CCIA Urges Tom Ridge to Avoid Using MicrosoftColumbus - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Lance Bennett: The perfect storm? The American media and IraqThe Inquirer has posted an article reporting that the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has urged the US Department of Homeland Security, in an open letter to Tom Ridge, secretary of the department, to avoid using Microsoft software because Microsoft's software is 'riddled with obvious and easily exploited vulnerabilities.'
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Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
"President Bush's tax cuts increased the political power of the richest Americans," says Walter Williams, University of Washington professor emeritus of public affairs. "Their gains fueled the huge increase in campaign contributions and made big money the driving force in national politics."
Today's rising inequality, Williams argues, distorts the political system and turns ordinary Americans into second-class citizens. Wealthy individuals and major corporations have returned the favor of tax cuts and deregulation with a flood of contributions that give Bush a commanding lead for the 2004 campaign — which Williams describes as a key battle to maintain the plutocracy.
"By the time you or I get into the act," Williams said, "the candidates are pretty much served up for us by the wealthy interests."
Click here to learn more about what economists are saying about Bush administration economic policy.
Rumsfeld: U.S. military commanders to have the troops they needIraq: U.S. Seeks UN Help, Offers 'Trademark Arrogance' Richard Butler, Andrew Wilkie give evidence to Iraq inquiryThe White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley.
"When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement," the report says, adding that the EPA had yet to adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin.
NEW YORK--WorldCom Inc., recently and hilariously accused of rerouting phone calls to avoid paying connection fees to other phone companies (who was running the joint, frat dudes?), ranks with Enron in the annals of modern corporate debauchery. After an $11 billion accounting scandal sunk the infamous telecommunications conglomerate into bankruptcy, the U.S. General Services Administration banned federal agencies from doing business with WorldCom. So how is a proscribed "company that has demonstrated a flagrant lack of ethics"--the words belong to Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), chairperson of the Senate's Governmental Affairs Committee--poised to land a $900 million Pentagon (news - web sites) contract to build a cell phone system for occupied Iraq?
"I was curious about it, because the last time I looked, MCI has never built out a wireless network," comments Len Lauer of Sprint.
"Another Sept. 11-style terrorist attack in the United States is highly likely," the report states. "Networks of militant Islamist groups are less extensive in the U.S. than they are in Western Europe, but U.S.-led military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has exacerbated anti-U.S. sentiment."
Arms and the Man Help WantedMarie Cocco: U.S. Clamps Secrecy on Warnings Before 9/11 Supreme Court oral arguments now available for file-swapping The Court of Last Resort Ashcroft Orders Tally Of Lighter Sentences: Critics Say He Wants 'Blacklist' of Judges"What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline," Kwiatkowski wrote. "If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam [Hussein] occupation [of Iraq] has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense [OSD]."
Kwiatkowski went on to charge that the operations she witnessed during her tenure in Feith's office, and particularly those of an ad hoc group known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), constituted "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-option through deceit of a large segment of the Congress".
[...]
Kwiatkowski's broadside coincides with the appearance in neo-conservative media outlets, notably the Wall Street Journal, of defenses of Feith, who is widely seen as the Pentagon's most likely fall guy if it is forced to shoulder blame for bad intelligence and planning. The government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair has pressed President George W Bush to fire Feith for several months, according to diplomatic sources.
In a lengthy defense published on Tuesday, the associate editor of the Journal's editorial page described Feith's policy workshop as "the world's most effective think tank".
The Rise of an Anti-American Army in Iraq: More than a million men have reportedly answered the call from a young cleric to join his 'Mehdi army' to defend Iraq's religion and country -- and drive out the Americans. Civil Rights Coalition Wants to 'Save Our Courts' Officials Confirm Dropping Firebombs on Iraqi Troops: Results are 'remarkably similar' to using napalm U.S. Marks Hiroshima Anniversary By Holding Top Secret Summit to Discuss Expanding Nation's Nuclear Arsenal'What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline,'' Kwiatkowski wrote. ''If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam (Hussein) occupation (in Iraq) has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defence'' (OSD).
Kwiatkowski went on to charge that the operations she witnessed during her tenure in Feith's office, and particularly those of an ad hoc group known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), constituted ''a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress''.
But what would the occupying forces and their families make of Bush's executive order 13303, promulgated without fanfare in May, which gives sweeping powers to US oil companies operating in Iraq while granting immunity to them for the consequences of any of their actions in exploiting the oil.
In a report last month for the US Democratic legal think tank Government Accountability Project (GAP), the legal director, Tom Devine, said that in terms of legal liability, 13303 "cancels the concept of corporate accountability and abandons the rule of law … (It) is a blank cheque for corporate anarchy. Its sweeping, unqualified language places the industry above domestic and international law for anything related to commerce in Iraqi oil."
The immunity is unconstrained. The opening sentence decrees that "any judicial process" is "null and void". Section 1 (b) shields the value "of any nature whatsoever" if it is "related to" the "sale or marketing of … all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products" or "interests".
Stealing The Internet: With Blessings from the FCC and Congress, the High-tech Industry Wants to Privatize the Internet. What Happens When you Have to Pay to Join the Information Revolution? John Pilger: War on TruthOne reason the BBC's Andrew Gilligan angered Downing Street was that he reported that, for many Iraqis, the bloody invasion and occupation were at least as bad as the fallen dictatorship.
This is unmentionable here in America. The tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and maimed do not exist. When I interviewed Douglas Feith, number three to Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, he shook his head and lectured me on the "precision" of American weapons. His message was that war had become a bloodless science in the service of America's unique divinity. It was like interviewing a priest. Only American "boys" and "girls" suffer, and at the hands of "Ba'athist remnants", a self-deluding term in the spirit of General Maude's "miscreants". The media echo this, barely gesturing at the truth of a popular resistance and publishing galleries of GI amputees, who are described with a maudlin, down-home chauvinism which celebrates the victimhood of the invader while casting the vicious imperialism that they served as benign. At the State Department, the under-secretary for international security, John Bolton, suggested to me that, for questioning the fundamentalism of American policy, I was surely a heretic, "a Communist Party member", as he put it.
Bitterness grows in Iraq over deaths of civilians The unreported cost of war: at least 827 American wounded More Calls to Vet Voting Machines What Was Behind the Pentagon's Betting Parlor? State Dept. Changes Seen if Bush Reelected: Powell and Armitage Intend to Step Down North Korea Won't Recognize State Dep't. Ideologue"The cylinders are about a foot long, grey in colour with a red band around the top. The skull and crossbones warning logo, and the label ‘pure uranium oxide’ are clearly marked in English."
William J. Broad: Facing a Second Nuclear Age US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban. Looted and for sale in Iraq: the deadly core of nuclear weapons MI6 chief to quit after split on Iraq: Succession battle over Blair 'favourite'When it comes to the Iraq War there seems to be little doubt that the war is generally regarded as an unjust war, despite its effect of freeing the Iraqi people from the oppressive rule of Saddam Hussein. The reasons for viewing it as unjust in origin are the following: the absence of defensive necessity, the refusal of the UNSC to authorize war, the dangerous uncertainties associated with recourse to war, the manipulation of evidence relating to the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the reluctance in the aftermath of the fighting to respect the aspirations of the Iraqi people to achieve political independence and exercise their rights of self-determination. For all of these reasons it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Iraq War is a clear example of an unjust war.
Click here to learn more about Richard Falk.
Sen. Clinton Says Supreme Court Still Merits Mistrust: Recent Decisions on Gays, Affirmative Action Does Not Outweigh 'Dubious Rulings,' She Says Walter Williams: Bush's high crimes against the nation Norman Solomon: U.S. Media Are Too Soft on the White House U.S. Shifts Rhetoric On Its Goals in Iraq: New Emphasis: Middle East StabilityThis site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Last modified: Fri Dec 26 10:34:07 CST 2003