Freeze Frame

During a recent public relations speech in West Virginia, a woman in the carefully screened audience commented to President Bush that the media do not report the good things the Bush administration does. In her mind, I suppose, hearing stories about violence in Iraq, the New Orleans fiasco, and presidential misconduct shows the Bush administration in a bad light. She wishes the media would report more good stories. That’s it! We need more happy stories! We do not need an independent media that reports the truth, holds politicians accountable, and lets the political chips fall where they may. We do not need stories showing the gruesome reality of the Iraq war or showing fallen soldiers coming home in coffins. We do not need to know that, as a result of Bush’s war, tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, including innocent men, women and children. We do not need to hear evidence that shows the president has lied repeatedly to the American people and to Congress. We do not need to ...

Just like the build-up to the Iraq war, the hypocritical U.S. Government and its media allies are creating an artificial sense of urgency regarding Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney said that there will be “meaningful consequences” if Iran does not change its present course. “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” Cheney said. Sound familiar? Remember the constant media drumbeat in 2002 and 2003 regarding Saddam Hussein and Iraq? Remember the accusations that Iraq was supporting terrorism? Remember the bogus assertion that Iraq was responsible for 9/11? Remember the imagery of the “mushroom cloud” and the U.S. insistence that Iraq had a vast stockpile of chemical weapons? Of course, the former United Nations weapons inspectors were saying at the time that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but this point of view was drowned out by the loud drumbeat for war. There was no meaningful diplomacy during that time because the Bush crime family had already decided...

History will regard the 109th Senate as the most corrupt ever. In the same way that President Bush fixed the facts to fit his neocon war plans in Iraq, the Republican leadership in the 109th Senate uses its power to short-circuit meaningful debate and independent investigations of presidential wrongdoing. On March 13, 2006, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), called upon the Senate to censure President Bush for ignoring the Constitution and misleading Congress and the American people on the use of warrant-less wiretapping. Bush loyalists claim that the president has the right to circumvent existing statutes and to use whatever means he sees fit in the so-called “war on terror.” One chief loyalist, Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH), even wants to introduce legislation making Bush’s warrant-less wiretapping on American citizens legal in order to cover the president‘s past illegal actions. What a sham! Senate Majority Leader Frist (R-TN) wanted to force an immediate vote on the Feingold resolution...

The Republic of China is growing increasingly apprehensive about the massive debt associated with the U.S. dollar, so it is reportedly shopping around for a new currency such as the Euro or Yen. It doesn't take an economist to figure out that the consequences of this in the U.S. would be immense. Cheap Chinese products now line the shelves of department stores, convenience stores and gift shops all over the country, so if the government imposes tariffs on Chinese imports -- as it has threatened -- then prices will rise and the economy will suffer greatly. China is mastering capitalism, but it remains a repressive society that does not practice democracy. When Chinese students began a pro-democracy movement at Tiananmen Square, the government acted quickly to squelch it. The famous photograph of the man in front of a tank is a worthy symbol of the pro-democracy movement, but the government arrests people who speak out and thus maintains its power and control by fear and repressio...

Wakie, wakie N.S.A.! I have another blog entry for your review. There is a chill in the air this morning and just knowing that President Bush authorized the N.S.A. to spy on Americans adds to that chill. We have returned to the days of Cointelpro when the F.B.I. secretly infiltrated antiwar groups, political parties, black power organizations and even women's rights and environmental groups. They used direct infiltration by agents posing as members, but also used wiretaps and break-ins to collect information on individuals and organizations. Some individuals were put on blacklists so they could not obtain employment, even though these individuals had broken no laws and committed no crimes. All they did was support their country through progressive causes and exercise their constitutional right to dissent when the leadership in Washington took the country in the wrong direction. Same thing is true today, but new technology allows the N.S.A. to use electronic keyword searches to ...

We found out too late that the war in Iraq was based on a pack of lies -- that it was not about WMD, al Qaeda, or 9/11 -- so you claimed that the war was about "building democracy" in Iraq. O.K., let's look back at our own history so citizens realize what we are in for if we allow this horrific war to continue. The first step in democracy-building is ethnic cleansing, a process that is well under way by the Shiite majority in Iraq. In our own nation, you will remember, we tried hard to exterminate the American Indians. When that failed, we tried to eliminate their main food supply, the buffalo. That weakened them enough that we could round them up and put them on reservations. Of course, you can't build democracy without someone to do the manual labor, so you will need at least 200 years of abject slavery in order to ensure that the majority gets to live the good life while the ethnic minorities remain poor. You can keep the slavery going in different forms, such ...

One of these days, the levees around New Orleans will finally be raised and strengthened to handle a Category 5 hurricane, but land developers are already salivating over the "new" New Orleans. They imagine a New Orleans of pricey hotels, condos, and shopping districts. The single-family homes will be bulldozed and replaced with high-rent apartments so landlords can further gouge the pocketbooks and dignity of the working class poor employed in the tourist and service industries -- waiters, cashiers, nurses aides, receptionists, cooks, delivery drivers, and so on. Instead of becoming a model city that pays a living wage to its citizens, that cares about the health and welfare of its citizens from the cradle to the grave, the "new" New Orleans will likely become a showcase for the very worst of modern capitalism. Greed. The Garden district and Bourbon Street will still be the main tourist draw because of the name recognition, but the real character of the city li...