Top Stories - USATODAY.com

"Families' lives measure pace of progress in Iraq"

Thu Mar 17, 6:14 AM ET

By John Diamond, Sabah al-Anbaki, Mohammed Hayder Sadeq and Elliot Blair Smith, USA TODAY

Until recently, it was a bad sign in the al-Taie household when the generator went silent.

It generally meant thieves had stolen the family's power source.

Lately, the silence signals something else: Electricity is flowing again to their middle-class neighborhood in Baghdad, so the generator has switched off automatically.

Two years after the U.S.-led invasion that brought down Saddam Hussein's regime, progress for typical Iraqi families is measured in small increments.

The al-Taie family has nearly continuous electricity.

For the al-Zubaidi family, lucrative jobs in the new government mean an improved lifestyle.

But the Muhaisens, a poor family, have not benefited much; they complain about the escalating prices of food and the dangerous roads, which keep them from tending to family graves in a city 100 miles away.

Some changes are apparent:

Streets in the capital are lined with fruit markets, furniture sellers, sidewalk kebab stands and neighborhood coffee shops.

The number of cars in Baghdad has more than tripled in the past two years.

U.S. troops remain a regular presence, but Iraqis increasingly regard the troops as part of the scenery.

"I like the guns I see with the American soldiers when they pass in the neighborhood," says 10-year-old Ahmed Abdullah al-Zubaidi.

The outside world has penetrated what was once a closed society.

Most homes have satellite television, which brings in Arab news stations and Western programs.

Satellite dishes were outlawed under Saddam.

Thousands of people now carry cell phones, also forbidden by the former regime.

Computers and televisions are pouring into a country starved by years of war and sanctions.

Defying the odds, about 8 million Iraqis came out to vote in national elections Jan. 30.

Wednesday, the newly elected Transitional National Assembly met for the first time.

People can now speak freely.

Some Iraqis still have not fully adjusted to freedom.

When 75-year-old Radiyah Abbas Ali, the matriarch of the al-Zubaidi family, speaks of Saddam, she lowers her voice and looks left and right, as if someone were listening in.

"The most important thing is that we got rid of Saddam," says Ali, a mother of 13.

"Deaths after deaths, this is what Saddam offered."

"He did not give us anything."

Political and economic freedom have come at a cost.

The al-Taie family can afford four cell phones.

But, worried about constant violence, they use the phones mostly to keep track of their extended family.

"Explosions are everywhere, and we need to be sure that everyone, especially the children, is safe," says Zaid al-Taie, 38, an engineer who works for a private contractor.

Insurgents continue nearly daily attacks, often with devastating suicide bombs that target Iraqi police and soldiers.

Government officials are frequently assassinated.

Oil production is struggling, hampered by both inefficiency and sabotage.

Lines at gas stations are still long.

The Baghdad airport - once named after Saddam - is closed to most commercial flights.

Saddam's reign of terror is over, but most Iraqis are still nervous, vacillating between fear and hope.

"If we surrender to fear and terror, we will lose," says Amira Ahmed, 43, the daughter of the al-Zubaidis.

Despite the dangers, Amira commutes from a middle-class neighborhood in Baghdad to teach at a school in Sadr City, a Shiite Muslim slum of garbage-strewn streets.

"Nowadays, my fellow teachers come to school from various and distant places with greater determination to continue despite the risk," she says firmly.

The experiences of individual Iraqis can vary dramatically based on ethnicity, location and luck.

Some members of the former ruling Baath Party have seen their families' status and income plummet.

Some families had loved ones imprisoned or executed under Saddam, losses that cannot be made up by his ouster.

There are wealthy Iraqis riding the wave of economic freedom and poor Iraqis trying to cope with rising prices and the loss of the Saddam-era safety net.

USA TODAY visited several families to gauge how Iraqis have fared in the two years since Saddam was ousted.

These are their stories.

The al-Taie family

The al-Taie household is a cluster of three generations, a common arrangement in Iraq.

The patriarch, Fadhil Abdul Ridha al-Taie, 74, is a Shiite; his wife, Khawla Assim al-Rawi, 66, is a Sunni Muslim.

They share several modest houses inside a walled compound with their three sons, all married.

There are three grandchildren and two more on the way.

The family got the land in 1965 from the government, which steered choice jobs and land to Sunnis.

Khawla is retired from a Baghdad bank where she worked as a branch manager.

The job and the connections it brought gave her access to property in the quiet al-Harthiya neighborhood.

The 9,149-square-foot lot is packed.

There is one large home flanked by two smaller ones, each two stories high.

The large house has a small garden in front.

Family meals are group affairs, and the Iraqi diet, with a few exceptions, would require no major adjustments for Westerners.

Saddam's demise has not changed mealtime for this family.

For breakfast, there are eggs, cheese, bread, jam, honey, tea and milk.

For afternoon and evening meats: grilled meats, especially chicken and lamb, along with salad, yogurt, vegetables, rice and fruit.

Various family members contribute separate dishes during meals.

They also help one another with cooking, shopping, cleaning and the family budget.

For dinner, a white tablecloth covers the wooden dining table.

The three youngsters - Ihssan, 11; Lina, 9; and Merriam, 6 - eat at a small plastic table and cheerfully ignore increasingly strident demands by the adults to be quiet.

"Stop it!" demands Ali Fadhil Abdul Ridha, 39, eldest of the three sons.

His son Ihssan teases back: "Or what?"

A beat-up 1979 Datsun is parked out front.

The father and the three sons take turns using it for shopping or visiting friends.

"We would like to change it, but we don't have enough money," Fadhil says.

There are many such cars on Baghdad's streets, though since the war there has been an influx of updated imports, including Mercedes-Benzes, a brand largely restricted to the dictator's inner circle in earlier times.

Fadhil is retired, but two of his sons work for the government and draw salaries of several hundred dollars a month.

Under Saddam, government officials earned significantly less.

Despite the abundance, there are daily reminders that all is not normal.

The extended family takes part in an informal crime watch.

They are on the lookout for burglars and also kidnappers who have been making a brisk business out of abducting people, particularly children, and holding them for ransom.

Last year a 12-year-old in the neighborhood was snatched and held for a week before being released on $30,000 ransom - several years' income for a middle-class Iraqi family.

The al-Taies have one landline telephone but have purchased four mobile phones for security's sake.

"We need to contact each other when we are out of the home," Ali says.

Ihssan, Ali's son, lives close enough to his school to walk.

But he is driven there.

"We prefer to send him by bus in order to be sure that there is always someone taking care of him," Ali says.

Ihssan's school has improved.

He is getting training on computers the school has acquired since the U.S. invasion.

"We are part of this world, and we should catch the developments out there, or at least some of them," Ihssan's grandfather says cautiously.

The extended family keeps the household going on a total of about $80 per week in expenses, which covers food, clothing and other costs.

The home is paid for.

The elder couple used to receive less than a dollar per month in pensions.

Now their combined pensions are about $215 per month, and their children's salaries add about $400 more per month.

During the Saddam era, the al-Taie family was sufficiently well off to attend various social clubs, including the Ministry of Oil club.

Their lifestyle then was supported largely by money generated by Khawla's sale of her gold jewelry.

These days, because of safety concerns, family members don't go out much.

They have satellite TV and keep the channel turned mainly to news stations such as Al-Iraqiya.

Satellite dishes were banned under Saddam.

Now families can choose from hundreds of channels.

"My husband doesn't like to watch movies or songs," says Khawla, the grandmother.

"This has been a problem for me since (our) engagement."

The family members seem more worried about the present than the future.

They are optimistic that the insurgency will eventually be defeated, but that doesn't mean they are casual about stepping outside.

"From time to time, we hear some shooting," Fadhil says.

"I think it is between the police and the thieves or insurgents ... nearby."

Though the family members are observant Muslims, they regard themselves as secular, and they decry what they see as creeping religious extremism in Iraq's daily life.

Suicide bombers were almost unheard of in Iraq.

Now they are attacking almost every day, egged on by insurgent leaders and radical clerics who promise the bombers paradise as martyrs.

"Those mullahs and clerics always leading people to their death, look how they are encouraging those young people to die," Khawla says.

Long suppressed by Saddam and previous Sunni-dominated governments, the majority Shiites now have political power.

Most Shiite leaders are preaching tolerance, but some secular Iraqis see growing signs of fundamentalism.

One of 6-year-old Merriam's classmates covers her head with a hijaband warns Merriam not to play with the boys because they are "devils."

Such peer pressure on Merriam angers Fadhil.

"If it ever happens again, I need to see the principal," Fadhil tells his wife.

Western-style dress for men and women is common in Baghdad, and in families that do dress conservatively, girls generally don't wear head coverings until their teens.

"Until now, no one has forced any female in this family to wear the hijab," Khawla says.

"But I am sure this day will come."

The Muhaisen family

A pair of shoes made for a young girl are nailed at the entrance to the squatter's shack in central Baghdad where Zahra Khamis Muhaisen, 53, and her family live.

Two years ago, U.S. bombs rained on the city, turning the night sky red.

But the dusty plastic shoes, considered a good-luck talisman in Iraq, served to keep the house and its occupants safe.

Zahra's neighbors fled the airstrikes, she says, but she and her family stood fast and came through unharmed.

"Do you know why I stayed?" asks Zahra, 53, her arms muscular from work and her skin dark from the sun.

"Because I believe the best place for a rock is where it lays."

It is one of many blunt assessments the hospital cleaning woman makes about life.

When American soldiers arrived here, Zahra says, her husband ordered her to lock herself and her daughters away.

"I replied: 'The Americans did not come for me.'"

"'They came for Saddam.'"

Yet Zahra says postwar Iraq is neither better nor worse than during Saddam Hussein's regime.

She is a Shiite Muslim but recognizes no difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

She says the ethnic rifts people speak of emerged only recently, as political posturing.

For that reason, she takes no great pride in the ascendancy of Shiite political and religious leaders.

And though her husband, Ali Alaibi Karim, 60, works as a caretaker at the mosque across the street, for which he receives about $20 a month in gratuities, Zahra does not believe that religion - or religious parties - will save her and her family.

Rather, she observes, as a woman she's not allowed to attend services at the mosque.

And it's her pay of about $65 a month that supports the family of eight.

"When the truth is to be spoken," she says, "I speak the truth."

Zahra has four daughters and two sons.

She recently withdrew her children from school because she cannot afford to send them.

About 15 years ago, Zahra took advantage of a government literacy campaign.

It taught a rudimentary alphabet.

"I could not stay in that program for more than one week," she says.

Today, she cannot read or write more than her name and her father's name.

The children can read and write.

She's uncertain whether they'll go back to school.

"It all depends on the money," she says.

"I don't have the money."

Zahra's family eats rice and lentils, mostly.

Seven chickens provide eggs for the family.

Zahra says the family rarely has meat.

"Forget about meat."

"It's too expensive."

Sometimes they get food donated by the mosque or neighbors.

"That is when we taste meat."

Food prices are much higher now, Zahra says.

She cites increases in the price of a single egg - to the equivalent of about 10 cents, from about 4 cents before the war - and in the price of rice, to about 20 cents a pound from 6 cents.

Zahra says that her neighborhood is safe but that she doesn't feel secure walking at night and doesn't let her daughters go out.

Her greatest fear is kidnappers.

She used to visit the graves of family members buried in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad.

Now her daughters won't let her go because of dangers on the road.

"When things went bad on the road to Najaf, the girls stopped me from going any more," she says.

The al-Zubaidi family

In 1993, Col. Abdullah Hussein al-Zubaidi, an Iraqi army physician, was abruptly fired from his job as director of Kut Military Hospital.

The charge, say his relatives, was participating in a conversation in which someone else criticized Saddam.

"They arrested him and tortured him for a crime he did not commit," says his wife, Amira Ahmed al-Zubaidi.

For Abdullah, 65, regime change has brought no relief.

Suffering from chronic depression, he remains in his room and does not join family discussions.

He is on medication.

Amira had to quit her job as a schoolteacher to take care of him.

The extended family lives in a comfortable Baghdad neighborhood.

Before 1985, when Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay started confiscating land alongside the Tigris River near here, there were few strangers seen in the largely Shiite neighborhood of Zuwaiyeh.

The word itself means "the corner," and refers to a sharp bend along this stretch of the Tigris.

Behind a metal gate in a yellow brick wall, the al-Zubaidis live among uncles, aunts and cousins.

As with the al-Taie family, this is a three-generation household.

Preteen children dart about chasing soccer balls.

Matriarch Radiyah Abbas Ali, 75, slowly shuffles out the back door to see how her pickled dates, stored in a sealed drum in the backyard, are progressing.

Radiyah lost one son, Salman, in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

The year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, another son, Nazar, deserted from Saddam's 51st Mechanized Infantry Division, positioned in southern Iraq directly in the path of the coming invasion.

He was caught and issued a red military identity card labeling him a deserter.

It was a badge of shame in Saddam's world, one that would prevent him from getting a good job in the private sector.

Now the identification card is a badge of honor, something he shows prospective employers to prove that he was no friend of the old regime.

When coalition forces crushed his unit in Basra during the opening days of the war, Nazar, 35, shouted to his family, "I won, I won!"

He turns to his mother during a recent interview and says, "See, Ma, you did not lose me."

She replies, "Yes, I know, and may Allah and Ali keep you safe always."

Prayers and blessings from the Koran are framed in elaborate Arabic script in the entry hall, and portraits of the holiest Shiite imams hang on the living room wall.

In the small yard around the spacious but plain two-story home are orange trees laden with fruit, date palms and ficus trees; inside is an array of potted plants.

The television is tuned to soccer matches and motorcycle races that mesmerize the children while the adults talk.

As everywhere else in Baghdad, there are safety concerns.

Mortar rounds fired at the heavily fortified Green Zone across the river sometimes fall short and land in their neighborhood.

But the ouster of the dictator brought one immediate improvement.

U.S. troops kicked looters out of a large building that had been used by Saddam's bodyguards.

Now the place is a community center for the district.

It has sports facilities and computers with Internet access.

Most of the talk is not about politics but matrimony, revolving around when Nazar, the youngest son, will marry.

The women do most of the talking.

"Let us marry him off, Mother."

"What are we waiting for?" asks Amira Ahmed, one of Nazar's four older sisters, all of whom are teachers.

"Let him collect some money, daughter," Radiyah replies.

Nazar has a future bride in mind, but his first indulgence after getting his job was the purchase of a television.

Most middle-class men need to save about $1,000 before marrying, though a bride would bring a dowry to help with starting a household.

The couple would live in the family compound.

Amira taught before the invasion and got her teaching job back recently.

Now she earns $400 a month, much more than she used to make.

Post-Saddam, government jobs pay well and are highly prized.

She says she paid a kickback to an official at the Education Ministry to land the job.

Such bribes are illegal but common.

"He asked me for $400, and I accepted," she says.

"You know, that is the way things sometimes go."

end quotes

Hhhhmmmm.

Paid a bribe for a job, and that is the way it goes!

Well, starting to sound like DE-MOCKERY to me!

In fact, it's starting to sound a lot like the EMPIRE STATE, where I live, over there, too!

SO!

How about that for progress, will you?

And so it goes, over there in Iraq, and you know what?

Good for them!

It is their country after all, and they should get to do with it what they want, even to paying off bribes to get what should be theirs, by right!

Or should it, really?

What is it with this thing of bribes?

Is it cultural, perhaps?

Or can it really be?

After all, IF IT WERE MERELY CULTURAL, would we have it over here?

SO, what is it with this thing of bribes?

BRIBE: ANY money, goods, right in action, property, thing of value, or any preferment, advantage, privilege or emolument, or any promise or undertaking to give any, asked, given, or accepted, WITH A CORRUPT INTENT to induce or influence action, vote, OR OPINION of person IN ANY PUBLIC OR OFFICIAL CAPACITY.

A gift, not necessarily of pecuniary value, bestowed TO INFLUENCE THE CONDUCT of the receiver!

SOLICITATION OF BRIBE: Asking, OR ENTICING, or requesting of another to commit crime of bribery.

BRIBERY: ANY direct or indirect action to give, promise or offer ANYTHING OF VALUE to a public official, OR WITNESS, OR AN OFFICIAL's or witness' solicitation of something of value is prohibited as a bribe or illegal gratuity.

AT COMMON LAW, the gist of the offense was the tendency to pervert justice!

The term now, however, extends to many classes of officers, and is not confined to judicial officers.

It applies BOTH TO THE ACTOR and RECEIVER, and extends to voters, legislators, sheriffs, and other classes.

ALL persons whose official conduct is connected with the administration of the government are subjects, including persons acting under color of title to office.

- Black's Law Dictionary

It probably should be noted, for the record, that the property the family acquired from the government in 1965 was made available after the forced eviction, or imprisonment of its former Shi'ite owner-occupants by the Ba'ath regime. One should also note how favoritism plays a role in getting jobs.

I myself could write a BOOK about bribery, and in fact, in many ways, I already have!

And it is thousands of pages long, to boot, which is one of the problems with that writing!

There is just so much there that it is not readily "digestible", and hence, the "IMMENSITY" of it turns people right off, and so!

Of course, this "writing" that I am talking about IS NOT all my writing, and that is an important consideration here, as well, SINCE if it were only my own writing, it would simply be OPINION, as opposed to FACT!

And OPINION and fifty cents buys you coffee, if you are lucky enough to have both the fifty cents, and a place anymore that will actually sell you a cup of coffee for fifty cents, which is certainly not up here anymore in the corrupt EMPIRE STATE of New York, where I am presently sitting, writing these particular words that you are reading right now!

In 1983, I found myself confronted, up here in the corrupt EMPIRE STATE of New York, with a "situation" involving the apparent giving and receiving of "consideration" by various public and private individuals that was going to have what I would call a "deleterious" affect on my own health and well-being as a human being down here on this earth of OURS, and so, I decided that I was not going to do what is "comfortable", or "socially acceptable", or even "smart", at least up here, which is really the equivalent, to me, at least, of going down into your own celler, as far into it as you can get, and hiding, and not saying one single word about "WHAT YOUR NEIGHBOR IS DOING"!

To the contrary, I decided that I was going to stand fast, and challenge this "situation", come what may!

And "come what may" did in fact come, and before it was over, which it is still not, to this day, where I am now deemed and listed, and in fact REGISTERED, as being "out-side of the protection of the law" up here in the corrupt EMPIRE STATE of New York, I was to learn, and document, reams and reams and reams about what can be called "corruption" up here in the corrupt EMPIRE STATE of New York, which, of course, involves, in my own case, what can only be properly called bribes, and solicitation of bribes, and extortion, and finally a COVER-OVER JOB to protect the status quo I complained about, which COVER-OVER JOB has the effect of literally crushing me, especially in the winter, when I struggle to keep the unfinished house where I reside above fifty degrees, inside.

My "writing", as I call it, includes hundreds upon hundreds of pages of sworn testimony, and various official government documents, including some interesting writings from the Office of the New York State Attorney General where one can get a real candid view of how that office views the integrity, or perhaps, lack thereof, would be a better term, of judges up here in the corrupt EMPIRE STATE, and it includes as well reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation which confirm the questionable practices that I decided, as a citizen, to stand up to, and challenge, beginning in 1983!

And in 1983, or 1986, or 1989, even, WHO WOULD EVER HAVE THOUGHT THAT SUCH A THING AS THIS INTERNET FORUM WOULD EXIST, or that I would survive to be in here talking about all of what I do talk about in here, which is LIFE in OUR America!

OR IS IT REALLY OURS?

OR mine, anyway?

IF THERE IS NOT REALLY LIBERTY, or JUSTICE, for one out of a population of 294 MILLION, IS THAT ACCEPTABLE?

When we have such a large mass of people over here as we do, DO WE REALLY NEED ONE MORE, which would be me, in this case, anyway?

IF MOST PEOPLE DO NOT REALLY CARE ABOUT LIBERTY AND JUSTICE, and would rather pay a bribe, as this Iraqi woman above here did to secure a job for herself over there in George W. Bush's client state of Iraq, then what of the individual who stands up and decries the bribes, and demands LIBERTY and JUSTICE for himself, WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY A BRIBE FOR THAT LIBERTY AND JUSTICE?

Isn't that person then a "threat" to the STATUS QUO that people have come to accept, which is really getting the "something" that you paid your bribe to get, like a subdivision approval, or sewage system construction permit that will really allow you to dump your raw sewage into a creek, despite any laws that may appear to prohibit such conduct?

IF BRIBES ARE JUST A WAY OF LIFE ANYMORE, should we all just acquiesce then, as this Iraqi woman did above?

Everybody does it, and everybody benefits?

Baksheesh?

The necessary GREASE that lubricates every transaction with what purports to be the GOVERNMENT?

And what then do we do with the intransigent ones like me who just cannot get with the program of "going along to get along", or "taking a pump, to get a jump", as the savvy politicians up here are wont to say, when asked about taking money and then "DOING FAVORS" in order to get ahead in politics, BECAUSE THAT JUST IS THE WAY IT IS!

Questions for OUR times, here in OUR America!

Stay tuned!

Show is about to begin!

And if, as the curtain begins to rise, you happen to see a tree behind it with some older looking guy nailed to it, with greyish hair and a moustache, and not much is happening in here anymore, at least with respect to Livyjr posts, then in all likelihood, that will be me nailed to the tree, and so, there will be one less question for the rest of you out there in America to have to consider, and who knows, maybe the simplicity to your own lives that "nailing to a tree" would bring might be welcome!

AND besides the "SHADOW", whoever really knows?

And good day to you, jeffmoskin!

AND YES, it should be noted, in both cases, one of which was then, and one now!

And here, I am going to say that I have to wonder at what might have happened over there in Iraq with respect to all these people IF people like George H. W. Bush HAD NOT PROPPED UP SADDAM HUSSEIN so that he could commit all these atrocities that still haunt these Iraqi people to this day, after all these years?

IF ONLY, eh?

And of course, being as how this FORUM has as its central theme above a quote that comes DIRECTLY from the days of OUR own nation's birth as a democratic Republic, and being as how we are patriots and citizens in here who are very much interested in the HEALTH of OUR own democracy, which is an eternal duty, we are therefore very much interested in this experiment in democracy that is alleged to be going on over there in Iraq, and so, we are following developments with respect to the formation of its new government over there, which brings us to this following story, where the wrangling is now about, you guessed it, OIL:

World - AFP

"New Iraq cabinet stalls over top oil job, Al-Qaeda posts execution video"

Sun Mar 27, 9:09 AM ET

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi politicians fought over the oil ministry and the role of Islam in the next government, while an Al-Qaeda website posted a video of the purported execution of an Iraqi colonel.

Iraq's parliament, due to meet Tuesday, seemed far from a deal on a coalition government, as the country's ethnic and religious factions bickered nearly two months after Iraq's historic January 30 election.

Parliament, which held its inaugural session on March 16, will try to put to a vote Tuesday the crucial three-man presidency council that will appoint the prime minister even if political parties cannot agree on the rest of the government, Shiite negotiators said.

The Shiite candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, sought to put an optimistic spin on the talks, despite the apparent deadlock on cabinet posts.

"I think we are pretty much done and we will see a new government in the next few days," Jafaari told Iraqi state television.

Members of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) have made similar predictions in the past only to see their projections fall flat.

The election-winning Kurds and Shiites have been locked in talks on forming a coalition government since late February.

Their task has been made more complicated by both sides' desire to include Sunnis, who largely boycotted elections, and the Kurds' wish to temper Islamist influence in the Shiite bloc by including members of the secular alliance of outgoing prime minister Iyad Allawi.

Allawi has said clerics must stay out of politics if he is to join a new governing coalition, a top aide of the secular politician told AFP Sunday.

Allawi put his demands in a letter delivered more than 10 days ago to the Shiite and Kurdish political blocs, an official of the prime minister's Iraqi National Accord party said.

"The government must be fully independent without any control by clerics of the leaders of the government," Ibrahim al-Janabi told AFP.

So far the UIA, with 146 of the parliament's 275 seats, and the Kurds, with 77 seats, have not given him a reply, Janabi said.

The Kurds and Shiites are also feuding over the post of oil minister, which both sides see as a jewel in the government's crown.

"Kurdish negotiators requested the oil minister be appointed by them and we think the oil is important and it should be part of the (United Iraqi Alliance) coalition," said UIA member Saad Jawad.

As the sides haggled, the insurgency fired off a new salvo in its propaganda war.

Loyalists of Al-Qaeda's Iraq frontman, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, posted a video on their website Sunday showing the execution of a man who said he was an Iraqi colonel.

The man, who identified himself as Colonel Ryad Kateh Olyway, was shown being shot in the head blindfold by a masked man after "confessing" that he had "collaborated" with US forces in Iraq.

"The religious court of the Organization of Al-Qaeda of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers has decided to implement God's order on this infidel ... to serve as a lesson to others," said the gunman before shooting his captive.

The shooter was flanked by two masked men armed with assault rifles who posed in front of a banner carrying the organization's name.

The captive was earlier shown sitting on a chair, with his hands tied behind his back, saying:

"I worked at the interior ministry to collaborate with the American forces.

Meanwhile, more than 1,200 pages of documents released by the Pentagon in response to a court order showed the US Army's abuse of detainees in Iraq went beyond Abu Ghraib prison.

The documents, released under a Freedom of Information request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, included evidence that forced physical exertions may have caused the death of at least one detainee held by the US Army in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul in late 2003.

And this sentence right above here about the ACLU getting more documentation on abuse by Bush Co.'s HOLY CRUSADERS gives us a SEGUE right into this next story, which probably has poor Rush Limbaugh and that crowd of mouth-runners on CLEARCHANNELSWORLDWIDE who imitate him by copying his voice and his style of rabid attack of LIB-RAWLS and intellectuals, ALL FOAMIMG AT THE MOUTH IN RAGE!

And HOORAY for that say I!

World - OneWorld.net

"Left-Right Coalition Rises to Oppose USA Patriot Act Provisions"

Thu Mar 24,11:20 AM ET

Abid Aslam, OneWorld US

WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 24 (OneWorld) - A novel coalition of conservatives and liberals normally at each other's throats over the nature of government and free speech have made common cause to oppose key parts of the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), long vilified by conservatives, has joined forces with right-wing groups the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Free Congress Foundation to spearhead the ''Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances'' coalition.

The Patriot Act's supporters have said it has kept America safe since 2001 but opponents have said the law is intrusive and threatens to let the government spy on innocent Americans.

The new coalition will lobby Congress to roll back provisions allowing law enforcement agents to look at library users' records and to conduct unannounced searches of homes and private offices.

''Checks and balances are absolutely essential, even and especially during times of threat,'' said coalition leader Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman from Georgia who voted for the law in 2001.

''Our message is universal."

"Liberty is not divisible, even in the face of terrorism, and we must not allow any part of it to be sacrificed in our efforts to defeat acts of terrorism.''

Administration and Justice Department officials have said that the law contains strong civil liberties safeguards and that no civil liberties complaints have been filed against the legislation itself.

Rather, they said, many of the complaints offered by civil libertarians have nothing to do with the law's provisions.

The coalition came together to prevent politicians from branding Patriot Act opponents un-American or suggesting they are willing to help terrorists, as happened when the law first was debated, coalition members said at a news conference.

''We don't want this argument to be obscured by those who would suggest that anyone who is for more and more government power is somehow on the side of the right, and those who are against it or are skeptical of such grants are on the side of the wrong,'' said David Keene of the American Conservative Union.

''This is an important question for all Americans on the left, the right, or in the middle.''

Key Patriot Act provisions are scheduled to expire on Dec. 31.

The Senate and House Judiciary committees plan to open hearings in the next month on whether they should be renewed.

The coalition focused on three of the law's most controversial provisions, asking that the wording of each be clarified to limit its scope to fighting terrorists and to prevent law enforcement agencies from using the law to silence dissent or go on fishing expeditions.

It urged that a provision giving agencies access to library, medical, and gun purchase records be modified to require law enforcement officials to present evidence to a federal judge supporting a link with suspected terrorism before warrants are served.

It sought similar limits on a provision allowing so-called ''sneak and peek'' searches of homes, businesses, and personal property without property owners' or residents' knowledge and with warrants delivered afterwards.

And it asked that the language of a provision allowing surveillance of protests be rewritten to require a definite connection with suspected terrorism.

''The Patriot Act went too far, too fast, and now is the time to determine what freedoms have been unnecessarily lost in the name of national security,'' said the ACLU's Laura Murphy.

''Now is the time for Congress to restore those freedoms.''

Short for the ''Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001,'' the USA Patriot Act originally passed by 357-66 in the House of Representatives and 98-1 in the Senate.

President George W. Bush's administration proposed the law, shepherded it through Congress, and enacted it in the immediate aftermath of the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the U.S. Senate's evacuation because of anthrax.

The measure passed with neither chamber issuing the usual reviews of proposed legislation.

''As a result, it lacks background legislative history that often retrospectively provides necessary statutory interpretation,'' according to a detailed analysis of the law prepared by the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose powers the law has greatly expanded, have called for the act's renewal.

Gonzales has suggested that provisions expanding the government's surveillance and prosecutorial powers against suspected terrorists, their associates, and financiers should be strengthened.

''Debate about government exercise of powers that might infringe upon privacy or civil liberties, I think that's an appropriate debate,'' Gonzales told a recent meeting of the National Association of Counties.

''But it's got to be a real debate, one based on facts."

"And I've yet to hear a strong argument as to why the Patriot Act should not be reauthorized.''

The coalition faces a difficult fight in making changes to the law, Barr told reporters.

The ACLU's Murphy, however, said grassroots opposition to the law is growing.

Some 375 local and state governments representing more than 56 million Americans have passed resolutions opposing the law or some of its provisions, the ACLU said.

While many of these resolutions have no practical effect, proponents have said the measures serve to notify federal policymakers and agencies of public disapproval.

Most of the resolutions called upon Congress to bring the Patriot Act back in line with the Constitution.

Foreign governments also have looked askance at the law, which gave the government new authority to collect information not only about U.S. citizens but also about visitors to the United States.

Last year, Latin American countries objected to sending census data and voter records to U.S. law enforcement agencies and Canadian officials warned that complying with the Patriot Act would violate Canadian law.

Other groups in the new coalition include the American Policy Center, Citizens' Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

LIBERTY IS NOT DIVISIBLE!

SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS!

Pass it along!

And tell your Congressmen or women, and your members of the United States Senate AT NO COST TO YOURSELF by clicking on this URL, now:

http://www.congress.org

And here I got to wondering why it is that WE NEVER HEAR THE BUSH CO. decrying CORRUPTION, and obvious corruption at that, over there in his CLIENT PUPPET STATE of Iraq, when we hear him just about foaming at the mouth in apoplectic fits of pique and rage about some corruption that he says he perceives in the Palestinean Authority?

Could it be that BECAUSE the Bush Co. can't read, that he does not know about this CORRUPTION over there in HIS client puppet state of Iraq?

Is that at all a possibility here?

Or is it that he does not really care?

Could that be it?

And before I must leave my post here for another day, here is a further update on what we call in here THE IRAQ SITUATION:

Top Stories - Knight Ridder Newspapers

"Sunnis' exclusion from political process stokes fears of civil war"

1 hour, 32 minutes ago

By Tom Lasseter, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American officials point to the bargaining among Shiite Muslim and Kurdish politicians over an interim Iraqi government as evidence that democracy is taking hold in Iraq, some Iraqi analysts and politicians are increasingly worried about the group that's missing from the equation: Sunni Muslims.

Almost two months after national elections, Iraq's Sunni minority remains fragmented and largely alienated from the horse-trading.

If that continues, the group that's long dominated Iraq could find itself shut out of December's prime ministerial election as it was on Jan. 30, when Sunnis won only a few seats in Iraq's new parliament.

Lawmakers had planned to meet this weekend to form a coalition government that's expected to be dominated by Shiites and Kurds, but the session was postponed at least until Tuesday.

On Sunday, Shiite and Kurdish leaders said that many of the key decisions about the new government had been made.

Both groups stand to receive most of the key positions - prime minister, president and the major cabinet posts - leaving the Sunnis further estranged.

Asked about Kurdish demands for 25 percent of the nation's oil revenues, Faraj al Haidari, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, said that the Kurds are entitled to a considerable stake of the country's wealth because of their suffering under former dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.

"We have to take in consideration that Kurdistan has suffered a lot in the past and it has to get what it deserves now," he said.

Saad Jawad, a senior Shiite political official, said that Kurdish demands for control of the oil-rich Kirkuk area, a crucial issue for Sunni Arabs, have been scaled back to a referendum to be held there at a later date.

Most Iraqis expect the Kurds to bus in as many of their own people as possible to win the vote and make Kirkuk part of an autonomous Kurdistan.

The Kurds have agreed, on paper at least, to absorb their Peshmerga militia into the nation's security forces, but the militia members will remain in Kurdistan.

Politicians and analysts in Iraq agree that the insurgency could broaden and intensify, and perhaps even threaten civil war, if mainstream Sunnis continue to feel disenfranchised.

"A defiant Sunni population would be dangerous," said Mazen al Ramadhani, a political science analyst and professor at Baghdad University.

While Sunnis make up some 20 percent of Iraq's population, they comprise most of its bureaucratic, technological and military elite, largely because of favoritism by Saddam.

"Our presence and representation in the next government is an important and necessary thing to stabilize this country," said Hassan al Hashimy, an official with the Iraqi Islamic Party, a main Sunni group.

Jawad Talib, a senior adviser to the presumptive Shiite prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, agreed.

"If they don't participate, it will destabilize the country," he said.

"I hope that the Sunni clerics won't submit to the terrorists."

In many predominantly Sunni areas, however, Sunni religious organizations called for a boycott of the Jan. 30 elections, and poor security made voting difficult.

In Anbar province, voter turnout was in the single digits.

There have been several attempts to gather the Sunni factions at the table and draft a common platform, but the effort has been plagued by disagreements between Sunnis willing to join the political process and those who dismiss it as a sham.

Now there are signs that some Sunni groups may be digging in their heels.

Leaders of the Muslim Scholars Association, an influential group of hard-line clerics that called for a boycott in January, continue to denounce the bargaining over a new government as an American fabrication.

A conference last week intended to bring major Sunni parties together was poorly attended, and the scholar's association representative used it to rail against the U.S. presence in Iraq and anything connected to it.

"We held the conference for the Sunni people after we started to feel that the sectarian divide is widening and after we realized that we're about to be marginalized," he said before putting in a good word for the Sunni-led insurgency.

"There are bad intentions to distort the reputation of the true, honorable resistance, which should be a crown on the heads of all Iraqis."

"This resistance is a legal act according to all the religions."

Some Sunni leaders have floated the idea of creating a federation of three Sunni provinces, which, under a clause in the nation's transitional law, could veto any constitution passed by the Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated assembly.

But even that's been stymied by infighting among Sunni politicians and tribal sheikhs, some of whom consider any political engagement, even a veto, a tacit acknowledgement of the government's legitimacy.

The naming of the new transitional government, negotiated by the Shiites and Kurds, appears likely to exacerbate the situation.

Although the Kurds, who are Sunnis but identify primarily with their Kurdish ethnicity, are also about 20 percent of the population, they mounted a massive get-out-the-vote drive and gained significant leverage with the Shiite majority.

Muayad Dulame, a Sunni barber in Baghdad, said he worried that the Sunnis are falling further and further behind.

Sitting in a restaurant next to his shop, Dulame said he hoped that Iraq wouldn't go the way of Lebanon, where a 15-year civil war killed thousands.

"We shouldn't be like Lebanon, where the Sunnis, Shiite and Christians are all divided," he said.

"But every time we hear the news, we hear that a Sunni mosque was hit; a Shiite mosque was hit; a Sunni sheikh was killed; a Shiite sheikh was killed."

Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondents Yasser al Salihee and Mohammed al Awsy contributed to this report.

And since I have a couple of minutes left in here, while I listen to Irish music on the radio, here is one more companion story to this one above here on, what else, THE IRAQ SITUATION, brought to us, here in OUR America, courtesy of the fabulous Bush Co.'s:

Politics - AFP

"Seems more foreign fighters entering Iraq: top US general"

Sun Mar 27, 3:40 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Foreign fighters entering Iraq in recent months make up a growing percentage of insurgents battling US troops and the country's fledgling security force, a senior US military commander said.

In an interview with CNN in Mosul, Iraq, General John Abizaid, the commander of US Central Command, which covers Iraq, said that while most insurgents appear to be Iraqis, "The percentage of foreign fighters over the past several months seems to have increased."

He also said the insurgents' ranks likely include "former Baathist criminals."

"It seems to be pretty well established that they tend to cross over from Syria, although we know that there have been some infiltrations from the Saudi border, there have been some from the Iranian border," Abizaid said.

"The Syrians are not doing everything we've asked them to do," Abizaid said, adding that Syria's intelligence services are not being aggressive enough in dismantling "facilitation cells" inside Syria.

In a separate CNN interview, George Casey, the commanding US general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, told the news network that current insurgent assaults were running at between 50 and 60 attacks a day.

"They (insurgents) are able to maintain the level of violence between 50 and 60 attacks a day," Casey said.

"And the four provinces where the insurgency is still capable is out west, near Fallujah in Anbar province, in the Baghdad area, and Saladdin, which is in the center of the country, around Saddam's home town, and up north, in the Mosul area," Casey said.

Casey said the insurgency had not been broken yet.

"Not yet."

"What it means to me is that they're not nearly as strong or as capable as some people thought they were prior to the elections," he said of the insurgents.

"Since the elections, the Iraqi security forces have gotten more involved, and the Iraqi people have gotten more involved in giving us tips, telling us where insurgents are and where insurgent weapons storage sites and things like that are," Casey said.

Asked for an update on the ongoing US manhunt for Iraq's most-wanted insurgent, the Al-Qaeda linked Jordanian Abu Masab Al-Zarqawi, Abizaid said Al-Zarqawi's followers were certainly operating in western Iraq.

"I think ... you well understand that a big military organization like the US military are pretty good at pressuring the (insurgent) networks, and that is what we're doing."

"A single manhunt is a difficult thing."

"Over time, we keep finding out more and more about his organization, we take more people out of it, and his time is running out," Abizaid predicted.

Yes, that's it.

A.B.

Before I go back to some other things in here, like Mr. A.B.'s words above on where exactly George W. Bush does stand on this matter of government corruption over there in Iraq, and here, too, in OUR America for that matter, I want to post this "prediction" article from yesterday's news about where Wall Street might be heading this week.

This morning, on the financial news, there was a squib about last week being the third straight down week for Wall Street, which makes this article relevant today, as the business week opens up again:

Business - AP

"Wall Street Could See Volatile Week"

27 March 2005

By MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - With Wall Street's fears of inflation confirmed by the Federal Reserve, investors are now looking for proof that the economy will be strong enough to handle the increased pricing pressure and additional expected Fed interest rate increases.

On Tuesday, the Fed raised its target for the overnight bank loan rate by a quarter point to 2.75 percent, the seventh in its current cycle of increases.

Trading in federal funds futures suggest that investors are betting that central bankers may follow that with a half point hike in either May or June.

That leads Wall Street to two important questions.

Will consumers be able to handle higher prices now that parts of corporate America appear to finally be gaining pricing power?

And will companies be able to continue expanding as the cost of raising capital rises?

The answers will start coming in the week ahead as key pieces of economic data will shed light on the strength of consumer spending and the health of the overall economy.

And that could lead to a volatile week on Wall Street.

Last week, stock indexes tumbled for a third straight week, precipitated by the Fed's statement that inflationary pressures are building in the economy.

Despite falling sharply most of the week, oil futures remained above $54 a barrel as well.

For the week, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 1.76 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1.53 percent and the Nasdaq composite index slid 0.83 percent.

Year-to-date, the Nasdaq remains far behind the other indexes, having lost 8.48 percent, as investors abandoned the technology sector and riskier small-cap companies.

The Dow is down 3.15 percent, and the S&P 500 has fallen 3.34 percent so far this year.

ECONOMIC DATA

In the coming week, investors will get strong gauges of economic health and how consumers, who accounts for two-thirds of economic activity, are faring.

On Friday, the Labor Department will release its monthly job creation report, one of Wall Street's closely watched barometers.

Economists are forecasting that the economy added 225,000 jobs in March, down from a gain of 262,000 in February.

In this case, a number slightly above or below the estimates would be ideal, since very low job growth calls into question the state of the economy, while high job growth could increase consumer demand and result in rising prices.

Also on Friday, the Institute for Supply Management's index will give a reading on the state of industry.

ISM index readings above 50 suggest that manufacturing is expanding, and economists are forecasting that it will come in at 55 for March, down slightly from a 55.3 reading in February.

Again, a surge in growth could prompt the Fed to raise borrowing costs at a faster pace in an attempt to keep prices in line, while sluggish growth will be seeing as troublesome for corporate profits.

Consumer confidence is expected to take a hit in March due to declining stock prices and soaring oil and gasoline prices.

The Conference Board's consumer confidence index, due Tuesday morning, is expected to come in at 103.3 in March, down from 104 in February.

Finally, on Wednesday, the Commerce Department will release its final figures on fourth quarter gross domestic product growth.

Economists are expecting the agency to say that the economy expanded at an annualized rate of 4 percent in last year's final quarter, up from a preliminary estimate of a 3.8 percent growth rate.

EARNINGS

First-quarter earnings season begins in earnest in April, but a handful of companies will be reporting their results in the week ahead.

On Monday, drug store chain Walgreen Co. is expected to report earnings of 48 cents per share, up from 41 cents per share in the year-ago quarter.

The company's stock has seen steady growth over the past year, rising 42.2 percent from its close of $32.51 on March 24, 2004, to close Thursday at $46.23.

Two of the nation's largest electronics retailers will issue their results Wednesday morning.

Best Buy Co. Inc. is expected to earn $1.54 per share, up from $1.42 per share a year ago.

Best Buy shares have fallen 16.5 percent since its best close of 2004, $62 on Nov. 18, finishing Thursday at $51.74.

Rival Circuit City Stores Inc. will report its first earnings statement since rejecting a $17-per-share takeover bid earlier this month from a private equity group.

Wall Street expects Circuit City to earn 55 cents per share, up from 46 cents per share in the year-ago quarter.

The stock has been volatile over the past year, but is still up 48.6 percent from its close of $10.43 on March 24, 2004, finishing Thursday at $15.50.

EVENTS

On Friday, General Motors Corp. — which drastically reduced its earnings forecasts due to sluggish sales — Ford Motor Co. and other automakers will report their March sales.

Many retailers will also start reporting on their monthly sales.

And here I want to do my bit to ease the fears of these financial boys by removing any doubt whatsoever in their minds THAT I WILL NOT BE BUYING ANYTHING AT ALL, outside of a little food now and then, and a bit of gas, and that is it!

Sorry, boys, but how does that saying go, something about a goose and golden eggs?

SO!

The financial boys just might have to learn how to do what I have had to learn how to do, which is to operate a leather punch, so that when your belt gets too loose, why, you just punch another hole in it, and cinch it a little tighter.

And you know what?

It'll be good for them.

Maybe instill a little character in them, and that's not a bad thing to have as you go through life, unless, of course, you are one of these scam artists that are so prolific out there in OUR America these days, or one of these Bush Co. "SHAKE DOWN ARTIST" Iraqis, who shakes down people for bribes, SO THEY CAN WORK THAT DAY, and survive until the next, when they'll have to pay yet another bribe to do it all over again.

Then, character is a real detriment, isn't it?

And so they have none!

But BID-NESS is good, despite that, so why worry?

Seems to me the George W. Bush, a Born-Again Christian, who reads the bible on a daily basis, might have stumbled accross this passage:

"Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. "(Matthew 26:52)

On the day 9-11 went down, to the eternal benefit of the Republicans, and the Republican National Committee, and George W. Bush in particular, and well, yes, Rudolph Giuliani, too, and the boys who make those big bucks selling "security", or is that "protection", George W. Bush was stumbling though a children's book about a goat!

A goat!

And he was having trouble with that, apparently trying to figure out exactly how many syllables there might actually be in the word "goat", and just what a goat might actually be in the first place, such as "fur, fish or fowl"!

Then aboard Air Force One on June 4, 2003, Mr. Bush said:

"I'm ALSO not very analytical."

"You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things!"

Before that, and before 9-11, actually, when George W. Bush was confounded by how to parse a sentence with the word "goat" in it, on February 21, 2001, in Townsend, Tennessee, OUR George said:

"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test!"

Well, yeah, maybe, George, BUT WILL HE OR HER HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA WHAT THE WORDS ON THE PAGE ACTUALLY MEAN, such as a goat is a four-legged farmyard animal that is also found in the wild, and can be quite mean, even if not provoked?

And jeffmoskin, come, come, here!

Are you actually presuming that a man who can't figure out how to pronounce the word "goat" would actually be able to take any meaning from your words above, from the Bible?

AND ....

IF he was able to read those words, which is doubtful, THEN HE WOULD SEE HIMSELF, in all likelihood, AS THE ONE SPEAKING THEM, and not as one to whom those words would ever apply!

Don't you know, jeffmoskin, that GEORGE W. BUSH IS GOD'S "SMITER" DOWN HERE ON THIS EARTH OF OURS, GOD'S DESTROYER OF ALL INIQUITY that is not directly under the absolute control of HIS REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE and one or another of Tom Delay's various PAC's?

Shame, shame, jeffmoskin!

God's gonna getcha, if you keep on pretending like you are that George W. Bush is just another mortal soul down here on this earth of OURS like we are!

Better keep on keeping your earflaps down if you keep thinking things like George W. Bush is accountable for HIS actions in the same manner that we are accountable for our own!

WHEN YOU ARE GOD, jeffmoskin, as George W. Bush is, WHAT NEED HAVE YOU OF A "JESUS", OR ANY WORDS THAT HE MIGHT HAVE SAID, TO US?

WHEN YOU ARE SUCH A GOD AS IS GEORGE W. BUSH, then "Jesus" is for the other folks, which is US!

And that is just the way it is!

And if you don't believe me, well, ask Billy Graham, and for a few dollars sent into the right numbered account somewhere or other to keep the "MINISTRY" going, and to pay all those expenses associated with having such a "TELEVISION MINISTRY" in the first place, why, jeffmoskin, Mr. Billy Graham just might set you straight here as to WHO GOD And George W. Bush really are, and why those words above then, DO NOT APPLY TO GEORGE W. BUSH!

George is the FATHER and Jesus sits at HIS right hand, and if Jesus knows what's good for him this time, unlike the last time when he got lippy and uppity with the GOD Tiberius Caesar and got nailed to the torture pole for his trouble, why, this time around, if Jesus has learned anything at all, HE WILL KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT IN THE PRESENCE OF George W. Bush, as we are supposed to also, OR ELSE!

"Put your hands right up there on the wood, Jesus, like a good boy; that's it, you know the drill, and oh, yeah, don't spread your feet, we're facing a budgetary crisis here, and so, we only have three nails to use on you today, so keep your feet together, please!"

And here I am once again returning from down the hall, and over into the "Religion and Politics" section of "Issues for OUR times", where I spend some time each day, as a rule, in Mr. A.B.'s thread entitled "George W. Bush v. The Holy Bible".

I find that when I am over there, I can be in a different state of mind than I generally am in over here, because to me, this THREAD HERE is completely secular in nature, without overtones of religion entering in, where we really deal with "citizenship issues" in a democratic Republic, while over there, I can be a simple individual IN A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC who is involved in a free and open discussion of a perhaps "religious", or maybe "spiritual" nature which is taking part over there concerning George W. Bush, and the various parts of the Bible, to include Revelation, which is the last book of the Bible, and perhaps the least read and understood!

Revelation is what I would call "self-authorizing", in that IF you can read it, and take meaning from it IN YOUR OWN LIFE, then IT is meant to be read, BY YOU, at that time!

Or me, in this case, since it is I who am quoting from Revelation over there, in a provocative manner, which is how I see Revelation being used by me right now, anyway, which is as a tool to cause people to have to say to themselves, "HEY!"

"What if ......"

Who is control of the world?

And what if it is not really George W. Bush?

What then?

Stay tuned!

Business - USATODAY.com

"Bumpy road ahead for stock investors?"

Mon Mar 28, 8:03 AM ET

By Adam Shell, USA TODAY

The road to higher interest rates may be filled with potholes for stock investors.

Last week, the Federal Reserve boosted its target for short-term rates to 2.75% from 2.5%, the seventh increase since June 30, the day the Fed launched its campaign to lift borrowing costs to more normal levels.

But more upsetting to Wall Street, which is already struggling with high-priced oil, is that the Fed hinted that more increases are on the way to ward off inflation.

Rising interest rates don't necessarily rule out rising stock prices.

But it's hard for investors to ignore the potentially depressive effect higher borrowing costs have on economic growth, corporate profits and consumer spending.

"Stocks typically go through a rocky period when the Fed is raising rates," says John Forelli, senior vice president at Independence Investments.

A study by ISI Group found that the eight Fed-tightening cycles since 1970 resulted in recession five times, caused the 1990 savings-and-loan crisis and triggered the 2000 collapse of the Nasdaq composite.

The key question now:

"How high will rates go?" says Janna Sampson of AmSouth Select Equity fund.

Until now, stocks have held their own, even though rates have risen by 1.75 percentage points.

Despite a downdraft last week sparked by the Fed policymakers' acknowledgment that they were worried about a rise in inflation, the Dow Jones industrials closed Thursday at 10,443 - virtually flat with June 30, the day the Fed began nudging rates higher.

Jonathan Golub, U.S. equity strategist at J.P. Morgan funds, says investors have already priced in short-term rates between 4% and 4.5%.

Stocks may still run into resistance.

In the eight instances since 1929 when the Fed has raised rates by as much as 1.75 percentage points, the Standard & Poor's 500 was down 12 months later six out of eight times, says InvesTech Research.

The average performance was a loss of 7.5%.

A study by Ned Davis Research found that the Dow fared worse than its long-run average in the months following a seventh rate increase, although the Dow's underperformance tended to evaporate 12 months later.

The resilience of stocks this time around is credited largely to the economy's ability to keep chugging along at a solid pace and to low yields on longer-term bonds.

Another plus: Short-term rates were at a five-decade low of 1% when the Fed began to raise rates.

That provided a dual benefit.

Not only were investors expecting rates to rise, but the early rate increases did not meaningfully slow the economy.

But with the Fed poised to keep raising rates, and rates almost 2 percentage points higher than when it started, stocks will face increasing headwinds.

"Higher rates are going to start to hurt," says Chris Johnson, analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

And from the economy, we go the environment, which many people would have us believe, if you can actually believe this yourself, many people would have us believe that the health of OUR environment is IN NO WAY CONNECTED to OUR own health, or the health of the earth itself!

Now that is something to ponder alright, how such a thing as that could ever be, where the environment could somehow be disconnected from both us and the earth!

What a novel idea!

Science - AP

"Bamboo Shortage Threatens Pandas in China"

Mon Mar 28,12:01 PM ET

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

SHANGHAI, China - Giant pandas in western China could be at risk of starvation because the bamboo plants that they eat are beginning to die off in a cycle that happens about every 60 years, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

Workers at the Baishuijiang State Nature Preserve in the northwestern province of Gansu plan to monitor the 102 pandas in the preserve for signs of hunger, according to Xinhua.

Threatened pandas will be moved to areas that still have bamboo, with special attention given to older, feeble animals, it said, citing Zhang Kerong, the preserve's director.

Pandas derive most of their nutrition from arrow bamboo and can starve once the plant enters its dying-off stage.

The stage begins when the bamboo forms flowers, after which the pandas refuse to eat it.

The bamboo then starts to produce seeds before dying.

Blooming happens about once every 60 years, with a new crop taking 10 years to mature.

However, the cycle seems to run along different schedules in different places and an earlier mass die-off of bamboo in the 1980s caused the deaths of about 250 pandas, Xinhua said.

Xinhua said some bamboo also has started blooming in Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces, home to the rest of China's estimated 1,590 wild pandas.

Flowering bamboo now covers more than 17,300 acres of the 544,000-acre preserve, Xinhua said.

It said 22 pandas living in the preserve's Bikou and Rangshuihe areas were directly threatened with starvation.

Zhang said rangers would patrol for ailing animals and rescue those in need.

Local villagers also have been told not to drive away or harm pandas if they enter inhabited areas looking for food.

China regards the panda as an unofficial national mascot, but the animal's limited diet is just one factor threatening its survival.

Panda numbers have declined as its habitat has fallen to farming and development, and the animal's low fertility rate causes it to reproduce at an agonizingly slow rate.

Chinese zoologists have improved the birth rate of giant pandas in captivity through artificial insemination.

The country also has launched a project to clone the animal as a way of boosting its numbers.

Svengali

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svengali

Svengali is the name of a fictional hypnotist in George Du Maurier's 1894 novel, Trilby.

A sensation in its day, the novel created a stereotype of the abusive hypnotist that persists to this day.

Trilby O'Ferrall is literally tone-deaf:

"Svengali would test her ear, as he called it, and strike the C in the middle and then the F just above, and ask which was the highest; and she would declare they were both exactly the same."

He "would either fawn or bully, and could be grossly impertinent."

"He had a kind of cynical humour, which was more offensive than amusing, and always laughed at the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place."

"And his laughter was always derisive and full of malice."

Under his hypnotic spell, Trilby becomes a talented singer, performing always in an amnesiac trance.

At a performance in London, Svengali is stricken with a heart attack and is unable to induce the trance.

Trilby is unable to sing in tune and is subjected to "laughter, hoots, hisses, cat-calls, cock-crows."

Not having been hypnotised, she is completely baffled and cannot remember anything about Svengali or her singing career.

When an audience member yells "Oh, ye're Henglish, har yer?"

"Why don't yer sing as yer bought to sing — yer've got voice enough, any'ow!"

"Why don't yer sing in tune?"

She cries, "'I didn't want to sing at all—I only sang because I was asked to sing—that gentleman asked me—that French gentleman with the white waistcoat!"

"I won't sing another note!"

She is stricken with a nervous affliction and dies tragically a day later.

The relation between Svengali and Trilby form only a relatively small portion of the novel, which is mainly an evocation of Bohemian Paris in the 1850s.

The novel has been adapted for the screen many times, the most successful being the 1931 film Svengali starring John Barrymore.

(A 1954 version is described by imdb [ http://www.imdb.org ] users as "unintentionally hilarious".

There was a 1983 television version with Peter O'Toole and Jodie Foster).

The word "Svengali" has entered the language meaning a person who, with evil intent, tries to persuade another to do what is desired.

It is frequently any kind of coach who seems to exercise an extreme degree of domination over a performer (especially if they believe they can only perform in the presence of their coach).

And from SVENGALI to AIG, we cover it all in here:

Business - Reuters

"SEC Subpoenas Dozen AIG Execs"

1 hour, 36 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed 12 executives of American International Group Inc. (AIG.N) in an expanding probe of the insurer, sources close to the case said on Monday.

As the SEC put 10 new possibly abusive transactions under scrutiny, news reports said AIG might part company soon with former Chief Executive Maurice Greenberg, who was stripped of the CEO title two weeks ago and named non-executive chairman.

Also involved in the inquiry are the U.S. Justice Department, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, New York state insurance regulators and law firms hired by the company and its independent directors, the sources said.

The law firms -- Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison for the company and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett for the independent directors -- were briefing regulators on Monday.

AIG in the past week fired Michael Murphy, an executive at its American International Co. unit in Bermuda, for failing to cooperate with investigators, an AIG spokesman said on Monday.

Last week, AIG said it fired two top executives after they signaled they would invoke their right to silence in the face of the probe -- chief financial officer Howard Smith and Christian Milton, a vice president of reinsurance.

AIG declined to discuss the substance of the investigation.

The SEC also declined to comment.

Government investigators had focused initially on a deal done in 2000 involving New York-based AIG and General Re, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKa.N), that may have artificially boosted AIG's reserves, the sources said.

But the SEC probe has since expanded to cover 10 other potentially questionable transactions and possible accounting errors valued at about $1 billion, the sources said.

AIG shares were trading up 2.9 percent, at $57.20 each, on the New York Stock Exchange in late afternoon trading.

They were valued at more than $70 each as recently as mid-February.

Merrill Lynch & Co. analysts said AIG's shares are suffering too much and blamed overall weakness in the stock market, the departure of Greenberg as CEO and the likelihood of company financial restatements.

A delay in filing financial statements and media coverage of AIG have created investor uncertainty, but Merrill said any restatements or charges will be modest relative to the $46 billion in market capitalization it has shed since Feb. 11.

AIG has said it might file its delayed 10-K annual report with the SEC this week, but Prudential Financial analyst John Hall said this looks unlikely.

end quotes

Life in OUR America?

Of course it is!

Silly me. What could I have been thinking?

Bush is only the monkey - Cheney is the organ grinder.

Still, I'll keep my ear flaps pulled tight for protection.

You're probably thinking, jeffmoskin, as are many people here in OUR America, that it would be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for someone like George W. Bush, who seems endowed by nature with less comprehension and intelligence than your standard box of rocks has, that it should actually be totally impossible for someone seemingly totally devoid of any comprehension whatsoever like George W. Bush to actually be president of the whole United States, is probably what you were thinking!

And thinking that it would be, or actually should be, impossible for a man like George W. Bush, who seemingly cannot read, nor comprehend the written word, to be the president of ALL America when he can't apparently read, or comprehend the written word, YOU PROBABLY THINK THAT BECAUSE HE IS PRESIDENT, that he can read and comprehend the written word, and therefore, you probably think that because he says he "reads" the Bible, that he is actually doing more than just looking at the pictures!

And you, like many people here in OUR America, probably think that someone in the position of president of America would, OR SHOULD, be able to read and clearly comprehend those words that YOU quoted from the Bible about "living by the sword", AND IN THAT, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!

ABSOLUTELY!

Someone, anyone, who is actually president of the United States SHOULD BE ABLE TO CLEARLY COMPREHEND THOSE WORDS that you can clearly comprehend, and understand, and that person WHO IS PRESIDENT, and especially this one who is always mouthing words about how he is a "BORN AGIN" christian, THAT PERSON WHO IS PRESIDENT should then be able to INSTILL IN EACH OF US, BY HIS OR HER EXAMPLE, WHY THOSE WORDS ARE WORDS TO HEED, for each of us, and especially for the leader of what is supposed to be the ONE free and open democratic Republic on the face of this earth!

Sadly, George W. Bush is not that man!

Nor is he that kind of president, or leader!

And you thought he was!

And it's okay, jeffmoskin; nothing wrong with your thoughts here, IT'S THE MAN IN THE OFFICE OF OUR PRESIDENT WHO IS DEFICIENT, and not you!

"I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving."

"I rarely read the stories, and get briefed BY PEOPLE WHO ARE PROBABLY read the news themselves!"

- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C.; September 21, 2003

And speaking of the need to be able to read and comprehend what you are reading just to be a responsible citizen of this democracy, let alone the person who would call himself president of ALL America, what have we here?

"The Iraq War and America's Tradition of Foreign Policy Idealism: Three Recent Books Illuminate the Subject"

By ANTHONY DWORKIN

Monday, Mar. 28, 2005

Alan Curtis, "Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise At Home and Abroad" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2004)

Jussi M. Hanhimaki, "The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy" (Oxford Univ. Press 2004)

Michael Walzer, "Arguing About War" (Yale Univ. Press 2004)

Not since Vietnam has foreign policy been at the center of political debate in America in the way that it is now.

For two years, the U.S. has been divided by passionate arguments about whether the Iraq war was morally justifiable or politically wise.

Meanwhile, the unsettled aftermath of the U.S. occupation ensures that these debates are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

Strikingly, the debate over Iraq - and about President Bush's international policies in general - has scrambled some traditional (albeit simplistic) assumptions about ideology and foreign policy.

Since the time of Woodrow Wilson, moral idealism in foreign policy has generally been seen as a Democratic position.

But it is a Republican president who now purports to espouse an idealistic approach to world affairs, seeking to establish a new international order on the basis of ending tyranny and advancing freedom.

In pushing the expansion of democracy, Bush said in his recent inaugural speech, "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one."

By contrast, the Democratic candidate in last year's presidential election, Senator John Kerry, emphasized primarily the costly and counterproductive nature of the war in Iraq, describing it as an unnecessary distraction from the more important objective of defeating Al Qaeda.

In contrast to Bush, Kerry took a position closer to the foreign policy tradition of realism - an outlook which aims at the promotion of national security, wealth, and power through conventional diplomatic means.

Realists, who distrust talk of a world order based on values like democracy or self-determination, have more often been associated with the Republican political tradition.

Of course, many people opposed the war in Iraq precisely because they thought it was immoral - thus adopting an idealist anti-war view.

But at a minimum, the national debate over Bush's global policies illustrates how contested the notions of national interest and morality in foreign policy have become.

Can President Bush, with his doctrine of regime change, really claim to be heir to the long American tradition of moral idealism in foreign policy?

And can the Democrats find a way to oppose him that rises above strategic realism, to incorporate a moral vision of their own?

In their different ways, the three books I will review here all provide openings to consider these important questions.

Hanhimaki on Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger, who was responsible for the foreign policy of the Nixon and Ford administrations as national security adviser and secretary of state, is generally regarded as the arch-practitioner of realpolitik in American diplomatic history.

The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, by the Finnish academic Jussi Hanhimaki, provides a thorough and judicious account of Kissinger's record.

Kissinger's view of world affairs was clearly set out in the foreign policy report to the U.S. Congress that he drafted for the recently-inaugurated President Nixon in February 1969.

The document said that America would regard its Communist adversaries "as nations pursuing their own interests as they perceive these interests, just as we follow our interests as we see them."

The report added that the structure of peace would come "from a realistic accommodation of conflicting interests."

In other words, Kissinger hoped to shift the tenor of America's relations with Russia and China from an ideologically-motivated hostility to an approach that more closely resembled the nineteenth-century European balance of power.

Kissinger believed that the United States should treat its Cold War enemies not as ideological adversaries, but rather as rival powers, alternately collaborating with them and playing them off against each other to maximize America's strategic advantage.

Hence, using his favorite method of back-channel diplomacy, Kissinger pushed forward détente with the Soviet Union, and reopened relations with China that had been frozen since the revolution twenty-two years earlier.

Hanhimaki explores Kissinger's handling of American foreign policy through a detailed narrative that is based, in large part, on many files that have only recently been opened.

The book confirms that Kissinger was a highly skilled and assiduous negotiator - for instance, in his shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Egypt in the aftermath of the 1973 October (or Yom Kippur) War.

But it also makes clear the limitations - moral and strategic - inherent in Kissinger's realpolitik.

The moral case against Kissinger is familiar, based upon the secret bombing of Cambodia, his backing of Pakistan during the crisis over East Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971, his part in the campaign to undermine Salvador Allende in Chile, and his tacit endorsement of Indonesian President Mohamed Suharto's invasion of East Timor in 1975.

Hanhimaki doesn't seek to minimize the human cost of these policies, but neither does he portray them as abnormally wicked in the context of the times.

His real concern is to point out the strategic failures of Kissinger's foreign policy- and it is here that his book is at its most persuasive.

By viewing every regional conflict in the context of great-power rivalry, Kissinger failed to acknowledge their local and regional causes.

The result generally was that his elaborately constructed schemes had little staying power, and often left a legacy that harmed America's longer-term interests.

In Vietnam, for example, Kissinger's combination of "peace through strength" (meaning a series of aggressive bombing raids while negotiations continued) and back-channel negotiations with the Soviet Union and China did produce a peace settlement in 1973 - but it was never likely to last.

Two years later, the South Vietnamese were overrun by North Vietnam, and the U.S.-backed Cambodian government of Lon Nol had also fallen to the brutal Khmer Rouge.

Similarly, in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 and the Angolan civil war that began in 1975, Kissinger threw American weight behind discreditable leaders who would end up on the losing side.

Hanhimaki concludes that Kissinger's central failing was that - for all his claims to be rethinking the ground rules of American foreign policy - he did not succeed in challenging the basic Cold War orthodoxy that saw everything through the lens of a single global struggle:

"His policies relied on preconceived notions, not particularly innovative for their time, about the overarching significance of American credibility and the Soviet-American relationship."

By the end of Kissinger's time in charge of U.S. foreign policy, even his vaunted relationships with the Soviet Union and China were faltering.

At home, détente was coming under attack from politicians like Democratic senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who wanted to tie economic relations with the Soviet Union to improvements in their human rights record.

(It is an historical irony that many of the neoconservatives associated with the policies of George W. Bush worked with Jackson around this time and were deeply influenced by his critique of the amoral realism of Kissinger's foreign policy.)

Meanwhile, the relationship with China had reached an impasse over the issue of Taiwan.

Kissinger's high-handed and secretive style - he once described himself as the Lone Ranger of U.S. foreign policy - meant that he built up little domestic support for his policies.

Although opinion polls showed that he himself retained a high level of public approval throughout his career in public life, Kissinger felt little need to base his actions on values that were widely shared among the American public.

No wonder, then, that in the 1976 election, Jimmy Carter was able to defeat President Ford in part through his promises of a more moral foreign policy.

"A foreign policy based on secrecy has had to be closely guarded and amoral," Carter charged during the campaign.

Walzer on War

The same year Carter took office, the political theorist and social critic Michael Walzer published his influential book Just and Unjust Wars.

The book was an intellectual response to the war in Vietnam, and its achievement was to jump-start a revival of the tradition of just war theory as a moral standard for assessing the use of military force in modern times.

Since then, Walzer has continued to write on the relationship between war and morality.

His new book, Arguing About War, is a collection of his recent essays on the subject.

The volume divides into a set of theoretical chapters exploring various aspects of the morality of armed conflict, and a series of practical essays in which Walzer applies "just war" thinking to recent real-world conflicts.

War is, of course, the most violent and destructive face of foreign policy - the one that has the most far-reaching consequences for human life - and it is also the time when national security is most urgently at stake.

The question of morality in warfare therefore represents the debate about the role of values in foreign policy in its most consequential and difficult form.

Among the most interesting aspects of Walzer's book are his reflections on how the situation today differs from that of the Vietnam era, when his first book on the subject was written.

In one essay, entitled "The Triumph of Just War Theory," he presents a generally optimistic account of how moral standards are incorporated into contemporary war-fighting.

After Vietnam, Walzer writes, both military officers and statesmen realized that the way a war was fought could be a decisive factor in whether it was successful: the United States lost in Vietnam in large part because civilians in Vietnam were alienated by the brutal way the conflict was conducted.

Summing up these lessons, Walzer argues that "there are now reasons of state for fighting justly."

"One might almost say that justice has become a military necessity."

This essay was written in 2002, and today Walzer might acknowledge that his confidence in the triumph of just war theory was premature.

There is no doubt that the U.S. armed forces make a much greater effort now to avoid harming civilians than in the Vietnam era; for instance, possible targets are reviewed by military lawyers to make sure that they comply with the requirements of the laws of war.

But there is another area of war-fighting where recent American conduct has in fact been worse in recent conflicts than it was in Vietnam.

This is, of course, in the treatment of prisoners.

The U.S. Army recently announced that 27 detainees had been killed in U.S. custody since August 2002.

Many hundreds of people have been held as "unlawful combatants" in Guantanamo for as long as three years, without the protection of prisoner of war status or any meaningful due process rights.

By contrast, in Vietnam, the U.S. Army treated prisoners well and gave prisoner of war status to guerrilla fighters who had a weaker claim to it, under a narrow reading of the law, than do Taliban captives from Afghanistan today.

A key difference, of course, is that large numbers of Americans were being held as captives by the North Vietnamese in Vietnam.

Concern over how they were being treated provided a powerful incentive for the U.S. Army to observe decent standards itself.

Another difference that Walzer sees between the Vietnam era and today lies in the aftermath of war.

Traditionally, "just war" thinking has concentrated on the circumstances in which it is right to go to war (jus ad bellum), and the way you should fight once war has started (jus in bello).

But Walzer argues convincingly that contemporary wars require a much greater attention to post-war justice, dealing with issues like occupation and democratization.

In his section on recent conflicts, Walzer collects a series of impressive essays on Iraq.

He argues that the war in Iraq was not a just war, because it was launched before it was necessary:

"Though disarming Iraq is a legitimate goal, morally and politically, it is a goal that we could almost certainly have achieved with measures short of full-scale war."

Walzer also argues persuasively that overthrowing tyranny cannot be a legitimate justification for invading another country, unless it is necessary to prevent an ongoing campaign of massacre or ethnic cleansing.

Essays on "Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense"

The question of Iraq also hangs over the third of the books reviewed in this article, a collection of essays entitled Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense.

This is a wide-ranging selection of articles, all written from a broadly progressive viewpoint, and designed to set out an alternative vision to the policies of the Bush administration.

The essays in the book vary greatly in quality, but there are a few thoughtful and persuasive chapters on foreign policy.

Perhaps the best is an essay by Jessica Tuchman Matthews about "the challenge of managing dominance."

Matthews argues pragmatically that the Bush administration's triumphalism is short-sighted, because America's current dominance is unlikely to last.

She says that, instead, we should "approach this historical moment with a keen sense of the limits that we confront."

We should place less faith in what can be achieved through force of arms, particularly given the obvious difficulties of building a decent post-war society in Iraq, and place more emphasis on diplomacy and democracy assistance.

Matthews says the Democrats have flubbed the challenge of coming up with a decent national security policy of their own.

She outlines what the elements of such a policy might be: reliance on alliances rather than short-term coalitions; building strong international institutions to deal with new global challenges; and a better balance in spending between diplomacy and force.

In her conclusion, Matthews addresses head-on the claim that President Bush's aggressive democracy promotion is a contemporary updating of the policies of Woodrow Wilson, the archetypal moral idealist in foreign policy.

Although Wilson believed in the promotion of democracy, Matthews points out, he also believed that America should be embedded "in international organizations and rules to which we were not an exception, but an integral part."

The Bush administration, by contrast, believes America should stand alone above the international community and be unconstrained.

Reading these three books together gives the clear impression that the relationship between values and national interest in foreign policy is more complex than it is often made out to be.

For instance, many people who abhor the cynical way that Kissinger looked at conflicts in Angola, Cambodia or East Pakistan might nevertheless be sympathetic to his claims that détente produced appreciable benefits like the Helsinki agreements of 1975.

The same people might also be profoundly opposed to the war in Iraq - a conflict that was promoted by officials who cut their teeth attacking Kissinger for his "value-free" approach to the Soviet Union in the 1970's.

In foreign policy debates - at least in democratic societies - there is never going to be one position that is agreed by all parties to be the "moral" one and another that is agreed to best represent the "national interest."

Instead, there are likely to be an interlocking series of arguments in which both parties claim the mantle of justice and strategic value for their favored course of action.

And in a democracy, it is the voters who will ultimately decide which group has made the better overall case.

Anthony Dworkin is editor of the Crimes of War website http://www.crimesofwar.org an online journal covering international law and armed conflict.

Sometimes, in fact, a lot of times when I am posting "news" in here, EVEN THOUGH it is "main stream" news from "mainstream" sources, I get this intense feeling of SURREALTY, as though we were getting a direct feed from way down to the bottom of the RABBIT HOLE, where Alice went!

TWEEDLE-DEE, and TWEEDLE-DUM, but it's really George W. Bush and Dick Cheney!

The CHESHIRE CAT!

But no, wait, it's Condoleeza Rice!

And what's this next?

I don't know, but if someone suggests the MAD HATTER'S TEA PARTY, I won't argue that choice!

Business - BusinessWeek Online

"Who Wants Anatoly Chubais Dead?"

Tue Mar 29, 8:13 AM ET

By Jason Bush

As Russian electricity boss Anatoly Chubais was chauffeured into work from his country house 40 kilometers west of Moscow on the morning of Mar. 17, would-be assassins awaited him.

First they tried to blow up his armored BMW with a roadside bomb.

Then they opened fire with Kalashnikovs, spraying Chubais' car and an escorting Jeep containing his bodyguards.

A brief firefight ensued, and the failed killers fled into the woods beside the road.

No one was hurt.

That much everyone agrees on.

But from here the story gets murkier.

Since the roadside ambush, Russia has been awash with competing theories about who tried to kill Chubais and why.

Chubais, after all, makes no ordinary target.

In addition to occupying the directorship of United Energy Systems, Russia's state-owned electricity monopoly -- which is among the largest companies in the country -- he serves as leader of one of Russia's two biggest liberal parties, the Union of Right Forces.

UNLIKELY SUSPECT.

Tensions have run high in Russia of late.

Recent months have seen the climax to the long-running battle between President Putin and the Yukos oil company, terrorist attacks in Moscow and Beslan, public protests over benefit reforms, and the election protests in neighboring Ukraine, which sent shock waves through Moscow's political Establishment.

Does the attempt to kill a leading businessman and politician signify instability in Russia's own political system?

That depends on which theory you believe.

The official version of events sure seems hard to swallow.

Within hours of the attack, the police arrested their prime suspect, Vladimir Kvachkov, a 57-year-old retired colonel who formerly worked for the GRU, Russia's military intelligence.

According to eyewitnesses, two camouflaged assassins piled into a waiting getaway car, a green Saab 9000, as they tried to make their escape.

Witnesses made note of the license plate, and police quickly traced the car to its owner -- Kvachkov's wife.

Later that day, they found the offending vehicle parked outside the couple's Moscow apartment, where they also discovered traces of explosives.

They arrested Kvachkov on the spot.

An open and shut case?

Perhaps -- if you can view Kvachkov as simply an incompetent amateur, driving away in his own car in full view of others and then parking it outside his residence.

If this sounds strange, the alleged motive strains credibility even further.

Kvachkov owns a dacha near Chubais', not far from the site of the ambush.

According to police sources quoted in the Russian media, Kvachkov is said to have felt personal animosity toward Chubais because of a minor road incident or a dispute over land.

PLAYING COY.

Russians are a suspicious people.

No surprise, then, that many believe Kvachkov was framed.

"This is the first time in the history of high-profile contract killings that the suspect involved has been accused of doing something as ridiculous as shooting at the target with his own pistol, stabbing him with his own knife, or fleeing the scene in his own Saab," Yulia Latynina, a well-known journalist and political commentator, wrote in the Moscow Times on Mar. 23.

One other problem with the personal grudge theory:

Chubais himself said from the start that he knows who hired his assailants, but won't say who.

If the assassins were guns for hire as Chubais maintains (and everybody else assumes true), whoever hired them made a careless choice by picking Chubais' neighbor to carry out the job.

Chubais has dropped some hints in the past as to who he thinks wants to get him.

In an interview with the Financial Times in November, he said he had already survived three assassination attempts, "the last of which was done about 18 months ago and has purely political motives."

"These people hate me because they said I sold off Russia."

ECONOMIC MOTIVE.

That's a reference to Chubais' controversial role as the top economic adviser to then-President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.

Chubais' radical privatization program made him unpopular because it seemed mainly to benefit a handful of billionaire oligarchs.

In that interview, Chubais seemed to imply that militant nationalists or communists wanted to kill him as punishment for his economic reforms.

This theory, however, has few takers as an explanation for the most recent assassination bid.

Aggrieved citizens rarely vent their anger over economic policies by resorting to Kalashnikovs.

Instead, most people who have ventured an opinion think Chubais was targeted because of a high-level dispute about money or power -- the usual motive for such hits.

So was it business or politics?

Or both?

On the face of it, the business theory looks intriguing.

Since 1998, when Chubais took on the task of reforming United Energy Systems, he has spearheaded a plan to split up the power giant.

It's already being broken into separate generation and distribution companies, slated for eventual privatization.

UKRAINE PRECEDENT.

A number of leading political figures have publicly declared that they think the reforms led to the attack.

"In my opinion this is another gangster showdown during which the energy system is being redivided," Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told the newspaper Argumenty I Fakty on Mar. 23.

However, electricity sector analysts remain skeptical.

They can see little benefit from getting rid of Chubais now.

Most of the key decisions affecting the planned reform have already received government approval.

"Bumping off Chubais wouldn't solve the problem."

"The reform process is well under way now," says Stephen O'Sullivan, head of research at Moscow investment bank United Financial Group.

That leaves the possibility that Chubais' affiliation with Russia's liberal opposition triggered the attack.

True, the party amounts to only a tiny faction that doesn't seem much of a threat to the Kremlin.

But it won a heavyweight supporter recently when former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov threw in his lot with it.

And the Kremlin is undoubtedly growing jittery because of events in neighboring Ukraine, where a revolution led by Western-leaning opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko toppled the government last year.

Yushchenko was the target of an assassination bid last year, generally assumed to have been the work of elements in the former Ukrainian regime.

MORE HYPOTHESES.

The political theory seems a dubious proposition, however.

Chubais is unpopular not only with many voters but also with other leading liberal politicians, making him more of a political liability for the opposition than an asset.

One possibility is that, having spent many years near the top echelons of power, Chubais has compromising information on someone important.

There are other, stranger theories, such as that Chubais staged the attack himself as a publicity stunt.

Whatever the truth, investors in Russia must surely hope that, after all the drama of recent months, the excitement and political intrigue will die down a bit between now and 2008, when President Vladimir Putin will step down.

Russia being Russia, though, you can probably bet safely that investors will be disappointed.

And every now and then, a story such as this next one will "catch my eye", and so, I will "capture" it for inclusion in here, in this record which we are creating in here of LIFE in OUR America!

Does it have any meaning?

Too early to tell, but since it is a thing of interest, I am including it!

Strange times we live in, and this is a part of that "strangeness", and so:

Science - AP

"Scientists Puzzled No Tsunami After Quake"

Tue Mar 29,11:05 AM ET

By JAYMES SONG, Associated Press Writer

EWA BEACH, Hawaii - Tsunami experts could not understand why Monday's forceful earthquake off Indonesia failed to produce massive waves similar to those generated by the Dec. 26 quake that killed at least 175,000 people in the same region.

A magnitude 8.7 quake shook Indonesia's west coast, killing hundreds of people and spreading panic that another devastating tsunami was on the way.

There was no tsunami, but a small wave was detected by a tide gauge on Cocos Island near Australia, about 1,500 miles south of the epicenter, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on Oahu.

"I'm baffled an earthquake this size didn't trigger a tsunami near the epicenter," said Robert Cessaro, a geophysicist at the center, which is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It is responsible for monitoring seismic and ocean conditions in the Pacific and alerting Pacific Rim nations and U.S. agencies.

Center Director Charles McCreery said earthquakes of at least 8.0 magnitude usually generate major tsunamis.

"We expected some destructive tsunami with some distant destructive effects."

"It was surprising," he said.

The latest event also demonstrated "there's a whole world of uncertainty about trying to judge a tsunami based on the earthquake data," he said.

The warning center initially estimated the Dec. 26 earthquake to have a magnitude of 8.0, but it turned out to be larger, with a magnitude of 9.0.

Monday's preliminary estimate was magnitude 8.5 but had no destructive tsunami.

"The one we initially thought was bigger turns out to have no effect," McCreery said.

"The one we initially thought was smaller had a huge effect."

"This is the challenge of tsunami warning."

The warning center, established in 1949, came under heavy criticism following the December tsunami for not being more aggressive about warning Asian nations and possibly saving thousands of lives.

Earlier this month, a group of 58 European tsunami survivors and relatives of victims sued NOAA and other agencies, alleging the center did not do enough to warn people about the disaster.

"Although we certainly wish that somehow the event unfolded in a way that we could've done more for the region, we really did all we could under the circumstances," McCreery said.

Since then, several Indian Ocean nations have established communications with the center and are now on its alert list.

On Monday, the facility was able to alert those nations.

The Indian Ocean has no warning center similar to the one in Hawaii.
___

On the Net:

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/

And since this earthquake business apparently is a "hot topic" right now in OUR America, especially for the "END TIMES" folks who are following along in Revelations, I want to include this companion article on these earthquakes, for the record!

Science - AP

"Latest Earthquakes Surprise Seismologists"

Tue Mar 29, 3:24 PM ET

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The latest deadly earthquake off the coast of Indonesia wasn't unexpected but may have arrived earlier than experts anticipated.

After the December 26 quake that sent out a devastating tsunami, every seismologist knew that the earthquake potential of nearby faults had increased, Yale University seismologist Jeffrey Park said in a telephone interview.

"But I don't think any one of us would have predicted it would have occurred in three months, at this magnitude," he said.

Dave Oppenheimer, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., noted that the December quake, to the north, released a lot of stress, but also increased the stress on nearby fault zones.

The area of Monday's quake had a major tremor in 1861 and had been storing up tension since then, he said, so the December quake dumped stress onto an area that was ready to go.

Another section, southeast of Monday's quake, last shook in 1833, Oppenheimer added.

"Will it go tomorrow, will it go in two months, two years, two decades ... we don't know, but it will occur," he said.

Aftershocks are common following large quakes, Oppenheimer said, and he called Monday's tremor a large aftershock from the December quake.

But Park declined to call it an aftershock, since it wasn't located in the same fault section.

"That doesn't mean that the two aren't connected; they very likely are connected," he said.

But what seismologists don't understand is the time lag, he said, noting that in the Anatolian fault zone in Turkey and in California, the time scale can be decades.

A 1971 quake in California loaded extra stress on a nearby fault that ruptured in the 1994 Northridge quake, Park said.

"So the correlation is pretty clear but the cause, in terms of knowing the cause well enough to predict when the next one is going to occur, that's still mysterious," he said.

Asked about the likelihood of another powerful Indonesian quake, he responded:

"If you would ask me what the odds are in the next three months, I'd say they are low."

"In the next 15 years I'd say there is reason to be concerned."

"I'd say let's get that tsunami warning system out there," he said.

Indeed, a new tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean was scheduled to begin service on Friday, but got an initial tryout Monday, relaying warnings from Japan and the United States that the quake had the potential to cause another great wave.

Ultimately, no serious tsunami was reported, but one could arrive with any future quake, and Oppenheimer noted that there may have been a tsunami that knocked out communications in rural areas and the damage will only be discovered later.

The full Indian Ocean tsunami warning system is expected to go into service by 2006.

Why the December quake generated a devastating tsunami and Monday's didn't isn't yet understood, but there are several possibilities, he said.

To generate those great waves, there has to be vertical movement of the sea floor, he said, and Monday's quake was deeper in the Earth than December's, so there may have been less direct effect on the ocean bottom.

Also, he said, it occurred beneath an island, reducing the sea floor effects.

In addition, the quake orientation was different.

In December the quake energy went east and west, toward Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia.

Monday the orientation was south-southeast, directing the energy into open ocean and Antarctica.

Park said in some ways the Sumatra quakes are a wake-up call after a long period of relative seismic quiet following a series of major quakes in the 1950s and 1960s.

"There's probably nothing ominous or portentous in that, by itself," he said.

"The largest quakes are relatively rare."

Indeed, Monday's 8.7 quake was the second most powerful since 1964, he said, following the December Sumatra quake which had a magnitude estimated at 9.0 or more.

The December quake was unusual, he added, noting that it persisted for a relatively long time, 400 to 500 seconds — roughly 6 1/2 to 8 1/2 minutes.

In the 20th century there were only about a half-dozen quakes as large as Monday's and four occurred along one boundary where the giant plates that make up the surface of the planet grind together.

That boundary stretches from Russia's Kamchatka peninsula along the Aleutian Islands to Alaska.
___

On the Net:

U.S. Geological Survey: http://www.usgs.gov

And of course, what would a day in OUR America be like without Iraq?

Middle East - AP

"Iraq Assembly Meeting Ends in Angry Words"

2 hours, 26 minutes ago

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - It was supposed to be a big day for Iraqi democracy — the choosing of a speaker for the newly elected parliament.

It ended in angry words.

For nearly three hours, lawmakers huddled in hallways, trying to cut a deal that would give the speaker's job to a Sunni as part of an effort to heal the country's ethnic wounds.

In the chamber of the convention center-turned-legislature — the same building where Saddam Hussein's 99 percent "election" landslides used to be formally announced — members waited for the horse-trading to yield results, then listened to readings from the Quran, then argued.

As patience wore thin, shouted exchanges broke out over whether to delay choosing the speaker.

Some insisted the time for agreement was now — at this first meeting of the parliament since it was sworn in two weeks ago.

"We've been sitting here for two hours just drinking sodas and coffee."

"We were waiting for a decisive decision, but there hasn't been one," said Fattah al-Sheik, a member of the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance.

For these men and women in robes and shawls, turbans and Western suits, the main task at hand was to find a balance between the Shiites and Kurds, who have a majority of the 275 seats, and the Sunnis who used to run the country under Saddam and whose participation in the new order is critical to Iraq's future.

But President Ghazi al-Yawer, the top candidate, wasn't going to settle for simply the speaker's job, as proposed by the Shiites.

He wanted a vice presidency and a bigger share of Cabinet posts.

As tensions rose, officials kicked out the few reporters allowed in the meeting, closed the doors and yanked the plug on the live TV coverage.

"We demand to know the details of what's happening behind the scenes!" a woman shouted shortly before officials escorted journalists out of the room.

Then interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi left, followed by al-Yawer.

Alliance officials later said Allawi had another appointment.

Hussein al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric and member of Allawi's coalition, was angry.

"What are we going to tell the citizens who jeopardized their lives and cast ballots on Jan. 30?" he asked.

Outside the parliament, some Iraqis wondered whether Iraq's new politicians were ready for democracy.

"They haven't been able to even name a parliament speaker, so how will they rule Iraq when they're only after their personal interests and gains?" said Sahib Jassim, a Sunni.

"They don't care about the Iraqi people."

And some were embarrassed.

"We don't want the world to see stuff like what happened in today's session."

"We were ashamed," said Dawoud Mohammed, a Shiite businessman.

"The security situation is unstable because there is no government."

That "security situation" is never forgotten.

Authorities had warned of possible insurgent attacks, and while the parliament was meeting in the heavily fortified Green Zone of the capital, explosions were heard in the distance.

Change a name or two and you have a typical secret meeting chaired by the organ grinder, Mr. Cheney himself.

A.B.

Yes, we do, don't we!

And there was just a quote in one of these articles the other day where George W. Bush was saying how "transparent" this whole process was over there in his client puppet state of Iraq because the press was allegedly all over the process of picking what is alleged to be a new government, although that is somewhat questionable right now, from all appearances here.

SO!

Transparency?

Yeah, okay, George, fine, if that's what you think, but it don't look that way from where I am sitting!

CounterPunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen1101.html

November 1, 2002

"Exposing Karl Rove"

by WAYNE MADSEN

He's America's Joseph Goebbels.

As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush.

Rove's dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon's 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national stage.

From his Eagle's Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill.

Since his formative political years when he tried to paint World War II B-24 pilot and hero George McGovern as a left-wing peacenik through his mid-level career as a planter of disinformation in the media on behalf of Texas and national GOP candidates to his current role as Dubya's "Svengali," Rove has practiced the same style of slash and burn politics as did his Nixonian mentor Segretti.

Many of us remember the Lincolnesque Senator Ed Muskie breaking down in tears during the 1972 campaign over Segretti-planted false stories in a New Hampshire newspaper that accused Mrs. Muskie of being a heavy smoker, drinker, and cusser and accused Muskie of uttering a slur in describing New Hampshire's French Canadian population.

Rove's hero also forged letters on fake Muskie campaign letterhead, disrupted rallies and fundraising dinners, and spread false stories about the sex lives of candidates.

Segretti's brush also smeared George McGovern, George Wallace, Shirley Chisholm, and McGovern's first vice presidential choice, Senator Tom Eagleton.

Segretti of course did not go on to a high-level White House job -- he was sentenced to six months in federal prison for distributing illegal campaign material.

In many respects, however, the apprentice Rove has far exceeded the chicanery and evil-mindedness of his mentor Segretti.

Rove is a tech-savvy puppet master for Bush.

Take, for example, last June's discovery of a "lost" CD-ROM in Lafayette Park across from the White House.

Contained on the CD was a PowerPoint presentation given by White House political director Ken Mehlman to Rove on the strategy for next Tuesday's off-year election.

The slide show showed First Brother Jeb Bush being vulnerable in Florida.

Jeb Bush later joked that the disc was part of a plot cooked up by him and his brother to make it appear that he was vulnerable in order to rally an otherwise complacent GOP base in the Sunshine State.

Or was it a joke?

Jeb Bush and his political minions like Katherine Harris have shown us that if anyone thinks what the GOP has done in Florida is funny they have an incredibly sick sense of humor.

Rove's own tendency to be sick-minded originates with his mentor Segretti.

The 2000 GOP primary was a chance for Rove to hone his skills in dirty tricks.

His target then was Senator John McCain who appeared to be within striking distance of Dubya in South Carolina after the then-GOP maverick's surprise upset victory in New Hampshire.

Rove's operation proceeded to target McCain with false stories:

* McCain was a stoolie for his captors in the Hanoi Hilton (this from a lunatic self-promoting Vietnam "veteran");

* McCain fathered a black daughter out of wedlock (a despicable reference to McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter);

* Cindy McCain's drug "abuse";

* and even McCain's "homosexuality."

In the spirit of Segretti, Rove engineered a victory for Dubya but at the cost of trashing an honorable man and his family.

Muskie, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Hart, Tsongas, Clinton, Biden, Dole, Perot, and others had all seen the Segretti/Rove slash and burn tactics before.

And Rove's penchant for fascistic demagoguery and outright lying continues to this very day.

After Paul Wellstone's sons asked that Vice President Dick Cheney not attend the Minneapolis memorial service for their father, mother, and sister, the White House explained that the real reason wasn't the surviving Wellstone family's abhorrence for Cheney but the fact the family didn't want Cheney's Secret Service protection to interfere with public access to the service.

Of course, the Rove and Ari Fleischer disinformation machine forgot to take into account that two attendees, Bill and Hillary Clinton, had their own Secret Service details.

But such is the case with a White House that takes its lessons from Goebbels and the editorial staff of the old Soviet News Agency Tass.

Rove's dirty fingerprints could also be seen in the Iowa Senate race between Tom Harkin and GOP candidate Greg Ganske.

A few months ago, a story was leaked that the Harkin campaign had employed a spy within the Ganske campaign.

To put this in a Rove context, we must go back to the 1986 Texas gubernatorial race in which Rove's candidate Bill Clements was taking on Democratic Governor Mark White.

Just before a debate between the two candidates, Rove spun the story that his office had been bugged.

No proof.

But the insinuation that White's people had carried out the bugging was reported by the media.

In the election, Clements defeated White.

Rove stashed away more political capital into his already heavy knapsack of ill-gotten IOUs.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, we were obviously treated to more Rove chicanery when the following Associated Press story hit the wires:

"A woman who worked for a media company that produced ads for President George W. Bush's campaign was indicted for secretly mailing a videotape of Bush practicing for a debate to Vice President Al Gore's campaign."

Yes, that videotape, along with a 120-page briefing book, just happened to turn up in Gore's headquarters as fast as the CD-ROM turned up in Lafayette Park.

The sourcerer Segretti must be very proud of his apprentice.

In 1980, no Republican bemoaned the fact that Jimmy Carter's debate briefing book was swiped and found its way into the hands of the Reagan-Bush campaign.

In Rove's world, its only an affront when someone "steals" your own campaign secrets and not when your are on the receiving end of a heist.

"If you're not with me, you're against me."

Bush's binary view of "good and evil" and "friend and enemy" sits well with the Rove strategy.

Georgia's conservative but libertarian-minded Representative Bob Barr found out about this in last August's primary when his GOP primary opponent John Linder began spreading around stories that Barr was "soft on terrorism."

Because Barr was skeptical about a number of aspects of the Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT Act, he became a target for the Rove machine.

However, it was likely that Barr became a target earlier on when he supported Steve Forbes against Bush in the 2000 primary.

Bush apparently means to say, "If you've not always been with me, you're against me."

It must have really been a dilemma for Bush and Rove to have to come to the support of John Sununu, Jr. in the New Hampshire Senate race.

Although Daddy made George W. unceremoniously give the axe to Sununu's father as White House Chief of Staff during the Bush 41 administration, the man who the junior Sununu defeated in the primary, Bob Smith, was even more of a problem.

He had the temerity to quit the Republican Party in 2000 and run against Dubya for President.

So in Bushspeak, which is obviously borrowed from Forrest Gump's scripts, "if you're less with me than the other guy, you're more against me."

Undoubtedly, Rove was also behind the campaign to "get" Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney who was the first nationally-known politician to question what Bush may have known beforehand about 9-11.

She was defeated by a former Republican state judge who had supported the wacky Alan Keyes for President in 2000.

Never mind, McKinney was "less with Bush" than Keyes, so it was more important to get McKinney who was "more against" Bush.

In all seriousness, rewarding the GOP on November 5 will only increase the appetite of Rove to amass more and more power into the White House.

The advent of a Democratic-controlled Senate and House might even begin to spell the end of the road for Segretti's star pupil.

German opposition figures in the mid-1930s often lamented the fact that they could have stopped the rise of the Nazis if only they had been more united in a common front when they had a chance.

However, they fell prey to the media manipulation of Goebbels and fought among themselves more than they did against the menace from the far right.

We Americans also have an early opportunity to stem an out-of-control and anti-constitutional regime with the Rasputin-like Rove at the after steerage helm of our ship of state.

That opportunity presents itself next Tuesday--Election Day.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.

Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com

Very interesting collection of books and theories. But now that the cold war is over, the struggle is for...

ENERGY!!


This is an easy one: The epicenter was directly underneath the island and therefore the island absorbed the shock wave. The December quake was under the ocean, and the water took the shock, thus creating a tidal wave.

And here I am, just coming in the door, and I see that jeffmoskin has been here before me, and has left some comments for me to consider, and while I am doing that, let's update the IRAQ SITUATION!

Where do things over there stand right now?

World - Reuters

"Iraq's Leaders Seek Way Out of Deadlock on Govt."

Wed Mar 30, 7:48 AM ET

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's quarrelsome politicians went back to the drawing board Wednesday to try and form a government after failing even to appoint a speaker for a parliament that was elected fully two months ago.

Despite public assurances of progress, the failure to put a government in place showed the difficulty of forging political agreement in a country divided along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Some politicians are now talking of several more weeks before a cabinet may be named, leaving government in limbo at time when economic reconstruction and the struggle against insurgents are pressing priorities.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who walked out of a chaotic and inconclusive second sitting of the National Assembly Tuesday, remains in a strong position, nine months after being appointed under the U.S.-led occupation authorities.

The interim constitution, drawn up under U.S. occupation with U.N. assistance, requires a two-thirds majority in the 275-member parliament to name a three-strong presidential council, which will in turn appoint a prime minister.

This means that in order to form a government the mostly Shi'ite bloc strongly influenced by Islamists which won a narrow majority in the assembly must reach a deal with the main Kurdish coalition, which won 75 seats in the Jan. 30 election.

The Shi'ites and Kurds also have to try to accommodate Sunni Arabs, a minority that dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein but has been left with little representation after most of them stayed away from the polls through intimidation or anger.

There are only 17 Sunni Arabs in parliament.

If Sunnis feel marginalized, however, support for the mostly Sunni insurgency against U.S. and new Iraqi forces could grow.

Sunnis could also thwart ratification of a constitution, which is due to be put to a referendum toward the end of the year and will require support in 16 of Iraq's 18 provinces.

After two months of talks, a joint declaration by the Shi'ite and Kurdish blocs on how to deal with contentious issues such as the status of the ethnically mixed northern oilfield city of Kirkuk has yet to be formally signed.

DIVISIONS

The two sides have also failed to agree on power sharing, and Sunni Arab lawmakers are furious that the Shi'ites and Kurds could end up with 22 out of 30 ministerial posts.

Many Sunni Arabs are annoyed that the Kurds would wield far more power than them, as a result of the failure of most Sunni Arabs to vote.

Kurds turned out in large numbers.

Both groups account for something like a fifth of the population.

To improve their negotiating position, most Sunni lawmakers, including interim President Ghazi al-Yawar, have allied with the 40-strong bloc of Prime Minister Allawi, a secular Shi'ite whose chances of retaining power in a new government are increasing the longer the Kurdish and Shi'ite blocs fail to agree.

The Sunni Arabs had wanted to retain the presidency but the Shi'ites and Kurds have agreed it should go to Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.

Yawar has declined the position of parliament speaker and there is no agreement on an alternative.

Now Sunni lawmakers say they want Adnan al-Janabi, a Sunni member of Allawi's bloc, as speaker.

They have rejected an alternative Sunni candidate proposed by the Shi'ite alliance.

"The Kurds and Shi'ites cannot force a candidate upon us."

"They are paying the price of ignoring Allawi," said Sunni member of parliament Mishan al-Jibouri.

Although the Shi'ites and Kurds say they want a Sunni speaker to help provide balance, pressure is building within their own blocs to abandon attempts to reach a consensus and vote on a speaker by the next parliament session Sunday.

So far, the Kurds and Shi'ite leaders say they are intent on finding a Sunni Arab acceptable to all to fill the position, which will play a key role in overseeing the writing of a new constitution over the next few months.

Talks are also under way to see if Allawi's bloc will join a national unity government.

"Allawi played this brilliantly and we messed up," an official in one of the Shi'ite alliance parties said.

"Expect limbo for some time."

And speaking of George "DUBYA" Bush, and his own standing as an alleged "leader", among us, the American people right now today, where exactly is that standing, and how has it been "achieved"?

Let's look and see, shall we?

Top Stories - The Christian Science Monitor

""Bush faces decline in approval ratings"

Wed Mar 30, 3:00 AM ET

From Social Security to Terri Schiavo to sinking polls, Bush fights for public faith amid the perils of a second term.

By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - If President Bush wants to lay blame for his slumping public support on immediate events, he has plenty of targets.

There's his brief intervention into the Terri Schiavo case, which a majority of Americans fault.

There's his inability thus far to make serious headway on Social Security reform, his top second-term priority.

And there's the economy, starting with rising gas and fuel prices and worries over inflation.

Bush advisers, while playing down the latest numbers, tend to fault the recent economic uncertainty.

Several major polls have shown Bush's job approval declining into the mid-40s, a drop of 5 to 7 points in just a week - in some cases, at or near an all-time low for his presidency.

The latest Gallup Poll also shows the highest public pessimism over the economy in two years, with 33 percent saying it is getting better and 59 percent saying it is getting worse.

Ultimately, though, it may just be that successful second terms for American presidents are historically difficult to pull off, and Bush is now bumping into that perception head on.

The politics of second terms are hard to avoid, even for a president whose party controls both houses of Congress.

Bush is not running for reelection, but most of his Republican brethren on Capitol Hill are - and they know that the president's party often suffers its greatest defeats in the second-term midterm elections.

"Members of the president's own party get very nervous, because they know the history and they worry that they're tying their ship to an unsteady anchor," says Darrell West, a Brown University political scientist.

"And of course, the opposition party is gunning for the next midterm elections, too, so they're generally not in a mood to cooperate."

What's behind perceptions of Bush

Bush has raised the stakes by laying out a self-consciously ambitious second-term agenda - not only to reconceptualize Social Security via voluntary partial privatization, but also to remake the tax system and spread democracy throughout the Middle East.

It is on that last point - most centrally, Iraq - that Bush's second term will likely be judged.

But even the progress in Iraq, starting with the holding of elections, hasn't provided the kind of polling dividends Bush might have expected.

In fact, it's possible that the perception of success and the spread of democracy in Iraq works against Bush in the way his father, the first President Bush, failed to turn his own success in the first Gulf War into victory come reelection time.

"Once he's no longer seen as a struggling wartime commander, the public focuses on more perhaps mundane matters, such as the price of gas," says Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council.

Bush also doesn't seem to be getting much of a bump from the successes of his new secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, whose latest Gallup Poll numbers (taken March 18-20) show a 61 percent approval rating.

It is also questionable whether the most popular person connected to the administration - first lady Laura Bush - could offer any reverse coattails for her husband.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Bush left on a surprise visit to Afghanistan to focus on educational initiatives for Afghan women and also meet with President Hamid Karzai and have dinner with US forces at Bagram Air Base.

Bush himself took to the Rose Garden Tuesday to deliver remarks on freedom and democracy, with an audience of Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans.

In general, Republican strategists say, Bush can help himself most by keeping his eye on the ball and sticking with his goals.

"You can't change your fundamental agenda, based on week-to-week variations in public opinion polls," says GOP pollster Whit Ayres.

"A real leader doesn't do that."

"A real leader sets some ambitious goals ... and has faith that if they are valuable goals to pursue, public opinion will come along."

After all, he and other Republicans say, the second term is only two months old and there is plenty of time to make progress on Social Security reform.

Mr. Ayres, who has polled on Social Security, says the president is correct in continuing to focus on educating the public about the problem.

The greater the understanding of two key facts - that the president's plan would not affect benefits for seniors and that participation in personal accounts would be voluntary - the greater the support for Bush's proposal.

On the other side

Among all the polling data, the silver lining for Bush and the GOP is that the Democratic leadership in Congress is just as unpopular as the Republican congressional leadership.

The latest Pew Research Center poll, released March 24, shows Bush's approval rating at 45 percent, the Republican leadership at 39 percent, and the Democratic leadership at 37 percent.

In fact, rank-and-file Democrats are less happy with their party leadership (56 percent) than are rank-and-file Republicans (76 percent), according to Pew.

So clearly, the Democrats cannot count on gaining from any Republican or presidential misfortune.

This generalized dissatisfaction with politicians is not unusual, says Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.

"It isn't always a zero-sum game, where someone loses and someone else gains," says Professor Guth.

"Sometimes everyone loses."

"There's not an assumption among the public that if the president is doing badly, the Democrats must be doing something right."

"It's that Washington is not doing well, and that includes the Democrats."

In the Pew poll, Americans give Congress low marks for working across party lines: Only 18 percent say that's going well.

Only 23 percent say Congress is doing well at dealing with important issues, and only 23 percent say Congress is acting ethically.

The percentage who support Bush's goal of introducing personal accounts into Social Security has declined.

Now 44 percent approve of that idea, down from 46 percent last month and 54 percent in December.

On the administration's plan to allow oil- and gas-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 42 percent are supportive and 46 percent oppose, Pew says.

And the Kurds KNOW that what they don't get in making a deal with the shi'ites RIGHT NOW they will NEVER GET LATER ON.

They want autonomy, which they can probably get, and they want the Kirkuk oilfield which is a problem because the Shi'ites need SOMETHING to offer the Sunnis when they join the government.

So it is an arm-wrestle situation.

We'll see who has the stronger arm.

My money is on the Kurds.

Yes, he does!

Starting with himself!

"If you don't have any ambitions, the minimum-wage job isn't going to get you to where you want to get, for example!"

"In other words, what is your ambitions?"

"AND, oh, by the way, IF THAT IS YOUR AMBITION, here's what it's going to take to achieve it!"

- The "Not Very Popular These Days" George W. Bush in a speech written for him by some very high-priced indeed speechwriters, to students in Little Rock, Arkansas, on August 29, 2002!

This is an interesting one, indeed, jeffmoskin, and yes, I would have to take the Kurds very seriously, myself, and I do.

They are certainly very organized, from what I have read about them, and they seem to stress education of their young people as a means for the whole nation to improve itself, and thereby get ahead, and who can fault that philosophy?

Certainly not me!

And what about these following two statements, here, jeffmoskin, by the Kurds?

Asked about Kurdish demands for 25 percent of the nation's oil revenues, Faraj al Haidari, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, said that the Kurds are entitled to a considerable stake of the country's wealth because of their suffering under former dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.

"We have to take in consideration that Kurdistan has suffered a lot in the past and it has to get what it deserves now," he said.

end quotes

Just think what might have been over there for both the Sunnis and the Kurds had people like George H. W. Bush, the father to this present one, not given material support to Saddam Hussein's "reign of terror" over there in Iraq, all those years ago!

Had George H. W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld NOT GIVEN AID AND COMFORT and material support to Saddam Hussein and his alleged TAY-RIST government, in all likelihood, Kurdistan might not have suffered a lot in the past, and so, the Kurds today might not be looking for so much in REPARATIONS for this suffering by them that could have been caused in part by the material support given to Iraq by George H. W. Bush!

And had George H. W. Bush NOT GIVEN MATERIAL SUPPORT to Saddam Hussein back then, and by extension, to the Sunnis, who were Saddam's people, then perhaps the Sunnis would not be quite as disliked, or hated, as they are today, where George W. Bush is now giving material support to the Shiites who George H. W. Bush spurned, when he was president!

Boy, between these two Bush's, they sure can make quite a mess of things in this world of OURS, can't they?

Leaders who impose elaborate strategies on people cause social reactions that undermine the structure of the organization BECAUSE CLEVER STRATEGIES strike a resonant chord in people, and trigger their own cunning responses!

If leaders, instead, GUIDE the organization with simplicity and directness, the inherent cleverness of the people will be disarmed.

Simple and direct leadership is HIGHLY EFFECTIVE when it is intelligently aligned with the general trends in the environment!

FOR THAT REASON, it is essential for leaders to examine both the current patterns in society and the constant laws of nature!

- Commentaries on Tao Te Ching of Lao Tze by R. L. Wing

"They said, 'You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the people'".

"And I said, you know something?"

"Whether it resignates or not doesn't matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the right thing is hearing the voices of people who work!"

- George W. Bush, Portland, Oregon; October 31, 2000

The question is really one of whether George should resignate, and I, for one, would be for that!

That is an idea that would certainly resonate with me, alright, George resignating, that is, and it would be damn good for OUR America to boot!

March 28, 2005

OP-ED COLUMNIST

"Is No One Accountable?" By BOB HERBERT

The Bush administration is desperately trying to keep the full story from emerging.

But there is no longer any doubt that prisoners seized by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been killed, tortured, sexually humiliated and otherwise grotesquely abused.

These atrocities have been carried out in an atmosphere in which administration officials have routinely behaved as though they were above the law, and thus accountable to no one.

People have been rounded up, stripped, shackled, beaten, incarcerated and in some cases killed, without being offered even the semblance of due process.

No charges.

No lawyers.

No appeals.

Arkan Mohammed Ali is a 26-year-old Iraqi who was detained by the U.S. military for nearly a year at various locations, including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

According to a lawsuit filed against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Ali was at times beaten into unconsciousness during interrogations.

He was stabbed, shocked with an electrical device, urinated on and kept locked - hooded and naked - in a wooden, coffinlike box.

He said he was told by his captors that soldiers could kill detainees with impunity.

(This was not a boast from the blue. On Saturday, for example, The Times reported that the Army would not prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Mr. Ali's story is depressingly similar to other accounts pouring in from detainees, human rights groups, intelligence sources and U.S. government investigators.

If you pay close attention to what is already known about the sadistic and barbaric treatment of prisoners by the U.S., you can begin to wonder how far we've come from the Middle Ages.

The alleged heretics hauled before the Inquisition were not permitted to face their accusers or mount a defense.

Innocence was irrelevant.

Torture was the preferred method of obtaining confessions.

No charges were ever filed against Mr. Ali, and he was eventually released.

But what should be of paramount concern to Americans is this country's precipitous and frightening descent into the hellish zone of lawlessness that the Bush administration, on the one hand, is trying to conceal and, on the other, is defending as absolutely essential to its fight against terror.

The lawsuit against Mr. Rumsfeld was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, a New York-based group, on behalf of Mr. Ali and seven other former detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan who claim to have been tortured by U.S. personnel.

The suit charges that Mr. Rumsfeld personally authorized unlawful interrogation techniques and abdicated his responsibility to stop the torture and other abuses of prisoners in U.S. custody.

It contends that the abuse of detainees was widespread and that Mr. Rumsfeld and other top administration officials were well aware of it.

According to the suit, it is unreasonable to believe that Mr. Rumsfeld could have remained in the dark about the rampant mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody.

It cites a wealth of evidence readily available to the secretary, including the scandalous eruptions at Abu Ghraib prison, the reports of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, myriad newspaper and magazine articles, internal U.S. government reports, and concerns expressed by such reputable groups as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

(The committee has noted, among other things, that military intelligence estimates suggest that 70 percent to 90 percent of the people detained in Iraq had been seized by mistake.)

Whether this suit will ultimately be successful in holding Mr. Rumsfeld personally accountable is questionable.

But if it is thoroughly argued in the courts, it will raise yet another curtain on the stomach-turning practices that have shamed the United States in the eyes of the world.

The primary aim of the lawsuit is quite simply to re-establish the rule of law.

"It's that fundamental idea that nobody is above the law," said Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First.

"The violations here were created by policies that deliberately undermined the rule of law."

"That needs to be challenged."

Lawlessness should never be an option for the United States.

Once the rule of law has been extinguished, you're left with an environment in which moral degeneracy can flourish and a great nation can lose its soul.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Lawlessness should never be an option for the United States.

Once the rule of law has been extinguished, you're left with an environment in which moral degeneracy can flourish and a great nation can lose its soul.

Boy, and can it ever!

"Expert: Malnutrition Affects Iraq Kids"

Wed Mar 30,12:45 PM ET

By JONATHAN FOWLER, Associated Press Writer

GENEVA - Malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis has almost doubled since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, a hunger specialist told the U.N. human rights body Wednesday in a summary of previously reported studies on health in Iraq.

By last fall, 7.7 percent of Iraqi children under 5 suffered acute malnutrition, compared to 4 percent after Saddam's ouster in April 2003, said Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.

Malnutrition, which is exacerbated by a lack of clean water and adequate sanitation, is a major killer of children in poor countries.

Children who survive are usually physically and mentally impaired for life, and are more vulnerable to disease.

The situation facing Iraqi youngsters is "a result of the war led by coalition forces," said Ziegler, an outspoken Swiss sociology professor and former lawmaker whose previous targets have included Swiss banks, China, Brazil and Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

Overall, more than a quarter of Iraqi children don't get enough to eat, Ziegler told the 53-nation commission, which is halfway through its annual six-week session.

The U.S. delegation and other coalition countries declined to respond to his presentation, which compiled the findings of studies conducted by other specialists.

In reporting the 7.7 percent malnutrition rate for Iraqi youngsters, the Norwegian-based Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science said in November that the figure was similar to the levels in some African countries.

Iraq was generally regarded as having good nutrition rates in the 1970s and 1980s, but problems emerged when the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The United Nations later began an oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy food and medicine.

That was credited with nearly doubling the Iraqi population's annual food intake and halving malnutrition among children.

Ziegler did not mention the role of Iraq's insurgency in the nutrition problem, something often cited by aid groups.

Late last year, Carol Bellamy, head of UNICEF, said the violence hampers the delivery of adequate supplies of food.

Ziegler also cited an October 2004 U.S. study that estimated as many as 100,000 more Iraqis — many of them women and children — had died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would normally have died, based on the death rate before the war.

"Most died as a result of the violence, but many others died as a result of the increasingly difficult living conditions, reflected in increasing child mortality levels," he said.

The authors of the report in the British-based medical journal The Lancet — researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad — conceded their data were of "limited precision."

Ziegler also told the commission he was concerned about hunger in North Korea, Palestinian areas, Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur region, Zimbabwe, India, Myanmar, the Philippines and Romania.

Worldwide, he said, more than 17,000 children under 5 die daily from hunger-related diseases.

"The silent daily massacre by hunger is a form of murder," Ziegler said.

"It must be battled and eliminated."

end quotes

EXCEPT ....

In that battle, there would be NO BIG BUCKS to be made, and so, that battle is not fought!

And overheard on the internet:

At one Army base, the annual trip to the rifle range had been canceled for the second year in a row, but the semi-annual physical fitness test was still on as planned.

One soldier mused, "Does it bother anyone else that the Army doesn't seem to care how well we can shoot, but they are extremely interested in how fast we can run?

The Kurds were actually promised a "Kurdistan" by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. But when all was said and done, the French and Brits created the map we have today and there is no Kurdistan. I think the Turks had something to do with shafting the Kurds. Their peoples overlap regions of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.

And yes, those Bushies can sure do a lot of damage.

But hey, as our Governator would say, "It's nothing PERSONAL."

It's the oil, stupid.

And here is an interesting story from OUR America that just came in over the "wire":

U.S. National - AP

"Armed Volunteers Plan to Patrol Border"

Wed Mar 30, 4:14 PM ET U.S. National - AP

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN, Associated Press Writer

TOMBSTONE, Ariz. - Hundreds of volunteers, some of them armed, are expected to take up positions along the Mexican border Friday and begin patrolling for illegal immigrants — an exercise some fear could attract racist crackpots and lead to vigilante violence.

Organizers of the Minuteman Project said the civilian volunteers, many of whom were recruited over the Internet, will meet first for a rally in this one-time silver mining town, then fan out across 23 miles of the San Pedro Valley to watch the border for a month and report sightings of illegal activity to Border Patrol agents.

Minuteman field operations director Chris Simcox described the project as "the nation's largest neighborhood watch group" and said one of the goals is to make the public aware of how porous the border is.

Jim Gilchrist, a retired accountant from Aliso Viejo, Calif., who organized the project, said that some volunteers will carry handguns, which is allowed under Arizona law, but are being instructed to avoid confrontation, even if shot at.

Still, law enforcement officials and human rights advocates are worried about the potential for bloodshed.

Critics contend the project may attract anti-immigrant racists and vigilantes looking to confront illegal immigrants.

At least one white supremacist group has mentioned the project on its Web site.

"They are domestic terrorists that represent a danger to the country and could promote a major border conflict that will have serious ramifications and consequences," said Armando Navarro, a University of California-Riverside political science professor and coordinator of the National Alliance for Human Rights, made up mostly of Hispanic activists.

Michael Nicley, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector, said the volunteers are "not the kind of help the Border Patrol is asking for."

Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever said he fears immigrant smugglers might open fire on the volunteers.

"I wouldn't anticipate that people of that persuasion would act or react any differently to anybody, citizen or law enforcement alike, if they were confronted and felt like their cargo was in jeopardy," he said.

The project's organizers gave assurances the volunteers will be closely monitored.

"If it gets to a situation where someone's life is in danger," said David Helppler, Minuteman security coordinator, "I will end the project."

Project organizers said they expect 800 to 1,000 volunteers.

How many might actually show is unclear; similar efforts in the past few years flopped.

One of them drew only about a half-dozen people.

On Wednesday, the Homeland Security Department announced that it is assigning 534 additional agents to the porous Arizona border to help keep out potential terrorists and illegal immigrants.

The 370-mile Arizona border is considered the most vulnerable stretch of the 2,000-mile southern border.

Of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol last year, 51 percent crossed into the country at the Arizona border.

Some people in this town nearly 30 miles north of the Mexican border, best known as the site of the 1881 shootout at the OK Corral, are eagerly awaiting the volunteers' arrival.

Tombstone Mayor Andree De Journett thinks of the volunteers as tourists and said they could boost the local economy.

"I've met five or six of them, they haven't been too bad so far," he said, estimating that 500 extra visitors staying for a month could spend $10,000 or more locally per day.

Marilynn Slade, Tombstone's city clerk, said the more attention drawn to illegal immigration, the better.

"The vast majority of the people feel that the feds should be dealing more aggressively with the problem," she said.

"There's a huge, huge cry down here."
___

On the Net:

Minuteman Project: http://www.minutemanproject.com

U.S. Customs and Border Protection: http://www.cbp.gov

And before I must leave here once again, I wanted to "close the loop" as it were, with respect to this reference above of Karl Rove as America's Joseph Goebbels!

Who was Goebbels, and why should it matter to us that Karl Rove might be OUR re-incarnation of him?

Let's look and see:

Joseph Goebbels
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

http:www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels

Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945) was Adolf Hitler's Propaganda Minister (see Propagandaministerium) in Nazi Germany.

He was a prominent figure of the regime, known for his great rhetorical skills.

He was born to the accountant Friedrich Goebbels and his wife Marian (née Oldenhausen) in Rheydt (now Mönchengladbach) in a Catholic area in the Rhineland.

Because of a club foot he was rejected when he volunteered for military service at the beginning of World War I.

After earning a Ph.D from the University of Heidelberg in 1921, he worked as a journalist and wrote some literature.

Joining the Nazi Party in 1924 (his later statement to have joined the party in 1922 belongs to his early lies), he initially opposed Hitler's leadership, but later changed sides to support him.

His diary shows many instances of great admiration for Hitler.

He played a large role in helping the Nazis achieve and retain power by creating propaganda to present the Nazi ideology to the German people in a favourable light.

He was also a committed anti-Semite, being involved with Kristallnacht in 1938, and later connected with the Nazi Final Solution, especially the deportation of Jews from Berlin.

On February 18, 1943, he delivered the Sportpalast speech, or Total War speech, a prominent speech to motivate the German people to continue the struggle when the tide of World War II was turning against Germany.

During the final stages of the war, before his suicide, Hitler appointed Goebbels Chancellor of Germany in his will (with Karl Dönitz as President—the Führer title was not granted in the will).

His government, which only ended up lasting a few hours, was not recognised by the Allied powers.

On May 1, 1945, Goebbels and his wife killed themselves with the help of SS bodyguards, as well as their six children whom they had given names starting with an 'H' from Hitler:

Like Hitler's final moments, the details of the death of the Goebbels family remain unclear.

While it is assumed that they were all poisoned with cyanide, some contend that he shot his wife Magda Goebbels and himself afterwards; however, when their bodies were found by the Soviets, they were apparently too charred to discern whether this was true.

Goebbels' technique is the name given to the policy of repeating a lie until it is taken to be the truth.

For example when Goebbel took ownership of the "Der Angriff" newspaper he attacked a man called Weiss calling him Isidor Weiss.

Isidor is to German ears an insulting name with strong anti-Jewish connotation.

This was done to such an extent that the public believed Isidor to be his real name and he became a figure of fun and ridicule.

Goebbels in popular culture

In popular culture Goebbels is often seen as the personification of misleading, harmful propaganda.

In George Orwell's "Animal Farm", the pig named Squealer is quite possibly intended to be a direct analog of Goebbels.

Squealer consistently and skillfully misleads the animals of the farm as to the true nature of the corrupt pigs' activities through propaganda and rhetoric.

end quotes

SO?

Squealer!

Karl Rove?

This morning, I was listening to the local news on the radio, and they were interviewing local police chiefs and fire chiefs around the area as to the impact that the rising cost of fuel was going to have on them, since they must operate on a fixed budget, unlike George W. Bush, who can simply manipulate here and there, since he is not at all accountable to anyone for anything, and especially fiscal responsibility.

As I listened to these people speaking about the impact of rising fuel prices on their operations, which are directly related to public health and safety in the local communities, it came back home to me one more time exactly how out of touch with the lives of people and communities in OUR America, Washington, D$C$ really is.

For them down there, nothing at all seems to matter.

The law certainly doesn't anyway, and when the law itself becomes a joke, then all else rapidly goes with it, such as stability in OUR local communities, which is where we all must live, BUT NOT THE POLITICIANS!

POLITICIANS live in "cloud-cuckoo land", or maybe, "Never-Never Land", where they are "never, never" without, because of their ability to just keep on taking, and taking, and taking, from us, who, because of them, and their $GREED$, will never, never have enough for OUR communities, for basic things like fire and police protection.

And so, this next story comes as no surprise to me, and I would be surprised if anyone, outside of George W. Bush and the POLITICIANS of both stripes down there in "out-of-touch-with-reality" Washington, D$C$, was surprised, as well.

Like a dog's tail follows the dog wherever the dog goes, so too does "inflation" follow rising prices for raw materials and energy, and you would have thought those "smart boys" down there in "out-of-touch-with-reality" Washington, D$C$ would have factored that into the "equation" BEFORE they went out and created all of this unrest and uncertainty in OUR world which is in part spurring the rapidly rising cost of energy in this country.

OR DID THEY?

Top Stories - Knight Ridder Newspapers

"High oil prices spur broader fears of inflation"

Wed Mar 30, 5:48 PM ET

By Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder Newspapers

SHADY SIDE, Md. - Soaring fuel costs, rising interest rates and creeping retail prices are hitting American pocketbooks in a combination unseen since the early '80s.

Inflation isn't surging anywhere near the 13.5 percent peak of 1980, but it's rising worrisomely as the economy suffers many strains, with a common root in global competition.

Oil prices grab the headlines, but prices for raw materials such as steel and even meat are rising too.

Growing global demand is to blame.

China, India and Brazil - emerging economies expanding fast - are competing with U.S. business for raw materials, driving up their prices.

Oysterman Don Sheckells feels the inflationary pinch of high fuel prices, which are driving many Maryland watermen to other jobs.

He's one of the few still in Shady Side, working the Chesapeake Bay as he has since 1972.

Disease has ravaged the oysters and cut their harvests, and the jump in marine-fuel costs hit Sheckells hard.

"It used to be 80 or 90 cents a gallon" less than 10 years ago - adjusted for inflation, 85 cents in 1997 would be a bit over $1 today - "but now it's double that," said Sheckells, bracing for $2.00 or more per gallon at his next fill-up.

"It's going to hurt."

When prices of goods and services rise, that's inflation.

Oil prices are now inflation's biggest driver: They reached $57 a barrel earlier this month before tapering off to around $54 this week.

Higher oil prices raise operating costs and eat into the profits of fuel-dependent businesses such as airlines, cruise ships and package-delivery firms, not to mention anyone who drives.

The costs of other raw materials are soaring too.

This month, prices of core intermediate goods - semi-finished goods, such as the nylon used to make a tent - are rising at an annual pace above 8 percent, the Labor Department reported.

That's the fastest in 20 years.

Prices on finished goods rose at a much slower pace: 2.8 percent, still the fastest since 1992.

To quell inflation, the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates.

Higher interest rates tend to reduce purchases of homes, cars and other big-ticket items.

That eventually takes the steam out of inflation - and sometimes out of the economy.

If the Fed slows things too much, that can tip the economy into recession, as it has several times in the past 50 years.

Sometimes that's the only way to stop inflation.

When commodity prices began rising last year, many businesses ate the costs and tried to offset them by working more efficiently or cutting back elsewhere.

Now they're starting to pass them on to clients in the form of higher prices.

That means prices are rising throughout the manufacturing chain, and the results eventually show up on store shelves.

"This suggests some further pass-through into higher consumer prices will occur in the months ahead," warns investment bank Goldman Sachs in New York.

Miami-based Carnival Corp., the giant cruise-ship line, anticipates a 23 percent increase in fuel costs this year.

United Parcel Service operates more than 500 planes and 88,000 delivery vehicles.

It tries to control costs by purchasing fuel in bulk.

Last year those costs exceeded $1.4 billion.

With oil prices spiraling, UPS imposed a fuel surcharge March 7 to pass along some of the higher cost to consumers.

Higher oil prices hit manufacturing, too.

PPG Industries of Pittsburgh makes brand-name retail paints such as Olympic, Lucite and Pittsburgh.

On March 15 it announced price increases to defray "the rapid escalation of raw-material costs."

Petrochemicals are used to make paint.

When oil prices go up, paint gets more expensive.

PPG spokesman Jeff Worden said that in the first three months of this year, the company's raw-material costs rose by $50 million.

The Polymer Group of North Charleston, S.C., makes textiles that are used in doctors' scrubs and disposable diapers for consumer-product giants such as Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble.

Its products contain polyester and polypropylene, both of which come from petroleum.

"We haven't passed on 100 percent" of the cost increases, said Dennis Norman, the company's vice president of strategic planning.

"We're doing everything we can to mitigate the cost increases to customers."

Higher steel prices are making Whirlpool washing machines and Caterpillar tractors more costly.

Higher global meat prices forced Bruce Rohde, the chairman of Con-Agra Foods Inc. in Omaha, Neb., to announce aggressive price increases for lunch meats.

Con-Agra owns brands such as Armour hot dogs, Butterball turkeys and Hebrew National lunch meats.

To clamp a lid on this incipient inflation, the Fed has increased short-term interest rates seven times since last June.

At its most recent move, on March 22, it noted that "pressures on inflation have picked up in recent months" and signaled that more aggressive rate increases may be necessary.

A day later, the Labor Department reported that the consumer price index had shot up by an unexpectedly robust 0.4 percent in February.

The Fed is trying to ease off the gas instead of stepping on the brakes, but getting the balance right is tricky.

If it raises interest rates too far, that could threaten the hot housing market.

Home prices have risen more than 40 percent over the past four years in many metropolitan areas.

Many economists think they're going up largely on expectations of even higher prices rather than economic fundamentals, making home prices a speculative financial bubble that could burst.

Mortgage interest rates tend to rise with Fed rate increases.

If they go high enough, buyers may dwindle and home prices could fall.

That could lead to defaults on mortgages and bankruptcies.

The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage climbed to 6.01 percent this week, compared with 5.40 in the same week of March 2004.

Today's rates remain historically low, but some analysts think there's a psychological barrier at 7 percent, since the 30-year rate has been under that since March 2002, and under 8 percent since August 2000.

Exceed those numbers and buyers may disappear.

Waitress Sandra Howes has had her home near Annapolis on the market since December.

She greets rising mortgage rates with a brave face.

"Maybe they'll help sell my house more quickly," she reasoned between customers at the Double T, an old-fashioned diner.

She hopes someone will snap it up soon to stay ahead of rising borrowing costs.

So far, consumers appear only a little worried about rising prices and interest rates.

The Consumer Confidence Index dipped only slightly for March.

It's published monthly by The Conference Board, a private business-research center.

"We haven't seen much of a drawback on spending."

"It would really depend on how high and how long; I think duration is important here," said Lynn Franco, a Conference Board economist.

"So far, we've seen consumers at least weathering the hikes well."

The test is how far rates have to rise.

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who's balanced these risks since 1987, knows the danger.

As economist Ed Yardeni noted this week:

"The Fed chairman retires on February 1, 2006."

"He certainly doesn't want to burst the housing bubble now and push the economy into a consumer-led recession."

And speaking of the "law", and being "out-of-touch" with it down there in Washington, D$C$:

"Justice deprived"

The Bush administration should act upon the second thoughts about military tribunals

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The notion that foreign terrorism suspects should be prosecuted by military tribunals has its origin in the rash thinking that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

What was a bad but perhaps understandable idea then, that suspects on trial at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba weren't entitled to the same rights as defendants tried in U.S. criminal courts or soldiers facing courts-martial, is an indefensible one now.

So much so that the Defense Department is seriously reconsidering the policy, at the urging of military lawyers.

More rights for Guantanamo Bay defendants, and a ban on confessions obtained through torture, are possible after all.

Same goes for the right to hear and contest evidence against them.

Possible, that is, after more than three years of unrelenting protests by federal courts, foreign governments and human rights groups.

It's that first rank of dissent, of course, that is most significant.

A ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson in Washington last November put an appropriate stop to one of the first such tribunals, one considering the case against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former aide to Osama bin Laden.

Judge Robertson sensibly ruled that even the likes of Mr. Hamdan should have hearings to determine if they are entitled to prisoner-of-war status, which requires a court martial, rather than a military tribunal, under the Geneva Conventions.

The very establishment of the tribunals, the judge said, amounted to improperly bypassing Congress.

Only the objections of Judge Robertson, or any other critic of military tribunals, don't necessarily prevail in the end.

Changing the way Guantanamo Bay detainees are prosecuted is instead the source of an internal White House battle.

Among those resisting new rules is Vice President Dick Cheney.

As Mr. Cheney's counsel, David Addington, put it in a recent meeting of Bush administration officials, according to a New York Times account, "We don't need any changes in the commissions."

But even military courts-martial, the standard wisely advocated for foreign terrorism suspects, have guarantees against self-incrimination and ensure the right to a prompt trial.

By now, the Bush administration should be able, as a matter of consensus, to accept such simple mechanics of justice.

An order signed by Mr. Bush on Nov. 13, 2001, promising that the tribunals would be "full and fair" has come to speak for itself.

That "justice delayed is justice denied," as Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes most famously repeated, of course occupies a central place in the American legal system.

So what might be said of a justice that's not just delayed, but rather simply deprived?

And since this story just came in on the "wire", and since it is directly relevant to this IRAQ SITUATION that we are monitoring in here, I will include it for the record right now, instead of dealing with some "housekeeping" matters, such as "JUSTICE DEPRIVED", here in OUR America, and some comments jeffmoskin made above on the "cold war" allegedly being over:

Top Stories - Chicago Tribune

"U.S. stays out of new Iraq's political wars"

28 minutes ago

By Colin McMahon Tribune foreign correspondent

In the hours before the National Assembly opened for business, Iraqi political leaders desperate to find a suitable candidate for the speaker's post asked American diplomats to help twist arms and broker a deal.

The Americans declined, a U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

And Tuesday afternoon, during only its second session, the Transitional National Assembly collapsed into rancor and retreated into secrecy.

Some deputies were irate.

Others were embarrassed.

A few spoke of a political crisis.

But by Wednesday, American officials were treating the setback as a "bump in the road" and insisting that Iraq's march to democracy is unbroken.

"I expect there will be more hiccups like this," said the U.S. diplomat, outlining why the Americans are sticking to a limited role in a process that has dragged on far longer than anyone predicted.

"This is tough for [the Iraqis]."

"This is not part of their historical culture."

The National Assembly is to meet again Sunday.

If the various factions of Shiite Muslims, Kurds and Sunnis can agree on a candidate for speaker, the parliament is expected to appoint one then.

With that done, the assembly could elect the Iraqi president and vice presidents.

Next to come would be a prime minister and a Cabinet.

But few officials want to predict when all those steps would take place.

The Shiites and Kurds who control most of the seats in the assembly have been promising a deal for weeks.

Yet two months after the Jan. 30 elections that energized large parts of Iraq, the nation is still limping along without a government.

Whatever the deal is and whenever it is concluded, U.S. officials say it will come with little American intervention, but not for a lack of concern.

U.S. military and civilian officials acknowledge that the longer Iraq goes without a government, and the deeper the sense of instability, the more insurgents trying to derail the political process will benefit.

Insurgent attacks have dropped in March compared with the past several months, but officials warn that the guerrillas are still capable of numerous small operations and the occasional spectacular one.

Car bomb kills 1 at school

On Wednesday a car bomb outside a primary school in the town of Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad killed a guard.

Insurgents also targeted Shiite pilgrims traveling to Karbala for the religious festival of Arbaeen on Thursday.

At least 10 people were wounded in two attacks, news services reported.

Television channel Al Jazeera also broadcast a tape showing three Romanian journalists who were reported kidnapped Monday.

The three and a fourth unidentified person were seated on the ground in a room while two men, their faces hidden by scarves, trained guns on them, The Associated Press reported.

A land mine also killed a U.S. Marine near the Syrian border, the military said.

The U.S. diplomat who spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity warned that significant delays would cost Iraq the momentum it gained from the Jan. 30 elections.

If the National Assembly fails to write a new constitution by mid-August, the parliament could invoke a clause in the transitional law giving members six more months to work.

That would push back a national referendum on the constitution, which is supposed to come before mid-October.

It also would push back national elections for a permanent government, which are to be held by year's end.

It would also delay the cause of democracy, the diplomat said.

"Elections generate their own positive momentum," he said.

"This is not the time to slow down."

"The best way to undercut the insurgency and build credibility on the street is to maintain momentum."

But so far, advising and consulting are as far as the Americans say they will step into the process.

Wary of any deal that could be slapped with a "Made in the USA" sticker, U.S. officials are neither dictating terms nor pushing personalities, they say.

"We are not suggesting names for jobs," the diplomat said.

"We are not suggesting numbers for particular parties or lists or factions within the Cabinet.

"Those kinds of tough political compromises have to be made by Iraqis . . . because those compromises have to stick."

Allawi reportedly disappointed

Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was reportedly disappointed the United States did not push for him as a compromise transitional prime minister, according to sources in the Sunni political community.

At various times the Kurds and the Shiites have come to the Americans with complaints during their long negotiations over how a new government would work and who would run it.

But generally, Iraqi politicians have advanced the argument that any deal or any government too closely associated with the U.S. would lack credibility among many Iraqis.

"The Americans agree to help us, and we appreciate that, but they have not interfered, and we do not want interference," said Ali al-Dabbagh, a member of the Shiite alliance that dominates the National Assembly.

"They know that applying pressure would destroy the whole process."

The U.S. diplomat declined to speculate on how long a delay is too long, how much instability is too much and when the Americans might feel compelled to step in more aggressively.

"Whatever agreement is ultimately reached, the Iraqis have to abide by it," the diplomat said.

"If it is imposed from the outside it will be only too easy for people to say, `It was forced on me, and I now refuse to abide by it.'"

Who says we even care?

We came to secure the OIL.

We did.

We will wait. If they have a civil war, so be it. We'll sell weapons to both sides.

May God and the world forgive our formerly peace-loving nation for the egregious sins of these mad men.