Month: May 2008

For nearly fifty years the United States have shut out an island that is ninety miles from American soil. Of all the Presidential candidates this election, Barack Obama has come the closest to saying he would extend an olive branch to Cuba by having face-to-face talks with Cuban leader Raul Castro. But he falls short of ending this destructive embargo against the Cuban people. Fidel Castro wrote an editorial critical of Obama but also reaching out to Obama as a great hope for Cuba. It is clear that Castro understands American politics and knows that his best hope is Obama.

HAVANA (AP) — Former President Fidel Castro says Sen. Barack Obama’s plan to maintain Washington’s trade embargo against Cuba will cause hunger and suffering on the island.

In a column published Monday by government-run newspapers, Castro said Obama was “the most-advanced candidate in the presidential race,” but noted that he has not dared to call for altering U.S. policy toward Cuba.

“Obama’s speech can be translated as a formula for hunger for the country,” Castro wrote, referring to Obama’s remarks last week to the influential Cuban American National Foundation in Miami.

We need to end the diplomatic freeze against Cuba. The fact that Obama has said he would meet with Raul Castro is an important first step, but it needs to be pursued toward “full diplomatic relations.” The argument that they are a Communist country no longer holds water. That shipped passed long ago when we recognized the USSR many years ago and currently have full relations with, yes, Communist China, although few refer to it that way anymore. China has in fact become an important ally with the United States.

So why the paranoia about Cuba. I am convinced, and it is not based on any evidence I have found, that had Nixon finished his second-term in office, he would have taken the next logical step and recognized Cuba too. It took a life-long Commie basher like President Richard Nixon to open the doors to the old USSR and China. Nixon had his personal demons and had self-destructive tendencies, but I grudgingly admit that he a was simply brilliant analyst and policy-maker when it came to world affairs and understanding how the world fit together.

So if a Commie-hating Republican like Nixon could seize the historical moment when he open the doors to the USSR and China, then it is difficult for me to understand the missed opportunities of Jimmy Carter, who didn’t open the doors to Cuba in his four years, or the missed opportunities of Bill Clinton during his eight years when he failed to open the doors to Cuba. Presidents like Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George Bush never had a vision of the world, so I would not have expected them to open the doors to Cuba.

I have high hopes that Barack Obama, should he become the next President, will right this grievous wrong against the Cuban people. John McCain, should he be elected, would continue the stale foreign policies of his Republican predecessors Reagan, Bush and Bush.

The policy seems to be that when the Castro passes on, we’ll think about opening the doors. But we are not punishing Fidel and Raul Castro in our failure to do the right thing. We are punishing the great people of Cuba. We are depriving them of basic needs and that is inhumane. We should be ashamed of our policies. Cuba is hardly a security threat the the United States. But I would be willing to bet if they were a military threat to the United States, we might be more willing to sit across the table from the Cubans.

I hope and pray that the next President of the United States brings humanity back to the world stage. Cuba would be a great start. Reading on Walden Bookstore.

In the interest of preserving information, I wanted to post the following article on the subject of smears against Obama.

He’s a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He’s a tool of Louis Farrakhan. He’s anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He’s friends with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He’s the Antichrist.

By now you’ve probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama’s religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black nationalist. That picture couldn’t be further from the truth, but you’d be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and US politics, has been specifically targeted [see Eric Alterman’s column in the March 24 issue, “(Some) Jews Against Obama”]. What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack has been thrust into the mainstream — used as GOP talking points, pushed by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence become “elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy,” as the Jewish Week, America’s largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.

What floods into one’s inbox these days bears little or no relation to Obama’s record. “Some of my earliest and most ardent supporters came from the Jewish community in Chicago,” he has said. Obama ran for the Senate promising to help reconstitute the black-Jewish civil rights coalition. His first foreign policy speech of the campaign was before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he pledged “clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel.” He has occasionally angered pro-Israel hawks by urging direct negotiations with Iran and Syria, but Obama’s foreign policy record is well within the Democratic Party mainstream. He’s committed to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, supported Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006 and has criticized Hamas. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama has been defended by AIPAC, the neoconservative New York Sun and The New Republic’s Marty Peretz, a noted Israel hawk. And yet no defense of Israel by Obama — or of Obama by the pro-Israel establishment — seems to be enough. “When one charge is disproved, another is leveled,” says Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads a synagogue in Alexandria, Virginia.

It’s nearly impossible to decipher where the smears originated [for a comprehensive account of how such campaigns are generated and spread in the age of the Internet and e-mail, see Christopher Hayes, “The New Right-Wing Smear Machine,” November 12, 2007]. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency traced one e-mail back 200 people before it stopped with a filmmaker in Tel Aviv who didn’t receive a return address. “No one knows if it’s the Clintons, a rogue agent or a Rove agent,” says Congressman Steve Cohen, a Jewish Obama backer who represents a largely black district in Memphis. Likely it’s a combination of the three.

We may not know who started the smears, but we do know who’s amplifying them. The “Obama is a Muslim” rumor began in the fringe conservative blogosphere. “Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim,” blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on December 18, 2006. Schlussel had a history of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. She said journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents in 2006, “hates America” and “hates Israel”; labeled George Soros a “fake Holocaust survivor”; and speculated that Pakistani terrorists were somehow to blame for last year’s shootings at Virginia Tech. Yet her post on Obama gained traction; one month later, the Washington Times’s Insight magazine alleged that Obama had attended “a so-called Madrassa” and was a secret Muslim.

The Christian right is also preoccupied with Obama’s religious beliefs. “Is Obama a Muslim?” the Rev. Rob Schenck, a reform Jew who converted to Christianity and now calls himself a “missionary to Capitol Hill,” asked in a recent videoblog. “He may be an apostate, he may be an infidel, he may be a bad Muslim, a very, very bad Muslim, he may be an unfaithful Muslim.” Schenck’s videoblog was circulated by the Christian Newswire and Cross Action News, a self-described “Drudge Report for Christians.” Schenck later concluded that, although not a Muslim, Obama was also “not a ‘Bible Christian'” and did not practice a “confident faith.” A separate report posted on the Christian Newswire recently asked if Obama was “Wearing a What-Would-Satan-Do Bracelet.” And a top figure in the group Christians United for Israel, Pastor Rod Parsley, a “spiritual guide” to John McCain, repeatedly referred to Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama” before campaigning with McCain in Ohio. (Thirteen percent of registered American voters now incorrectly believe that Obama is a Muslim, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, up from 8 percent in December. Forty-four percent of respondents are unsure of his religion or decline to answer; only 37 percent know that he is a Christian.)

The Muslim rumor was followed by fictions about Obama’s actual faith, Christianity. In February 2007, Erik Rush, a columnist for WorldNetDaily, a hub of right-wing yellow journalism, called Obama’s Chicago church a “black supremacist” and “separatist” institution. Rush found a sympathetic audience at Fox News, where he was interviewed by Sean Hannity. Soon after, another blast of e-mails went out, calling Obama a racist: “Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should want to join Obama’s churchB-L-A-C-K!!!” Like the Muslim claim, it was a lie. But screeds about Obama’s faith soon gave way to wide-ranging attacks against his campaign advisers, his positions on the Middle East and his associations in Chicago.

At the fulcrum of this effort is a little-known blogger from Northbrook, Illinois, named Ed Lasky, whose articles on AmericanThinker.com have done more than anything to give the smear campaign an air of respectability. Lasky co-founded AmericanThinker.com in 2003, modeling it after Powerline, a popular conservative blog. Before that, he had frequently written letters to newspapers defending Israel and criticizing the Palestinians. Though his background remains a mystery, Lasky didn’t hide his neoconservative leanings. He wrote a blog post in 2004 titled “Why American Jews Must Vote for Bush,” made three separate donations to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, contributed $1,000 to Tom DeLay and has given more than $50,000 to GOP candidates and causes since 2000. Lasky sits on the board of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, whose close affiliations with Christian-right operatives like Ralph Reed has made Eckstein a controversial figure in the Jewish community.

A lengthy article from January 16, “Barack Obama and Israel,” put Lasky on the map. “One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama’s career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates,” Lasky wrote. To reach that conclusion, Lasky laughably warped what it meant to be “pro-Israel,” criticizing Obama for, among other things, opposing John Bolton as UN ambassador and hiring veteran foreign policy hands from the Clinton and Carter administrations. By Lasky’s criteria, every Democrat in the Senate, and more than a few Republicans, would be considered “anti-Israel.” “Lasky’s piece is filled with half-truths, omission of ‘inconvenient facts,’ innuendo, deeply flawed logic, undocumented charges, hearsay, and guilt by distant association,” wrote Ira Forman of the National Jewish Democratic Council in the Philadelphia Jewish Voice.

Despite — or perhaps because of — its propagandistic nature, Lasky’s column and subsequent follow-ups circulated far and wide. Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post quoted Lasky at length in a January column, printing his false claims as fact, as did a separate column in the same paper by Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith (a onetime top official in the Bush Defense Department) and a top ally of neocon darling and Iraq War proponent Ahmad Chalabi and co-chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel. More surprising, Lasky became a household name in the mainstream Jewish press, the talk of the town at synagogues — even liberal ones — and a useful ally for members of the Clinton campaign, who circulated his articles. Recently he’s been interviewed by mainstream outlets like NPR and the New York Times, which have labeled Lasky a “critic” of Obama without explaining his neoconservative sympathies. “I wonder how a tendentiously argued anti-Obama piece is mass-emailed by so many Jews who should know better,” blogged Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor of the New Jersey Jewish News.

Another key purveyor of the smear campaign is Aaron Klein, an Orthodox Jew who is Jerusalem correspondent for WorldNetDaily. WND is notoriously disreputable, a sort of National Enquirer for the right (typical headline: “Sleaze Charge: ‘I Took Drugs, Had Homo Sex With Obama'”). Klein made a name for himself by getting terrorists to say nice things about Democrats and allying himself with extremist elements of the Israeli right, whom he frequently quotes as sources in his articles — when he bothers to quote anyone at all. Klein originally called Hillary Clinton the “jihadist choice for president,” but when Clinton stumbled, he turned his fire to Obama, attempting to expose his so-called “terrorist connections.”

Klein penned two stories in late February wildly distorting Obama’s links, from his days in Chicago, to pro-Palestinian activists like Rashid Khalidi, a respected professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University who previously taught at the University of Chicago (hardly a bastion of left-wing activism). Klein’s story goes something like this: Obama sat on the board of a foundation in Chicago that gave a grant to the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), run by Khalidi’s wife, which supposedly rejects Israel’s existence; and Khalidi directed the PLO’s Beirut press office and is a supporter “for Palestinian terror.” (In fact, the AAAN focuses solely on social service work in Chicago and takes no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Khalidi says he was never employed by the PLO; he has been a harsh critic of Palestinian suicide bombings and a longtime supporter of a two-state solution, and he has never been an adviser to Obama. As for Obama’s past statements, at least in Chicago, being pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian is not a contradiction in terms.)

Once again, the facts mattered little, and Klein’s stories gained an audience beyond the narrow confines of WND. Christian publicist Maria Sliwa sent Klein’s articles to prominent reporters, the Tennessee GOP included his claims in a press release titled “Anti-Semites for Obama” and the Jewish Press, an Orthodox Brooklyn paper, reprinted his story about Khalidi. His latest article alleges that “terrorists worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election.” As evidence, Klein quotes Ramadan Adassi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank’s Askar refugee camp, who says an Obama victory would be an “important success. He won popularity in spite of the Zionists and the conservatives.” In previous stories, Klein has quoted Adassi praising Cindy Sheehan, Rosie O’Donnell and Sean Penn. For a suspected terrorist, Adassi follows pop culture and US politics remarkably closely.

Despite Klein’s questionable sourcing and scandalous accusations, mainstream reporters now call the Obama campaign to ask about Klein’s articles. He also reports for John Batchelor, a right-wing talk-radio host for KFI-AM in Los Angeles who has written a series of outlandish columns about Obama for the conservative magazine Human Events and repeatedly pushed the Obama smears on his radio show. According to an e-mail of Batchelor’s obtained by The Nation, Batchelor says that information about Obama and Khalidi came via “oppo research.”

Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them. Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor. Clinton fundraiser Annie Totah circulated a column by Ed Lasky before Super Tuesday, with the inscription “Please vote wisely in the Primaries.” Clinton adviser Ann Lewis falsely referred to Zbigniew Brzezinski, a critic of AIPAC, as a chief adviser to Obama on a conference call with Jewish reporters. “I can tell you for a fact people from the Clinton campaign are calling reporters and asking them to pay attention to things involving Obama and Israel,” says Shmuel Rosner, Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. The volume of e-mails about Obama in a given state tends to track the election calendar — hardly a coincidence.

Large American Jewish organizations, like AIPAC and the Orthodox Union, have repeatedly defended Obama. Yet they’ve had little sway over reactionary elements in both the United States and Israel — including Jewish hate groups — who are eager to keep the smear campaign alive. The website Jews Against Obama, for instance, is run by the Jewish Task Force, which funnels money to the radical settler movement in Israel. (Curiously, John McCain’s alliance with Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, a leading proponent of “end times” theology, and his recent endorsement by former Secretary of State James Baker have received far less scrutiny from pro-Israel pundits. It was Baker, after all, who reportedly told George H.W. Bush, “Fuck the Jews. They didn’t vote for us anyway.”)

Respected news outlets have stoked these smears, even as they attempt to debunk them. “Is Barack Obama a Muslim?” asked an editorial in the Forward. “Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost certainly yes.” After Obama criticized “a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel,” Rosner of Ha’aretz accused Obama of “meddling in Israel’s internal politics.” The Washington Post noted Obama’s “denials” of his Muslim faith, without ever stating that the rumor was untrue. Post columnist Richard Cohen crassly connected Obama, his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan, a line of guilt-by-association questioning that Tim Russert aggressively repeated in the last Obama-Clinton debate.

Among conservatives, Fox News has endlessly amplified such rumors. Karl Rove, a new hire by the network, recently speculated that Obama would withdraw funding for Israel. Sean Hannity has asked if Obama has a “race problem.” Fox News radio host Tom Sullivan compared Obama to Hitler. “Fox News are on to him and all the arguments our ‘smear’ camping [sic] is making and for the most part it is running with them,” right-wing blogger Ted Belman, of Israpundit, wrote in a recent e-mail.

The attacks on Obama reek of racism and Islamophobia but, as John Kerry learned in 2004, any Democrat should expect such treatment. “If Moses was the Democratic nominee, he’d still be the victim of this hate mail,” says Doug Bloomfield, a former legislative director for AIPAC. The right-wing smear machine grinds on, with the mainstream media and rival campaigns lending a helping hand.

article by Ari Berman

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

The biggest advantage of this long primary season on the Democratic side is that, unlike McCain, Obama will emerge with information from every county in the country. Never before has a candidate had this level of granular detail about where he has support and where he is weak. Never before has a candidate had this many identified supporters. And if the Clintons are willing to turn over their data, it will double Obama’s advantage.

Obama can literally use a laser focus to campaign in those areas where he underperformed in the primaries. Mississippi is a perfect example. He did poorly in the First District and parts of the Gulf Shore region. He has an exact roadmap now to use to make inroads and turn the state into a battleground. He even has the rationale: poverty. The part of the Gulf where he did badly was also the part that was hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, the northeastern First District represents the lowest reaches of Appalachia. He can fulfill his promise to do a poverty tour with John Edwards by visiting both regions.

One of Obama’s advantages is that, while he will not win votes everywhere, he is not hated or despised by any significant number of people. Politicians, by and large, will be happy to campaign with him in almost every district in the country. You’ll notice that even on Obama’s two worst states, Kentucky and West Virginia, he has been endorsed by Sens. Byrd and Rockefeller and Reps. Nick Rahall, Ben Chandler, and John Yarmuth. He’s also been endorsed by Appalachian Reps. Rick Boucher of Virginia and Jim Cooper of Tennessee.

It will be really fascinating to look at where Obama campaigns and compare it to his performance in the primaries. He’s going to be in Nevada tomorrow and he’s campaigning in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is the area where Clinton did well enough to make up for losing in every other area of the state. I anticipate that Obama will be looking to campaign in weak spots first. As election day draws near, I expect to switch tactics and begin campaigning in his most vote-rich areas.

One thing he should do is another college tour right after Labor Day. Those students need time to converse with and convert their parents and grandparents. I expect the age-gap to be the strongest gap in this election.

unable to find the money for essential services.

Last week the city of Vallejo,California became a casualty of the subprime mortgage crisis.As homeowners could not afford the higher interest rates after a reset,the county’s tax base collapsed and the city could no longer pay its police,firemen and other officials.It has declared bankruptcy.

Even with the mortgage crisis the city could have weathered the crisis if it had not been shelling out money for years under an insurance scam perpetrated by the ratings agencies like Fitch,S&P and Moody’s.Essentially, these agencies intentionally gave a lower credit rating to municipalities compared to corporations even though municipalities have taxing authority that brings steady revenues and their default rate is practically zero.Corporations on the other hand have much higher default rates on their bonds.

Yet the agencies have continually rated bonds from municipalities lower than corporate bonds.Not merely that, the bond insurance companies,in cahoots with the rating agencies hit the municipalities for fat fees to rate them again after they took out insurance from the Bond Insurers like Ambac,MBIA etc.That steady stealing of funds from the municipalities continues to this day.

If the municipal issues were valued and rated correctly,not only would local and state governments save money on the premiums but would not have to pay for the “services” of the ratings agencies at all.

I am surprised that other than Barney Frank, no politicians,Republican or Democrat, has raised a stink about it.

We should end this billion dollar windfall for the Insurance companies and get the moneys available for people who are paying taxes to receive services.

There is only one word for this: Daylight Robbery.

YOU remember Larry, right…??? The supposed “ex”-CIA guy who you so dutifully defended when he ran his game on your front page for so many years?

Could it be because he’s turned into…

SATAN!!!???

Read on if you are curious, folks.

Larry’s gone all anti-Obama.

(There seems to be this tape of Michelle saying some nasty things about white people, y’see….)

Read on.

More Bad News for Michelle Obama

By Larry Johnson on May 26, 2008 at 11:07 AM in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, Michelle Obama

I know for a fact that Barack and Michelle Obama would like the tape of her blasting “whitey” during a rant at Jeremiah Wright’s church to never see the light of day. They are worried, appropriately so, about the damage this tape will inflict on the Obama campaign. They can be certain of one thing–the tape will hit the blogosphere and TV land come October if Obama is the nominee.

How do I know? I have learned from someone in touch with a senior Republican over this holiday weekend that a major McCain backer has a copy of the tape in addition to the one controlled by the Karl Rove folks. McCain’s supporters are not about to cut Hillary a break. They believe that John McCain stands a better chance of beating Barack rather than Hillary. That’s why they are holding the video. They realize showing it now would likely boost support for Hillary and erode support for Obama among the Super Delegates. Simply put, McCain wants Obama.

Then there is the angry woman problem. Here’s Michelle–living in a $1.6 million dollar home, graduate of America’s most prestigious universities, and pulling a six-figure salary–and she was not proud of the United States until Barack ran for President. Know what? The average angry, bitter white person. who is clinging to God and guns and not living in a mansion, not able to afford college, and making less than $50,000 a year, does not know what her damn problem is.

Jeff Jacoby’s column yesterday in the Boston Globe adds further insight:

In an interview on ABC, Obama growled that Republicans “should lay off my wife,” and described the inoffensive Tennessee video as “detestable,” “low class,” and reflecting “a lack of decency.”

If Republicans “think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign,” he added ominously, “they should be careful.”

Ooh, very fierce. But unless Obama is prepared to emulate Jackson – Old Hickory defended his wife’s honor by fighting duels, in one of which he killed a man – he stands no chance of putting his wife’s remarks off-limits to criticism. As long as he keeps sending her around the country to campaign on his behalf, everything she says is – and should be – fair game.

And unfortunately for Obama and his allegedly sunny politics of hope, what Mrs. Obama seems to say with grim regularity is that America is a scary, bleak, and hopeless place.

Here she is, for instance, in Wisconsin:

“Life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime, through Republican and Democratic administrations. It hasn’t gotten much better.”

And in South Carolina:

America is “just downright mean” and “guided by fear . . . We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day.”

Michelle needs an attitude adjustment. Americans don’t want a nattering nabob of negativism in their face for the next four years. And that will become increasingly clear as America gets to know Michelle.

And:

Why I Believe the Michelle Obama Tape Exists

By Larry Johnson on May 26, 2008 at 1:34 PM in Current Affairs

I understand the skepticism of many about whether there actually exists a tape of Michelle Obama engaged in an anti-white rant. The lady obviously has some anger management issues–just check out her senior thesis she wrote at Princeton–but this sounds too good to be true. However, here is why I think the tape exists.

I have two friends. One is a Democrat and one is a Republican. One lives on the west coast and one lives on the east coast. They do not know each other. Yet each has spoken directly with someone who has seen the tape. In fact, I first heard about the tape from my east coast friend. I thought it was interesting but, without additional proof, not worth mentioning. Later that night I was chatting with a friend, who happens to be an Obama supporter, but is very well connected to the Washington political scene. That person told me he had heard the same thing. He also told me about a separate tape of Barack Obama during an overseas trip that also is in the hands of the McCain folks.

The clincher came when my buddy on the west coast wrote to me that he had a friend who had seen the tape. Given that there are two separate people, completely unconnected, giving the same report, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the tape exists. We shall see.

Here it comes, Booman.

The perfect storm.

And it’s your storm.

They couldn’t run this game on Hillary Clinton.

Larry’s your folks.

A spokesman for the CIA.

The so-called “liberal” wing of the Intel Org.

THEY know what’s coming. Just as do I.

How come YOU can’t figure it out?

Oh.

Neener neener neener. I can’t HEAR you…!!!

NOW you don’t read Larry. Now that he “disagrees” with you.

Good work, boyo.

My congrats.

It’s your perfect storm.

Now deal with it.

AG

The first,uttered by none other than Donald Rumsfeld, went:”The soldiers are fungible.They do not bring any special skills to the theatre of war”.

Think about the cool callousness required to say those words.

Not to be left out or outdone by his mentor,Rumsfeld’s Sancho Panza chimed in recently upon the gruesome injuries suffered by a soldier:”Remember he chose this.He volunteered”.

Monsters in our midst.

No, more than a human rights crime. It is “one of the greatest human rights crimes now existing on Earth” says Carter. Think the Myanmar junta, the Sudanese government, and now the Israeli/US/EU (Blair) coalition, and yes, that would be us.

Following up on his first expose of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the deadly siege, blockade, and collective punishment Israel has imposed on the Hamas controlled territory and its 1.5 million residents, Jimmy Carter spoke out again, this time in Wales, essentially turning up the volume on his previous Cairo message and more.

This report came through the French news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP), and was picked up by Yahoo News.

LONDON (AFP)
Sun May 25, 2008

In a speech at a literary festival in Hay-on-Wye, in Wales, the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner said: “There is no reason to treat these people this way,” referring to the blockade, in place since the Islamist Hamas movement seized Gaza in June 2007.

According to Carter, the failure of the European Union to support the Palestinian cause was “embarrassing.” He said European countries should be “encouraging the formation of a unity government,” including Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s rival Fatah movement. “They should be encouraging Hamas to have a ceasefire in Gaza alone, as a first step,” he told the invited guests. “They should be encouraging Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement in prisoner exchange and, as a second step, Israel should agree to a ceasefire in the West Bank, which is Palestinian territory.”

Carter also said the United States had to begin holding direct talks with Iran over the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear programme, which the West believes is aimed at developing a nuclear bomb, despite Tehran’s denials. “We need to talk to Iran now, and continue our discussions with Iran, to let Iran know the benefits, and the detrimental side, of continuing with their nuclear programme,” he said.

The big question is this: why can’t Carter make these statements in the US and why isn’t the mainstream media reporting them from wherever they originate? And how did Americans get pulled into this human rights crime as an accessory in the first place? Think Cheney-Bush.

The video on Politico.com showed her drinking beer and dancing to a Julio Yglesias tune.She looked radiant wearing a light blue top over her trademark pants.She was smiling and having a good time.

After looking at this video, I wondered why she has been hiding this part of her personality for so long.This was a thoroughly endearing Hillary, someone we can all be proud of and support if this is backed up by transparency in her policies and talk.

It is a shame that we are going to lose an opportunity to have the first woman president because she chose the expedient lie over the painful truths.

Here’s something you’ll never hear from any pundit, news reporter, or politician this Memorial Day: an apology.

To all the soldiers who have been maimed and killed in the wars of the Bush-Cheney regime:

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I didn’t do more to voice my opposition when it mattered.

I’m sorry I have kept paying for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan with my tax dollars, without doing more to ensure that you had all the equipment and training you needed to stay alive.  I’m sorry I didn’t do more to prevent all the money spent so far from being written in the form of blank checks to Halliburton and other war profiteers.

I’m sorry for all the pain, suffering, and death you’ve had to endure.

I’m sorry you were sent in without a clear mission, without an objective, and without constraints on your behavior so you could avoid being put in the position of committing war crimes on the orders of your inferiors in Washington.

I’m sorry some of you were allowed to be in the military, when your recruiters and training instructors knew you had little or no moral compass, when they knew you might gladly mistreat prisoners at places such as Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.  The actions carried out by these disgraces to their uniforms have tarnished the reputation of the military as a whole.

I’m sorry many of you who were maimed — mentally, physically, or both — were tricked out of your health care benefits by a Pentagon so greedy for money that it decided it could get away with fraudulently listing your conditions as pre-existing.

I’m sorry I didn’t make a bigger, louder, and more effective effort to call for the impeachment, prosecution, and conviction of those whose lies sent you into the hell of Iraq and Afghanistan with no way out.

To the people of Iraq:

I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to endure.

Even I hardly write about the war anymore.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September.

There are a lot of reasons that the war is off the media’s radar.

I asked Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, how a war that had cost thousands of lives and over $1 trillion was losing news salience.

“There is a cold and sad calculation that readers/viewers aren’t that interested in the war, whether because they are preoccupied with paying $4 for a gallon of gas and avoiding foreclosure, or because they have Iraq fatigue,” he wrote in an e-mail message, adding that The Times stays on the story as part of an implied contract with its readers.

It might be part conspiracy theory but I actually think that the Bigfoot media was told that we’re going to wind down the war and that it will cause less national humiliation if they don’t cover every bloody detail of how our occupation unravels. It’s simply untrue that the American people have lost interest in the war. It’s still among the top two or three things on the public’s mind. What’s changed is that the media now dedicates only 3% of their coverage to the catastrophe over there. That means bloggers have a lot less information to work with, too. But another problem is that we’ve won the argument over the war. We won the argument but we didn’t win enough political power to end the war. And that means we all just have to sit in a holding pattern, waiting for a new president. The fact that John McCain is running on an argument that has already been settled (and not in his favor) is what makes it totally implausible that he will be our next president.

I can kind of mark the day that the antiwar movement died. It was the day that MoveOn.org ran their strategically moronic BetrayUs advertisement in the New York Times. That was the day that the Democratic Party (which is, after all, one of the two Establishment parties in this country) had to divorce itself from the movement to end the war. MoveOn.org showed a profound misunderstanding of the power structures that govern Washington. The Democratic Party, as an institution, was never going to countenance the vilification of our most important general in the field. Nor will they ever fully come to grips with the profound moral horrors they have been complicit in allowing. The Democratic Party is merely a vehicle for change. It can only be moved slowly and it will always gravitate back to the center. The most important task of the last three years has been taking the Democratic Party out of the hands of the people that have been running it since Bill Clinton won the nomination in 1992. That was the real battle. And that is where the most positive change will come from. The new party, along with the politicians that have been elected since the argument over Iraq was won, will govern in a new way. It won’t be revolutionary, but it will be much more responsible. That is our gift to our Vets on this Memorial Day.