Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Re: Leonard Cohen - Anthem Dear Friends: Here we are, gathering together for another Saturday. Welcome, and a tip of the Stetson, to all the new readers who came aboard this week. We're growing. Leonard Cohen has been a favorite singer and poet of mine since college days, and his words have never lost their bite or their beauty. He reminds us that everything has value, and everyone is a teacher: "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." ANTHEM By Leonard Cohen The birds they sang at the break of day Start again I heard them say Don't dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be. The wars they will be fought again The holy dove be caught again bought and sold and bought again the dove is never free. Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. We asked for signs the signs were sent: the birth betrayed the marriage spent the widowhood of every government-- signs for all to see. Can't run no more with the lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear form me. Ring the bells that still can ring... You can add up the parts but you won't have the sum You can strike up the march, there is no drum Every heart to love will come but like a refugee. Ring the bells that still can ring... @1992 Leonard Cohen Stranger Music, Inc. (BMI) All rights Reserved. ______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ================================================== 2:04:44 PM

Re: Molly Ivins takes on the FCC Dear Friends: As everyone knows by now, on June 2 the FCC will vote on the deregulation of the airwaves and the rules governing multiple ownership. Though most of us are "freedom loving," this is a case to watch carefully. And act upon quickly, while there's still time. The dangers of an "All Fox, All the Time" radio or television is too horrible to image. (My apologies to King of the Hill, The Simpsons, and Seinfeld--all favorites of mine.) ______________________________________ Rotten, Old-Fashioned Corruption at the FCC by Molly Ivins May 29, 2003 AUSTIN, Texas -- This is a gross scandal. The Center for Public Integrity has a stunning study out on the concentration of ownership in telecommunications. The even more stunning news is that the Federal Communications Commission, which theoretically represents you and me, is about to make all of it even worse. And behind this betrayal of the public trust is nothing but rotten, old-fashioned corruption. It's the old free-trip-to-Vegas ploy, on a grand scale. The Public Integrity people examined the travel records of FCC employees and found that they have accepted 2,500 trips, costing nearly $2.8 million over the past eight years, paid for by the telecommunications and broadcast industries, which are, theoretically, "regulated" by the FCC. The industry-paid travel is on top of about $2 million a year in official travel paid for by taxpayers. According to the center, FCC commissioners and agency staffers attended hundreds of conventions, conferences and other events all over the world, including Paris, Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro. They were put up at luxury hotels such as the Bellagio in Las Vegas and ferried about by limo. Vegas was the top destination -- 330 trips -- New Orleans second with 173, then New York at 102 and London with 98 trips. Why London, you may ask. Well, do ask. So here's the result of our regulators getting all these nice freebies where they schmooze with the industry guys. The three largest local phone companies control 83 percent of home telephone lines. The two top long-distance carriers control 67 percent of that market. The four biggest cellular phone companies have 64 percent of the wireless market. The five largest cable companies pipe programming to 74 percent of the cable subscribers nationwide. The FCC is what is known in government circles as a "captive agency." It has been captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate. Those who work at captive agencies come to identify with their industry and believe their function is to service it, not regulate it. The center, www.publici.org, also found that the FCC increasingly relies on industry-generated data to justify sweeping deregulation proposals. Great, it doesn't even have its own numbers. FCC Chairman Michael ("The free market is my religion") Powell is about to pass yet another giveaway to the country's biggest media conglomerates. There will be another enormous wave of media consolidation. On June 2, the FCC will vote to end long-established rules on multiple ownership. The big players are Rupert Murdoch's News Corp./Fox, General Electric/NBC, Viacom/CBS, Disney/ABC and the Tribune Corp. You will notice that television is not giving this story, with its enormous impact, any coverage at all, and many newspapers have done no better. (William Safire of The New York Times is a noble exception.) These are public airwaves. They are owned by us, we the people. Neil Hickey reports in "The Gathering Storm Over Media Ownership" that at public hearings all over the country, there has been a huge outpouring of public concern and anxiety about what is happening. More and more people are speaking out, and the FCC's public reaction counts are completely negative, yet it goes right on doing it, as though the citizens are nothing. You can register your protest before June 2 by going to www.mediareform.net, or phoning or faxing the agency. But why should you bother, especially if they're not going to pay attention anyway? Look at what has already happened to radio. Many of the stations you listen to will not break into their programming to tell you if a tornado is headed directly for your town, or to warn you if there's a flash flood on the west side or that a toxic chemical truck has turned over near you. That's because there is no one at your radio station. You think it's a local station because a voice with your local regional accent announces the county fair attractions for next weekend and such. But that voice is an actress in Los Angeles. She reads the announcement there, and then it is inserted digitally into the programming, which is the same across the country -- generic rock, oldies, country, whatever. When you get this degree of concentration in the news media, the idea of a free press becomes a joke. Liberals and conservatives alike have a common interest in preventing the huge media conglomerates from getting even bigger. We must keep independent voices alive. This is worth raising hell about. Call your congressperson, too, because, even at captive agencies, when the pols who write the budgets speak, the agencies listen. And the pols listen when the people get stirred up enough. Let's see a little citizenly responsibility from all you patriots out there. You need to do more than sing, "I'm Proud to Be an American" to keep this country free. © 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. ______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ====================== 2:04:10 PM

Re: The Saturday Funnies Dear Friends: And now, time for the Saturday Funnies. Here's a treat for you from Andy Borowitz. Life does indeed imitate art. _____________________________________________ BUSH TO PHASE OUT ENVIRONMENT BY 2004 by Andy Borowitz All Species Under Review, President Says One day after Christine Todd Whitman departed her post at the Environmental Protection Agency, President George W. Bush announced ambitious new plans to phase out the environment altogether by 2004. "In addition to cutting taxes, it is the goal of this administration to cut our wasteful, bloated environment," Mr. Bush said in a speech before the Association of Indiscriminate Applauders in Washington, D.C. While plans to eliminate the environment entirely are still being formulated, the general strategy of the White House is to phase out the environment gradually "so that hardly anyone will notice it's gone," an aide said today. Apparently, the plan to phase out the environment may have prompted Ms. Whitman's decision to leave the EPA, since the agency's mission seemed increasingly nebulous in the absence of an environment to protect. "Christie decided to move from the EPA to New Jersey because a year from now New Jersey will still be around," one source said. The Presidents plan to eliminate the environment calls for a comprehensive review of all species currently living in the United States and the accelerated extinction of all superfluous organisms by the end of fiscal 2004. The plan also calls for a gradual reduction of air and water, with water most likely to get the axe. "If it comes down to choosing between air and water, the President will probably scrap water," one aide said. "After all, the Iraqis haven't had water in weeks and look how well they're doing." --Andy Borowitz    ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:03:39 PM

Re: America's Most Wanted Playing Cards Dear Friends: In our May 25 feature (Iraq's Most Wanted Playing Cards) we commented on those hellish Iraqi Playing Cards, (published by the U.S. Playing Card Company,ISBN: 9995569876), and offered a suggestion that "you might want to let the folks at Amazon.com know how you feel about their handling this product. Write your own on-line review of these foul cards. Better still, write lots and lots of responses to the readers' recommendations section of this product.  Best yet--create cards featuring the Bushies. And when you do, make sure you make a ton of money from it, invest it wisely in good causes, and bring the bastards down." Julia Scott's article is an answer to a prayer. Now, thanks to The Ruckus Society, we have America's Most Wanted--War Profiteer Cards. Gee, I wonder how they will ever have enough cards to feature them all. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- America's Most Wanted: War Profiteer Cards by Julia Scott AlterNet May 28, 2003 Corporate watchdogs, poker aficionados and concerned citizens will all have reason to delight in The Ruckus Society's newest bid to expose the "War Profiteers" who benefit from combat at the expense of Iraqis and Americans alike, engagingly rendered on a harmless-looking set of playing cards. Their tone is humorous, but make no mistake: these cards are an essential weapon. Their faux-camouflage finish makes them perfect for stealth viewing on the bus or at work. And while you may never actually come face-to-face with the enemy, they ensure that you'll be well armed. They're an inspired spoof of the "Iraq's Most Wanted" deck, which was issued to coalition troops in April by the U.S. Defense Department and included photos and descriptions of individuals integral to Saddam Hussein's regime. Soon the flag-buying segment of the American public had another product to covet, and sales skyrocketed. Ruckus is a well-respected progressive organization that specializes in training others in the latest in activism tools -- from internet organizing to rope climbing -- but its latest project is homegrown. The deck focuses on the multitude of incestuous relationships between oil, gas, military and defense corporations, government officials, and media groups, the conflicts of interest they evoke, and their lucrative involvement in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The "shadow governments" of world policy top this stacked deck, with the WTO, IMF and World Bank as the ace of spades, clubs and diamonds, respectively. Henry Kissinger ("Architect of Evil") reigns as the Queen of Hearts, with Dick Cheney as his King, and humorous photos of Tom Ridge and Donald Rumsfeld accompany enlightening facts about their political careers. Players can learn how Monsanto and Lockheed Martin are in bed together and how deep Bechtel and ExxonMobil's special interests go. And there's only one "Jerk" (Joker) in this deck -- "Petty Dictator" George W. Bush. The scheme was born under typical circumstances for Ruckus. Mojgone Azemun, the group's training director, first approached fellow activist and graphic designer Innosanto Nagara about the project at a ChevronTexaco civil disobedience action in mid-April. She pitched it in the time it took for him to get arrested. "He disappeared for a couple of days after that," recalls Azemun. "But he got out and asked me, 'Remember that idea? Let's do it.'" Together they spawned a plan for a different way to educate the public about corporate abuses, one that would probably not result in anyone's arrest. As it happened, fellow activists Pratap Chatterjee and Jeff Conant of the Hesperian Foundation had been planning the same project. They fused their creative efforts and individual expertise with those of Gopal Dayaneni, a trainer with Ruckus; John Sellers, Ruckus' executive director, and others. Some worked nights and weekends, staying up till 2 AM; they found a local unionized print broker, used recycled paper with soy-based inks. The cards went from concept to product in less than four weeks. But they weren't the only ones with a good idea. Several similar-minded spoof decks emerged in the meantime, including one from Gatt.org with pictures of officials they recommended be "removed from power" to ensure real world peace; sarcastic "Republican Chickenhawk" cards (officials and pundits who have avoided serving their country); Greenpeace's "Nuclear Solitaire Game;" far-out "Psychedelic Republicans;" and from the right, "The Deck of Weasels," taking jabs at The Dixie Chicks, Hans Blix, Jacques Chirac and others. The deck is available through the War Profiteers website, www.warprofiteers.com, for a $10 donation to the nonprofit. The site also acts as a portal to other activist organizations, divided up by suit (e.g. hearts for government officials -- "because they love you"). It's no coincidence that many of the "profiteers" are associated with institutions that activists have been focusing on. And clicking on a card online reveals extra intelligence on companies and officials. Compiling that information was an important part of the project for Azemun. As they were working, "I was finally being educated about the players that some people only hear about. Take Sam Nunn, for instance. A lot of people recognize his name from Congress, but now he has positions on three or four executive boards," she explained. The cards also give crucial attention to influential but lesser-known right-wing groups, such as editor William Kristol's Project for a New American Century, or the Grace News Network, a Christian media group that was handpicked by the Bush administration to produce Arabic TV news for Iraq. Early response to the cards has been overwhelming. Ruckus is printing 10,000 decks due to the volume of orders; the website gets 3,000 hits a day, many of which are from different countries in Europe. They've heard from art galleries, magicians, high school history teachers, and even a California woman who ordered several decks for her poker club. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman cracked up as she read them out on the air. In short, they've become the perfect "culture jamming" tool. "We should be putting our messages on vectors of culture to exploit our message, the same way Pepsi does with hip-hop," said Azemun. Ruckus may create a new international deck featuring Tony Blair, Hamid Karzai and other figures complicit in the exploitation of the Iraq war. There's also talk of sending them to members of Congress. Chatterjee, a journalist who created the text for the military and defense-themed cards, calls them "a good political education tool for youth" that could have a dual use in the 2004 elections. At a recent peace conference in Indonesia, he passed along several decks to activists from Afghanistan and Iraq -- "To see if they caught any of the criminals." The cards' sly, comic flavor does not detract from the seriousness of the issues they're concerned with. "If you can poke fun at something, it's no longer taboo to talk about," Sellers asserts. He says it was important to him that there be humor, which was almost too easy to do: "These are the best straight guys in the world." At the same time, remarks Nagara, "I don't see global capitalism capitulating to humor. Ultimately, we're going to have to get people organized on a much larger scale." While the deck can be used to play any card game, from "bullshit" to bridge, there is an obvious candidate. "I've been using them to play War with my friends," said Dayaneni, who compiled the information on the oil, gas and energy companies. "Once in a while you have to stop and say, 'Wait a minute: Paul Wolfowitz is an 8 and [Boeing CEO] Philip Condit's a 9? Let's reconsider this.' It makes you think.'" --Julia Scott is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and Associate Editor with Independent Arts and Media. © 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============== 2:03:15 PM

Re: The end of arts funding? Dear Friends: In a Newsweek Web Exclusive, arts editor and critic Douglas McLennan passionately writes about the looming end of arts funding. Is it a choice of where to spend money? Is it the economy, stupid? Well, yes and no. McLennan states that the argument for public funding of art for art's sake hasn't been made in more than a decade. By reducing arguments for art to economic impacts and by attaching art to laundry lists of social goods, art has been devalued and stripped of inspiration and vision. For a decade now, public arts agencies that should have been promoting the best artistic vision have instead been pandering to the public, trying to find a denominator that, if not lowest, is most common.  But the arts are not most common. The arts ought to inspire. Public arts funding indicates what the government thinks is worthwhile and of value. Arts funding in America has been broken for a long time; if it doesn't find some compelling vision to lead rather than follow, it won't just be broken, it will be gone. ____________________________ The End of Arts Funding? The NEA stayed alive during the culture wars, but its survival strategy may have done more harm than good By Douglas McLennan Newsweek Web Exclusive   May 29--Across America, government is getting out of the arts business. While states like Massachusetts, California, Florida and Michigan slash their arts budgets by half or more, lawmakers in Colorado, Oregon and New Jersey consider eliminating their arts agencies altogether.    The last time state governments attacked a program with such cost-cutting zeal was welfare reform in the mid-'90s. So why the arts, and why now? The obvious reason is that state governments are hurting for money and have big deficits they have to close. If it's a choice between arts and public safety or arts and roads, you know that truck has already left the turnpike.   Anticipating these all-too-familiar choices, arts leaders have spent much of the past decade churning out dozens of economic-impact studies to show that the arts are a great public investment: You want return? For every dollar government invests in nonprofit arts, eight dollars are returned to the economy. You want economic stimulus? The arts generated $134 billion in economic activity across America in 2001. You want jobs? The arts produce 4.85 million full-time equivalent American jobs. If money seems to be a language legislators understand, then arts leaders figured they'd give them economic ways to think about the arts. The strategy seemed to be paying off, too. Between 1993 and 2001, state public spending on the arts more than doubled, from $211 million in 1993, to $447 million eight years later, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. But those were boom years, and as soon as the economy started to sour, states began cutting their arts budgets, slashing $93 million combined in the past two years. This year's cuts could whack off another $100 million or more, bringing arts spending down to levels of a decade ago. Worse, the massive cuts don't just put a crimp in state arts funding, they cripple or eliminate longstanding core programs. Government is redefining its relationship with the arts while arts supporters are left sputtering their economic impact factoids and wondering why no one seems to be listening. (Pssst, have you heard that more people attended arts events last year than professional sports events?) The reason the economic arguments don't make any difference is because 1) the arts cuts aren't about money, and 2) they're all about money. They aren't about money because saving $5 million or $10 million or $20 million on an arts budget is a puny thing when you're trying to close a deficit measuring in the billions. The arts are a good financial investment-and a cheap one, too, compared to many of the investments governments make. Proposing to eliminate arts funding isn't about recapturing an extra few million that would have been spent on arts-it's about making a statement: politicians demonstrating how serious they are about budget cuts. The arts are a highly visible target, and cutting them is a symbol of political resolve to solve a difficult problem.   The cuts are all about money because arts administrators have made them about money. The culture wars of the late '80s and early '90s jolted artists, but more important, they terrified leaders of America's arts institutions, who feared that their ability to raise money was in jeopardy. Republicans made "zeroing out" the National Endowment for the Arts an official plank of the party's election campaign, and the culture wars became an ideological political crusade that seized upon incendiary images of crucifixes soaked in urine and chocolate-smeared performance artists to fuel partisan outrage. In response, the art world ducked for cover, vowing to cut out the controversial art-at least for public-funding purposes. A succession of appeasement-minded NEA chairpersons traveled the country preaching the Neville Chamberlain doctrine, stressing populism, traditional values and above all, inclusiveness. Grants to individual artists disappeared, and arts funding seemed to become an exercise in PR for the arts. How then to sell the arts to lawmakers weary of controversy? Back in 1965, Congress created the National Endowment for the Arts, proclaiming that "democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens." Americans have always been distrustful of elitism, but in the early days of the NEA there was a vision to sell: American culture could be the envy of the world (and beat the Soviets, who invested heavily in art and artists). The brash American spirit that had helped win World War II and rebuild Europe could be embodied by a culture that could produce superior citizens. The idea that government could also help bring the arts to every part of the land was heady stuff, and since 1965, some 4,000 state, local and regional arts agencies have sprung up across America. But by the late '80s-with postmodernism and conceptualism making it difficult (if not impossible) to declare artistic standards that most people could go along with, multiculturalism eroding a sense of traditional cultural canon, popular culture dominating like never before and the culture wars turning entire art forms into toxic Superfund sites-appealing to a sense of excellence didn't seem like an effective strategy. Instead of promoting culture as a means to "wisdom" and "vision" (the NEA's traditional pitch), the arts were paired up with social "goods"-arts as educational tool, arts working with troubled kids, arts promoting neighborhood improvement. To get an arts grant, an arts organization had to show its chops with whatever social agenda du jour was on the table. At the same time, arts agencies across America began assembling the bricks of an economic argument for the arts that would appeal to politicians. It was not an unsuccessful strategy. The NEA survived the culture wars, state and local arts funding soared and billions were spent in the '90s on new theaters, museums and concert halls in an orgy of arts construction.        But-as the current arts-funding crisis suggests-the survival strategy might have topped itself out and ultimately killed public arts funding. By my estimation, a pure case for public funding of art for art's sake hasn't been made in more than a decade. By reducing arguments for art to economic impacts and by attaching art to laundry lists of social goods, art's been undersold, stripped of inspiration, vision and, yes, wisdom.        Playing art as economics forces you to play by economics' rules. That means drawing bigger audiences every year. That means improving your financial situation each quarter. And it means that others will continue to run their equations of profit and loss even when you'd rather they not (like now). Art may be a great economic investment, but if it's not an investment someone chooses to make, you're out of luck. Sorry, just business.        You can always tell a theater or symphony orchestra is on the ropes when it starts worrying more about getting people in the seats than it does about inspiring audiences; that's the point it has become a follower rather than a leader and that's when it slides into real trouble.        America has extraordinary artists. But for a decade now, public arts agencies that should have been promoting the best artistic vision have instead been following behind the public, trying to find a denominator that, if not lowest, is most common. The arts are not most common. The arts ought to lead. Public arts funding is important-for better or worse, money is how government signals what it thinks is important. But arts funding in America has been broken for a long time; if it doesn't find some compelling vision to inspire rather than follow, it won't just be broken, it will be gone.        --Douglas McLennan is an arts reporter and critic and the editor of ArtsJournal.com     © 2003 Newsweek, Inc.  ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================ 2:02:40 PM

Re: This just in from France and G8 Dear Friends: This just in from France. Throughout the buildup and the invasion of Iraq, we have been strong supporters of the French. Their charming arrogance, their rude waiters, and their integrity in holding firm against Bush and Blair are admirable. The teargassing of anti-G8 protestors is not. (For more background, see the War and Peace Watch article "G8 Summit Begins Today," May 30, 2003). ______________________ Reuters Saturday, May 31, 2003 12:55 p.m. ET French Police Teargas Anarchists in G8 Eve Clash  by Jon Boyle ANNEMASSE, France (Reuters) - French police fired teargas on Saturday to disperse several hundred anarchists in the first major disturbance ahead of a summit of the "Group of Eight" leading industrialized countries. Eyewitnesses said the incident came after the protesters marched from an anti-G8 campsite near the French town of Annemasse on the Swiss border to blockade a building where French Socialist Party activists were meeting. It was the first clash in what both protest leaders and police had said would be a series of peaceful marches and sit-ins during the three-day summit in the nearby French spa town of Evian, which opens on Sunday. Authorities on both sides of the border, fearful of a repetition of violence that rocked a G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, two years ago, have mounted a massive security operation involving some 25,000 police and security officials. It was not immediately clear why the anarchists, carrying their traditional black-and-red flags, decided to march against the socialists -- although hard-left movements generally regard social democratic parties as "hirelings of capitalism." Marchers said they threw stones at the building where the socialists were meeting to discuss the G8 summit after guards inside fired a spray at them. There was no immediate comment from the socialists. The anarchists began setting up barricades but French riot police moved in, firing volleys of teargas to push them back to the campsite at Annemasse airfield, where earlier in the day protesters were instructed in passive resistance techniques. Police barricades were going up on both sides of the French- Swiss border around Lake Geneva to halt protesters trying to move off permitted routes. Army helicopters circled overhead. In Lausanne, across Lake Geneva from Evian, various groups denouncing the G8 leaders, who include President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin,, were considering ways to try to block water traffic. While most G8 leaders are staying around Evian, about a dozen prime ministers and presidents who are summit guests, including China's Hu Jintao, will stay in Lausanne and travel across Lake Geneva from the Swiss to the French side. Protesters accuse the G8 chiefs of acting like "Masters of the Universe" and say the poorer nation leaders -- who include Brazil's new left-wing President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva -- will get nothing more than crumbs from them. The G8 include Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States . Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:02:01 PM

Re: Bush claims WMD found Dear Friends: Bush continues to warp the truth until it takes the shape he wants. The latest example of this is his claiming that empty trailers were in fact weapons of mass destruction, his primary justification for waging war on Iraq. Although we don't take it for granted that corporate leaders and heads of state will always act in our best interests, we do believe in the inherent goodness of man. We  believe in stewardship--that we are our brother's keeper. We continue to believe that it is possible for leaders to act in a statesman-like manner,  with integrity, and with honesty. Hmmm. Wrong on all three counts here. __________________________ Washington Post May 31, 2003 Bush: 'We Found' Banned Weapons President Cites Trailers in Iraq as Proof By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer KRAKOW, Poland, May 30 -- President Bush, citing two trailers that U.S. intelligence agencies have said were probably used as mobile biological weapons labs, said U.S. forces in Iraq have "found the weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States' primary justification for going to war. In remarks to Polish television at a time of mounting criticism at home and abroad that the more than two-month-old weapons hunt is turning up nothing, Bush said that claims of failure were "wrong." The remarks were released today. "You remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons," Bush said in an interview before leaving today on a seven-day trip to Europe and the Middle East. "They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. "And we'll find more weapons as time goes on," Bush said. "But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them." Bush arrived today in Poland, a U.S. ally in the Iraq war and the first stop on his trip. Later he will meet with fellow heads of government in St. Petersburg, Russia's second city, and Evian, a resort city in the French Alps, before presiding over a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan. Bush administration officials have recently been stressing a hunt for "weapons programs" instead of weapons themselves. Among the officials who have hedged their claims in recent public statements is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said this week that deposed president Saddam Hussein may have destroyed all the weapons before the war. U.S. authorities have to date made no claim of a confirmed finding of an actual nuclear, biological or chemical weapon. In the interview, Bush said weapons had been found, but in elaborating, he mentioned only the trailers, which the CIA has concluded were likely used for production of biological weapons. The agency reported that no pathogens were found in the two trailers and added that civilian use of the heavy transports, such as water purification or pharmaceutical production, was "unlikely" because of the effort and expense required to make the equipment mobile. Production of biological warfare agents "is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles," the CIA report concluded. Preparing for Bush's visit to the Middle East, administration officials said they were assembling a team of 24-hour-a-day monitors to mediate between the parties and measure performance in implementing the "road map" peace plan that aims to create a Palestinian state and permanent peace in the region. Powell said the move stopped short of naming a "major envoy, with constant negotiations." But it would deepen U.S. responsibility in the peacemaking process. Powell, joining Bush aboard Air Force One today, said the head of the U.S.-led team would be chosen soon. Recounting his February speech to the U.N. Security Council, which included the display of satellite images and the playing of communications intercepts, Powell said that he "went out to the CIA, and I spent four days and four nights going over everything that they had as holdings." Powell said he had access to "a roomful of analysts, the raw documents, the papers." "Where I put up the cartoons of those biological vans, we didn't just make them up one night," he said. "Those were eyewitness accounts of people who had worked in the program and knew it was going on, multiple accounts. "I have been through many crises in my career in government and there are always people who come after the fact to say, 'This wasn't presented to you,' or 'This was politicized or this wasn't,' " Powell continued. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said during a brief visit to Warsaw today that he was confident that illegal weapons would be found and urged people to "have a little patience," the Reuters news agency reported. "The idea that we authorized or made our intelligence agencies invent some piece of evidence is completely absurd," Blair said, referring to news media reports in London that British intelligence officials feel that Blair's office overstated the case in a dossier issued before the war. "Saddam's history of weapons of mass destruction is not some invention of the British security services." Bush plans to use a speech in Krakow on Saturday to argue anew that the liberation of the people of Iraq was a legitimate cause for war, according to an administration official. He will speak after a solemn visit to the firing squad's "Death Wall" at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and will draw a line from that to modern evil, including to Hussein and terrorists. Bush told Polish television that the visit's purpose is "to remind people that we must confront evil when we find it." Bush began his sprint through six countries by offering conciliatory words to such traditional allies as France that tried to thwart the war in Iraq. But his aides said he planned to use the trip to continue projecting American might to try to change the world on his terms. "I understand the attitudes of some, but I refuse to be stopped in my desire to rally the world toward achieving positive results for each individual," Bush told foreign reporters before leaving Washington. A senior administration official said the theme underpinning the diplomatic tour was, "What does President Bush do with his military victory?" Bush will lay out his answers beginning with the speech in Krakow, where he will call for greater transatlantic cooperation on controlling AIDS, poverty and weapons of mass destruction. "Together, we can achieve the big objective," he said Thursday in remarks to foreign reporters that the White House released today. "And that is peace and freedom." From here, Bush heads Saturday afternoon to St. Petersburg for celebrations and a gathering of world leaders on the occasion of that city's 300th anniversary. Then he flies to Evian for the annual meeting of the heads of the Group of Eight industrial powers. There, supporters and opponents of the war in Iraq will try to work out continuing resentments. © 2003 The Washington Post Company ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ================ 2:01:28 PM

Re: Cheney calls for utter destruction Dear Friends: We recently featured Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author, and his attempt to deliver the commencement address to the graduating class at Rockford College in Illinois. He was greeted with catcalls, boos, and bullhorns. When VP Cheney spoke to the graduating class at the U.S. Military Academy on Saturday, he stated that "The United States will not pursue deterrence or containment policies in its so-called war on terrorism but would instead seek to utterly destroy its enemies." In addition, he warned that the United States remained willing to use its military might against any nation supporting terrorists. Cheney's speech received no such jeers from his audience. What was the force that gave them meaning? __________________________________ Reuters Saturday, May 31, 2003 No Deterrents in U.S. War on Terror - Cheney  By Mark Egan WEST POINT (Reuters) - The United States will not pursue deterrence or containment policies in its so-called war on terrorism but would instead seek to utterly destroy its enemies, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Saturday. In a speech to the 2003 graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy, Cheney also warned that the United States remained willing to use its military might against any nation supporting terrorists. "The battle of Iraq was a major victory in the war on terror but the war itself is far from over," Cheney told the more than 840 graduating cadets, most of whom will pursue careers as officers in the U.S. Army. "We cannot allow ourselves to grow complacent, we cannot forget that the terrorists remain determined to kill as many Americans as possible both abroad and here at home, and they are still seeking weapons of mass destruction to use against," he said. "With such an enemy, no peace treaty is possible, no policy of containment or deterrent will prove effective -- the only way to deal with this threat is to destroy it completely and utterly, and President Bush is absolutely determined to do just that." Cheney noted that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes destroyed the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, marked the birth of the "Bush doctrine" that any nation supporting or harboring terrorists was as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Without naming nations, Cheney warned that policy remains in effect. "If there is anyone in the world today who doubts the seriousness of the Bush doctrine, I would urge that person to consider the fate of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's regime," he said. Cheney hailed the U.S. victory in Iraq, which quickly toppled Saddam's government in Baghdad, as proof that the American military is the best in the world. "With our victory in Iraq we have removed a threat to our country and to our friends in the region," Cheney said. While making no direct mention of Iran, a nation along with Iraq and North Korea that President Bush has called part of an "axis of evil," Cheney's latest comments came as the White House is turning its attention to Tehran. With military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq already in hand, administration hawks have begun portraying Iran as an imminent threat. The Bush administration has complained repeatedly about Iran's nuclear programs, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused Tehran of not doing enough against al Qaeda members allegedly in Iran. The network led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden has been blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks. That same rhetoric linked to "terrorists" and the threat of weapons of mass destruction formed the basis for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March. The United States has since had trouble uncovering weapons of mass destruction or conclusive links between Baghdad and terrorist organizations. Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:00:50 PM

Re: CIA pressured to overstate threat Dear Friends: The intelligence community and the CIA in particular are being sharply questioned about the gap between what was predicted in Iraq and what was actually found.  A group of retired intelligence analysts have written the president charging that systemic warping of intelligence misled Congress into voting for the war. Meanwhile, a more serious charge has emerged, namely that the CIA's analysis leading up to the war was altered under pressure by the administration to overstate the threat Hussein presented. As a result, the credibility of the intelligence community -- and the United States -- is at risk. __________________________ Washington Post June 1, 2003 Integrity, Intelligence And Iraq by Jeffrey H. Smith George Tenet probably has the toughest job in America. The intelligence community and the CIA in particular are being sharply questioned about the gap between what was predicted in Iraq and what has been found. Critics of the war are screaming that the CIA did not anticipate the chaos, looting and political instability in Iraq. A group of retired intelligence analysts have written the president charging that systemic "warping" of intelligence "misled" Congress into voting for the war. On Friday, both Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell responded by making unusual public statements in defense of the intelligence community and their own actions. Although the intelligence community got much right that enabled an extraordinary military victory, it appears to have gotten much wrong about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and his link with al Qaeda. Time will tell whether the CIA was right about these matters. But in the meantime a more serious charge has emerged, namely that the CIA's analysis leading up to the war was altered under pressure by the administration to overstate the threat Hussein presented. As a result, the credibility of the intelligence community -- and the United States -- is at risk. Therefore hard questions must be asked. At least three investigations are asking those questions, including the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, an internal review ordered by Tenet and a further internal review requested by congressional oversight committees. Among the questions that should be asked: . What did we know before the war and how does it compare with what we found? . What was the president told? . Were there doubts in the intelligence community about some of the analysis, and were those doubts passed up the line? . Was there pressure on career professionals to alter their analysis, and if so, from whom? . If changes were made under political pressure, what can be done to avoid that in the future? As these investigations begin, two principles must be kept in mind. First, as the late William Colby, a former director of central intelligence, was fond of saying, intelligence analysis is like the proverb about the blind man grasping the tail of an elephant and trying to explain what he is holding. We must all understand the inherent limits of intelligence analysis -- and the concomitant risks in basing action on intelligence. Second, the most important aspect of intelligence analysis is integrity. Many factors contribute to that integrity, including the intellectual skills and character of the individuals preparing the reports, the support given to the analysts by CIA leadership and the independence of the agency. Tenet and his senior leadership have greatly emphasized the first two factors. Any recommendations emerging from these investigations must preserve or strengthen them. But attention should also be paid to the third: the independence of the CIA. The CIA was established after World War II because President Truman and Congress recognized that it was imperative to have an agency to collect and analyze intelligence for the president that would be independent of the departments of State and Defense. This independence was and is essential to ensuring that analysis is not tailored to suit the views of any government policymaker. The president's new policy of preemption places an even greater premium on the need for integrity in intelligence analysis. Iraq, the first real test of this policy, painfully proves the point. Serious questions are being asked about whether intelligence was misused, manipulated or ignored by the administration to argue in favor of an invasion. Foreign governments are questioning our word, making it much harder for the president to gather support for his policies in Korea, Iran and other hot spots. Members of Congress have said privately that when they hear reports of other threats facing the United States, they question whether they are accurate or have been influenced by senior administration officials who favor a particular policy. Concern about the integrity of U.S. intelligence analysis cannot stand. The director of central intelligence must be able to speak truth to power. In many ways, Tenet's most important responsibility is to say, "Mr. President, your policy is failing." Those of us who know Tenet are convinced he has the steel to do precisely that. The CIA has established the position of ombudsman for politicization of intelligence. If any intelligence analyst believes his or her analysis has been altered because of policy or political considerations, that analyst can report to the ombudsman, who would then take appropriate measures. The investigations currently underway should examine whether that system is adequate. Congress can help. It has the obligation to conduct vigorous oversight of intelligence agencies. But it must make clear that what it values most is integrity in the collection and analysis of intelligence. Organizational changes might also help. The 9/11 commission is considering changes in the organization of the intelligence community. The congressional oversight committees have been quietly considering some changes. Brent Scowcroft recently completed a study that remains classified but reportedly calls for the director of central intelligence to have greater authority over those agencies in the intelligence community that are part of the Defense Department. At the same time, the Defense Department has created an intelligence unit in the office of the secretary of defense that is said to be a rival to Tenet as a source for analysis that reflects the views of Rumsfeld and that often finds its way to the Oval Office. Congress should examine these organizational issues and be ready to act when the 9/11 commission makes its report. Regardless of organizational or personnel changes, political leaders must recognize that however badly they want intelligence that supports their policy prospective, they cannot "cook the books." Most important, the president must recognize that he needs someone who can speak the truth to him. --The writer is a former general counsel of the CIA. © 2003 The Washington Post Company ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 2:00:16 PM

Re: The looting of American civilization Dear Friends: Almost two months after the world first heard of America's failure to protect Baghdad's museum from looters and thieves, Iraq's treasures are still being pillaged, this time at the archaeological sites themselves. To make matters worse, our government is trying to cover up its responsibility in this tragedy through political spin. Another abdication of cultural duty by Washington is likely to become official tomorrow. June 2 marks the date when the FCC is expected to give media conglomerates even more power by approving deregulation, thus allowing them increase their vast holdings. Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, testified to Congress in March that  "The measure of a great nation is not merely its wealth and power but also its civilization." Can he save American culture from being pillaged? The measure of his tenure in Washington will be the extent to which he can counter those administration policies that damage our civilization rather than merely provide them rhetorical cover.  --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- The New York Times June 1, 2003 George W. Bush and the Poet by Frank Rich   Given that the artistic muse of the Clinton administration was Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the creator of the sitcom "Designing Women," George W. Bush's appointment of Bo Derek to the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts could hardly be faulted for breaking with tradition. Ever since Abraham Lincoln overruled his advisers to attend "Our American Cousin," culture has been considered ladies' work in Washington--first ladies' work. It was Jacqueline Kennedy who brought Pablo Casals to the East Room, not her husband, who celebrated his inaugural with a command performance by the Rat Pack. It is Laura Bush who invites writers to the White House, not the president, whose inaugural concert featured Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ricky Martin and Wayne Newton. (Where was Barry Manilow when the country needed him?) But at a certain point Washington's tenuous, often tacky connection to culture ceases to be a joke, and that point is now. Almost two months after the world first heard of America's failure to protect Baghdad's museum from looters and thieves, Iraq's treasures are still being pillaged--this time at the source, the archaeological sites themselves. According to The Economist, the Italian diplomat the United States put in charge of Iraq's cultural holdings is obscuring the dimensions of this new fiasco by refusing to allow reporters to accompany him on helicopter visits to the scenes of these crimes. Meanwhile, the plundering continues, and each day that it does, we lose more of our collective memory of our religious, literary and artistic roots in the centuries before Christ. Visit "Art of the First Cities" at the Metropolitan Museum--an exhibition of delicate Mesopotamian artifacts safely held by non-Iraqi museums--and weep for the many comparable pieces that are being destroyed or stolen as our occupation forces fail to secure the peace. As if this weren't enough, our government is now trying to cover up its culpability in the desecration of the Baghdad museum with smoke bombs of spin. On May 7, Lt. Gen. William Wallace told reporters that "as few as 17 items" in the National Museum were unaccounted for--a figure that then allowed administration apologists to minimize the tragedy. But this and other low-ball American estimates of loss are, as one Unesco fact-finder told The International Herald Tribune last week, "a distortion of reality." The U.N.'s team of experts estimates that at least 2,000 to 3,000 pieces are missing from the museum and that the entire two million volumes in the National Library and Archives are ash. "It's only by comparison with the most dire initial reports that said everything was gone that it seems not so bad," said one member of the team, John Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art. "Yes, not everything is gone, but major things are." Another derogation of cultural duty by Washington, and one hitting closer to home, is likely to become official tomorrow. That's when the Federal Communications Commission is expected to hand media giants like Viacom and News Corporation more power by letting them grab still more notches on the TV dial. The fix has long been in. The Center for Public Integrity revealed 10 days ago that the F.C.C. regulators and staff members making these decisions had taken some $2.8 million worth of free trips (some 2,500 junkets in all, many of them to Las Vegas) from the very industry they are supposed to be regulating. Michael Powell, the agency's Bush-chosen chairman, has alone freeloaded 44 times to rendezvous with show-business moguls even as he has largely disdained public hearings on the issues at stake. The template for this kind of stacked, behind-closed-doors policy making is Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, to which Enron executives got entree while environmental advocates received short (if any) shrift. Do our entertainment conglomerates need the same kind of government favors being showered on Halliburton? In the recession year of 2002, Variety has reported, the seven major Hollywood studios saw a rise of 18 percent in revenues. The reach of these companies is already so pervasive that performing arts institutions dedicated to classical music, dance and theater can barely be heard above the din. It's a sign of the Bush era that an oil company, ChevronTexaco, has picked this moment to dump the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday afternoon performances on radio, one of the last examples of high culture's regular appearance in the mass arena of commercial broadcasting. Or, as one critic puts it in the new issue of The Hudson Review, "Our commercialized, entertainment-oriented television-based culture has cheapened and trivialized all forms of public discourse." He points to a recent study showing that the average American spends 24 minutes a day reading--"not just books, but anything," TV Guide and diet tips included--as opposed to "over four hours daily of television and over three hours of radio." The author of this grim indictment of the cultural state of the nation, as it happens, is himself a member of the Bush administration--Dana Gioia, who took over as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts during the runup to the war in Iraq. In the weeks since he's been in office, I've spent several hours talking with him in New York and Washington--conversations I've found fascinating. The only subject he wouldn't expound on is the mystery of how he ended up in this administration in the first place. Mr. Gioia, 52, is in almost every way a contradiction. He's a working-class kid of Italian-Mexican heritage from Los Angeles who ended up spending 15 years as a business executive (at General Foods) while building a career as a widely published poet and essayist. He has studied with Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Fitzgerald and marketed Jell-O. He's a Republican who voted for Mr. Bush but says "the only people I've ever contributed money to are Green candidates." As a critic, he's a fierce defender of what he considers traditionalist literary standards and yet takes pains to distinguish himself from the neo-con snobs who regularly deplore pop culture. He sounds nearly as engaged by Run-DMC rap lyrics as he is by Auden--and he can get as passionate about "Magnolia" as he is about "Les Troyens." Nor does Mr. Gioia subscribe to the ugly culture wars that the likes of Lynne Cheney and William Bennett embraced during the Gingrich revolution. Many of those battles were in one way or another about N.E.A. grants to artistic projects with sexual content, especially homosexual content. Mr. Gioia will have none of it. "If the F.B.I. investigation of me proved anything," he says, "it's that about half of my friends and in some cases my collaborators are gay--like Alva Henderson, the guy I wrote an opera with. How can you accomplish anything in the American arts if you're homophobic? It just can't be done. Someone doesn't want to do a play because it's gay? Well, grow up. This is America. It's just as simple as that. We're supporting arts for all Americans." He does reserve one cheer for the cultural marketplace--he's not a Republican for nothing. "If you create a system where the marketplace doesn't operate in the arts," he says, "it breeds a kind of institutional stagnation, which you see in a lot of European countries." But he knows the perils: "If you put the marketplace entirely in charge of the arts, you see them very endangered" - as they are now. Like virtually all of his predecessors, Mr. Gioia's antidote is to increase the N.E.A. budget and expand arts education. But at a time when arts programs of all kinds, in and out of schools, are falling prey to the worst fiscal crunch in the states since World War II, the endowment would not make a difference even at three times its minuscule current appropriation ($117 million). Add the catastrophic money woes at American cultural institutions to the growing grip of the media giants that are sucking up the air in their stead, and you've got a crisis. What can Dana Gioia do about it? He could shake Washington--and the Bush administration--with the same asset that has made him successful as a writer, the power of his ideas. A legendarily contentious essay he wrote for The Atlantic in 1991, "Can Poetry Matter?," started a debate over the merits of the academic poetry establishment that raged for years. While he sees clearly the cultural lay of the land, including what he called the "heartbreaking" destruction in Iraq, his duty must be to convey the urgency of his vision to a larger audience, within and beyond the White House. Can he? The knee-jerk answer, of course, is no. He would appear to be as doomed as another green administration appointee, the soon-to-depart Christie Whitman, who, in the words of The Washington Post, seems to have been put in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency "merely to make the Bush administration seem more interested in the environment . . . than it was." Yet there's a crucial difference between Mr. Gioia and Ms. Whitman. While a commanding and popular public speaker, Mr. Gioia has never been a politician and has no interest in becoming one. He is confident and in no way a waffler. He has a proud, hard-won reputation as an independent thinker and artist to protect for his eventual return to the literary life. He is too smart not to realize that for all the efforts of the current first lady, a former librarian, to promote reading, libraries are closing, not expanding, on this administration's watch. He is too serious to stand idly by while Rupert Murdoch amasses more power at home and looters subsume the culture of our 51st state, Iraq. "The measure of a great nation is not merely its wealth and power but also its civilization," Mr. Gioia said when testifying before Congress in March. He seems to mean it. The measure of his tenure in Washington will be the extent to which he can counter those administration policies that damage our civilization rather than merely provide them rhetorical cover.  Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 1:59:46 PM

Senators respond to FCC deregulation Dear Friends: As we all know, yesterday the FCC  took actions to loosen restrictions on the ownership of broadcast properties. Not all senators rolled over in docile acceptance, however. Senator Dorgan (D-ND), joined by Senator Hollings (D-SC) and Lott (R-MS) are featured in a 25-minute broadcast, courtesy of C-Span. The URL is:  http://www.cspan.org. You can locate it under Recent Programs, dated June 2, 2003.  A tip of the Stetson to the Texas faction for passing this on to me. Sound bites from the broadcast follow, and I encourage you to listen to it in its entirety. ____________________________________________________ Sen. Dorgan (D-ND) responds to the FCC decision on media ownership, along with Sens. Lott (R-MS) & Hollings (D-SC). 6/2/2003: WASHINGTON, DC: 25 MI. [NOTE: the following are sound bites taken from the broadcast, and are transcribed by the War and Peace Watch]   Sen Dorgan: The FCC is a regulatory agency. I've never seen a federal regulatory agency cave in so completely and so quickly on the issue of broadcast ownership. Under this new ruling, in the large markets, it will be possible for the same company to own the newspaper, 3 television stations, the cable company, and 8 radio stations, in the same market area. This does not benefit the public. This benefits some very large, well-financed corporations, at the expense of the public interest. One must ask, what prompted the FCC to take this action? Was there a public outcry by the American people asking for this? No. On the contrary, they had hundreds of thousands of communications to the FCC from the American people opposing just that. The FCC,decided to proceed anyway. This decision favors concentration  over competition. It says we don't care about localism and diversity. This is not a good decision.  I will be supportive of efforts to deal with this fact. The question in the future is: Who will broadcast the local news, the local weather, the local baseball games? In retrospect, this decision will be seen as an ignorant, and dangerous, decision. There are ways in the Congress for us to force a vote on this. Some of us are talking about a form of "legislative veto" that will be made available, and to bring a vote on the FCC's decision. The Congress needs to weigh in on this on the side of the people. _________________ Senator Hollings (D-SC): I feel we can get a majority vote to challenge this decision. If not, we may be forced to append a rider to a current appropriations bill in front of the Congress. This is not our favored method of action, but it is a possibility. The FCC ruling was based on greed, and nothing else. __________________ Senator Lott (R-MS): This is not a partisan, or a regional issue. It is a question of fairness, access, and diversity.  I do not always think that big is bad...But this level of concentration...is a mistake. I've been very disappointed in the way the FCC handled it. Granted, the whole industry has drastically changed over time. But, I do think this is a mistake. The 35% national ownership cap is high enough. If the 45% level holds, where will it go from there? ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================ 1:59:01 PM

Re: Inspector General critical of abusive detentions Dear Friends: Following the terrorism of September 11, the nation, in order to protect itself, undertook measures that limited the civil liberties of its citizens and those residing in this country. The balance between freedom and security is always difficult to maintain, especially under such conditions. Just how difficult is revealed by a blistering report, released yesterday, from the inspector general of the Justice Department on abusive detention methods. ___________________________________ The New York Times June 3, 2003 The Abusive Detentions of Sept. 11 Editorial   It was vital after the terrorism of Sept. 11 that the nation protect itself, arresting and investigating those who might have had a role. But it was equally vital that it avoid doing things we would later regret, like failing to grant detainees due process or abusing them either mentally and physically. Sadly, such caution was not exercised, according to a frank and blistering report by the inspector general of the Justice Department. The report, released yesterday, criticizes an array of practices, like holding suspects in 23-hour "lockdowns" and interfering with their access to lawyers. This stern indictment should lead the department to change its policies for handling terrorism detainees, and it should cause Congress to end its timidity in exercising its oversight of antiterrorism practices. In the 11 months after Sept. 11, the Justice Department detained 762 noncitizens in connection with terrorism inquiries, many on charges of entering the country illegally or overstaying visas. The inspector general found that while the Justice Department had faced "enormous challenges and difficult circumstances," it had nevertheless engaged in a significant amount of unacceptable activity. The F.B.I. did a poor job of separating detainees who were subjects of terrorism inquiries and those picked up on bad leads. The government had a goal of informing detainees within 72 hours of the charges against them, but some detainees went a month or more without being told why they were being held. Many were needlessly held for weeks or months, often in harsh conditions, while the F.B.I. took longer than it should have to investigate and clear them. The conditions of confinement were also not proper, the inspector general found. Detention centers routinely blocked efforts by detainees' families and lawyers to locate them. Detainees who did not have legal counsel were often made to wait weeks or months before receiving a list of lawyers who could represent them. The report also identified a "pattern of physical and verbal abuse" against some detainees. Some were held in lockdowns for 23 hours a day and taken outside their cells in a "four-man hold," using handcuffs, leg irons and heavy chains. Detainees reported being slammed against the wall, or being subjected to such verbal taunts as "You're going to die here." The inspector general's findings are particularly powerful because they come not from politicians or advocacy groups, but from a unit of the Bush administration itself. This administration has been notably unwilling to accept criticism of the war on terrorism, and its response yesterday was true to form. The Justice Department declared through a spokeswoman that it made "no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from further terrorist attacks." No one wants the government to stop protecting the nation. But yesterday an important watchdog added its voice to those who insist that while doing so, the government must do a better job of protecting the rights of the suspects, many of them completely innocent, who are caught up in the net. Immigrants, legal or illegal, deserve due process and decent treatment. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 1:58:08 PM

Re: Blair rounds on Short and war critics Dear Friends: British PM Tony Blair is becoming increasingly frustrated over the growing claims that he misled the nation into the war on Iraq. Yesterday, attacking Clare Short and calling her a liar, he rejected calls for an independent inquiry into the war and the infamous weapons of mass destruction that he continues to claim exists. Even if Bush and his ilk are somehow able to create the illusion of these weapons (is there such a thing as a "throw-down WMD"?), Blair's reputation and his credibility has suffered irreparable damage, both at home and abroad. ________________________________ The Independent June 3, 2003 Blair Rounds on Short and War Critics by Andy McSmith in Evian and Paul Waugh in London Tony Blair's frustration with claims that he misled the nation over the war on Iraq boiled over yesterday when he made an unprecedented attack on Clare Short, calling her a liar, and rejected calls for an independent inquiry into the affair. After days of mounting pressure, the Prime Minister was forced to issue his strongest denial that Downing Street had exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Sweating profusely at a G8 summit press conference in Evian, Mr Blair appeared uncomfortable in the extreme as he rebutted charges his spin machine had "duped" the country into war. He even adopted the logic of his critics, who have long demanded evidence of his pretext for war, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and represented an imminent threat to the West. Denying accusations that he had deliberately misled the nation, Mr Blair said: "I think it is important that if people actually have evidence that they produce it. But it is wrong, frankly, for people to make allegations on the basis of so-called anonymous sources, when the facts are precisely the facts we have stated." Labour MPs intensified demands for a full investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence reports about Baghdad's weapons. Mr Blair will come under fresh pressure from MPs tomorrow when he makes a Commons statement. One Labour backbencher said the issue was as serious as the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. Amid claims that Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's communications chief, could become the scapegoat for the controversy, the Tories added to the pressure by warning that key questions were unanswered. Today, Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, becomes the first leader of a mainstream political party to demand an inquiry. Writing in The Independent, Mr Kennedy says Mr Blair's attempts to make the case for war have seriously harmed his standing and trust in the Government. Clearly angry that the allegations had overshadowed his six-day tour of Iraq, Poland, Russia and France, Mr Blair ruled out yesterday an independent inquiry into the events leading up to the war. He said he stood "100 per cent" behind the evidence in government dossiers on the Iraqi threat and rejected claims that information was "sexed up" to justify the war. But the allegation that appeared to have provoked Mr Blair more than any other was Ms Short's claim that there was no real Cabinet role in the decisions leading up to the war, because everything of importance was decided "secretly" by Mr Blair and George Bush. His discomfiture was increased by the sweltering heat during his press conference in a crowded marquee where the air conditioning had been switched off for almost an hour. "The idea that apparently Clare Short is saying I made some secret agreement with George Bush back last September that we would invade Iraq in any event at a particular time is completely and totally untrue," he said. "Charges should have evidence but there is none.'' Mr Blair said every single piece of intelligence presented by Downing Street was cleared "very properly" by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Mr Blair insisted critics should wait until the 1,400 US, British and Australian investigators sent in to search for Iraq's weapons had finished work. "The idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45-minute capability of delivering weapons of mass destruction is completely and totally false," he said. An international survey group on WMD was starting its work this week interviewing scientists and experts. "When we accumulate that evidence properly we will give it to people. I have no doubt at all the assessments made by the British intelligence services will turn out to be correct," he said. Ahmed Chalabi, president of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group, told BBC's Newsnight it was "unlikely" that the claim that Iraq's weapons could be launched within 45 minutes had come from anyone linked to his organisation. Malcolm Savidge, Labour MP for Aberdeen North and one of 73 MPs who have signed a Commons motion calling for the Government's evidence to be published in full, said: "I cannot conceive of a more serious accusation than that Parliament and the people could have been misled into being brought into a war on false pretences. That to me is more serious than Watergate." © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) 1:57:27 PM

Re: Further troubles for Blair  Dear Friends: Although the pretext of the existence of  weapons of mass destruction was key to Britain's going to war against Iraq, Hugo Young of The Guardian contends that  this was not the prime cause. Rather, he feels that Blair, and former prime ministers for the last 60 years, have been bound to America by some sort of blind loyalty. Not only has this unswerving solidarity with Bush caused us to question Blair's political judgment, but it has endangered his career as well. Just how badly will be revealed tomorrow, at Question Time at Parliament. _____________________________ The Guardian June 3, 2003 WMD or Not, Blair Had Already Made up His Mind The PM was incapable of detaching himself from Bush's march to war by Hugo Young The infamous weapons of mass destruction were a crucial pretext for Britain going to war against Iraq, but they were not the prime cause. They didn't drive the strategy. The originating, compulsive, inescapable reason was something different and, I think, more infamous. Unless we understand that, it's impossible to make sense of the bitter flounderings of Tony Blair and Jack Straw as they try to defend what is being exposed as a saga of duplicity. What lay deeper than the weapons and whether or not they existed was a twin commitment. First, the American decision that, short of Saddam Hussein being assassinated or going into exile, war was going to happen: a decision, it is now clear, that had been made by last August at the latest. And second, the visceral inability of Mr Blair to contemplate detaching this country from whatever Washington decided. He did this in solidarity with George Bush on September 11. But arguably it began to happen earlier, when he journeyed to Camp David immediately after Bush's election, returning to pronounce him, contrary to most popular impressions, a wise and balanced statesman. Whenever it happened, the pledge to support Bush's world view became a crucial limitation on our prime minister's independent judgment. It lay behind every decision the British took. Yes, Blair helped persuade Bush to take the UN route - but it's apparent that he never intended to do anything other than follow along if and when Bush reneged on it. All those words about war not being inevitable were for the birds. Yes, Blair urged delay, but for a period whose main effect was to allow time to assemble the US and UK armies for attack, by which time it was inconceivable, even when almost invited to by Donald Rumsfeld, that the Brits would pull out. Yes, Blair beat his head against the wall in defence of the case for Saddam possessing biological/chemical/nuclear weapons that posed an imminent threat to the UK - but he loaded the benefit of any doubt in favour of war rather than no war. The current argument about WMD, in other words, is proceeding on a false premise. We're asked to believe that if we, the British, had doubted the existence of the weapons, we would not have gone to war. Every time Straw embarks on another of his tortuous assertions that WMD did and do exist, though they've not yet been found, the corollary is that we were always capable of acting differently. The truth is that we had a prior, if unadmitted, commitment to stick with Bush, come what may. So we became impaled on an American analysis that ranked the weapons as a quite secondary pretext. This was to be suspected at the time, but has now become indisputable. Paul Wolfowitz reveals that the discovery of WMD was merely a "bureaucratic" detail, necessary to broaden support for the war. Rumsfeld admits that he doesn't expect to find any WMD, and blithely claims this doesn't matter. The entire US performance through autumn and winter at the UN can now be starkly seen as a sham, conducted to keep Blair and a few others sweet. Washington needed one faithful ally, and was prepared to go this far to secure him, no doubt mindful of his frequent, self-abnegating assertion - the strangest diplomatic axiom ever laid down by a prime minister - that British policy must be guided by the need to protect Washington from isolation. I don't doubt Blair's sincerity in wanting to persuade himself and the voters, as well as the soldiers he sent to war, that the threat posed by Saddam's WMD was the total reason for the conflict. He does sincerity very well, as we saw again yesterday in his raging dismissal of Clare Short's painful charges. He does it well because he cannot believe otherwise. He needed those WMD last autumn, to keep the right side of international law. He needed them in March, when he discussed openly with colleagues the chances of his having to resign if he lost the Labour majority for war in the House of Commons. His entire life depended on persuading enough MPs that the weapons were a real and present danger, 45 minutes away. He needs them today, to deflect the uproar in the Labour party. He has every reason for sincerely believing in his own sincere belief that the weapons will be found. So strong is his sincerity, however, that he has tried to underpin it by bending the language and the truth. The first sign came a few weeks ago, when Straw started shifting tenses. Instead of saying that Iraq contains weapons of mass destruction, the foreign secretary began to blur "has" into "had", to cope with the inconvenient possibility that the weapons had been destroyed some time before war began. Yet if the past tense is all we can now be sure of, what is left of the claim that Saddam posed an imminent threat to Britain's national security? More blatant was Downing Street's serial exploitation of MI6 and GCHQ material in ways quite disrespectful of the health warnings that invariably accompany intelligence reports to ministers. They became raw facts for manipulation by a government machine that has spent six years treating all facts - speeches, statistics, meetings, journeys, policy commitments - as the beginning of a propaganda spin. A cautious sceptic might have doubted whether MI6 material too could have been devoured into this maw: it belongs, after all, in a secret world with its own rules. But when thinly veiled MI6 rebuttals of Downing Street assertions appear on the BBC - a practice seldom, if ever, seen before - one understands the price that is being paid to defend Tony Blair's sincerity. One response to this dismal history is to agree the need for a public inquiry. We need a fair judgment on how much deception was involved in setting the war in motion, with all its dangers and deaths. Did soldiers die in a cause falsely described from the start? The issue seems at least as serious as the collapse of the Matrix Churchill trial in 1992, which led John Major to set up the arms-for-Iraq inquiry. There could be no more independent judge to investigate it than Lord Richard Scott. But that would merely be the forensic side. The bigger question is about Blair's political judgment. What happened over Saddam's weapons gives the most striking recent insight into the cost of policies that start from thraldom to Washington. Whether or not they existed during the run-up to war turns out to have been irrelevant to Bush, and to have mattered to Britain only as cover for a war policy into which we were ineluctably trapped months before. The trend predates Blair, of course. It has been in the DNA of prime ministers for 60 years. But Blair takes further than any predecessor a refusal, in the field of defence and foreign policy, to mark the smallest distance between himself and a hard right president from whom, in most other respects, he should be alien. Believing in his influence as much as his sincerity, he now sees it in ruins. --h.young@guardian.co.uk Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 ________________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 1:52:12 PM