12 October 2002

Wow! Lots going on this week. I could be no sadder than I was Thursday night upon hearing about the House and Senate votes on the resolution. Here is how it tallied out (thanks to Moveon.org for the summaries):

A full roll call list for the Senate is available on our website at:
http://www.moveon.org/senatevote.html
A full roll call for the House is available at:
http://www.moveon.org/housevote.html

The 23 true Patriots in the Senate who voted against the resolution:
Akaka (D) -- (202) 224-6361 Bingaman (D) -- (202) 224-5521 Boxer (D) -- (202) 224-3553 Byrd (D) -- (202) 224-3954 Chafee (R) -- (202) 224-2921 Conrad (D) -- (202) 224-2043 Corzine (D) -- (202) 224-4744 Dayton (D) -- (202) 224-3244 Durbin (D) -- (202) 224-2152 Feingold (D)--(202) 224-5323 Graham (D)--(202) 224-3041 Inouye (D)--(202) 224-2934 Jeffords (I) -- (202) 224-5141 Kennedy (D) -- (202) 224-4543 Leahy (D)--(202) 224-4242 Levin (D) -- (202) 224-6221 Mikulski (D) -- (202) 224-4654 Murray (D) -- (202) 224-2621 Reed (D)--(202) 224-4642 Sarbanes (D)--(202) 224-4524 Stabenow (D)--(202) 224-4822 Wellstone (D) -- (202) 224-5641 Wyden (D) -- (202) 224-5244

House Representative Pete Stark (D-Cojones) sends a clear message to BabyDoc about why he is voting against the House resolution: http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/10/10/stark/print.html

Media Whores Online is on vacation next week. Probably loading up to watch the Boy Usurper spend our tax dollars campaigning for the Repugnicant Party for the three weeks before the election. All of the crap going on (How many jobs lost since January 2001? How much is the stock market worth again? Are you going to spend your $300 extra in ‘tax relief’ this year in shoring up our faltering economy by spending it in the stores? Are you putting all that ‘tax-deferred’ income in your 201K, er, 401K, these days? Did you notice that the cost of basic goods [gas, food] and services [insurance, licensing fees] has gone up since then? Do you realize that this little aside is just the tip of the iceberg for this man who got [s]elected as the “moral and ethical alternative” to Gore?) plus new revelations about his previous policies and decisions as a board member at Harken. Basically, (p)Resident Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do pioneered the techniques he blasted Enron and the rest of the corpo-weasels for using to overinflate the stock market. Here is the report from HarvardWatch:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~skomarov/harvardwatch/harken_memo_full.pdf

And now, with the sights of Freepers, LDotards, and Ditto Monkeys hazily focused in my direction, and hopefully a few more enlightened souls not yet gone over to the Dark Side heeding the words of brave Americans who refuse to be silent while the (s)Elected Fraud turns the U.S.A. into the Fourth Reich, I will bid you adieu for the weekend. Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow!

10 October 2002

The letter below my blather comes compliments of The Daily Brew at BlogSpot (as opposed to TheDailyBrew.com, which I believe is his as well… ;), one of the blogger community that has inspired your Humble Narrator to pursue a yearning to see if my literary skills are up to snuff. I can only point to some of their stuff in some of the web addresses I post in these journal entries.

And of course fly my Habs flag in honour of their opening game for this NHL season! For some unknown reason they don’t start until tomorrow (Sunday in the Midling/Hobbit Calendar, and Friday in the real world). Right now Toronto is pummeling Pittsburgh. Boy, this year your special teams are going to be very important. I hope the Habs have a good power play this year… (he said whilst touching every piece of wood in the general vicinity)

Ending my first week back at work. Finishing up the project has proven a little complicated, with an unanticipated turn or two. And I’m sure the guys who use the current production stuff have left a few wild cards up their sleeves. Ah well… the eagle craps later this week (in my world…)

First Funny Farm Fact:

I have to start off by saying a big hello to all you froody molochiks and "all intelligent lifeforms everywhere... and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys." Funny Farm Facts: can you name the author of that quote? Where does molochik come from?

Molochik is a term used in "A Clockwork Orange" by a gentleman named Anthony Burgess (I believe - in this case I am relying on my own feeble mental faculties and their supposed accruate remembrances) - which, like Alice in Wonderland before it, invented words that are now in the dictionaries. Enough frelling dren on that one...

Froody and the part in the quotes above are from the 5-book trilogy The Hitchkier’s Guide to the Galaxy by a gifted but sadly departed individual named Douglas Adams. You should read it in its book form(s) and/or listen to the tapes and/or watch the BBC series (an agonizingly long movie on the VHS format, badly deteriorating but beloved tape that I have – but apparently a weekly[?] TV series in Britain in the latter half of the 20th century). Or, if you ever find a scuffed GameBoy type thing with the words “Don’t Panic” on it in a battered travel case with a really incredible towel in it, send it to me if you don’t know what to do with it. Call me before you use the Electronic Thumb. And for heavens sake, buy as many Sony Walkmen as you can!

And now, for something completely different...

Clark, Ramsey, 1927–, attorney general of the United States (1967–69), b. Dallas, Texas; son of Tom Campbell Clark. Admitted to the bar in 1951, Ramsey Clark practiced law in Dallas. After serving in the federal government as assistant attorney general in charge of the lands division (1961–65), deputy attorney general (1965–66), and acting attorney general (Oct., 1966–Feb., 1967), he was appointed by President Johnson to succeed Nicholas Katzenbach as attorney general. Clark proved to be a vigorous defender of civil liberties and civil rights; he opposed the use of government wiretaps and initiated the first Northern school desegregation case. After leaving the government, he taught law and later became active in the anti–Vietnam War movement, visiting North Vietnam in 1972. In 1974 he was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York but was defeated by Jacob Javits. Subsequently he practiced as a defense lawyer in New York and continued his political activism. Clark wrote Crime in America (1970). For an account of his career as Attorney General, see Justice by Richard Harris (1970).

The following letter by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has been sent to all members of the UN Security Council, with copies to the UN General Assembly. Please circulate.

September 20, 2002

Secretary General Kofi Annan United Nations New York, NY

Dear Secretary General Annan,

George Bush will invade Iraq unless restrained by the United Nations. Other international organizations-- including the European Union, the African Union, the OAS, the Arab League, stalwart nations courageous enough to speak out against superpower aggression, international peace movements, political leadership, and public opinion within the United States--must do their part for peace. If the United Nations, above all, fails to oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq, it will forfeit its honor, integrity and raison d’etre.

A military attack on Iraq is obviously criminal; completely inconsistent with urgent needs of the Peoples of the United Nations; unjustifiable on any legal or moral ground; irrational in light of the known facts; out of proportion to other existing threats of war and violence; and a dangerous adventure risking continuing conflict throughout the region and far beyond for years to come. The most careful analysis must be made as to why the world is subjected to such threats of violence by its only superpower, which could so safely and importantly lead us on the road to peace, and how the UN can avoid the human tragedy of yet another major assault on Iraq and the powerful stimulus for retaliatory terrorism it would create.

1. President George Bush Came to Office Determined to Attack Iraq and Change its Government.

George Bush is moving apace to make his war unstoppable and soon. Having stated last Friday that he did not believe Iraq would accept UN inspectors, he responded to Iraq’s prompt, unconditional acceptance by calling any reliance on it a “false hope” and promising to attack Iraq alone if the UN does not act. He is obsessed with the desire to wage war against Iraq and install his surrogates to govern Iraq by force. Days after the most bellicose address ever made before the United Nations--an unprecedented assault on the Charter of the United Nations, the rule of law and the quest for peace--the U.S. announced it was changing its stated targets in Iraq over the past eleven years, from retaliation for threats and attacks on U.S. aircraft which were illegally invading Iraq’s airspace on a daily basis. How serious could those threats and attacks have been if no U.S. aircraft was ever hit? Yet hundreds of people were killed in Iraq by U.S. rockets and bombs, and not just in the so called “no fly zone,” but in Baghdad itself. Now the U.S. proclaims its intentions to destroy major military facilities in Iraq in preparation for its invasion, a clear promise of aggression now. Every day there are threats and more propaganda is unleashed to overcome resistance to George Bush’s rush to war. The acceleration will continue until the tanks roll, unless nonviolent persuasion prevails.

2. George Bush Is Leading the United States and Taking the UN and All Nations Toward a Lawless World of Endless Wars.

George Bush in his “War on Terrorism” has asserted his right to attack any country, organization, or people first, without warning in his sole discretion. He and members of his administration have proclaimed the old restraints that law sought to impose on aggression by governments and repression of their people, no longer consistent with national security. Terrorism is such a danger, they say, that necessity compels the U.S. to strike first to destroy the potential for terrorist acts from abroad and to make arbitrary arrests, detentions, interrogations, controls and treatment of people abroad and within the U.S. Law has become the enemy of public safety. “Necessity is the argument of tyrants.” “Necessity never makes a good bargain.”

Heinrich Himmler, who instructed the Nazi Gestapo “Shoot first, ask questions later, and I will protect you,” is vindicated by George Bush. Like the Germany described by Jorge Luis Borges in Deutsches Requiem, George Bush has now “proffered (the world) violence and faith in the sword,” as Nazi Germany did. And as Borges wrote, it did not matter to faith in the sword that Germany was defeated. “What matters is that violence ... now rules.” Two generations of Germans have rejected that faith. Their perseverance in the pursuit of peace will earn the respect of succeeding generations everywhere.

The Peoples of the United Nations are threatened with the end of international law and protection for human rights by George Bush’s war on terrorism and determination to invade Iraq.

Since George Bush proclaimed his “war on terrorism,” other countries have claimed the right to strike first. India and Pakistan brought the earth and their own people closer to nuclear conflict than at any time since October 1962 as a direct consequence of claims by the U.S. of the unrestricted right to pursue and kill terrorists, or attack nations protecting them, based on a unilateral decision without consulting the United Nations, a trial, or revealing any clear factual basis for claiming its targets are terrorists and confined to them.

There is already a near epidemic of nations proclaiming the right to attack other nations or intensify violations of human rights of their own people on the basis of George Bush’s assertions of power in the war against terrorism. Mary Robinson, in her quietly courageous statements as her term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ended, has spoken of the “ripple effect” U.S. claims of right to strike first and suspend fundamental human rights protection is having.

On September 11, 2002, Colombia, whose new administration is strongly supported by the U.S., “claimed new authority to arrest suspects without warrants and declare zones under military control,” including “[N]ew powers, which also make it easier to wiretap phones and limit foreigners’ access to conflict zones... allow security agents to enter your house or office without a warrant at any time of day because they think you’re suspicious.” These additional threats to human rights follow Post-September 11 “emergency” plans to set up a network of a million informants in a nation of forty million. See, New York Times, September 12, 2002, p. A7.

3. The United States, Not Iraq, Is the Greatest Single Threat to the Independence and Purpose of the United Nations.

President Bush’s claim that Iraq is a threat justifying war is false. Eighty percent of Iraq’s military capacity was destroyed in 1991 according to the Pentagon. Ninety percent of materials and equipment required to manufacture weapons of mass destruction was destroyed by UN inspectors during more than eight years of inspections. Iraq was powerful, compared to most of its neighbors, in 1990. Today it is weak. One infant out of four born live in Iraq weighs less than 2 kilos, promising short lives, illness and impaired development. In 1989, fewer than one in twenty infants born live weighed less than two kilos. Any threat to peace Iraq might become is remote, far less than that of many other nations and groups and cannot justify a violent assault. An attack on Iraq will make attacks in retaliation against the U.S. and governments which support its actions far more probable for years to come.

George Bush proclaims Iraq a threat to the authority of the United Nations while U.S.-coerced UN sanctions continue to cause the death rate of the Iraqi people to increase. Deaths caused by sanctions have been at genocidal levels for twelve years. Iraq can only plead helplessly for an end to this crime against its people. The UN role in the sanctions against Iraq compromise and stain the UN’s integrity and honor. This makes it all the more important for the UN now to resist this war.

Inspections were used as an excuse to continue sanctions for eight years while thousands of Iraqi children and elderly died each month. Iraq is the victim of criminal sanctions that should have been lifted in 1991. For every person killed by terrorist acts in the U.S. on 9/11, five hundred people have died in Iraq from sanctions.

It is the U.S. that threatens not merely the authority of the United Nations, but its independence, integrity and hope for effectiveness. The U.S. pays UN dues if, when and in the amount it chooses. It coerces votes of members. It coerces choices of personnel on the Secretariat. It rejoined UNESCO to gain temporary favor after 18 years of opposition to its very purposes. It places spies in UN inspection teams.

The U.S. has renounced treaties controlling nuclear weapons and their proliferation, voted against the protocol enabling enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention, rejected the treaty banning land mines, endeavored to prevent its creation and since to cripple the International Criminal Court, and frustrated the Convention on the Child and the prohibition against using children in war. The U.S. has opposed virtually every other international effort to control and limit war, protect the environment, reduce poverty and protect health.

George Bush cites two invasions of other countries by Iraq during the last 22 years. He ignores the many scores of U.S. invasions and assaults on other countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas during the last 220 years, and the permanent seizure of lands from Native Americans and other nations--lands like Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Puerto Rico, among others, seized by force and threat.

In the same last 22 years the U.S. has invaded, or assaulted Grenada, Nicaragua, Libya, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and others directly, while supporting assaults and invasions elsewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

It is healthy to remember that the U.S. invaded and occupied little Grenada in 1983 after a year of threats, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying its small mental hospital, where many patients died. In a surprise attack on the sleeping and defenseless cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986, the U.S. killed hundreds of civilians and damaged four foreign embassies. It launched 21 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in August 1998, destroying the source of half the medicines available to the people of Sudan. For years it has armed forces in Uganda and southern Sudan fighting the government of Sudan. The U.S. has bombed Iraq on hundreds of occasions since the Gulf War, including this week, killing hundreds of people without a casualty or damage to an attacking plane.

4. Why Has George Bush Decided The U.S. Must Attack Iraq Now?

There is no rational basis to believe Iraq is a threat to the United States, or any other country. The reason to attack Iraq must be found elsewhere.

As governor of Texas, George Bush presided over scores of executions, more than any governor in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 (after a hiatus from 1967). He revealed the same zeal he has shown for “regime change” for Iraq when he oversaw the executions of minors, women, retarded persons and aliens whose rights under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of notification of their arrest to a foreign mission of their nationality were violated. The Supreme Court of the U.S. held that executions of a mentally retarded person constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution. George Bush addresses the United Nations with these same values and willfulness.

His motives may include to save a failing Presidency which has converted a healthy economy and treasury surplus into multi-trillion dollar losses; to fulfill the dream, which will become a nightmare, of a new world order to serve special interests in the U.S.; to settle a family grudge against Iraq; to weaken the Arab nation, one people at a time; to strike a Muslim nation to weaken Islam; to protect Israel, or make its position more dominant in the region; to secure control of Iraq’s oil to enrich U.S. interests, further dominate oil in the region and control oil prices. Aggression against Iraq for any of these purposes is criminal and a violation of a great many international conventions and laws including the General Assembly Resolution on the Definition of Aggression of December 14, 1974.

Prior regime changes by the U.S. brought to power among a long list of tyrants, such leaders as the Shah of Iran, Mobutu in the Congo, Pinochet in Chile, all replacing democratically elected heads of government.

5. A Rational Policy Intended to Reduce the Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction in The Middle East Must Include Israel.

A UN or U.S. policy of selecting enemies of the U.S. for attack is criminal and can only heighten hatred, division, terrorism and lead to war. The U.S. gives Israel far more aid per capita than the total per capita income of sub Sahara Africans from all sources. U.S.-coerced sanctions have reduced per capita income for the people of Iraq by 75% since 1989. Per capita income in Israel over the past decade has been approximately 12 times the per capita income of Palestinians.

Israel increased its decades-long attacks on the Palestinian people, using George Bush’s proclamation of war on terrorism as an excuse, to indiscriminately destroy cities and towns in the West Bank and Gaza and seize more land in violation of international law and repeated Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.

Israel has a stockpile of hundreds of nuclear warheads derived from the United States, sophisticated rockets capable of accurate delivery at distances of several thousand kilometers, and contracts with the U.S. for joint development of more sophisticated rocketry and other arms with the U.S.

Possession of weapons of mass destruction by a single nation in a region with a history of hostility promotes a race for proliferation and war. The UN must act to reduce and eliminate all weapons of mass destruction, not submit to demands to punish areas of evil and enemies of the superpower that possesses the majority of all such weapons and capacity for their delivery.

Israel has violated and ignored more UN Resolutions for forty years than any other nation. It has done so with impunity.

The violation of Security Council resolutions cannot be the basis for a UN-approved assault on any nation, or people, in a time of peace, or the absence of a threat of imminent attack, but comparable efforts to enforce Security Council resolutions must be made against all nations who violate them.

6. The Choice Is War Or Peace.

The UN and the U.S. must seek peace, not war. An attack on Iraq may open a Pandora’s box that will condemn the world to decades of spreading violence. Peace is not only possible; it is essential, considering the heights to which science and technology have raised the human art of planetary and self-destruction.

If George Bush is permitted to attack Iraq with or without the approval of the UN, he will become Public Enemy Number One--and the UN itself worse than useless, an accomplice in the wars it was created to end. The Peoples of the World then will have to find some way to begin again if they hope to end the scourge of war.

This is a defining moment for the United Nations. Will it stand strong, independent and true to its Charter, international law and the reasons for its being, or will it submit to the coercion of a superpower leading us toward a lawless world and condone war against the cradle of civilization?

Do not let this happen.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark

09 October 2002

Well, the Thief-in-Chief did it again... yap yap yap yadda yadda yadda we need regime change NOW! (foaming at the mouth) Saddam Saddam blah blah blah. Oh, and by the way, we're going to force the dock workers to go back to work and unload all that Xmas stuff that retailers will be shoving down our throats for the rest of the year.

The stock market did it again, too... 7341.27 at 1:33PM EDT. Down 160 points today. Are you sure you want to keep on doing this, Drinky McDumbAss? Just before your mid-terms? Oh, yeah - you never prepared for midterms before, either, did you? I don't know if PapaDoc Bush can buy his way out of this one... maybe after the market goes down again, and they can buy up the rest of the economy at discount prices.

Or maybe they'll just nationalize the stuff they don't own and put it in their pocket that way. I hope that somehow this junta gets pulled down before we are worse off than the third world banana republics. If it hasn't already happened yet...

Sorry to be on such a downer. That's what happens when you confront a ditto monkey with the truth and they refuse to accept it - and then call you a traitor for saying it. And then spin the truth around so it sounds like their guy caught the other guy pulling the monkey business when the other guy caught their guy pulling the monkey business. It's been a while since the Smirk made satire obsolete. Now he wants to make us Oceania? When will the Ministry of Love (sponsored by the faith-based organizations, of course) be finished? How much of our (taxpayer's, not unelected fraud's) money will you be spending on it, Chimp? We can see how you've built up the Ministry of Peace and are eager to let slip the dogs of war. And the Ministry of Truth got you in power in the first place!

Oh well... I hear they are accepting immigrants in many prosperous countries these days. Better get out now before they make that illegal, too.

It’s good to be back! I’ve now managed to make it through almost a half week at work! I have a big project, that should be operational by the end of the month, that I am finishing up – so the days seem to be flying by a little more. Which is also somewhat the definition of getting old, if you think about it… anyways,… time to go get ready for day number three.

Before I do: take a look at this:

http://editorial.careers.msn.com/articles/resumedonts/

And redo your resume if you think you need to! It never hurts to make sure your resume is current, especially during times like these… Take care!

06 October 2002

Wow! Only back a day, and info overload hits the earwaves (along with a well placed XTC cut - Generals and Majors - at the right time on WDET…). Hopefully massive protests hit the national psyche, and I can’t send a link to this story http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm because the email to a friend link has been hacked by freepertrash or the generic equivalent thereof. Ann Slanders should be sympathetically and symbolically frothing at the mouth.
Listening to the BFEE preach morality while ramming through their right wingnut agenda makes me sick as well. Good thing I can retreat into the realm of the worker drone for a while (touch wood). And dream of what I could achieve. After seeing a small slice of Americana, and making plans to make plans to see some more, it’s time to reflect and treasure that which I got to see and do. Time to build on the experiences and begin another path down the never ending journey that is the wonder of my life even amidst all this chaos and spinsanity going on amidst the gonads running amok in the festering sewer that is our seat of power in the start of the new millennium. And that’s as close to the truth as I’d like to get for the next fortnight or so, thank you very much! Time to take care of my Sig-O and make sure she gets through a bad patch in her journey. So we can both take the road back to Lo$t Wage$ next year ‘in a rolling big house full of fresh air’. And maybe visit a few others along the way…

Another day (Humpday in the Hobbit Calendar, but that’s another story…), another dollar. I suppose I should update things once again, and get back into the daily routines that I have neglected during the time I have been away. Then again, maybe I should just chuck it all away and go off on another adventure, hosting a bed and breakfast in the Sin City zone for travelling ICBMWs… good night, America, and have a pleasant tomorrow!