Note: This situation is beyond anything I'd care to grapple with. No way in hell am I going to ever be found anywhere near those Everglades...and I'd advise the guys in the airboats to not get out and start strolling around...
From the Miami Herald:
Posted on Wed, Oct. 05, 2005
MICHAEL BARRON/EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK
FASCINATING: The carcasses of a Burmese python and an American alligator found last week in Everglades National Park provide compelling questions for scientists.
It's alien versus predator in Glades creature clash. A giant exotic snake's fatal mistake of trying to swallow an alligator has provided scientists with strange new evidence that pythons are continuing to spread in the Everglades.
BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@herald.com
A meeting between two of the largest and fiercest predators in the Everglades -- a Burmese python and an American alligator -- ended in a scene as rare as it was bizarre.
The 13-foot-snake and six-foot gator both wound up dead, locked so gruesomely it is hard to make heads, tails or any other body part of either creature.
When the carcasses were found last week in an isolated marsh in Everglades National Park, the gator's tail and hind legs protruded from the ruptured gut of a python -- which had swallowed it whole.
As an added touch of the macabre, the snake's head was missing.
For scientists, exactly how the clash occurred is a compelling curiosity. More importantly, the latest and most extraordinary encounter provides disturbing evidence that giant exotic snakes, which can top 20 feet in length and kill by squeezing the life out of prey, have not only invaded the Everglades but could challenge the native gator for a perch atop the food chain.
''It's just off-the-charts absurd to think that this kind of animal, a significant top-of-the-pyramid kind of predator in its native land, is trying to make a living in South Florida,'' said park biologist Skip Snow, who has been tracking the spread of the snakes.
Pythons, likely abandoned by pet owners, have been seen in the Everglades since the 1980s. But in the past two years alone, Snow has documented 156 python captures, a surge that has convinced biologists the snakes are multiplying in the wild.
The growing population of big, scary predators also raises questions about threats to native species and whether anything indigenous -- gators, for starters -- might be capable of consuming and potentially controlling one of the world's largest snake species.
The latest find was spotted floating in a spike rush marsh in the Shark River Slough on Sept. 26 by Michael Barron, a helicopter pilot flying park researchers to tree islands. It was examined the next day by Snow.
The discovery was important for a number of reasons.
LIVING ANYWHERE
For one, it showed the snakes are capable of living anywhere in the Everglades, Snow said. Most earlier finds have been on park fringes, roads or parking lots.
''This is the first we have documented Burmese pythons really in the heart of the slough,'' Snow said.
It also confirmed that snakes and gators, while typically consuming less troublesome mammals, turtles and birds, have an appetite for each other -- at least when the opportunity presents itself.
The first observed encounter in the park occurred three years ago when awestruck onlookers at the popular Anhinga Trail boardwalk witnessed a tussle between a 10- to 15-foot snake and six- to nine-foot gator. That fight, which lasted an estimated 24 hours, ended in an apparent draw, with both swimming off and vanishing.
Earlier this year, Snow documented a gator killing and consuming a python. The latest encounter showed that a hungry adult snake can eat a sizable gator.
Such clashes, though spawned by damaging incursion by an exotic species, can't help but fascinate both the public and scientists, said Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor and expert on crocodiles and gators in the Glades.
''We've got not only two big things, but two charismatic mega-fauna -- the Burmese python, invader of the Everglades, and the American alligator, monarch of the Everglades,'' he said.
Mazzotti said size would probably dictate which species would win most encounters, and scientists could only speculate why this one ended in double deaths.
Snow's detailed field notes provide some evidence the snake was the attacker -- there were wounds on the gator's head and ''large wads of alligator skin'' in what remained of the snake's digestive tract.
ASKING THE EXPERTS
He was so intrigued that he e-mailed photos and notes to other experts around the country.
So far, several theories abound, none of them pretty and all speculative because once on the scene, Snow quickly abandoned plans to load the bloated, badly decomposed carcasses on the chopper.
''We decided there was no way we were going to do that,'' he said. ``Something was going to go wrong and it was going to be nasty.''
Instead, he performed a ''floating'' necropsy in the water.
While unusual, it's not unheard of for a snake to consume prey that proves too hard or large to digest. Things like claws, hooves or bones can damage the snake's internal organs. The bulk of a victim can put pressure on the snake's lungs, essentially suffocating it from within.
Slowed by the extra weight, the snake might have been attacked by another gator, which could explain a missing python head.
Joe Wasilewski, a South Miami-Dade biologist and expert gator and crocodile tracker, examined the photos and surmised the gator wasn't quite dead when the snake swallowed it snout-first.
That's not uncommon, he said. ''That [gator] could have been kicking its hind legs and ruptured the snake's stomach wall,'' Wasilewski said.
DEAD MOVES
Mazzotti said a similar scenario could have happened even if the gator were dead because of a quirk of its nervous system. Until a gator's spinal cord is severed and literally stirred into jelly with a special tool, he said, ``a dead alligator gives a remarkably good imitation of being alive. One of the things they do is they move their legs like they're walking. Those claws are pretty sharp. It could tear through the [snake's] skin.''
Mazzotti said it's also plausible the snake scavenged a dead gator. Then time, decay and heat could explain what happened next: a nasty blowout of the snake body.
''You've got a deteriorating carcass, you've got a buildup of gases, you've got sharp claw points . . . ,'' he said.
Snow said a few wags even suggested the deaths were weird enough to fit into the plot of the new TV series Invasion, which involves aliens descending into the Everglades from strange lights during a hurricane.
The carcasses were found a week after the show debuted, he said. ``I've heard some jokes that maybe it was the lights.''
Wrap...
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Interesting Books,Films coming...
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
FICTION:
PEN Center West Award of Honor winner, co-founder of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and author of The Downhill Racers, Oakley Hall's THE GATES OF BONE, his fifteenth novel, about war and the life of a California boy over the last sixty years, from the promise of Southern California (with appearances by Errol Flynn) through Red Baiting, Pearl Harbor and WWII, and back to California, where early love affairs never die, to John Parsley at Thomas Dunne Books, by Michael Carlisle at Inkwell Management (NA).
DEBUT:
Renee Dodd's A CABINET OF WONDERS, taking place in the Freak Show of a carvival as it travels through the rural South in 1927, focusing on the chosen family of the scholarly dwarf bossman who does everything he can to keep them together, to Matthew Miller at The Toby Press, by Bill Contardi at Brandt & Hochman (world).bill@billcontardi.com
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Journalist Sean Chercover's debut BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD, featuring a Chicago PI who takes a bodyguard gig for a Hollywood location manager who sees a crime he shouldn't have witnessed, to Lyssa Keusch at Avon, in a two-book deal, by Denise Marcil at Denise Marcil Literary Agency.Denise@DeniseMarcilAgency.com
THRILLER:
Pseudonymous UK journalist who worked for The Washington Post during the Clinton era Sam Bourne's THE RIGHTEOUS MEN, a thriller that goes inside the secret worlds of fundamentalist religion, kabballah and biblical prophecies, which contain a legend that says that in every generation, there are thirty-six Righteous Men who keep the world going, to to Claire Wachtel at William Morrow, by Deborah Schneider at Gelfman Schneider, on behalf of Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown UK, following sales in 20 countries (US).
BIOGRAPHY:
Former CBS 60 Minutes Producer and CBS News employee Alan Weisman's LONE STAR: The Long Goodbye of Dan Rather, to Tom Miller at Wiley, at auction, for publication in May 2006, by Sharlene Martin at Martin Literary Management (world).Sharlene@MartinLiteraryManagement.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Bestselling author of THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR Martha Stout PhD's THE PARANOIA SWITCH: The Psychology of Trauma and The Politics of Fear, on what terror and fear politics have done to our minds, and to the very biology of our brains, to Sarah Crichton at Sarah Crichton Books, in a pre-empt, by Susan Lee Cohen at Riverside Literary Agency (world English).roselm@fsgbooks.com
Security expert and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Stephen E. Flynn's, THE EDGE OF DISASTER, about all the ways in which America has become vulnerable to terror and catastrophe -- both man-made and natural -- the role of our own ongoing negligence in contributing to the danger, and what we can do to protect ourselves most effectively, to Susan Mercandetti at Random House, by Mort Janklow (world).ctisne@randomhouse.com
HUMOR:
Security expert and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Stephen E. Flynn's, THE EDGE OF DISASTER, about all the ways in which America has become vulnerable to terror and catastrophe -- both man-made and natural -- the role of our own ongoing negligence in contributing to the danger, and what we can do to protect ourselves most effectively, to Susan Mercandetti at Random House, by Mort Janklow (world).ctisne@randomhouse.com
MEMOIR:
The guitarist for The Police Andy Summers' ONE TRAIN LATER, about his life in music, including his first guitar; his earlier bands; his relationships and encounters with Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burden, John Belushi and, of course, The Police, to John Parsley at Thomas Dunne Books, by Susan Schulman at Susan Schulman Literary Agency (NA).Schulman@aol.comforeign: EleanoraTevis@aol.com john.parsley@stmartins.com
NARRATIVE:
Journalist David Lida's FIRST STOP IN THE NEW WORLD, an insider's account of the thriving, paradoxical megametropolis Mexico City -- from the high arts to the sex industry, to Sean McDonald at Riverhead, by Jennifer Carlson at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner (NA).mail@dclagency.com
RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY:
Christopher Hitchens' GOD IS NOT GREAT: The Case Against Religion, asserting that religion does more harm than good in the world, and aiming to show how society would benefit if faith remained personal rather than public, to Jonathan Karp at Warner Twelve, in a pre-empt, by Steve Wasserman at Kneerim & Williams (world English).
SCIENCE:
University of Washington paleontologist and astrobiologist Peter D. Ward's THE GLOBAL WARMING EXTINCTIONS: The Once and Potentially Future Greenhouse Gas Catastrophes, arguing that rising levels of carbon dioxide were responsible for most of the world's great extinctions, and considers what that means for our warming future, to T.J. Kelleher at Smithsonian Books, by Samuel Fleishman at Literary Artists Representation (world).kellehert@si.edu
TRUE CRIME:
Attorney Matt Dalton with Bonnie Hearn Hill's PRESUMED GUILTY: What the Jury Never Knew About Laci Peterson's Murder, and Why Scott Peterson Should Not Be on Death Row, to Peter Borland at Atria, for publication in December 2005, in a very nice deal, by Laura Dail of the Laura Dail Literary Agency (world).
UK:
Norah Vincent's SELF-MADE MAN: My Year Disguised as a Man, to Clara Farmer at Atlantic Books, in a nice deal, by Hal Fessenden at Penguin Putnam (UK and Commonwealth excluding Canada). louisebrice@groveatlantic.co.uk
FILM:
Vicki Constantine Croke's THE LADY AND THE PANDA, the true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: an aged bear that had lived in the labyrinth of cold mountains, to David Gerson at Focus Features, by Ron Bernstein at ICM.gerson@focusfeatures.com
Wrap...
FICTION:
PEN Center West Award of Honor winner, co-founder of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and author of The Downhill Racers, Oakley Hall's THE GATES OF BONE, his fifteenth novel, about war and the life of a California boy over the last sixty years, from the promise of Southern California (with appearances by Errol Flynn) through Red Baiting, Pearl Harbor and WWII, and back to California, where early love affairs never die, to John Parsley at Thomas Dunne Books, by Michael Carlisle at Inkwell Management (NA).
DEBUT:
Renee Dodd's A CABINET OF WONDERS, taking place in the Freak Show of a carvival as it travels through the rural South in 1927, focusing on the chosen family of the scholarly dwarf bossman who does everything he can to keep them together, to Matthew Miller at The Toby Press, by Bill Contardi at Brandt & Hochman (world).bill@billcontardi.com
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Journalist Sean Chercover's debut BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD, featuring a Chicago PI who takes a bodyguard gig for a Hollywood location manager who sees a crime he shouldn't have witnessed, to Lyssa Keusch at Avon, in a two-book deal, by Denise Marcil at Denise Marcil Literary Agency.Denise@DeniseMarcilAgency.com
THRILLER:
Pseudonymous UK journalist who worked for The Washington Post during the Clinton era Sam Bourne's THE RIGHTEOUS MEN, a thriller that goes inside the secret worlds of fundamentalist religion, kabballah and biblical prophecies, which contain a legend that says that in every generation, there are thirty-six Righteous Men who keep the world going, to to Claire Wachtel at William Morrow, by Deborah Schneider at Gelfman Schneider, on behalf of Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown UK, following sales in 20 countries (US).
BIOGRAPHY:
Former CBS 60 Minutes Producer and CBS News employee Alan Weisman's LONE STAR: The Long Goodbye of Dan Rather, to Tom Miller at Wiley, at auction, for publication in May 2006, by Sharlene Martin at Martin Literary Management (world).Sharlene@MartinLiteraryManagement.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Bestselling author of THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR Martha Stout PhD's THE PARANOIA SWITCH: The Psychology of Trauma and The Politics of Fear, on what terror and fear politics have done to our minds, and to the very biology of our brains, to Sarah Crichton at Sarah Crichton Books, in a pre-empt, by Susan Lee Cohen at Riverside Literary Agency (world English).roselm@fsgbooks.com
Security expert and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Stephen E. Flynn's, THE EDGE OF DISASTER, about all the ways in which America has become vulnerable to terror and catastrophe -- both man-made and natural -- the role of our own ongoing negligence in contributing to the danger, and what we can do to protect ourselves most effectively, to Susan Mercandetti at Random House, by Mort Janklow (world).ctisne@randomhouse.com
HUMOR:
Security expert and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Stephen E. Flynn's, THE EDGE OF DISASTER, about all the ways in which America has become vulnerable to terror and catastrophe -- both man-made and natural -- the role of our own ongoing negligence in contributing to the danger, and what we can do to protect ourselves most effectively, to Susan Mercandetti at Random House, by Mort Janklow (world).ctisne@randomhouse.com
MEMOIR:
The guitarist for The Police Andy Summers' ONE TRAIN LATER, about his life in music, including his first guitar; his earlier bands; his relationships and encounters with Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burden, John Belushi and, of course, The Police, to John Parsley at Thomas Dunne Books, by Susan Schulman at Susan Schulman Literary Agency (NA).Schulman@aol.comforeign: EleanoraTevis@aol.com john.parsley@stmartins.com
NARRATIVE:
Journalist David Lida's FIRST STOP IN THE NEW WORLD, an insider's account of the thriving, paradoxical megametropolis Mexico City -- from the high arts to the sex industry, to Sean McDonald at Riverhead, by Jennifer Carlson at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner (NA).mail@dclagency.com
RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY:
Christopher Hitchens' GOD IS NOT GREAT: The Case Against Religion, asserting that religion does more harm than good in the world, and aiming to show how society would benefit if faith remained personal rather than public, to Jonathan Karp at Warner Twelve, in a pre-empt, by Steve Wasserman at Kneerim & Williams (world English).
SCIENCE:
University of Washington paleontologist and astrobiologist Peter D. Ward's THE GLOBAL WARMING EXTINCTIONS: The Once and Potentially Future Greenhouse Gas Catastrophes, arguing that rising levels of carbon dioxide were responsible for most of the world's great extinctions, and considers what that means for our warming future, to T.J. Kelleher at Smithsonian Books, by Samuel Fleishman at Literary Artists Representation (world).kellehert@si.edu
TRUE CRIME:
Attorney Matt Dalton with Bonnie Hearn Hill's PRESUMED GUILTY: What the Jury Never Knew About Laci Peterson's Murder, and Why Scott Peterson Should Not Be on Death Row, to Peter Borland at Atria, for publication in December 2005, in a very nice deal, by Laura Dail of the Laura Dail Literary Agency (world).
UK:
Norah Vincent's SELF-MADE MAN: My Year Disguised as a Man, to Clara Farmer at Atlantic Books, in a nice deal, by Hal Fessenden at Penguin Putnam (UK and Commonwealth excluding Canada). louisebrice@groveatlantic.co.uk
FILM:
Vicki Constantine Croke's THE LADY AND THE PANDA, the true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: an aged bear that had lived in the labyrinth of cold mountains, to David Gerson at Focus Features, by Ron Bernstein at ICM.gerson@focusfeatures.com
Wrap...
Consider the US Navy SEALs.....
Note: In 2002, Steve Robinson, a former US Navy SEAL, published a book entitled, "NO GUTS, NO GLORY: Unmasking Navy SEAL Imposters." Within it, he talks about who the SEALs are. Here is an excerpt:
"Many knowledgeable experts will argue that the US Navy SEAL Teams are the best fighting force in the world today. They are an elite force of highly trained warriors capable of projecting armed combat actions in and from the three distinct environments of sea, air, and land. The term SEAL--always capitalized--is an acronym composed of letters from those three environments: SE-a, A-ir, and L-and. Printing conventions for the acronym do not include the use of "periods" after each letter.
It has been calculated that fewer than 5% of the men who apply for SEAL training are accepted for the program. Classes convene with something over 100 men, although classes as large as 150 men are rare. The training is incredibly arduous, and the number of men successfully completing the training program with any given class is not large. The average graduating class constitutes only about 25% of the men who began that training. Sometimes as few as 14 or 15 men (or even fewer) successfully graduate from classes that originally convened with over 100 men. Historically, there was even one class that never graduated because all of the students were either dropped for failure to meet performance qualifications or voluntarily left the program."
Note: Psychologists have visited the SEAL Team base in Coronado to study the new beginning classes of men entering training, but have never been able to single out common characteristics that would apply across the board to those men who will complete BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training and become SEALs.
Note: There have never been and most probably never will be women SEALs.
Note: The extreme training SEALs have, their abilities in all forms of combat, their intelligence, is truly something hard earned and well practiced. It does not do to aggravate them.
Note: These same SEAL abilities have caused far too many people to forget these men are very very human. They laugh, they cry, they play outrageous practical jokes on each other, they love their families the same as all other people. And they care deeply about each other, as witness the story below:
October 3, 2005
latimes.com : California
New Navy SEALs Undeterred by Recent Loss of 11
By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer
CORONADO, Calif.
Mario Romero was in the middle of training to be a Navy SEAL when he heard about it: the largest loss of life in a single mission in the 40-year history of the elite force of Navy commandos.
Eleven SEALs had died in Afghanistan — three were part of a Special Forces unit that disappeared June 28 in the mountains of Afghanistan, and eight were aboard a helicopter shot down by Taliban guerrillas while attempting to rescue the unit.
The most SEALs killed in a single incident in Vietnam was five.
(Note: that was in an helicopter accident)
"We were all feeling anger and sadness," said Romero, 22. "But it also inspired us, made us motivated, driven to get over there."
That motivation paid off Friday as Romero and 34 other enlisted sailors finished the 50-week training course and were each awarded the coveted Trident insignia.
It was the first graduation at the SEAL training school here since the loss in Afghanistan.
Although there was no direct reference to the 11 deaths by the SEAL brass who addressed the graduates and their family members, it was difficult not to hear references embedded in their official comments.
Vice Adm. Eric T. Olson, a SEAL and deputy commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command, said the graduates had "crossed a bed of hot coals" to graduate but that the rigor of being a SEAL had just begun.
"You will earn your Trident every day as a SEAL," he said. "You have to prove yourself every day."
Class 253 began a year ago with 166 would-be SEALs. The washout rate was 79%, about average for a SEAL class.
Each of the graduates had run 1,310 miles in the sand with their boots on, swum 150 miles in the ocean, completed a grueling half-mile obstacle course 39 times, spent 57 hours submerged in cold water, and performed five parachute jumps. Collectively, they fired 850,000 rounds and detonated 5,500 pounds of explosives.
The SEALs are one of the military's smallest groups, numbering about 2,400 SEALs, 600 combat crewmen and 2,000 support personnel.
The graduation of Class 253 was the first since the writing of the SEAL Ethos, which was read aloud by a senior enlisted SEAL.
Its conclusion reads, "Brave men have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold…. I will not fail."
SEAL Capt. Garry Bonnelli, a reservist and Vietnam veteran, said he was not surprised that Afghanistan and the loss of the 11 SEALs were not mentioned directly. It didn't have to be, he said in a telephone interview.
"We're a small community, and everyone felt the loss and still feels it," he said. "But the SEAL code is to look forward, not backward."
The Afghanistan loss, Bonnelli said, was a tragic affirmation of what SEALs have always known about the dangers of being part of a special operations unit that specializes in risky missions: "When things go wrong, they can go wrong very quickly and profoundly. A lot of [military] units say they're the tip of the spear, but SEALs really are at the tip of the spear."
Romero and other members of Class 253, along with four officers, leave Tuesday for cold-weather training in Kodiak, Alaska. Months of additional specialized training lie ahead before they are ready for combat assignments.
Romero, who grew up in New Jersey and attended college before enlisting, had just finished training as a Navy weather specialist when he earned a spot in Class 253. He had enlisted with hopes of becoming a SEAL.
"There's always been a void, an emptiness, inside me," he said. But the moment he walked on stage and pinned on "the bird" — SEAL jargon for the Trident — "it was finally filled in. It was a great feeling, down to my toes."
Even thoughts of what happened to the SEALs in Afghanistan couldn't change his joy at becoming one, Romero said.
"There's got to be people to do this job," he said. "Why wouldn't I do it?"
Note: Writer and editors of all stripes constantly and continually refer in print to SEALs as Seals. Absolutely incorrect. Watch for it. It will drive you nuts...as it does me.
Wrap...
"Many knowledgeable experts will argue that the US Navy SEAL Teams are the best fighting force in the world today. They are an elite force of highly trained warriors capable of projecting armed combat actions in and from the three distinct environments of sea, air, and land. The term SEAL--always capitalized--is an acronym composed of letters from those three environments: SE-a, A-ir, and L-and. Printing conventions for the acronym do not include the use of "periods" after each letter.
It has been calculated that fewer than 5% of the men who apply for SEAL training are accepted for the program. Classes convene with something over 100 men, although classes as large as 150 men are rare. The training is incredibly arduous, and the number of men successfully completing the training program with any given class is not large. The average graduating class constitutes only about 25% of the men who began that training. Sometimes as few as 14 or 15 men (or even fewer) successfully graduate from classes that originally convened with over 100 men. Historically, there was even one class that never graduated because all of the students were either dropped for failure to meet performance qualifications or voluntarily left the program."
Note: Psychologists have visited the SEAL Team base in Coronado to study the new beginning classes of men entering training, but have never been able to single out common characteristics that would apply across the board to those men who will complete BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training and become SEALs.
Note: There have never been and most probably never will be women SEALs.
Note: The extreme training SEALs have, their abilities in all forms of combat, their intelligence, is truly something hard earned and well practiced. It does not do to aggravate them.
Note: These same SEAL abilities have caused far too many people to forget these men are very very human. They laugh, they cry, they play outrageous practical jokes on each other, they love their families the same as all other people. And they care deeply about each other, as witness the story below:
October 3, 2005
latimes.com : California
New Navy SEALs Undeterred by Recent Loss of 11
By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer
CORONADO, Calif.
Mario Romero was in the middle of training to be a Navy SEAL when he heard about it: the largest loss of life in a single mission in the 40-year history of the elite force of Navy commandos.
Eleven SEALs had died in Afghanistan — three were part of a Special Forces unit that disappeared June 28 in the mountains of Afghanistan, and eight were aboard a helicopter shot down by Taliban guerrillas while attempting to rescue the unit.
The most SEALs killed in a single incident in Vietnam was five.
(Note: that was in an helicopter accident)
"We were all feeling anger and sadness," said Romero, 22. "But it also inspired us, made us motivated, driven to get over there."
That motivation paid off Friday as Romero and 34 other enlisted sailors finished the 50-week training course and were each awarded the coveted Trident insignia.
It was the first graduation at the SEAL training school here since the loss in Afghanistan.
Although there was no direct reference to the 11 deaths by the SEAL brass who addressed the graduates and their family members, it was difficult not to hear references embedded in their official comments.
Vice Adm. Eric T. Olson, a SEAL and deputy commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command, said the graduates had "crossed a bed of hot coals" to graduate but that the rigor of being a SEAL had just begun.
"You will earn your Trident every day as a SEAL," he said. "You have to prove yourself every day."
Class 253 began a year ago with 166 would-be SEALs. The washout rate was 79%, about average for a SEAL class.
Each of the graduates had run 1,310 miles in the sand with their boots on, swum 150 miles in the ocean, completed a grueling half-mile obstacle course 39 times, spent 57 hours submerged in cold water, and performed five parachute jumps. Collectively, they fired 850,000 rounds and detonated 5,500 pounds of explosives.
The SEALs are one of the military's smallest groups, numbering about 2,400 SEALs, 600 combat crewmen and 2,000 support personnel.
The graduation of Class 253 was the first since the writing of the SEAL Ethos, which was read aloud by a senior enlisted SEAL.
Its conclusion reads, "Brave men have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold…. I will not fail."
SEAL Capt. Garry Bonnelli, a reservist and Vietnam veteran, said he was not surprised that Afghanistan and the loss of the 11 SEALs were not mentioned directly. It didn't have to be, he said in a telephone interview.
"We're a small community, and everyone felt the loss and still feels it," he said. "But the SEAL code is to look forward, not backward."
The Afghanistan loss, Bonnelli said, was a tragic affirmation of what SEALs have always known about the dangers of being part of a special operations unit that specializes in risky missions: "When things go wrong, they can go wrong very quickly and profoundly. A lot of [military] units say they're the tip of the spear, but SEALs really are at the tip of the spear."
Romero and other members of Class 253, along with four officers, leave Tuesday for cold-weather training in Kodiak, Alaska. Months of additional specialized training lie ahead before they are ready for combat assignments.
Romero, who grew up in New Jersey and attended college before enlisting, had just finished training as a Navy weather specialist when he earned a spot in Class 253. He had enlisted with hopes of becoming a SEAL.
"There's always been a void, an emptiness, inside me," he said. But the moment he walked on stage and pinned on "the bird" — SEAL jargon for the Trident — "it was finally filled in. It was a great feeling, down to my toes."
Even thoughts of what happened to the SEALs in Afghanistan couldn't change his joy at becoming one, Romero said.
"There's got to be people to do this job," he said. "Why wouldn't I do it?"
Note: Writer and editors of all stripes constantly and continually refer in print to SEALs as Seals. Absolutely incorrect. Watch for it. It will drive you nuts...as it does me.
Wrap...
Nukes & the State Department...
From American Progress:
NATIONAL SECURITY -- ADMINISTRATION WEAKENS STATE DEPARTMENT'S ARMS CONTROL CAPABILITIES:
When Congress took its summer recess in July, the Bush administration tried to "quietly eliminate" most of the State Department's arms control offices and merge them with the nonproliferation units. Congress disagreed with the move, temporarily putting a hold in August on the reorganization.
Despite this block, the State Department has once again begun quietly reorganizing its arms control and nonproliferation bureaus, which would "effectively complete an eight-year, Republican-driven process of dismantling the State Department’s once sizable infrastructure dedicated to [nonproliferation]."
This shift away from arms control comes at the same time that Harvard professor Graham Allison and other members of the national security community agree that "if policy makers in Washington keep doing what they are currently doing about the [proliferation] threat, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is likely to occur in the next decade."
Wrap...
NATIONAL SECURITY -- ADMINISTRATION WEAKENS STATE DEPARTMENT'S ARMS CONTROL CAPABILITIES:
When Congress took its summer recess in July, the Bush administration tried to "quietly eliminate" most of the State Department's arms control offices and merge them with the nonproliferation units. Congress disagreed with the move, temporarily putting a hold in August on the reorganization.
Despite this block, the State Department has once again begun quietly reorganizing its arms control and nonproliferation bureaus, which would "effectively complete an eight-year, Republican-driven process of dismantling the State Department’s once sizable infrastructure dedicated to [nonproliferation]."
This shift away from arms control comes at the same time that Harvard professor Graham Allison and other members of the national security community agree that "if policy makers in Washington keep doing what they are currently doing about the [proliferation] threat, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is likely to occur in the next decade."
Wrap...
Monday, October 03, 2005
Military operating in US? Paying attention yet?
Note: Baker was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun for many years...and a damned good one.
From Russ Baker's blog:
Monday, August 8, 2005
ARMY TROOPS IN US STREETS?
In Friday’s blog, I expressed some concern about the government’s prosecution of several private individuals for having passed along classified information obtained from a government employee. (See below). I’m particularly worried about whether this is part of a general clampdown on dissent, because there appears to be a growing pattern of such things. As to the merits of that case, I’ll just note that there’s often little basis for the claim that classified material is vital to real ‘national security,’ or that public airing of the information is inimical to the national interest, whatever that might be.
On Sunday, came yet another troubling sign. In the New York Times, we read of the case of a New York-area translator and US citizen facing 20 years in prison for providing material aid to terrorism and conspiring to deceive the government. Although the reporter says that some outside of the prosecution seem to think this fellow clearly did something wrong, it is clear that she – and most of her sources – are alarmed by the harshness of the potential sentence given a less than clear case of wrongdoing. (Among other things, there is nothing about the man to suggest any personal support for terror or even an inkling of such.) Read it yourself and see what you think.
Meantime, today has yet another potential cause for alarm. The Washington Post reports on plans being developed by the Pentagon to have normal military troops intervene domestically in various crisis scenarios. There are lots of reasons to worry about this, the most basic of which is that such operations can -- at least in theory -- lead to military government. The article contains various reassurances that there’s no cause for alarm, but here are some quick thoughts on particulars worth scrutinizing:
-The Washington Post got this story from “officers who drafted the plans.” Now, I wonder why those officers told the reporter about this. I’m assuming they spoke to him with the permission of their superiors, which means that this is a planned leak. It means that the military is trying to float the idea to see what kind of reaction it gets. I.e., Will there be an outcry or not?
-Given the above-mentioned stories, in which various US citizens are accused of threatening ‘national security’, one wonders why releasing the Pentagon plan (complete with a surprising amount of detail) is somehow not a threat to security.
-Now, read the following excerpt:
The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement. Indeed, defense officials continue to stress that they intend for the troops to play largely a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters and other civilian response groups.
But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.
"In my estimation, [in the event of] a biological, a chemical or nuclear attack in any of the 50 states, the Department of Defense is best positioned -- of the various eight federal agencies that would be involved -- to take the lead," said Adm. Timothy J. Keating, the head of Northcom, which coordinates military involvement in homeland security operations.
The plans present the Pentagon with a clearer idea of the kinds and numbers of troops and the training that may be required to build a more credible homeland defense force. They come at a time when senior Pentagon officials are engaged in an internal, year-long review of force levels and weapons systems, attempting to balance the heightened requirements of homeland defense against the heavy demands of overseas deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Now, here are a few thoughts and questions relating to that.
-Why, with all the massive budgeting and preparing for emergencies, do we need the military involved? What about the vast Department of Homeland Security, which swallowed up pre-existing entities like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA? What about the thousands upon thousands of trained responders? What about police and National Guard? Why should that not be enough?
-How much of this is designed to satisfy the gaping maw of the defense industry, for whom the state of never-ending war has been a tremendous boon, after a dry spell immediately after the USSR collapsed? (Read the annual reports from these companies, which don't even try to hide their delight at the new marketing opportunities since 9/11). The Post piece mentions that the military command for North America (Northcom) has grown so much in under three years that it now has 640 headquarters staff, more than the military has for operations in Latin America.
-Why is there so little talk about how this came about? The Bush Administration didn’t cause the 9/11 attacks, but had things been handled differently, that might have turned out to represent something of an aberration, an essentially manageable situation where reasonable risks are met with reasonable responses. Obviously, disasters like 9/11 need to be addressed, but the question was, how? Thanks to the Iraq war, we are now seeing that still-limited threat scenario evolve into a wholesale transformation of our world -- everywhere, and at home. And we’re still not, as a country, discussing that.
-There’s mention in the article of “crowd control” – and it doesn’t take a lot to imagine that, although it may be intended to control crowds panicked by an attack, troops might be used to control any kind of crowd deemed to be ‘out of control’ – including crowds of domestic dissenters. (We already got a whiff of that with excesses outside the GOP convention in 2004)
That there's an ideological component at work is indisputable. The article quotes a staffer at the very conservative Heritage Foundation speaking approvingly about the Pentagon’s “acknowledg(ing) that it would have to respond…” as a “big step.”
-The article says that Pentagon brass doesn’t want standing units, but to use a common pool of troops trained for homeland and overseas assignments. I see troubles there, too. When troops are operating abroad, they’re often in war zones, in highly volatile situations where civil liberties and other niceties play little or no role. Should those same soldiers suddenly be deployed to Washington or Madison, Wisconsin?
There’s talk of mixing it up with entities that do traditionally have responsibilities for domestic order, including having National Guard officers in charge of task forces that could include ordinary active-duty soldiers. Again, this makes me nervous – it looks a lot like getting around constitutional prohibitions on using active-duty troops. And then, there’s this doozy of a quote from Admiral Timothy Keating, head of Northcom:
"It could be a challenge for the commander who's a Guardsman, if we end up in a fairly complex, dynamic scenario," Keating said. He cited a potential situation in which Guard units might begin rounding up people while regular forces could not.
Folks, can we all just stop a moment from our orgy of denial and deliberate distraction, what with the explosion of ‘reality shows,’ fascination with cooking, home improvement and real estate speculation, to get a handle on what is going on here?
Wrap.
From Russ Baker's blog:
Monday, August 8, 2005
ARMY TROOPS IN US STREETS?
In Friday’s blog, I expressed some concern about the government’s prosecution of several private individuals for having passed along classified information obtained from a government employee. (See below). I’m particularly worried about whether this is part of a general clampdown on dissent, because there appears to be a growing pattern of such things. As to the merits of that case, I’ll just note that there’s often little basis for the claim that classified material is vital to real ‘national security,’ or that public airing of the information is inimical to the national interest, whatever that might be.
On Sunday, came yet another troubling sign. In the New York Times, we read of the case of a New York-area translator and US citizen facing 20 years in prison for providing material aid to terrorism and conspiring to deceive the government. Although the reporter says that some outside of the prosecution seem to think this fellow clearly did something wrong, it is clear that she – and most of her sources – are alarmed by the harshness of the potential sentence given a less than clear case of wrongdoing. (Among other things, there is nothing about the man to suggest any personal support for terror or even an inkling of such.) Read it yourself and see what you think.
Meantime, today has yet another potential cause for alarm. The Washington Post reports on plans being developed by the Pentagon to have normal military troops intervene domestically in various crisis scenarios. There are lots of reasons to worry about this, the most basic of which is that such operations can -- at least in theory -- lead to military government. The article contains various reassurances that there’s no cause for alarm, but here are some quick thoughts on particulars worth scrutinizing:
-The Washington Post got this story from “officers who drafted the plans.” Now, I wonder why those officers told the reporter about this. I’m assuming they spoke to him with the permission of their superiors, which means that this is a planned leak. It means that the military is trying to float the idea to see what kind of reaction it gets. I.e., Will there be an outcry or not?
-Given the above-mentioned stories, in which various US citizens are accused of threatening ‘national security’, one wonders why releasing the Pentagon plan (complete with a surprising amount of detail) is somehow not a threat to security.
-Now, read the following excerpt:
The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement. Indeed, defense officials continue to stress that they intend for the troops to play largely a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters and other civilian response groups.
But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.
"In my estimation, [in the event of] a biological, a chemical or nuclear attack in any of the 50 states, the Department of Defense is best positioned -- of the various eight federal agencies that would be involved -- to take the lead," said Adm. Timothy J. Keating, the head of Northcom, which coordinates military involvement in homeland security operations.
The plans present the Pentagon with a clearer idea of the kinds and numbers of troops and the training that may be required to build a more credible homeland defense force. They come at a time when senior Pentagon officials are engaged in an internal, year-long review of force levels and weapons systems, attempting to balance the heightened requirements of homeland defense against the heavy demands of overseas deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Now, here are a few thoughts and questions relating to that.
-Why, with all the massive budgeting and preparing for emergencies, do we need the military involved? What about the vast Department of Homeland Security, which swallowed up pre-existing entities like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA? What about the thousands upon thousands of trained responders? What about police and National Guard? Why should that not be enough?
-How much of this is designed to satisfy the gaping maw of the defense industry, for whom the state of never-ending war has been a tremendous boon, after a dry spell immediately after the USSR collapsed? (Read the annual reports from these companies, which don't even try to hide their delight at the new marketing opportunities since 9/11). The Post piece mentions that the military command for North America (Northcom) has grown so much in under three years that it now has 640 headquarters staff, more than the military has for operations in Latin America.
-Why is there so little talk about how this came about? The Bush Administration didn’t cause the 9/11 attacks, but had things been handled differently, that might have turned out to represent something of an aberration, an essentially manageable situation where reasonable risks are met with reasonable responses. Obviously, disasters like 9/11 need to be addressed, but the question was, how? Thanks to the Iraq war, we are now seeing that still-limited threat scenario evolve into a wholesale transformation of our world -- everywhere, and at home. And we’re still not, as a country, discussing that.
-There’s mention in the article of “crowd control” – and it doesn’t take a lot to imagine that, although it may be intended to control crowds panicked by an attack, troops might be used to control any kind of crowd deemed to be ‘out of control’ – including crowds of domestic dissenters. (We already got a whiff of that with excesses outside the GOP convention in 2004)
That there's an ideological component at work is indisputable. The article quotes a staffer at the very conservative Heritage Foundation speaking approvingly about the Pentagon’s “acknowledg(ing) that it would have to respond…” as a “big step.”
-The article says that Pentagon brass doesn’t want standing units, but to use a common pool of troops trained for homeland and overseas assignments. I see troubles there, too. When troops are operating abroad, they’re often in war zones, in highly volatile situations where civil liberties and other niceties play little or no role. Should those same soldiers suddenly be deployed to Washington or Madison, Wisconsin?
There’s talk of mixing it up with entities that do traditionally have responsibilities for domestic order, including having National Guard officers in charge of task forces that could include ordinary active-duty soldiers. Again, this makes me nervous – it looks a lot like getting around constitutional prohibitions on using active-duty troops. And then, there’s this doozy of a quote from Admiral Timothy Keating, head of Northcom:
"It could be a challenge for the commander who's a Guardsman, if we end up in a fairly complex, dynamic scenario," Keating said. He cited a potential situation in which Guard units might begin rounding up people while regular forces could not.
Folks, can we all just stop a moment from our orgy of denial and deliberate distraction, what with the explosion of ‘reality shows,’ fascination with cooking, home improvement and real estate speculation, to get a handle on what is going on here?
Wrap.
FYI...Dole salads bad...
Some Dole Salads Connected to E. Coli
Monday, October 3, 2005 now part of stylesheet -->
(10-03) 08:36 PDT
WASHINGTON (AP) --
The Food and Drug Administration is warning people not to eat certain Dole pre-packaged salads that have been connected to an outbreak of E. coli infections in Minnesota.
The illnesses have all been associated with Dole salads bought at Rainbow Foods grocery store outlets in the state. But salads carrying the same production codes have been distributed nationwide, prompting the national warning, the FDA said.
At least 11 people have been sickened by a specific type of E. coli that have been connected to the products. Two have been hospitalized. The last reported case connected to the outbreak was reported Sept. 19, the FDA said.
"Given the severity of this illness, FDA believes an urgent warning to consumers is needed. FDA is working closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and our state partners to further identify the source of the problem and its scope," said Dr. Robert Brackett, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, in a statement.
The affected Dole products are:
_ Classic Romaine, with a "best-if-used-by (BIUB)" date of Sept. 23, 2005 and a production code beginning with "B250."
_ American Blend, with a "best-if-used-by (BIUB)" date of Sept. 23, 2005 and a production code beginning with "B250."
_ Greener Selection, with a "best-if-used-by (BIUB)" date of Sept. 22, 2005, and a production code beginning with "B250."
The "best-if-used-by" code date is one the upper right hand corner of the front of the bag. Stores probably aren't carrying these salads on their shelves any more, but people may still have some at home. They should be thrown away, the FDA said.
The particular type of E. coli connected to the salads is known as O157:H7. An infection can cause bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Most healthy adults recover within a week, but children under 5 and the elderly are at risk for complications that can lead to kidney damage or death.
Dole Food Co. has issued a recall for the affected salad products, the FDA said.
On the net:
FDA's Recalls, Market Withdrawals and Safety Alerts Page:
www.fda.gov/opacom/7alerts.html
Wrap...
Monday, October 3, 2005 now part of stylesheet -->
(10-03) 08:36 PDT
WASHINGTON (AP) --
The Food and Drug Administration is warning people not to eat certain Dole pre-packaged salads that have been connected to an outbreak of E. coli infections in Minnesota.
The illnesses have all been associated with Dole salads bought at Rainbow Foods grocery store outlets in the state. But salads carrying the same production codes have been distributed nationwide, prompting the national warning, the FDA said.
At least 11 people have been sickened by a specific type of E. coli that have been connected to the products. Two have been hospitalized. The last reported case connected to the outbreak was reported Sept. 19, the FDA said.
"Given the severity of this illness, FDA believes an urgent warning to consumers is needed. FDA is working closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and our state partners to further identify the source of the problem and its scope," said Dr. Robert Brackett, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, in a statement.
The affected Dole products are:
_ Classic Romaine, with a "best-if-used-by (BIUB)" date of Sept. 23, 2005 and a production code beginning with "B250."
_ American Blend, with a "best-if-used-by (BIUB)" date of Sept. 23, 2005 and a production code beginning with "B250."
_ Greener Selection, with a "best-if-used-by (BIUB)" date of Sept. 22, 2005, and a production code beginning with "B250."
The "best-if-used-by" code date is one the upper right hand corner of the front of the bag. Stores probably aren't carrying these salads on their shelves any more, but people may still have some at home. They should be thrown away, the FDA said.
The particular type of E. coli connected to the salads is known as O157:H7. An infection can cause bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Most healthy adults recover within a week, but children under 5 and the elderly are at risk for complications that can lead to kidney damage or death.
Dole Food Co. has issued a recall for the affected salad products, the FDA said.
On the net:
FDA's Recalls, Market Withdrawals and Safety Alerts Page:
www.fda.gov/opacom/7alerts.html
Wrap...
US Intel goes to DNI...not DCI...
From Secrecy News...
SSCI MARKUP OF 2006 INTEL AUTHORIZATION ACT
The authority of the Director of National Intelligence over U.S. intelligence policy would be further consolidated under the 2006 intelligence authorization act as marked up by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Among other notable provisions, the new bill would assign authority to the DNI to manage access to human intelligence information (sec. 403), previously a function of the Director of Central Intelligence.
The bill would authorize defense intelligence officers to conduct intelligence "assessment contacts" within the United States without disclosing their own identity (sec. 431).
The bill would exempt "operational files" of the Defense IntelligenceAgency from the Freedom of Information Act (sec. 434). Such an exemption was rejected by a less compliant Congress when it was first requested by DIA in 2000.
The 2006 intelligence authorization act, S. 1803, as marked up by theSenate Intelligence Committee, is available here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_cr/s1803.html
Wrap...
SSCI MARKUP OF 2006 INTEL AUTHORIZATION ACT
The authority of the Director of National Intelligence over U.S. intelligence policy would be further consolidated under the 2006 intelligence authorization act as marked up by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Among other notable provisions, the new bill would assign authority to the DNI to manage access to human intelligence information (sec. 403), previously a function of the Director of Central Intelligence.
The bill would authorize defense intelligence officers to conduct intelligence "assessment contacts" within the United States without disclosing their own identity (sec. 431).
The bill would exempt "operational files" of the Defense IntelligenceAgency from the Freedom of Information Act (sec. 434). Such an exemption was rejected by a less compliant Congress when it was first requested by DIA in 2000.
The 2006 intelligence authorization act, S. 1803, as marked up by theSenate Intelligence Committee, is available here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_cr/s1803.html
Wrap...
No shows in Ohio...Repub base....
Sunday, October 2, 2005
Republicans rally to energize Event comes as GOP officials, hopefuls deal with challenges
By Dan Klepal
Enquirer staff writer
LEBANON - Candidates at times outnumbered voters at the Republicans Rock! event Saturday at the Warren County Fairgrounds, with local, state and national GOP officials and hopefuls stumping to define - or redefine - the image of a party facing a number of serious challenges after scandals in the governor's office, a razor-thin victory in a Congressional race in a Republican stronghold, and declining national support for the president.
Joel Schapp, a 40-year-old Maineville man who is a lifelong Republican, said recent events will cause him to take a very careful look at all the candidates in next year's primary.
"My political persuasion doesn't mean I believe everything in the party all the time," Schapp said. "Sometimes you need different types of leadership because people have been in too long and you need some fresh ideas. I'll be looking hard at all the candidates. That's why I get more out of (an event) like this, because I have time to absorb it."
Ken Blackwell, current secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate and a former Hamilton County commissioner, said voters are tired of candidates who "campaign like Ronald Reagan and govern like Dick Celeste," the later referring to Ohio's governor from 1983 until 1991 who held office during a time of large increases in the state income tax.
The other three GOP candidates for the governor's office - Betty Montgomery, Jim Petro and Pete Draganic - also were at the festival.
"The only way we're going to win in 2006 is to convince independents that the top of the ticket isn't hugging the status quo," Blackwell said. "We've got to get spending under control, and we've got to be honest - runaway spending happened on our watch. We need new leadership to come to Columbus and encourage Republican leaders to act like Republicans."
The day was all about energizing the Republican base, in one of the reddest districts in a red state. The event even garnered some national attention in Republican circles, given that it is the first event during a non-presidential election year geared toward raising awareness of GOP candidates and talking about ballot issues.
U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, who barely defeated Democratic challenger Paul Hackett in an August special election, said she doesn't think Saturday's event was a response to Republican woes. "This was planned last March," she said. "No party is ever 100 percent healthy. You always look internally to energize your base, and that's what we're doing today."
E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com
Warp....
Republicans rally to energize Event comes as GOP officials, hopefuls deal with challenges
By Dan Klepal
Enquirer staff writer
LEBANON - Candidates at times outnumbered voters at the Republicans Rock! event Saturday at the Warren County Fairgrounds, with local, state and national GOP officials and hopefuls stumping to define - or redefine - the image of a party facing a number of serious challenges after scandals in the governor's office, a razor-thin victory in a Congressional race in a Republican stronghold, and declining national support for the president.
Joel Schapp, a 40-year-old Maineville man who is a lifelong Republican, said recent events will cause him to take a very careful look at all the candidates in next year's primary.
"My political persuasion doesn't mean I believe everything in the party all the time," Schapp said. "Sometimes you need different types of leadership because people have been in too long and you need some fresh ideas. I'll be looking hard at all the candidates. That's why I get more out of (an event) like this, because I have time to absorb it."
Ken Blackwell, current secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate and a former Hamilton County commissioner, said voters are tired of candidates who "campaign like Ronald Reagan and govern like Dick Celeste," the later referring to Ohio's governor from 1983 until 1991 who held office during a time of large increases in the state income tax.
The other three GOP candidates for the governor's office - Betty Montgomery, Jim Petro and Pete Draganic - also were at the festival.
"The only way we're going to win in 2006 is to convince independents that the top of the ticket isn't hugging the status quo," Blackwell said. "We've got to get spending under control, and we've got to be honest - runaway spending happened on our watch. We need new leadership to come to Columbus and encourage Republican leaders to act like Republicans."
The day was all about energizing the Republican base, in one of the reddest districts in a red state. The event even garnered some national attention in Republican circles, given that it is the first event during a non-presidential election year geared toward raising awareness of GOP candidates and talking about ballot issues.
U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, who barely defeated Democratic challenger Paul Hackett in an August special election, said she doesn't think Saturday's event was a response to Republican woes. "This was planned last March," she said. "No party is ever 100 percent healthy. You always look internally to energize your base, and that's what we're doing today."
E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com
Warp....
Eric Clapton tells it all....
From Publishers Lunch:
Meanwhile, an auction for world rights to Eric Clapton's memoir is set to close on Wednesday--and he has reportedly turned down an offer of 2.5 million pounds. Agent Ed Victor, who is representing rights, says, "Eric has known everybody and played with everybody. He has terrific recall and a very dry wit. He will be very frank about his life." Victor adds, "He has reached a plateau in his life when looking back is something he would like to do." London's Times comments, "The real selling point is the stories he plans to tell about the legendary figures he has met and worked with. Besides Hendrix and the Beatles, these include Steve Winwood, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck."
Times on Clapton
Wrap...
Meanwhile, an auction for world rights to Eric Clapton's memoir is set to close on Wednesday--and he has reportedly turned down an offer of 2.5 million pounds. Agent Ed Victor, who is representing rights, says, "Eric has known everybody and played with everybody. He has terrific recall and a very dry wit. He will be very frank about his life." Victor adds, "He has reached a plateau in his life when looking back is something he would like to do." London's Times comments, "The real selling point is the stories he plans to tell about the legendary figures he has met and worked with. Besides Hendrix and the Beatles, these include Steve Winwood, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck."
Times on Clapton
Wrap...
DeLay....Breaking News...
Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:
TEXAS GRAND JURY INDICTS U.S. REP. TOM DELAY ON A NEW CHARGE OF MONEY LAUNDERING
http://abcnews.go.com?CMP=EMC-1396
TEXAS GRAND JURY INDICTS U.S. REP. TOM DELAY ON A NEW CHARGE OF MONEY LAUNDERING
http://abcnews.go.com?CMP=EMC-1396
Straight talk on Iraq & the military..& BushCo...
Note: Huber's credentials are at article's end...
In Case You Wonder Where I Stand
by Jeff Huber
Late last week and through the weekend we heard more of the same self contradicting war rhetoric from the administration, the Pentagon, and the usual gang of echo chamberlains.
A ratified constitution is vital to success in Iraq, but if it isn't ratified that might be okay, because a ratified constitution might make the insurgency even worse. If it doesn't pass and things do get worse, that's okay too because we anticipated it.
Only Iraqi's can defeat the insurgency. As occupiers, our presence actually contributes to the strength of the insurgency.
Iraqi forces are making progress toward being able to handle the insurgency themselves, even though they've gone from having three ready battalions to only having one.
Until Iraqi forces are ready to handle the insurgency, we can't make plans to draw down our presence in the country, even though our presence in the country contributes to the strength of the insurgency.
And the pro-war pundits! They refuse to compare Iraq to Vietnam, but they're happy to equate it with the American Revolution, our Civil War, and World War II whenever the mood strikes them.
We're stuck in a generational quagmire, and all our "leaders" have to offer us by way of explanation is the standard menu of memes, catch phrases, and double talking points. Lamentably, old military beat hands in the mainstream media can't call the Pentagon's bull manure what it is because they're "reporter," not columnists. And the mainstream columnists are either in the administration's pocket or they're afraid to take on the Pentagon because they're completely out of their depth when it comes to military matters.
Our political and military leaders are stringing us along. The Iraq excursion has been a dishonest, immoral, and incompetently run fiasco from the outset. This has to change, and it's high time to debunk the right wing mantra that "real" Americans support their president and the military in time of war.
"Real" Americans are not loyal subjects. They are citizens. The president is not America's commander in chief. He is commander in chief of America's military. And America does not exist to support its military. The military exists to support America.
By committing our military to a bad war in pursuit his neocon cronies' agenda, Mister Bush has mis-served our country and the troops we have placed under his command.
By continuing to support Mister Bush, our generals are not only placing political loyalty above their oath to uphold the constitution, they are betraying the trust of the troops who serve under them.
They should resign.
And real Americans should demand an accounting from Mister Bush and his minions/puppet masters.
Commander Jeff Huber, US Navy (Retired) was a flight instructor, operations officer of Carrier Air Wing 9 and the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, and commanding officer of VAW-124, an E-2C Hawkeye squadron. Jeff's satires on military and foreign policy affairs have appeared in Proceedings, The Navy, Military, and GlobalEar. His essays have been required student reading at the U.S. Naval War College, where Jeff received a master's degree in national security studies in 1995. He recently co-authored an article on command and control of naval forces for Jane's Fighting Ships. Jeff lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia where he writes, plays with his dogs, works on his house, and does the occasional bit of (ahem) consulting work.
Wrap....
In Case You Wonder Where I Stand
by Jeff Huber
Late last week and through the weekend we heard more of the same self contradicting war rhetoric from the administration, the Pentagon, and the usual gang of echo chamberlains.
A ratified constitution is vital to success in Iraq, but if it isn't ratified that might be okay, because a ratified constitution might make the insurgency even worse. If it doesn't pass and things do get worse, that's okay too because we anticipated it.
Only Iraqi's can defeat the insurgency. As occupiers, our presence actually contributes to the strength of the insurgency.
Iraqi forces are making progress toward being able to handle the insurgency themselves, even though they've gone from having three ready battalions to only having one.
Until Iraqi forces are ready to handle the insurgency, we can't make plans to draw down our presence in the country, even though our presence in the country contributes to the strength of the insurgency.
And the pro-war pundits! They refuse to compare Iraq to Vietnam, but they're happy to equate it with the American Revolution, our Civil War, and World War II whenever the mood strikes them.
We're stuck in a generational quagmire, and all our "leaders" have to offer us by way of explanation is the standard menu of memes, catch phrases, and double talking points. Lamentably, old military beat hands in the mainstream media can't call the Pentagon's bull manure what it is because they're "reporter," not columnists. And the mainstream columnists are either in the administration's pocket or they're afraid to take on the Pentagon because they're completely out of their depth when it comes to military matters.
Our political and military leaders are stringing us along. The Iraq excursion has been a dishonest, immoral, and incompetently run fiasco from the outset. This has to change, and it's high time to debunk the right wing mantra that "real" Americans support their president and the military in time of war.
"Real" Americans are not loyal subjects. They are citizens. The president is not America's commander in chief. He is commander in chief of America's military. And America does not exist to support its military. The military exists to support America.
By committing our military to a bad war in pursuit his neocon cronies' agenda, Mister Bush has mis-served our country and the troops we have placed under his command.
By continuing to support Mister Bush, our generals are not only placing political loyalty above their oath to uphold the constitution, they are betraying the trust of the troops who serve under them.
They should resign.
And real Americans should demand an accounting from Mister Bush and his minions/puppet masters.
Commander Jeff Huber, US Navy (Retired) was a flight instructor, operations officer of Carrier Air Wing 9 and the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, and commanding officer of VAW-124, an E-2C Hawkeye squadron. Jeff's satires on military and foreign policy affairs have appeared in Proceedings, The Navy, Military, and GlobalEar. His essays have been required student reading at the U.S. Naval War College, where Jeff received a master's degree in national security studies in 1995. He recently co-authored an article on command and control of naval forces for Jane's Fighting Ships. Jeff lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia where he writes, plays with his dogs, works on his house, and does the occasional bit of (ahem) consulting work.
Wrap....
Torture....Under Orders from the CinC....
From The Miami Herald:
Posted on Mon, Oct. 03, 2005
Fixing responsibility for Abu Ghraib abuse
OUR OPINION: PUNISHING ONLY LOW-LEVEL SOLDIERS ISN'T ENOUGH
The conviction and sentencing of Lynndie England last week, the last of nine courts-martial of enlisted men and women for abusing detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, brought an unsatisfactory conclusion to the scandal. Responsibility for what happened must not end there.
Those young soldiers did not act in a vacuum. They were part of a mission bigger than themselves. They were carrying out assignments to defeat an enemy defined by military brass at the Pentagon and civilians in the White House.
When the final chapter in this scandal is written, all who had a part in it should be identified and made to own up to their responsibility -- just as happened with Lynndie England and the other foot soldiers. Private England was sentenced to three years in prison and given a dishonorable discharge from the Army. No officer or commander thus far has been tried, although several have gotten administrative punishments.
Chain of command
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that in an organization as rigidly controlled as the military, commanders bear some degree of responsibility for the actions of troops under their command. The top officers are responsible for the training, or lack thereof, supervision, discipline and guidance of troops under their command. In Iraq, military leaders on the ground decide what the specific missions are and how to achieve them, including whether to adhere to Geneva Conventions, international law or the U.S. Constitution. And the colonels and generals themselves are following orders from their civilian bosses, who define the broader goals and objectives. In this war, the civilian leadership in Washington defined the fight as a war against terrorism.
It is easy to see how all of this may have been fuzzed up with the detainees at Abu Ghraib. Are they civilians, insurgents, prisoners of war or terrorists? What are the rules applicable to their detention? At Abu Ghraib prison, soldiers were put in a confused and chaotic environment either with, (a) tacit instructions about what was expected of them or, (b) no instructions at all. In either case, they are not lone actors in what occurred.
Army Capt. Ian Fishback, 26, succinctly states the case for responsibility. He spent nearly 18 months going up the chain of command, reporting on abuses at Abu Ghraib, asking questions and trying to get answers and guidance. Frustrated with denials and avoidance, he went public with his concerns. ''We did not set the conditions for our soldiers to succeed,'' he said. ''We failed to set clear standards, communicate those standards and enforce those standards. For us to get to that point now, however, we have to come to grips with whether it's acceptable to use coercion to obtain information from detainees.'' Clearly, Capt. Fishback gets it.
Is anyone in Congress listening?
Wrap...
Posted on Mon, Oct. 03, 2005
Fixing responsibility for Abu Ghraib abuse
OUR OPINION: PUNISHING ONLY LOW-LEVEL SOLDIERS ISN'T ENOUGH
The conviction and sentencing of Lynndie England last week, the last of nine courts-martial of enlisted men and women for abusing detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, brought an unsatisfactory conclusion to the scandal. Responsibility for what happened must not end there.
Those young soldiers did not act in a vacuum. They were part of a mission bigger than themselves. They were carrying out assignments to defeat an enemy defined by military brass at the Pentagon and civilians in the White House.
When the final chapter in this scandal is written, all who had a part in it should be identified and made to own up to their responsibility -- just as happened with Lynndie England and the other foot soldiers. Private England was sentenced to three years in prison and given a dishonorable discharge from the Army. No officer or commander thus far has been tried, although several have gotten administrative punishments.
Chain of command
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that in an organization as rigidly controlled as the military, commanders bear some degree of responsibility for the actions of troops under their command. The top officers are responsible for the training, or lack thereof, supervision, discipline and guidance of troops under their command. In Iraq, military leaders on the ground decide what the specific missions are and how to achieve them, including whether to adhere to Geneva Conventions, international law or the U.S. Constitution. And the colonels and generals themselves are following orders from their civilian bosses, who define the broader goals and objectives. In this war, the civilian leadership in Washington defined the fight as a war against terrorism.
It is easy to see how all of this may have been fuzzed up with the detainees at Abu Ghraib. Are they civilians, insurgents, prisoners of war or terrorists? What are the rules applicable to their detention? At Abu Ghraib prison, soldiers were put in a confused and chaotic environment either with, (a) tacit instructions about what was expected of them or, (b) no instructions at all. In either case, they are not lone actors in what occurred.
Army Capt. Ian Fishback, 26, succinctly states the case for responsibility. He spent nearly 18 months going up the chain of command, reporting on abuses at Abu Ghraib, asking questions and trying to get answers and guidance. Frustrated with denials and avoidance, he went public with his concerns. ''We did not set the conditions for our soldiers to succeed,'' he said. ''We failed to set clear standards, communicate those standards and enforce those standards. For us to get to that point now, however, we have to come to grips with whether it's acceptable to use coercion to obtain information from detainees.'' Clearly, Capt. Fishback gets it.
Is anyone in Congress listening?
Wrap...
Willie Nelson...doin' it right!!!
The Trucks Stop Here
Carl's Corner, Texas,
Oct. 1, 2005
(CBS)
About an hour or so south of Dallas you come upon a little town called Carl's Corner. It's pretty much a truck stop. And this is pretty much Carl: mayor, judge, fire chief, police chief.
Carl Cornelius bought some less-than-prime property out here and built his now legendary truck stop. He wanted a liquor license, but first he needed a city. So he built that too.
"I went and got 21 mobile homes and got the biggest families I could find, cause I needed 201 people to live here 6 months in order to incorporate."
Carl wanted to create a Shangri la for truckers. Over the years it's featured a strip club and a chapel, a drive thru beer window and a drive in movie theater for 18-wheelers."
We had a masseuse out here at one time," Carl said. "Truckers love to have their feet rubbed."
He put in an indoor swimming pool and outdoor Jacuzzis. As mayor, he performed weddings here.
Carl has even hosted foreign dignitaries. Prince Albert of Monaco stopped by once and dined on his Texas-sized chicken fried steaks,which might be viewed by some today as an assassination attempt.
Carl and his truck stop have even been celebrated in song.
Things seemed to be merrily rolling along when tragedy struck. Three of Carl's children died. "I lost 3 boys. It knocked the wind out of me. A lot of memories around here."
With the deaths of his sons, Carl lost interest in just about everything and was about to shut down Carl's Corner. That's when an old friend came into the picture--Willie Nelson.
"He called me and said don't shut that place down. Let's do something."
Carl and Willie both tend to think big. They built an 850-seat theater where the swimming pool and strip joint used to be and where Willie played to a packed house last week.
And that's just the half of it. Willie had become interested in alternative fuels and was burning soybean oil in his tour buses and recycled oil from deep fat fryers in his Mercedes. He and Carl decided to produce this bio-diesel fuel and sell it at the truck stop. They call it Biowillie. Carl didn't even know what it was.
"(Willie) explained it to me. He was so enthused with it. He said, 'Let's put in one island.' And I said the hell with that if you believe in this damned thing lets do all of it. We did the whole, everything is biodiesel."
The farmers could be growing this and we could be lessening our dependency on energies abroad and get out of wars over oil, speaking more plainly.
"Not to mention the truckers seem to really like the stuff."
I want to try some of this bio," said one trucker. "Long way to try it, 40 miles out of the way. If I can get better mileage it's great. It's kind of unusual, but Willie's kind of unusual."
"I got the book where the people started writing notes," said Carl. "These guys are doing the testimony. So they're the ones who sold me on biodiesel. One of them said your diesel is great but your pancakes suck."
Biowillie can be made from soybeans, sunflower seeds, and even animal fat.
Is it true you could put your chicken fried steaks in there as animal fats and run to San Antonio with it?
"And halfway back," said Willie.
These days there's a lot of Willie in Carl's Corner. Said Willie: "I tell people I won this truck stop in a poker game, and now I'm trying to lose it back. Every time I put the deed on the table everybody folds."
But the two have even bigger plans."We want to build a plant right here at Carl's Corner," said Willie. " We could, I think, make about 2 million gallons a year."
Carl is putting a satellite radio station in the truck stop and is thinking about building more theaters in town." It's conceivable you can put another one over here and another and another, and all of a sudden you'd have another Branson, Missouri here," said Carl.
Some people think they're both a little nuts. And if they are crazy, that means things are getting back to normal in Carl's Corner." My get up and go had got up and went. So I guess it's come back," said Carl.
And has it. Carl recently created a shirt designed for pot-bellied truck drivers--maternity wear for men. You never know what to expect around here.
© MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Wrap...
Carl's Corner, Texas,
Oct. 1, 2005
(CBS)
About an hour or so south of Dallas you come upon a little town called Carl's Corner. It's pretty much a truck stop. And this is pretty much Carl: mayor, judge, fire chief, police chief.
Carl Cornelius bought some less-than-prime property out here and built his now legendary truck stop. He wanted a liquor license, but first he needed a city. So he built that too.
"I went and got 21 mobile homes and got the biggest families I could find, cause I needed 201 people to live here 6 months in order to incorporate."
Carl wanted to create a Shangri la for truckers. Over the years it's featured a strip club and a chapel, a drive thru beer window and a drive in movie theater for 18-wheelers."
We had a masseuse out here at one time," Carl said. "Truckers love to have their feet rubbed."
He put in an indoor swimming pool and outdoor Jacuzzis. As mayor, he performed weddings here.
Carl has even hosted foreign dignitaries. Prince Albert of Monaco stopped by once and dined on his Texas-sized chicken fried steaks,which might be viewed by some today as an assassination attempt.
Carl and his truck stop have even been celebrated in song.
Things seemed to be merrily rolling along when tragedy struck. Three of Carl's children died. "I lost 3 boys. It knocked the wind out of me. A lot of memories around here."
With the deaths of his sons, Carl lost interest in just about everything and was about to shut down Carl's Corner. That's when an old friend came into the picture--Willie Nelson.
"He called me and said don't shut that place down. Let's do something."
Carl and Willie both tend to think big. They built an 850-seat theater where the swimming pool and strip joint used to be and where Willie played to a packed house last week.
And that's just the half of it. Willie had become interested in alternative fuels and was burning soybean oil in his tour buses and recycled oil from deep fat fryers in his Mercedes. He and Carl decided to produce this bio-diesel fuel and sell it at the truck stop. They call it Biowillie. Carl didn't even know what it was.
"(Willie) explained it to me. He was so enthused with it. He said, 'Let's put in one island.' And I said the hell with that if you believe in this damned thing lets do all of it. We did the whole, everything is biodiesel."
The farmers could be growing this and we could be lessening our dependency on energies abroad and get out of wars over oil, speaking more plainly.
"Not to mention the truckers seem to really like the stuff."
I want to try some of this bio," said one trucker. "Long way to try it, 40 miles out of the way. If I can get better mileage it's great. It's kind of unusual, but Willie's kind of unusual."
"I got the book where the people started writing notes," said Carl. "These guys are doing the testimony. So they're the ones who sold me on biodiesel. One of them said your diesel is great but your pancakes suck."
Biowillie can be made from soybeans, sunflower seeds, and even animal fat.
Is it true you could put your chicken fried steaks in there as animal fats and run to San Antonio with it?
"And halfway back," said Willie.
These days there's a lot of Willie in Carl's Corner. Said Willie: "I tell people I won this truck stop in a poker game, and now I'm trying to lose it back. Every time I put the deed on the table everybody folds."
But the two have even bigger plans."We want to build a plant right here at Carl's Corner," said Willie. " We could, I think, make about 2 million gallons a year."
Carl is putting a satellite radio station in the truck stop and is thinking about building more theaters in town." It's conceivable you can put another one over here and another and another, and all of a sudden you'd have another Branson, Missouri here," said Carl.
Some people think they're both a little nuts. And if they are crazy, that means things are getting back to normal in Carl's Corner." My get up and go had got up and went. So I guess it's come back," said Carl.
And has it. Carl recently created a shirt designed for pot-bellied truck drivers--maternity wear for men. You never know what to expect around here.
© MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Wrap...
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Lady Thatcher & DeLay & Abramoff?!!!!
3 October 2005
KEEP IT SEALED KEEP IT SECRET
EXCLUSIVE: Secret paper links Thatcher to freebies probe
By Bob Roberts Deputy Political Editor
A DOCUMENT linking Margaret Thatcher to a US corruption probe is so explosive civil servants have been asked to ensure it remains "sealed".
The 79-year-old former Premier is said to have met Congressman Tom DeLay in Britain while he was on a suspected favours-for-freebies scam.
In return for his free holiday, DeLay - who resigned as Republican leader of Congress last week after being accused of laundering political funds - allegedly backed legislation favourable to lobby groups.
Disclosing that US authorities were seeking aid from UK counterparts, a secret Home Office briefing says: "One visit to the UK involved a meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher.
"Evidence is sought from her about that meeting and her involvement in the alleged deception and violation of US criminal laws."
Police will "sensitively" investigate the meeting, which took place in May 2000.
In the dossier headed "Secret...wider circulation strictly forbidden", civil servants then warn ministers: "There would be considerable press interest in this case if it were to become public knowledge.
"We have been asked by the US to keep this request 'sealed', which we take to mean as confidential as possible. This has been relayed to the Crown Office and Metropolitan Police.
"Our normal line is that we neither confirm nor deny the existence of any request until it is in the public domain and there is no reason to change that course of action here."
The revelations will be a body-blow to Lady Thatcher's reputation and dash Tory morale on the opening day of its crucial party conference.
If Lady Thatcher is found to have been involved in the alleged scam she could face a criminal probe in the US or even be banned from travelling to the country.
Her spokesman confirmed police had been in contact about the DeLay meeting. But he insisted there was no question of wrongdoing.
The document, leaked to the Mirror, informs ministers there has been an official request for "mutual legal assistance" from the US Department of Justice in Washington.
It said the request was part of a deception investigation "involving high-profile American and UK-based individuals, including a leading Congressman and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher". At the centre of the probe is high-profile lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is already under investigation in the US.
The document says: "US officials are investigating whether Abramoff was involved in obtaining legislative assistance from public officials in exchange for arranging and underwriting trips to the UK."
Investigators are also probing whether the public officials filed false reports relating to the trips.
The holidays involved playing golf at St Andrews in Scotland, dinner with unnamed members of the Scottish Parliament, theatre trips in London and luxury hotel accommodation.
Mr DeLay's staff also scheduled a meeting with Lady Thatcher.
The briefing adds that police investigating the meeting "have been asked to handle these inquiries sensitively given the nature of the individual concerned and the background to the request". Members of the Scottish Parliament will be questioned concerning any contacts they may have had with Abramoff, DeLay or members of their party.
Scottish police will collect hotel record, bills, invoices, and statements.
Lady Thatcher's spokesman said last night: "An approach was made to her office to confirm the bare details of the particular meeting. At this stage we are expecting nothing further.
"Lady Thatcher met Mr DeLay as as one politician meeting another. It was in no way a business meeting."
The Thatcher family's reputation has tarnished since she left office.
Her son Mark, 52, was fined £265,000 last year for helping to organise an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea.
There are also growing fears about the health of Lady Thatcher, who is 80 next Thursday.
Yesterday she was described as "increasingly forgetful and forbidden to speak in public".
She has had a number of strokes and is said to have been badly shaken by the collapse of her son's marriage.
Congressman DeLay, nicknamed The Hammer because of his tough-guy reputation, denies criminal conspiracy relating to party funds.
Abramoff insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing concerning millions of dollars in funding he received for helping Indian tribes set up casinos in their tribal homelands.
A Home Office spokesman said: "We neither confirm nor deny receipt of requests of legal assistance."
Wrap...
KEEP IT SEALED KEEP IT SECRET
EXCLUSIVE: Secret paper links Thatcher to freebies probe
By Bob Roberts Deputy Political Editor
A DOCUMENT linking Margaret Thatcher to a US corruption probe is so explosive civil servants have been asked to ensure it remains "sealed".
The 79-year-old former Premier is said to have met Congressman Tom DeLay in Britain while he was on a suspected favours-for-freebies scam.
In return for his free holiday, DeLay - who resigned as Republican leader of Congress last week after being accused of laundering political funds - allegedly backed legislation favourable to lobby groups.
Disclosing that US authorities were seeking aid from UK counterparts, a secret Home Office briefing says: "One visit to the UK involved a meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher.
"Evidence is sought from her about that meeting and her involvement in the alleged deception and violation of US criminal laws."
Police will "sensitively" investigate the meeting, which took place in May 2000.
In the dossier headed "Secret...wider circulation strictly forbidden", civil servants then warn ministers: "There would be considerable press interest in this case if it were to become public knowledge.
"We have been asked by the US to keep this request 'sealed', which we take to mean as confidential as possible. This has been relayed to the Crown Office and Metropolitan Police.
"Our normal line is that we neither confirm nor deny the existence of any request until it is in the public domain and there is no reason to change that course of action here."
The revelations will be a body-blow to Lady Thatcher's reputation and dash Tory morale on the opening day of its crucial party conference.
If Lady Thatcher is found to have been involved in the alleged scam she could face a criminal probe in the US or even be banned from travelling to the country.
Her spokesman confirmed police had been in contact about the DeLay meeting. But he insisted there was no question of wrongdoing.
The document, leaked to the Mirror, informs ministers there has been an official request for "mutual legal assistance" from the US Department of Justice in Washington.
It said the request was part of a deception investigation "involving high-profile American and UK-based individuals, including a leading Congressman and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher". At the centre of the probe is high-profile lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is already under investigation in the US.
The document says: "US officials are investigating whether Abramoff was involved in obtaining legislative assistance from public officials in exchange for arranging and underwriting trips to the UK."
Investigators are also probing whether the public officials filed false reports relating to the trips.
The holidays involved playing golf at St Andrews in Scotland, dinner with unnamed members of the Scottish Parliament, theatre trips in London and luxury hotel accommodation.
Mr DeLay's staff also scheduled a meeting with Lady Thatcher.
The briefing adds that police investigating the meeting "have been asked to handle these inquiries sensitively given the nature of the individual concerned and the background to the request". Members of the Scottish Parliament will be questioned concerning any contacts they may have had with Abramoff, DeLay or members of their party.
Scottish police will collect hotel record, bills, invoices, and statements.
Lady Thatcher's spokesman said last night: "An approach was made to her office to confirm the bare details of the particular meeting. At this stage we are expecting nothing further.
"Lady Thatcher met Mr DeLay as as one politician meeting another. It was in no way a business meeting."
The Thatcher family's reputation has tarnished since she left office.
Her son Mark, 52, was fined £265,000 last year for helping to organise an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea.
There are also growing fears about the health of Lady Thatcher, who is 80 next Thursday.
Yesterday she was described as "increasingly forgetful and forbidden to speak in public".
She has had a number of strokes and is said to have been badly shaken by the collapse of her son's marriage.
Congressman DeLay, nicknamed The Hammer because of his tough-guy reputation, denies criminal conspiracy relating to party funds.
Abramoff insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing concerning millions of dollars in funding he received for helping Indian tribes set up casinos in their tribal homelands.
A Home Office spokesman said: "We neither confirm nor deny receipt of requests of legal assistance."
Wrap...
BushCo...beyond the pale...
From the NY Times...
October 2, 2005
In the Beginning, There Was Abramoff
By FRANK RICH
"Terri Schiavo is not brain-dead; she talks and she laughs, and she expresses happiness and discomfort. Terri Schiavo is not on life support."- Tom DeLay, March 20, 2005
IF you believed Tom DeLay then, you no doubt believe now that the deposed House majority leader is only on "temporary" leave from his powerful perch in Washington and that he'll soon bounce back, laughing all the way, from a partisan witch hunt that unjustly requires his brief discomfort in a Texas courtroom.
Those who still live in the reality-based community, however, may sense they're watching the beginning of the end of something big. It's not just Mr. DeLay, a k a the Hammer, who is on life support, but a Washington establishment whose infatuation with power and money has contaminated nearly every limb of government and turned off a public that by two to one finds the country on the wrong track.
But don't take my word for it. And don't listen to the canned talking points of the Democrats, who are still so busy trying to explain why they were for the war in Iraq before they were against it that it's hard to trust their logic on anything else. Listen instead to Andrew Ferguson, of the conservative Rupert Murdoch magazine, The Weekly Standard. As far back as last December in a cover article on the sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Mr. Ferguson was already declaring "the end of the Republican Revolution."
He painted the big picture of the Abramoff ethos in vibrant strokes: the ill-gotten Indian gambling moolah snaking through the bank accounts of a network of DeLay cronies and former aides; the "fact-finding" Congressional golfing trips to further the cause of sweatshop garment factories in the Marianas islands; the bogus "think tank" in Rehoboth Beach, Del., where the two scholars in residence were a yoga instructor and a lifeguard (albeit a "lifeguard of the year"). Certain names kept recurring in Mr. Ferguson's epic narrative, most prominently Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, Republican money-changers who are as tightly tied to President Bush and Karl Rove as they are to Mr. Abramoff and Mr. DeLay, if not more so.
The bottom line, Mr. Ferguson wrote, was a culture antithetical to everything conservatives had stood for in the Gingrich revolution of 1994. Slaying a corrupt, bloated Democratic establishment was out, gluttony for the G.O.P. and its fat cats was in. Mr. Abramoff and his gang embodied the very enemy the "Contract With America" Congress had supposedly come to Washington to smite: " 'Beltway Bandits,' profiteers who manipulate the power of big government on behalf of well-heeled people who pay them tons of money to do so." Those tons of Republican money were deposited in the favors bank of K Street, where, as The Washington Post reported this year, the number of lobbyists has more than doubled (to some 35,000) since the Bush era began in 2000. Conservatives who once aspired to cut government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" - as a famous Norquist maxim had it - merely outsourced government instead to the highest bidder.
Mr. DeLay's latest plight is only a tiny detail within this vast Boschian canvas of depravity. If this were Watergate - and Watergate itself increasingly looks like a relatively contained epidemic of corruption - the Texas grand jury's indictment of the congressman and his associates would be a sideshow tantamount to the initial 1973 California grand jury indictment of the Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and his pals in the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office; Watergate's real legal fireworks were still in the wings. So forget about all those details down in Texas that make your teeth hurt; don't bother to learn the difference between Trmpac and Armpac. Fasten your seat belt instead for the roller coaster of other revelations and possible indictments that's about to roar through the Beltway.
The most important plot development of the past two weeks, in fact, has nothing to do with Mr. DeLay (as far as we know). It was instead the arrest of the administration's top procurement officer, David Safavian, on charges of lying and obstructing the investigation of Mr. Abramoff. And what an investigation it is: The F.B.I., the I.R.S., the Treasury Department and the Interior Department have all been involved. The popular theory of the case has it that Mr. Safavian, a former lobbying colleague of both Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Norquist, is being muscled by the feds to rat on the big guys in Washington - much as another smaller fish may have helped reel in Mr. DeLay in Texas.
The DeLay and Abramoff investigations are not to be confused with the many others percolating in the capital, including, most famously of late, the Justice Department and S.E.C. inquiries into the pious Bill Frist's divine stock-sale windfall and the homeland security inspector general's promised inquiry into possible fraud in the no-bid contracts doled out by FEMA for Hurricane Katrina. The mother of all investigations, of course, remains the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's pursuit of whoever outed the C.I.A. agent Valerie Wilson to Robert Novak and whoever may have lied to cover it up. The denouement is on its way.
But whatever the resolution of any of these individual dramas, they will not be the end of the story. Like the continuing revelations of detainee abuse emerging from Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo, this is a crisis in the governing culture, not the tale of a few bad apples. Every time you turn over a rock, you find more vermin. We've only just learned from The Los Angeles Times that Joseph Schmitz, until last month the inspector general in charge of policing waste, fraud and abuse at the Pentagon, is himself the focus of a Congressional inquiry. He is accused of blocking the investigation of another Bush appointee who is suspected of siphoning Iraq reconstruction contracts to business cronies. At the Justice Department, the F.B.I. is looking into why a career prosecutor was demoted after he started probing alleged Abramoff illegality in Guam. According to The Los Angeles Times, the demoted prosecutor was then replaced by a Rove-approved Republican pol who just happened to be a cousin of a major target of another corruption investigation in Guam.
We have to hope that the law will get to the bottom of these cases and start to connect the recurring dots. But while everyone is innocent until proved guilty, the overall pattern stinks and has for a long time. It's so filthy that the Republican caucus couldn't even find someone clean to name as Mr. DeLay's "temporary" stand-in as House majority leader last week. As The Washington Post reported in 2003, Roy Blunt, the Missouri congressman who got the job, was found trying to alter a homeland security bill with a last-minute provision that would have benefited Philip Morris-brand cigarettes. Not only had the tobacco giant contributed royally to Mr. Blunt's various campaign coffers, but both the congressman's girlfriend (now wife) and his son were Philip Morris lobbyists at the time.
This is the culture that has given us the government we have. It's a government that has spent more of the taxpayers' money than any since L.B.J.'s (as calculated by the Cato Institute, a libertarian research institution), even as it rewards its benefactors with tax breaks and corporate pork. It's a government so used to lying that Mr. DeLay could say with a straight face that the cost of Katrina relief could not be offset by budget cuts because there was no governmental fat left to cut. It's the government that fostered the wholesale loss of American lives in both Iraq and on the Gulf Coast by putting cronyism above patriotism.
The courts can punish crooks, but they can't reform democracy from the ground up, and the voters can't get into the game until 2006. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the key players both in the White House and in the leadership of both houses of Congress are either under investigation or joined at the hip to Messrs Rove, DeLay, Abramoff, Reed or Norquist. They seem to be hoping that some magical event - a sudden outbreak of peace and democracy in Iraq, the capture of Osama bin Laden, a hurricane affording better presidential photo ops than Rita - will turn things around. Dream on.
The one notable anomaly is John McCain, who retains a genuine hunger for reform, a rage at the corruption around him and the compelling motive of his presidential ambitions to push him forward; it's his Indian Affairs Committee, after all, that exposed the hideous Abramoff cesspool to public view last year. The Democrats, bereft of leadership and ideas (though not of their own Beltway bandits), also harbor a number of would-be presidents, but they are busier positioning themselves politically than they are articulating actual positions that might indicate what a new governmental order would look like. While the Republican revolution is dead, it says everything about the power vacuum left in its wake that Geena Davis's fictional commander in chief has more traction, as measured in Nielsen ratings and press, than any of the real-life contenders for that job in D.C.
Wrap...
October 2, 2005
In the Beginning, There Was Abramoff
By FRANK RICH
"Terri Schiavo is not brain-dead; she talks and she laughs, and she expresses happiness and discomfort. Terri Schiavo is not on life support."- Tom DeLay, March 20, 2005
IF you believed Tom DeLay then, you no doubt believe now that the deposed House majority leader is only on "temporary" leave from his powerful perch in Washington and that he'll soon bounce back, laughing all the way, from a partisan witch hunt that unjustly requires his brief discomfort in a Texas courtroom.
Those who still live in the reality-based community, however, may sense they're watching the beginning of the end of something big. It's not just Mr. DeLay, a k a the Hammer, who is on life support, but a Washington establishment whose infatuation with power and money has contaminated nearly every limb of government and turned off a public that by two to one finds the country on the wrong track.
But don't take my word for it. And don't listen to the canned talking points of the Democrats, who are still so busy trying to explain why they were for the war in Iraq before they were against it that it's hard to trust their logic on anything else. Listen instead to Andrew Ferguson, of the conservative Rupert Murdoch magazine, The Weekly Standard. As far back as last December in a cover article on the sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Mr. Ferguson was already declaring "the end of the Republican Revolution."
He painted the big picture of the Abramoff ethos in vibrant strokes: the ill-gotten Indian gambling moolah snaking through the bank accounts of a network of DeLay cronies and former aides; the "fact-finding" Congressional golfing trips to further the cause of sweatshop garment factories in the Marianas islands; the bogus "think tank" in Rehoboth Beach, Del., where the two scholars in residence were a yoga instructor and a lifeguard (albeit a "lifeguard of the year"). Certain names kept recurring in Mr. Ferguson's epic narrative, most prominently Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, Republican money-changers who are as tightly tied to President Bush and Karl Rove as they are to Mr. Abramoff and Mr. DeLay, if not more so.
The bottom line, Mr. Ferguson wrote, was a culture antithetical to everything conservatives had stood for in the Gingrich revolution of 1994. Slaying a corrupt, bloated Democratic establishment was out, gluttony for the G.O.P. and its fat cats was in. Mr. Abramoff and his gang embodied the very enemy the "Contract With America" Congress had supposedly come to Washington to smite: " 'Beltway Bandits,' profiteers who manipulate the power of big government on behalf of well-heeled people who pay them tons of money to do so." Those tons of Republican money were deposited in the favors bank of K Street, where, as The Washington Post reported this year, the number of lobbyists has more than doubled (to some 35,000) since the Bush era began in 2000. Conservatives who once aspired to cut government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" - as a famous Norquist maxim had it - merely outsourced government instead to the highest bidder.
Mr. DeLay's latest plight is only a tiny detail within this vast Boschian canvas of depravity. If this were Watergate - and Watergate itself increasingly looks like a relatively contained epidemic of corruption - the Texas grand jury's indictment of the congressman and his associates would be a sideshow tantamount to the initial 1973 California grand jury indictment of the Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and his pals in the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office; Watergate's real legal fireworks were still in the wings. So forget about all those details down in Texas that make your teeth hurt; don't bother to learn the difference between Trmpac and Armpac. Fasten your seat belt instead for the roller coaster of other revelations and possible indictments that's about to roar through the Beltway.
The most important plot development of the past two weeks, in fact, has nothing to do with Mr. DeLay (as far as we know). It was instead the arrest of the administration's top procurement officer, David Safavian, on charges of lying and obstructing the investigation of Mr. Abramoff. And what an investigation it is: The F.B.I., the I.R.S., the Treasury Department and the Interior Department have all been involved. The popular theory of the case has it that Mr. Safavian, a former lobbying colleague of both Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Norquist, is being muscled by the feds to rat on the big guys in Washington - much as another smaller fish may have helped reel in Mr. DeLay in Texas.
The DeLay and Abramoff investigations are not to be confused with the many others percolating in the capital, including, most famously of late, the Justice Department and S.E.C. inquiries into the pious Bill Frist's divine stock-sale windfall and the homeland security inspector general's promised inquiry into possible fraud in the no-bid contracts doled out by FEMA for Hurricane Katrina. The mother of all investigations, of course, remains the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's pursuit of whoever outed the C.I.A. agent Valerie Wilson to Robert Novak and whoever may have lied to cover it up. The denouement is on its way.
But whatever the resolution of any of these individual dramas, they will not be the end of the story. Like the continuing revelations of detainee abuse emerging from Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo, this is a crisis in the governing culture, not the tale of a few bad apples. Every time you turn over a rock, you find more vermin. We've only just learned from The Los Angeles Times that Joseph Schmitz, until last month the inspector general in charge of policing waste, fraud and abuse at the Pentagon, is himself the focus of a Congressional inquiry. He is accused of blocking the investigation of another Bush appointee who is suspected of siphoning Iraq reconstruction contracts to business cronies. At the Justice Department, the F.B.I. is looking into why a career prosecutor was demoted after he started probing alleged Abramoff illegality in Guam. According to The Los Angeles Times, the demoted prosecutor was then replaced by a Rove-approved Republican pol who just happened to be a cousin of a major target of another corruption investigation in Guam.
We have to hope that the law will get to the bottom of these cases and start to connect the recurring dots. But while everyone is innocent until proved guilty, the overall pattern stinks and has for a long time. It's so filthy that the Republican caucus couldn't even find someone clean to name as Mr. DeLay's "temporary" stand-in as House majority leader last week. As The Washington Post reported in 2003, Roy Blunt, the Missouri congressman who got the job, was found trying to alter a homeland security bill with a last-minute provision that would have benefited Philip Morris-brand cigarettes. Not only had the tobacco giant contributed royally to Mr. Blunt's various campaign coffers, but both the congressman's girlfriend (now wife) and his son were Philip Morris lobbyists at the time.
This is the culture that has given us the government we have. It's a government that has spent more of the taxpayers' money than any since L.B.J.'s (as calculated by the Cato Institute, a libertarian research institution), even as it rewards its benefactors with tax breaks and corporate pork. It's a government so used to lying that Mr. DeLay could say with a straight face that the cost of Katrina relief could not be offset by budget cuts because there was no governmental fat left to cut. It's the government that fostered the wholesale loss of American lives in both Iraq and on the Gulf Coast by putting cronyism above patriotism.
The courts can punish crooks, but they can't reform democracy from the ground up, and the voters can't get into the game until 2006. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the key players both in the White House and in the leadership of both houses of Congress are either under investigation or joined at the hip to Messrs Rove, DeLay, Abramoff, Reed or Norquist. They seem to be hoping that some magical event - a sudden outbreak of peace and democracy in Iraq, the capture of Osama bin Laden, a hurricane affording better presidential photo ops than Rita - will turn things around. Dream on.
The one notable anomaly is John McCain, who retains a genuine hunger for reform, a rage at the corruption around him and the compelling motive of his presidential ambitions to push him forward; it's his Indian Affairs Committee, after all, that exposed the hideous Abramoff cesspool to public view last year. The Democrats, bereft of leadership and ideas (though not of their own Beltway bandits), also harbor a number of would-be presidents, but they are busier positioning themselves politically than they are articulating actual positions that might indicate what a new governmental order would look like. While the Republican revolution is dead, it says everything about the power vacuum left in its wake that Geena Davis's fictional commander in chief has more traction, as measured in Nielsen ratings and press, than any of the real-life contenders for that job in D.C.
Wrap...
Robert Heinlein...S/F Grand Master of contradictions
October 2, 2005
Heinlein's Female Troubles
By M. G. LORD
Preparations are underway for a huge celebration to commemorate the centennial of Robert A. Heinlein, the legendary science-fiction author who in 1975 was named the first ever Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. The celebration, set for July 7, 2007, Heinlein's birthday, will consist of three separate sections: one for fans, one for academics and a third for a group not usually associated with fiction, genre or otherwise - aerospace professionals. But Heinlein holds a unique place in this world; many scientists and engineers who built the first United States spacecraft (as well as today's space-tourism entrepreneurs) cite his novels as their inspiration. Larry Niven, a sci-fi writer, spoofs this in "The Return of William Proxmire," a time-travel yarn written in 1988. In Niven's tale, Senator Proxmire, a notorious critic of the American space program, journeys back to the 1930's, carrying present-day antibiotics. Proxmire aims to cure Heinlein of the tuberculosis that ended his Navy career and inaugurated his literary one. If Heinlein never writes a story, Proxmire reasons, the money-wasting space program can be scrubbed before it launches.
Although the Navy did indeed discharge Heinlein, Heinlein never quite discharged the Navy. His nostalgia for military values emerged most memorably in "Starship Troopers" (1959), a young-adult novel whose glamorization of combat caused some critics to view him as a fascist. Among the critics was Scribner, his longtime publisher, which refused to issue the novel. Heinlein has also been attacked for being a misogynist - in large part for his 1982 novel, "Friday," whose eponymous woman narrator enjoys being raped.
The Heinlein at the center of these storms, however, was a far cry from the Heinlein whose work I loved in elementary school. I credit this Heinlein with making me a feminist, never mind that "feminist" didn't enter my vocabulary until at least junior high.
At 8, when I first read "Starship Troopers," its controversial aspects went right over my head. I did, however, notice something remarkable in it - something that moved and inspired me. Something that, given the values in my arch-Republican, Roman Catholic aerospace family, seemed as preposterous as time travel: Heinlein's portrayal of women. Unlike the female characters in other science fiction of the time, such as the stories of Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein's women were not invisible or grossly subservient to men. Nor were they less technologically competent. The hero of "Starship Troopers" follows a woman he admires into the military. But because she is sharper than he, she gains admission to the prestigious pilot corps, and he winds up stuck in the infantry.
"Have Spacesuit - Will Travel" (1958), another of his young-adult novels, sealed my feminist conversion. It featured Peewee, an 11-year-old girl who was smarter and braver than Kip, its 18-year-old male central character. It also featured a creature called "The Mother Thing," a fuzzy, portable being of indeterminate gender that provided the cuddling and support associated with mothering. The Mother Thing blew me away. Heinlein advanced the thought that motherhood was a job, not a biological destiny, and men could nurture, too.
Heinlein also created terrific women role models in his early short stories. They included G. B. McNye, a radio engineer who coeducates an all-male space station in "Delilah and the Space Rigger," and M. L. Martin, a world-famous scientist in "Let There Be Light." Often these women used their initials instead of their full names - Gloria Brooks and Mary Lou for instance - a practice that, on the eve of fourth grade, inspired me to abridge Mary Grace to M. G.
When college-age women tell me they cannot imagine a world in which opportunities for women were so openly curtailed, I suggest they screen some cold-war-era classroom films, as I recently did. Among these films is the emblematic "Why Study Science?" (1955), in which a boy announces he plans to study science so he can "go to the moon," but his sister doesn't have to because her mission is to "hook some guy." "What's wrong with that?" his sister asks. The idea that you don't need science to prepare nutritious meals! their mother counters. Or to teach your toddler how the telephone works.
Heinlein managed to ridicule such sexism without alienating his core audience of engineering-minded boys. In "Tunnel in the Sky" (1955), a young-adult novel, Heinlein describes a 10-day wilderness survival trip that goes awry, stranding a group of high school students on a hostile planet. Rod, the book's central character, believes that teaming with a girl will hurt him, since girls are flighty, unstable and mechanically inept. Instead, he partners with the eccentric boy who rescues him - a boy with no facial hair who never sheds his body armor. The reader immediately grasps what Rod is too bigoted to notice: The "boy" who keeps him alive is a girl.
Heinlein was decades ahead of his time in the way he played with preconceptions about masculinity and femininity. Far from being essential to biology, Heinlein suggests, gender is socially constructed; it involves approaching an impossible absolute by approximating it. In "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" (1966), he introduces a computer that develops consciousness. As a heap of circuits, it has no biological gender; but it moves easily between "Mike" and "Michelle," fully realized male and female identities. Likewise, in "The Star Beast," he creates a gigantic, steel-eating "Lummox" whom John Thomas, a human boy, keeps in his backyard as a pet. When Heinlein describes the creature noshing on a secondhand Buick, the reader pictures a big, oafish guy. As it turns out, however, Lummox is female. And far from being a brute, she is a highly cultivated empress, an emissary from an advanced alien species, who views John Thomas as her companion animal.
In many novels, Heinlein's characters commit to group marriages - less because the arrangement offers sexual variety than because it can free women to work. It also provides efficient parenting, an argument that appealed to me as a child. When my mother died of cancer during my girlhood, I wished my father had had a bunch of other mothers around to pick up the slack.
Given Heinlein's apparently feminist ideas, you'd think he would be enshrined as a champion of women's rights. And had he stopped writing with his young-adult novels, he most likely would have been. But the sexual revolution took a toll on him, tainting some of his post-1970 novels with a dated lasciviousness and impairing his ability to create three-dimensional women. In Heinlein's earliest stories - the ones in which lady scientists used their initials - Heinlein eroticized his women. But the prim conventions of 1950's fiction precluded doing this explicitly. By the 1980's, however, he felt licensed to reveal more - or, in the case of Friday, to describe sexual experiences from a woman's point of view. Friday is an "Artificial Person"; she was conceived in vitro and brought to term in an incubator, which in the book's fictive world is a terrible stigma. To today's AIDS-conscious reader, however, Friday bears a worse stigma: she is a brazen disease vector, recklessly promiscuous, with a bizarre weakness for male engineers. (Heinlein trained as an engineer.) This gives unintended meaning to the idea of Artificial Person; Friday exists only as a mouthpiece. Heinlein has so thoroughly objectified her that her subjectivity falls flat.
Sometimes I wish Heinlein were a less complex writer, that I could cheerlead for his early novels and ignore the rest. Instead he leaves me - and his other feminist admirers - with a paradox: How in later life could someone who once wrote so expansively produce work that only a Mother Thing could love?
M. G. Lord is the author of "Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science" and "Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll."
Wrap....
Heinlein's Female Troubles
By M. G. LORD
Preparations are underway for a huge celebration to commemorate the centennial of Robert A. Heinlein, the legendary science-fiction author who in 1975 was named the first ever Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. The celebration, set for July 7, 2007, Heinlein's birthday, will consist of three separate sections: one for fans, one for academics and a third for a group not usually associated with fiction, genre or otherwise - aerospace professionals. But Heinlein holds a unique place in this world; many scientists and engineers who built the first United States spacecraft (as well as today's space-tourism entrepreneurs) cite his novels as their inspiration. Larry Niven, a sci-fi writer, spoofs this in "The Return of William Proxmire," a time-travel yarn written in 1988. In Niven's tale, Senator Proxmire, a notorious critic of the American space program, journeys back to the 1930's, carrying present-day antibiotics. Proxmire aims to cure Heinlein of the tuberculosis that ended his Navy career and inaugurated his literary one. If Heinlein never writes a story, Proxmire reasons, the money-wasting space program can be scrubbed before it launches.
Although the Navy did indeed discharge Heinlein, Heinlein never quite discharged the Navy. His nostalgia for military values emerged most memorably in "Starship Troopers" (1959), a young-adult novel whose glamorization of combat caused some critics to view him as a fascist. Among the critics was Scribner, his longtime publisher, which refused to issue the novel. Heinlein has also been attacked for being a misogynist - in large part for his 1982 novel, "Friday," whose eponymous woman narrator enjoys being raped.
The Heinlein at the center of these storms, however, was a far cry from the Heinlein whose work I loved in elementary school. I credit this Heinlein with making me a feminist, never mind that "feminist" didn't enter my vocabulary until at least junior high.
At 8, when I first read "Starship Troopers," its controversial aspects went right over my head. I did, however, notice something remarkable in it - something that moved and inspired me. Something that, given the values in my arch-Republican, Roman Catholic aerospace family, seemed as preposterous as time travel: Heinlein's portrayal of women. Unlike the female characters in other science fiction of the time, such as the stories of Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein's women were not invisible or grossly subservient to men. Nor were they less technologically competent. The hero of "Starship Troopers" follows a woman he admires into the military. But because she is sharper than he, she gains admission to the prestigious pilot corps, and he winds up stuck in the infantry.
"Have Spacesuit - Will Travel" (1958), another of his young-adult novels, sealed my feminist conversion. It featured Peewee, an 11-year-old girl who was smarter and braver than Kip, its 18-year-old male central character. It also featured a creature called "The Mother Thing," a fuzzy, portable being of indeterminate gender that provided the cuddling and support associated with mothering. The Mother Thing blew me away. Heinlein advanced the thought that motherhood was a job, not a biological destiny, and men could nurture, too.
Heinlein also created terrific women role models in his early short stories. They included G. B. McNye, a radio engineer who coeducates an all-male space station in "Delilah and the Space Rigger," and M. L. Martin, a world-famous scientist in "Let There Be Light." Often these women used their initials instead of their full names - Gloria Brooks and Mary Lou for instance - a practice that, on the eve of fourth grade, inspired me to abridge Mary Grace to M. G.
When college-age women tell me they cannot imagine a world in which opportunities for women were so openly curtailed, I suggest they screen some cold-war-era classroom films, as I recently did. Among these films is the emblematic "Why Study Science?" (1955), in which a boy announces he plans to study science so he can "go to the moon," but his sister doesn't have to because her mission is to "hook some guy." "What's wrong with that?" his sister asks. The idea that you don't need science to prepare nutritious meals! their mother counters. Or to teach your toddler how the telephone works.
Heinlein managed to ridicule such sexism without alienating his core audience of engineering-minded boys. In "Tunnel in the Sky" (1955), a young-adult novel, Heinlein describes a 10-day wilderness survival trip that goes awry, stranding a group of high school students on a hostile planet. Rod, the book's central character, believes that teaming with a girl will hurt him, since girls are flighty, unstable and mechanically inept. Instead, he partners with the eccentric boy who rescues him - a boy with no facial hair who never sheds his body armor. The reader immediately grasps what Rod is too bigoted to notice: The "boy" who keeps him alive is a girl.
Heinlein was decades ahead of his time in the way he played with preconceptions about masculinity and femininity. Far from being essential to biology, Heinlein suggests, gender is socially constructed; it involves approaching an impossible absolute by approximating it. In "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" (1966), he introduces a computer that develops consciousness. As a heap of circuits, it has no biological gender; but it moves easily between "Mike" and "Michelle," fully realized male and female identities. Likewise, in "The Star Beast," he creates a gigantic, steel-eating "Lummox" whom John Thomas, a human boy, keeps in his backyard as a pet. When Heinlein describes the creature noshing on a secondhand Buick, the reader pictures a big, oafish guy. As it turns out, however, Lummox is female. And far from being a brute, she is a highly cultivated empress, an emissary from an advanced alien species, who views John Thomas as her companion animal.
In many novels, Heinlein's characters commit to group marriages - less because the arrangement offers sexual variety than because it can free women to work. It also provides efficient parenting, an argument that appealed to me as a child. When my mother died of cancer during my girlhood, I wished my father had had a bunch of other mothers around to pick up the slack.
Given Heinlein's apparently feminist ideas, you'd think he would be enshrined as a champion of women's rights. And had he stopped writing with his young-adult novels, he most likely would have been. But the sexual revolution took a toll on him, tainting some of his post-1970 novels with a dated lasciviousness and impairing his ability to create three-dimensional women. In Heinlein's earliest stories - the ones in which lady scientists used their initials - Heinlein eroticized his women. But the prim conventions of 1950's fiction precluded doing this explicitly. By the 1980's, however, he felt licensed to reveal more - or, in the case of Friday, to describe sexual experiences from a woman's point of view. Friday is an "Artificial Person"; she was conceived in vitro and brought to term in an incubator, which in the book's fictive world is a terrible stigma. To today's AIDS-conscious reader, however, Friday bears a worse stigma: she is a brazen disease vector, recklessly promiscuous, with a bizarre weakness for male engineers. (Heinlein trained as an engineer.) This gives unintended meaning to the idea of Artificial Person; Friday exists only as a mouthpiece. Heinlein has so thoroughly objectified her that her subjectivity falls flat.
Sometimes I wish Heinlein were a less complex writer, that I could cheerlead for his early novels and ignore the rest. Instead he leaves me - and his other feminist admirers - with a paradox: How in later life could someone who once wrote so expansively produce work that only a Mother Thing could love?
M. G. Lord is the author of "Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science" and "Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll."
Wrap....
Bush: Torture on, or I'll veto the bill...
Bush Moves to Block Torture Probe
Reuters
Friday 30 September 2005
Washington - The White House on Friday threatened to veto a $440.2 billion defense spending bill in the Senate because it wasn't enough money for the Pentagon and also warned lawmakers not to add any amendments to regulate the treatment of detainees or set up a commission to probe abuse.
Last summer, Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia and others sought legislation banning cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners.
The administration has been criticized for holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. Critics have also questioned whether administration policies led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The Senate legislation, which includes a $50 billion emergency fund to keep combat operations running in Iraq into next year, could be voted on next month.
The measure provides $7 billion less than President George W. Bush requested early this year and is nearly $1 billion below current levels.
"These cuts will either result in deterioration of our force readiness" or will require additional spending requests from the administration later in the fiscal year, the White House budget office warned senators.
The House of Representatives last summer passed a fiscal 2006 defense spending bill supported by the Bush administration, although the White House complained about $3 billion in cuts that it said would hamper regular military operations.
Referring to the Senate bill, the White House statement on Friday noted that Bush's senior advisers would recommend vetoing a bill "that significantly underfunds the department (of defense)" and shifts the money to domestic programs not related to security.
In addition, the White House threatened to veto the defense spending bill if it changes the process for considering military base closures within the United States.
Besides cutting some operation and maintenance accounts at the Pentagon, the Senate bill would cut the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft by $270 million and would reduce the Transformational Satellite Communications program by $250 million. Spending on a missile defense program would be about $800 million below Bush's request.
Wrap...
Reuters
Friday 30 September 2005
Washington - The White House on Friday threatened to veto a $440.2 billion defense spending bill in the Senate because it wasn't enough money for the Pentagon and also warned lawmakers not to add any amendments to regulate the treatment of detainees or set up a commission to probe abuse.
Last summer, Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia and others sought legislation banning cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners.
The administration has been criticized for holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. Critics have also questioned whether administration policies led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The Senate legislation, which includes a $50 billion emergency fund to keep combat operations running in Iraq into next year, could be voted on next month.
The measure provides $7 billion less than President George W. Bush requested early this year and is nearly $1 billion below current levels.
"These cuts will either result in deterioration of our force readiness" or will require additional spending requests from the administration later in the fiscal year, the White House budget office warned senators.
The House of Representatives last summer passed a fiscal 2006 defense spending bill supported by the Bush administration, although the White House complained about $3 billion in cuts that it said would hamper regular military operations.
Referring to the Senate bill, the White House statement on Friday noted that Bush's senior advisers would recommend vetoing a bill "that significantly underfunds the department (of defense)" and shifts the money to domestic programs not related to security.
In addition, the White House threatened to veto the defense spending bill if it changes the process for considering military base closures within the United States.
Besides cutting some operation and maintenance accounts at the Pentagon, the Senate bill would cut the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft by $270 million and would reduce the Transformational Satellite Communications program by $250 million. Spending on a missile defense program would be about $800 million below Bush's request.
Wrap...
Saturday, October 01, 2005
There are blonds & then there are THESE blonds....
From the most excellent and very smart http://blondesense.blogspot.com
Saturday, October 1
Mr. Billmon, I am shocked, shocked that you would compare David Koresh to Tom DeLay. The only thing they have in common is being in Texas and having excellent legal representation.But it is a snarky comparison and it cute. Factually and patently ridiculous, but cute.
I have heard the 911 tapes of the Koresh incident. Have you? I didn't think so. I know of the man who answered the phone at the McLennan County sheriff's department when Koresh called and begged the sheriff's department to help stop the ATF/FBI shooting because of the children in the camp.
Have you met any of the survivors of the federal clusterfuck? I didn't think so. I have. I met them at a panel discussion where I shook Dick DeGuerin's hand. As a trial lawyer, he doesn't concern himself with how his client got into the government's crosshairs, he is concerned that the government act in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. Did you know that the federal government sat in the Hilton hotel in Waco and told everyone from reporters to cocktail waitresses what they had planned for Koresh? Did you know that it was a reporter that leaked the story to Koresh? Did you know that the local D.A. had an arrest warrant served on Koresh for attempted murder at the compound and not a single shot was fired? Why? Because the McLennan County sheriff did it right. I didn't think so.
What is wrong with liberal writers, and I am one, is that they are just as capable as being asses as conservative writers. What could DeLay possibly have in common with Koresh? What a childish, simplistic comment to make. It puts me in an awkward situation of having to appear to defend DeLay.
As for Kay Bailey "Breck Girl" Hutchison, Earl's prosecution team announced "ready" in open court and weren't. They fucked up. Case dismissed. The government cannot rewrite the rules of criminal procedure and expect to get a judge to rule in favor of the government no matter how much you hate the defendant.
If Ronnie Earl doesn't have the goods on DeLay, then I hope the U.S. Constitution and Dick DeGuerin prevail. Frankly, I hope DeGuerin kicks Earl's ass. And I hate Tom DeLay. If he is going down, we have to make damn sure the government doesn't walk all over DeLay. It disturbs me that DeLay, a cockroach crawling on the body politic is more important than justice to you or anyone else in this matter. Again, how conservative of you. Why you are sounding rather like Ken Starr and Bob Barr and Tom DeLay.
Submitted by Jaye Ramsey Sutter @ 3:46 PM
Wrap...
Saturday, October 1
Mr. Billmon, I am shocked, shocked that you would compare David Koresh to Tom DeLay. The only thing they have in common is being in Texas and having excellent legal representation.But it is a snarky comparison and it cute. Factually and patently ridiculous, but cute.
I have heard the 911 tapes of the Koresh incident. Have you? I didn't think so. I know of the man who answered the phone at the McLennan County sheriff's department when Koresh called and begged the sheriff's department to help stop the ATF/FBI shooting because of the children in the camp.
Have you met any of the survivors of the federal clusterfuck? I didn't think so. I have. I met them at a panel discussion where I shook Dick DeGuerin's hand. As a trial lawyer, he doesn't concern himself with how his client got into the government's crosshairs, he is concerned that the government act in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. Did you know that the federal government sat in the Hilton hotel in Waco and told everyone from reporters to cocktail waitresses what they had planned for Koresh? Did you know that it was a reporter that leaked the story to Koresh? Did you know that the local D.A. had an arrest warrant served on Koresh for attempted murder at the compound and not a single shot was fired? Why? Because the McLennan County sheriff did it right. I didn't think so.
What is wrong with liberal writers, and I am one, is that they are just as capable as being asses as conservative writers. What could DeLay possibly have in common with Koresh? What a childish, simplistic comment to make. It puts me in an awkward situation of having to appear to defend DeLay.
As for Kay Bailey "Breck Girl" Hutchison, Earl's prosecution team announced "ready" in open court and weren't. They fucked up. Case dismissed. The government cannot rewrite the rules of criminal procedure and expect to get a judge to rule in favor of the government no matter how much you hate the defendant.
If Ronnie Earl doesn't have the goods on DeLay, then I hope the U.S. Constitution and Dick DeGuerin prevail. Frankly, I hope DeGuerin kicks Earl's ass. And I hate Tom DeLay. If he is going down, we have to make damn sure the government doesn't walk all over DeLay. It disturbs me that DeLay, a cockroach crawling on the body politic is more important than justice to you or anyone else in this matter. Again, how conservative of you. Why you are sounding rather like Ken Starr and Bob Barr and Tom DeLay.
Submitted by Jaye Ramsey Sutter @ 3:46 PM
Wrap...
Nukes, Near-Space & Academics....
From http://gazette.com in Colorado:
October 01, 2005
UCCS weighs ethics of Los Alamos alliance
By BRIAN NEWSOME THE GAZETTE
The University of Colorado system’s partnership with the military on space and energy research is fueling a debate about academia’s role in the business of war. In July, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs signed an agreement with the Army and Air Force to explore near space, a slice of the Earth’s atmosphere too high for most jets and too low for most satellites.
Now, the CU Board of Regents is considering a partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was invented 60 years ago.
In both cases, researchers and university officials say the partnerships hold tremendous promise for academic advancement and, with it, additional money to do their work. Others, including faculty members and peace activists, worry that high-tech weaponry or military tools will be branded with a UCCS or CU logo, and they say the university should abstain from such relationships.
“This, fundamentally, is about the principles of academic freedom,” said UCCS Vice Chancellor Rogers Redding at a campus forum Friday of faculty, students, peace activists and others. For UCCS researchers, near space, the 12- to 62-mile gap between sky and space, is an unexplored frontier where research could lead to major advancements. The air there is too thin for most jet-propelled aircraft, yet gravity is too strong for most satellites. With the exception of a few weather balloons, near space is empty.
The UCCS Space and Near Space Research Lab and College of Engineering believes near-space aircraft or devices could have revolutionary applications, such as providing broadband Internet to remote locations or improved cellular coverage. The military is interested in the communications and surveillance potential.
Peace activist Loring Wirbel said UCCS risks “getting in bed with a Frankenstein monster.”
The Los Alamos National Laboratory holds similar promise for scientific advancement, many officials believe, and critics are equally fearful of its implications. Los Alamos is central to the nation’s nuclear weapons program. The University of Texas and Lockheed Martin have put in a bid to manage the laboratory. CU is part of a roughly 20-campus coalition to do research there under the proposal.
University officials say academic work on near space and at Los Alamos will be on nonlethal applications. Opponents warn there could still be unintended consequences of the research. Speakers in support of near-space research on Friday said that’s an inherent risk of breakthroughs in science and that to stifle it is to stifle academic freedom.
Some airplanes are used to save lives, others to bomb people, one person noted.
Peace activist Esther Kisamore said money from the federal government is, in reality, limiting the freedom to do research. Studies in humanitarian causes are being neglected for lucrative, government-backed interests, she said.
Faculty member Roger Sambrook said if weapons research is limited, then other subjects could also be targets. “We do need to kind of shield this institution from politics,” he said.
Several people said communication with the public about the arrangements has been lacking.
History professor Christopher Hill said he received three notices about a traffic roundabout on campus, but he learned of the nearspace agreement only when it was signed. UCCS Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak pledged that additional forums on the subject will be scheduled.
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0198 or bnewsome@gazette.com
Wrap...
October 01, 2005
UCCS weighs ethics of Los Alamos alliance
By BRIAN NEWSOME THE GAZETTE
The University of Colorado system’s partnership with the military on space and energy research is fueling a debate about academia’s role in the business of war. In July, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs signed an agreement with the Army and Air Force to explore near space, a slice of the Earth’s atmosphere too high for most jets and too low for most satellites.
Now, the CU Board of Regents is considering a partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was invented 60 years ago.
In both cases, researchers and university officials say the partnerships hold tremendous promise for academic advancement and, with it, additional money to do their work. Others, including faculty members and peace activists, worry that high-tech weaponry or military tools will be branded with a UCCS or CU logo, and they say the university should abstain from such relationships.
“This, fundamentally, is about the principles of academic freedom,” said UCCS Vice Chancellor Rogers Redding at a campus forum Friday of faculty, students, peace activists and others. For UCCS researchers, near space, the 12- to 62-mile gap between sky and space, is an unexplored frontier where research could lead to major advancements. The air there is too thin for most jet-propelled aircraft, yet gravity is too strong for most satellites. With the exception of a few weather balloons, near space is empty.
The UCCS Space and Near Space Research Lab and College of Engineering believes near-space aircraft or devices could have revolutionary applications, such as providing broadband Internet to remote locations or improved cellular coverage. The military is interested in the communications and surveillance potential.
Peace activist Loring Wirbel said UCCS risks “getting in bed with a Frankenstein monster.”
The Los Alamos National Laboratory holds similar promise for scientific advancement, many officials believe, and critics are equally fearful of its implications. Los Alamos is central to the nation’s nuclear weapons program. The University of Texas and Lockheed Martin have put in a bid to manage the laboratory. CU is part of a roughly 20-campus coalition to do research there under the proposal.
University officials say academic work on near space and at Los Alamos will be on nonlethal applications. Opponents warn there could still be unintended consequences of the research. Speakers in support of near-space research on Friday said that’s an inherent risk of breakthroughs in science and that to stifle it is to stifle academic freedom.
Some airplanes are used to save lives, others to bomb people, one person noted.
Peace activist Esther Kisamore said money from the federal government is, in reality, limiting the freedom to do research. Studies in humanitarian causes are being neglected for lucrative, government-backed interests, she said.
Faculty member Roger Sambrook said if weapons research is limited, then other subjects could also be targets. “We do need to kind of shield this institution from politics,” he said.
Several people said communication with the public about the arrangements has been lacking.
History professor Christopher Hill said he received three notices about a traffic roundabout on campus, but he learned of the nearspace agreement only when it was signed. UCCS Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak pledged that additional forums on the subject will be scheduled.
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0198 or bnewsome@gazette.com
Wrap...
Gingrich?!!! Heaven forbid!
From http://politicalwire.com
September 30, 2005
Gingrich Discusses White House Bid
Promoting his new book in Michigan, Newt Gingrich (R) "discussed a possible run for president in 2008, saying health care and government modernization are the pillars of his program," the AP reports.
Said the former Speaker: "If I'm potentially going to run, I have to get my message out, and if it works and five others pick it up, I won't run. If the message doesn't work, I won't run. But if the message works and nobody picks it up, I'll run."
Link
Wrap...
September 30, 2005
Gingrich Discusses White House Bid
Promoting his new book in Michigan, Newt Gingrich (R) "discussed a possible run for president in 2008, saying health care and government modernization are the pillars of his program," the AP reports.
Said the former Speaker: "If I'm potentially going to run, I have to get my message out, and if it works and five others pick it up, I won't run. If the message doesn't work, I won't run. But if the message works and nobody picks it up, I'll run."
Link
Wrap...
Censorship? Or not? What would you do?
Take a look at this letter to the editor of http://voiceofsandiego.org and then think about it...
Speaking Out
SHAWN McMILLAN,
SAN DIEGO
September 30, 2005
Our country was founded by great thinkers, and philosophers whose ideas where deemed seditious and revolutionary at the time. Much of what they published in support of what they believed in, and what they were fighting for, was published anonymously.
There is a reason for this. The ideas they espoused potentially subjected them to considerable risk. Many of the greatest thinkers our nation has ever known, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, Jay and Paine among others, would not have raised the hue and cry, if they had been required at the outset to lay personal claim to the ideas and arguments they expressed, for to do so would have meant certain peril. Although the consequences are not nearly so dire today, the same principles hold true.
In order to foster a lively debate where the citizenry are encouraged to delve deeply into the issues of the day, it is critical that concerned citizens be able to communicate their ideas without fear of reprisal or reprimand. Policies that require the identification of authors of controversial, or potentially controversial pieces, do not promote the public good, or a vibrant and unbridled discussion of the critical issues facing our city today. To the contrary in fact, the debate is stifled. Many of the players in the drama that is unfolding before us have much to lose if they offend the opposition, or if they are perceived as traitorous to their respective political parties and the powerful men who control those parties.
Voice of San Diego purports to support the “free marketplace of ideas.” And, up to this point, I think that they have. However, the Chief Editor’s decision to refrain from publishing anonymous letters is tantamount to censorship.
Out of consideration of the “political” consequences of openly supporting one candidate over another, or one set of ideas over another, some authors may refrain from delving too deeply into the short comings of their parties, the party leadership, or the candidates.
The natural result of this “consideration,” is self-censorship. Censorship, no matter how it is imposed, strikes a deadly blow to freedom of the press, and the foundations of our democracy. I am disappointed in your decision to say the least. To paraphrase Chief Joseph: I shall write no more, forever.
Remember, they killed Socrates for his ideas. He would have been better off to remain silent.
Editor's note: Voice does not censor letters to the editor and does not limit the number or frequency of submissions by individual authors. However, Voice will attempt to verify their authenticity by confirming the authors. Letters written anonymously or under pseudonyms will not be accepted.
Wrap...
Speaking Out
SHAWN McMILLAN,
SAN DIEGO
September 30, 2005
Our country was founded by great thinkers, and philosophers whose ideas where deemed seditious and revolutionary at the time. Much of what they published in support of what they believed in, and what they were fighting for, was published anonymously.
There is a reason for this. The ideas they espoused potentially subjected them to considerable risk. Many of the greatest thinkers our nation has ever known, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, Jay and Paine among others, would not have raised the hue and cry, if they had been required at the outset to lay personal claim to the ideas and arguments they expressed, for to do so would have meant certain peril. Although the consequences are not nearly so dire today, the same principles hold true.
In order to foster a lively debate where the citizenry are encouraged to delve deeply into the issues of the day, it is critical that concerned citizens be able to communicate their ideas without fear of reprisal or reprimand. Policies that require the identification of authors of controversial, or potentially controversial pieces, do not promote the public good, or a vibrant and unbridled discussion of the critical issues facing our city today. To the contrary in fact, the debate is stifled. Many of the players in the drama that is unfolding before us have much to lose if they offend the opposition, or if they are perceived as traitorous to their respective political parties and the powerful men who control those parties.
Voice of San Diego purports to support the “free marketplace of ideas.” And, up to this point, I think that they have. However, the Chief Editor’s decision to refrain from publishing anonymous letters is tantamount to censorship.
Out of consideration of the “political” consequences of openly supporting one candidate over another, or one set of ideas over another, some authors may refrain from delving too deeply into the short comings of their parties, the party leadership, or the candidates.
The natural result of this “consideration,” is self-censorship. Censorship, no matter how it is imposed, strikes a deadly blow to freedom of the press, and the foundations of our democracy. I am disappointed in your decision to say the least. To paraphrase Chief Joseph: I shall write no more, forever.
Remember, they killed Socrates for his ideas. He would have been better off to remain silent.
Editor's note: Voice does not censor letters to the editor and does not limit the number or frequency of submissions by individual authors. However, Voice will attempt to verify their authenticity by confirming the authors. Letters written anonymously or under pseudonyms will not be accepted.
Wrap...
FYI: BushCo's walkin' talkin' disasters...
Sometimes I get so damned torqued over this admin's shenanigans that I can barely see straight. When the neocons set out to break the back of this nation for their own personal power and $$$$, they wrote up their plan--PNAC--, got BushCo elected, and proceeded to do their worst. First came the spinning--remember the trashing Kerry took for "Senate-speak"? They had to do something to take the heat and attention away from Bush's "can't speak". So they spun, they lied, they kept secret everything they could...and they still are. Fine. BushCo got in office. What did the nation get? Here's a recap of some of what we got...and it isn't nearly all:
September 30, 2005
The Way It Is
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He sold all his stock in HCA, which his father helped found, just days before the stock plunged. Two years ago, Mr. Frist claimed that he did not even know if he owned HCA stock.
According to a new U.S. government index, the effect of greenhouse gases is up 20 percent since 1990.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a 33-year-old Wall Street insider with little experience in regulation but close ties to drug firms, was made a deputy commissioner at the F.D.A. in July. (This story, picked up by Time magazine, was originally reported by Alicia Mundy of The Seattle Times.)
The Artic ice cap is shrinking at an alarming rate.
Two of the three senior positions at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are vacant. The third is held by Jonathan Snare, a former lobbyist. Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group, reports that he worked on efforts to keep ephedra, a dietary supplement that was banned by the F.D.A., legal.
According to France's finance minister, Alan Greenspan told him that the United States had "lost control" of its budget deficit.
David Safavian is a former associate of Jack Abramoff, the recently indicted lobbyist. Mr. Safavian oversaw U.S. government procurement policy at the White House Office of Management and Budget until his recent arrest.
When Senator James Inhofe, who has called scientific research on global warming "a gigantic hoax," called a hearing to attack that research, his star witness was Michael Crichton, the novelist.
Mr. Safavian is charged with misrepresenting his connections with lobbyists - specifically, Mr. Abramoff - while working at the General Services Administration. A key event was a lavish golfing trip to Scotland in 2002, mostly paid for by a charity Mr. Abramoff controlled. Among those who went on the trip was Representative Bob Ney of Ohio.
It's not possible to attribute any one weather event to global warming. But climate models show that global warming will lead to increased hurricane intensity, and some research indicates that this is already occurring.
Tyco paid $2 million, most going to firms controlled by Mr. Abramoff, as part of its successful effort to preserve tax advantages it got from shifting its legal home to Bermuda. Timothy Flanigan, a general counsel at Tyco, has been nominated for the second-ranking Justice Department post.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is awash in soldiers and police. Nonetheless, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Blackwater USA, a private security firm with strong political connections, to provide armed guards.
Mr. Abramoff was indicted last month on charges of fraud relating to his purchase of SunCruz, a casino boat operation. Mr. Ney inserted comments in the Congressional Record attacking SunCruz's original owner, Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, placing pressure on him to sell to Mr. Abramoff and his partner, Adam Kidan, and praised Mr. Kidan's character.
James Schmitz, who resigned as the Pentagon's inspector general amid questions about his performance, has been hired as Blackwater's chief operating officer.
Last week three men were arrested in connection with the gangland-style murder of Mr. Boulis. SunCruz, after it was controlled by Mr. Kidan and Mr. Abramoff, paid a company controlled by one of the men arrested, Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello, and his daughter $145,000 for catering and other work. In court documents, questions are raised about whether food and drink were ever provided. SunCruz paid $95,000 to a company in which one of the other men arrested, Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari, is a principal.
Iraq's oil production remains below prewar levels. The Los Angeles Times reports that mistakes by U.S. officials and a Halliburton subsidiary, which was given large no-bid reconstruction contracts, may have permanently damaged Iraq's oilfields.
Tom DeLay, who stepped down as House majority leader after his indictment, once called Mr. Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." Mr. Abramoff funneled funds from clients to conservative institutions and causes. The Washington Post reported that associates of Mr. DeLay claim that he severed the relationship after Mr. Boulis's murder.
Public health experts warn that the U.S. would be dangerously unprepared for an avian flu pandemic.
As Walter Cronkite used to say, That's the way it is.
Wrap...
September 30, 2005
The Way It Is
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He sold all his stock in HCA, which his father helped found, just days before the stock plunged. Two years ago, Mr. Frist claimed that he did not even know if he owned HCA stock.
According to a new U.S. government index, the effect of greenhouse gases is up 20 percent since 1990.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a 33-year-old Wall Street insider with little experience in regulation but close ties to drug firms, was made a deputy commissioner at the F.D.A. in July. (This story, picked up by Time magazine, was originally reported by Alicia Mundy of The Seattle Times.)
The Artic ice cap is shrinking at an alarming rate.
Two of the three senior positions at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are vacant. The third is held by Jonathan Snare, a former lobbyist. Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group, reports that he worked on efforts to keep ephedra, a dietary supplement that was banned by the F.D.A., legal.
According to France's finance minister, Alan Greenspan told him that the United States had "lost control" of its budget deficit.
David Safavian is a former associate of Jack Abramoff, the recently indicted lobbyist. Mr. Safavian oversaw U.S. government procurement policy at the White House Office of Management and Budget until his recent arrest.
When Senator James Inhofe, who has called scientific research on global warming "a gigantic hoax," called a hearing to attack that research, his star witness was Michael Crichton, the novelist.
Mr. Safavian is charged with misrepresenting his connections with lobbyists - specifically, Mr. Abramoff - while working at the General Services Administration. A key event was a lavish golfing trip to Scotland in 2002, mostly paid for by a charity Mr. Abramoff controlled. Among those who went on the trip was Representative Bob Ney of Ohio.
It's not possible to attribute any one weather event to global warming. But climate models show that global warming will lead to increased hurricane intensity, and some research indicates that this is already occurring.
Tyco paid $2 million, most going to firms controlled by Mr. Abramoff, as part of its successful effort to preserve tax advantages it got from shifting its legal home to Bermuda. Timothy Flanigan, a general counsel at Tyco, has been nominated for the second-ranking Justice Department post.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is awash in soldiers and police. Nonetheless, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Blackwater USA, a private security firm with strong political connections, to provide armed guards.
Mr. Abramoff was indicted last month on charges of fraud relating to his purchase of SunCruz, a casino boat operation. Mr. Ney inserted comments in the Congressional Record attacking SunCruz's original owner, Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, placing pressure on him to sell to Mr. Abramoff and his partner, Adam Kidan, and praised Mr. Kidan's character.
James Schmitz, who resigned as the Pentagon's inspector general amid questions about his performance, has been hired as Blackwater's chief operating officer.
Last week three men were arrested in connection with the gangland-style murder of Mr. Boulis. SunCruz, after it was controlled by Mr. Kidan and Mr. Abramoff, paid a company controlled by one of the men arrested, Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello, and his daughter $145,000 for catering and other work. In court documents, questions are raised about whether food and drink were ever provided. SunCruz paid $95,000 to a company in which one of the other men arrested, Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari, is a principal.
Iraq's oil production remains below prewar levels. The Los Angeles Times reports that mistakes by U.S. officials and a Halliburton subsidiary, which was given large no-bid reconstruction contracts, may have permanently damaged Iraq's oilfields.
Tom DeLay, who stepped down as House majority leader after his indictment, once called Mr. Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." Mr. Abramoff funneled funds from clients to conservative institutions and causes. The Washington Post reported that associates of Mr. DeLay claim that he severed the relationship after Mr. Boulis's murder.
Public health experts warn that the U.S. would be dangerously unprepared for an avian flu pandemic.
As Walter Cronkite used to say, That's the way it is.
Wrap...
Chain of Command...their responsibilities...
So Lynndie England gets sent off to jail along with a few other soldiers for her part in torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Then the 82nd Airborne soldiers are discovered to have done the same. No doubt those soldiers will also be sent off to jail. The USA does not do torture, right? Wrong. Under the Bush regime our people are doing torture left, right, and around the world. They think this up themselves? They doing it under orders? If so, whose orders? Soldiers have the right to refuse illegal orders. But at what cost to themselves? What the hell is going on here? Who holds ultimate responsibility? What happened to the Geneva Conventions? Why are they being disregarded? Keep reading for the answers via Tom Paine.com :
Abu Ghraib: Command Responsibility
Ray McGovern
September 30, 2005
Ray McGovern served as a captain in the U.S. Army from 1962-64 before serving 25 years as an analyst in the CIA. He now works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He is also a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
The news that yet another Army private, Lynndie England, 22, of Fort Ashby, W. Va., has been convicted and sentenced for posing for the infamous photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, while her superiors duck responsibility, is a sad commentary on the degenerating ethos of the U.S. Army.
The reminder of the photos of those inexcusable activities was sickening enough and England deserves to be punished. But I am of the old-Army school where officers took responsibility for the actions of those under their command. It is no less than scandalous how the Army brass and its civilian leadership, who are demonstrably responsible for the torture, continue to dance away from taking responsibility.
They chose, instead, to stone the woman, like the hypocrites of Bible fame, contending that the photos inflamed the insurgency in Iraq. It is the torture, not the photos, that has inflamed the insurgency. And responsibility for the torture reaches directly up the chain of command to the commander in chief himself. Perhaps when even more repulsive photos and videos of torture at Abu Ghraib are released, as federal judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered yesterday, the American people finally will be jarred awake.
So far, the silent acquiescence with which Americans have greeted President George W. Bush’s open assertion of a right to torture some prisoners evokes memories of the unconscionable behavior of “obedient Germans” of the 1930s and early 1940s. Thankfully, despite the hate whipped up by administration propagandists against people branded “terrorists,” polling conducted last year showed that most Americans reject torturing prisoners. Almost two-thirds held that torture is never acceptable.
Yet few speak out—perhaps because President Bush says he too, is against torture, and our domesticated media have successfully hidden from most of us the fact that the president has added a highly significant qualification. On February 7, 2002, the president issued an order instructing our armed forces “to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity , in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva” (emphasis added).
In the preceding paragraph, the president determined that Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees “do not qualify as prisoners of war.” Never mind that there is no provision in the Geneva Conventions for such a unilateral determination.
Speedy Gonzales
In taking this position, Bush had to overrule then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, the only one of his senior advisers with experience in combat. On January 26, 2002, Powell sent to then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formal comments on the latter’s memorandum for the president, the subject of which was “Decision Re Application Of The Geneva Convention On Prisoners Of War To The Conflict With Al Qaeda And The Taliban."
This is the Mafia-like memorandum in which Gonzales not only branded some Geneva provisions “quaint” and “obsolete,” but also reassured the president that he could probably escape domestic criminal prosecution for violating the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. 2441), as well. Here is what Gonzales tells the president on this key point:
...it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.
Meanwhile, back at the State Department, Powell apparently thought the memorandum was still in draft. But Gonzales, who knew what the president wanted, did not wait for Powell’s formal comments. Rather, on January 25, Gonzales sent his final draft to the president, thereby shielding him from dissonance like Powell’s written observation that exempting detainees from Geneva protections “will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops.”
Gonzales was already aware of Powell’s opposition, and in his own memo, the former White House counsel and now attorney general was dismissive of Powell’s request that the president reconsider the argument that Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are not prisoners of war under Geneva. In a short paragraph tacked onto the bottom of a list of “negatives,” Gonzales took brief note of Powell’s objections. Gonzales’ paragraph speaks volumes in the light of subsequent abuses in Abu Graib, Afghanistan and Guantanamo :
A determination that the GPW [Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War] does not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries.
Last week, more than a dozen high-ranking military officers sent a letter to President Bush, pointing out that “It is now apparent that the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere took place in part because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that went beyond what was allowed by the Army Field Manual.”
A pity that Colin Powell limited himself to writing memos to the president’s lawyer.
The photos from Abu Graib and the more recent Human Rights Watch report describing “routine” torture by the once highly professional 82nd Airborne Division offer graphic evidence that Powell’s misgivings were well-founded. The report relies heavily on the testimony of a West Point graduate, an Army captain who has had the courage to speak out after 17 months of trying in vain to go through Army channels.
Human Rights Watch Director Tom Malinowski has noted, “The administration demanded that soldiers extract information from detainees without telling them what was allowed and what was forbidden. Yet when the abuses inevitably followed, the leadership blamed the soldiers in the field instead of taking responsibility.” A Pentagon spokesman has dismissed the report as “another predictable report by an organization trying to advance an agenda through the use of distortion and errors of fact.” Judge for yourselves; the report can be found here. It's grim but required reading.
Pictures Worth A Thousand Words
After seeing the photos from Abu Graib last year, Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia took a strong rhetorical stand against torture. But then he quickly succumbed to White House pressure to postpone Senate hearings on the subject until after the November 2004 election.
More recently, Warner joined two other Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, in attempts to introduce amendments against torture to the defense authorization bill. The amendments would require that U.S. forces revert to the standards set forth in Army Field Manual (FM 34-52) for interrogating detainees held by the Defense Department. The manual prohibits the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Another amendment discussed would require that all foreign nationals “be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross.” This would prohibit sequestering unregistered “ghost detainees” at prisons like Abu Graib and secret CIA interrogation centers.
Inured as I thought I had become to outrageous behavior at the top of the Bush administration, I found its reaction shocking. On the evening of July 21, Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill to dissuade the three senators from proceeding with the amendments. But the senators have not been cowed—not yet, at least. Four days later on the floor of the Senate, John McCain—who knows something of torture—made a poignant appeal to his colleagues to hold our country to humane standards in treating captives, “no matter how evil or terrible” they may be. “This is not about who they are. This is about who we are,” said McCain.
The following day, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pulled the Pentagon spending bill off the floor, sparing Bush the political risk of vetoing the much-needed defense authorization bill simply because it included amendments requiring the protections for detainees required by U.S. criminal statute and international law.
It will be interesting to see if, in the end, the senators cave in to White House pressure. For if they do, they will be providing yet another congressional nihil obstat for the general approach so succinctly voiced by the president to then-terrorism czar Richard Clarke and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in the White House on the evening of 9/11.
According to Clarke, the president yelled, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass."
Wrap....
Abu Ghraib: Command Responsibility
Ray McGovern
September 30, 2005
Ray McGovern served as a captain in the U.S. Army from 1962-64 before serving 25 years as an analyst in the CIA. He now works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He is also a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
The news that yet another Army private, Lynndie England, 22, of Fort Ashby, W. Va., has been convicted and sentenced for posing for the infamous photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, while her superiors duck responsibility, is a sad commentary on the degenerating ethos of the U.S. Army.
The reminder of the photos of those inexcusable activities was sickening enough and England deserves to be punished. But I am of the old-Army school where officers took responsibility for the actions of those under their command. It is no less than scandalous how the Army brass and its civilian leadership, who are demonstrably responsible for the torture, continue to dance away from taking responsibility.
They chose, instead, to stone the woman, like the hypocrites of Bible fame, contending that the photos inflamed the insurgency in Iraq. It is the torture, not the photos, that has inflamed the insurgency. And responsibility for the torture reaches directly up the chain of command to the commander in chief himself. Perhaps when even more repulsive photos and videos of torture at Abu Ghraib are released, as federal judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered yesterday, the American people finally will be jarred awake.
So far, the silent acquiescence with which Americans have greeted President George W. Bush’s open assertion of a right to torture some prisoners evokes memories of the unconscionable behavior of “obedient Germans” of the 1930s and early 1940s. Thankfully, despite the hate whipped up by administration propagandists against people branded “terrorists,” polling conducted last year showed that most Americans reject torturing prisoners. Almost two-thirds held that torture is never acceptable.
Yet few speak out—perhaps because President Bush says he too, is against torture, and our domesticated media have successfully hidden from most of us the fact that the president has added a highly significant qualification. On February 7, 2002, the president issued an order instructing our armed forces “to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity , in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva” (emphasis added).
In the preceding paragraph, the president determined that Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees “do not qualify as prisoners of war.” Never mind that there is no provision in the Geneva Conventions for such a unilateral determination.
Speedy Gonzales
In taking this position, Bush had to overrule then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, the only one of his senior advisers with experience in combat. On January 26, 2002, Powell sent to then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formal comments on the latter’s memorandum for the president, the subject of which was “Decision Re Application Of The Geneva Convention On Prisoners Of War To The Conflict With Al Qaeda And The Taliban."
This is the Mafia-like memorandum in which Gonzales not only branded some Geneva provisions “quaint” and “obsolete,” but also reassured the president that he could probably escape domestic criminal prosecution for violating the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. 2441), as well. Here is what Gonzales tells the president on this key point:
...it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.
Meanwhile, back at the State Department, Powell apparently thought the memorandum was still in draft. But Gonzales, who knew what the president wanted, did not wait for Powell’s formal comments. Rather, on January 25, Gonzales sent his final draft to the president, thereby shielding him from dissonance like Powell’s written observation that exempting detainees from Geneva protections “will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops.”
Gonzales was already aware of Powell’s opposition, and in his own memo, the former White House counsel and now attorney general was dismissive of Powell’s request that the president reconsider the argument that Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are not prisoners of war under Geneva. In a short paragraph tacked onto the bottom of a list of “negatives,” Gonzales took brief note of Powell’s objections. Gonzales’ paragraph speaks volumes in the light of subsequent abuses in Abu Graib, Afghanistan and Guantanamo :
A determination that the GPW [Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War] does not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries.
Last week, more than a dozen high-ranking military officers sent a letter to President Bush, pointing out that “It is now apparent that the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere took place in part because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that went beyond what was allowed by the Army Field Manual.”
A pity that Colin Powell limited himself to writing memos to the president’s lawyer.
The photos from Abu Graib and the more recent Human Rights Watch report describing “routine” torture by the once highly professional 82nd Airborne Division offer graphic evidence that Powell’s misgivings were well-founded. The report relies heavily on the testimony of a West Point graduate, an Army captain who has had the courage to speak out after 17 months of trying in vain to go through Army channels.
Human Rights Watch Director Tom Malinowski has noted, “The administration demanded that soldiers extract information from detainees without telling them what was allowed and what was forbidden. Yet when the abuses inevitably followed, the leadership blamed the soldiers in the field instead of taking responsibility.” A Pentagon spokesman has dismissed the report as “another predictable report by an organization trying to advance an agenda through the use of distortion and errors of fact.” Judge for yourselves; the report can be found here. It's grim but required reading.
Pictures Worth A Thousand Words
After seeing the photos from Abu Graib last year, Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia took a strong rhetorical stand against torture. But then he quickly succumbed to White House pressure to postpone Senate hearings on the subject until after the November 2004 election.
More recently, Warner joined two other Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, in attempts to introduce amendments against torture to the defense authorization bill. The amendments would require that U.S. forces revert to the standards set forth in Army Field Manual (FM 34-52) for interrogating detainees held by the Defense Department. The manual prohibits the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Another amendment discussed would require that all foreign nationals “be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross.” This would prohibit sequestering unregistered “ghost detainees” at prisons like Abu Graib and secret CIA interrogation centers.
Inured as I thought I had become to outrageous behavior at the top of the Bush administration, I found its reaction shocking. On the evening of July 21, Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill to dissuade the three senators from proceeding with the amendments. But the senators have not been cowed—not yet, at least. Four days later on the floor of the Senate, John McCain—who knows something of torture—made a poignant appeal to his colleagues to hold our country to humane standards in treating captives, “no matter how evil or terrible” they may be. “This is not about who they are. This is about who we are,” said McCain.
The following day, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pulled the Pentagon spending bill off the floor, sparing Bush the political risk of vetoing the much-needed defense authorization bill simply because it included amendments requiring the protections for detainees required by U.S. criminal statute and international law.
It will be interesting to see if, in the end, the senators cave in to White House pressure. For if they do, they will be providing yet another congressional nihil obstat for the general approach so succinctly voiced by the president to then-terrorism czar Richard Clarke and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in the White House on the evening of 9/11.
According to Clarke, the president yelled, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass."
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