COMMODIFYING 'SUSTAINABILITY'
On 7-30-08 in The Morning News, the “Novozymes” company, “Doing Business in Bentonville,” purchased a half-page ad in TMN to announce a free breakfast and lunch at the Clarion Hotel to introduce its “Sustainable Solutions—Designing Your Products for the Better.”
Experts in biofuels, sustainable detergents and textiles, food and nutrition, biological cleaning, and organic plant care will be on hand.
It’s a claim familiar since the beginning of advertising a hundred years ago: Better! The old undefined comparative: better than what or to what degree? Better .00000000000001%?
Takes your breath away to see Novozmes think they can fool anybody with that trick today. But what I enjoyed the most was the Latin. All of us who like words—and that’s everybody with a critical lobe — will be stopped by “novozymes.” That’s arresting. New Ferment. How do they define it in the ad: Rethink Tomorrow.
You can almost see the ad team brainstorming and getting all excited as they imagined us getting all excited over the words and hurrying out to buy. For as the ad also says: Novozymes just wishes to “share their expertise on sustainable technology — why and what you can do to design and manufacture your products to meet the needs and wants of consumers — and retailers alike!” And what are the needs and wants of consumers and retailers? Living in a world, living life-styles of significantly reduced CO2?! A genuinely new ferment? A true rethinking for 350 PPM? It’s better to not mention any of that. Dick 8-5-08
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Dick Bennett's second newsletter on terrorism
WAR ON TERRORISM NEWSLETTER #2
From: Omnicenter Communications (omninews@listserv.uark.edu) on behalf of Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
Sent: Mon 8/04/08 12:39 PM
Reply-to: Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
To: OMNINEWS@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU
Security scan upon download
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OMNI NEWSLETTER #2 ON THE WAR ON “TERRORISM,” August 4, 2008, FOR WE, THE PEOPLE AND A CULTURE OF PEACE, COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT (Number 1 Jan. 8, 2008)
OMNI SEEKS A WORLD FREE OF WAR AND THE THREAT OF WAR, A SOCIETY WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, A COMMUNITY WHERE EVERY PERSON’S POTENTIAL MAY BE FULFILLED, AN EARTH RESTORED. GRASSROOTS NONVIOLENCE, WORLD PEACE, HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIAL and ECONOMIC JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP PROTECTING SPECIES AND THE EARTH. These are OMNI’s ideals. Read our brochure and our newsletters, attend our Steering Committee, become an active member of one or more of our committees, participate in our dozens of activities to see how these broad goals are realized in action.
SEE IMPERIALISM AND TORTURE NEWSLETTERS.
SENATOR LINCOLN (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371.
Fayetteville office: 251-1380
Senator Mark Pryor: Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908
CONGRESSMAN Boozman: Lowell office: 479-725-0400.
DC address: 1708 Longworth House Office Bldng., Washington, DC 20515; 202-225-4301.
CONTENTS
Political Prisoners
Prison Ships
Blum’s Anti-Empire Reports
Permanent War
Rigged Trials at Gitmo
An Innocent Man in Guantanamo
Al-Qaeda Myth
Blame Anthrax on Al-Queda
“War on Terror”: 5 Years of US Terror
US War Crimes/Wars of Aggression
Repression USA: Martial Law
Al-Marri
Homegrown Terrorist
Two Books
War Crimes
80,000 POLITICAL PRISONERS FOR US WAR ON TERRORISM?
[See my Political Prisoners and Trials: A Worldwide Annotated Bibliographjy, 1900 through 1993. If you ask the average U.S. citizen if the US has or had political prisoners, the reply is likely to be no. But our leaders have imprisoned thousands of our fellow citizens for their beliefs—trade unionists, suffragettes, communists, socialists, conscientious objectors, anti-war demonstrators, civil rights protestors, and many more. Since the beginning of WWII, concern for morality and rights have often collapsed before one illegal invasion and intervention after the other against one fabricated enemy after the other. The rhetoric of morality and rights remained but the reality was war and empire. The latest enemies are the “terrorists.”]
Subject: US rendition, detention of suspected terrorists
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 12:32:13 +0200
"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have
been 'through the system' since 2001..."
from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/usa.humanrights
“US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships”
· Report says 17 boats used, · MPs seek details of UK role, · Europe attacks 42-day plan
By Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, Monday June 2 2008
The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an
attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.
Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention
without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.
Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and
related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.
The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.
It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.
[These are the opening paragraphs of a longer article.]
This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday June 02 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section. It was last updated at 00:01 on June 02 2008.
WILLIAM BLUM
Anti-Empire Report, March 3, 2008
http://killinghope.org/aer55.htm
Blum authored Rogue State and Killing Hope on the long history of illegal US aggressions/invasions. See Imperialism newsletters for more of Blum’s Reports.
PERMANENT WAR
“Tom Ridge, the former chief of the Homeland Security Department, said… that the war on terror is likely to last for decades, much like the Cold War, adding: ‘For every [Osama] bin Laden, there’s a bin Laden wannabe. And for every al-Qaida, there’s a like organization.” ADG (6-23-08).
“Rigged Trials at Gitmo” by Ross Tuttle, The Nation (March 10, 2008). This is a powerful indictment of the moral and legal outrages committed by the Bush Admin. at Guantanamo. Google: Tuttle Ross Rigged Trials and Gitmo. Call our Congressional deleg. Write a letter to editor. Raise the necessary noise until this cancer is excised and the perpetrators, beginning at the top, are removed from the government and exposed for war crimes.
“Five Years of My Life” by Peter Meroth and Uli Rauss in Amnesty International (Spring 2008), about the innocent German national Murat Kurnaz kidnapped in Pakistan , sold as a terror suspect to the U.S. military for $3000, and sent to Guantanamo, where en suffered 5 years of torture and not released until in 2006 even though US and German authorities had determined in 2002 that he was innocent. Watch for his memoir, soon to be published in the U.S. For news and action opportunities from AI USA’s Denounce Torture campaign, visit www.amnestyusa.org/torture.
THE AL-QAEDA MYTH
“The Power of Nightmares”: Excellent BBC production dissecting the Al Quaeda myth. Bo
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2081592330319789254&q=the+power+of+nightmares&total=582&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2
“FBI was told to blame Anthrax scare on Al Qaeda by White House officials,”BY JAMES GORDON M EEKS, DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 6:32 PM
WASHINGTON - In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.
After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.
"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.
On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."
But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."jmeek@nydailynews.com
“WAR ON TERROR”: FIVE YEARS of SL AUGHTER
Speech by Abel Tomlinson March 6, 2008, at UA Student Union for OMNI UA’s Drop Books Not Bombs rally.
CONSEQUENCE OF “WAR ON TERROR”: MARTIAL LAW USA
“Martial Law, Inc.: KBR: A Halliburton Subsidiary
By Andrew G. Marshall
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8258
Global Research, March 5, 2008 (from Tom M)
KBR, or Kellogg Brown & Root, was a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation until 2007, when bad publicity and indictments against KBR forced Halliburton to sell its shares in KBR.
"As the preparations of martial law are being put in place, it is of vital important to identify the specific corporations involved in this process. Administrations change, politicians go in and out of power, but the corporation is a consistent powerhouse. In this case, KBR has been a force to be reckoned with since the rise of Lyndon Johnson. Today, it has reached new heights. It was necessary to examine the recent history of this company’s activities, much the same as identifying a person’s own history and experiences to account for their present personality: so as to better understand their actions today. Given KBR’s history related to war and violence, more light should be shed on their current activities with the Department of Homeland Security, as morality is not a concept KBR seems to understand."
AL-MARRI HELD FOR SIX YEARS IN A MILITARY BRIG
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.
But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.
Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.
To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely. [I excised a large section from this point on to the last par.]
Whatever the decision, the case seems destined for the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the first military trials are set to begin soon against detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Al-Marri may get one, too. Or he may get put back into the civilian court system. For now, he waits. On the Net: Documents and information from al-Marri's defense team: http://tinyurl.com/6kp58o (from Mike T)
(From Tom M)
Are You a Homegrown Terrorist?
TWO BOOKS
War with No End by John Berger, et al., protesting the “war on terror.” Verso, 2008.
The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn. Verso, 2008. Recounts the devastation of post-Saddam Iraq, new edition through 2007.
US administrations have scattered cluster bombs throughout the world, where they continue to kill. Work to ban all use in civilian areas. Templates at www.fcnl.org
War Crimes: Goose and Gander
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 13 March 2006
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his jail cell at The Hague Saturday. Since 2001, he had been on trial for genocide in Bosnia, and war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Although many have already adjudged him guilty, we will never hear the official verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
We will also never see a trial in the ICTY for Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright or Wesley Clark for the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Nor will George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld be prosecuted by an international tribunal for their war crimes in Iraq.
NATO's invasion of Yugoslavia was a war of aggression that violated the United Nations Charter. It was not undertaken in self-defense nor did it carry the approval of the Security Council. Between 1500 and 2000 civilians were killed and many thousands injured. When I visited Belgrade a year after the NATO bombing, I saw schools, hospitals, bridges, libraries and homes reduced to rubble. The ICTY statute prohibits the targeting of civilians. And even though it also forbids the use of poisonous weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering, NATO used depleted uranium and cluster bombs, whose devastating character is widely known. NATO also targeted a petrochemical complex, releasing carcinogens into the air that reached 10,600 times the acceptable safety level.
The American Association of Jurists and a group of Canadian lawyers and law professors filed a war crimes complaint against NATO leaders in the ICTY. Yet that tribunal conducted only a perfunctory investigation of the serious charges. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized the ICTY for failing to thoroughly investigate.
By denouncing the International Criminal Court, Team Bush has ensured that US leaders will never be held to account for war crimes. Although virtually every Western democracy has ratified the statute under which the Court operates, the United States has thumbed its nose at this monumental international justice system.
Bush has reason to fear prosecution. He has used cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and napalm. And the torture of prisoners in US custody also constitutes a war crime. His war on Iraq is a war of aggression.
After the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing ... to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunal, labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times."
For the first time, at Nuremberg, individuals were held criminally accountable for war crimes and waging a war of aggression. Japanese leaders were also tried for atrocities committed during World War II, in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
Yet US leaders who were responsible for some of the most heinous war crimes ever committed - the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombings of Dresden, Tokyo and 66 other Japanese cities - were never brought to justice.
Only the vanquished Germans and Japanese were put on trial. Justice Radhabinod Pal of India, dissenting at the Tokyo Tribunal, called this "victor's justice."
Indeed, Robert McNamara, who participated in the bombing of Japan during World War II, admitted in the film Fog of War that he and General Curtis LeMay would have been tried for war crimes if the US had lost the war. He said, "LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He ... and I'd say I ... were behaving as war criminals."
It is no accident that the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein is currently on trial only has jurisdiction over Iraqi citizens for acts committed prior to May 1, 2003, the day the US-UK occupation of Iraq began. The United States opposed sending Hussein to an international tribunal, and manipulated the Iraqi tribunal to prevent any US leaders from being tried for their war crimes in Iraq.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. But the leaders of the world's most powerful country continue to enjoy "victor's justice."
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.
SENATOR LINCOLN (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371.
Fayetteville office: 251-1380
Senator Mark Pryor: Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908
CONGRESSMAN Boozman: Lowell office: 479-725-0400.
DC address: 1708 Longworth House Office Bldng., Washington, DC 20515; 202-225-4301.
END OF NEWSLETTER #2 ON “War” on “Terror”
Dick Bennett
jbennet@uark.edu
From: Omnicenter Communications (omninews@listserv.uark.edu) on behalf of Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
Sent: Mon 8/04/08 12:39 PM
Reply-to: Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
To: OMNINEWS@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU
Security scan upon download
att11eda.jpg (4.6 KB), att11eeb.gif (1.2 KB), att11efb.gif (0.9 KB)
OMNI NEWSLETTER #2 ON THE WAR ON “TERRORISM,” August 4, 2008, FOR WE, THE PEOPLE AND A CULTURE OF PEACE, COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT (Number 1 Jan. 8, 2008)
OMNI SEEKS A WORLD FREE OF WAR AND THE THREAT OF WAR, A SOCIETY WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, A COMMUNITY WHERE EVERY PERSON’S POTENTIAL MAY BE FULFILLED, AN EARTH RESTORED. GRASSROOTS NONVIOLENCE, WORLD PEACE, HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIAL and ECONOMIC JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP PROTECTING SPECIES AND THE EARTH. These are OMNI’s ideals. Read our brochure and our newsletters, attend our Steering Committee, become an active member of one or more of our committees, participate in our dozens of activities to see how these broad goals are realized in action.
SEE IMPERIALISM AND TORTURE NEWSLETTERS.
SENATOR LINCOLN (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371.
Fayetteville office: 251-1380
Senator Mark Pryor: Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908
CONGRESSMAN Boozman: Lowell office: 479-725-0400.
DC address: 1708 Longworth House Office Bldng., Washington, DC 20515; 202-225-4301.
CONTENTS
Political Prisoners
Prison Ships
Blum’s Anti-Empire Reports
Permanent War
Rigged Trials at Gitmo
An Innocent Man in Guantanamo
Al-Qaeda Myth
Blame Anthrax on Al-Queda
“War on Terror”: 5 Years of US Terror
US War Crimes/Wars of Aggression
Repression USA: Martial Law
Al-Marri
Homegrown Terrorist
Two Books
War Crimes
80,000 POLITICAL PRISONERS FOR US WAR ON TERRORISM?
[See my Political Prisoners and Trials: A Worldwide Annotated Bibliographjy, 1900 through 1993. If you ask the average U.S. citizen if the US has or had political prisoners, the reply is likely to be no. But our leaders have imprisoned thousands of our fellow citizens for their beliefs—trade unionists, suffragettes, communists, socialists, conscientious objectors, anti-war demonstrators, civil rights protestors, and many more. Since the beginning of WWII, concern for morality and rights have often collapsed before one illegal invasion and intervention after the other against one fabricated enemy after the other. The rhetoric of morality and rights remained but the reality was war and empire. The latest enemies are the “terrorists.”]
Subject: US rendition, detention of suspected terrorists
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 12:32:13 +0200
"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have
been 'through the system' since 2001..."
from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/usa.humanrights
“US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships”
· Report says 17 boats used, · MPs seek details of UK role, · Europe attacks 42-day plan
By Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, Monday June 2 2008
The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an
attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.
Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention
without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.
Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and
related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.
The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.
It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.
[These are the opening paragraphs of a longer article.]
This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday June 02 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section. It was last updated at 00:01 on June 02 2008.
WILLIAM BLUM
Anti-Empire Report, March 3, 2008
http://killinghope.org/aer55.htm
Blum authored Rogue State and Killing Hope on the long history of illegal US aggressions/invasions. See Imperialism newsletters for more of Blum’s Reports.
PERMANENT WAR
“Tom Ridge, the former chief of the Homeland Security Department, said… that the war on terror is likely to last for decades, much like the Cold War, adding: ‘For every [Osama] bin Laden, there’s a bin Laden wannabe. And for every al-Qaida, there’s a like organization.” ADG (6-23-08).
“Rigged Trials at Gitmo” by Ross Tuttle, The Nation (March 10, 2008). This is a powerful indictment of the moral and legal outrages committed by the Bush Admin. at Guantanamo. Google: Tuttle Ross Rigged Trials and Gitmo. Call our Congressional deleg. Write a letter to editor. Raise the necessary noise until this cancer is excised and the perpetrators, beginning at the top, are removed from the government and exposed for war crimes.
“Five Years of My Life” by Peter Meroth and Uli Rauss in Amnesty International (Spring 2008), about the innocent German national Murat Kurnaz kidnapped in Pakistan , sold as a terror suspect to the U.S. military for $3000, and sent to Guantanamo, where en suffered 5 years of torture and not released until in 2006 even though US and German authorities had determined in 2002 that he was innocent. Watch for his memoir, soon to be published in the U.S. For news and action opportunities from AI USA’s Denounce Torture campaign, visit www.amnestyusa.org/torture.
THE AL-QAEDA MYTH
“The Power of Nightmares”: Excellent BBC production dissecting the Al Quaeda myth. Bo
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2081592330319789254&q=the+power+of+nightmares&total=582&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2
“FBI was told to blame Anthrax scare on Al Qaeda by White House officials,”BY JAMES GORDON M EEKS, DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 6:32 PM
WASHINGTON - In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.
After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.
"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.
On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."
But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."jmeek@nydailynews.com
“WAR ON TERROR”: FIVE YEARS of SL AUGHTER
Speech by Abel Tomlinson March 6, 2008, at UA Student Union for OMNI UA’s Drop Books Not Bombs rally.
CONSEQUENCE OF “WAR ON TERROR”: MARTIAL LAW USA
“Martial Law, Inc.: KBR: A Halliburton Subsidiary
By Andrew G. Marshall
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8258
Global Research, March 5, 2008 (from Tom M)
KBR, or Kellogg Brown & Root, was a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation until 2007, when bad publicity and indictments against KBR forced Halliburton to sell its shares in KBR.
"As the preparations of martial law are being put in place, it is of vital important to identify the specific corporations involved in this process. Administrations change, politicians go in and out of power, but the corporation is a consistent powerhouse. In this case, KBR has been a force to be reckoned with since the rise of Lyndon Johnson. Today, it has reached new heights. It was necessary to examine the recent history of this company’s activities, much the same as identifying a person’s own history and experiences to account for their present personality: so as to better understand their actions today. Given KBR’s history related to war and violence, more light should be shed on their current activities with the Department of Homeland Security, as morality is not a concept KBR seems to understand."
AL-MARRI HELD FOR SIX YEARS IN A MILITARY BRIG
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.
But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.
Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.
To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely. [I excised a large section from this point on to the last par.]
Whatever the decision, the case seems destined for the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the first military trials are set to begin soon against detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Al-Marri may get one, too. Or he may get put back into the civilian court system. For now, he waits. On the Net: Documents and information from al-Marri's defense team: http://tinyurl.com/6kp58o (from Mike T)
(From Tom M)
Are You a Homegrown Terrorist?
TWO BOOKS
War with No End by John Berger, et al., protesting the “war on terror.” Verso, 2008.
The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn. Verso, 2008. Recounts the devastation of post-Saddam Iraq, new edition through 2007.
US administrations have scattered cluster bombs throughout the world, where they continue to kill. Work to ban all use in civilian areas. Templates at www.fcnl.org
War Crimes: Goose and Gander
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 13 March 2006
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his jail cell at The Hague Saturday. Since 2001, he had been on trial for genocide in Bosnia, and war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Although many have already adjudged him guilty, we will never hear the official verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
We will also never see a trial in the ICTY for Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright or Wesley Clark for the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Nor will George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld be prosecuted by an international tribunal for their war crimes in Iraq.
NATO's invasion of Yugoslavia was a war of aggression that violated the United Nations Charter. It was not undertaken in self-defense nor did it carry the approval of the Security Council. Between 1500 and 2000 civilians were killed and many thousands injured. When I visited Belgrade a year after the NATO bombing, I saw schools, hospitals, bridges, libraries and homes reduced to rubble. The ICTY statute prohibits the targeting of civilians. And even though it also forbids the use of poisonous weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering, NATO used depleted uranium and cluster bombs, whose devastating character is widely known. NATO also targeted a petrochemical complex, releasing carcinogens into the air that reached 10,600 times the acceptable safety level.
The American Association of Jurists and a group of Canadian lawyers and law professors filed a war crimes complaint against NATO leaders in the ICTY. Yet that tribunal conducted only a perfunctory investigation of the serious charges. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized the ICTY for failing to thoroughly investigate.
By denouncing the International Criminal Court, Team Bush has ensured that US leaders will never be held to account for war crimes. Although virtually every Western democracy has ratified the statute under which the Court operates, the United States has thumbed its nose at this monumental international justice system.
Bush has reason to fear prosecution. He has used cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and napalm. And the torture of prisoners in US custody also constitutes a war crime. His war on Iraq is a war of aggression.
After the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing ... to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunal, labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times."
For the first time, at Nuremberg, individuals were held criminally accountable for war crimes and waging a war of aggression. Japanese leaders were also tried for atrocities committed during World War II, in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
Yet US leaders who were responsible for some of the most heinous war crimes ever committed - the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombings of Dresden, Tokyo and 66 other Japanese cities - were never brought to justice.
Only the vanquished Germans and Japanese were put on trial. Justice Radhabinod Pal of India, dissenting at the Tokyo Tribunal, called this "victor's justice."
Indeed, Robert McNamara, who participated in the bombing of Japan during World War II, admitted in the film Fog of War that he and General Curtis LeMay would have been tried for war crimes if the US had lost the war. He said, "LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He ... and I'd say I ... were behaving as war criminals."
It is no accident that the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein is currently on trial only has jurisdiction over Iraqi citizens for acts committed prior to May 1, 2003, the day the US-UK occupation of Iraq began. The United States opposed sending Hussein to an international tribunal, and manipulated the Iraqi tribunal to prevent any US leaders from being tried for their war crimes in Iraq.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. But the leaders of the world's most powerful country continue to enjoy "victor's justice."
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.
SENATOR LINCOLN (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371.
Fayetteville office: 251-1380
Senator Mark Pryor: Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908
CONGRESSMAN Boozman: Lowell office: 479-725-0400.
DC address: 1708 Longworth House Office Bldng., Washington, DC 20515; 202-225-4301.
END OF NEWSLETTER #2 ON “War” on “Terror”
Dick Bennett
jbennet@uark.edu
Friday, August 1, 2008
CNN scoffs at White House critics
CNN Scoffs at White House Critics
Anchor with Bush ties dismisses abuse-of-power hearings as 'stagecraft'
7/31/08
CNN's Election Center program devoted a July 25 report to mocking a
hearing of the House Judiciary Committee investigating White House abuses
of power.
"Believe it or not, there was a congressional hearing today about
impeaching the president," scoffed host Campbell Brown, who added: "It was
all stagecraft, though."
Brown went on to introduce the report by CNN correspondent Erica Hill by
saying, "Tell us about this piece of Kabuki theater, Erica."
Hill explained: "From the beginning it was pretty clear this was all just
stagecraft, for what one Republican lawmaker deemed impeachment light."
Hill underscored this notion by claiming: "The Democratic leadership made
it clear impeachment is not on the table at this hearing today for two
reasons. Not only is there not enough time left in President Bush's term,
but also they know any real impeachment hearings at this point could cause
a major backlash."
It's difficult to know exactly who Hill is referring to; at the hearings
she was apparently covering, there was scarce mention of a potential
"backlash" from voters, nor was there much time spent determining precisely
when it might be too late to bring impeachment hearings.
More typical were comments from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), responding to
the sentiment that impeachment would be "overzealous partisanship":
But I ask, would impeachment be a vehicle to restore life and vitality to
the delicate system of checks and balances, which is the hallmark of our
Constitution and which this administration has shattered--aided and abetted
by the do-nothing, Republican-controlled, rubber-stamp Congress which
failed to exercise its constitutional responsibility to oversee the
operations of the executive branch of our government?
Johnson went on enumerate the criticisms of the White House:
Warrantless wiretapping of Americans; torturing and kidnapping and
detaining numerous prisoners, foreign enemy combatants, prisoners, whatever
they could be classified as; the fact that we have become a severely
surveilled population now with the abuses of the Patriot Act--all done
under the cloak of government secrecy. Political spying; the attacks on
academic freedom; the politicization of the Justice Department; selective
prosecutions--so many areas fertile for inquiring by this Congress.
Host Campbell Brown closed the report by saying: "All right. So this is
really just stagecraft, not to mention a real waste of taxpayer money and
Congress' time." Needless to say, the suggestion that looking into the
weighty matters addressed by the hearing is a "waste of taxpayer money" is
a remarkable statement from a supposedly unbiased anchor.
It is worth noting that Brown is married to Dan Senor, who was a deputy
press secretary for George W. Bush before becoming the chief spokesperson
for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. (He's currently a Fox News
analyst.) Given that much of the discussion of executive malfeasance
concerns the Iraq War, it is inappropriate for Brown to even be covering an
investigation of abuses of power that involve her husband's former
associates--let alone for her to dismiss such inquiries as a waste of time
and money. If CNN had been around in 1974, would it have allowed the spouse
of a former Nixon spokesperson to report on the Watergate hearings?
The report closed with Hill assuring voters that George W. Bush was not
threatened by any of this: "As for the president today, clearly, not too
worried about this hearing. He was in Peoria, Illinois. As you can see
here, kissing babies, smiling, taking pictures." The two CNN reporters then
mused about the difficulties in getting babies to wear sunglasses--all of
this mere moments after they derided Congress for wasting time with a
investigation of White House abuses of power.
ACTION:
Ask CNN why an investigation of abuses of power by elected officials was
treated as fodder for humor and not serious reporting. And ask Campbell
Brown why she didn't recuse herself from commenting on an inquiry into
wrongdoing by her husband's political associates.
CONTACT:
CNN Election Center
Webform: http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?125
Anchor Campbell Brown
Email: Campbell@cnn.com
CNN President Jonathan Klein
212 275 8263
envelopeEmail to a friend
Watch clip from CNN's July 25 Election Center program at:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bzx6ttmbTbs
TAKE ACTION!
* Ask CNN why an investigation of abuses of power by elected officials was
treated as fodder for humor and not serious reporting.
* And ask Election Center anchor Campbell Brown why she didn't recuse
herself from commenting on an inquiry into wrongdoing by her husband's
political associates.
Anchor with Bush ties dismisses abuse-of-power hearings as 'stagecraft'
7/31/08
CNN's Election Center program devoted a July 25 report to mocking a
hearing of the House Judiciary Committee investigating White House abuses
of power.
"Believe it or not, there was a congressional hearing today about
impeaching the president," scoffed host Campbell Brown, who added: "It was
all stagecraft, though."
Brown went on to introduce the report by CNN correspondent Erica Hill by
saying, "Tell us about this piece of Kabuki theater, Erica."
Hill explained: "From the beginning it was pretty clear this was all just
stagecraft, for what one Republican lawmaker deemed impeachment light."
Hill underscored this notion by claiming: "The Democratic leadership made
it clear impeachment is not on the table at this hearing today for two
reasons. Not only is there not enough time left in President Bush's term,
but also they know any real impeachment hearings at this point could cause
a major backlash."
It's difficult to know exactly who Hill is referring to; at the hearings
she was apparently covering, there was scarce mention of a potential
"backlash" from voters, nor was there much time spent determining precisely
when it might be too late to bring impeachment hearings.
More typical were comments from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), responding to
the sentiment that impeachment would be "overzealous partisanship":
But I ask, would impeachment be a vehicle to restore life and vitality to
the delicate system of checks and balances, which is the hallmark of our
Constitution and which this administration has shattered--aided and abetted
by the do-nothing, Republican-controlled, rubber-stamp Congress which
failed to exercise its constitutional responsibility to oversee the
operations of the executive branch of our government?
Johnson went on enumerate the criticisms of the White House:
Warrantless wiretapping of Americans; torturing and kidnapping and
detaining numerous prisoners, foreign enemy combatants, prisoners, whatever
they could be classified as; the fact that we have become a severely
surveilled population now with the abuses of the Patriot Act--all done
under the cloak of government secrecy. Political spying; the attacks on
academic freedom; the politicization of the Justice Department; selective
prosecutions--so many areas fertile for inquiring by this Congress.
Host Campbell Brown closed the report by saying: "All right. So this is
really just stagecraft, not to mention a real waste of taxpayer money and
Congress' time." Needless to say, the suggestion that looking into the
weighty matters addressed by the hearing is a "waste of taxpayer money" is
a remarkable statement from a supposedly unbiased anchor.
It is worth noting that Brown is married to Dan Senor, who was a deputy
press secretary for George W. Bush before becoming the chief spokesperson
for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. (He's currently a Fox News
analyst.) Given that much of the discussion of executive malfeasance
concerns the Iraq War, it is inappropriate for Brown to even be covering an
investigation of abuses of power that involve her husband's former
associates--let alone for her to dismiss such inquiries as a waste of time
and money. If CNN had been around in 1974, would it have allowed the spouse
of a former Nixon spokesperson to report on the Watergate hearings?
The report closed with Hill assuring voters that George W. Bush was not
threatened by any of this: "As for the president today, clearly, not too
worried about this hearing. He was in Peoria, Illinois. As you can see
here, kissing babies, smiling, taking pictures." The two CNN reporters then
mused about the difficulties in getting babies to wear sunglasses--all of
this mere moments after they derided Congress for wasting time with a
investigation of White House abuses of power.
ACTION:
Ask CNN why an investigation of abuses of power by elected officials was
treated as fodder for humor and not serious reporting. And ask Campbell
Brown why she didn't recuse herself from commenting on an inquiry into
wrongdoing by her husband's political associates.
CONTACT:
CNN Election Center
Webform: http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?125
Anchor Campbell Brown
Email: Campbell@cnn.com
CNN President Jonathan Klein
212 275 8263
envelopeEmail to a friend
Watch clip from CNN's July 25 Election Center program at:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bzx6ttmbTbs
TAKE ACTION!
* Ask CNN why an investigation of abuses of power by elected officials was
treated as fodder for humor and not serious reporting.
* And ask Election Center anchor Campbell Brown why she didn't recuse
herself from commenting on an inquiry into wrongdoing by her husband's
political associates.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Deadline tonight to sign online petition for impeachment
Kucinich Petition Deadline Midnight Tonight 7/30/08
URGENT: need your help -
Impeachment Petition Deadline Midnight Wednesday
Dear Friends,
Because of your vigilance and support for democracy, last Friday was a day of singular importance in Washington. The House Judiciary Committee met to discuss the Bush Administration's abuse of executive power and for the first time the case for Impeachment was discussed in front of a Congressional committee, in depth, at length and with authority.
Twenty members of the Judiciary Committee attended the six hour hearing, during which twelve witnesses, including myself and four members of Congress testified. In this hearing I called for the Impeachment of the President for misrepresenting a case for war.
This week I will present members of Congress with Impeachment petitions submitted by those of you who have signed the on-line impeachment form.
I need your help. In the next few days we must redouble our efforts to get more signatures on the online petition at kucinich.us. I'm asking each of you to please contact at least ten of your friends to go to www.Kucinich.us now and sign the Impeachment petition that will be delivered by me. Wednesday night is the deadline.
Please sign petition online here
Please send out an email to all your friends and family, post this link, http://kucinich.us to your blogs and make this effort count as this is the only petition that I will deliver.
Thank you so very much.
Dennis
PO Box 110475 | Cleveland | OH | 44111 | 216-252-9000
URGENT: need your help -
Impeachment Petition Deadline Midnight Wednesday
Dear Friends,
Because of your vigilance and support for democracy, last Friday was a day of singular importance in Washington. The House Judiciary Committee met to discuss the Bush Administration's abuse of executive power and for the first time the case for Impeachment was discussed in front of a Congressional committee, in depth, at length and with authority.
Twenty members of the Judiciary Committee attended the six hour hearing, during which twelve witnesses, including myself and four members of Congress testified. In this hearing I called for the Impeachment of the President for misrepresenting a case for war.
This week I will present members of Congress with Impeachment petitions submitted by those of you who have signed the on-line impeachment form.
I need your help. In the next few days we must redouble our efforts to get more signatures on the online petition at kucinich.us. I'm asking each of you to please contact at least ten of your friends to go to www.Kucinich.us now and sign the Impeachment petition that will be delivered by me. Wednesday night is the deadline.
Please sign petition online here
Please send out an email to all your friends and family, post this link, http://kucinich.us to your blogs and make this effort count as this is the only petition that I will deliver.
Thank you so very much.
Dennis
PO Box 110475 | Cleveland | OH | 44111 | 216-252-9000
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Environmentalists not allowed to participate in coal conference in Hope, Arkansas
Comment from Stephens media blog on unfairness of coal conference in Hope
Different panel: Same dirty coal
Relying on information in the Hope newspaper yesterday, I mentioned that PSC Chairman Colette Honorable would be moderating a panel at a coming conference in Hope on "Making Clean Coal Technology a Reality." I commented that that seemed sort of a political statement by a member of a state panel that is hearing objections to coal-fired power generation by "clean coal" -- a public relations term -- or any other coal.
She asks a correction. She says, despite what a Hope newspaper account erroneously said, she's actually moderating a panel "What to do about Greenhouse Gases."
Noted. Answer to her panel's question: Don't burn coal in power plants.
Honorable is honorable, I hasten to add. I've known her several years and think a great deal of her. But I'll repeat what I told her. I'm not sure it's a good idea for PSC commissioners to lend their high status and neutral position to elevate a public relations stunt put on by the electric power industry and the coal lobby, as this one is. If you need any more information about how balanced this session will be, see Stephens Media today for its story about how the Sierra Club was barred from participation.
Torture the timber, strip the land, dig the coal. Just don't expect me to call it perfume.
I also meant to say initially that this "conference" is a byproduct of SWEPCO's recent purchase of the UA community college branch at Hope for $1 million. No reason the Hope branch shouldn't have a corporate owner, like the UA's Walton-Tyson branch.
PS -- I'm told Ken Smith of Audubon Arkansas will be on hand to be available to anyone who might appreciate a fuller picture of coal's impact on the environment. I hope the power company lobby, which is putting on this dog-and-pony show, doesn't arrest him or move him, a la the Bush jackboots, to a Free Speech Zone over around Lake Greeson.
posted by aubunique at 10:03 pm 0 comments
Environmentalists not allowed to participate in coal conference in Hope, Arkansas
Environmentalists excluded from conference on coal power
Thursday, Jul 17, 2008
By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK - Environmentalists have been barred from participating in an industry-sponsored conference that will examine Arkansas' role in the development and use of clean coal technologies, a spokesman for the Sierra Club said Wednesday.
Former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and U.S. Rep Mike Ross, D-Prescott, are the scheduled keynote speakers for the Arkansas Clean Coal Technology Conference, set for today and Friday at the University of Arkansas Community College in Hope.
A news release from one of the conference's sponsors, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, says the conference will focus on "Arkansas' role in the development and deployment of advanced clean coal technologies as well as the associated environmental, economic and public policy concerns."
Glen Hooks, regional representative of the Sierra Club, said the Sierra Club and Audubon Arkansas asked to participate in the conference and provide alternative viewpoints but were told they could not.
"They said that's not what this is about, they've already got the panel set up," Hooks said. "So we were invited to attend but not necessarily to participate in the official part of the program."
There is "not really any environmental representative on the panels at all," Hooks said.
Ken Smith, executive director of Audubon Arkansas, did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
Leah Arnold, spokeswoman for American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said she was not aware that the Sierra Club or Audubon Arkansas had asked to participate, but she said the conference is not a forum on whether coal power should be abandoned.
"We don't think that coal should be taken out. We believe that coal is going to continue - it's going to have to continue - to be a part of Arkansas' energy mix. You can't just do away with 47 percent of (the state's) electricity like that," she said.
The conference will be held about 12 miles from the site of a planned $1.52 billion, 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant Southwestern Electric Power Co. hopes to build near Fulton. The state Public Service Commission has approved SWEPCO's plans, but the state Department of Environmental Quality is still considering whether to grant an air permit for the proposed plant.
Arnold said the conference will include discussion of technology that would allow carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants to be stored permanently underground. The technology is 10 to 15 years away from being a reality, she said.
"Clean coal" technology would not be available when the SWEPCO plant near Fulton goes into operation, but the technology could be added to it and all other power plants when it does become available, Arnold said.
Hooks said America cannot afford to produce additional millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year while waiting for clean coal technology to be developed.
"By all accounts, we're at or near the tipping point when it comes to global warming," he said.
The conference also is sponsored by the Center for Legislative Energy and Environmental Research and the Southern States Energy Board.
www.americaspower.org
www.sierraclub.org
Find this article at:
http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2008/07/17/News/347061.html
\
posted by aubunique at 9:21 pm 0 comments
Different panel: Same dirty coal
Relying on information in the Hope newspaper yesterday, I mentioned that PSC Chairman Colette Honorable would be moderating a panel at a coming conference in Hope on "Making Clean Coal Technology a Reality." I commented that that seemed sort of a political statement by a member of a state panel that is hearing objections to coal-fired power generation by "clean coal" -- a public relations term -- or any other coal.
She asks a correction. She says, despite what a Hope newspaper account erroneously said, she's actually moderating a panel "What to do about Greenhouse Gases."
Noted. Answer to her panel's question: Don't burn coal in power plants.
Honorable is honorable, I hasten to add. I've known her several years and think a great deal of her. But I'll repeat what I told her. I'm not sure it's a good idea for PSC commissioners to lend their high status and neutral position to elevate a public relations stunt put on by the electric power industry and the coal lobby, as this one is. If you need any more information about how balanced this session will be, see Stephens Media today for its story about how the Sierra Club was barred from participation.
Torture the timber, strip the land, dig the coal. Just don't expect me to call it perfume.
I also meant to say initially that this "conference" is a byproduct of SWEPCO's recent purchase of the UA community college branch at Hope for $1 million. No reason the Hope branch shouldn't have a corporate owner, like the UA's Walton-Tyson branch.
PS -- I'm told Ken Smith of Audubon Arkansas will be on hand to be available to anyone who might appreciate a fuller picture of coal's impact on the environment. I hope the power company lobby, which is putting on this dog-and-pony show, doesn't arrest him or move him, a la the Bush jackboots, to a Free Speech Zone over around Lake Greeson.
posted by aubunique at 10:03 pm 0 comments
Environmentalists not allowed to participate in coal conference in Hope, Arkansas
Environmentalists excluded from conference on coal power
Thursday, Jul 17, 2008
By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK - Environmentalists have been barred from participating in an industry-sponsored conference that will examine Arkansas' role in the development and use of clean coal technologies, a spokesman for the Sierra Club said Wednesday.
Former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and U.S. Rep Mike Ross, D-Prescott, are the scheduled keynote speakers for the Arkansas Clean Coal Technology Conference, set for today and Friday at the University of Arkansas Community College in Hope.
A news release from one of the conference's sponsors, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, says the conference will focus on "Arkansas' role in the development and deployment of advanced clean coal technologies as well as the associated environmental, economic and public policy concerns."
Glen Hooks, regional representative of the Sierra Club, said the Sierra Club and Audubon Arkansas asked to participate in the conference and provide alternative viewpoints but were told they could not.
"They said that's not what this is about, they've already got the panel set up," Hooks said. "So we were invited to attend but not necessarily to participate in the official part of the program."
There is "not really any environmental representative on the panels at all," Hooks said.
Ken Smith, executive director of Audubon Arkansas, did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
Leah Arnold, spokeswoman for American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said she was not aware that the Sierra Club or Audubon Arkansas had asked to participate, but she said the conference is not a forum on whether coal power should be abandoned.
"We don't think that coal should be taken out. We believe that coal is going to continue - it's going to have to continue - to be a part of Arkansas' energy mix. You can't just do away with 47 percent of (the state's) electricity like that," she said.
The conference will be held about 12 miles from the site of a planned $1.52 billion, 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant Southwestern Electric Power Co. hopes to build near Fulton. The state Public Service Commission has approved SWEPCO's plans, but the state Department of Environmental Quality is still considering whether to grant an air permit for the proposed plant.
Arnold said the conference will include discussion of technology that would allow carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants to be stored permanently underground. The technology is 10 to 15 years away from being a reality, she said.
"Clean coal" technology would not be available when the SWEPCO plant near Fulton goes into operation, but the technology could be added to it and all other power plants when it does become available, Arnold said.
Hooks said America cannot afford to produce additional millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year while waiting for clean coal technology to be developed.
"By all accounts, we're at or near the tipping point when it comes to global warming," he said.
The conference also is sponsored by the Center for Legislative Energy and Environmental Research and the Southern States Energy Board.
www.americaspower.org
www.sierraclub.org
Find this article at:
http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2008/07/17/News/347061.html
\
posted by aubunique at 9:21 pm 0 comments
Sunday, July 27, 2008
OMNi information on coming presidential election
OMNI OBAMA NEWSLETTERFrom: Omnicenter Communications (omninews@listserv.uark.edu) on behalf of Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
Sent: Sun 7/27/08 3:32 PM
Reply-to: Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
To: OMNINEWS@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU
OMNI OBAMA WATCH 1
Compiled by Dick Bennett, July 22, 2008.
For a Culture of Peace and Justice by We, the People.
We should stand by our principles, search for the truth about McCain and Obama, do our best to make them wiser candidates, vote, and then continue to do our best to make the winner respect the Constitution, avoid illegal wars, restore the economy.
[For rest of Obama Newsletter go to www.omnicenter.org and click on periodicals]
Websites for researching Obama
http://opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cid=N00009638&cycle=2008
Type Obama into the search field at http://www.factcheck.org
http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/400629_barack_obama
Topic pages and databases about Obama
General
Chicago Tribune - Candidate coverage
On the Issues - Issue positions
Project Vote Smart - Candidate information, including issue positions
Disability issues
Obama answers questions on disability issues
Environment
Obama & environmental issues: Comprehensive review from the League of Conservation Voters.
Foreign affairs
"Renewing American Leadership" - detailed article article by Barack Obama in Foreign Affairs
Barack Obama's positions on top foreign policy issues - extensive material documented by the Council on Foreign Relations
Health care
They've Got You Covered? - Obama and Clinton ads both claim all Americans would be covered by their health plans. Clinton's would come close. Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania.
2008 Presidential Candidate Health Plan Report Card issued by the National Physicians Alliance
Envisioning the Future: The 2008 Presidential Candidates' Health Reform Proposals from The Commonwealth Fund
Israel and the Middle East conflict
Obama on Zionism and Hamas - extensive interview with Jeffrey Goldberg
Speech by Senator Barack Obama
McCain, Obama positions on Mideast issues Associated Press June 6, 2008
DEFEATING MCCAIN, BEING REALISTIC ABOUT OBAMA
Obama and the Progressive Base
Thursday 10 July 2008 by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
"The Audacity of Hope" is embraced during an Obama campaign rally on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries. Supporters have long projected their hopes onto Barack Obama. (Photo: Reuters)
A reasonably evenhanded biography of Barack Obama, published last year, describes him as "an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see." The biographer, David Mendell, reports, "the higher he soared, the more this politician spoke in well-worn platitudes and the more he offered warm, feel-good sentiments lacking a precise framework."
Now, less than four months before Election Day, with growing disquiet among significant portions of Obama's progressive base, the current negative reactions can't be dismissed as potshots from the political margins. Even The New York Times, in a July 4 editorial headlined "New and Not Improved," has expressed alarm: "We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama's shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games."
But on July 8, Obama made a valid point - even if it wasn't exactly the point he was trying to make - when he disputed "this whole notion that I am shifting to the center" and argued: "The people who say this apparently haven't been listening to me." Overall, his career as a politician has embraced conciliation and compromise rather than pushing against centrist corporate agendas.
These days, an appreciable number of Obama supporters are starting to use words like "disillusionment." But that's a consequence of projecting their political outlooks onto the candidate in the first place.
The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place.
The more that spotlights move from Obama's uplifting eloquence to his specific policy positions, complete with loopholes and wiggle room, it's predictable that some of his progressive base will become displeased - whether on issues related to the death penalty, fair trade, government funding of religious-based projects, Iraq, Iran, evenhandedness between Israel and Palestinians, gun control or (perhaps most flagrantly) warrantless surveillance.
On Wednesday, when Obama cast a vote in the Senate to undermine the Fourth Amendment, he fulfilled his frequent prediction during the primary season that "I will make mistakes." This was a very big one. As an attorney who's well acquainted with constitutional law, he participated in damaging one of the most precious provisions in the precious Bill of Rights.
Barack Obama is an extremely smart guy. And I can't remember a major contender for president less inclined to insult the intelligence of the public. Let's return the favor by directly challenging him when appropriate. We'd do him - and the Obama campaign, ourselves and the country as a whole - no favors by opting for silence instead.
We can help the Obama for President effort when we hold him to his good positions - and move to buck him up when he wavers.
While speaking of the Iraq war, Obama made one of the most insightful statements of the primary campaign: "I don't want to just end the war; I want to end the mindset that got us into war." He needs to be held to that wisdom. Obama should feel enormous counterpressure from the grassroots against the forces in the media and foreign-policy establishment that are pushing him to go wobbly on ending the Iraq war.
The vortex of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism" is enormously powerful - and, in the context of presidential politics, routinely enticing. To the extent that Obama gears up anti-Iran rhetoric that he seemed to have mercifully abandoned months ago, for instance, he may reassure some pundits and other influential power brokers in Washington, but at the same time he's liable to weaken some of the allegiance to his candidacy among progressive constituencies.
As an elected Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention, I've been hearing from people who are upset by the recent direction of the campaign. Some were always a bit skeptical of Obama, but are becoming much more so. Others have been strong supporters from the outset. In the latter category, an attorney sent an email to me a few days ago: "I must confess that my enthusiasm for Senator Obama has waned in recent weeks with a number of his policy announcements (on FISA, gun control, etc.). While I of course will vote for him and help him get elected, I must say that I feel a bit deflated after having put so much hope, effort and money into his candidacy."
Obama and his top advisers will have to gauge the importance of such deflation and waning enthusiasm. A key factor in the election will be the extent to which the Obama campaign can pull off a massive mobilization of voters. Deflated constituencies don't mobilize as well as inspired ones.
Anyone who assumes Obama will be elected president in November is on ground as solid as the assumption in 2000 that Al Gore would be elected president. On July 9, when releasing new results from nationwide polling, the Democratic research outfit, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, reported Obama has a mere four-point lead over John McCain. Despite its propensity to spin for Democrats and its eagerness to note Obama seems "well-positioned," the firm acknowledged "some diminished enthusiasm for the presumptive Democratic nominee and only small gains among independent voters."
Some progressives, now disaffected, might consider the prospect of Obama falling short on Election Day to be his problem, not ours. But this isn't about Obama. It's about whether the levers of power in the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court along with it, are going to be redelivered into the hands of the right wing for yet another four years.
We're facing the historic imperative of keeping McCain out of the White House. If major progressive change is going to be feasible during the next several years, defeating McCain in November is necessary. And insufficient. The insufficiency does not negate the necessity.
Under a McCain presidency, we'd be back to square one, where we've found ourselves since January 2001. Putting Obama in the White House would not by any means ensure progressive change, but under his presidency, the grassroots would have an opportunity to create it.
Along the way, let's strive to eliminate disillusionment by dispensing with illusions. No one who is a presidential candidate can proceed to overcome corporate power or the warfare state. The pervasive and huge problems that have proved to be so destructive are deep, structural and embedded in the political economy. The changes most worth believing in are the ones social movements can make possible.
Norman Solomon, the author of "War Made Easy," is a national co-chair of Healthcare NOT Warfare. The other co-chairs of the campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America, are Donna Smith (featured in "Sicko"), Marilyn Clement (national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW) and Representative John Conyers, chief sponsor of H.R. 676
OBAMA/MCCAIN ON AFGHANISTAN
July 25, 2008
Dear Dick,
We are guardedly optimistic about the growing consensus for a timeline to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. But unlike Barack Obama, we don't want to see our troops removed from the "bad war" in Iraq only to be sent to fight "the good war" in Afghanistan.
One of the very first actions of CODEPINK when we formed in 2002 was to go to Afghanistan to see, firsthand, the results of our invasion. We were horrified by the "collateral damage" -- the steady stream of innocent civilians killed and maimed by our "smart bombs." We pushed our government to stop killing civilians and to compensate the families of those who we had mistakenly killed or maimed.
Seven years later, innocent Afghans continue to be killed by our troops, more US soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan than Iraq, the Taliban are gaining new strength, opium production has soared, and Osama bin Laden has not been found. The Afghan people continue to be among the poorest in the world, women continue to be oppressed, and the U.S. government reneged on its promise of a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild Afghanistan.
Barack Obama and John McCain are advocating the exact same "solution": Send more troops. But more troops will only mean more violence, more suffering, more killing of innocents, and more recruits for the Taliban.
We know that war is not the answer, but what is? Should the U.S. peace movement call for talks with the Taliban? In Iraq, the U.S. government has not just talked to Sunni insurgent groups that killed U.S. soldiers but it is now allied with them.
Back in 2006, Greg Mills, an advisor to the NATO forces in Afghanistan, wrote: "Countering an insurgency requires a mix of military pressure, institution-building, reconstruction and development, and international aid. But ultimately, the key to defeating it is political accommodation. In Afghanistan, that means talking to the Taliban."
A June 2008 report by Canada's Senate Committee on National Security, said, "The conflict in Afghanistan could go on for a very long time if there is no attempt to resolve the issue through diplomacy."
Would you advocate a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops? How can we best support Afghan women?
Click here to share your thoughts with us and take our survey about the issues that are being brought to the surface by Obama's recent trip to Afghanistan. You can join the conversation by posting your comments on Common Dreams and Huffington Post. We will cull through your responses and comments and promote the best to the presidential candidates. Surely we can come up with a better answer than simply advocating more violence!
Thank you for your insights and your commitment to peace.
Alicia, Anne, Dana, Deidra, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jean, Jodie, Liz, Lori, Medea, Nancy, Rae and Tighe
P.S. While Obama has been in Iraq listening to generals, we are listening to the soldiers standing up against war. James Burmeister, who suffers from PTSD and other ailments related to traumatic brain injury, was recently court-martialed for refusing to return to Iraq and speaking out against the horrors of war. He is currently serving six months in prison for his courageous stand. You can read more about his story here and send a letter of support- get the address here.
P.P.S. Our website Dontbuybushswar.org won the 2008 Progressive Source Awards Judges' Choice for Best Microsite, making this CODEPINK's second win in a row! Congratulations to Farida Sheralam, our brilliant webmistress, who continues to make our work shine. Be sure to check out her awesome new homepage redesign at www.codepinkalert.org.
unsubscribe from this list
Take our survey and share with us your thoughts about Afghanistan
Send a letter of support to war resister James Burmeister
Join CODEPINK
at the DNC/RNC!
Robert Dreyfuss, “Obama’s Evolving Foreign Policy.” The Nation (July 21/28, 2008). His foreign policy views are “a work in progress.” Dreyfuss’ references seem thorough.
OBAMA SUPPORTS HABEAS CORPUS FOR GHITMO PRISONERS
“Naivete, thy name is Arkansas Democrat-Gazette” By Richard Drake
With their editorial “Willful Blindness Dept.: Naivete, thy name is Barack Obama” [the ADG took] Obama - and by extension the Supreme Court - to task for their old-fashioned view that the rule of law, and granting prisoners the right of Habeas Corpus will somehow result in in all of these prisoners being free to attack the U.S. again, they reveal a serious mistrust in the basic rule of law in the United States, that which other nations often look to as an example of how to conduct themselves.
Guilt? Innocence? These are just words! So what if a lot of these guys were just innocent schmucks turned in by people for the reward, who may not be guilty of anything at all, except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The new mind-set: Guilty until proven guilty.
DEMS HAVE AN OPTION?
http://imvotingrepublican.com/
Lest we forget that Libs and Demos have a less than perfect candidate, read this Wash Post story on the Court
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/28/AR2008062802078.html?hpid=topnews
GO TO www.omnicenter.org and click on periodicals for the full biblio.
Dick Bennett
jbennet@uark.edu
(479) 442-4600
Sent: Sun 7/27/08 3:32 PM
Reply-to: Dick Bennett (jbennet@uark.edu)
To: OMNINEWS@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU
OMNI OBAMA WATCH 1
Compiled by Dick Bennett, July 22, 2008.
For a Culture of Peace and Justice by We, the People.
We should stand by our principles, search for the truth about McCain and Obama, do our best to make them wiser candidates, vote, and then continue to do our best to make the winner respect the Constitution, avoid illegal wars, restore the economy.
[For rest of Obama Newsletter go to www.omnicenter.org and click on periodicals]
Websites for researching Obama
http://opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cid=N00009638&cycle=2008
Type Obama into the search field at http://www.factcheck.org
http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/400629_barack_obama
Topic pages and databases about Obama
General
Chicago Tribune - Candidate coverage
On the Issues - Issue positions
Project Vote Smart - Candidate information, including issue positions
Disability issues
Obama answers questions on disability issues
Environment
Obama & environmental issues: Comprehensive review from the League of Conservation Voters.
Foreign affairs
"Renewing American Leadership" - detailed article article by Barack Obama in Foreign Affairs
Barack Obama's positions on top foreign policy issues - extensive material documented by the Council on Foreign Relations
Health care
They've Got You Covered? - Obama and Clinton ads both claim all Americans would be covered by their health plans. Clinton's would come close. Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania.
2008 Presidential Candidate Health Plan Report Card issued by the National Physicians Alliance
Envisioning the Future: The 2008 Presidential Candidates' Health Reform Proposals from The Commonwealth Fund
Israel and the Middle East conflict
Obama on Zionism and Hamas - extensive interview with Jeffrey Goldberg
Speech by Senator Barack Obama
McCain, Obama positions on Mideast issues Associated Press June 6, 2008
DEFEATING MCCAIN, BEING REALISTIC ABOUT OBAMA
Obama and the Progressive Base
Thursday 10 July 2008 by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
"The Audacity of Hope" is embraced during an Obama campaign rally on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries. Supporters have long projected their hopes onto Barack Obama. (Photo: Reuters)
A reasonably evenhanded biography of Barack Obama, published last year, describes him as "an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see." The biographer, David Mendell, reports, "the higher he soared, the more this politician spoke in well-worn platitudes and the more he offered warm, feel-good sentiments lacking a precise framework."
Now, less than four months before Election Day, with growing disquiet among significant portions of Obama's progressive base, the current negative reactions can't be dismissed as potshots from the political margins. Even The New York Times, in a July 4 editorial headlined "New and Not Improved," has expressed alarm: "We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama's shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games."
But on July 8, Obama made a valid point - even if it wasn't exactly the point he was trying to make - when he disputed "this whole notion that I am shifting to the center" and argued: "The people who say this apparently haven't been listening to me." Overall, his career as a politician has embraced conciliation and compromise rather than pushing against centrist corporate agendas.
These days, an appreciable number of Obama supporters are starting to use words like "disillusionment." But that's a consequence of projecting their political outlooks onto the candidate in the first place.
The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place.
The more that spotlights move from Obama's uplifting eloquence to his specific policy positions, complete with loopholes and wiggle room, it's predictable that some of his progressive base will become displeased - whether on issues related to the death penalty, fair trade, government funding of religious-based projects, Iraq, Iran, evenhandedness between Israel and Palestinians, gun control or (perhaps most flagrantly) warrantless surveillance.
On Wednesday, when Obama cast a vote in the Senate to undermine the Fourth Amendment, he fulfilled his frequent prediction during the primary season that "I will make mistakes." This was a very big one. As an attorney who's well acquainted with constitutional law, he participated in damaging one of the most precious provisions in the precious Bill of Rights.
Barack Obama is an extremely smart guy. And I can't remember a major contender for president less inclined to insult the intelligence of the public. Let's return the favor by directly challenging him when appropriate. We'd do him - and the Obama campaign, ourselves and the country as a whole - no favors by opting for silence instead.
We can help the Obama for President effort when we hold him to his good positions - and move to buck him up when he wavers.
While speaking of the Iraq war, Obama made one of the most insightful statements of the primary campaign: "I don't want to just end the war; I want to end the mindset that got us into war." He needs to be held to that wisdom. Obama should feel enormous counterpressure from the grassroots against the forces in the media and foreign-policy establishment that are pushing him to go wobbly on ending the Iraq war.
The vortex of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism" is enormously powerful - and, in the context of presidential politics, routinely enticing. To the extent that Obama gears up anti-Iran rhetoric that he seemed to have mercifully abandoned months ago, for instance, he may reassure some pundits and other influential power brokers in Washington, but at the same time he's liable to weaken some of the allegiance to his candidacy among progressive constituencies.
As an elected Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention, I've been hearing from people who are upset by the recent direction of the campaign. Some were always a bit skeptical of Obama, but are becoming much more so. Others have been strong supporters from the outset. In the latter category, an attorney sent an email to me a few days ago: "I must confess that my enthusiasm for Senator Obama has waned in recent weeks with a number of his policy announcements (on FISA, gun control, etc.). While I of course will vote for him and help him get elected, I must say that I feel a bit deflated after having put so much hope, effort and money into his candidacy."
Obama and his top advisers will have to gauge the importance of such deflation and waning enthusiasm. A key factor in the election will be the extent to which the Obama campaign can pull off a massive mobilization of voters. Deflated constituencies don't mobilize as well as inspired ones.
Anyone who assumes Obama will be elected president in November is on ground as solid as the assumption in 2000 that Al Gore would be elected president. On July 9, when releasing new results from nationwide polling, the Democratic research outfit, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, reported Obama has a mere four-point lead over John McCain. Despite its propensity to spin for Democrats and its eagerness to note Obama seems "well-positioned," the firm acknowledged "some diminished enthusiasm for the presumptive Democratic nominee and only small gains among independent voters."
Some progressives, now disaffected, might consider the prospect of Obama falling short on Election Day to be his problem, not ours. But this isn't about Obama. It's about whether the levers of power in the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court along with it, are going to be redelivered into the hands of the right wing for yet another four years.
We're facing the historic imperative of keeping McCain out of the White House. If major progressive change is going to be feasible during the next several years, defeating McCain in November is necessary. And insufficient. The insufficiency does not negate the necessity.
Under a McCain presidency, we'd be back to square one, where we've found ourselves since January 2001. Putting Obama in the White House would not by any means ensure progressive change, but under his presidency, the grassroots would have an opportunity to create it.
Along the way, let's strive to eliminate disillusionment by dispensing with illusions. No one who is a presidential candidate can proceed to overcome corporate power or the warfare state. The pervasive and huge problems that have proved to be so destructive are deep, structural and embedded in the political economy. The changes most worth believing in are the ones social movements can make possible.
Norman Solomon, the author of "War Made Easy," is a national co-chair of Healthcare NOT Warfare. The other co-chairs of the campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America, are Donna Smith (featured in "Sicko"), Marilyn Clement (national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW) and Representative John Conyers, chief sponsor of H.R. 676
OBAMA/MCCAIN ON AFGHANISTAN
July 25, 2008
Dear Dick,
We are guardedly optimistic about the growing consensus for a timeline to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. But unlike Barack Obama, we don't want to see our troops removed from the "bad war" in Iraq only to be sent to fight "the good war" in Afghanistan.
One of the very first actions of CODEPINK when we formed in 2002 was to go to Afghanistan to see, firsthand, the results of our invasion. We were horrified by the "collateral damage" -- the steady stream of innocent civilians killed and maimed by our "smart bombs." We pushed our government to stop killing civilians and to compensate the families of those who we had mistakenly killed or maimed.
Seven years later, innocent Afghans continue to be killed by our troops, more US soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan than Iraq, the Taliban are gaining new strength, opium production has soared, and Osama bin Laden has not been found. The Afghan people continue to be among the poorest in the world, women continue to be oppressed, and the U.S. government reneged on its promise of a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild Afghanistan.
Barack Obama and John McCain are advocating the exact same "solution": Send more troops. But more troops will only mean more violence, more suffering, more killing of innocents, and more recruits for the Taliban.
We know that war is not the answer, but what is? Should the U.S. peace movement call for talks with the Taliban? In Iraq, the U.S. government has not just talked to Sunni insurgent groups that killed U.S. soldiers but it is now allied with them.
Back in 2006, Greg Mills, an advisor to the NATO forces in Afghanistan, wrote: "Countering an insurgency requires a mix of military pressure, institution-building, reconstruction and development, and international aid. But ultimately, the key to defeating it is political accommodation. In Afghanistan, that means talking to the Taliban."
A June 2008 report by Canada's Senate Committee on National Security, said, "The conflict in Afghanistan could go on for a very long time if there is no attempt to resolve the issue through diplomacy."
Would you advocate a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops? How can we best support Afghan women?
Click here to share your thoughts with us and take our survey about the issues that are being brought to the surface by Obama's recent trip to Afghanistan. You can join the conversation by posting your comments on Common Dreams and Huffington Post. We will cull through your responses and comments and promote the best to the presidential candidates. Surely we can come up with a better answer than simply advocating more violence!
Thank you for your insights and your commitment to peace.
Alicia, Anne, Dana, Deidra, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jean, Jodie, Liz, Lori, Medea, Nancy, Rae and Tighe
P.S. While Obama has been in Iraq listening to generals, we are listening to the soldiers standing up against war. James Burmeister, who suffers from PTSD and other ailments related to traumatic brain injury, was recently court-martialed for refusing to return to Iraq and speaking out against the horrors of war. He is currently serving six months in prison for his courageous stand. You can read more about his story here and send a letter of support- get the address here.
P.P.S. Our website Dontbuybushswar.org won the 2008 Progressive Source Awards Judges' Choice for Best Microsite, making this CODEPINK's second win in a row! Congratulations to Farida Sheralam, our brilliant webmistress, who continues to make our work shine. Be sure to check out her awesome new homepage redesign at www.codepinkalert.org.
unsubscribe from this list
Take our survey and share with us your thoughts about Afghanistan
Send a letter of support to war resister James Burmeister
Join CODEPINK
at the DNC/RNC!
Robert Dreyfuss, “Obama’s Evolving Foreign Policy.” The Nation (July 21/28, 2008). His foreign policy views are “a work in progress.” Dreyfuss’ references seem thorough.
OBAMA SUPPORTS HABEAS CORPUS FOR GHITMO PRISONERS
“Naivete, thy name is Arkansas Democrat-Gazette” By Richard Drake
With their editorial “Willful Blindness Dept.: Naivete, thy name is Barack Obama” [the ADG took] Obama - and by extension the Supreme Court - to task for their old-fashioned view that the rule of law, and granting prisoners the right of Habeas Corpus will somehow result in in all of these prisoners being free to attack the U.S. again, they reveal a serious mistrust in the basic rule of law in the United States, that which other nations often look to as an example of how to conduct themselves.
Guilt? Innocence? These are just words! So what if a lot of these guys were just innocent schmucks turned in by people for the reward, who may not be guilty of anything at all, except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The new mind-set: Guilty until proven guilty.
DEMS HAVE AN OPTION?
http://imvotingrepublican.com/
Lest we forget that Libs and Demos have a less than perfect candidate, read this Wash Post story on the Court
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/28/AR2008062802078.html?hpid=topnews
GO TO www.omnicenter.org and click on periodicals for the full biblio.
Dick Bennett
jbennet@uark.edu
(479) 442-4600
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Caterpillar of the viceroy butterfly on a willow tree on World Peace Wetland Prairie
Please click on image to ENLARGE TO photo of viceroy butterfly caterpillar on willow leaf at World Peace Wetland Prairie in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Viceroys (Limenitis archippus) look much like monarchs but their caterpillars look far different and depend on willows and other native trees, while monarch caterpillars depend on the many species of milkweed.
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