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Why We Fight * Rumsfeld's Hitler * Citgo
09 February 2006
Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed. This world
in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending
the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists,
the hopes of its children.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
16 April 19531) A War Too Far- - Why We Fight - by writer/director Eugene Jarecki
- - Human Rights Abuse In Gitmo Continues
2) Pat Robertson again calls for Chavez's assassination- - Rumsfeld likens Venezuela's Chavez to Hitler
- - The CITGO BUYCOTT EXPANDS
"This budget is not just fiscally bankrupt, it is morally bankrupt.
This budget chooses war over health care, tax cuts over education,
special interests over need of the nation and rich over poor. This budget
cuts vital domestic funding because of spending for the war in Iraq and the
tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, placing the burden squarely on the
backs of poor and working class Americans. The President's budget will
increase defense spending by almost 7%, to $439 billion, while vital
finding for Medicare, Medicaid, education, veterans health care,
children's health care, Welfare, transportation, NASA programs
and the Department of Agriculture are slashed. All this, while
requesting an additional $70 billion-or $120 billion for the year
to fund the misguided and ill-advised war and occupation of Iraq."
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich
February 6, 2006Editor's Notes:The above Dennis Kucinich quote reminds me of the eloquence and clarity in what inspired FN to endorse this Ohio Congressman for US President in the 2004 elections. Yet his adding NASA in his description of what is under-funded is ill advised, since this agency is now a component of the administration's waste and cronyism, and an organization that has largely been overtaken by the military industrial complex. The Cassini space probe, and recent nuke launch to Pluto are just a bit of the problem. Yet on the whole, his words are well taken, and that of President Eisenhower, who even in the highest office of the US Government, could only warn Americans of this threat.
Item 1 begins with an article called "A War Too Far" and reveals those responsible for the uprising of Muslim-West discontent. The idea of a leader responsible for the killing of more than 100,000 innocent people in Iraq, (who claims the numbers are only 30,000), and speaking at Coretta Scott King's funeral, and lecturing to those protesting the sacrilege of the Muslim prophet, Mohammed, can only be described as disturbing. The movie, "Why We Fight" is reviewed in the first item, too, which was inspired by the renowned President Eisenhower Farewell Address. Also, in this first item is a disturbing report in today's NY Times about continued torture and the disgraceful conduct of the US treatment of prisoners on the Island of Cuba. But disturbing issues seem to be the norm of the day. In item 2 you have preacher Pat Robertson again calling for the death of the democratic leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez; and you have US Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, likening Chavez to Hitler. Why don't people look into the mirror of their own souls, or perhaps the distortion is purposeful and their allegiance is to an underworld? But all this craziness is making truth more apparent, and if you buy gas regularly in the US from anywhere else other than Citgo gas stations, you likely have not comprehended the importance of supporting those fighting for truth and freedom.
In the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought
or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential
for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties
or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an
alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of
huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful
methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together..
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great
human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy
it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings;
that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that
all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges
of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and
that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace
guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farewell Address - January 17, 1961
1) A War Too Far- - Why We Fight - by writer/director Eugene Jarecki
- - Human Rights Abuse In Gitmo Continues
A War Too Far
Tom Porteous
Published by TomPaine.com
February 07, 2006
Tom Porteous is a syndicated columnist, writer and analyst who has worked for the BBC and the U.K. Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He is co-director of the International Network for Conflict and Security, a consultancy group specializing in conflict analysis.
The publication in a Danish newspaper of a series of cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed, including one depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a terrorist's bomb about to explode, provides an unsettling glimpse of the way in which the "war on terror" is providing opportunities and motives for political entrepreneurs on both sides to escalate tensions between the Muslim world and the West.
In Europe, a major escalating factor has been the decision in the past weeks by some European newspapers to re-publish the Danish cartoons (which first appeared in September). Editors of these newspapers have defended their decision by invoking a perceived need to protect freedom of expression against religious dogma and fundamentalism.
Whatever the motivation, it was clear that re-publication of the cartoons, besides helping to sell more newspapers, would intensify both the Muslim anger the cartoons had already provoked, and the growing anti-Muslim sentiment among Europeans that the Muslim reaction has stirred up. Neither the Islamophobic right-wing European parties nor Islamic extremists in Europe and the Middle East will be sorry that the issue has escalated in the manner it has..
For Western governments, therefore, now would seem like a good time to reappraise the strategy of the whole "war on terror" and the rationale behind it. Is it working? Is it the best way to tackle the problem of terrorism? Is there not a danger of exacerbating the problems the strategy is supposed to address and of sparking a wider cultural conflict between the West and the Muslim world?
Instead, recent days have seem a escalation of confrontation between the West and another Muslim state, Iran, and a clear restatement of both the rationale and the strategy of the "war on terror" in President Bush's State of the Union address. The uncompromising message from Washington is the Churchillian refrain: "Never give in, never, never, never, never."
Worse, Bush's State of the Union address marked a clear broadening of the war on terror. No longer does the U.S. government limit itself to speaking of a narrow war against terrorists, or a struggle against an "evil ideology" of Islamic extremism.
According to Bush, the West's opponent in a new global conflict that has replaced the Cold War is now "radical Islam"-the very political ideology to which increasingly large numbers of Muslims are committed, if the successes of radical Islamists in recent democratic elections in Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon and Iran are any evidence.
As the furor over the cartoons shows, the further we go down this road, the more the "war on terror" will infect cultural outlooks and popular attitudes both in the West and in the Muslim world, poisoning relations between them. We must not allow a military and intelligence battle between a coalition of governments and a bunch of extremists and desperados to develop into a real conflict between cultures and peoples.
Source
www.tompaine.com/articles/20060207/a_war_too_far.php= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Why We Fight - by writer/director Eugene JareckiA Movie.Net Review
{EXCERPT]
Why We Fight looks at what President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex"-an unholy alliance between the defense sector, the military, and those in government that Eisenhower feared could threaten the structure of our society. Today, the United States annually spends nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars on defense-more than on all other discretionary parts of the federal budget combined. And most people barely know about it, let alone have any say in it.
Eisenhower's warning was limited to the defense sector, but it can really be applied to the entire American corporate-political state. With the enormous costs involved in campaign finance and the need for members of Congress to bring jobs to their districts, the most important constituents for any politician are not you and me, but those whose companies write big checks and create jobs. And it doesn't matter what party is in power. One quick look at the past century's wars shows Republicans don't own the copyright on making war or serving special interests. Democrats and Republicans alike face obscene campaign costs and constituents who want results. This is where American industries gain "unwarranted influence." The problem is systemic. And those in power are unlikely to fix it since, more often than not, they are part of it.
Things look pretty dark. And in the darkness it's easy to get disillusioned and frustrated. It can make you want to holler. But also in the dark lies the prospect for change. I don't mean "change" in some syrupy, inspirational-video kind of way. I mean what history has proven. Dark ages have historically preceded periods of enlightenment and progress. And while it's dark, it's hard to imagine it may ever get light again. But it is during dark times that people seek change..
For the complete review, see:
www.movienet.com/whywefight.htmlFor the web site of the film, see:
www.whywefight.com= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Human Rights Abuse In Gitmo ContinuesTough U.S. Steps in Hunger Strike at Camp in Cuba
By TIM GOLDEN
Published by the New York Times - February 9, 2006
[EXCERPTS]
United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.
In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods in what the officials said was an effort to keep them from being encouraged by other hunger strikers.
The measures appear to have had drastic effects. The chief military spokesman at Guantánamo, Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin, said yesterday that the number of detainees on hunger strike had dropped to 4 from 84 at the end of December.
Some officials said the new actions reflected concern at Guantánamo and the Pentagon that the protests were becoming difficult to control and that the death of one or more prisoners could intensify international criticism of the detention center. Colonel Martin said force-feeding was carried out "in a humane and compassionate manner" and only when necessary to keep the prisoners alive. H e said in a statement that "a restraint system to aid detainee feeding" was being used but refused to answer questions about the restraint chairs.
Lawyers who have visited clients in recent weeks criticized the latest measures, particularly the use of the restraint chair, as abusive.
"It is clear that the government has ended the hunger strike through the use of force and through the most brutal and inhumane types of treatment," said Thomas B. Wilner, a lawyer at Shearman & Sterling in Washington, who last week visited the six Kuwaiti detainees he represents. "It is a disgrace."
The lawyers said other measures used to dissuade the hunger strikers included placing them in uncomfortably cold air-conditioned isolation cells, depriving them of "comfort items" like blankets and books and sometimes using riot-control soldiers to compel the prisoners to sit still while long plastic tubes were threaded down their nasal passages and into their stomachs.
Officials of the military and the Defense Department strongly disputed that they were taking punitive measures to break the strike. They said that they were sensitive to the ethical issues raised by feeding the detainees involuntarily and that their procedures were consistent with those of federal prisons in the United States. Those prisons authorize the involuntary treatment of hunger strikers when there is a threat to an inmate's life or health.
"There is a moral question," the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., said in an interview. "Do you allow a person to commit suicide? Or do you take steps to protect their health and preserve their life?"
Dr. Winkenwerder said that after a review of the policy on involuntary feeding last summer Pentagon officials came to the basic conclusion that it was ethical to stop the inmates from killing themselves.
"The objective in any circumstance is to protect and sustain a person's life," he said.
Some international medical associations and human rights groups, including the World Medical Association, oppose the involuntary feeding of hunger strikers as coercive..
Until yesterday, Guantánamo officials had acknowledged only having forcibly restrained detainees to feed them a handful of times. In those cases, the officials said, doctors had restrained detainees on hospital beds using Velcro straps.
Two military officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the question, said that the use of restraint chairs started after it was found that some hunger strikers were deliberately vomiting in their cells after having been tube-fed and that their health was growing precarious.
In a telephone interview yesterday, the manufacturer of the so-called Emergency Restraint Chair, Tom Hogan, said his small Iowa company shipped five $1,150 chairs to Guantánamo on Dec. 5 and 20 additional chairs on Jan. 10, using a military postal address in Virginia. Mr. Hogan said the chairs were typically used in jails, prisons and psychiatric hospitals to deal with violent inmates or patients.
..Detainees' lawyers said they believed that the tougher approach to the hunger strikes was related to the passage in Congress of measure intended to curtail the detainees' access to United States courts.
Federal district courts have put aside most lawyers' motions on the detainees' treatment until questions about applying the measure have been litigated.
"Because of the actions in Congress, the military feels emboldened to take more extreme measures vis-à-vis the hunger strikers," said one lawyer, Sarah Havens of Allen & Overy. "The courts are going to stay out of it now."
..On Jan. 9, Mr. Odah told his lawyers, an officer read him what he described as an order from the Guantánamo commander, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood of the Army, saying hunger strikers who refused to drink their liquid formula voluntarily would be strapped into metal chairs and tube-fed.
Mr. Odah said he heard "screams of pain" from a hunger striker in the next cell as a thick tube was inserted into his nose. At the other detainee's urging, Mr. Odah told his lawyers that he planned to end his hunger strike the next day.
Another lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, said one of his three Bahraini clients, Jum'ah al-Dossari, told him about 10 days ago that more than half of a group of 34 long-term hunger strikers had abandoned their protest after being strapped in restraint chairs and having their feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some bled or fainted.
"He said that during these force feedings too much food was given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves," Mr. Colangelo-Bryan added. "Jum'ah understands that officers told the hunger strikers that if they challenged the United States, the United States would challenge them back using these tactics."
For the complete New York Times article, see:
www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/politics/09gitmo.html?th&emc=th
2) Pat Robertson again calls for Chavez's assassination- - Rumsfeld likens Venezuela's Chavez to Hitler
- - The CITGO BUYCOTT EXPANDS
Robertson again calls for Chavez's assassination: "Not now, but one day"
Summary: On Hannity & Colmes, Pat Robertson once again called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, "Not now, but one day, one day."
During the February 2 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Christian Coalition founder and 700 Club host Pat Robertson reiterated his call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
When co-host Alan Colmes asked Robertson, "[I]f he [Chavez] were assassinated, the world would be a safer place?" Robertson answered, "I think South America would." When Colmes later pressed Robertson, asking, "Do you want him [Chavez] taken out?" Robertson retorted, "Not now, but one day, one day, one day."
Earlier, Colmes had asked, "Should Chavez be assassinated?" Robertson explained that "one day," Chavez will "be aiming nuclear weapons; and what's coming across the Gulf [of Mexico] isn't going to be [Hurricane] Katrina, it's going to be his nukes." Co-host Sean Hannity agreed that "the world would be better off without him where he [Chavez] is, because he is a danger to the United States."
Earlier that day, on the February 2 edition of ABC's Good Morning America, Robertson addressed his original August 22, 2005, appeal, in which he had said: "We have the ability to take him [Chavez] out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability." During the interview, co-host Robin Roberts asked Robertson to explain his comments on Chavez, his condemnation of the citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania -- who voted a school board out of office after it imposed an intelligent design curriculum -- and his statements regarding former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, in which he suggested that Sharon's stroke was the result of Sharon's policy, which he claimed was "dividing God's land." Robertson replied:
I'm very passionate about certain things, and unfortunately, my passion maybe runs ahead of me. And in the context of what I'm saying, it isn't quite as strong as it sounds, but I am passionate about certain things and it's not politically correct at all.
For the complete article, and comments, see:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200602030003= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Rumsfeld likens Venezuela's Chavez to HitlerDefense chief expresses concern at
'populist leadership' in Latin America
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11159503or
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/03/politics/main1279205.shtml= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - The CITGO BUYCOTT EXPANDS Defeat the boycott - BUY CITGO GAS TODAY! - Editorial by Mary Ratcliff
The American Family Association, whose website bills itself as "America's largest pro-family online action site," announced Wednesday a boycott of Citgo gas stations. The right-wing website invites readers to send a brief message to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that says: "Dear President Chavez, Just a note to let you know that I will not be shopping at Citgo. I don't want my money going to someone who has vowed to bring down my government."
"A source at the company's Houston headquarters said Citgo has received more than 37,000 e-mails from people pledging not to buy gasoline at the company's 14,000 U.S. service stations," Reuters reports.
"This is the second campaign focusing on Citgo because of Chavez. In 2005, liberal groups began urging people opposed to the Bush administration to buy their gasoline at Citgo gas stations as a sign of support for Chavez."
Today the Bay View is renewing the call for a Citgo BUYcott, not a boycott, as a token of our admiration for President Chavez and his revolution that is sweeping South America and, we hope, spreading northward.
Bay View Editor CC Campbell-Rock is in Venezuela now, having attended last week's World Social Forum - see her first two stories on the WSF in this week's Bay View. She is staying over this week to tour the Venezuelan countryside with other delegates from Global Women's Strike to meet the grassroots revolutionary leaders who are making the kind of miracles in education, health, housing, economic development etc. that could revive and transform the hoods of the U.S.
President Chavez envisions the 14,000 Citgo stations throughout the U.S. as little embassies dispensing not only bargain gasoline but direct assistance and encouragement to Black and Brown poor people. While the U.S. government plots "regime change" schemes to drive Chavez from power so as to grab Venezuela's oil wealth, Chavez offers his love especially to the people of the U.S. whose bloodlines he proudly shares: African and Indigenous people.
Get your gas at Citgo, the oil company that cares about us
As U.S. oil companies Chevron and Exxon-Mobile report record profits - Chevron's the highest in its 126-year history and Exxon-Mobile's the highest of any U.S. company ever - Venezuela's Citgo, a subsidiary of its state-owned oil company that operates eight refineries and licenses 14,000 gas stations in the U.S., is setting aside up to 10 percent of its refined oil products, especially heating oil, to be sold directly to poor communities and institutions in the U.S.
Venezuelan oil is already heating homes - and warming hearts - in the hoods of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, Maine and Rhode Island this winter. "There is a lot of poverty in the U.S.," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told Rev. Jesse Jackson. "Many people die of the cold in winter."
While George W. Bush, in his State of the Union message Tuesday, decried his countrymen's "addiction to oil," President Chavez reaches out through Citgo stations to share Venezuela's oil wealth with those in the U.S. who need fuel for survival, not for SUVs. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world outside the Middle East.
Venezuelan opposition leader Julio Borges, running a distant second to Hugo Chavez in the current presidential campaign, alleged Tuesday that President Chavez has given away more than $5 billion to Cuba, $4.5 billion for Brazil, plus more than $200 million for the United States, "They're all programs in which Venezuela gives money or gasoline or oil and receives nothing proportional in exchange," Borges told the Associated Press.
While Borges recited the statistics as an attack on Chavez, they also testify to Chavez' brilliant strategy to relieve suffering and uplift the poor throughout the Western Hemisphere. Chavez reminded Borges that all the recipients of Venezuelan petroleum products pay market prices, though special financing makes the purchases affordable.
Some countries pay partly in goods or services, such as bananas or beans. Cuba trades the work of some 20,000 Cuban doctors now treating Venezuela's poor without charge. "How much do 20,000 doctors cost? Add it up," said Chavez.
His PetroCaribe pact, an agreement with 13 Caribbean countries, allows them to pay 60 percent of their bill for Venezuelan oil up front and to pay off the rest as a 25-year loan with a 1 per cent interest rate. Similar financing is being offered to heat the homes of the poor in the northern U.S. this winter with Venezuelan oil.
To support the only oil company that cares about us, patronize your nearest Citgo station. To find it, use the "Citgo Locator" at
www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator.jsp. For the complete article, see:
www.sfbayview.com/020106/defeattheboycott.shtml
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