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Welcome 
If you're coming from the link posted by Jörg Kantel at his Der Schockwellenreiter site, welcome and enjoy your visit. Thanks Jörg.
Jörg and I had more in common as webloggers and exchanged more links when I used to be focused on books, music and whatever else caught my fancy. I hope to return to that style of weblogging after John Kerry is elected. If Kerry loses the election I may be moving to Germany and asking Jörg for a job.
I never thought I say this...
Eminem rocks. Mosh.
I want my country back
New Florida vote scandal feared by Greg Palast
A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".
It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."
Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot.
Mass challenges
They may then only vote "provisionally" after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.
Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a voter "in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections."
"Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day; and discourage voters from voting."
Sancho calls it "intimidation." And it may be illegal. [more]
Greg Palast found the "caging list" in the Dead Letter Office noted earlier today.
Phony morals
U.S. Action Bars Right of Some Captured in Iraq by Douglas Jehl
A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.
The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said.
They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.
The officials outlined the opinion on Monday in response to a report in The Washington Post over the weekend that the Central Intelligence Agency had secretly transferred a dozen non-Iraqi prisoners out of Iraq in the past 18 months, despite a provision in the conventions that bars civilians protected under the accords from being deported from occupied territories.
Since early 2002, the United States has moved hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. American officials have said prisoners captured in Iraq would not be moved to Guantánamo, but they declined to say Monday where any prisoners transferred out of Iraq were being sent. [more]
The CIA's Disappeared Washington Post editorial
The Bush administration pretends, and many Americans may believe, that the abuse of U.S.-held prisoners abroad ended after the release of sensational photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Sadly, it did not. While blaming the crimes at Abu Ghraib on a small group of low-ranking soldiers, the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA have fought to preserve the exceptional and sometimes secret policies that allow U.S. personnel to violate the Geneva Conventions and other laws governing the handling and interrogation of foreign detainees. Under those policies, practices at odds with basic American values continue -- even if there are no sensational photos to document them.
The latest example concerns "ghost prisoners," suspects captured in Iraq and Afghanistan who are interrogated by the CIA in secret locations, sometimes outside those countries, and whose identities and locations are withheld from relatives, the International Red Cross and even Congress. For all practical purposes, they have "disappeared," like the domestic detainees of some notorious dictatorships...
(...)
It's not clear what legal standards the CIA is using for its ghost prisoners, because it refuses to explain the standards even to the congressional committees charged with oversight, much less to the public. What ought to be clear, however, is that the practice of holding detainees incommunicado in secret prisons without any outside oversight violates basic standards of human rights. A number of members of Congress, including several Republican senators, have expressed outrage about the ghost detainees and have promised to investigate; to date they have not done so. Now would be a good time to start.
I'm sick of Bush and the phony morals of his administration. And I'm sick of the so called religious right that support him. They do not stand for my American values. If you vote for Bush, know that you are supporting an administration in violation of the Geneva Conventions. You are supporting an adminsitration that outsources torture. Under Bush we have become a rogue super-power. No matter how despicable our enemy might be, right is still right. If the U.S. only selectively complies with the Geneva Conventions and International Law, how can we expect any other nation to do otherwise?
Not so dead, dead letter office
georgewbush.org is a satirical Bush reelection campaign site. Apparently the .org address has gotten a few Republican operatives confused and they have been sending strategy emails to this, in effect, anti-Bush site. Some of the emails seem to be treading mighty close to illeagal activity. Is there a lawyer in the house?
E-MAIL FROM THE GEORGEWBUSH.ORG "CATCH-ALL" MAILBOX
(link via Blah3.Com)
Do the right thing
An Open Letter to Colin Powell and John McCain by Ernest Partridge
Gentlemen,
Rarely in the course of human events, does an opportunity fall upon a single individual to dramatically and favorably alter the course of history.
Each of you stands at that crossroad of history and each of you, in Abraham Lincoln's words, "hold the power and bear the responsibility."
Along with millions of our countrymen, I implore you to pause, to reflect, and then to follow the demands of your duty to your country and to its enduring principles: renounce your support of George Bush and his corrupt and incompetent administration, and join us in our determination to cleanse our body politic of greed and deliberate ignorance, and to restore the good name of the United States among the community of nations.
Either of you, and most certainly both of you together, can, by this act of conscience and authentic loyalty, bring an end to this administration and by so doing, rescue and renew our democracy. [more]
What you don't know could kill you
A Culture of Cover-Ups by Paul Krugman
Aides to John Kerry say that if he wins, he'll replace Porter Goss as head of the C.I.A. Let's hope so: Mr. Goss has already confirmed the fears of those who worried about his appointment by placing Republican staff members from Capitol Hill in key positions and raising fears about a partisan purge.
But the flap over Mr. Goss is only a symptom of a much broader issue: whether the Bush administration will be able to maintain its culture of cover-ups. That culture affects every branch of policy, but it's strongest when it comes to the "war on terror."
Although President Bush's campaign is based almost entirely on his self-proclaimed leadership in that war, his officials have thrown a shroud of secrecy over any information that might let voters assess his performance.
Yesterday we got two peeks under that shroud. One was The Times's report about what the International Atomic Energy Agency calls "the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Ignoring the agency's warnings, administration officials failed to secure the weapons site, Al Qaqaa, in Iraq, allowing 377 tons of deadly high explosives to be looted, presumably by insurgents.
The administration is trying to play down the importance of this loss, arguing that because Iraq was awash in munitions, a few hundred more tons don't make much difference. But aside from their potential use in nuclear weapons - the reason they were under seal before the war - these particular explosives, unlike standard munitions, are exactly what a terrorist needs.
Informed sources quoted by the influential Nelson Report say explosives from Al Qaqaa are the "primary source" of the roadside and car bombs that have killed and wounded so many U.S. soldiers. And thanks to the huge amount looted - "in a highly organized operation using heavy equipment" - the insurgents and whoever else have access to the Qaqaa material have enough explosives for tens of thousands of future bombs.
If the administration had had its way, the public would never have heard anything about this. Administration officials have known about the looting of Al Qaqaa for at least six months, and probably much longer. But they didn't let the I.A.E.A. inspect the site after the war, and pressured the Iraqis not to inform the agency about the loss. They now say that they didn't want our enemies - that is, the people who stole the stuff - to know it was missing. The real reason, obviously, was that they wanted the news kept under wraps until after Nov. 2. [more]
More, more, more Republicans for Kerry
Republican Switchers
I believe, because, well, I believe
Why I believe in our president by Thomas F. Schaller
I believe in President George W. Bush. I've always believed him.
(...)
I believe the best response against an Islamic fundamentalist network operating from a South Asian cave which used boxcutters to attack us is to invade a secular Arab dictator living in 11 palaces in a Middle Eastern country whose (supposed) weapon of choice was nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. I further believe that the best way to accomplish that mission was to land on air aircraft carrier in military garb and stand in front of a banner declaring it so.
I believe the president when he says he would have moved "heaven and earth" had he any "inkling" that terrorists were planning to attack America with hijacked airplanes. I believe the security briefing the president read five weeks before the attacks which was entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside United States," and specifically mentioned hijacked airplanes and New York City as a target was an inkling-free, "historical" document. I believe we should re-double our investments in a missile defense system, which could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and will prevent future attacks like it from occurring.
I believe the president was right to oppose the formation of the 9/11 Commission, to change his mind but then oppose fully funding it, to change his mind but then oppose granting its request for an extension, to change his mind but refuse to testify for more than an hour, to change his mind but then testify alongside Vice President Dick Cheney so long as transcripts and note-taking were prohibited. I believe the investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shows it was the fault of a handful of misguided underlings who simply misunderstood a memo signed by the Secretary of Defense which authorized the use of dogs to interrogate prisoners.
Domestically, I believe income tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are the solution to budget surpluses or deficits, high or low inflation, stable or unstable interest rates, expanding or shrinking trade deficits, widening or narrowing wealth gaps, increasing or decreasing poverty rates, rising or falling unemployment, prosperity or recession, wartime or peace. I believe record-setting budget deficits, record-setting trade deficits, and a burgeoning national debt are examples of the president's fiscally-conservative economic leadership. [read it all]
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