By: Paul Gilfeather  

George Bush's top security adviser last night admitted the U.S. would attack Iraq even if U.N. inspectors fail to find weapons.

Dr Richard Perle stunned MP's by insisting a "clean bill of health" from U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix would not halt America's war machine.

Evidence from ONE witness on Saddam Hussein's weapons program will be enough to trigger a fresh military onslaught, he told an all- party meeting on global security.

Former defense minister and Labour backbencher Peter Kilfoyle said: "America is duping the world into believing it supports these inspections. President Bush intends to go to war even if inspectors find nothing. This make a mockery of the whole process and exposes America's real determination to bomb Iraq."

EPA Says It Will Change Rules Governing Industrial Pollution

By: Matthew L. Wald  

The Bush administration today announced the most sweeping move in a decade to loosen industrial air pollution rules. The administration said the changes would encourage plant improvements that would clean the air.

But critics denounced the changes as a retreat from tougher rules now in place that require factories to make costly investments in pollution control equipment when they modernize.

The new rules apply to industrial plants, including oil refineries and manufacturing plants. Proposals for additional rules that would apply primarily to power plants will be issued shortly, officials said, and they hope to put those in force late next year.

The EPA began considering changing the rules in the mid-1990's, under the Clinton administration. But Carol Browner, who held Ms. Whitman's job in that administration, issued a statement today saying that the rule changes were "nothing but a special deal for the special interests" and come "at the expense of all who breathe and most particularly our children", she said.

By: Paul Krugman  

...In the face of budget deficits as far as the eye can see, the administration - determined to expand, not reconsider the program of tax cuts it initially justified with projections of huge surpluses - must make a show of cutting spending. Yet what can it cut? The great bulk of public spending is either for essential services like defense and the justice system, or for middle-class entitlements like Social Security and Medicare that the administration doesn't dare attack openly.

Privatizing federal jobs is a perfect answer to this dilemma. It's not a real answer - the pay of those threatened employees is only about 2% of the federal budget, so efficiency gains from privatization, even if they happen, will make almost no dent in overall spending. For a few years, however, talk of privatization will give the impression that the administration is doing something about the deficit.

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

- the LITTLE PRICK some call President

By: William Rivers Pitt  

And there you have it. The legislative future of the next Congress appears quite clear. The despoiling of the Alaskan wildlife preserve and many other precious environmental treasures, the further dumbing-down of national education standards, the degrading of a separation between church and state, the rubber-stamping of any and all war proposals by the Bush administration, and the creation of an activist conservative judiciary are all but guaranteed.

Rather than wallow in despair, those citizens who would see this program blocked and thwarted must take decisive action. The people must knock their knuckles bloody on the doors of those Republican Senators who do not blindly follow the edicts of the Bush administration. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island must be cultivated, as must Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Senator Jeffords of Vermont, who was counting on a Democratic victory to spare him the vengeance of his former GOP comrades, must be protected. If these people can be counseled to vote as Democrats on important environmental, judicial, and military issues, the gains made by the GOP on November 5^th will be blunted.

"I would love to personally escort [Ken] Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says: 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey.'"

- California Attorney General Bill Lockyer

From:  

Hoo boy, there's no denying that we took a beating on November 5. And now the Republicans have complete control in Washington DC, and it's entirely up to them to prove whether or not they can run the country. So let's see what they have in store for us, shall we? This is the first Top Ten after the election, and already the conservatives are cranking up the idiocy machine. We have the Army (1) who have far more important things than the War on Terrorism to worry about. We have Trent Lott (2) and Judie Brown (3) who have far more important things than women's lives to worry about. And we have Rush Limbaugh (4) who has far more important things than... um... the truth to worry about (not that you didn't know that already). Meanwhile, Janet's got a gun (5), Shawn's a dunce (7), John's your new Big Brother (8), and Sonny's a racist (10).

"Liberals believe that we can solve our problems together as a society, and conservatives believe that people should look out for themselves first."

- Jerry from Austin, in a letter to Bush Watch

By: The Watcher  

It's coming, possibly very soon. It may not even arrive with this imminent war with Iraq, but surely it is coming. Americans don't have a clue that its arrival draws nigh. But surely, as the cruise missiles are being fueled and the artillery shells are being loaded, the day is coming. What is it, you ask? It is of course, the true nature of war, a bloodbath. On all sides. Including America's.

Now given the green light after the November 2002 election enabled the Republicans to seize control of the entire Government, the Boy King's unbridled hubris will lead to a major conflagration, beginning in Iraq. The U.S. has no idea as to what is about to transpire, blind-folded by American flags flying on all the television screens. They don't have any idea that their leader has a taste for blood and a desire to see the fulfillment promised after Armageddon.

By: Jonathan Turley  

If there is one legal principle that seems to guide Attorney General John Ashcroft, it is this: Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

In holding citizens and noncitizens, Ashcroft has claimed unilateral authority to dictate how and where they will be tried and, most important, executed. In the last few weeks, he has taken this control to a new level, defying states and judges who do not conform to his demands for speedy justice.

Most Attorneys General would resist removing cases from the Justice Department and declaring the military to have a superior judiciary. But Ashcroft has become a walking contradiction, more general than attorney. Whereas his predecessors viewed the justice system as the very thing that defines us as a nation of laws, Ashcroft views justice as merely one means to an end.

As he prepares his list for summary judgment and execution, the American justice system will be the first to be dispatched.

By: Brandon Bailey  

Phone recordings made in 2000 caught a manager for Oklahoma-based Williams Companies telling a Southern California power plant operator that "it wouldn't hurt Williams' feelings" if the generator stayed out of service, because Williams could make more money selling electricity to the state from another source.

Consumer advocates and state officials said Friday that the report is further evidence that energy traders had illegally manipulated the state's energy market - and that federal regulators didn't do enough to stop them. State and federal authorities are pursuing criminal investigations into the actions of Williams and other energy wholesalers.

They Brazenly Lie, Without Apology and Without Shame

Editorial from:  

The Grand Hypocrisy Party (GHP) continually runs campaigns based on lies and deception (just look at their official 2002 candidate playbook this time, which told GOP candidates to claim the Democrats were the party advocating the privatization of Social Security) and wins. And now, after wining back the Senate, the Rove spin is that the voters supported privatization by electing Republicans, even though those GOP candidates ran against privatization and accused the Democrats of coming up with the idea. Got it? The Democrats won't vigorously expose this chronic lying and deception - and they lose.

Give Karl Rove credit, he positioned Bush to champion the broad theme of "protecting the homeland". It's always a convenient mantra for dictatorial regimes. The Democrats could have countered by showing how inept Bush has been at this very effort. They could have countered with a broad theme of "protecting our Constitutional freedoms". They could have countered with "protecting the homeland" through a long-term foreign policy that will simultaneously defeat our current enemies and prevent the spread of anti-Americanism among future potential terrorists through a strategic approach to world peace.

Editorial from:  

Fourteen months after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, the American people deserve a more effective warning system about possible new assaults than the Chicken Little alerts the Bush administration is providing. Once again last week, Washington, in effect, warned that the sky was falling, and officials did a good imitation of Henny Penny as they analyzed the latest intelligence data about Osama bin Laden. This is no way to conduct the affairs of the most powerful, technologically advanced nation on the planet.

The only thing warnings this vague are good for is providing political cover in case of disaster. They offer no specific information about the location, timing, or method of attack, and are all but useless to the average citizen, or even to local law enforcement officers. If there is another terror strike, however, we can be sure that the White House, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency will be quick to remind everyone that they saw it coming this time and did their best to prevent it.

"Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant, and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our President."

- Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School

Editorial from:  

Anyone who deliberately set out to invent a government program with the specific aim of terrifying the Orwell-reading public could hardly have improved on the Information Awareness Office. Tucked away in the outer reaches of the Defense Department, brandishing an eerie and cryptic logo - an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid and the slogan "Scientia Est Potentia" ("Knowledge Is Power") - the office is headed by retired Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter, the Reagan administration official who was convicted in the wake of the Iran-contra scandal of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying official documents, and obstructing the congressional inquiry into the affair. Not surprisingly, there have already been some fast-breathing reactions to recently published information about the office, including allegations that it is funded by the Homeland Security Bill (it isn't) and that Adm. Poindexter has compiled a computer dossier on every American (he hasn't, or not yet).

By: David Cogswell  

Like his father, Bush's power is based on deception. He was not elected by telling what he really believed in. He essentially coopted the Democrats issues and called them his own. It did not concern him that he was lying. He proceeded to break his campaign promises one by one once in office. So far it hasn't caught up to him, again primarily because of the war smokescreen which keeps the public so riled up people can't focus on less dramatic issues.

Like his father's Gulf War, Bush's Afghanistan and Iraq wars are also based on deception. They are trumped up, sold as wars to make Americans secure from attack, when they are really transparently about control of oil resources.

Like his father, Bush has trouble with "the vision thing", as his father put it. As the phrase reveals, to them "the vision thing" is merely a product to be sold, a PR device to be used as a tactic in a campaign. That is as deep as any of it ever goes for them. It is all about manipulating the public, leading them on with grand themes that resonate, while hiding your true motives. Their real agenda is also all about war and plunder, but that doesn't sell so well, so it has to be dressed up.

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."

- Woodrow Wilson

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

- Harry Truman

By: David Albrecht  

God Announces Delisting of Homo Sapiens; Planetary Downsizing Plan

Under the new rules, delisting means that humanity as a whole will be ineligible for Divine Intervention in the face of extreme weather, famine, economic collapse, epidemic disease, terrorism, and social disintegration. "Manna will not fall from Heaven, the sea shall not be stilled, and I will not be there to wipe all the tears from your eyes", He stated. Adding that: "If you're in the mood for deus ex machina, read some Aristophanes."

God's new get-tough attitude was shared by several members of his executive board. Among them was St. Francis of Assisi, who lingered after the conference to speak with journalists. "Frankly, there are still a number of us up here who are really pissed off about the passenger pigeon and ivory-billed woodpecker 'incidents'." said the saint, drawing quotes in the air to make his point. "And I haven't even begun to discuss the 20^th Century. I mean, Jesus Christ, you'd think that World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, Rwanda, Chernobyl, Bhopal, and the melting of the North Pole would wake up at least a few human beings! Apparently not. We're dealing with a chronically underperforming asset, and it's time for a new broom." Experts noted that Francis' opinion, though somewhat further right than mainstream Heavenly Opinion, was not unusual.

"...for the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government - the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary - is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture. These folks don't even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote 'a Biblical worldview' in American politics?"

- Bill Moyers, from his commentary on the Election 2002 results

Guess you're safe from investigation now,
aren't you 'Monkey Boy'?

How the Republicans Use the Corporate US Media To Undermine and Control America - and How We Can Fight Back

By: Tamara Baker  

There's been a lot of talk over what the Democrats should or should not have done in order to win the November 2002 elections. The general consensus is that the Democrats' message was muddled, and that they are paying the price for moving too far to the right over the last few years.

The latter problem is already being addressed, at least in the House: Dick Gephardt, who's been too preoccupied with his longtime dream of becoming President to actually do what's best for his party, has stepped down, no doubt to spend more time refining his "Gephardt in 2004" platform - the same platform he had in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000, in all probability. Nancy Pelosi, the effectively diplomatic House Whip who showed that bucking, not backing, the Bush Junta is the way to win Congressional races, is the likely person to replace him, and that's a very good thing.

As for the other problem, the muddling of the Democrats' message, that's a touch more complicated and not as easy to solve...

By: Don Kraus and Mark Epstein  

Perhaps a war has been avoided. The United Nations Security Council's unanimous passage of an historic resolution gives U.N. weapons inspectors "unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access" to anyone and anywhere in Iraq that their search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) might lead them. The resolution gives Iraq a "final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations". Resistance is futile. Saddam Hussein has been given seven days to confirm his intention to comply.

In the run-up to the passage of this resolution, President Bush, at a fundraiser, said: "I want the United Nations to be an effective body. The United Nations must be willing to uphold [its] resolution[s]. The United Nations must be strong enough to hold Saddam Hussein to account."

If Bush were serious about wanting the U.N. to be strong he would support giving the U.N. its own police forces to thwart aggression before it boils over into war.

And if he really wanted to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, he would support a strong International Criminal Court, instead of trying to eviscerate it.

By: Maureen Farrell  

We thought we were just average citizens, with average concerns, until we woke up to find ourselves part of the radical left. We're not sure how it happened, mind you. In fact, we didn't even realize it until a chorus of pundits started steering us a certain way. When MSNBC's Lester Holt happily explained how daisy cutters work, for example, we were filled with queasiness in lieu of national pride. We believed Scott Ritter was telling the truth, no matter how often Paula Zahn warned us not to. And despite the President's assurances he'd like to avoid war, we trusted Newsday's observation that his administration "appeared to be purposely setting the bar too high for Hussein to comply".

Chants about "blaming America first" aside, we have always been uncomfortable with our legacy of coups d'etats and assassinations - and of replacing democratically-elected leaders with tyrants of our own. We'd prefer to spend that money and energy aggressively seeking alternative energy, so babies need not die in our names. And we can't ignore the role we've played in creating problems named bin Laden, Hussein, Noreiga, and Pinochet; or inconsistencies in official stories; or hidden agendas, regardless how often we're chided by "the liberal media elite".

By: James Higdon  

What is the lesson of November 5, 2002? It is simple really. It all comes down to one major overriding factor. A free press that encourages fierce investigative journalism of government and institutions, and promotes free and open debate with an array of divergent views and opinions is the single most brilliant vision of our founding fathers. For more than 200 years, as a nation, we found ways to preserve and encourage that vision, until greedy, right wing, corporate robber barons realized that was the one central roadblock that stood in their way. Purchasing a political party was not enough, but purchasing America's broadcast airwaves was just the prescription needed to insure success.

In short, there is no longer any long term hope for the Constitution of the United State of America unless an active, fair and balanced Fourth Estate, less concerned with profit than with ethics and duty, is reestablished within our national borders. When NBC presents Rush Limbaugh to provide its election night coverage, there is no longer hope that the left can find a voice in the American media.

By: Douglas Mattern  

This should remind us that the actual weapons are, of course, hardware. Their creation comes from the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, which is the human mind. It is here that we must purge the violence of the past to create a new culture of peace and progress for the future. Part of this process is putting in place a strong United Nations capable of resolving conflicts between nations and people through the civilized framework of enforceable world law, and thus able to achieve real disarmament with security, and put the armament industry and architects of destruction permanently out of business.

But underlying this process requires the creation of a new civilization that is based on respect for life, for the environment, and for each other. This is our ultimate challenge, and time is of the essence if we are to end the Verduns, the nukes, the senseless slaughter, the war system itself with all of its economic, political, and cultural manifestations. Only then will the beauty, the wonder, the ethics, and the spirit of the human mind prevail and lead us forward.

By: David Fickling  

"Nuclear proliferation still poses the single greatest threat to mankind", says Richard Butler, sipping mineral water in a pavement cafe near his home in Sydney. Much of Butler's adult life has been dedicated to limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, and since September 11 he has been wheeled out as a supporter of military action on Iraq. This has only added to his reputation - among left-wing critics, fellow weapons inspectors, and of course the Iraqi regime - as a stooge of U.S. intelligence. When you meet him, though, he doesn't seem much of a hawk. "Whatever we do must be done for the right reasons", he says. "If the reasons are phoney or tendentious that will be found out, and I think there's been an inadequate answer to the question of 'Why now?'. I believe the case against Saddam Hussein is utterly proven. The man should be tried for crimes against humanity. But what I'm unconvinced by is the question of why it was inconvenient to deal with the problem two or three years ago and now, today, it's imperative. What actually is motivating that?"

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