Thursday, September 29, 2005
Jennifer Van Bergen
The doctrine assumes, in its extreme form, nearly absolute deference to the Executive branch from Congress and the Judiciary.
Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photos
NEW YORK - Saying the United States "does not surrender to blackmail," a judge ruled Thursday that pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released over government claims that they could damage America's image.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered the release of certain pictures in a 50-page decision that said terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism." [read the whole article here]
The man with moustache is John R. Bolton, U.S. representative to the United Nations. I don't think I need to say who the other guy is.
INQUISITION 2005
The Vatican's bold new witch hunt
By Nancy Goldstein | RAW STORY COLUMNIST
In a sign of the rich cultural interchange wrought by our global economy, this month’s Chutzpah Award goes to…the Catholic Church.
In addition to documenting assaults by more than 60 priests, the Philadelphia report alleges a cover-up by the late Cardinal John Krol, the former archbishop of Philadelphia, and his successor, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqu, who “retired” in 2003.
A series of technicalities makes it impossible for the perpetrators of these crimes or those who covered up for them liable. No charges can be brought against a diocese because it is “an unincorporated association rather than a corporation.” In other cases, statutes of limitations have lapsed.
But surely these technicalities cannot stand in the way of justice — certainly not when the chain of command leads to the top of one of the world’s largest religious institutions. Surely we can count on the Vatican to make restitution for the damage done to thousands of innocent children and their trusting parents through a combination of repentance, financial restitution, punishment where appropriate, and a thorough examination of what went wrong at the highest levels of the church.
Um… Would you settle for a witch-hunt against gay seminarians in the US instead?
I hope so, because that’s all you’re going to get. In a move uncannily reminiscent of a certain American leader who responded to Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist attack by invading an uninvolved but oil-rich country, the Vatican has decided to avoid addressing its real problem — pedophile priests and widespread corruption throughout its leadership — by taking a page from the Inquisition playbook.
“Better targets,” as Rumsfeld would say.
[read the whole article here]
It is wrong to discriminate against homosexuals, even if it appears that the most frequent cases of molestation of minors by priests regard post-pubescent kids (but there have been cases of abuse/rape of girls and women, like scandals in third world countries have shown). Truth is, even the label of "homosexual" is debatable in a religion which forces priests to be celibate. How many individuals in prisons who engage in same-sex acts are actually "homosexual"?
The real problem, in my opinion, regards the Catholic docrine on sexuality as a whole, which fosters sexual and psychological immaturity, and the absurd docrine of the celibacy of priests. It is exactly these doctrines which contribute to make many priests unbalanced and disturbed individuals.
By scapegoating homosexuals the Roman Catholic Church diverts the attention from its despicable coverups and from the huge human limitations of its pathological and pathogenic doctrines.
priest scandal, religion & mental illness, catholic hypocrisy
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
From Raw Story:
Post reveals Halliburton sponsored summit to divide Katrina relief
Hallliburton sponsored a "Katrina Reconstruction Summit," hosted by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), aimed at offering the company and lobbyists a chance to push "private sector involvement" in the distribution of Katrina reconstruction funds, RAW STORY has learned. [read the whole article here]
COMMENT: It seems to me that this Halliburton company is like mushrooms sprouting everywhere there's a gain to make, with support from people of the Bush administration. A political-corporate assembly.
From U.S. Newswire:
Today, Congressman Henry A. Waxman and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi introduced the Anti-Cronyism and Public Safety Act, which would prohibit the President from appointing unqualified individuals to critical public safety positions in the government. [read all here]
COMMENT: One would take it for granted that a person would be appointed to a critical position only if with sufficient skills and qualifications. That an anti-cronyism bill be necessary stands as a further evidence of Bush's dangerous incompetence.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'
RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.
The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.
It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.
Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.
[Read the whole article here]
COMMENT:
Often religion is hastily associated to morality. Some people even go as far as maintaining that religion is the source of morality, while it is well known that the most tragic conflicts are those in which the contenders claim to enjoy the benevolence of a God, or even to do his will, even when this supposed will leads to the slaughtering of thousands of human beings. No religion is exempt from this. A certain president has even claimed, in recent times, of having consulted a "higher father", before waging an illegal war....
It is easy to see how religion can feed a feeling of arrogance and intolerance.
But even in times of peace, the study mentioned in the article suggests, the effects of religion are negative.
It makes much sense that very devout societies might have more problems, exactly related to the issues that religion claims to be able to prevent. Why? Firstly religion relies on blind belief. It is, in all respects, a form of superstition which encourages irrationality and passive obedience to dogmas (irrespectively of their making sense or not). The subjugation of individuality under a legacy of ancient fabrications likely brings about a seed of destructiveness, similarly to that developed by people brought up in very authoritarian families in which creativity and individuality are thwarted to match a parental vision. I strongly believe that addictions, self-destructive behaviour and suicide are the result of authoritarian upbringing and education. Secondly, religions often utilises sexual repression and guilt to exert power on people: this too brings about psychological unbalances, tensions and destructiveness.
It seems plausible to think that in societies characterised by mutual respect and tolerance, where reason is held in higher value than arbitrary and authoritarian rules, and where individuals are encouraged to freely express their being - in all respects, intellectually, creatively, sexually - the levels of tensions and destructiveness would be less.
Cindy Sheehan was arrested yesterday for "demonstrating without a permit". You can read here an article Cindy Sheehan wrote afterwards.
As Cindy's article well shows, the situation is somewhat paradoxical: while those who have shown the highest disregard for legality, domestically and internationally, continue their job without accountability for their actions, people are arrested for demonstrating without a permit.
From Raw Story:
New York congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) delivered a fiery critique of the Bush Administration's drive to war in Iraq, labeling the push part of a "conspiracy" to deceive Congress and occupy the country. [read the article here]
Monday, September 26, 2005
Joe Tresh's photographs of the United for Peace & Justice Anti-War March held in Washington. Really worth checking, click here.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Some people held signs such as "Make levees, not war." or "From New Orleans to Iraq: Stop the war on the poor."
The more the leaders of a country lack moral credibility and a virtuous foundation of ideals, the more they will exploit wars to bring the world around them to the the same level of their own personal and moral barbarism; they will exploit fear to simplistically divide people between good and bad, they - of course - self-proclaiming themselves as the good ones, despite their lies, their manipulation, their deception, their corruption, their ineptitude, their incompetence, their callous disregard for human life and dignity, while planning, or contributing to, the next disaster from the comfort of their halls of power or of their ranches, happily supported by those who who already know how much money they will make out of destruction and death of the 'underprivileged'.
iraq, impeach bush, bush bullshit, downing street memo, katrina hurricane
Saturday, September 24, 2005
A 12-year-old Indian girl committed suicide after her mother told her she could not afford one rupee - two US cents - for a school meal.
Read the BBC's article here.
3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine
The new allegations, the first involving members of the elite 82nd Airborne, are contained in a report by Human Rights Watch. The 30-page report does not identify the troops, but one is Capt. Ian Fishback, who has presented some of his allegations in letters this month to top aides of two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. Captain Fishback approached the Senators' offices only after he tried to report the allegations to his superiors for 17 months, the aides said. The aides also said they found the captain's accusations credible enough to warrant investigation. [...]
Read the whole article here.
From the Human Rights Watch Report:
Here you can read the report of Human Rights Watch.
COMMENT: While reading this article, a thought occured to me. That the barbarism showed by some US troops (called "murderous maniacs" by residents of Fallujah) really is only the tip of the iceberg, whether that is admitted or not. Both in terms of chains of command and in terms of moral connivance.
When the Bush administration decides to bomb a country that poses no threat, thus killing 20 to 100 thousands people, it shows a callous disregard for human life and dignity that is consistent with breaking a prisoner's leg with a baseball bat, or with amusing oneself with "human pyramids" of prisoners.
The fact that dropping bombs destroys lives without direct contact with human beings does not make the bombings more honourable or acceptable. Especially when such bombings are not an act of defense, but an act of aggression based on fabricated reasons.
The scandal is not the abuse only. The scandal is the war on Iraq that killed thousands of innocent people for no reasons, like ants or termites, and then produced the abuses.
The scandal is that people like George W. Bush and his clique of fabricators of virtual threats should lead a country like the United States.
Excerpt:
[...] "I don't know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds," Mr Viges, who served with the 82nd Airborne Division, said during a presentation this week at American University in Washington. "In Baghdad, I had days that I don't want to remember. I try to forget," he added
The rare insight into the chaos of the combat including an order to open fire on all taxis in the city of Samawa because it was believed Iraqi forces were using them for transport comes as US support for the war in Iraq slumps to an all-time low. Polls suggest that 60 per cent now believe the war was wrong. Mr Bush's personal approval ratings are also at a record low. [...]
Read the whole article here.
So it seems that American soldiers in Iraq were given orders to open fire on taxis, just in case, since it was believed they were used by Iraqi forces.
I thought there were International laws.
Wait a minute, there ARE international law prohibiting indiscriminate fire on civilians during war. But has the Bush-led US shown any care for laws? Or any real conviction that diplomacy is not a momentary pause before Bush's preferred means to solve international controversies are used, that is thousands of tons of bombs dropped in countries that pose no threat?
From the Guardian:
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Saturday September 24, 2005
The Guardian
Saudi fears of a break-up were voiced by Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, in an interview with Associated Press published yesterday, and at a meeting on Thursday night with the US media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He said: "The impression is gradually going toward disintegration. There seems to be no dynamic now that is pulling the country together. All the dynamics there are pushing the people away from each other."
His comments are the most pessimistic about Iraq to be made in public by a Middle East leader in recent months.
Prince Saud, who is meeting Bush administration officials in Washington, said his government warned the US before the war of the consequences of the invasion but was ignored. "It is frustrating to see something that is clearly going to happen, and you are not listened to by a friend, and soon harm comes out of it. It hurts." [...]
Read the whole article here.
Prince Saud says it is frustrating to not be listened by a friend. I would say more: it is frustrating that the leader of the most powerful nation in the world does not listen to anybody and lives in a world of his own, a world of imagination, where plans revealing dangerous and belligerent delusion of grandeur are pursued, no matter the consequences, against any common sense or evidence, nay fabricating evidence.
It is frustrating to see that the same person, George W. Bush, appears to be animated by a dogged, obsessive-compulsive attitude, which prevents him from judging things with balance and openness, and from recognising priorities correctly. I would even go as far as saying that I have a feeling that Bush's dogged attitude and propensity to denial of reality almost appear to have a cohering function for a personality that is unbalanced and constantly on the verge of disgregation. Too many are the errors made, too many are the signs that allow seeing that this president does not have a clue.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
How would you define a country where a person can be detained indefinitely without criminal charges?
I mean you might just vaguely look like somebody in some blurred picture of some intelligence agency, or appear suspect for any unspecified reason, and some authority, like in the worst Kafkaeske nightmare you can think of - which more and more reality is turning into - abducts you and throws you in some jail where you can remain indefinitely - again I say, indefinitely, that is even a life time - without any criminal charge.
So, is this (read here) a bright example of democracy and justice which the people of the United States of America, self-appointed beacon of virtue and civilization should be proud of? Is this what the whole world should look at with admiration?
Fuck, I am happy I live in Europe.
I mean, let's say it all. I am happy I don't live in the States AND I don't happen to be Arabic, or Black or even tan in the United States.
Beause you can be sure that in most cases those who will be detained will not be SUV-driving Republicans, or those who get on with their lives in millions dollar-worth ranches in Texas and bike around or cut wood for fun, or those who are high-rank government officers on the mere account of having been school buddies of the president or of some of his friends.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Vincent Laforet/The New York Times
Hurricane Paints Destruction on an Eerie Canvas
Electrical wires, which once ran parallel to train tracks outside New Orleans, now lie twisted in a multicolored whip.
Vincent Laforet/The New York Times
Cars and trucks, clustered together with nowhere to go, are a jumble of rectangles against the dark water in Chalmette, La.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Excerpt:
[...] The water that breached the New Orleans levees and left a million people homeless and jobless has also breached the White House defenses. Reality has come flooding in. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been remarkably successful at blowing off "the reality-based community," as it derisively calls the press.
But now, when W., Mr. Cheney, Laura, Rummy, Gen. Richard Myers, Michael Chertoff and the rest of the gang tell us everything's under control, our cities are safe, stay the course - who believes them?
This time we can actually see the bodies.
As the water recedes, more and more decaying bodies will testify to the callous and stumblebum administration response to Katrina's rout of 90,000 square miles of the South.
The Bush administration bungled the Iraq occupation, arrogantly throwing away State Department occupation plans and C.I.A. insurgency warnings. But the human toll of those mistakes has not been as viscerally evident because the White House pulled a curtain over the bodies: the president has avoided the funerals of soldiers, and the Pentagon has censored the coffins of the dead coming home and never acknowledges the number of Iraqi civilians killed.
But this time, the bodies of those who might have been saved between Monday and Friday, when the president failed to rush the necessary resources to a disaster that his own general describes as "biblical," or even send in the 82nd Airborne, are floating up in front of our eyes. [...]
The administration's foreign policy is entirely constructed around American self-love - the idea that the U.S. is superior, that we are the model everyone looks up to, that everyone in the world wants what we have.
But when people around the world look at Iraq, they don't see freedom. They see chaos and sectarian hatred. And when they look at New Orleans, they see glaring incompetence and racial injustice, where the rich white people were saved and the poor black people were left to die hideous deaths. They see some conservatives blaming the poor for not saving themselves. So much for W.'s "culture of life."
The president won re-election because he said that the war in Iraq and the Homeland Security Department would make us safer. Hogwash.
W.'s 2004 convention was staged like "The Magnificent Seven" with the Republicans' swaggering tough guys - from Rudy Giuliani to Arnold Schwarzenegger to John McCain - riding in to save an embattled town.
These were the steely-eyed gunslingers we needed to protect us, they said, not those sissified girlie-men Democrats. But now it turns out that W. can't save the town, not even from hurricane damage that everyone has been predicting for years, much less from unpredictable terrorists.
His campaigns presented the arc of his life story as that of a man who stumbled around until he was 40, then found himself and developed a laserlike focus.
But now that the people of New Orleans need an ark, we have to question the president's arc. He's stumbling in Iraq and he's stumbling on Katrina.
Let's play the blame game: the man who benefited more than anyone in history from safety nets set up by family did not bother to provide one for those who lost their families.
The Jefferson Parish president: "Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy needs to stand trial before congress today. Take whatever idiot they have at the top, give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."
Read the whole article here.
A complete visual timeline of George W. Bush's and his administration's efforts during the hurrican Katrina catastrophy is available here.
Do those picture not make you think of something else? No? Think about it.
In the first picture, George W. Bush quietly sits, after having been told that the USA has been attacked on 9/11/2001. Obviously he does not want to interrupt the carefully prepared video shootage.
In the second picture, taken on August 30th, Bush plays the guitar. By then it hurricane Katrina had hit the South Coast of the United States.
But if you wonder where do such moving examples of empathy, dedication to work, and concern for the destiny of the country come from, after a recent statement of his mother, Barbara Bush, you can understand:
Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees -- cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.
"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them," Mrs. Bush told American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, before returning to her multi-million dollar Houston home.
On the tape of the interview, Mrs. Bush chuckles audibly as she observes just how great things are going for families that are separated from loved ones, people who have been forced to abandon their homes and the only community where they have ever lived, and parents who are explaining to children that their pets, their toys and in some cases their friends may be lost forever. Perhaps the former first lady was amusing herself with the notion that evacuees without bread could eat cake.
by Gabrielle Chwallek
Washington - "For God's sake, are you blind?," a woman shouts at the head of the federal emergency management agency (FEMA), Michael Brown.
"You're patting each other on the back, while people here are dying."
The woman is not a victim of Hurricane Katrina. She is a reporter with US television network MSNBC who is so affected by the misery she has witnessed she can hold back no longer.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Posted 2005-09-03
One of the creepier vanities of most political leaders is the private yearning to be tested on a historical scale. Bill Clinton used to confide that, no matter what else he did as President, without a major war to fight he could never join the ranks of Lincoln and F.D.R. During the Presidential debates in 2000, George W. Bush informed his opponent, Al Gore, that natural catastrophes are “a time to test your mettle.” Bush had seen his father falter after a hurricane in South Florida. But now he has done far worse. Over five days last week, from the onset of the hurricane on the Gulf Coast on Monday morning to his belated visit to the region on Friday, Bush’s mettle was tested—and he failed in almost every respect.
Obviously, a hurricane is beyond human blame, and the political miscalculations that have come to light—the negligent planning, the delayed rescue and aid efforts, the thoroughly confused and uninspired political leadership—cannot all be laid at the feet of President Bush. But you could sense, watching him being interviewed by Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America”—defensive, confused, overwhelmed—that he knew that he had delivered a series of feeble, vague, almost flippant speeches in the early days of the crisis, and that the only way to prevent further political damage was to inoculate himself with the inevitable call for non-partisanship: “I hope people don’t play politics during this period of time.”
And yet, to a frightening degree, Bush’s faults of leadership and character were brought into high relief by the crisis. Suntanned and relaxed after a vacation so long that it would have shamed a French playboy, Bush reacted with fogged delinquency, as if he had been so lulled by his summer sojourn that he was not quite ready to acknowledge reality, let alone attempt to master it. His first view of the floods came, pitifully, theatrically, from the window of a low-flying Air Force One, and all the President could muster was, according to his press secretary, “It’s devastating. It’s got to be doubly devastating on the ground.” The moment demanded clarity of mind and rigorous governance, and yet he could not summon them. The performance skills Bush eventually mustered after September 11th—in his bullhorn speech at Ground Zero, in his first speech to Congress—eluded him. The whole conceit of his Presidency, that he was an instinctive chief executive backed by “grownups” like Dick Cheney and tactical wizards like Karl Rove, now seemed as water-logged as Biloxi and New Orleans. The mismanagement of the Katrina floods echoed the White House mismanagement—the cavalier posture, the wretched decisions, the self-delusions—in postwar Iraq.
Read the whole editorial here.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
In a bold move and seeming turnaround from a relatively placid appearance on CNN's Anderson Cooper, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) took President Bush to task Saturday for what she believes the use of a tragedy for a "presidential photo opportunity," RAW STORY has learned.
Read the whole article here
by Joe London
As if they, those with power, cared.
As if they could go beyond or below, rather, the surface of their sanctimony, or of their compassionate conservatism - flaunted when a camera man is around and all details are coreographed like in a movie set - and reach for a core, if only minimal, of humanity.
Facts only are those that speak clear.
Facts only are those that show if one is sincere.
When real empathy is lacking, the results are simply inexistent.
They did not care for you, it is as simple as this.
Those with dough promptly fled, not only satisfied for their being safe but, in the back of their mind, perhaps persuaded that their lucky fate were a divine sign of distinction, a privilege accorded by the God of the powerful.
The God exploited by the president to wage wars and spread death and destruction. The God that does not stop him from awarding those who have while depriving those who have not.
The God of Rumsfeld for whom "stuff happens", despite the fact that no measures were taken to protect the city from an announced catastrophy and that, after, the poor waited for days, and many are still waiting, for help.
The God of Condollezza Rice who will say that efforts are fair, no matter the colour of the skin.
The God for whom the poor are sacrificed, in wars or left to drawn, while they, the others in suits, enjoy their games of strategy, or safe at home, ride about blithefully.
"We the people"... What a joke.
America is not the country of all the people. America is the country where - for many - dreams are a hope to cling onto in a sea of misery. While for others are tangible, ever growing assets, lovingly protected even from tax. Because they, the ones in suits, they do get protection. While others shake the American flag on the roofs of New Orleans.
From the New York Times:
The Bursting Point
As Ross Douthat observed on his blog, The American Scene, Katrina was the anti-9/11.
On Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani took control. The government response was quick and decisive. The rich and poor suffered alike. Americans had been hit, but felt united and strong. Public confidence in institutions surged.
Last week in New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed.
The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting.
And the key fact to understanding why this is such a huge cultural moment is this: Last week's national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation's psyche.
Over the past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find W.M.D.'s in Iraq. We have seen incompetent postwar planning. We have seen the collapse of Enron and corruption scandals on Wall Street. We have seen scandals at our leading magazines and newspapers, steroids in baseball, the horror of Abu Ghraib.
Public confidence has been shaken too by the steady rain of suicide bombings, the grisly horror of Beslan and the world's inability to do anything about rising oil prices.
Each institutional failure and sign of helplessness is another blow to national morale. The sour mood builds on itself, the outraged and defensive reaction to one event serving as the emotional groundwork for the next. [...]
Read the whole article here.
