U.S. House Refuses To Curb Patriot Act

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits.

The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but Republican leaders kept the vote open for about 20 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

School of the Americas House Vote Coming Soon

The BEST OPPORTUNITY for a vote this session to
close the SOA/WHINSEC may be
coming soon; sooner than expected!

The Foreign
Operations Appropriations
bill is scheduled to be voted on by the full House
of Representatives AS
EARLY AS JULY 12th. [Previously we had reported the
vote would take place
the week of the 19th, but the schedule has changed,
and so must we!]

Historically, we have had success in our legislative
efforts when a Member
of Congress has introduced an amendment to that
bill to cut the funds for "scholarships" for the
foreign security forces
attending the SOA/WHINSEC, rendering the school
inoperable. THIS IS OUR
CHANCE TO CLOSE THE SOA. We can do it!

"Cheney Pays Visit to Stadium"

Tyler Kepner, New York Times Vice President Dick Cheney spent about 20 minutes in Manager Joe Torre's office and in the clubhouse shaking hands with players before the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 11-3, last night at Yankee Stadium.

Cheney studied the photographs inside and outside Torre's office and asked Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame catcher, why he was playing the outfield in one picture. Cheney started watching the game from the private box of the Yankees' principal owner, George Steinbrenner, switched to a seat beside the Yankees' dugout for a few innings, then returned to Steinbrenner's box.

"I told him before the game I hope he brings us more good luck than he brings them," Torre said. "It's great any time a dignitary like that visits. It slaps you with pride."

During the singing of "God Bless America" in the seventh inning, an image of Cheney was shown on the scoreboard. It was greeted with booing, so the Yankees quickly removed the image.

Audience Gasps as Judge Likens Election of Bush to Rise of Il Duce

2nd Circuit's Calabresi Also Compares Bush's Rise to That of Hitler

Josh Gerstein, New York Sun

WASHINGTON — A prominent federal judge has told a conference of liberal lawyers that President Bush's rise to power was similar to the accession of dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler.

"In a way that occurred before but is rare in the United States — somebody came to power as a result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution that had the right to put somebody in power.That is what the Supreme Court did in Bush versus Gore. It put somebody in power," said Guido Calabresi, a judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan.
    

"The reason I emphasize that is because that is exactly what happened when Mussolini was put in by the king of Italy," Judge Calabresi continued, as the allusion drew audible gasps from some in the luncheon crowd Saturday at the annual convention of the American Constitution Society.

"Saying No to the Prosecutor:
Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify to the Grand Jury"
Bruce Jackson, Counterpunch

A Death and a Taste of Blood

Steve Kurtz's wife Hope died of a heart attack May 11. Steve, an associate professor of art at University at Buffalo, called 911. The police who came saw some of the materials for an art exhibit on genetic modification and called the FBI. The FBI came in, cordoned off half the block, confiscated Hope's body, Steve's computer, his notebooks, his art supplies and their cat. They took him into custody. Two days later they let him and the cat go and whoever had the wife's body released for burial. There was no supposition of foul play in the death. Kurtz is a member of the highly-regarded Critical Arts Ensemble, a group that does confrontation art works designed to make people think about the role corporations play in modern life.

"Why The CIA Will Always Be A Costly Flop"
John Chuckman

The resignation of both the director and an important deputy director of any large organization is noteworthy, but when that organization is the CIA we have an event of global interest.

Several official, and likely-embarrassing, reports concerning CIA activities - including one dealing with the Agency's generous estimates of Iraq's non-existent weapons - are expected to appear soon. The timing of the resignations may well reflect these coming reports.

You might think the men who resigned, Director George Tenet and Deputy Director for Operations James Parvitt, should have been fired long ago. Never mind the nonexistent weapons in Iraq or phony invoices for uranium, the Agency's failure around the events leading to 9/11 was stunning, but the intelligence business is one of the few where job performance is almost unconnected with keeping your job.

hydrarchist writes ... this is just the introduction from a reader produced for a conference of the same title by some friends in Australia. The link to the rest of the texts can be found at the end.

The State of Emergency - A Reader

She is married to a man she loathes but who has her almost completely in his power ... [So] Sue Ellen’s ... alcoholism functions as a metaphor for her enduring state of crisis ... Such a state of crisis is not at all exceptional or uncommon in the context of the soap opera genre. On the contrary, crisis can be said to be endemic to it.- Ien Ang on Sue Ellen from Dallas.

In 1940, Walter Benjamin - a Marxist Jew in exile in France - wrote that “[t]he tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception, but the rule.” Just as crisis is the normal state for a soap opera about oil fortunes (i.e., Dallas), crisis is the normal state for the soap opera about oil fortunes in which we live (i.e., the world).

Frank Wallis writes

The War on Terror: Massacre in Fallujah, April 2004

New Report Questions Bush Government's Claims

"It's not that I encourage my son to hate Americans. It's not that I make him want to join the resistance. Americans do that for me." – Abdul Razak al-Muaimy, resident of Fallujah

"People will bend to our will if they are afraid of us." – USMC Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne

A year before the massacre of April 2004 the citizens of Fallujah witnessed an American invasion and the deaths of eighteen people at the hands of the US military. Fallujah (pop. 200,000) is 35 miles west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River. The massacre of April 2004 cannot be understood without reference to a series of tragic events that took place in the previous year. The sixty-eight page report by historian Frank Wallis shows that the hundreds of deaths which took place in Fallujah met the definition of massacre, and were the result of a poorly planned and badly managed political and military campaign aimed at Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorists. The military arm of the George W. Bush government thrust itself into Fallujah to destroy an enemy that did not exist, and concluded the operation with a futile status quo ante. The same people that Bush's government sought to drive out of Fallujah returned to power. Resistance to the American intrusion was homegrown, and not under the direction of foreign terrorists. Culpability for the massacre rises to the top of the military chain of command, and hence to the Bush government.

____________________

Copyright 2004 by Frank Wallis. All rights reserved.

"Ashcroft, Snoops and Gag Orders:

The Secrets of
Surveillance"

Elaine Cassell, Counterpunch

Everyone knows by now (or should) that the Patriot Act
allows the FBI to conduct surveillance on Internet and
email usage. Using so-called National Security Letters
(NSLs), the FBI directs Internet Service Providers
(ISPs) to provide passwords and identifying information
that will allow the government to target people who are
plotting terrorism or who are otherwise potentially
dangerous to national security. I am sure that many of
you reading this (and I, likely) have the government in
our computers.

simulacrum writes:

The "New" Europe

The European Union as from May 1 has ten new member-countries. It extended its membership after years of debate and indecisiveness and became the world's single biggest market with a population of 450 million. Not only that the extended EU increased its economic potential, and eventually its worldwide influence and economic power, but it created a part of the world which will presumably be a respective, almost equal, competitor to the US on the global political landscape in quest for global dominance.

As it is, there are some significant downsides to this spectacular "Europeanization of Europe". Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, as some of the new members are societies with a dreadful recent past of unsuccessful communism. Their economies were systematically ruined by the overwhelming influence of Stalinist Soviet Union and the population of those countries as a whole lack, if we can call it like that, a basic training course in democracy. Of course, some countries, like for example Slovenia, had more ideological and geographical contacts with Western Europe, and therefore have developed a stronger sense of what "capitalism" and "democracy" as abstract concepts mean. Thus, this Slovenian experience reflected itself to certain extent in the current socio-political situation in the country which is, along with Cyprus, the richest newcomer in EU with a GDP per head of 69% of EU average.