Flyby News
"News Fit to Transmit in the Post Cassini Flyby Era"
Self Evident * Nuke Disarm * Campaign 2004
20 February 2004
"I am not a member any organized political party"
"I am a Democrat."
-- Will Rogers1) William Rivers Pitt: "The One You've Been Waiting For"
2) USA Today – Get rid of all nuclear arms- - Kucinich Statement for Complete Nuclear Disarmament
3) Kucinich Campaign info excerpts and links- - Wisconsin Primary
- - Crowd wowed by frankness from also-ran
- - Kucinich appeals to military families
- - Kucinich keys on jobs, Iraq, health care
- - The Nation article: "Progressives Should Vote Kucinich"
- - Press Release: INDECENT WAR ON FREEDOM
- - Super Tuesday and the anti-war movement
Editor's Notes:The article that I have been waiting for is in item 1. The first article I read by William Rivers Pitt is called
"Hell To Pay," which openned me up to his sincerity and talents for writing, which are in the finest of American traditions like that of Thomas Paine. "Hell to Pay," published in January 2002, included the unfathomable irony of FBI-Osama bin Ladin hunter, executive deputy, John O'Neill, who went down with thousands of others in the World Trade Center Towers; with innocence and conspiracy broken apart, and debris swept away in the crime of the Century. Instead of examining the crime scene, the US government used the event as a precursor for endless war and aim for world domination. Fear tried to conquer us. This newest article by William Rivers Pitt, "The One You've Been Waiting For" is a sequel in a new time, a new opportunity, to empower ourselves with a freedom in a pseudo democracy to make it work, and arise from the ashes of death to lay fear to rest. Item 2 is a USA Today article editorial with the only common sense direction for a world inundated with nuclear arms, and too many crazy people in high places. Item 3 is to catch you up on the Kucinich campaign, to counterbalance the censorship in the mainstream press; yet, this movement will not be denied. It is only a matter of time. Each candidate in the Democratic Party has contributed much for an opportunity to change directions. Only united will people succeed; and this spring there are signs for an american and universal awakening.
1) "The One You've Been Waiting For" by William Rivers Pitt"The One You've Been Waiting For
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 19 February 2004
"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival." - Winston Churchill
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Nicole Frye and Bryan Spry are dead because of George W. Bush. Both died in Iraq. Both were 19 years old. William Ramirez was also 19 years old, as was Holly McGeogh. Luis Moreno and Nathan Nakis, Jeffrey Braun and Jason Wright, Joey Whitener and Steven Acosta and Rachel Bosveld, all were 19 years old when they died in Iraq. Ryan Thomas and Michael Mihalakis were 18 when they died in Iraq. They join the 544 American soldiers who have been killed there in less than a year.
They were lied to, as were we all, and now they are forever young in death. The lie they, and we, were fed still sits on the White House website. You can find the lie if you go to www.WhiteHouse.gov and do a search for the page titled ‘Disarm Saddam Hussein.' The page is still there, in all its dishonest glory, even today. The page will tell you that Iraq possesses 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve
agent. 500 tons, for those without calculators, equals 1,000,000 pounds.
Hide that.
This White House page likewise claims Iraq is in possession of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering the 64,000 liters of anthrax and botulinum toxin no one can find, along with the 1,000,000 pounds of sarin, mustard and VX gas no one can find. Better still, the page claims a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that never existed and cannot be proven.
Best of all, the page claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program. This was the lie that Bush used in his State of the Union address, to the humiliation of us all. This was the lie that motivated Ambassador Joseph Wilson to speak out on the pages of the New York Times. This was the lie that motivated White House staffers to take revenge against Wilson by exposing his CIA wife, Valerie Plame, thus sparking a federal investigation. This was the lie that might bring down the administration. It is still on the White House website.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
The American people continue to be kept almost completely in the dark regarding the events of September 11. Very nearly a thousand days have passed since the attacks, and yet the best we have to work with is "Evildoers who hate our freedom." The best we have to work with is an unnecessary invasion of Iraq as a substitute for actual answers and actions. Had the Bush administration been given what it wanted, the best we would have had to work with was master secret-keeper Henry Kissinger chairing a hand-picked investigation committee that would have come armed with pens, paper and buckets of whitewash.
The families of the September 11 dead have published some questions they would like to see George W. Bush answer publicly. Among them are:
Beginning with the transition period between the Clinton administration and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information (either verbal or written) about terrorists, possible attacks and targets, did you receive from any source? This would include briefings or communications from out-going Clinton officials, CIA, FBI, NSA, DoD and other intelligence agencies, foreign intelligence, governments, dignitaries or envoys, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and/or Richard Clarke, former counter-terrorism czar.
Specifically, what did you learn from the August 6, 2001, PDB about the terrorist threat that was facing our nation? Did you request any follow-up action to take place? Did you request any further report be developed and/or prepared?
As Commander-in-Chief, from May 1, 2001 until September 11, 2001, did you receive any information from any intelligence agency official or agent that UBL was planning to attack this nation on its own soil using airplanes as weapons, targeting New York City landmarks during the week of September 11, 2001 or on the actual day of September 11, 2001?
Please explain why no one in any level of our government has yet been held accountable for the countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?
Do you continue to maintain that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda? What proof do you have of any connection between al-Qaeda and the Hussein regime?
No one on the entire earth has more moral authority on this issue than the wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers of the men and women who were killed that day. To ignore their demand for answers is to slap them across the face. To ignore their demand is to kill their loved ones all over again. These questions must be answered in the broad light of day.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Since George W. Bush came to Washington DC, some 2.2 million jobs have evaporated. Last year, the administration promised to create 1.7 million new jobs, a promise that went laughably unfulfilled. Just last week, the administration promised to create either 2.6 million new jobs or 3.8 million new jobs, depending upon which administration official you chose to listen to.
These White House predictions are so off-the-scale ludicrous that the administration officials charged with shepherding the economy have refused to have anything to do with them. Both Treasury Secretary John Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans have put as much distance as political physics will allow between themselves and these predictions. "Macroeconomic models are based on a lot of assumptions," said Secretary Snow, who further stated that such things are, "not without a range of error."
Indeed. The "range of error" may well be found in the fact that this administration has promised millions of new jobs while simultaneously – and by‘simultaneously' I mean within the pages of the same economic report – claiming that the outsourcing of millions of American jobs to foreign countries is a good thing for the economy and the American people. Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich asked a pointed question about this which has gone unanswered: In which country will these jobs be created?" They won't be created in America, for Americans.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Seldom in the history of American politics has the Democratic Party fielded a more competent, patriotic, excellent group of candidates for the office of the Presidency than that which has been in the running to date. A case can be made, however, that each has bruises on their records as progressives; from voting for the Iraq War Resolution to voting for the PATRIOT Act to espousing right-leaning economic principles to questionable allegiance to a woman's right to choose, each and every candidate has failed the purity test somewhere along the line.
Yet held against the appalling record compiled by the Bush administration to date, of which the issues raised above comprise only a damnable fraction, the truth is as self-evident as the shining sun at noontime. Each and every one of the Democratic candidates represent a quantum leap forward for America, should any of them attain that high office. Each and every one of them can be pressured, cajoled, even attacked by the progressive community to act in a manner required by the people. No amount of pressure from the progressive community has moved the Bush administration one inch away from its extremist agenda to date, and no amount of pressure will move them should Bush win the 2004 election.
Is John Kerry the one you've been waiting for? Is John Edwards? Howard Dean? Dennis Kucinich? Al Sharpton? Were any of the candidates who have dropped out the one you've been waiting for? The answer to those questions will vary from person to person. At the end of the day, however, the final answer is no.
No, none of these candidates are the one you've been waiting for.
The one you've been waiting for has always been here. The one you've been waiting for pressured these candidates to fight the onslaught of the Bush administration. The one you've been waiting for took to the streets before the Iraq invasion, worked for the campaign which most inspired, agitated against the PATRIOT Act, spoke to friend and neighbor and family about what has gone wrong.
This final truth is self-evident. You are the one you've been waiting for. You drive the agenda. You make or break this political season. You are the hero. You've been here the whole time.
William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for truthout. He is a New York Times and international bestselling author of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/021904A.shtml© Copyright 2004 by
TruthOut.org
2) USA Today – Get rid of all nuclear arms- - Kucinich Statement for Complete Nuclear Disarmament
Get rid of all nuclear arms
By Adil Najam
Editorial/Opinion
Posted 2/18/2004 7:59 PM
USA Today
President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) provides the right solution, but to the wrong problem. Nuclear proliferation is merely a symptom; the real issue is the nuclear weapons themselves. And, in this sense, the PSI is no more than a Band-Aid, and a quite small one at that.
The recent scandal in Pakistan, where a corrupt scientist sold nuclear secrets for profit, only demonstrates that such traffic is much too lucrative to be stopped by increased policing. For 60 years, ever since Hiroshima, the U.S. and the world have tried to control the spread of nuclear weapons. We've tried treaties, economic sanctions and moral persuasion. And we've failed.
We could not stop the Soviets from getting nukes. We chose not to resist, and actually ignored, Israel's nuclear program. We looked the other way when India went nuclear and, thus, could do little when Pakistan followed suit.And we merely fumed when North Korea flexed its nuclear muscles. In the meantime, we have built and maintained the world's largest nuclear stockpile.
Can we contain Pakistan's nuclear program? Yes, we can. But first we will need to contain India's. To do that, however, India will need to see China's program rolled back. How does that happen? For that, we will need to start looking at our own. As my grandmother used to say, "If you point one finger at someone, at least three will point back at you." No one said this was easy!
Are we really surprised that the rest of the world rolls its eyes when we pontificate about the dangers of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in general — as when Bush referred to them as "the greatest threat to humanity today"? What other countries doubt is our sincerity. It is hypocritical to tell the rest of the world that nuclear weapons are good enough for us, but not for them. We can't have a world part nuclear and part not.
Perhaps the fathers of our own atom bomb — Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues from the Manhattan Project — were correct in believing that the only real way of dealing with nuclear proliferation is to ban nuclear weapons altogether. Everywhere.
International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei understands this reality. He recently wrote: "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use."
We must insist on a nuclear-free world. We must make a sincere commitment to it at home and demand it abroad. Rather than better mousetraps for proliferating nations, we need an approach to eliminate nuclear weapons. Some may argue this is unrealistic. But no more so than the misguided, even naive, hope that a feel-good Band-Aid called PSI will make the world a safer place.
Adil Najam is an associate professor of international negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
You can also find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-02-18-oppose_x.htm = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Kucinich Statement for Complete Nuclear DisarmamentThe following is an excerpt and link to statement by Dennis Kucinich on Nuclear Weapons, the only candidate with a statement for "..complete nuclear disarmament."
"World Peace Initiative - - Part 1: Nuclear Weapons
As President, Dennis Kucinich will work to achieve the following steps to promote world peace:
1. Leading the way toward the complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the earth. Kucinich's goal as president will be a steady movement toward complete nuclear disarmament.
and for complete statement, see:
www.kucinich.us/issues/nuclear_weapons.php - - Kucinich on Weapons and Non-Proliferation:"We must demand that our nation and all nations:
Abide by the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Stop the development of new nuclear weapons.
Take all nuclear weapons systems off alert.
Persist towards total, worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Our nation must:
Revive the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.
Sign and enforce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Abandon plans to build a so-called missile shield.
Prohibit the introduction of weapons into outer space.
The complete statement is posted:
www.kucinich.us/issues/nuclearnp.php
3) Kucinich Campaign info excerpts and links- - Wisconsin Primary
- - Crowd wowed by frankness from also-ran
- - Kucinich appeals to military families
- - Kucinich keys on jobs, Iraq, health care
- - The Nation article: "Progressives Should Vote Kucinich"
- - Press Release: INDECENT WAR ON FREEDOM
- - Super Tuesday and the anti-war movement
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Wisconsin PrimaryFebruary 18, 2004
Dennis extends his thanks to the 27,000+ people who voted for him in the Wisconsin Primary, where he earned 3% of the vote. Also, a special thanks to master guitarist Tim Reynolds for his special performances throughout the weekend. The Wisconsin Primary was February 17.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Crowd wowed by frankness from also-ranMilwaukee Journal Sentinel
Crowd wowed by frankness from also-ran
By RAQUEL RUTLEDGE
rrutledge@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Feb. 15, 2004
Like a character in a Broadway play, Dennis Kucinich delivered his lines in Sunday's debate with confidence and conviction. He waved his arms, pointed his fingers and punched the right words.
Although Kucinich didn't get to speak until about 10 minutes into the debate, his answer to a question about negative campaigning drew the first applause of the night.
"If the debate ends up being about the president's service record, you know, we should be worried about the National Guardsmen and Guardswomen who are in Iraq right now who shouldn't be there.
"We should be worried about bringing them home, not worrying about what the president did or didn't do 30 years ago. We have to be concerned about what he's doing now. He sent those men and women there on a lie, and we have to bring them home."
The crowd cheered.
Kucinich later said his first act in office would be to repeal NAFTA.
"That's specific action that will regain real power for the American workers and for workers everywhere and to give the American people the ability to buy American-made goods."
For the complete article, see
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/feb04/207907.asp= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Kucinich appeals to military familiesPublished in The Post-Crescent, 2/15/04
Kucinich appeals to military families
Long-shot candidate says he'll bring Iraq troops home quickly
By Nathan Phelps
.. "We can take the world in a different direction. We tell the U.N. we're not interested in oil, contracts, privatization or running the government of Iraq," Kucinich said. "This is the only way that we can be certain we'll achieve peace."
Although Kucinich badly trails other top contenders, including frontrunner John Kerry, who will be in Green Bay Monday, he says his opposition to the war will be the lynchpin to defeating President Bush.
For the complete article, see:
http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/archive/local_14719240.shtml= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Kucinich keys on jobs, Iraq, health careWisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, 2/15/04
Kucinich keys on jobs, Iraq, health care
By Trudy Stewart
Central Wisconsin Sunday
http://www.wisinfo.com/dailytribune/wrdtlocal/279822304580588.shtml= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - The Nation article: "Progressives Should Vote Kucinich""Progressives Should Vote Kucinich"
by RONNIE DUGGER
The Nation, 2/17/04
Dennis Kucinich is the one candidate for President whose vision, eloquence and commitments on the issues can lead us to rise to and surmount the worldwide crises precipitated by the Bush Administration.
For the article link to The Nation, see:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20040301&s=dugger= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Press Release: INDECENT WAR ON FREEDOMPlease note too that the next Flyby News free public forum
will be held in Amherst, MA on Thursday, February 26, 2004,
and in Vermont; February 28th & 29th! called:
INDECENT WAR ON FREEDOM
Grassroots Forums on the War On Terror
This program will include the film:
"Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror
A Special Report by John Pilger" and open discussions
and Dennis Kucinich's 18-minute powerhouse speech
"A Prayer for America"
For details and more information, see FlybyNews.com -
under campaigns and events and link to
"Films that Make a Difference!" = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Super Tuesday and the anti-war movementStay with the Kucinich campaign for their latest breaking information
http://www.kucinich.usThe best source of information about the Massachusetts (New England) campaign is the MASSforKucinich web site -
http://www.massforkucinich.us - which has a regularly updated and detailed calendar section. Also see the national web site for Dennis world changing schedule:
http://www.kucinich.us/schedule.htm
Flyby News Support
If you care to join with Flyby News and help cover expenses
for printing, hosting, sponsoring events, etc. you can send donations to:
Flyby News
P.O. Box 1999
Wendell Depot, MA 01380 USA
Thanks for reading, forwarding, supporting independent news.
The views expressed herein are the writers' own and not necessarily those of Flyby News.
A "Fair Use Policy" that describes Flyby News' use of copyrighted material is posted at flybynews.com.
Your feedback for story suggestions and networking Flyby News are welcomed and appreciated.
You can write to the publisher/editor Jonathan Mark via email: info@flybynews.com
Flyby News is educational and nonviolent in focus, and has supported critical campaigns
for a healthy environment, human rights, justice, peace, and nonviolence,
since the launching of NASA's Cassini space probe in 1997.=====News Fit to Transmit in the Post Cassini Flyby Era====> = = = = = = www.FlybyNews.com = = = = =