HYPOCRISY DELUXE ,, Reid supports one Federal Prosecutor not another!

Special prosecutor targets polygamy 'epidemic'

Probe could halt cross-border trade in young women

ROBERT MATAS

hypocrisy

May 9, 2008

VANCOUVER -- The United States has appointed a federal prosecutor to work with state and local authorities on bringing an end to lawlessness in polygamous communities, an investigation that may extend to finding a way to stop the so-called polygamy underground railway across the Canada-U.S. border.

A senior prosecutor in the deputy attorney-general's office has been assigned to carry out the review in consultation with the attorneys-general of Nevada, Arizona and Utah, Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, stated in correspondence released yesterday.

Mr. Reid described the problem as an "epidemic of lawlessness in polygamous communities."

He found out about the federal initiative after contacting U.S. Attorney-General Michael Mukasey to urge a thorough review of how the U.S. government could help state and local authorities "tackle this complex problem."

Arizona Attorney-General Terry Goddard said yesterday that he welcomes the review, which he and others had sought three or four years ago. "The problem traditionally has been that the laws have not been enforced in these remote communities in Utah, Arizona and Nevada," he said in an interview.

"My fundamental guiding star is, there is nothing special here. They need to follow the law like anyone else and it is up to us as prosecutors to make sure it happens," Mr. Goddard said shortly before co-chairing a town hall meeting on polygamy in St. George, Utah.

B.C. Liberal MLA Bill Bennett, who represents the East Kootenay riding, said the Canadian government should be working with the United States on the cross-border issues. "What we need is a co-operative effort by the province, various states and the two federal governments, who have primary responsibility for immigration and customs," he said from Victoria.

"Certainly from what I've been told, there is no doubt young women have been sent to Bountiful [B.C.] to marry older men and young women have been taken from Bountiful to marry older men [in the polygamous communities] in Colorado City, Arizona and in Utah."

The U.S. federal review was announced a month after a raid on a 1,700-acre compound in Texas of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamous religious sect.

Authorities found more than 20 girls that they believed were under the age of 18 and pregnant or who already had children. Child protection officials said they found evidence of sexual abuse and a pervasive pattern of grooming young girls for underage sex. They apprehended 463 children at the compound, including at least one Canadian girl, and placed them in foster care.

Former members of the polygamous sect have said young women were regularly sent across the Canada-U.S. border, in both directions, to marry older men. Bountiful is a FLDS community of about 1,000 in the Creston, B.C., area.

Mr. Reid said he believes the U.S. federal government should have done more years ago, when the states of Utah and Arizona had asked for federal co-operation in investigating "the systemic lawlessness" in polygamous communities. State authorities had sought federal action on violations of federal civil rights laws by Colorado City marshals and on Internal Revenue Code violations.

"This is precisely the kind of help I believe the federal government should provide, but it has not yet done so. Your requests for federal funding to assist victims of domestic violence also merit prompt review," Mr. Reid said.

In a statement issued from his office late yesterday, he said that human trafficking across the Canada-U.S. border was clearly a federal matter. "[He] would expect the Justice Department to review any allegations like that," Mr. Reid's spokesman, Jon Summers, said.

Arizona's Mr. Goddard said he recently spoke briefly to B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal about the U.S. response to the polygamous communities. Mr. Oppal seemed "very interested," he said.

In Arizona, authorities have tried to ensure that the law applies without stigmatizing the FLDS communities for their religion, Mr. Goddard said.

Authorities there have gone after allegations of child abuse in the communities and after police who took orders from the church. The state government has taken over the school district because it was run by the FLDS hierarchy and not for the benefit of the children, he said.

It is up to the federal government to look into tax evasion, possible welfare fraud and civil rights violations, especially those committed against young men thrown out of the community, Mr. Goddard said.

The actions in Arizona are in marked contrast to activities in Canada. Polygamy is illegal in Canada, but no one at Bountiful has ever faced charges for bigamy.

Mr. Oppal is currently deliberating whether to refer a question on the constitutionality of Canada's polygamy law to the B.C. Court of Appeal. He told reporters this week he expected to announce his decision within two or three weeks.

A 9/11 Every Day for Ten and Half Years: Most of Us Will Eat Shit Until the Day We Die

A 9/11 Every Day For Ten and a Half Years: Most of Us Will Eat Shit Until the Day We Die

By Arthur Silber

12/02/08 "Once Upon A Time" - -- -Let us begin with the proposition of greatest importance. From my essay, "The Missing Moral Center: Murdering the Innocent":

There is one final point to be made about all this -- and that has to do with the supreme value of a single human life. In our desensitized, dehumanized age, most people have almost no appreciation for what I'm talking about, and our political establishment and media only make this grievous failing worse. Each of us is unique; not one of us can be replaced. Each of us has a family, loved ones, friends and a life that is a web of caring, interdependence, and joy. When even one of us is killed or horribly injured for no justifiable reason, the damage affects countless people in addition to the primary victim. Sometimes, the survivors are irreparably damaged as well. Even the survivors' wounds can last a lifetime.

This is of the greatest significance. There is nothing more important or meaningful in the world. No moral principle legitimizes our invasion and occupation of Iraq, just as it will not justify an attack on Iran. Therefore, when the first person was killed in Iraq as the result of our actions, the immorality was complete. The crime had been committed, and no amends could ever suffice or would even be possible. That many additional tens or hundreds of thousands of people have subsequently been killed or injured does not add to the original immorality with regard to first principles. It increases its scope, which is an additional and terrible horror -- but the principle is not altered in the smallest degree.

So think of the five-year-old Iraqi girl who is no more, or think of any one of the countless other victims of this criminal war and occupation. Think of their families and friends. Think of the lives that have been altered forever, and of the wounds that will never heal. Think about all of that.

Contemplate the devastation and the horror. Make it real to yourself. And ask yourself if forgiveness is possible.

We now know -- at least, those of us who are minimally honest know -- that the United States government has murdered in excess of one million Iraqis. In yet another attempt to break through the massive wall of resistance erected by our government, the U.S. media, and the American public, I once put this in terms that I hoped would hit home more directly:

For ease of computation, we'll use approximate figures. Assume the U.S.'s war crimes have resulted in one million deaths. That is roughly 1/26 of the total Iraqi population. An equivalent number of American deaths would be 11.5 million people. 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9/11. In terms of casualties, 11.5 million deaths represent 3,800 9/11s -- or a 9/11 every day for ten and a half years.

Let me repeat that: a 9/11 every day for ten and a half years.

Perhaps you think these casualty figures are highly inflated. Fine. Cut them in half. That's a 9/11 every day for a little over five years.

Every day.

Do you begin to understand now?

Our government, our media and most Americans remain absolutely determined not to understand.

Let us proceed to a second proposition of great significance. The ruling elites in the United States have been committed to a foreign policy of American hegemony for over a century; this has been especially true in the decades following the end of World War II. This foreign policy of global hegemony, to be actualized by overthrow, assassination, war, murder, torture and occupation as required, has been and remains a fully bipartisan affair. Both Republicans and Democrats, insofar as the parties bearing those names are central institutions of power in the United States, embrace this policy; very often, Democrats have been notably more aggressive and ruthless in pursuit of this end than Republicans (always excepting the current war criminals in charge of the executive branch). I have detailed this bipartisan policy of murder and conquest in numerous essays; see all of my "Dominion Over the World" series (all the essays in that series are linked at the end of that article), and the other articles linked in those pieces. Scan the archives for still more.

The Democrats were never going to end the occupation of Iraq, as I noted in a post just prior to the 2006 election: "An Election Conceived in Nausea." The other predictions in that post have also been borne out by events. Predicting how loathsome the loathsome Democrats will be is not a difficult task -- not if you are minimally honest.

In a new article, Matt Taibbi details the nauseating depths of the Democrats' abominable record over the last year. Taibbi notes the Democratic leaders' lofty calls to inspirational principles -- from Harry Reid ("We have the presidential election," Reid said recently. "Our time is really squeezed."), and from Nancy Pelosi ("We'll have a new president," said Pelosi. "And I do think at that time we'll take a fresh look at it.") Reid and Pelosi offer such resounding calls to first principles as more and more people are slaughtered every day. Couldn't you just die? Lots of people are dying, but not anyone you know (or Reid or Pelosi knows) -- so you don't give a shit.

Taibbi writes:

Working behind the scenes, the Democrats have systematically taken over the anti-war movement, packing the nation's leading group with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war. "Our focus is on the Republicans," one Democratic apparatchik in charge of the anti-war coalition declared. "How can we juice up attacks on them?"

The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what's to come if they win the White House. And if we don't pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there's still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years. With no one but ourselves to blame.

Taibbi makes two errors here, one that is obvious and one that is implied. The obvious error is to speak of the Democrats' "betrayal." It is only betrayal if the Democrats had, in fact, been committed to ending the occupation. That in turn would require that they question the basic assumptions of United States foreign policy. But they weren't and they don't, as many of my essays demonstrate. It was betrayal only to those stupid enough to have believed what the Democrats said, as opposed to what their actions -- and the underlying dynamics at work -- showed. I suppose I should add that one need not necessarily have been stupid (and here, I cast my eye around the "progressive" blogosphere): a person might be so consumed with achieving power for the Democrats above all else that he or she is willing to lie endlessly -- so as to curry favor with those in power (or who might be), to wield "influence," and/or to make a sufficient number of mindless readers happy (or keep them suitably intellectually sedated).

Taibbi's implied error is his talk about "whom to nominate." He names Hillary Clinton as one of those who peddles endless "bullshit" about wanting "to do the right thing" -- and he notably fails to mention Obama. Memo to Taibbi: if you're thinking that Obama represents a genuinely different point of view on these questions, you're wrong -- he doesn't. (I'll have more about the particular dangers represented by Mr. Obama, and they are considerable, in the next few days.)

Later in his article, Taibbi offer these sickening details concerning the mechanics of the Democrats' actions:

Rather than use the vast power they had to end the war, Democrats devoted their energy to making sure that "anti-war activism" became synonymous with "electing Democrats." Capitalizing on America's desire to end the war, they hijacked the anti-war movement itself, filling the ranks of peace groups with loyal party hacks. Anti-war organizations essentially became a political tool for the Democrats — one operated from inside the Beltway and devoted primarily to targeting Republicans.

This supposedly grass-roots "anti-war coalition" met regularly on K Street, the very capital of top-down Beltway politics. At the forefront of the groups are Thomas Matzzie and Brad Woodhouse of Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq, the leader of the anti-war lobby. Along with other K Street crusaders, the two have received iconic treatment from The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which depicted the anti-war warriors as young idealist-progressives in shirtsleeves, riding a mirthful spirit into political combat — changing the world is fun!

But what exactly are these young idealists campaigning for? At its most recent meeting, the group eerily echoed the Reid-Pelosi "squeezed for time" mantra: Retreat from any attempt to end the war and focus on electing Democrats. "There was a lot of agreement that we can draw distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans," a spokeswoman for Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq announced.

What the Post and the Times failed to note is that much of the anti-war group's leadership hails from a consulting firm called Hildebrand Tewes — whose partners, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, served as staffers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). In addition, these anti-war leaders continue to consult for many of the same U.S. senators whom they need to pressure in order to end the war. This is the kind of conflict of interest that would normally be an embarrassment in the activist community.

Worst of all is the case of Woodhouse, who came to Hildebrand Tewes after years of working as the chief mouthpiece for the DSCC, where he campaigned actively to re-elect Democratic senators who supported the Iraq War in the first place. ...

With guys like this in charge of the anti-war movement, much of what has passed for peace activism in the past year was little more than a thinly veiled scheme to use popular discontent over the war to unseat vulnerable Republicans up for re-election in 2008.

Taibbi goes on:

Even beyond the war, the Democrats have repeatedly gone limp-dick every time the Bush administration so much as raises its voice. Most recently, twelve Democrats crossed the aisle to grant immunity to phone companies who participated in Bush's notorious wiretapping program. Before that, Democrats caved in and confirmed Mike Mukasey as attorney general after he kept his middle finger extended and refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Democrats fattened by Wall Street also got cold feet about upsetting the country's gazillionaires, refusing to close a tax loophole that rewarded hedge-fund managers with a tax rate less than half that paid by ordinary citizens.

After all this, the liberal-progressive blogosphere continues to propagandize endlessly and raise huge amounts of money for "more and better Democrats" -- on the model of Jim Webb, I suppose, one of those "better" Democrats who offered one of the most pathetically stupid defenses in the history of the universe in support of his vote for last summer's atrocious FISA legislation.

Here's a rule you can take to the bank:

Any individual who rises to the national political level is, of necessity and by definition, committed to the authoritarian-corporatist state. The current system will not allow anyone to be elected from either of the two major parties who is determined to dismantle even one part of that system.

Yes, yes: there are a handful of exceptions. That's so some of you can continue to prattle about the virtues of "participatory democracy." That's so you don't notice that the ruling elites don't give a damn what you think, except for brief periods surrounding elections -- when they'll tell you what you want to hear, even though history, including yesterday's history, proves they don't mean a single damned word of it. And please note that the two or three exceptions are not those individuals championed by these same liberals and progressives: note how the leading progressive bloggers themselves led the marginalization of Dennis Kucinich.

I'll be blunt, even rude: You can call it Republican shit. You can call it Democratic shit. You can call it progressive shit. It's still shit. It's still murder, and torture, and criminal war, and a growing surveillance state. If you vote for the Democratic or the Republican candidate for president -- and if you vote for almost any of the candidates for national office -- you're voting for murder. You're voting for torture. You're voting for criminal war. You're voting for the growing surveillance state.

Is that what you choose to do? Is that what you choose to support? Is it?

At the end of his article, Taibbi writes:

How much of this bullshit are we going to take? How long are we supposed to give the Reids and Pelosis and Hillarys of the world credit for wanting, deep down in their moldy hearts, to do the right thing? Look, fuck your hearts, OK? Just get it done. Because if you don't, sooner or later this con is going to run dry. It may not be in '08, but it'll be soon. Even Americans can't be fooled forever.

Perhaps not forever, but most Americans are perfectly willing to be fooled (hell, they're enthusiastic about it) until the Empire begins to crumble around them -- that is, in ways that directly affect them in their lives. That day may be coming, perhaps sooner than we might prefer to think.

Some of them won't be fooled at that point. But then it will be too late. A lot of you will eat shit until the day you die.

Posted by Gaime at 6:13 AM

Guest blogger!! Cheney to Congress: "Make warrantless wiretapping permanent", Matt Janovic

My comment: Bear in mind when you read this that everything Hitler did was perfectly LEGAL.
And muchas gracias, Matt! I spent the day researching what to say on FISA and the Protect America Act - after watching Cheney and his nazi supporters on c-span I dissociated and couldn't put the article together that I wished to write.
It's make or break time, America!! Harry Reid says that he is forcing this to fillibuster to get the democrats attention - this is NO TIME for partisan politics. And this entire issues should been part of a serious impeachment process, handled by parties not subject to maipulation by the telecoms. Now isn't everyone subject to manipulation by telecoms? Guess so!!
Way to go Congress!! Wade through the muck you've already created. Smelll the stench as you wade, get used to it - as there will be PLENTY more.
Veeger

Cheney to Congress: "Make warrantless wiretapping permanent", by Matt Janovic

"While EFF appreciates the attempt by Senator Specter to craft a compromise to save the litigation, the bill contains serious flaws that undermine the goal of allowing the courts to decide whether the carriers and the president broke the law when they engaged in over five years of warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans." --Electronic Frontier Foundation press release, December 5th, 2007.

Washington D.C.--Today's rare glimpse of the vice president all appears to have begun over a letter written by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.) urging the White House to allow for more time to consider provisions of a bill to extend the government's abilities to wiretap domestically. Reid and others want oversight provisions and more. In an unsurprising move, the ever reclusive Vice President crawled-out of his secret bunker and issued an ultimatum to Congress today demanding that spying on American citizens--as well as foreigners--be made permanent. What the vice president and president want is the addition of a feature in the sunsetting "Protect America Act" (Public Law 110-55), a bill that was rashly passed by the 110th Congress at the end of August of 2007, and against the will of the public.

The White House has vowed to veto any version of the renewed act that doesn't include specific provisions. What does Cheney want? The Bush administration (Cheney) wants a provision that gives retroactive immunity to the telecoms (all-but-one complied without warrants) over aiding in perhaps thousands of FISA violations under an illegal NSA wiretapping program that failed to obtain warrants from the oversight court. Blah-blah-blah, "9/11," blah-blah-blah, "war on terrorism," and more blah-blah-blahs, were the reasons given to offer law-breaking communications corporations like AT&T, Verizon, Southern Bell (SBC), MCI, and many others (some unknown at this writing). Does haste make waste? My Grandmother always said it did:

"We're reminding Congress that they must act now," Cheney told the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The law, which authorizes the administration to eavesdrop on phone calls and see the e-mail to and from suspected terrorists, expires on Feb. 1. Congress is bickering over terms of its extension. On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked an effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to extend the stopgap Protect America Act without expanding it, raising stakes for an expected showdown in the Senate later this week on a new version of the law. (AP, 01.23.2008)

And so, we've established that Richard Cheney didn't have such a great Grandma and that it actually does appear that Democrats in the Senate are trying to kill the Protect America Act (or make it reasonable). Sunsetting the PAA would be the traditionally American thing to do when a law threatens the liberties of its citizens and so clearly violates the Constitution of the United States, but Congress appears to be taking-its-time. This is acceptable. At least the Democrats are finally beginning to understand what a threat this all poses to them and the rest of us. Yet, somehow, Cheney seems to think he can operate without any mandate--he should, he's been doing so for almost eight-years now.

The 2008 elections loom large on the horizon. Is Senator Reid just trying to give Democratic incumbents the appearance of an opposition party, or is this a real shift from their timid and co-conspiratorial behavior from 2000-on? Nonetheless, the vice president's speech is being heavily-hyped by our corporate media in an attempt to drown-out all other voices on the issue, just as they did to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

As usual, Cheney's speech was made on unconsecrated ground, where nobody with any sense would laugh or balk at the vice president's statements today: the Heritage Foundation, where expressing common sense and reason are career-liabilities. None of this matters, action speaks louder than words. Congress is likely to capitulate on this issue unless we nearly break-their-hands forcing them to let the Protect America Act sunset and die after February 1st, 2008. Will they, or won't they? Regardless of the desire to scratch the immunity provision on-the-part of the Democratic majority, they still want to extend the program of spying on Americans, just with oversight by Congress.

But is the threat that bad, is it real? How could you even prove it was until there was an attack? It's all about instilling fear, and most incumbents are thinking on the same level as the White House: milk the war on terrorism for political-points. In-addition, the public isn't taking Congress or the White House at their word as they did in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, which a simple glance at the polls has made clear since as early as late-2004 (about the time that the NYT discovered the warrantless surveillance programs).

Economic woes are only going to exacerbate the dislike for incumbents, especially if they don't start delivering broad-based reforms. The next sweeping-out of Congress could very well mean an end to this political generation and the rise of a new one. Several interconnected DC-scandals could finish the job. The Democrats understand this dynamic of the mandate better than the GOP, and the pressures must be immense at this writing. Preserving Democratic-gains made from the 2006 midterms will require giving the public something, and something will have to go.

On this note, Senator Harry Reid seems to be leading-the-charge against the immunity provisions, so we must assume that it's becoming a mainstream issue within the Senate itself. The reality is that it's been senators like Russell Feingold (D-Wi.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.), who have been keeping this issue alive. Other than Arlen Specter, there have been no progressive voices coming from GOP incumbents on this issue. Surely, civil libertarians of all-stripes are pelting Congress with angry e-mails, phone calls, and letters as this is being written. If they aren't, they'd better start doing it immediately, criminals cannot reform themselves. For that matter, they cannot be trusted to investigate or arrest themselves. Going widely unreported by the mainstream press are the actions by Sen. Christopher Dodd who is threatening once again to filibuster the bill in the Senate. What are his chances of succeeding? Not bad:

Efforts to pass the Senate FISA bill stalled in December when Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) pledged to filibuster any measure that provided phone companies with immunity. Reid pulled the bill from the floor so the Senate could finish its other work. Dodd on Wednesday again said that he would work to defeat any efforts that included such protections. “I’m just not going to give them a free pass,” Dodd said. Before filibustering, he said he would support an amendment that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) plans to offer that would strengthen the FISA court and does not include immunity for the carriers. Leahy’s amendment is based on the bill passed by the Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. He would not say on Wednesday whether he would support a filibuster by Dodd. (theHill.com, 01.23.2008)

If the Democratic Party wishes to retain the Congress after this next election cycle, they must stand firm on this issue and block any attempts by the GOP to force passage of this legislation. As Republicans aren't in the majority, it will be the fault of the Democratic one if this legislation is renewed in a form acceptable to the White House. The rule of law has been thwarted long enough by the GOP and her operatives within the State. Predictably, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) is calling for a 'compromise' that replaces the telecom carriers as the defendant in all of the telecom lawsuits (nearly all alleging unlawful and unconstitutional violations of privacy) with the government. Ask any honest former-prosecutor if this is acceptable (meaning, 'not Arlen Specter, Rudolf Giuliani or Thomas DiBagio').

Retroactive immunity is like letting the primary accomplices to a major crime off-the-hook so that they can commit the same crimes again-and-again for a future administration, presumably Republican. Granting immunity will absolve this administration and her allies of an unknown number of high crimes, possibly even treason, and it will create dangerous precedents. It should be clear to anyone that Sen. Specter is acting-on-behalf of his party, doing his best to protect the GOP from a long-delayed justice. This is un-American in every respect.

Are Senator Reid and others in Congress starting to listen to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)? EFF's contention back on December 5th, 2007 was that Congress shouldn't rush things--exactly the opposite of what the White House is calling for. This mess has been ongoing since December of 2005 when the existence of the NSA's warrantless surveillance program was revealed in The New York Times. They had been sitting on it for a year. We can wait to pass this bill until it resembles something Americans can be proud of.

'NSA Class Actions': http://www.eff.org/cases/att

'EFF Calls on Senate Judiciary Committee and Full Senate to Take More Time and Not Let Telephone Companies Off the Hook: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/12/05

The Hill (yes, the Hill) on the wiretapping battle, 01.24.2008: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/battle-over-wiretapping-is-heating-up-on-the-hill-2008-01-24.html

The sound of our liberties dying, 01.23.2008 (AP): http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jRICMUBI8QvePywA5BLklcJJApcAD8UBQAT80

Senate holds 12-second session to block Bush

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In one of the shortest session in its history, the Senate's final session of the year lasted a total of 12 seconds Monday.

Democrats kept the Senate in session over the holiday season.

Only one senator, Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island, was in the chamber to gavel open the Senate and adjourn it until January 3.

Monday's event was the latest in a series of "pro forma" sessions the Senate has called. Pro forma means "for the sake of formality" and these micro sessions are part of the last political scuffle between the White House and the Democratic-led Congress.

Democrats are keeping the Senate in session to block President Bush from making any recess appointments. During congressional recesses, a constitutional mechanism allows the president to fill top government posts for up to one year without Senate confirmation.

Nearly all the senators left the Capitol for the Christmas holiday nearly a week and a half ago, but only one senator is needed to keep the Senate in session.

During the session last week, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, opened and then immediately gaveled the Senate session to a close. Wednesday's session lasted for 11 seconds. In all, he spent 57 seconds in the chamber.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, announced December 19 that he would keep the Senate open with a series of pro forma sessions through mid-January.

Talks had just broken down with the White House on a deal that would have allowed the president to make dozens of those appointments if he agreed not to appoint one controversial official, Steven Bradbury, as the permanent head of the influential Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.

Bush declined to accept the Democrats' offer, and Reid refused to approve Bradbury because of concerns about his involvement in crafting legal opinions for the administration on interrogation techniques of terrorism suspects.

Similar sessions were conducted over the Thanksgiving recess.

Other Democrats -- including Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Chuck Schumer of New York -- will share the duty of presiding over the "pro forma" sessions next month.

Read up on Gold Mining/Daily KOS

All That Glitters -- w/Poll (#3 in Series)

by Land of Enchantment

Thu Nov 17, 2005 at 02:11:12 PM PST

This installment in the series is about gold, and about the physical processes involved in mining. And the environmental consequences therefrom. These are the things that will happen if the Pombo Amendment passes, allowing for the fire sale of public lands. Links to the previous diaries and posts in this series are here, here, here, here, and here.

Here's the latest e-mail from National Environmental Trust regarding the Pombo Amendment: "Congressional Quarterly is now reporting that the leadership still does not have the votes to carry the reconciliation bill. Could happen later today or tonite, but might go back to rules for more changes in the bill tonite. Not too late for calls, letters, emails." Call your representative toll free at 1-800-828-0498.

Story below the flip

• Land of Enchantment's diary :: ::
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The Midas Touch

Gold has some special properties. It's shiny, it's easy to work with, it doesn't tarnish, and it conducts electricity. Those are the things its value is based upon. For centuries, its value is has been largely symbolic. That is, it's valuable because everyone says so. Its first use as currency was in a principality/kingdom called Lydia, occupying the central area of modern-day Turkey. That changed things. Our lexicon uses it to connote everything good: Golden Boy, Golden Rule, the Gold Standard, Good as Gold. But how good is it really? This diary starts to explore that question, and the next will finish it up.

Once upon a time, some 750 years BC, legend has it that Bacchus visited a little kingdom in what is now Turkey. It's king was named Midas. Bacchus liked his hospitality, and granted a wish, which we've all heard of. Perhaps he was greedy, or perhaps he was just tired of his people being poor. At any rate, Bacchus allowed him to reverse his wish when turning everything into gold didn't turn out, by bathing in the Pactolus River. His kingdom became rich. And gold washed downstream to the kingdom of Lydia, the first place in the world to issue standard gold coins as currency. This is where we move from legend to recorded history and physical evidence.

Timeline of Important Events in the History of Gold

• 687 BC Lydia originates state-monopoly on gold coinage (from Herodotus)
  
• 1492 Columbus's first voyage, setting mass looting of New World gold
  
• 1848 California gold rush
  
• 1980s Large scale cyanide heap leaching introduced

Gold has been mined for about 6,000 years in various corners of the world. 90% of all the gold mined in the world has occurred since the California Gold Rush, from 1848 onwards. Large scale gold mining began shortly thereafter in Australia and South Africa. All the gold ever mined would form a cube 19m on a side, which would fit easily under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Link to see a picture of same.

Purifying the metal from the ore
Because of gold's chemical stability, it takes a little work to separate it from ore-bearing rocks. In earlier days, mercury served the role. Mercury is a heavy metal, persistent in the environment and toxic in various ways. It bioaccumulates in the body. Leftover mercury from gold mining is the primary cause of advisories limiting or forbidding the consumption of fish caught in polluted rivers to this day. 750,000 miles of rivers in the US carry fish advisories due to mercury as well as 13 million acres of lakes. See EPA's Fish Advisories webpage for technical information. Westerners for Responsible Mining as a more user-friendly discussion.

But since the 1980s there's a new kid in town: cyanide. Cyanide is a chemical union of one carbon and one nitrogen atom, held together by a triple bond. The molecule's shape is such that it easily bonds to hemoglobin, the oxygen-bearing pigment in our blood - it's what makes it red. Cyanide binds so well that it doesn't let go, thus starving the body of oxygen. That's why it's toxic.

Tailings
Those are the waste products associated with extracting the metal from the ore. There are other parts of mining. There's tailings, the waste left over after the ore has been processed. In the case of gold, it contains cyanide. While it's true that cyanide will break down, in time, to harmless carbon and nitrogen, that doesn't happen instantly. It remains toxic as cyanide for some time. And, it also forms a variety of complexes with other materials that can later convert back to cyanide. The point being that when environmental monitoring is done for cyanide, it doesn't measure these related cyanide species, so reported results are biased low. Cyanide is toxic for any organism that breathes oxygen, which doesn't rule out much. Not something to welcome to the neighborhood.

Tailings are wet, and generally stored behind a dam to contain them. From time to time, these dams breach. And then there's trouble. More here.

On 30 January 2000, a breach in the tailings dam of the Aurul S.A. Baia Mare Company, released some 100,000 m³ of cyanide-rich tailings waste into the river system near Baia Mare in north west Romania. This spill released an estimated 50-100 tonnes of cyanide, as well as heavy metals, particularly copper, into the Somes, Tisza and finally into the Danube Rivers before reaching the Black Sea.
...
IMPACTS

• Contamination of the Somes/Szamos stream, tributary of the Tisza River
  
• Contamination and interruption of the drinking water in 24 locations and of 2.5 million people
  
• Massive fishkill and destruction of aquatic species in the river systems
  
• Severe negative impact on biodiversity, the rivers' ecosystems, drinking water supply and socio-economic conditions of the local population
  
• Cleanup costs = N/A
  

This kind of thing happens routinely on a smaller scale.

Waste Rock and Overburden
Waste rock is that which doesn't have enough gold in it to be worth processes. Waste rock is separated from good ore, and tossed aside in big waste piles. Overburden is similar. For a pit mine, typically the ore body is not right at the surface. So other rock, sometimes hundreds of feet thick, have to be removed to get at the ore. This is the main source of the giant unsightly piles of rock so characteristic of pit mines. Typically, they're piled as steep as they can get, and sometimes have landslides.

This is just regular native rock, so there shouldn't be any toxic problems with it. Right? Wrong. It's been ground up small pieces, allowing air and water into the spaces between all the pieces. Think of it like coffee: You pour hot water over a bunch of coffee beans and not much happens. Grind them up into little bits, and we all know the result. A similar thing happens with these rocks. Typically, one of the elements in those rocks is sulphur, typically in the form of H2S, because it's been locked up deep underground with little exposure to air or water. When air and water happens, the whole business is oxidized, with sulphuric acid H2SO4 being the result:

And therein lies the problem. Sulphuric acid is a strong acid, and dissolves metals out of the rocks as it percolates through them. As in the drawing above, it enters groundwater and eventually makes its way to surface water. In the case of underground mines, the old mineshafts and adits themselves can act as conduits to the toxic water. This water can be as strong as battery acid. I'll spare you a long discussion of all the bad things that happen. The EPA link above can help those wanting more in-depth technical info. Except for catastropic accidents and spills, as described above, acid mine drainage is the primary source of pollution from hard rock mining.

In fact, ore processing for some metals, like copper, mimic acid mine drainage to separate the metal from the ore. The ore is ground up, stacked up into heap leach piles, and processed by adding sulphuric acid. All that extra acid poses environmental threats because it accelerates acid mine drainage when it inevitably migrates through the area surrounding the mine.

About 40% of all headwater streams in the West are impaired (to use EPA language) by acid mine drainage.

The New Gold Rush
From the point of view of gold mining, cyanide was a great technical advance. It can extract gold from low grade ores that couldn't be processed before. Too bad tons and tons of cyanide degrade all living things in the vicinity. Nevada has been particularly active in this new gold rush. The new mines are HUGE, as can be well understood by considering the following:

Nevada is the driest of America's 50 states, so its ecosystems are particularly sensitive to disturbances in its hydrological cycles. And with these gigantic mines, which chew up whole mountains and spit them out, hydrology is inevitably redirected. If the mine digs into a spring, the water is pumped away to keep the mine dry. If it's too dry, water must be pumped in to be used for processing. All this massive gold mining has caused massive disruption for Western Shoshone living in small groups scattered throughout the Nevada countryside.

Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone:

In our traditional way, that our people have told us, the water in the earth's body is like blood in your veins. It's a life system within the earth. And they're taking it out. What's going to happen then? Do you know? Nobody knows!

These two maps show Western Shoshone traditional lands covered by the Ruby Lake Treaty of 1864. Link to larger map showing some of the facilities in Newe Segobia, the Shoshone name for their homeland. Western Shoshone, living in such dry country, traditionally moved around a lot within the territory shown above. At times different small groups scattered to different areas. They all gathered to during the salmon run on the Snake River in Idaho to catch and dry fish. It's not hard to figure see their ancestral lands will be particularly hard hit by the Pombo Amendment sell-off of public lands.

Gold has not been kind to the Western Shoshone. The main overland route for the 49ers followed the Humboldt River across northern Nevada (I-80 follows much of the same route today). From a handful of wagon trains in previous years (such as the Donner party, who had the bad luck to pick a serious El Niño year), and a handful of trappers, over 30,000 forty-niners made their way along the main watercourse in Western Shoshone territory. All those thousands of horses and oxen stripping the landscape of forage, and thus decimating the Shoshone's hunting and gathering. Some of the wagon trains shot at Indians for sport; conflict of various sorts flared up. After a decade of this, the Shoshone were in a lot of trouble. They submitted to the Ruby Lake Treaty in 1863 (ink to full text here). It's terms weren't particularly favorable. But somewhere along the way, all the land got reclassified as National Forest, Bureau of Land Management, National Wildlife Refuge, Area 51, Nuclear Test Range, and so on. There was never a formal transfer of title. Link to larger map showing some of the facilities in Newe Segobia, the Shoshone name for their homeland.

The intent of the treaty was to get the Western Shoshone to take up cattle ranching, and many did. The Dann family obtained land for a ranch under the Homestead Act (below, left). (I'm staying with them as a case study, because it's easier to tell a story with a human face on it.) Today, if you stand where this picture was taken from, and do an about-face, you'll see one of the ten largest working gold mines in the world. And they've got plans for major expansion. The Pombo Amendment pending before Congress this week, will be a big help to the mining companies. I've discussed this amendment in previous diaries and posts here, here, here, here, and here.

Turns out that northeast Nevada is the epicenter of the new gold rush, in a geologic region called the Carlin Trend. If Nevada were a separate country, it would be the second largest producer in the world. 2/3 of all gold mined in the US these days comes from Nevada. Here's a map showing mines around the Dann Ranch:

The old Horse Canyon mine is at a site known as Mt. Tenabo to the Western Shoshone. It's estimated that roughly $10 billion of gold (yes, with a "B") lies within that mountain, which a mining company proposes to grind up into little bits, drizzle with cyanide, and extract the gold. The mountain, of course, has its own traditional meaning. Early maps from the 1860s show a location marked "Shoshone Wells."Here's the mountain from the ground:

The 1872 Mining Act, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant, is still in force. See the first diary in this series for discussion of its provisions. Its purpose was to promote settlement and development of the west after the Civil War and completion of the first trans-continental railroad. It allows for the sale of public land at $2.50 to $5 per acre. In the Clinton Years, Interior Secretary called a press conference to spotlight the $275 check the government received for a land sale involving millions of dollars of gold. This contributed to a climate where these sales were placed in moratorium. Mines still proceeded on public land, and were thus subject to environmental review under NEPA, NAGPRA, Endangered Species, Clean Water, Clean Air and so on. Pombo's Amendment changes that by again permitting sales, but for $1000 per acre.

Before Pombo, Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) introduced a bill which would make an exception to 1872, and allow sale of 60,000 acres of federal land including Mt. Tenabo at fair market rates. (60k acres is a square about 9.7 miles on a side.) That might amount to $100 per acre, maybe more. At $100, the sale price would be $6 million for $10 BILLION of gold. Not the same bargain as Babbitt protested, but still a pretty good deal. Unlike when oil is extracted, no royalty fees would be required. Presumably Gibbons, who serves on the House Resources Committee which Pombo chairs, had a hand in crafting the Pombo Amendment to the Budget Reconciliation Bill. (The advantage to this approach is that Budget Bills are exempt from filibuster in the Senate.) Consulting the map above, it's pretty clear that Gibbons's mining company "constituents" will be the #1 beneficiaries of the Pombo Amendment boondoggle.

Meanwhile, there's been an ongoing dispute between Western Shoshone ranchers and the Bureau of Land Management. BLM exercises authority over public lands, including grazing leases. It's their contention that Western Shoshones owe millions of dollars in grazing fees for using public land. Only thing is, there's no paper trail documenting the transfer of title. Because it never happened. The Indians contend that they're doing exactly what they agreed to do at the time of the treaty, raising cattle on their traditional lands. They do not recognize the federal government's authority to charge lease fees for them to use their lands. Background: In the 1960s (or so) there was a bizarre court ruling that the Shoshone had lost title to their land through "gradual encroachment".

At that time, Congress passed a bill to compensate them - for most of the state of Nevada (plus) - at the rate of 5 cents per acre. Dirt cheap even compared to 1872 Mining Act prices. They refused to accept it, and the money's been sitting in escrow for all that time. All kinds of efforts to divide and conquer, or ram the settlement down their throats have been attempted since then. At present, with accrued interest, it amounts to (ball park) a one-time cash payment to each Shoshone of $30k. One mid-range heavy duty pick-up. Harry Reid, whom many Kossacks love to love, has led the pack in these efforts since he's been in office.

This matter has been taken to international forums on the grounds of human rights violations perpetrated by the US government. And the Western Shoshone had some rulings in their favor. None of which slowed the BLM down in confiscating a whole bunch of Indian cattle, and most of the Dann's horses which were put up for auction to offset the grazing fees.

So whaddya think? Is this about cattle grazing? Or is it about driving the Indians out so that multi-billion dollar gold mines can proceed without impediment? I think it's the latter, don't you? Did you think the days of dispossessing the Natives is something of the past, long over? Hasn't happened since the 1800s? Sorry, it's time to let go of another illusion about what the US government does in all of our names. I guess this is a good place for a link to the Western Shoshone Defense Project, in case you're disturbed enough about this to want to know more, or even help out.

BTW, I've recommended to YearlyKos that Western Shoshone Defense Project, and a relevant spiritual person, be invited to the gathering in Las Vegas next June. For an invocation (decidedly not affiliated with Jesus), and for a presentation. On the grounds that if you visit a place, you ought to know something about the locals. No telling if anyone with clout will notice. I certainly haven't got any!

Here's a quote from Carrie Dann regarding the land claims and land settlements:

The Indian Claims Commission payment constitutes selling of our Indian lands and destruction of the Indian heritage and culture. No money would ever compensate taking the land from our native people. No race of people has ever sold their homeland. Where will our homeland be if we accept the money? Let us walk with dignity and honor and never as a people without a country.

Of course, there are mining interests elsewhere, too. And corporate cronies all over the place to please. Though I wouldn't be surprised if those mining gold in Nevada haven't found a way for a few $$ to find their way to Pombo. Hopefully, Pombo's vulnerable in `06, due to redistricting, demographic changes in his district, and lack of concern for his constituents compared to the cronies. And judging by the editorials popping up all over the West (kudos to excellent media work being done by mining activists - link here), there's some backlash to his (ahem) crap.

Generally, we expect the Democrats, especially in the Senate, to do the right thing on these matters. In this case, Harry Reid is not the guy I'd prefer to have leading the charge. He has a long record of being in the pocket of mining interests. Dang!!!!

At any rate, there's hope in the House. The GOP hasn't mustered the necessary votes to get pass the bill yet, so there's still a chance to stop it. Could come up as soon as today, so keep your eyes pealed (peeled?!?) for alerts. National Environmental Trust website is a good place to look for the latest on this issue.

Next: The social and economic role of gold, and campaigns addressing a few of its more glaring problems: shareholder activism, No Dirty Gold. It would seem that the "No Summos Pendejos" installment will be coming later.

[*UPDATE:* This came to my attention after the diary was written, but is certainly relevant. Editor's Report from Indian Country Today today (November 17, 2005):

*Take it from the Indian, sell it to the highest bidder*

...

Well, some things never seem to change.

A potential land grab, the likes of which haven't been seen since the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, is upon us. A huge acreage of what remains traditionally Indian land, and yet in many places has seemingly been passed to the public domain as federal trust lands, is slated to be put up for claim and/or sale, if a provision pushed by U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., chair of the House Resources Committee, passes Congress. Pombo's provision, slipped inside a House budget bill, would overturn a congressional ban that has kept both mineral companies and individuals from taking patents on public lands, prohibiting purchases in national forests and parks, for supposed mining purposes.

The new bill would make it legal for anyone to stake out a mining claim on public land and then be allowed to buy it. Pombo is ostensibly revising the 1872 General Mining Law that encouraged easy claims to stimulate westward migration. The loophole would now be expanded by lowering the levels of commercially viable ore that must be present. Ultimately, an estimated 350 million acres of ''public lands,'' much of which is still legitimately Indian land, could pass into private hands, at giveaway prices, under the new provisions. That estimate is more than three times the amount of land lost by Native nations as a result of the allotment acts.

In at least one case, the so-called settling of title with the Western Shoshone via legislative manipulation imposed by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and signed by President Bush allows the possibility of large privatization in that state, where nearly 60 million acres could ultimately be sold to developers. Six of the top 10 present claim-holders are foreign entities, mostly Canadian and Australian mining companies.

Poll

What should the sale price per acre be for Mt. Tenabo?

	5 cents (Indian Claims Commission)
0%	0 votes
	$2.50 (1872 Mining Act)
0%	0 votes
	$100 (Gibbons HR 2869)
0%	0 votes
	$1000 (Pombo Amendment)
0%	0 votes
	$100,000 (roughly 1/2 the value of the gold)
1%	1 votes
	Keep it public with gold mines
9%	5 votes
	Keep it public with no mining
29%	15 votes
	Transfer title to Western Shoshone
58%	30 votes

| 51 votes | Results

Tags: 1872 Mining Act, Western Shoshone, Richard Pombo, Jim Gibbons, Harry Reid (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

Permalink | 21 comments

Daily Kos Help

• Tip jar (4.00 / 15)

  Will use the tips to buy a few acres needing protection from a gold mine.

  Something new

  by Land of Enchantment

• Yes, but I am not sure (none / 0)

  • I like your Diary title...:0(, I thought someone dropped a ring in the toilette or something.

    Will the elite be happy living behind gated communities in the potential meltdown? Peace now. -7.00, -2.92

    by mattes

    You're right. I already changed it. (none / 1)

    • I intended to anyhow. It's been up a hour. That's long enough.

      Something new

      by Land of Enchantment

    • More supply - lower price n/t

• by TarheelDem
  

  • Next in series will address... (none / 1)

    ...market-related issues. For this one, more supply = more devastation. If the mining companies actually had to clean up their messes, rather than dump it on others, the economics would be different. Since most gold has symbolic value, rather than use value, it's a helluva price to pay.

    Something new

    by Land of Enchantment on Thu Nov 17, 2005 at 02:23:35 PM PST

    • Symbolic value

      If the price declines, the symbolic value also declines unless people get really scared about the economy.

      They should mine old computer cards instead.

      -6.00/-7.18 The Partie Lion

      by TarheelDem on Thu Nov 17, 2005 at 07:27:58 PM PST

  • Less damand also equals lower price

    and less destruction:)

    This is one of the reasons I don't buy Gold anything...although I'm sure silver mining is an issue as well.

    I'm a hopemonger.

    by Elise on Thu Nov 17, 2005 at 02:27:30 PM PST

    • Don't buy gold anything

      Have you ever looked at the contacts between the motherboard and any of the cards in your computer?

      -6.00/-7.18 The Partie Lion

      by TarheelDem
      

      
      

      • Thought those were bronze....

        or copper...

        I'm a hopemonger.

        by Elise on Fri Nov 18, 2005 at 11:07:22 AM PST

        • It's the tiny stuff you can't see...

          ...inside the plug-in chips. The super-miniaturized stuff uses gold.

          But that's only a very small percentage of gold use. South African depends on gold mining, which it does not do by cyanide heap leaching. And could more than meet the world's need for ICs (integrated circuits) and dental gold, too. For the practical use value uses, rather than symbolic uses.

          Something new

          by Land of Enchantment on Sat Nov 19, 2005 at 04:20:46 PM PST

          [ Parent ]

• Hopefully the price of gold will

  collapse and the issue will disappear.

  Imo the right price is the value of the gold less the cost to recover it less a reasonable profit margin for the miner ... though I would rather it be kept as public land. It's a national asset and shouldn't be squandered.

  "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" - Hunter S. Thompson (RIP)

  by redfish
  

• As one with less pull I imagine than you (none / 0)

  what is the best way to advance your notion of WSDP addressing kos convention?

  Keep it up.

  What's so hard about Peace, Love, and Truth and Progress?

  by melvin
  

  • Don't really know. I just keep mentioning it. (none / 0)

    There's a separate website for here. Currently in Beta version, and a little buggy. They want everybody to take the survey. To make suggestions, scroll down to a link on the left side which says "We'll laugh at your suggestions here". You have to register before you can post. Not very active, only a few posts a day so far.

    Something new

    by Land of Enchantment

    • For this, I'll jump through those (none / 0)

      hoops. Only for this.

      What's so hard about Peace, Love, and Truth and Progress?

      by melvin
      

• I've got a diary I wrote last night...

  that has an action link about dirty gold...The diary is here and the link is the one about Zales...it asks you to email them about fair mining practices.

  I just thought I'd add that here so people could take action. I don't mean to diary pimp...so I apologize for that. I hope you don't mind...and I hope I'm not getting too ahead...I see you've got No Dirty Gold coming soon...

  This is a GREAT diary though....we really need to defeat Pombo.

  I'm a hopemonger.

  by Elise

  • Interestingly, the (none / 1)

    Jewelers of America trade association, has taken a stand against the Pombo giveaway. Jewelry is the primary use of gold, so this is a case of acting on principle rather than only on the spiritually debauched motivation of profit only. From their letter to Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert:
    

    On behalf of the Jewelers of America (JA), I am writing to register our strong opposition to a provision within the House Budget Reconciliation bill (HR 4241) that would result in a massive public land giveaway to corporations and private interests. We urge that this section ("Miscellaneous Amendments Related to Mining") be stripped from the bill.

    Also of interest is the recently formed "Council for Responsible Jewelry" here. There's likely some greenwashing involved, as founding members include gold mining giants Newmont & Rio Tinto, as well as Tiffany's, Cartier & Zales. Doesn't include the largest single retailer of gold in the U.S. ---- WALMART!!!

    Still interesting that they feel enough pressure to put up a front. Concerns it self with "Conflict Diamonds" as well,

    Something new

    by Land of Enchantment

    
    

    • Thanks for those links...

      I didn't know that!

      I'm a hopemonger.

      by Elise on

• Help!!!!!

  Somehow unrecommended in mid-switch to firefox (free at last). Everybody recommend to counter!

  What's so hard about Peace, Love, and Truth and Progress?

  by melvin
  

• I would really hate to see the West

  get the West Virginia treatment in terms of despoilation by the mining and energy cos. It's bad enough as it is now.

  "I just had the basic view of the American public -- it can't be that bad out there." Marine Travis Williams after 11 members of his squad were killed.

  by Steven D
  

  • Rep. Nick Joe Rahall II (D-VA)

    Has been in Congress for nearly 30 years. He's introduced some of the best mining bills over the years. And has also been pretty vocal on the Pombo Amendment. Nothing like first-hand experience to focus ones understanding.

    Something new

    by Land of Enchantment

    
    

    • s/b Rahal (D-WV)

      Off by 150 years. It's been along time since WV & VA were united as a single state.

      Something new

      by Land of Enchantment
      

      
      

STOP THE GENOCIDE, STOP IT!

Double Bluff: The Democrats' Pro-War Anti-War Bill

Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque

November 15, 2007 There has been much throwing about of brains on the Democrat's "bold" new proposal to "end" the onging war crime in Iraq. Anyone who still believes that these Reid-Pelosi Democrats are going to do anything to kill – or even pinch – the militarist goose whose golden eggs of loot and dominion are fattening the bipartisan plutocracy is, to put it mildly, a rock-bottom fool. Arthur Silber does his usual excellent demolition job on this latest bit of bunkum from the "opposition" and the support it has garnered from some of our leading "progressive" lights. Silber takes the radical step of actually reading what the bill actually says, and learns that is the same old non-withdrawal withdrawal plan that we have heard from top Dems for months; i.e., it would keep thousands upon thousands of American troops in Iraq, year after year, operating from permanent bases and engaging in a vast range of military actions, including combat, "force protection," "counter-terrorism operations" and "supporting Iraqi forces." In other words, under the Democrats' plan, Bush would achieve all of his war aims: a permanent military presence in Iraq, dominating a compliant Baghdad regime dedicated to imposing an "oil law" that will lay the conquered land's resources wide open for exploitation by Western plutocrats. But Silber, as is his wont, goes deeper than this devastating analysis of the bill, and shows how the "false narrative" that Harry "Shaky" Reid is building around it – i.e., that he and Pelosi are "hanging tough" to end the war – has won wide acceptance in "progressive" circles because it is a false narrative that helps the Democrats politically. It turns out that many in the "reality-based community" are perfectly happy to swallow the kind of false narratives that the Bush Regime has churned out relentlessly over the years – as long as those lies serve the "proper" partisan turn. But you'll get no excerpts here; Silber's piece deserves to be read in full, so get on over there pronto and give it a look: Stop the Lies, Stop the Funding, Stop the Genocide: STOP IT. ***

:: Article nr. 38252 sent on 15-nov-2007 17:25 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=38252

Link: www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/Double_Bluff%3A_The_Democrats%27_Pro-War_A
nti-War_Bill/

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Uruknet .

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> PENTAGON INSIDER HAS DIRE WARNING <

Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered insights into the looming attack on Iran and the loss of liberty in the United States at a recent American University symposium. What follow are his comments from that speech. They have been edited only for space.

By Daniel Ellsberg

Let me simplify . . . and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9-11. That’s the next coup that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution . . . what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world—in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.

All these violations were impeachable had they been found out at the time but in nearly every case the violations were not found out until [the president was] out of office so we didn’t have the exact challenge that we have today.

That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and others. They were impeachable. They weren’t found out in time. But I think it was not their intention, in the crisis situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.

It is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early 1970s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but [they] have believed in executive government, single-branch government under an executive president—elected or not—with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.

When I say this, I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country and what they think is best for this country—but what they think is best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this country [and the Framers of the Constitution] thought.

They believe we need a different kind of government now, an executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with ‘signing statements.’

Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says: ‘I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.’

It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire control of the executive branch, essentially of the president—a concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one branch, which is precisely what the founders meant to avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the Constitution.”

Now I’m appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my experience that on this point the Founders had it right. It’s not just ‘our way of doing things’— it was a crucial perception on the corruption of power to anybody, including Americans.

On procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power under control because the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.

That brings me to the second point. This executive branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition [even] from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran, which, even by imperialist standards, [violates] standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly everyone in the executive branch but most of the leaders in Congress.

The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …

But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t; it doesn’t even make it unlikely.

That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress—Democrats and Republicans—and the public and the media, we have freed the White House — the president and the vice president—from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.

And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.

And the question is what then, can we do about this?

We are heading toward an insane operation. It is not certain. [But it] is likely.… I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.

What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran, is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.

And . . . we will not succeed in moving Congress, probably, and Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that small, perhaps—anyway not large—possibility and probability to avert this within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our lives.

* * *

Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t be started under the next administration.

Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a further coup in the face of a 9-11, another attack, is for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage of which we have seen very little.

We have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible names, ‘traitor,’ ‘weak on terrorism’—names that politicians will do anything to avoid being called.

How do we get more people in the government and in the public at large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of office.

I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an oath of office which is the same oath of office taken by every member of Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in the armed services.

And that oath is not to a commander in chief, which is not [even] mentioned. It is not to a Fuehrer. It is not even to superior officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.

I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it out then. I was not obeying my oath, which I eventually came to do.

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada—who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war—is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously [the matter of] upholding his oath.

The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. [All the personnel] under him who understand what is going on — and there are myriad — are violating their oaths. And that’s the standard that I think we should be asking of people.

On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate—and frankly of the Republicans —that it is not their highest single absolute priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic majority so that Pelosi can still be speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.

I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about that.
Of course that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern. Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it, let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.”

Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the Constitution in the last couple of years?

I am shocked by the Republicans today that I read [about] in The Washington Post who threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas corpus. The ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get us back to George the First it got us back to before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.

I think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with that can we protect the world from madmen in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.

And the current generation of American generals and others who realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves —they might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and would not risk their career or their relations with the president to the slightest degree.

That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up here who somehow brought home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and find in themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the world. Thank you.”

(Issue #47, November 19, 2007)