<WebBlog>

Show Notes

Saturday, March 08, 2003

IMPEACH THIS NUTCASE BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!

¶ 6:09 PM

Friday, March 07, 2003

Tonight! FRIDAY. YAY! March 7, 2003

10pm - Caleb Hayes, 12 year old student activist hosts website anti-bush.com. We'll talk about his site, the latest on Cheney's move to shut down "whitehouse.org", what it's like to get involved at such a young age and what he sees as the future we're going to leave behind for him.

11pm - Savage killing of suspects. Afghan prisoners beaten to death by a U.S. military that previously lied about their demise (natural causes, riiiight) Guest: Govind Acharya, Amnesty International.

Midnight - so much to catch up on - especially, the obvious disconnect between Hans Blix's favorable inspections report today juxtaposed against Bush's march to war, great stories from SF GATE, GEOV PARRISH and open lines to review the week. Hope to hear from you, especially if you're new to the show:

206-421-5476 or toll-free 1-877-710-5476. Instant messages (while I'm on air 10p - 1a Pacific time):www.710kiro.com or mwebb@entercom.com

¶ 6:26 PM

Resist the Estrada nomination. Call your Senator on this toll free line: 1-888-508-2974
Republicans Lose Bid to End Filibuster on Judge
By David Stout
New York Times

Thursday 6 March 2003

WASHINGTON, March 6 - Senate Republicans lost a fight today that they had not expected to win, falling five votes short of ending a filibuster against President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to a federal appeals court.

Supporters of Mr. Estrada came up with 55 votes in favor of ending the long debate over his nomination and moving to a confirmation vote. Sixty votes are required to end a filibuster.

"The fight for justice is just beginning," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican majority leader, said after the vote.

Democrats have resisted Mr. Estrada's nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. They say Mr. Estrada's positions - at least to the extent he is willing to make them known - reflect an "extreme" and "ultra far-right" point of view," as Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic minority leader, put it today.

President Bush immediately put out a statement calling today's vote "a disgrace."

"The Senate has a responsibility to exercise its constitutional advice and consent function and hold an up or down vote on a judicial nominee within a reasonable time," Mr. Bush said. "Some senators who once insisted that every appeals court nominee deserves a timely vote have now abandoned that principle for partisan politics. Their tactics are an injustice and unfair to the good man I have nominated, and unfaithful to the Senate's own obligations."

"I will stand by Miguel Estrada's side until he is sworn in as a judge," the president said. "I call on the Senate Democratic leadership to stop playing politics, and permit a vote on Miguel Estrada's nomination. Let each senator vote as he or she thinks best, but give the man a vote."

Mr. Bush and his Republican Senate allies had not expected to win today's vote on ending the filibuster. But they fully expect to capitalize politically on the Democrats' resistance to an Hispanic nominee whose candidacy has been endorsed by the American Bar Association.

The administration has resisted the Democrats' attempts to obtain confidential memorandums that Mr. Estrada wrote as an assistant solicitor-general.

Forty-three Senate Democrats and one independent, James Jeffords of Vermont, voted against ending the filibuster. Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who is recovering from heart surgery, did not vote.

The four Senate Democrats who crossed the political aisle to join the 51 Republicans today were Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Zell Miller of Georgia and John Breaux of Louisiana. They are relatively conservative, often side with the administration and had said they would back the nominee.

The battle is seen as a possible dress rehearsal for Mr. Bush's first Supreme Court nominee, who could be Mr. Estrada if he wins the appeals court seat. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is considered extremely important, as it often resolves disputes between the executive and legislative branches and rules on the constitutionality of federal laws and regulations.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

© Copyright 2002 by TruthOut.org

¶ 4:35 PM

Project For A New American Century
--
Also check out WORKING FOR CHANGE's Geov Parrish Column. This is one of his best pieces ever! I post it here. You can also catch his work in THE WEEKLY and www.WORKING FOR CHANGE
--The suicide bombers
Geov Parrish - workingforchange.com

03.07.03 - You know what I feel like? I feel like one of those passengers on those doomed jets that were hijacked on 9/11.

I don't mean to belittle that tragedy, or the fate of those passengers. I don't think I'm personally facing imminent death, and hope that doesn't happen until I'm good and ready. The same goes for you, dear reader.

However, I do very much feel like the unlucky passenger in a jet that has been hijacked, and piloted for over two years now, by religious maniacs who, I am gradually concluding, are on a path to kill us all -- along with a great many other innocents on the ground -- on the way to fulfillment of their obscure religious and political agenda.

That's what it feels like as all signs point to a massive United States military invasion of Iraq, possibly a week away, perhaps more, perhaps less. Should this attack takes place, there will without any question at all be at least four immediate results:

1) A great many Iraqis will die, probably more than we'll ever know. It is a number the current U.S. administration has good reason to not be interested in, and for a long time nobody else will have access to count the bodies. The U.S. is also likely to be uninterested in the number of its own soldiers who die in the coming years, irradiated or psychically wounded by their experience.

2) The government of Israel will launch a brutal new round of attacks against the essentially defenseless Palestinians in their bantustans. It scarcely matters whether the "crackdown" will be unprovoked or ostensibly in response to demonstrations or terrorist acts prompted by the U.S. invasion. The end result will be the same.

3) Hatred of the United States will sweep the world, among not just ordinary citizens but whole governments, composed of those countries' ruling elites. Alliances will become former alliances; business as well as political relationships will be irrevocably damaged. In the Islamic world, with relatively few exceptions, "fury" will be the moderate reaction; fuel for decades' worth of terrorist activity, against the U.S. and its corrupt, brutal puppets, lies at the other end of the spectrum. The patient groundwork that the Bush Administration has laid over the past two years to make the United States an international pariah will be fulfilled. We will no longer be one nation among many, but an empire, with vassals; often, what we want we will only be able to obtain by force.

4) The economy, both globally and in the U.S., will also be badly damaged. It's already worsened dramatically in the last year, a fact obscured by all the Bush talk of Iraq. Investors are horrified, international trade is taking a backseat to global lockdown, and the world's biggest economy is retooling itself for permanent wars it cannot possibly afford; things are, by almost every serious economists' reckoning, likely to be made far worse.

The economic fallout -- far more than any concern over mere human lives -- is why so many of the world's political and business elites stand opposed to the Bush folly. And yet, on this as on each of these other points, the political and media giants of the U.S. appear to be in a state of delusional denial.

How else to explain it when Bush himself can "speak to the nation," as he did Thursday night, presume to speak for the world (without mentioning that that world opposes his war with a unanimity rarely seen), and presume to speak of the entire nation of Iraq as "Saddam Hussein" (without acknowledging the 23 million disposable stage props also inhabiting the country)? Bush spoke of of "rebuilding" Iraq, without mentioning how it might come to be destroyed; he vowed to "disarm" Iraq, in the name of "peace," without mentioning the massive death toll his methods entail. Bush can offer half-truths, distortions, and outright lies that have been repeatedly refuted. He can vow not to wait for that moment when "a terrorist unleashes his weapons of mass destruction," and nobody will point out that he, George Bush, is the terrorist threatening mass destruction. This is arrogance beyond measure, and the passengers look out the window.

How else to explain the political and media response to a succession of "spy" stories in the last week: a plane intercepted by North Korea; a leaked document suggesting U.S. plans to spy on war opponents at the United Nations; reports that U.S. spies were told years ago by the Iraqi defector who ran the program that its weapons of mass destruction were destroyed in 1995; and the transparent manipulativeness of the timing of Iraqi diplomats' expulsion by the United States? Collectively, the response has been a shrug.

It is as if, firstly, the United States is presumed to have the right to invade the privacy of political opponents anywhere and everywhere; and secondly, it is as if the United States, having had all its arguments for invasion refuted, is now simply taking the position that it is so militarily powerful that it needs no stinkin' reason. And nobody on the jet says a word.

How else to explain it when U.S. officials can talk openly and proudly about their "Shock and Awe" strategy of dropping at least 3,000 cruise missiles on Baghdad in 48 hours? This is four times the munitions used in the entire Gulf War, expected to create a collective oxygen-eating fireball over a city of five million inhabitants. Bush officials proclaimed all week that precision guidance systems will enable the U.S. to minimize civilian casualties. The very laws of physics render such a claim preposterous; one can no more steer a fireball than win an earthquake. It is the naked propaganda of an imperial power on the eve of war. Yet among the opposition politicians and the pundits, there is bland acceptance or silence.

Either we passengers have succeeded in deluding ourselves that this plane really is going to land, and everyone will be all right; or we have given up all hope of subduing the hijackers, and so pretend we don't care or sink into our private fate.

Let us not delude ourselves. The United States is not about to launch a war. Wars involve two sides fighting each other. This will not be a war; it will be an unprovoked massacre, probably of historic proportions.

There are a great many people in this country who have spoken out against this folly, this outrage, this war crime, this thing that defies language. Opponents hail from every conceivable ideology, background, class, race. Many would never have dreamed once that they'd be publicly criticizing their President. But then, many of us never thought our country would come to this.

There are also a great many more people in our country who should know better but who have not spoken out. This includes powerful people important to the Bush Administration. They must, as the hours tick by, examine their own priorities.

Bad things will be set irrevocably in motion when this jet crashes. However, we passengers -- unlike a horrifying number of Iraqis -- will survive.

As indefensible as this massacre will be, and as dire as the consequences may be, never say it can't get worse. It can; history teaches us that worse is usually up to the challenge. Most of us in the U.S. lead comfortable lives, largely unimpinged upon by government or war; despite John Ashcroft's delusions, we still live more or less in a democracy.

Once the shock waves of outrage and horror and grief wash over us, we must use that privilege. We must take to heart what the White House empire-builders already know: that Iraq is intended as only one skirmish in a much longer "war." Much can still be changed by strong and determined public opposition to it.

The bottom line is saving lives. Between now and November 2004, the domestic political and economic cost to the Bush Administration must be raised so high as to hamper as much as is possible of its imperial agenda. Come that election, as imperfect as any Democratic challenger is likely to be, unseating Bush and the zealots around him assumes paramount importance. The rest of the world does not get a vote; we do, and we must vote, and organize others to vote, on the world's behalf as well as our own.

It is, realistically speaking, the only way to disarm the fundamentalist zealots who have hijacked and are now piloting this airplane.

When each of them does, eventually, meet their Creator, they will need to answer for some unspeakable crimes. Any Divine Being worthy of the name will know what to do. In the interim, so must we.

Reclaim History!

Things that happened on Mar. 7 that you never had to memorize in school:

1799: John Fries launches a rebellion in Pennsylvania against the imposition of the "direct tax" enacted by Congress the previous year on lands, houses, and slaves. Fries' mob was dispersed by the militia after a march on Bethlehem. Fries was arrested and sentenced to be hanged for treason, before being pardoned by the President.

1860: Six thousand shoemakers joined by 20,000 other workers in strike in Lynn, Mass. About 1,000 women workers initially strike for a union and against wage cuts; in 10 days, a procession of 10,000 workers marches through Lynn in the largest labor protest prior to the Civil War. Within a month, shoe manufacturers offer higher wages to bring strikers back to the factories. But the companies refuse to recognize a union.

1905: Beginning of the Russian peasant rebellion, during which the peasants burn many castles of the nobility.

1932: Detroit police fire on Ford hunger marchers, killing four. Beginning of Ford hunger strike.

1942: IWW founder, anarchist labor organizer Lucy Parsons dies, Chicago, Illinois.

1972: Urban Indians form the National American Indians Council. Omaha, Nebraska.

1974: Commenting on the SLA's Patricia Hearst ransom demand of free food for the poor, California's Gov. Ronald Reagan says, "It's just too bad we can't have an epidemic of botulism."

1983: After a fire in a coal mine in northern Turkey, miners are ordered back in before the flames are completely extinguished; two subsequent explosions kill 98 workers.

1988: A Federal court rules that a peace group must have the same access to students at high school career days as military recruiters. Atlanta, Georgia.

1995: After decades of opposition, state of New York instates the death penalty.

1996: Five hundred women march on the National Palace in a commemoration of state violence against women. Guatemala City, Guatemala.

© Working Assets Online

¶ 3:32 AM

Thursday, March 06, 2003

Dear friend,

An emergency petition from citizens around the world will be delivered to the U.N. Security Council on MONDAY, MARCH 10.

If hundreds of thousands of us sign, it could be an enormously
important and powerful message -- people from all over the
world demanding a peaceful solution. But
we really need everyone who agrees to sign up today. You can
do so easily and quickly at:

http://www.moveon.org/emergency

The stakes couldn't be higher. A war with Iraq
could kill tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and inflame
the Middle East. According to current plans, it would require
an American occupation of the country for years to come. And
it could escalate in ways that are horrifying to imagine.

We can stop this tragedy from unfolding. But we need to speak
together, and we need to do so now. Show the Security
Council what world citizens think.

¶ 1:36 PM

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Wednesday, March 5, 2002

10pm - Bush on the edge of making "the ultimate call" while Hans Blix says Saddam is complying. Where and why the disconnect?

11pm - Rep. Jim McDermott joins us to talk about a courageous and controversial decision, along with Rep. Pete Stark (D-Ca) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to refuse signature of Bush's "Confidentiality Oaths" for the administration's security briefings.

Midnight - U.S. spies on UN Security Council in order to force a favorable vote on Iraq. Live from London, reporter Martin Bright will reveal the details of this shakedown by the Bush whitehouse.

Coming up: Friday night -Caleb's Website :anti-bush.com...a 12 year old online journalist expresses his activism. We'll talk with him about the value of the internet and youth politics, especially on the heels of Dick Cheney's shutdown of the parody site, whitehouse.org

Something to get ACTIVE ABOUT: Resist the Estrada nomination. Call your Senator on this toll free line: 1-888-508-2974

¶ 5:00 PM

Monday, March 03, 2003

Thanks so much for the great responses from our KIRO debate this past week. For those I haven't been able to respond to personally, I apologize. I will eventually get through all the mail, but in the mean time am sending the following:
--Hello,

Thanks very much for the note. We have received a surprising and overwhelming number of email messages. I apologize up front for not responding personally. I am greatly encouraged by the wonderful thoughts expressed by so many clear thinking, true American citizens.

We will continue to update the website with more information whenever appropriate. Most responders are fully aware that, even conservatives like the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, a vehement proponent of war, acknowledges the "incredibly narrow base of support that exists for this audacious project" as he puts it.

What may begin as soon as this week - the unprovoked attack of Iraq - would be no less than a war crime perpetrated by an administration that is completely out of control. You likely understand that the war against Iraq is threatening all of humanity and that, protests notwithstanding, the decision to launch this imperialistic catastrophe was made long ago.

Rational critics know that this pretext for war is about, not just oil, but a more far-reaching ambition: the political and economic reorganization of the world. All the parts have fallen into place, making this the most opportune time to begin the so-called "regime change". Of course, it will not end with Iraq. This entire mission is predicated on a fundamentalist hybrid of Theocracy and Plutocracy expressed in Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's Project For a New American Century, crafted long ago. Even a dispassionate pragmatist can see that this will only enflame global relations and the extent of violent acts of retribution are frightening and unpredictable. As we pointed out in the recent debate, even the CIA's own George Tenet warned Bush that the danger Iraq poses to the United States only exists if we attack them. This is a staggering realization: that, against the advice of his top security advisors, Bush will proceed with his campaign. How much clearer can it be that the goal is not about saving the world, but controlling it?

I encourage your enthusiasm as we fight this uphill battle against an illegal, imperialist takeover by working with all disenfranchised communities, uniting the workers of America and beyond - people who come from a variety of religious, racial and social backgrounds to fight for basic American values. Using the courts, lobbying our representatives in Congress and maintaining contact with the media are the only hopeful tools we have left, but I'm glad that so many are willing to use them.

Best wishes,

Mike Webb
www.mikewebb.org

¶ 12:44 AM