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January 2005 Articles
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DV Articles
November 2003
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Come to think of it, why shouldn’t we let God back into the classroom? I mean, it’s not as if all those nasty French ideas about “social contracts” and “rational thought” ever really caught on here in America anyway, so what’s the big deal? If we cranky old Liberals would just stop all the grousing, quit fighting the inevitable, and get with the program, maybe we could all lock arms and march boldly forward into the brave new classroom of the future. Just imagine...(full article)
A few hours before
President George Bush gave his inauguration address promising to rid the
world of tyranny, Vice President Dick Cheney made a few comments that tell
more about where the administration is heading. Yukking it up with
right-wing talk show host Don Imus on MSNBC, Cheney placed Iran at the
“top of the list” of “potential trouble spots” that the Bush
administration was determined to deal with in its second term. Of course,
added Cheney, Israel “might well decide to act first” to destroy Iran’s
nuclear capacity and “let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up
the diplomatic mess afterwards.” For someone who normally plays the role
of the administration’s Prince of Darkness, Cheney’s concluding calls for
a diplomatic solution seemed out of character. But it could all be an
elaborate setup for what Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and every other neoconservative in Washington wants -- a decisive
confrontation with Iran leading to “regime change.”...(full
article)
Iraq’s Non-Election Predictably, the U.S. news media are full of discussion and debate about this weekend’s election in Iraq. Unfortunately, virtually all the commentary misses a simple point: There will be no “election” on Jan. 30 in Iraq, if that term is meant to suggest an even remotely democratic process....(full article)
The abject surrender of the media fed a slew of illusions to the public, none more craven than the belief that he whom we kill must be killed. Yeah, yeah, we occasionally obliterate the wrong house and incinerate its occupants, but that's just “friendly fire.” (A lovely phrase if there's one: Let's hear the surgeon who amputates the wrong leg inform his patient of his “friendly amputation.”) Minus the friendliness, however, our whiz-bang weapon wizardry never fails to separate the wheat from the chaff, the nursing mother from the crazed beheader. So goes the creed, anyway....(full article)
After the body bags are removed from the tarmac and the dead are buried; after children have said farewell to a father or mother and parents bid goodbye to a son or a daughter; after seriously injured soldiers are shuffled off to understaffed rehabilitation facilities and others are left to deal with their wounds on their own; and after soldiers that escaped physical harm return home with severe mental health problems, America will reap a whirlwind it hasn't seen since the end of the Vietnam War....(full article)
Abu Ghraib and the torture of our enemies no
longer light up cable news with that mind numbing repetition of perp walks
and stacked nude bodies. The military, we are assured, is taking care of
the problem and the slate will be wiped clean once again for a little
while. The enlisted kids being punished now and in the future will take
the rap for "getting caught." The career officers will escape
accountability, just as they did in Vietnam over 30 years ago....
Team Bush and Big Pharma's plan for the nation's mental health includes heavy emphasis on new and expensive drugs....(full article)
Less than two weeks ago, many of us sat shell-shocked for a moment as we learned that conservative pundit Armstrong Williams was paid a cool $241,000 by the Department of Education to talk up Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. Williams failed to disclose to his readers and listeners that he had a contract with the federal government. It has just come to light that another conservative commentator, Maggie Gallagher, had a similar, if less lucrative, contract with the Bush Administration in 2002. Gallagher was paid a total of $41,500 to advertise the Bush Administration's $300 million marriage initiative....(full article)
January 26-27
The story today is going to be very discouraging to the American people,” President Bush said at a news conference Wednesday, hours after 37 American troops died in Iraq. “I understand that. We value life. And we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life.” How long will the U.S. news media continue to indulge that sort of pious talk from the White House without challenge? The evidence is overwhelming that the president and his policy team are quite willing to devalue -- in fact, destroy -- life when it gets in their way. And if they “weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life,” the grief is rigorously selective....(full article)
Not having had a
chance to listen to the inaugural speech, I read it in transcript and was
struck like everyone else by those ominous, symmetrical allusions to fire
in it. . . . In Bush’s religio-political theater, fire isn’t a damp
metaphoric squib but a powerful symbol, the leitmotif of the soaring
neo-conservative soundtrack -- fire consuming the twin towers, fire as
inspiration, and then fire as “freedom” crackling over the globe, warming
its friends and incinerating its enemies. This isn’t vague bombast. The
meanings are precise and meant to resonate with deep-rooted themes in
American culture....(full article)
Veterans Benefits “Hurtful” to National
Security, Says Pentagon
The Wall Street
Journal describes the pittance set aside for veteran’s benefits as
“Congress’ generosity,” even as the Republican-controlled Congress and
Bush Pentagon get set to slash billions more from Veterans
Administration’s (VA) programs. In an interview with the Wall Street
Journal (1-25-05), Pentagon official David Chu, in a mockery of the
contribution of veterans, defended a new round of cuts by ironically
describing funding for programs like veterans’ education and job training,
health care, pensions, VA housing and the like as “hurtful” to national
security....(full article)
Bush Gives Key to Medicare Fund to Known
Criminals
The new Medicare
Prescription Drug Bill was supposed to make drugs more affordable for
senior citizens, but numerous studies reveal that it has done just the
opposite. The actual so-called benefit from the bill will not go into
effect until 2006, so in the meantime Bush and his cronies in the industry
came up with the idea for a prescription drug discount card program
intended to reduce prescription costs for senior citizens until 2006. To
that end, Bush chose roughly 70 private companies to administer the
program and provide the discount cards to seniors, at a fee of up to $30
to use at pharmacies. Time to do the math. The Medicare program has about
40 million participants. So multiply that number by $30 and see how much
it comes to. If the Bush scam had gone according to the plan, the
companies authorized to administer the program would have made a bundle
before the first prescription drug was even purchased. However, Bush and
his gang underestimated the intelligence of seniors because few people
signed up for the cards. In fact, last time I checked the companies
couldn't even give them away. What qualifications did a company have to
have to be approved? That question requires a one-word answer --
money....(full article)
The Freedom of Choice In a democracy, we are supposed to have choices. Our constitution gives us those choices. Our constitution is founded on the premise of morality and the values represented by the highest order of morality. As a soldier, my husband, Sgt. Kevin Benderman, has a sworn duty to defend his country and its constitution. As a soldier, my husband has a sworn duty therefore, to defend morality. “Thou shall not kill.” After seeing the immorality of war firsthand, my husband has laid down his weapons to kill no more. What greater defense of our constitution is there? (full article)
If there is one thing I understand it is simply this, once one “sees” war up close and personal and you look into the abyss, that “Heart of Darkness” of war; you are forever changed--period. Some become very self-defensive and become strong supporters of war—what else can they do? If they do not support war then they would be compelled to revisit “war” and come to terms with it. That in itself shakes the very foundations of one’s beliefs, and this is something a lot of people just do not want to do, or are unwilling to do; it hurts like hell! Then there are those like Jim Massey, Mike Hoffman, Kevin Benderman, Dave Bischel, Tim Goodrich, Camillo Mejas just to name a very few, who have confronted the issue of wars immorality and inhumanity from the perspective of those who have participated in war; and thru that participation have found war sorely lacking, and due to that have come out in opposition to participation and opposition to war in general, as a methodology of solving our problems....(full article)
You may not meet them among your circle of
friends, but there are millions of Americans who fiercely believe we
should nuke North Korea and Iran, seize the Middle East’s oil, and replace
the U.S. Constitution with the Christian Bible. They believe the United
States will conquer the entire world and convert it to our notions of
democracy and fundamentalist Christian religion. And that will happen says
my Christian neo-conservative friend Dave Henderson, “when win we elect a
man with the balls to use our nukes.” You may not believe me, and if you
don’t I cannot blame you for never having been exposed to such folks. Only
an idiot or a masochistic observer of the American scene would subject
himself or herself to these Americans. I like to think I am the latter,
but the jury is still out.
In understanding how
such ominous political ideations manifested themselves in this country, it
helps to look back 450 years to a group of Celtic cattle thieves killing
one another in the mud along Hadrian’s Wall -- the Borderers. Fanatically
religious and war loving, these Scottish Protestants made their way first
to Ireland as the “Ulster Scots,” then to American shores during the early
18th century. Known to most Americans as the Scots Irish or
Scotch Irish, the Borderers brought cultural values that govern (some
would say screw up) the political emotions of millions of Americans to
this day....(full article)
Boarding Up the “Window of
Opportunity”
After weeks of the “red carpet” treatment from his cohorts in Tel Aviv, a bewildered Mahmoud Abbas was kicked down the stairwell before he even took the oath of office. A bombing at a Gaza border crossing has thrust him into the spotlight; forcing him to utilize his new powers to defuse the latest flare-up between the warring parties. It’s the very same situation that faced Arafat nearly every day for the last three years. It explains how he became the unwitting scapegoat for any violence directed at the occupation. Now that moniker looks like it will be passed off to the new President Abbas. Sharon has threatened to sever all diplomatic ties and instigate another major operation like last September’s “Days of Repentance”. That incursion into Gaza claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives and destroyed nearly as many homes. Now, its Abbas’ turn to see if he can settle down the hostilities and restore the brittle peace. There’s a steep learning curve for those who accept the job of Israel’s security guard, and Abbas is scrambling to meet the challenge....(full article)
A writer at The NY Times counted 27 references to freedom in Bush's inaugural speech. The speech contained not one reference to his ugly war in Iraq, but for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis the only freedom established by Bush's invasion was their freedom to miserable deaths or future lives as cripples. Bush promised he would bring freedom to the world's dark corners. It is worth noting that none of the world's people asked Bush to assume such a task, and every poll of those living outside the United States shows Washington now widely regarded as one of the world's darkest corners, a source of fear itself rather than freedom from fear....(full article)
If, as betrayed by the announced plans of the fanatics dreaming up Another American Century, Afghanistan and Iraq are the antechambers of hell on earth in the Middle East, the “Iranian Campaign” would constitute the inner-chambers. Weapons of Mass Destruction present or not, speedily coming up next on the agenda for another century of barbarity: when (not if) and how to militarily attack Iran, a nation at peace with its neighbors, and most of the rest of the world. No apologies for belaboring the point that Iran is also a nation that has already been subjugated to premeditated US aggression, in a 1953 CIA-conducted coup that overthrew our democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh; an aggression that completely changed the course of our modern history, for the worse. More, the invasion of our country by Iraq in 1980 was completely and actively supported militarily, financially and logistically by the successive Carter and Reagan administrations. And now the Americans are back for more mass murder and mayhem in our country....(full article)
In a recent article in The New Yorker, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the Bush administration has conducted missions using military special forces on Iranian territory in an attempt to find Iran’s nuclear facilities for possible later targeting with air strikes or commando raids. Such military actions would have dire consequences for the United States and the Middle East. As unbelievable as it might seem, despite its disastrous martial adventure in neighboring Iraq, the administration appears to be once again leaning toward using the military option to deal with a country that it believes is attempting to get nuclear weapons. U.S. government intelligence agencies believe that Iran is still three to five years from getting such a weapon, but given their recent track record of failure on the Indo-Pakistan nuclear tests, the September 11 attacks, and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, no one can be sure if they are correct. Using this information, however, as the government must, targeting of Iran is over-the-top—given that an Iranian nuclear weapon is not imminent....(full article)
Something's got to give. Another election is just around the corner. What's it going to be? Another opportunity to document election “irregularities” and computer “glitches”? Another chance to analyze mysterious exit polls? Another exercise in frustration? Another charade. Democrats will need a mighty good reason to go back to the polls. Many believe that our elections are rigged. And they have good reason. Republicans own the voting machine companies that count 80% of the votes. Congress and the courts are unlikely to change that. And the Democratic leadership has hardly made it an issue. So, let's do something different. We'll go to Plan B. We'll organize our own “Parallel Elections”....(full article)
Lewis Black brought his unique brand of anger, wit and political commentary to Vancouver this week, performing to a sold-out crowd at The Vogue theatre. The skyrocketing popularity of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, where Black does a 2-minute rant every Thursday, has taken the 56-year-old comic from cult following to near star status. The brief “Back in Black” spots with Jon Stewart, though, just scratch the surface of Lewis’ critical rage. Seen live, one truly gets an idea of the Black appeal. For more than an hour, he blistered the Democrats, the Republicans, MTV, John Kerry, the Christian Right, and the rest of the cultural and political morass that defines the social landscape of the United States. George W. Bush was featured, of course, but curiously Black never mentioned him by name – always “him”, “the president,” “that guy” -- suggesting perhaps that the cantankerous comic’s anger might slip from hilarious to frightening or dangerous if the emperor’s name crossed his lips....(full article)
Just as the American empire was crowned as the world's one and only super power, the energy that sustains that power sputtered and started to give out. Regardless whether oil production has already peaked or whether it peaks in one year or two, petroleum's high energy return on the energy invested to produce it is a thing of the past. So, too, are all hydrocarbon empires. Whatever oil remains to be pumped out of the earth will be very expensive to produce, and the resulting economic toll will be charged to us all (as has already happened) as inflation. It will be passed on to us in the degradation of our schools; the hollowing out of our health care system; the malnutrition of our retirement plans, our legal system, our transportation systems, our libraries, and our environment....(full article)
In an original Star Trek episode, “Journey to Babel,” a high-speed Orion spaceship was attacking the Starship Enterprise. Using subterfuge, the Enterprise managed to disable the attacking vessel, which self-destructed rather than be captured. A disguised Orion captive died on the bridge of the Enterprise from a self-administered poison. It turned out that the suicide mission was intended to foment interplanetary war so that the neutral Orions could clean up by selling dilithium crystals to the two sides in the conflict. In other words, the crew of the Orion ship had executed a suicide bombing to enrich some capitalists back on their home world. Now imagine yourself as a jobless Iraqi surrounded by two M-16 assault rifle-toting US troops and their soulless Iraqi collaborators. Being jobless in Iraq is the norm, as 70 percent of your neighbors can attest. Besides, the few jobs that are available involve selling one’s soul to the occupying enemies, the ones who bombed your house to smithereens with your wife and three children in it. The same ones that imprisoned and raped your innocent mother and sister in Abu Ghraib -- this after your father died with the jackboot of an American soldier on his face and a rifle wedged excruciatingly deep into his groin. It wasn’t enough that they had looted your parents’ house of any savings and the few valuables; they had also bulldozed the house to the ground....(full article)
So when did the assault on Americans’ civil liberties get jumpstarted? The current liberal establishment seems to deem 9/11 the chief catalyst. Many of the most loathsome specimens within the haughty club imply that drastic incursions on Americans’ civil liberties only began after 9/11, while the Clinton Administration represented a civil liberties paradise....(full article)
Ariel Sharon's tactic of throwing fine sand in the air as he plows forward with his time-tested, time-honored strategy of establishing facts-on-the-ground, is working to perfection -- at least on the US mainstream media. When Ariel Sharon announced back in June of 2004 Israel's decision to go ahead with the implementation of a unilateral “Gaza pull-out plan,” the US media hailed the event as a watershed moment. Sharon was portrayed as taking great political risks and putting not only his political life but his very physical life on the line. Completely missed in the sand storm was the much bigger story: the official decision by his cabinet of permanently taking over large portions of the West Bank....(full article)
The Bushies really should have come to me before bribing -- uh, hiring; no, no, I was right the first time -- right-wing commentator Armstrong Williams to shill for the federal No Child Left Behind Act in his newspaper columns and on his radio and TV show “The Right Side.” According to Eunice Moscoso of the Cox News Service, Williams raked in $240,000 for his best Fox faux facts impersonation. . . . The most basic problem, of course, is that Williams is obviously not a journalist but still plays one on TV. With my sincerest apologies to members of the world’s oldest profession, he’s a whore -- a very dangerous, democracy-destroying whore -- much more suited to joining the streetwalkers union than any to which real journalists might apply. (Chances are slim, though, the hookers would take him; professional integrity, you know.) Williams, however, still seeks to semantically split hairs while in damage control mode when he claims, per Moscoso, “that although he [is] a commentator, and not a journalist, he still should abide by the same ethical standards.” (Funny how ethics come up after checks have been cashed and beans spilled.)....(full article)
I read in my daily paper about overcapacity in the airline industry. There are more airline seats than buyers. Mr. Supply outstrips Mr. Demand. Consequently, the profitability of these carriers is down. When profits drop, airline workers get pay cuts and layoffs. They don’t need advanced degrees to understand work and wages. Neither option is their cup of tea. And who can argue? Investors can, because it is their continued profitability that governs how everybody else lives and works. Corporate investors have powerful allies in their pursuit of profitability. They control the state, a result of the elite’s bloody victories over the majority. We can call them the ownership class. At the top of this heap in terms of wealth is the Walton family of U.S. fame. They own the nation-state of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In the meantime, consider some of the service provided to investors by federal bankruptcy judges. Recently, one of them voided the labor union contracts for mechanics employed by US Airways. Poof. All gone. Just like that, baby. After all, it was better for some of the mechanics to get fired then for their employer to fold, the court ruled....(full article)
Anti-abortion, homophobic, abstinence-only supporting African American chosen as President Bush's chief domestic advisor....(full article)
Of course, by now everybody has at least
heard of Halliburton, the all-time poster child for war profiteering. But
I'll bet most people don't understand exactly how this company has gone
the full financial circle in Iraq....
“Piss on Pity”: Clint Eastwood's “Million
Dollar” Snuff Film Fresh off some big Golden Globes wins, “Million Dollar Baby” seems poised for Oscar success...but not everyone is pleased with the boxing flick-cum-snuff film. . . “This movie is a corny, melodramatic assault on people with disabilities,” writes Steve Drake in The Ragged Edge. “It plays out killing as a romantic fantasy and gives emotional life to the ‘better dead than disabled’ mindset lurking in the heart of the typical (read: non-disabled) audience member.” It will likely come as a bit of shock to those unfamiliar with the disability rights movement, but not every disabled person would rather be dead (or even non-disabled)....(full article)
His name is Clare Callan. He is a feisty 85-year-old former congressman from rural Nebraska. And he is asking the Supreme Court to declare that President Bush had no legal authority to go to war in Iraq. Mr. Callan does not see himself as Don Quixote. He is not asking the Supreme Court to end the war. He is a World War II veteran who served on a US Navy destroyer in the Pacific, who is proud of the US military, proud of his own service, and proud of the troops fighting in Iraq. But he believes that president violated the Constitution when he sent American troops into harm’s way. Now, he wants the nation’s highest court to say so. Here’s his case....(full article)
I was privileged to attend not one, but two Counter-Inaugural demonstrations this past week. The first, held by The Greater Fall River (MA) Committee for Peace and Justice, was a small candlelight vigil in front of Fall River's Government Center. The second was a much larger gathering in Bridgewater, MA....(full article)
The lower court ruling in the Texas school funding case needs to be modified to more strongly protect rights to equitable funding for property-poor districts, argued the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) in a December motion. But on inauguration day, the property-rich districts suddenly joined forces with the state to move jurisdiction to the Texas Supreme Court. Why is MALDEF being left behind? (full article)
Conservative Christian organizations have accused a children’s cartoon character, SpongeBob SquarePants, of being part of a secret agenda to promote homosexuality. The character appears in a music video, produced by the non-profit We Are Family Foundation, which was established following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to promote greater cultural understanding. The video, which is being distributed to 61,000 elementary schools, features SpongeBob, Winnie the Pooh, and other popular children’s characters. Although the video does not mention sexuality, the website of the foundation asks people to take a tolerance pledge by respecting those of different abilities, beliefs, culture, sexual identity, and race....(full article)
There have been many times where the penetrating analysis of James Petras has come in essential to my personal development. In a world where, even on the supposed “revolutionary left” we have a tendency to put things into black and white, good and bad, up and down, red vs. blue, ad nauseum--Petras has usually been able to smash such shortcuts to intellectualism and come through with a more nuanced and real analysis. Even in times where I personally disagree with the work he puts out -- such as his August offering proclaiming the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela a mere reformist upsurge -- his take comes from neither bloated dogma nor a need to denounce. Petras’ newest article reminded me clearly of the frailty of human thought when we are exposed to unrelenting propaganda about the various movements that resist imperialism, in particular American imperialism. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army—FARC-EP—have recently seen Colombian special agents enter the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and kidnap a man who has unofficially been FARC’s foreign minister and face to the world -- Rodrigo Granda. In so doing, President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe has violated the sovereignty of Venezuela and committed what amounts to virtually an act of war. No less than this, the president himself has announced that he personally paid off members of the Venezuelan security apparatus to help with this Mossad-like operation....(full article)
William Blum on police state measures in the age of the PATRIOT Act, Condoleezza Rice's confirmation hearings, CIA intervention in foreign countries, the Dems copy the Republican religious song and dance, Lawrence Summers, and more....(full article)
Why would Homeland Security hire former Stasi chief Markus Wolfe and former head of the KGB General Yevgeni Primakov? Is this part of the Bush anti-terror strategy? After all, Wolfe is the man who is credited with building up the feared East German secret police that was responsible for the disappearance and deaths of thousands of citizens. And, Primakov’s record is not any better. As skipper of the KGB he was driving force behind the machinery of state terror; a legacy that still has a chilling affect on many Russians....(full article)
If you live outside the DC metropolitan area, you likely heard little about a man who parked his van in front of the White House this past Tuesday, threatening to blow it up if his political demands were not met. There was never any need to worry. The FBI quickly assured the media, and therefore the public, that this is not an act of terrorism. After all, how could it be? The man in the van was white. But wait. White males can be terrorists, too. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols became terrorists when they blew up a moving van full of explosives outside a federal building. Perhaps there were other criteria that led the FBI to quickly discount a man parking his van claiming to be full of explosives outside the White House and threatening to blow it up if his demands were not met as not an act of terrorism. Reviewing what the government considers terrorism should bring some light on this subject....(full article)
Four years ago at the counter-inaugural
event on the steps of the state Capitol in Austin, TX, I administered a
Citizen’s Oath of Office to a crowd that was eager to fight the incoming
Bush administration’s reactionary agenda:
“I do
solemnly pledge that I will faithfully execute the office of citizen of
the United States, and that I will, to the best of my ability, resist
corporate control of the world, resist militarism, resist the roll-back of
civil rights, and resist illegitimate authority in all its forms.”
Predictably, the Bush gang has spent four years doing its best to
strengthen the corporate elite’s grip on the country, jack up military
spending and use that military to deepen U.S. control in key regions of
the world, and undermine fundamental political freedoms. We couldn’t have
predicted that the events of 9/11 would raise the stakes so dramatically,
but the oath was on target about the basic nature of the threats. But
looking back I realize the oath failed to capture the heart of citizens’
obligations -- it talked only about resisting reactionary forces and
didn’t speak to the democratic force we have to create. It made the
mistake of talking about politics only as the rejection of injustice, not
the process of creating justice and the means of achieving justice over
the long term. So, this time around, I want to update the oath....(full
article)
Democrats Support Bush’s Iran Policy
By now you have
probably heard about the Bush Administration’s secret plan to attack Iran
and how US Special Forces units have been operating in the country for
some time. Seymour Hersh, the maverick journalist for the New Yorker,
broke the story earlier this week. . . . But the Bush administration
may not have to worry about the opposition for round two. While Hersh
surmises that Bush’s Iran invasion could be carried out with Israeli
special operatives, political opposition may never reach the doorsteps of
Congress. After all, the Democrats have long agreed that Iran must be
dealt with militarily....(full article)
US Army Sergeant Kevin Benderman Charged
With Desertion The Army yesterday charged Sergeant Kevin Benderman with two counts of violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), for his refusal to re-deploy to Iraq in a case that has sparked a worldwide media feeding-frenzy and elicited condemnation of both the Bush administration and the U.S. Army....(full article)
The Bush Administration is intentionally steering Iraq towards civil war. The elections are merely the catalyst for igniting, what could be, a massive social upheaval. This explains the bizarre insistence on voting when security is nearly nonexistent and where a mere 7% of the people can even identify the candidates. (This figure gleaned from Allawi’s Baghdad newspaper, Al-Sabah) Rumsfeld is using the elections as a springboard for aggravating tensions between Sunnis and Shiites and for diverting attention away from the troops. It’s a foolhardy move that only magnifies the desperation of the present situation. The Pentagon brass expected a “cakewalk” and, instead, they’ve found themselves mired in a guerilla war....(full article)
The latest polls show that most Americans are critical of the war in Iraq. But the option of swiftly withdrawing all U.S. troops from that country gets little media attention. So far this year, many news outlets have lapsed into conjecture on what George W. Bush has in mind for the Iraq war. At the end of a recent lengthy editorial, the New York Times noted that, “there’s speculation about whether President Bush intends to use the arrival of a new elected government [in Baghdad] as an occasion to declare victory and begin pulling out American troops.” Right now, that kind of speculation amounts to a smokescreen for a war-crazed administration. Its evident intention is for large numbers of U.S. troops to stay in Iraq for a long time....(full article)
A glaring, galling example of the administration’s basement-level baseness is provided in a recent article by Dana Priest of the Washington Post:“Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries…The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including those for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts.” Well, where to start? The indefinite imprisonments? The fact that one need only be “suspected” of being a terrorist (as so designated by George Bush; now there’s a comforting thought) to be detained for a “lifetime” because of a lack of “enough evidence to charge in courts”? Not to be an alarmist (impossible these days, anyway), but this means you or I could be put away forever simply at Dubya’s discretion. If you consider this far-fetched, I remind you here that Education Secretary Rod Paige identified the country’s largest teacher’s union, the National Education Association, as a “terrorist organization”; it is a small step indeed for the Constitution-reviling, Patriot Act-revering team of Bush/Cheney to label -- yes, believe it or not -- even non-educators as mortal enemies of the state....(full article)
This week features two major celebrations in the United States, and the contrasts between the figures being feted couldn’t be starker. Thursday’s second inauguration for George W. Bush comes only three days after Martin Luther King Day was celebrated on Monday, January 17. The two celebrations couldn’t be more opposed, revealing the chasm between the “two Americas.” Gay and lesbian rights, and peace and justice issues were raised in a series of marches celebrating the birthday of the civil rights icon; the run-up to Bush’s second swearing in was marked by a continuing crisis in Iraq, and revelations of new covert war preparations for Iran....(full article)
Using taxpayers' dollars and government
employees to deceive the public is generally prohibited, but lately this
seems to have become standard operating procedure. The latest outrage is
the Bush Administration's conscription of federal employees at the Social
Security Administration in its effort to convince the public that Social
Security is in "crisis." This comes on the heels of a scandal involving
the Department of Education payment of $240,000 of taxpayers' money to
commentator Armstrong Williams to promote the Administration's "No Child
Left Behind" education agenda....
Historically,
Islamdom has nearly always been the principal Other in the Western
dialectic of imagination, fear and domination. Over the past few decades,
with the growing salience of the Israeli-Arab conflict, the re-entry of
Islam into the politics of the Islamicate world, and finally with the
collapse of the communist challenge, a growing body of thought in the
United States has sought to reclaim, to resurrect, this old Western
adversary....(full article)
Hollywood’s Patriots Sandra Bullock and Leonardo DiCaprio each donated about $1 million for disaster relief following the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia. The Steven Spielberg family donated $1.5 million. Jet Li donated more than $125,000; Jackie Chan added at least $64,000. Among several dozen rock bands which donated proceeds of their concerts or made outright donations, U2 and Linkin Park each donated $100,000; Ozzie and Sharon Osborn donated almost $200,000. At the Laugh Factory in both L.A. and New York, major comedians donated their time, with proceeds benefiting the victims. The Red Cross says innumerable celebrities made anonymous donations. Dozens of “A”-list celebrities, many with Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, and Obies became part of a live broadcast fund-raiser for the tsunami victims—and worked the phones to take pledges from Americans whose names are unknown outside their own communities. George Clooney, who had helped organize the creative community for the 9/11 telethon that raised more than $130 million three years earlier, again rounded up his friends and their friends for “Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope.” These are the people whom President George W. Bush believes “don’t represent the heart and soul of America.” To innumerable conservative talk-show hosts who bash celebrities, while bathing in the limelight of celebrity themselves, they’re the “Hollyweird.” Rush Limbaugh and his Dittoheads call most of the creative community “Left Coast Hollywood Kooks,” even if they live in Omaha; simply, they’re traitors who should be exiled. But it is these “kooks” who are among the first to respond to humanitarian needs....(full article)
Besides improving Washington’s image in South and Southeast Asia, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is hoping to achieve something more concrete from its aid efforts in the aftermath of the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed over 175,000 people along the coasts of the Indian Ocean. In particular, it is reviving its hopes of normalizing military ties with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, whose strategically located archipelago, critical sea lanes, and historic distrust of China have long made it an ideal partner for containing Beijing....(full article)
As the United States experiences its second
Martin Luther King Jr. Day to occur with Iraq under American occupation,
it’s an opportune moment to remember King as a border crosser who refused
to restrict his focus to just one city or one nation or to just one or two
social and political problems. King thought that difficulties in Vietnam
and the Philippines were inseparably linked to difficulties in Chicago and
Washington D.C. and Montgomery, Alabama. And in a remarkable essay titled
“A Testament of Hope,” which was published after his death, he wrote that
“the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the
problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are
interrelated.”....(full article)
A Matter of Conscience Having watched and observed life from the standpoint of soldier for ten years of my life, I felt there was no higher honor than to serve my country and defend the values that established this country. My family has a history of serving this country dating back to the American Revolution and I felt that to continue on in that tradition was the honorable thing to do. As I went through the process which led to my decision to refuse deployment to Iraq for the second time, I was torn between thoughts of abandoning the soldiers that I serve with, or following my conscience which tells me: war is the ultimate in destruction and waste of humanity....(full article)
For
the past two weeks, my husband Kevin and I have answered questions from
reporters, journalists, interested citizens from almost every state in the
union, and about eight foreign countries. After all of these interviews,
I have a few questions of my own. What is wrong with a country in which a
man and his wife have to jump through hoops, take psychological tests, and
wait three months for the results of an application that declares he has
made a
conscious choice to never go to war again? What is wrong with the
state of affairs of a country when a man and his wife must use every media
source available, and during those interviews face the questioning of his
and their character, all because that man has decided he cannot in good
conscience ever participate in war again? (full
article)
Gauging the Worth of US Troops in Neocon
Eyes
Kim Petersen ruminates on American spending priorities and the "opulent outburst of vainglory" of the War administration: Bush's upcoming inauguration party is slated to cost $40 million, while American troops in Iraq lack adequate armor, and a new Census Bureau report finds more Americans slipping into poverty. Many die so a few can party? (full article)
Lila Rajiva on Abu Ghraib, Christian
Zionism, American religious fundamentalism, the war on terror, and the
US-Israel relationship....
Two Million Black Americans Are Still Not
Free at Last
Voting is the American way,” says Miles, an
ex-felon staying at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. “Once it’s
taken, you become a third-class citizen, and you can’t participate in what
this country’s all about and what wars were fought for.” “Losing the right
to vote affects my views of those in power,” said Steve, with an
unmistakable inflection of regret in his voice. “I believe in democracy,
but not the way they’re trying to use it.” The mysterious “they” was a
recurring theme among the ex-felons I talked to, showing how so many
ex-felons who lose the right to vote in turn feel that American politics
is something conducted by other people, for other people....(full
article)
Where Lip Service is Not an Option: King
and the Christian Left
All religions, said
Simone de Beauvoir, have “embarrassing flexibility on a basis of rigid
concepts.” Practitioners and believers who swear to core principles find
themselves fighting each other from opposite extremes of the political
spectrum. At the time she said it, in the second chapter of The Second
Sex, Beauvoir had three great religions in mind: Christianity, Marxism,
and Psychoanalysis. In each case there were right wingers and left wingers
then, and in each case there are right and left wingers still. Today, as
we blow out 76 candles to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King,
Jr., I am thinking that in a nation where
79 percent of the people believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, there
is no good reason not to imagine the possibility of a revived and renewed
Christian left....(full article)
From Axis of Evil to Exit Door for Weasels
In
making the case for the war against Iraq, the Bush administration insisted
that Iraq had WMDs and intimate relationships with Bin Laden. Two years and
a billion dollars later -- the search is over and the president will stage
his inauguration party with yet another dry hole on his hands. Bush can
handle dry holes as well as any man. He already has a long history of losing
other people’s money as a wildcatter in the Texas oil patch. . . .In any case, things
have obviously turned out worse than the bleakest initial projections. We
are now witnessing the end game. Which brings us to Iran -- a former
founding member of the axis of evil -- now elevated to a partner in
designing an exit strategy with the neocon weasels who orchestrated this war
of choice....
In justifying the War in Iraq, it has been continually maintained by the United States that violent regime change in Iraq to install a democracy will not only produce a peaceful, democratic Iraq, but also provide an “inspiring example” for other such rouge nations. A clear example of this rhetoric turned to policy can be found in an executive memorandum by the Heritage Foundation’s James A. Phillips, in which he says the post-Saddam goal for the United States in Iraq is that of “building a stable, democratic, pro-American Iraqi government.” These claims are based on the democratic peace argument, which maintains that democracies do not go to war with one another. Arguments such as this, which propose security through homogeneity, though initially compelling and appearing to be inductively justified, when analyzed are categorically dubious. Moreover, if the US truly waged war on Iraq -- a substantial political and financial investment -- on the grounds that installing a democracy would be in its best interests as well as a move towards a greater peace, it did so either foolishly or to serve other interests. As I will show -- and I expect top-level officials already know -- arguments proposing security through homogeneity (STH) are fatally flawed except as a means to rhetorically justify further systemic hegemony or promote other interests....(full article)
In the bizarro world that President Bush lives in, it pays—literally—to be a miserable failure, a criminal and a corporate con man. Those are just some of the characteristics of the dastardly men and women who were tapped recently to fill the vacancies in Bush’s second-term cabinet. But one of the President’s most outrageous decisions (besides naming Alberto Gonzales, who concocted a legal case for torturing foreign prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Attorney General) has got to be choosing 66-year-old Sam Bodman to serve as Secretary of Energy. This is a guy who for a dozen years ran a Texas-based chemical company that spent years on the top five lists of the country’s worst polluters....(full article)
I wonder what President Bush’s plan to change the Social Security system with private accounts for younger workers means for businesses nationwide? Likely, the workers who patronize these firms will end up with less cash. Why add such risk to consumer income that helps to stabilize U.S. businesses and living standards? (full article)
The time has come to boycott the Democratic Party, a party which has failed us again and again, and continues to ask us to open our wallets, as recently as this week in a whining, equally pandering mass email campaign. Are we gluttons for punishment? Why do we insist on clinging to the coattails of the Democrats when they no longer espouse those beliefs that we hold closest to our hearts? (full article)
As I write this, I can hear Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter and Co. accusing the Left (er, make that “Lib’rals”) of making too much of the imbecility of Britain’s heir-apparent two steps removed. It would be easy to dismiss the sordid judgment of bonnie Prince Harry, this wastrel and good-for-nothing, if he were merely another spoiled American celebrity -- a male Paris Hilton, for example. But he’s not that. He’s a potential King of England -- land of Shakespeare and Milton, Keats and Shelley, and crazy King George III against whom we had the good sense to rebel some umpteen decades ago. The problem with letting Harry out of his golden box, free from his highly remunerated toady handlers, is that he rather baldly demonstrates the fairly precipitous decline of British “civilization”. The Brits invented the idea of a clash of civilizations long before Harvard’s Samuel Huntington. Kipling celebrated the clash in rather sophomoric poems like “Gunga Din,” and a slew of doomed First World War poets like Rupert Brooke ruefully embraced it: “If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England.”....(full article)
American Family Association blasts
children's television characters for participating in “We Are Family”
video that “promotes the normalization of homosexuality”....(full
article) January 14-15
On Friday, January 7, 2005
Sergeant Kevin Benderman, stationed with the 2-7 Infantry Battalion at
Ft. Stewart, Georgia, refused an order from the Command Sergeant Major of
his unit Samuel Coston to deploy to Iraq and requested a General
Courts-Martial. Benderman, 40 is a combat veteran, having served one tour
in Iraq in 2003 during which a Captain in his command ordered soldiers
from Benderman’s outfit to fire on children throwing rocks at unit
personnel. Having personally witnessed this and other illegal acts by
military personnel during his tour, Benderman now says that under no
circumstances will he participate further in the war in Iraq, a war
Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan has labeled “illegal”.
Benderman has applied for Conscientious Objector status. His commanders
have not yet acted on his request, as required by Army regulations....
A Marine Comes Home: The Untold Story Of
War
On Sunday, January
9, 2005, nineteen-year-old Andres Raya shot two police officers, killing
Sergeant Howard Stevenson of the Ceres Police Department, and was himself
killed in the ensuing gun battle. Raya had served seven months in Iraq
with the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines of the 1st Marine Division. Though he
served in the infamous Sunni Triangle, the military denied he had
participated in the assault on Fallujah. Andres Raya and Howard Stevenson
will not be entered on the official casualty list for the war in Iraq but
they are both casualties of the war as certainly as the Iraqi civilians
who were not targeted by American bombs but died under them just the
same....
The Moral High Ground? Here is a sure-fire nomination for the most outrageous quote of the week: “Accusations that we are torturing people tend to be mythology.” These are the words an un-named Egyptian official questioned by The Washington Post about prisoner abuse. Here are the facts of the case The Post was enquiring about. The reader can decide who was doing what to whom. An Egyptian-born Australian citizen, currently a prisoner at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, charges that the US Government forcibly transferred him to Egypt, where he was tortured for six months. He has petitioned a US Federal Court to block plans to send him back to an Egyptian prison a second time....(full article)
At his
confirmation hearing to be America’s next attorney general, President
Bush’s White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales ducked most of the
potentially contentious questions asked by his US Senate questioners. But
he pledged that he would work around the clock to protect civil liberties
and human rights. Well, here’s a place for him to begin: Since June 2003,
Ahmed Abu Ali, a 23-year-old US citizen, has been held in al-Ha’ir prison
in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was reportedly arrested by Saudi Arabian
authorities on June 11, 2003 in the city of Medina, while taking an exam
at the Islamic University there. He has no access to legal counsel or to
family members. It is not clear whether he has been charged with a crime,
nor is it clears when, or if, he will be put on trial. The US Government
says it had nothing to do with his detention, although three FBI agents
reportedly questioned him soon after his arrest. Saudi officials have
declined to give an explanation for his detention, but say they are
holding him at the request of the US State Department and would be glad to
release him if there was a request from the US....(full
article)
The Case
of the Ticking Time Bomb: Or, How Not to Argue Against Torture
Ted Rall is
rightly outraged at the Bush Administration for the culture of
The weeks and months
leading up to December 25 are characterized by a manic focus on
consumption, materialism and unrestrained hedonism. The Season of Good
Will actually sees more alcohol-fuelled violence on our streets, more
family strife, and raised levels of suicide. One in two people suffer from
“festive depression” after Christmas. . . .For many Westerners, then, the
tsunami of December 26 struck at an extraordinary time and place. A
catastrophe that left millions with nothing occurred exactly as Westerners
were over-indulging in everything. The waves that killed 150,000 brought
hell on earth to many of the places we think of as paradise. Empathy for
the victims was doubtless increased by the dramatic, televised nature of
the disaster, the involvement of large numbers of Western tourists – a
number of journalists were themselves holidaying in the area at the time –
and by the fact that these are indeed much-loved tourist destinations.
Indonesia, in particular, is also a major economic and military ally of
the West. . . . Likewise, leading
British and US politicians - in actuality war criminals still at large -
eagerly swooped on the chance to divert public attention from the ongoing,
man-made catastrophe in Iraq, and to recast themselves as humanitarians
bringing aid, fair trade and justice to the Third World....
On December 25, 2004, one day before Aceh
was devastated by an earthquake-driven tsunami, the Indonesian military
(TNI) announced that it had just killed eighteen guerrillas in the
province. Such news had long since become routine. A week earlier, the TNI
killed five. TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto stated in early December
that his men had killed 3,216 Acehnese since martial law was imposed upon
the province in May 2003. In all these reported armed clashes, very few
Indonesian soldiers died. The war was lopsided, with Acehnese, especially
civilians (posthumously labeled “rebels” by the TNI), bearing nearly all
the casualties. Aceh was already a killing field before the Indian Ocean
wreaked havoc on the land. . . . One should not imagine that the severity
of the tsunami in Aceh (the latest estimate is more than 100,000 dead)
renders this history of military rule irrelevant. The Indonesian
government is now using the military as its primary coordinator of relief
aid. Worse, the military is still waging war on the pro-independence Free
Aceh Movement (GAM). Mother nature inflicted enormous damage on Aceh but
did not fundamentally alter the pre-existing social institutions....
Rumsfeld's Bloody Paths of Glory
Defense Secretary's shameful journey to Iraq
is followed by Pentagon discussions of forming El Salvador-like death
squads....(full article) The recent avalanche of American generosity towards those whose lives have been destroyed by the horrific damage of the Tsunami offers a troubling contrast to our callousness towards those whose lives have been wrecked by the man-made horrors of war. The uncomfortable reality is that the purposeful suffering inflicted by armed conflict is more morally tolerable than suffering caused by natural disasters....(full article)
On January 6, the World Bank announced it would release $73 million in cash to Haiti’s government of Gerard Latortue, which was installed by foreign powers after elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide was forced from office. For Haiti to get the World Bank cash it had to pay $52 million in outstanding arrears. Canada helped out by giving the regime a $12.7 million grant. What’s going on? (full article)
The World Bank has formally asked the government of Bangladesh for legal immunity. It was reported that the WB became impatient to obtain a total immunity in Bangladesh. Anu Muhammad asks why? What wrong has the WB done for which it needs the cover of immunity for saving its skin? Why is the government moving fast to give full-fledged immunity to the Bank? Why does the government need to afford the Bank protection? What makes the champion of transparency and development nervous of the court and public scrutiny? Is it only to keep the reported internal irregularities under carpet or something more? (full article)
Since November, Christian fundamentalists have been flourishing their alleged popular mandate for taking America back to the days of forced prayer, heresy laws, and witch hunts. The media trumpets to High Heaven that it was good Christian folk with solid “moral values” who put the born-again Chimpster back in office. Now the fundies are aggressively pushing their retro agenda on rabidly approving Republican toadies and meek opposition Fraidy-crats. The ink wasn’t even dry on the gift checks before fundies were everywhere screeching about the Pledge, the Ten Commandments, evolution, Intelligent Design, gays, Christmas, and the horrible oppression they suffer at the hands of secular liberals and other assorted communist sympathizers (gag!). Their sick goal, of course, is nothing short of a medieval Christian America with their highly perverted version of the Jesus myth explicitly codified right into the fabric of America’s legal, political, educational, and judicial systems....(full article)
Say you're expecting to rely on a modest retirement fund. Along comes a hotshot stockbroker promising that if he can handle your money, he’ll guarantee you 15 or 40 percent less of a payout than you would have gotten in the first place. It sounds absurd -- but that’s the essence of George W. Bush’s Social Security “reform.” For all of Bush’s hype about diverting a portion of the Social Security payroll tax into individual retirement accounts, his proposal is simply a smokescreen for a cut in benefits....(full article)
Well, what’s fascism anyhow? Everybody’s hollering about it, and pointing accusatory fingers at everybody else, so what is it, exactly? Is fascism the tacit approval -- by some citizens --of local skinheads burning crosses and running hate-filled websites? Or is a fascist your neighbor down the street who uses racial epithets at all cultures other than his own and won’t let his kid play with your kid because you’re an immigrant? None of the above. Matter of fact, all of the above consist of those liberties of free speech that we, as Americans, have treasured since the inception of our country. Fascism is, “A Right-Wing Dictatorship Ruling Any Country.” Simple. Easy. And happening here....(full article)
Take the Election 2004/Ohio quiz. An easy
action assignment follows....
The only thing surprising about the purge at CBS was that they handed out the pink slips with a straight face. Other than that the episode was sadly reminiscent of Porter Goss wielding his scimitar over at the CIA. A few quick swishing motions and the erring parties were removed. Dan Rather, of course, was spared the humiliation of getting the boot down the office stairwell and, instead, was asked to commit ritual seppuku in the privacy of his own Park Ave. penthouse. The others simply got a brisk walk to the front door. The whole incident yielded the unpleasant odor of corporate despotism; four careers sacrificed to the god of political loyalty. But, then, that seems to be the way of things now. One’s future is strangely tied to one’s deference to the “Dear Leader” just as it is at state-run TV. Slip up on story about Bush’s faithful service in the National Guard and it’s a quick jaunt to the unemployment line. What a joke....(full article)
What do tsunamis, the war on Iraq, podophilia, pie-related murder, and choice pizza have to do with each other? Peter Kurth explains....(full article)
“Every
hero must learn to kill,” says the online invitation for Fable, the Xbox
video game by Microsoft. “You can save those in peril and aid those in
need. But you are also free to be as wicked, violent and dark as you
wish.” For me, this promo also describes the reality game being played
across the globe by the USA. Send the tsunami relief supplies if you want,
but you are free to drop bombs on Falluja. Like the game Fable, we are
invited to choose the kind of hero we want to be. And we are buying an
ideology that says in order to be heroes we must be ready to kill. So I am
pleased to get word via email that a group of activists in Chicago, while
training to join Christian Peacemaker Teams, kicked off their new year by
inspecting the video-game shelves at a local toy store....(full
article)
Hope is Not on the Way: The Farce of the
DNC Contest
Howard Dean formally
announced on January 11 that he was officially entering the race for
chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
which will be voted on in early February. The ex-governor of Vermont had
been unofficially campaigning for the position since the Democrats’ loss
to the Republicans in November’s presidential election.
Dean
joins a field of contenders that includes Democratic activists Simon
Rosenberg and Donnie Fowler, former Texas Representative Martin Frost,
former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, former Representative from Indiana
Tim Roemer, and former Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Leland. Dean’s
decision to enter the race so late in the game reflects his fears that if
he had peaked early as a contender, he would have deflated by nomination
day....
A system glorifies its winners. The mass media and the rest of corporate America are enthralled with professionals scaling career ladders to new heights. Meanwhile, the people hanging onto bottom rungs are scarcely blips on screens. Far from the media spotlights are countless lives beset with financial scarcity, often in tandem with chronic illness, monotony, adversity and despair. The same institutions and attitudes that lavish outsized respect on high achievers (the wealthier the better) are apt to convey ongoing disrespect for low achievers....(full article)
People saw Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit
9/11 will recall the scene of Congressional Black Caucus members
requesting a single member of the Senate to support their calls for
investigations into the stolen election in Florida that put Bush in the
White House in 2000. Last week, that scene was re-enacted over disputed
results in Ohio last November. Only this time, instead of responding with
craven silence, Democratic senators--or at least one of them, Barbara
Boxer of California -- agreed to support a challenge to Bush getting
Ohio’s electoral votes. But after a few minutes of speechmaking on the
importance of electoral reform, the Congress went ahead and dismissed the
complaints about Ohio, certifying Bush as the victor in that state, and
therefore the next president. Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, was AWOL --
having arranged for a visit to troops in Baghdad to coincide with the
certification vote. In the Senate, only Boxer voted to pursue an
investigation. In the House, 81 Democrats voted with the Republicans to
dismiss the objections -- and 80 House Democrats didn’t even bother to
show up. As Salon’s Tim Grieve described the spectacle, “There was no
sense of history being made, no sense that anything was really happening
at all.” In the end, the Democrats’ performance in 2004 was only slightly
improved over their dive in 2000....(full
article) January 11-12
As the first news reports of the devastation caused by the tsunami killer waves began to pour in, a newsreader on Aaj Tak’s Headline Today television channel asked his correspondent reporting from the scene of destruction in Tamil Nadu in south of India: “Any idea about how much | |
