stay safe in the jailyard, they could chew some "Next to the Last Supper" gum, or use some "Mother Teresa Breath Mist" ~ it has a saintly peppermint flavor.

Or, in their new cell, they could hang a
"Wash Away Your Sins Air Freshener ~ it has the faithful fragrance of altar flowers. That way they can close their eyes and pretend they are in church, plus feel safe enough at night to catch some shut-eye.

Since they are obviously very contrite, (I just saw one of them crying on t.v. last week), I think these thoughtful gifts will help them feel more secure while in prison, plus it will give them a feeling of being on the "outside", since so many of them went to church faithfully at least three times a week before being caught and convicted.

for more ideas ~

http://www.misspoppy.com/catalog/xcart/customer/home.php?cat=108

These are just too funny!!!

http://www.misspoppy.com/catalog/xcart/customer/home.php?cat=299

(Please bear with me while I go out on a limb here, fellow citizens, fellow patriots, fellow beings:)

-----

I, too, have a dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the *true* meaning of its creed:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men, and women, and children, and faiths, and colors, and beliefs, and orientations are created equal."

I have a dream that one day in the red states the sons and daughters of former so-called hard-right conservatives and in the blue states the sons and daughters of so-called bleeding-heart liberals will be able to sit down together at a shared table of brother- and sisterhood.

I have a dream that one day even the non-state of Washington, D.C, an unacknowledged colony of an otherwise representative government still sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that *all* of our children will one day live in a nation, and a world, where they will not be judged by the color of their skin or by their gender or their creed or their financial worth, but by the content of their character and the value of their meaning to the world --

and that this worth will not be judged by any criteria larger or smaller than that they are, simply and wholly, human beings who deserve every right and every chance and every grace that any being anywhere also truly and totally deserves.

I, too, have a dream today. But my dream did not start out as my dream only. It is a dream that was formed and shaped from the words and thoughts and hopes and dreams of many others, not just those of my own. Like all far visions, my dream stands upon the shoulders of giants.

My dream today has grown and been shaped by the world around around me for every year that I have been blessed to be on this earth, from every hearth and home and hamlet that I have ever visited, from the cold blue shores of the Great Lakes to the warm loving waters of the Florida Keys and the hot sweet jazz clubs of New Orleans and from everywhere in between.

Thanks to those spirits and those visionaries and those leaders who have come before me -- including among them Dr. King, and Gandhi, and Mother Theresa, and countless others whose names are too many to be listed here -- I, too, have a dream today.

And my dream is this: that today will be the day when all of the people everywhere, on every mountain and in every valley and in every desert and in every jungle, will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation, this dream must become true. If America is to be a great power, this dream must be allowed to come true. If America is to be a great vision, then this dream must be envisioned so that it can actually come true.

And so I ask only this: that you, too, have a dream with me today. That you share this dream, and that you find it in your heart, and in your spirit, and in your mind, and in your power, to help make sure that your dream and my dream and all our dreams can finally become a reality.

all creatures great and small: blessed be,
Otter

Fannie Lou Hamer's speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1964--you can read it or listen to it here:

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html

Activists:

A National Conference on Media Relations for Progressives

Join some of America’s best progressive PR practitioners for two days of panels, workshops, networking, and fun.

http://www.truespinconference.com

Faculty includes:
Ben Cohen, Co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s, Pres., TrueMajority.org;

Kathy Bonk, author, Strategic Communications for Nonprofits;

Martin Kearns, Executive Director, Green Media Toolshed; and

Lisa Witter, Executive Vice President, Fenton Communications

Andy Bichlbaum, Yes Men!;

Andrew Boyd, Billionaires for Bush;

Lori Dorfman, co-author, News for a Change;

Lisa Lange, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals;

Holly Minch, Spin Project;

Bill Walker, Environmental Working Group.
Feb. 2 and 3, 2006, Denver, CO

For more information, visit www.truespinconference.com/>

Buyer's Remorse:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=at7vTVbeB_iU&refer=top_world_news

Americans Now Want a Different Type of President

On a related note, I read in the Seattle Times Sunday supplement that 80 some percent of Americans can not identify the three branches of government.

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1202-23.htm

Molly Ivins
 
Austin, Texas -- The Lord Impersonator is back again. This fella reappears every couple of years and causes no end of trouble. The jokester goes around persuading feeble-minded persons he is the Lord Almighty and that they are to do or say some perfectly idiotic thing under his instructions.

One of the worst cases we've had in Texas was the time the Lord Impersonator convinced 20 people in Floydada to git nekkid, get into a GTO and drive to Vinton, La., where they ran into a tree. Seein' 20 nekkid people, including five children, come out of a GTO startled the Vinton cops. The nekkid citizens all said God told them to do it.

Quite a few people have been mishearing the Lord lately. The Rev. Pat Robertson thinks the Lord told the people of Dover, Pa., they shouldn't ask for His help anymore because they elected a school board Robertson doesn't like. And Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana said right after Hurricane Katrina that "we finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did it."

I kind of doubt Katrina was designed by the Lord as a form of urban renewal. I think it's a big mistake for us to go around putting our own puny interpretations on stuff that happens and then claiming the Lord meant thus-and-such by it. It is my humble opinion that some folks should do a lot more listening to God and a lot less talking for Him.

In that category, I put a whole passel of politicians — including that God-fearing professional patriot Rep. "Duke" Cunningham, of San Diego. Cunningham resigned his office after pleading guilty to having accepted $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. "Duke's" big cause in Congress was to get a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. Which do you think is more unpatriotic: burning a flag to indicate desperate dissent against American policy or getting elected to Congress and selling out for a Rolls-Royce and some antique commodes?

Rep. Tom DeLay, who is under indictment in Texas, is another fine parser of the Lord's intent. According to Mother Jones magazine, DeLay appeared at a prayer breakfast just after the tsunami that killed 240,000 people. "DeLay read a passage from Matthew about a nonbeliever: '... a fool who built his house on sand: the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined.' Then, without comment, he righteously sat down."

Some Christians seem to me inclined to lose track of love, compassion and mercy. I don't think I have any special brief to go around judging them, but when the stink of hypocrisy becomes so foul in the nostrils it makes you start to puke it becomes necessary to point out there is one more good reason to observe the separation of church and state: If God keeps hanging out with politicians, it's gonna hurt his reputation.

I've always hoped that people like Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham (and Reps. Bob Ney, Richard Pombo, Dana Rohrabacher, John Doolittle and William J. Jefferson, a Democrat; and Sens. Bill Frist and Conrad Burns) were really stonewall cynics at heart, secretly sneering at the rubes who buy into their holier-than-thou posturing. But I'm afraid they're not.

I'm afraid one actually has to allow for the denial and self-delusion that make it possible for people to be both self-righteous and sleazy at the same time. We are all capable of fooling ourselves in a grand variety of ways.

Another reason why religion and policy make such a bad mix is that religion brings the dread element of certitude into what needs to be a constant process of questioning. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh quotes a former Defense Department official who served in Bush's first term: "The president is more determined than ever to stay the course. He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'"

Look, certitude is the enemy of clear thinking. "Never be absolutely sure" is a useful motto, and sailing through our current policies in Iraq without a shadow of a doubt is both foolish and dangerous. I would be far more reassured if I thought the president were second-guessing every move we make than I am to find out he hasn't a shadow of a doubt. For one thing, it shuts him off from considering alternatives, and boy do we need some alternatives.

So here we sit, watching a great, stinking skein of corruption being fished to the surface of Washington, while the town is simultaneously filled with a great babble about God, prayer and morality. Corruption trails head off in all directions — lobbyists, wives, jobs, perverting intelligence, outing agents for petty revenge — all this and a prayer breakfast every day.

Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer

The three branches of government:

Left-wing;

Right-wing;

Christianic fundamentalist evanglistic neo-conservative.

Any questions?

ever the inquisitor,
otter

Speaking of Molly Ivins - Dan Savage of The Stranger, Seattle, commends the relatively conservative Seattle Times for even publishing her, even including the S word.

(I have taken the liberty of replacing all vowels in profane words with dollar signs)

The 'Seattle Times' Is All Grown Up

Last month, while Vice President Dick Cheney was working behind the scenes in Washington, D.C., to kill an amendment that would ban the use of torture by U.S. troops, torture fans—Cheney, conservative bloggers, right-wing media outlets (Fox News, the Wall Street Journal)—noted that the folks who land in America's torture chambers aren't nice guys.

But, as liberal icon Molly Ivins pointed out in a column that ran in the November 14 issue of the Seattle Times, we didn't torture members of the SS or the Gestapo during WWII, and they weren't exactly nice. (Plus, there's the small matter of the number of completely innocent noncombatants who have been tortured and killed by U.S. troops.)

But I haven't come to condemn torture—I'll leave that to Ivins and Andrew Sullivan and John McCain and the European Union. No, I've come to praise the editors of the Seattle Times for running Ivins's column on November 14 as written.

"I hear the familiar tinniness of fake machismo I know so well from George W. Bush," Ivins wrote, "and all the other frat boys who never went to Vietnam and never got over the guilt. 'Sometimes you gotta play rough,' said Dick Cheney. No shit, Dick? Now why don't you tell that to John McCain?"

For fans of daily newspapers, the appearance of the word "shit" on the op-ed page of the Seattle Times is a welcome development.

Daily papers are barely keeping their heads above water—in the past six months the Times' circulation dropped seven percent, and the Post-Intelligencer's fell nine percent—and the "family newspaper" anvil dailies insist on holding onto as they tread water isn't helping. sh$t f$ck b$llsh$t $ssh$l$—these are all words that adults use for emphasis when they discuss politics, sex, religion, sports, dinner, spouses, pop culture, Pop-Tarts, and Wal-Marts. Daily papers and daily-paper websites are for adults, and adult language has a place in both. When a publication uses profanity in print, it communicates to its readers that they're not being condescended to, or treated like children who have to be protected from language they use every f$cking day.

The Stranger uses profanity constantly. Are we being juvenile? Not at all. I challenge our critics to find profane words in The Stranger that can't also be found in, say, the New Yorker, or in mainstream films, or on basic cable—or in the f$cking Financial Times, where I recently encountered the word "sh$tburgers," a fresh piece of profanity that I intend to work into my Savage Love column at the earliest opportunity. When we use profanity we are not being glib or attempting to shock. We're being grownups. When the New York Times lists the best-selling book On Bullsh$t as On Bull---- because it's a "family newspaper" it's not just being juvenile, it's also alienating adult readers.

Why do so many daily newspapers refuse to let their writers use words like "sh$t"? Because they're afraid. "Why all the fear?" one friend who works at a large East Coast daily asked rhetorically. "Have you answered phone calls from angry old men all day, telling you how many years they've subscribed (usually longer than my life span), giving you a point-by-point rundown of the decline of civilization? It gets old after the third call, but guess what, 150 calls to go."

But is the timidity justified? James Vesely, the editor of the Seattle Times' editorial page, made the decision to run the Ivins column as written.

"I received a few calls objecting to the word in the Ivins column," said Vesely in an e-mail. "Not a great number of complaints—about a dozen..." But don't expect to see adult language become commonplace in the Seattle Times. "I felt in this case her punctuation of that sentence by using the word made the whole point. I can't promise I would use the word again, or the others you cite."

That's too bad, because daily newspapers need to start winning back adult readers, and adults don't trust papers that are timid and condescending. Allowing writers to use the word "sh$t"—naturally, not gratuitously—in print screams, "This is not a publication that is written and edited under the bizarre, erroneous, suicidal assumption that adults sit around reading daily papers aloud to their children at bedtime." As a fan of daily newspapers, I want to see them survive. So I hope the Seattle Times lets go of the "family newspaper" thing permanently. It's an anvil, not a floatation device.
savage@thestranger.com

A picture that I thought was appropriate for this thread, "All creatures great and small, blessed be."

http://webpages.charter.net/micah/walklan.jpg

Posted by: Otter at December 4, 2005 09:24 PM

We're with you. We have a dream.

Takes a special breed of cat.

Like someone told me last week, "we found each other for a reason".

This is my translation from French - bear in mind it is very much a 2nd language.:

http://info.france2.fr/europe/16244642-fr.php

More than 430 planes snuck by the CIA to Germany?

In the magazine "Der Spiegel" - Berlin possesses a "detailed list" of planes of the US CIA & of 430 "movements" of the Americans' secret service in German airspace and airports recently.

Condi Rice left Washington for a trip to Europe where she will go to Berlin, Kiev and Bucharest and to participate in Brussels at a reunion of NATO.

She says, "listen - we are menaced by terrorism." "We respond: says M. Hadley on Fox News Channel "but we respect American law."

(note: no mention of international law) 

Saturday the British magazine "Mail on Sunday" affirmed that the CIA benefited from "free access" to British military airports to transport terrorist suspects.
 
The Germans had concerns. "Der Spiegel" indicated that "the planes conveyed the presumed terrorists to secret places for torture."

The list of planes has been furnished by the security office for German aerial navigation, who responded to a demand addressed by the liberal parliamentary group.

CIA planes were utilized in German airspace and airports in 2002-2003, respectively 137 and 146 trips, essentially to Frankfort (West) and Berlin, according to the same source.

Germany has the most large concentration of American air bases in Europe.

The US was accused of having utilized the airports or airspaces since 2001 for the passage of CIA planes tranporting persons suspected of terrorism to countries practising torture.

For their part, the British newspaper "The Guardian" has indicated that the more than 300 planes had been utilised by the CIA. In "Mail on Sunday," they published photos by amateurs in the airports of Edinburgh, Prestwick and Glasgow, in 2004 and 2005. 

(translator note: these would probably be hobbyist "tailspotters")

European countries will have representatves attending the European conference with Condi Rice in Berlin. Germany wants an explanation of the CIA planes over Europe.

In Der Spiegel - the government believes in making this affair a debate about the utilization of German airspace by the US for the Iraq war and about the stationing of American troops in Germany.

(note: I have a friend on an Army base in Germany & he reads German fluently. I'll see what he says.)

Bingo. It's morning in Europe and newspapers are out. Condi Rice will not be able to manipulate foreign journalists. Wearing hot-looking knee boots in Berlin will not do the trick this time, girl.

UK 'breaking law' over CIA secret flights

Condoleezza Rice flies into row over 'rendition' of terror suspects

Ian Cobain and Luke Harding in Berlin

The British government is guilty of breaking international law if it allowed secret CIA "rendition" flights of terror suspects to land at UK airports, according to a report by American legal scholars.

Merely giving permission for the flights to refuel while en route to the Middle East to collect a prisoner would constitute a breach of the law, according to the opinion commissioned by an all-party group of MPs, which meets in parliament for the first time today.

The report comes as the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, arrives in Europe for a trip that has been overshadowed by the growing dispute about the CIA's use of rendition - the term used to describe the abduction of suspects who are taken to countries where they can be questioned outside the protection of US law.

Several European governments, as well as the EU, have launched investigations into hundreds of CIA flights which have shuttled through the continent. Fresh revelations in Germany at the weekend show that CIA aircraft have landed in the country on 437 occasions. The Washington Post also reported that dozens of prisoners had been wrongly taken under rendition, with some kidnapped in their home countries and held incommunicado for weeks.

Ms Rice has promised to clarify the issue. Yesterday, however, US officials made it clear she was likely to respond robustly to any questioning from European leaders.

"We do not move people around the world so they can be tortured," Stephen Hadley, the White House's adviser, said yesterday, pledging that the Bush administration would deal with the issue "in a comprehensive way". In briefings officials said she would remind European ministers that their governments had cooperated in anti-terror operations with the US.

The all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, with representatives from the three main parties, was formed after the Guardian reported in September that aircraft operated by the CIA had flown in and out of civilian airports and RAF bases in the UK at least 210 times since September 11 2001.

Last night the Foreign Office said: "We have no evidence to corroborate media allegations about use of UK territory in rendition operations."

A report for the group by New York University's school of law's centre for human rights and global justice, concluded: "A state which aids or assists another state in the commission of an internationally wrongful act by the latter is internationally responsible for doing so."

The authors believe the government could face legal sanctions because of the UK's support. "Accomplice liability has been recognised in international criminal law since at least the Nuremberg trials," they said. Ms Rice, who meets Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, tomorrow, also faces tough questions about reports of secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe.

Yesterday Romania's foreign minister, Razvan Ungureanu, again denied that his country had hosted a covert CIA jail - but left open the possibility that the US had operated one without his government's knowledge. He urged Human Rights Watch to hand over evidence it had of secret CIA prisons in Romania.

Andrew Tyrie, the Tory MP and chairman of the parliamentary group, said: "By apparently assisting the US in the practice of extraordinary rendition, the UK and the west are losing the moral high ground so valuable to foreign policy since the end of the cold war."

I WOULD CONSIDER THIS AN INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT

CIA's secret jails open up new transatlantic rift

· Hundreds of flights landed in Germany over 2 years
· Seizure of innocent people likely to embarrass Rice

Luke Harding in Berlin
The Guardian

The US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's meeting with Germany's new chancellor Angela Merkel tomorrow is likely to be a tricky affair. What should have been a chance to repair the damaging rift between the countries over Iraq is fast being eclipsed by something else - a new transatlantic row between the US and the European Union over the CIA.

During the weekend there were further revelations about the role of the CIA in kidnapping suspects. According to yesterday's Washington Post, the agency carried out a number of "erroneous renditions" - grabbing suspects off the street who later turned out to be innocent.

In total, "about three dozen" people may have been wrongly seized, the paper said. One of them was Khaled Masri - a German national who shared the same name as a top al-Qaida terrorist.

The CIA kidnapped him in Macedonia on Dec 31 2003, and flew him to Afghanistan, where he spent five months in appalling conditions. After realising its mistake, the administration debated whether to inform "the Germans" of the blunder, eventually dispatching the US ambassador to Germany, Daniel Coats, to tell the government, the paper said.

"They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many cases there was only some vague association with terrorism," one CIA officer told the Post. The embarrassing details are likely to increase pressure on Ms Rice to give a forthright account of the CIA's behaviour during her visit to Europe this week.

Yesterday the magazine Der Spiegel also gave further details that suggest that Europe was used as a major transit hub. It revealed that after September 11 2001, the CIA flew to Germany 437 times. Two CIA aircraft landed 132 and 146 times in 2002 and 2003 respectively, the magazine said, citing German government figures.

Ms Rice is not the only person with difficult questions to answer, however. European governments - who have so far been reluctant to confront Washington over the flights - now face awkward inquiries about how much they knew.

"If [EU] member or candidate states actively contributed to, or connived in, illegal transports and torture, or illegal prisons on their territory, that must be investigated and the necessary consequences drawn," Martin Schulz, head of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, said yesterday. He added: 'There's active acceptance, and there's acquiescence. Neither of those are acceptable.'

According to the Post, the CIA operated a network of secret prisons or "black sites" in eight countries at various times, including several in eastern Europe. Since 9/11, the agency, often working with foreign partners, had captured an estimated 3,000 people, including several key al-Qaida leaders. Members of the rendition group would blindfold suspects, cut off their clothes, and administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They would transfer prisoners to one of the CIA's covert sites or to a detention facility in a friendly country - in Afghanistan, Central Asia or the Middle East. Things did not always go to plan, however. Mr Masri was kidnapped while the CIA's station chief in Macedonia was away on holiday. The American Civil Liberties Union is expected to announce tomorrow that it is suing the CIA in connection with his case. Others detained included an innocent college professor who had given an al-Qaida suspect a bad grade. "It was the Camelot of counter-terrorism. We didn't have to mess with others, and it was fun," an official working in the CIA's counter-terrorism centre told the Post.

Ms Merkel, who meets Condoleeza Rice in Berlin tomorrow, has said she wants a fresh start with the Bush administration, describing the row over Iraq as a "past battle". Ms Merkel's government played down expectations of revelations from the US. "We're not rushing things," a spokesman said. But the issue seems unlikely to go away. "If the US doesn't create any clarity ... then they feed suspicion and encourage speculation," said Mr Schulz. "If Ms Rice gives no clarification, we in parliament will further insist that the governments of the EU provide this clarification themselves."

Backstory

The American policy of moving suspects from one country to another without any court hearing or extradition process is thought to have begun in the Reagan era. In those days, joint CIA and FBI teams would bring drug traffickers and terrorism suspects to the United States. They would be read their rights, given lawyers and then put on trial. In the wake of the 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Centre, these detentions, known as "renditions", were largely replaced by the "extraordinary rendition" policy of taking suspects to a third country. CIA officers combating Islamist terrorism decided they should keep some suspects out of the US courts for fear of jeopardising their sources and to protect intelligence officials from other countries who did not wish to be called as witnesses. Michael Scheuer, a former CIA counter-terrorism expert, has explained how he approached Clinton administration officials for permission. "They said, 'Do it'." While it is against US law to take anyone to a country where there are "substantial grounds" for believing they will be tortured, those officials are said to have relied upon a very precise reading of that term, arguing that they could not be sure whether suspects would be tortured or not. At least four suspected Islamists were subsequently abducted in the Balkans in the late 1990s and taken to Egypt. One disappeared, two are reported to have been executed and one later alleged that he was tortured. An Islamist organisation threatened retaliation for these abductions and two days later, the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were blown up, killing 224 people. The Bush administration reviewed and renewed the presidential directive which authorises the rendition programme, and after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the number of abductions rocketed. According to Scott Horton, an international law specialist who helped prepare a report on renditions published by the New York University School of Law and the New York City Bar Association, as many as 150 people have been "rendered" over the past four years. Most of these people have not been charged with any crime.

They are denied lawyers, their families do not know their whereabouts and their detention is concealed from the international committee of the Red Cross.

9/11 Commission Says US at Risk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5457179,00.html

Admininstration is too busy & doesn't see domestic security as urgent - just like BEFORE 9/11.

-- Spiriting people away without charges, some of whom are innocent -- this does not make us safer.

Posted by: Otter at December 4, 2005 07:48 PM

Otter, darling, I hope my interjected jokes did not take away from the seriousness and heartfelt feelings and emotions you were sharing with us.

By the time I got my Polly Sigh post written and posted I missed your theme, and didn't see it until I posted my piece.

I also loved your own version of I have a dream.

Very touching, thank you.

Martin Luther King
BEYOND VIETNAM: A TIME TO BREAK SILENCE
Riverside Church, New York City
4 April 1967

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

http://yonip.com/main/peace/vietnam.html

Rice defends terror policy before trip to Europe
Secretary of state doesn't address whether CIA ran secret prisons abroad

Updated: 7:51 a.m. ET Dec. 5, 2005
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice turned the tables on European critics of tough U.S. tactics in the war on terror Monday, maintaining that intelligence gathered by the CIA has saved European lives.

Responding for the first time in detail to the outcry over reports of secret CIA-run prisons in European democracies, Rice said the United States "will use every lawful weapon to defeat these terrorists."

But in remarks as she prepared to leave on a trip to Europe, she steadfastly refused to answer the underlying question of whether the United States had CIA-operated secret prisons there.

“We cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement, and military operations. We expect other nations share this view,” Rice said in a statement at suburban Andrews Air Force Base, Md.

The secretary said that information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies from a “very small number of extremely dangerous detainees,” has helped prevent terrorist attacks and saved lives “in Europe as well as in the United States and other countries.”

Reports of the existence of the secret prisons, which arose last month, has caused a trans-Atlantic uproar. The European Union has asked the Bush administration about these reports.

Rice: U.S. does not torture
Britain, which holds the revolving presidency of the EU, sent a two-paragraph letter to Washington late last month embodying the request. That came after weeks of increasing concern in Europe over reports that the CIA has detained and interrogated terrorism prisoners in Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe.

She said the United States does not permit or tolerate torture under any circumstances. “The United States does not use the air space or airport of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee when we believe he or she will be tortured,” Rice said. “With respect to detainees, the United States government complies with its laws, its Constitution and its treaty obligations,” she added.

“It is the policy of the United States that this questioning is to be conducted ... without torture,” Rice said.

“The United States has fully respected the sovereignty of other countries that have cooperated in these matters,” the secretary said. “The United States is a country of laws. My colleagues and I have been sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” ...The United States must protect its citizens.”

The reference to sovereignty implies that any European democracies that may have provided secret prisons did so willingly.

“The United States does not transport, and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture,” the secretary stressed.

more doubletalk here ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10323501/

U.S. Command Declares Global Strike Capability

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Strategic Command announced yesterday it had achieved an operational capability for rapidly striking targets around the globe using nuclear or conventional weapons, after last month testing its capacity for nuclear war against a fictional country believed to represent North Korea (see GSN, Oct. 21).

In a press release yesterday, STRATCOM said a new Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike on Nov. 18 “met requirements necessary to declare an initial operational capability.”

The requirements were met, it said, “following a rigorous test of integrated planning and operational execution capabilities during Exercise Global Lightning.”

The annual Global Lightning exercise last month tested U.S. strategic warfare capabilities, including the so-called CONPLAN 8022 mission for a global strike, according to publicly available military documents.

CONPLAN 8022 is “a new strike plan that includes [a] pre-emptive nuclear strike against weapons of mass destruction facilities anywhere in the world,” said Hans Kristensen, a consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Kristensen first published the STRATCOM press release on his Web site, nukestrat.com.

Military analyst William Arkin, in a column on the Washington Post Web site in October, wrote that the classified exercise involved the response to a radiological “dirty bomb” attack on Alabama by the fictional country Purple or allied terrorists. “In the exercise, Purple is a Northeast Asian nation thinly veiled as North Korea,” according to Arkin.

Maj. Jeff Jones, STRATCOM spokesman, said today that the exercise incorporated various scenarios and added, “Everything is fictional that we put in the exercise.”

Global Lightning employed command and control personnel, according to the STRATCOM release.

Global strike attacks could be launched from U.S. long-range bombers, nuclear submarines or land-based ballistic missiles, according to the STRATCOM Web site.

The new command was created Aug. 9 in an attempt to integrate broad elements of U.S. military power into global strike plans and operations.

That, according to an Arkin commentary in the Washington Post in May, could include anything from electronic jamming to penetrating computer networks, to commando operations, to the use of a nuclear earth penetrator. CONPLAN 8022, he wrote, is intended to address two scenarios using such capabilities: preventing a suspected imminent nuclear attack from a small state, and attacking an adversary’s suspected WMD infrastructure.

STRATCOM Commander Gen. James Cartwright said at an opening ceremony that the new command would help the country convey a “new kind of deterrence.”

According to the STRATCOM release, “The command’s performance during Global Lightning demonstrated preparedness to execute its mission of providing integrated space and global strike capabilities to deter and dissuade aggressors and when directed, defeat adversaries through decisive joint global effects in support of STRATCOM missions.”

According to Arkin’s article in May, CONPLAN 8022 was completed in 2003, “putting in place for the first time a pre-emptive and offensive strike capability against Iran and North Korea.”

STRATCOM’s readiness for global strike was certified to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush in January 2004, Arkin reported.

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_12_2.html#FB378486

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

you don't have to be a christianist to know the truth when you hear it,
Otter

Posted by: Otter at December 5, 2005 09:30 AM

I heard that.