The Rag Blog

The Bush/Cheney White House, which told the American people in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion would be a three-to-six-week affair, now tells us that the U.S. occupation is permanent. Forever.

Attentive Americans, of which, alas, there are so few, had already concluded that the occupation was permanent. Permanence is the obvious message from the massive and fortified U.S. embassy under construction in Iraq and from the large permanent military bases that the Bush regime is building in Iraq.

Bush regime propagandists have created a false analogy with “the Korean model” in their effort to sell the permanent occupation of Iraq as necessary for Iraq’s security. More than one half century after the close of the Korean war, U.S. troops continue to be based in Korea, as they are in Germany more than six decades after the end of World War II.

The rationale for the U.S. troops in South Korea is to remind North Korea that an attack on South Korea is an attack on the U.S. itself. The rationale for U.S. troops in Germany disappeared when Reagan and Gorbachev brought the Cold War to an end.

There is, of course, no similarity between Iraq and Korea. There was no insurgency in Korea and no attacks on U.S. troops based in South Korea once the fighting stopped. The presence of U.S. troops in South Korea has produced many protest demonstrations by South Koreans, but the U.S. troops in South Korea have had no exposure to combat since the war ended in 1953.

In contrast, the insurgency in Iraq continues to rage and could expand dramatically if Shi’ites were to join the Sunnis in attacks on U.S. forces. Most American military leaders no longer believe the insurgency can be defeated. Permanent occupation means permanent insurgency. Indeed, an attempt at permanent occupation could possibly unify the Arabs in a joint effort to expel the Americans.

The absurd analogy with Korea is so far-fetched that it raises the question whether the Bush/Cheney regime has entered a new, higher level of delusion. Bush cannot keep troops in Iraq permanently unless he intends to remain permanently in the White House. Even some Republicans in Congress are talking about beginning withdrawals of U.S. troops in September. Republicans believe that if withdrawals do not begin, their party will be wiped out in the 2008 election.

The wild card is the neoconservatives’ long-standing alliance with Israeli Zionists. The neoconservatives still have a death grip on the discredited Bush regime. Jim Lobe describes the extensive international organization that the neoconservatives have put into place for the purpose of orchestrating an attack on Iran.

A sane reader might wonder why neoconservatives would want to expand a conflict in which the U.S. has failed. Surely, even delusional “cakewalk” neoconservatives must realize that attacking Iran would greatly increase the threat to U.S. troops in Iraq and perhaps bring missile attacks on oil facilities and U.S. bases throughout the Middle East. An attack on Iran would further radicalize Muslims and further undermine U.S. puppets in the Middle East. It could bring war to the entire region.

The point is that the neoconservatives do realize this. Their defeat in Iraq and Israel’s defeat in Lebanon have taught the neoconservatives that the U.S. cannot prevail in the Middle East by conventional military means. As I have previously explained, the neoconservatives’ plan is to escape the failure of their Iraq plan by orchestrating a war with Iran in which the U.S. can prevail only by using nuclear weapons. As previously reported, the neoconservatives believe that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran will convince Muslims that they must accept U.S. hegemony.

The neoconservatives have put the elements of their plan in place. They have powerful naval forces on station off Iran’s coast. They have convinced President Bush that only by attacking Iran can he prevail in Iraq.

The neoconservatives have rewritten U.S. war doctrine to permit preemptive U.S. nuclear attacks on non-nuclear countries. They have demonized Iran as the greatest threat since Hitler. Neoconservatives have invented “Islamofascism,” something that exists only in the neoconservative propaganda used to instill in Americans hatred of Muslims. The neoconservatives have dehumanized Muslims as monsters who must be destroyed at all costs. Recent statements by neoconservative leaders such as Norman Podhoretz read like the ravings of ignorant lunatics. Podhoretz has written Muslims out of the human race. He demands that their culture be deracinated.

Neoconservatives, convinced that a nuclear attack will bring Muslims to heel, are ignoring the likely blowback and unintended consequences of an attack on Iran, just as they ignored the likely consequences of their attack on Iraq. If the neoconservatives are mistaken in their assumption that nuclear weapons will cause Muslims to submit to the U.S., the consequences will be unmanageable.

The neoconservative Bush regime has got away with more than I thought possible, perhaps because most of Congress and the American public cannot imagine the degree of insanity that lies behind the Bush administration. Most Americans who have turned against the regime think that the administration is incompetent, that it jumped to wrong conclusions about Iraq, and that it mismanaged the war and will not admit its mistakes. As every reason Bush gave for the war has proven to be false, people see no point in continuing the struggle.

If Americans understood the enormity of the deception behind the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the pending attack on Iran, Bush and Cheney would be impeached and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, and AIPAC would be forced to register as a foreign agent.

Just as Goebbels said, some lies are too big to be disbelieved. It is this disbelief that is so dangerous. The inability of Americans to see through the Big Lie to the secret agenda allows the neoconservatives to escape accountability and continue with their plot.

It may sound like urban legend but it’s not. A frightening trend of bee colony collapses could lead to everything from a radically transformed diet to an overall wipeout of the world’s food supply.

The joke may have fallen flat, but this time no one could blame Bill Maher. Sure, it happened on the May 4, 2007 installment of his show Real Time With Bill Maher, but CNN personality and senior medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta was the one delivering the punch line, and it seems he was the only one in the room who believed the issue of Earth’s mysteriously vanishing honeybees was a joke. And while some may argue that he stayed on message, promoting his May 19 documentary called Danger: Poison Food, he nevertheless fumbled for answers when Maher asked him about what could be killing a major component of the nation’s food supply.

“Gosh, I don’t know,” Gupta answered, searching for context. “The — you know, with regards to bees in particular, I’m not sure what’s killing the bees. I’m not sure what’s killing the birds or the bees.”

Cue the laugh track.

In Gupta’s defense, a few weeks or months ago, the increasing disappearance of the honeybees, known now by the technical term Colony Collapse Disorder, had that feel of an urban legend, a phenomenon so esoteric and strange that it sounded like something out of science fiction. Except it’s not: It’s a frightening trend that, according to those hard at work at solving the problem at universities and organizations worldwide, could lead to everything from a radically transformed diet to an overall wipeout of the world’s food supply.

“It is real,” argued Dewey M. Caron, professor of entomology at the University of Delaware and one of several authorities investigating the issue with the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium’s Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group (MAAREC). “We surveyed a few states and figured out that half to three-fourths of a million bee colonies have died. This is no urban legend. It is serious.”

What is so serious is not only that the bees themselves are dying off without a smoking gun present, but that most people have no idea of the role they play in the food supply at large. Commercial beehives pollinate over a third of America’s crops, and that web of nourishment encompasses everything from fruits like peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries and more, to nuts like California almonds, 90 percent of which are helped along by the honeybees. Without this annual pollination, you could conceivably kiss those crops goodbye, to say nothing of the honey bees produce or the flowers they also fertilize.

But as the world has grown, so has its hunger and crowds, which has paved the way for the death of wild pollinators as well as the importation of honeybees from different climates in order to have massive crop pollination.

In the case of California’s aforementioned almonds, the largest managed pollination event in the world, the growing season occurs in February, well before local hives have suitably increased their populations to handle the pollination load. As a result, the region is increasingly dependent on the importation of hives from warmer climates.

The same goes for apple crops in New York, Washington and Michigan, as well as blueberries in Maine. Almonds alone require more than one-third of all the managed honeybees in the United States, so it’s entirely possible that the honeybees may have already been stretched to the breaking point, as far as environmental and chemical stressors are concerned. In fact, it’s safe to say that the nation’s honeybees, already a tireless lot, are totally exhausted from work.

“The honeybee is so important for pollination of hundreds of agricultural crops, because humans have made it so,” Caron explained. “We destroyed the natural pollinators, plowed up the area they needed to live and continued to replace their habitats with strip malls and housing developments. So, farmers have come to rely on honeybees because of mushrooming human populations and our own destructive habits to the natural ecology.”

And not just here, either: The disappearance is under way across the world. Regions of Iran are experiencing the same phenomenon, as are countries like Poland, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and more every day, including Latin American and Asia. The breadth of the problem suggests that a major environmental balance could be to blame — what else is new? — yet no authority will sign off on the possibility and the specific causes still remain unknown.

“Other countries are also experiencing serious declines of honeybee colonies,” said Maryann Frazier, senior extension associate at MAAREC and the department of entomology at Penn State University. “But we are not certain that the cause behind the losses here in the United States are the same as those causing [losses] in other parts of the world.”

Throw in the fact that this type of thing has been recorded as a regular occurrence since the 19th century, and you have an apiary mystery of mammoth proportions.

“Bee colonies die all the time,” Caron added. “They die over winter, lose queens, are destroyed by pests or diseases. But this is different, as the bees are simply gone and do not develop normally.”

Tony Blair hinted today at new restrictions on internet journalism, saying online news coverage had become “more pernicious and less balanced” than traditional political reporting.

In a farewell lecture on public life, he said that much of the British media behaved like a “feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits”.

But he had particularly harsh words for non-traditional media outlets, particularly the internet.

“It used to be thought – and I include myself in this – that help was on the horizon,” he said.

“New forms of communication would provide new outlets to by-pass the increasingly shrill tenor of the traditional media.

“In fact, the new forms can be even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five.”

The emergence of internet-based news and 24-hour television news channels meant reports were “driven by impact”. He said that there was a need for the distinction between news and comment to be reasserted.

With newspapers increasingly moving online, he said the regulatory systems for papers and TV needed to be revised. Currently they are monitored by separate watchdogs.

“As the technology blurs the distinction between papers and television, it becomes increasingly irrational to have different systems of accountability based on technology that no longer can be differentiated in the old way,” Mr Blair said.

The outgoing Prime Minister said senior figures in public life had now become “totally demoralised” by the completely unbalanced nature of reporting.

He conceded that relations had always been fraught, but said the situation now threatened politicians’ “capacity to take the right decisions for the country”.

The Prime Minister acknowledged that he had “contributed” to the deteriorating situation with the media by “spinning” too much in the early days of New Labour.

”We paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging, and persuading the media,” Mr Blair said in a speech to Reuters.

”In our own defence, after 18 years of opposition and the, at times, ferocious hostility of parts of the media, it was hard to see any alternative.

”But such an attitude ran the risk of fuelling the trends in communications that I am about to question.”

I would like to take the opportunity to personally thank you for bringing this very important issue to my attention.

I share your concerns about the large stockpile of nuclear weapons in the United States . I have been a long time advocate of reducing the amount of nuclear warheads while still protecting our national interest.

The United States has maintained nuclear warheads for many years so our friends, allies, and adversaries will be confident about the safety and effectiveness of U.S. nuclear forces. Most of the current U.S. nuclear warheads were built in the 1970s and 1980s and have been retained much longer than originally expected. These warheads however deteriorate with age. To correct the problem, the aging warhead components have been replaced in the Life Extension Program (LEP), a part of the larger Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP). Some of the replaced components, however, required a nuclear test but the United States has observed a test moratorium since 1992.

The new approach that has been recommended to address the nuclear warhead issue is called the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. This program trades key Cold War features such as “high yield and low weight” to gain more valuable features, such as low cost, greater ease of manufacture, and a further increase in use control. This is completed by replacing large stockpiles of non-deployed nuclear warheads with fewer warheads. This program plans to make these improvements by designing replacement warheads that would not add military capability. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) views RRW as part of a comprehensive plan that would also modernize the nuclear weapons “Complex 2030″ (the ” strategy ” to modernize the cold-war nuclear weapons complex), avoid nuclear testing, and reduce non-deployed weapons.

Congress, upon the onset of the program, spelled out specific goals to be accomplished before continuing to fund the RRW program. These goals included increasing the confidence, without nuclear testing and developing warheads that will perform as intended over the long term. Other goals included increasing the ease of the manufacture and certification, reducing the life cycle cost, increasing weapon safety and use control, and reducing the environmental burden.

Last week, I along with the House Appropriations Sub-committee on Energy and Water voted no to provide funding to the RRW initiative. The Committee noted that it is premature to continue to design activities for a nuclear warhead until a revised U.S. nuclear weapon strategy (Complex 2030) is developed that describes the long term nuclear stockpile requirements and demonstrates how a new nuclear warhead is necessary to address specific U.S. national security requirements and nuclear nonproliferation commitments.

Again thank you for your concern in this matter.

I feel sorry for Paris Hilton. She’s the Barbie doll I never had.

In 1959 when the first Barbie came into our lives, that is, the lives of little girls, I begged my mother to get me a Barbie. “You’re too old for dolls,” she told me. “But I’m only eleven,” I answered. “You’ll just outgrow it and then we’ll have something around the house we don’t need,” she replied. She had that look on her face that meant there was no more discussion. So the words that Paris recently cried aloud I could only scream in tortured silence. “Mom, this isn’t right!”

I consoled myself with the thought that I’d soon be visiting Lynn Schuler, my ten year girlfriend who lived over in Jersey. She had a Barbie. The whole deal would go down with Barbie over at Lynn’s house.

Barbie was perfect. Thin with slender legs, long straight blond hair, endless outfits for her endless adventures and no pubic hair. It was heaven over there. The wonderful thing about Barbie was that she didn’t have to do anything. She was free. Sure, she had an outfit for her job as an airline stewardess and she took lots of time getting dressed to look professional and more importantly very beautiful. But I don’t remember that she actually worked. Mostly she went to the beach, or wherever she roamed, with the wind in her hair which would have to be re-combed and put back up into that famous long blond pony tail. She drove around in her convertible, she had lots of friends and she had a pink Princess telephone.

One early evening as Lynn and I were deep into Barbie-Land, Mrs. Schuler called to Lynn from downstairs. “Lynn Marie, she hollered up, “come clean the dinner dishes.” Lynn groaned. I picked up Barbie and pointed her to the door where Mrs. Schuler’s voice had emanated. “I don’t do no stinkin’ dishes,” I, or rather Barbie said. “What did you say Eva?” Mrs. Schuler said. “Oh, I said, chirpily, “I said I’d help Lynn with the dishes.” I pulled a fast Eddie Haskell on that one.

“Don’t forget, Lynn,” Mrs. Schuler said, “you still have to practice the piano. And remember, your tutor is coming tomorrow so get your books together for your remedial reading hour.” “Poor Lynn,” I thought. “She has so much to do. Poor me, when I get home it’ll be the same thing, only different.”

Many years later during the summer of 1967 before video porn but they didn’t call it the Summer of Love for nothing, I was hanging out in Thompson Square Park in the East Village sitting on a bench. Some guy sat down next to me and we got to talking. I remember him telling me that he appreciated that I applied my eye makeup expertly and asked me if I wanted to go over to Allen Ginsberg’s pad on Seventh. We got there and Ginsberg’s little living room was filled with hippies and some old Beats and one dissolute poet who kept bragging he was second best to Ginsberg. The guy who brought me over started playing the violin. Someone else tapped on a congo drum or something. Ginsberg wasn’t there yet. Then he came in. Everyone looked up. He wasn’t in a great mood.

“Hey,” he growled. “Why don’t one of you chicks get in the kitchen and start doing some of these dishes?”

That was my cue to leave. Only I had to walk through the kitchen to exit through the door. He thought I was one of the “chicks” volunteering to wash the mountain of dirty plates and motioned to me where to begin. “I don’t do no stinkin’ dishes,” I said and walked out.

I bet Paris has never done any dishes. All she did was drive around in her convertible and got popped for 0.08 percent alcohol. What’s that, one beer? Give me a break. Then the State goes after her for driving with a suspended license and she gets forty five days? It isn’t like she got a DUI and then invaded two countries and killed millions of people. She’s just a Barbie not a Bushie.

Speaking of bushies, I didn’t know that Paris elects not to have one. I probably wouldn’t have known this if the professor from Tufts hadn’t been so on top of his game and provided us with this vital piece of information in his CounterPunch article along with the name of her boyfriend which I forgot as soon as I read it. But I should have known, because of Barbie.

What kind of scapegoat is Paris Hilton? What need does she fill? I wouldn’t know. She only reminds me of something harmless from long ago before I entered our meritoriously-oriented society and went to work.

Economic discussion in the United States is trapped in ancient ruts. Both right and left are stuck in old habitual ways of thinking. Neither shows inclination or ability to think independently of ideology. For a country beset with economic problems, this is problematic.

The ascendency of free market economics during the past quarter century has removed some constraints on corporate power. It is difficult to argue that this is a desirable result. For example, the concentration of media ownership permitted by the Clinton administration in the 1990s has destroyed the independence of the US media, thus reducing the accountability of government. Deregulation has had unintended consequences. The growth of corporate influence has facilitated the reach of special interests into universities and think tanks and turned some from pursuit of truth to “for-profit activities” that compromise the independence of studies and publications.

The left-wing, which refuses to accept that the Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve’s mistaken monetary policy and still blames corporate power and greed for the 1930s decade of high unemployment, is disturbed at the loosening of the leash on corporate power. Generally speaking, the left blames President Reagan for boosting corporate power by cutting taxes and for spear-heading union-busting by firing the striking air controllers.

John Kenneth Galbraith was correct that unions provided a countervailing power, one that has been removed. The left-wing is correct that corporations have grown in power and that income inequality has worsened. But the left is wrong in attributing these developments to tax cuts and dismissed air controllers.

The purpose of Reagan’s reduction in marginal tax rates was to cure stagflation and worsening trade-offs between inflation and employment that had undermined Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Reagan’s tax policy brought a record economic expansion that did not require rising rates of inflation to sustain. It is impossible to argue that the decline in inflation and home mortgage rates benefitted the rich more than others. The rich have a lot of margin in their budgets. The poor have none.

US income inequality was worsened and the unions busted by the collapse of world socialism and the rise of the high speed Internet. These two developments, which were not part of Reagan’s economic program, made it possible for corporations to substitute foreign labor for American labor in the production of goods and services for American markets.

Until the collapse of world socialism, corporations did not have access to the large pools of excess labor in China and India. Until the rise of the high speed Internet, corporations could not hire professional services supplied from distant lands. These two developments meant that highly productive and highly paid American labor could be substituted out of production functions and replaced with equally productive but much cheaper foreign labor, because large excess supplies of Asian labor suppressed Asian wages below the productivity of labor.

Industrial unions were busted by the movement of plant, equipment, and technology abroad.

The professional middle class was adversely impacted by the ability of corporations to contract for the delivery via the Internet of professional services from abroad and by the ability to import cheaper foreign workers on H-1B, L-1 and other work visas.

Jobs offshoring is dismantling the ladders of upward mobility in the US, polarizing the population into rich and poor, and, thereby, worsening the income distribution.

The nation accused of aiding the killings in Darfur provides spies in Iraq. In return, it gets access in Washington.

WASHINGTON — Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq, an example of how the U.S. has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its suspected role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.

President Bush has denounced the killings in Sudan’s western region as genocide and has imposed sanctions on the government in Khartoum. But some critics say the administration has soft-pedaled the sanctions to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan.

The relationship underscores the complex realities of the post-Sept. 11 world, in which the United States has relied heavily on intelligence and military cooperation from countries, including Sudan and Uzbekistan, that are considered pariah states for their records on human rights.

“Intelligence cooperation takes place for a whole lot of reasons,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing intelligence assessments. “It’s not always between people who love each other deeply.”

Sudan has become increasingly valuable to the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks because the Sunni Arab nation is a crossroads for Islamic militants making their way to Iraq and Pakistan.

That steady flow of foreign fighters has provided cover for Sudan’s Mukhabarat intelligence service to insert spies into Iraq, officials said.

“If you’ve got jihadists traveling via Sudan to get into Iraq, there’s a pattern there in and of itself that would not raise suspicion,” said a former high-ranking CIA official familiar with Sudan’s cooperation with the agency. “It creates an opportunity to send Sudanese into that pipeline.”

As a result, Sudan’s spies have often been in better position than the CIA to gather information on Al Qaeda’s presence in Iraq, as well as the activities of other insurgent groups.

“There’s not much that blond-haired, blue-eyed case officers from the United States can do in the entire Middle East, and there’s nothing they can do in Iraq,” said a second former CIA official familiar with Sudan’s cooperation. “Sudanese can go places we don’t go. They’re Arabs. They can wander around.”

The officials declined to say whether the Mukhabarat had sent its intelligence officers into the country, citing concern over the protection of sources and methods. They said that Sudan had assembled a network of informants in Iraq providing intelligence on the insurgency. Some may have been recruited as they traveled through Khartoum.

The U.S.-Sudan relationship goes beyond Iraq. Sudan has helped the United States track the turmoil in Somalia, working to cultivate contacts with the Islamic Courts Union and other militias in an effort to locate Al Qaeda suspects hiding there. Sudan also has provided extensive cooperation in counter-terrorism operations, acting on U.S. requests to detain suspects as they pass through Khartoum.

Sudan gets a number of benefits in return. Its relationship with the CIA has given it an important back channel for communications with the U.S. government. Washington has also used this channel to lean on Khartoum over the crisis in Darfur and for other issues.

06/10/07 “ICH” — — While on a recent business trip, I heard the jet’s stewardess announce, “And we thank any American troops onboard for their hard work to keep America free. We, especially, thank them for doing this in dangerous, far away places. We appreciate their honor and service on behalf of the great American way. They are true heroes doing whatever it takes to keep our freedom truly free at home.”

In response, I felt like calling out, “Excuse me, but how is destroying a country like Iraq keeping us free? How is warring to secure the ME oil fields for companies like Exxon-Mobile keeping us free? How is slaughtering countless civilians in dangerous, far away places (as you call them) keeping us free? Were Iraq and Afghanistan dangerous to be as a tourist before our country’s initial aggressive assaults? Perhaps our invasions fomented increased dangers from terrorists both abroad AND here. So, please stop spreading dangerous propaganda. It does us all a disservice!”

Instead I kept quiet because in the land of the free, free speech is curtailed. As a result, I’d have wound up arrested by airport security forces for “creating a disturbance” were I to contradict the flight attendant.

That perhaps would be ironically amusing if it weren’t so emblematic of the way that fostering of party-line lies and limiting truth generally prevail in the US. In this vein, the falsehoods often are so illogically absurd that they possess an Orwellian ring to them.

For example, many Americans (50% in 2006 according to a Harris Poll *) still believe that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq and provided a sufficient reason for US to preemptively attack. A considerable portion, also, think that the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq and that the Iraqi government had ties to Al Qaeda (64% according to same tally). Yet, none of this has been proven one iota true. Indeed, evidence suggests quite the contrary.

At the same time, 55% imagine that historical records will credit the US with providing democracy and freedom to Iraq. In a similar vein, 72% have concluded that Iraqis have better lives now than they did under the former regime.

While the judgment is still out on the first claim, the second is utterly wrong as chronic malnourishment, a massive number (655,000+) of civilian deaths, huge ongoing migrations (involving 10% of the prewar population) into other lands, widespread poverty, declining literacy, as well as lack of jobs, adequate housing, clean water, food, electricity, medical supplies, medical staff, sanitation and other basic provisions have impacted daily life in Iraqi. This is according to UN, Red Cross and other surveys conducted by reputable sources**.

All considered, the gap between the facts and the misconceptions held by a substantial number of hoodwinked Americans is, obviously, wide. This is so even when we don’t add in the outlooks of those amongst the evangelical masses, such as the silly notion that ME warring should be joyfully encouraged since it represent a sign from God that Armageddon is at hand.

Yet, how could such an immense disparity exist? In addition, the discrepancy begs other more critical questions: How could such a sizable portion of US citizens be so easily duped and what agents are responsible for such easy acceptance of erroneous conclusions? In other words, who created these bogus sets of facts and, equally important, were they deliberately crafted?

The answer is obvious. While fictitious interpretations of events are clearly founded in misinformation, their prevalence is quite understandable given that the US mainstream media is funded by advertising industry whose puppet strings are, ultimately, yanked by big multinational corporations — the same companies that our government courts and woos by creating expensive wars (in regions laden with resources coveted by those worldwide businesses) and myriad laws favoring globalization at the expense of American jobs.

So somewhere along the way, some devious group of people, both connected to the government and big business, developed a plot to bamboozle the American people to go along with the war, a not too difficult task following 9/11. This same group could have easily decided to not push for the reinstatement of the draft in that a mandatory draft became the indirect cause that led many Americans to protest the Vietnam War. (It got a little too close to home when one’s own middle and upper class sons were called to arm.)

Consequently, life, all in all, goes simply onward with misguided factual backdrops enduring intact because few reputable mainstream sources dare dispute them. This is especially the case as most news programs simply aren’t going to get beyond such topics as the best ways to fix your hair on high humidity days, the stores that have the cutest summer fashions, the highest grossing movie of the week, ways to make vegetables more appealing to children, the car accident in the next town, the foiled robbery at a local convenience store and so on — all making up the bland harmless pabulum demanded by sponsors, and that we can watch day after day if we choose such fatuous fare.

06/10/07 “ICH” — – On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an hour and a half-long press conference which was attended by many members of the world media. The contents of that meeting—in which Putin answered all questions concerning nuclear proliferation, human rights, Kosovo, democracy and the present confrontation with the United States over missile defense in Europe—have been completely censored by the press. Apart from one brief excerpt which appeared in a Washington Post editorial, (and which was used to criticize Putin) the press conference has been scrubbed from the public record. It never happened. (Read the entire press conference archived here.)

Putin’s performance was a tour de force. He fielded all of the questions however misleading or insulting. He was candid and statesmanlike and demonstrated a good understanding of all the main issues.

The meeting gave Putin a chance to give his side of the story in the growing debate over missile defense in Eastern Europe. He offered a brief account of the deteriorating state of US-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War, and particularly from 9-11 to present. Since September 11, the Bush administration has carried out an aggressive strategy to surround Russia with military bases, install missiles on its borders, topple allied regimes in Central Asia, and incite political upheaval in Moscow through US-backed “pro-democracy” groups. These openly hostile actions have convinced many Russian hard-liners that the administration is going forward with the neocon plan for “regime change” in Moscow and fragmentation of the Russian Federation. Putin’s testimony suggests that the hardliners are probably right.

The Bush administration’s belligerent foreign policy has backed the Kremlin into a corner and forced Putin to take retaliatory measures. He has no other choice.

If we want to understand why relations between Russia are quickly reaching the boiling-point; we only need to review the main developments since the end of the Cold War. Political analyst Pat Buchanan gives a good rundown of these in his article “Doesn’t Putin Have a Point?”

Buchanan says:

“Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from Eastern Europe voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we would not move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we bring Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother Russia’s front porch. Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin.

Second, America backed a pipeline to deliver Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, to bypass Russia.

Third, though Putin gave us a green light to use bases in the old Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem hell-bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.

Fourth, though Bush sold missile defense as directed at rogue states like North Korea, we now learn we are going to put anti-missile systems into Eastern Europe. And against whom are they directed?

Fifth, through the National Endowment for Democracy, its GOP and Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations, and “human rights” institutes such as Freedom House, headed by ex-CIA director James Woolsey, we have been fomenting regime change in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, and Russia herself.

U.S.-backed revolutions have succeeded in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, but failed in Belarus. Moscow has now legislated restrictions on the foreign agencies that it sees, not without justification, as subversive of pro-Moscow regimes.

Sixth, America conducted 78 days of bombing of Serbia for the crime of fighting to hold on to her rebellious province, Kosovo, and for refusing to grant NATO marching rights through her territory to take over that province. Mother Russia has always had a maternal interest in the Orthodox states of the Balkans.

These are Putin’s grievances. Does he not have a small point?”

Yes–as Buchanan opines—Putin does have a point, which is why his press conference was suppressed. The media would rather demonize Putin, than allow him to make his case to the public. (The same is true of other world leaders who choose to use their vast resources to improve the lives of their own citizens rather that hand them over to the transnational oil giants; such as, Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez) Even so, NATO has not yet endorsed the neocon missile defense plan and, according to recent surveys, public opinion in Poland and the Czech Republic is overwhelmingly against it.

Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration is going ahead regardless of the controversy.

Putin cannot allow the United States to deploy its missile defense system to Eastern Europe. The system poses a direct threat to Russia’s national security. If Putin planned to deploy a similar system in Cuba or Mexico, the Bush administration would immediately invoke the Monroe Doctrine and threaten to remove it by force. No one doubts this. And no one should doubt that Putin is equally determined to protect his own country’s interests in the same way. We can expect that Russia will now aim its missiles at European targets and rework its foreign policy in a way that compels the US to abandon its current plans.

The media has tried to minimize the dangers of the proposed system. The Washington Post even characterized it as “a small missile defense system” which has set off “waves of paranoia about domestic and foreign opponents”.

Down the shore yesterday, as we say in Philly, I was body surfing in the Atlantic and it got me to thinking.

On the East Coast, where the prevailing winds are offshore, the surf tends to be pretty tame, and Thursday was no exception, with the biggest waves cresting at perhaps three feet. Nonetheless, these little combers were able to send my prone body racing 100 feet toward the beach at a good clip.

There’s a lot of energy packed in even a small wave.

Just so with impeachment, where a wave is slowly building for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Since Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) filed his impeachment bill against Cheney back April 24, five other members of the House have signed on as co-sponsors, most recently Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She joins Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL and chief deputy whip of the House), William Lacy Clay (D-IL) and Albert Wynn (D-MD) as co-sponsors of H. Res. 333.

Flash Update! Just to make the point about how this wave is building, shortly after I filed this piece, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), another co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, signed on as a co-sponsor of H.Res. 333. Cheney has to be starting to sweat…

Kucinich’s bill is narrowly focused on Cheney’s criminal role in lying the nation into an illegal invasion of Iraq, and on his illegal threat to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran.

The wave that is building in the House for impeachment of this criminal administration may seem small, but it is definitely building. As each new representative signs on to H. Res. 333 as a co-sponsor, others gain courage and find it easier to buck the “leadership” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi et al.

It seems likely that as the magnitude of that wave grows, some members will add to the list of Cheney’s crimes with their own additional impeachment bills. After all, Cheney was clearly behind the illegal outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, was involved in the politicization of the Justice Department, and is now known to have been involved in the illegal, warrantless wiretapping and internet monitoring of American citizens by the National Security Agency.

At some point, there will surely be a second wave, which will begin with a member impeachment bill against President Bush.

Evidence that Pelosi is losing her footing is coming in many forms.

There’s the impeachment resolution passed late last month by the Detroit City Council. Now there have been nearly 100 such resolutions passed around the country, but this one stands out because it was introduced by Council President Monica Conyers, who happens to be the wife of Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which would be where any impeachment hearing would be conducted. Conyers was once a leading advocate of the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, but buckled when Pelosi threatened to deny him the coveted chair of the Judiciary Committee. Clearly, his wife thinks he shouldn’t have caved, and Conyers is showing signs of wanting action on impeachment. He has lately taken to encouraging the actions of impeachment activists.

There are also the many resolutions calling for impeachment of Bush and Cheney which have been passed, often overwhelmingly, by state Democratic Parties, including those in California, Massachusetts and North Carolina.

Finally, there are the statements from Democratic politicians, who are looking increasingly ridiculous in their efforts to avoid talking impeachment. Take Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). Nadler, back in 2006, was a member of the group of 39 House members in the 109th Congress who signed on to Rep. Conyers’ then bill calling for a select committee to investigate impeachable crimes by the administration (that bill died with the end of the 109th Congress).

Recently, Nadler, who sat on the impeachment panel during the Clinton impeachment farce, and who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, declared in a recent radio interview that “there’s a prima facie case” that the president and the attorney general “engaged in a criminal conspiracy.” He went on to say that when the executive branch is “contemptuous of the power of Congress” and breaks or ignores the law, then “you have to use whatever weapons the Constitution gives Congress.”

Now Nadler is no dummy. He knows that the main “tool” that the Constitution gives to Congress to combat such presidential lawlessness and abuse of power is impeachment.

Nadler’s constituency in Manhattan isn’t stupid either. They know that the president has been committing impeachable crimes, and that the remedy is impeachment. The same is true of Rep. Conyers’ constituents.

It seems only a matter of time before these leaders, and others like them, are going to have to take a stand and buck Pelosi and the sell-out Democratic leadership that is trying to adopt a do-nothing strategy ahead of the 2008 elections.

One thing you can say about waves–even small ones–and that is that they are pretty much unstoppable. Another thing you can say is that they wear down resistance–especially when the resistance is insubstantial. A third thing is that they are never alone. They keep on coming, one after another after another.