Labor Day Weekend, 2006

http://clyburn.house.gov/statements/040305manufactjobs.html

Many Americans remember the old McDonald’s commercial that had us all hungry for: “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun.” When you felt compelled to purchase one of those concoctions, did you feel as though you had just bought a product similar to the factory-produced computer that sits on your desktop? Or the desk it sits upon? The Bush Administration seems to think you should.

The President sent his new Economic Report to Congress last month, and buried among the 417 pages was the Administration’s query about reclassifying fast food workers as manufacturing positions. The New York Times reports the White House drew a box for emphasis around the section that laments the current system of classifying jobs “is not straightforward.” The report went on to ask “When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a ‘service’ or is it combining inputs to ‘manufacture’ a product?” According to the Administration’s logic, fast food production is the equivalent of producing an automobile or manufacturing a computer.

MORTON KONDRACKE, San Diego Union-Tribune

Why economy isn’t helping the GOP

September 1, 2006

Even though the economy generally is strong, as the White House proclaims, new data illustrates why President Bush’s polls are low: Wages haven’t been rising and workers are losing health coverage.

White House aides assert that worker compensation has begun to rise as the economy continues to grow, but they acknowledge the word is not getting out in time to help Republicans in the November elections.

The latest Gallup Poll shows that Bush’s overall approval rating is 42 percent, but on the economy, it’s only 39 percent. Gallup also found that Americans favor Democrats to handle the economy by a margin of 52 percent to 38 percent.

Conventional political wisdom is that attitudes on the economy suffer under a dark shadow cast by the Iraq War, but some top administration aides acknowledge that economic concerns may have their own bite.

This week’s report from the Census Bureau shows that the nation’s median household income rose slightly in 2005 – but only because more family members were taking jobs to make ends meet.

And a front-page New York Times analysis of economic data showed that both median hourly wages and total worker compensation – wages plus benefits – fell between 2003 and 2005, despite surging productivity and corporate profits.

Meanwhile, the bureau’s report showed another jump in the number of Americans lacking health insurance – up 1.3 million in one year to 46.6 million, or 15.9 percent of the population.

Of the 1.3 million, fully 961,000 were employed all year – evidence that employers are continuing a trend of dropping coverage. When they do, workers’ children also lose coverage – and the bureau showed that the percentage of children lacking insurance rose from 10.8 percent to 11.2 percent.

And the report showed that economic recovery has not diminished the nation’s poverty rate, which held steady at 12.6 percent.

The data suggests that, while the overall economy has recovered strongly during the Bush administration, the benefits have not accrued to average workers – a trend that definitely helps Democrats in the fall elections.

Which of course is BUSHSPEAK for cut wages, and benefits while increasing corporate profits

Pretty soon we will be competitive with places like Cambodia and Guatemala.

On America Working
The war on workers


David Sirota
Monday, September 4, 2006

U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige labeled one “a terrorist organization.” Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, called them “a clear and present danger to the security of the United States.” And U.S. Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., claimed they employ “tyranny that Americans are fighting and dying to defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan” and are thus “enemies of freedom and democracy,” who show “why we still need the Second Amendment” to defend ourselves with firearms.

Who are these supposed threats to America? No, not Osama bin Laden followers, but labor unions made up of millions of workers—janitors, teachers, firefighters, police officers, you name it.

Bashing organized labor is a Republican pathology, to the point where unions are referenced with terms reserved for military targets. In his 1996 article, headlined “GOP Readies for War With Big Labor,” conservative columnist Robert Novak cheered the creation of a “GOP committee task force on the labor movement” that would pursue a “major assault” on unions. As one Republican lawmaker told Novak, GOP leaders champion an “anti-union attitude that appeals to the mentality of hillbillies at revival meetings.”

The hostility, while disgusting, is unsurprising. Unions wield power for workers, meaning they present an obstacle to Republican corporate donors, who want to put profit-making over other societal priorities.

Think the minimum wage just happened? Think employer-paid health care and pensions have been around for as long as they have by some force of magic? Think again—unions used collective bargaining to preserve these benefits. As the saying goes, union members are the folks that brought you the weekend.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — Iraqi casualties soared by more than 50 percent in recent months, the product of spiraling sectarian clashes and a Sunni-based insurgency that remains “potent and viable,” the Pentagon said in its latest comprehensive assessment of security in Iraq.

During the period from the establishment of the new Iraqi government on May 20 until Aug. 11, the average number of weekly attacks jumped to almost 800. That was a substantial increase from earlier this year and almost double the number of the first part of 2004.

As a consequence, Iraqi casualties increased 51 percent over the last reporting period. The document notes that, based on initial reports, Iraqi casualties among civilians and security forces reached nearly 120 a day, up from about 80 a day in the pervious reporting period from mid-February to mid-May. About two years ago they were running about 30 a day.

“Although the overall number of attacks increased in all categories, the proportion of those attacks directed against civilians increased substantially,” the Pentagon noted. “Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife, with Sunni and Shia extremists each portraying themselves as the defenders of their respective sectarian groups.”

New York Times

These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan. They weren’t wearing uniforms . . . but were there to kill. (President Bush 06/20/05)
Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.

Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed “fighters for;” 30% considered “members of;” a large majority – 60%—are detained merely because they are “associated with” a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners their nexus to any terrorist group is unidentified.

Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/index.html

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — It began last summer.

On a July morning, Taliban gunmen shot dead the province’s most powerful cleric as he walked to the main city mosque to lead morning prayers. Five months later, they executed a teacher at a nearby village school as students watched. The following month, they walked into another mosque and gunned down an Afghan engineer working for a foreign aid group, shooting him in the back as he pressed his forehead to the ground and supplicated to God.

This spring and summer, the slow and methodical siege of this southern provincial capital intensified. The Taliban and their allies set up road checkpoints, burned 20 trucks and slowed the flow of supplies to reconstruction projects. All told, in surrounding Helmand Province, five teachers, one judge and scores of police officers have been killed. Dozens of schools and courts have been shuttered, according to Afghan officials.

“Our government is weak,” said Fowzea Olomi, a local women’s rights advocate whose driver was shot dead in May and who fears she is next. “Anarchy has come.”

When the Taliban fell nearly five years ago, Lashkar Gah seemed like fertile ground for the United States-led effort to stabilize the country. For 30 years during the cold war, Americans carried out the largest development project in Afghanistan’s history here, building a modern capital with suburban-style tract homes, a giant hydroelectric dam and 300 miles of canals that made 250,000 acres of desert bloom. Afghans called this city “Little America.”

September 2, 2006

News Analysis

Bush’s Shift of Tone on Iraq:

The Grim Cost of Losing

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — President Bush’s newest effort to rebuild eroding support for the war in Iraq features a distinct shift in approach: Rather than stressing the benefits of eventual victory, he and his top aides are beginning to lay out the grim consequences of failure.

It is a striking change of tone for a president who prides himself on optimism and has usually maintained that demeanor, at least in public, while his aides cast critics as defeatists.

But in his speech on Thursday in Salt Lake City — the first in a series to commemorate the Sept. 11 anniversary — he picked up on an approach that Gen. John P. Abizaid , Vice President Dick Cheney and others have refined in the past few months: a warning that defeat in Iraq will only move the battle elsewhere, threatening allies in the Middle East and eventually, Mr. Bush insisted, Americans “in the streets of our own cities.”

“We can allow the Middle East to continue on its course — on the course it was headed before September the 11th,” Mr. Bush said, “and a generation from now, our children will face a region dominated by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons. Or we can stop that from happening, by rallying the world to confront the ideology of hate and give the people of the Middle East a future of hope.”

It is reminiscent of — updated for a different war, and a different time — President Lyndon B. Johnson’s adoption of the “domino theory,” in which South Vietnam’s fall could lead to Communism’s spread through Southeast Asia and beyond. In the case of Iraq, Mr. Bush’s argument boils down to a statement he quoted from General Abizaid, his top commander in the Middle East: “If we leave, they will follow us.”

Film Clip

Like other honorable commentators in U.S. television history Edward R.Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Bill Moyers;
Keith Olbermann spoke”Truth to Power,” by challenging Donald Rumsfeld, and by extension the unconstitutional behavior of the Bush administration.

Even if he is fired by the Rightwingers that own and control MSNBC (General Electric) he has made a statement for the ages.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=B5eOvaWKY3g

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12131617

The Armitage Confession & the Niger Problem

I Am a Curious Yellowcake

By DAVE LINDORFF

Now that Dick Armitage has admitted to being the initial source of right-wing columnist Robert Novak’s news story outing Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent and wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, it’s important to remember what this story is really all about.

The mainstream media has focused on the scandal as a whodunit, all about White House leaks and journalists’ unidentified sources, but the real issue has largely been left unaddressed, namely: Why did the White House go to such lengths to try to attack and discredit Wilson, a career diplomat?

Counterpunch

You’re sooo right Dubya, and with your policies the number of people that hate Americans will continue to grow in leaps and bounds.

An Appeal to the 

Anti-War Movement

By David Chen

If there was an achilles heel that would definitely bring down not only the Bush Administration, but every tyrannical mechanism they have constructed in their fraudulent “War on Terror”, would you strike at it? As I scour the web and talk to people in the anti-war movement, I have heard disheartening answers ranging from dismissiveness to fear to willful ignorance. I am referring to attitudes regarding the one event used by the neo-cons and their flag waving supporters to justify endless war, government looting, eroding constitutional freedoms, and everything else under the sun, namely 9/11. What is disheartening is that we are missing out on a golden opportunity to unite and bring down the current reign of tyranny.

In light of probable war in Iran, previous scams in history, such as the Nazi Gleiwitz incident and the Iraqi WMD scam , serve as guides as to what we can watch for as the powers that be prepare a staged provocation to lead America to war. It is time for everyone to drop the dismissive attitude towards the rapidly growing 9/11 truth movement. It is time for people to recognize 9/11 truth’s vital role in preserving liberty and stopping future wars of aggression. It is high time for people in the mainstream anti-war movement to investigate 9/11 and expose the official story for the fraud that it is.

“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrongdoing which will be imposed on them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

Frederick Douglass

Crowds surrounding the Reflecting Pool, during the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. An estimated 200 to 500 thousand people participated in the march, which featured Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

“I Have a Dream” is the popular name given to the historic public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., when he spoke of his desire for a future where blacks and whites would coexist harmoniously as equals. King’s delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. The speech is often considered to be one of the greatest speeches in history and was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.[1] According to U.S. Congressman John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, “Dr. King had the power, the ability and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a modern day pulpit. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed [not just] the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations.”[2]

link

It was a major factor leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Repukes printing up hundred dollar bills for themselves:

CBS News Story

http://brasscheck.com/videos/middleeast/me5.html

The Israeli army is sooooo overrated. They had a mutiny on their hands after a series of skirmishes with Hezbollah. These guys are nothing more than an over-glorified police force. Read on -

Times Online Story

Story

During his August 21 press conference, George W. Bush responded to a question about the Iraq War by saying that “sometimes I’m happy” about the conflict. But many readers and TV viewers never heard the remark, since journalists edited the statement to save Bush any possible embarrassment.

Bush’s unedited comment was as follows:

Q: But are you frustrated, sir?

BUSH: Frustrated? Sometimes I’m frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I’m happy. This is—but war is not a time of joy. These aren’t joyous times. These are challenging times, and they’re difficult times, and they’re straining the psyche of our country. I understand that.

Viewers of CBS Evening News (8/21/06) saw a carefully edited version of that response, one better suited to presenting Bush as serious and concerned with the effects of the war. Reporter Bill Plante previewed the answer by saying that Bush “conceded that daily reports of death and destruction take a toll, both on the nation and on him.” The edited quote that followed:

Frustrated? Sometimes I’m frustrated, rarely surprised. These aren’t joyous times. These are challenging times, and they’re difficult times. And they’re straining the psyche of our country. I understand that.

CBS was not alone in massaging Bush’s response,many outlets excised Bush’s “happy” remark, or found other ways to clean up Bush’s performance. NBC Nightly News (8/21/06) worked around Bush’s awkward answer; reporter Kelly O’Donnell noted that Bush “offered an unusual glimpse into his thinking,” but then proceeded to edit the comments to Bush’s advantage:

BUSH: Frustrated? Sometimes I’m frustrated. Rarely surprised.

O’DONNELL: and acknowledged Iraq’s weight on the nation.

BUSH: They’re difficult times, and they’re straining the psyche of our country. I understand that.

So instead of airing Bush’s “happy” remark, NBC ’s reporter stressed the fact that Bush was serious about Iraq’s “weight on the nation.”

Print outlets also generally left out Bush’s remark and praised his performance. The New York Times (8/22/06) interpreted Bush’s “occasionally rocking back and forth” as a sign that he was “generally upbeat,” while the Los Angeles Times was more effusive: “Bush’s appearance suggested he was settling into a pattern of regular, wide-ranging interactions with reporters in which he can appear confident and presidential” (8/22/06).

Of course, Bush can only appear that way if the press decides to present his comments in the most flattering light. With the Iraq War widely unpopular with the public, many viewers may have found Bush saying that it sometimes made him “happy” jarring and distasteful. CBS and NBC apparently thought it was more appropriate to shield viewers from Bush’s words, and, perhaps more importantly, shield the White House from that public response.

ACTION: Contact CBS and NBC and ask them why they decided that Bush’s comments about the Iraq War making him “happy” should be excised from their reporting.

CONTACT:
CBS Evening News
evening@cbsnews.com

CBS Public Eye
publiceye@cbs.com

NBC Nightly News
nightly@nbc.com

NOTE: You can watch the CBS broadcast here:
CBS News Clip

Click on the segment labeled “Bush Holds Firm On Iraq”

“Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business”

John Dewey

It is impossible to put a precise figure on the number of American troops who have left the army as a result of the US involvement in Iraq. The Pentagon says that a total of 40,000 troops have deserted their posts (not simply those serving in Iraq) since the year 2000. This includes many who went Awol for family reasons. The Pentagon’s spokesmen say that the overall number of deserters has actually gone down since operations began in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is no doubt that a steady trickle of deserters who object to the Iraq war have made it over the border and are now living in Canada. There they seek asylum, often with the help of Canadian anti-war groups. One Toronto lawyer, Jeffry House, has represented at least 20 deserters from Iraq in the Canadian courts; he is himself a conscientious objector, having refused to fight in the Vietnam war – along with 50,000 others, at the peak of the conflict. He estimates that 200 troops have already gone underground in Canada since the war in Iraq began.

These conscientious objectors are a brave group – their decisions will result in long-term life changes. To be labelled a deserter is no small burden. If convicted of desertion, they run the risk of a prison sentence – with hard labour. To choose exile can mean lifelong separation from family and friends, as even the most trivial encounter with the police in America – say, over a traffic offence – could lead to jail.

Many of the deserters are not pacifists, against war per se, but they view the Iraq war as wrong. First Lt Watada, for instance, said he would face prison rather than serve in Iraq, though he was prepared to pack his bags for Afghanistan to fight in a war that he considered just. They don’t want to face the military courts, which is why they have decided to flee to Canada. A generation ago, Canada welcomed Vietnam-war draft dodgers and deserters. Today, the political climate is different and the score or so of US deserters who are now north of the border are applying for refugee status. So far, the Canadian government is saying no, so cases rejected for refugee status are going to appeal in the federal courts.

But there is no guarantee that these exiles will ultimately find safe haven in Canada. If the federal courts rule against the soldiers and they then exhaust all further judicial possibilities, they may be deported back to the United States – and that may not be what the Americans want. Their presence in the US will in itself represent yet another public-relations headache for the Bush administration.

JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer Mon Aug 28, 7:03 AM ET

EDINBURGH, Scotland – Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday ever-tighter political and economic control of the media is a major threat to democracy.

Gore said the goal behind his year-old “interactive” television channel Current TV was to encourage the kind of democratic dialogue that thrives online but is increasingly rare on TV.

“Democracy is under attack,” Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. “Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time.

The story

Creating A Sustainable Future has prepared a petition addressed to the United Nations General Assembly demanding that the UN immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI).

The Petition, “Demand an Immediate International Criminal Tribunal for Israel”, demands that The United Nations General Assembly immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) as a subsidiary organ under U.N. Charter Article 22 to prosecute the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz, Chief of Staff Halutz and Israel’s other top generals as war criminals for their infliction of international war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine.

Petition is posted at:
Petition

A small number of local political activists gathered at 16th & Broadway on Saturday evening, August 26th to protest the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the kidnapping and continued detention of democratically elected Palestinian leaders and the Bush administration’s pro-war policies.

Story

By Paul Craig Roberts

08/27/06 “Information Clearing House”

Many readers have praised me for my courage in broaching taboo subjects and stating obvious truths. Others denounce me for “being unpatriotic and distrusting our government.” One reader, Susan Hartman, wrote to me that I was obviously in the pay of Islamic Jihadists and that she had reported me to the FBI.

Despite the lack of evidence to support their belief, a number of readers remain confident that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that America narrowly missed being annihilated. These readers know for a fact that Hussein had WMD, because “the President would know, and he wouldn’t lie.”

In other words, whatever Bush says is true, and all who doubt him are unpatriotic. “You are with us or against us.” The facts be damned. There are a large number of Susan Hartmans in the body politic.

A group of scientists, engineers, and university professors are trying to start a debate about the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings. I reported one of their findings: There is an inconsistency between the speed with which the buildings collapsed and the “pancaking theory” used to explain the collapse .Another way of putting the problem is that there seems to be a massive energy deficit in the explanation that the buildings fell as a result of gravitational energy. There simply was not sufficient gravitational energy to produce the results.

For reporting a scientific finding, I was called a “conspiracy theorist.” Only in America is scientific analysis seen as conspiracy theory and government lies as truth.

Applications of the laws of physics and scientific calculations can be reviewed and checked by other scientists. Scientists, like the rest of us, can make mistakes. However, questions raised about the collapse of the WTC buildings are not engaged but ignored.

The 9/11 scholars findings seem to be in sync with public opinion. Polls show that more than one-third and as much as one-half of the American public does not believe the government’s 9/11 story.

The public doesn’t believe the John F. Kennedy assassination story either. Nevertheless, experts who point out problems in the official story are still called “conspiracy theorists” even though a large percentage of the people share their doubts.

I think the reason so many Americans do not believe the Kennedy story told by the Warren Commission and the 9/11 story told by the 9/11 Commission is not because Americans are knowledgeable about ballistics or physics, or know how to do energy calculations, but because the stories contain too many unusual happenings, too many oddities.

In the Kennedy case doubts are raised by such things as an improbable bullet trajectory, the against-all-procedures absence of Secret Service agents from the rear and sides of Kennedy’s limo, the inexplicable access of an unauthorized armed civilian, Jack Ruby, who was able to assassinate Oswald inside the jail before Oswald could be questioned. Online at Link

there is a report that two scientists, Pat Grant and Erik Randich, at the Forensic Science Center of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have discredited the reliability of the “neutron activation” analysis, which was used to “prove” that all the recovered bullet fragments came from Oswald’s shots. Courts no longer accept as evidence and the FBI no longer uses the analysis that was used to close the Oswald case.

Any one of these things would be an oddity. The combination of oddities becomes inexplicable, a statistical impossibility.

The same with the explanation of 9/11. Powerfully constructed buildings collapse when there is no source of the required energy to do the job. A large 757 hits the Pentagon but leaves a small hole, and there is no sign of wings, engines, tail or fuselage. Every air control and military procedure fails, and hijacked airliners are not intercepted by jet fighters. The alleged hijackers’ names apparently are not on the passenger lists, and some of the alleged hijackers have been found alive and well in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Thomas R. Olmstead used the Freedom of Information Act to get a copy of the autopsy list of American Airlines flight 77, and he reports that there are no Arabic names on the list.

My point is a simple one. Attentive people, even if they are not scientifically literate, can sense when there are too many oddities for an explanation to be believable.

If deception is sensed, there is a receptive audience when experts or film makers speak. Denouncing inconvenient facts as “conspiracy theories” is a way of suppressing debate and investigation.

This itself is telling. If the official explanations are safe, their proponents should welcome the opportunity to show again and again that the explanations can stand all challenges. Instead, the second a challenge shows its head, it is branded a “conspiracy theory.” That tells me that the official explanations can stand no challenge.

Don’t ask me who killed Kennedy and why, and don’t ask me who was behind the 9/11 attack or what brought the three WTC buildings down. My position is a simple one. The official accounts are too improbable to be believable.

I won’t believe them until the government can explain where the energy came from to bring down the three WTC buildings. With the demise of the “single bullet” theory, there seems to be no verification of Oswald’s magical shooting.

It seems to me that the real conspiracy theories are the explanations that are overweighted with improbabilities.

Readers ask me what can we do? We can do very little as we have lost control over our government. Elections, even if not stolen, change very little. Government got free of our control when we forgot the teaching of our Founding Fathers that government is always the greatest threat to our liberty.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Information Clearinghouse

Please help grow this list. To join, send an email to Pat Elder at agentforchange@comcast.net

Associated Press | August 29, 2006

SAN JOSE, California – The Defense Department has announced it will closely monitor military recruiters and their commanders in light of two investigations – one by the government, the other by The Associated Press – that found increased levels of recruiter misconduct.

“Through this monitoring we are going to evaluate a command’s ability to control, or eliminate, misconduct by military recruiters as well as the actions taken by commands towards those recruiters found to have violated the code of conduct with potential recruits,” said Defense Department spokesman Maj. Sean Upton.

Upton said the monitoring will last five to 10 months and that once the Defense Department has enough data and can confirm its integrity, officials will consider changes in policy.

Last week the AP reported that one out of 200 frontline military recruiters – the ones who deal directly with young people – was disciplined for sexual misconduct in 2005. The cases ranged from fraternization to forcible rape. Earlier, the Government Accountability Office released a report that showed overall wrongdoing by military recruiters increased from just over 400 cases in 2004 to 630 cases in 2005.

Voters for Peace

Here’s the message we received:

Wed.Aug.30.2006@5:00PM to
Wed.Aug.30.2006@7:00PM

Click
here for flier in PDF

Join the DC Anti-War Network on Wednesday August 30, 200 in protest against the war profiteering of The Washington Post. Gather at 5PM outside of The Washington Post located at 1150 15th Street, NW.

SPEAK OUT! PROTEST WASHINGTON POST

Wednesday
August 30 5-7 pm

1150
15th Street NW at L Street

Bring
signs, banners, noise-makers

STOP TAKING MONEY FROM WAR PROFITEERS! IS THE TRUTH FOR SALE?
Washington Post editorials have supported U.S. attacks on Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq as well as U.S.-backed attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Its news reporting emphasizes government excuses for war and only belatedly and reluctantly exposes the lies and propaganda leading
to those wars. It supports the Bush administrations war on terrorism and does little to expose the anti-Arab and Muslim agenda of government and private organizations that is inflaming bigotry in this country.

Washington Post reporters who truthfully report on controversial stories may be silenced. The NY Sun recently reported the Post rebuked Thomas Ricks for televised comments about U.S. military allegations about deceptive
Israeli strategies in Lebanon. That is just one of many allegations by media watch dog groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and Palestine Media Watch.

Even as two-thirds of Americans now think the Iraq war was a mistake, based in part on lies, the Post supports the U.S. staying in Iraq. As we approach the August 31 U.S.-coerced deadline for the cessation of Iranian nuclear enrichment, Post editorials and Op Eds overwhelmingly support the possibility of a U.S. military attack on Iran. The free press is supposed to help guard the public against unjust and unnecessary wars, not provide propaganda cover for those wars!

Why does the Post support pro-war policies? Could it be that its top management has forgone objectivity and acquiesced to the economic and political agendas of corporate advertiser? Do the full page ads placed by military contractors and other private businesses supporting an aggressive foreign policy influence the Post’s editorial outlook?

WE
DEMAND:

The Washington Post stop running display advertisements from militarycontractors. The Washington Post run more articles about the anti-Iraq war sentiment shared by the great majority of Americans.

The Washington Post discover and emphasize the administration’s false charges and lies excusing their drive for a military attack on Iran.

The Washington Post widen the range of debate with more Op Eds by the broad spectrum of anti-war Americans.

The Washington Post Board of Directors set aside one seat for a spokesperson for peace and non-interventionism.

Sponsored
by DC Antiwar Network.

Location:
1150 15th Street, NW, Washington,, DC
Metro:
McPherson Square