impeachment toolkit: history of the US exposed by Matt Janovic

The "Nays" Have Had it: President George W. Bush's Disapproval Rating Higher Than Hugo Chavez, Saudis, and Communist Cuba, States Historic Gallup Poll - Matt Janovic

Washington D.C./The Mainstream Media--As most of the public has been told, approval ratings for American presidents began 70-years-ago, meaning in 1938. At that time, the Democratic Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in office, and the New Deal was coming under fire, primarily from the Republicans and the rest of the business community.

Roosevelt had also attempted packing the Supreme Court, a move he was appropriately criticized for and stopped from doing. Yes, the good-old-days of accountability, it makes the heart swell, just like a Sousa march.

But it should be reflected on that if there had been polls in 1932-33, it's likely that Herbert Hoover would have won the lowest approval rating of any American president, not Harry Truman or George W. Bush. Who cares? The Republicans were the minority party for five decades. There is no better indicator than that, and this was a time when people still voted in reasonable numbers.

For five decades, the American public knew full-well that allowing a Republican majority into government would spell another economic disaster borne out of the GOP's inherent tendencies towards wanton excess and their desire for a lack of oversight in the economy (something they and the Libertarians share in their respective doctrines). Welcome to that disaster. We've collectively forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression, the down-side of losing the WWII generation to the attrition of mortality. The wheel turns.

Truman's push into the Korean peninsula during the early-1950s would never have happened without the 1949 elections that swept Republicans into Congress; representatives like, red-baiting alcoholic Joe McCarthy, segregationist Strom Thurmond, and the demagogue Richard M. Nixon whose "unpopularity" record the current president has broken, flooded into the House and the Senate. Their aim was to wreck the New Deal, which didn't work, but they scored significant victories by pushing us into unnecessary wars. Then came the repression of McCarthyism and the stagnation of the Eisenhower years. Democrats shared the blame in most all of this then, just as they do now.

Yet, without Republicans pushing the postwar Red Scare, starting with affairs like the Alger Hiss/Whittaker Chambers scandal, the Rosenbergs, and accusing anyone who didn't tow their aggressive foreign policy line as being "soft on communism," there would have been no Korean War (1950-1953), Cuban Missile Crisis, or even a Vietnam War. Imagine the social spending that would have been possible had these conflicts never occurred. We can't.

Iraq is part of an old game: divert the potential for meeting social needs with out-of-control military spending, all thanks to the same whipping-up of fear we've seen today. These same tactics still apply, which is why we're often "treated" to the GOP's flimsy-argument that they're somehow "stronger on national security," a notion that doesn't deserve serious comment or analysis.

Dramatically, the current president of the United States enjoys less popularity than Socialist President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. This is because Americans are understanding the the source of the majority of their current problems--the price of gasoline, rampant unemployment, an illegal war costing hundreds-of-millions every day, runaway foreclosures, no reasonably socialized medicine, etc.--originate from the extra-legal policies of the Bush administration and the GOP.

The ultimate source, however, is the economic sector, the big-big rich who both parties truly serve. The majority of the public understands this, and doesn't care for it. Action and participation in the democratic process have been the only real remedies. The public appears to finally be grasping this fact after 30+ years of being politically comatose. While it's rarely reported, the anger is most strongly directed at Congress, for her inaction.

Like any mother who allows her children to be beaten by a demented patriarch, Congress is suffering under even lower approval-ratings than the president. The answer as to the "whys" is a simple one: the public wants Congress to rein-in the president and either force a resignation, or move forwards onto full-impeachment, including that of the vice president. It's commonplace for physically-abused children to blame the other parent more than they blame the actual aggressor. Not doing anything to prevent or end abuses when one actually can constitutes aiding and abetting. Not deciding is deciding.

Irregardless of current congressional inaction in our disabled system of checks and balances, Americans are becoming much more vocal about their disapproval of politicians in-general:

There is no single explanation for why the percentage who decline to give an opinion of the president's job performance is lower now than in the past. However, one hypothesis is as follows. When Gallup polled in the Truman and Nixon years, respondents may have been more likely to say they didn't have an opinion in lieu of saying they disapproved of the president. In other words, respondents who did not approve of the president's performance--rather than flat-out saying they disapproved--may have simply told interviewers they didn't have an opinion.

Today, as the percentage of "no opinion" responses to the presidential job approval question has declined, Americans appear to be more willing to give a negative response, resulting in the situation in which Bush's disapproval rating is at a record high while his approval rating is not at a record low. ("Bush's 69% Job Disapproval Rating Highest in Gallup History," Gallup, 04.22.2008)

The president is also less popular than the Saudi regime--amazing considering the fact that the American public is generally aware that 17 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. The reality is that people are being affected directly by the rapidly rising costs, a result of the high price of oil.

Most stunning is the fact that a majority of Americans look to Communist Cuba as being more reasonable and supportable than the current administration occupying the White House. This wholly contradicts the mainstream media's portrayal of what Americans think, but only a fool would accept their picture. The majority of Americans are weighing how other systems provide for their citizens, and their attitudes overall are far-left. Most importantly for the present: a whopping 69% now feel that we were all lied to to get us into a war in Iraq. Better late than never. War crimes have no statute of limitations. Not even a presidential pardon can make that go away, never.

USA Today on the gist, 04.22.2008: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080422/a_pollbox22.art.htm

The Beef, 04.22.2008: http://www.gallup.com/poll/106741/Bushs-69-Job-Disapproval-Rating-Highest-Gallup-History.aspx

What “Freedom” Brought to Afghanistan

What “Freedom” Brought to Afghanistan

Women in Afghanistan have a 1 in 8 lifetime risk of maternal death. (By contrast: The rate in neighboring Pakistan is 1 in 74; the rate in Sweden is in in 17,400).

It’s like a perfect storm of right-wing policies: The War on Drugs, women’s liberation by way of imperialism, and “freedom” at the barrel of a gun.

Khalida’s father says she’s 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can’t keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can’t keep her much longer. Khalida’s father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It’s the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he’s losing far more than money. “I never imagined I’d have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter,” says Shah.

In the last six months alone, over 250 women have committed suicide in the country, according to Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). IRIN News, August 21, 2007

The vast majority of the world’s opiates originate in Afghanistan. To fight drug production, the solution has been to target individual farmers and destroy their crops — without offering them any other option for survival. And the U. S. keeps mucking it up. We offered farmers other crops (wheat, etc), but once it was grown there weren’t enough buyers (I guess we didn’t think that far ahead).

And it’s not just farmers who are suffering because of these policies — it’s girls.

Angiza Afridi, 28, has spent much of the past year interviewing more than 100 families about opium weddings in two of Nangarhar’s 22 districts. The schoolteacher and local TV reporter already had firsthand knowledge of the tragedy. Five years ago one of her younger aunts, then 16, was forced to marry a 55- year-old man to pay off an older uncle’s opium debt, and three years ago an 8-year-old cousin was also given in marriage to make good on a drug loan. “This practice of marrying daughters to cover debts is becoming a bad habit,” says Afridi.

Even so, the results of her survey shocked her. In the two districts she studied, approximately half the new brides had been given in marriage to repay opium debts. The new brides included children as young as 5 years old; until they’re old enough to consummate their marriages, they mostly work as household servants for their in-laws. “These poor girls have no future,” she says. The worst of it may be the suicides. Afridi learned of one 15-year-old opium bride who poisoned herself on her wedding day late last year and an 11-year-old who took a fatal dose of opium around the same time. Her new in-laws were refusing to let her visit her parents.

Gul Ghoti is on her first visit home since her wedding six months ago. She says it’s a relief to be back with her father and mother in their two-room mud-and- brick house, if only temporarily. “My heart is still with my parents, brothers and sisters,” she says. “Only my body is with my husband’s family.” She says she personally knows of two opium brides who killed themselves. “One of the girls had been badly beaten by her husband’s brother, the other by her husband,” she says. Ghoti says she’s considered suicide, too, but Islam stopped her. “I pray that God doesn’t give me a daughter if she ends up like me.”

The life expectancy for adults in Afghanistan is 43.

Almost half of all children are not enrolled in primary school.

Only eight percent of girls attend secondary school.

More than half of all children under 5 are suffering from moderate to severe stunting.

Only 34 percent of people in Afghanistan have access to adequate sanitation facilities.

For every 100 people in Afghanistan, 5 have a phone.

One has internet access.

Women in Afghanistan have a 1 in 8 lifetime risk of maternal death.

(By contrast:

The rate in neighboring Pakistan is 1 in 74;

the rate in Sweden is in in 17,400).

A dose of Canadian REALITY from Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk: The fearful lives in a land of the free

Sat Apr 5, 2008 4:34 pm (PDT)

Robert Fisk: The fearful lives in a land of the free

Westerners assume that anyone with a Canadian passport is safe,

I was given the chance to talk to 600 Muslim Canadians a few days ago. The dinner was in an Ottawa banqueting room and the guests also included the imam of the Ottawa mosque, the Ottawa chief of police and sundry uniformed Canadian army officers.

The imam sat between me and the Canadian capital's top cop – a genuinely decent guy who wanted Muslim Canadians to regard him as a friend – and we were even able to joke about the reality of those "random checks" which Muslims of Middle Eastern origin and a certain R Fisk seem to receive at North American airports. All well and good, then, until I got up to speak.

I warned the audience they might not like all they heard from me. And sure enough, when I told the audience that they were perfectly at liberty to condemn Israel and America – indeed, that they should condemn both when they abuse human rights, occupy other people's countries and shoot innocent civilians – but that I wanted to know why I so rarely heard them condemn the vicious police states in the Middle East and other areas of south-west Asia from which they originally came, I was greeted with silence. A smattering of Muslim diplomats sat like statues, thus identifying the cruelty of their regimes. The only immediate applause came when I remarked that the moment Western soldiers started shooting at Muslims in Muslim lands, it was time for the soldiers to withdraw.

Two interesting phenomena emerged from this remark. The first was that, when I finished, both the police chief and the Canadian army officers joined the applause. Canada's hopeless military involvement in Afghanistan is a subject of considerable controversy within the Canadian military. When the politicians have had their say, I've discovered, soldiers usually let us know their views.
Much more revealing, however, was the long car journey I took next day across the frozen tundra of Canada during which two Muslim Canadian men – yes, yes, they had beards – explained to me just why their community was so silent about the iniquities perpetrated by their local dictatorships back home. I had suggested that they were rather too beholden to those regimes – for funding and political support. They agreed – up to a point.

"Mr Robert, you have to understand something," the driver suddenly said. "They have their 'mukhabarat' agents here in Canada. Whenever there is even a dispute between families, anyone who's angry can report back that his antagonist is anti-regime. We have to remember that we have families still in our Arab countries. They can be arrested. Or we can be arrested when we go back to visit them."

Of course. Only a Westerner – only someone who automatically assumes that anyone with a Canadian passport is safe – could have failed to spot the flaw in the country's brave multiethnic society: not that Canada's vast communities from every part of the world live in the land of the free – which they do – but that their freedom is frighteningly circumscribed by the ruthlessness and lack of freedom in the countries from which they came.

And so I began to learn what it is like to be an Arab Canadian. It takes only a local argument to have an email winging its way back to Tripoli or Cairo or Damascus or the Gulf, informing the local despots that their dual citizen – Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman or whatever – is a potential subversive and, ergo, a terrorist. And, so great is the co-operation between our beloved Western intelligence agencies and the torturers of these repulsive dictatorships that this "intelligence" is shared.

So only days after the original message has gone off to the Arab world, the "mukhabarat" privately tell the Canadian intelligence service – a truly silly institution called CSIS – that Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman is a "terrorist". At which point, Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman come under observation from CSIS as potentially dangerous terrorists in Canada.

At which point I realised exactly why my remarks in the Ottawa banqueting hall were greeted with a frozen silence. It isn't long ago, for example, that Maher Arar, who lives in Canada, was picked up by the FBI's goons while in transit at JFK airport and "renditioned" to an underground prison and torture in Syria, courtesy of information provided by CSIS and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The Canadian government subsequently awarded Arar $10m for this outrageous experience. But who wants to speak out against one's country of origin if it's going to end in the company of a well-trained torturer?

Just as Tariq Ali revealed the darkness behind the Bhutto legend in the London Review of Books last year, so my favourite lawyer, Gareth Peirce – she of In the Name of the Father fame – has now shone her crimson torch upon the British version of these iniquitous goings on.

In the same publication, she has given the most detailed account so far of the fraudulent British promises given to Arabs who chose to return to their savage homelands – rather than languish under a form of house arrest in the UK – that they would be neither tortured nor imprisoned after they went home.

When Benaissa Taleb and Rida Dendani were packed off back to Algeria, for instance, a British diplomat had promised that they would be detained for only a few hours. But they were both interrogated and beaten for 12 days in Algiers before being sentenced to years in prison. When Dendani appealed desperately to the British Special Immigration Appeals Commission, the SIAC didn't even bother to reply. And there was no reason why they should.

As Peirce has now revealed from court papers, private memoranda between the Home Office and Anthony Blair (I am truly sorry that I must mention this wretched man's name again), a caution from civil servants about the probable torture to which deported Egyptians might be subjected if sent to Cairo, was greeted by our former prime minister with the words:

"Get them back."

In reference to the Home Office's concern that Egyptian assurances could not be trusted, Blair wrote:

"This is a bit much. Why do we need all these things?"

Am I the only one to react to the preachy, hypocritical sermon by this detestable man at Westminster Cathedral on Thursday with something more than disgust? Because it is his callous, immoral reaction to that deportation case – and the response of countless political leaders like him – towards Muslims in Europe and North America that led to that cold, hollow, frightening silence in the Ottawa banqueting hall. If I had been among the audience, I now realise, I would have remained silent too.

5 April 08. The Independent.

Robert Fisk's new book The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings, a selection of his Saturday columns in The Independent is out now

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-the-fearful-lives-in-a-land-of-the-free-804914.html

The US does NOT own the world; Okinawan women

A Message from the Women of Okinawa

To All US GIs in Okinawa

By CounterPunch News Service

Once again, American GIs have raped an Okinawan girl, one from junior high. We are angry.

We do not believe that all of you are rapists. But given the long history of similar crimes over the sixty years from the Battle of Okinawa continuing to today, one could be forgiven for thinking so. If you are a female GI, can you trust these male GIs ?

We know that this incident is only the tip of the iceberg. There have been so many rape victims who have told no one and wept silently in their beds, that you are probably confident that you could get away with it, aren't you. But those days are now over.

We are not going to let us and our mothers, our sisters and our daughters be humiliated any longer. Whatever you do, wherever you go, we'll be watching you.

You have been turned into killing machines. The military organization has sought to teach you to see people not as people, but as something to kill. It is that same training that has taught you see us as someone you can rape casually. Go back to your hometown, where your mother is, and try to get yourself back to being a decent human being.

We do not hate you as individuals. But as members of the US military organization, you are unwelcome here. Maybe you imagine you are protecting Okinawa. But because you are here, we never feel safe. Because you are here, we feel constant fear.

You think that because the US military shed blood to seize Okinawa in World War II, the place belongs to you and you can do anything you want here, don't you.

But whatever countries or governments may have won or lost whatever wars, we have our dignity, our honor, and our freedom, and these are our islands, our land, our sky, our sea. It is here that we maintain the chain of life, giving birth to children, and raising them to be adults. This is the women of Okinawa. And this is what we are proud of. We will not allow you to continue to insult the pride, the honor, the dignity of us and our mothers, sisters and daughters. Go back to America. Now.

Okiinawan women are handing this statement to US military personnel. Contact address: ushiibaakami@yahoo.co.jp

What do I REALLY think and feel?

Commentary POST BuZh and Laura TV appearance

The world's biggest turkeys gooble

and gluck

The IDIOT cannot get one coherant sentence out of his mouth without a mistake. IT's all chop and change as he edits every single though, even simple ones.

You'll notice the contrast between what he says and her ability to form a sentence quite fluidily. Oh, she is the glib master spinner for the television world, and he is still the Splenda and aspertame KING OF THE AIRWAVES, only he cannot speak coherantly any more.


But she is such an arrogant piece of work. OH! Look at me! I am the IMPERIAL FIRST LADY! is the subtext! Aren't I SPECIAL??

Well, No, Laura it is my special opinion you are not. You are married to a deceitful, totally unacceptable WAR CRIMINAL and the truth be known, although under the kleig lights you may "appear" acceptable becuz you are being interviewed by a nitwit TOADIE who lets George's flagrant lies go by, you are not acceptable, you are IMPERIAL WAR CRIMINALS, perhaps the worst the world has EVER EVER known. And you are sick making in the extreme.

To endorse HiLIARy Clinton as acceptable and to be chosen as toxic Presidential infotainment is unacceptable -- and to beat it into America, not once but twice during this interview sucks the big one. Talk about a blow job on AMERICA, you two have it DOWN.

You both seem to think we all fucking stoopid, or do you WISH to offend? Even the stoopidest kid on the block would see what actually vampires you are. We see the death tolls coming out. We KNOW that the surge was a bust and that America's been had. And we wonder, strongly wonder, you fucking twit, why don't you mention that you are sorry for ringing up the national deficit causing UNTOLD HOMELESSNESS, to occur as oil prices fucking soar - why don't you two fucking apologize to AMERICA for your excess . the worst excess EVER EVER seen in any administration, in any country at any time on earth.

OH, the two of you are just totally obscene.

Really filthy people, scum of the scum, not rich immature little brats who live in a 'cottage.' To think it is YOUR FUCKING PERSONAL COTTAGE when in fact it belongs to the people of the United States and you act like it is YOURS is such an outrage is to as to NOT be believed.

Madame First Lady, when I was young I adored Mamie Eisenhower. I wrote her a letter. I had no idea of her personal woes. I just thought she belonged in that White House and wanted to know what she enjoyed doing in there. She wrote me back and said she played the organ alot.

Later, when I grew up I found out the truth about Mamie Eisenhower. She was in fact an alcoholic drifting around the White House as if it were an isolation tank, never knowing what TO DO, except to hit the bottle and hide out. But she did not act as if SHE WERE THE FRIGGIN OWNER of the White House, of some IMPERIAL STOCK. Despite Ike's indiscretions with US Army women, Mamie hung in there and acted like a fucking American PUBLIC servant.

Oh, how I choke with rage, you twit Laura fucking Bush.

As for you George, I hope you fry in HELL, with all your senses IN TACT, not being able to be high and out of it, doped up by doctors (like your little playmate Condi Rice) -- and totally without any socially redeeming value. I don't find you amusing or cute or cuddly or anything at all and I feel damned sorry for your future son in law. I wonder in fact who bribed him to work with the shits on your staff and what lead him to dating your obviously twisted daughter. What a great role model YOU are to this seriously deluded young man.

What bubble does HE think he can live in when the seige of Iran, Syria, the Sudan begin? What a fine IMPERIAL scene to contemplate as he breds a "new American" imperial family.

I cannot WAIT to see the end of you ALL.

Man, as I read that statement, I got angrier and angrier and angrier and angrier. I hope a few other people did as well.

After I read the transcript, I feel into a sleep, returned to St. Paul MInnesota (???!!!) and after getting lost and enduring many rather boring adventures among the "new" Americans that have lived in lalaland there since I have been gone - I got caught up in a raging FLOOD from which I could not escape. The Mississippi had flooded its banks and was carrying away ALL noticable human culture with it. I first got assaulted by pop cans as the current grew stronger and stronger. I realized that all the trees were being carried along and were highly dangerous to my safety. I wanted to get back to people I loved, to simplicity, to honesty, to the VALUES that sustained me when my alcoholic family did not.

I tried to swim out of the current that was taking me into greater and greater danger; but I could not - as the surface of the water was like some impervious plastic, oil-ridden scum and there was no way to get off it and into LESS turbulent water or to a bank or grab a tree branch as I rushed by. The current and speed of the river moved ever faster. St. Paul resembled cities I saw in Europe that sustained heavy war damage and have been rebuilt. I was in NAZILAND - and there was no escape! I woke up with the cold sweats when I realized I am a WARRIORESS, always surviving, yet carried along by the times. The times are the times created by BuZh and the IMPERIUM in my life time, out of control, frightening, indifferent as to where I was lead to go. They ignore my talents, my strengths, my abilities to sing and dance and play and help others. My ability to transform food into sharing, my ability to have emotions other than fear and panic. (and yet, and yet, I just keep swimming ... I am STRONG.)

I am rying to make it to shore, but a victim of THE TIMES, the times when the IMPERIUM gets on TV at THANKSGIVING and reminds me of how much AMERICA has changed and it's NOT for the good. It's diabolic what these liars have wrought.

Once St. Paul was home to high level diplomats and great global thinkers who built beautiful houses looking over some of God's most beautiful country on beautiful hills, homes that were filled with love, and creativity and promise but are now becoming mere skeletons to "oil progress" which left them heatless, heartless and devoid of any purposeful activity. And yes, George and Laura Bush would NEVER EVER BE WELCOME IN ANY OF THESE HOMES, as people are about to lose them forever. There would not be room in their vastness to hold the Buzh's imperial entourage of soldiers, body guards, hair dressers, make up artistes, aides, confidantes, six cooks and a bottlewasher. Instead, this once great American palaces will serve as fossils of insanity for people to view in a few decades, all the VITAL people lost, all their culture eschewed ..

And what a pity.

Nothing growing in these yards but the native plants once again.

Prairie grasses trying to hold their stalks high in the wind.

And the sun will be buried under a nuclear cloud.

Having forgotten why there were built at all.