The WAWG Blog

All the Republican presidential candidates and the neocon talking heads are telling us, through the compliant profit-oriented media, how bad things will go in the Middle East if we don’t do what President Bush says. Can they see into the future? Do they have a direct line to God? What’s their record on predicting the future?

“Al-Qaeda are on the way to establishing their first stronghold in the Middle East,” warned an American official.” If they succeed, it will be a catastrophe and an imminent danger to Saudi Arabia and Jordan.”

“I concluded that to step back from Baghdad would have disastrous consequences in America,” Bush told reporters. “And the reason why I say ‘disastrous consequences’ is, the Iraqi government could collapse and chaos could spread.”

President Bush on May 24, 2007, “The danger in this particular theater in the war on terror is that if we were to fail, they’d come and get us.”

From The Huffington Post, “Appearing on the Sunday morning news shows, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told the American people that our leaving Iraq would result in a wider war, with real danger to the United States and its interests.”

Why does anyone think the terrorists would wait until we leave Iraq? Isn’t it more proactive to anticipate that they could be here at any moment. Isn’t this especially true since we have replaced their high school level, obstacle course, training camps in Afghanistan with the five-star, real-time, real-enemy and real-weapons training camp in the city of Bagdad. They have learned more about killing from our invasion of Iraq than they ever could in their old dirt cheap Afghanistan playground.

Their advanced training in Iraq has created a much stronger terrorist foe and they are already sending these five-star terrorists to neighboring countries to stir up more trouble. How long before they reach here? Shouldn’t they be in a hurry to get these highly skilled terrorists to the U. S. while we are all living under a false sense of security? Won’t it be easier to attack us now, while our best troops and defense equipment are over there?

At a news conference in August 2006, Bush said:

A failed Iraq: would make America less secure.

A failed Iraq: in the heart of the Middle East will provide safe haven for terrorists and extremists. It will embolden those who are trying to thwart the ambitions of reformers. In this case, it would give the terrorists and extremists an additional tool besides safe haven and added revenues from oil sales.

Isn’t Iraq just that, a “haven for terrorists?” They’re emboldened by our mere presence. New revenues? Does anyone really think terrorist funding is an issue? Their advancements in anti-imperialist weaponry and killings indicate money is plentiful and growing.

The Boston Globe provided the following examples on recent Republican candidate talking points that are misleading and reminiscent of what got us in this mess to begin with. If enough people repeat a lie, it must be true.

… Senator John McCain of Arizona suggested that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would “follow us home” from Iraq — a comment some viewers may have taken to mean that bin Laden was in Iraq, which he is not.

… Rudolph Giuliani asserted, in response to a question about Iraq, that “these people want to follow us here and they have followed us here. Fort Dix happened a week ago.” However, none of the six people arrested for allegedly plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were from Iraq.

… Mitt Romney identified numerous groups that he said have “come together” to try to bring down the United States, though specialists say few of the groups Romney cited have worked together and only some have threatened the United States.

Romney, McCain, and Giuliani have endorsed — and expanded on — Bush’s much-debated contention that Al Qaeda is the main cause of instability in Iraq.

… many GOP candidates have recently echoed Bush’s longstanding assertion that Iraq is the “central battlefront” in the worldwide war against Al Qaeda and have declared that Al Qaeda would make Iraq its base of operations if the United States withdraws …

Romney’s comment in the earlier debate that “they’ve come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” struck some former intelligence officials as particularly misleading. Shia and Sunni, they said, are branches of Islam and not terrorist groups. There are an estimated 300 million Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, many of them fighting Al Qaeda.

During the debates about war funding, GOP leaders have downplayed the role of sectarian violence in Iraq and emphasized the role of Al Qaeda.

… McCain called any attempt to cut Iraq war funding, “the equivalent of waving a white flag to Al Qaeda.”

… while there is evidence that AQI members coordinate attacks among themselves, there is little evidence that they coordinate closely with bin Laden.

… Bush last week said a previously classified intelligence report indicated that bin Laden had sent a messenger in early 2005 to urge the late Iraqi terrorist chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to aim more attacks at the United States.

“We don’t have any direct information that would link Al Qaeda in Iraq to getting e-mails, memos, whatever, from bin Laden,” the military official said, speaking under condition of anonymity.

The Boston Globe also provided the following from CIA experts:

Michael Scheuer , the CIA’s former chief of operations against bin Laden in the late 1990s, said the comments of some GOP candidates seem to suggest that bin Laden is controlling the insurgency in Iraq, which he is not.

“There are at least 41 groups [worldwide] that have announced their allegiance to Osama bin Laden — and I will bet that none of them are directed by Osama bin Laden,” Scheuer said, pointing out that Al Qaeda in Iraq is not overseen by bin Laden.

“The idea that Al Qaeda will move its headquarters of operation from South Asia to Iraq is nonsense,” said Scheuer.

Stop the fearmongering and misinformation. Give us something that isn’t wild imagination of worst case scenarios.

Here’s a quote from a nonpartisan, non-Islamic and non-American observer, “The new Iraqi government has accomplished almost nothing in terms of public security and social stability. Ethnic conflicts and religious confrontations rage on; the economy remains in a coma; the country sees no ray of hope from underneath a mountain of debt. Iraq is now in fact a country without a central authority and totally broke.”

Why don’t we stop investing in the Middle East and take all that “war” money and provide incentives to our energy industries to invent a better battery or fuel-cell so we don’t need all that oil? This is not only a more productive use of the funds, which we are borrowing from the rest of the world, it is an incentive to keep them investing in the U.S. It also means we end this endless war and thus remove the real incentives for the terrorists to do us harm – our presence.

We Aren’t Number One – The United States is among the least peaceful nations in the world, ranking 96th between Yemen and Iran, according to an index of 121 countries.

Economy Has Worst Growth Since 2002
The economy nearly stalled in the first quarter with growth slowing to a pace of just 0.6 percent. That was the worst three-month showing in over four years.

Bush Says US Army Should Remain In Iraq Like We Have In South Korea For 50 Years

US Attorney Fired for Protecting Voting Rights of Native Americans – For more than 15 years, clean-cut, square-jawed Tom Heffelfinger was the embodiment of a tough Republican prosecutor. Named U.S. attorney for Minnesota in 1991, he won a series of high-profile white-collar crime and gun and explosives cases. By the time Heffelfinger resigned last year, his office had collected a string of awards and commendations from the Justice Department. So it came as a surprise — and something of a mystery — when he turned up on a list of U.S. attorneys who had been targeted for firing. Part of the reason, government documents and other evidence suggest, is that he tried to protect voting rights for Native Americans. At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger’s office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.

Earmarking and Phonemarking in the Democratic Congress – When the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed one of its first spending bills, funding the Energy Department for the rest of 2007, it proudly boasted that the legislation contained no money earmarked for lawmakers’ pet projects and stressed that any prior congressional requests for such spending “shall have no legal effect.” Within days, however, lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) began directly contacting the Energy Department. They sought to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process — a practice that lobbyists and appropriations insiders call “phonemarking.”

US Still Lacks a Disaster Response Plan – Even though the US is better prepared to deal with a disaster such as Katrina, officials said on Tuesday that the US still lacks a formal structure for coordinating a national response.

We Still Haven’t Learned That Harsh Methods Don’t Work in Interrogation – Psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, are attempting to make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.

Supreme Court Makes Pay Discrimination Easier – The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for many workers to sue their employers for discrimination in pay, insisting in a 5-to-4 decision on a tight time frame to file such cases. The dissenters said the ruling ignored workplace realities.

Neocon Hopes and Prays That Bush Will Bomb Iran – Yes, pray to Jesus. Spread his love destruction. What the world needs now is bombs, sweet bombs.

Republican Senator Says Defeatist Democratic War ‘Wimps’ Share Blame for Iraq War Deaths

U.S. Rejects European Union Emission Reductions
In the neocon world view, it’s not enough to bomb people, we need to kill the planet.

We’re Fighting Them There To Train Them To Fight Elsewhere – The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond. Experts now say that the experience that Jihadists are currently gaining in Iraq will become far more problematic than the training Muslim radicals received in Afghanistan’s terrorist camps. A report written by former State Department intelligence analyst Dennis Pluchinsky in April stated “battle-hardened militants from Iraq posed a greater threat to the West than extremists who trained in Afghanistan because Iraq had become a laboratory for urban guerrilla tactics.

More on How We Are Producing More Terrorists – An article published in Monday’s Gulf News posits that members of a Palestinian militant group fighting the Lebanese military previously fought in Iraq and received training in Jordan.

Even More on How We Are Producing More Terrorists

God Speaks to Tom Delay, but Tom Doesn’t Listen – Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who resigned under indictment on campaign finance-related charges in Texas, also has grown dissatisfied with the president’s stewardship of the conservative movement. DeLay told Goldberg that in coming years, when he is not fighting the Texas indictment, he plans to build a conservative grass-roots movement to rival MoveOn.org, insisting that divine inspiration brought him to that quest. “God has spoken to me,” DeLay said. “I listen to God, and what I’ve heard is that I’m supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican party, and I think we shouldn’t be underestimated.” DeLay also said, “The Schiavo case was one of my proudest moments in Congress,”

A jerking knee is no substitute for a thinking brain.

Regards,

Jim

In an article titled In the Democratic Congress, Pork Still Gets Served, the Washington Post reported last Thursday that Congressman David R. Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, “told fellow lawmakers that he intends to keep requests for earmarks out of pending spending bills, at least for now. Obey said the committee will deal with them at the end of the appropriations process in the closed-door meetings between House and Senate negotiators known as conference committees.” This is one of the ways earmarks are added to appropriation bills without approval or a link to its author, and was discussed in my previous article.

The WP article went on to report, “Obey’s spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, said his intention is not to keep the projects secret. Rather, she said, so many requests for spending were made to the appropriations panel — more than 30,000 this year — that its staff has been unable to study them and decide their validity.”

Another approach used by congressmen to get funding for their pet projects is referred to as phonemarking. This occurs when a congressman either calls or writes to the Secretary of an executive department and suggests or demands such funding.

The Washington Post article quoted Anne Womack of the Energy Department, “Certainly, we have heard from various members of Congress this year to express their support for various projects and groups seeking funding from the department. There’s no difference from previous years.”

Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay lead our Congress down this road to corruption and our new leaders are being seduced by the “bad barrel” those two created.

In a 2004 interview on CNN, Dr. Phil Zimbardo was commenting on situations like Abu Ghraib in Iraq and My Lai in Vietnam when he said, “what you have is powerful situational forces that get the majority to do things they say they would never do.” Dr. Zimbardo refers to these powerful situational forces as the “bad barrel.” He says, “And the barrel corrupts.” The barrel “gives people permission to do things they ordinarily would not.”

Now imagine the powerful situational forces at work inside The Beltway – Washington, D.C. How many of our representatives are being turned into “bad apples” by this bad barrel? A barrel that our elected officials have modified over recent years to concentrate power within a single party. In February of 2004, Robert Kuttner detailed these changes that occurred during the Republican reign over Congress. These changes are still in place under the new Democrat majority.

Under these changes and the additional ones instituted in our response to 9/11, which further concentrates power inside our federal government, the situation has become worse and more likely to create bad apples out of mostly good elected officials.

In a March 2007 Think Progress article, there is a summary of one of the measures of bad deeds that have increased significantly since 1994:

In 2005, Congress inserted 15,877 pork projects into spending bills. In 2006, Congress allocated a record $71.77 billion “to 15,832 special projects, more than double the $29.11 billion spent on 4,155 pork-barrel projects in 1994.”

Similar numbers were provided by the Wall Street Journal editorial page in January of 2006. “Giving up earmarks should be easy for Congress, since they used to be so rare. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan vetoed a spending bill because it contained 121 earmarks. The number of earmarks approved by Congress grew to 1,439 in 1995. Last year [2005], Congress approved a staggering 13,998 earmarks.”

Even back in 1999, The Heritage Foundation was warning, “Today, pork-barrel politics is characterized by a meteoric growth in the number of earmarks. Although the increase in the number of earmarks has been rising since 1985, the growth appears now to be accelerating rapidly. The number of earmarks in five of the 13 annual appropriations bills doubled between fiscal year 1998 and FY 1999. If allowed to continue, this trend will undermine the patterns of federalism that traditionally have defined the relationship among America’s three levels of government.”

Obviously, not all earmarks or pork are bad, but with an exponential increase in the number of earmarks and the fact that none can be attributed to an individual congressman, there is a significant possibility for abuse. A case in point is that of Congressman Duke Cunningham and his abuse of earmarks to advance his own well being. This is extensively documented in the new book The Wrong Stuff.

In Congressional Earmarks and Duke Cunningham, American Thinker put it this way:

It is “the biggest case of Congressional corruption ever documented.” Shocking in its scope and in the brazenness of its conspirators, the Duke Cunningham bribery caper is a tale not only of individual malfeasance that would make a grifter cry, but also of a culture in Washington, D.C. that threatens the integrity of government itself.

This culture/situation in Washington, D.C. is example of Dr. Zimbardo’s “bad barrel.”

The American Thinker review went on to say,

What Stern, Kammer and Condon uncovered in their investigation of Cunningham’s criminality went far beyond the rather seedy yet spectacular corruption of one Congressman. The authors have written a brief against the budget device that led Cunningham (and no doubt others) down a primrose path toward temptation and ultimately, a moral surrender to turpitude. It is a device that threatens the foundations of trust in our elected officials: the belief that they are acting in the interests of their constituents and not to line their pockets with gifts and cash from the legions of lobbyists whose only job is to wring as much of our tax dollars as is humanly possible from the government and deposit it in the bank accounts of their clients (keeping a healthy portion of pork for themselves).

The device is earmarks, of course. And if you can come away after reading this book and not be shaking in anger at the unadulterated and transparent corruption that earmarks have fostered, then you don’t pay taxes or simply don’t care about the theft of your money.

Again, earmarks as a tool are not by definition bad. What is bad is how the tool is used by individuals working inside the bad barrel.

The American Thinker article put it this way:

But the authors make the case it is not necessarily what earmarks are for that is the problem. After all, one man’s earmark is another man’s necessary expenditure. What may look like a pork road project to one person living far away from the location where construction would take place could in fact be a “quality of life” issue to someone directly affected by the increased traffic flow and safer driving that a particular earmarked project would bring.

Rather it is the way that earmarks are included in the budget process that cries out for radical reform. Earmarks are usually dropped into spending bills anonymously and are rarely debated on the floor of the House. Or they are added during mark-up sessions or even during House-Senate conferences. Sometimes, they are included in the Committee’s report on the final spending bill and not even passed on to the President when he signs it.

Earmarks were a problem going back in the 1980’s. For example, the authors point to the 1987 Transportation bill vetoed by an astonished Ronald Reagan, who counted no fewer than 121 earmarks in the bill. Both the House and Senate – Democrats and Republicans – shrugged off the Gipper’s disapproval and passed the bill over the President’s veto overwhelmingly. In 1991, the number of earmarks in the pork-laden Transportation bill had grown to 538; 1850 by 1998; and by 2005 the total number of earmarks reached a mind numbing 6,373 costing an additional $24.2 billion. (Source: Taxpayers for Common Sense).

Newt Gingrich and the Republicans saw the earmark as a ticket to a permanent majority. The Republicans would place newer or more vulnerable members on one of the Appropriations Committees, which would give them access to the lobbyists who, in exchange for an earmark, would fill their campaign coffers with cash as well as shower the member with gifts, junkets, and other goodies.

As The American Thinker closed their review, they asked, “Did the earmarks themselves corrupt Cunningham or did they simply act as a catalyst for his already warped sense of entitlement?” I think the question to ask is, how have the situational conditions changed in Congress that have allowed the biggest case of Congressional corruption ever documented? Another question is, how have the situational conditions changed in the White House that allow such arrogance to exist? As Dr. Zimbardo said in the CNN interview, “No, see that’s what’s been happening — from Bush on down, we’re saying ‘it’s a few bad apples’, ‘it’s isolated.’ But what’s bad is the barrel.”

For much more on bad barrel’s, the good apples that go bad in these bad barrels and those who build the barrels, refer to the Stanford Prison Experiment and The Lucifer Effect.

Here is some related humor.

Given a set of conditions, or abnormal situation, how might each of us respond?

Research indicates that most of us can be manipulated to commit acts we would not normally do. For example, in the the Milgram obedience studies, sixty-seven percent of 1,000 participants and up to 90% under very specific conditions were convinced by an authority figure to ‘shock’ another person with up to 450 volts. Others, under an abnormal situation, will just stand by and watch those doing bad things and a very small number of us will become unwitting, but true, heros.

Here are some examples of each type of response to an abnormal situation:

Blindly Obedient to Authority
There were the normal college students that willingly became the bad guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment. Their situation included minimal supervision, one specific instruction to not use physical violence, uniforms, clubs and mirrored eye glasses to hide behind. The situation was exacerbated by a prisoner revolt on the second day of the experiment. It was all down hill from there. The two week experiment was ended after six days but not before the bad guards had resorted to sexually humiliating tactics.

There was Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Frederick who was sent to prison for 8 years, busted to private and given a dishonorable discharge for his leadership role at Abu Ghraib. His situation had him working twelve hour night shifts (4PM-4AM) 7 days a week, for 40 days with not one day off. The prison conditions were chaotic and unsanitary with filthy surroundings that made it smell like a putrid sewer. There was limited water for showering and frequent electrical blackouts that created dangerous opportunities for prisoner attacks. Sgt. Frederick had no mission-specific training and was put in charge of more than 300 prisoners initially. The number soon swelled to more than 1,000. In addition, he was in charge of 12 army reserve guards and 60 Iraqi police, who often smuggled contraband to the inmates. Up until he was put in this “bad barrel” built by various authorities, the Sgt. was a model reservist, good husband and father of two, a Baptist and a fisherman.

Non-responsive Bystander
These were the “good guards” from the Stanford Prison Experiment who put in their time and watched other guards become abusive of the other students and their power as guards with no intervention from the authorities.

There were many bystanders at different levels of participation at Abu Ghraib. Some were shown in the photos and many others were also very aware of the abuse. However, all but one did nothing to stop the abuse of people and power. Some of the bystanders included doctors and nurses.

Bystanders all assume that someone else will take responsibility and action.

Heros
There was Frank DeMartini, a Port Authority construction Manager, and his crew of Pablo Ortiz, Carlos DaCosta, and Pete Negron who helped evacuate up to 70 individuals from upper floors of the North Tower on September 11, 2001. Frank and his colleagues perished when the tower finally collapsed.

There was Jabar Gibson, a felon from New Orleans, who commandeered a bus, loaded it with neighbors and drove it to Houston before the government’s buses ever arrived.

There was Dr. Tom Cahill who stood up to the EPA and warned that air quality at Ground Zero was not safe.

There was Dale Sayler who acted in an instant and pulled an unconscious driver from a vehicle about to be hit by an oncoming train. He and 17 others have been recognized by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission.

In 1940, there was Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese consul official in Lithuania, who signed over 2,000 visas allowing Jews to escape the Nazi invasion.

More recently, there was Wesley Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker, father of 2 and Navy veteran. He dove in front of a subway train to save Cameron Hollopeter, who had fallen off the subway platform as the train approached.

So, which of these are we capable of being? The answer is that all of us can be any one of the three depending on the situation and our personal characteristics. Is there anything we can do to increase the likelihood of being the hero instead of a non-responsive bystander or mindless implementor of authoritarian dictates? According to The Banality of Heroism by Philip Zimbardo and Zeno Franco, there is.

What personal characteristics make the difference between a mindless implementor of authoritarian dictates, a non-responsive bystander and a hero? Refer to the table in John Dean Exposes The Authoritarians that Are Leading the Way for the list of character traits that might explain the first two character types. As for heros, here are some likely characteristics as derived from The Banality of Heroism:

• Dissent – A history of incidents in Chiune Sugihara’s life suggest he “possessed the internal strength and self-assurance necessary to be guided by his own moral compass in uncertain situations.”
• Challenge authority – Chiune Sugihara refused to “obey his government’s order to not help the Jews (and, by extension, comply with his culture’s age-old moré not to bring shame on his family by disobeying authority).” Challenge others to support their own principles and ideology. Avoid the herd mentality or mob rule.
• Be Mindful and analytical of a given situation
• Hold on to your values as you imagine alternative futures for a given situation
• Don’t accept rationalizations where the ‘righteous’ end justifies the means. Resist the seduction of evil.
• Remain hopeful that others will eventually recognize your actions are just. Be ready to accept the consequences of taking action – muster your courage in the face of personal risk.
• Establish and maintain a code of conduct that has proven its value over time.

Here is a quote from another hero. “It violated everything I personally believed in and all I’d been taught about the rules of war.” This quote is from Sergeant Joseph Darby concerning his singular and risky decision to expose what was happening at Abu Ghraib.

In Ten Questions with Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Dr. Zimbardo said:

To become a hero involves only two steps on humanity’s path:

• One must act; moving away from the passivity of the mass of silent observers of evil or threats to life by somehow being catalyzed into action in that setting.
• That action is taken on behalf of others; it is a socio-centric act against the evolutionary imperative of being ego-centric, of not taking risks or putting those precious genes in harm’s way.

With all that’s been said here about situations and personal traits, take another look at the “situation” in our country and review your actions. How are you participating? Are you blindly obedient to authority or a non-responsive bystander, or are you moving toward being a hero?

Cast Your Vote for the Worst Offender in the Corporate Hall of Shame

Coca-Cola: The real cost of the Real Thing
What is the “Coke Side of Life” like on the other side of the world? In India, Coca-Cola bottling plants drain local water supplies, causing village wells to run dry. Plant workers in Colombia who fight for labor rights and decent working conditions are violently harassed. Here in the United States, Coke has worked to undermine public confidence in local water utilities through the marketing of its bottled water products, even though its water comes from municipal sources that they then mark up hundreds of times the original cost.

ExxonMobil: Slick lawyers — and a lot of hot air
Even though ExxonMobil is the most profitable corporation in the world, the oil giant is still using its legal clout to avoid paying $4.5 billion in punitive damages from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. At the same time, Exxon is spending millions to delay action on global warming. As the only oil corporation that still denies the urgency of climate change, ExxonMobil spent nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 funding “junk science” from front groups that confuse the issue.

Ford: Driving America’s dependence on oil
Automobiles are one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States — and Ford’s auto fleet has had deplorable fuel efficiency ratings. Ford also leads the industry in blocking state and federal efforts to improve auto emissions and efficiency. It was Ford’s lobbyists that took the lead in keeping improved fuel efficiency standards out of the 2005 Energy Bill. Meanwhile, Ford has spent millions on “greenwashing” ads to portray itself as an environmental leader. In April, Ford awarded its new CEO $28 million for only four months of work, just as the company moves ahead with plans to close plants and cut more than 30,000 hourly positions.

Halliburton: Maximum profits, minimal accountability
At Halliburton, war profiteering is big business. Since the Iraq war began, Halliburton has been awarded more than $20 billion in government contracts. Now Congress is investigating $2.7 billion in waste and overcharging by Halliburton — including bills for three times the meals that U.S. troops actually received in Iraq. With these sky-high prices comes an embarrassingly low level of service, such as water contaminated with feces that Halliburton delivered to troops for bathing, laundry and even making coffee. Now, after charging taxpayers billions of dollars for their government contracts, Halliburton has announced plans to cut and run, moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, which will likely make it easier for the company to pay less U.S. taxes.

Kimberly-Clark: The clear-cut truth about Kleenex
Kimberly-Clark may say its tissues are soft on the nose, but its paper products are hard on the Earth. The world’s largest tissue maker refuses to use recycled fiber in Kleenex and its other popular products. Kimberly-Clark’s appetite for clear-cut fiber is driving the destruction of ancient forests in the North American “Boreal” — a pristine forest that is critical for stabilizing the climate and home to migratory birds and 80 percent of Canada’s indigenous peoples.

Merck: Big pharma’s bad medicine
Once a role model for responsible corporate behavior, Merck has been more about money than patients in recent years. The pharmaceutical giant was widely condemned for keeping Vioxx on the shelves for four years after learning that the pain medication could cause heart complications. Merck withdrew the drug only after negative press about the thousands of lawsuits filed by patients who had suffered heart attacks. In the face of public health crises in the developing world, Merck’s actions have been increasingly motivated by greed. In Thailand, Merck aggressively fought government efforts to allow the sale of generic versions of life-saving AIDS medications.

Nestle: Not so sweet after all
Its chocolate may be sweet, but Nestlé’s corporate conduct and labor practices are far from it. Violations of labor rights have been reported from Nestlé factories in numerous countries, including the exploitation of children in the cocoa fields of the Ivory Coast. As one of the world’s largest and most powerful food and beverage corporations, Nestlé uses its political influence to shape nutrition policies to avoid responsibility for its role in the global obesity epidemic. For its bottled water products, Nestlé uses aggressive and manipulative tactics to obtain community water sources.

Wal-Mart: Low prices, lower wages
The world’s largest retailer generates nearly a billion dollars per day in sales. In fact, 2.5 cents of every dollar spent in the United States passes through a Wal-Mart cash register. But the employees who run those cash registers, stock the shelves, and clean the floors aren’t sharing in the corporate wealth. Most of the retail giant’s workers have an annual income close to the poverty line. Fewer than half are covered by the corporation’s health plan. Meanwhile, congressional investigators estimate that each Wal-Mart store receives nearly half a million dollars a year in government subsidies.

FreedomCentralUSA by Hugh E. Scott. – Freedom Central USA is dedicated to the destruction of domestic fascism — also known as neoconservatism — using truth and the Internet as WMDs.

The hands-down winner: Oil companies. (by HughScott)
If you like anecdotal information, then my background in the petroleum industry should capture your interest because it pertains directly to the White House.

After graduation in 1956 from Texas A&M with a BS in Geology, before entering the Air Force I worked for Atlantic Refining Company, now ARCO. By doing so, I followed the footsteps of my late father, Ed Scott, a career geologist/high-level executive for Union Oil of California (Unocal), which is well-known in the Bush administration.

For example, UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad worked for Unocal as a high-paid consultant. A former Chevron board member in addition to his Unocal connection, Khalilzad was appointed by President Bush to the National Security Council, where he reported directly to Condoleezza Rice.

Because Khalilzad’s assignment to the Council didn’t require congressional approval, he dodged a potentially difficult inquiry into his past as a State Department official under President Reagan. At the time, Khalilzad pushed for high-end weapons, such as surface-to-air missiles, for the Soviet-battling Mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan. U.S. funded and Pakistani-trained, they later became our enemy known as the Taliban.

When Bush 41 was president, Khalilzad worked for Paul Wolfowitz in the Defense Department. Prior to Gulf War 1, both Wolfowitz and Khalilzad advocated the use of military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

After Khalilzad left the DOD, he worked for the Rand Corporation, a rightwing think tank that performed research for the U.S. military, DOD and American intelligence community. Not surprisingly, Unocal was a Rand client.

While consulting for Unocal, Khalilzad participated in talks with the Taliban on Afghan oil and gas pipeline infrastructure, escorted a delegation of Taliban leaders that visited Unocal headquarters in Texas, and called for the United States to support their regime.

During the Clinton years, Khalilzad conducted risk assessments for Unocal on their proposed 900-mile pipeline project to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan. Even as the Clinton administration began to recognize the repressive nature of the Taliban regime and its links to Osama Bin Laden, Khalilzad called for U.S. engagement with the Taliban. …

Coexisting with the petroleum industry-White House connection is the subversive rightwing organization, Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

Not coincidentally, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad and Richard Armitage — all former oilmen — are PNAC members (called “signatories”). Oilman Bush is linked to PNAC through his brother, Jeb, a PNAC founder.

Another original PNAC member, Steve Forbes, has publicly stated he wants the IMF out of Iraq and private oil companies in. Some critics have dubbed PNAC’s imperialist goals the “Cheney strategy,” which employs a U.S. foreign policy based on securing direct global energy control by the Big Four American/U.S.-tied oil giants — Chevron. Exxon-Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell. Simply put, the PNAC/Cheney strategy is aimed at controlling the world’s major oil and natural gas deposits.

Oil Companies May Make 80% to 85% Profit on Crude Oil – Oil companies do not usually break out their divisional earnings, i.e. production, refining, chemical operations and on. Yet the oil industry had an ‘Oops’ moment a few years ago when a then bubbling management of Marathon Oil, one year out from its separation from U.S. Steel and clearly not yet fully in thrall of the oil industry’s vow of omerta, laid out exactly such a breakdown (By the way this is the same company currently under investigation by the CFTC for alleged crude oil price manipulation). In Marathon’s 2002 annual report, barely able to contain themselves they claimed upstream profits (primarily sales of crude) of over $1 billion dollars. They further boasted that they had replaced their annual production that year by 262 percent with finding and development costs of $4.61 per barrel, while increasing their proved reserves by 23 percent. In 2002 the average price of crude was in the $20’s per barrel, so that with a price of say $25/bbl Marathon earned a gross profit of over $20 per barrel produced and sold. If we assume the price of finding and producing a barrel of oil has doubled since then, which is a generous assumption, then at today’s prices of circa $65/bbl their per barrel, gross profit would be over $55 per barrel! Marathon has been brought into line and no longer breaks out earnings by division. But we can readily assume that today at over $65 a barrel the upstream profits are staggering, and that the same would apply for all integrated oil companies.

But that’s not all. Marathon’s 2002 report showed that the Upstream Division (production) had some 3000 employees and earnings were over $1 billion, while the rest of the companies additional 26,000 employees brought in earnings of $300 million. The report showed that upstream operations comprised 71% of the company’s earnings while downstream (primarily refining) and other energy related business comprised 29%. With today’s crude oil prices of over $60/barrel the numbers become daunting even with beneficent refinery margins. Certainly House chairman Bart Stupak’s criteria “unconsciously excessive” would readily apply.

Regards,

Jim

Mexico to Boost Tapping of Phones and E-Mail with U.S. Aid – Mexico is expanding its ability to tap telephone calls and e-mail using money from the U.S. government, a move that underlines how the country’s conservative government is increasingly willing to cooperate with the United States on law enforcement. The expansion comes as President Felipe Calderon is pushing to amend the Mexican Constitution to allow officials to tap phones without a judge’s approval in some cases. Calderon argues that the government needs the authority to combat drug gangs, which have killed hundreds of people this year.

Administration Ignored Intelligence Report That Predicted Post-War Chaos in Iraq – Prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the nation’s intelligence services warned the president that a military invasion of Iraq would fuel Islamist extremism and provide an opportunity for al Qaeda and Iran to exploit post-invasion disorder there, according to a new report released Friday. The report undercuts several of President Bush’s key justifications for invading Iraq and exposes the extent to which the chaos the US currently finds itself in was predicted with often chilling accuracy.

Regards,

Jim

Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran – The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, according to current and former officials in the intelligence community. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

Bush Outsources the Task of Catching bin Laden – The Bush administration pays the Pakistani government $1 billion a year to hunt down Osama bin Laden, and demands zero accountability as to how that money is spent. We are paying Musharraf $1 billion a year to strike immunity deals with the warlords thought to be harboring this man we’re paying him to catch?

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Former aide Goodling says Alberto Gonzales Gave Erroneous Testimony – In questioning with Rep. Artur Davis (D-GA), Goodling was asked if the Attorney General had given incomplete testimony with regard to his knowledge of the list of US Attorneys who were set to be fired and her attorney attempted to intervene. Asked if it was accurate that Gonzales “never saw the US Attorneys list,” Goodling responded, “I believe he saw a list,” and then affirmed that “it would be inaccurate testimony.” She also said Gonzales’s testimony that he had not been briefed on the firings was not accurate, and that Gonzales was present at a Nov. 27 meeting.

Liberty University Student Caught Carrying Explosives He Planned to Use to Stop Protesters at Jerry Falwell’s Funeral – Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car. The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service

Former Rove aide pleads the Fifth on White House contacts with convicted lobbyist Abramoff – Susan Ralston, the former executive assistant to top White House adviser Karl Rove, invoked her rights against self-incrimination while she was being asked to answer questions by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The deposition for which she sat concerned contacts between convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rove, as well as the White House more broadly.

Republican Senator Blocks Honors for Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring – A Republican Senator known for his criticism of various environmental causes is single-handedly holding up two bills in the US Senate that would honor the life of Rachel Carson, author of the well-known book Silent Spring. The bills were introduced by a bipartisan group of Senators from Carson’s home-states of Pennsylvania and Maryland on the occasion of the centennial of her birthday on May 27.

Giuliani made falling adoptions seem to rise using cherry-picked statistics – Rudy Giuliani said adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent when he was mayor, when in fact adoptions at the end of his tenure were only 17 percent higher than at the start, and falling.

Veterans Claims Court Denied Over 18,000 Claims in 2006 – The U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims is facing its highest caseload ever as the government receives an increasing number of benefit claims, the court’s chief judge said Tuesday. The U.S. is also rejecting a record number of those claims; denial of benefits jumped to 13,033 in the 2005 fiscal year, from 9,299 in 2004. Last year, the number of denials reached 18,107.

George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. – So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb?

Regards,

Jim

Proposed Pay Raise for Troops Serving in Iraq, Afghanistan Violates Federal Law – Recently the Bush Administration and Democratically-controlled Congress were at odds over how much to pay US soldiers serving in the most dangerous places in the world: Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress said that the troops should get a raise of 3.5%, while the Administration said any raise higher than 3% was not deserved. Administration officials even bluntly said the White House “strongly opposes” giving the troops that extra 0.5%. Although Democrats have been arguing for the 3.5% raise, what neither they, nor any news organization seems to have thus far noticed, is that the Administration’s meager compensation plan would be, in fact, illegal. Increases in military salary are traditionally determined by increases in average civilian salary, according to a method of measurement called the Employment Cost Index. Regardless of the actual dollar increase in salary, the base pay for service-members must be at least 0.5% above the corresponding civilian pay because of a Defense Authorization Act which Congress passed in 1999. But according to Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers the Bush Administration’s proposed raise of only 3% for active-duty troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is actually less than the average increase in civilian wages from 2006 to 2007 (3.2%), instead of the required 0.5% more than the average civilian wage (which would be equal to 3.7%). In the summer of 2003, the Bush Administration secretly planned pay cuts for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was not until the plan was made public that the White House was forced to make an embarrassing political flip-flop on the matter, but not before several high-profile Democrats decried their efforts to save money by depriving the troops of their “imminent danger pay.”

Voter Suppression: It’s the New Redistricting – Clink. Clink. Clink. What’s that reverberating in the halls of the Texas statehouse? It’s the ghost of Tom DeLay in leg irons. Ring. Ring. Ring. What’s that? It’s Karl Rove on the line. Once again, public servants are being called to do the national Republican Party’s errands. The task four years ago was redistricting. The task this time is voter suppression.

Bush Driving Without a Seatbelt as National Seatbelt Week Starts

U.S. Government’s $63 Million-a-Year Public Broadcasting Outlet in the Middle East Transmitted Terrorist Messages – Al Hurra television, the U.S. government’s $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program. That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces. More incompetence by Bush appointees.

Should Bush be Impeached?

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Former Republican State Senator Arrested for Child Rape, Molestation of Pages – Another one.

Regards,

Jim

White House opposes military pay raise – The White House has come out in opposition to a proposal by Congress to raise military pay by 3.5 percent, according to a report by Army Times.

Contrary to Gonzales Claim, At Least 26 Prosecutors Were Targeted for Firing – The Justice Department considered dismissing at least 26 U.S. attorneys between February 2005 and December 2006, say sources familiar with documents withheld from the public, far more than had been previously acknowledged by Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales and the Bush administration. The latest inconsistency in Gonzales’s congressional testimony came as investigators also learned of administration efforts to replace prosecutors in Florida and Colorado after GOP lawmakers complained that alleged Democratic “voter fraud” wasn’t being pursued enthusiastically enough, bringing to nine the number of battleground states in which the White House sought to install “Bushies” with a more pronounced partisan bent. 2 additional prosecutors were considered for ouster

Warrantless tapping initially was authorized by President Bush according to testimony by former deputy attorney general James Comey – Did Mr. Bush start by authorizing the agency to intercept domestic e-mails and telephone calls without first getting a warrant? Mr. Bush has acknowledged authorizing surveillance without a court order of communications between people abroad and people in the United States. That alone violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Domestic spying without a warrant would be an even more grievous offense. The question cannot be answered because Mr. Bush is hiding so much about the program. But whatever was going on, it so alarmed Mr. Comey and F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller that they sped to the hospital, roused the barely conscious Mr. Ashcroft and got him ready to fend off the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, and Mr. Bush’s counsel, Alberto Gonzales. There are clues in Mr. Comey’s testimony and in earlier testimony by Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Ashcroft’s successor, that suggest that Mr. Bush initially ordered broader surveillance than he and his aides have acknowledged.

PBS Frontline’s “Spying on the Home Front” program was downright chilling and showed a very clear and complete picture of the Bush administration’s vastly expanded domestic surveillance programs and their impact on civil liberties. At one point, the program showed how Alberto Gonzales was very deceitful during his Senate testimony on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. On numerous occasions he made it abundantly clear that he was only testifying on that specific program, which leads one to conclude that there are likely other (and more intrusive) domestic spying programs in place. Indeed, when Sen. Feinstein asks him if there are any other programs, he says “I don’t know how to answer that.” In case you missed it, I highly recommend watching the entire thing on the PBS website. This is by far the most comprehensive report to date on the extent and severity of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 domestic surveillance activities.

Bush administration attempts to control the Civil Liberties Watchdog Board’s agenda and edit its public statements – White House lawyers engaged in substantial edits of the Civil Liberties Watchdog Board’s annual report to Congress. A majority of the board sought to remove an extensive discussion of recent findings by the Justice Department’s inspector general of FBI abuses in the uses of so-called “national-security letters” to obtain personal data on U.S. citizens without a court order. The White House counsel’s office wanted to strike language stating that the panel planned to investigate complaints from civil-liberties groups that the Justice Department had improperly used a “material witness statute” to lock up terror suspects for lengthy periods of time without charging them with any crimes.

Documents Show NYPD Spied On Groups Suspected To Be Raising Anti-GOP Funds

Regards,

Jim