The DISH
Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use
Vol. 9 No. 37…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…September
15, 2006
The Restless
Consumer
By Neil Young
The people have heard
the news
The people have
spoken
You may not like what
they said
But they weren't
jokin'
Way out on the desert
sands
Lies a desperate
lover
They call her the
"Queen of Oil"
So much to discover
Don't need no ad
machine
Telling me what I
need
Don't need no Madison
Avenue War
Don't need no more
boxes I can see
Covered in flags but
I can't see them on TV
Don't need no more
lies
The restless consumer
flies
Around the world each
day
With such an appetite
for taste and grace
People from around
the world
Need someone to
listen
We're starving and
dying from our disease
We need your medicine
How do you pay for
war and leave us dyin' ?
When you could do so
much more
You're not even
tryin'
Don't need no TV ad
Tellin' me how sick I
am
Don't want to know
how many people are like me
Don't need no
dizziness
Don't need no nausea
Don't need no side
effects like diarrhea or sexual death
Don't need no more
lies
The restless consumer
lies
Asleep in her hotel
With such an appetite
for anything that sells
A hundred voices from
a hundred lands
Need someone to
listen
People are dying here
and there
They don't see the
world the way you do
There's no mission
accomplished here
Just death to
thousands
A hundred voices from
a hundred lands
Cry out in unison
Don't need no terror
squad
Don't want no damned
Jihad
Blowin' themselves
away in my hood
But we don't talk to
them
So we don't learn
from them
Hate don't negotiate
with Good
Don't need no more
lies
The restless consumer
flies
Around the world each
day
With such an appetite
for efficiency
And pace...
Don't need no more
lies.
The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro has
expressed a desire to be treated as a teenager or better yet as a youthful
adult. He is taking health and talking with confidence about mature subjects
involving life and death. Asked for comments on his newly acquired maturity,
the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro responded with clarity, "I gather information and
connect dots."
Eric Arthur Blair
(1903 - 1950)
"Every line of serious work that I have
written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against
totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it."
George Orwell (1946)
Eric Arthur Blair was born June 25, 1903 in India, which was part of the
British Empire. Blair's father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked for the Opium
Department of the Civil Service. Raised and educated in England, he attended
St. Cyprian's preparatory school in Eastbourne, Sussex and earned scholarships
to Wellington and Eton. After a brief stay at Wellington, he attended Eton,
where he was a King's Scholar (1917 to 1921).
In 1922, Blair joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He came to hate
imperialism; Blair resigned and returned to England (1927) to pursue writing.
He moved to Paris in 1928 hoping to become a freelance writer. Unsuccessful at
earning a living as a writer, Blair was forced to accept menial labor. In 1929,
he returned to England. He wrote Burmese Days (1934) and essays, such as A
Hanging (1931), and Shooting an Elephant (1936) from his experience in the
Indian Imperial Police. He became a regular contributor to New Adelphi
magazine.
Blair completed Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and adopted the
pen-name George Orwell just before its publication. He worked briefly as a
schoolteacher and drew on that experience for the novel A Clergyman's Daughter
(1935). From late 1934 to early 1936, Orwell worked as an assistant in a
bookshop in Hampstead, an experience partially recounted in Keep the Aspidistra
Flying (1936).
In December 1936, Orwell went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
Wounded, he returned to
Orwell was known for his journalism, essays, reviews, newspaper and magazine
columns and books, such as Down and Out in Paris and London, based on his
experience in those cities, The Road to Wigan Pier, which described living
conditions of the poor in northern England and social inequality, and Homage to
Catalonia, based on his Spanish Civil War experiences. Orwell is best known for
his allegories Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949).
An opponent of imperialism and totalitarianism and early proponent of federal
socialism, Orwell's most famous works provided new words and phrases with which
to describe certain political conditions, such as 'Big Brother', 'Big Brother
is watching you' and 'thought police,' which come from Nineteen Eighty-Four.
According to biographers, Orwell wrote this book "to alter other people's
idea of the kind of society they should strive after." Even his pen name
is an adjective. Orwellian refers to misleading language used as a tool of
political manipulation. Animal Farm's famous slogan "all animals are
equal, but some animals are more equal than others" is used to satirize
situations where equality exists in theory and rhetoric but not in practice.
Orwell married Eileen O'Shaugnessy (1936). After her death in 1949, he married
Sonia Browell. Orwell died from tuberculosis in London on January 21, 1950.
(Sources: http://students.ou.edu/,
http://en.wikipedia.org and www.online-literature.com/orwell)
Disgruntled feels: Orwellian!
On the fifth anniversary of 9-11, George W. Bush gave a prime time speech to
mark the somber occasion. Billed as non-political, it sounded much like all the
other speeches he has given in honor of the signature event that launched his
war on terror. Nothing could be more political. It is Orwellian to claim
otherwise.
Disgruntled says: Average Americans are
discontent and disillusioned. Despite boasts to the contrary, the state of the
US economy, especially the job market, is poor and unpromising. In times like
these, young folks join the military. With death tolls rising, discontent with
the military option and disillusionment about the mission grow. It does not
help matters when elected officials, such as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA),
rudely remind grieving parents, wounded veterans and their families that their
loved ones volunteered for the killing fields of
Disgruntled wants to know: Opium
production in Afghanistan has soared to record levels.
Phase II: Prewar
Intelligence
On Friday, September 8, 2006, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its
second report on prewar intelligence. The first report, issued in July 2004,
focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of
Drawing on a previously undisclosed CIA assessment, the Senate Intelligence
Committee report found no relationship between Saddam Hussein and 'al-Qaida operative'
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates. The CIA expressed consistent doubts
that a meeting occurred between '9/11 hijacker' Mohamed Atta and a senior Iraqi
intelligence official in
The Bush administration continues to link Hussein's government to al-Zarqawi.
As recently as an August 21, 2006 news conference, Bush asserted Saddam had
links with the recently-killed Zarqawi.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the CIA expressed doubts about the
validity of information furnished by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an
anti-Saddam group led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi. Despite their warnings that
the INC had been penetrated by "hostile intelligence services" and
was intent on influencing
In addition to no al-Qaida link, the report found no support for a 2002
intelligence report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed
biological weapons or had ever developed mobile facilities for producing
biological agents
On the Senate floor, Senator Carl Levin, stated, "The President's decision
to ignore intelligence community assessments prior to the Iraq war and to make
repeated public statements that gave the misleading impression that Saddam
Hussein's regime was connected to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 cost
him any credibility he may have had on this issue....The report is a
devastating indictment of the administration's unrelenting, misleading and
deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was
linked with al-Qaida."
Democrats claim the report show top administration officials, including Bush,
Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, misled the
public in drumming up support for war in Iraq. Republicans claim the report
presents no new finding and charged Democrats with playing politics.
War on War Crimes Act
A Republican-dominated Congress passed the War
Crimes Act. Enacted in 1996, the law incorporates the Geneva Conventions into
More than two dozen detainees have died in US
custody. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which includes the
Geneva Conventions, low level military personnel have been prosecuted. Civilian
administration officials are not subject to the UCMJ. The War Crimes Act was
specifically enacted to make non-military officials equally responsible and
culpable as those in uniform for violations of the Geneva Conventions.
In a recent 'war on terror' speech, Bush
acknowledged the government "changed its policies" to give
intelligence personnel "the tools they need" to fight terrorists,
including secret prisons. Under these policy changes, the CIA was given
permission to use "an alternative set of procedures," to extract
information from captured 'terrorists.' While he provided no specific methods,
Bush said, "the procedures were tough," meaning abusive, torture.
With no congressional oversight, prior to the
Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), the Bush
administration used "unitary executive power," 'Nixon's executive
privilege,' to "justify" its illegal actions. Now that the Court has
disabused Bush of this notion, only a change in the law negates potential
prosecution of political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel
authorizing those "tough" interrogation techniques. If Congress
amends the act, Bush's criminal actions become retroactively legal, effectively
killing the rule of law.
Stop the Big Brother
NSA Bills!
The USA has long touted its
adherence to the rule of law; it is a nation of laws, rather than men. A
signatory to international treaties, a UN Charter member, it has a constitution
and an established body of law. Like so many things under the Bush regime, this
too is slated for change.
The Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program has been ruled in
violation of Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution and Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. Republican Senator Arlen Specter and others have proposed
legislation that will allow the Bush administration to continue its domestic
spying operations without any meaningful oversight from Congress or the courts.
A number of organizations have expressed serious reservations about changing
laws to circumvent their application in the court system. They are urging
citizens to contact their
Spearheaded by the Bill of Rights Defense
Committee, during "National Call-in to Congress Weeks," (September 5
and September 11) and Constitution Day - September 17, citizens are asked to
call each of their Senators and Representative and urge them to oppose Senator
Specter's S. 2453, Senator DeWine's S. 2455, and Representative Wilson's H.R.
5825. Tell them to oppose any legislation that would give the executive branch
new surveillance powers without oversight by the courts and Congress and
support a full, public investigation of the NSA surveillance program.
For more, including organizations supporting this
effort, links to bills and call-in page to locate legislators' phone numbers,
log on to www.bordc.org
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Phone Calls
Email www.washingtonpost.com
Reagan Aide Stockman Targeted in Fraud Probe...By Carrie Johnson…To old
hands in Washington, David A. Stockman will always be the long-haired numbers
cruncher who led the cheers for Reaganomics but nearly lost his job for
privately denigrating the administration's budget at the same time he sold it
to the public. Stockman's trip "to the woodshed" with President
Ronald Reagan and his denouncement of the "rosy scenario" of White
House fiscal policy helped coin political phrases that linger in the capital's
lexicon more than two decades after he left government. Now the man who put one
over on Congress could face far more severe consequences for possibly
misleading Wall Street. Lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission
recently notified Stockman that he could face civil charges related to upbeat
statements he made to investors two months before an auto parts company he ran
sought bankruptcy protection last year, according to sources familiar with the
issues who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation continues.
Email www.legitgov.org
Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say 30 Jun 2006...The
U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic
call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers
claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court. "The Bush
Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer
Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview.
"This undermines that assertion.''
Email fluttergas@yahoo.com
Remember The Computer Called "The Beast"? IBM Is Building Its Giant
Big Brother Computer -- the world's most powerful supercomputer -- at the Los
Alamos National Laboratory,
Email gailS@hotmail.com The Torturer's Apprentice...Ray McGovern ...September 07, 2006...As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches and with the midterm elections just two months away, the president's speechwriters succeeded in making a silk purse out of the sow's ear of torture. The artful offensive will succeed if--but only if--the mainstream media is as cowed, and the American people as dumb, as the president thinks they are. Arguably a war criminal under international law and a capital-crime felon under US criminal law, Bush's legal jeopardy is even clearer than when he went AWOL during the Vietnam War. And this time, his father will not be able to fix it.
|| 2006 Issues || The DISH ||