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As Iraq Burns; Dems Look on the Bright Side

By Arianna Huffington
09/28/05 "ICH" -- -- If you need yet another reminder why the Democrats continue to teeter on the verge of becoming a permanent minority party, I suggest you pick up the Boston Herald and watch CBS News.

At the same time the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, with CBS reporting on the "undeclared civil war" raging between Shiites and Sunnis and the Saudi Foreign Minister telling the world that Iraq is "going toward disintegration," there was John Kerry giving a speech arguing that "progress" was being made. As the Boston Herald put it, Senator John Kerry "back-pedalled on blistering criticism of the war."

Unbelievable.

Andrew Gumbel's latest HuffPost turns a flashing red spotlight on why we need to reform our voting systems. But even the most corruption-free voting system in the world isn't going to help Democrats if they keep offering up candidates who make the kind of absurd pronouncements on Iraq Kerry did this week.
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The Last Passion of the Democratic Party

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
In June of 1964, three civil rights workers -- one black and two Jewish white young men -- didn't have any naive notions that Philadelphia, Mississippi, practiced brotherly love as allegedly did its Pennsylvania counterpart. On the 21st of that month, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman -- all in their early 20s -- traveled to the "Mississippi Philadelphia" to investigate the burning of a black church by the revived Ku Klux Klan.

In a conspiracy between the local sheriff and the Klan, the three were arrested on a trumped up charge, and released after local law enforcement notified a mob of white males as to which road the three would be riding out of town on. As Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman approached an intersection, they were dragged from their car and brutally murdered. Ironically, this past June, "Forty-one years to the day after three civil rights workers were ambushed and killed by a Ku Klux Klan mob, a jury found former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen guilty on three counts of manslaughter."

The murders of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in a summer that was a racial tinderbox for America, along with the bombing of a church that killed young black girls, set the civil rights movement aflame. As a result of the segregationist, anti-democracy actions of self-styled saviors of the white Christian southern lifestyle, America was about to finally fully emancipate itself. The vision of a democracy that belonged to every citizen of the United states -- regardless of race, creed or color -- was to belatedly become law as Lyndon Johnson, a gnarly, old school Texan Southern Democrat -- who somehow had truly been touched by the injustice of racism -- embraced a new guarantee of equality for every American.
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Republicans dump gay leader, pick House Whip Blunt
John Byrne

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After earlier reporting that Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) was expected to succeed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) as majority leader, the decision has been reversed. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) will instead take up DeLay's post.

Sources tell RAW STORY that Dreier -- who was a shoo-in for the position -- was nixed for various reasons, in part because his sexuality would raise ire within the party ranks.
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Monday, September 26, 2005

Etan Thomas Rises to the Occasion
By Dave Zirin

Sports stars are generally known more for their narcissism than their compassion, but in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, athletes have expressed a tremendous amount of altruism and anguish over the amount of human suffering the storm has caused. That's not surprising, when you consider that more than 100 professional athletes come from the Gulf Coast, an area whose deep poverty, institutionalized racism and year-round sunshine combine to offer the requisite conditions for athletic success.

But these times cry out for something more than just sympathy and charity from the athletic-industrial complex: They cry for outrage. Athletes can use their hyper-exalted, swoosh-adorned platform to call out the murderous negligence of the Bush Administration and the country's deep racial divide. Muhammad Ali rose to such an occasion when he opposed the draft in Vietnam; Billie Jean King did the same when she spoke out for abortion rights in the early 1970s. The National Basketball Association's Etan Thomas is attempting to join their ranks, and he deserves both respect and support.

Thomas is raising both cash and supplies to help victims of the hurricane. But the Washington Wizards power forward is also putting his mouth where his money is. When we spoke last week, Thomas began by defending rapper Kanye West's unscripted comment on an NBC benefit concert that "George W. Bush doesn't care about black people" (West had just been called "disgusting" by that arbiter of racial sensitivity, Laura Bush).

"I definitely agree with Kanye West," he said. Read More

Friday, September 23, 2005

BUSH'S BOOZE CRISIS

By JENNIFER LUCE and DON GENTILE

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.

Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Email from arrested White House official suggests powerful congressman lied about trip

John Byrne

WASHINGTON -- News of David Safavian's arrest Monday ricocheted through the Washington political scene like a gunshot.

Safavian, 38, who oversaw $300 billion in federal procurement for President George W. Bush, quit Friday after an FBI operation alleged he obstructed an investigation and tried to finagle a government deal for a friend. He was appointed in 2004.

Yet what is most significant about Safavian's case isn't Safavian himself. It’s the fact that he was arrested—and that emails he sent to conservative superlobbyist Jack Abramoff indicated that those on the trip knew that a trip to Scotland in 2002 was being paid for by the lobbyist
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Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?
By Paul Craig Roberts

The "cakewalk war" is now two and one-half years old. US casualties (dead and wounded) number 20,000. As 20,000 is the number of Iraqi insurgents according to US military commanders, each insurgent is responsible for one US casualty. ...
the US military’s use of small caliber ammunition has risen to 1.8 billion rounds. Think about that number. If there are 20,000 insurgents, it means US troops have fired 90,000 rounds at each insurgent.
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British Storm Basra Jail with Tanks
By Prof. Juan Cole

Sabrina Tavernisse of the New York Times gives the only account of alarming events in Basra I have yet seen that makes sense.

The Guardian seems to me to have left out some key information.

Anyway, here's my timeline for what happened.
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Sunday, September 18, 2005

Juan Cole's Informed Consent

Security Situation in Baghdad Sinking like the Titanic

Sunday, September 18, 2005

An observer in Iraq writes to me:

"The situation has deteriorated in Baghdad dramatically today. Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura. It is very bad. My guys there report that cars have come into these neighborhoods and blocked off the streets. Masked gunmen with AKs and other weapons are roaming these areas, announcing that people should stay home. One of my drivers in Amiraya reports that his neighborhood is shut down totally, and even those who need food or provisions are warned not to go out.

The government will respond feebly. It will go into a contested neighborhood, and then just like Fallujah, Ramadi, Tel Afar, the insurgents will flee to take over another area on another day. Bit by bit they are taking over the main parts of Baghdad. The only place we are sure they cannot control is Sadr City, unless of course they want to take on Jaish Mahdy [Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army], and that would be bloody.
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Friday, September 16, 2005

Welcome to civil war
By Pepe Escobar

Undeclared civil war in Iraq has been raging for months. Now it's "official": using the customary audio clip on a website, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - who may or may not be a cipher, but is certainly the leader of Monotheism and Holy War, or al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers - has declared "all-out war" on Iraqi Shi'ites.

To prove it, he unleashed Black Wednesday - including a horrendous attack in the Kadhimiyah neighborhood in Baghdad, with at least 112 dead and more than 200 wounded, all of them poor, helpless Shi'ite construction workers, many of them enticed toward the killer with promises of jobs before he detonated his lethal load. Baghdad was paralyzed on Wednesday, trying to cope with more than 150 dead and more than 500 wounded in a string of coordinated attacks marking the bloodiest day in the country since the end of major combat two years ago.
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Survey finds more women experiment with bisexuality
WASHINGTON (AP) More women, particularly those in their late teens and 20s — are experimenting with bisexuality or at least feel more comfortable reporting same-sex encounters, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control.
The survey, released Thursday by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, found that 11.5% of women, ages 18 to 44, said they've had at least one sexual experience with another women in their lifetimes, compared with about 4% of women, ages 18 to 59, who said the same in a comparable survey a decade earlier.

For women in their late teens and 20s, the percentage rose to 14% in the more recent survey. About 6% of men in their teens and 20s said they'd had at least one same-sex encounter.
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President Bush asks for a potty break at the UN.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Central America's Street Gangs Are Drawn into the World of Geopolitics
Report Drafted By:
Adam Wolfe

Over the course of the past year, the Bush administration has begun to shift its focus in Latin America away from asymmetrical threats, such as terrorism, and toward the more traditional power politics of the region: containing the left-leaning governments bent on curtailing Washington's influence in the region. Threats previously espoused by the administration -- Hezbollah's presence in the tri-border region and in Chile, Venezuela's Margarita Island serving as a terrorist resort and Islamic groups working with the drug traffickers in the region -- have all seemingly been knocked down in their threat level in public declarations. However, in Central America, Washington is getting serious about a problem it helped to create -- and not simply because the region's street gangs and vast criminal networks are making their presence known in the United States.

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The reconstruction of New Oraq
By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse

In the decade before September 11, 2001, "globalization", a word
now largely missing in action, was on everyone's lips and we constantly heard about what a small, small world this really was. In the aftermath of Katrina, that global smallness has grown positively claustrophobic and particularly predatory.

Iraq and New Orleans now seem to be morphing into a single entity, New Oraq, to be devoured by the same limited set of corporations, let loose and overseen by the same small set of Bush administration officials. In President George W Bush's new world of globalization, first comes the destruction, and only then does one sit down at the planetary table to sup.

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Thursday, September 08, 2005

KATRINA TIMELINE

Saturday, September 3
SENIOR BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL LIES TO WASHINGTON POST, CLAIMS GOV. BLANCO NEVER DECLARED STATE OF EMERGENCY: The Post reported in their Sunday edition “As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.” They were forced to issue a correction hours later. [Washington Post, 9/4/05]

9AM CDT — BUSH BLAMES STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS: “[T]he magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities. The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need.” [White House, 9/3/05]

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

bb.mp3

New World Orleans: Microcosm for the "New America"
Special report on the elite police state takeover

Steve Watson | September 5 2005

Imagine an America where everyone is displaced. It's survival of the fittest as all law and order has broken down. Martial law has been declared with 24 hr curfews, Posse Comitatus has been overturned and there are troops on the streets shooting anyone who disobeys their orders. Thousands and thousands of people are starving but the authorities will not allow aid in any significant amounts. Large crowds are quelled with the use of sonic lasers, whilst overhead drone aircraft monitor the area, checking for any anomalous activity.

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