The regressive republicans are a bunch of punks!

And Republi-lite Democrats aren't much better!
We need more stand-up Democrats, and a lot fewer wafflers!
Dump the tax breaks!

And it passed by us surrendering and giving in to everything the Republicans wanted--rather than showing the people that the Republicans blocked the increase. Shame.

Finally, on Thursday, the minimum wage bill did pass the Senate, with tax cuts for small businesses.

Seems like a good piece of legislation (though I haven't read the final version). One worth all the frustration. Well done and thank you.

Sure, we needed a minimum wage bill. But if the Democrats don't get those tax breaks DUMPED in Committee, it's hardly a win for the people. You should remember and actually believe that Republicans are not running things anymore. ACT LIKE IT! And please, don't let them get away with a watered down slap on the wrist resolution against this war. Don't give in! The American people want this war OVER!

dors and all- while i haven't read the legislation, it does seem questionable to give money to wage earners on the one hand while essentially taking it away on the other with another tax cut to the monied class- seems like another example of dems caving in to their corporate cronies at the chamber of commerce instead of sticking to some sort of principle that says there have been enough tax cuts in the last six (hell, thirty?) years- it all rolls downhill as we have certainly witnessed in the last six years with the massive tax cuts of the bush administration and the "contract on america" crowd- just another costly tax break attached to the backs of the working folk of this country

"on the thirty-first floor, a gold plated door won't keep out the lord's burning rain"- gram parsons/chris hillman- flying burrito brothers

Posted by queencityjefro on February 2, 2007 at 08:31 PM it does seem questionable to give money to wage earners on the one hand while essentially taking it away on the other with another tax cut to the monied class

That's why I'll look up the bill at some point. To see what the definition of small business is. I know lots of small business owners and they are not "monied". In fact, some of the families don't have health care coverage.

But neither are their businesses adversely affected by the minimum wage increase. Still a tax cut of some order is probably not a bad idea.

If small business really means small business, then this has probably turned out pretty well I think.

dors- i won't argue with your sentiment, the trouble is, as i'm sure you know, the idea of who constitutes a "small business" with the republican party often reads like a who's who of the fortune 500- i understand and support the idea that "small" (with a genuinely small "s") businesses should not suffer as a result of having to pay a handful of workers more money, but really, i'm just not sure that that is what is intended by all the hoopla- i somehow doubt it- there are always loopholes written in to all this legislation, and the democrats are masters at it as my dad is never short on pointing out to me ever since he read that philadelphia enquirer expose on the fleecing of the middle class by the rewriting of the tax codes- a fleecing that both parties excitedly took part in

dors- here is the link to the book- sadly, i have to admit that i didn't make it through the whole thing, and i'm not sure if i gave it back to my dad or if it is in one of the boxes of books (too numerous to count) that sit in my basement (because there is not enough room for them all in the living quarters)-

needless to say, these days i've been wanting to read the damn thing

http://www.amazon.com/America-Wrong-Donald-L-Barlett/dp/0836270010

while i will probably be taken to task and regret for responding to imi, the posts that i have offered here made no distinction between either party's votes- in fact, the book that i mention and link to above makes it quite clear that the selling out of the middle class in this country was brought about by the selling out of both parties to corporate interests who had no interest in protecting the workers of this country and every interest in stacking the deck of the tax code against the bottom 80% (i'm pulling a convervative number out of my hat) in order to line their own pockets and the pockets of their benefactors whose money works to keep them in office- the short of it is that it has nothing to do with party politics- both parties are equally to blame

and now that i have reread my comment from above, i must post again- i did reference the republican party in my comment about what constitutes a "small business"- in truth, i guess what i see happening a lot of the time is much like what i perceive has happened with this bill- a majority of democrats are for the passage of relief for the average wage earner in this country, and a large segment of politicians who perceive themselves to be beholden to corporate/business interests intend to "water" down the bill by attaching additional tax breaks for the very same owners who will pay those wage earners a higher wage- while i am sure that there are dems who would rather have this attached to this bill, i also perceive that the republicans in congress are driving its attachment to what is supposed to be a bill to raise the minimum wage

in the end, if there is a concern for certain truly small businesses who might be affected by this bill, then maybe our congress should debate that concern separately from the fact that people earning the minimum wage are living in poverty

i'm not sure that this article applies to the discussion of raising the minimum wage, but it did come to my mind while wondering why some individuals would even bother taking a minimum wage job- there are more issues than one can shake a stick at- what i do know is that traveling around this city as a case manager for the disabled, i see many more homeless people than i did even a few years ago- last week, there was a fire up under an underpass which i assumed was an encampment fire that had gotten out of control- food for thought

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070201/NEWS01/702010370/-1/all

Huh, looks like the DNC blog police deleted my earlier comment. Let me rephrase it: Gov. Dean was ahead of his time - he will run again - but this year he is the ref. John Edwards seems the least phony of the bunch of folks who are running this time around, because he apologized for the Iraq War vote. We shall see what happens.

Gov. Dean - keep up the good work.

PS - glad to see that the min. wage was increased and its good to help small biz as well.

PARIS, Feb. 2 — In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is “unequivocal” and that human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/science/earth/03climate.html?ref=world

So where's that twit trolly Frostie the Cowpie.

Here's the damning prove that global warming is for real despite what flat-headed trollies say.

I am glad minimum wage passed but shame on the Republicans for forcing even more tax cuts at a time when we can't afford them. Let's revoke Bush's tax cuts for the upper brackets to make up the difference.

Goodness there are so many threads here I don't know which one to post on.

The regressive republicans voted for tax hikes on CEOs. LOL!

The regressives caved on the minimum wage bill almost as fast as they did in the search for Osama Bin Laden.

i see many more homeless people than i did even a few years ago- last week, there was a fire up under an underpass which i assumed was an encampment fire that had gotten out of control- food for thought
****

hey jefro, hard to figure out where to post tonight. There doesn't seem to a Friday open thread.

Yep, the minimum wage is just one problem out of many. The bankruptcy laws should be changed back to what they were. We also need universal health care as most bankruptcies are medical related.

But first, this rotten Iraq debacle and militarism must come to an end. It's time for the american empire to come home and for us to get our house in order.

The regressives caved on the minimum wage bill almost as fast as they did in the search for Osama Bin Laden.
****

We need to keep pressuring them. They know that voters are watching and will take it out on them in 2008 if they keep acting like cavemem.

The next major economic action should be passing the Employee Free Choice act that will make forming unions easier.

It's time for workers to unite again.

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach
by Cenk Uygur
Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 06:27:19 AM PST

Every single day the US puts out another statement about how Iran is helping in attacks against US troops in Iraq. This is nothing but complete lies. The same type of lies we heard before the Iraq War. The Iranians support the Shiites in Iraq. The insurgents laying down the IEDs against our troops and that are doing a great majority of the attacks against us are - Sunnis!

The Iranians would never support the Sunnis. The Shiite militias are mainly killing Sunnis now, not US troops. This is so obvious, but unfortunately these new set of lies are challenged by so few people, just like in the lead up to the Iraq War. People are more skeptical now, but not nearly skeptical enough as the war machine revs up again.
Cenk Uygur's diary :: ::

The LA Times at least has written an excellent piece explaining why these charges against Iran are lies. The Bush administration also warns of Iranian WMD, when every expert in the field says they wouldn't even have the capacity for a nuclear weapon another five to ten years. Gee, where have I heard lies about WMD before?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/2/9236/50789

****

Like the title of that journal. Impeach Chimp and Shotgun Dick.

Republicans Poised to Hang Themselves on Iraq
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-02-02 16:33. Congress

Leadership putting loyalty to Bush before loyalty to the voters
Will Sen. John Warner be the next ‘Macaca’ from Virginia?
By Kevin Zeese

The Republican leadership seems poised to take their party over the cliff. Sen. John Warner has successfully manipulated the Senate so that it will not make a strong statement against the escalation of troops in Iraq and will re-affirm its unwillingness to use the power of the purse to stop the president. And, Republican leader Mitch McConnell, is threatening to filibuster the appropriations supplemental if the Democrats restricts the president too much or redirect the funds toward withdrawal. In the House GOP members are being pressured by the leadership to back the war. The voters spoke on November 7, 2006 and polls since have shown opposition to the war has increased and solidified, with landslide opposition to sending more troops to Iraq. Putting Bush’s failed and illegal war before the wishes of the American public risks the future of the Republican Party.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18072

Great Puggies! Keep it up and the Puggies will be a minority party for the next twenty five years.

Video: End the Occupation Now
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-02-02 14:27. Video and Audio

On January 27, 2007, 500,000 marched against war and occupation in Washington, DC. After this mass demonstration against the war, Kelly Dougherty, co-founder and Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against War, and Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: the Logic of Withdrawal spoke at the Bus Boys and Poets cafe. Their talks followed an incredible performance of songs by activist/hip hop artist Son of Nun.

See videos of these talks (each about 20 minutes) and a scintillating performance of his "Speak on It" by Son of Nun at http://www.traprockpeace.org/arnove_dougherty_012707.html

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18068

It was at least 500,000 despite what the lying MSM says.

Here's the open thread, rjsnj.

USA must develop biotechnological and nano-technical changed, changed bacteria, orbacteria micro robert he combinations, which clean environment, air and waterto clean, clean, those from greenhouse gases, carbon oxides, sulfur oxides,Metan oxides, chemicals and pollutants, which of the industry and traffic areproduced as wastes, wastes! Biotechnological and nano-technical changedbacteria, or bacteria micro robert he combinations, those simply eat, in-collectgreenhouse gases, carbon oxides, sulfur oxides, Metan oxides, to use chemicalsand pollutants from the environment and then these materials in the industryagain as raw materials! These biotechnological and nano-technical changedbacteria, or bacteria micro robert he combinations controlled in its increase,spreading and behavior! If nano-particle installed into these bacteria, thenbacteria micro robert he combinations produces to become controlled remotecontrolled to be able, be able! USA must develop biotechnological andnano-technical changed, changed viruses these bacteria, or bacteria microRobert he combinations destroy, if this too strong should to increase andprevent so uncontrolled increase! The technology would be, would be away-cutenvironmental protection technology of the world, would have, would haveinconceivably large, large application possibility, application possibility inenvironmental protection, environmental re-establishment, the military,military land defense, and the economic trade!
Text in German, Deutsch into English!
USA muss entwickeln Biotechnische und Nanotechnischeveraenderte, veränderte Bakterien, oder Bakterien-Mikro-Roberter-Kombinationen,die Umwelt, Luft und Wasser reinigen, saeubern, säubern, die von TreibhausGase, Kohlenstoffoxide, Schwefeloxide, Metan-oxide, Chemikalien undSchadstoffe, die von der Industrie und Verkehrswesen als Abfaelle, Abfälleproduziert werden !
Biotechnische und Nanotechnische veränderte Bakterien, oderBakterien-Mikro-Roberter-Kombinationen, die einfach Auffressen, einsammeln TreibhausGase, Kohlenstoffoxide, Schwefeloxide, Metan-oxide, Chemikalien und Schadstoffeaus der Umwelt und dann diese Stoffe in der Industrie wieder zu verwenden alsRohstoffe !
Diese Biotechnische und Nanotechnische veränderte Bakterien,oder Bakterien-Mikro-Roberter-Kombinationen muesssen, müsssen kontrolliert inihrer Vermehrung, Verbreitung und Verhalten !
Installierte Nano-Teilchen in diese Bakterien, dann werdenBakterien-Mikro-Roberter-Kombinationen erzeugt die kontrolliert ferngesteuertwerden koennen, können !
USA muss entwickeln Biotechnische und Nanotechnischeveraenderte, veränderte Viren diese Bakterien, oderBakterien-Mikro-Roberter-Kombinationen vernichten, wenn diese sich zu starkevermehren sollten und so unkontrolliert Vermehrung zu verhindern !
Die Technologie waere, wäre die fortschnittstUmweltschutztechnologie der Welt, haette, hätte unvorstellbar grosse, großeAnwendungsmoeglichkeit, Anwendungsmöglichkeit im Umweltschutz,Umweltwiederherstellung, der Militaerischen, Militärischen Landverteidigung,und den Wirtschaftlichen Handel !

The Dems are moving on exactly on Target.Minimum Wage Done.The next is immigration for the people,and by the people.

Minimum wage is done? Not hardly likely! The fat lady ain't sung, yet.
The Republi-lites in the Senate just sold us out by cutting taxes for those who can afford it, and the details of the differences need to be hashed out between the Senate and the House. We need to keep telling these Republi-lite cretins that they need to wake up and smell the coffee. This tax the poor and middle class policy is NOT sustainable.
The NEXT issue to be addressed should be the unfair "free" trade agreements that have shipped our jobs overseas, and destroyed the economies of our neighbors to the south so that we are flooded with economic refugees.
The first item on that agenda should be NO MORE "Fast Track". Then we need to re-negotiate NAFTA, CAFTA, and the other "free" trade agreements to provide better protection for workers, and for the environment.
There are too many people out there who want to punish the economic refugees from Mexico and Central America for being the victims of the greedy robber barons of industry who are based in this country.
The responsible way is to correct the problems we caused them first.

“I’m concerned about protectionism, isolationism.”

Those were the first words President Bush spoke as he sat down Wednesday at an editorial board meeting at the Wall Street Journal.

Reading his remarks calls forth only sadness. For neither the president nor his acolytes at the Journal appear to have learned anything from the disasters their ideas have visited upon the country.

Can Bush not see that the isolation of America is a result of the war he launched on a nation that, no matter how odious its regime, did not threaten us? Can he not see clearly now the idiocy of the Journal’s 10-year crusade for a “MacArthur Regency” in Baghdad? Has this president learned nothing? And, if not, what does that portend for Iran?

As for protectionism, does Bush not see the link between the rise of economic nationalism in America, the rout of his party in November and the humongous trade deficits he has been running up?

When the trade figures for 2006 come in, it will be revealed that the United States ran the greatest trade deficit in history, close to $800 billion, near 7 percent of GDP. And the greatest trade deficit with any one country will be recorded – a trade deficit with China of nearly $230 billion.

Because China fixes its currency 40 percent below where it would float in a free market, Beijing is siphoning factories, technologies and jobs out of our country at a prodigious rate. For two decades, China’s annual growth has been consistent at 9-10 percent. Beijing has accumulated $1 trillion in hard currency reserves, most of it in dollar-denominated instruments.

A good slice of that trade surplus, and of the billions Beijing collects in annual interest on that share of our national debt it holds, is used to finance the greatest military buildup in Asia since Japan in the 1930s. Our “strategic partner” just sent us a message in the clear. Using a land-based ballistic missile, Beijing blasted a satellite out of the sky, 500 miles above the earth.

Does President Bush not understand the correlation between his trade policy, our sinking dollar and the loss of 3 million manufacturing jobs on his watch? Economic patriotism is on the march because economic globalism is failing America.

We are being skinned alive by our trading partners. While we have eliminated tariffs, they impose value-added taxes of up to 20 percent on U.S. goods entering the country and rebate the VAT on goods they export to the United States. This system operates like a 40 percent tariff on U.S. goods. That is why we are running record trade deficits with Canada, the European Union, Japan and Free Asia.

Bush has now begun his campaign for renewal of “fast track” authority, which expires in July. Under fast track, Congress agrees to give up its constitutional right to amend trade treaties.

But to give Bush a blank check to negotiate trade treaties after his record trade deficits makes as much sense as giving him a blank check to launch another war. Some adult has got to grab the steering wheel here.

WE MUST MAKE BUSH AND HIS GOP RIGHT WING PARTY ANSWER IN FOR WHAY HAVE DONE TO THE PEOPLE'S OF THE U.S.A IN THE FINAL TWO YEARS OF BUSH PRESIDENCY AND THE REPUBLICANS MUST BE STOP AND STOP THE WAR

God Bless the Congress. It appears The Democrats really are working and fighting. Tight! So hopefully we can get a little break for the next two years, but then, we just have to do ALL we can to get our Democratic Candidate elected. We, of course, have to act now, but at least we know that our "background" is safe, for it's trully ours. The nation really does put its trust in the Democratic party and It supports it like never before. I can see it all around, in my home state, at my college, at work, at home, like everywhere. According to polls around seventy percent of Americans support the Party and its efforts. Fantastic! I guess it's just us, it's WE THE PEOPLE that are different now. It's like waking up after sleeping and being blind for six years in a row. Now we think and act. I'm only 22 but i'm full of renewed hope and optimism for our future, cause i know that if the American People are not going to give up, things are gonna get better. They are. We just have to keep up the great work and increase our efforts in winning all over. So it's up to us. If we really do all we can, i can't imagine wht it's gonna be like in like five years from now or ten years from now. Keep it up!

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose
our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
--Abraham Lincoln

God Bless the Congress. It appears The Democrats really are working and fighting. Tight! So hopefully we can get a little break for the next two years, but then, we just have to do ALL we can to get our Democratic Candidate elected. We, of course, have to act now, but at least we know that our "background" is safe, for it's trully ours. The nation really does put its trust in the Democratic party and It supports it like never before. I can see it all around, in my home state, at my college, at work, at home, like everywhere. According to polls around seventy percent of Americans support the Party and its efforts. Fantastic! I guess it's just us, it's WE THE PEOPLE that are different now. It's like waking up after sleeping and being blind for six years in a row. Now we think and act. I'm only 22 but i'm full of renewed hope and optimism for our future, cause i know that if the American People are not going to give up, things are gonna get better. They are. We just have to keep up the great work and increase our efforts in winning all over. So it's up to us. If we really do all we can, i can't imagine what it's gonna be like in like five years from now or ten years from now. Keep it up!

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose
our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
--Abraham Lincoln

NOW THE REPUBLICANS THAT WILL BE FACING RE-ELECTION IN 2008 WE MUST VOTE HIM OUT OF THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE THEY MUST GO NOW ,FOR THE GOOD OF THE PEOPLE'S WE NEED A GOVERNMENT THAT IS FOR THE PEOPLE'S AND BY THE PEOPLE'S WE NEED ALL CHURCH LEADERS TO STAND UP FOR THE POOR PEOPLE'S ALL OVER THE U.S.A WE HAVE POOR POWER SO WE MUST US IT SO STAND UP PEOPLE'S

YES MY PEOPLE'S KEEP STANDING UP FOR WHAT YOU NO IS RIGHT FOR THE PEOPLE'S WE NEED THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE TO BE ALL DEMOCRATS TO PUT AN END TO WAR AND POVERTY THAT THE POOR PEOPLE'S LIVE IN, SO WE MUST STAND FOR OUR KIDS LIFEAND ON ON SO STAND UP NOW AND ALL WAYS FOR THE GOOD OF THE PEOPLE'S

THE POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN INC AS THE PPC WE MUST STAND UP AND KEEP STANDING ALL WAYS FOR ALL PEOPLE'S ALL OVER FOR WE HAVE POOR POWER SO US IT NOW AND ALL WAYS TO PUT AN END TO THE WAR AND POVERTY THAT THE POOR LIVE IN SO STAND UP PEOPLE'S

TOGETHER STANDING AS ONE WE CAN MAKE A NEW DAYS SO DON'T STOP THE FEELING KEEP IT A LIVE POOR POWER WE HAVE TOGETHER SO KEEP STANDING UP MY PEOPLE'S

END BUSH AND HIS GOP WAR STOP THE KILLING OF OUR PEOPLE'S NOW YOU --- ----- NOW WE MUST KEEP STANDING TO THIS HATE FOR THAT IS WHAT WAR IS AND TO MAKE MONEY AND OIL THAT IS WHAT BUSH IS LOOKING FOR POWER OVER OIL SO THIS IS HIS WAR HE LOVE THAT OIL OVER THERE NOT OUR PEOPLE'S YES NOT AT ALL. MY PEOPLE'S SEND THE POOR PEOPLE'S TO DIE IN HIS WAR.FOR HIM SO HE CAN HAVE THE OIL AND THE MONEY WHEN HE COME OUT OF THE HOUSE YES MY PEOPLE'S HE IS NO GOOD FOR THE U.S.A AT ALL PEOPLE'S

You got it, kingrobinson1:
Poor people in this country have to stand up and keep in the politicians' faces.
We gotta keep reminding them that 2008 is not just presidential elections, but the House and 1/3 of the Senate, and if they don't start supporting the growing number of poor people in this country, they're gonna be out on the streets.
We need to keep sending them messages, and start looking for the people we do want to represent us.
We also need to keep on these politicians cases about campaign and election reform.
We've had enough of stolen elections and bought off politicians!
It's time to fix this country, and get it back on the right road!
This ugly little cancer that they tacked on the minimum wage bill proves there's a lot more work to be done!

“I’m concerned about protectionism, isolationism.”

Those were the first words President Bush spoke as he sat down Wednesday at an editorial board meeting at the Wall Street Journal.

Reading his remarks calls forth only sadness. For neither the president nor his acolytes at the Journal appear to have learned anything from the disasters their ideas have visited upon the country.

Can Bush not see that the isolation of America is a result of the war he launched on a nation that, no matter how odious its regime, did not threaten us? Can he not see clearly now the idiocy of the Journal’s 10-year crusade for a “MacArthur Regency” in Baghdad? Has this president learned nothing? And, if not, what does that portend for Iran?

As for protectionism, does Bush not see the link between the rise of economic nationalism in America, the rout of his party in November and the humongous trade deficits he has been running up?

When the trade figures for 2006 come in, it will be revealed that the United States ran the greatest trade deficit in history, close to $800 billion, near 7 percent of GDP. And the greatest trade deficit with any one country will be recorded – a trade deficit with China of nearly $230 billion.

Because China fixes its currency 40 percent below where it would float in a free market, Beijing is siphoning factories, technologies and jobs out of our country at a prodigious rate. For two decades, China’s annual growth has been consistent at 9-10 percent. Beijing has accumulated $1 trillion in hard currency reserves, most of it in dollar-denominated instruments.

A good slice of that trade surplus, and of the billions Beijing collects in annual interest on that share of our national debt it holds, is used to finance the greatest military buildup in Asia since Japan in the 1930s. Our “strategic partner” just sent us a message in the clear. Using a land-based ballistic missile, Beijing blasted a satellite out of the sky, 500 miles above the earth.

Does President Bush not understand the correlation between his trade policy, our sinking dollar and the loss of 3 million manufacturing jobs on his watch? Economic patriotism is on the march because economic globalism is failing America.

We are being skinned alive by our trading partners. While we have eliminated tariffs, they impose value-added taxes of up to 20 percent on U.S. goods entering the country and rebate the VAT on goods they export to the United States. This system operates like a 40 percent tariff on U.S. goods. That is why we are running record trade deficits with Canada, the European Union, Japan and Free Asia.

Bush has now begun his campaign for renewal of “fast track” authority, which expires in July. Under fast track, Congress agrees to give up its constitutional right to amend trade treaties.

But to give Bush a blank check to negotiate trade treaties after his record trade deficits makes as much sense as giving him a blank check to launch another war. Some adult has got to grab the steering wheel here.

'Perfect Storm' Is Rising To Oust Dick Cheney
by Michele Steinberg

With the combination of the most somber and serious Congressional hearings since Watergate, and the opening of the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor, I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice, there is a ''window of opportunity'' for impeachment of the Vice President--and Cheney is jumping right through it.

On Jan. 24, one day after Cheney was exposed by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, as directing the campaign to discredit a credible, eyewitness critic, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, by exposing the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, who worked as a covert agent of the CIA, Cheney went on national television to announce that the White House will ignore any resolution from Congress that criticizes the escalation of force in Iraq.

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, when asked about the Senate resolution against the ''surge,'' which had just been passed by the Foreign Relations Committee, Cheney boasted, ''That won't stop us ... we are moving forward ... the President has made his decision.''

In short, Cheney's own foul mouth, in bragging that the White House will ignore the Senate resolution against Bush's surge, just hours after the Senate committee passed the bipartisan Biden-Hagel-Levin measure, creates the ''perfect storm'' that could finally sweep Cheney out of the White House.

The exposure of Cheney's role in the Scooter Libby case, and his outrageous dismissal of the constitutional role of the Congress, affords the Bush family--which enlisted Cheney to craft George W. Bush's Presidential run in 2000--an opportunity now to take action to get him out.
This is not a matter of partisan, or revenge politics, but a matter of the national interest. Around the world, as a second carrier group move towards the Persian Gulf, and White House threats against Iran are repeated on a daily basis, it is recognized that the only certain path to stopping the planned attack on Iran is the impeachment of Dick Cheney, who today, just as in the case of the Iraq War, is running the ''team'' and the policy for ''regime change'' in Iran.

Now Is the Time
Pundits--especially those favorable to Cheney's chickenhawk policies--have said that impeachment is unlikely because the Vice President is a ''constitutionally elected official'' who can only be removed under charges of criminality, or by voluntarily resigning. But, with the opening statement by Special Counsel Fitzgerald in the Libby trial, on Jan. 23, in which he alleged that Cheney issued a hand-written memo to Libby on discrediting Wilson, the situation changed. Not only did Fitzgerald disclose the existence of the memo, but he charged that Libby had ''wiped out'' that incriminating piece of evidence.
However, reportedly through the combination of computer memory recovery methods, and the testimony of witnesses who also knew about Cheney's memo, Fitzgerald was able to introduce the matter in his opening remarks.
Now, to all those who say ''impeachment is off the table,'' one must ask--what would the trial of Richard Nixon's aides Haldeman, Ehrlichman, et al., have looked like, if a hand-written note from Nixon, directing them to break into the offices of Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel, had been disclosed?
Washington insiders report that the Bush family may be the critical factor in getting rid of Cheney, a scenario which is being mooted in the media.
On Jan. 25, Keith Olbermann, the host of the popular ''Countdown'' show on MSNBC, did a five-minute spot called, ''Should Cheney Go?'' He pointed to longtime Bush family operative, James Baker III, as the person who tried--and failed--to save G.W. Bush from the Cheney disaster.
Olbermann opened his show saying, ''Piece by piece testimony at the Scooter Libby trial is dismantling the already tattered reputation of the nation's Vice President, portraying him as consumed with retaliating against a serious credible critic of his attempts to sell the war....''
Later in the program, Olbermann said, ''Another friend of this show, Craig Crawford, reported today that Jim Baker not only led the Iraq Study Group, he was also leading a kind of a private attempt to wrench the President away from Mr. Cheney's influence and ideology, and ultimately failed in that, judging from what the President is trying to do in Iraq now, in light of the Baker Commission....''
The phrase being increasingly heard in the halls of Congress and around Washington is, ''the time is now.'' It is being used in the appeals from Republicans to the Bush family to save the Party and the Bush legacy--by getting Cheney out. And, it has been heard in open Congressional hearings, such as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote of Jan. 24 on the Biden-Hagel-Levin resolution that condemned Bush's ''surge'' in Iraq. Senators said ''now is the time'' that Congress must take decisive action, such as capping the number of troops in Iraq, or cutting off the funds for the war, using the ''power of the purse.''

Impeach Cheney Now
According to a well-informed Washington intelligence source, the major question after day one of the Libby trial was, ''Why was the Vice President not indicted along with Libby?'' Fitzgerald apparently did not want to influence the outcome of the 2006 election by issuing an indictment before the vote--but, there is no obstacle now. And, a massive outpouring from the voters could actually bring it about.
In three days of trial, evidence has been introduced that it was Cheney who was obsessed with discrediting Wilson, and it was Cheney who personally directed the anti-Wilson campaign, which included the ''outing'' of Plame (who was, ironically, trying to track down weapons of mass destruction in Iran!).
Even Voice of America, a news service wholly owned by the U.S. government, pointed to Cheney. On Jan. 26, an unusual article, signed only as ''By VOA News,'' said the following:
''A former spokeswoman to Vice President Dick Cheney says she informed Cheney and his former chief-of-staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, about the identity of a CIA operative married to a Bush administration critic.
''[Cathie] Martin testified that she informed Cheney and Libby of Plame's identity after learning it from a CIA official. She also said Cheney personally directed efforts to discredit Wilson's allegations.''
Coming on the heels of Fitzgerald's disclosure of the Cheney memo, written during a trip to Norfolk, Virginia, which included Cathie Martin, Cheney, and Libby, there is growing pressure to prosecute Cheney.

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'Perfect Storm' Is Rising To Oust Dick Cheneyby Michele Steinberg

With the combination of the most somber and serious Congressional hearings since Watergate, and the opening of the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor, I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice, there is a ''window of opportunity'' for impeachment of the Vice President--and Cheney is jumping right through it.
On Jan. 24, one day after Cheney was exposed by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, as directing the campaign to discredit a credible, eyewitness critic, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, by exposing the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, who worked as a covert agent of the CIA, Cheney went on national television to announce that the White House will ignore any resolution from Congress that criticizes the escalation of force in Iraq.
In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, when asked about the Senate resolution against the ''surge,'' which had just been passed by the Foreign Relations Committee, Cheney boasted, ''That won't stop us ... we are moving forward ... the President has made his decision.''
In short, Cheney's own foul mouth, in bragging that the White House will ignore the Senate resolution against Bush's surge, just hours after the Senate committee passed the bipartisan Biden-Hagel-Levin measure, creates the ''perfect storm'' that could finally sweep Cheney out of the White House.
The exposure of Cheney's role in the Scooter Libby case, and his outrageous dismissal of the constitutional role of the Congress, affords the Bush family--which enlisted Cheney to craft George W. Bush's Presidential run in 2000--an opportunity now to take action to get him out.
This is not a matter of partisan, or revenge politics, but a matter of the national interest. Around the world, as a second carrier group move towards the Persian Gulf, and White House threats against Iran are repeated on a daily basis, it is recognized that the only certain path to stopping the planned attack on Iran is the impeachment of Dick Cheney, who today, just as in the case of the Iraq War, is running the ''team'' and the policy for ''regime change'' in Iran.

Now Is the Time
Pundits--especially those favorable to Cheney's chickenhawk policies--have said that impeachment is unlikely because the Vice President is a ''constitutionally elected official'' who can only be removed under charges of criminality, or by voluntarily resigning. But, with the opening statement by Special Counsel Fitzgerald in the Libby trial, on Jan. 23, in which he alleged that Cheney issued a hand-written memo to Libby on discrediting Wilson, the situation changed. Not only did Fitzgerald disclose the existence of the memo, but he charged that Libby had ''wiped out'' that incriminating piece of evidence.
However, reportedly through the combination of computer memory recovery methods, and the testimony of witnesses who also knew about Cheney's memo, Fitzgerald was able to introduce the matter in his opening remarks.
Now, to all those who say ''impeachment is off the table,'' one must ask--what would the trial of Richard Nixon's aides Haldeman, Ehrlichman, et al., have looked like, if a hand-written note from Nixon, directing them to break into the offices of Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel, had been disclosed?
Washington insiders report that the Bush family may be the critical factor in getting rid of Cheney, a scenario which is being mooted in the media.
On Jan. 25, Keith Olbermann, the host of the popular ''Countdown'' show on MSNBC, did a five-minute spot called, ''Should Cheney Go?'' He pointed to longtime Bush family operative, James Baker III, as the person who tried--and failed--to save G.W. Bush from the Cheney disaster.
Olbermann opened his show saying, ''Piece by piece testimony at the Scooter Libby trial is dismantling the already tattered reputation of the nation's Vice President, portraying him as consumed with retaliating against a serious credible critic of his attempts to sell the war....''
Later in the program, Olbermann said, ''Another friend of this show, Craig Crawford, reported today that Jim Baker not only led the Iraq Study Group, he was also leading a kind of a private attempt to wrench the President away from Mr. Cheney's influence and ideology, and ultimately failed in that, judging from what the President is trying to do in Iraq now, in light of the Baker Commission....''
The phrase being increasingly heard in the halls of Congress and around Washington is, ''the time is now.'' It is being used in the appeals from Republicans to the Bush family to save the Party and the Bush legacy--by getting Cheney out. And, it has been heard in open Congressional hearings, such as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote of Jan. 24 on the Biden-Hagel-Levin resolution that condemned Bush's ''surge'' in Iraq. Senators said ''now is the time'' that Congress must take decisive action, such as capping the number of troops in Iraq, or cutting off the funds for the war, using the ''power of the purse.''

Impeach Cheney Now
According to a well-informed Washington intelligence source, the major question after day one of the Libby trial was, ''Why was the Vice President not indicted along with Libby?'' Fitzgerald apparently did not want to influence the outcome of the 2006 election by issuing an indictment before the vote--but, there is no obstacle now. And, a massive outpouring from the voters could actually bring it about.
In three days of trial, evidence has been introduced that it was Cheney who was obsessed with discrediting Wilson, and it was Cheney who personally directed the anti-Wilson campaign, which included the ''outing'' of Plame (who was, ironically, trying to track down weapons of mass destruction in Iran!).
Even Voice of America, a news service wholly owned by the U.S. government, pointed to Cheney. On Jan. 26, an unusual article, signed only as ''By VOA News,'' said the following:
''A former spokeswoman to Vice President Dick Cheney says she informed Cheney and his former chief-of-staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, about the identity of a CIA operative married to a Bush administration critic.
''[Cathie] Martin testified that she informed Cheney and Libby of Plame's identity after learning it from a CIA official. She also said Cheney personally directed efforts to discredit Wilson's allegations.''
Coming on the heels of Fitzgerald's disclosure of the Cheney memo, written during a trip to Norfolk, Virginia, which included Cathie Martin, Cheney, and Libby, there is growing pressure to prosecute Cheney.

Congress Takes Action
Parallel to the political explosion in the Libby trial, is a drive by members of the U.S. Congress to stop Bush's stubborn madness in the Persian Gulf--both his escalation of troop deployments in Iraq, and his refusal to diplomatically engage Iran and Syria to find a way to end the Iraq conflict.
On Jan. 24, the vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in favor of the Concurrent Resolution against the surge, was evidence of what Lyndon LaRouche has dubbed the ''New Politics,'' following the Nov. 7, 2006 election.
By a 12-9 vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the Biden-Hagel-Levin resolution, which states, ''it is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq.'' Quite revealing was the fact that of the ten Republicans on the committee, only one, Sen. David Vitter (La.), explicitly supported the Bush surge as stated.
But more compelling than the dry words of a consensus resolution, was the three-hour debate, which every member of the 21-person committee attended. In that debate, the central issue was the adoption of the Baker-Hamilton/Iraq Study Group report, as the policy of the nation.
Of great import is a second bipartisan Senate concurrent resolution against the surge (see Documentation), introduced by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a former Secretary of the Navy, and one of the most senior Republicans in the Congress. The Warner resolution is co-sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Me.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.).
On Jan. 22, in announcing the resolution, Warner said that he would not act on a vote until after the Biden-Hagel-Levin resolution comes to the Senate floor--which is expected during the week of Jan. 29. Foreign Relations Committee chairman Joe Biden (D-Del.) said that, in some respects, the Warner resolution is tougher than theirs, and he would be open to working out a common resolution with Warner. However, it appears, for now, that Warner will keep the two separate.
But these two bills are just the tip of the iceberg. There are already four additional resolutions that have been introduced to block a war on Iran:
* House Concurrent Resolution 43, introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), with ten co-sponsors, calls for implementation of the Baker-Hamilton Commission's recommendation on diplomacy with Iran and Syria;
* Senate Resolution 39, introduced by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), addresses the need for Congressional approval before the White House can take offensive military action against any other nation;
* House Concurrent Resolution 33, introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), with 30 co-sponsors, says the President should not take military action against Iran without Congressional authorization;
* House Joint Resolution 13, introduced by Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), with 18 co-sponsors, attempts to block offensive miltiary action against Iran.
However, there are serious concerns that these actions do not go far enough, and are not fast enough. Many observers believe that only immediate steps to remove the Vice President by impeachment could protect the nation from the disaster of a war with Iran.
With that mood in the country, it is not surprising that, on Jan. 25, Congressional actions escalated:
* The Senate Judicary committee has scheduled a hearing on Jan. 30, entitled ''Congress's Power To End a War.'' Its chairman, Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), said, ''Congress holds the power of the purse, and if the President continues to advance his failed Iraq policy, we have the responsibility to use that power to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq. This hearing will help inform my colleagues and the public about Congress's power to end a war and how that power has been used in the past.'' Among the scheduled witnesses is Prof. Walter Dellinger of Duke University School of Law, a former U.S. Solicitor General, and an expert on impeachment.
* House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) announced that his committee will hold hearings, beginning Jan. 31, on President Bush's rampant abuse of ''signing statements'' and Bush's claim that these documents give him the power to ignore laws duly passed by the Congress.
Commentators immediately noted that, with these hearings, impeachment is now ''back on the table.''
Then, on Jan. 26, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, charged that Dick Cheney had obstructed and delayed the Senate investigation of ''Phase II'' of the committee's investigation of the misuse of Iraq War intelligence. Observers say this charge, if proved, reaches the threshold of ''high crimes and misdemeanors,'' the Constitutional requirement for impeachment.

A Fiery Debate
When Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, presented a mealy-mouthed opposition to the Biden-Hagel-Levin resolution, saying that it will ''deepen the divide'' between the Legislature and the Executive on Iraq, his strongest opponent was fellow-Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Hagel, a Vietnam War hero, pummelled the idea that any Senator can continue to remain silent on Iraq. The nation has passed the point of a divide, Hagel said, and the question is, should Congress ever get involved? He cited Senator Warner's assertion that, ''We're a co-equal branch ... [based on] Article I of the Constitution.''
Hagel continued, even more impassioned, demanding that all 100 Senators step up to the plate on this tough decision, challenging them: ''You want a safe job? Go sell shoes.''
He charged that the impugning of the motives of the resolution sponsors, and questioning their patriotism is ''offensive and disgusting,'' and that the American people are far ahead of the Congress in recognizing that the administration has failed in Iraq. He warned Congress not to send any more American soldiers into ''that grinder.''
Hagel said he wants ''every Senator to look into the camera'' and tell the people back home what they think. ''Don't hide any more!'' The President's plan would make the world far more dangerous, and more dangerous for America, Hagel charged. ''Read the Baker-Hamilton report,'' he added, a comment which became standard for almost every supporter of the resolution--and even some of the opponents.
From Vietnam veterans John Kerry (D-Mass.), James Webb (D-Va.), and Hagel, to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who silenced the opposition when she revealed that her state has the highest number of deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, the debate was a proud hour for American citizens.
Senator Feingold wants the Congress to cut funding after a certain point, and Kerry captured the sentiments of all in declaring, ''This is our moment, and our time.''

Cronyism is criminal, as is lying to the American people to start a war. Cheney is in on all of it!
We still don't know the REAL reason the War of Lies got started, but judging from the effects, there was money to be made on the war, and the entire Bushiato was in on it.
We need to keep digging on the Abramoff and Plaume scandals. We also need to inquire deeper into the manipulation of intelligence data, to con the American people into supporting this adventuring into disaster.
Being a conspirator in war crimes is a criminal offense. Dubya doesn't have the drive or intelligence to come up with all this on his own. He's a front man with delusions of adequacy.
INVESTIGATE! IMPEACH!! INDICT!!!

This may come as a shock, but I don't have nearly the resentment about the small business tax cuts as many here seem to have. There are two reasons for this:
"Spiting" the Republicans by spiting the Wal-Mart slaves is not how I see the ideals of the Democratic Party.
The petit-bourgeoisie, while largely Republican by virtue of their brainwashing, are more likely to be potential allies of the proletariat than the grand bourgeoisie, for whom the grand often refers to the magnitude of their larceny.

let's get out there and win this race in 08

Last time I looked Wal-Mart is NOT a small business.
Most small businesses will not be hurt by mnimum wage increase, because they will have more people coming in to buy more things.
I'd much rather buy from Joe down the street than ship my dollars, which are needed in Montana, to Arkansas, where they will be put in a large vault for the Walton family to swim around in ala Scrooge McDuck.
The Waltons will only find new ways to torture their "associates" like the new computer scheduling which leaves no slack for parents to deal with child-raising issues.
That sound you hear is Sam Walton spinning in his grave.

Let's not forget to make certain that we do not vote in one of Al From's Republican Lobbying DLCers, and there's a bunch of them.

None of the Presidential Candidates saw the need to tell WE THE PEOPLE that they had pulled out of the DLC, which is an absolute necessity for a GRASSROOTS VOTE.

When it comes time to vote, if my Grassroots choices are a DLC Candidate and a liberal to moderate Republican, I will vote Republican, because the DLC is against the Grassroots, and there may be a small chance of the Grassroots getting a fair shake economically with a liberal or moderate Republican, but no chance at all with the DLC, Democratic Leadership Council EXTREME Right Wing of the Democratic Party. For example, if the choices of the vote for President were between EXTREME Conservative DLC Hillary Clinton or any DLCer and Moderate Republican Chuck Hagle, then I would vote hands down for Chuck Hagel. If the vote is between DLC Hillary and John McCain, I may not vote at all, although I probably would vote for John McCain, since the grassroots would have a better chance with John McCain than Lobbying Al From's superficial Conservative EXTREME DLC Hillary or whatever DLCer that will follow the EXTREME DLC platform.

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1463

I would really hate to vote against the Democratic Party, but if the DLC is the Democratic Party Platform, then the Grassroots has no choice, because the DLC does not represent the class and culture of the Grassroots Base of the Democratic Party. The Liberal Republican would be better than the EXTREME DLC.

The only other choice would be a protest vote by writing in Governor Howard Dean, which is what I more than likely would do if faced with the above situation.

WE THE PEOPLE, the Grassroots MAJORITY, must not allow DLC Conservative Right EXTREME faux Democratic Party representation of the Grassroots LEFT to be elected in any office of United States Government, Federal or State.

WE MUST KEEP STANDING UP WITH THE DEMOCRATS PARTY NO MORE REPUBLICANS,SO KEEP STANDING UP MY PEOPLE'S

The Democrat Loosership Committee needs to be fired, like yesterday, for sure.
Voting Republican is not the way to change the DLC's Republi-lite minds.
Republicans are so lock-step with their lies, corruption and kissing up to K-street, that I don't think there are any moderate Republicans left.
It would be far better to be sure to get as many people as possible to vote the primaries, and keep supporting the candidates who really represent the people, any way you can. Money, signs & stickers, working for their campaign, whatever, we have to get behind the populists 100%!
In the mean time, support the populist candidates, even if you, your friends, family, and your cousin's yellow dog have to write them in.
Don't forget that the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate is also up for election in 2008. We need to keep the pressure on the DNC/DLC so they will know that WE AREN'T FORGETTING!
If the Republi-lites don't do the job we want them to do, they can be fired just like Republicans!
THEY WORK FOR US! NOT K-STREET!!!

how does this help small businesses???

YES MY PEOPLE'S KEEP STANDING UP FOR THE GOOD OF ALL OF US THE POOR PEOPLE'S MUST KEEP STANDING NOW AND ALL WAYS, DR KING THE POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN IS THE ONLY WAY POOR POWER

***********Legalizing an Underclass***********
By David Bacon
TomPaine.com

Monday 05 February 2007

Oakland, California - Of all the supporters of corporate immigration reform, Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff is the most honest. The day of the notorious raids at the Swift and Company meatpacking plants, he told the media the raids would show Congress the need for "stronger border security, effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program." Bush wants, he said, "a program that would allow businesses that need foreign workers, because they can't otherwise satisfy their labor needs, to be able to get those workers in a regulated program."

Chertoff is hardly the only voice in D.C. using raids to justify guest worker programs. Cecilia Muñoz, head of National Council of La Raza (NCLR), is another. Those deported in December were among the millions of undocumented workers who came after Congress passed the last immigration amnesty in 1986. Since legislators at the time didn't consider people who would come in following years, "perhaps the most tragic consequences are the terrible human costs of workplace raids," she mourns. New guest worker programs will give future migrants legal status, she claims, and protect them from the migra.

The raids do cause terrible suffering. But Muñoz and other Washington insiders actually supported bills last year that mandate the same worksite enforcement Chertoff carries out today. More raids were a price they were willing to pay (or willing to let others pay) for the guest worker programs they wanted.

Today, many Congressional leaders - Democrats and Republicans - want to allow corporations and contractors to recruit hundreds of thousands of workers a year outside of the U.S. and put them to work here on temporary visas. Labor schemes like this have a long history. From 1942 to 1964, the Bracero Program recruited temporary immigrants. They were exploited, cheated, and deported if they tried to go on strike. Growers pitted them against workers already in the country to drive down wages. César Chávez, Ernesto Galarza and Bert Corona all campaigned to get the program repealed.

Advocates of today's programs do everything they can to avoid association with the bitter "bracero" label. They used "guest worker" until that name also developed an ill repute. Now they prefer other euphemisms - "essential workers," or just "new workers." We don't live in a magical world, however. You can't clean up an unpleasant reality by renaming it.

Current guest worker programs allow labor contractors to maintain blacklists of workers who work slowly or demand rights. Anyone who makes trouble doesn't get rehired to work in the U.S. again. Public interest lawyers spend years in court, trying just to get back wages for cheated immigrants. The Department of Labor almost never decertifies a contractor for this abuse.

Guest workers labor under the employer's thumb. Standing up for a union or minimum wage is risky. Under current programs, and in the new Congressional proposals, if workers lose their jobs they must leave, making deportation a punishment for being unemployed. No one gets unemployment insurance, disability or workers' compensation payments. Companies save money and avoid bad publicity by sending injured workers back home, where healthcare is virtually unavailable.

But Muñoz and others argue that Congress can allow guest workers to go to court. Our legal system is such a poor protector of workers' rights today, however, that in 30 percent of all organizing drives, workers (both citizens and immigrants) are illegally fired, with virtually no remedies or penalties on employers. Arguing that lawyers can protect immigrants on temporary work visas is preposterous. These problems aren't aberrations, curable with legal fine print.

By their nature, guest worker programs are low-wage schemes, intended to supply plentiful labor to corporate employers at a price they want to pay. Companies don't recruit guest workers so they can pay them more, but to pay them less.

According to Rob Rosado, director of legislative affairs for the American Meat Institute, meatpackers want a guest worker program, but not a basic wage guarantee for those workers. "We don't want the government setting wages," he says. "The market determines wages."

Major Senate sponsors of guest worker bills don't believe the government should even set a minimum wage for anyone, immigrant or citizen. John McCain, John Cornyn, James Kyl, Larry Craig and Chuck Hegel all just voted for an amendment to repeal the federal minimum wage entirely. Making them responsible for guest worker wages is putting the fox in charge of the chickens.

And it's not just wages. The schemes create a second tier of workers with fewer rights and less job security. They have none of the social benefits U.S. workers won in the New Deal - retirement, unemployment and disability insurance. Instead of including new immigrants in these and other social programs, giving them legal residence and rights, Congress would create a huge workforce without them. Corporations that have pushed for eliminating these standards for everyone would be halfway there.

That's why workers, unions and community organizations have opposed guest worker programs, but also why corporations want them. Starting in the late 1990s, companies organized a shadowy lobby group, the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC) which today encompasses over 40 huge employer associations, including Wal-Mart, Marriott, Tyson Foods and the Association of Builders and Contractors. They recruited the Cato Institute to produce guest worker recommendations, which President Bush repeats almost word-for-word. The hard-right Manhattan Institute provides additional cover.

The corporate lobby made other inroads as well. John Gay, who heads the National Restaurant Association and EWIC, is now board chair of the National Immigration Forum, a major Washington player. NCLR's list of corporate sponsors includes Wal-Mart and 14 other multinationals. Even two unions - the Service Employees and UNITE HERE - supported the Senate guest worker compromise last year.

The question Congress is deciding isn't "what can stop immigration?" With over 180 million people in the world living outside their countries of origin, nothing can. Migration begins when people are displaced. In the countries that are the main sources of migration to the U.S., most migration is caused by economic dislocation - people can no longer survive as farmers or workers. Other migrants fled the wars that raged in Central America.

NAFTA, CAFTA and U.S.-sponsored economic reforms, along with U.S. military intervention, uprooted millions of people, leaving them little options other than coming north. Corporations like Wal-Mart and Marriott wrote U.S. trade policy to improve their investment opportunities abroad. Now they also want guest worker programs to channel people displaced by those policies into their U.S. operations. Often those leaving home are among the most skilled and educated. Their departure makes it even harder for their countries to progress.

This flow of forced migration may not stop in the near future, but changing pro-corporate trade policies would reduce the pressure on people to leave home. Unsurprisingly, that's not on EWIC's agenda.

The real question Congress is deciding is the status of people once they're here. Other proposals - those from outside the Beltway - would give immigrants far greater rights and much more equality than guest worker programs. Congress could, for instance,

* give permanent residence visas, or green cards, to people already here. Those visas don't require people to stay, but give them the chance to come and go - to work, study or take care of family members in the U.S. or in their home country. They can't be deported if they lose a job.

* expand the number of green cards available for new migrants, opening the door to legal immigration far enough to accommodate those now coming illegally. Most immigrants already come through family networks. Making family reunification easier would help them and strengthen communities.

* allow people to apply for green cards, in the future, after they've been here a few years. The U.S. wouldn't develop the huge undocumented population it has today.

* stop the enforcement program that has led to thousands of deportations and firings, and a border so heavily militarized that migrants cross, and die, in the most dangerous areas.

* prohibit companies from recruiting outside the U.S. They can always hire immigrants with green cards here, and green card holders are in a much better position to demand rights and higher wages.

It's not likely that many corporations will support such a program. That's why those who claim to represent the interests of immigrants in Washington must choose whose side they're really on.

Journalist/photographer David Bacon is the author of The Children of NAFTA and the recent Communities Without Borders, a photodocumentary on transnational communities.

-------

Ironically, the people who are supporting the criminalization of illegal immigrants are only supporting the sociopathic sweat shops which employ them.
Without any protection from the law, these economic refugees have no redress when they are made to work overtime without pay, work in conditions that violate EPA and OSHA standards, no medical care when the workplace conditions destroy their health, and have no one to turn to when they are cheated out of their wages by their employers, which is a common occurrence.
Under the "get tough" conditions, the workers who complain find the INS knocking on their doors because of a "tip", and are shipped back across the border, the employer pocketing any back wages the deported workers are owed.
These "get tough on illegals" supporters are usually the same people who will benefit from these economic refugees' plight under the laws they are demanding.
They have no plan to hire US citizens who have rights and will complain about mistreatment.
If people who are pushing the "get tough" laws really wanted to be fair, they need to get tough on these unethical employers, and support the end to the "free" trade agreements that have caused the economic hardships that brought them here in the first place.

thank you guys we thank you so much we needed this money to keep are country strong. God bless you all.

Oh my, the "seeking" freak is still seeking. Oh well, what do you expect from a troll?

Seeking-Phoenix freak, there's lots of things you can do, but for you i whould suggest to find a good psychiotrist. There's a little chance that maybe,(not for sure), but maybe, he'll be able to help you "obtain the knowledge and the truth".

Keep up the great work!

Thank you guys for everything you do!!!! You all are so awesome. The Democrats really are working and fighting. Tight! So hopefully we can get a little break for the next two years, but then, we just have to do ALL we can to get our Democratic Candidate elected. We, of course, have to act now, but at least we know that our "background" is safe, for it's trully ours. The nation really does put its trust in the Democratic party and It supports it like never before. Man! I can see it all around, in my home state, at my college, at work, at home, like everywhere. According to polls around seventy percent of Americans support the Party and its efforts. Fantastic! I guess it's just us, it's WE THE PEOPLE that are different now. It's like waking up after sleeping and being blind for six years in a row. Now we think and act.I am proud to be an American and i'm full of great hope and optimism for our future, for i know that if the American People are not going to give up, things are gonna get better. They are. We just have to keep up the great work and increase our efforts in winning all over. So it's up to us. If we really do all we can, i can't imagine what it's gonna be like in like five years from now or ten years from now. Keep it up!

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose
our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
--Abraham Lincoln

WE MUST STOP THIS MADMAN WAR BUSH WITH HIS KKK --- WIS MUST STOP THE HATE THEY ARE KKK TO PEOPLE'S OF HATE AND RACISM PEOPLE'S IN WIS THE KKK

Butte is right. The unfair, supposed Fair Trade Laws of the DLC From/Clintonians have caused the influx of illegals. If you could only earn 9 cents an hour in your country, don't you think you would look for greener pastures in other countries if possible? Of course you would, anybody would.

I don't recall saying that illegal immigrants should enter the US. I said that we need to understand that they are entering the US because they are desperate, because their families are hungry, because they have no hope in their home countries.
What I am saying is that in order to control illegal immigration, we shouldn't target the victims, we should attack the problem at its sources.
The sources are the "free" trade agreements which destroyed Mexican and Central American economies. It's exacerbated by unscrupulous employers who don't want to pay fair wages, or comply with OSHA and EPA laws.
Building walls, and treating economic refugees like felons is like putting a band-aid on a small pox victim. You may feel like you are doing something, and maybe you don't see the sores anymore, but the disease is still there.
Until we take a stand for social justice instead of xenophobic punishment, the problem won't go away.
As for Americans working a lot of these jobs, the majority of employers who depend on illegal immigrants don't want workers that will stand up and demand fair treatment, decent working conditions, reasonable pay, and who will apply for workmans' comp if they are injured on the job.
I certainly do not support the Republican position that we should bring Mexicans in and put them into peonage where they work as pretty much slave labor or be deported if they complain about crappy conditions.
One of the reasons the Bracero program was terminated, was because of the abuses that the employers inflicted on the laborers. If there are no provisions for complaint and redress in any temporary worker program it will be the same way. The Republican plans don't have any redress.
The Democratic party is supposed to be a party of the people and the party of social justice. It's about time we act like it!

If there is no democratic grassroots leader to vote for, then it doesn't matter who you vote for, because all will be Republican or Republican Lite. The only Democrat that I am sure isn't DLC is Kennedy and Dennis Kucinich, therefore, I will probably vote for Dennis Kuccinich.

http://kucinich.us/

Dennis Kucinich spoke the following words before the Democratic National Committee at their Winter Meeting on Friday, February 2, 2007 in Washington , DC:

Watch video

I grew up in the city of Cleveland, the oldest of seven children. My parents never owned a home. We were renters, we kept moving, with each new arrival to our family. We lived in 21 different places, including a couple of cars. I know first hand what happens when someone in the family lacks adequate health care, or daycare or doesn’t have the money for college or can’t afford to pay the utility bills.

I remember where I came from. My priority as President will be to create economic opportunities and prosperity, to rebuild America’s cities, to repair America’s neighborhoods, to restore America’s industry, to renew America’s schools, to reclaim America’s health. I will ask our Democratic Congress to pass a single-payer not for profit health care plan, Medicare for All, a Universal Pre-Kindergarten bill, a Rebuild America’s Infrastructure bill, and legislation to create a cabinet-level Department of Peace and Non-Violence, which takes Dr. King’s dream and makes it an everyday reality.

Of all the candidates for President, I not only voted against the authorization but I have consistently voted against funding the war and I have a 12-point plan devised with the help of international peacekeepers, to bring our troops home and to end the war.
**************************************

Populist is not the solution -- populist just means more are going to go over the cliff.

Kucinich unveils comprehensive exit plan to bring troops home, stabilize Iraq

Dennis J Kucinich, Monday, January 8, 2007, New York City

In November of 2006, after an October upsurge in violence in Iraq, the American people moved decisively to reject Republican rule, principally because of the conduct of the war. Democratic leaders well understand we regained control of the Congress because of the situation in Iraq. However, two months later, the Congress is still searching for a plan around which it can unite to hasten the end of US involvement in Iraq and the return home of 140,000 US troops.

There is a compelling need for a new direction in Iraq, one that recognizes the plight of the people of Iraq, the false and illegal basis of the United States war against Iraq, the realities on the ground which make a military resolution of the conflict unrealistic and the urgent responsibility of the United States, which caused the chaos, to use the process of diplomacy and international law to achieve stability in Iraq, a process which will establish peace and stability in Iraq allow our troops to return home with dignity.

The Administration is preparing to escalate the conflict. They intend to increase troop numbers to unprecedented levels, without establishing an ending date for the so called troop surge. By definition, this escalation means a continuation of the occupation, more troop and civilian casualties, more anger toward the US, more support for the insurgency, more instability in Iraq and in the region, and prolonged civil war at a time when there is a general agreement in the world community that the solution in Iraq must be political not military. Iraq is now a training ground for insurgents who practice against our troops.

What is needed is a comprehensive political process. And the decision is not President Bush's alone to make.

Congress, as a coequal branch of government has a responsibility to assist in the initiation of this process. Congress, under Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution has the war-making power. Congress appropriates funds for the war. Congress does not dispense with its obligation to the American people simply by opposing a troop surge in Iraq.

There are 140,000 troops remaining in Iraq right now. What about them? When will they come home? Why would we leave those troops in Iraq when we have the money to bring them home? Soon the President will ask for more money for the war. Why would Congress appropriate more money to keep the troops in Iraq through the end of President Bush's term, at a total cost of upwards of two trillion dollars and thousands of more troop casualties, when military experts say there is no military solution? Our soldiers stand for us in the field, we must to stand for them in our legislature by bringing them home.

It is simply not credible to maintain that one opposes the war and yet continues to fund it. This contradiction runs as a deep fault line through our politics, undermining public trust in the political process and in those elected to represent the people. If you oppose the war, then do not vote to fund it.

If you have money which can be used to bring the troops home or to prosecute the war, do not say you want to bring the troops home while you appropriate money in a supplemental to keep them in Iraq fighting a war that cannot be won militarily. This is why the Administration should be notified now that Congress will not approve of the appropriations request of up to $160 billion in the spring for the purposes of continuing the occupation and the war. Continuing to fund the war is not a plan. It would represent the continuation of disaster.

The US sent our troops into Iraq without a clear mission. We created a financial, military and moral dilemma for our nation and now we are talking about the Iraq war as our problem. The Iraqis are forgotten. Their country has been destroyed: 650,000 casualties, [based on the Lancet Report which surveyed casualties from March of 2003 to July of 2006] the shredding of the social fabric of the nation, civil war, lack of access to food, shelter, electricity, clean drinking water and health care because this Administration, with the active participation of the Congress, authorized a war without reason, without conscience, without international law.

The US thinks in terms of solving our own military, strategic, logistical, and political problems. The US can determine how to solve our problems, but the Iraqi people will have problems far into the future. This requires an intensive focus on the processes needed to stabilize Iraq. If you solve the Iraqi problem you solve the US problem. Any comprehensive plan for Iraq must take into account as a primary matter the conditions and the needs of the Iraqi people, while providing our nation with a means of righting grievous wrongs and taking steps to regain US credibility and felicity within the world community.

I am offering such a plan today. This plan responds to the concerns of a majority of Americans. On Tuesday, when Congress resumes its work, I will present this plan to leadership and members as the only viable alternative to the Bush Administration's policy of continued occupation and escalation. Congress must know that it cannot and must not stand by and watch our troops and innocent Iraqi civilians die.

These are the elements of the Kucinich Plan:

1. The US announces it will end the occupation, close military bases and withdraw. The insurgency has been fueled by the occupation and the prospect of a long-term presence as indicated by the building of permanent bases. A US declaration of an intention to withdraw troops and close bases will help dampen the insurgency which has been inspired to resist colonization and fight invaders and those who have supported US policy. Furthermore this will provide an opening where parties within Iraq and in the region can set the stage for negotiations towards peaceful settlement.

2. .US announces that it will use existing funds to bring the troops and necessary equipment home. Congress appropriated $70 billion in bridge funds on October 1 st for the war. Money from this and other DOD accounts can be used to fund the troops in the field over the next few months, and to pay for the cost of the return of the troops, (which has been estimated at between $5 and $7 billion dollars) while a political settlement is being negotiated and preparations are made for a transition to an international security and peacekeeping force.

3. Order a simultaneous return of all US contractors to the United States and turn over all contracting work to the Iraqi government. The contracting process has been rife with world-class corruption, with contractors stealing from the US Government and cheating the Iraqi people, taking large contracts and giving 5% or so to Iraqi subcontractors.

Reconstruction activities must be reorganized and closely monitored in Iraq by the Iraqi government, with the assistance of the international community. The massive corruption as it relates to US contractors, should be investigated by congressional committees and federal grand juries. The lack of tangible benefits, the lack of accountability for billions of dollars, while millions of Iraqis do not have a means of financial support, nor substantive employment, cries out for justice.

It is noteworthy that after the first Gulf War, Iraqis reestablished electricity within three months, despite sanctions. Four years into the US occupation there is no water, nor reliable electricity in Bagdhad, despite massive funding from the US and from the Madrid conference. The greatest mystery involves the activities of private security companies who function as mercenaries. Reports of false flag operations must be investigated by an international tribunal.

4. Convene a regional conference for the purpose of developing a security and stabilization force for Iraq. The focus should be on a process which solves the problems of Iraq. The US has told the international community, "This is our policy and we want you to come and help us implement it." The international community may have an interest in helping Iraq, but has no interest in participating in the implementation of failed US policy.

A shift in US policy away from unilateralism and toward cooperation will provide new opportunities for exploring common concerns about the plight of Iraq. The UN is the appropriate place to convene, through the office of the Secretary General, all countries that have interests, concerns and influence, including the five permanent members of the Security Council and the European community, and all Arab nations.

The end of the US occupation and the closing of military bases are necessary preconditions for such a conference. When the US creates a shift of policy and announces it will focus on the concerns of the people of Iraq, it will provide a powerful incentive for nations to participate.

It is well known that while some nations may see the instability in Iraq as an opportunity, there is also an even-present danger that the civil war in Iraq threatens the stability of nations throughout the region. The impending end of the occupation will provide a breakthrough for the cooperation between the US and the UN and the UN and countries of the region. The regional conference must include Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

5. Prepare an international security and peacekeeping force to move in, replacing US troops who then return home. The UN has an indispensable role to play here, but cannot do it as long as the US is committed to an occupation. The UN is the only international organization with the ability to mobilize and the legitimacy to authorize troops.

The UN is the place to develop the process, to build the political consensus, to craft a political agreement, to prepare the ground for the peacekeeping mission, to implement the basis of an agreement that will end the occupation and begin the transition to international peacekeepers. This process will take at least three months from the time the US announces the intention to end the occupation.

The US will necessarily have to fund a peacekeeping mission, which, by definition will not require as many troops. Fifty percent of the peacekeeping troops must come from nations with large Muslim populations. The international security force, under UN direction, will remain in place until the Iraqi government is capable of handling its own security. The UN can field an international security and peace keeping mission, but such an initiative will not take shape unless there is a peace to keep, and that will be dependent upon a political process which reaches agreement between all the Iraqi parties.

Such an agreement means fewer troops will be needed.

According to UN sources, the UN the peacekeeping mission in the Congo, which is four times larger in area than Iraq, required about twenty thousand troops. Finally the UN does not mobilize quickly because they depend upon governments to supply the troops, and governments are slow. The ambition of the UN is to deploy in less than ninety days. However, without an agreement of parties the UN is not likely to approve a mission to Iraq, because countries will not give them troops.

6. Develop and fund a process of national reconciliation. The process of reconciliation must begin with a national conference, organized with the assistance of the UN and with the participation of parties who can create, participate in and affect the process of reconciliation, defined as an airing of all grievances and the creation of pathways toward open, transparent talks producing truth and resolution of grievances. The Iraqi government has indicated a desire for the process of reconciliation to take place around it, and that those who were opposed to the government should give up and join the government. Reconciliation must not be confused with capitulation, nor with realignments for the purposes of protecting power relationships.

For example, Kurds need to be assured that their own autonomy will be regarded and therefore obviate the need for the Kurds to align with religious Shia for the purposes of self-protection. The problem in Iraq is that every community is living in fear. The Shia, who are the majority fear they will not be allowed to government even though they are a majority. The Kurds are afraid they will lose the autonomy they have gained. The Sunnis think they will continue to be made to pay for the sins of Saddam.

A reconciliation process which brings people together is the only way to overcome their fears and reconcile their differences. It is essential to create a minimum of understanding and mutual confidence between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

But how can a reconciliation process be constructed in Iraq when there is such mistrust: Ethnic cleansing is rampant. The police get their money from the US and their ideas from Tehran. They function as religious militia, fighting for supremacy, while the Interior Ministry collaborates. Two or three million people have been displaced. When someone loses a family member, a loved one, a friend, the first response is likely to be that there is no reconciliation.

It is also difficult to move toward reconciliation when one or several parties engaged in the conflict think they can win outright. The Shia, some of whom are out for revenge, think they can win because they have the defacto support of the US. The end of the US occupation will enhance the opportunity for the Shia to come to an accommodation with the Sunnis. They have the oil, the weapons, and support from Iran. They have little interest in reconciling with those who are seen as Baathists.

The Sunnis think they have experience, as the former army of Saddam, boasting half a million people insurgents. The Sunnis have so much more experience and motivation that as soon as the Americans leave they believe they can defeat the Shia government. Any Sunni revenge impulses can be held in check by international peacekeepers. The only sure path toward reconciliation is through the political process. All factions and all insurgents not with al Queda must be brought together in a relentless process which involves Saudis, Turks and Iranians.

7. Reconstruction and Jobs. Restart the failed reconstruction program in Iraq. Rebuild roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and other public facilities, houses, and factories with jobs and job training going to local Iraqis.

8. Reparations. The US and Great Britain have a high moral obligation to enable a peace process by beginning a program of significant reparations to the people of Iraq for the loss of lives, physical and emotional injuries, and damage to property. There should be special programs to rescue the tens of thousands of Iraqi orphans from lives of destitution. This is essential to enable reconciliation.

9. Political Sovereignty. Put an end to suspicions that the US invasion and occupation was influenced by a desire to gain control of Iraq's oil assets by A) setting aside initiatives to privatize Iraqi oil interests or other national assets, and B) by abandoning efforts to change Iraqi national law to facilitate privatization.

Any attempt to sell Iraqi oil assets during the US occupation will be a significant stumbling block to peaceful resolution. The current Iraqi constitution gives oil proceeds to the regions and the central government gets nothing. There must be fairness in the distribution of oil resources in Iraq. An Iraqi National Oil Trust should be established to guarantee the oil assets will be used to create a fully functioning infrastructure with financial mechanisms established protect the oil wealth for the use of the people of Iraq.

10. Iraq Economy. Set forth a plan to stabilize Iraq's cost for food and energy, on par to what the prices were before the US invasion and occupation. This would block efforts underway to raise the price of food and energy at a time when most Iraqis do not have the means to meet their own needs.

11.Economic Sovereignty. Work with the world community to restore Iraq's fiscal integrity without structural readjustment measures of the IMF or the World Bank. \n\n\n

12 .International Truth and Reconciliation. Establish a policy of truth and reconciliation between the people of the United States and the people of Iraq.

In 2002, I led the effort in the House of Representatives challenging the Bush Administration's plans to go to war in Iraq. I organized 125 Democrats to vote against the Iraq war resolution. The analysis I offered at that time stands out in bold relief for its foresight when compared to the assessments of many who today aspire to national leadership. Just as the caution I urged four years ago was well-placed, so the plan I am presenting today is workable, and it responds to the will of the American people, expressed this past November. This is a moment for clarity and foresight. This is a moment to take a new direction in Iraq. One with honor and dignity. One which protects our troops and rescues Iraqi civilians. One which repairs our relationship with Iraqis and with the world. Thank you.

http://kucinich.us/

Senators Dennis Kucinich and Ted Kennedy are the only members of the Senate that haven't lent their names to the Republican Lite DLC Lobbyist Organization for the Project For the New American Century.

Democrats and Republicans:

Although I hail the increase in wages for the citizens among us who must undergo the hardships of minimum wage employment, I can only question as to why the Republicans refused to pass the increase without tax breaks for small businesses. Small, of course, is defined by those who stalled the legislation for the repression of a minimum wage increase without the associated tax reductions.

We must remember my fellow democrats that a wage increase for the lower-wage employee does not stall small-business expansion, nor does it affect small businesses in any manner. I can only note a Washington Post article dated January 10, 2007, in which an economist by the name of Veronique de Rugy of the American Enterprise Institute stated that "new jobs have been created by both large and small businesses in roughly the same proportion." So, I can only question whether or not the minimum wage increase will stall small business expansion, when historically speaking, businesses, large and small, pass on any increase in operations to the consumers.

U.S. Sent a FREE FOR ALL of Billion of Dollars in CASH [363 TONS of Money] to Iraq on PALLETS

US Sent Pallets of Cash to Baghdad
By Jeremy Pelofsky
Reuters

Tuesday 07 February 2007

The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said on Tuesday.

The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.

Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.

On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq, initially "the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history," according to an e-mail cited by committee members.

It was followed by more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later. The CPA turned over sovereignty on June 28.

Paul Bremer, who as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority ran Iraq after initial combat operations ended, said the enormous shipments were done at the request of the Iraqi minister of finance.

"He said, 'I am concerned that I will not have the money to support the Iraqi government expenses for the first couple of months after we are sovereign. We won't have the mechanisms in place, I won't know how to get the money here,"' Bremer said.

"So these shipments were made at the explicit request of the Iraqi minister of finance to forward fund government expenses, a perfectly, seems to me, legitimate use of his money," Bremer told lawmakers.

Where's the Money?

Democrats led by Waxman also questioned whether the lack of oversight of $12 billion in Iraqi money that was disbursed by Bremer and the CPA somehow enabled insurgents to get their hands on the funds, possibly through falsifying names on the government payroll.

"I have no knowledge of monies being diverted. I would certainly be concerned if I thought they were," Bremer said. He pointed out that the problem of fake names on the payroll existed before the U.S.-led invasion.

The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, said in a January 2005 report that $8.8 billion was unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqi ministries.

"We were in the middle of a war, working in very difficult conditions, and we had to move quickly to get this Iraqi money working for the Iraqi people," Bremer told lawmakers. He said there was no banking system and it would have been impossible to apply modern accounting standards in the midst of a war.

"I acknowledge that I made mistakes and that, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have made some decisions differently," Bremer said.

Republicans argued that Bremer and the CPA staff did the best they could under the circumstances and accused Democrats of trying to score political points over the increasingly unpopular Iraq war.

"We are in a war against terrorists, to have a blame meeting isn't, in my opinion, constructive," said Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican.

________
Greed, On Purpose or Stupid?? What happened to the Bank in Switzerland???????

Opening Statements and Prosecution Blunders
By Bill Simpich and Scott Galindez
t r u t h o u t | Report

Wednesday 07 February 2007

Ft. Lewis, Washington - On the second day of the court-martial of First Lt. Ehren Watada, it seemed at times that the prosecution witnesses were really defense witnesses.

The day began with opening statements. The prosecution laid out the following charges:

Charge I: Violation of the UCMJ, Article 87
The specification: In that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, U.S. Army, did, at or near Fort Lewis, Wash., on or about 22 June 2006, through design miss the movement of Flight Number [redacted], with which he was required in the course of duty to move.

Charge II: Violation of the UCMJ, Article 133
Specification 1: In that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, U.S. Army, did, at or near Tacoma, Wash., on or about 7 June 2006, take part in a public press conference in which he communicated the following disgraceful statement, to wit: "It is my conclusion as an officer of the Armed Forces that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of American law.... As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must as an officer of honor and integrity refuse that order.... The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of Iraqis is not only a terrible and moral injustice, but it's a contradiction to the Army's own law of land warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes," or words to that effect, his statement bringing dishonor to the Armed Forces.

The additional specification: In that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, U.S. Army, did, at or near Seattle, Wash., on or about 12 August 2006, take part in the Veterans for Peace National Convention in which he communicated the following disgraceful statement, to wit: "Today, I speak with you about a radical idea.... That to stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it.... Now it is not an easy task for the soldier. For he or she must be aware that they are being used for ill gain.... They must know that resisting an authoritarian government at home is equally important to fighting a foreign aggressor on the battlefield.... This administration used us for rampant violations of time-tested laws banning torture and degradation of prisoners of war. Though the American soldier wants to do right, the illegitimacy of the occupation itself, the policies of this administration, and the rules of engagement of desperate field commanders will ultimately force them to be party to war crimes.... If sodiers realized this war is contrary to what the Constitution extols - if they stood up and threw their weapons down - no President could ever again initiate a war of choice. When we say, 'Against all enemies foreign and domestic,' what if our elected leaders became the enemy?... To support the troops who resist, you must make your voices heard. If they see thousands supporting me, they will know.... We must show open-minded soldiers a choice and we must give them courage to act.... I tell this to you because you must know that to stop this war, for the soldiers to stop fighting it, they must have the unconditional support of the people.... Convince them that no matter how long they sit in prison, no matter how long this country takes to right itself, their families will have a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs, opportunities, and education.... Now, I'm not a hero. I am a leader of men who said enough is enough.... Never again will we allow those who threaten our way of life to reign free -! be they terrorists or elected officials. The time to fight back is now. The time to stand up and be counted is today," or words to that effect, his statement bringing dishonor to the Armed Forces.

The evidence for the additional specification was a Truthout video of Ehren Watada's speech at the Veterans for Peace Convention. Part 1. Part 2.

The video played on the big screen in the courtroom and may have helped the defense as much as it helped the prosecution. The judge had already ruled out most of the defenses that Watada's counsel had intended to raise, including the Nuremburg defense, a defense that Watada raised in that speech.

During his opening statement, defense attorney Eric Seitz emphasized from the beginning: The only real question is why? What was Lt. Watada's intent? The questions that flow from that are: How did he comport himself? Did he dishonor himself, the officer corps, or the Army itself? He enlisted in 2003 against his family's wishes and took an oath to defend the Constitution that motivates him to this day.

He received positive evaluations, and arrived in Fort Lewis in June 2005 looking forward to a promising military career. But two issues soon drew his attention. One was the utter falsity of the threat that Iraq contained weapons of mass destruction, which was the justification for initiating the invasion of Iraq. The other was the falsity of the claim that the Iraqi leadership was tied up with the events of 9/11. The underlying facts documenting this falsity are accepted by most reasonable people as true and correct. Lt. Watada became very upset and disillusioned with what he was going to be called upon to do, and felt that action was necessary.

In early 2006, he resolved to do something to prevent putting himself and his troops at risk. He contacted his superior, Lt. Col. Bruce Antonia, explained his dilemma, and asked to be allowed to resign. He wrote a letter and they had a discussion. Antonia did not take Lt. Watada's letter seriously.

Lt. Watada offered to go to Afghanistan or anywhere else, but was refused. His offer to resign had been refused. He had ordered to go to the Public Affairs office, where he was informed in a talk that he should make no statements on duty, in uniform, or on the base - which he complied with. The June 22 deployment date was coming near, and Lt. Watada determined that he had to bring the matter to a head before the unit headed to Iraq. On June 7, the lieutenant held a Tacoma press conference and went public with his dilemma.

On August 12, Lt. Watada addressed the Veterans for Peace Convention in Seattle. The defense asked the panel to place the speech in context, as it asked the listeners to examine their conscience and decide for themselves what to do. Eric Seitz closed by reminding the panel that the prosecution had stacked the case originally with a request for as much as eight years of potential punishment (which drew an objection sustained by the judge), and that the lieutenant did not shirk his duties but rather upheld his oath to defend the Constitution. The prosecution presented three witnesses today; Lt. Colonel Bruce Antonia, Professor Richard Swain and Lt. Colonel William James.

Antonia testified that Lt. Watada was a high quality officer and very smart, an asset to the unit. He also testified that he has never questioned his integrity. When asked why he thought Watada could be an asset to the unit while expressing his moral objections to the war, the Lt. Colonel said that because Watada was a high caliber officer, he felt he could overcome his moral questions and perform in the field.

The strongest argument Antonia made for the prosecution was that he didn't want a distraction for the other troops deploying. While he said he didn't recall ordering Watada to not go public, he told him he wanted to avoid a media circus. During cross-examination Antonia testified that Lt. Watada's statements didn't decrease the morale or the effectiveness of the unit.

Following the testimony of Dr. Swain, the prosecutor, Capt. Van Sweringen, was overheard to have said to one of his aides in the courtroom that "Dr. Swain was a disaster."

Professor Richard Swain, the military ethics expert, was barred by the judge from making the argument that Lt. Watada's public statements were inconsistent with his oath to defend the Constitution. The net result was that his testimony reinforced Antonia's statement that officers had no obligation to follow orders they think are illegal. Swain added that "if they make that determination, they have to be right. If they're not right, they have to expect to be held accountable."

The prosecution rested its case at 3:40 p.m. Pacific.

Eric Seitz released the following statement after the day 2 proceedings:

The prosecution presented three witnesses today; Lt. Colonel Bruce Antonia, Professor Richard Swain and Lt. Colonel William James.

Through our questions, the witnesses continued to describe a young officer who made every possible attempt to avoid conflict in a respectful, orderly manner in an effort to resolve a dispute between his own conscience and the orders that he was given to deploy to Iraq. The witnesses never delved into the reasons why Lt. Watada refused deployment to Iraq, but all of them conceded that Lt. Watada was a "quality officer" and a person of integrity.

Tomorrow, we expect to two witnesses to testify - Lt. Watada and Captain Scott Hulin, who returned from Iraq in order to testify as a character witness. These are the only two witnesses this court has allowed us to call. The judge has continued to deny us the opportunity to bring any expert witnesses in order to fully explain Lt. Watada's motivations and reasons for refusing deployment to Iraq.

Based upon the first two days of trial, we are continuing to be optimistic about the outcome, and our hope is that Lt. Watada will be treated with respect for the position he's taken and the views that he's articulated and that any disposition will take into account that he is taking a position of conscience. We expect the findings portion of the case to conclude tomorrow, and any punishment proceedings will probably conclude on Thursday.

5 Americans To Be Charged In Iraq Fraud
Alleged Scheme Duped Provisional Authority Out Of $8M for Reconstruction

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2007

(CBS) By CBS News Justice Department producer Stephanie Lambidakis

Five Americans, including military personnel, were charged with a massive fraud scheme for bilking more than $8 million in Iraq reconstruction money from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), according to a law enforcement official.

The charges include conspiracy, bribery, honest services fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property and bulk cash smuggling. There are also charges for money laundering, false tax returns and forfeiture.

The lead defendant is a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve out of Utah who was stationed in Iraq. The others are a Lt. Colonel in the Reserves from Wisconsin, a Lt. Colonel from Trenton, NJ, a civilian based in Cyprus who lived in Romania, and a Defense Department contracting employee who was involved in the reconstruction.

The company involved is a construction and services company called Global Business Group, based in Iraq and Romania, which did work for both the CPA and the DOD.

The company allegedly bribed the military personnel with: business class tickets, liquor, jewelry, an SUV, sports car, RV, weapons and employment. In return, the military personnel steered reconstruction business to Global Business Group. The way they avoided detection is by keeping the contracts under $500,000. That is the threshold for having to put the contracts out for bids. The regional CPA offices could approve those "smaller" projects. The hub of this activity was in Hillah, Iraq.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/07/iraq/main2442654.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2442654

Connecting the Dots with WAR

From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots With Oil
By Richard W. Behan
AlterNet
Monday 05 February 2007

In the Caspian Basin and beneath the deserts of Iraq, as many as 783 billion barrels of oil are waiting to be pumped. Anyone controlling that much oil stands a good chance of breaking OPEC's stranglehold overnight, and any nation seeking to dominate the world would have to go after it.

The long-held suspicions about George Bush's wars are well-placed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. They were not waged to spread democracy in the Middle East or enhance security at home. They were conceived and planned in secret long before September 11, 2001 and they were undertaken to control petroleum resources.

The "global war on terror" began as a fraud and a smokescreen and remains so today, a product of the Bush Administration's deliberate and successful distortion of public perception. The fragmented accounts in the mainstream media reflect this warping of reality, but another more accurate version of recent history is available in contemporary books and the vast information pool of the Internet. When told start to finish, the story becomes clear, the dots easier to connect.

Both appalling and masterful, the lies that led us into war and keep us there today show the people of the Bush Administration to be devious, dangerous and far from stupid.

The following is an in-depth look at the oil wars, the events leading up to them, and the players who made them possible.

Iraq
The Project for a New American Century, a D.C.-based political think tank funded by archconservative philanthropies and founded in 1997, is the source of the Bush Administration's imperialistic urge for the U.S. to dominate the world. Our nation should seek to achieve a "...benevolent global hegemony," according to William Kristol, PNAC's chairman. The group advocates the novel and startling concept of "pre-emptive war" as a means of doing so.

On January 26, 1998, the PNAC, sent a letter to President William Clinton urging the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The dictator, the letter alleged, was a destabilizing force in the Middle East, and posed a mortal threat to "...the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's oil supply..." The subjugation of Iraq would be the first application of "pre-emptive war."

The unprovoked, full-scale invasion and occupation of another country, however, would be an unequivocal example of "the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of another state." That is the formal United Nations definition of military aggression, and a nation can choose to launch it only in self-defense. Otherwise it is an international crime.

President Clinton did not honor the PNAC's request.

But sixteen members of the Project for a New American Century would soon assume prominent positions in the Administration of George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage and John Bolton.

The "significant portion of the world's oil supply" was of immediate concern, because of the commanding influence of the oil industry in the Bush Administration. Beside the president and vice president, eight cabinet secretaries and the national security advisor had direct ties to the industry, and so did 32 others in the departments of Defense, State, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and the Office of Management and Budget.
Within days of taking office, President Bush appointed Vice President Cheney to chair a National Energy Policy Development Group. Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was composed of the relevant federal officials and dozens of energy industry executives and lobbyists, and it operated in tight secrecy. (The full membership has never been revealed, but Enron's Kenneth Lay is known to have participated, and the Washington Post reported that Exxon-Mobil, Conoco, Shell, and BP America did, too.)

During his second week in office, President Bush convened the first meeting of his National Security Council. It was a triumph for the PNAC. In just one hour-long meeting, the new Bush Administration turned upside down the long-standing focus of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Over Secretary of State Colin Powell's objections, the goal of reconciling the Israel-Palestine conflict was abandoned, and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was set as the new priority. Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty, describes the meeting in detail.

The Energy Task Force wasted no time, either. Within three weeks of its creation, the group was poring over maps of the Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, tanker terminals, and oil exploration blocks. It studied an inventory of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" - dozens of oil companies from 30 different countries, in various stages of negotiations for exploring and developing Iraqi crude.

Not a single U.S. oil company was among the "suitors," and that was intolerable, given a foreign policy bent on global hegemony. The National Energy Policy document, released May 17, 2001 concluded this: "By any estimation, Middle East oil producers will remain central to world security. The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy."

That rather innocuous statement can be clarified by a top-secret memo dated February 3, 2001 to the staff of the National Security Council. Cheney's group, the memo said, was "melding" two apparently unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies toward rogue states," such as Iraq, and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." The memo directed the National Security Council staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as the "melding" continued. National security policy and international energy policy would be developed as a coordinated whole. This would prove convenient on September 11, 2001, still seven months in the future.

The Bush Administration was drawing a bead on Iraqi oil long before the "global war on terror" was invented. But how could the "capture of new and existing oil fields" be made to seem less aggressive, less arbitrary, less overt?

During April of 2002, almost a full year before the invasion, the State Department launched a policy-development initiative called "The Future of Iraq Project" to accomplish this. The "Oil and Energy Working Group" provided the disguise for "capturing" Iraqi oil. Iraq, it said in its final report, "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war ... the country should establish a conducive business environment to attract investment in oil and gas resources."

Capture would take the form of investment, and the vehicle for doing so would be the "production sharing agreement."

Under production sharing agreements, or PSAs, oil companies are granted ownership of a "share" of the oil produced, in exchange for investing in development costs, and the contracts are binding for up to 30 years. What would happen, though, if the companies' investments were only minimal, but their shares of the production were obscenely, disproportionately large?

This is hardwired. According to a UK Platform article titled "Crude Designs," production sharing agreements have now been drafted in Baghdad covering 75 percent of the undeveloped Iraqi fields, and the oil companies, waiting to sign the contracts, will earn as much 162 percent on their investments. And the "foreign suitors" are not quite so foreign now: The players on the inside tracks are Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell.

The use of PSAs will cost the Iraqi people hundreds of billions of dollars in just the first few years of the "investment" program. They would be far better off keeping in place the structure Iraq has relied upon since 1972: a nationalized oil industry leasing pumping rights to the oil companies, who then pay royalties to the central government. That is how it is done today in Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC countries.

Production sharing agreements, heavily favored by the oil companies, were specified by George Bush's State Department. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority drafted an oil law privatizing the oil sector, and American oil interests have lobbied in Baghdad ever since then for the PSAs. Apparently successfully: The Oil Committee headed by Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih is said currently to be "leaning" toward them.

With the capture of Iraqi oil resources prospectively disguised, the Halliburton company was then hired, secretly, to design a fire suppression strategy for the Iraqi oil fields. If oil wells were to be torched during the upcoming war (as Saddam did in Kuwait in 1991), the Bush Administration would be prepared to extinguish them rapidly. The contract with Halliburton was signed in the fall of 2002. Congress had yet to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

So a line of dots begins to point at Iraq, though nothing illegal or unconstitutional has yet taken place. We are still in the policy-formulation stage, but two "seemingly unrelated areas of policy" - national security policy and international energy policy - have become indistinguishable.

Afghanistan

The strategic location of Afghanistan can scarcely be overstated. The Caspian Basin contains up to $16 trillion worth of oil and gas resources, and the most direct pipeline route to the richest markets is through Afghanistan.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the first western oil company to take action in the Basin was the Bridas Corporation of Argentina. It acquired production leases and exploration contracts in the region, and by November of 1996 had signed an agreement with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

Not to be outdone, the American company Unocal (aided by an Arabian company, Delta Oil) fought Bridas at every turn. Unocal wanted exclusive control of the trans-Afghan pipeline and hired a number of consultants in its conflict with Bridas: Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage (now Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), Zalmay Khalilzad (a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton) and Hamid Karzai.

Unocal wooed Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas, and hosted them in meetings with federal officials in Washington, D.C.

Unocal and the Clinton Administration hoped to have the Taliban cancel the Bridas contract, but were getting nowhere. Finally, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice President, testified to a House Committee of International Relations on February 12, 1998, asking politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted. His discomfort was well placed.

Six months later terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and two weeks after that President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack into Afghanistan. Clinton issued an executive order on July 4, 1999, freezing the Taliban's U.S.-held assets and prohibiting further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca could count that as progress. More would follow.

Immediately upon taking office, the new Bush Administration actively took up negotiating with the Taliban once more, seeking still to have the Bridas contract vacated, in exchange for a tidy package of foreign aid. The parties met three times, in Washington, Berlin, and Islamablad, but the Taliban wouldn't budge.

Behind the negotiations, however, planning was underway to take military action if necessary. In the spring of 2001 the State Department sought and gained concurrence from both India and Pakistan to do so, and in July of 2001, American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence agents to inform them of planned military strikes against Afghanistan the following October. A British newspaper told of the U.S. threatening both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden - two months before 9/11 - with military strikes.

According to an article in the UK Guardian, State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban at their last pipeline negotiation in August of 2001, just five weeks before 9/11, "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."

The Great Game and Its Players

The geostrategic imperative of reliable oil supplies has a long history, arguably beginning with the British Navy in World War I. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill repowered the British fleet - from coal (abundant in the UK) to oil (absent in the UK), and thus began the Great Game: jockeying by the world powers for the strategic control of petroleum. (Churchill did this to replace with oil pumps the men needed to shovel coal - a large share of the crew - so they could man topside battle stations instead.) Iraq today is a British creation, formed almost a century ago to supply the British fleet with fuel, and it is still a focal point of the Game.

The players have changed as national supremacy has changed, as oil companies have morphed over time, and as powerful men have lived out their destinies.

Among the major players today are the Royal family of Saudi Arabia and the Bush family of the state of Maine (more recently of Texas). And they are closely and intimately related. The relationship goes back several generations, but it was particularly poignant in the first Gulf War in 1990-91, when the U.S. and British armed forces stopped Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, before his drive reached the Arabian oil fields. Prime Minister John Major of the UK, and President George H.W. Bush became the much esteemed champions of the Arabian monarchy, and James Baker, Bush's Secretary of State, was well regarded, too. (Years earlier, Mr. Baker and a friend of the royal family's had been business partners, in building a skyscraper bank building in Houston.)

The Carlyle Group: Where the Players Meet to Profit

After President Bush, Secretary Baker, and Prime Minister Major left office, they all became active participants and investors in the Carlyle Group, a global private equity investment firm comprised of dozens of former world leaders, international business executives (including the family of Osama bin Laden); former diplomats, and high-profile political operatives from four U.S. Administrations. For years, Carlyle would serve as the icon of the Bush/Saudi relationship.

Carlyle, with its headquarters just six blocks from the White House, invests heavily in all the industries involved in the Great Game: the defense, security, and energy industries, and it profits enormously from the Afghan and Iraqi wars.

In the late 1980s, Carlyle's personal networking brought together George W. Bush, the future 43rd U.S. president, and $50,000 of financial backing for his Texas oil company, Arbusto Energy. The investor was Salem bin Laden (half-brother of Osama bin Laden) who managed the Carlyle investments of the Saudi bin Laden Group. (After the tragedy of 9/11, by mutual consent, the bin Laden family and Carlyle terminated their business dealings.) George Bush left Carlyle in 1992 to run for governor of Texas.

Ex-President Bush, Ex-Prime Minister Major, and Ex Secretary Baker, in the 1990's, were Carlyle's advance team, scouring the world for profitable investments and investors. In Saudi Arabia they met with the royal family, and with the two wealthiest, non-royal families - the bin Ladens and the bin Mahfouzes.

Khalid bin Mahfouz was prominent in Delta Oil, Unocal's associate in the Afghan pipeline conflict. He was later accused of financing al Qaeda, and named in a trillion dollar lawsuit brought by the families of 9/11 victims. (It was Mr. bin Mahfouz who had been Mr. Baker's business associate in Houston.)

Carlyle retained James Baker's Houston law firm, Baker-Botts, and Baker himself served as Carlyle Senior Counselor from 1993 until 2005. (Other clients of Baker-Botts: Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Shell, Amoco, Conoco-Phillips, Halliburton, and Enron.)

Mr. Baker has long been willing to put foremost the financial advantage of himself, his firm, and his friends, often at the expense of patriotism and public service. As President Reagan's Secretary of the Treasury, he presided over the savings-and-loan scandal, in which S&L executives like Charles Keating and the current President's brother Neil Bush handed the American taxpayers a bill to pay, over a 40-year period, of $1.2 trillion. His law firm willingly took on the defense of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Azis, the Saudi Defense Minister sued by the families of 9/11 victims for complicity in the attacks.

We will encounter Mr. Baker again soon.

September 11, 2001

In September of 2000, the Project for a New American Century published a report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." It advocated pre-emptive war once again, but noted its acceptance would be difficult in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

President Bush formally established the PNAC's prescription for pre-emptive, premeditated war as U.S. policy when he signed a document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" early in his first term.
Still nothing illegal or unconstitutional had been done.

But the rationale and the planning for attacking both Afghanistan and Iraq were in place. The preparations had all been done secretly, wholly within the executive branch. The Congress was not informed until the endgame, when President Bush, making his dishonest case for the "war on terror" asked for and was granted the discretion to use military force. The American people were equally uninformed and misled. Probably never before in our history was such a drastic and momentous action undertaken with so little public knowledge or Congressional oversight: the dispatch of America's armed forces into four years of violence, at horrendous costs in life and treasure.

Then a catastrophic event took place. A hijacked airliner probably en route to the White House crashes in Pennsylvania, the Pentagon was afire, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were rubble.

In the first hours of frenetic response, fully aware of al Qaeda's culpability, both President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld sought frantically to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks, as we know from Richard Clarke's book, Against All Enemies. They anxiously waited to proceed with their planned invasion of Iraq.
If the Bush Administration needed a reason to proceed with their invasions, they could not have been handed a more fortuitous and spectacular excuse, and they played their hand brilliantly.

9/11 was a shocking event of unprecedented scale, but it was simply not an invasion of national security. It was a localized criminal act of terrorism, and to compare it, as the Bush Administration immediately did, to Pearl Harbor was ludicrous: The hijacked airliners were not the vanguard of a formidable naval armada, an air force, and a standing army ready to engage in all out war, as the Japanese were prepared to do and did in 1941.

By equating a criminal act of terrorism with a military threat of invasion, the Bush Administration consciously adopted fear mongering as a mode of governance. It was an extreme violation of the public trust, but it served perfectly their need to justify warfare.

As not a few disinterested observers noted at the time, international criminal terrorism is best countered by international police action, which Israel and other nations have proven many times over to be effective. Military mobilization is irrelevant. It has proven to be counterproductive.

Why, then, was a "war" declared on "terrorists and states that harbor terrorists?"

The pre-planned attack on Afghanistan, as we have seen, was meant to nullify the contract between the Taliban and the Bridas Corporation. It was a matter of international energy policy. It had nothing to do, as designed, with apprehending Osama bin Laden - a matter of security policy.

But the two "seemingly unrelated areas of policy" had been "melded," so here was an epic opportunity to bait-and-switch. Conjoining the terrorists and the states that harbored them made "war" plausible, and the Global War on Terror was born: It would be necessary to overthrow the Taliban as well as to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

(In retrospect, the monumental fraud of the "war on terror" is crystal clear. In Afghanistan the Taliban was overthrown instead of bringing the terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice, and in Iraq there were no terrorists at all. But Afghanistan and Iraq are dotted today with permanent military bases guarding the seized petroleum assets.)

On October 7, 2001 the carpet of bombs is unleashed over Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, the former Unocal consultant, is installed as head of an interim government. Subsequently he is elected President of Afghanistan, and welcomes the first U.S. envoy - Mr. John J. Maresca, the Vice President of the Unocal Corporation who had implored Congress to have the Taliban overthrown. Mr. Maresca was succeeded by Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad - also a former Unocal consultant. (Mr. Khalilzad has since become Ambassador to Iraq, and has now been nominated to replace John Bolton, his PNAC colleague, as the ambassador to the UN.)

With the Taliban banished and the Bridas contract moot, Presidents Karzai of Afghanistan and Musharraf of Pakistan meet on February 8, 2002, sign an agreement for a new pipeline, and the way forward is open for Unocal/Delta once more.

The Bridas contract was breached by U.S. military force, but behind the combat was Unocal. Bridas sued Unocal in the U.S. courts for contract interference and won, overcoming Richard Ben Veniste's law firm in 2004. That firm had multibillion-dollar interests in the Caspian Basin and shared an office in Uzbekistan with the Enron Corporation. In 2004, Mr. Ben Veniste was serving as a 9/11 Commissioner.

About a year after the Karzai/Musharraf agreement was signed, an article in the trade journal "Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections" described the readiness of three US federal agencies to finance the prospective pipeline: the U.S. Export/Import Bank, the Trade and Development Agency, and the Overseas Private Insurance Corporation. The article continued, "...some recent reports ... indicated ... the United States was willing to police the pipeline infrastructure through permanent stationing of its troops in the region." The article appeared on February 23, 2003.
The objective of the first premeditated war was now achieved. The Bush Administration stood ready with financing to build the pipeline across Afghanistan, and with a permanent military presence to protect it.

Within two months President Bush sent the armed might of America sweeping into Iraq.

Then came the smokescreen of carefully crafted deceptions. The staging of the Jessica Lynch rescue. The toppling of the statue in Baghdad. Mission accomplished. The orchestrated capture, kangaroo court trial, and hurried execution of Saddam Hussein. Nascent "democracy" in Iraq. All were scripted to burnish the image of George Bush's fraudulent war.

The smokescreen includes the cover-up of 9/11. Initially and fiercely resisting any inquiry at all, President Bush finally appoints a 10-person "9/11 Commission."

The breathtaking exemptions accorded President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the inquiry rendered the entire enterprise a farce: They were "interviewed" together, no transcription of the conversation was allowed, and they were not under oath. The Commission report finally places the blame on "faulty intelligence."

Many of the 10 commissioners, moreover, were burdened with stunning conflicts of interest - Mr. Ben Veniste, for example - mostly by their connections to the oil and defense industries. The Carlyle Group contributed to Commissioner Tim Roemer's political campaigns. Commission Chairman Thomas Kean was a Director of Amerada Hess, which had formed a partnership with Delta Oil, the Arabian company of Khalid bin Mahfouz, and that company was teamed with Unocal in the Afghan pipeline project. Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton serves on the board of Stonebridge International consulting group, which is advising Gulfsands Petroleum and Devon Energy Corporation about Iraqi oil opportunities.

The apparent manipulation of pre-war intelligence is not addressed by the 9/11 Commission, the veracity of the Administration's lies and distortions is assumed without question, and the troubling incongruities of 9/11 are ignored: The theories of controlled demolition, the prior short-selling of airline stock, the whole cottage industry of skepticism.

The doubters and critics of 9/11 are often dismissed as conspiracy crazies, but you needn't claim conspiracy to be skeptical. Why did both President Bush and Vice President Cheney pressure Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to forego any investigation at all? Failing in that, why did the President then use "Executive Privilege" so often to withhold and censor documents? Why did the White House refuse to testify under oath? Why the insistence on the loopy and unrecorded Oval Office interview of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney simultaneously?
There is much we don't know about 9/11.

The Iraq Study Group

Viewing the carnage in Iraq, and seeking desperately to find a way out of it, the U.S. Congress appointed on March 15, 2006 the Iraq Study Group. It was also called the Baker-Hamilton Commission after its co-chairmen, the peripatetic problem-solvers James Baker and Lee Hamilton. It was charged with assessing the situation in Iraq and making policy recommendations.

The Commission assessed the situation as "grave and deteriorating" and recommended substantive changes in handling it: draw down the troop levels and negotiate with Syria and Iran. These recommendations were rejected out of hand by the Bush Administration, but those about the oil sector could hardly have been more pleasing.

The Commission's report urged Iraqi leaders to "... reorganize the national industry as a commercial enterprise." That sounds like code for privatizing the industry (which had been nationalized in 1972.) In case that wasn't clear enough, the Commission encouraged "... investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international energy companies." That sounds like code for Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Conoco/Phillips, BP/Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell. The Commission urged support for the World Bank's efforts to "ensure that best practices are used in contracting." And that sounds like code for Production Sharing Agreements.
Mr. Baker is a clever and relentless man. He will endorse pages and pages of changes in strategy and tactics - but leave firmly in place the one inviolable purpose of the conflict in Iraq: capturing the oil.

A Colossus of Failure

The objectives of the oil wars may be non-negotiable, but that doesn't guarantee their successful achievement.

The evidence suggests the contrary.

As recently as January of 2005, the Associated Press expected construction of the Trans Afghan Pipeline to begin in 2006. So did News Central Asia. But by October of 2006, NCA was talking about construction "... as soon as there is stability in Afghanistan."

As the Taliban, the warlords, and the poppy growers reclaim control of the country, clearly there is no stability in Afghanistan, and none can be expected soon.

Unocal has been bought up by the Chevron Corporation. The Bridas Corporation is now part of BP/Amoco. Searching the companies' websites for "Afghanistan pipeline" yields, in both cases, zero results. Nothing is to be found on the sites of the prospective funding agencies. The pipeline project appears to be dead.

The Production Sharing Agreements for Iraq's oil fields cannot be signed until the country's oil policies are codified in statute. That was supposed to be done by December of 2006, but Iraq is in a state of chaotic violence. The "hydrocarbon law" is struggling along - one report suggests it may be in place by March - so the signing of the PSA's will be delayed at least that long.

The U.S. and British companies that stand to gain so much - Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Concoco/Phillips, BP/Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell - will stand a while longer. They may well have to stand down.

On October 31, 2006 the newspaper China Daily reported on the visit to China by Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani. Mr. Shahristani, the story said, "welcomed Chinese oil companies to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi oil industry." That was alarming, but understated.

Stratfor, the American investment research service, was more directly to the point, in a report dated September 27, 2006 (a month before Minister Shahristani's visit, so it used the future tense). The Minister "... will talk to the Chinese about honoring contracts from the Saddam Hussein era.... This announcement could change the face of energy development in the country and leave U.S. firms completely out in the cold."

The oil wars are abject failures. The Project for a New American Century wanted, in a fantasy of retrograde imperialism, to remove Saddam Hussein from power. President George Bush launched an overt act of military aggression to do so, at a cost of more than 3,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and half a trillion dollars. In the process he has exacerbated the threats from international terrorism, ravaged the Iraqi culture, ruined their economy and their public services, sent thousands of Iraqis fleeing their country as refugees, created a maelstrom of sectarian violence, dangerously destabilized the Middle East, demolished the global prestige of the United States, and defamed the American people.
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Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He is working on a new book, To Provide Against Invasions: Corporate Dominion and America's Derelict Democracy. He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com.

Officer's court-martial ends in mistrial
By MELANTHIA MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer 43 minutes ago

FORT LEWIS, Wash. - A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the court-martial of an Army lieutenant who refused to deploy to Iraq, saying the soldier did not fully understand a document he signed admitting to elements of the charges.
Prosecutors said 1st Lt. Ehren Watada admitted in the document that he had a duty to go to Iraq with his fellow soldiers. Watada, however, said he admitted only that he did not go to Iraq with his unit, not that he had a duty to go.

Military judge Lt. Col. John Head set a March 12 date for a new trial and dismissed the jurors. Watada's defense lawyer objected to the mistrial and said a second trial would amount to double jeopardy — more than one prosecution for the same alleged crime.
Watada, 28, of Honolulu, had been expected to testify in his own defense Wednesday until Head and attorneys met in a closed meeting for much of the morning.

Watada is the first commissioned officer to be court-martialed for refusing to go to Iraq, said Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington, D.C.

In the 12-page stipulation of fact he signed last month, Watada acknowledged that he refused to deploy last June with his unit, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and that he made public statements criticizing the Iraq war. Watada has said he refused to go to Iraq because he believes the war is illegal.
In exchange, prosecutors dropped two charges of conduct unbecoming an officer against him. He remains charged with missing movement — for his refusal to deploy — and two other allegations of conduct unbecoming an officer for comments made about the case. He could receive four years in prison and a dishonorable discharge if convicted.
Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, said he didn't think his client could be tried again because it would be the equivalent of double jeopardy. Should the Army proceed with a second trial, Seitz said he would seek dismissal of the charges with prejudice so they could not be refiled. Lt. Col. Robert Resnick of the Judge Advocate General's office at Fort Lewis said double jeopardy does not apply.

In their opening statements Tuesday, prosecutors said Watada abandoned his soldiers and brought disgrace upon himself and the service by accusing the Army of war crimes and denouncing the Bush administration.
Seitz countered that Watada acted in good conscience, based on his own convictions.

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

EXCLUSIVE: Hunger-Striking Palestinian Professor Sami Al-Arian Speaks Out In First Broadcast Interview of His Four-Year Imprisonment

In a Democracy Now! exclusive, Sami Al-Arian speaks to us from prison where is on a hunger-strike. The Palestinian professor and activist’s case has been one of the most closely watched – and controversial – post-9/11 prosecutions in the United States. Al-Arian has been jailed despite a jury's failure to return a single guilty verdict. In the four years since his arrest, Sami Al-Arian has never conducted a broadcast interview - until now. Sami Al-Arian has been in prison for the past four years. The Palestinian professor and activist was found not guilty over a year ago of 17 charges against him yet he remains in jail and the US government seems unwilling to release him.

Al-Arian’s case has been one of the most closely watched – and controversial – post 9/11 prosecutions in the United States. A respected computer science professor at the University of South Florida, Al-Arian was a leading member of the Muslim community and one of the most prominent Palestinian academics and activists in the US.

In February 2003, he was arrested and accused of being a leader of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Justice Department handed down a sweeping 50-count indictment against him and seven other men, charging them with conspiracy to commit murder, giving material support to terrorists, extortion, perjury, and other offenses.

At the end of the trial in December 2005, the jury failed to return a single guilty verdict. Al Arian was acquitted on eight of seventeen counts against him and the jury deadlocked on the rest. Four months after the verdict, he agreed to plead guilty to one of the remaining charges in exchange for being released and deported. At his sentencing, the judge gave Al-Arian as much prison time as possible under a plea deal - 57 months. His release date was set for April 2007.

But just over two weeks ago, a judge found him in contempt for refusing a second time to testify before a grand jury in Virginia in a case involving a Muslim think tank. The date of his release could now be extended by as much as 18 months because of the ruling. Al-Arian, who is a diabetic, began a hunger strike in response.

In the four years since his arrest, Sami Al-Arian has never conducted a broadcast interview - until now. In a Democracy Now exclusive, we spoke with Sami Al-Arian from prison. He called us yesterday from the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia. He began by describing where he was being held.

* Sami Al-Arian, speaking from prison.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: In this Democracy Now! exclusive, we speak with Sami Al-Arian from prison. He called us yesterday from the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia. He began by describing where he is being held.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I am in, I think, somewhere in central Virginia in a jail called Northern Neck Regional Jail. I think it's somewhere in the country, and it's a very small jail. I hear it's privately owned and that they hold the federal prisoners on contract. I think there are less than 500 prisoners. I’m in a part, which is not very big. It’s about twelve cells with twenty-eight people. And that's what it’s called. It’s a part.

AMY GOODMAN: And why are you being held there right now?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I’m being held on contempt charges. And, you know, that's why I’m on a hunger strike.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us when you went on hunger strike?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yeah, I started on January 22nd, about sixteen days ago.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, I believe that freedom and human dignity are more precious than life itself. In essence, I’m taking a principled stand, that I’m willing to endure whatever it takes to win my freedom. I’m also protesting the continuous harassment campaign by the government against me because of my political beliefs. This campaign was supposed to have ended when we concluded the plea deal last year, but unfortunately it hasn't. And if you’d like, I can elaborate further on that.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, please do.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: OK. Well, you know, after two-and-a-half years in pretrial detention with Guantanamo-like conditions, mostly under 23-hour lockdowns, followed by a six-month trial with eighty witnesses, including twenty-one from Israel, thousands of documents, phone interceptions, physical surveillance, websites, hearsay evidence, anything and everything they could think of, preceded by twelve years of investigations, tens of millions of dollars, some even say over $80 million spent on this investigation, with ninety-four charges against me and my co-defendants and with my defense only being four words -- “I rest my case” -- how did the jury see it? They gave them zero convictions.

Unfortunately, however, the judge stopped the deliberations, because of a distressed juror, and they ended up with some hung counts, although they were mostly ten-to-two in my favor. What happened was that the government had the power to retry me on these hung counts. My attorneys had prior commitments and would have left, which meant I probably would have to hire a new legal team and wait perhaps for another year or more for a new trial.

Meanwhile, in my attorneys’ judgment, the government was desperate to settle after its total defeat. I was, at the time, perplexed, because I wasn't sure what offense I would plea to. But one of my attorneys said that even if there was none, we had to invent one to get you out. I authorized them to explore this option, and they concluded a deal with essentially time served and deportation, were I to plea to giving some services to people associated with an organization on their terrorist list. And if you’d like, I could go over quickly and briefly --

AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Go through what your plea agreement was.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yeah. Well, number one, that I sponsored a researcher in 1994 and ’95 to come to the United States to conduct research and edit a magazine, which he certainly did. Two, that I wasn't candid or forthcoming when interviewed by a journalist in November ’95 -- and don’t ask me why this is an offense. And three, that I helped my brother-in-law to get out of prison when he was detained on secret evidence between ’97 and 2000. These are the only three things that --

AMY GOODMAN: That was Mazen Najjar?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: That was Mazen Al-Najjar, that’s correct. My main concern with this deal was that the judge got out of hand, because association is constitutionally protected. And everyone kept saying that this was just a face-saving way for the government to end this, and no one is going to object. And, indeed, you know, no one did.

Amy, during the plea negotiations, the government wanted a cooperation provision, which I totally ruled out. I told my lawyers that if they insisted, then to break off all these negotiations and proceed to a new trial. The government immediately took this off the table and never raised it again.

Now, they want me to testify before a grand jury in Virginia, which is contrary to our agreement of no cooperation. We also believe that this is either a perjury or contempt trap. See, back in August of 2000, I was also subpoenaed before an immigration court, and I was asked if I believe in the freedom of Islam through violence. My answer was one word: no. But this was nonetheless one of the counts against me, which the jury acquitted me of. Now, I have been held in contempt for the total of over a month last year, and then that grand jury expired. Then they reconvened another grand jury this year, and I have been held now in contempt since January 22nd. That's why I’m on a hunger strike.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain this case that they’re asking you to testify before a grand jury about?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, I’m not really sure, because I don’t believe that -- I think it's just a justification to ask me whatever they want. You know, one of the prosecutors, who’s been after me for some time, although he’s not even from Florida -- he’s from Virginia -- had said to one of my attorneys that, “OK, if Sami wants to tell his story, we're going to give him the opportunity to tell his story.” I mean, I’m not sure what that meant. But the context of which, that there is an ongoing investigation of some of the think tanks and charities in Virginia, and they want me to -- they want to ask me about them, which I really haven't had any relationship with any of these since ’92 or ’93. I mean, it's been a long time, and I think it's just a pretext to hold me either in contempt or charge me with perjury, because whatever I’m going to say, they’re going to say, “You lied.”

AMY GOODMAN: And so, how does it work? If you refuse to cooperate, how long is your jail sentence without the refusal, and what happens now?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I’m told that on civil contempt charges, it is really in the hands of the judge. The judge has the power to lift this tomorrow, if he wants to. It is not supposed to be punishment. It’s supposed to be coercion. It can go for six months, renewed two more times, which is up to eighteen months. And after that, the government can even charge you with criminal contempt, which really has no limit on how much, so this really could go on for years and years if they really want to do it. And I think it’s politically motivated, so it might very well be the case.

AMY GOODMAN: Sami Al-Arian is speaking to us from prison in Virginia in this first broadcast interview since his arrest four years ago. We’ll return to this Democracy Now! exclusive in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our exclusive conversation here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report, the conversation with the jailed Palestinian professor and activist Sami Al-Arian. It's his first broadcast interview since his arrest in February of 2003. He talked about the conditions of his imprisonment.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, in about a couple of weeks, it would be my fourth anniversary, so it will be four years, and it has been, you know, a difficult situation, difficult ordeal. The first twenty-three, twenty-four months, I was basically in a federal penitentiary in a section of the prison called the special housing unit, which is pretty similar to Guantanamo-like conditions. I would call it Guantanamo-plus, the “plus” being giving one phone call a month and visitation by the family behind glass.

Other than that, it's pretty much the same: very restricted, extremely restricted; physical searches and strip searches almost daily at the time, until the judge put a stop to it; in terms of availability to any outsiders, it's almost nonexistent; no phone calls allowed. Very difficult treatment within the prison system. I remember in the first couple of months, they wouldn’t even -- you have to be shackled, obviously, every time you leave your cell. And when I meet with my lawyers, they would refuse even to carry my stuff. I would carry it on my back, you know, and try to balance myself while I walk almost half a mile between my cell and where my lawyer was. So it wasn’t --

AMY GOODMAN: You mean, your back being perpendicular to the floor?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Exactly. Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: You'd be bent over at a ninety-degree angle, to keep your documents on your back?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: That’s right. For two months, I had to carry my legal stuff on my back, because they would refuse to carry it, and I was handcuffed from the back, so I cannot carry it myself. And that took place over the past, you know, couple of years, and then I was transferred, you know, during my trial for fifteen months in a county jail, and I was the only prisoner -- by the way, when I was in the federal penitentiary, I was the only pretrial person in the whole 5,000-inmate complex, because the prison officials kept telling me, “We’re not equipped for pretrials,” because I had all kinds of problems trying to listen to the conversations, they wouldn’t take me to the computers, and all kinds of problems that, you know, your show will not even be enough for me to account them and to go over them.

But after that, shortly before my trial, during my trial and post-trial, I was for fifteen months in a county jail, and I was put in the female section. I was the only man in the female section. And because, of course, it’s a female section, the whole part, the whole area, I was there by myself. I would hear females; I wouldn’t see them. And then, still, I was in my cell for twenty-three hours locked down, although all the other cells were empty. There was no reason really for me to be in a cell for twenty-three hours, but that’s the kind of treatment I was getting.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you recently filed a protest with the judge about the latest conditions that you’re in?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I have, and I explained to him, you know, for instance, I’ve been -- in the past nine months I’ve been to nine different prisons. I mean, I don't understand it. You know, I go from -- when the grand jury expired last year, you know, at the end of the year, I was transferred to Atlanta for a couple of weeks, and they knew, because the prosecutors and my lawyers were saying that a new grand jury will be convened, and the same thing -- we’ll go over the same thing again. And nevertheless I was sent to Atlanta for a couple of weeks, again under 23-hour lockdown, in a very small cell with two or three people and with a roach- and rat-infested environment. You know, the rat actually ate my diabetics tack one night. And it was very difficult, because in one hour -- and then they let 200 people out at one time; in one hour you’re supposed to get a shower, make a phone call, do whatever you want, and obviously have to wait in line on each and every one of them. And there is really no reason for that.

And then, I was transferred to another prison in Petersburg, Virginia, in which I had clean clothes. They took the clean clothes and gave me dirty clothes and turnout clothes. And when I protested, you know, they started giving me obscenities. I had an undershirt, and it was almost twenty degrees, and they took the undershirt and they put it in the garbage. They took my sneakers. I mean, all this kind of a treatment, really which I call harassment, is uncalled for, because that undershirt, I bought from the government, you know. I didn’t come with it. I bought it from them.

AMY GOODMAN: Which meant that you -- once they took your t-shirt, it was very cold.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yeah. And you had to walk, you know, shackled, your legs shackled and your hands handcuffed, and you can't even do anything about it. I mean, everybody, every guard, not only had their shirt and their coat and their cap and their gloves, but we were walking in t-shirts in twenty degrees at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning for long distances, and were shackled. That means you cannot even run. You have to walk very slowly so you won't fall down.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Dr. Sami Al-Arian. He’s imprisoned now in Virginia. I wanted to ask you about the judge's comments, US District Judge James Moody, who said, “You are a master manipulator. The evidence is clear in this case: you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, I’m not really sure what motivated the judge to say what he said. He gave me the high end of the sentence, and he used language to justify that, which was basically acquitted conduct. You know, I was -- he was, in essence, rebuking the findings of the jury, which I believe is unconstitutional. I mean, the evidence was very clear. When one of the jurors was asked later, you know, “How did you -- why did you fail to convict this guy?” And he looked him in the eye and said, “There was no evidence.”

OPERATOR: You have one minute left to talk.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: And then, he asked him back, “What would it have taken you to convict him?” He looked him back and said, “Evidence.” I mean, what evidence was there -- I mean, the freedom of association and freedom of beliefs, I think this is not a crime. A crime is, have I done anything that would have convicted me in a court of law with a jury of my peers, and the facts are very clear. They said no.

AMY GOODMAN: The judge also said your children attend the finest universities this country that this country has to offer, while you raise money to blow up the children of others.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Again, this was count two in my indictment, and the jury acquitted me on this.

OPERATOR: You have fifteen seconds left to talk.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I will have to call you back.

AMY GOODMAN: And with that, the line cut. Sami Al-Arian did call us back. Before we go to the second part of that interview, we're going to go right now to Sami Al-Arian's attorney. Sami Al-Arian’s attorney is Peter Erlinder, and he joins us now from Minneapolis. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Peter Erlinder. Peter, can you hear me?

PETER ERLINDER: Can you hear?

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I’ll ask -- I will ask the cameraman in Minneapolis to repeat the question. But I would like to -- why don’t we go back to the Sami Al-Arian tape, which is the second part of the interview, and then we'll talk with the attorney who is now representing Sami Al-Arian. The second part of the interview was conducted just a few minutes after the line cut off. Sami Al-Arian called us back and continued the conversation.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi. Dr. Sami Al-Arian?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi. So you face fifty-seven months prison, which was the sentence the judge gave you, despite a request of prosecutors and defense attorneys for a lower sentence. But it is extended because of your refusal to cooperate with the [inaudible]?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Correct. I mean, even in the fifty-seven months, you don’t serve fifty-seven months. You serve about 85% of them, which would have meant that I would be released in the middle of April of this year. Now, this is thing is tolled, and I would have to serve whatever the contempt sentence would be, which is up to the judge, and that, as I said, could be as long as eighteen months. And in the meanwhile, I’ll be waiting to serve the rest of my sentence, when that sentence is up.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you'll be deported?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Where will you go?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I don't know. I’m a Palestinian. I am homeless, and my family is still looking for a country. And that effort has stopped now, because we don't know when I’ll be leaving. And my attorneys and my family were trying to find me a country before this thing started back in September.

AMY GOODMAN: Where is your brother-in-law, who was deported?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: He is in the Middle East. He is trying to live a peaceful life. I mean, he’s in a friendly country of the United States. So, and he’s trying to resume basically his life, after his ordeal.

AMY GOODMAN: Sami Al-Arian, can you talk about your activism? I mean, it might surprise some to hear that in 2000 you campaigned not just for President Bush, but with President George W. Bush in Florida. The photographs are there, and he met your children.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yes. Well, a lot of people only get part of the story. You know, the story obviously started with the struggle for civil rights in this country for Arabs and Muslims after the use of -- the intensive use of secret evidence in the late ’90s. And I was part of a group that came together, a coalition that came together trying to fight this. And we were approaching Congress almost on a -- you know, for me, sometimes on a weekly basis, traveling and trying to talk to them about this practice and the unconstitutionality of it. And we approached both campaigns, the Democrats and the Republicans, trying to do something about it. We had legislation in Congress trying to outlaw and ban the use of secret evidence.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by “secret evidence”?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, at that time, the government had the power -- and obviously it had expanded tremendously after the PATRIOT Act -- to introduce evidence that the defendant has absolutely no knowledge of. And they present it to the judge, and the judge will look at it from, you know, only one side and will make a determination. And we thought that was unconstitutional, that the person has -- due process says that you have to look at the evidence and cross-examine the witnesses, and then the judge would make a determination based on both sides.

And we were pretty successful, you know. We got it passed through the Judiciary Committee, which was chaired by Henry Hyde at the time, and I had a good relationship with him. And, as I said, we approached both campaigns. And basically, my interest was basically a single issue at the time. You know, I wasn’t interested in Middle East politics. I wasn’t interested in how they deal with, you know, the different things in the world. We were interested to see which campaign would support this legislation, so we can at least get that victory for civil rights in this country.

The Gore campaign was lukewarm, because they were part of legislation that was executing this policy. The Bush campaign embraced us. And he said -- I mean, he talked in the second debate about how, you know, unjustly it is to use “racial profiling,” he called it, in the name of secret evidence. And we endorsed him based on that promise. And indeed, he was going to keep his promise. A lot of people don’t even know that on 9/11 itself, at 3:00 that afternoon, had 9/11 not taken place -- I mean, the events -- he would have announced something as far as banning the use of secret evidence, and the Republican congress was ready to pass that legislation if the President gave them that sign. But, you know, I am pretty critical of the policies of the Republican congress and the Bush administration, as far as many, many other issues, especially after 9/11.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said that the issue has moved from secret evidence to no evidence.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: That’s right, exactly. I mean, what’s happening now is the -- I mean, you just mentioned about the judge, and what evidence did the government have in order to link us to any of these murders? I mean, that’s why I’m totally perplexed by the judges. You know, and I think it has to do probably with the local coverage. You know, this case was covered immensely in the area. If you go to one of these local papers, you may find a thousand articles on me for the past, you know, dozen years or so. And there is linkage to the university that I was working in. That’s why I said from the beginning that this is a politically motivated persecution.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean “linkage to the university”? You mean the University of Southern Florida?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yeah, yeah, the University of South Florida. Well, I can talk a little bit about it, which probably will be something that no one heard before. The university was very much involved in this plot against me. As you may already know, I had been a target for many years by some groups to get me fired from the university. This effort intensified after 9/11. They found a sympathetic ear in the current president of the university, who orchestrated a board vote to dismiss me.

AMY GOODMAN: And that president was?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Her name is Judy Genshaft. Naturally, you know, I fought back and actually won both in state and federal courts. But as the university was on the verge of being censured by the American Association of University Professors, that the president offered a large settlement, almost $1 million for me in order to resign. That happened around the third week of August in 2002. But then, she said that she needed to clear that with the board’s chairman, the board of trustees chairman, who also happened to be a fat cat Republican. The chairman of that board objected, because of the anticipated political fallout, and immediately contacted his friend, who appointed him to the position, the former governor of Florida. The governor indicated that he’d take care of the matter, but needed some time. So the university, within three days of offering me this large settlement, they came back and sued me in court in order to fire me. Meanwhile, the government contacted the White House and the former attorney general to take care of the matter. And I could see from the grand jury that it had [inaudible] tremendously in August and September and October. And as the word goes, now we know the rest of the story.

AMY GOODMAN: And the governor at the time of Florida was?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: The brother of the President, Jeb Bush. Oh, by the way, I mean, if you remember in the 2004 campaign, there was a very heated campaign between the current senator of Florida, Martinez, and the former education commissioner and the former [inaudible] president, Castor, Betty Castor, you know.

AMY GOODMAN: The former president of USF, your university.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yeah, and they [inaudible] around me, and then, at the time, they asked Bush, Jeb Bush, you know, “Do you know this guy?” He said, “I never met him in my life.” And we met four times. Not only we met four times, but he sent me a written letter, which is in evidence in the government’s possession, and the guys -- I mean, politicians just say whatever, you know, they think will give them [inaudible] with the public without, unfortunately, any relation to the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: And he met you four times around what issue? Around a substantive issue or around you campaigning for him?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: In 2000 -- I didn’t campaign for Jeb Bush, but, I mean, we talked to him. I met with him three times in 2000 and one time in 2001. And in 2001, actually, I told him that the margin of victory in Florida was really due to us, because we campaigned, and in our estimation we gave push, you know, for good or bad -- people could claim, blame me for that -- maybe a margin of about 14,000 votes.

AMY GOODMAN: And when you say “us,” you mean?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I’m talking about the Arab and Muslim community in Florida. And, again, we were focused on secret evidence. We were not focused on other issues. And he said, “Can you prove it to me?” I said, “Yes, I can prove it to you.” And, you know, and so, we had this kind of discussion, and actually at the time, I think the meeting was in Orlando in the summer of -- I think in April or May of 2001.

AMY GOODMAN: That was a very close race between Martinez and Castor, the university president of your university, and could decide the balance of -- it was thought at the time -- of the Senate.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: That’s right. And unfortunately --

AMY GOODMAN: You were featured prominently in the campaigns.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: -- I was somehow in the center of this campaign, you know, and we were exploited, basically. I mean, he wanted to trash her by using me in order to win that seat.

AMY GOODMAN: That is the interview that we're bringing you with Sami Al-Arian, our exclusive talk with him in jail in Virginia. When we come back from break, we'll speak with his attorney, we’ll go back to the final part of the interview, and then speak with Sami Al-Arian's daughter, Laila.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Before we go back to the third part of our interview with Sami Al-Arian, I want to bring in his attorney to talk about some of the legal aspects of the case. Peter Erlinder represents Sami Al-Arian in the latest contempt charges against him. He joins us from Minneapolis, where he's a professor at the William Mitchell School of Law. Welcome to Democracy Now!

PETER ERLINDER: Good morning, Ms. Goodman. How are you?

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you start off just by explaining, in the jury verdict -- seventeen charges against Sami Al-Arian -- he was either acquitted or the jury deadlocked on every single one. Not found guilty in any of the charges against him?

PETER ERLINDER: That’s correct. The jury found him not guilty of approximately half of the charges and the more serious charges, and then with the charges in which they weren’t able to reach a verdict, they had voted ten-to-two in favor of acquittal, and they were still deliberating at a time that the judge ended the deliberations. So it's quite clear that the evidence against Dr. Al-Arian was extraordinarily weak.

And your listeners should know that his defense consisted entirely of the First Amendment. There were no witnesses, no evidence. Sami didn’t testify and his lawyers, Linda Moreno and Bill Moffitt, stood before the jury and simply said that everything this man has done is protected by the Constitution of the United States. And the jury agreed.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the judge hands down a sentence of -- what was it? -- fifty-seven months.

PETER ERLINDER: Correct.

AMY GOODMAN: Above the request of the prosecutors?

PETER ERLINDER: The prosecution had agreed that Dr. Al-Arian essentially should have been released shortly after the plea agreement in May of 2006, and that he would voluntarily leave the country, and he would be assisted by the Justice Department in doing that. However, when we appeared at the sentencing hearing on May 1, 2006, the judge launched into what could only be called a diatribe, in which he accused Sami publicly of all of the offenses that the jury had acquitted him of. And then he used that as a justification to reject the prosecution recommendation on the sentence and to sentence Sami to the maximum allowable under the guidelines.

Had the sentence been two or three months longer, it clearly would have been an unconstitutional sentence based on recent Supreme Court cases. We are now in the process of filing a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court, challenging the judge's use of acquitted conduct in this situation, too. And so, we’ll be asking the Supreme Court to decide whether this expansion of the sentence was imposed constitutionally or whether a judge, rather than a jury, can make determinations like this.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, in the plea agreement that Dr. Al-Arian reached with the state, he talked about non- cooperation, part of it.

PETER ERLINDER: Correct.

AMY GOODMAN: What does that mean? And how is it that he has now been called to testify before a grand jury?

PETER ERLINDER: Well, there's an assistant US attorney named Kromberg in the Eastern District of Virginia who actually has a pattern of calling before the grand jury or calling to his office Arab and Muslim defendants who have been acquitted. He then asks them questions and, based on what his interpretation of the truth is, then indicts them for lying either to the grand jury or lying to him as a federal official. And we understood that that was the tactic and the ploy used by this person, Kromberg. So our advice was that Dr. Al-Arian should not testify. And beyond that, the law in the Fourth Circuit, which is where the Eastern District of Virginia is located, makes absolutely clear that a non-cooperation clause in a plea agreement means that a defendant should not be called before a grand jury, either, or be required to cooperate in any way. So the request itself, we believe, was against the law and is against the law, and we’re going to be appealing that to the Fourth Circuit, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this case in relation to the Chicago case, where both Salah and Ashqar were just acquitted. And the attorney for Ashqar was also the attorney for Al-Arian, William Moffitt, who told the New York Times the government wants to use these cases to turn the fight for Palestinian rights in the Middle East into a battle of criminal law in an American courtroom.

PETER ERLINDER: Well, Bill Moffitt, of course, is a well-known criminal defense lawyer for whom I have great respect, and he is correct about that observation. But what happened, both in Sami Al-Arian’s case and the case in Chicago, is that lawyers for the defendants told the jury the truth about the political motivations for these prosecutions. And when people in the United States, fair-minded folks who understand what the First amendment means and what freedom of speech mean and what freedom of association mean, hear the details of the government manipulation of these cases, they respond in extraordinary ways, as the jury did in Tampa, as did the jury in Chicago. And this is not a new phenomenon. Several of the other lawyers in the Chicago case are National Lawyers Guild members, as am I, as are a number of the other lawyers, including Lynne Stewart, who you know, who have been fighting this. And the successes have come when the lawyers have made clear to the juries the political underpinnings of these prosecutions, which of course is what’s motivating them.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Erlinder, I want to go back to the end of the interview with Sami Al-Arian from this Virginia jail, speaking to us from Virginia. At the time of his arrest, Al-Arian was a leading member of the Muslim community in South Florida, one of the most prominent Palestinian academics and activists in the United States. In September 2001, invited to be a guest on the O’Reilly Factor, under the impression he was going to be discussing Arab American reactions to 9/11. Instead, the host, Bill O'Reilly, spent the interview accusing him of supporting terrorism. O’Reilly concluded by saying, “If I was the CIA, I’d follow you wherever you went.”

Beginning the next day, the University of South Florida, where Al-Arian worked, was barraged with hundreds of threatening letters and emails. Thirty-six hours after the interview the university put him on paid leave. He was arrested a year and a half later and has been in prison ever since. In my conversation with Dr. Al-Arian from prison yesterday, I asked him about the media’s role in his ordeal and whether it all began with Bill O’Reilly.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: No. It actually started long before Bill O’Reilly, and if you know John Sugg has been -- who is a journalist, used to be in Tampa, now in Atlanta, I think, a senior editor of an alternative newsweekly, he has been tracking this. And I think there’s another journalist, Eric Boehlert who wrote about this. This media campaign has been going on now since 1994. And the same media people who have been after me since 1994 were the instigators to Bill O'Reilly. And I didn't know that, of course, at the time, but I know it now. There is a group of people who present themselves as terrorism experts, who have been after me. And, I mean, their names are very well known. I don't need to recite them here for you, but they are very well known. Anybody can look them up.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re referring to, for example, Steven Emerson?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: That's one of them.

AMY GOODMAN: And he represents what group?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, a lot of them are referred to as basically Likudniks in this country. I mean, I am sure now, you know, with the neocons, a lot of people know now more about them than they used to as of ten years ago. I mean, you got the guy from Philadelphia, Pipes, and others. And so, I don't need to go through all these names, but they have been part of that group who are trying to basically say that the interest of Israel, this country, is the same as the interest of America, which we totally reject that.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a few more minutes. What about your family? You plea bargained, you say, to spare your family another trial?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Not only that. You know, I’ve been away from my family for four years, and my two youngest children are in need of me. This is the most critical time of their life, and I need to be a part of their lives before they grow up. And that was the major consideration for me, to end this, is to be with them. And now the government wants even to delay it further. That’s why, you know, I’m not going to [inaudible] -- that happened. And, as I said earlier, to me, freedom is more precious than life itself, and if I have to sacrifice, I will sacrifice. But I will not give in.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, your children now are what age?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, the three older ones are in college or graduated and working. And I got the two younger ones, one in middle school and one in high school, twelve and sixteen.

AMY GOODMAN: When you are deported, will they go to where you are?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: The two youngest ones will go with me, yes. The other ones, obviously, are going to stay here, because they have established lives here.

AMY GOODMAN: And your wife?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: My wife will be with me. And she has been with me throughout this. And I couldn't ask for a better partner in my life.

AMY GOODMAN: Could they convene one grand jury after another and keep you in jail forever?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: No. They can't do that. I’m told that they can do it up to two times. But, obviously, they always have a gun at your head, because they can go also, after they’ve done with the civil contempt, they go for criminal contempt. And the problem with the criminal contempt is that the proof is not very difficult, because all what they have to do is that you refuse to obey the court's order, and then there is no limit on how much you can be sentenced in a criminal contempt. So this could be an open-ended struggle.

AMY GOODMAN: Your final thoughts, as you speak to us from jail in Virginia, to share with this audience here in the United States, but also all over the world.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yes. I just want to say how grateful I am for really thousands of people who have looked at this case and have concluded that this was unjust and this is politically motivated. And I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart, because I receive letters almost on a daily basis, and notes and pictures and books and letters of support and prayers.

OPERATOR: You have one minute left to talk.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I would like to thank them and take this opportunity basically to thank them. And I would like them to continue the struggle, because the struggle in America has not ended. It’s been a continuous line for civil rights in this country from early on until now, and I think we are going to win. They just have to hold on, be patient and steadfast and, as the President says, stay the course.

AMY GOODMAN: Sami Al-Arian, speaking in his first broadcast interview since his arrest and imprisonment four years ago.

Laila Al-Arian is Sami Al-Arian's eldest daughter. She’s a graduate of Columbia University Journalism School here in New York. She joins us in the firehouse studio. And we're still joined by Peter Erlinder, Dr. Al-Arian's attorney, speaking with us from Minneapolis. Laila, your father is now entering his third week of a hunger strike, has lost more than fifteen pounds now. How is that affecting your family?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: We’re very worried about his health. He’s a diabetic, as was stated before. And, you know, we’re just worried about how this is going to affect him, and at the same time we're trying to support him and we’re fasting ourselves as much as we can. And there’s now seventy-five people around the country that are also fasting in solidarity. So, it's definitely a tough time for us.

AMY GOODMAN: He has been in something like nine jails? How does that affect you? And are you able to see him, are you able to visit him?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Where he is now in Warsaw, Virginia, we have visited him. We have a one-hour visit once a week, so we usually drive from D.C. about two hours.

AMY GOODMAN: But do you touch?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: No. We can’t. It’s behind glass and through the telephone. But every time he’s moved to a different prison, we’re extremely worried about him. Usually he’s moved under horrible circumstances. He’s shackled. He’s deprived of food and water sometimes. He’s treated horribly by, you know, some of -- and told racist statements by some racist court marshals, who -- I’m sorry -- people who are in charge of transporting him. So it's usually just a horrible nightmare for all of us, and just trying to get a hold of him and to find out where he is is also a big ordeal.

AMY GOODMAN: How old were you when he was first arrested? And what is your understanding of his case?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: I was twenty-one when he was first arrested. I was a senior in college, about to graduate. And he ended up missing my graduation. Me and my older brother and younger sister, who’s twenty-one, are very much aware of what's going on. And we've been, you know, his advocates for the past four years as much as we can. And we just see this as the government criminalizing political speech and association. It's un-American. And that’s sort of my core understanding of my father’s case.

AMY GOODMAN: You went on to journalism school, to Columbia Journalism School. How has this affected your view of what is now your profession as a freelance journalist?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Well, as my father mentioned in his interview, the media has definitely played a big role in our case. There's a ten-year smear campaign by the Tampa Tribune locally that ended up affecting some couple of jurors that held out at the end and also the judge, clearly, through his comments. So it's definitely made me more skeptical as a journalist, which I think is what journalists should be: skeptical and cynical of the official government line. And I see my father's case as no different. The reporting in it is no different than the reporting of weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the Iraq war. It’s just a failure by, unfortunately, many journalists to question the official government line and to move beyond accusations to look for evidence.

AMY GOODMAN: Judge Moody said to your father, “Your children have attended the finest universities of this country, and you advocate blowing up other people's children.” Your response?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: What’s interesting is that the judge actually took that line from a government witness, who was discredited on the stand for lying and for embellishing on his resume. So that goes to show you where he’s getting his cues from: from a discredited government witness who was a spy in the Muslim community. So, obviously, I think the government used those words -- I mean, excuse me, the judge used those words to really try to hurt my father, and it didn't work. I mean, he just ended up looking undignified in the end.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Erlinder, as we speak to you in Minneapolis, you're the attorney for Dr. Al-Arian now. Can Dr. Al-Arian just be held indefinitely? Could they convene one grand jury after another -- he'll refuse to cooperate -- and he just gets extended prison terms?

PETER ERLINDER: Well, the grand jury civil contempt process can't go on forever. His civil contempt is reviewed as a matter of course every six months. And then, I believe it’s two terms of the grand jury, which would be thirty-six months that it would be possible to continue this. But as Dr. Al-Arian mentioned, then after that, criminal contempt charges could be brought.

And I want to make it absolutely clear that tomorrow, Attorney General Gonzales could release him. There are no pending charges against him. The Justice Department already agreed that he should have been released last May, and with a single stroke of a pen, a single phone call, Attorney General Gonzales could live up to the bargain that the Justice Department made last spring and allow Sami to get on with his life. This is purely an act of executive branch hubris. This is not the law; this is politics.

AMY GOODMAN: Laila, your uncle was deported, Mazen Al-Najjar. Your father, at the end of this, is going to be deported. What does this mean to you?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Unfortunately, it's just the story of Palestinians now. I mean, no other people are stateless the way Palestinians are. And, you know, my father came to this country at the age of seventeen, an idealist. He really believed, and still does to a certain extent, in American democracy and the ideals of this country, and his children do, too. And this is the only country all five of his children have ever known. So it really is heartbreaking to see that the cycle of stateless Palestinian refugees keeps continuing, and it really needs to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: What kind of support have you gotten?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: We’ve gotten tremendous support, especially locally in Tampa from the progressive Christian community there, and we’re really grateful for their efforts. They’ve spearheaded the rolling hunger strike in support of my father. And they’ve really been for us the past four years, writing letters, trying to meet with members of Congress and the Justice Department. So, as my father said, we're very grateful for their help. And, you know, we’ve also received national support from different organizations and from some members of the Muslim community. So it's been really tremendous. And internationally even, we receive a lot of emails and letters from people all over the world who are closely watching this case.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Erlinder, in terms of the legal community and how these cases fit into the climate in this country, and the whole issue that Dr. Al-Arian brought up, a campaign that he was involved in when he was free, the issue of secret evidence.

PETER ERLINDER: Well, actually Dr. Al-Arian and I were two of the founding members of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom that the Lawyers Guild initiated with the purpose of stopping the use of this secret evidence. And in litigation over a period of years, David Cole, who is a professor at Georgetown, and others were successful in having the secret evidence thrown out of twenty-two cases in a row, I believe, and we were just on the verge of having Congress repeal the secret evidence law when 9/11 happened, as Dr. Al-Arian mentioned .

AMY GOODMAN: How has this affected your decisions in your life, Laila Al-Arian?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: I think it's just been a very, very difficult time for us. But I think at the same time it's made us better people. It’s made us more empathetic. You know, we're constantly watching what's going on to victims all over the world, victims of oppression. And it's made us strong advocates for justice.

AMY GOODMAN: When your father is deported, your mother and younger siblings will go?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Will you stay here?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: I think so. I think me and the older siblings, we have a life here. We have careers. My two siblings are in academia, I’m a journalist. So, we’re pretty firmly rooted here. We'll definitely be traveling back and forth.

AMY GOODMAN: And the website to get more information about your father?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: To get more information about my father's case, it's www.freesamialarian.com.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Laila Al-Arian and Peter Erlinder, attorney for Dr. Al-Arian, speaking to us from Minneapolis.

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Clinton Official Admits They Distorted FREE TRADE For Years; Coalition Builds Against Bush's "FAST TRACK"

Coalition Builds Against Bush's Latest "Free" Trade Demands

By David Sirota

The Hill Newspaper today has an encouraging piece today about intensifying efforts to prevent Democrats and Republicans from reauthorizing "fast track" authority, which lets presidents ram lobbyist-written trade deals through Congress. Here are some details:

The AFL-CIO, United Autoworkers and other groups representing organized labor are pressing Democrats to deny the Bush administration an extension of its authority to send free-trade deals to Congress for up or down votes, partly by reminding lawmakers of the role trade played in Democrats’ re-taking of majorities in the House and Senate...Labor groups already helped organize a letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) from 39 members of the freshman House Democratic class that said the “vocal stand against the administration’s misguided trade agenda” was vital to their electoral success. AFL-CIO Assistant Director for International Economics Thea Lee said the group is “flat-out opposed” to extending the existing fast-track authority, which expires at the end of June, and sees an extension limited to allowing the Bush administration to finish negotiations on the current World Trade Organization talks, known as the Doha round, as a non-starter.

As usual, the article cites former Clinton administration officials demanding Democrats relent and pass fast track. This is something they've been doing since right after the election. But the AFL-CIO's Lee puts them in their place:

Some key Democratic figures, including former President Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling, have already spoken out in favor of at least extending fast track to allow the Bush administration to complete the Doha talks. During a hearing on trade and globalization last week, Sperling warned Ways and Means members that Congress could be seen as killing Doha if it did not extend fast track. Alluding to global warming and the Iraq war, he said this would contribute to international sentiment that the U.S. is intent on taking a unilateral approach to global issues. Lee said such arguments might sound good to the Brookings Institution, a centrist Democratic think tank, but will not play well in the heartland. She said granting the administration a short-term extension of fast track to conclude Doha should be a non-starter for Congress. (Emphasis added)

This last point about "free" trade rhetoric playing well in Washington but being strongly rejected in the heartland is one many people inside the Beltway either do not understand, or do not want to understand because it gets in the way of D.C.'s favorite sport: shilling for Big Money interests. That we just had an election that repudiated both Washington's pay-to-play culture and its lobbyist-written "free" trade ideology seems at best like an afterthought to these people. But if/when they try to ram "fast track" down the throat of America, both Democrats and Republicans should expect very strong pushback

ADDENDUM: As the U.S. Business-Industry Council notes, just a few weeks ago, Sperling actually admitted in congressional testimony that at the tail end of its term when it was pushing more "free" trade deals, the Clinton administration "simply presented all the positive facts that existed, as opposed to giving a balanced assessment of what had been successful or had not worked in NAFTA." In other words, even as the Clintonites push "fast track" and more lobbyist-written trade deals, they are acknowledging that they have relied on presenting a distorted picture in order to get their way. As Tonelson says, "Sperling has all but announced to you that he deserves no credibility on trade policy." So why do Democrats still give people like him a forum?

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=9CF4F108-E0C3-F08F-90AD971F64511E89

Quotes from prominent citizens:

"Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." -- Thomas Jefferson

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"Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck". – Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

"The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians." -- Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

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"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." -- General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951

http://tinyurl.com/dy6yy

BUSH CONTRACTOR SCAM MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR LRAQ,STOP THIS BUSH SCAM MONEY OFF THE TOP OF THIS WAR FOR BUSH WE NEED GOVERNMENT REFORM SO WE CAN STOP BUSH AND HIS WAR SENDING THE POOR TO DIE IN A WAR OR LIES BY BUSH AND HIS GOP SO WE MUST STAND UP AND KEEP STANDING UP ON BUSH HIS GOP

For WE THE PEOPLE Bill Moyers Would Be GREAT For President; Could The Public, WE THE PEOPLE, Compete With Private Capitalists and Corporate Big Money For His Support???????

All candidates who refuse public money, it would appear, are saying by doing so that they are NOT representing the public and are NOT responsible to the Working and Poor Class, which includes the Middle Class, who ARE the General Public, the General Population.

These candidates that refuse the publics money for private corporations' money may not be loyal to WE THE PEOPLE, the public, should they get into office; and, more than likely, will be loyal to the money that put them into office, corporate interests and interests of capital, at the expense of the Working and Poor Class, which includes the Middle Class.

Working and Poor Class candidates, or any candidate, for WE THE PEOPLE should not have to make a choice between private funds and public funds, since they are supposedly choosing to be public servants, instead of private servants.

Democrats have the majority in Congress at this time and must pass legislation to control candidate spending so that the wealthy can't just outspend the poor. It must not be made necessary for a candidate of the Working and Poor Class to sell his/her soul in order to get election money support to represent WE THE PEOPLE.

Based on what Governor Howard Dean deems necessary for WE THE PEOPLES CANDIDATES, there has to be a cap put on the amount of money that can be spent for the various offices, so that there will be a money support equilibrium between the wealthy and non-wealthy, where the non-wealthy candidates will not be forced to give up their loyalty to WE THE PEOPLE, THE PUBLIC, the general population, like the DLC advocates in order for our candidates to have enough money to actually win. Congress CAN make laws to prevent this type of inequality for candidates and it would behoove them to do it while we have control of the Congress, if we actually have control as it appears.

Corporate and Capital interest extremes are for having the Working Class be non-citizen commodities to be used for private interests as various forms of slaves with little or no compensation, which is not conducive to being in the best interest of the Working and Poor Class.

Grassroots DNC, Governor Howard Dean, represents democracy for the GENERAL PUBLIC, the GENERAL POPULATION of the United States. If Congress does not change legislation for there to be equilibrium, it will behoove WE THE PEOPLE to put DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA first, and give our money to the Grassroots until it hurts, in order to get a person like Bill Moyers into the office of the president so that WE THE PEOPLE will have representation.

It is better to eat a steady diet of beans and support democracy than to eat well and lose democracy to the DLC.

Many people are unaware that the DLC is against democracy for all. The DLC won't tell you that they are trying to destroy you, as they still need your vote to get into office, but the DLC does not represent the 70% Working and Poor Class and Culture and if they finish getting control of the government, will not in the future need your vote, as voting for the general population will be totally suspended.

Currently it is difficult for WE THE PEOPLE to get representation because of our lack of money, but if each of the 210,000,000 people that are 70% of the population will send $1.00 one time to Governor Howard Dean's Grassroots Democrats WE THE PEOPLE will have $210,000,000. to get our candidate elected, and we will have to do this more than once, not just once, but as often as we can.

When WE THE PEOPLE stand together WE THE PEOPLE will have the representation of our choice, but if we do not stand together and support our Grassroots candidate, WE THE PEOPLE will continue to not have representation in the government of the United States.

It is time for WE THE PEOPLE to make our stand for democracy. POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA

Babble on Phoenix Self Seeker, you are undoubtedly one of the Lumpen Proletariat, who don't know your left from your right.

Babble on Phoenix Self Seeker, you are undoubtedly one of the Lumpen Proletariat, who doesn't know your left from your right.