Author: Nag

Frist urges 2 teachings on life origin
By David Stout, New York Times, August 20, 2005

Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, aligned himself with President Bush on Friday when he said that the theory of intelligent design as well as evolution should be taught in public schools.

Such an approach “doesn’t force any particular theory on anyone,” Mr. Frist said in Nashville, according to The Associated Press. “I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future.” A Washington spokesman for the senator, Nick Smith, said later that the report was accurate. [complete article]

Comment — Why only have only two “theories” about the origin of life? I have a theory that life began when God let out a wet fart. It’s a bit like the Big Bang theory and just as traces of that cosmic event are evident in the even distribution of helium across the universe, the ubiquity of ideas that stink seems – at least to me – to provide compelling evidence that it was one almighty stinker that brought us into existence. My theory might not be widely accepted, but in a pluralistic society I think it should get a fair hearing.

AMY GOODMAN: Al Ross, while you may not agree with the Federalist Society, apparently there are tens of thousands of members. Why doesn’t, with conservatives in the ascendancy in the government, why don’t they just say, `Sure, he represents our ideology? What is wrong with that?’

ALFRED ROSS: Well, it’s interesting. A number of conservatives actually were upset with the White House for trying to cover up the connection because they’re quite proud of it. But I think the issue here is the, I believe, correct awareness by the Bush administration’s spin masters, that the majority of the American people would not support the ideology of the Federalist Society, even though admittedly thousands of right wing lawyers are very glad to further their agenda.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, do they take a stance on abortion?

ALFRED ROSS: Well, officially the Federalist Society, as an organization, doesn’t take a stance on anything. But that’s rather a sham. Throughout their literature and at their forums, they endorse not only anti-abortion ideology, but extremist ideology on civil rights, national security law, telecommunications law, and every other issue you can possibly imagine.

(emphasis mine)

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you tell us about what you know, what evidence you have that John Roberts is a member of the Federalist Society, and then, of course, what the Federalist Society is?

ALFRED ROSS: Well, Roberts, whether he’s paid his dues or not, was prominently listed in the 1997/1998 leadership directory published by the Federalist Society itself. So it is very difficult to believe that he didn’t have any membership. He was on the Steering Committee. The important question is not whether he paid dues as a member or not. The question really at stake here is where does Roberts and his Federalist Society cronies plan to steer our ship of state. If one looks at the history of the Federalist Society, which was established at the inspiration of Robert Bork in the early 1980s, their entire trajectory has been to move our judicial system in an extremely radically right wing direction.

In order to effectuate this, the Federalist Society has established 15 practice groups which you can find on their own website which is fed-soc.org. These 15 practice groups are busy developing new legal theories for every area of American jurisprudence, from civil rights law to national security law, international law, securities regulations law, and so on. And if one goes through the publications of their practice groups, one can only gasp not only at the breadth of their agenda, but the extremism of their ideology.

It is not insignificant that today Timothy Flanigan will have hearings at the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to be Deputy Attorney General of the United States. In the same leadership directory that lists John Roberts on the Steering Committee to the Federalist Society, it lists Timothy Flanigan on the Program Committee of the Federalist Society. And both men have their own personal track records in the right wing of American jurisprudence. In 1987 the Senate Judiciary decided that Robert Bork’s ideology was so far outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence that he was not fit to serve on the Supreme Court. The same kind of strict scrutiny should be applied to John Roberts who is on the Steering Committee of the organization that Robert Bork inspired.

emphasis mine

2,000 vets call for release of more Abu Ghraib photos

RAW STORY

Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), a nonpartisan veterans’ organization with 12,000 members, called for a commission to investigate torture allegations today, in response to the Pentagon refusal to release photos and videos from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the group said in a release Monday. Details follow.
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In an open letter, signed by more than 2,000 veterans and supporters (including 5 flag-rank officers and more than 200 commissioned officers), the veterans urged Congress and the President to “commit — immediately and publicly — to support the creation of an independent commission to investigate and report on the detention and interrogation practices of U.S. military and intelligence agencies deployed in the war on terror.”

Charles Sheehan-Miles, a 1991 Gulf War veteran and the group’s executive director, said, “Once again the administration is fighting to prevent any possible public accountability for its policies, instead choosing to blame it all on the troops. To court-martial privates while high ranking officials get promoted is damaging to the very principle of command responsibility and undermines the U.S. military.”

“He’ll take the recess” appointment, said the administration source, who is familiar with Bolton’s thinking. “The president has made his selection, and the president is asking the Senate to confirm the selection, and if the Senate refuses to do that, then most assuredly Bush will make a recess appointment.”

Previous ambassadors have kept a small staff in Washington in a modest suite. Bolton told several colleagues he needs more space and a larger staff in Washington because, if confirmed, he intends to spend more time here than his predecessors did.

“Bolton isn’t going to sit in New York while policy gets made in Washington,” the administration source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the source lacks authorization to discuss this on the record. But Bolton’s efforts to obtain more space have encountered resistance. Two colleagues said Bolton’s request was inappropriate because he had not been confirmed.

Bolton – who lost the title of undersecretary of state June 1 when his successor, Robert Joseph, was sworn in – has spent the past four months in a transition suite at the State Department, and colleagues said he continues to ready himself for the ambassadorship.

Six months ago, Human Rights Watch (HRW) laid out a catalogue of alleged abuses being applied to those suspected of terrorism in Iraq and called for an independent complaints body in Iraq.

But as the insurgency has grown hotter, so too, it appears, have been the methods employed in the dirty counter-insurgency war.

To add to HRW’s allegations of beatings, electric shocks, arbitrary arrest, forced confessions and detention without trial, The Observer can add its own charges These include the most brutal kinds of torture, with methods resurrected from the time of Saddam; of increasingly widespread extra-judicial executions; and of the existence of a ‘ghost’ network of detention facilities – in parallel with those officially acknowledged – that exist beyond all accountability to international human rights monitors, NGOs and even human rights officials of the new Iraqi government.

What is most shocking is that it is done under the noses of US and UK officials, some of whom admit that they are aware of the abuses being perpetrated by units who are diverting international funding to their dirty war.

We can add a new chapter to the Bush Administration’s war on free speech as it was revealed yesterday that an Al Jazeera cameraman has been in custody for three years at Guantanamo Bay. Al-Hajj, a Sudanese national, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and has remained in prison without being charged for four years.

Amnesty International, who referred to the prison as “the gulag of our times,” has again been vindicated in its claims by these new charges that Al-Haj “has suffered extreme physical, sexual and religious abuse,” charges that are consistent with other reports that the US is practicing “systematic” abuse of detainees.

Attorney Clive Stafford-Smith, who visited clients at Guantanamo two weeks ago, said, “Sami Al-Hajj had been beaten by his interrogators…. He has been beaten. He had a huge scar on his face when I saw him.” (Al Jazeera)

“He is completely innocent,” said Stafford-Smith. “He is about as much of a terrorist as my granddad. The only reason he has been treated like he has is because he is an Aljazeera journalist. The Americans have tried to make him an informant with the goal of getting him to say that Aljazeera is linked to al-Qaida.“

Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq’s Oil

By: Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC Newsnight

03/17/05 – “BBC” – The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq’s oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC’s Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today – when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad – protestors claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq’s oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of “Big Oil” executives and US State Department “pragmatists.”

“Big Oil” appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began “within weeks” of Bush’s first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

Secret sell-off plan

The industry-favored plan was pushed aside by yet another secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq’s oil fields. The new plan, crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq’s oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, flew to the London meeting, he told Newsnight, at the request of the State Department.

Privatization blocked by industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq’s oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: “There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved.”

The chosen successor to Mr Carroll, a Conoco Oil executive, ordered up a new plan for a state oil company preferred by the industry.

Ari Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatize Iraq’s oil fields. He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a “no-brainer” decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, “I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain.”

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper’s Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favored by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004, Harper’s discovered, under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Former US Secretary of State Baker is now an attorney. His law firm, Baker Botts, is representing ExxonMobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

A woman who alleges U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood repeatedly beat her during a five-year “close romantic and intimate personal relationship” sued him in a Washington D.C. court Wednesday, seeking $5.5 million in damages.

The suit by Cynthia M. Ore, 29, of Rockville, Md., alleges the 64-year-old Republican from Tunkhannock Township repeatedly struck her in the face, neck, chest and back, “violently yanking” her hair and repeatedly tried to choke or strangle her. Afterward he would tell her he would never beat her again, then beg her not to leave him, according to the suit filed in Superior Court in the District of Columbia

Why The Times Now Is Reporting Sherwood Story

When a former political opponent first circulated word that police had responded to a call to the apartment of U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood in Washington, D.C., from a woman claiming he had tried to strangle her, The Scranton Times and The Tribune declined to publish a story.

Managing Editor Lawrence K. Beaupre later wrote that over the seven months since the incident had occurred, the woman and police had not filed criminal charges, and the woman did not file civil charges. The woman’s story also was discounted by police, who said she did not appear to be of sound mind.

Mr. Beaupre noted that although the circumstances were tawdry, the newspaper believed that, in the absence of criminal or civil charges, this was a private matter that had not yet been connected to Mr. Sherwood’s public responsibilities.

Mr. Beaupre noted that if the incident were to enter the public realm through criminal or civil charges, or became an issue in a political campaign, the newspaper would report the story in full.

In her complaint she says they lived together for most of the five years in Apartment 215 at 110 D St., where Mr. Sherwood lives while in the capital. He also promised to marry her and start a family, Ms. Ore said in her complaint.

Mr. Sherwood is married and has three daughters.