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George W. Bush;s Resume (C.V) |
axxxr
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A label that apologizes for Bush
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axxxr
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axxxr
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WHY DID'NT I GO TO VIETNAM?
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axxxr
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Cowards All Around
The media should take a step back and remind us what Bush and Cheney were up to in 1969.
At first blush, the treatment given to Michael Dobbs' page-one swift-boat article in Sunday's Washington Post seems at least vaguely reassuring. There's the neutral headline "Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete," but below that, a deck-headline informing readers that "Critics Fail to Disprove Kerry's Version of Vietnam War Episode." The banner treatment, running across three-fourths of the front page above the fold, places the onus of proof where it belongs -- on the accusers, not on Kerry, a point that Bob Novak and others have chosen to ignore, obscure, or even refute; and in announcing that the proof isn't there, it seems to be a plus for Kerry.
So what's wrong with this picture? This: The Washington Post should not even be running such a story -- a takeout of something in the neighborhood of 2,700 words, I'm guessing, delving into the remotest arcana about what really happened on the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969 -- in the first place. Len Downie and the paper's other editors would undoubtedly argue that the story represents the Post's tenacity for getting to the truth, without fear or favor. But what the story actually proves is that a bunch of liars who have in the past contradicted their own current statements can, if their lies are outrageous enough and if they have enough money, control the media agenda and get even the most respected media outlets in the country to focus on picayune "truths" while missing the larger story.
And the larger story here is clear: John Kerry volunteered for the Navy, volunteered to go to Vietnam, and then, when he was sitting around Cam Ranh Bay bored with nothing to do, requested the most dangerous duty a Naval officer could be given. He saved a man's life. He risked his own every time he went up into the Mekong Delta. He did more than his country asked. In fact he didn't even wait for his country to ask.
George W. Bush spent those same years in a state of dissolution at Yale, and would go on, as we know, to plot how to get out of going to Southeast Asia. On that subject, here's a choice quote. "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment," Bush told the Dallas Morning News in 1990. "Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."
Let's parse that quotation phrase for phrase. We do not, of course, know the full context of the conversation he was having with the reporter, and we don't know exactly what question Bush was asked. But his words begin from the presumption that actually going to Vietnam was absolutely not an option. The quote is entirely about how to avoid going. He wasn't prepared to damage his hearing intentionally for the sake of securing a deferment (he probably meant a 4-F classification and confused the two). And he wasn't willing to go to Canada. So he took the third option, the Air National Guard. And note how the choice was about bettering himself, not about thinking of a way to best render service that this child of privilege might -- had he been possessed of the moral fiber and sense of duty of, say, John Kerry -- have considered his obligation, especially considering that, on paper at least, he supported the war.
Dick Cheney is another who, on paper at least, supported the war. But we know Cheney's story: A series of deferments going back to 1963, when he was a student at Casper College in Wyoming. As Tim Noah reported in Slate, Cheney went on to marry -- as fate would have it, right after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when it was clear that young single men would be called up in larger numbers than before. And then he went on to have a child, Elizabeth, born precisely nine months and two days after the Selective Service ended the proscription on the drafting of married but childless men. What a happily timed burst of passion he and Lynn were consumed by! So, while Kerry was plying the Mekong Delta, Cheney was safe and dry stateside, dropping out of Yale because his grades weren't sufficient to maintain the scholarship the school had offered him.
Everyone knows Cheney's quote, delivered to the Senate committee that was vetting him for service as George H.W. Bush's Defense Secretary, that he "had other priorities" than going to fight for his country. But he made another comment at that hearing that's less known and more damning: He said he "would have obviously been happy to serve had I been called." That, as John Nichols notes in his recent book Dick, is not just an obfuscation or a tap dance; it's a lie. He was called, and he ducked.
So now we're having a debate about whether the man who did the honorable thing may have embellished his record a little (although nothing in the documentary record suggests he did this), while we have two cowards who did everything they could to stay miles away from the place Kerry demanded he be sent. This is the fundamental truth. And while yes, Kerry has made his war service a centerpiece in a way that Bush and Cheney for obvious reasons did not, is it really Kerry who deserves scrutiny for how he behaved in 1968 and 1969? Why shouldn't the major media be doing comparisons of how Kerry, Bush, and Cheney passed those years? Why shouldn't The Washington Post be devoting 2,700 words to a comprehensive look at Cheney's deferments? Nichols identifies three young men from Casper who did die in Vietnam: Robert Cardenas, Walter Elmer Handy, and Douglas Tyrone Patrick. Did one of them die because Cheney had "other priorities"?
But The Washington Post won't do that, because there exists no Vietnam Veterans for the Truth About Deferments, financed by wealthy Democratic donors and out peddling its wares. Which is the moral of the story. Our media can sort through the facts in front of their nose and determine, at least some of the time, who's lying and who's not. But they are completely incapable of taking a step back and describing the larger reality. Doing that would require making judgments that are supposedly subjective rather than objective; but the larger reality here is clearer than clear. Just imagine if the situation were reversed: The same people now questioning Kerry's "character" would have worked to establish Bush as a war hero long ago. They would have labeled Kerry a coward. If by chance a liberal-backed group came forward to question Bush's wartime actions, they would have been called traitors and worse. And the mainstream media would be following the agenda they set every step of the way.
You'd think a press corps that has now officially acknowledged that it was had by this administration on the pre-Iraq war propaganda would think twice before letting itself get used one more time. You'd think, for example, that if the editors of the Washington Post were planning 2,700-word takeouts, they might have given priority to an investigation into ties between the White House and the Swift Boat group. If the conventions of mainstream journalism prevent our media from letting readers, viewers, and listeners examine the full truth in its broadest context, then it's time to reexamine those conventions. Until that happens, people who are willing to say anything, and who have the money to back them up, will be setting the agenda, and the media -- once upon a time, a guardian of our democratic traditions -- will be following them.
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axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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From: Londinium
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NEW YORK (Wireless Flash) -There will be a lot of pants-dropping and panty-flashing at the Republican National Convention in New York on September 1
The Axis of Eve -- a women's rights group -- is planning a 10-minute mass panty flash to protest the policies of the Bush administration.
The group consists of more than 100 women, all of whom will flash panties emblazoned with anti-Bush slogans like "give Bush the finger," "cream Bush" and "drill Bush, not oil."
Event planner Natasha Eve says her group feels, "...depressed with the deceit that's the norm for this administration," and is doing the flash as "a symbolic demand for accountability in government."
Natasha adds that dropping trou allows young women to mobilize and utilize their political passion in ways they never thought of before.
The group has exposed themselves at political events before, but Natasha admits, "This is the big one."
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axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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New Swift boat ad cheap and almost certainly wrong.
It is a twisted state of affairs that George W. Bush's most avid surrogates are trying to make this election turn on the question of whether Lt. John Kerry was or was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968.
Having pretty much failed at their efforts to disprove the official U.S. Navy account of Kerry's valor in battle as skipper of a "Swift boat" patrolling the Mekong Delta, the veterans against Kerry have moved to discredit his more obscure claim—made a few times over the years, in interviews and Senate floor speeches—that, on Dec. 24, he took CIA or special ops forces across the border into Cambodia,even while Washington claimed no American troops were there.
Kerry first told this story publicly in an article published in the Boston Herald on Oct. 14, 1979, before he was a senator.
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Lynx69
Joined: Feb 22, 2004
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Quote:
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On 2004-08-23 22:18:11, axxxr wrote:
A label that apologizes for Bush
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Cant argue with that!
 >>*Wow 2100+ posts*<< |
axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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From: Londinium
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Caught on tape - At a public event, Former Texas Lt. Govenor apologizes and expresses regret for helping George W. and other rich contributors avoid the draft while others went and died.
UNEDITED VIDEO
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axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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On September 2nd, 2004, at approximately 10 pm, George W. Bush will appear on television screens nationwide. For some of our fellow citizens, this will be a moment of joy.
Until now, there have been only two options: miss the speech (either by screaming at the television or turning it off), or bottle up the frustration within us, causing irreparable psychological harm. The first option is unbecoming of citizens in a democracy. The second option is just terrible. But now, for the first time, we have a better way. At the moment we see the president on our television screens, we will rise. We will throw open our windows. And, as George W. Bush moves to the podium in New York City, we will send him a message about his bid for reelection: we will yell, “fuggedaboudit!”
This will be a peaceful, non-disruptive protest. We will stop yelling before the president starts speaking. Our goal is not to drown him out, but to communicate. (And vent.)
We will do it in groups.,find a event or if you can't find one, plan your own. You can also sign up to shout solo. If “fuggedaboudit” doesn’t feel right—for example, if you aren’t in New York City—we urge you to customize your shout. But no obscenities. You’ll be addressing the president of the United States. And we will be broadcasting the shout-outs live, from several locations, on Air America Radio.
www.thegreatamericanshoutout.org
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axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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Tech helps protesters get creative
NEW YORK (AP) -- Gary Boston and Jeff Adler are just two guys with a dream: shutting down New York City for a day.
What they want is a general strike, with everyone from Broadway dancers to Madison Avenue street sweepers calling in sick Wednesday to protest the Republican National Convention, which begins on Monday. (Special Report: America Votes 2004, the Republican convention)
Both men are in their 30s and have full-time jobs, and neither has any organizing experience. Boston, who had never built a Web site before, put together ShutItDownNYC.com in three days, using Microsoft FrontPage software and the book "FrontPage for Dummies." The site has received more than 22,000 hits since it launched in late June.
"It's pretty amazing the amount of attention we've been able to generate with very simple tools," said Boston, a Wall Street analyst.
Technology has changed how protests are organized.
Activists are using the Internet to arrange housing for out-of-towners, organize a mass-flash of underwear emblazoned with anti-Bush messages and tell protesters what to say if they're arrested ("I am going to remain silent. I would like to speak with a lawyer.").
There are at least two Web guides for protesters packed with calendars of events and dining guides -- including Dumpster diving tips for those on a tight budget.
Cell phones work well for on-the-fly mobilizations, and text messages add to their power. Some protesters are signing up for 10 p.m. daily text updates telling them where the next day's events will be.
The phones have also put a technological twist on street theater.
An activist who calls himself Rev. Billy and members of his organization, The Church of Stop Shopping, plan to gather Tuesday at the commuter train station at Ground Zero, where they are to mill around reciting lines from the First Amendment into their cell phones for a half-hour, then recite it together, then disperse.
Crowd management
Technology, predictably, has also changed crowd control and surveillance.
Earlier this month, the New York Police Department showed off a machine called the Long Range Acoustic Device, developed for the military and capable of blasting at an earsplitting 150 decibels -- as loud as a firecracker, a jet engine taking off or artillery fire at 500 feet, according to the Noise Center at the League for the Hard of Hearing.
The NYPD said it would use the machine to direct crowds to safety if there's a terrorist attack or remind protesters where they're allowed to march.
Police said they wouldn't use the earsplitting screeching noise feature at the convention.
"It's only to communicate in large crowds," Inspector Thomas Graham of the police department's crowd control unit said.
Free speech advocates say New York's police have videotaped past protests, so organizations like United for Peace and Justice are encouraging protesters to bring their own video cameras to videotape the police.
A Web protest guide from Just Cause Law Collective suggests that protesters who see police brutality document it by leaving a detailed cell phone message for themselves or recording what they see on their portable music player.
Mobile bloggers, or mobloggers, are expected to show up in droves and quickly post on the Web photos, text and even video chronicling events as they happen.
"People will be able to quickly upload what is being seen, what is being felt and what is being done," said Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of a tech-steeped civil disobedience group called The Electronic Disturbance Theater.
"We will be able to keep an eye on the police the same way they keep an eye on us."
The New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union will be using cell phones and two-way pagers to monitor demonstrations.
Its legal team will be in close contact with the police "so we can hear about problems and trouble-shoot them instantly," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Hacking element
Will the convention be a target for hackers?
"The word 'target' is inappropriate," said Emmanuel Goldstein, editor and publisher of 2600, a hacking magazine.
"Hackers are interested in what the cops are doing, how the city is being operated during that (convention) period, what kinds of technology are being implemented here for the first time, as well as all sorts of ways to infiltrate and spread information."
Not many hackers are warning of electronic disruption.
One speaker at this summer's Defcon, an annual hackers conference, advocated disrupting the convention.
And one group released tools online to mount so-called denial-of-service attacks aimed at overwhelming the main Web sites for the convention, the Republican National Committee and the Bush campaign, said Greg Shipley, chief technology officer of the security company Neohapsis Inc.
Such tactics have been used in the past to try to disrupt annual meetings of the global business elite run by the World Economic Forum.
"I don't anticipate much of an online 'hacker' response," said Bryan Burns, who attended Defcon. "People I know who can hack and are politically motivated see themselves as more effective doing civil disobedience in person."
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[ This Message was edited by: axxxr on 2004-08-29 16:46 ] |
axxxr
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'Anybody but Bush,' cry NY marchers
They marched against US policy in the Middle East, against the war in Iraq, against the Bush administration's environmental policy and the Republican Party's opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
They marched against what they saw as a transparent ploy by President George W Bush and the Republican Party to exploit the tragedy of 11 September for political gain.
But one thing united the tens of thousands of protesters who marched for block after block through midtown Manhattan: Their desire to vote George W Bush out of office.
March organisers had predicted that 250,000 would take part in the protest.
They said that the turn out exceeded their wildest expectations.
Diverse group
The march moved very little in the hours after organisers started on the route towards Union Square as tens of thousands of marchers flooded in from side streets.
The marchers included children, young couples, students, the middle aged and the elderly. One woman sat in her wheelchair in Union Square holding a sign saying, "I'm 98 and I'm outraged!"
Barbara, who describes herself as a middle-aged schoolteacher, had never been to a protest march until Sunday.
She held a sign saying that she was a former Republican against George Bush.
They marched against what they saw as a transparent ploy by President George W Bush and the Republican Party to exploit the tragedy of 11 September for political gain.
But one thing united the tens of thousands of protesters who marched for block after block through midtown Manhattan: Their desire to vote George W Bush out of office.
March organisers had predicted that 250,000 would take part in the protest.
They said that the turn out exceeded their wildest expectations.
Diverse group
The march moved very little in the hours after organisers started on the route towards Union Square as tens of thousands of marchers flooded in from side streets.
The marchers included children, young couples, students, the middle aged and the elderly. One woman sat in her wheelchair in Union Square holding a sign saying, "I'm 98 and I'm outraged!"
Barbara, who describes herself as a middle-aged schoolteacher, had never been to a protest march until Sunday.
She held a sign saying that she was a former Republican against George Bush.
She defected from the party in after the first term in office of the current president's father, George HW Bush, when religious and social conservatives Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson spoke at the party's 1992 convention.
"They sounded like dangerous guys, but this George Bush has them in the closet. And they run the party," she said.
"[President George W Bush] has given us record deficits. When Osama Bin Laden is in Afghanistan, he went to war in Iraq. It's a mess," she said.
"We have to get rid of George Bush. We can't tolerate another four years of his international or domestic policies," she said.
Four more years or four more months
Just blocks from the Madison Square Garden, a group of protestors decided to stay at home in their apartment overlooking the route.
They hung "George Bush is the anti-Christ" signs in their window, and a cheer went up from the marchers below as they played the John Lennon song, Give Peace a Chance, from speakers propped up in their windows.
The protest was peaceful. There was a strong police presence, but most were not in riot gear. There were few confrontations.
On the eve of Sunday's massive march, New York City Police said more than 300 protestors had been arrested and more than 50 more were arrested during the first hour of the march.
Across the street from Madison Square Garden, Bush supporters held signs mocking the protestors with slogans such as "Communists for Kerry" and chanted, "Four more years!"
The protestors shouted back, "Four more months!"
A sign at Madison Square Garden welcomed the Republicans, but many protestors wanted the party to know they were not welcome in New York.
Ray Lyman worked in a building across the street from the south tower of the World Trade Centre. The building was heavily damaged and is still covered in a black shroud.
He said the Republican Party's decision to hold its convention in New York is insulting and emotionally offensive. "It feels like a complete violation," he said.
"I don't believe in the way that Bush and the Republican Party are using the tragedy of 9/11 as their campaign platform," he said, adding, "They are using 9/11 as an excuse to further their own right-wing agenda."
Qualified support for Kerry
Four years ago, the protests at the Democratic and Republican conventions were made up largely of Americans who felt alienated from traditional party politics and saw little difference between the two mainstream parties.
But at this march, the political theme could be summed by "Anybody but Bush", even if that means electing John Kerry who voted for the war in Iraq, which they overwhelmingly oppose.
Stephanie Jennings came all the way from San Diego, California, to march in New York.
She carried a sign calling for voters in swing states to vote for the "lesser of two warmongers".
Four years ago, she voted for Ralph Nader. She still believes both parties represent corporate interests over the interests of ordinary people.
"We're here because of Bush policies and the war," she said, but she is also not a strong supporter of the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, John Kerry.
If Mr Kerry has a large lead in California, she plans to vote for the Green Party candidate.
"I need the Democrats to know they can't take my vote for granted," she said.
But she wants John Kerry to win. Under Bush policies, "we are on the precipice. It's a really dangerous time," she said. "Four more years of this, and I fear for the world."
Via:bbc.co.uk
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axxxr
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axxxr
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axxxr
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axxxr
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RNC-NYC: Tactics by Police Mute Protesters, and Their Messages
Interesting piece in today's NYT about NYPD crowd control tactics at the Repulican National Convention. If I'm reading this correctly, the prevailing logic seems to be that a lack of wanton violence makes the protests less worthy of air time and serious media coverage?
Nearly 1,800 protesters had been arrested on the streets, two-thirds of them on Tuesday night alone. But for all the anger of the demonstrations, they have barely interrupted the convention narrative, and have drawn relatively little national news coverage.
Using large orange nets to divide and conquer, and a near-zero tolerance policy for activities that even suggest the prospect of disorder, the New York Police Department has developed what amounts to a pre-emptive strike policy, cutting off demonstrations before they grow large enough, loud enough, or unruly enough to affect the convention. The demonstrations, too, have thus far been more restrained than many recent protests elsewhere.
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Posted: 2004-08-23 22:18
>>*Wow 2100+ posts*<< 
