Will The Last One Out Of This Democracy Please Turn Out The Lights?

There's a peace march scheduled in New York City today. But it will be more like a peace standstill. Unlike the 602 cities around the globe where protesters plan to march together to protest a war on Iraq, New York authorities won't allow it.
...

But there's more to it than that. The Bush administration - which is in the midst of trying to sell the war to the public - filed a brief urging the judges to uphold denial of the permit. And the Bloomberg administration has no intention of forcing a St. Patrick's Day standstill instead of a parade - even though it's bigger and likely more raucous.

There you have it people: The Bush administration is working to deny individuals their right to protest its policies. Is this the democracy you paid for?

Story here.

That Whole Free Speech Thing Was So 1990s!

Remember those people who screamed their heads off about the dangers of having the media controlled by too few hands? This is what they were talking about:


"Feb. 13 — Getting out the antiwar message has never been easy, but now a peace group has accused one of America's largest media companies of censorship for its refusal to run a national billboard campaign with the slogan: INSPECTIONS WORK. WAR WON'T.

Viacom, the owner of a number of media outlets like CBS and MTV, says it is just following company policy. But Wes Boyd, president of MoveOn.org says the media giant is playing fast and loose with the right to free speech. Viacom won't place our ads, says Boyd."

More here.

Guide to America

Here's a website dedicated to helping international students understand Americans and America. Some of it is very funny while some is very telling.

Our Weekly Marching Orders from The GOP:

Dear Toddo,

A pattern is forming. President Bush puts forward a positive agenda...

(cash flow for rich people and will positively roll back Roe V. Wade)
...to move our nation forward. Democrat presidential candidates oppose it because of politics....

(aren't they politicians?)

... So it is no surprise that Senator John Kerry has joined liberal democrats in filibustering President Bush's nomination of the first Hispanic to possibly sit on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals -viewed by many as the second highest court in the U.S...

(How many Hispanic legal & social groups have come out against this guy? Lots! They're screaming "please don't let this guy be the first Hispanic - he's a backwards Ashcroft clone that prescribes bible study to women seeking abortions. This is very similar to the NAACP's reaction to Clarence Thomas' nominations: "oh, ah , great. Yes.".:

...As Senate Democrat's continue to obstruct the judicial nomination process, a move that has shocked legal scholars and more moderate members of the Democrat party...

(A.K.A. people who like having these things called "rights.")

Democrat Senator John Breaux responded by saying, "The country is at orange alert. People are stockpiling water and duct tape. Who knows if we're going to war in two weeks, and we're going to shut down everything to filibuster a person the American Bar Association has unanimously said is well qualified?"....

(That's right, people - how dare you question the confirmation of a rascist, mysogynistic, bible-thumping moron when you have more important things to be afraid of?!!! Where are your priorities? Hey, I think I saw Osama Bin Laden over there! Boo!)

...With our courts in crisis and serious challenges facing our nation, we cannot afford such reckless and shameful partisan politics...

(Something the GOP has never involved itself in, thank goodness).

Sincerely,

Jack Oliver
(Grand Moff)Deputy Chairman
Republican National Committee

Finally, The American People Are Rising Up For A Worthy Cause!

Viewers vow boycott over 'Millionaire'

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) --Viewers were fuming and David Letterman was cracking wise about Fox promotions for "Joe Millionaire" that seemed to promise more than the show delivered.

Evan Marriott didn't make the final choice between would-be loves Sarah and Zora Monday night, although network hints seemed to indicate that he would. Instead, the episode was mostly a recap.

"We got duped. We totally got duped," viewer Cynthia Wiggin of San Carlos said Wednesday. She dismissed the episode as "Total filler. A whole filler night."

More here.

So, you can strip the American people of their rights, steal their retirement funds and reward the people who did it, tax the middle class into poverty while cutting the taxes of the rich, destroy the envoironment, cut spending for social programs, evicerate perscription programs for the elderly, erase the line between church & state, embark on a policy to isolate them from every country in the world, and drag them into an endless war against a nebulous concept in order to protect the intrests of a few....but...but...but don't fuck with their tabloid reality TV Programing! Rise up, Americans!

Our Chechnya

From the Daily Kos: One war scenario

"There are many ways war can unfold in Iraq. This is my guess on the matter, and assumes the US cannot win UN Security Council approval for the invasion.

Iraq has six neighbors -- Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Syria and Iran are automatically out of the conflict (though Iran can always raise mischief in southern Iraq). Jordan has taken delivery of Patriot missiles batteries, but is noncommittal to use as staging grounds for an invasion. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have made guarded promises premised on Security Council backing for the war. Turkey's cooperation will be purchased by the US ("upgrades" of existing military facilities). Saudi Arabia may be persuaded to allow combat sorties originating at Prince Sultan airbase, but without UN approval, ground troops is iffy.

So for the air war, the US will likely have access to bases in Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (a big "maybe"), and five or six aircraft carriers. B-1 and B-52 sorties will be flown from Diego Garcia (a Brittish island in the middle of the Indian Ocean), while B-2 bombers may fly sorties from Missouri.

The US initial goal is to pummel Iraq with as much air and missile ordinance as possible, in order to sap the Iraqi defenders' morale. This tactic works great with exposed troop concentrations in the desert, but with defenders holed up in urban areas, it will get ugly. Lots of civilian casualties, lots of rubble, but the Iraqi defenders should remain relatively unscathed.

Given the timetable the US is under ("hurry up before it gets hot!"), the air war should be brief. Airborne troops (either the 82nd, or the 101st, or both) will attempt to take the Iraqi oil fields near Basra. Taking the fields will be the easy part, and with Kuwait nearby, ressuply of those troops should pose no major logistical problems. The big question will be whether the troops can prevent Iraqi defenders from destroying and setting ablaze the fields. And if Saddam is going to use chemical weapons, this would be a good time -- with US troop concentrations exposed in the open desert.

Now this is where things get complicated -- the US would have to physically occupy Basra, Baghdad, and perhaps Kirkuk (and every town in between in order to protect its supply lines) in order to silence Iraqi opposition. To take Baghdad, US forces would have to essentially move north from Kuwait -- the only obvious staging ground for US ground troops at the moment. Turkey is a possibility, but the Kurdish problem is a big one. At last report, Iraqi Kurds were still eager to maintain the status quo rather than risk yet another US betrayal. Initial US efforts to use Kurds in the campaign as a proxy army (a la Northern Alliance) met stiff opposition from Ankara, which is paranoid of any Kurdish state on its borders. Troop movements in northern Iraq may spur a Kurdish-Turkey war, rathern than help the US establish a second logistical line.

There's no doubt that Kuwait is sufficient for staging purposes, but having a single supply line is problematic. Not only is it exposed to dehabilitating guerilla attacks, but Saddam could hamper the entire resupply operation by either detonating a nuke (if he has one) or contaminating wide swaths of the logistical lines with chemical and/or biological weapons. Air resupply operations are woefully inefficient, providing only a fraction of the tonnage possible with ground transport. And modern armies are voracious eaters -- my 9-launcher missile battery (MLRS) required 15-20 big trucks to keep properly supplied. And that was only for 160 soldiers. Imagine what a 350,000 man army requires.

Then there's the bloody part of the conflict -- door-to-door urban warfare. Air power is next to useless in these conditions, where $30 million helicopter gunships suddenly become vulnerable to $200 RPGs (rocket propelled grenades). Remember that missile barage that was supposed to break Iraqi morale? Well, it turned each city into rubble giving snipers myriad ambush points. The Russians found this out the hard way in Grozny.

Urban warfare is the great equalizer. There is little technology can do at this point -- it's M-16 vs. AK-47. And the defender always has a masive advantage -- it can make use of prepared defensive positions, it can funnel invading armies into ambush zones, it can move freely throughout the city via sewers and obscure back alleys. It can fire from rooftops, building windows, the ground floor and underground providing a multi-dimensional killing zone.

Soldiers can be cut off from supply lines, making them easy prey as they run out of water or ammo (or both). Urban battlefields are brutal on the wounded -- where evacuation is difficult or impossible. And the inevitable barrage of civilian deaths will be a public relations nightmare for the US on the world stage.

Will the US prevail? Probably. But at what cost? Saddam will undoubtedly escape (as did OBL and Mullah Omar), and the US will face a costly occupation facing a newly energized and radicalized guerilla opposition. Far from eradicating the al Qaeda network -- our most immediate and dangerous enemy today -- we will be helping drive the Iraqi people (the most secular in the Muslim world) into the arms of militant radicals. The US will be multiplying rather than eradicating its terrorist enemies.

The US military is under no illusions that an urban war will be casualty free -- but that's exactly what Bush has been selling the public. If there was a shred of honesty somewhere inside that man, he would be frank with Americans, telling them that coming battle could be bloody, and that casualties could mount into the thousands. (Remember, nearly 400 allied troops died in Gulf War I -- and that was a veritable cakewalk compared to what we face today.)

But the word "sacrifice" never leaves his lips. And that includes sacrifice in blood, in treasure, in international prestige, in wounding international institutions, etc. So Americans, accustomed to Serbia and Afghanistan have a skewed sense of what the word "war" really means.

I've never been a pacifist -- I am an Army vet with strong respect for our military and a great interest in military history and tactics. But there is such a thing as a "just war", a "necessary war", and this ain't it. Not by a long shot. "

Get Your's Before They're All Gone!


A Total Information Awareness thong? Sounds like a good idea!

OK, Much Clearer. Thank You.

Last night's Daily Show had a clip of Matt Lauer interviewing Tom Ridge and asking, in effect, just what people are supposed to do with the sort of vague warnings that Vaterland Security has been issuing.

Ridge replied, "We receive general information and specific information. The specific information contains no details about time or place, means or methods."

A Nutty Day At The The Nobel Institute:

Nobel laureates slam Bush tax-cut plan.
Ten Nobel-prize winners lead the list of 358 economists who have signed a statement saying the proposal would hurt, not help, the US economy

Ten Nobel-prize winning economists have signed a statement attacking US President George W. Bush's plan for a 10-year, US$674-billion tax cut package, the Economic Policy Institute said Thursday.

More here.

OR

110 economists back Bush tax plan
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


     A letter signed by 110 economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, urges Congress to support the main elements of President Bush's $647 billion tax-cut plan, make his 2001 tax cut permanent and restrain federal spending to spur the sluggish economy.

here

Why It's Fun To Read The Letters To The Editor

Just another case of the conspiracy to keep the contributions of white people out ouf the history books:

"Recognize bus driver
I read the Feb. 2 article, "Rosa Parks shares day with symbol of movement," and was intrigued to learn the actual name of the driver of the bus. Much has been written about Parks' courage in refusing to relinquish her seat. But with all due respect to Parks, shouldn't the driver of the bus (James Blake) also be recognized as a hero during Black History Month? After all, where would the civil rights movement be today if he had not ordered her to give up her seat?"

Link, from the Detroit News, here.

Yes, indeed! If not for those firehoses, KKK cross burinings, and Jim Crow, where would the Civil Rights movement be? Isn't it time to give credit where credit is due?

The Less Bad Terrorists?

If you're folliwing the thread of the below story, I have a challenge for you. Think about how this story would be different, both in reporting language and the general attention it would be getting, if it were about Islamic Terrorists:

Arrests display homebred side of terror threat

By Mike Carter
Seattle Times staff reporter

Nearly a decade has passed since a truck bomb killed 168 people in Oklahoma City, although the passage of time and the horror of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have dimmed that tragedy in the American psyche.

But terrorism experts say the arrest of a retired Washington Army National Guard intelligence officer and his ex-wife in Spokane last week on accusations that they illegally possessed secret military documents and sold them to the radical right serves as a stark reminder that the threat of terrorism in the U.S. does not come only from al-Qaida, Iraq or North Korea.

"While it is true that membership in the militias has dwindled, those who are left are about as radical and extreme as you can imagine," said Leonard Weinberg, a professor of political science at the University of Nevada-Reno and one of the foremost authors of academic studies on terrorism.

"While we focus on the threat outside our borders, it would be foolish to ignore the continuing threat from within."

Consider these events from the past month in the Northwest:

? On Jan. 18, the FBI arrested James D. Brailey, an Olympia man who had recently returned from a meeting of the Christian Identity movement in Arkansas. Brailey was arrested on firearms charges and is accused of plotting to kill Gov. Gary Locke.

? Ten days later, two Oregon Army National Guard soldiers, just back from peacekeeping duties in Egypt, were arrested and charged with hate crimes for beating a Medford, Ore., hotel owner who they thought was an Arab. The soldiers told investigators they were on a mission to "clean up" Medford.

? Last Tuesday, the FBI in Spokane arrested 51-year-old Rafael Davila and his ex-wife, Deborah Cummings Davila. Federal prosecutors allege some of the secret materials they possessed were intended to go to white supremacists and anti-government radicals.

Rafael Davila had served for years as an Army intelligence officer and was a decorated Vietnam special-forces veteran. Before his retirement in 1999, he had served in the 341st Military Intelligence Battalion and was its senior intelligence officer, with a top-secret rating in the Guard's 92nd Troop Command.

Federal law-enforcement sources have said that, over the years, Davila had drifted to the radical right.

Davila had told the FBI that he took home boxes of secret documents to study. Up to 15 boxes of security documents ? some involving chemical, nuclear and biological-warfare strategies ? are missing, federal agents say.

Deborah Davila, a teacher, is believed to have collected at least $2,000 for mailing more than 300 documents to addresses in North Carolina, Texas and Georgia, according to court documents.

Deborah Davila told agents she was told by "a mysterious man" in a phone conversation that one thick envelope of secret papers would reach Kirk Lyons, a North Carolina lawyer who has represented such groups as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Patriot Movement and the Posse Comitatus.

Deborah Davila attended Lyons' wedding, which was performed by the Rev. Richard Butler, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian and founder of the Aryan Nations. According to federal court documents, Davila lied about knowing Lyon.

Lyon has denied he received the documents and also denied being an adherent to extremist beliefs. He has not been charged with a crime.

Rafael and Deborah Davila remain in federal custody to face espionage charges. A federal magistrate on Friday refused to release them on bail because they are a flight risk.

The FBI has said that the missing documents pose a "huge threat" to the security of the United States and that they would be worth millions of dollars on the black market.

Not knowing where the documents are now, acknowledged FBI Special Agent in Charge Charlie Mandigo, makes the threat even more disconcerting.


More here.

Keeping Tabs On The Astroturf

Check here to read the text of these letters to the editor by "citizens" and where they have been published.