Hannah's Blog

Seeing is Endorsing?

There's a report out of New Mexico that, in order to get tickets for a campaign speech by the Vice President, one has to provide written evidence of one's support for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

"An endorsement form provided to the Journal by Random says: 'I, (full name)....do herby (sic) endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States.' It later adds that, 'In signing the above endorsement you are consenting to use and releas of you name by Bush-Cheney as an endorser of President Bush.'"

Bush camp solicits race of Star staffer

By C.J. Karamargin
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Star refused to provide the information.

Cheney is scheduled to appear at a rally this afternoon at the Pima County Fairgrounds.

A rally organizer for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign asked Teri Hayt, the Star's managing editor, to disclose the journalist's race on Friday. After Hayt refused, the organizer called back and said the journalist probably would be allowed to photograph the vice president.

"It was such an outrageous request, I was personally insulted," Hayt said later.

Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the president's re-election campaign, said the information was needed for security purposes.

"All the information requested of staff, volunteers and participants for the event has been done so to ensure the safety of all those involved, including the vice president of the United States," he said.

Diaz repeated that answer when asked if it is the practice of the White House to ask for racial information or if the photographer, Mamta Popat, was singled out because of her name. He referred those questions to the U.S. Secret Service, which did not respond to a call from the Star Friday afternoon.

Hayt declined to speculate on whether Popat was racially profiled, but said she is deeply concerned.

"One has to wonder what they were going to do with that information," Hayt said. "Because she has Indian ancestry, were they going to deny her access? I don't know."

Journalists covering the president or vice president must undergo a background check and are required to provide their name, date of birth and Social Security number. The Star provided that information Thursday for Popat and this reporter.

"That's all anybody has been asked to provide," said Hayt, adding that this is the first time in her 26-year career that a journalist's race was made an issue.

Organizer Christine Walton asked for Popat's race in telephone conversations with two other Star editors before she spoke to Hayt. They also refused to provide the information. Walton told Hayt that Popat's race was necessary to allow the Secret Service to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name.

"It was a very lame excuse," Hayt said.

Popat, a photographer with six years' experience, was on assignment Friday and unaware of the controversy. But she said she was glad the Star refused. "My race shouldn't have anything to do with my job," she said.

Tickets are required for the public to attend the rally, which begins at 12:50 p.m. All tickets were distributed by Friday.

Happy News is Disgusting

The local TV news out of Manchester,NH last evening had one of the most disgusting stories I have ever heard. It wasn't the subject that was disgusting; rather the manner and treatment of the information.
It seems that the city of Nashua, in response to not having enough money, is discontinuing the library's bookmobile service--a service that has been provided for decades, if not a century. But to listen to the patter of the news readers, you'd think that getting rid of a dillapidated vehicle that toted more than twenty thousand volumes, mainly children's books was somehow a sign of progress since these books would now be available in the school libraries.

And just to show that someone had done his homework, this development was provided with an historical context--the fact that while not so long ago there were over 200 bookmobiles in the country, now there are only 12. The enthusiasm for the story couldn't have been greater, if they were reporting a decrease in the number of murders in their metropolis.
Perhaps what made this story really disgusting was that it was presented in conjunction with an ad for the Republican Governor. Benson, who's running for re-election on a platform of reducing taxes and persuading his friends to provide a couple of hundred children with lap-tops--the electronic equivalent, to their way of thinking, of the public library and the bookmobile.
Never mind that lap-tops for children are the modern equivalent of passing out free cigarettes on the school playground. It's an effort to get kids hooked on electronics, on gadgets that have a short shelf life, high maintenance costs and tend to be psychologically addictive and physically debilitating in the long run. Not to mention that the lap-top user is likely to become part of a virtual community and withdraw from the real one that the historical bookmobile used to create.
There are some really stupid public policy choices being made.
What I want to know is why, if our country is becoming ever more prosperous and our standard of living is supposed to be going up, the level of public services keeps going down?
You know, there was a time when garbage got collected twice a week, when the mail got delivered every day, when there was a newspaper morning and evening, when the streets got swept on a regular basis, not just for a convention or a visit by the circus, and when people could do all their shopping on public transit. So what happened?

Conference Report

July 28, 2004
Take Back America conference (starring Howard Dean, Michael Moore, and Robert Reich)

by Jonathan Watterson, the Rambling Rover

Omigod what a thrill. I got to see the two politicians I?ve worked hardest for, and been most passionate about, and the biggest Hollywood political star, like, ever, all in one afternoon. The Take Back America conference, sponsored by Campaign for America?s Future, was the place to be this afternoon. There was a whole lineup of prominent speakers in addition to the stars, and overall the feeling was one of optimism and determination to work hard to get the Democratic Party to pay attention to issues of social justice. It was a good antidote to the rah-rah of the Convention.

I arrived at the Cambridge Royal Sonesta Hotel with two SC friends at 11:30 and took places a couple hundred places back in the line for the 2:00 forum. Turns out they got over 3000 RSVPs for the 700-capacity event. The ballroom was packed with excited people, and they made the classy but questionable choice to serve us coffee (two of us got stains on our shirts). Before the speeches began, an MSNBC reporter interviewed my friend Robin, and her headshot ended up on msnbc.com. Represent, yo!

The humming crowd was thrilled to see Dr. Dean take the stage. He gave a version of the speech he gave us on Sunday, adapted for a more public crowd (rather than a throng of supporters). He emphasized the need for unity among Democrats and progressives to support Kerry in overthrowing Bush, and the importance of supporting progressive candidates and causes in the red states. Dean?s familiar trick is to begin listing states (a la Iowa), which always draws applause, but only we hard-cores get to see him scream. He plugged the ?Dean Dozen? lists of DFA-supported candidates for local office and encouraged us to run for, and support candidates for, local offices like mayor and school board and library commission. And he promoted the new Dean-ish decentralized mode of politics that?s creeping into mainstream campaigns, using blogs and meetups and word of mouth to complement top-down campaign management. I, of course, spent about a month this past winter volunteering for the Dean campaign, working with campaign operatives that had been brought into Columbia to prepare for the SC primary, and seeing my hero twice this week has been a thrill and reinforced the rightness of the cause I?ve adopted.

Robert Reich was secretary of labor under Clinton in the early nineties, and in 2002 he ran for governor of Massachusetts. I gave many hours to his reform-minded campaign, and continue to admire his brains and his tireless championship of working Americans. He stepped up to the podium with a new short joke. It used to be he would put a box down behind the podium, step up onto it, and announce that he?s the only candidate who has a platform (rim shot). This time he stood his 4? 10 1/2? frame behind the podium, his chin barely clearing it, told his joke about how he was six feet tall when he started fighting Republicans, and slowly lifted himself onto his platform as he said that our activist energy was causing him to ?rise up like a phoenix!? He gave many of his familiar insights into economics. To wit, it?s not ?trickle down? but ?trickle on.? Tax breaks to the rich do not stimulate the economy, because when you give them money back they save it, they don?t spend it, while tax breaks to middle-class Americans go straight back into the economy as we find ourselves with more spending power. The rich do invest extra money they have, but they?re just as likely to invest it abroad as here. Reich has a history as a burr in the side of complacent Democrats; after all, he nearly beat Shannon O?brien for the gubernatorial nomination, and he dissed his former co-worker Al Gore by endorsing Bill Bradley for president. So when he tells us to go out and support Kerry, people should listen. By the way, in the ballroom there I ran into Kim, the fellow Reich supporter who first emailed me about this guy Howard Dean whom many Reich folks were supporting. So it?s all connected, you see.

Michael Moore was several hours late in arriving; I heard later that a morning appointment was delayed and he was late in everything today. Meanwhile, hundreds disappointed not to have gotten into the packed ballroom formed their own meeting outside, and the speakers began to go out to speak to them after finishing with us. Other speakers, like the heads of the AFL-CIO and the NEA, gave predictably intelligent and impassioned speeches about the needs of their constituents and of sympathetic public officers, while we waited for Moore.

Oh boy was it worth the wait. Moore gave us the burst of raw emotion this crowd needed. He mostly played nice with the Democrats, encouraging us to support Kerry and not to let any ideological differences discourage us. The most creative and useful point he made was addressed at the question of how to reconcile Kerry?s vote in favor of the war in Iraq. He compared it to a soldier who apologized to him for having booed Moore at his famous Oscar acceptance speech ? the soldier, and Kerry, had been guilty of nothing more than believing the president. (I think Kerry didn?t completely believe the president; he?s too smart to be that gullible, and I think he was being more disingenuous than that; but I?m willing to disregard that in the face of the alternative.) Moore also heavily, though politely, criticized his former ally Ralph Nader for continuing to run as a potential spoiler. He said that the Democratic Party is better now than in 2000, partly because of Nader?s actions, and that he should rest on his laurels. No danger of that.

Afterwards, Moore resumed his tirade outside to the crowd that had formed there when most of the audience quit the ballroom after Moore?s speech ended. I?d stuck around for the last few speakers, including the head of the new interfaith group Let Justice Roll, who I learned is already fostering ties to my UU Fellowship of Columbia. The outdoor speech was more of a pep rally, in which Moore dug into the media for sleeping on the job. ?Do Your Job, Do Your Job,? he had us chant at the camera crews. One of the camera crews for NBC interviewed me and Robin; I don?t know yet if it?s aired anywhere.

By the way, did anyone catch Barack Obama?s speech at the DNC tonight? That was a speech of a future president. The large crowd gathered in Harvard?s JFK School of Government?s large TV atrium burst into a real-live standing ovation at the end of the televised speech, and I shouted ?Obama and Dean in 2012!? That would be an absolute political dream. This kid is going places. And he seems to be about my age.

Bribes all around

Good morning,

I'm assuming that everyone enjoyed the good doctor's speech at the Democratic National Convention and all praise has been given.
Perhaps because I'm a contrarian or in the interest of getting on with the real task at hand, the following is a letter I sent off to 43 papers just before turning in last night.
I bring it up now because in my morning paper there's a story from Iraq about American military commanders handing out thousands of dollars to locals and insisting that these payments are not "bribes."
Clearly, much of what the current administration has done has skirted if not violated the law. However, getting that point across to law-abiding people who've had no personal involvement with the courts is difficult. So, what I'm thinking is that most everyone knows what the term "bribery" means.

Dear Editor:
While it is true that the federal tax cut on which the current administration brags has had the effect of increasing taxes and fees on the state and local level, the Democrats are missing the boat when they point this out.
That's because that tax cut, whether it went to the wealthy or the ordinary working bloke, was nothing less than a bribe, a pay-off to insure that the people in power and their neo-con friends could violate the law of the land with impunity.
Of course, nobody's come out and said "We'll give you some money and then we'll take your rights as citizens," but that's what's happened. Make no mistake. The Constituttion is being shredded right before our eyes. Just take a gander at Americans relegated to cages in free speech zones.
In case you're thinking that the term bribery doesn't apply to ordinary citizens being bought off, just remember that our Constitution, the law of the land, relies on the people to insure compliance.

When is a tax cut a bribe?

Walking along the Boston waterfront on Sunday it was impossible to miss all the private water craft moored along side the various residential piers. As usual, the spouse reacted to these toys, used infrequently and ranging in size from a row boat to a double-wide, as a waste of money that could be used better for something else.

I, on the other hand, saw them as an opportunity for somebody to build something for which he had no personal use and getting paid a good salary for a job well done. Which, after all, is one of the ideals of the Democratic process.

After giving it some more thought, I was reminded that one of the Globe's op-ed columnists not long ago included the opinion in his column that "everybody wants to be rich"--an opinion with which I have to disagree. Certainly, I don't want to be rich and I wouldn't want one of those craft bobbing in Boston harbor, if you gave me one.

And I don't think I'm all that peculiar. Lots of people don't want to be rich. What they want is not to be denied the OPPORTUNITY to get rich, if that's what they wanted to do. And therein lies a big difference. And therein lies a mistake the Democrats are making, when they suggest that their policies would give more to the middle class and less to the rich. They are not only antagonizing the rich (not all, but some) but they are antagonizing those who might want to become rich by suggesting that the game is somehow fixed.

While there was a long period of history when the amount of money available was fixed and whenever someone got more someone else got less, that's no longer the case (thank Richard Nixon for liberating our currency from the store of gold). Pretending that it is is manipulative, if not deceptive. And deception tends to generate resentment and properly so.

Which leads me to the observation that the Republican mantra of providing tax cuts, being based on the same flawed assumption that the money available is somehow fixed, is also deceptive. But not in the sense that Democrats have so far tried to emphasise in pointing out that tax cuts by one governmental authority merely lead to increasing taxes by others since the services being provided are obviously necessary and desirable.

While the rationale for the transfer of the taxing responsibility, as well as the delivery of services from one governmental authority to another actually used to have a basis in fact in that some services are more efficiently and effectively delivered on the local level (a national fire suppression agency would undoubtedly be overwhelmed by complexity), there is no logical basis for the current administration's distribution of tax cuts. Not even in restrospect. for the ostensible purpose of stimulating private enterprise just hasn't happened.

And there's a good reason for why it hasn't happened. That's because the tax cuts were just a distraction from the fact that, in exchange for getting a tax cut, we were expected to give up a lot of our personal freedoms.

Now, you may quibble that a bribe is a payment of money or a favor delivered in exchange for looking the other way or ignoring some illegal behavior on the part of an official person. One may also question whether a payment that is delivered by someone else (in this case the Congress of the U.S.) can be classified as a bribe. But the fact remains that in a system of government where the ultimate responsibility to assure compliance with the law rests with the people, the promise of tax cuts has been accompanied by a gross violation of our Constitution--i.e. the fundamental law of the land.

It may be ironic, but it seems that the supporters of law and order have been bought off with a few dollars. As a result, our whole nations is now perceived as an outlaw by most of the people on this globe.

Dean at Demfest

Boston Sunday

We spent four hours in Boston yesterday--from 10:15 in the morning to just after 2:30. The drive in was uneventful and we parked right across from the Fleet Center in a parking garage. Had we driven a little further, we would have paid four dollars more. The rates seem to be calibrated by how much time the vehicles spends on local street.
Anyway, we walked from the Fleet where there were a few people with tags around their necks lining up to go through gates to get inside the fencing to the Government Center and then the Quincy market area. It would not have been a good route to try to negotiate with a wheel chair.Crosswalks are haphazard; walk signals are unreliable and there are barricaded work areas everywhere because the demolition of the elevated highway is not yet complete.

At the Quincy Market we encoutered our first overtly political groups, supporters of Lyndon Larouche who were trying to pass out position papers. Oddly enough, most of the young men spoke German accented English. We did not take their multipaged documents. The next group we encoutered, after making our way across the surface artery to the park on the waterfront, was holding a reading on a platform and with a loudspeaker commemorating people who have died in the Isreali conflicts. There didn't seem to be anyone handing our any information. Men in black and police in flack jackets did have a presence and one large shepherd was allowed to relieve himself on the grass outside the children's play area.
It's been at least four years since I've been in Boston and I was sorry to see that the park is filling up with more and more structural elements, as they say. In addition to the arbor and the children's playground, there's now some sort of maintenance building with a couple of public toilets.
Speaking of toilets, Joe's American Cafe, where we had some iced tea and onion rings overlooking the water, has the cleanest, shiniest "restrooms" I've ever seen. The floors are polished to a high sheen and there's not a finger-print to be seen on the woodwork either. At sign at the entrance to the restaurant even invites the public to use the facilities. That's a first in my experience.
Having been refreshed at Joe's, we meandered along Causeway Street, skirting the North End and taking a look at the condos that have now been constructed on most of the old warves. I was sorry to see that some of the warf buildings have had wings attached on the land side, somewhat ruining the original architecture. Maybe I'm just a little soured by jealousy, 'cause that sure is a place where I'd happily live, if we could afford it.
The North End neighborhood is little changed. Though the paper has reported that the residents are have a hard time getting used to not having the noise from the highway behind them, that wasn't a problem yesterday because of the noise from all the helicopters over-head. Three or four of them had obviously been dispatched to fly back and forth.
It was the feast of St. Joseph yesterday, beging celebrated with a marching band and a serenade by singers in "traditional" garb. Banners over the main shopping street announced yet other festivals for the next two weekends.
We settled on a small family-run restaurant for lunch. The menu was appealing and the prices seemed very reasonable. Turned out that was probably because the restaurant accepts cash only. But somebody must have had a late night out. This cash-only enterprise had no change on hand so the cook had to be dispatched next door to get some. Message to prospective diners: bring cash and small bills to the North End.
Having enjoyed our lunch and a couple of Italian Birres (didn't know Italians drink beer), we continued our meander along Causeway Street, past the swimming pool and the bollo courts and the hockey rink converted to a FEMA headquarters. Parking along the street was outlawed by "Special Police Event" signs but wasn't being enforced against one derelict vehicle which, though it had enighborhood parking stickers, obviously hadn't been moved through many street sweepings. A couple of tour buses from out of state didn't seem inclined to honor the no-parking signs either, even though we discovered a large parking lot next to the Center had been set aside for their use. The drivers were probably lost and couldn't find their designated area.
We discovered that the old causeway bridge which leads to the dock for the "Constitution" as well as a number of new Residence Inns and an approach to the Tobin Bridge is still operational.
Lots of sightseers were walking, jogging and being driven across in Duckboats. Still glad we weren't trying to negotiate the area with a wheel-chair.
Since we had parked on the north side of the Fleet Center and were now on the south, we made a couple of false starts trying to get around. Some streets were blocked to traffic with barriers, others with large dump trucks but pedestrians seemed un-impeded until they came within a half block of the center where only people with plastic around their necks were permitted to go through make-shift gates.
Actually, the gates are only make-shift in the sense that the fencing in which they are contained is easily moved about (as easy as it is to move eight foot by four foot screens with a four foot metal base which has been set up by the hundreds to form the fence). Although movable, this fencing is in every sense permanent and obviously intended for repeated use in different venues. It's probably being rented like tents for weddings and receptions.
While we were circumventing the Fleet Center we watched the police arrive. They were delivered in yellow school buses which had the word "Bus" taped over. For the most part, the officers being delivered to the site seemed to be somewhat over-the-hill and, for the most part, over-weight. Most probably couldn't pass physical entrance tests. Oddly enough, the female officers fit right in. Though they could more properly be described as "stocky" rather than over-weight.
The few officer we querried as to how to get to the parking garage seemed not to be familiar with the names of the streets in the area nor where anything was to be found. I got the impression that they were not familiar with the city as a whole. Perhaps because the police tend to be permanently assigned to specific neighborhoods. Which, it seems to me, would be a disadvantage during a real emergency.
Anyway, by mid-afternoon there were no more buses in the special compound than in the morning and the number of people with plastic tags going through the gates seemed about the same. The restaurants and bars right next to the Fleet seemed to have fewer patrons than those in the North End. People were getting into locked buildings by waiting for someone to come out. And, oh yes, the parking garage turned out not to have a human attendant at all.
In order to get out, one was expected to stop at a glass-enclosed booth, about three times the size of an ATM facility, submit the card one got from the machine when coming in, pay with cash or credit card, receive a receipt and another card which was to be deposited into another machine at the exit to lift the "barrier." All of which was supposedly being observed by a camera which somebody was presumably watching like a hawk to make sure no-one drove through the barrier without paying. Given all the man-power on the street waiting for protesters who didn't arrive, you'd think a few warm bodies could have been dispatched to the parking garage right next to the Fleet.
Of course, the Democratic Convention doesn't start until today and much of the activity yesterday could have been a sort of dry-run (generating lots of over-time for the patrolmen). But that still leaves me with the impression that much activity is designed to impress the citizenry rather than to actually improve security. While the Globe had been reporting that the city removed trash receptacles in the downtown area to minimize the opportunity for terrorists planting explosives, the neighborhoods through which we walked were full of large garbage containers parked in doorways and overflowing with trash. The ability of terrorists to plan ahead and anticipate contingencies seems not to have registered with our security planners.
Guess the best we can do is keep our fingers crossed.
Anyway, our exit from the city was also uneventful. We simply followed the route we had walked by car and snaked onto the exit to the Tobin Bridge from Causeway. There are no bridge tolls on the way out, so we were past Chelsea in no time. There's never much traffic heading north on a Sunday afternoon.

Cheney Speak

Shrub Speak

"Blacks are gagging on the donkey but not yet ready to swallow the elephant."

George W. Bush at the National Urban League today

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/07/20040723-8.html

Dean for Bush?

The Washington Post reports:

Dean for Bush? That's a Scream

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean learned something new yesterday: He's a member of the Republican National Committee's Victory 2004 club. Even has the membership card to prove it. It arrived in the mail with a striking picture of President and Laura Bush, and a typed note: "To: Howard Dean, thank you for your loyal commitment, I'm looking forward to working with you for a great Republican victory in Vermont this year. Warmest regards, George Bush." (And the onetime Democratic presidential contender thought his loss in Iowa was a good reason to shriek.)

Monday Reading

http://www.legitgov.org/front_tampa_schiffler_071604.html

Case Closed?

Allawi shot inmates in cold blood, say witnesses

uploaded 16 Jul 2004

By Paul McGeough, Chief Herald Correspondent, in Baghdad

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".

The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.

But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence.

Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on and congratulated him when the job was done. Mr al-Naqib's office has issued a verbal denial.

The names of three of the alleged victims have been obtained by the Herald.

One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents.

"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them."

Re-enacting the killings, one witness stood three to four metres in front of a wall and swung his outstretched arm in an even arc, left to right, jerking his wrist to mimic the recoil as each bullet was fired. Then he raised a hand to his brow, saying: "He was very close. Each was shot in the head."

The witnesses said seven prisoners had been brought out to the courtyard, but the last man in the line was only wounded - in the neck, said one witness; in the chest, said the other.

Given Dr Allawi's role as the leader of the US experiment in planting a model democracy in the Middle East, allegations of a return to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor are likely to stir a simmering debate on how well Washington knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely what he envisages for the new Iraq.

There is much debate and rumour in Baghdad about the Prime Minister's capacity for brutality, but this is the first time eyewitness accounts have been obtained.

A former CIA officer, Vincent Cannisatraro, recently told The New Yorker: "If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does. He was a paid Mukhabarat [intelligence] agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff."

In Baghdad, varying accounts of the shootings are interpreted by observers as useful to a little-known politician who, after 33 years in exile, needs to prove his leadership credentials as a "strongman" in a war-ravaged country that has no experience of democracy.

Dr Allawi's statement dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government.

But in a sharp reminder of the Iraqi hunger for security above all else, the witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In interviews with the Herald they were enthusiastic about such killings, with one of them arguing: "These criminals were terrorists. They are the ones who plant the bombs."

Before the shootings, the 58-year-old Prime Minister is said to have told the policemen they must have courage in their work and that he would shield them from any repercussions if they killed insurgents in the course of their duty.

The witnesses said the Iraqi police observers were "shocked and surprised". But asked what message they might take from such an act, one said: "Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny. This is the new Iraq.

"Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and soldiers not to be scared if they kill anyone - especially, they are not to worry about tribal revenge. He said there would be an order from him and the Interior Ministry that all would be fully protected.

"He told them: 'We must destroy anyone who wants to destroy Iraq and kill our people.'

"At first they were surprised. I was scared - but now the police seem to be very happy about this. There was no anger at all, because so many policemen have been killed by these criminals."

Dr Allawi had made a surprise visit to the complex, they said.

Neither witness could give a specific date for the killings. But their accounts narrowed the time frame to on or around the third weekend in June - about a week before the rushed handover of power in Iraq and more than three weeks after Dr Allawi was named as the interim Prime Minister.

They said that as many as five of the dead prisoners were Iraqis, two of whom came from Samarra, a volatile town to the north of the capital, where an attack by insurgents on the home of Mr Al-Naqib killed four of the Interior Minister's bodyguards on June 19.

The Herald has established the names of three of the prisoners alleged to have been killed. Two names connote ties to Syrian-based Arab tribes, suggesting they were foreign fighters: Ahmed Abdulah Ahsamey and Amer Lutfi Mohammed Ahmed al-Kutsia.

The third was Walid Mehdi Ahmed al-Samarrai. The last word of his name indicates that he was one of the two said to come from Samarra, which is in the Sunni Triangle.

The three names were provided to the Interior Ministry, where senior adviser Sabah Khadum undertook to provide a status report on each. He was asked if they were prisoners, were they alive or had they died in custody.

But the next day he cut short an interview by hanging up the phone, saying only: "I have no information - I don't want to comment on that specific matter."

All seven were described as young men. One of the witnesses spoke of the distinctive appearance of four as "Wahabbi", the colloquial Iraqi term for the foreign fundamentalist insurgency fighters and their Iraqi followers.

He said: "The Wahabbis had long beards, very short hair and they were wearing dishdashas [the caftan-like garment worn by Iraqi men]."

Raising the hem of his own dishdasha to reveal the cotton pantaloons usually worn beneath, he said: "The other three were just wearing these - they looked normal."

One witness justified the shootings as an unintended act of mercy: "They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk."

After the removal of the bodies, the officer in charge of the complex, General Raad Abdullah, is said to have called a meeting of the policemen and told them not to talk outside the station about what had happened. "He said it was a security issue," a witness said.

One of the Al-Amariyah witnesses said he watched as Iraqis among the Prime Minister's bodyguards piled the prisoners' bodies into the back of a Nissan utility and drove off. He did not know what became of them. But the other witness said the bodies were buried west of Baghdad, in open desert country near Abu Ghraib.

That would place their burial near the notorious prison, which was used by Saddam Hussein's security forces to torture and kill thousands of Iraqis. Subsequently it was revealed as the setting for the still-unfolding prisoner abuse scandal involving US troops in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.

The Herald has established that as many as 30 people, including the victims, may have been in the courtyard. One of the witnesses said there were five or six civilian-clad American security men in a convoy of five or six late model four-wheel-drive vehicles that was shepherding Dr Allawi's entourage on the day. The US military and Dr Allawi's office refused to respond to questions about the composition of his security team. It is understood that the core of his protection unit is drawn from the US Special Forces units.

The security establishment where the killings are said to have happened is on open ground on the border of the Al-Amariyah and Al-Kudra neighbourhoods in Baghdad.

About 90 policemen are stationed at the complex, which processes insurgents and more hardened offenders among those captured in the struggle against a wave of murder, robbery and kidnapping in post-invasion Iraq.

The Interior Ministry denied permission for the Herald to enter the heavily fortified police complex.

The two witnesses were independently and separately found by the Herald. Neither approached the newspaper. They were interviewed on different days in a private home in Baghdad, without being told the other had spoken. A condition of the co-operation of each man was that no personal information would be published.

Both interviews lasted more than 90 minutes and were conducted through an interpreter, with another journalist present for one of the meetings. The witnesses were not paid for the interviews.

Dr Allawi's office has dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government.

A statement in the name of spokesman Taha Hussein read: "We face these sorts of allegations on a regular basis. Numerous groups are attempting to hinder what the interim Iraqi government is on the verge of achieving, and occasionally they spread outrageous accusations hoping they will be believed and thus harm the honourable reputation of those who sacrifice so much to protect this glorious country and its now free and respectable people.

"Dr Allawi is turning this country into a free and democratic nation run by the rule of law; so if your sources are as credible as they say they are, then they are more than welcome to file a complaint in a court of law against the Prime Minister."

In response to a question asking if Dr Allawi carried a gun, the statement said: "[He] does not carry a pistol. He is the Prime Minister of Iraq, not a combatant in need of any weaponry."

Sabah Khadum, a senior adviser to Interior Minister Mr Naqib, whose portfolio covers police matters, also dismissed the accounts. Rejecting them as "ludicrous", Mr Khadum said of Dr Allawi: "He is a doctor and I know him. He was my neighbour in London. He just doesn't have it in him. Baghdad is a city of rumours. This is not worth discussing."

Mr Khadum added: "Do you think a man who is Prime Minister is going to disqualify himself for life like this? This is not a government of gangsters."

Asked if Dr Allawi had visited the Al-Amariyah complex - one of the most important counter-insurgency centres in Baghdad - Mr Khadum said he could not reveal the Prime Minister's movements. But he added: "Dr Allawi has made many visits to police stations ... he is heading the offensive."

US officials in Iraq have not made an outright denial of the allegations. An emailed response to questions from the Herald to the US ambassador, John Negroponte, said: "If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed."

Source: SMH

Freed Swede

Freed Swede Says Was Tortured in Guantanamo
Wed Jul 14, 2004 03:06 PM ET

By Jan Strupczewski

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) - A Swede released from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay last week said he had been tortured by exposure to freezing cold, noise and bright lights and chained during his 2-1/2-year imprisonment.

Mehdi Ghezali, 25, the son of an Algerian-born immigrant who was arrested in Pakistan where he says he was studying Islam, told Swedish media in interviews published or aired Wednesday that he was interrogated almost every day.

Washington dismissed the allegations of mistreatment.

He was released on July 8 after pressure from Sweden including a meeting in Washington between Prime Minister Goran Persson and President Bush.

Ghezali told Dagens Nyheter daily and Swedish public radio that he had answered all questions put to him for the first six months but gave up talking when his interrogators kept asking the same questions.

After more than two years in the camp, in April this year the military stepped up the pressure on him.

"They put me in the interrogation room and used it as a refrigerator. They set the temperature to minus degrees so it was terribly cold and one had to freeze there for many hours -- 12-14 hours one had to sit there, chained," he said, adding that one foot had gone partially numb.

CHAINED FEET

Ghezali said he was deprived of sleep for about two weeks by constant switching of cells and interrogation, was exposed to powerful flashes of light in a dark room, to very loud music and noise and was chained for long periods in painful positions.

"They forced me down with chained feet. Then they took away the chains from the hands, pulled the arms under the legs and chained them hard again. I could not move," he said.

After several hours his feet were swollen and his whole body was aching. "The worst was in the back and the legs," he said.
Some of these torture methods have also been used by the U.S. military on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in a scandal which has embarrassed the U.S. government this year.

Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds told public radio that if correct, the allegations meant that the U.S. had broken international law. "That is wholly unacceptable," Freivalds said.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in Washington: "The government of Sweden representatives have visited Guantanamo on multiple occasions and they have not expressed allegations of mistreatment to us."

Ghezali said he went Pakistan to study Islam in August 2001, before the Sept. 11 attacks which triggered President Bush's war on terrorism and the invasion of Afghanistan.

He said he was visiting a friend in the Afghan town of Jalalabad near the Pakistani border when the U.S. attack began and decided to return to Pakistan when he heard that villagers were selling foreigners to the U.S. forces.

But he was captured by Pakistani villagers while crossing the border from Afghanistan and sold to Pakistani police, who turned him over to the U.S. military. He was flown from Pakistan to Afghanistan and arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

Platform Construction

Platform Perspectives: Laura Blubaugh, Delegate Coordinator
July 12, 2004

"The strongest message that we sent was that we are here to stay. We insist and demand that the progressive voice has a home within the Democratic Party, and we are not going away."

The numbers and the rules were clearly stacked against us going into Miami.

There were 186 platform members on the DNC roster, 186 platform members that our teams researched, and, for the most part, contacted well in advance of the Platform Committee meeting to begin making our case. This was all with the understanding that, under the rules, we needed 20% of the members, or 38 votes, to move a minority plank forward.

Only 105 platform members attended, barely making the quorum that determines the National Democratic Party Platform. Under the rules, the platform-writers "need not be delegates or alternates to the Convention" (Rules of Procedure for the Platform Committee), and though only 25 members are officially appointed by the DNC chairman, it is rare that members are elected. When the elected national delegates meet in Boston -- representatives from every Congressional district across the country ? they will have the opportunity to vote only on whether they support or do not support the platform that is presented to them on the National Convention floor.

At the Platform Committee, any proposed amendment requires at least 15 "seconding" voices to even acknowledge its existence and to give it an opportunity for public debate. The "debate" process allows for five members to speak in favor the amendment, and five to speak against it.

When the Kerry Campaign first heard of our delegates' work building relationships with and lobbying platform committee members in a dozen states last week, they activated their own phone trees to speak with platform members. When the Kerry Campaign saw the Progressive Democratic Caucus with our signs and flyers inside the Westin Hotel, and saw platform committee members engaging in dialogue on the issues with our supporters, who came from as far as Texas, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, they began "working" the members to dissuade them from supporting the language we wanted on universal single-payer healthcare, on a Department of Peace, on NAFTA/WTO, on USA Patriot Act, on civil liberties, and on the occupation of Iraq.

We also discovered that we would still need 37 votes to pass a minority plank, despite the fact that there were only 105 members present, and there was no question that every effort was being made to ensure we didn't get the 37 votes. The Kerry campaign representatives also began to move their strongest voices against our amendments into position to block the votes we needed just to bring the issues to the floor for debate.

But the DNC and the Kerry campaign were pushed. Never before has the DNC seen platform members being lobbied so hard in their own states. This was the first time there has ever been an organized, grassroots presence inside the DNC hotel, monitoring this process, distributing literature, carrying signs, engaging members in thoughtful dialogue, and simply playing by and simultaneously pushing the rules and norms of DNC Platform meetings. The strongest message that we sent was that we are here to stay. We insist and demand that the progressive voice has a home within the Democratic Party, and we are not going away. We will continue to organize, continue to be vocal, and continue to push the Democratic Party so that they will have no choice but to deal with us as a credible and increasingly powerful coalition of voices from progressive campaigns and like-minded issue-based organizations. We are not the enemy. We are amongst many things, a vehicle for change, success, and for bringing back a true democratic spirit and credibility to this party.

The confrontation and struggle in Miami was a necessary exercise for many reasons. We are proud we were there. We are proud we took on the leadership of the DNC. We are proud of our supporters, mostly brand-new to the Platform process, who learned so much mentally and emotionally. We are proud that language on troop reduction was incorporated into the platform when we expected to walk away with nothing concrete. We are proud, and we will be back for Boston, even better organized, with more voices of support.

We will have to keep fighting (nonviolently!) every step of the way, including at the national convention. Power does not concede and respect can be disingenuous. There are successes to celebrate in the language and experience of Miami, but the platform is still far from acceptable. Boston will be a very different experience as a result of our presence in Miami, and the Kucinich Campaign will be more fully accepted, welcomed and incorporated, but observers from outside the Fleet Center and the electoral process can be assured of the Kucinich Campaign's tireless commitment to continue moving the party in the right direction -- from the inside.

DEMFEST

Handy DemocracyFest Links

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Tickets: www.myvoteismyvoice.com

Contributions http://www.myvoteismyvoice.com/html/contribute.html

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Workshop Registration http://www.myvoteismyvoice.com/html/training_registration.html

Speakers/Performers http://www.myvoteismyvoice.com/html/deanfest_2004.html

Press Release http://www.myvoteismyvoice.com/html/june_30_2004.html

DemocracyFest Merchandise http://www.cafeshops.com/democracyfest

Blogger's Breakfast http://bloggersbreakfast.blogharbor.com/blog

Blog Family Cookbook http://www.takeyourcountryback.com/COOKBOOK/

Posted by jjem! at July 7, 2004 08:51 PM

jjem at work!!!!!!

Bush Support

View image

Newmarket MeetUp

The July meeting of the Newmarket "Crackers," as I call them, was held in Exeter because, as expected, the crowd come to hear the candidates was too big to fit in Crackskulls.
We had one candidate for Governor, Paul McEachern, accompanied by his son, Deaglan who brought us flyers and made note of some questions. McEachern is staking his future career in politics on his support for an income tax in New Hampshire--certainly a topic that needs to be discussed but doesn't seem to be getting much traction. His Democratic challenger in the primary is John Lynch, who sent a representative but couldn't attend himself.

Because of the importance of the position they are aiming for, I should probably have mentioned Bob Bruce and Justin Nadeau first. They are challenging Representative Bradley who's still occupied in Washington. While Bob Bruce has a long career in public service, including law enforcement, Justin Nadeau has a lively presentation, focused to a large extent on what he learned from his grandparents. I asked both in one-on-one conversations what consideration they had given to impeaching a President whose performance has been derelict, if not criminal.

Bob Bruce's career in law enforcement allowed him to make the simple point that everyone is subject to the law and he would have no difficulty giving consideration to what at this point is obviously a hypothetical situation. Justin Nadeau, on the other hand, although he's a lawyer, seemed to be almost stunned by the question, as if he'd not given much thought to the parameters of the position he is aiming for and his aide was not in a position to help him out.

Although the New Hampshire Senate has only 24 members, four candidates presented themselves to our forum. Iris Estabrook, of Durham, was joined by Maggie Hassan, of Exeter, Marth Fuller Clark from Portsmouth, and Marlene DeChane from Barrington. Their presentations could be considered in the category of "singing to the choir"--i.e. fully supportive of the progressive interests of the group (education, health care, social service, effective government and human rights).

There were a goodly number of newcomers to the group from Exeter, no doubt because of an interest of the three candidates for Representative to the New Hampshire House. Eileen Flockhart and Marlowe Bergendorf spoke briefly. Chaz Proulx, who was chairing the forum, has only just put his name in and doesn't have a stump speech. Gordon Millar, from Dover, who has filed for the position, preferred to listen rather than make a presentation, as well.

Finally, we heard from Vincent DeChane who has decided to bring a little diversity to the three man County Commission of Rockingham County which is presently solidly Republican.

All of these candidates are deserving of more consideration and we look forward to the picnics and houseparties that will be planned thoughout the summer and look forward to an interesting primary in September. Politics is less and less of a spectator sport, thanks in large part to the example of Governor Howard Dean, MD.

Abortion--What's to like?

Kerry told the paper, "I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception."

Yes, I read that story as well. My reaction? Well, abortion is a process by which the body either spontaneously or with assistance rids itself of unwanted tissue. The notion that one can be for or against a nasty natural process is just a bit irrational.

Abortion of even the smallest amount of fethal tissue is unpleasant. So what's to like? Most of us women don't even like thinking about the elimination of tissues that don't contain a fertilized egg. And, yes, every one of those cells is alive or living or contains life, until it is dead. To argue about the beginning of a particular life is to go back to the beginning of organic existence on the planet. What's the point, unless you happen to be a paleobiologist?
One would hope that a political leader in the twenty-first century would not be fixated on such esoteric stuff. There was a time when a man such as Thomas Jefferson could amuse himself with philosophic speculation and agricultural research because the population was much smaller and the demands on his time were less.
Given the limited amount of time in every day that is available to deal with real-time problems, badgering a candidate about the origins of life is just another distraction to keep us from looking at what is really going on behind the closed doors of the current administration.

A Handful of Comments

It seems that the people in the Clinton administration forgot that for some people controlling other people is a lot more important and attractive than controlling the economy--i.e. things. Since controlling other people presumes a hierarchy, egalitarian policies and achievements are anathema to them. What the Clinton people perceived as good, these other factions considered to be bad.
Those are the people who are now in charge of our government. It's quite possible that the reason they got in is because we are not able to recognize that evil is not about the self; evil is about controlling others.

Well, the notion that the power to tax is the power to destroy may have had validity when governments did nothing but control the population and wage wars against their neighbors. However, when governments are designed to serve the will of the people, then the failure to contribute to the provision of those services constitutes a special privilege which, especially in the case of religion, is not to be granted either.
For some reason there is a basic discontinuity between our ostensible support for the concept of private property and the apparent desire to regulate it through taxation. Church properties are exempt because of an assumption that they provide a public service that provides a general public benefit.
Of course, Republicans, if they were honest, would have to admit that their support for religious institutions is largely based on the belief that religious authority is better at controlling the general population and does so more cheaply.

There is a difference between the person and the office. There is also a difference between people doing their job and not.
The people who have been charged with legislating have largely abrogated that responsibility, relying instead on the executive to tell them what they should be doing.
People like to have eaders in part because leaders are a convenient locus of blame and praise and it seems to be human nature to assign responsibility, especially for failure, somewhere else. It's because that happened during Reagan and Bush One that Rummy and his whole crew are still with us.
I doubt very much that any of those people are going to be retained by Kerry.
Increasingly, Clinton looks to me like an inter-regnum. My spouse compares it to whatever the period is called when the ministers rule until the Dauphine comes of age.

Yes, but the separation of Church and State in the constitution is based on the realization that the power of religion to control people by regulating what they think should not, on the one hand, be augmented by the power of the gun, or, on the other, be in any way restricted.
The individual has no rights when the state perceives its power to be threatened. Just recently we have seen that, except when a person risks incriminating himself by speaking, he has no right to remain silent.

That whole lust for things is what's driven me right out of the organized church, even though I'm still as ardently Christian as ever.
Posted by volneysimmons - visit DFA Talent at July 3, 2004 10:17 AM

Well, there may well be an element of lust on the part of those who instigate the building of churches. More likely, there is the gratification of making others do your bidding.
On the other hand, man is a tool-using creature and a builder. He likes making things with his hands. Also, man is a social animal and enjoys working with others on a common project. The amassing of the resources (both men and material) to construct a large project has to fall to someone. Whether that person is a religious leader (giving orders in the name of a deity) or a political leaders (giving orders in the name of a defined population or with a gun in his hand) or a traders who's perspicacity has enabled him to envision a project made of up many different parts, the organizing force is necessary if any major project is to be achieved.
I'm not quite sure why making and having things is less ethical or moral than persuading people to do things your way. You'd think that by now we would realize that the distinction between matter and spirit is a rather useless construct.

Well, I am not sure that determining one's contribution to the community as a whole on the basis of how much property one has accumulated and claimed responsibility for is the best way to go. It is the basis on which religious institutions are exempt.
There is an implicit assumption that because they have "chosen" on their own to concern themselves with people's spiritual welfare that they are thereby exempt from contributing to the physical needs of the whole community.
Why should a commitment to a particular way of thinking exempt one or a group from the social responsibilities that others support? Why should a commitment to a deity make it possible to enjoy a social center for singing and dancing and communal eating (not unlike in a country club) while fire and police and transportation services are provided for nothing?
Churches promote exclusivity. They exclude people who don't think like the membership. They exclude people who don't look like most of the members. Why should exclusive organizations benefit from a public subsidy?
By the way, it's quite possible to be exclusive without overtly keeping anyone out. You either make membership so onerous that the "wrong" people won't want to join or you simply ignore everyone who doesn't fit in.
That, of course, is why affirmative action is necessary. Neither abjuring exclusivity or practicing "benign neglect" is sufficient to realize a well-integrated community.

GETTING PUBLICITY

Yesterday I suggested to Kimmy that she try to get a commission to write up her journey to Dean Fest and pay for her transport that way. She wondered how to do that, so I looked up a couple of addresses in a Writer's Guide and I'm going to post them here, because other Dean Fest attendees and Convention Delegates might find it worthwhile to get some commissions to write up their experiences.

One of the reasons most of us are uninformed how the political process works on the ground is because most of the people who participate don't write about it for the general public and the people who write (pundits) don't participate except as observers.
So here's a list of publications that might be interested in Kimmy's perspective and pay a reasonable amount and indicate a relatively short turn-around time (some publications, like the garment industry, work four to six months ahead)

California Journal
edit at statenet dot com

Toward Freedom.com

East Bay Monthly
editorial at themonthly dot com

LA Magazine
lamag.com

Orange Coast Magazine
ocmag at aol dot com

Boston globe
globe.com/globe/magazine
requires a query and negotiates payment

International Railway Traveler
irt.trs at aol dot com

Cosmopolitan
Contact at Hearst Corp in NY--pays big bucks, doesn't provide email contact

MS. Magazine
info at msmagazine dot com

Almost no publications welcome stuff to be sent to them cold. They like to have a query, an outline for a story or article and some like to have a sample of something else the person has written.
What surprised me was how many publications are quite willing to accept stuff that has been published somewhere else. Some even say they pay half of whatever somebody else already paid. LOL
The publishing industry it seems is a consumer of information. They only publish what people send them. So, of course, if certain segments of the population are waiting to be asked for their opinion on things, they can wait for ever.
One thing this blog has done is reveal to people that they actually have a writing talent. Also they've learned that the more they do it, the easier it gets. LOL