The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts.
[. . .]
If approved in its current form by both the Senate and the House, which has not yet considered the measure but where passage is considered likely, the law would nullify a June 2004 Supreme Court opinion that detainees at Guantanamo Bay had a right to challenge their detentions in court.
[. . .]
Nearly 200 of roughly 500 detainees there have already filed habeas corpus motions, which are making their way up through the federal court system. As written, the amendment would void any suits pending at the time the law was passed.
The vote also came in the same week that the Supreme Court announced that it would consider the constitutionality of war crimes trials before President Bush's military commissions for certain detainees at Guantanamo Bay, a case that legal experts said might never be decided by the court if the Graham amendment became law.
The above is from Eric Schmitt's "Senate Approves Limiting Rights of U.S. Detainees" in this morning's New York Times.
The vote passed thanks to five so-called Democrats who felt this was just the thing the country needed. Five Democrats voted for this ___. The five idiots, losers, creeps and disgusting ___s? No list of disappointments is ever complete without Joe Lieberman.
Kent Conrad's spine goes in an out. On this vote, it collapsed yet again allowing him to join the five. Ben Nelson (Nebraska) who's does the best Joe Lieberman impression in the Senate is a famaliar face on lists of disappointments.
Fourth on the list, Mary Landrieu -- who apparently has tired of waking the displaced from Hurricane Katrina to traipse through shelters for photo ops and footage (which she'd be wise not to use in a 2008 campaign). If you missed it:
AMY GOODMAN: They said they didn't want to us film inside there. Has anyone been allowed to film?
WILLIAM ANSARDI: Mary Landrieu was here with her film crew.
AMY GOODMAN: The senator?
WILLIAM ANSARDI: The senator, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they ask your permission to take your picture?
WILLIAM ANSARDI: They didn’t ask my permission. She came in and did showboating up there, and they took pictures of everybody sleeping about 10:00-10:30 at night. I didn't see her ask anybody how they were doing or anything. But she just come in and did her little crew. And she left. I haven't seen her since. Peyton and Eli Manning came here and they did more for the spirit of these people than what Mary Landrieu and all these other great politicians we got.
The fifth vote was Ron Wyden. I'm not sure whether it's fair to make a joke about Wyden because I'm honestly not sure he knew what he was voting for. Take yesterday:
AMY GOODMAN: Senator Wyden, we only have 30 seconds. I just want to follow up on the discussion we had earlier, you might have caught the tail end of, and that is that the President's appointment of Stewart Simonson, who is head of Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness within the Department of Health and Human Services being the former corporate council of Amtrak. Do you think this is another example of crony appointments that could endanger this country like Michael Brown, former head of FEMA?
SEN. RON WYDEN: This should be a very important hearing where he's questioned thoroughly about how he's going to act in the public interest. Too often these kinds of appointments are just skated through. Those days are over.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, he already is head of it.
SEN. RON WYDEN: Well, I think what we've got to do is look further into his background and make sure that the positions that he's going to stake out are in the public interest.
"Too often these kinds of appointments are just skated through. Those days are over." "This should be a very important hearing where he's questioned throughly . . ."
From the HHS website:
Stewart Simonson was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on April 28, 2004.
A year and a half ago Simonson took office and Wyden thinks they should question him before he assumes the position . . . that he's been serving in for over a year and half?
Like I said, I'm not sure Wyden knew what he was voting for. Maybe the newlywed's mind is on other things?
The five should be all embarrased to show their faces. They should be ashamed of themselves. We can take comfort in the fact that none serve on the Judiciary Committee since their vote is a slap to the judiciary. It's also a slap against what America is supposed to stand for.
Mia e-mails to note Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman's "What John Kerry Definitely Said About 2004's Stolen Election and Why It's Killing American Democracy" (Columbus Free Press via Common Dreams):
In recent days Mark Crispin Miller has reported that he heard from Kerry personally that Kerry believes the election was stolen. The dialog has been widely reported on the internet. Kerry has since seemed to deny it.
We have every reason to believe Miller. His recent book FOOLED AGAIN, has been making headlines along with our own HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008.
As in his campaign for president, Kerry has been ambivalent and inconsistent about Ohio's stolen vote count. Soon after the presidential election, Kerry was involved in a conference call with Rev. Jesse Jackson and a number of attorneys, including co-author Bob Fitrakis. In the course of the conversation, Kerry said "You know, wherever they used those [e-voting] machines, I lost, regardless if the precinct was Democratic or Republican."
Kerry was referring to New Mexico. But he might just as well have been talking about Ohio, where the election was decided, as well as about Iowa and Nevada. All four of those "purple" states switched from Democratic "blue" in the exit polls as late as 12:20am to Republican "red" a few hours later, giving Bush the White House.
A scant few hours after that, Kerry left tens of thousands of volunteers and millions of voters hanging. With Bush apparently leading by some 130,000 votes in Ohio, but with a quarter-million votes still uncounted here, Kerry abruptly conceded. He was then heard from primarily through attorneys from Republican law firms attacking grassroots election protection activists who dared question the Ohio outcome.
In the year since that abrupt surrender, Theresa Heinz Kerry has made insinuations that she thought the election might have been stolen. But there has been no follow-up.
Now we have this report from M. C. Miller that Kerry said he knew the election was stolen, and then denied saying it. Coming from Kerry, the inconsistency would be entirely consistent.
["Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, available at Freepress.org and harveywasserman.com. Their upcoming What Happened in Ohio, with Steve Rosenfeld, will be published by The New Press in spring, 2006. "]
Rod e-mails to note today's scheduled topics for Democracy Now!:
* New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer on whether the C.I.A. can legally kill prisoners.
* Arianna Huffington on the resignation of New York Times reporter JudyMiller.
* And famed writer Octavia Butler joins us in our Firehouse studios.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
amy goodman
democracy now
jane mayer
iraq
guantanamo bay
elections
octavia butler
arianna huffington
[Note: Post corrected. Not Douglas Jehl as the author of the first item, Eric Schmitt. My apologies.]
Friday, November 11, 2005
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Indymedia roundup
One of many intriguing points in Mapes' book--a thing I shouldn't have had to be reminded of--is that the documents she and Dan Rather based their story on were never exposed as fakes. In her book due out this week from St. Martin's Press, Mapes insists that the documents are authentic.
The people who made the most adamant accusations at the time were anonymous amateurs on the Internet, not known experts. Somehow all of a sudden everybody and his blog was an expert on 40-year-old typewriters and proportional spacing.
In the book Mapes presents expert opinion and evidence that the accusation--all the stuff about typewriters, superscripts, proportional spacing and typefaces--was just wrong. She says the people who presented those arguments didn't know what they were talking about.
After dealing with the typeface issues, Mapes presents contextual evidence to show that the documents make an uncannily smooth factual mesh with other documents of known provenance. Not the sort of thing one would expect from fakes.
Another telling point to recall is that not even the high tribunal and commission set up by CBS to explore the issue was able to corroborate the accusations of fakery. For all the money CBS spent on its commission, not to mention various private detectives--and for the amount of public bloodletting the network justified on the basis of the commission's findings--you have to think they would have found a way to call those documents fake if they could have.
That was the core accusation against Mapes, Dan Rather's producer for that story: that she bought off on fake documents and fooled her superiors. If CBS could have proved the documents were fake, then all the blame would have been on Mapes and much less of it on CBS.
Certainly on the technical side of this I am not a good arbiter. And I'm not entirely neutral on Mapes herself. But I can say this much for her book: Anybody with an honest intellectual curiosity about this story will have to read the book or find some other way to confront the arguments in it. Mapes' evidence supporting the authenticity of the Bush Guard documents is compelling enough to put the ball squarely back in the court of her accusers. The case for forgery is dead in the road until it finds a way around this book.
The above, sent in by Billie, is from Jim Schutze's "Mapesgate: Before you judge former CBS-TV producer Mary Mapes, take a walk in her shoes" (The Dallas Observer). Thursday, indymedia roundup and this entry is highlighting a variety of topics.
For instance, Billie's highlight notes the corporate media, the next entry wonders if indymedia can be saved from the same trap? Melissa e-mails to note Bruce B. Brugmann's "Lockyer: Stop the merger" (San Francisco Bay Guardian):
It all sounds exactly like what Lockyer complained about in his original Jan. 27, 2003 complaint, which charged that the actions of New Times and VVM "have the further result of depriving the economy and the general public of the benefits which accrue from healthy competition."
If this merger goes through, a company with a proven pattern of antitrust violations would be in a strong position to increase media concentration, damage competition, and hurt readers and advertisers in at least two California markets. It would add to the homogenization of media in the state and damage the vigorous marketplace of ideas envisioned in the First Amendment. One example: New Times, by its own admission and proclamation, will wipe out the endorsements and editorials at the LA Weekly, thus depriving the community of a strong voice for progressive causes and against the war.
Since the Bay Guardian was founded, in l966, the alternative press has become a vigorous and indispensable part of the politics and culture of California, a state dominated by out-of-state chain dailies. There are more alternative papers in California than in any other state, 23 in total, from the Chico News and Review, in the north, to the San Diego Reader, in the south. And most, in their own ways, have been on a special First Amendment mission, working to be alternatives to and competitive with the local monopoly daily paper and working in their communities to be a major force for positive change.
The Bush Administration would be happy to wreck all that, to see that the alternative press is subsumed into a neocon corporate-chain culture and the independents jacked up against the wall.
California's attorney general doesn't need to take his lead from Bush and doesn't need to let New Times and VVM make a mockery of the original complaint, consent decree and moratorium on further conspiratorial, antitrust and anticompetitive activities between the two chains. Lockyer needs to do the right thing, employ the logic and rationale of his 2003 arguments, and exercise his power to stop the merger.
Cindy highlights another concern by noting Eliza Strickland's "Was DiFi Batting for Big Oil? Human-rights groups delay Sen. Feinstein's surprise bid to gut key protections against corporate abuses abroad" (East Bay Express):
In the late afternoon of October 17, United States Senator Dianne Feinstein took an unlikely position, given her liberal Bay Area constituency. She introduced a Senate bill to amend the Alien Tort Claims Act, a law written in 1789 that lets foreigners sue in American courts.
Her bill might once have been politically safe, but over the past decade human-rights lawyers have dusted off the antiquated statute and used it to go after US corporations for their complicity in overseas abuses. Burmese villagers, for instance, used it to sue Unocal for allegedly enslaving them during construction of a pipeline -- the company settled for an undisclosed amount in 2004.
The human-rights community, which now views the statute as an indispensable counterbalance to multinational power, reacted with outrage to Feinstein's bill. Her move was a betrayal, they say, and it showed she was taking marching orders from her corporate donors.
In her statement introducing the bill, Feinstein said it was high time that Congress step in and clarify the act's limits: "This two-hundred-year-old law has spawned dozens of legal cases involving US multinational companies, human-rights groups, foreign plaintiffs, the State Department, and millions of dollars in litigation costs," she said. "Numerous companies in California are in the midst of these lawsuits as defendants."
One of those companies is locally based oil giant Chevron, which is embroiled in litigation over alleged murders and human-rights abuses in Nigeria in the late 1990s. When attorneys for the Nigerian plaintiffs examined Feinstein's bill, they discovered serious ramifications for their lawsuit. "There were about eight different ways that her proposal would have gutted this case," says Cindy Cohn, one of the attorneys. "It's clear this was written by a lobbyist for somebody on the other side of the Alien Tort Claims Act cases, and I think it's likely that somebody was Chevron -- although I don't know for sure," she says. Chevron has contributed about $30,800 to Feinstein's electoral campaigns since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
A Chevron spokesman wouldn't say whether the company participated in the bill's writing. However, its lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 and 2005 list "Nigerian litigation effort -- pending litigation regarding alien tort statute" as a specific lobbying issue.
With the media consumed by Harriet Miers, natural disasters, and pending White House indictments, the senator's proposal hardly made a blip on the national radar, but it set off such a furor among human-rights groups that Feinstein quickly backpedaled, and essentially withdrew the bill eight days after introducing it. She now doesn't care to talk about the short-lived anomaly that was the Alien Tort Statute Reform Act.
The bill's origins and the senator's motivations are no longer relevant, insists Feinstein's spokesman, Howard Gantman. "The bill is not moving at this time; that's the current status," he says. "She said that she does not want any action on this legislation until she can meet with the folks who have raised concerns. She will be meeting with folks as time allows." Gantman says he doesn't have a list of the interest groups or lobbyists Feinstein's staff met with to prepare the bill, and declined to make any staff members available for questions, citing time constraints.
Shifting gears to a musical note, Amber e-mailed to note Vince Darcangelo's "A song to pass the time: Emo's one-time boy wonder grows up to become an indie-folk superstar" (Boulder Weekly). Who? Conor Oberst. Amber's pulled from the introduction to the interview "in case anyone's still hasn't heard of Bright Eyes." Here's her excerpt:
The dark, poetic depths of the latter in particular had fans in the emo community rallying around Oberst and bandying about the word wunderkind. When Bright Eyes released Fevers and Mirrors in 2000, he was branded the next big thing and became the darling of the indie music scene. When he released Lifted, or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground in 2002, he proved he was worthy of the hype, transforming Saddle Creek into the new industry buzz label and making Omaha-Omaha!-the new Seattle.
In January of this year, Bright Eyes simultaneously released two new CDs: a folkie, acoustic record, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, and an electronic record, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Oberst toured separately for each album, and recently embarked on a new tour, which will include a two-night stand in Boulder, Nov. 7-8, including a live taping at etown.
Two new releases and three tours in one year would be enough for most artists, but not the overachieving Oberst. On Nov. 15, Bright Eyes will release his first live album, Motion Sickness, through the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. The album will only be available in independent record shops.
In keeping with this independent spirit, Oberst recently canceled a show in St. Louis when he learned that Clear Channel owned the venue at which he was slated to play.
That's not the only controversy Oberst has found himself a part of this year. In May, he performed his new song, "When the President Talks to God," a scathing indictment of George W. Bush, on The Tonight Show. Last fall, leading up to the presidential election, he performed on the Vote for Change tour alongside Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M.
During a recent stop in Davis, Calif., Oberst hooked up with Boulder Weekly for an exclusive chat about music, politics and why Bright Eyes is not as depressing as you might think.
Switching from art to retail, we'll note Durham Gal's highlight Dan Coleman's "What's wrong with Wal-Mart?" (Raleigh-Durham Independent Weekly):
Although the world's largest retailer lacks the dramatically explosive potential of a nuclear power plant, its impact has been devastating to communities across the United States. It has played a major role in the dismantling of America's manufacturing base and the disappearance of the middle-class worker.
Although the feared north Chatham Supercenter has yet to appear and things have been quiet lately along the Orange-Chatham line, Wal-Mart is again in the news. Last month, the nonprofit group Wal-Mart Watch obtained a memo to the company's board of directors written by its executive vice president for benefits, Susan Chambers.
The memo confirms what anti-Wal-Mart activists have been claiming for years: that pay, benefits and working conditions at Wal-Mart are bad, and intentionally so. This is a corporation that seeks to maintain profits by keeping its employees on the edge of poverty.
And that's not all. As Robert Greenwald's new film Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (www.walmartmovie.com) dramatically illustrates, Wal-Mart is complicit in the evisceration of main streets across the United States. Its policies drive local stores and American manufacturers out of business. The retail giant has been charged with a wide range of abuses, at home and abroad.
Wal-Mart's success is a matter of legend. As Simon Head put it in the New York Review of Books, "With 1.4 million employees worldwide, Wal-Mart's workforce is now larger than that of GM, Ford, GE, and IBM combined. At $258 billion in 2003, Wal-Mart's annual revenues are 2 percent of U.S. GDP and eight times the size of Microsoft's. In fact, when ranked by its revenues, Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation."
Note that this article includes links to others from The Independent Weekly on the same topic.
Brad e-mails to note Steve's "An Unreasonable Woman Comes To Troy" (Hudson Mowhawk IMC):
Diane Wilson, author of "An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas" appears in Troy on Monday, November 14 at 7 PM for a talk and booksigning at The Sanctuary for Independent Media, 3361 6th Avenue in Troy. By donation, to benefit the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center. (She will also be speaking Monday at noon on the RPI campus in DCC 337, at an event co-sponsored by the Department of Science & Technology Studies and the Arts Department.)
Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper, began fishing the bays off the coast of East Texas at the age of eight, by 24 she was a boat captain. In 1989, while was running her brother's fish house at the docks and mending nets, she read a newspaper article that listed her home of Calhoun County as the number one toxic polluter in the country. She set up a meeting in the town hall to discuss what the chemical plants were doing to the bays and thus began her life as an environmental activist. Threatened by thugs and despised by her neighbors Diane insisted the truth be told and that Formosa Plastics stop dumping toxins into the bay.
Three years ago Wilson was arrested for committing civil disobediance at a Dow Chemical plant to protest the company's connection to the Bhopal chemical disaster. She’s now refusing to go to prison until former Union Carbide CEO Warren Andersen is jailed for his role in Bhopal.
The Corporate Crime Reporter is reporting that Diane Wilson is facing four months of jail in Texas. But she now says that she’s not going to jail until Warren Andersen, the former CEO of Union Carbide, is extradited to face manslaughter charges in Bhopal, India. Andersen was CEO of Union Carbide on December 3, 1984 when a deadly gas leak from Union Carbide’s pesticide factory in Bhopal, India poisoned at least 500,000 people. More than 8,000 people died within three days and over 20,000 people have died to date as a result of their exposure. In August 2002, Wilson scaled a Dow Chemical facility in Seadrift, Texas and unfurled a banner that read – "Dow Responsible for Bhopal." When she came down, she was arrested and charged with criminal trespass. In January 2003, Wilson was convicted of that charge and sentenced to four months in prison and fined $2,000.
Brad recommends the book and also notes that Diane Wilson was on Democracy Now! last month.
Lastly, Bonita e-mailed to note Anon's "AIDS activists take over Family Research Council to Protest Abstineence-Only Programs" (DC Indymedia):
Twelve staffers and clients of New York City's Housing Works (www.housingworks.org), the nation's largest AIDS agency, were arrested this morning at about 10am after chaining themselves at the base of a shrine to "traditional marriage" in the lobby bookstore of conservative think tank Family Research Council and refusing to leave once police arrived. The 12, including Housing Works CEO Rev. Charles King, were dragged out of FRC in plastic handcuffs by respectful D.C. police as dozens more protesters cheered them, chanting "Abstinence-only doesn't work!" and brandishing posters reading "Don't censor science."
Activists were protesting FRC's promotion of abstinence-until-marriage programs to prevent HIV/AIDS, which have virtually no scientific evidence of effectiveness compared to condoms, whose proven value in protecting against HIV the FRC has repeatedly aimed to debunk.
The protest began at 8:30am, when 40 protesters flooded FRC's lobby and bookstore. While the 12 who would be arrested chained themselves to each other before the traditional marriage display, others--chanting "Wake up, time's up, end AIDS now!"--blanketed the store with leaflets calling FRC's anti-gay, anti-condom agenda "hateful" and "ignorant." Protesters also decorated FRC windows with bold posters reading "Tell Youth the Truth: Condoms Save Lives." Three or four activists cavorted in giant condom costumes.
Astonished FRC staffers on their way into work stood by for over an hour watching the non-violent disruption until police arrived and began making arrests as cameras from local affiliates of ABC, NBC and Fox, as well as APTV and the Washington Post, captured the event.
"We're targeting Family Research Council today for one reason," said Housing Works legislative counsel Michael Kink, who served as a legal observer. "They've done everything in their power to weaken and distort the fact that condoms can help prevent HIV if used properly. Even the federal Centers for Disease Control has concluded that condoms are 'highly effective' at preventing HIV. FRC is messing with science to fit its own religion-based belief in abstinence until marriage, and with HIV rates rising in young Americans of color, that's a dangerous game to play."
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
The people who made the most adamant accusations at the time were anonymous amateurs on the Internet, not known experts. Somehow all of a sudden everybody and his blog was an expert on 40-year-old typewriters and proportional spacing.
In the book Mapes presents expert opinion and evidence that the accusation--all the stuff about typewriters, superscripts, proportional spacing and typefaces--was just wrong. She says the people who presented those arguments didn't know what they were talking about.
After dealing with the typeface issues, Mapes presents contextual evidence to show that the documents make an uncannily smooth factual mesh with other documents of known provenance. Not the sort of thing one would expect from fakes.
Another telling point to recall is that not even the high tribunal and commission set up by CBS to explore the issue was able to corroborate the accusations of fakery. For all the money CBS spent on its commission, not to mention various private detectives--and for the amount of public bloodletting the network justified on the basis of the commission's findings--you have to think they would have found a way to call those documents fake if they could have.
That was the core accusation against Mapes, Dan Rather's producer for that story: that she bought off on fake documents and fooled her superiors. If CBS could have proved the documents were fake, then all the blame would have been on Mapes and much less of it on CBS.
Certainly on the technical side of this I am not a good arbiter. And I'm not entirely neutral on Mapes herself. But I can say this much for her book: Anybody with an honest intellectual curiosity about this story will have to read the book or find some other way to confront the arguments in it. Mapes' evidence supporting the authenticity of the Bush Guard documents is compelling enough to put the ball squarely back in the court of her accusers. The case for forgery is dead in the road until it finds a way around this book.
The above, sent in by Billie, is from Jim Schutze's "Mapesgate: Before you judge former CBS-TV producer Mary Mapes, take a walk in her shoes" (The Dallas Observer). Thursday, indymedia roundup and this entry is highlighting a variety of topics.
For instance, Billie's highlight notes the corporate media, the next entry wonders if indymedia can be saved from the same trap? Melissa e-mails to note Bruce B. Brugmann's "Lockyer: Stop the merger" (San Francisco Bay Guardian):
It all sounds exactly like what Lockyer complained about in his original Jan. 27, 2003 complaint, which charged that the actions of New Times and VVM "have the further result of depriving the economy and the general public of the benefits which accrue from healthy competition."
If this merger goes through, a company with a proven pattern of antitrust violations would be in a strong position to increase media concentration, damage competition, and hurt readers and advertisers in at least two California markets. It would add to the homogenization of media in the state and damage the vigorous marketplace of ideas envisioned in the First Amendment. One example: New Times, by its own admission and proclamation, will wipe out the endorsements and editorials at the LA Weekly, thus depriving the community of a strong voice for progressive causes and against the war.
Since the Bay Guardian was founded, in l966, the alternative press has become a vigorous and indispensable part of the politics and culture of California, a state dominated by out-of-state chain dailies. There are more alternative papers in California than in any other state, 23 in total, from the Chico News and Review, in the north, to the San Diego Reader, in the south. And most, in their own ways, have been on a special First Amendment mission, working to be alternatives to and competitive with the local monopoly daily paper and working in their communities to be a major force for positive change.
The Bush Administration would be happy to wreck all that, to see that the alternative press is subsumed into a neocon corporate-chain culture and the independents jacked up against the wall.
California's attorney general doesn't need to take his lead from Bush and doesn't need to let New Times and VVM make a mockery of the original complaint, consent decree and moratorium on further conspiratorial, antitrust and anticompetitive activities between the two chains. Lockyer needs to do the right thing, employ the logic and rationale of his 2003 arguments, and exercise his power to stop the merger.
Cindy highlights another concern by noting Eliza Strickland's "Was DiFi Batting for Big Oil? Human-rights groups delay Sen. Feinstein's surprise bid to gut key protections against corporate abuses abroad" (East Bay Express):
In the late afternoon of October 17, United States Senator Dianne Feinstein took an unlikely position, given her liberal Bay Area constituency. She introduced a Senate bill to amend the Alien Tort Claims Act, a law written in 1789 that lets foreigners sue in American courts.
Her bill might once have been politically safe, but over the past decade human-rights lawyers have dusted off the antiquated statute and used it to go after US corporations for their complicity in overseas abuses. Burmese villagers, for instance, used it to sue Unocal for allegedly enslaving them during construction of a pipeline -- the company settled for an undisclosed amount in 2004.
The human-rights community, which now views the statute as an indispensable counterbalance to multinational power, reacted with outrage to Feinstein's bill. Her move was a betrayal, they say, and it showed she was taking marching orders from her corporate donors.
In her statement introducing the bill, Feinstein said it was high time that Congress step in and clarify the act's limits: "This two-hundred-year-old law has spawned dozens of legal cases involving US multinational companies, human-rights groups, foreign plaintiffs, the State Department, and millions of dollars in litigation costs," she said. "Numerous companies in California are in the midst of these lawsuits as defendants."
One of those companies is locally based oil giant Chevron, which is embroiled in litigation over alleged murders and human-rights abuses in Nigeria in the late 1990s. When attorneys for the Nigerian plaintiffs examined Feinstein's bill, they discovered serious ramifications for their lawsuit. "There were about eight different ways that her proposal would have gutted this case," says Cindy Cohn, one of the attorneys. "It's clear this was written by a lobbyist for somebody on the other side of the Alien Tort Claims Act cases, and I think it's likely that somebody was Chevron -- although I don't know for sure," she says. Chevron has contributed about $30,800 to Feinstein's electoral campaigns since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
A Chevron spokesman wouldn't say whether the company participated in the bill's writing. However, its lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 and 2005 list "Nigerian litigation effort -- pending litigation regarding alien tort statute" as a specific lobbying issue.
With the media consumed by Harriet Miers, natural disasters, and pending White House indictments, the senator's proposal hardly made a blip on the national radar, but it set off such a furor among human-rights groups that Feinstein quickly backpedaled, and essentially withdrew the bill eight days after introducing it. She now doesn't care to talk about the short-lived anomaly that was the Alien Tort Statute Reform Act.
The bill's origins and the senator's motivations are no longer relevant, insists Feinstein's spokesman, Howard Gantman. "The bill is not moving at this time; that's the current status," he says. "She said that she does not want any action on this legislation until she can meet with the folks who have raised concerns. She will be meeting with folks as time allows." Gantman says he doesn't have a list of the interest groups or lobbyists Feinstein's staff met with to prepare the bill, and declined to make any staff members available for questions, citing time constraints.
Shifting gears to a musical note, Amber e-mailed to note Vince Darcangelo's "A song to pass the time: Emo's one-time boy wonder grows up to become an indie-folk superstar" (Boulder Weekly). Who? Conor Oberst. Amber's pulled from the introduction to the interview "in case anyone's still hasn't heard of Bright Eyes." Here's her excerpt:
The dark, poetic depths of the latter in particular had fans in the emo community rallying around Oberst and bandying about the word wunderkind. When Bright Eyes released Fevers and Mirrors in 2000, he was branded the next big thing and became the darling of the indie music scene. When he released Lifted, or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground in 2002, he proved he was worthy of the hype, transforming Saddle Creek into the new industry buzz label and making Omaha-Omaha!-the new Seattle.
In January of this year, Bright Eyes simultaneously released two new CDs: a folkie, acoustic record, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, and an electronic record, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Oberst toured separately for each album, and recently embarked on a new tour, which will include a two-night stand in Boulder, Nov. 7-8, including a live taping at etown.
Two new releases and three tours in one year would be enough for most artists, but not the overachieving Oberst. On Nov. 15, Bright Eyes will release his first live album, Motion Sickness, through the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. The album will only be available in independent record shops.
In keeping with this independent spirit, Oberst recently canceled a show in St. Louis when he learned that Clear Channel owned the venue at which he was slated to play.
That's not the only controversy Oberst has found himself a part of this year. In May, he performed his new song, "When the President Talks to God," a scathing indictment of George W. Bush, on The Tonight Show. Last fall, leading up to the presidential election, he performed on the Vote for Change tour alongside Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M.
During a recent stop in Davis, Calif., Oberst hooked up with Boulder Weekly for an exclusive chat about music, politics and why Bright Eyes is not as depressing as you might think.
Switching from art to retail, we'll note Durham Gal's highlight Dan Coleman's "What's wrong with Wal-Mart?" (Raleigh-Durham Independent Weekly):
Although the world's largest retailer lacks the dramatically explosive potential of a nuclear power plant, its impact has been devastating to communities across the United States. It has played a major role in the dismantling of America's manufacturing base and the disappearance of the middle-class worker.
Although the feared north Chatham Supercenter has yet to appear and things have been quiet lately along the Orange-Chatham line, Wal-Mart is again in the news. Last month, the nonprofit group Wal-Mart Watch obtained a memo to the company's board of directors written by its executive vice president for benefits, Susan Chambers.
The memo confirms what anti-Wal-Mart activists have been claiming for years: that pay, benefits and working conditions at Wal-Mart are bad, and intentionally so. This is a corporation that seeks to maintain profits by keeping its employees on the edge of poverty.
And that's not all. As Robert Greenwald's new film Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (www.walmartmovie.com) dramatically illustrates, Wal-Mart is complicit in the evisceration of main streets across the United States. Its policies drive local stores and American manufacturers out of business. The retail giant has been charged with a wide range of abuses, at home and abroad.
Wal-Mart's success is a matter of legend. As Simon Head put it in the New York Review of Books, "With 1.4 million employees worldwide, Wal-Mart's workforce is now larger than that of GM, Ford, GE, and IBM combined. At $258 billion in 2003, Wal-Mart's annual revenues are 2 percent of U.S. GDP and eight times the size of Microsoft's. In fact, when ranked by its revenues, Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation."
Note that this article includes links to others from The Independent Weekly on the same topic.
Brad e-mails to note Steve's "An Unreasonable Woman Comes To Troy" (Hudson Mowhawk IMC):
Diane Wilson, author of "An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas" appears in Troy on Monday, November 14 at 7 PM for a talk and booksigning at The Sanctuary for Independent Media, 3361 6th Avenue in Troy. By donation, to benefit the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center. (She will also be speaking Monday at noon on the RPI campus in DCC 337, at an event co-sponsored by the Department of Science & Technology Studies and the Arts Department.)
Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper, began fishing the bays off the coast of East Texas at the age of eight, by 24 she was a boat captain. In 1989, while was running her brother's fish house at the docks and mending nets, she read a newspaper article that listed her home of Calhoun County as the number one toxic polluter in the country. She set up a meeting in the town hall to discuss what the chemical plants were doing to the bays and thus began her life as an environmental activist. Threatened by thugs and despised by her neighbors Diane insisted the truth be told and that Formosa Plastics stop dumping toxins into the bay.
Three years ago Wilson was arrested for committing civil disobediance at a Dow Chemical plant to protest the company's connection to the Bhopal chemical disaster. She’s now refusing to go to prison until former Union Carbide CEO Warren Andersen is jailed for his role in Bhopal.
The Corporate Crime Reporter is reporting that Diane Wilson is facing four months of jail in Texas. But she now says that she’s not going to jail until Warren Andersen, the former CEO of Union Carbide, is extradited to face manslaughter charges in Bhopal, India. Andersen was CEO of Union Carbide on December 3, 1984 when a deadly gas leak from Union Carbide’s pesticide factory in Bhopal, India poisoned at least 500,000 people. More than 8,000 people died within three days and over 20,000 people have died to date as a result of their exposure. In August 2002, Wilson scaled a Dow Chemical facility in Seadrift, Texas and unfurled a banner that read – "Dow Responsible for Bhopal." When she came down, she was arrested and charged with criminal trespass. In January 2003, Wilson was convicted of that charge and sentenced to four months in prison and fined $2,000.
Brad recommends the book and also notes that Diane Wilson was on Democracy Now! last month.
Lastly, Bonita e-mailed to note Anon's "AIDS activists take over Family Research Council to Protest Abstineence-Only Programs" (DC Indymedia):
Twelve staffers and clients of New York City's Housing Works (www.housingworks.org), the nation's largest AIDS agency, were arrested this morning at about 10am after chaining themselves at the base of a shrine to "traditional marriage" in the lobby bookstore of conservative think tank Family Research Council and refusing to leave once police arrived. The 12, including Housing Works CEO Rev. Charles King, were dragged out of FRC in plastic handcuffs by respectful D.C. police as dozens more protesters cheered them, chanting "Abstinence-only doesn't work!" and brandishing posters reading "Don't censor science."
Activists were protesting FRC's promotion of abstinence-until-marriage programs to prevent HIV/AIDS, which have virtually no scientific evidence of effectiveness compared to condoms, whose proven value in protecting against HIV the FRC has repeatedly aimed to debunk.
The protest began at 8:30am, when 40 protesters flooded FRC's lobby and bookstore. While the 12 who would be arrested chained themselves to each other before the traditional marriage display, others--chanting "Wake up, time's up, end AIDS now!"--blanketed the store with leaflets calling FRC's anti-gay, anti-condom agenda "hateful" and "ignorant." Protesters also decorated FRC windows with bold posters reading "Tell Youth the Truth: Condoms Save Lives." Three or four activists cavorted in giant condom costumes.
Astonished FRC staffers on their way into work stood by for over an hour watching the non-violent disruption until police arrived and began making arrests as cameras from local affiliates of ABC, NBC and Fox, as well as APTV and the Washington Post, captured the event.
"We're targeting Family Research Council today for one reason," said Housing Works legislative counsel Michael Kink, who served as a legal observer. "They've done everything in their power to weaken and distort the fact that condoms can help prevent HIV if used properly. Even the federal Centers for Disease Control has concluded that condoms are 'highly effective' at preventing HIV. FRC is messing with science to fit its own religion-based belief in abstinence until marriage, and with HIV rates rising in young Americans of color, that's a dangerous game to play."
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
Indymedia focus on war and peace
Dwight Scarbrough, with his familiar sticker-covered truck, has quickly become perhaps Boise's most visible anti-war figure. An entomologist with the Forest Service by day, he spends what seems to be the rest of his time "waging peace" wherever and whenever anyone will listen to his stridently anti-war message.
Scarbrough has only been in Boise since 2003--arriving in town for a new job--but he's carved out a niche in that short time. Having been a member of Veterans for Peace (VFP) chapters in other areas of the country, when Scarbrough saw that Boise didn't have a chapter, he started one up. VFP Chapter 117 has been a recognized chapter since October of 2004 and not surprisingly, Scarbrough is its president.
Veterans for Peace is a national organization of combat and peacetime veterans, founded in 1985 and based in St. Louis, drawing on members' "personal experiences and perspectives gained as veterans to raise public awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives." VFP membership has grown nationwide in recent years and the groups numerous issues of involvement include putting an end to the war in Iraq, working for veterans' rights, ensuring civil liberties, countering military recruitment in schools, advocating for victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam, promoting reconciliation and friendship between the United States and both Vietnam and Korea, ending U.S. military shelling on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, sending delegations to Columbia to investigate human rights abuses and observing elections in Central American countries like Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Bush-antagonist and war mother Cindy Sheehan launched her effort at the 2005 VFP national conference and 50 members subsequently accompanied her to camp out in Crawford, Texas. In addition, VFP is an official Non-Governmental Organization represented at the United Nations.
The local chapter of VFP currently has about 20 official members and some 130 people on their mailing list. VFP Chapter 117's main focus, according to Scarbrough, is to educate the public about the cost of war, not just in "real terms"--monetary, as well as the wounded and dead--but in those costs people perhaps don't consider: returning vets, who are both physically and mentally damaged, and their coping families, friends and communities. "That's part of the hidden costs of war," says Scarbrough. "George W. won't help you with that--they don't give a hoot about that stuff. And that's true of most government."
The above is from Sara Beitia's "Waging Peace: Local vets want to 'stop the war machine'" (Boise Weekly). It's Thursday and we're doing indymedia roundup. These are items that members send in. (And I whittle down, as requested in the poll done by Gina and Krista for the gina & krista round-robin.) Kevin noted Beitia's article and he also notes Nicholas Collias' "Pre-Emptive Peace: Making the case for conscientious objection with no draft in sight" (Boise Weekly):
The draft? You can't be serious.
After all, didn't Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld say last year that "There isn't a chance in the world that the draft will be brought back?" Didn't President Bush agree during last year's second presidential debate, saying, "We're not going to have a draft so long as I'm president"? In recent years, mandatory military service has been eliminated in Spain and France, shot down again last year the U.S. Congress, and as recently as last week, proposed and shouted down in Canada. With polls showing Americans to be over 70 percent against the draft, bringing it back would seem to be political suicide.
Conscription's just a relic--an anachronism ... right? Husband and wife Jeff Harry and Bette Carlson aren't counting on it.
"I have no trust it wouldn't happen," says Harry. A school social worker for the last 25 years, Harry has been "disturbed" by the prevalence of military recruiters in schools, and the way they romanticize military service--especially in recent years. "The Iraq war has really brought it front and center," he explains.
Carlson agrees, but says war has been a concern for far longer than the current conflict. "When Jeff and I decided to have children, it was really important to make sure they at least had the opportunity to decide what they thought about war," she says.
Luckily for them, their eldest son, Capitol High senior Emil Harry, agrees with their views. He describes himself as a pacifist, saying, "Wars just serve to make the rich richer." After graduating, he's even looking into peace studies programs, along with political science and sociology. But just to make sure that his life matches his ideals, Emil and his parents have created a "conscientious objector portfolio."
As the draft has faded from public focus, so have the specifics of what, exactly, a conscientious objector is--and how difficult it can be to become one. Here's a recap: A soldier or draftee can apply for CO status if he has a moral, ethical or religious objection to either war or killing. This objection doesn't have to be religious, but it isn't supposed to be a whim of self-preservation, nor a political judgment. Most importantly, according the Selective Service System, "The man's lifestyle prior to making his claim must reflect his current claims." In lieu of combat, COs usually perform some sort of alternative service, often in military support, conservation or social service programs.
With the burden of proof squarely on the applicant, not surprisingly, CO applications aren't always approved by the overseeing draft board. Even approvals often take months or even years to come through. And while both Emil Harry and his parents are involved with a local Quaker church, Boise Valley Friends, they aren't relying on the 350-year history of Quaker peace activism in the United States to make Emil's case for him. So, inside Emil's portfolio, they put documentation of his participation in peace demonstrations; a letter to his principal saying he'd like to opt-out of recruitment activities; proof of his membership in groups like the Idaho Peace Coalition and a letter of support from Lou Landry, a family friend, fellow Quaker and former aspiring CO.
Landry applied for objector status in 1964, soon after his "conscience was awakened" in college. His budding scruples weren't proof enough for the draft board, however. Landry's application was denied, forcing him into either going to war or engaging in civil disobedience. He chose the latter, and was given three years of probation, which he spent working with the handicapped in New Mexico. Four decades later, he still works with disabled adults, and he looks back on his rebellion as "an eye-opening experience into what it was to take a stand." As such, he sees value in a draft as a way to force people to clarify their perspective on war.
"The military prey on the young, and offer bonuses for college, as a way to have the poor pay with their lives," he says. "I think that's immoral, and I think we should all take a stand. This should be a great occasion for young people to reflect deeply."
Lori e-mails to note awilliams' "Local Peace Activst Challenges Bush" (Richmond IMC):
Tidewater peace activist, Tom Palumbo, of Virginia Beach was given an admittance ticket to President Bush's recent speaking event at Chrysler Hall. Attired in khakis and a crispy Docker's sky blue button-down shirt with a jacket and his usual wire rims, he appeared appropriately collegiate. The pre-event anticipation on the balcony level was a surreal "fly on the wall" experience as he overheard a cozy fundamentalist group of CBN visitors who were so excited they "couldn't sleep or eat!!!" the night before. As a Veteran for Peace, Tom enthusiastically applauded as Bush spoke about the sacrifices made on behalf of the military. He stated he would have "given a standing ovation had Bush said he was bringing the troops home or funding more education".
Instead, Bush launched into the "war on terrorism" and after the second reference, Tom stood up and stated, "Mr. President, war IS terrorism! Torture IS terrorism! Do the right thing and RESIGN NOW!" as he opened his button-down shirt to reveal a"DUMP BUSH” tee shirt with "FIRE THE LIAR!" on the back. Tom was silenced through forcible removal by at least 3 members of the security personnel unit.
Later in the evening, a lovely child by the name of Bria, approached Tom and asked him, "Why did they take you out?" to which Tom replied, "because sometimes one person has to decide to speak out when other people can't…sort of like what Rosa Parks did…does that make sense?” Bria's animated response? A light went off---"ohhhhh, YES!"
Thinking of last week's World Can't Wait rallies, Shirley e-mailed to highlight Eve Ensler's "Fire His Ass" (The World Can't Wait):
Since GEORGE BUSH really got in power by corporate take over and not election. Since he has behaved like a CEO of a huge corporation called U.S.A. supporting profit in all cases over human interests, we should treat him the way they would treat him in any corporation and
FIRE HIS ASS
When you start with a major surplus and end up with a huge huge deficit they
FIRE YOUR ASS
When you fail to move a company forward, they
FIRE YOUR ASS
When you are lazy and take vacations at a time of peril, they
FIRE YOUR LAZY ASS
When you don't prepare for terrible outcomes and then lose thousands of lives and insane amounts of money they
FIRE YOUR ASS
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
Scarbrough has only been in Boise since 2003--arriving in town for a new job--but he's carved out a niche in that short time. Having been a member of Veterans for Peace (VFP) chapters in other areas of the country, when Scarbrough saw that Boise didn't have a chapter, he started one up. VFP Chapter 117 has been a recognized chapter since October of 2004 and not surprisingly, Scarbrough is its president.
Veterans for Peace is a national organization of combat and peacetime veterans, founded in 1985 and based in St. Louis, drawing on members' "personal experiences and perspectives gained as veterans to raise public awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives." VFP membership has grown nationwide in recent years and the groups numerous issues of involvement include putting an end to the war in Iraq, working for veterans' rights, ensuring civil liberties, countering military recruitment in schools, advocating for victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam, promoting reconciliation and friendship between the United States and both Vietnam and Korea, ending U.S. military shelling on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, sending delegations to Columbia to investigate human rights abuses and observing elections in Central American countries like Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Bush-antagonist and war mother Cindy Sheehan launched her effort at the 2005 VFP national conference and 50 members subsequently accompanied her to camp out in Crawford, Texas. In addition, VFP is an official Non-Governmental Organization represented at the United Nations.
The local chapter of VFP currently has about 20 official members and some 130 people on their mailing list. VFP Chapter 117's main focus, according to Scarbrough, is to educate the public about the cost of war, not just in "real terms"--monetary, as well as the wounded and dead--but in those costs people perhaps don't consider: returning vets, who are both physically and mentally damaged, and their coping families, friends and communities. "That's part of the hidden costs of war," says Scarbrough. "George W. won't help you with that--they don't give a hoot about that stuff. And that's true of most government."
The above is from Sara Beitia's "Waging Peace: Local vets want to 'stop the war machine'" (Boise Weekly). It's Thursday and we're doing indymedia roundup. These are items that members send in. (And I whittle down, as requested in the poll done by Gina and Krista for the gina & krista round-robin.) Kevin noted Beitia's article and he also notes Nicholas Collias' "Pre-Emptive Peace: Making the case for conscientious objection with no draft in sight" (Boise Weekly):
The draft? You can't be serious.
After all, didn't Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld say last year that "There isn't a chance in the world that the draft will be brought back?" Didn't President Bush agree during last year's second presidential debate, saying, "We're not going to have a draft so long as I'm president"? In recent years, mandatory military service has been eliminated in Spain and France, shot down again last year the U.S. Congress, and as recently as last week, proposed and shouted down in Canada. With polls showing Americans to be over 70 percent against the draft, bringing it back would seem to be political suicide.
Conscription's just a relic--an anachronism ... right? Husband and wife Jeff Harry and Bette Carlson aren't counting on it.
"I have no trust it wouldn't happen," says Harry. A school social worker for the last 25 years, Harry has been "disturbed" by the prevalence of military recruiters in schools, and the way they romanticize military service--especially in recent years. "The Iraq war has really brought it front and center," he explains.
Carlson agrees, but says war has been a concern for far longer than the current conflict. "When Jeff and I decided to have children, it was really important to make sure they at least had the opportunity to decide what they thought about war," she says.
Luckily for them, their eldest son, Capitol High senior Emil Harry, agrees with their views. He describes himself as a pacifist, saying, "Wars just serve to make the rich richer." After graduating, he's even looking into peace studies programs, along with political science and sociology. But just to make sure that his life matches his ideals, Emil and his parents have created a "conscientious objector portfolio."
As the draft has faded from public focus, so have the specifics of what, exactly, a conscientious objector is--and how difficult it can be to become one. Here's a recap: A soldier or draftee can apply for CO status if he has a moral, ethical or religious objection to either war or killing. This objection doesn't have to be religious, but it isn't supposed to be a whim of self-preservation, nor a political judgment. Most importantly, according the Selective Service System, "The man's lifestyle prior to making his claim must reflect his current claims." In lieu of combat, COs usually perform some sort of alternative service, often in military support, conservation or social service programs.
With the burden of proof squarely on the applicant, not surprisingly, CO applications aren't always approved by the overseeing draft board. Even approvals often take months or even years to come through. And while both Emil Harry and his parents are involved with a local Quaker church, Boise Valley Friends, they aren't relying on the 350-year history of Quaker peace activism in the United States to make Emil's case for him. So, inside Emil's portfolio, they put documentation of his participation in peace demonstrations; a letter to his principal saying he'd like to opt-out of recruitment activities; proof of his membership in groups like the Idaho Peace Coalition and a letter of support from Lou Landry, a family friend, fellow Quaker and former aspiring CO.
Landry applied for objector status in 1964, soon after his "conscience was awakened" in college. His budding scruples weren't proof enough for the draft board, however. Landry's application was denied, forcing him into either going to war or engaging in civil disobedience. He chose the latter, and was given three years of probation, which he spent working with the handicapped in New Mexico. Four decades later, he still works with disabled adults, and he looks back on his rebellion as "an eye-opening experience into what it was to take a stand." As such, he sees value in a draft as a way to force people to clarify their perspective on war.
"The military prey on the young, and offer bonuses for college, as a way to have the poor pay with their lives," he says. "I think that's immoral, and I think we should all take a stand. This should be a great occasion for young people to reflect deeply."
Lori e-mails to note awilliams' "Local Peace Activst Challenges Bush" (Richmond IMC):
Tidewater peace activist, Tom Palumbo, of Virginia Beach was given an admittance ticket to President Bush's recent speaking event at Chrysler Hall. Attired in khakis and a crispy Docker's sky blue button-down shirt with a jacket and his usual wire rims, he appeared appropriately collegiate. The pre-event anticipation on the balcony level was a surreal "fly on the wall" experience as he overheard a cozy fundamentalist group of CBN visitors who were so excited they "couldn't sleep or eat!!!" the night before. As a Veteran for Peace, Tom enthusiastically applauded as Bush spoke about the sacrifices made on behalf of the military. He stated he would have "given a standing ovation had Bush said he was bringing the troops home or funding more education".
Instead, Bush launched into the "war on terrorism" and after the second reference, Tom stood up and stated, "Mr. President, war IS terrorism! Torture IS terrorism! Do the right thing and RESIGN NOW!" as he opened his button-down shirt to reveal a"DUMP BUSH” tee shirt with "FIRE THE LIAR!" on the back. Tom was silenced through forcible removal by at least 3 members of the security personnel unit.
Later in the evening, a lovely child by the name of Bria, approached Tom and asked him, "Why did they take you out?" to which Tom replied, "because sometimes one person has to decide to speak out when other people can't…sort of like what Rosa Parks did…does that make sense?” Bria's animated response? A light went off---"ohhhhh, YES!"
Thinking of last week's World Can't Wait rallies, Shirley e-mailed to highlight Eve Ensler's "Fire His Ass" (The World Can't Wait):
Since GEORGE BUSH really got in power by corporate take over and not election. Since he has behaved like a CEO of a huge corporation called U.S.A. supporting profit in all cases over human interests, we should treat him the way they would treat him in any corporation and
FIRE HIS ASS
When you start with a major surplus and end up with a huge huge deficit they
FIRE YOUR ASS
When you fail to move a company forward, they
FIRE YOUR ASS
When you are lazy and take vacations at a time of peril, they
FIRE YOUR LAZY ASS
When you don't prepare for terrible outcomes and then lose thousands of lives and insane amounts of money they
FIRE YOUR ASS
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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