9.27.2004
Michael Moore On Tour;
Slackers of the World, Unite!
9/25/04
Dear Friends,
Tomorrow I begin a little 20-state, 60-city tour to try and convince the fed-up, the burned-out, and the Nader-impaired to leave the house for just a half-hour on November 2nd and mark an "X" in a box (or punch a chad or touch a screen) so that America and the world can be saved. (I don't mean "saved" as in all workers will henceforth control the means of production. That's, um, going to take a few more years.)
What I'm asking is that our fellow Americans, as the collective landlord of a public housing project at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., take just a few minutes to evict the tenant who is currently wrecking the place (not to mention what he's doing to the rest of the neighborhood). After all, isn't this one of the coolest things about a democracy, getting to give some payback to those in power? "YOU'RE FIRED!" Oooh, that feels good -- especially if the recipient of the pink slip is someone who wants to send your kid off to war.
So, having nothing better to do for the next month (and eager to visit such swinging states as Iowa! Ohio! Arkansas!), I have decided to go to every battleground state in the country and do whatever it takes to get out the vote. I will do your laundry, I will clean your house, I will give you a year's supply of beer nuts if you will commit to me to go to the polls on Tuesday, November 2.
I'm calling it "The Slacker Uprising Tour", a coast-to-coast effort to bring the non-voting majority out of hibernation and kick some political butt. My goal is to get as many of the 100 million non-voters in America as I can to give voting a try -- just this once. I want at least 56% of all eligible voters to vote and thus set a modern-day turnout record.
I'm putting out the red alert call to slackers everywhere to help me lead this revolt. I want everyone in their teens and twenties who exist from one packet of Ramen noodles to the next bag of Tostitos to take your fully-justified cynicism and toss it like a Molotov right into the middle of this election. As "non-voters" you have been written off. But if only a few thousand of you vote, it could make all the difference. You literally hold all the power in your hands. That's even cooler than holding a TV remote.
I, the original slacker -- I, who have endured all sorts of attacks for my slacker demeanor -- yes I am coming to an arena or stadium just outside your dorm room (or that little space off the furnace room where your parents still let you stay, rent-free). Why arenas and stadiums? Because there are so many of us -- AND they serve beer and chips. From the Sun Dome to the Key Arena, from the Patriot Center to the Del Mar Race Track, I will be there and I will bring prizes and presents and clean underwear for all in need.
Before I arrive, I have arranged for free screenings of "Fahrenheit 9/11" in each city. When I get there I will have with me dozens of voter registrars who will register new (or recently transplanted) voters (please check here for voter registration deadlines -- they are fast approaching in most states in the next 10 days!). Absentee ballot applications will also be available. And the good people of Move-On, ACT and other groups will be present at each of my appearances to sign up volunteers to get out the vote on election day.
Details of where I will be appearing will be available in your local media. Many venues, due to advance word already out there, have "sold out" (at most stops, students get in for free and community people pay a nominal fee -- usually $5 -- to cover costs). Again, check your local media to find out the times and dates and how to get advance tickets.
A partial list of the cities I'm visiting includes: Seattle, Big Rapids (MI), Mt. Pleasant (MI), Tucson, Dearborn, Phoenix, East Lansing, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Albuquerque, Toledo, Columbus (OH), Ames (IA), Cleveland, Fairmont (WV), Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Bethlehem (PA), Fairfax (VA), Carlyle (PA), State College (PA), Minneapolis, Gainesville, Nashville, Miami, Memphis, Orlando, Salem (OR), Jacksonville, Tampa, Kansas City, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Madison, Green Bay, Las Vegas, Reno, Denver, and, of course, Tallahassee, Florida. Others will be posted later.
While on the road, I will try to keep my blog up-to-date and post some pictures we take in each city. The three campuses on the tour which register the most students to vote (or who have the most non-voters committing to me to vote) will receive a special scholarship from us at the end of the tour.
Thanks, in advance, to everyone out there who is working hard during this election. I know it will make a difference.
Let's leave no non-voter behind.
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
www.michaelmoore.com/takeaction/vote/
9.20.2004
Free Americans Resisting the Fourth Reich on Behalf of All Species.
From: "Gary Kohls"
Date: September 21, 2004 12:09:47 AM GMT+07:00
Peace Friends: Here is vitally important information from Jerry Mazza, Joseph Price, MD, and James Fallows.
Essentially, Bush's history of alcohol abuse, cocaine abuse, nicotine abuse and probably eating too much toxic Texas beef (all containing deadly neurotoxins that kill brain cells, albeit usually slowly and undetectably until it's too late to do anything about it) - plus his neglectful over-privileged child-rearing history likely accounts for his foul mouth, his indifference to human suffering, his patriotic cruelty to non-Americans and the non-elite, his impulsivity, his obvious lack of intelligence and lack of knowledge, his dyslexia, his arrogant and insulting behaviors, his intolerance and his concretized thinking (celebrated as steadfastness in his leading America towards a cliff and utter disaster).
Even though the unelected Bush is mostly puppet and inarticulate spokesperson to the ruthless Rove/Cheney/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld cabal, America will be forced by justice-seekers everywhere to reject and impeach the whole bunch in disgrace (and, equally likely, be crushed economically by the rest of the appalled world).
Of course, the Republican Party's neofascist Project for a New American Century (PNAC) may well intervene by presidential order to stop elections and to suspend the Constitution in favor of a quasi-dictatorship so that they can continue to obscure and shred the evidence of their evil deeds and give them more time to silence/incarcerate those of us with dissenting voices.
The risks are too high for real freedom-loving Americans to allow that to happen. Bush and Company (including "Daddy War Bucks" Bush/Baker/Kissinger & Co) should be smart enough to realize that the humiliation of an impeachment of their "boy" is a serious threat to their honor. They should also know that the oncoming world-wide boycott of America goods and services by alarmed anti-fascists and a few billion assorted "Yankee-Go-Homers" around the world won't be very good for their huge fortunes either.
The New World Order bunch in the PNAC, James Baker, the unindicted war criminal Henry Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Bush the Older, Bush the Younger, etc. are accurately seen as protofascists and we all know what ultimately happens to fascist regimes like Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan - they all go down in flames - figuratively or literally. And history has a way of repeating itself, although anti-intellectuals like Bush haven't heard that word because they don't read history.
Consider this mailing a call to action and forward it widely, even to the tens of millions of close-minded Bush supporters who don't want to listen to, see or speak unwelcome truths. We must do this for the sake of our children and theirs and for the suffering children of God everywhere, many of whom are innocent victims of our compassionless, conservative American military and economic aggression.
Also, please open, read and re-distribute widely, especially to churches and clergy, the attached Prayer/Pledge of Responsibility for Children by Ina J. Hughs, slightly amended by myself - and a part of the effort of Every Church A Peace Church (www.ecapc.org) to prevent the horrific wars that are being planned by the PNAC and Bush & Co. ECAPC hopes to bring compassion and mercy to the world's children through the transformation of the Just War Theology Christian churches into true peace churches, that will then courageously live and teach/preach as the nonviolent Jesus lived and taught - and thus lead the world toward peace and prosperity for all.
Here's strength to those of you who choose to resist the Empire in the coming struggles. It's important to not vote for or support in any way our future oppressors.
Gary
****
Online Journal Special Report:
Physician Sees 'Presenile Dementia' In Bush's Faltering Speech
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Contributing Writer
September 18, 2004-
In a letter to the editor of Atlantic Monthly, October 2004, Joseph M. Price, M.D. of Carsonville, Michigan, comments that James Fallows' July/August Atlantic article on John Kerry's debating skills ("When George Meets John"), "was interesting, but most remarkable was Fallows's documentation of President [sic] Bush's mostly overlooked changes over the past decade-specifically 'the striking decline in his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills.'" Dr. Price understands Fallows' initial "speculations that there must be some organic basis for the President's [sic] peculiar mode of speech, a learning disability, a reading problem, dyslexia or some other disorder."
Quoting Fallows, Dr. Carson also agrees with him that "The main problem with these theories is that through his forties Bush was perfectly articulate." Yet, Dr. Carson stated he felt "that something organic was wrong with President [sic] Bush, most probably dyslexia, but . . . was unaware of what Fallows pointed out so clearly: that Bush's problems have been developing slowly, and that just a decade ago he was an articulate debater." He was as Fallows said, "artful indeed in steering questions and challenges to his desired subjects . . . [one] who did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones." As Dr. Carson suggests, "Consider, in contrast, the present: 'the informal Q&A he has tried to avoid,' 'Bush's recent faltering performances,' 'his stalling, defensive pose when put on the spot,' 'speaking more slowly and less gracefully.'"
Dr. Price suggests that "not being a professional medical researcher and clinician, Fallows cannot be faulted for not putting two and two together. But he was 100 percent correct in suggesting that Bush's problem cannot be 'a learning disability, a reading problem, [or] dyslexia,' because patients with those problems have always had them." The doctor goes on to say, "Slowly developing cognitive deficits, as demonstrated so clearly by the President [sic], can represent only one diagnosis, and that is 'presenile dementia'! Presenile dementia is best described to nonmedical persons as a fairly typical Alzheimer's situation that develops significantly earlier in life, well before what is usually considered old age."
Dr. Carson adds, "It [presenile dementia] runs about the same course as typical senile dementias, such as classical Alzheimer's-to incapacitation and, eventually, death, as with President Ronald Reagan, but at a relatively earlier age." Dr. Carson adds, "President [sic] Bush's 'mangled' words are a demonstration of what physicians call 'confabulation,' and are almost specific to diagnosis of a true dementia." His advice: "Bush should immediately be given the advantage of a considered professional diagnosis, and started on drugs that offer the possibility of retarding the slow but inexorable course of the disease."
As the son of an Alzheimer's victim who passed at 80, I might add that my father exhibited some of Bush's recently reported explosive behaviors, starting at least 15 years earlier. This along with an inflexibility of opinion and attitude, a kind of relentless insistence that he was on the right side (not just the Republican right) of every issue we discussed. It was a set of behaviors that eventually made it almost impossible to speak with him, and led to his wife [my stepmother] leaving him, leaving myself as his sole caregiver. Ironically, it was only in this state of aloneness and incapacitation that he had some recognition of a very deep problem and that his survival depended on accepting medical care, accepting the medication that ameliorated some of his behaviors, and accepting me as a friend not the enemy.
As a layman and admittedly a liberal, I see in Bush, and in the Republican will to dominance, i.e. "new world order", an eerie echo of my own father's behavior. As a writer, not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I see in each case the need to control, generated by some deeper fear, anxiety or insecurity. In my father's case that need was generated largely by my father's father, who was an alcoholic, and kept the family in a state of agitated imbalance for decades. Even years after my grandfather was deposed by his sons as the head of the family, he remained an alcoholic and a disturbing presence for all. It's not surprising that my grandmother, a gentle, accepting woman, passed some 13 years before my grandfather did, at the age of 65, of her first and only heart attack, simply worn out.
I offer this information, painful as it is to remember, for whatever light the personal life can shed on political life. And I might add, in the anger, the sheer hate and viciousness of the Grand Old Party's behavior, I see hardly anything grand, but rather obsessively self-aggrandizing to the point of pathology. I am fully aware there are those who would say this is what it takes to survive in politics and in the world. I see it as a giant step back in our development, both as a nation and a species. It would be wonderful to move forward in a somewhat more humane atmosphere, one that would mitigate the contagion of anger and hate that has spread to the world. With all our differences, we are still one human family, sharing a physiology, consciousness, a need for love and safety, the need to procreate and protect our young, and to relish the joys of the immediate as well as the extended family, our brothers and sisters of the world.
If this seems like a foolish optimism, a soft-toothed liberal pipedream, consider the alternatives, which we are living every day. The proliferation of war, of weapons of mass destruction, of divisive fundamentalism (east and west), of aggressive unilateralism as opposed to a binding multilateralism. The end game on this Grand Chessboard is not a Pax Americana (an American Empire) as envisioned first by Zbigniew Brzezinski and now by PNAC (the Project for the New American Century), but a world in shambles, pocked by pocket wars, decimated by regional and national poverty and disease, a world of haves and have-nots, walled in or walled out by mutual fear and disrespect. Rather than crossing the human divides, we are widening them, like so many tribes stranded on ice floes in a roiling ocean. If we are to survive as a species we need to reach a common higher ground. The right choice, like voting or not, like which candidate is the sane one to vote for, is ours, and at this point not just a privilege, but an existential necessity.
***
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer who resides in New York City. Contact him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
9.19.2004
Secrecy in the Bush Administration
By Rep. Henry A. Waxman
Yubanet.com
18 September 2004
Rep. Henry A. Waxman has released a comprehensive examination of secrecy in the Bush Administration. The report analyzes how the Administration has implemented each of our nation’s major open government laws. It finds that there has been a consistent pattern in the Administration’s actions: laws that are designed to promote public access to information have been undermined, while laws that authorize the government to withhold information or to operate in secret have repeatedly been expanded. The cumulative result is an unprecedented assault on the principle of open government.
The Administration has supported amendments to open government laws to create new categories of protected information that can be withheld from the public. President Bush has issued an executive order sharply restricting the public release of the papers of past presidents. The Administration has expanded the authority to classify documents and dramatically increased the number of documents classified. It has used the USA Patriot Act and novel legal theories to justify secret investigations, detentions, and trials. And the Administration has engaged in litigation to contest Congress’ right to information.
The records at issue have covered a vast array of topics, ranging from simple census data and routine agency correspondence to presidential and vice presidential records. Among the documents that the Administration has refused to release to the public and members of Congress are (1) the contacts between energy companies and the Vice President’s energy task force, (2) the communications between the Defense Department and the Vice President’s office regarding contracts awarded to Halliburton, (3) documents describing the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, (4) memoranda revealing what the White House knew about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and (5) the cost estimates of the Medicare prescription drug legislation withheld from Congress.
There are three main categories of federal open government laws: (1) laws that provide public access to federal records; (2) laws that allow the government to restrict public access to federal information; and (3) laws that provide for congressional access to federal records. In each area, the Bush Administration has acted to restrict the amount of government information that is available.
Laws That Provide Public Access to Federal Records
Beginning in the 1960s, Congress enacted a series of landmark laws that promote “government in the sunshine.” These include the Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Each of these laws enables the public to view the internal workings of the executive branch. And each has been narrowed in scope and application under the Bush Administration.
Freedom of Information Act
The Freedom of Information Act is the primary law providing access to information held by the executive branch. Adopted in 1966, FOIA established the principle that the public should have broad access to government records. Under the Bush Administration, however, the statute’s reach has been narrowed and agencies have resisted FOIA requests through procedural tactics and delay.
The Administration has:
* Issued guidance reversing the presumption in favor of disclosure and instructing agencies to withhold a broad and undefined category of “sensitive” information;
* Supported statutory and regulatory changes that preclude disclosure of a wide range of information, including information relating to the economic, health, and security infrastructure of the nation; and
* Placed administrative obstacles in the way of organizations seeking to use FOIA to obtain federal records, such as denials of fee waivers and delays in agency responses.
Independent academic experts consulted for this report decried these trends. They stated that the Administration has “radically reduced the public right to know,” that its policies “are not only sucking the spirit out of the FOIA, but shriveling its very heart,” and that no Administration in modern times has “done more to conceal the workings of government from the people.”
The Presidential Records Act The Presidential Records Act, which was enacted in 1978 in the wake of Watergate, establishes the important principle that the records of a president relating to his official duties belong to the American people. Early in his term, President Bush issued an executive order that undermined the Presidential Records Act by giving former presidents and vice presidents new authority to block the release of their records. As one prominent historian wrote, the order “severely crippled our ability to study the inner workings of a presidency.”
The Federal Advisory Committee Act
The Federal Advisory Committee Act prevents secret advisory groups from exercising hidden influence on government policy, requiring openness and a balance of viewpoints for all government advisory bodies. The Bush Administration, however, has supported legislation that creates new statutory exemptions from FACA. It has also sought to avoid the application of FACA through various mechanisms, such as manipulating appointments to advisory bodies, conducting key advisory functions through “subcommittees,” and invoking unusual statutory exemptions. As a result, such key bodies as the Vice President’s energy task force and the presidential commission investigating the failure of intelligence in Iraq have operated without complying with FACA.
Laws that Restrict Public Access to Federal Records
In the 1990s, the Clinton Administration increased public access to government information by restricting the ability of officials to classify information and establishing an improved system for the declassification of information. These steps have been reversed under the Bush Administration, which has expanded the capacity of the government to classify documents and to operate in secret.
The Classification and Declassification of Records
The classification and declassification of national security information is largely governed by executive order. President Bush has used this authority to:
* Reverse the presumption against classification, allowing classification even in cases of significant doubt;
* Expand authority to classify information for longer periods of time;
* Delay the automatic declassification of records;
* Expand the authority of the executive branch to reclassify information that has been declassified; and
* Increase the number of federal agencies that can classify information to include the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Statistics on classification and declassification of records under the Bush Administration demonstrate the impact of these new policies. Original decisions to classify information — those in which an authorized classifier first determines that disclosure could harm national security — have soared during the Bush Administration. In fiscal years 2001 to 2003, the average number of original decisions to classify information increased 50% over the average for the previous five fiscal years. Derivative classification decisions, which involve classifying documents that incorporate, restate, or paraphrase information that has previously been classified, have increased even more dramatically. Between FY 1996 and FY 2000, the number of derivative classifications averaged 9.96 million per year. Between FY 2001 and FY 2003, the average increased to 19.37 million per year, a 95% increase. In the last year alone, the total number of classification decisions increased 25%.
Sensitive Security Information
The Bush Administration has sought and obtained a significant expansion of authority to make designations of Sensitive Security Information (SSI), a category of sensitive but unclassified information originally established to protect the security of civil aviation. Under legislation signed by President Bush, the Department of Homeland Security now has authority to apply this designation to information related to any type of transportation.
The Patriot Act
The passage of the Patriot Act after the September 11, 2001, attacks gave the Bush Administration new authority to conduct government investigations in secret. One provision of the Act expanded the authority of the Justice Department to conduct secret electronic wiretaps. Another provision authorized the Justice Department to obtain secret orders requiring the production of “books, records, papers, documents, and other items,” and it prohibited the recipient of these orders (such as a telephone company or library) from disclosing their existence. And a third provision expanded the use of “sneak and peak” search warrants, which allow the Justice Department to search homes and other premises secretly without giving notice to the occupants.
Secret Detentions, Trials, and Deportations
In addition to expanding secrecy in government by executive order and statute, the Bush Administration has used novel legal interpretations to expand its authority to detain, try, and deport individuals in secret. The Administration asserted the authority to:
* Hold persons designated as “enemy combatants” in secret without a hearing, access to a lawyer, or judicial review;
* Conduct secret military trials of persons held as enemy combatants when deemed necessary by the government; and
* Conduct secret deportation proceedings of aliens deemed “special interest cases” without any notice to the public, the press, or even family members.
Congressional Access to Federal Records
Our system of checks and balances depends on Congress being able to obtain information about the activities of the executive branch. When government operates behind closed doors without adequate congressional oversight, mismanagement and corruption can flourish. Yet despite Congress’ constitutional oversight role, the Bush Administration has sharply limited congressional access to federal records.
GAO Access to Federal Records
A federal statute passed in 1921 gives the congressional Government Accountability Office the authority to review federal records in the course of audits and investigations of federal programs. Notwithstanding this statutory language and a long history of accommodation between GAO and the executive branch, the Bush Administration challenged the authority of GAO on constitutional grounds, arguing that the Comptroller General, who is the head of GAO, had no “standing” to enforce GAO’s right to federal records. The Bush Administration prevailed at the district court level and GAO decided not to appeal, significantly weakening the authority of GAO.
The Seven Member Rule
The Bush Administration also challenged the authority of members of the House Government Reform Committee to obtain records under the “Seven Member Rule,” a federal statute that requires an executive agency to provide information on matters within the jurisdiction of the Committee upon the request of any seven of its members. Although a district court ruled in favor of the members in a case involving access to adjusted census records, the Bush Administration has continued to resist requests for information under the Seven Member Rule, forcing the members to initiate new litigation.
Withholding Information Requested by Congress
On numerous occasions, the Bush Administration has withheld information requested by members of Congress. During consideration of the Medicare legislation in 2003, the Administration withheld estimates showing that the bill would cost over $100 billion more than the Administration claimed. In this instance, Administration officials threatened to fire the HHS Actuary, Richard Foster, if he provided the information to Congress. In another case, the Administration’s refusal to provide information relating to air pollution led Senator Jeffords, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, to place holds on the nominations of several federal officials.
On over 100 separate occasions, the Administration has refused to answer the inquiries of, or provide the information requested by, Rep. Waxman, the ranking member of the House Committee on Government Reform. The information that the Administration has refused to provide includes:
* Documents requested by the ranking members of eight House Committees relating to the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere;
* Information on contacts between Vice President Cheney’s office and the Department of Defense regarding the award to Halliburton of a sole-source contract worth up to $7 billion for work in Iraq; and
* Information about presidential advisor Karl Rove’s meetings and phone conversations with executives of companies in which he owned stock.
The 9-11 Commission
On November 27, 2002, Congress passed legislation creating the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (commonly known as the 9-11 Commission) as a congressional commission to investigate the September 11 attacks. Throughout its investigation, however, the Bush Administration resisted or delayed providing the Commission with important information. For example, the Administration’s refusal to turn over documents forced the Commission to issue subpoenas to the Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration. The Administration also refused for months to allow Commissioners to review key presidential intelligence briefing documents.
The Collective Impact
Taken together, the actions of the Bush Administration have resulted in an extraordinary expansion of government secrecy. External watchdogs, including Congress, the media, and nongovernmental organizations, have consistently been hindered in their ability to monitor government activities. These actions have serious implications for the nature of our government. When government operates in secret, the ability of the public to hold the government accountable is imperiled.
Full Report: Commitee on Government Reform Minority Office.
http://democrats.reform.house.gov/features/secrecy_report/pdf/pdf_secrecy_report.pdf
from: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091904W.shtml
9.16.2004
Tribe Conducts War Dance to Stop Dam Expansion
Last Such Dance Was in 1887
14 September 2004
SHASTA LAKE, California (AP) -- As darkness fell across the crescent-shaped Shasta Dam,
eight barefoot Winnemem Wintu warriors armed with bows began the tribe's first war dance
since 1887.
Members of the tiny American Indian tribe began the four-day protest Sunday night to stop a
potential expansion of the Shasta Dam, which would destroy sacred sites that had survived its
original construction.
"The war dance itself is a message, a message to the world that we can't stand to put up with
this again," said Caleen Sisk-Franco, the chief who says she received the protest vision from
the spirits of ancestors. "We've already lost too many sacred sites to the lake. To lose more is
like cutting the legs off all the tribal members."
For more than 20 years, there's been talk of raising the 602-foot high dam that holds back three
rivers, including the Sacramento, the state's biggest. Multimillion-dollar studies are under way
over the possibility of raising it as little as 6 1/2 feet and as much as 200 feet, and the Winnemem
feel an imminent threat to their way of life.
Three-quarters of the state's rain falls north of Sacramento, and Shasta Lake, with its 370-mile
shore, is the largest catch basin. Electricity is produced as waters spill toward the Sacramento River,
the water conduit for 22 million people and thousands of farms, said Jeff McCracken of the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation. The bureau operates Shasta Dam, located about 110 miles south of the
Oregon border.
But as the state grows by 5 million people each decade and copes with water shortages, officials
said they need more water. Of the potential choices, McCracken said, expanding Shasta is one of
the most promising.
Expanding the dam could help troubled salmon by ensuring steadier flows in the Sacramento River
and keeping temperatures colder for fish as they head from the sea to their birthplaces to spawn,
according to Bureau of Reclamation officials.
But Craig Tucker, of the environmental group Friends of the River, said a bigger dam would further
inundate the Sacramento, McCloud and Pit rivers upstream, jeopardizing world-class trout fishing and whitewater recreation.
"Their goal isn't to help the fishery," Tucker said of the dam supporters. "Their goal is to hoard more
and more water."
The Winnemem Wintu population has dwindled to 125 members due to a combination of disease, dis-
putes and departures by members who have abandoned the culture. The tribe last held a war dance in
1887 to protest a McCloud River hatchery that captured the salmon it relied on for its way of life.
About 60 years ago, the tribe relocated the graves of 183 ancestors and abandoned many sacred sites
as Shasta Lake swallowed its villages and ancient cemeteries. The tribe said it was promised land else-
where in exchange, but the only plots received were in a cemetery below the dam.
Sisk-Franco has likened the dam expansion to flooding the Vatican. His tribe is one of hundreds nation-
wide that are not officially recognized, which limits its clout while negotiating with the government.
If the dam is raised, the tribe said it will forever lose Puberty Rock, where ceremonies are held for girls
coming of age. Children's Rock, where young ones seek blessings and the gift of talents, would also
disappear. One hundred fifty years ago settlers killed 42 tribe members in what is known as the massacre
at Kaibai Creek, and the site also would be washed away.
"When those places get threatened or occupied or expropriated or somehow taken from them, that calls
for preparation for conflict," said Les Field, a University of New Mexico anthropologist.
Chanting and letting out cries, each warrior held out a bow and arrows in their left hand, the only obvious gesture of war as they danced around the blazing fire -- with the dimly lit dam in the distance.
9.13.2004
Unmasked: The George W Bush
the President Doesn't Want the World To See
By Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor / Sunday Herald
2004-09-12
With less than 50 days to the US polls and a 10-point lead over John Kerry, George W Bush’s re-election as President looks a breeze. Despite his dodgy past, he has successfully sold himself as a ‘hero’ War President and defender of traditional US values. How did he do it? Bush’s people have run riot over Kerry’s record, so what about the President’s?
Is President George W Bush, who weaves a narrative about himself as a man of God, actually a charlatan? Is he really a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Is his faith a sham? Is he more bad boy than born again? More playboy than penitent?
This past month has seen John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic rival for the White House, take one almighty pasting from the Republican right wing over accusations that he exaggerated his military record in Vietnam. Kerry, a many times decorated navy Vietnam veteran, said the smear campaign was orchestrated by a Bush team desperate to divert attention from the woeful state of the US economy and the running sore of Iraq.
But this week it’s Bush’s turn to line up for a beating. But where Kerry has a single questionable question mark hanging over his past, Bush’s charge sheet for alleged wrongdoing has got it all – sex, drugs, cowardice, cruelty; his alleged failings and foibles are imperial in stature.
These are the issues being debated as a result of further revelations into the shrouded past of the President.
His Military Record
President Bush has wrapped himself in the Stars and Stripes since the horror of September 11. His presidency has pushed a simple message: America is in danger and he’s the man to keep the people safe; he’ll take the fight against the terrorists abroad and he’s proud of the USA’s troops.
If that is the case, why is Bush mired in a scandal about his Vietnam-era service, or lack of, with fresh allegations that he was able to sneak out of serving his country overseas because his daddy was famous, powerful and rolling in cash?
Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war as a pilot and never left the country. He even cut short his military commitment in 1973. In 1989, he told a local newspaper in Texas: “I regret not having gone to Vietnam.” He went on to say that “I did my time” and “I did my duty”.
Despite Bush’s claims, his service in the home-based National Guard is highly questionable. CBS Television’s acclaimed 60 Minutes programme interviewed Ben Barnes, a former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, who said that he pulled strings for a Bush family friend to get George Jr into the National Guard so he could avoid service in Vietnam.
“I was a young, ambitious politician,” Barnes said, “doing what I thought was acceptable, that was important to make friends … I would describe it as preferential treatment.
“I was maybe determining life or death and that’s not a power that I want to have. I’ve thought about it an awful lot. You walk through the Vietnam memorial and, I tell you, you’ll think about it a long time.”
CBS also produced documents which allegedly showed that in 1973, Bush’s superior officer complained of being pressurised to “sugar-coat” an annual officer evaluation for Bush even though the future President had not been at the base for the year in question. His opponents accuse him of going awol – absent without leave.
According to airforce records, Bush did not meet his military commitments. On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston, Texas, to Harvard to take an MBA course, he signed a document that declared: “It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another reserve forces unit or mobilisation augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months.”
Bush didn’t sign up with a National Guard unit when he moved to New England – but nor did he get drafted as a punishment. In May 1968, Bush signed a “statement of understanding” that he would “achieve satisfactory participation”, including attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty and 15 days of annual active duty at home. The document also said that Bush would face two years in Vietnam for “unsatisfactory participation”.
Bush performed no service for an entire six-month period in 1972 and for a period lasting almost three months in 1973, yet Bush’s unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been “satisfactory”. His opponents say this was favouritism shown to a wilful rich boy.
Retired army colonel Gerald A Lechliter, who has studied Bush’s military records, says: “He broke his contract with the United States government – without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen. He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard.”
The unit that Bush was assigned to was known as the Champagne Squadron because of the number of sons of American millionaires who served in it. The unit included the sons of former Texas governor John Connally and former senator Lloyd Bensten, as well as several members of the Dallas Cowboys American football team.
Retired Lt Col Albert C Lloyd Jr said that by not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Bush “took a chance that he could be called up for active duty, but the war was winding down and he probably knew that the airforce was not enforcing the penalty”.
Lawrence J Korb, an assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan White House, said Bush “gamed the system”, adding: “If I cheat on my income tax and don’t get caught, I’m still cheating on my income tax.”
When Bush enlisted in the US equivalent of the Territorial Army, he was given an automatic commission as a second lieutenant and underwent flight training for 13 months. In June 1970, he began what should have been a four-year posting with the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. However, in May 1972 he moved to Alabama to work on a US senate campaign on the condition that he trained with the National Guard in that state.
Nobody has come forward with any memory of Bush serving in the National Guard while in Alabama or when he returned to Texas in 1973. In Alabama, Bush was removed from flight status as he failed to take an annual physical test in July 1972.
His last physical test had been in May 1971. Major General Paul A Weaver Jr, who retired in 2002 as head of the Pentagon’s Air National Guard, said: “There is no excuse for that. Aviators just don’t miss their flight physicals.”
After inspecting Bush’s brief record of flying, Weaver said: “I would not have let him near the airplane.” Weaver added: “It appears that nobody wanted to hold him accountable.” Former friends of the Bush family have said that Bush was sent to Alabama as he kept “getting in trouble and embarrassing the family”.
In May 1973, Bush’s superior officers said they could not complete his annual performance review as he had not been seen at the base in Houston for 12 months. Terry McAuliffe, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said that “the President did not serve honourably”.
Memos uncovered by CBS purport to show that Bush’s superior officer, Lt Col Jerry B Killian, felt he was being forced by his own commander, Brigadier General Walter B Staudt, to go soft on Bush for his underperformance.
The memo, dated August 1973, shows the political clout that Bush had and an attempt, opponents say, to embellish his service record. Bush’s father was a Houston congressman at the time of the Vietnam war.
Another Killian memo, headed “Subject: CYA” – a military acronym for “cover your ass” – reads that Staudt “has obviously pressured [Major-General Bobby W] Hodges more about Bush. I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job”.
The memo adds that Killian received “a message today … regarding Bush’s [annual officer efficiency report] and Staudt is pushing to sugar-coat it”. Killian also felt that Bush was “talking to someone upstairs” to engineer a move to Alabama.
Robert Strong, a friend of the late Killian who ran the Texas Air National Guard offices, said that because of Bush Killian had “found himself between a rock and a hard place”.
CBS reported that the White House did not dispute the authenticity of these documents. However, some questions have been raised about their provenance, with typographical experts saying the documents were produced by computers, not 1970s typewriters.
CBS, however, said it had the documents authenticated by its own experts. CBS also spoke to Killian’s superior, Major-General Hodges, who said the sentiments in the memos were the same as Killian expressed to him. However, Marjorie Connell, Killian’s widow, said she didn’t believe her husband would have used the words in the memos.
In a reversal of the sniper attacks launched on John Kerry and his military record by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth organisation’s adverts on TV, an outfit calling itself Texans for Truth is going to start running television ads asking if Bush ever served with a unit in Alabama. The Republicans have already rubbished the planned ads as unfair and playing dirty.
Cocaine, Booze And Abortions
Being proved to be a little yellow- bellied about fighting in Vietnam would be mere collateral damage to the Bush campaign compared to the all-out nuclear holocaust which would ensue if the allegations made about Dubya’s cocaine use and abortion-fixing, in biographer and muck-raker Kitty Kelly’s forthcoming book on the Bush family, stand up to scrutiny.
Bush’s stance as a strongly moral Christian who prizes family values and Biblical ethics is just as powerful a pull on his supporters as his patriotism and militarism. Bush has come out as bitterly opposed to abortion. His acceptance speech for the presidential nomination at last month’s Republican Party Convention in New York City was peppered with sentiments about the rights of the unborn child and the wrongs of gay marriage.
The Republican party faithful see the President as a man of moral rectitude who will keep the liberal barbarians from the gates. But if, as alleged by Kelly, Bush used class A drugs and arranged for doctors to “kill” his own baby – as many in the party would regard an abortion – that would hole Bush below the waterline and scupper his chances of re-election.
Kelly – the bitch of biographers who has already assassinated the characters of such luminaries as the Reagans, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Onassis and the Windsors – says she spoke to the President’s sister-in-law Sharon Bush, who divorced the President’s brother, Neil.
Sharon Bush apparently told Kelly: “The President did coke at Camp David when his father was President [1989-93] and not just once either.” Camp David is the US presidential retreat. Sharon Bush, however, is now denying that she made the cocaine claim to Kelly.
Proof of coke use in the late 1980s and early 1990s would mean that Bush used the drug after his reported conversion to Christianity. If that was proved to be the case then the one thing that protects Bush from his hard- partying past – his born-again status and his repentance for past sins – would fall to bits. The cocaine claim is therefore political dynamite. Bush has pursued America’s so-called war on drugs with a vengeance. US jails, which now have the highest population figure ever, are filled with drug users.
Even more damaging is the allegation aired by Kelly in her book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, that she has gathered “a great deal of circumstantial evidence” that the President helped arrange for a girlfriend to have an abortion in the 1970s.
Kelly says four friends of the woman who had the abortion provided affidavits to the authoritative US current affairs magazines Time and Newsweek about the abortion but the magazines did not run with the story.
Kelly also brings up allegations of George Bush Sr’s affair with his English secretary Jennifer Fitzgerald, which apparently devastated Barbara Bush, his wife. The book further delves into the sexually transmitted diseases which have afflicted one of Bush’s brothers following his habitual use of Asian prostitutes.
Sharon Bush told Kelly: “The Bushes don’t practise what they preach.” Bush has always been evasive about drugs. During his first presidential campaign, he said: “The current FBI form asks the question, ‘Did somebody use drugs within the last seven years?’ I will be glad to answer that question and the answer is no.”
Kelly quotes a former lieutenant, who refers to Bush not taking his medical during his Air National Guard days, saying: “There is circumstantial evidence pointing to substance abuse by Bush during this period.”
The book claims that Bush first used coke at university in the mid-1960s. Kelly quotes two sources, one of whom says Bush sold him the class A drug. Another acquaintance of Bush says that after work, Bush, in his mid-20s, “liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine”.
There are even claims that First Lady Laura Bush was a drug dealer in her youth. She is the darling of the US right, adored for her schoolmarm demeanour and whiter-than-white aura, and one of the biggest assets in Bush’s attempt to appeal to middle America. But Kelly says she was the “go-to-girl for dime bags” of grass at the Southern Methodist University. Kelly quotes a PR executive, Robert Nash, who says: “She not only smoked dope but she sold dope.”
Laura was also involved in a car smash that killed a friend when she was 17. The accident happened when she ran through a stop sign in her Chevrolet sedan on a clear night in November 1963, drove into an intersection and struck the Corvair sedan of 17-year-old Michael Douglas. No charges were ever filed.
Laura is also supposed to have had to flee her marital home on a number of occasions because of Bush’s apparently abusive behaviour. However, the police were said to have never been involved.
A friend of Bush, Tobery Macdonald, says: “Poor Georgie. He couldn’t relate to women unless he was loaded.” Another “friend” added: “He went out of his way to act crude. It’s quite amazing that someone you held in such low esteem became President.” A third says Bush wasn’t interested in anything except “booze and sports”.
In 1976, Bush was found drunk driving down his parents’ street in Washington. When his father challenged him, Bush apparently offered to fight his dad, saying: “You wanna go mano a mano right here?”
His consumption of alcohol – primarily beer and whisky – turned him into a belligerent boor. At one society party in Houston, he asked an older woman: “So, what’s sex like after 50, anyway?”
Bush allegedly confronted his alcoholism in 1986 – a decision he says set him off on the road to being born again. He dried out, joined an evangelical group and found the Lord.
Kelly’s book quotes a family friend saying of Bush: “George has no humility whatsover about being President. He really thinks he deserves the office; that it’s his by merit, not default. With each political job he’s had, he’s gotten worse, more arrogant. Now he’s unbearable.” Kelly’s book concludes that Bush’s faith makes him invulnerable to self-doubt – just like his political friend and fellow Christian Tony Blair.
A Caring Christian, A Compassionate Conservative?
America may not have the same sensibilities about the death penalty as “old” Europe, but there can’t be many US citizens who embrace the killing of their fellow man as gleefully as the President.
Perhaps the most disturbing example of Bush’s zeal for the Death House was shown in 1998 when he was governor of the state of Texas. Karla Faye Tucker was then facing execution by lethal injection. The former teen prostitute had committed murder after a three-day drug binge and later underwent a religious conversion in jail. As a born-again Christian – just like Bush – many religious leaders wanted her life spared. Tucker even appeared on Larry King’s TV show to discuss her case. Bush was caught out by a reporter mocking the condemned woman. Sneering at her, he put on a whiney voice, pouted his lips and whimpered: “Please, don’t kill me.” Significantly, Tucker had never even asked for mercy while on King’s show.
Bush later claimed in his biography, A Charge To Keep, that he had a “restless night” before Tucker’s execution and “felt like a huge piece of concrete was crushing me” as he waited for her to die. Bush said reading her postmortem was “one of the hardest things I have ever done”, adding that the whole experience left him “heavy of heart”.
Bush said he denied her a clemency appeal – which was based on the fact that her conversion had rehabilitated her – saying: “I have concluded judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority.”
When governor of Texas between 1995 and 2000, Bush presided over more than 120 executions – that accounts for about a third of the executions in the entire USA during the same period.
Bush objected to a bill to stop the state executing people with mental problems. He also vetoed a unanimous bill by the Texas legislature requiring the appointment of a lawyer to an accused within 20 days. Most states require a lawyer be appointed within 72 hours.
In Texas, judges appoint lawyers for defendants. The bill which Bush vetoed would have allowed an independent body to appoint lawyers. There were concerns that the appointment of lawyers was being influenced by the fact that lawyers were making campaign contributions to judges. A survey by the State Bar of Texas found that half of all judges believed campaign contributions from attorneys were a factor in judges considering which lawyer to assign to which case.
Dodgy Deals And Insider Trading Allegations
Since his days in Yale, Bush has been strongly anti-intellectual and rampantly pro-business. Until the age of 30, he didn’t really do very much of anything, but by 1977 he started to use his family’s powerful connections to raise money for an oil business.
He describes his attitude to business as a “bulldog on the pantleg of opportunity”. However, in all Bush lost some $2 million of other people’s money in failed business ventures while still managing to walk away in 1990 with $840,000. One of his ventures was called Arbusto, which the President thought meant “bush” in Spanish – it actually translates as “shrub”. Shrub has now stuck as the nickname for him by his Texan detractors.
The most questionable business venture of Bush’s oil career came while he was with the Harken Energy Corporation. Harken made investments in the Middle East in the run-up to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam . At the time, Bush Sr was the 41st President of the USA and Bush Jr was on the board of Harken. Harken took a pasting on the stockmarket. In June 1990, Harken consultants said only “drastic action” could save the company. Bush sold his entire stock in Harken before information about the dire state of the company was known publicly – despite a legal requirement on him to notify the Securities Exchange Commission immediately. Bush didn’t report his sale for eight months.
Bush – who now stakes his fiscal reputation on the fact that he loves to slash taxes and not spend public money unwisely – took a hefty slice of taxpayers’ cash when he later bought the Texas Rangers baseball team. He persuaded the city of Arlington to finance a new stadium for his team using public taxes. Arlington contributed $191m in public subsidies. Bush’s stake in the Rangers was later valued at rising from $640,000 to $15.4m.
from: http://www.sundayherald.com/44773
Copyright © 2004 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088
9.09.2004
Micronuclear Devices Used in OKC Bombing:
Explosives Placed by FBI, ATF
Dr. Bill Deagle MD
September 8 2004
Note: This article is presented as it was received, with no editing.
In 1995 I worked at Penrose St. Francis Hospital in Colorado Springs, as an Occupational Physician for CCOM. We had many of the most classified contracts in the Colorado Springs area, including Falcon Air Force Base program employees, NORAD employees and classified ATMEL and Symbios Logic, etc. EMP proof and Supercomputer chip classified manufacturers.
My director, Dr. George Swinder MD, was unavailable when the Military Expert Forensic team was sent from Fort Carson to Oklahoma city and was just returning to the Springs for exit examinations. This duty fell to me to perform exit physicals and testing, for all five members of the team. One of the team requested sperm testing, stating, "I want to have kids." I replied sarcastically, " Go ahead, and have kids." He said, "No, you don't understand." I said, "What do you mean?" "Doc, you really don't know what happened at Oklahoma City do you?" I said, "Well I heard that an ammonium nitrate bomb was reported to have exploded killing 168 people."
He leaned forward, "See this rash on my arms, and chest, and legs. Check me doc. I want all the blood tests and do a sperm test." I was irritated now, "Now just a minute, I'm the doctor. If you don't come clean and tell me what you were exposed to I can't possibly know what type of tests to order. I was a biochemisty major, before going into medicine, and we do toxicology testing when there is suspected industrial exposures that put an employee in danger." He said, "You won't release my name or put this in your report to my superiors, will you. I know about doctor-patient confidentiality." "Well," I said, "I won't release your name, but if affects others, I can't say I won't release the information to the correct authorities."
"Doc, what happened in Oklahoma City wasn't caused by ammonium nitrate bomb in the small truck they say was parked by the building." "What are you saying?", I snapped back. "See this rash, it was caused by radiation. We broke three radiation detectors there. See, we were the same team that was sent to Riyad, Saudi Arabia and the bomb only blew the windows into the building. We estimated the explosion was by our calculations to be seven times more ammonium nitrate in that truck bomb. The whole front of the building was sheared off doc in Oklahoma; cleanest controlled detonation our munitions expert forensic team has seen ever. " "What!!", I blurted. "Yeah, we were examining the building site under Wakenhut armed guard, and told not to take any radioactive debris off the site, or they were ordered to shoot on site to kill. All our bags were searched and put through a detector, to make sure we didn't take any off site, or away from the place where they burried and concrete capped all the debris, again under armed Wakenhut guard." "You are telling me that the building was exploded with a nuclear device?", I said. Shaking with a now very pale and distant face, he grunted, "Yeah!". "Oh my God!, and how did this happen?", I inquired.
"There were micronuclear bombs placed on support pillars in the walls of the Federal Building, by special units of the ATF and FBI. They were paged out not to enter the building on the morning of the detonation, and the Federal Judge was warned to cancel court that day. We removed to undetonated softball sized micronuclear bombs, and one C4 pineapple bomb, attached to the pillars of the remaining building."
"I can't believe this story!", I blurted. "Well, doc are you going to test me?", now sweating and shaking more violently with anguish at these revelations. "I will order some more tests of your blood cells that will rule out radiation effects on your blood cells and bone marrow. As for the sperm count and morphology testing, you need to just go to your primary family doctor's office, and I am sure he will do this for you. Call me with the results, and I can interpret if there are any abnormalities." "Ok" Looking relieved, "thanks for listening to what happened to us doc."
This story dialogue was very disturbing, and I told my wife Michelle that night, placed the information of the 'shelf', and hoped that he was lying, but I had an aching feeling of serious doubt that continued until other events proved to me he was right on with the details of the Oklahoma Murah Building detonation by the NWO.
from:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2004/080904okcbombing.htm
9.04.2004
Bush, Hitler & God
Gott mit uns: On Bush and Hitler's Rhetoric
By Bob Fitrakis / Editor of the Free Press
September 4, 2004
President Bush told Texas evangelist James Robinson that "I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen . . . I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
With 49.3% of New York City residents in a recent Zogby poll believing that some people in our government knew of the 911 attack in advance and allowed it to happen, the President as right-wing evangelical prophet is under siege in his Madison Square Garden bunker. Convention watchers should take careful note of the theocratic nationalist rhetoric at the Republican convention this week.
When was the last time a Western nation had a leader so obsessed with God and claiming God was on our side?
If you answered Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, you're correct. Nothing can be more misleading than to categorize Hitler as a barbaric pagan or Godless totalitarian, like Stalin.
Both Bush and Hitler believe that they were chosen by God to lead their nations. With Hitler boldly proclaiming, before launching his doctrine of preventive war against all of Europe, that "I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany."
"I follow the path assigned to me by Providence with the instinctive sureness of a sleepwalker," Hitler said.
Hitler stated in February 1940, "But there is something else I believe, and that is that there is a God. . . . And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years." After the Iraqi invasion, Bush announced, "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did . . . ." Neither the similarity between Hitler and Bush's religious rhetoric nor the fact that the current President's grandfather was called "Hitler's Angel" by the New York Tribune for his financing of the Fuher's rise to power is lost on Europeans.
Pat Robertson called Bush "a prophet" and Ralph Reed claimed, after the 9/11 attack, God picked the President because "he knew George Bush had the ability to lead in this compelling way." Hitler told the German people in March 1936, "Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell, fell as scarcely any other people heretofore. In this deep misery we again learn to pray. . . . The mercy of the Lord slowly returns to us again. And in this hour we sink to our knees and beseech our almighty God that he may bless us, that He may give us the strength to carry on the struggle for the freedom, the future, the honor, and the peace of our people. So help us God."
At the beginning of Hitler's crusade on April 12, 1922, he spelled out his version of the warmongering Jesus: "My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter." Randall Balmer in The Nation, noted that "Bush's God is the eye-for-an-eye God of the Hebrew prophets and the Book of Revelation, the God of vengeance and retribution."
As Bush has invoked the cross of Jesus to simultaneously attack the Islamic and Arab world, Hitler also saw the value of exalting the cross while waging endless war: "To be sure, our Christian Cross should be the most exalted symbol of the struggle against the Jewish-Marxist-Bolshevik spirit."
Like Bush-ites, Hitler was fond of invoking the Ten Commandments as the foundation of Nazi Germany: "The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there's no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul."
But if you ever wondered where Bush got his idea for so-called "faith-based initiatives" you need only consult Hitler's January 30, 1939 speech to the Reichstag. The Fuhrer begins, "Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so-called democracy is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion."
Hitler goes on to document how much "public monies derived from taxation through the organs of the State have been placed at the disposal of both churches [Protestant and Catholic]." Hitler gave nearly 1.8 billion Reichsmarks between 1933-1938 directly to the Christian churches. In 1938 alone, he bragged that the Nazis gave half a billion Reichsmarks from the national government and an additional 92 million Reichsmarks from the Nazi-controlled German states and parish associations.
Hitler made the intent of his faith-based initiative clear when he noted, "With a tenth of our budget for religion, we would thus have a Church devoted to the State and of unshakable loyalty. . . . the little sects, which receive only a few hundred thousand marks, are devoted to us body and soul."
Bush's assertion that "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job" brings to mind God as a dull-witted, cognitively-impaired nationalist unable to utter a simple declarative sentence who spends his time preaching "blessed are the warmongers and profit-makers."
Bob Fitrakis is the Editor of the Free Press (freepress.org), a political science professor, attorney
and co-author with Harvey Wasserman of George W. Bush vs. the Superpower of Peace.
from: http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/942
