Life in OUR America, Volume 2, The Livyjr Files Options

[Livyjr]

The "Gilded Age" returns it seems, and in spades; and who is surprised, when you look at the "cast" of "supporting characters" such as Rudy Giuliani's "fund-raising" committee chairman?

After all, these people who raise the "geetus" and "moolah" for the REPUBLICAN BIG BOYS and FAST MOVERS and GO-GETTERS like former federal prosecutor Giuliani have to have some source for that money, and what better pockets to tap for that money than those of the ones who are stealing from us?

How can they say no, especially when they are allowed to do their stealing from us by the reciprocal service done back to them by those in positions of authority in such places as the corrupt State of New York who have learned to strategically "turn their backs" on the stealing, SO THAT IT CAN OCCUR, to enrich those who then use that money to buy themselves even more protection, FROM OUR OWN GOVERNMENT, that allows them to steal even more from us in a never-ending spiral that is reducing us to a level equal to that of feed-lot cattle, HERE IN OUR OWN NATION, where we, the citizens, are supposed to  be the sovereigns, and not the victims, of OUR government.

AFTER ALL, WHY ON EARTH WOULD THEY BE CALLED "SPECIAL INTERESTS", DOES ANYONE THINK, IF THEY WERE NOT IN FACT "SPECIAL"?

And here is a glimpse of the "backlash" to the excesses of the "Gilded Age", right here in OUR America, where it really did occur, and not all that long ago, as time is measured in historical terms, and in the living memory of man and woman, such as us in here, who are the heart and soul of OUR America; despite the fact that we are viewed as nothing more than feed-lot cattle by this Bush Co. crowd that presently inhabits the "Halls of Power", here in OUR America:

"Carnivals of Revenge"

The frustrations of Gilded Age workers transformed the labor movement into a vigorous, if often violent, force.

Workers saw men like Andrew Carnegie getting fabulously rich, and raged at being left behind.

With their own labor the only available bargaining chip, workers frequently went on strike.

The 1880's witnessed almost ten thousand strikes and lockouts; close to 700,000 workers struck in 1886 alone.

The results were often explosive - none more than the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

When the B&O Railroad cut wages, workers staged spontaneous strikes, which spread nationwide.

In Baltimore, the state militia fired on strikers, leaving 11 dead and 40 wounded.

In Pittsburgh, Andrew Carnegie's mentor, Thomas Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, urged that strikers be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread."

In Philadelphia, strikers battled local militia, burning much of the downtown area before the federal troops intervened.

The wage reductions remained in place, and the War Department created the national guard to put down future disturbances.

Industrialists took a harder line against unions, but the labor movement grew.

In 1877, three national unions existed; in 1880 there were eighteen.

For many Americans, unionization fed a fear that "barbarians" had invaded the nation.

During a Cleveland steel strike, violent confrontations led local newspapers to attack the "un-American" Polish workers as "Ignorant and degraded whelps," "Foreign devils," and "Communistic scoundrels [who] revel in robberies, bloodshed, and arson."

In 1886, a national strike called for changing the standard workday from 12-hours to eight.

At 12,000 companies nationwide, 340,000 workers stopped work.

In Chicago police were trying to break up a large labor meeting in Haymarket Square, when a bomb exploded without warning, killing a police officer.

Police fired into the crowd, killing one and wounding many more.

As a result of the riot, four labor organizers were hanged.

The hangings demoralized the national labor movement and energized management.

By 1890, Knights of Labor membership had plummeted by ninety percent.

The 1892 battle at Carnegie's Homestead mill became a model for stamping out strikes: hold firm and call in government troops for support.

The brutal depression of 1893-94 triggered some of the worst labor conflicts in the country's history, including the strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company.

When George Pullman slashed wages and hiked rents in his company town, a national strike and boycott was called on all railways carrying Pullman cars.

Railroad traffic ground to a halt as 260,000 workers struck, and battles with state and federal troops broke out in 26 states.

The strike ultimately failed, its leaders imprisoned and many strikers blacklisted.

The labor movement lay in shambles, and would not rise again for nearly fifty years.

Although workers would find new strength in the next century, they would never again pose the same broad challenge to the claims of capital.

[Livyjr]

And here is a glimpse of the "backlash" to the excesses of the "Gilded Age", right here in OUR America, where it really did occur, and not all that long ago, as time is measured in historical terms, and in the living memory of man and woman, such as us in here, who are the heart and soul of OUR America; despite the fact that we are viewed as nothing more than feed-lot cattle by this Bush Co. crowd that presently inhabits the "Halls of Power", here in OUR America:

"Carnivals of Revenge"

The frustrations of Gilded Age workers transformed the labor movement into a vigorous, if often violent, force.

Workers saw men like Andrew Carnegie getting fabulously rich, and raged at being left behind.

With their own labor the only available bargaining chip, workers frequently went on strike.

The 1880's witnessed almost ten thousand strikes and lockouts; close to 700,000 workers struck in 1886 alone.

The results were often explosive - none more than the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

When the B&O Railroad cut wages, workers staged spontaneous strikes, which spread nationwide.

In Baltimore, the state militia fired on strikers, leaving 11 dead and 40 wounded.

In Pittsburgh, Andrew Carnegie's mentor, Thomas Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, urged that strikers be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread."

In Philadelphia, strikers battled local militia, burning much of the downtown area before the federal troops intervened.

The 1892 battle at Carnegie's Homestead mill became a model for stamping out strikes: hold firm and call in government troops for support.

"The 1892 battle at Carnegie's Homestead mill BECAME A MODEL for stamping out strikes: HOLD FIRM AND CALL IN GOVERNMENT TROOPS FOR SUPPORT!"

SPECIAL INTERESTS, INDEED; and here is one of the "very special" from that "Gilded Age" period of OUR American history:

"Jay Gould", From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jay Gould (May 27, 1836 - December 2, 1892), American financier, was born in Roxbury, New York.

He was brought up on his father's farm, studied at Hobart Academy, and though he left school in his sixteenth year, devoted himself assiduously thereafter to private study, chiefly of mathematics and surveying, at the same time keeping books for a blacksmith for his board.

Birth and early career

Jay was the son of John Burr Gould (1792-1866) and Mary Moore (c1800-1841).

For a short time he worked for his father in the hardware business.

He then engaged in the lumber and tanning business in western New York, and in banking at Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

The railroad business

Through his wife's father, Daniel S. Miller, he was appointed manager of the Rensselaer & Saratoga railway.

He bought up and reorganized the railroad when it was in a very bad condition.

In the same way he bought and reorganized the Rutland & Washington railway, from which he ultimately realized a large profit.

In 1859 he moved to New York City, where he became a broker in railway stocks.

In July 1868, the "Erie War", which Gould and James Fisk engaged in against Cornelius Vanderbilt over control of the Erie Railroad, ended with Gould and Fisk taking control of the railroad.

Gould was elected president of the railroad later that year.

Gould and Fisk plundered the railroad and manipulated stock prices.

From 1868-1870, the company sold $5 million in fraudulent stock, leading to litigation that forced Gould out of the company in March 1872 and forced him to pay back about $7.5 million

The Tweed Ring

It was during the same period that Gould and Fisk became involved with Tammany Hall; they made Boss Tweed a director of the Erie, and Tweed in turn arranged favourable legislation for them.

Tweed and Gould became the subjects of political cartoons by Thomas Nast in 1869.

In October 1871, when Tweed was held on $1 million bail, Gould was the chief bondsman.

Black Friday

In August 1869, Gould and Fisk began to buy gold in an attempt to corner the market, hoping that the increase in price of gold would increase the price of wheat such that western farmers would sell, causing a great amount of shipping of breadstuffs eastward, increasing freight business for the Erie railroad.

During this time, Gould used contacts with President Ulysses S. Grant's brother-in-law, A. H. Corbin, to try to influence the president and his Secretary General Horace Porter.

These speculations in gold culminated in the panic of Black Friday, on September 24, 1869, when the price of gold fell from 162 to 135.

Late career and death

After being forced out of the Erie Railroad, Gould gained control of the Union Pacific Railroad, withdrawing from it in 1883 after realizing a large profit.

He built up what became known as the Gould System of railways by gaining control of a total of four western railroads, including the UP and the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

In 1880 he was in virtual control of 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of railway, about one-ninth of the length of rail in the United States at that time.

Gould also obtained a controlling interest in the Western Union telegraph company, and after 1881 in the elevated railways in New York City, and was intimately connected with many of the largest railway financial operations in the United States from 1868-1888.

He died of consumption and of mental strain on December 2, 1892 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

His fortune was estimated at $72 million, all of which he left to his own family.

Reference

This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[jeffmoskin]

"What is the chief end of man?--to get rich."
"In what way?--dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must."-- Mark Twain-1871

When French prime minister Georges Clemenceau visited, he said the nation had gone from a stage of barbarism to one of decadence -- without achieving any civilization between the two.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/gildedage.html

Barbarism to decadence? Without achieving any civilization?

Mon Dieu, Monsieur Clemenceau!

Were you not aware of the great expanse of American Empire (we called it Manifest Destiny) that rigged a phoney Mexican attack, leaving America "owning" most of northern Mexico? Were you not aware of the betrayals of our treaties with the Indians and the subsequent wars that added most of the remaining West? Were you not aware of how we swindled Russia out of Alasksa?

Sacre Bleu. We were EVERY BIT as civilized as the French; only we did our colonizing on our OWN continent.

And here is a glimpse of the "backlash" to the excesses of the "Gilded Age", right here in OUR America, where it really did occur, and not all that long ago, as time is measured in historical terms, and in the living memory of man and woman, such as us in here, who are the heart and soul of OUR America; despite the fact that we are viewed as nothing more than feed-lot cattle by this Bush Co. crowd that presently inhabits the "Halls of Power", here in OUR America:

"Carnivals of Revenge"

The frustrations of Gilded Age workers transformed the labor movement into a vigorous, if often violent, force.

Workers saw men like Andrew Carnegie getting fabulously rich, and raged at being left behind.

With their own labor the only available bargaining chip, workers frequently went on strike.

The 1880's witnessed almost ten thousand strikes and lockouts; close to 700,000 workers struck in 1886 alone.

The results were often explosive - none more than the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

When the B&O Railroad cut wages, workers staged spontaneous strikes, which spread nationwide.

In Baltimore, the state militia fired on strikers, leaving 11 dead and 40 wounded.

In Pittsburgh, Andrew Carnegie's mentor, Thomas Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, urged that strikers be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread."

In Philadelphia, strikers battled local militia, burning much of the downtown area before the federal troops intervened.

The wage reductions remained in place, and the War Department created the national guard to put down future disturbances.

Industrialists took a harder line against unions, but the labor movement grew.

In 1877, three national unions existed; in 1880 there were eighteen.

For many Americans, unionization fed a fear that "barbarians" had invaded the nation.

During a Cleveland steel strike, violent confrontations led local newspapers to attack the "un-American" Polish workers as "Ignorant and degraded whelps," "Foreign devils," and "Communistic scoundrels [who] revel in robberies, bloodshed, and arson."

In 1886, a national strike called for changing the standard workday from 12-hours to eight.

At 12,000 companies nationwide, 340,000 workers stopped work.

In Chicago police were trying to break up a large labor meeting in Haymarket Square, when a bomb exploded without warning, killing a police officer.

Police fired into the crowd, killing one and wounding many more.

As a result of the riot, four labor organizers were hanged.

The hangings demoralized the national labor movement and energized management.

By 1890, Knights of Labor membership had plummeted by ninety percent.

The 1892 battle at Carnegie's Homestead mill became a model for stamping out strikes: hold firm and call in government troops for support.

The brutal depression of 1893-94 triggered some of the worst labor conflicts in the country's history, including the strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company.

When George Pullman slashed wages and hiked rents in his company town, a national strike and boycott was called on all railways carrying Pullman cars.

Railroad traffic ground to a halt as 260,000 workers struck, and battles with state and federal troops broke out in 26 states.

The strike ultimately failed, its leaders imprisoned and many strikers blacklisted.

The labor movement lay in shambles, and would not rise again for nearly fifty years.

Although workers would find new strength in the next century, they would never again pose the same broad challenge to the claims of capital.

Sadly, people today associate the name "Carnegie" either with music or with higher learning. He was a real pr*ck in his day.

"The 1892 battle at Carnegie's Homestead mill BECAME A MODEL for stamping out strikes: HOLD FIRM AND CALL IN GOVERNMENT TROOPS FOR SUPPORT!"

SPECIAL INTERESTS, INDEED; and here is one of the "very special" from that "Gilded Age" period of OUR American history:

"Jay Gould", From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jay Gould (May 27, 1836 - December 2, 1892), American financier, was born in Roxbury, New York.

He was brought up on his father's farm, studied at Hobart Academy, and though he left school in his sixteenth year, devoted himself assiduously thereafter to private study, chiefly of mathematics and surveying, at the same time keeping books for a blacksmith for his board.

Birth and early career

Jay was the son of John Burr Gould (1792-1866) and Mary Moore (c1800-1841).

For a short time he worked for his father in the hardware business.

He then engaged in the lumber and tanning business in western New York, and in banking at Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

The railroad business

Through his wife's father, Daniel S. Miller, he was appointed manager of the Rensselaer & Saratoga railway.

He bought up and reorganized the railroad when it was in a very bad condition.

In the same way he bought and reorganized the Rutland & Washington railway, from which he ultimately realized a large profit.

In 1859 he moved to New York City, where he became a broker in railway stocks.

In July 1868, the "Erie War", which Gould and James Fisk engaged in against Cornelius Vanderbilt over control of the Erie Railroad, ended with Gould and Fisk taking control of the railroad.

Gould was elected president of the railroad later that year.

Gould and Fisk plundered the railroad and manipulated stock prices.

From 1868-1870, the company sold $5 million in fraudulent stock, leading to litigation that forced Gould out of the company in March 1872 and forced him to pay back about $7.5 million

The Tweed Ring

It was during the same period that Gould and Fisk became involved with Tammany Hall; they made Boss Tweed a director of the Erie, and Tweed in turn arranged favourable legislation for them.

Tweed and Gould became the subjects of political cartoons by Thomas Nast in 1869.

In October 1871, when Tweed was held on $1 million bail, Gould was the chief bondsman.

Black Friday

In August 1869, Gould and Fisk began to buy gold in an attempt to corner the market, hoping that the increase in price of gold would increase the price of wheat such that western farmers would sell, causing a great amount of shipping of breadstuffs eastward, increasing freight business for the Erie railroad.

During this time, Gould used contacts with President Ulysses S. Grant's brother-in-law, A. H. Corbin, to try to influence the president and his Secretary General Horace Porter.

These speculations in gold culminated in the panic of Black Friday, on September 24, 1869, when the price of gold fell from 162 to 135.

Late career and death

After being forced out of the Erie Railroad, Gould gained control of the Union Pacific Railroad, withdrawing from it in 1883 after realizing a large profit.

He built up what became known as the Gould System of railways by gaining control of a total of four western railroads, including the UP and the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

In 1880 he was in virtual control of 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of railway, about one-ninth of the length of rail in the United States at that time.

Gould also obtained a controlling interest in the Western Union telegraph company, and after 1881 in the elevated railways in New York City, and was intimately connected with many of the largest railway financial operations in the United States from 1868-1888.

He died of consumption and of mental strain on December 2, 1892 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

His fortune was estimated at $72 million, all of which he left to his own family.

Reference

This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Thanks for reminding me why I left The Empire State in 1964. I knew that weather was not the only reason.

[Livyjr]

Barbarism to decadence?

Without achieving any civilization?

Mon Dieu, Monsieur Clemenceau!

Were you not aware of the great expanse of American Empire (we called it Manifest Destiny) that rigged a phoney Mexican attack,  leaving America "owning" most of northern Mexico?

Were you not aware of the betrayals of our treaties with the Indians and the subsequent wars that added most of the remaining West?

Were you not aware of how we swindled Russia out of Alasksa?

Sacre Bleu.

We were EVERY BIT  as civilized as the French; only we did our colonizing on our OWN continent.

Oh, god, jeffmoskin, you're going to get me laughing so hard I might hurt myself, somehow!

[Livyjr]

Thanks for reminding me why I left The Empire State in 1964.

I knew that weather was not the only reason.

And many people have left since, jeffmoskin, for the same reasosn, and some, or many, especially the young, I have encouraged to go!

"Get out while you can, and don't ever look back!"

The corrupt Empire State of New York, and except for a few brief periods under the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Smith, New York has been a corrupt place to do business, and apparently the people must like it, as it persists, and my experience is that the people do like the corruption, and hence, we have it!

What the people want in a democracy is what the people get, after all, and so .....

Having been born and educated here in New York state, in a small town, I was exposed to this corrupt history of New York State by my teachers at a very young age, and I was taught that we have "checks and balances" in OUR constitution to prevent the type of corruption that existed early on in New York's history, way back in the day's of the King's governors when New York was but a colony!

Of course, later on, you learn that the checks-and-balances have been completely circumvented, and in some cases, dismantled outright, and that the corruption of the King's governors such as Lord Cornbury still not only exists, but actually flourishes right here in the Capital District area of the corrupt Empire State.

The "ROTTON BOUROUGHS", all over again!

Government exists for the sole purpose of enriching those who would govern!

jeffmoskin, as for me, I am quite happy that you did escape, and that you did make your way to sunny California, so that you could become successful in your life, so that you can then come in here, with your sunny California outlook on life, and be a counter-point to my northern dourness!

[Livyjr]

And here I want to update the "happenings" in Iraq, vis-a-vis their own search for where democracy is going to take them, as a people, and as a nation:

Top Stories - AP

"Wrangling Over New Iraq Government Begins"

1 hour, 25 minutes ago

By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's electoral commission certified the results of the Jan. 30 elections Thursday, clearing the way for the country's first democratic parliament in half a century.

But wrangling over who will get top posts in the Shiite-dominated government means the new National Assembly is unlikely to convene for weeks.

The certification came as current Prime Minister Ayad Allawi warned the new government to avoid further alienating minority Sunni Arabs who were members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and largely stayed away from the polls.

"We cannot afford in this country, for now, to go on a route different to that of national unity," Allawi told The Associated Press.

Otherwise, "it will throw the country into problems, severe problems," said Allawi, who spoke English in the interview.

The Sunni-led Iraqis Party won only five seats in parliament, but Shiite and Kurdish leaders have said they are reaching out to prominent Sunnis who boycotted the election to participate in the new government.

A key challenge for the new government will ending a largely Sunni-led insurgency that kills dozens of people every week.

Most Iraqis say only negotiations will end the attacks.

Iraqi police killed two men with suspected links to al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq and arrested five others during raids in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, the city's police chief, Major Gen. Adel Molan, said Thursday.

"We found huge amounts of weapons, including mortars, assault rifles, and explosives."

"We also found computers and CDs which show the beheading of several hostages in addition to letters which they were about to send to Osama bin Laden," Molan said of Tuesday's raids.

In the latest hostage ordeal, a Swedish citizen kidnapped in Iraq appeared in a video with a gun pointed at his head, appealing to the pope and Sweden's king to help win his release from insurgents, Swedish media reported.

A group calling itself "Martyr of al-Isawy Brigades" said it kidnapped the Swede of Iraqi descent as he traveled from Mosul to Baghdad this month.

The National Assembly will be in power for only 10 months, and its main job will be to draft a constitution so new elections can be held in December.

But it won't convene until disputes are resolved over who will become prime minister — the top post in the new government.

That process may take days or even weeks.

The clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance won 140 seats, giving it a slight majority in the 275-member parliament.

But a two-thirds majority — 182 seats — is needed to confirm the next president, two vice presidents, the prime minister and his Cabinet.

Kurdish parties, which came in second with 75 seats, have apparently agreed to support the alliance's candidate for prime minister in return for the presidency, though they have also offered to produce a compromise candidate for prime minister, if needed.

Kurdish officials have said they would not accept a theocratic government.

"We will reject, and we won't allow, the establishment of a theocratic state; we want separation between religion and state," said Noshirwan Mustafa, an aide to Jalal Talabani, the Sunni Kurd who is expected to become president.

Ali Hashim al-Youshaa, one of the United Iraqi Alliance's leaders, said the coalition has recruited eight lawmakers from other political parties to join the bloc in parliament, and that talks were under way to recruit many more.

There is no timetable for convening the National Assembly, and the current government will work with incoming lawmakers to set a date to convene.

Once the assembly meets, there is also no deadline for appointing the largely ceremonial president and two vice presidents, who will in turn name the prime minister.

Most observers don't expect the assembly to appoint the president until there is consensus on who will be prime minister and who will be in the Cabinet.

Once the president is appointed, a prime minister must be named within two weeks.

The two leading candidates to be the alliance's nominee for prime minister are interim Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi.

Allawi, whose secular party won 40 seats, insists he is still in the running as a compromise candidate.

Al-Jaafari said Thursday he expects the alliance to agree on a nominee within the next two days, but it wasn't clear if he expected the candidate to have the backing of the 182 lawmakers needed to win, or the support only of the alliance.

"We are having free discussions about who is going to be the prime minister and it probably will take two or three days to announce who is going to be the prime minister," al-Jaafari said following certification of the election results.

Adnan al-Kadhimi, an aide to al-Jaafari, said he expects the assembly to convene for the first time March 1.

[Livyjr]

And here I want to update the "happenings" in Iraq, vis-a-vis their own search for where democracy is going to take them, as a people, and as a nation:

Top Stories - AP

"Wrangling Over New Iraq Government Begins"

By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's electoral commission certified the results of the Jan. 30 elections Thursday, clearing the way for the country's first democratic parliament in half a century.

But wrangling over who will get top posts in the Shiite-dominated government means the new National Assembly is unlikely to convene for weeks.

The two leading candidates to be the alliance's nominee for prime minister are interim Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi.

Allawi, whose secular party won 40 seats, insists he is still in the running as a compromise candidate.

Today was a beautiful day where I am, with a beautiful cobalt-blue sky, and luckily for me, I got to be outside today, so that I could enjoy that sky!

And as I was puttering around out there, a thought came to me that the George W. Bush presidency is like a parody of the Mel Brook's movie, "Blazing Saddles", which itself was a parody of American western movies!

SO!

A parody of a parody, and when I read news articles like this one directly above, that point comes hammering home, where Ahmad Chalabi, the former Bush Co. "REJECT", is now in the running to be Iraq's prime minister, and the hand-picked Bush Co. puppet Allawi appears to be on his way out the door!

What a turn of events, and how typical of a Bush Co. production!

BUT ......

Never a dull moment, and that is for sure!

Take that right to the bank; here, in OUR America!

[Abu Beacon]

And here I want to update the "happenings" in Iraq, vis-a-vis their own search for where democracy is going to take them, as a people, and as a nation:



"Wrangling Over New Iraq Government Begins"

1BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's electoral commission certified the results of the Jan. 30 elections Thursday, clearing the way for the country's first democratic parliament in half a century.

Allawi, whose secular party won 40 seats, insists he is still in the running as a compromise candidate.

Good work on this, Livyjr.

Being that George Bush is such a good friend to Mr. Allawi, he is probably making plans to loan Mr. Rove to him.

BTW, take a run over to the George Bush vs. The Holy Bible thread when you have a moment. I unintentionally posted a thread on that one,which I had planned to put here.

A.B.

[Livyjr]

BTW, take a run over to the George Bush vs. The Holy Bible thread when you have a moment.

I unintentionally posted a thread on that one,which I had planned to put here.

A.B.

And here I want to take a moment to "plug" A.B.'s new thread entitled George W. Bush vs. The Holy Bible which is over in the "religion/politics" room of this forum!

To get there in a hurry, or easily, click on my name, or A.B.'s, if it is handy, and then go to "member's posts", and find that heading, and then click on the "post number", and this wonderful forum elevator/escalator/person mover service will whisk you right to that thread in a heartbeat!

Some interesting discussion is evolving over there, and to me, that is always a good thing, when people can communicate, as opposed to arguing, and flaming, and all of that other somewhat juvenile behavior that can occur in here just as easily as it can occur out there in reality, itself.

SO!

Stop on by over there, and see for yourselves is my advice on that subject!

And yes, A.B., I did see that post you make reference to, and to be truthful I thought it fit right in over there.

And if necessary, you can certainly cut and paste it to here as well, but right now, A.B., I think it is fine where it is!

[Livyjr]

And we ARE having an effect.

In reading this morning's NY Times, it turns out that the bloggers are responsible for getting out the story on James D Guckert, AKA Jeff Gannon, believed to be the one who outed Valerie Plame.

"Democrats Want Investigation of Reporter Using Fake Name"
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Two Democrats in Congress are pressing for investigations into how a Washington reporter who used a pseudonym managed to gain access to the White House and had access to classified documents that named Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative.

Until Wednesday when he resigned, Mr. Guckert worked for TalonNews.com, a Web site operated by Robert Eberle, a Texas Republican.

Mr. Guckert said in a March 2004 interview with his own news service, in which he was referred to as Mr. Gannon, that the classified document had been "easily accessible."

The two Democrats questioned how a person with "dubious qualifications" had access to such a document.

The Democrats also wrote to the Secret Service seeking an explanation of how someone using a pseudonym was cleared to enter the White House daily press briefings as well as a presidential news conference last month.

They said in their letter that allowing such a person in "appears to deviate significantly from heightened security measures you have employed recently."

Karl Frisch, a spokesman for Ms. Slaughter, said: "This is a guy who could not get credentialed by the House or the Senate press galleries, and yet managed to get into the White House and question the president" and have access to a top-secret document.

He added: "To imply he has no connection to the White House is just not credible."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/politics...print&position=

And while I am out collecting some further information on who this Ahmad Chalabi character is, here is another view on this Gannon business that jeffmoskin posted above; this from Ms. Maureen Dowd, of the New York Times, herself quite a feisty lady, indeed, and her opinion on this matter is worth noting, in my opinion, anyway:

February 17, 2005

OP-ED COLUMNIST

"Bush's Barberini Faun" By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

I am very impressed with James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon.

How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to question the president of the United States?

Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get to be face2face with the commander in chief?

It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy.

How does it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?

"Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a wealthy Texas Republican.

Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for softball questions.

Howard Kurtz reported in The Washington Post yesterday that although Mr. Guckert had denied launching the provocative Web sites - one described him as " 'military, muscular, masculine and discrete' (sic)" - a Web designer in California said "that he had designed a gay escort site for Gannon and had posted naked pictures of Gannon at the client's request."

And The Wilmington News-Journal in Delaware reported that Mr. Guckert was delinquent in $20,700 in personal income tax from 1991 to 1994.

I'm still mystified by this story.

I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one called me back.

Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend?

He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

Mr. McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher magazine, oddly noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors."

I know the F.B.I. computers don't work, but this is ridiculous.

After getting gobsmacked by the louche sagas of Mr. Guckert and Bernard Kerik, the White House vetters should consider adding someone with some blogging experience.

Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a military-stud Web site is a recommendation?

Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White House, even on gay issues, was endearing.

One of his stories mocked John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" with the headline "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."

With the Bushies, if you're their friend, anything goes.

If you're their critic, nothing goes.

They're waging a jihad against journalists - buying them off so they'll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail for doing their jobs and replacing them with ringers.

At last month's press conference, Jeff Gannon asked Mr. Bush how he could work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

But Bush officials have divorced themselves from reality.

They flipped TV's in the West Wing and Air Force One to Fox News.

They paid conservative columnists handsomely to promote administration programs.

Federal agencies distributed packaged "news" video releases with faux anchors so local news outlets would run them.

As CNN reported, the Pentagon produces Web sites with "news" articles intended to influence opinion abroad and at home, but you have to look hard for the disclaimer: "Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense."

The agencies spent a whopping $88 million spinning reality in 2004, splurging on P.R. contracts.

Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy.

It's worse than hating the press.

It's an attempt to reinvent it.

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

[Livyjr]

And while I am out collecting some further information on who this Ahmad Chalabi character is, here is another view on this Gannon business that jeffmoskin posted above; this from Ms. Maureen Dowd, of the New York Times, herself quite a feisty lady, indeed, and her opinion on this matter is worth noting, in my opinion, anyway:

February 17, 2005

OP-ED COLUMNIST

"Bush's Barberini Faun" By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

I am very impressed with James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon.

How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to question the president of the United States?

Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get to be face2face with the commander in chief?

It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy.

How does it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?

"Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a wealthy Texas Republican.

Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for softball questions.

I'm still mystified by this story.

I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a military-stud Web site is a recommendation?

Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White House, even on gay issues, was endearing.

One of his stories mocked John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" with the headline "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."

With the Bushies, if you're their friend, anything goes.

If you're their critic, nothing goes.

And while I was on my way to look for that Ahmad Chalabi information, one more take on this Gannon story was waiting for me in my e-mail box, so to keep things concise, I will post it here, for the balance it might lend to understanding exactly what is going on here, outside of the "just plain wierdness" that seems to permeate and pervade this Bush Co. presidency:

February 20, 2005

FRANK RICH, NY Times

"The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'"

THE prayers of those hoping that real television news might take its cues from Jon Stewart were finally answered on Feb. 9, 2005.

A real newsman borrowed a technique from fake news to deliver real news about fake news in prime time.

Let me explain.

On "Countdown," a nightly news hour on MSNBC, the anchor, Keith Olbermann, led off with a classic "Daily Show"-style bit: a rapid-fire montage of sharply edited video bites illustrating the apparent idiocy of those in Washington.

In this case, the eight clips stretched over a year in the White House briefing room - from February 2004 to late last month - and all featured a reporter named "Jeff."

In most of them, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, says "Go ahead, Jeff," and "Jeff" responds with a softball question intended not to elicit information but to boost President Bush and smear his political opponents.

In the last clip, "Jeff" is quizzing the president himself, in his first post-inaugural press conference of Jan. 26.

Referring to Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, "Jeff" asks, "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

If we did not live in a time when the news culture itself is divorced from reality, the story might end there: "Jeff," you'd assume, was a lapdog reporter from a legitimate, if right-wing, news organization like Fox, and you'd get some predictable yuks from watching a compressed video anthology of his kissing up to power.

But as Mr. Olbermann explained, "Jeff Gannon," the star of the montage, was a newsman no more real than a "Senior White House Correspondent" like Stephen Colbert on "The Daily Show" and he worked for a news organization no more real than The Onion.

Yet the video broadcast by Mr. Olbermann was not fake.

"Jeff" was in the real White House, and he did have those exchanges with the real Mr. McClellan and the real Mr. Bush.

"Jeff Gannon's" real name is James D. Guckert.

His employer was a Web site called Talon News, staffed mostly by volunteer Republican activists.

Media Matters for America, the liberal press monitor that has done the most exhaustive research into the case, discovered that Talon's "news" often consists of recycled Republican National Committee and White House press releases, and its content frequently overlaps with another partisan site, GOPUSA, with which it shares its owner, a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican convention.

Nonetheless, for nearly two years the White House press office had credentialed Mr. Guckert, even though, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post explained on Mr. Olbermann's show, he "was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership."

How this happened is a mystery that has yet to be solved.

"Jeff" has now quit Talon News not because he and it have been exposed as fakes but because of other embarrassing blogosphere revelations linking him to sites like hotmilitarystud.com and to an apparently promising career as an X-rated $200-per-hour "escort."

If Mr. Guckert, the author of Talon News exclusives like "Kerry Could Become First Gay President," is yet another link in the boundless network of homophobic Republican closet cases, that's not without interest.

But it shouldn't distract from the real question - that is, the real news - of how this fake newsman might be connected to a White House propaganda machine that grows curiouser by the day.

Though Mr. McClellan told Editor & Publisher magazine that he didn't know until recently that Mr. Guckert was using an alias, Bruce Bartlett, a White House veteran of the Reagan-Bush I era, wrote on the nonpartisan journalism Web site Romenesko, that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover."

(Otherwise, it would be a rather amazing post-9/11 security breach.)

By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news.

Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "marriage" initiatives.

The other four have played real newsmen on TV.

Before Mr. Guckert and Armstrong Williams, the talking head paid $240,000 by the Department of Education, there were Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia.

Let us not forget these pioneers - the Woodward and Bernstein of fake news.

They starred in bogus reports ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," went the script) pretending to "sort through the details" of the administration's Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2004.

Such "reports," some of which found their way into news packages distributed to local stations by CNN, appeared in more than 50 news broadcasts around the country and have now been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.

The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors.

A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million P.R. kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction.

We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.

Even now, we know that the fake news generated by the six known shills is only a small piece of the administration's overall propaganda effort.

President Bush wasn't entirely joking when he called the notoriously meek March 6, 2003, White House press conference on the eve of the Iraq invasion "scripted" while it was still going on.

(And "Jeff Gannon" apparently wasn't even at that one).

Everything is scripted.

The pre-fab "Ask President Bush" town hall-style meetings held during last year's campaign (typical question: "Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?") were carefully designed for television so that, as Kenneth R. Bazinet wrote last summer in New York's Daily News, "unsuspecting viewers" tuning in their local news might get the false impression they were "watching a completely open forum."

A Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence, intended to provide propagandistic news items, some of them possibly false, to foreign news media was shut down in 2002 when it became an embarrassing political liability.

But much more quietly, another Pentagon propaganda arm, the Pentagon Channel, has recently been added as a free channel for American viewers of the Dish Network.

Can a Social Security Channel be far behind?

It is a brilliant strategy.

When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government.

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.

The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault.

The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press.

Conservatives, who supposedly deplore post-modernism, are now welcoming in a brave new world in which it's a given that there can be no empirical reality in news, only the reality you want to hear (or they want you to hear).

The frequent fecklessness of the Beltway gang does little to penetrate this Washington smokescreen.

For a case in point, you needed only switch to CNN on the day after Mr. Olbermann did his fake-news-style story on the fake reporter in the White House press corps.

"Jeff Gannon" had decided to give an exclusive TV interview to a sober practitioner of by-the-book real news, Wolf Blitzer.

Given this journalistic opportunity, the anchor asked questions almost as soft as those "Jeff" himself had asked in the White House.

Mr. Blitzer didn't question Mr. Guckert's outrageous assertion that he adopted a fake name because "Jeff Gannon is easier to pronounce and easier to remember."

(Is "Jeff" easier to pronounce than his real first name, Jim?).

Mr. Blitzer never questioned Gannon/Guckert's assertion that Talon News "is a separate, independent news division" of GOPUSA.

Only in a brief follow-up interview a day later did he ask Gannon/Guckert to explain why he was questioned by the F.B.I. in the case that may send legitimate reporters to jail: Mr. Guckert has at times implied that he either saw or possessed a classified memo identifying Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative.

Might that memo have come from the same officials who looked after "Jeff Gannon's" press credentials?

Did Mr. Guckert have any connection with CNN's own Robert Novak, whose publication of Ms. Plame's name started this investigation in the first place?

The anchor didn't go there.

The "real" news from CNN was no news at all, but it's not as if any of its competitors did much better.

The "Jeff Gannon" story got less attention than another media frenzy - that set off by the veteran news executive Eason Jordan, who resigned from CNN after speaking recklessly at a panel discussion at Davos, where he apparently implied, at least in passing, that American troops deliberately targeted reporters.

Is the banishment of a real newsman for behaving foolishly at a bloviation conference in Switzerland a more pressing story than that of a fake newsman gaining years of access to the White House (and network TV cameras) under mysterious circumstances?

With real news this timid, the appointment of Jon Stewart to take over Dan Rather's chair at CBS News could be just the jolt television journalism needs.

As Mr. Olbermann demonstrated when he borrowed a sharp "Daily Show" tool to puncture the "Jeff Gannon" case, the only road back to reality may be to fight fake with fake.

[Livyjr]

Today was a beautiful day where I am, with a beautiful cobalt-blue sky, and luckily for me, I got to be outside today, so that I could enjoy that sky!

And as I was puttering around out there, a thought came to me that the George W. Bush presidency is like a parody of the Mel Brook's movie, "Blazing Saddles", which itself was a parody of American western movies!

SO!

A parody of a parody, and when I read news articles like this one directly above, that point comes hammering home, where Ahmad Chalabi, the former Bush Co. "REJECT", is now in the running to be Iraq's prime minister, and the hand-picked Bush Co. puppet Allawi appears to be on his way out the door!

What a turn of events, and how typical of a Bush Co. production!

BUT ......

Never a dull moment, and that is for sure!

Take that right to the bank; here, in OUR America!

And for those of you out there who either did not really know who Ahmad Chalabi was, or had forgotten, or just did not care, here's our Ahmad, in all his glory:

"Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy - Ahmed Chalabi's long and winding road from (and to?) Baghdad"

By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 11.18.02

If T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") had been a 21st-century neoconservative operative instead of a British imperial spy, he'd be Ahmed Chalabi's best friend.

Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time neoconservative strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put American troops -- and American oil companies -- in full control of the Persian Gulf's reserves and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing America's global strategic hegemony.

Just as Lawrence's escapades in World War I-era Arabia helped Britain remake the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, the U.S. sponsors of Chalabi's INC hope to do their own nation building.

"The removal of [Saddam Hussein] presents the United States in particular with a historic opportunity that I believe is going to prove to be as large as anything that has happened in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the entry of British troops into Iraq in 1917," says Kanan Makiya, an INC strategist and author of Republic of Fear.

Chalabi would hand over Iraq's oil to U.S. multinationals, and his allies in conservative think tanks are already drawing up the blueprints.

"What they have in mind is denationalization, and then parceling Iraqi oil out to American oil companies," says James E. Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Even more broadly, once an occupying U.S. army seizes Baghdad, Chalabi's INC and its American backers are spinning scenarios about dismantling Saudi Arabia, seizing its oil and collapsing the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

It's a breathtaking agenda, one that goes far beyond "regime change" and on to the start of a New New World Order.

What's also startling about these plans is that Chalabi is scorned by most of America's national-security establishment, including much of the Department of State, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He is shunned by all Western powers save the United Kingdom, ostracized in the Arab world and disdained even by many of his erstwhile comrades in the Iraqi opposition.

Among his few friends, however, are the men running the Bush administration's willy-nilly war on Iraq.

And with their backing, it's not inconceivable that this hapless, exiled Iraqi aristocrat and London-Washington playboy might end up atop the smoking heap of what's left of Iraq next year.

The Chalabi Lobby

Almost to a man, Washington's hawks lavishly praise Chalabi.

"He's a rare find," says Max Singer, a trustee and co-founder of the Hudson Institute.

"He's deep in the Arab world and at the same time he is fundamentally a man of the West."

In Washington, Team Chalabi is led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who heads the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.

Chalabi's partisans run the gamut from far right to extremely far right, with key supporters in most of the Pentagon's Middle-East policy offices -- such as Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael Rubin.

Also included are key staffers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, not to mention Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA Director Jim Woolsey.

The Washington partisans who want to install Chalabi in Arab Iraq are also those associated with the staunchest backers of Israel, particularly those aligned with the hard-right faction of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Chalabi's cheerleaders include the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

"Chalabi is the one that we know the best," says Shoshana Bryen, director of special projects for JINSA, where Chalabi has been a frequent guest at board meetings, symposia and other events since 1997.

"He could be Iraq's national leader," says Patrick Clawson, deputy director of WINEP, whose board of advisers includes pro-Israeli luminaries such as Perle, Wolfowitz and Martin Peretz of The New Republic.

What makes Chalabi so attractive to the Washington war party?

Most importantly, he's a co-thinker: a mathematician trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago and a banker (who years ago hit it off with Albert Wohlstetter, the theorist who was a godfather of the neoconservative movement), a fellow mathematician and a University of Chicago strategist.

In 1985, Wohlstetter (who died in 1997) introduced Chalabi to Perle, then the undersecretary of defense for international-security policy under President Reagan and one of Wohlstetter's leading acolytes.

The two have been close ever since.

In early October, Perle and Chalabi shared a podium at an American Enterprise Institute conference called "The Day After: Planning for a Post-Saddam Iraq," which was held, appropriately enough, in AEI's 12th-floor Wohlstetter Conference Center.

"The Iraqi National Congress has been the philosophical voice of free Iraq for a dozen years," Perle told me.

Philosophical or not, since its founding in 1992, Chalabi's INC has been trying to drag the United States into war with Iraq.

By its very nature, the INC's strategy -- building a paramilitary presence inside Iraq, creating a provisional government, launching attacks on Iraqi cities -- was intended to create inexorable momentum for a war in which in the United States would be compelled to support the INC.

But American policy in the 1990s was focused primarily on containing Saddam Hussein and depriving him of weapons of mass destruction, so the INC's efforts were sidetracked during the Clinton administration.

At the time, most of the national-security establishment saw the INC as weak and ineffectual.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of Central Command for U.S. forces in the Middle East, famously ridiculed Chalabi and company as "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London," adding, "I don't see any opposition group that has the viability to overthrow Saddam."

Supporting the INC, he warned, meant that "the Bay of Pigs could turn into the Bay of Goats."

And a widely cited 1999 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Rollback Fantasy," lambasted the INC's strategy for a gusano-style offensive by a ragtag army operating out of the so-called no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, saying it was "militarily ludicrous and would almost certainly end in either direct American intervention or a massive bloodbath."

Indeed, in 1996 an ill-organized INC offensive in northern Iraq, where Chalabi had assembled about 1,000 fighters, was half-heartedly backed by the CIA.

Not only did Saddam Hussein's troops not defect en masse, as predicted by Chalabi, but one of the INC's key allies, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, chose to ally itself with Baghdad, inviting the Iraqi army back into northern Iraq's Kurdish areas for a mop-up exercise.

Another of the INC's allies, the Iraqi National Accord, apparently blew up the INC's main offices in an act of bloody fratricide.

These tragic failures only increased the distaste for Chalabi at the CIA and among the U.S. military.

Still, Chalabi is a survivor.

Since the 1996 fiasco, he's managed a precarious balance atop a fractious and quarrelsome constellation of Iraqi opposition factions, from Kurds and Shi'a tribal leaders to Islamic fundamentalists, monarchists and military officers.

Our Man in Baghdad

Born in 1945, Chalabi is the scion of a wealthy, oligarchic Shi'a family with close ties to the Hashemite monarchy that was installed in Iraq after World War I by Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and the British imperial authorities.

Chalabi's grandfather served in nine various Iraqi cabinet positions, his father was a cabinet officer and president of the figurehead Iraqi senate, and his mother ran political salons that catered to Iraq's elite.

In 1958 that all came to a crashing end when a coalition of army officers and the Iraqi Communist Party led a revolution that toppled King Faisal II.

The Chalabis scattered.

As a young man Chalabi lived in Jordan, Lebanon, the United Kingdom and the United States, where he attended MIT before earning a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Chicago.

He took a position teaching math at the American University of Beirut.

In 1977, Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan invited Chalabi to Amman to establish the Petra Bank, a financial institution that would soon become the second-largest commercial bank in Jordan.

In an August 1989 episode still surrounded by controversy, however, the government of Jordan seized the Petra Bank under martial law, arresting its chief currency trader and using Jordan's central bank to pump $164 million into the Petra Bank and its allied institutions to keep them liquid.

To avoid arrest, Chalabi fled the country "under mysterious circumstances," according to a 1989 article in the Financial Times.

The Hudson Institute's Max Singer says that Prince Hassan personally drove Chalabi to the Jordanian border, helping him escape.

(According to one account, Chalabi was in the trunk of the car.)

Chalabi eventually was tried in absentia by a Jordanian court and sentenced to 22 years of hard labor for embezzlement, fraud and currency-trading irregularities.

He reportedly got away with more than $70 million.

The INC offers a different version.

According to Zaab Sethna, an INC spokesman, King Hussein of Jordan executed a politically motivated coup against Chalabi in coordination with Iraq because Chalabi was "using the bank to fund [Iraqi] opposition groups and learning a lot about illegal arms transfers to Saddam."

Because the Petra Bank had inside information about Jordanian-Iraqi trade, Chalabi used his position in a freelance, cloak-and-dagger operation to feed intelligence about Iraq's trade deals to the CIA.

Because Chalabi was already active in anti-Iraq opposition groups and had a connection with Perle, it's possible that Chalabi's account is true.

Further evidence of political motives behind the seizure of the Petra Bank and Chalabi's intelligence connections: The American lawyer who represented the Petra Bank's Washington, D.C., subsidiary was former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

And when Chalabi fled the country, anonymous leaflets reportedly circulated linking Chalabi to an alliance with Iraq's Shi'a and with (mostly Shi'a) Iran, all in a vague conspiracy against Iraq and Jordan.

(During the Iran-Iraq war and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Jordan -- always delicately balanced between "Iraq and a hard place," as King Hussein was wont to say -- tilted toward Iraq. Afterward, King Hussein distanced himself from Baghdad and eventually reconciled with Chalabi. The jail sentence for bank fraud stands but reportedly might be lifted soon by Jordan's King Abdullah.)

Of course, the fact that Chalabi may have been prosecuted for political reasons does not mean that he is innocent of embezzlement and fraud.

In any case, allegations of self-dealing have followed him everywhere since.

Puppet Theater

Soon after fleeing Jordan, Chalabi began making the contacts with the CIA that would eventually lead to the INC's founding in 1992.

Meeting first in Vienna, Austria, and then in Salahuddin in northern Iraq, the INC emerged as an umbrella group for the many factions of Iraqi opposition in exile.

In the early 1990s, the CIA spent about $100 million through the INC and its Kurdish allies in the north -- until the fiasco of 1996.

Though the CIA cut off the INC after that, Chalabi was undeterred and went about working with congressional Republicans to pass the Iraq Liberation Act.

That law set up a pool of funds and in-kind contributions for the INC and other opposition forces.

In its implementation, however, the INC has been embroiled in repeated disputes with the State Department over its accounting for funds received.

(In 1999, when asked about secrecy in accounting for certain INC expenditures, Chalabi blurted: "Damn right! It was covert money.")

"He's a criminal banker," says Akins, the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

"He's a swindler."

"He's interested in getting money, and I suspect it's all gone into his bank accounts and those of his friends."

Earlier this year, the State Department and the INC were deadlocked over payments to the INC, and the dispute was resolved only when the Pentagon, with its pro-Chalabi group, agreed to take over payments to the INC for the latter's intelligence-gathering work inside Iraq.

Even after 1996, Chalabi continued to insist that Saddam Hussein's government would crumble if the INC, with only limited American backing, were to launch its planned offensive.

In June 1997, Chalabi spoke to JINSA's board, which includes, not surprisingly, Perle, Woolsey and key hard-line backers of Israel such as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Kampelman, Eugene Rostow and former Rep. Steve Solarz (D-N.Y.).

"The INC plan for Saddam's overthrow is simple," Chalabi told JINSA.

From its base in northern Iraq, the INC would begin to confront Iraqi forces with only political and logistical support from the United States, including U.S. efforts to "feed, house and otherwise provide for the Iraqi army as it abandons Saddam."

Then, Chalabi concluded, "With U.S. political backing and regional support for a process of gradual encirclement, Saddam can be driven into hiding in Takrit and eventually removed."

That's it.

The idea that ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein is as easy as that was, of course, ridiculed by virtually all CIA, military and State Department strategists.

But without the ability to commit hundreds of thousands of American troops and a relentless wave of bombing sorties, it was all that Chalabi and his allies had -- until September 11.

Effectively capitalizing on the impact of 9-11, Perle, Woolsey and company began beating the drums for a full-scale war against Iraq.

With President Bush in tow and railing against "the guy who tried to kill my dad," the war party got the upper hand.

According to the latest leaks about U.S. strategy, a war against Iraq now could involve up to 250,000 U.S. troops and would result in an open-ended military occupation of Iraq modeled on the post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan.

The INC, meanwhile, hopes to ride into Baghdad on American tanks.

Weeks ago the Pentagon began a program to train INC combatants for a coming conflict in Iraq, but its effort fooled no one.

Ousting Saddam Hussein, if it happens, will be the work of U.S. troops, not the INC.

But a Big Brother-style public-relations offensive is being readied, aimed at creating the myth that Iraq has been liberated by an alliance of the United States and the INC.

"I want to create the national story that Iraqis liberated themselves," says WINEP's Clawson.

"It may have no more truth than the idea that the French liberated themselves in World War II."

But, insists Clawson, it's a fiction that will resonate with Iraqis.

Almost no one, not even the INC itself, thinks that Chalabi has any cachet inside Iraq.

Entifadh Qanbar, the earnest, young ex-Iraqi officer who heads the INC's office in Washington, says that Chalabi represents Iraq's "silent majority."

Asked whether people in Baghdad have even heard of Chalabi, Qanbar says:

"They may not know the man."

"But he represents their views."

Others scoff at even that notion.

"It's a formula for setting up a puppet regime," says David Mack, vice president of the Middle East Institute, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and ex-deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs who's dealt extensively with Iraqi opposition politicians and military officers.

"And we will have responsibility for propping them up for a long, long time to come, possibly with the blood of American soldiers."

But indefinitely propping up an INC-style quisling regime might be exactly what the United States wants, as it would mean that U.S. troops would be occupying Iraq's oil fields for years to come.

Striking Oil

It's hard to overstate the importance of Iraqi oil.

With proven reserves of 112 billion barrels (and many analysts saying that its true reserves are double that), Iraq sits above the second largest supply of oil in the world.

Its crippled industry can produce only 2 million barrels of oil a day at present, but with a modest effort, Iraq's output could soar to as high as 7 million to 8 million barrels per day by decade's end.

Controlling that much oil would give the United States enormous leverage over Europe and Japan, which depend heavily on Gulf oil; over Russia, whose economy is hinged to the price of its oil exports, which could be manipulated by an American-run Iraq; and over Saudi Arabia, whose regime's survival is linked to oil.

"The American oil companies are going to be the main beneficiaries of this war," says Akins.

"We take over Iraq, install our regime, produce oil at the maximum rate and tell Saudi Arabia to go to hell."

"It's probably going to spell the end of OPEC," says JINSA's Bryen.

The INC is quietly courting the American oil companies.

In mid-October, Chalabi had a series of meetings with three major U.S. oil firms in Washington.

"The oil people are naturally nervous," says INC spokesman Zaab Sethna, who took part in the meetings between Chalabi and the oil executives.

"We've had discussions with them, but they're not in the habit of going around talking about them."

That's true.

In interviews, oil company officials speak cautiously and only on background about Iraq, laughing nervously at the idea of being quoted.

They are extremely wary of associating themselves with the INC or with U.S. war plans for fear of angering Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf.

Asked about talks with the INC, one U.S. oil executive blanched, saying, "I can't discuss that, even on background."

But the untold riches that lie beneath the soil of Iraq are a powerful lure for multinational oil companies.

"I would say that especially the U.S. oil companies ... look forward to the idea that Iraq will be open for business," says an executive from one of the world's largest oil companies, adding that the companies are trying hard not to be noticed.

"We don't have a stake in Iraq now," says another oil industry executive.

"One of the frustrations that U.S. oil companies have is that the Russians, the French and the Chinese already have existing relations with Iraq."

"And the question is: How much of that will be sanctified by the people who succeed Saddam?"

The INC and its backers make no bones about the fact that the American forces gathering to attack Iraq will be liberating Iraq's oil.

Unable to restrain himself, Chalabi blurted to The Washington Post that the INC intends to reward its American friends.

"American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," he proclaimed.

Meanwhile, economists allied with the INC -- including strategists at the Heritage Foundation, the AEI and JINSA -- are abuzz with plans to "denationalize" the Iraqi oil industry and then distribute it to Western, mostly American, companies.

In late September, in "The Future of a Post-Saddam Iraq: A Blueprint for American Involvement," the Heritage Foundation's Ariel Cohen put forward a nearly complete scheme for the privatization of Iraq's oil, creating three separate companies for southern Iraq, the region around Baghdad and the Kirkuk fields in northern Iraq, with additional companies to operate pipelines and refineries and to develop Iraq's natural gas.

In an interview, Cohen warned that France, Russia and China might find that their existing oil contracts with Iraq won't be honored by the INC.

"It will be up to the next government of Iraq to examine the legal validity of the deals signed by the Saddam regime," says Cohen.

"From a realpolitik point of view, these governments should try to get in early with the Iraqi National Congress and abandon Saddam."

"The window of opportunity is closing."

It's hard to imagine that a regime that denationalized Iraq's oil would be very popular with Iraqis.

The nationalization, which took place between 1972 and 1974, electrified Iraqis and stunned the industry worldwide.

It also set dominoes falling throughout the Persian Gulf and the OPEC nations, as other countries ousted the multinationals and created state-owned enterprises.

Eventually, even Saudi Arabia seized control of all-powerful Aramco, the consortium of Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and Chevron that had long been the colossus of the Persian Gulf.

Now, cautiously, the oil industry sees a war in Iraq as a way to win back what's been lost.

"Even in Saudi Arabia, all we can do is buy their oil," says an American oil company official. U.S. companies, this executive confirmed, want to return to greater direct control, perhaps through so-called production-sharing agreements that would give them both a direct stake in the oil fields and a greater share of the profits.

It's also clear that the INC, the neoconservatives and oil executives are thinking beyond Iraq to Saudi Arabia.

Ever since Robert W. Tucker wrote an article in Commentary in the 1970s proposing a U.S. occupation of Saudi Arabia's oil fields, such a scenario has been a cherished vision for a small but growing circle of strategists.

(Last summer Perle invited a RAND Corporation analyst to speak to the Defense Policy Board on exactly that topic.)

Earlier this year, in an article titled "Free the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia," Singer suggested that the United States should help create a Muslim Republic of East Arabia.

"I meant it seriously," says Singer.

"Saudi Arabia is vulnerable not only to a U.S. seizure of their land but to U.S. unofficial participation in a rebellion by minority Shi'a in the Eastern Province."

The Eastern Province, which is largely Shi'a, happens to include the vast bulk of Saudi Arabia's oil fields.

One other problem is that the INC does not represent the entire Iraqi opposition movement.

The two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, though long-time bloody rivals, have momentarily patched things up.

They've allied, in turn, with the Iraqi National Accord, a CIA-backed group of former Iraqi military officers, and with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to form the Group of Four, an alternative to the INC that, they hope, will attract further American support.

There is even a monarchist group trying to restore T.E. Lawrence's Hashemite kingdom in Baghdad that, some say, could promote a kingship in Iraq for Prince Hassan of Jordan, a Hashemite himself.

Do these strategic realities, and the wide ridicule of Chalabi among Middle East experts, matter?

"I don't think their point of view is relevant to the debate any longer," says Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute.

"Sor-ry!"

Thanks to the "entire vast army [of neoconservatives]" who've successfully won over Bush and Cheney, she observes, the INC has something that the other groups lack: the support of the president of the United States.

Robert Dreyfuss

[Livyjr]

And for those of you out there who either did not really know who Ahmad Chalabi was, or had forgotten, or just did not care, here's our Ahmad, in all his glory:

"Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy - Ahmed Chalabi's long and winding road from (and to?) Baghdad"

By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 11.18.02

If T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") had been a 21st-century neoconservative operative instead of a British imperial spy, he'd be Ahmed Chalabi's best friend.

Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time neoconservative strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put American troops -- and American oil companies -- in full control of the Persian Gulf's reserves and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing America's global strategic hegemony.

Just as Lawrence's escapades in World War I-era Arabia helped Britain remake the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, the U.S. sponsors of Chalabi's INC hope to do their own nation building.

Chalabi would hand over Iraq's oil to U.S. multinationals, and his allies in conservative think tanks are already drawing up the blueprints.

"What they have in mind is denationalization, and then parceling Iraqi oil out to American oil companies," says James E. Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Even more broadly, once an occupying U.S. army seizes Baghdad, Chalabi's INC and its American backers are spinning scenarios about dismantling Saudi Arabia, seizing its oil and collapsing the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

It's a breathtaking agenda, one that goes far beyond "regime change" and on to the start of a New New World Order.

What's also startling about these plans is that Chalabi is scorned by most of America's national-security establishment, including much of the Department of State, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He is shunned by all Western powers save the United Kingdom, ostracized in the Arab world and disdained even by many of his erstwhile comrades in the Iraqi opposition.

Among his few friends, however, are the men running the Bush administration's willy-nilly war on Iraq.

And with their backing, it's not inconceivable that this hapless, exiled Iraqi aristocrat and London-Washington playboy might end up atop the smoking heap of what's left of Iraq next year.

And here is another view of Mr. Ahmad Chalabi, with some further interesting quotes in it as to who in Washington, D.C. was into this Chalabi fellow's pocket, or, rather, who in Washington was supporting this guy to be the new head of Iraq at the time the Bush Co. Holy War to steal Iraq's oil was just beginning to heat up:

"Ahmed Chalabi" From SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy

Dr. Ahmed Chalabi (also spelled "Ahmad") is part of a three-man leadership council for the Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was created at the behest of the U.S. government for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Chalabi, a secular Iraqi Shiite Muslim and mathematician by training, previously served as chairman of the Petra Bank in Jordan, where he engaged in various cloak-and-dagger operations that ended abruptly in August 1989 when he fled the country "under mysterious circumstances" and in 1992 was convicted in absentia for embezzlement, fraud and currency-trading irregularities, sentencing him to 22 years' hard labour.

[1] http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/pri...reyfuss-r.html;

[2] http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/081903J.shtml

In August 2003 a petition was circulating among Jordanian deputies to hold a special session soon in the 110-member house to demand the government take legal steps to seek Chalabi's extradition from Iraq.

[3] http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/081903J.shtml

During 2004 Chalabi's influence with the U.S. has waned to the point where government funding for him is likely to be discontinued.

History

In March 2002, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that "A dispute over Chalabi's potential usefulness preoccupies the bureaucracy" within the U.S. government, "as the civilian leadership in the Pentagon continues to insist that only the INC can lead the opposition."

"At the same time, a former Administration official told me, 'Everybody but the Pentagon and the office of the Vice-President wants to ditch the INC.'"

"The INC's critics note that Chalabi, despite years of effort and millions of dollars in American aid, is intensely unpopular today among many elements in Iraq."

"'If Chalabi is the guy, there could be a civil war after Saddam's overthrow,' one former CIA operative told me."

"A former high-level Pentagon official added, 'There are some things that a President can't order up, and an internal opposition is one.'"

[4] http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020311fa_FACT

Notwithstanding these concerns, Hersh reported that "INC supporters in and around the Administration, including Paul Dundes Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, believe, like Chalabi, that any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand."

In December 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the administration of George Walker Bush actually preferred INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over analyses provided by long-standing analysts within the CIA.

"Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency," he wrote.

"The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq."

"... Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war."

Much of the pro-war faction's information came from the INC, even though "most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil."

"... The Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad."

"At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else."

[5] http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/pri...dreyfuss-r.html

"The [INC's] intelligence isn't reliable at all," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert.

"Much of it is propaganda."

"Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear."

"And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions."

"They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches."

[6] http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/pri...dreyfuss-r.html

In February 2003, as the Bush administration neared the end of its preparations for war, an internal fight erupted over INC's plan to actually become the government of Iraq after the U.S. invasion.

Chalabi wanted to "declare a provisional government when the war starts," a plan that "alienated some of Mr Chalabi's most enthusiastic backers in the Pentagon and in Congress, who fear the announcement of a provisional government made up of exiles would split anti-Saddam sentiment inside Iraq."

[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...,899944,00.html

"What he did was pander to the dreams of a group of powerful men, centered in the Pentagon, the Defense Policy Board, the vice president's office, and various think tanks scattered around Washington,² according to Thomas Engelhardt, a New York writer who produces a daily web log on the war.

The thing that needs to be grasped here is that since 1991 these men have been dreaming up a storm about reconfiguring the Middle East, while scaling the heavens (via various Star Wars programs for the militarization of space), and so nailing down an American earth for eternity.

Their dreams were utopian and so, by definition, unrealizable.

Theirs were lava dreams, and they were dreamt, like all such burning dreams, without much reference to the world out there.

They were perfect pickings for a Chalabi.

Of course, the fact that Chalabi is now scarcely mentioned as a possible political force in Iraq is barely acknowledged by the hawks who still insist, albeit with less conviction, that things are going their way and that there is no reason to panic.

--Jim Lobe, 11 July 2003

[8] http://www.domino.ips.org/ips%\eng.ns.../?OpenDocument)

In July 2003 Chalabi was one of nine Iraqi Governing Council members chosen to serve as president for a month of the U.S.- backed, self-rule body.

[9] http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/081903J.shtml

Chalabi even participated in a secret Defense Policy Board meeting just a few days after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon in which the main topic of discussion, according to the 'Wall Street Journal', was how 9/11 could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq.

[10] http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=22509

Jim Lobe reports on 20 Februrary 2004 to IPS that "It appears that Chalabi, whose family, it was reported this week, has extensive interests in a company that has already been awarded more than 400 million dollars in reconstruction contracts, is signalling his willingness to take all of the blame, or credit, for the faulty intelligence."

[11] http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=22509

"in April, 2003, Jay Garner let it slip to some of his staff that his charge was to turn Iraq over to Ahmad Chalabi within six months."

[12] http://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/041002Cole.shtml

External links

Interview with Michael Rubin, "Ahmad Chalabi: 'The Biggest Error Was Occupation' http://www.meforum.org/article/626," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004.

"An Interview with Dr. Ahmad Chalabi"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sh...ws/chalabi.html, from "Frontline: The Survival of Saddam," PBS, January 25, 2000.

Robert Dreyfuss, Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy. Ahmed Chalabi's long and winding road from (and to?) Baghdad http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/21/dreyfuss-r.html, The American Prospect, November 18, 2002.

Warren P. Strobel, "Plan to give Iraqi exiles big role spurs feud" http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/new...raq/5493219.htm, Mercury News, March 27, 2003.

Christophe Boltanski, "How the Dissidents Fooled the Washington Hawks" http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/printer_040603D.shtml, La Liberation, April 1, 2003.

Eric Schmitt and Steven R. Weisman, U.S. to Recruit Iraqi Civilians to Interim Posts

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/internat.../11POST.html?th,

The New York Times, April 10, 2003. Numerous references to Chalabi.

"Fresh bank scandals hit Iraq's leader in waiting" http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/17/1050172708630.html, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 April 2003.

Marian Wilkinson and Peter Fray, "The thief of Baghdad" http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/09/1052280437666.html, Sydney Morning Herald, May 9, 2003.

Jim Lobe, "Analysis: Anatomy of a Quack-Mire" http://commondreams.org/views03/0711-12.htm, Inter Press Service, July 11, 2003.

"War, Truth and Consequences" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth, PBS Frontline, October 9, 2003, includes a lengthy interview with Chalabi.

Knut Royce, Start-up Company With Connections. U.S. gives $400M in work to contractor with ties to Pentagon favorite on Iraqi Governing Council http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/na...,0,735950.story, Newsday, February 15, 2004:

"... to a start-up company that has extensive family and, according to court documents, business ties to Ahmed Chalabi, ... The most recent contract, for $327 million to supply equipment for the Iraqi Armed Forces, was awarded last month and drew an immediate challenge from a losing contester, who said the winning bid was so low that it questions the 'credibility' of that bid."

"Iraq's Chalabi Says 'Blame CIA, Not Me' About WMD" http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?t...storyID=4510118, Reuters, March 5, 2004.

Isabel Hilton, "Ready to rule, despite his errors" (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/09/1078594360097.html, Sydney Morning Herald, March 10, 2004.

Tabassum Zakaria, "Exile group still on US payroll" http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/...8594496135.html, The Age, March 12, 2004:

"The US is still paying the Iraqi National Congress exile group, headed by Ahmed Chalabi, about $US340,000 ($A450,000) a month for intelligence - despite internal government reviews finding that much of the intelligence provided before the war was faulty or even fabricated..."

Dexter Filkins, "Chalabi, Nimble Exile, Searches for Role in Iraq" http://nytimes.com/2004/03/26/internationa...ast/26CHAL.html, New York Times, March 26, 2004.

Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh, "Chalabi: A Questionable Use of U.S. Funding" http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4615823/, Newsweek, April 5, 2004:

"Under investigation: Congress is examining whether Ahmad Chalabi inappropriately used U.S. taxpayer dollars to prod America towards war in Iraq."

Timothy M. Phelps, "U.S. backing knocked" http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wo...dnews-headlines, New York Newsday, April 22, 2004.

Kenneth Pollack, a former Clinton administration official and one of the most prominent Democrats to support the war in Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday that it was a 'disgrace' that the United States 'continues to push [Ahmed Chalabi] the way we do' for a leadership position in Iraq. Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Vice Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said they agreed with Pollack."

"Transcript: Ahmed Chalabi on Fox" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,118087,00.html 'Fox News Sunday', April 25, 2004.

Robin Wright and Walter Pincus, "Washington's chosen ones face the axe" http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2004/0...2831438483.html, Sydney Morning Herald, April 26, 2004.

(This is a syndicated story originally published in the Washington Post).

"Chalabi says no to U.N. oversight "
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20040428-092502-4081r.htm, Washington Times, April 29, 2004.

Joshua Micah Marshall, More on Chalabi http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/...5_02.php#002902,

Talking Points Memo, May 2, 2004.

Mark Hosenball, "Intelligence: A Double Game" http://msnbc.msn.com/ID/4881157/, Newsweek, May 10, 2004.

Andrew Cockburn, "The Truth About Ahmed Chalabi http://www.counterpunch.org/chalabi05202004.html, Counterpunch, May 20, 2004.

Retrieved from http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ahmed_Chalabi

[Abu Beacon]

And for those of you out there who either did not really know who Ahmad Chalabi was, or had forgotten, or just did not care, here's our Ahmad, in all his glory:

"Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy - Ahmed Chalabi's long and winding road from (and to?) Baghdad"

By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 11.18.02

If T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") had been a 21st-century neoconservative operative instead of a British imperial spy, he'd be Ahmed Chalabi's best friend.

Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time neoconservative strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put American troops -- and American oil companies -- in full control of the Persian Gulf's reserves and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing America's global strategic hegemony.



Chalabi would hand over Iraq's oil to U.S. multinationals, and his allies in conservative think tanks are already drawing up the blueprints.

"What they have in mind is denationalization, and then parceling Iraqi oil out to American oil companies," says James E. Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Even more broadly, once an occupying U.S. army seizes Baghdad, Chalabi's INC and its American backers are spinning scenarios about dismantling Saudi Arabia, seizing its oil and collapsing the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

It's a breathtaking agenda, one that goes far beyond "regime change" and on to the start of a New New World Order.

What's also startling about these plans is that Chalabi is scorned by most of America's national-security establishment, including much of the Department of State, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Among his few friends, however, are the men running the Bush administration's willy-nilly war on Iraq.

And with their backing, it's not inconceivable that this hapless, exiled Iraqi aristocrat and London-Washington playboy might end up atop the smoking heap of what's left of Iraq next year.


Almost to a man, Washington's hawks lavishly praise Chalabi.

."

In Washington, Team Chalabi is led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who heads the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.

Chalabi's partisans run the gamut from far right to extremely far right, with key supporters in most of the Pentagon's Middle-East policy offices -- such as Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael Rubin.

In early October, Perle and Chalabi shared a podium at an American Enterprise Institute conference called "The Day After: Planning for a Post-Saddam Iraq," which was held, appropriately enough, in AEI's 12th-floor Wohlstetter Conference Center.


."

The Eastern Province, which is largely Shi'a, happens to include the vast bulk of Saudi Arabia's oil fields.

Robert Dreyfuss

That is an in depth article.

When the Iraq war started, almost everyone knew that the bottom line was oil.

As other issues crept in, the " invasion for oil " belief was pushed into the background.

But -----the motive for the war never really changed. It was ALWAYS about the oil, and this article brings us back to reality.

How slippery is this administration? Coming up with a reason of the month for attacking Iraq.

If you can't beat them, confuse them ."

They did that well with with 51% of the voters.

Thanks for bringing the true story back into the limelight again, Livyjr.

A.B.

This post has been edited by Abu Beacon: Feb 17 2005, 07:05 PM

[jeffmoskin]

That is an in depth article.

When the Iraq war started, almost everyone knew that the bottom line was oil.

As other issues crept in, the " invasion for oil " belief was pushed into the background.

But -----the motive for the war never really changed. It was ALWAYS about the oil, and this article brings us back to reality.

Originally, the Iraq invasion was to be called "Operation Iraqi Liberation"

Until somebody figured out that the acronym was O.I.L.

[Livyjr]

Originally, the Iraq invasion was to be called "Operation Iraqi Liberation"

Until somebody figured out that the acronym was O.I.L.

jeffmoskin, you are sharp as a tack, and let there be no doubts about that!

SO?

What did they change the words to, to get this present acronym of O.O.F.?

Or is it O.O.P.S.?

Or W.H.O.O.P.S.?

Drat this old age!

Never can keep anything straight anymore!

Of course, though, in an environment of lies, 24/7, in which we now find ourselves immersed, thanks to the Bush Co., WHAT IS STRAIGHT ANYMORE?

And where has the truth gone?

And not to Washington, D.C., that is for sure!

They wouldn't know the truth down in that place if it came right up and bit them hard on the backside!

[Livyjr]

And somewhere along the line here, I want to get back to the "American Creed" which jeffmoskin posted in here a while back, but right now the "HOT" story has to do with this alleged "tort reform" legislation that George W. Bush in essence snuck through OUR Congress, and which he is supposed to sign, later today, limiting OUR rights, as American citizens, to seek redress in the courts of this nation, as is OUR Constitutional right!

And without further ado, here is that story:

Politics

"Final OK for class-action lawsuit changes - Congress sends bill to Bush for his signature"

Updated: 5:16 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2005

WASHINGTON - Congress on Thursday passed legislation that would transfer most large, multistate class action lawsuits to federal court, fulfilling one of President Bush’s second-term goals.

The aim of the bill was to protect businesses and stop lawyers from reaping huge profits by filing suits in carefully selected state courts.

The legislation, given final congressional approval by the House on a 279-149 vote, would ban state courts from hearing large multistate class action lawsuits.

Such courts have been known for issuing multimillion-dollar verdicts like they did against tobacco companies.

After the bill becomes law, cases against corporations and businesses accused of wrongdoing against large groups of people will be heard by federal judges.

Critics have said these jurists are not as amenable as are their state counterparts to these cases, which often involve millions of dollars.

The Senate passed the bill Feb. 10.

Bush is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday.

Bush and other Republicans have been pushing for changes in the legal system for years.

They argue that greedy lawyers have taken advantage of the state class action lawsuit system by filing frivolous lawsuits in certain state courts where they know they can win big dollar verdicts.

Meanwhile, those lawyers’ clients get only small sums or coupons giving them discounts for the products of the company they just sued, lawmakers said.

“Frivolous lawsuits are clogging America’s judicial system, endangering America’s small businesses, jeopardizing jobs and driving up prices for consumers,” said House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Moving those cases to federal court will ensure that state judges will no longer “routinely approve settlements in which the lawyers receive large fees and the class members receive virtually nothing,” he added.

Companies in response have had to cut back on their activities to defend those lawsuits, and have had to raise prices on products to recoup their costs, Republicans said.

“These out-of-control class action lawsuits are killing jobs, they’re hurting small business people who can’t afford to defend themselves and they’re hurting consumers who have to pay more for products,” said Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla.

Democrats argued that the main goal of Republicans was to hurt trial lawyers who donate heavily to the Democratic Party and to help big business escape multimillion-dollar verdicts from state courts.

“This bill is the Vioxx protection bill, it is the Wal-Mart protection bill, it is the Tyco protection bill and it is the Enron protection bill,” said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.

They tried to scuttle the legislation by offering an amendment rewriting the bill and trying to force it back to committee, but Republicans voted those efforts down.

The legislation is “a payback to big business at the expense of consumers,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said.

Federal courts are expected to allow fewer large class action lawsuits to go forward, which Democrats say means more businesses will get away with wrongdoing and fewer ordinary people will be protected.

“It’s the final payback to the tobacco industry, to the asbestos industry, to the oil industry, to the chemical industry at the expense of ordinary families who need to be able go to court to protect their loved ones when their health has been compromised,” said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

“And these people are saying that your state isn’t smart enough, your jurors aren’t smart enough” to hear those cases.

The legislation would affect only cases that are filed after the president signs it into law.

Cases already in court could go forward in their current courts.

For example, Vioxx cases already being heard in courts, where people assert that the drug causes problems ranging from stroke to irregular heartbeat to heart attack, would not be affected.

Under the legislation, class-action suits seeking $5 million or more would be heard in state court if the primary defendant and more than one-third of the plaintiffs are from the same state.

But if fewer than one-third of the plaintiffs are from the same state as the primary defendant, the case would go to federal court.

The bill also would limit lawyers’ fees in so-called coupon settlements — when plaintiffs get discounts on products instead of financial settlements — by linking the fees to the coupon’s redemption rate or the actual hours spent working on a case.

[Livyjr]

And somewhere along the line here, I want to get back to the "American Creed" which jeffmoskin posted in here a while back, but right now the "HOT" story has to do with this alleged "tort reform" legislation that George W. Bush in essence snuck through OUR Congress, and which he is supposed to sign, later today, limiting OUR rights, as American citizens, to seek redress in the courts of this nation, as is OUR Constitutional right!

And without further ado, here is that story:

Politics

"Final OK for class-action lawsuit changes - Congress sends bill to Bush for his signature"

Updated: 5:16 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2005

WASHINGTON - Congress on Thursday passed legislation that would transfer most large, multistate class action lawsuits to federal court, fulfilling one of President Bush’s second-term goals.

The aim of the bill was to protect businesses and stop lawyers from reaping huge profits by filing suits in carefully selected state courts.

The legislation, given final congressional approval by the House on a 279-149 vote, would ban state courts from hearing large multistate class action lawsuits.

Such courts have been known for issuing multimillion-dollar verdicts like they did against tobacco companies.

After the bill becomes law, cases against corporations and businesses accused of wrongdoing against large groups of people will be heard by federal judges.

Bush and other Republicans have been pushing for changes in the legal system for years.

They argue that greedy lawyers have taken advantage of the state class action lawsuit system by filing frivolous lawsuits in certain state courts where they know they can win big dollar verdicts.

“Frivolous lawsuits are clogging America’s judicial system, endangering America’s small businesses, jeopardizing jobs and driving up prices for consumers,” said House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Moving those cases to federal court will ensure that state judges will no longer “routinely approve settlements in which the lawyers receive large fees and the class members receive virtually nothing,” he added.

“These out-of-control class action lawsuits are killing jobs, they’re hurting small business people who can’t afford to defend themselves and they’re hurting consumers who have to pay more for products,” said Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla.

Democrats argued that the main goal of Republicans was to hurt trial lawyers who donate heavily to the Democratic Party and to help big business escape multimillion-dollar verdicts from state courts.

“This bill is the Vioxx protection bill, it is the Wal-Mart protection bill, it is the Tyco protection bill and it is the Enron protection bill,” said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.

The legislation is “a payback to big business at the expense of consumers,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said.

Federal courts are expected to allow fewer large class action lawsuits to go forward, which Democrats say means more businesses will get away with wrongdoing and fewer ordinary people will be protected.

“It’s the final payback to the tobacco industry, to the asbestos industry, to the oil industry, to the chemical industry at the expense of ordinary families who need to be able go to court to protect their loved ones when their health has been compromised,” said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

“And these people are saying that your state isn’t smart enough, your jurors aren’t smart enough” to hear those cases.

The Star Chamber!

That's what this story above about this Bush Co. "tort reform" reminds me of, listening to the language of his Republican stooges in OUR Congress as they explain this need to strip us further of OUR rights which were won for us by OUR forefathers in liberty at the start of this nation's history in 1776!

And no, I don't mean a movie, I mean the Star Chamber courts under the corrupt English kings, whose yoke of tyranny OUR forefathers in liberty threw off beginning in 1776!

Unfortunately, that yoke of tyranny was not apparently thrown far enough, because George W. Bush appears to have found it again, and is now assuming that IT IS HIS, to use against US!

English History

"The Court of Star Chamber 1487-1641"

The Court of Star Chamber was a court of law which evolved from meetings of the king's royal council.

Although its roots go back to the medieval period, the court only became powerful as a separate entity during the reign of Henry VII.

In 1487 the court became a judicial body separate from the king's council, with a mandate to hear petitions of redress.

Star-Chamber - The Facts

The Court of Star Chamber was named for the star pattern painted on the ceiling of the room at Westminster Palace where its meetings were held.

In a sense the court was a supervisory body; its members oversaw the operations of lower courts.

As well, its members could hear cases by direct appeal.

Members of the court were either privy councillors (i.e. members of the king's advisory body) or judges drawn from the courts of common law.

The mandate of the court expanded under the Tudors to include instances of public disorder.

Judges would receive petitions involving property rights, public corruption, trade and government administration, and disputes arising from land enclosures.

Although the court was initially a court of appeal, Henry VIII and his councillors Wolsey and Cranmer encouraged plaintiffs to bring their cases directly to the Star Chamber, bypassing the lower courts entirely.

Although the court could order torture, prison, and fines, it did not have the power to impose the death sentence.

Under the Tudors, Star Chamber sessions were public.

The power of the court of Star Chamber grew considerably under the Stuarts, and by the time of Charles I, it had become a byword for misuse and abuse of power by the king and his circle.

James I and his son Charles used the court to examine cases of sedition, which, in practice, meant that the court could be used to suppress opposition to royal policies.

It became used to try nobles too powerful to be brought to trial in the lower courts.

Court sessions were held in secret, with no right of appeal, and punishment was swift and severe to any enemy of the crown.

Charles I used the Court of Star Chamber as a sort of Parliamentary substitute during the years 1628-40, when he refused to call Parliament.

Finally, in 1641 the Long Parliament abolished the hated Star Chamber, though its name survives still to designate arbitrary, secretive proceedings in opposition to personal rights and liberty.

http://www.britainexpress.com/History/tudor/star-chamber.htm

[Livyjr]

Thanks for the link, Livyjr.

But Mr. Rheingold goes on to say some words that are disturbing to me.

"Today, a small number of broadband Internet providers, such as Comcast and Viacom, are pushing for regulations that would enable them to pick and choose the content that travels over their part of the network."

"The courts also are coming to bear in this fight, as companies work to extend copyright far beyond its original intent and establish digital rights schemes that make it difficult to produce or distribute digital content not authorized by the entertainment industry."

"The consolidation of media ownership in the hands of a small number of individuals or cartels—who exchange political funding for legislative and regulatory favors—is being fought by organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

"But activists who have not been involved in technology or media issues need to join in this battle, because communication media under dispute are profoundly political tools."

"In coming decades, Internet-based media will exert more and more influence over what people know and believe and how they can organize and assemble for collective action."

We cannot allow the greedy corporations to throw an electronic monkey wench into this new electronic printing press.

And it appears that the theme right now today in here, is creeping servitude to a tyrannical "MASTER", or "OVERLORD", which well might be the thuggish Republican Party, and its "component parts", here in OUR America:

washingtonpost.com Highlights

"Mergers raise concerns over Internet access - Organizations to press for conditions on telecommunications deals"

By Jonathan Krim

Updated: 5:36 a.m. ET Feb. 16, 2005

WASHINGTON - On the surface, the frenzy of telecommunications mergers in the past few weeks raises relatively clear-cut questions for lawmakers and regulators who will be weighing the deals:

Will consumers and businesses be harmed if long-distance choices disappear when AT&T and MCI are swallowed by telephone giants SBC and Verizon?

In many parts of the country, the mergers would mean that two of the top three providers of long-distance telephone service are combining, leaving one overwhelmingly dominant player.

Ordinarily, such corporate marriages have trouble getting approved.

But several experts said they expect as many questions to be raised about whether the phone giants would gain too much power over access to the Internet, especially for large businesses.

Worried representatives of large businesses and consumer groups said they will begin sounding the alarm, at the Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department and on Capitol Hill.

So far, there is no organized group calling for the rejection of Verizon Communications Inc.'s buyout of MCI Inc. or SBC Communications Inc.'s purchase of AT&T Corp.

Instead, in a process that could last a year or more, several organizations said they will press regulators to place conditions on the mergers to help ensure robust Internet competition.

State public-utility officials also intend to play a role.

The focus on Internet services, as well as on long-distance calling, is testimony to the breathtaking changes in the communications landscape over the past several years.

For many consumers, wireless service is a substitute for traditional local and long-distance phone service.

Under the administration of outgoing FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, phone line discounts were eliminated, making it difficult for companies such as MCI, AT&T and smaller players to offer local service over local phone company lines.

Meanwhile, the local phone giants were allowed to enter the long-distance market.

Together, these government moves caused the MCIs and AT&Ts of the world to begin withdrawing from serving residential customers.

As a result, experts said, regulators would be hard-pressed to reject mergers that eliminated local phone service competitors that already had decided to leave the market because of government policies.

But MCI and AT&T are major providers of "Internet backbone," the large pipes that carry data around the world in the same way that interstate highways are the arteries for long-distance car traffic.

In the Internet world, local or regional networks allow businesses, institutions and consumers to get to the main Internet pipes.

These networks often are owned by the local phone companies, which charge for access to the backbone.

The fees charged for those connections are rising and have been the subject of "a running gunfight for years," said Brian R. Moir, president of the E-Commerce & Telecommunications Users Group, which represents large industries and institutions such as universities that send and receive huge volumes of Internet traffic.

With the prospect of Verizon and SBC owning two of the biggest backbone providers in AT&T and MCI, Moir said, his members fear a possible squeeze.

The FCC decided in January to review those connection rates, which Moir said should be part of any merger examination.

Moreover, he said, whereas AT&T, MCI and the large local phone carrier in a given region once would bid on providing long-distance and data services for large businesses or government agencies, there would now be one fewer bidder.

The danger, Moir and others said, is that SBC and Verizon could use their ability to bundle soup-to-nuts telecommunications services for businesses in ways that could make it impossible for rivals to compete.

At the moment, there is so much backbone capacity that prices are falling.

And there are several other backbone providers.

But if the mergers are approved, "Verizon and SBC are well-positioned to dominate and make it more difficult for other backbone providers to offer packages of services," said Gene Kimmelman, head of the Washington office of Consumers Union.

Michael E. Glover, a Verizon attorney, responded that the acquisition of MCI would allow his firm to compete for global business with AT&T for the first time.

He also disputed Moir's assertions that network connection costs are going up.

Blair Levin, a former FCC official and now a telecommunications analyst for the investment firm Legg Mason, agreed that integrated phone and Internet backbone giants could jeopardize competition.

"You can do bundling so it can be discriminatory," he said.

Levin added that regulators might look closely at whether AT&T, for example, should be forced to give up some local facilities that allow customers to connect directly to its backbone.

The recent mergers, which also include a proposed combination of Nextel Communications Inc. and Sprint Corp., come when many in the industry and on Capitol Hill want to take a fresh look at the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was passed before many Internet services were developed.

But Levin said he expects any legislative action to follow the antitrust reviews.

"Mergers are the 800-pound gorilla on all policy proceedings," he said.

[Livyjr]

And here is one more version of Star Chamber history which has some quotes in it that are directly relevant to OUR own times, here in OUR America, where George W. Bush is now OUR own version of Henry VIII of corrupt and tyrannical jolly olde England, with some "Fat George", or George III thrown in to the "mix" as well, and the thug-like Republican Party in OUR Congress is collectively becoming HIS Star Chamber, to be used AGAINST US, to OUR detriment!

Time is indeed a loop!

"Star Chamber", From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Star Chamber was an English court of law at the royal Palace of Westminster, so named because the court chamber had a pattern of stars on a dark blue background painted on its ceiling.

The Star Chamber evolved from meetings of the king's royal council, with its roots going back to the medieval period.

The court only became unusually powerful during the reign of Henry VII, when in 1487 the court became a separate judicial body from the king's council with a mandate to hear petitions of redress.

The Star Chamber was finally abolished in 1641 by the Long Parliament.

Initially well regarded because of its speed and flexibility, it was made up of Privy Councillors as well as common-law judges and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters.

In a sense the court was a supervisory body, overseeing the operations of lower courts, though its members could hear cases by direct appeal as well.

The court was set up to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against prominent people, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes.

Under the Tudors, the mandate of the court expanded to include instances of public disorder and rioting.

Judges would receive petitions involving property rights, public corruption, trade and government administration, and disputes arising from land enclosures.

Although the court could order torture, prison, and fines, it did not have the power to impose the death sentence.

Under the Tudors, Star Chamber sessions were public.

Under the leadership of Lords Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Cranmer (1515-1529), the Court of Star Chamber became a political weapon for bringing actions against opponents to the decrees and edicts of Henry VIII.

Although the court was initially a court of appeal, Henry VIII and his councillors Wolsey and Cranmer encouraged plaintiffs to bring their cases directly to the Star Chamber, bypassing the lower courts entirely.

The power of the Court of Star Chamber grew considerably under the Stuarts, and by the time of Charles I it had become synonomous with misuse and abuse of power by the king and his circle.

James I and his son Charles used the court to examine cases of sedition, which meant that the court could be used to suppress opposition to royal policies.

It came to be used to try nobles too powerful to be brought to trial in the lower courts.

Court sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no witnesses.

Evidence was presented in writing, and the verdict was whatever the Privy Council decided.

Charles I used the Court of Star Chamber as a sort of Parliamentary substitute during the years 1628-1640, when he refused to call Parliament.

On October 17, 1632, the Court of Star Chamber banned all "news books" over complaints from Spanish and Austrian diplomats that coverage of the Thirty Years' War in English newspapers was unfair.

Newspapers had to be printed in Amsterdam and then smuggled into the country until the ban was lifted six years later.

Charles I made extensive use of the Court of Star Chamber to persecute dissenters, including the Puritans who fled to New England.

Star Chamber proceedings were not only used to gain arbitrary convictions, but also arbitrary acquittals for guilty parties whom the crown wished to protect as well.

The abuses of the Star Chamber by Charles I were one of the rallying cries for those who eventually executed him.

(See the entry for John Lilburne).

In the early 1900s, Edgar Lee Masters wrote:

"In the Star Chamber the council could inflict any punishment short of death, and frequently sentenced objects of its wrath to the pillory, to whipping and to the cutting off of ears."

"... With each embarrassment to arbitrary power the Star Chamber became emboldened to undertake further usurpation."

"... The Star Chamber finally summoned juries before it for verdicts disagreeable to the government, and fined and imprisoned them."

"It spread terrorism among those who were called to do constitutional acts."

"It imposed ruinous fines."

"It became the chief defense of Charles against assaults upon those usurpations which cost him his life. ..."

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber