Found: Saddam's weapon of mass destruction

Washington - This photo of condemned Iraqi ex-strongman Saddam Hussein amid exotic weapons of mass destruction, taken just before the liberation of Iraq, was released Saturday by the White House. Proclaiming that the long-awaited evidence of Saddam's deadly weaponry was now irrefutable, Presidential spokesman Tony Snow displayed the picture of Saddam with bow and arrows [read the original NY Times article] at a special briefing for the Washington press corp.

Media sham for Iraq war -- it’s happening again

The lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has become notorious in the annals of American journalism. Even many reporters, editors and commentators who fueled the drive to war in 2002 and early 2003 now acknowledge that major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war.

But it’s happening again.

The current media travesty is a drumbeat for the idea that the U.S. war effort must keep going. And again, in its news coverage, the New York Times is a bellwether for the latest media parade to the cadence of the warfare state.

During the run-up to the invasion, news stories repeatedly told about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction while the Times and other key media outlets insisted that their coverage was factually reliable. Now the same media outlets insist that their coverage is analytically reliable.

Instead of authoritative media information about aluminum tubes and mobile weapons labs, we’re now getting authoritative media illumination of why a swift pullout of U.S. troops isn’t realistic or desirable. The result is similar to what was happening four years ago -- a

Stop Expansion of Oil Drilling on our Coasts

This lame-duck Congress will likely be launching their first attack TOMORROW. The House of Representatives will likely vote tomorrow on a dangerous bill to expand oil drilling off our coasts, even in some special areas where drilling is currently banned. We need your immediate action to stop this last-ditch attempt to hand over our natural heritage to Big Oil.
Please call your Representative right now:

Tell your Member of Congress to vote NO on S.3711, the offshore oil and gas drilling bill and to stop the giveaways to Big Oil. Urge your Representative to support bills that will give us more renewable energy and REDUCE our destructive dependence on oil. And please help the NRDC Action Fund to expose and stop these eleventh-hour attacks on our environment by making a special donation today: Drilling Fund

Your contribution will enable us to mobilize nearly one million online activists, dozens of experts, and our lightning-fast media operation in order to thwart this and other lame-duck assaults on our last wild places. Drilling off our coasts will NOT bring down gas prices or

The Pryce of democracy in Ohio’s 15th Congressional District

The Republican Party is on the brink of seizing another seat in the U.S. Congress. The key race is the central Ohio 15th District Congressional House seat held by Deborah Pryce, the fourth most powerful Republican in Congress. 

On election night the preliminary vote count showed Pryce beating Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy by 3717 votes out of more than 200,000 cast. Nearly 20,000 votes remained uncounted after Election Day. Kilroy refused to concede and demanded a full accounting of provisional, absentee and uncounted machine votes.

On Monday, November 27, the final tally was announced. Kilroy officially picked up 2482 votes, leaving Pryce ahead by 1054. The Franklin County Board of Elections could have certified the results earlier, but chose instead to wait until after the Big Ten championship football game between Ohio State and the University of Michigan.

Because the margin is within 1/2% of the votes cast, Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder says this will trigger an automatic recount within ten days.

By all rights, Kilroy would seem to be an obvious winner, except for a

Think globally, protect the vote locally

Just as local cities have adopted environmental and wage laws that exceed federal standards, maybe it's time for local initiatives protecting the sanctity of the vote. We've been seeing electoral abuses and manipulations since the Bush administration took power. So we need to ensure the Democrats make national electoral protection a priority. But we can also act on a local level.

Though the Democratic surge took back the Senate and House, some ugly actions quite likely shifted several close Congressional races. The poster race for this election's abuses, appropriately, is Catherine Harris's old Congressional district in Sarasota, FL. Whether through manipulation or error, electronic voting machines in that district logged 18,000 fewer votes in this neck-and-neck congressional race than for governor or senator, and fewer than wholly uncontroversial down-ballot races like the Sarasota Public Hospital Board. Whatever the causes, these votes disappeared in a county that Democrat Christine Jennings carried by 53 percent, and would have likely allowed her to defeat Republican Vern Buchanan.

Harris's district saw more than just voting machine problems. In the

Gaza and Darfur

As a zone of ongoing, large-scale bloodletting, Darfur in the western Sudan has big appeal for U.S. news editors. Americans are not doing the killing, or paying for others to do it. So there's no need to minimize the slaughter with the usual drizzle of "allegations." There's no political risk here in sounding off about genocide in Darfur. The crisis in Darfur is also very photogenic.

            When the RENAMO gangs, backed by Ronald Reagan and the apartheid regime in South Africa were butchering Mozambican peasants, the news stories were sparse and the tone usually tentative in any blame-laying. Not so with Darfur, where moral outrage on the editorial pages acquires the robust edge endemic to sermons about inter-ethnic slaughter where white people, and specifically the U.S. government, aren't obviously involved.

Blood fatigue

Troublemaker Charles Rangel, the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has a deliciously bad idea.

The New York congressman recently reprised his audacious proposal - first made nearly four years ago, with the U.S. about to launch Operation Iraqi Quagmire - to reinstate the draft. He reasoned that, if a military action is really necessary, we should, you know, share the sacrifice: get congressmen's' children, presumably even Jenna and Barbara, involved in the action. And if it isn't, we shouldn't go to war.

As a faux-naive device for exposing hypocrisy, Rangel's idea is worthy of Michael Moore, if not Borat. The hemming and hawing of establishment opposition is worth savoring for a news cycle.

But the real reason why the draft, so passionately defended by conservatives during the Vietnam era, is no longer "necessary" or wanted by the military-industrial-media complex is that the country is far too peace-loving to tolerate it.

Support Ohio Senate Bill 74 - Medical Marijuana

On Wednesday 11/15, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Criminal Justice heard sponsor testimony from Sen. Robert Hagan (D-Youngstown) on S.B. 74, which will protect seriously ill Ohio patients from the threat of arrest and imprisonment for using marijuana to treat their conditions.

Thank you to everyone who attended the hearing and took action over the last several days. But we don't have time to let up! The Criminal Justice Committee needs to hear just how important S.B. 74 is to the well-being of the critically ill. Here's what you can do right now to help us get a hearing with patient testimony:

1) Call the members of the Criminal Justice Committee. Legislators regularly tell us that a phone call from their constituents is very influential on their decisions regarding legislation.

The message can simple: "I strongly support S.B. 74, Sen. Hagan's compassionate medical marijuana bill. People suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses should not go to jail if they use medical marijuana on their doctors' advice. Please schedule S.B. 74 for a hearing with patient testimony."

You can go to

Blind obedience to the canons of capitalism: of sick societies, American Dalits, and a nation of Lady Macbeths 

[Author's Note to Establish Context: I composed this on 11/24/06, the day after Thanksgiving]

"Tell me where do I belong in this sick society?

....Look at yourself instead of looking at me. With accusation in your eyes. Do you want me crucified for my profanity?

....Tell me the truth and I'll admit to my guilt if you'll try to understand. But is that blood that's on your hand from your democracy?"

--Ozzy Osbourne, You're no Different, 1983

Bow your heads and drop to your knees, brothers and sisters! Feel the power of the Holy Dollar coursing through your being as you humbly offer your prayers, exaltations and gratitude to Mighty Mammon!

Lay the perpetual argument to rest. There is no separation of church and state.

It is indisputable that the United States is one nation, under God. Our nation worships the unholy trinity of the Dollar, Acquisitiveness, and Opulence with the fanaticism of the Inquisitors.

‘Tis (officially) the season to be greedy...

Head for the exit, now!

Imagine a steer in the stockyards hollering to his fellows, "We need a phased withdrawal from the slaughterhouse, starting in four to six months. The timetable should not be overly rigid. But there should be no more equivocation." Back and forth among the steers the debate meanders on. Some say, "To withdraw now" would be to "display weakness." Others talk about a carrot-and-stick approach. Then the men come out with electric prods and shock them up the chute.

            The way you end a slaughter is by no longer feeding it. Every general, either American or British, with the guts to speak honestly over the past couple of years has said the same thing: The foreign occupation of Iraq by American and British troops is feeding the violence.

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