Friday, January 16, 2004

Hostility To Militarism FEATURED ARTICLES - From his Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam, by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr - To the Left of Right, by The Weasel Hunter - Memo for the President: Your State-of-the-Union Address, by Ray McGovern QUOTE OF THE DAY "These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." - - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. From his Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam (April 1967 At Manhattan's Riverside Church) http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-13.htm KNOW YOUR HISTORY - JANUARY 16th January 16, 1991 -- US invades Kuwait & Iraq. Several dozen US troops (many victims of "friendly fire") & up to 400,000 Iraqi citizens die in the following weeks. An estimated 1,000,000 Iraqis die - a vast number being children - due to the effects of the following five years of U.S.-led global economic embargo. January 17, 1965 -- Segregationists assault Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma, Alabama, as he registers as the first black guest in a hotel built a century earlier with slave labor. January 18, 1993 -- The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was observed in all 50 U.S. states for the first time. RHINO HERE: Thursday would have been Dr. Martin Luther King's 75th birthday, had he not been gunned down by right wing extremists like so many other heroes of the day. The tri-letter broadcasters, those bandits who always end up pocketing the lions share of all the multi-millions in campaign funds, usually try to honor Dr. King's memory by replaying the usual clips of his comments on race relations like the "I have a dream" speech. They never show his passionate addresses to the nation opposing the war in Viet Nam and how he connected the plight of America's poor to the tremendous waste of resources that is America's addiction to militarism. When the evil dick cheney or his imbecile commander 'n thief speak of the BILLIONS of dollars they think are warranted to create democracy in Iraq, and when the sheep like democratic congressional reps vote to give them those BILLIONS, do they ever stop to think what a few billion greenbacks could do for the working poor of the U.S. - or for that matter, the world. When will they realize that real democracy will be but a fleeting illusion until all the people of the world have food on the table & availability to decent health care. Here's a ditty circulating the web on the subject of the words, "A BILLION." Subject: A Billion The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" casually, think about whether you want that politician spending your tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into perspective in one of its releases - A billion seconds ago, it was 1959. - A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive. - A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age - A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate Washington spends it. The Rhino's been thinking of Republicans he's known & respected in the past & how many of them must be dealing with tortured souls pondering the heartless actions of the shrub gang. Below is a well constructed summary of just how far right of right these ideologues have tread. It was provided to Rhino's Blog by the ever sleuthfull Weasel Hunter. To the Left of Right by The Weasel Hunter ...In the execution of its duties, the Bush administration (BushCo) has gnawed, clawed, slithered, shit, spit, and sidestepped so far to the Right that a number of well-established bedfellows are passing (vociferously) to its Left. (1) The U.S. Army War College In a report published in late December, the staid and honorable United States Army War College calls the BushCo takeover of Iraq "unfocused" and "unnecessary." The report, written by Jeffrey Record, a former Vietnam war advisor and professor at the U.S. Air War College in Alabama, predicts that the war on terror may launch "open-ended and gratuitous conflict." The War College report can be found at: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/bounding/bounding.pdf (2) Paul O'Neill & The Wall Street Journal Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill (neither a gadfly nor a revolutionary) was a major source for "The Price of Loyalty," a new book written by former Wall Street Journal (not exactly a Left-wing rag) reporter Ron Suskind. In the book, O'Neill portrays the president as "indifferent," and "disengaged," and "carefully insulated" by a "praetorian guard" led by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-bush-oneill-portrait.html (3) U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist The Protect Act, signed into Law by your president last April, threatens judicial independence by suggesting that judges could be called to account for any variation in sentencing. Who is slapping Congress' wrist for passing the Protect Act? That old rabble-rouser, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist. In his annual report Chief Justice Rehnquist declared the Protect Act an "unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges." Source: http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/01/rehnquist.judiciary/ (4) Kevin Phillips, lifetime Republican, chief political strategist for Richard Nixon (not your average muckraker) In his new book, "American Dynasty," Phillips describes what he calls "the politics of deceit in the House of Bush." In American Dynasty, Phillips traces the course of Bush's family over the past 100 years, detailing how they sought influence "in the back corridors" of the oil and defense industries, investment banking and the intelligence establishment. Elites, not elections, put Bush in power. "Four generations of building toward dynasty have infused the Bush family's hunger for power and practices of crony capitalism with a moral arrogance and backstage disregard of the democratic and republican traditions of the U.S. government." Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-phillips11jan11,1,59027.story Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pid=2751 Also pissed off: (5) The Carnegie Endowment The Bush administration will today be accused of "systematically misrepresenting" the threat posed by "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction" in a comprehensive report on post-war findings. Source: http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/11787_carnegie.html (6) The Central Intelligence Agency (how do you get to the Right of the CIA?) At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department began investigating charges that the White House leaked the name of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press in retaliation for remarks by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, challenging President Bush's claim that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa. An unnamed administration official told the Washington Post that two White House officials had revealed the agent's identity to at least six journalists. "Clearly," the official said, "it was meant purely and simply for revenge." The White House denied that Karl Rove was responsible for the leak, which was a violation of the Intelligence Protection Act and carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines. Source: http://www.harpers.org/CIA.html (7) The General Accounting Office (government bean counters and bureaucrats,not usually litigious) The General Accounting Office filed suit against Vice President Dick Cheney to force him to reveal the identities of energy-company executives who advised him in his drafting of the administration's energy policy. Source: http://www.harpers.org/DickCheney.html For comments, suggestions, or to SUBSCRIBE to Weasel Tracks:  e-mail weaselhunter@earthlink.net and write SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Last but not least, is the latest letter to the shrub from the steering group of the organization known as the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. This 5th such memorandum offers suggestions for bush the lesser on how to handle his state of the union address scheduled for next Thursday. Worthwhile perspectives indeed. VIPS is a coast-to-coast enterprise; mostly intelligence officers from analysis side of CIA, but Operations side also represented. VIPS can be reached at vips@counterpunch.org 7:46:06 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - Memo for the President Memo for the President: Your State-of-the-Union Address by Ray McGovern, Published on CommonDreams.org , 1/15/04 MEMORANDUM FOR:       The President FROM:                Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity SUBJECT:          Your State-of-the-Union Address We write this, our fifth such memorandum to you since our critique of Secretary of State Colin Powell's UN speech last February, out of concern that the same advisers who served you so poorly in drafting the Iraq section of last year's state-of-the-union address will embarrass you again. Your credibility and that of the intelligence community suffered a major blow from the hyperbole that characterized that speech-not to mention the infamous 16 words based on the forgery alleging that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. The panel led by Gen. Brent Scowcroft, whom you asked to investigate how that wound up in your speech, reportedly attributes it to desperation on the part of your staff to "find something affirmative" to support claims like those made by Vice President Dick Cheney that Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted" Iraq's nuclear program. We suggest you ensure that those over-eager functionaries responsible for the 16 words, and for your claim last spring that weapons of mass destruction had been found in the form of two "bio-trailers"-since proven to be generators of hydrogen for weather balloons-take no hand in drafting this year's address. Spindoctors Before your state-of-the-union address last year we urged you to resist the temptation to favor "ideologues and spin doctors over the professional intelligence officers paid to serve you." Specifically, we noted that most of our major allies, with whom we have extensive intelligence sharing arrangements, had taken strong issue with US claims regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They found the evidence on the presence of weapons of mass destruction inconclusive-and far short of what would be necessary to justify war. Ten months of unsuccessful quest for such weapons, together with freshly obtained documentary evidence, has proved them right. After all the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction as the main reason for war, it will take considerable humility and courage to acknowledge error. But such a step is needed to stem further erosion in the credibility of your administration's statements and the intelligence adduced to justify them. Further dissembling on Iraq will inevitably bring still more damage. Besides, conceding error is the honorable thing to do-and the only way to go forward with confidence and self-respect... READ IT ALL AT:    http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-07.htm "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 6:37:48 AM    comment

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