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EnergyInvasion * GOP/NAZIS * WarmingSpirals


31 March 2004

"Terrorism is the war of the poor,
and war is the terrorism of the rich."

– Peter Ustinov


1) This Isn't America
2) Cheney, energy and Iraq invasion

- - Electronic Ballots May Have Altered Race Outcome
- - New Russian weapon to make US missile defense system useless
3) The GOP and the Nazis
4) Global warming spiral upwards


Editor's Notes:

The last issue of Flyby News inspired a subscriber to respond by email asking, "..I look at the world and I wonder if there's any saving grace. I am Overwhelmed by sadness. What do YOU DO to overcome such despair and Depression?" This heartfelt question has stayed with me, knowing my responsibility in forwarding evidence showing the dictatorship over democracy for our nation and irreparable harm to our environment. We are in this together, and knowing that many people are seeking to learn and share the truth of our circumstances, provides a great incentive for me to continue with the mission of Flyby News, covering issues critical for life's survival in the 21st Century.

Kucinich in his "A Prayer for America" speech, said, "..that freedom stirs the human heart and fear stills it. With the belief that a free people cannot walk in fear and faith at the same time. With the understanding that there is a deeper truth expressed in the unity of the United States. That implicit in the union of our country is the union of all people. That all people are essentially one. That the world is interconnected through human consciousness, through the human heart, through the heart of the world, through the simply expressed impulse and yearning to be and to breathe free.."

So I encourage those overwhelmed by despair, fearing the worse of a dictatorship strangling democracy in the United States, for those knowing that tens of thousands of innocent lives were irreparably harmed by corporate greed interest, for those realizing that countless generations that could be harmed by exploded depleted Uranium missile shells, and for those discovering that Global Warming is accelerating exponentially that could impact all life on Earth.. I suggest keeping faith a bit longer, staying attuned to miracles in every day, and to drink in nature and appreciation as never before. There is time to hope, to work for significant changes, to survive an integrity, and to resist fear-induced controls of governments or terrorists, to link trust with the Creator within each and everyone of us. And since there is an ancient time marker for a new era by the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012, and since there are too many observations and testimonies (with the Disclosure Project) of extraterrestrial intelligence, and with the ability of our scientists and civilization to reverse the hideous genius of the Manhattan Project for survival endeavors.. the time is not now to give in to despair and hopelessness.

O eons of darkness, eternal night
you are only a backdrop for wondrous light.
And here I might find through the core of self
the entrance to illuminate, to perceive,
to flow with atoms expelling light,
as a river of purity in the deepness of night




1) This Isn't America

New York Times
March 30, 2004

This Isn't America
by Paul Krugman

Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack."

So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of something rotten in the state of our government.

The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush's terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources — including "Bush at War," by Bob Woodward.

And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures."

That's why the administration responded to Mr. Clarke the way it responds to anyone who reveals inconvenient facts: with a campaign of character assassination.

Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an Associated Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks were "standard operating procedure" for this administration and cited "a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster," the Medicare actuary who revealed how the administration had deceived Congress about the cost of its prescription drug bill.

But other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well."

This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics — even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power — to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics.

To be fair, Senator Bill Frist's suggestion that Mr. Clarke might be charged with perjury may have been his own idea. But his move reminded everyone of the White House's reaction to revelations by the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: an immediate investigation into whether he had revealed classified information. The alacrity with which this investigation was opened was, of course, in sharp contrast with the administration's evident lack of interest in finding out who leaked the identity of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame to Bob Novak.

And there are many other cases of apparent abuse of power by the administration and its Congressional allies..

..Where will it end? In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5967.htm



2) Cheney, energy and Iraq invasion

- - Electronic Ballots May Have Altered Race Outcome
- - New Russian weapon to make US missile defense system useless

Cheney, energy and Iraq invasion
Supreme Court to rule on secrecy
Larry Everest
Sunday, March 21, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

The case Cheney vs. U.S. District Court is scheduled to be heard before the Supreme Court next month and could end up revealing more about the Bush administration's motives for the 2003 Iraq war than any conceivable investigation of U.S. intelligence concerning Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction.


The plaintiffs, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, the conservative legal group based in Washington, argue that Vice President Cheney and his staff violated the open-government Federal Advisory Committee Act by meeting behind closed doors with energy industry executives, analysts and lobbyists.

The plaintiffs allege these discussions occurred during the formulation of the Bush administration's May 2001 "National Energy Policy."

For close to three years, Cheney and the administration have resisted demands that they reveal with whom they met and what they discussed.

Last year, a lower court ruled against Cheney and instructed him to turn over documents providing these details.

On Dec. 15, the Supreme Court announced it would hear Cheney's appeal. Three weeks later, Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent a weekend together duck hunting at a private resort in southern Louisiana, giving rise to calls for Scalia to recuse himself. So far, he has refused.

Why has the administration gone to such lengths to avoid disclosing how it developed its new energy policy?

Significant evidence points to the possibility that much more could be revealed than mere corporate cronyism: The national energy policy proceedings could open a window onto the Bush administration's decision-making process and motives for going to war on Iraq.

In July 2003, after two years of legal action through the Freedom of Information Act (and after the end of the war), Judicial Watch was finally able to obtain some documents from the Cheney-led National Energy Policy Development Group.

They included maps of Middle East and Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, two charts detailing various Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a March 2001 list of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," detailing the status of their efforts. The documents are available at http://www.judicialwatch.org.

These documents are significant because during the 1990s, U.S. policy-makers were alarmed about oil deals potentially worth billions of dollars being signed between the Iraqi government and foreign competitors of the United States including France's Total and Russia's LukOil.

The New York Times reported the LukOil contracts alone could amount to more than 70 billion barrels of oil, more than half of Iraq's reserves. One oil executive said the volume of these deals was huge -- a "colossal amount."

As early as April 17, 1995, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. petroleum giants realized that "Iraq is the biggie" in terms of future oil production, that the U.S. oil companies were "worried about being left out" of Iraq's oil dealings due to the antagonism between Washington and Baghdad, and that they feared that "the companies that win the rights to develop Iraqi fields could be on the road to becoming the most powerful multinationals of the next century."

U.N. sanctions against Iraq, maintained at the insistence of the United States and Britain, prevented these deals from being consummated.

Saddam Hussein's removal in 2003 has left the deals in a state of limbo, but the Bush administration's insistence that only countries supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom are eligible for postwar reconstruction does not bode well for French and Russian concerns.

An April 2001 report by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and the Baker Institute for Public Policy -- commissioned by Cheney to help shape the new energy policy -- also devoted serious attention to Iraq.

The report, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," complained about Hussein's oil leverage:

"Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential influence over the price of oil. Iraq has become a key 'swing' producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S. government. ... Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East.

"Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets."

Significantly, the report concluded that the United States should immediately review its Iraq policy, including its military options.

There are many other indications that, despite the Bush administration's repeated and insistent denials, petroleum politics may have played a crucial role in the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

For instance, both the State Department and the Pentagon had pre-war planning groups that included a focus on Iraq's oil industry; protecting the industry was an early U.S. objective in the war.

In October 2002, Oil and Gas International reported that U.S. planning was already under way to reorganize Iraq's oil and business relationships.

In January 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported that representatives from Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., Conoco-Phillips and Halliburton, among others, were meeting with Vice President Cheney's staff to plan the post- war revival of Iraq's oil industry.

Cheney is said to have once remarked that the country that controls Middle East oil can exercise a "stranglehold" over the global economy.

One-time Bush speech writer David Frum wrote in "The Right Man," his 2003 biography of his boss, that the United States' "war on terror" was designed to "bring new freedom and new stability to the most vicious and violent quadrant of the Earth -- and new prosperity to us all, by securing the world's largest pool of oil."

Further records from Cheney's Energy Task Force could shed more light on the inner workings of the Bush administration's march to war in Iraq. The first question, though, is whether the Supreme Court will lift the Bush-Cheney veil of secrecy.

Larry Everest is a Bay Area journalist and author of "Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda" (Common Courage Press 2004). He is scheduled to address San Francisco's Commonwealth Club on that topic on May 5.

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/21/ING0H5LTDA
1.DTL

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- - Electronic Ballots May Have Altered Race Outcome

Orange County registrar says incorrect electronic ballots may have altered a race's outcome, but says results will be certified today. Although some Orange County voters cast the wrong electronic ballots in the March 2 primary, potentially altering the outcome of one race for a Democratic Party post, Registrar Steve Rodermund said he will certify the results of the election today. In a report circulated late Monday to the Board of Supervisors, Rodermund acknowledged for the first time that his office's failures could have affected a race — and gave ammunition to critics of electronic voting.

For links to the above articles and other breaking news and
commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government, see:
http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

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- - New Russian weapon to make US missile defense system useless

[Excerpts]
New Russian weapon to make US missile defense system useless
The National Post [Canada], 29 March 2004

The official said the new weapon would be inexpensive, providing an "asymmetric answer" to U.S. missile defences, which are proving extremely costly to develop.

After years of vociferous protests, Russia reacted calmly when Washington withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 in order to develop of a countrywide missile shield. But U.S.-Russian relations have soured again lately, and Moscow has complained about Washington's plans to build new low-yield nuclear weapons.

For the complete article, see:
http://www.canada.com/news/world/story.html?id=c486c971-1b1f-4fbf-affb-1cc41cb8f7c3



3) The GOP and the Nazis

The GOP and the Nazis
There are similarities and, no, I will not apologize
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
March 10, 2004

[Excerpts]

In a number of columns written after George W. Bush's extra-constitutional seizure of powers post 9-11, I pointed out a number of similarities between Bush's GOP and Hitler's Nazi Party. The bombast from the usual suspect circles was swift and predictable. Writing in the neoconservative National Review, Byron York bemoaned the fact that "Wayne Madsen wrote that Bush is 'borrowing liberally from Hitler's play book.'"

Following the same line, The New York Post's editorial page editor, arch-neocon propagandist John Podhoretz, in his new book, Bush Country, whined that when I wrote about Hitler's oratory skills being light years ahead of Bush's, I was somehow praising Hitler. This is so typical of the right-wing attack dogs ignore the main point and fire off a broadside of false innuendo. No reasonable historian would deny that Hitler's speechmaking abilities were far ahead of the syllable-challenged Bush's. Contrasting the policies of Bush and Hitler following terrorist attacks in their countries is a legitimate area for historical comparative analysis. Although Hitler was behind the burning of the Reichstag, he and Bush virtually tore up their respective constitutions and began viciously denouncing their political enemies. Both Bush and Hitler failed in every business venture they started, until, of course, they became leaders of their countries in questionable elections.

The neocon spin machine continues to defend Bush against charges that he practices the same sort of reactionary politics embraced by Hitler. On Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, I was asked to defend my comparison. Guest Co-host Michael WolffBut you don't see a legitimate distinction between Adolf Hitler and George Bush?

Madsen: Well, look, if you look at some of the policies, preemptive warfare, we know that Hitler did that against Poland. He did it against France; he did it against the Soviet Union. Trashing the United Nations, that's what Hitler did to the League of Nations.

Sean Hannity: Don't you see how you're alienating the majority of the American people with your rhetoric?

Madsen: I don't think so. The way to combat terrorism isn't to take the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and shred it like Mr. Hitler did after the Reichstag fire.

The exchange on Fox was prompted by two television advertisements likening Bush to Hitler that were submitted in a contest sponsored by MoveOn.org. Cathy Young, writing an op-ed on behalf of Reason, a so-called libertarian magazine whose motto is Free Minds and Free Markets, said comparisons between Bush and Hitler should be retired. It is interesting that a magazine like Reason would use the phrase "Free Minds and Free Markets." Considering that Reason champions the so-called rights of companies over the Lilliputians of the working class, that motto is not much different from the sign over the main gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Liberates).

Recently, radio shock jock Howard Stern said the real reason why the pro-Bush and Dallas-based Clear Channel dropped his nationally-syndicated morning program from its stations was not because the company was trying to placate the Federal Communications Commission over offensive material on the airwaves, but was in response to his attacking the Nazi and Taliban-like policies of Bush.

Stern also suggested that the fundamentalist right-wingers supporting Bush were organized into Nazi-like cells. Stern is just one more in a long list of people who have disagreed with Bush and have faced the wrath of the Bush storm troopers. Let us not forget what the creepy management of Clear Channel did when The Dixie Chicks spoke out against Bush. They banned their songs from their radio stations and sponsored compact disk smashing events in the same manner that Hitler's minions banned books and burned them in huge bonfires around Germany.

John Ashcroft's Gestapo-like Justice Department has engaged in definite selective prosecutions of those who have openly opposed Bush's policies or have contributed money to the Democratic Party's coffers. Take former Illinois Republican Governor George Ryan: Ashcroft's right-wing prosecutors indicted him after he commuted the death sentences of Illinois's death row population. Ryan cited police and prosecutorial misconduct in Chicago and the state capital of Springfield as a major reason for his decision. Ashcroft and Bush, both self-anointed born-again Christians, are in love with the death penalty and championed executions while serving as governors of their states of Missouri and Texas, respectively. In 2002, a Purim sermon at a Washington, DC, synagogue suggested Ashcroft was like Haman, the evil vizier of the Persian King Ahasuerus. Haman, like Hitler, plotted to annihilate the Jews and the two are often compared in Jewish liturgies.

And then there is Martha Stewart, a past generous contributor to Democratic candidates and causes. She was indicted by Ashcroft's New York feds after she lied about dumping her Imclone stock in an insider trading deal. Never mind the fact that Enron's former chairman, Kenneth Lay (affectionately called "Kenny Boy" by Bush) still walks free despite the fact that he ripped off billions of dollars from stockholders and employees. It was hallmark of the Hitler regime to accuse political opponents of the Nazis of committing economic crimes against the state. The Nazis charged a number of non-Nazi business leaders with contributing to Germany's hyper-inflation following World War I. Many were later arrested and had their property seized. The Nazis allowed only a few large corporations to flourish, particularly those that generously contributed to the Nazi cause. Arms manufacturer Gustav Krupp was won over to the Nazi cause in 1933 when the Nazis told him that they would increase defense spending to record levels. For his part, Krupp led an industrial fund called the Adolf Hitler Spende. The fund collected money for Hitler's election coffers in return for special treatment for German industries. Ken Lay, meet Gustav Krupp.

On the subject of Enron, it was Lay and his buddies in Houston who financially raped California in 2001 by conspiring to raise the state's electric utility rates to a usurious degree. Who paid the price when California was plunged into financial ruin? Democratic Governor Gray Davis, who was recalled in a right-wing financed election after having served less than a year of his second
term. And who replaced Davis? Self-described Hitler, Nazi, and Kurt Waldheim admirer Arnold Schwarzenegger, the new Republican Governor of California whose congressional soul mate, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, wants to amend the US Constitution to allow an Austrian immigrant like Schwarzenegger to run for president. Where before have we seen national laws changed to allow a right-wing Austrian to run for political office in an adopted homeland?

But the neocons still continue to attack those who draw comparisons between Bush and Hitler. Shamefully, the neocons keep silent as Mel Gibson releases a big screen version of the Passion plays that were historically used throughout Europe to fan the flames of anti-Semitism. Many religious experts have pointed out that Gibson's The Passion of the Christ will only further exacerbate tense relations between Christians and non-Christians. Not so, say the evangelical Christians and their neocon allies, especially those affiliated with the Catholic right-wing secret society Opus Dei and the New American Century/American Enterprise Institute crowd. Shamefully, they mimic the capos of Nazi Germany's concentration camps and keep silent as Gibson's movie fans the flames of religious intolerance. Worse, the hallelujah chorus for the extreme right failed to urge Gibson to condemn his father Hutton's historical revisionist comments that Germany could not have killed 6 million Jews. "Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it? It takes a liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They [the Germans] did not have the gas to do it. That's why they lost the war," the elder Gibson told a New York radio show. He then suggested that many Jewish victims of the Holocaust had actually emigrated to the United States and Australia.

Yet, GOP radio and television mouthpieces like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Rush Limbaugh defend Mel Gibson's movie while, at the same time, deride those who would compare what is happening in the United States now to what occurred in Germany in the early and mid 1930s. They feel we should just ignore Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hutton and Mel Gibson, and the foaming-at-the-mouth racists and xenophobes of evangelical Christendom and right-wing Catholicism. I, for one, will not ignore what are indisputable signs that the right wing in the United States has made a sharp turn into the netherworld of fascism and racial and religious xenophobia..


..During the 1930s, the famous writer H.G. Wells was rebuked by the conservatives of his day for comparing Hitler to Caesar and suggesting that Hitler was a "certifiable lunatic." Wells turned out to be right on the money. Those of us who see a creeping fascism with Bush and his cronies will, one day, be vindicated by the muses of history.

Wayne Madsen is the co-author of
America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II.

This article is Copyright by Online Journal, and posted in its entirety at:
http://onlinejournal.com/Commentary/031004Madsen/031004madsen.html



"And there is, I am certain,
among the Iraqi people a respect for the care
and the precision that went into the bombing campaign."

– Donald Rumsfeld
(defenselink.mil, 04-09-03)



4) Global warming spiral upwards

Published by Independent.co.uk
Global warming spirals upwards
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
28 March 2004

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped abruptly, raising fears that global warming may be accelerating out of control. Measurements by US government scientists show that concentrations of the gas, the main cause of the climate exchange, rose by a record amount over the past 12 months. It is the third successive year in which they have increased sharply, marking an unprecedented triennial surge.

Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but fear that it could show the first signs that global warming is feeding on itself, with rising temperatures causing increases in carbon dioxide, which then go on to drive the thermometer even higher. That would be a deeply alarming development, suggesting that this self-reinforcing heating could spiral upwards beyond the reach of any attempts to combat it..

For the entire article, see:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=505798



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