From CBSNews.com:
The execution of death row inmate Troy Davis in Georgia shows that the nation's death penalty system is "unjust and outdated," former President Jimmy Carter said following Davis' death.
The Georgia Democrat said Thursday in a statement to The Associated Press that he hopes "this tragedy will spur us as a nation toward the total rejection of capital punishment."
Davis was executed late Wednesday night for the 1989 murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. His supporters insist he was the victim of mistaken identity, while prosecutors and MacPhail's family said justice was finally served after four years of delays.
Carter says "if one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated."
Davis maintained his innocence until the end.
"All I can ask ... is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth. I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight," he said moments before he was executed Wednesday night...
Carter: Davis execution shows system is "unjust"
September 22, 2011
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/22/national/main20110095.shtml
Showing posts with label Jimmy Carter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jimmy Carter. Show all posts
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Friday, November 19, 2010
Obama: Better off as a lame duck?
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/11/obama-better-off-as-a-lame-duck/1
Nov 15, 2010
Obama: Better off as a lame duck?
David Jackson
A couple of pollsters have an odd suggestion for President Obama, if he wants to get something done with the new, more Republican Congress.
Announce he won't run for re-election.
Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell write in The Washington Post:
If the president goes down the re-election road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.
Schoen polled for former President Bill Clinton. Caddell worked for President Jimmy Carter, but has since been more of a political independent.
We rather doubt their analysis, however -- it's hard to see how Obama gains any leverage over congressional Republicans or Democrats by making himself a lame duck.
After he won the 1904 election, President Theodore Roosevelt announced that he would not seek re-election in 1908, a move he later regretted. It is often essential for an office holder to retain the option of taking his case to the people, if he or she cannot persuade their political opponents.
Lame duck-ism is also a reason that most second-term presidents struggle.
The last president to voluntarily forgo a re-election bid was Lyndon Johnson, amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War in 1968 and facing Democratic primary challenges from Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy.
Even then, LBJ didn't opt out of race until March 31, 1968, little more than seven months before the election.
A short-term lame duck is one thing. But two years?
There is little evidence that Obama will take the advice of Schoen and Caddell in any event.
Top political aide David Axelrod said yesterday on Fox News Sunday that he will return to Chicago in the late winter or early spring to start work on the president's re-election bid.
Nov 15, 2010
Obama: Better off as a lame duck?
David Jackson
A couple of pollsters have an odd suggestion for President Obama, if he wants to get something done with the new, more Republican Congress.
Announce he won't run for re-election.
Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell write in The Washington Post:
If the president goes down the re-election road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.
Schoen polled for former President Bill Clinton. Caddell worked for President Jimmy Carter, but has since been more of a political independent.
We rather doubt their analysis, however -- it's hard to see how Obama gains any leverage over congressional Republicans or Democrats by making himself a lame duck.
After he won the 1904 election, President Theodore Roosevelt announced that he would not seek re-election in 1908, a move he later regretted. It is often essential for an office holder to retain the option of taking his case to the people, if he or she cannot persuade their political opponents.
Lame duck-ism is also a reason that most second-term presidents struggle.
The last president to voluntarily forgo a re-election bid was Lyndon Johnson, amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War in 1968 and facing Democratic primary challenges from Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy.
Even then, LBJ didn't opt out of race until March 31, 1968, little more than seven months before the election.
A short-term lame duck is one thing. But two years?
There is little evidence that Obama will take the advice of Schoen and Caddell in any event.
Top political aide David Axelrod said yesterday on Fox News Sunday that he will return to Chicago in the late winter or early spring to start work on the president's re-election bid.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Many Children Were Tortured Under Bush
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/07/22/president-carter-many-children-were-tort
President Carter: Many Children Were Tortured Under Bush
July 22nd, 2009
Ralph Lopez
While congress says it is gearing up to investigate what is old news, that CIA and Special Ops forces are killing Al Qaeda leaders, a decision of far different gravity is being contemplated by Attorney General Eric Holder. The new insistence of Congress on its oversight role, conspicuously absent throughout 8 years of Bush, is suddenly rearing its head in the form of questioning a policy which has been in place with no controversy for years. The U.S. has been hunting and killing Al Qaeda leaders outside of official war zones since 2004, when the New York Times reported that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had signed an order authorizing Special Forces to kill Al Qaeda where they found them.
As recently as September 2008 CBS reported that Special Forces struck Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.
The decision faced by Holder, whether or not to appoint a Special Prosecutor on torture, is of a different gravity altogether. A weight of evidence keeps building which indicates torture was employed on innocent men, that it didn't work, and that it didn't prevent any attacks. And it gets worse.
Bush's own FBI Director Robert Mueller recently confirmed to the New York Times what he told Vanity Fair a year ago, that "to [his] knowledge" torture didn't prevent a single attack. Former Legendary CIA Director William Colby has said that torture is "ineffective."
Harper's Magazine's Scott Horton nows suggests there are two Eric Holders at war with each other: Holder the good soldier who knows well the preference of his boss for prosecutions to not take place, and Holder the servant of the law who is aware that what he does now may determine what is likely to happen again.
It is becoming clear that such an investigation, if it happens, will not stop with a few low-ranking scapegoats. Horton notes:
"President Obama’s assurance to CIA officials who relied on the opinions of government lawyers in implementing these programs, an assurance that Holder himself repeated, would have to be worked in. That suggests that the focus would likely be on the lawyers and policymakers who authorized use of the new techniques."
And CIA whistleblower Ray McGovern writes this week:
the buck stops - actually, in this case, it began - with President Bush. Senate Armed Services Committee leaders Carl Levin and John McCain on Dec. 11, 2008, released the executive summary of a report, approved by the full committee without dissent, concluding that Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum "opened the door to considering aggressive techniques."
What changed with Holder? Horton writes in "The Torture Prosecution Turnaround?":
Holder began his review mindful of the clear preference of President Obama’s two key political advisers—David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel—that there be no investigation. Axelrod and Emanuel are described as uninterested in either the legal or policy merits of the issue of a criminal investigation. Their concerns turn entirely on their political analysis...Holder initially appeared prepared to satisfy their wishes.
This attitude seemed to change after Obama's speech at the CIA, when Emanual and Axelrod moved out front to say there would be no prosecutions. According to Horton:
"In the days after Obama’s speech at the CIA, both Axelrod and Emanuel insisted that the White House had made the decision that there would be no prosecutions. According to reliable sources, that incensed Holder, who felt that the remarks had compromised the integrity both of the White House and Justice Department by suggesting that political advisers made the call on who would or would not be criminally investigated."
To make things worse for the Bush administration, evidence is emerging that they can no longer even rely on exhibit A and B of the Torture Works theory, Al Zabudaya and Kalid Shiek Mohammed, the latter of whom is still confessing to everything short of being the real Boston Strangler. I guess if I'd been waterboarded 82 times I'd be babbling too. The FBI Special Agent who interrogated Abu Zubayda, recently breaking a 7-year silence after reading the "torture memos," wrote in the New York Times:
"One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence...This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives."
Then there is the political risk to the Obama administration that Axelrod and Emanual have miscalculated, and that, in fact, the rest of the president's agenda is hamstrung while a growing number of Americans call for existing laws to be enforced. What is haunting Americans could be, in Washington jargon, "sucking oxygen" out of the debate, and "moving forward" is a pipe dream until pending business is dealt with. Spontaneous and planned rallies calling for a Special Prosecutor are growing, not diminishing. In addition, the worse revelations may be yet to come in the horrifying saga of what happened when, as Major General Anthony Taguba says:
[a] permissive environment [was] created by implicit and explicit authorizations by senior US officials to "take the gloves off"...
President Jimmy Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon "have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse." In "Our Endangered Values" Carter said that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons "107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old." And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody.
Journalist Seymour Hersh's (who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal) bombshell before the ACLU some years ago has been in a temporary slumber, as there is question as to whether the videotapes in possession of the Pentagon were among those claimed to be destroyed. Destroyed or not, there is still the conscience of soldiers and agents who bore witness to contend with, as the reign of political terror against whistleblowers which characterized the Bush administration subsides. Hersh said:
" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said at the time:
"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges."
History is just beginning to sort out the Bush era, with stubborn facts showing a resilience that Fox News talking points cannot, and more emerging. Today, even among Republicans, it is difficult to find those who will embrace Richard Nixon, though for a while he was every bit the perceived victim of "left-wing hate" that Bush and Cheney are now. Incredibly, to compare Nixon to Bush-Cheney is to do a deeply flawed man a disservice. Nixon inherited Vietnam. He did not orchestrate from whole cloth a campaign to link Saddam with 9/11, and strenuously push to war despite the objections of his countrymen and the world. Nixon spied on political enemies. He did not use a tragedy to illegally spy on millions, the true numbers of which we still do not know because congress has never investigated.
It's almost possible to feel sorry for the shifty, friendless Nixon. It is less possible to feel so for the smirking Bush, who thought nothing of telling soldier's families that war critics were saying that their loved ones "had died in vain."
A compilation in November 2008 of other evidence of alleged incidents involving children at the time recounts:
-- Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, "suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation" and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of "random" arrests "not based on any legal text."
-- Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, "[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and [a U.S. soldier] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners."
-- Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw "hundreds" of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, "They have undressed me. They have poured water over me." He said he heard her whimpering daily.
-- Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy "who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed." Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.
-- German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of "Report Mainz" quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists "poured water" over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, "smeared him with mud" and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.
-- Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British "The Guardian" that "Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad’s prisons...Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the "Guardian" he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.
-- Raad Jamal, age 17, was taken from his Doura home by U.S. troops and turned over to the Iraqi Army’s Second regiment where Jamal said he was hung from the ceiling by ropes and beaten with electric cables.
-- Human Rights Watch (HRW) last June put the number of juveniles detained at 513. In all, HRW estimates, since 2003, the U.S. has detained 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten.
-- IRIN, the humanitarian news service, last year quoted Khalid Rabia of the Iraqi NGO Prisoners’ Association for Justice(PAJ), stating that five boys between 13 and 17 accused of supporting insurgents and detained by the Iraqi army "showed signs of torture all over their bodies," such as "cigarette burns over their legs," she said.
-- One boy of 13 arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 was held in solitary for more than a year at Bagram and Guantanamo and made to stand in stress position and deprived of sleep, according to the "Catholic Worker."
Attorney General Holder is a man of conscience who now serves both President Obama and the law. A Newsweek piece last week says he has no illusions that:
Such a decision [to appoint a Special Prosecutor] would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."
There can be redemption for a nation which faces its past. One that does not can only become more monstrous.
President Carter: Many Children Were Tortured Under Bush
July 22nd, 2009
Ralph Lopez
While congress says it is gearing up to investigate what is old news, that CIA and Special Ops forces are killing Al Qaeda leaders, a decision of far different gravity is being contemplated by Attorney General Eric Holder. The new insistence of Congress on its oversight role, conspicuously absent throughout 8 years of Bush, is suddenly rearing its head in the form of questioning a policy which has been in place with no controversy for years. The U.S. has been hunting and killing Al Qaeda leaders outside of official war zones since 2004, when the New York Times reported that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had signed an order authorizing Special Forces to kill Al Qaeda where they found them.
As recently as September 2008 CBS reported that Special Forces struck Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.
The decision faced by Holder, whether or not to appoint a Special Prosecutor on torture, is of a different gravity altogether. A weight of evidence keeps building which indicates torture was employed on innocent men, that it didn't work, and that it didn't prevent any attacks. And it gets worse.
Bush's own FBI Director Robert Mueller recently confirmed to the New York Times what he told Vanity Fair a year ago, that "to [his] knowledge" torture didn't prevent a single attack. Former Legendary CIA Director William Colby has said that torture is "ineffective."
Harper's Magazine's Scott Horton nows suggests there are two Eric Holders at war with each other: Holder the good soldier who knows well the preference of his boss for prosecutions to not take place, and Holder the servant of the law who is aware that what he does now may determine what is likely to happen again.
It is becoming clear that such an investigation, if it happens, will not stop with a few low-ranking scapegoats. Horton notes:
"President Obama’s assurance to CIA officials who relied on the opinions of government lawyers in implementing these programs, an assurance that Holder himself repeated, would have to be worked in. That suggests that the focus would likely be on the lawyers and policymakers who authorized use of the new techniques."
And CIA whistleblower Ray McGovern writes this week:
the buck stops - actually, in this case, it began - with President Bush. Senate Armed Services Committee leaders Carl Levin and John McCain on Dec. 11, 2008, released the executive summary of a report, approved by the full committee without dissent, concluding that Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum "opened the door to considering aggressive techniques."
What changed with Holder? Horton writes in "The Torture Prosecution Turnaround?":
Holder began his review mindful of the clear preference of President Obama’s two key political advisers—David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel—that there be no investigation. Axelrod and Emanuel are described as uninterested in either the legal or policy merits of the issue of a criminal investigation. Their concerns turn entirely on their political analysis...Holder initially appeared prepared to satisfy their wishes.
This attitude seemed to change after Obama's speech at the CIA, when Emanual and Axelrod moved out front to say there would be no prosecutions. According to Horton:
"In the days after Obama’s speech at the CIA, both Axelrod and Emanuel insisted that the White House had made the decision that there would be no prosecutions. According to reliable sources, that incensed Holder, who felt that the remarks had compromised the integrity both of the White House and Justice Department by suggesting that political advisers made the call on who would or would not be criminally investigated."
To make things worse for the Bush administration, evidence is emerging that they can no longer even rely on exhibit A and B of the Torture Works theory, Al Zabudaya and Kalid Shiek Mohammed, the latter of whom is still confessing to everything short of being the real Boston Strangler. I guess if I'd been waterboarded 82 times I'd be babbling too. The FBI Special Agent who interrogated Abu Zubayda, recently breaking a 7-year silence after reading the "torture memos," wrote in the New York Times:
"One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence...This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives."
Then there is the political risk to the Obama administration that Axelrod and Emanual have miscalculated, and that, in fact, the rest of the president's agenda is hamstrung while a growing number of Americans call for existing laws to be enforced. What is haunting Americans could be, in Washington jargon, "sucking oxygen" out of the debate, and "moving forward" is a pipe dream until pending business is dealt with. Spontaneous and planned rallies calling for a Special Prosecutor are growing, not diminishing. In addition, the worse revelations may be yet to come in the horrifying saga of what happened when, as Major General Anthony Taguba says:
[a] permissive environment [was] created by implicit and explicit authorizations by senior US officials to "take the gloves off"...
President Jimmy Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon "have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse." In "Our Endangered Values" Carter said that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons "107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old." And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody.
Journalist Seymour Hersh's (who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal) bombshell before the ACLU some years ago has been in a temporary slumber, as there is question as to whether the videotapes in possession of the Pentagon were among those claimed to be destroyed. Destroyed or not, there is still the conscience of soldiers and agents who bore witness to contend with, as the reign of political terror against whistleblowers which characterized the Bush administration subsides. Hersh said:
" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said at the time:
"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges."
History is just beginning to sort out the Bush era, with stubborn facts showing a resilience that Fox News talking points cannot, and more emerging. Today, even among Republicans, it is difficult to find those who will embrace Richard Nixon, though for a while he was every bit the perceived victim of "left-wing hate" that Bush and Cheney are now. Incredibly, to compare Nixon to Bush-Cheney is to do a deeply flawed man a disservice. Nixon inherited Vietnam. He did not orchestrate from whole cloth a campaign to link Saddam with 9/11, and strenuously push to war despite the objections of his countrymen and the world. Nixon spied on political enemies. He did not use a tragedy to illegally spy on millions, the true numbers of which we still do not know because congress has never investigated.
It's almost possible to feel sorry for the shifty, friendless Nixon. It is less possible to feel so for the smirking Bush, who thought nothing of telling soldier's families that war critics were saying that their loved ones "had died in vain."
A compilation in November 2008 of other evidence of alleged incidents involving children at the time recounts:
-- Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, "suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation" and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of "random" arrests "not based on any legal text."
-- Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, "[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and [a U.S. soldier] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners."
-- Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw "hundreds" of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, "They have undressed me. They have poured water over me." He said he heard her whimpering daily.
-- Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy "who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed." Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.
-- German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of "Report Mainz" quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists "poured water" over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, "smeared him with mud" and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.
-- Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British "The Guardian" that "Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad’s prisons...Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the "Guardian" he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.
-- Raad Jamal, age 17, was taken from his Doura home by U.S. troops and turned over to the Iraqi Army’s Second regiment where Jamal said he was hung from the ceiling by ropes and beaten with electric cables.
-- Human Rights Watch (HRW) last June put the number of juveniles detained at 513. In all, HRW estimates, since 2003, the U.S. has detained 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten.
-- IRIN, the humanitarian news service, last year quoted Khalid Rabia of the Iraqi NGO Prisoners’ Association for Justice(PAJ), stating that five boys between 13 and 17 accused of supporting insurgents and detained by the Iraqi army "showed signs of torture all over their bodies," such as "cigarette burns over their legs," she said.
-- One boy of 13 arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 was held in solitary for more than a year at Bagram and Guantanamo and made to stand in stress position and deprived of sleep, according to the "Catholic Worker."
Attorney General Holder is a man of conscience who now serves both President Obama and the law. A Newsweek piece last week says he has no illusions that:
Such a decision [to appoint a Special Prosecutor] would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."
There can be redemption for a nation which faces its past. One that does not can only become more monstrous.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Carter Supports Call For New 9/11 Investigation
http://www.prisonplanet.com/former-president-jimmy-carter-supports-call-for-new-911-investigation.html
Former President Jimmy Carter Supports Call For New 9/11 Investigation
Carter slammed Bush administration for exploiting attacks in 2004
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, January 30, 2009
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has become the latest, and perhaps most prominent, public figure to express support for a new investigation into the 9/11 attacks.
We Are Change Ohio attended a book signing by the former President in Chicago. Despite the best efforts of secret service personnel to abduct the person recording the conversation, the audio of Carter’s words were still captured.
Carter was asked, “I was just wondering if you’d support the victims’ family members that want a new investigation into 9/11.”
Carter clarifies the question before responding, “Yeah, I don’t have anything to do with it but I certainly would….it would be nice.
In October 2004, Carter told the London Guardian newspaper that President Bush exploited the 9/11 attacks and that the press had not held him to account.
“The basic reason is that our country suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack … and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander in chief, fighting a global threat against America,” Carter said.
“He’s repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated,” he added.
Carter responded to the atmosphere at the time by slamming the notion that questioning Bush’s actions was unpatriotic.
His rebuke for media cowardice about asking tough questions about the “war on terror” was also stinging.
“The press have been cowed, because they didn’t want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive journalism. In fact, it’s hard to think of a major medium in the United States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when criticism was deserved,” said Carter.
Carter’s support for a new investigation into 9/11 has been echoed by innumerable prominent public figures both in and out of politics over the last few years.
Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, UK MP Michael Meacher, Japanese MP Fujita Yukihisa, former German Defense Secretary Andreas von Buelow, music icon Willie Nelson, and even vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin have all expressed support for a new inquiry into the September 2001 attacks.
Former President Jimmy Carter Supports Call For New 9/11 Investigation
Carter slammed Bush administration for exploiting attacks in 2004
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, January 30, 2009
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has become the latest, and perhaps most prominent, public figure to express support for a new investigation into the 9/11 attacks.
We Are Change Ohio attended a book signing by the former President in Chicago. Despite the best efforts of secret service personnel to abduct the person recording the conversation, the audio of Carter’s words were still captured.
Carter was asked, “I was just wondering if you’d support the victims’ family members that want a new investigation into 9/11.”
Carter clarifies the question before responding, “Yeah, I don’t have anything to do with it but I certainly would….it would be nice.
In October 2004, Carter told the London Guardian newspaper that President Bush exploited the 9/11 attacks and that the press had not held him to account.
“The basic reason is that our country suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack … and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander in chief, fighting a global threat against America,” Carter said.
“He’s repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated,” he added.
Carter responded to the atmosphere at the time by slamming the notion that questioning Bush’s actions was unpatriotic.
His rebuke for media cowardice about asking tough questions about the “war on terror” was also stinging.
“The press have been cowed, because they didn’t want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive journalism. In fact, it’s hard to think of a major medium in the United States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when criticism was deserved,” said Carter.
Carter’s support for a new investigation into 9/11 has been echoed by innumerable prominent public figures both in and out of politics over the last few years.
Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, UK MP Michael Meacher, Japanese MP Fujita Yukihisa, former German Defense Secretary Andreas von Buelow, music icon Willie Nelson, and even vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin have all expressed support for a new inquiry into the September 2001 attacks.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Obama's Malaise Speech?
http://blogs.abcnews.com/liveblogging/2009/01/obamas-malaise.html
Obama's Malaise Speech?
January 20, 2009
A lot of talk about Obama’s speech already; was it more like Roosevelt’s or Kennedy’s?
I have a weird one to throw out there -- how about Jimmy Carter’s "malaise" speech?
Carter never actually used that word, but back in July of 1979, with the country in crisis, President Carter spoke of the dour national mood:
"The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America."
And somewhat surprisingly, to me at least, today President Obama said America is suffering from: "a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights."
Boy, sounds like he is saying America is suffering a kind of malaise. Carter was pounded in the press for his speech. Obama will not be. Perhaps it shows how times have changed.
Obama's Malaise Speech?
January 20, 2009
A lot of talk about Obama’s speech already; was it more like Roosevelt’s or Kennedy’s?
I have a weird one to throw out there -- how about Jimmy Carter’s "malaise" speech?
Carter never actually used that word, but back in July of 1979, with the country in crisis, President Carter spoke of the dour national mood:
"The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America."
And somewhat surprisingly, to me at least, today President Obama said America is suffering from: "a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights."
Boy, sounds like he is saying America is suffering a kind of malaise. Carter was pounded in the press for his speech. Obama will not be. Perhaps it shows how times have changed.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Jonestown, Harvey Milk, and George Moscone
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2008/11/jonestown-harvey-milk-and-george.html
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Jonestown, Harvey Milk, and George Moscone
Few realize that the massacre at Jonestown is related to the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, and to the murders of others more obviously linked to the People's Temple cult.
In the following excerpt from The Copycat Effect, the ripples from this 30 year old tragedy are examined and these dots are connected.
Jonestown
One of the most discussed modern mass suicides occurred in the unique setting of Jonestown, Guyana.
Jonestown in the early 1970s was little more than a nine-hundred acre island cut out of the thick South American rainforest. It was there that the Reverend James Warren “Jim” Jones relocated his People's Temple from the San Francisco area. Allegations were first published in the Guyana Daily Mirror that Jonestown was a “concentration camp” in which Jones’s flock were given psychotropic drugs, sexually abused, sleep deprived, and forced to work 18 hour days. Former members told of drills, called “white nights,” in which middle-of-the-night sirens called members to a line up where they were told they were going to have to take a poison.
Jonestown residents became pre-conditioned into expecting a coming invasion of the camp by Russians, the CIA, or other imagined “enemies” by the delusional Jones. In the wake of these claims, the pressure mounted for San Francisco officials to look into the Jonestown “cult.”
On July 26, 1977, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone announced that he would not hold an investigation of Jones. In a letter to President Jimmy Carter, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk defended Jones as a friend to minority communities. But soon, San Francisco family members asked their congressional representative to fly to Jonestown to look into the situation (and hopefully rescue their relatives). This finally occurred with a one-day delegation headed by Congressman Leo Ryan.
On November 18, 1978, supposedly frightened by the investigative visit of Ryan, cult leader Jim Jones ordered Larry Schact, a medical school graduate and designated camp doctor, to prepare a huge cyanide-laced vat of grape Flavor-aide.
At the Guyanese airstrip near Jonestown, Jones sent gunmen to ambush Ryan and about 30 newsmen, government aides, and relatives of People's Temple members before they could board their plane for a return to the United States. Ryan, three reporters, and a Jonestown defector were killed, and among the wounded were the area’s alleged CIA's Chief of Station Richard Dwyer, and Ryan aide, Jackie Speier. Later Jones, with armed guards at his side, had his followers drink the potion and kill themselves. Those that refused to take the poison were machine-gunned to death by guards who apparently escaped. Thus some of the Jonestown deaths were indeed murders.
By most counts, the death toll was 913. Initially, the general public could not believe that the news accounts were true, despite widespread press and broadcast attention bringing the details into American living rooms. Media reports about the People’s Temple suicides would drag on for years. (It was not until 1986 that one of Jim Jones's assistants, Larry Layton, the only person prosecuted for any of the events in and around Jonestown, was convicted for his involvement in the Jonestown incidents and Ryan’s death. Layton was released from custody in April 2002, on parole, after 18 years in prison. Many believed he was an innocent scapegoat.)
As often happens after well-publicized suicides and mass suicides, the copycat effect took the form of follow-up murders. This happened quickly and in spectacular fashion in San Francisco.
Nine days after the Jonestown events, on November 27, 1978, San Francisco Bay Area residents would learn of the assassinations of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk. Law enforcement officials repeated the local rumors that some Bay Area residents believed that Moscone and Milk were murdered by the hauntingly named "White Night" hit squads said to have been sent by the Peoples Temple to avenge Jim Jones. As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Richard Rapaport observed, “When authorities went through the personal effects left behind in San Francisco by Jones, they found a hit list with the names of erstwhile political friends and allies like George Moscone and Willie Brown.”
The Moscone-Milk murders were carried out by a recently resigned former supervisor, Dan White, and were not directly linked to Jim Jones. White had impulsively retired from his position one year after his election and a mere two days after the Jonestown event. A former Vietnam vet, former police officer, and former firefighter, White would often go into trances during supervisors’ meetings and then impulsively goose-step around the room. His past was filled with mystery, including an enigmatic “missing year” of 1972. White’s murderous instability appeared to have been set off by the Jonestown murder-suicides and their link to San Francisco. The Chronicle’s Rapaport noted in 2003: “Part of the connection between the events came through media coverage. Each day between Saturday, Nov. 18, and Monday, Nov. 27, new and terrible video, photos and revelations emanated from the jungle retreat where many former San Franciscans had chosen, been coerced or programmed to join the man they called ‘Father.’”
In 1979 Dan White was found guilty of “manslaughter by diminished capacity,” despite opening arguments by attorney Doug Schmidt that linked Jonestown to the assassinations. Many still believe that the reason White was not convicted of first degree murder was because of what most of the media reported as the “Twinkle defense” – a phrase coined by well-known satirist Paul Krassner - that junk food had made White do it. While it was in reality HoHos and Ding Dongs, White’s defense claimed that his love of junk food was the result of his depression, not the cause of it.
The night the verdict was handed down, on May 21, 1979, the streets around San Francisco, especially near City Hall, erupted in violent protests. They became known, ironically, as the “White Night Riots.” Dan White would only serve five of his seven-year sentence. He was paroled in January 1984, tried exile in Ireland, and then returned to San Francisco despite requests from Mayor Dianne Feinstein (who had succeeded Moscone) not to do so.
On the morning of October 21, 1985, Dan White attached a garden hose to the exhaust pipe of his car, a yellow 1970 Buick Le Sabre, and died by suicide at his San Francisco home. Tom, his brother, discovered the body just before 2 p.m. White had died as an Irish ballad, “The Town I Loved So Well,” played from a cassette player inside the car as it filled with deadly carbon monoxide.
Milk’s less than a month old will requested that his body be cremated, and by his direction, the ashes were enshrined with a mixture of bubble bath (to denote his gay lifestyle) and Kool Aid (to signify the People’s Temple victims). On the 25th anniversary of the assassinations, Milk was remembered as the world’s first openly gay politician to hold office, the subject of the Oscar-winning film, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, and the focus of operas, plays, and museum exhibits. An elementary school, a civic plaza, a restaurant, a gay cultural institute and a library in San Francisco bear his name, as does a one-of-a-kind high school in New York for gay students who were tormented in mainstream schools.
Milk and Moscone were not the only persons killed in the wake of the People’s Temple suicides and murder-suicides.
In 1980, news accounts told of an alleged People Temple “hit squad,” which were suspected of killing, on February 26, a family of three who had defected in 1975 and testified against the cult. Elmer Mertle (identified in early news accounts under the alias Al Mills), was found shot in the head, lying face down in his bedroom in the family's Berkeley home. The body of his 40-year-old wife Deanna Mertle (also known as Jeannie Mills, author of Six Years with God), also shot in the head with a small-caliber weapon, was discovered on her back in an adjacent bathroom. The couple's 15-year-old daughter, Daphene, was taken to Alta Bates Hospital with two gunshots in the head, and died there later. The Mertles were the founders of Concerned Relatives, and the principal organizers of Ryan's attempt to intervene in the Jonestown cult. Jones called them “white devils.”
Less than a month later, the ripples from the San Francisco murders reached civil rights worker Dennis Sweeney. On March 14, 1980, Sweeney shot seven bullets point-blank into his former friend, Congressman Allard K. Lowenstein, at Lowenstein’s New York City law offices. Activist Lowenstein had marched in the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi, campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy, authored the "Dump Johnson" movement, and ran the National Student Association, which was later revealed to be CIA-subsidized. After the shooting, Sweeney sat down, smoked a cigarette, seemed to be in a trance state, and calmly waited for the police to arrive.
During his trial, Sweeny testified that the CIA (with Lowenstein's help) had implanted a chip in his head 15 years earlier, and he could hear voices transmitted through his dental work. Sweeny blamed CIA “controllers” for his uncle's heart attack and the assassination of San Francisco mayor George Moscone. Sweeney was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and in 2000, was released from a mental hospital in upstate New York. (The media loved the Sweeney-Lowenstein story. Teresa Carpenter even won a Pultizer Prize for her Village Voice exclusive, quoting Sweeney saying that the shooting was a gay lovers’ quarrel. The only trouble was that Carpenter never interviewed Sweeney; she had made the whole thing up.)
Other deaths followed. Joe Mazor, the private detective hired by the Concerned Relatives to persuade people to leave Jonestown, was shot dead a few years after the Mertles/Mills deaths. Walter Rodney, an intellectual and renowned Caribbean scholar born and raised in Guyana, was assassinated there on December 13, 1980, via a bomb-implanted walkie-talkie. Paula Neustel Adams, Jim Jones's top liaison in the upper echelons of the Guyanese government, was murdered in suburban Bethesda, Maryland in October 1983. Her longtime companion, Laurence Mann, Guyana's ambassador to the United States from 1975-81, apparently killed her, their child and then himself, in a murder-suicide. Members of the Jonestown Institute and author Garrett Lambrev have written that many questions remain unanswered about the true extent of all the copycat suicides, murder-suicides, and murders that occurred since the Jonestown massacre.
The specter of Jonestown filled the newspapers for years and produced a made-for-television movie called Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), starring the then-new and unknown actor Powers Boothe in a highly acclaimed performance as Jones. The Jonestown event had other broad cultural outcomes besides creating a model for mass suicides. For example, despite the actual use of Flavor-aide, the media had quickly mislabeled what was used as “Kool Aid,” and worldwide sales of Kool Aid crashed. Another lasting linguistic legacy of the People’s Temple tragedy is the expression, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” This has come to mean, “Don’t trust any group you find to be a little on the fanatical side.”
© Loren Coleman 2004 ~ from The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).
Labels: Anniversary, Assassinations, CIA, George Moscone, Harvey Milk, Jonestown, Mass Murders, Media, President Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Jonestown, Harvey Milk, and George Moscone
Few realize that the massacre at Jonestown is related to the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, and to the murders of others more obviously linked to the People's Temple cult.
In the following excerpt from The Copycat Effect, the ripples from this 30 year old tragedy are examined and these dots are connected.
Jonestown
One of the most discussed modern mass suicides occurred in the unique setting of Jonestown, Guyana.
Jonestown in the early 1970s was little more than a nine-hundred acre island cut out of the thick South American rainforest. It was there that the Reverend James Warren “Jim” Jones relocated his People's Temple from the San Francisco area. Allegations were first published in the Guyana Daily Mirror that Jonestown was a “concentration camp” in which Jones’s flock were given psychotropic drugs, sexually abused, sleep deprived, and forced to work 18 hour days. Former members told of drills, called “white nights,” in which middle-of-the-night sirens called members to a line up where they were told they were going to have to take a poison.
Jonestown residents became pre-conditioned into expecting a coming invasion of the camp by Russians, the CIA, or other imagined “enemies” by the delusional Jones. In the wake of these claims, the pressure mounted for San Francisco officials to look into the Jonestown “cult.”
On July 26, 1977, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone announced that he would not hold an investigation of Jones. In a letter to President Jimmy Carter, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk defended Jones as a friend to minority communities. But soon, San Francisco family members asked their congressional representative to fly to Jonestown to look into the situation (and hopefully rescue their relatives). This finally occurred with a one-day delegation headed by Congressman Leo Ryan.
On November 18, 1978, supposedly frightened by the investigative visit of Ryan, cult leader Jim Jones ordered Larry Schact, a medical school graduate and designated camp doctor, to prepare a huge cyanide-laced vat of grape Flavor-aide.
At the Guyanese airstrip near Jonestown, Jones sent gunmen to ambush Ryan and about 30 newsmen, government aides, and relatives of People's Temple members before they could board their plane for a return to the United States. Ryan, three reporters, and a Jonestown defector were killed, and among the wounded were the area’s alleged CIA's Chief of Station Richard Dwyer, and Ryan aide, Jackie Speier. Later Jones, with armed guards at his side, had his followers drink the potion and kill themselves. Those that refused to take the poison were machine-gunned to death by guards who apparently escaped. Thus some of the Jonestown deaths were indeed murders.
By most counts, the death toll was 913. Initially, the general public could not believe that the news accounts were true, despite widespread press and broadcast attention bringing the details into American living rooms. Media reports about the People’s Temple suicides would drag on for years. (It was not until 1986 that one of Jim Jones's assistants, Larry Layton, the only person prosecuted for any of the events in and around Jonestown, was convicted for his involvement in the Jonestown incidents and Ryan’s death. Layton was released from custody in April 2002, on parole, after 18 years in prison. Many believed he was an innocent scapegoat.)
As often happens after well-publicized suicides and mass suicides, the copycat effect took the form of follow-up murders. This happened quickly and in spectacular fashion in San Francisco.
Nine days after the Jonestown events, on November 27, 1978, San Francisco Bay Area residents would learn of the assassinations of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk. Law enforcement officials repeated the local rumors that some Bay Area residents believed that Moscone and Milk were murdered by the hauntingly named "White Night" hit squads said to have been sent by the Peoples Temple to avenge Jim Jones. As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Richard Rapaport observed, “When authorities went through the personal effects left behind in San Francisco by Jones, they found a hit list with the names of erstwhile political friends and allies like George Moscone and Willie Brown.”
The Moscone-Milk murders were carried out by a recently resigned former supervisor, Dan White, and were not directly linked to Jim Jones. White had impulsively retired from his position one year after his election and a mere two days after the Jonestown event. A former Vietnam vet, former police officer, and former firefighter, White would often go into trances during supervisors’ meetings and then impulsively goose-step around the room. His past was filled with mystery, including an enigmatic “missing year” of 1972. White’s murderous instability appeared to have been set off by the Jonestown murder-suicides and their link to San Francisco. The Chronicle’s Rapaport noted in 2003: “Part of the connection between the events came through media coverage. Each day between Saturday, Nov. 18, and Monday, Nov. 27, new and terrible video, photos and revelations emanated from the jungle retreat where many former San Franciscans had chosen, been coerced or programmed to join the man they called ‘Father.’”
In 1979 Dan White was found guilty of “manslaughter by diminished capacity,” despite opening arguments by attorney Doug Schmidt that linked Jonestown to the assassinations. Many still believe that the reason White was not convicted of first degree murder was because of what most of the media reported as the “Twinkle defense” – a phrase coined by well-known satirist Paul Krassner - that junk food had made White do it. While it was in reality HoHos and Ding Dongs, White’s defense claimed that his love of junk food was the result of his depression, not the cause of it.
The night the verdict was handed down, on May 21, 1979, the streets around San Francisco, especially near City Hall, erupted in violent protests. They became known, ironically, as the “White Night Riots.” Dan White would only serve five of his seven-year sentence. He was paroled in January 1984, tried exile in Ireland, and then returned to San Francisco despite requests from Mayor Dianne Feinstein (who had succeeded Moscone) not to do so.
On the morning of October 21, 1985, Dan White attached a garden hose to the exhaust pipe of his car, a yellow 1970 Buick Le Sabre, and died by suicide at his San Francisco home. Tom, his brother, discovered the body just before 2 p.m. White had died as an Irish ballad, “The Town I Loved So Well,” played from a cassette player inside the car as it filled with deadly carbon monoxide.
Milk’s less than a month old will requested that his body be cremated, and by his direction, the ashes were enshrined with a mixture of bubble bath (to denote his gay lifestyle) and Kool Aid (to signify the People’s Temple victims). On the 25th anniversary of the assassinations, Milk was remembered as the world’s first openly gay politician to hold office, the subject of the Oscar-winning film, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, and the focus of operas, plays, and museum exhibits. An elementary school, a civic plaza, a restaurant, a gay cultural institute and a library in San Francisco bear his name, as does a one-of-a-kind high school in New York for gay students who were tormented in mainstream schools.
Milk and Moscone were not the only persons killed in the wake of the People’s Temple suicides and murder-suicides.
In 1980, news accounts told of an alleged People Temple “hit squad,” which were suspected of killing, on February 26, a family of three who had defected in 1975 and testified against the cult. Elmer Mertle (identified in early news accounts under the alias Al Mills), was found shot in the head, lying face down in his bedroom in the family's Berkeley home. The body of his 40-year-old wife Deanna Mertle (also known as Jeannie Mills, author of Six Years with God), also shot in the head with a small-caliber weapon, was discovered on her back in an adjacent bathroom. The couple's 15-year-old daughter, Daphene, was taken to Alta Bates Hospital with two gunshots in the head, and died there later. The Mertles were the founders of Concerned Relatives, and the principal organizers of Ryan's attempt to intervene in the Jonestown cult. Jones called them “white devils.”
Less than a month later, the ripples from the San Francisco murders reached civil rights worker Dennis Sweeney. On March 14, 1980, Sweeney shot seven bullets point-blank into his former friend, Congressman Allard K. Lowenstein, at Lowenstein’s New York City law offices. Activist Lowenstein had marched in the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi, campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy, authored the "Dump Johnson" movement, and ran the National Student Association, which was later revealed to be CIA-subsidized. After the shooting, Sweeney sat down, smoked a cigarette, seemed to be in a trance state, and calmly waited for the police to arrive.
During his trial, Sweeny testified that the CIA (with Lowenstein's help) had implanted a chip in his head 15 years earlier, and he could hear voices transmitted through his dental work. Sweeny blamed CIA “controllers” for his uncle's heart attack and the assassination of San Francisco mayor George Moscone. Sweeney was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and in 2000, was released from a mental hospital in upstate New York. (The media loved the Sweeney-Lowenstein story. Teresa Carpenter even won a Pultizer Prize for her Village Voice exclusive, quoting Sweeney saying that the shooting was a gay lovers’ quarrel. The only trouble was that Carpenter never interviewed Sweeney; she had made the whole thing up.)
Other deaths followed. Joe Mazor, the private detective hired by the Concerned Relatives to persuade people to leave Jonestown, was shot dead a few years after the Mertles/Mills deaths. Walter Rodney, an intellectual and renowned Caribbean scholar born and raised in Guyana, was assassinated there on December 13, 1980, via a bomb-implanted walkie-talkie. Paula Neustel Adams, Jim Jones's top liaison in the upper echelons of the Guyanese government, was murdered in suburban Bethesda, Maryland in October 1983. Her longtime companion, Laurence Mann, Guyana's ambassador to the United States from 1975-81, apparently killed her, their child and then himself, in a murder-suicide. Members of the Jonestown Institute and author Garrett Lambrev have written that many questions remain unanswered about the true extent of all the copycat suicides, murder-suicides, and murders that occurred since the Jonestown massacre.
The specter of Jonestown filled the newspapers for years and produced a made-for-television movie called Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), starring the then-new and unknown actor Powers Boothe in a highly acclaimed performance as Jones. The Jonestown event had other broad cultural outcomes besides creating a model for mass suicides. For example, despite the actual use of Flavor-aide, the media had quickly mislabeled what was used as “Kool Aid,” and worldwide sales of Kool Aid crashed. Another lasting linguistic legacy of the People’s Temple tragedy is the expression, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” This has come to mean, “Don’t trust any group you find to be a little on the fanatical side.”
© Loren Coleman 2004 ~ from The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).
Labels: Anniversary, Assassinations, CIA, George Moscone, Harvey Milk, Jonestown, Mass Murders, Media, President Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale
Monday, November 17, 2008
For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All
Robalini's Note: I'm not the first to ask, but would Obama be able to get an appointment to his own administration? Doubtful...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/politics/13apply.html
November 13, 2008
For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON — Want a top job in the Obama administration? Only pack rats need apply, preferably those not packing controversy.
A seven-page questionnaire being sent by the office of President-elect Barack Obama to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts may be the most extensive — some say invasive — application ever.
The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.
Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.
The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”
The vetting process for executive branch jobs has been onerous for decades, with each incoming administration erecting new barriers in an effort to avoid the mistakes of the past, or the controversies of the present. It is typically updated to reflect technological change (there was no Facebook the last time a new president came to town).
But Mr. Obama has elevated the vetting even beyond what might have been expected, especially when it comes to applicants’ family members, in a reflection of his campaign rhetoric against lobbying and the back-scratching, self-serving ways of Washington.
“President-elect Obama made a commitment to change the way Washington does business, and the vetting process exemplifies that,” said Stephanie Cutter, chief spokeswoman for the Obama transition office.
Jobs with the mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have served as lucrative incubators for Democratic and Republican administration officials. But those affiliations have become potentially toxic since the government seized both companies after years of financial irregularities that have stoked the economic crisis.
Not surprisingly, then, Question 18 of the Obama application asks whether “you, your spouse or any member of your immediate family” have been affiliated with Fannie, Freddie, American International Group, Washington Mutual and any other institution getting a government bailout.
Under “Domestic Help,” the questionnaire asks the immigration status of applicants’ housekeepers, nannies, chauffeurs and yard-workers, and whether applicants have paid the required taxes for household employees. (Those questions reflect controversies that tripped up President Bill Clinton’s first two nominees for attorney general in 1993.)
“Every transition is cumulative,” said Michael Berman, a lawyer and lobbyist who worked in the transitions of both Mr. Clinton and President Jimmy Carter. After reviewing the Obama application, Mr. Berman added, “I am very happy I am not seeking a job in the federal government.”
A former Clinton White House official who insisted on anonymity said in an e-mail message, “I believe it is considerably more detailed than we had to fill out in ’93. Interesting that they want spouse information on everything — means lots of folks are going to have to list the very prominent — and controversial — companies that their spouses work/lobby for.”
The first question asks applicants not just for a résumé, but for every résumé and biographical statement issued by them or others for the past 10 years — a likely safeguard against résumé falsehoods, one Clinton administration veteran said.
Most information must cover at least the past decade, including the names of anyone applicants lived with; a chronological list of activities for which applicants were paid; real estate and loans over $10,000, and their terms, for applicants and spouses; net worth statements submitted for loans, and organization memberships — in particular, memberships in groups that have discriminated on the basis of race, sex, disability, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
There are no time limits for some information, including liens, tax audits, lawsuits, legal charges, bankruptcies or arrests. Applicants must report all businesses with which they and their spouses have been affiliated or in which they have had a financial stake of more than 5 percent. All gifts over $50 that they and their spouses have received from anyone other than close friends or relatives must be identified.
Just in case the previous 62 questions do not ferret out any potential controversy, the 63rd is all-encompassing: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.”
The answer could duplicate the response to Question 8: “Briefly describe the most controversial matters you have been involved with during the course of your career.”
For those who clear all the hurdles, the reward could be the job they wanted. But first there will be more forms, for security and ethics clearances from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Government Ethics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/politics/13apply.html
November 13, 2008
For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON — Want a top job in the Obama administration? Only pack rats need apply, preferably those not packing controversy.
A seven-page questionnaire being sent by the office of President-elect Barack Obama to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts may be the most extensive — some say invasive — application ever.
The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.
Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.
The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”
The vetting process for executive branch jobs has been onerous for decades, with each incoming administration erecting new barriers in an effort to avoid the mistakes of the past, or the controversies of the present. It is typically updated to reflect technological change (there was no Facebook the last time a new president came to town).
But Mr. Obama has elevated the vetting even beyond what might have been expected, especially when it comes to applicants’ family members, in a reflection of his campaign rhetoric against lobbying and the back-scratching, self-serving ways of Washington.
“President-elect Obama made a commitment to change the way Washington does business, and the vetting process exemplifies that,” said Stephanie Cutter, chief spokeswoman for the Obama transition office.
Jobs with the mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have served as lucrative incubators for Democratic and Republican administration officials. But those affiliations have become potentially toxic since the government seized both companies after years of financial irregularities that have stoked the economic crisis.
Not surprisingly, then, Question 18 of the Obama application asks whether “you, your spouse or any member of your immediate family” have been affiliated with Fannie, Freddie, American International Group, Washington Mutual and any other institution getting a government bailout.
Under “Domestic Help,” the questionnaire asks the immigration status of applicants’ housekeepers, nannies, chauffeurs and yard-workers, and whether applicants have paid the required taxes for household employees. (Those questions reflect controversies that tripped up President Bill Clinton’s first two nominees for attorney general in 1993.)
“Every transition is cumulative,” said Michael Berman, a lawyer and lobbyist who worked in the transitions of both Mr. Clinton and President Jimmy Carter. After reviewing the Obama application, Mr. Berman added, “I am very happy I am not seeking a job in the federal government.”
A former Clinton White House official who insisted on anonymity said in an e-mail message, “I believe it is considerably more detailed than we had to fill out in ’93. Interesting that they want spouse information on everything — means lots of folks are going to have to list the very prominent — and controversial — companies that their spouses work/lobby for.”
The first question asks applicants not just for a résumé, but for every résumé and biographical statement issued by them or others for the past 10 years — a likely safeguard against résumé falsehoods, one Clinton administration veteran said.
Most information must cover at least the past decade, including the names of anyone applicants lived with; a chronological list of activities for which applicants were paid; real estate and loans over $10,000, and their terms, for applicants and spouses; net worth statements submitted for loans, and organization memberships — in particular, memberships in groups that have discriminated on the basis of race, sex, disability, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
There are no time limits for some information, including liens, tax audits, lawsuits, legal charges, bankruptcies or arrests. Applicants must report all businesses with which they and their spouses have been affiliated or in which they have had a financial stake of more than 5 percent. All gifts over $50 that they and their spouses have received from anyone other than close friends or relatives must be identified.
Just in case the previous 62 questions do not ferret out any potential controversy, the 63rd is all-encompassing: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.”
The answer could duplicate the response to Question 8: “Briefly describe the most controversial matters you have been involved with during the course of your career.”
For those who clear all the hurdles, the reward could be the job they wanted. But first there will be more forms, for security and ethics clearances from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Government Ethics.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Forget JFK, Obama could be the next Jimmy Carter
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/3393741/Obama-must-lower-expectations-to-raise-hopes-of-a-recovery.html
Forget JFK, Obama could be the next Jimmy Carter
Barack Obama and his supporters have been drinking from a bottle of elixir labelled Hope. But the President-Elect knows as well as everyone else that there are gallons of bitter medicine to be swallowed if the economy is to be saved.
By Adrian Michaels, Group Foreign Editor
06 Nov 2008
To be as responsible as he has promised, he has to change the behaviour of consumers, of government and of regulators that has led America into a period of declining growth and employment.
If he is successful, he could create so much resentment that he will be booted out of the White House after just one term. Obama's supporters may imagine their man to be the next Roosevelt or Kennedy. But instead of BHO to follow FDR and JFK, he could end up being the next Jimmy Carter.
Fixing the economy pitches Obama into two big battles. The first will be with many of the Americans who have just voted for him. They have responded to a promise of "change you can believe in" - and they had better start believing that they have to accept falling house prices and a pervasive feeling of being less wealthy.
The Democratic-controlled Congress is Obama's second battle. If the economy starts to grow again, then Democratic politicians had better believe that spending must be cut heavily and that they will not be able to fulfil campaign promises.
It is hard to imagine that a new president with a thumping majority in the electoral college will start to lower expectations quickly. But Obama must. American consumers had only one of the starring roles in the financial and economic crisis, but it was important.
Goaded by cheap credit they spent more of their income. They took out ludicrously unsafe mortages and ran up big balances on their credit cards. Their overborrowing was mirrored by private equity groups that overpaid for businesses. Such deals encouraged shares to go up as investors foresaw being bought out at crazy rates. Higher share values made people feel wealthier: it must be time for another cruise, or car.
Now all that credit has been withdrawn, house prices must continue to fall until people who are not taking unsustainable risks can afford to pay them. People are starting already to spend less. Their reduced economic activity will drive down asset prices.
Obama must tell Americans that this is necessary. A painful recession is inevitable. He can promise help from the government with targeted spending of its own until the economy picks up.
There isn't much money around, but interest rates are low and the government can probably afford to borrow and increase its projected $1 trillion deficit for now. It is interesting to reflect that it was consumers attracted by cheap money that helped to create the crisis. Paradoxically it is the availability of cheap money that could show the way out.
Congress will pass an economic stimulus package and attempt to arrest price falls, or else deflation would last too long and sap the morale of a generation. Infrastructure plans and other projects could fill the gap in demand and reduce unemployment.
And if all that goes according to plan, then Obama somehow has to stop a rampant Congress from believing that a more bloated and invasive government was more than a temporary measure to combat a deep recession. Governments believe that increasing spending in a downturn is probably a good measure, but they find it impossible to cut expenditure when an economy recovers.
Cutbacks will be hard because the Democrats controlling Congress want to spend on far more than anti-recession measures. President-Elect Obama has huge spending plans, and has not told us how they have been affected by the economic crisis.
Decreased government spending in an upturn is a necessity because private enterprise generally knows better what to do with money than government. Businesses and individuals need to be encouraged to invest in projects of their own, when they can, rather than in government bonds.
But will Obama be able to face down a runaway Congress? The House and Senate may pass spending bills, but they can be vetoed by the president. Too many vetoes and the president looks out of touch - after all, Congressmen and women were elected too.
I found this online, from Time magazine in June 1977: "Determined to balance the budget by the end of his first term, Carter, the fiscal conservative, is clipping away at congressional spending. The more liberal Congress is on the verge of passing three bills that could exceed his spending plans...the White House seems to be virtually itching to veto the [plans] ... when [they reach] ... Carter's desk."
And so the seeds of Democratic civil war and electoral disaster were sown.
In the battles to come, with his people and then his party, Obama will have numerous opportunities to mess up. If an economic stimulus is spent on tax cuts that simply encourage more consumer spending then all will be lost. He must also play a leading role in framing a new architecture for the world economy. Badly-drawn regulations will create more problems than they solve.
The President-Elect's team must agree on goals and a plan. Its members did that well in the campaign. They need to keep their discipline in the years ahead. An elixir called brandy will come in useful.
Forget JFK, Obama could be the next Jimmy Carter
Barack Obama and his supporters have been drinking from a bottle of elixir labelled Hope. But the President-Elect knows as well as everyone else that there are gallons of bitter medicine to be swallowed if the economy is to be saved.
By Adrian Michaels, Group Foreign Editor
06 Nov 2008
To be as responsible as he has promised, he has to change the behaviour of consumers, of government and of regulators that has led America into a period of declining growth and employment.
If he is successful, he could create so much resentment that he will be booted out of the White House after just one term. Obama's supporters may imagine their man to be the next Roosevelt or Kennedy. But instead of BHO to follow FDR and JFK, he could end up being the next Jimmy Carter.
Fixing the economy pitches Obama into two big battles. The first will be with many of the Americans who have just voted for him. They have responded to a promise of "change you can believe in" - and they had better start believing that they have to accept falling house prices and a pervasive feeling of being less wealthy.
The Democratic-controlled Congress is Obama's second battle. If the economy starts to grow again, then Democratic politicians had better believe that spending must be cut heavily and that they will not be able to fulfil campaign promises.
It is hard to imagine that a new president with a thumping majority in the electoral college will start to lower expectations quickly. But Obama must. American consumers had only one of the starring roles in the financial and economic crisis, but it was important.
Goaded by cheap credit they spent more of their income. They took out ludicrously unsafe mortages and ran up big balances on their credit cards. Their overborrowing was mirrored by private equity groups that overpaid for businesses. Such deals encouraged shares to go up as investors foresaw being bought out at crazy rates. Higher share values made people feel wealthier: it must be time for another cruise, or car.
Now all that credit has been withdrawn, house prices must continue to fall until people who are not taking unsustainable risks can afford to pay them. People are starting already to spend less. Their reduced economic activity will drive down asset prices.
Obama must tell Americans that this is necessary. A painful recession is inevitable. He can promise help from the government with targeted spending of its own until the economy picks up.
There isn't much money around, but interest rates are low and the government can probably afford to borrow and increase its projected $1 trillion deficit for now. It is interesting to reflect that it was consumers attracted by cheap money that helped to create the crisis. Paradoxically it is the availability of cheap money that could show the way out.
Congress will pass an economic stimulus package and attempt to arrest price falls, or else deflation would last too long and sap the morale of a generation. Infrastructure plans and other projects could fill the gap in demand and reduce unemployment.
And if all that goes according to plan, then Obama somehow has to stop a rampant Congress from believing that a more bloated and invasive government was more than a temporary measure to combat a deep recession. Governments believe that increasing spending in a downturn is probably a good measure, but they find it impossible to cut expenditure when an economy recovers.
Cutbacks will be hard because the Democrats controlling Congress want to spend on far more than anti-recession measures. President-Elect Obama has huge spending plans, and has not told us how they have been affected by the economic crisis.
Decreased government spending in an upturn is a necessity because private enterprise generally knows better what to do with money than government. Businesses and individuals need to be encouraged to invest in projects of their own, when they can, rather than in government bonds.
But will Obama be able to face down a runaway Congress? The House and Senate may pass spending bills, but they can be vetoed by the president. Too many vetoes and the president looks out of touch - after all, Congressmen and women were elected too.
I found this online, from Time magazine in June 1977: "Determined to balance the budget by the end of his first term, Carter, the fiscal conservative, is clipping away at congressional spending. The more liberal Congress is on the verge of passing three bills that could exceed his spending plans...the White House seems to be virtually itching to veto the [plans] ... when [they reach] ... Carter's desk."
And so the seeds of Democratic civil war and electoral disaster were sown.
In the battles to come, with his people and then his party, Obama will have numerous opportunities to mess up. If an economic stimulus is spent on tax cuts that simply encourage more consumer spending then all will be lost. He must also play a leading role in framing a new architecture for the world economy. Badly-drawn regulations will create more problems than they solve.
The President-Elect's team must agree on goals and a plan. Its members did that well in the campaign. They need to keep their discipline in the years ahead. An elixir called brandy will come in useful.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/social_issues/july-dec08/peaceprize_10-10.html
October 10, 2008
Former Finnish President Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for his career of diplomatic efforts and skillful negotiations to buoy peacemaking and resolve international conflicts.
"No one better than he could win the Nobel Peace Prize," former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said of the award, according to wire reports. "He is the only man I know who has made peace on three continents -- Africa, Asia and Europe -- and I always found him ready to answer the call to make this world a better place."
Among his accomplishments, Ahtisaari brokered peace between Indonesia and rebels in Aceh province in 2005, ending 30 years of fighting in the region. Until March of last year as U.N. envoy, he led Serb-Albanian talks on Kosovo.
He was also the designer of a European Union-backed plan for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, which guaranteed Serb minority rights and was implemented peacefully after the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Ahtisaari, 71, also is credited with playing a key role in establishing independence for the African nation of Namibia.
"These efforts have contributed to a more peaceful world and to 'fraternity between nations' in Alfred Nobel's spirit," the Nobel committee said in announcing the prize.
"He has also made constructive contributions to the resolution of conflicts in Northern Ireland, in Central Asia and on the Horn of Africa," the citation said.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was pleased to hear Ahtisaari had won the prize, a spokesman said, according to the Associated Press.
"We have known him to be a man of honor, a man of integrity and a man who not only has full devotion to the cause of peace but also has the rare talents to help make it to practical priority on the ground," the spokesman said.
Ahtisaari encountered bouts of tough opposition in his years as a peace negotiator. Serbia forcefully rejected his attempts to forge a compromise on Kosovo, which declared independence in February. Ahtisaari's blueprint forms the foundation of Kosovo's constitution.
Serbia considers Kosovo its historic and religious heartland and has long maintained that it should remain a Serbian province.
"He is a professional diplomat and a very skilful negotiator," Serbia's former Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic told Reuters. "However, in Serbia he represents a symbol of Kosovo's independence and he will be remembered as an architect of Kosovo's secession."
By selecting Ahtisaari for the peace prize, the Nobel committee returned to the historical focus of the award after changing tracks last year and giving the honor to climate activist and former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. panel on climate change.
Ahtisaari spent the early part of his career as a primary school teacher and later joined Finland's Foreign Ministry in 1965. He spent 20 years abroad, first as ambassador to Tanzania and then to the U.N. in New York.
Ahtisaari is the first peace broker to win the prize since former President Jimmy Carter in 2002 and the first European in a decade. He is also the first Finnish peace laureate.
"We have been waiting for a long time for this. He really deserved it. He has worked for a long time on solving problems of different groups. That's what he is really good at," Helsinki resident Leni Tornqvist told Reuters.
October 10, 2008
Former Finnish President Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for his career of diplomatic efforts and skillful negotiations to buoy peacemaking and resolve international conflicts.
"No one better than he could win the Nobel Peace Prize," former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said of the award, according to wire reports. "He is the only man I know who has made peace on three continents -- Africa, Asia and Europe -- and I always found him ready to answer the call to make this world a better place."
Among his accomplishments, Ahtisaari brokered peace between Indonesia and rebels in Aceh province in 2005, ending 30 years of fighting in the region. Until March of last year as U.N. envoy, he led Serb-Albanian talks on Kosovo.
He was also the designer of a European Union-backed plan for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, which guaranteed Serb minority rights and was implemented peacefully after the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Ahtisaari, 71, also is credited with playing a key role in establishing independence for the African nation of Namibia.
"These efforts have contributed to a more peaceful world and to 'fraternity between nations' in Alfred Nobel's spirit," the Nobel committee said in announcing the prize.
"He has also made constructive contributions to the resolution of conflicts in Northern Ireland, in Central Asia and on the Horn of Africa," the citation said.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was pleased to hear Ahtisaari had won the prize, a spokesman said, according to the Associated Press.
"We have known him to be a man of honor, a man of integrity and a man who not only has full devotion to the cause of peace but also has the rare talents to help make it to practical priority on the ground," the spokesman said.
Ahtisaari encountered bouts of tough opposition in his years as a peace negotiator. Serbia forcefully rejected his attempts to forge a compromise on Kosovo, which declared independence in February. Ahtisaari's blueprint forms the foundation of Kosovo's constitution.
Serbia considers Kosovo its historic and religious heartland and has long maintained that it should remain a Serbian province.
"He is a professional diplomat and a very skilful negotiator," Serbia's former Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic told Reuters. "However, in Serbia he represents a symbol of Kosovo's independence and he will be remembered as an architect of Kosovo's secession."
By selecting Ahtisaari for the peace prize, the Nobel committee returned to the historical focus of the award after changing tracks last year and giving the honor to climate activist and former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. panel on climate change.
Ahtisaari spent the early part of his career as a primary school teacher and later joined Finland's Foreign Ministry in 1965. He spent 20 years abroad, first as ambassador to Tanzania and then to the U.N. in New York.
Ahtisaari is the first peace broker to win the prize since former President Jimmy Carter in 2002 and the first European in a decade. He is also the first Finnish peace laureate.
"We have been waiting for a long time for this. He really deserved it. He has worked for a long time on solving problems of different groups. That's what he is really good at," Helsinki resident Leni Tornqvist told Reuters.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Jobless Report Becomes an Issue
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/business/economy/06econ.html
September 6, 2008
Jobless Report Becomes an Issue on the Campaign Trail
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
The unemployment rate jumped to 6.1 percent in August, its highest level in five years, pushing the job troubles of American workers onto the political stage as the presidential campaign enters its final eight weeks.
So far, 605,000 jobs have disappeared since the start of the year, with employers slashing 84,000 jobs in August alone, the Labor Department reported on Friday. And even Americans who are still employed are facing tough times.
Raises have not kept up with the rising cost of living, putting more pressure on workers as high gasoline and food prices curtail their spending power.
The bleak data, which came as the two presidential candidates began a two-month sprint to Election Day, clearly raised the challenge facing Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate. Economic downturns are almost always bad for the incumbent party. In 1980, when unemployment rose more than a percentage point during the year, and several months showed year-over-year declines, the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, lost. In 1992, jobs were down, although the unemployment rate did not rise that much, and President Bush lost his bid for re-election.
In a statement Friday, Mr. McCain said that “Washington has failed to act” to improve the poor economy.
“Americans are hurting and we must act to create jobs,” he said. He vowed to enact a jobs program and help retrain workers for the changing market.
While Mr. McCain has tried to distance himself from President Bush, Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, tried again Friday to link the Republican candidate to the current administration. Mr. Obama argued that his opponent was “intent on continuing the economic policies that just this year have caused the American economy to lose 605,000 jobs.”
“Today’s jobs report is a reminder of what’s at stake in this election,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.
The Obama campaign called on Congress, which returns next week, to enact another stimulus package, using the senator’s $100 billion proposal as a starting point.
An economic adviser for Mr. McCain, Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, said Congress should consider another short-term stimulus, but did not specify whether that should be more rebate checks or come in some other form, like tax cuts.
The unemployment rate, which rose from 5.7 percent in July and from 5 percent in April, is at its highest level since September 2003. While teenagers accounted for most of the earlier increase, the job losers in August were mostly over 25 and college educated as well as high school graduates.
“These numbers just cry out to me that the job market is in a recession,” Stuart Hoffman, the chief economist of PNC Bank, said.
Stocks on Wall Street fell after the release of the report, but the Dow Jones industrials recovered and was up slightly in afternoon trading.
Production workers in the manufacturing industry were hit hardest in August, with 61,000 workers losing their jobs. Nearly 60,000 administrative workers, including secretaries and temp workers, were laid off.
Gains came in the education and health care industries, which added a total of 55,000 jobs. But those were offset by broad job cuts at restaurants, auto dealers and factories that make parts for cars and other transportation equipment.
It was the eighth consecutive month that the economy has shed jobs, which is, historically, a symptom of recession.
Layoffs have picked up speed in the last three months, contrary to earlier estimates that they had begun to plateau. The government now says that 100,000 jobs were lost in June, double its original estimate.
“Working families are in trouble,” Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economics Policy Institute in Washington and an adviser to Senator Obama, said. “This spike in the unemployment rate occurred exclusively among adults who are 25 and older. These are not teens; many of these folks depend on their jobs and their paychecks, and in this climate that means they’re suffering.”
Most workers are effectively earning less than they were a year ago. Hourly wages for rank-and-file workers — those not in supervisory or managerial positions — grew 3.6 percent between last month and August 2007. That was a faster growth rate than July, but below the rate of inflation.
The clear signs of pain in the labor market come as the economy continues to grow; between April and July, the economy expanded at a relatively brisk pace of 3.3 percent, according to the Commerce Department.
Businesses have been benefiting from high foreign demand for American-made goods, which has kept production high. But little of that activity, analysts said, has translated into assistance for the average American worker.
“Whatever is growing the economy, it’s not showing up in the jobs market in any way at all,” Mr. Bernstein said.
Companies may be terminating workers to cut costs in anticipation of tougher times ahead. Many analysts believe the global economy has entered a broad slowdown, which could depress export sales and put a dent into American business activity. Officials at the Federal Reserve believe activity will slow sharply for the rest of the year before returning to a faster growth rate in 2009.
The Labor Department’s jobs report is considered the most reliable snapshot of the nation’s economy in any given month. The unemployment rate is estimated by surveying thousands of households, while the data on job cuts is compiled from reports from employers.
Also on Friday, a new report showed that the outlook for the housing market remained troubling, though there are some early signs of improvement. The number of home loans in foreclosure jumped in the second quarter to another record but the percentage of borrowers who are starting to fall behind declined, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Louis Uchitelle contributed reporting.
September 6, 2008
Jobless Report Becomes an Issue on the Campaign Trail
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
The unemployment rate jumped to 6.1 percent in August, its highest level in five years, pushing the job troubles of American workers onto the political stage as the presidential campaign enters its final eight weeks.
So far, 605,000 jobs have disappeared since the start of the year, with employers slashing 84,000 jobs in August alone, the Labor Department reported on Friday. And even Americans who are still employed are facing tough times.
Raises have not kept up with the rising cost of living, putting more pressure on workers as high gasoline and food prices curtail their spending power.
The bleak data, which came as the two presidential candidates began a two-month sprint to Election Day, clearly raised the challenge facing Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate. Economic downturns are almost always bad for the incumbent party. In 1980, when unemployment rose more than a percentage point during the year, and several months showed year-over-year declines, the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, lost. In 1992, jobs were down, although the unemployment rate did not rise that much, and President Bush lost his bid for re-election.
In a statement Friday, Mr. McCain said that “Washington has failed to act” to improve the poor economy.
“Americans are hurting and we must act to create jobs,” he said. He vowed to enact a jobs program and help retrain workers for the changing market.
While Mr. McCain has tried to distance himself from President Bush, Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, tried again Friday to link the Republican candidate to the current administration. Mr. Obama argued that his opponent was “intent on continuing the economic policies that just this year have caused the American economy to lose 605,000 jobs.”
“Today’s jobs report is a reminder of what’s at stake in this election,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.
The Obama campaign called on Congress, which returns next week, to enact another stimulus package, using the senator’s $100 billion proposal as a starting point.
An economic adviser for Mr. McCain, Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, said Congress should consider another short-term stimulus, but did not specify whether that should be more rebate checks or come in some other form, like tax cuts.
The unemployment rate, which rose from 5.7 percent in July and from 5 percent in April, is at its highest level since September 2003. While teenagers accounted for most of the earlier increase, the job losers in August were mostly over 25 and college educated as well as high school graduates.
“These numbers just cry out to me that the job market is in a recession,” Stuart Hoffman, the chief economist of PNC Bank, said.
Stocks on Wall Street fell after the release of the report, but the Dow Jones industrials recovered and was up slightly in afternoon trading.
Production workers in the manufacturing industry were hit hardest in August, with 61,000 workers losing their jobs. Nearly 60,000 administrative workers, including secretaries and temp workers, were laid off.
Gains came in the education and health care industries, which added a total of 55,000 jobs. But those were offset by broad job cuts at restaurants, auto dealers and factories that make parts for cars and other transportation equipment.
It was the eighth consecutive month that the economy has shed jobs, which is, historically, a symptom of recession.
Layoffs have picked up speed in the last three months, contrary to earlier estimates that they had begun to plateau. The government now says that 100,000 jobs were lost in June, double its original estimate.
“Working families are in trouble,” Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economics Policy Institute in Washington and an adviser to Senator Obama, said. “This spike in the unemployment rate occurred exclusively among adults who are 25 and older. These are not teens; many of these folks depend on their jobs and their paychecks, and in this climate that means they’re suffering.”
Most workers are effectively earning less than they were a year ago. Hourly wages for rank-and-file workers — those not in supervisory or managerial positions — grew 3.6 percent between last month and August 2007. That was a faster growth rate than July, but below the rate of inflation.
The clear signs of pain in the labor market come as the economy continues to grow; between April and July, the economy expanded at a relatively brisk pace of 3.3 percent, according to the Commerce Department.
Businesses have been benefiting from high foreign demand for American-made goods, which has kept production high. But little of that activity, analysts said, has translated into assistance for the average American worker.
“Whatever is growing the economy, it’s not showing up in the jobs market in any way at all,” Mr. Bernstein said.
Companies may be terminating workers to cut costs in anticipation of tougher times ahead. Many analysts believe the global economy has entered a broad slowdown, which could depress export sales and put a dent into American business activity. Officials at the Federal Reserve believe activity will slow sharply for the rest of the year before returning to a faster growth rate in 2009.
The Labor Department’s jobs report is considered the most reliable snapshot of the nation’s economy in any given month. The unemployment rate is estimated by surveying thousands of households, while the data on job cuts is compiled from reports from employers.
Also on Friday, a new report showed that the outlook for the housing market remained troubling, though there are some early signs of improvement. The number of home loans in foreclosure jumped in the second quarter to another record but the percentage of borrowers who are starting to fall behind declined, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Louis Uchitelle contributed reporting.
Friday, January 18, 2008
I Got What America Needs Right Here
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/i_got_what_america_needs_right
I Got What America Needs Right Here
By Jimmy Carter
January 9, 2008 Issue 44•02
Sometimes I'm a little stupid, maybe, a little slow in the head, so I'm wondering if you can help me get something straight. Maybe you can help me understand one fucking thing right now, America, and explain to me what in the Christ is going on here. 'Cause, unless I'm missing something, this country is in the middle of a motherfucking shitstorm, and I have no fucking idea what you're gonna do to get out of it. I mean, are you seriously considering voting for one of these shitbags you got here in '08? Fat fucking chance.
Way I see it, America needs a president who's gonna somehow un-royally screw up the Middle East, do some serious cleaning up after you dropped your pants and took a steaming dump all over the fucking environment, and—boom!—restore dignity, honor, and all that shit to these United States.
See, I got solutions to all your problems—I got 'em right here in my big, hairy ballsack.
You better get down on your hands and knees and kiss Jimmy Carter's rosy-red Georgia-peach-picking ass and beg me to run your fucking country again, because there's no way I'm ever gonna come to you fuck-knobs and politely ask you if I might please be a presidential candidate in your precious fuckin' election. So you can just bite my cock. I've had it with you jerkoffs and your jerkoff candidates.
You actually seem to think one a' these assholes is gonna prance in and wave a magic wand and make everything all nice again. Look at you, sitting there like a common fucking schnook and eating all their bull about bi-fucking-partisanship, and how they have all the goddamn answers. Let me tell you something: These fags are dogshit compared to Jimmy fucking Carter, all right? I was arbitrating Mideast crises when this bunch was still sucking on their mamas' titties.
But who comes to me, huh? Fucking nobody. Why ask old Jimmy anything? What the fuck could he know about peace in the Middle East? It's not like he fucking won the Nobel Peace Prize for that shit. You myopic pricks. Back in '79, I sat Sadat and Begin right down and made those two dicklicks shake hands. It was beautiful—I had all the pieces lined up and I smiled and waved in my best fucking suit and tie right there on TV. And what do you do, you pieces of shit? You screw the whole goddamn pooch.
Cocksuckers.
Oh, what's that I hear? The weather's all screwy? You got a global warming problem? Boo-fucking-hoo! I was telling you morons to turn off your lights and unplug all your shit at night to conserve energy in 19-fuckin'-75, for chrissake. Gee, I wonder what woulda happened if we'd all switched to solar power like I fucking did back when we had a fucking chance to do something about it. Think we'd still be sucking Saudi Arabia's dick like a five-dollar whore? I sure as fuck didn't get no fancy Oscar for that little spiel, though, did I? No. But Al Gore, that cum-sucking pig, steals the shit from me and now he's the greatest thing since Jesus Christ made a fucking sandwich.
Well, he can lick my asshole right after George W. Bush, that fuck.
You want compassion? Somebody who's looking out for the little guy? Why don't you take a look at Jimmy Carter, 'cause unlike, oh, every motherfucking candidate out there, he spent the last fucking quarter-century building houses for the homeless. And what does he get for it? A fucking hernia. Some fucking gratitude, you selfish twats. You talk to me about compassion? I'll shove a crucifix so far up the Democrats' asses they'll be asking me to buy them dinner and kiss them good night.
Funny thing about me: I actually fucking know shit! Not like these goombas trying to weasel their way into the White House. I practically wrote the book on collapsing bridges, inflation, and the working poor, fuck-o. I even got a degree in nuclear engineering or some shit. You know how easy I could swoop down right now like a guardian angel and solve all your fucking problems? Snap. Bam. Do it in my fucking sleep. Just fucking try me.
So you want me to run for president again? Yeah, sure, absolutely, I'll do it. I'd be honored to do it—with my fucking dick in your mouth, you worthless scumbags.
You had your chance with Jimmy Carter, and you fucking blew it. So get fucked. Fucking country.
I Got What America Needs Right Here
By Jimmy Carter
January 9, 2008 Issue 44•02
Sometimes I'm a little stupid, maybe, a little slow in the head, so I'm wondering if you can help me get something straight. Maybe you can help me understand one fucking thing right now, America, and explain to me what in the Christ is going on here. 'Cause, unless I'm missing something, this country is in the middle of a motherfucking shitstorm, and I have no fucking idea what you're gonna do to get out of it. I mean, are you seriously considering voting for one of these shitbags you got here in '08? Fat fucking chance.
Way I see it, America needs a president who's gonna somehow un-royally screw up the Middle East, do some serious cleaning up after you dropped your pants and took a steaming dump all over the fucking environment, and—boom!—restore dignity, honor, and all that shit to these United States.
See, I got solutions to all your problems—I got 'em right here in my big, hairy ballsack.
You better get down on your hands and knees and kiss Jimmy Carter's rosy-red Georgia-peach-picking ass and beg me to run your fucking country again, because there's no way I'm ever gonna come to you fuck-knobs and politely ask you if I might please be a presidential candidate in your precious fuckin' election. So you can just bite my cock. I've had it with you jerkoffs and your jerkoff candidates.
You actually seem to think one a' these assholes is gonna prance in and wave a magic wand and make everything all nice again. Look at you, sitting there like a common fucking schnook and eating all their bull about bi-fucking-partisanship, and how they have all the goddamn answers. Let me tell you something: These fags are dogshit compared to Jimmy fucking Carter, all right? I was arbitrating Mideast crises when this bunch was still sucking on their mamas' titties.
But who comes to me, huh? Fucking nobody. Why ask old Jimmy anything? What the fuck could he know about peace in the Middle East? It's not like he fucking won the Nobel Peace Prize for that shit. You myopic pricks. Back in '79, I sat Sadat and Begin right down and made those two dicklicks shake hands. It was beautiful—I had all the pieces lined up and I smiled and waved in my best fucking suit and tie right there on TV. And what do you do, you pieces of shit? You screw the whole goddamn pooch.
Cocksuckers.
Oh, what's that I hear? The weather's all screwy? You got a global warming problem? Boo-fucking-hoo! I was telling you morons to turn off your lights and unplug all your shit at night to conserve energy in 19-fuckin'-75, for chrissake. Gee, I wonder what woulda happened if we'd all switched to solar power like I fucking did back when we had a fucking chance to do something about it. Think we'd still be sucking Saudi Arabia's dick like a five-dollar whore? I sure as fuck didn't get no fancy Oscar for that little spiel, though, did I? No. But Al Gore, that cum-sucking pig, steals the shit from me and now he's the greatest thing since Jesus Christ made a fucking sandwich.
Well, he can lick my asshole right after George W. Bush, that fuck.
You want compassion? Somebody who's looking out for the little guy? Why don't you take a look at Jimmy Carter, 'cause unlike, oh, every motherfucking candidate out there, he spent the last fucking quarter-century building houses for the homeless. And what does he get for it? A fucking hernia. Some fucking gratitude, you selfish twats. You talk to me about compassion? I'll shove a crucifix so far up the Democrats' asses they'll be asking me to buy them dinner and kiss them good night.
Funny thing about me: I actually fucking know shit! Not like these goombas trying to weasel their way into the White House. I practically wrote the book on collapsing bridges, inflation, and the working poor, fuck-o. I even got a degree in nuclear engineering or some shit. You know how easy I could swoop down right now like a guardian angel and solve all your fucking problems? Snap. Bam. Do it in my fucking sleep. Just fucking try me.
So you want me to run for president again? Yeah, sure, absolutely, I'll do it. I'd be honored to do it—with my fucking dick in your mouth, you worthless scumbags.
You had your chance with Jimmy Carter, and you fucking blew it. So get fucked. Fucking country.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Al Gore, UN panel share Nobel for Peace
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071012/ap_on_re_eu/nobel_peace
Al Gore, UN panel share Nobel for Peace
By DOUG MELLGREN and MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writers
10-12-7
Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for fighting it.
Gore, who won an Academy Award earlier this year for his film on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," had been widely tipped to win the prize.
He said that global warming was not a political issue but a worldwide crisis.
"We face a true planetary emergency. ... It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," he said. "It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."
The win is also likely add further fuel to a burgeoning movement in the United States for Gore to run for president in 2008, which he has so far said he does not plan to do.
Kenneth Sherrill, a political scientist at Hunter College in New York said Gore probably enjoys being a public person more than an elected official.
"He seems happier and liberated in the years since his loss in 2000. Perhaps winning the Nobel and being viewed as a prophet in his own time will be sufficient," says Sherrill.
Two Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share his thinking, said the award will not make it more likely that he will seek the presidency. If anything, the Peace Prize makes the rough-and-tumble of a presidential race less appealing to Gore, they said, because now he has a huge, international platform to fight global warming and may not want to do anything to diminish it.
One of the advisers said that while Gore is unlikely to rule out a bid in the coming days, the prospects of the former vice president entering the fray in 2008 are "extremely remote."
In its citation, the committed lauded Gore's "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."
Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the prize committee, said the award should not be seen as singling out the Bush administration for criticism.
"A peace prize is never a criticism of anything. A peace prize is a positive message and support to all those champions of peace in the world."
Bush abandoned the Kyoto Protocol because he said it would harm the U.S. economy and because it did not require immediate cuts by countries like China and India. The treaty aimed to put the biggest burden on the richest nations that contributed the most carbon emissions.
The U.S. Senate voted against mandatory carbon reductions before the Kyoto negotiations were completed. The treaty was never presented to the Senate for ratification by the Clinton Administration.
"Al Gore has fought the environment battle even as vice president," Mjoes said. "Many did not listen ... but he carried on."
Gore supporters have been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for petition drives and advertising in an effort to lure him into the Democratic presidential primaries. One group, Draftgore.com, ran a full-page open letter to Gore in Wednesday's New York Times, imploring him to get into the race.
Gore, 59, has been coy, saying repeatedly he's not running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, without ever closing that door completely.
He was the Democratic nominee in 2000 and won the general election popular vote. However, Gore lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush after a legal challenge to the Florida result that was decided by the Supreme Court.
Gore called the award meaningful because of his co-winner, calling the IPCC the "world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis."
Gore said he planned to donate his share of the prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
The last American to win the prize, or share it, was former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who won it 2002.
The committee cited the IPCC for its two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming."
It went on to say that because of the panel's efforts, global warming has been increasingly recognized. In the 1980s it "seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent."
"It was a surprise," said Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for the IPCC. "We would have been happy even if (Gore) had received it alone because it is a recognition of the importance of this issue."
But some questioned the prize decision.
"Awarding it to Al Gore cannot be seen as anything other than a political statement. Awarding it to the IPCC is well-founded," said Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist."
He criticized Gore's film as having "some very obvious mistakes, like the argument that we're going to see six meters of sea-level rise," he said.
"They (Nobel committee) have a unique platform in getting people's attention on this issue, and I regret they have used it to make a political statement."
This year, climate change has been at the top of the world agenda. The U.N. climate panel has been releasing its reports; talks on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate are set to resume; and on Europe's northern fringe, where the awards committee works, concern about the melting Arctic has been underscored by this being the International Polar Year.
Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said the prize would help to continue the globally growing awareness of climate change.
"Their contributions to the prevention of climate change have raised awareness all over the world. Their work has been an inspiration for politicians and citizens alike," he said in a statement.
In recent years, the Norwegian committee has broadened its interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts outlined by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in creating the prize with his 1895 will. The prize now often also recognizes human rights, democracy, elimination of poverty, sharing resources and the environment.
"We believe that the Nobel Committee has shown great courage by so clearly connecting the climate problems with peace," said Truls Gulowsen, head of environmental group Greenpeace Norway.
The Nobel Prizes each bestow a gold medal, a diploma and a $1.5 million cash prize on the winner.
___
On the Net:
http://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/
Al Gore, UN panel share Nobel for Peace
By DOUG MELLGREN and MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writers
10-12-7
Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for fighting it.
Gore, who won an Academy Award earlier this year for his film on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," had been widely tipped to win the prize.
He said that global warming was not a political issue but a worldwide crisis.
"We face a true planetary emergency. ... It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," he said. "It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."
The win is also likely add further fuel to a burgeoning movement in the United States for Gore to run for president in 2008, which he has so far said he does not plan to do.
Kenneth Sherrill, a political scientist at Hunter College in New York said Gore probably enjoys being a public person more than an elected official.
"He seems happier and liberated in the years since his loss in 2000. Perhaps winning the Nobel and being viewed as a prophet in his own time will be sufficient," says Sherrill.
Two Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share his thinking, said the award will not make it more likely that he will seek the presidency. If anything, the Peace Prize makes the rough-and-tumble of a presidential race less appealing to Gore, they said, because now he has a huge, international platform to fight global warming and may not want to do anything to diminish it.
One of the advisers said that while Gore is unlikely to rule out a bid in the coming days, the prospects of the former vice president entering the fray in 2008 are "extremely remote."
In its citation, the committed lauded Gore's "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."
Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the prize committee, said the award should not be seen as singling out the Bush administration for criticism.
"A peace prize is never a criticism of anything. A peace prize is a positive message and support to all those champions of peace in the world."
Bush abandoned the Kyoto Protocol because he said it would harm the U.S. economy and because it did not require immediate cuts by countries like China and India. The treaty aimed to put the biggest burden on the richest nations that contributed the most carbon emissions.
The U.S. Senate voted against mandatory carbon reductions before the Kyoto negotiations were completed. The treaty was never presented to the Senate for ratification by the Clinton Administration.
"Al Gore has fought the environment battle even as vice president," Mjoes said. "Many did not listen ... but he carried on."
Gore supporters have been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for petition drives and advertising in an effort to lure him into the Democratic presidential primaries. One group, Draftgore.com, ran a full-page open letter to Gore in Wednesday's New York Times, imploring him to get into the race.
Gore, 59, has been coy, saying repeatedly he's not running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, without ever closing that door completely.
He was the Democratic nominee in 2000 and won the general election popular vote. However, Gore lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush after a legal challenge to the Florida result that was decided by the Supreme Court.
Gore called the award meaningful because of his co-winner, calling the IPCC the "world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis."
Gore said he planned to donate his share of the prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
The last American to win the prize, or share it, was former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who won it 2002.
The committee cited the IPCC for its two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming."
It went on to say that because of the panel's efforts, global warming has been increasingly recognized. In the 1980s it "seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent."
"It was a surprise," said Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for the IPCC. "We would have been happy even if (Gore) had received it alone because it is a recognition of the importance of this issue."
But some questioned the prize decision.
"Awarding it to Al Gore cannot be seen as anything other than a political statement. Awarding it to the IPCC is well-founded," said Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist."
He criticized Gore's film as having "some very obvious mistakes, like the argument that we're going to see six meters of sea-level rise," he said.
"They (Nobel committee) have a unique platform in getting people's attention on this issue, and I regret they have used it to make a political statement."
This year, climate change has been at the top of the world agenda. The U.N. climate panel has been releasing its reports; talks on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate are set to resume; and on Europe's northern fringe, where the awards committee works, concern about the melting Arctic has been underscored by this being the International Polar Year.
Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said the prize would help to continue the globally growing awareness of climate change.
"Their contributions to the prevention of climate change have raised awareness all over the world. Their work has been an inspiration for politicians and citizens alike," he said in a statement.
In recent years, the Norwegian committee has broadened its interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts outlined by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in creating the prize with his 1895 will. The prize now often also recognizes human rights, democracy, elimination of poverty, sharing resources and the environment.
"We believe that the Nobel Committee has shown great courage by so clearly connecting the climate problems with peace," said Truls Gulowsen, head of environmental group Greenpeace Norway.
The Nobel Prizes each bestow a gold medal, a diploma and a $1.5 million cash prize on the winner.
___
On the Net:
http://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/
Sunday, September 9, 2007
"Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World"
http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/756
Bill Clinton's "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World" (Hardcover)
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
Whatever reconsiderations BuzzFlash or our readers may have about the triangulating, globalization, welfare cutting policies of the former head of the DLC, we still consider Bill the Big Dog.
He was a Democrat who knew how to fight for his territory, and whatever his "centrist" shortcomings, America was a better place for his 8 years of service (and let's not forget Al Gore). He left our nation in a fiscally sound position and at peace. It took the GOP Bush/Cheney goon squad just a short time to trash the country -- and the world. With Bill Clinton as president, we could push for more progress and we knew that our Constitution was protected, instead of having to wake each morning to a new horror and travesty, as incompetent, arrogant fools trash our nation's freedom and put our national security increasingly at risk.
And Clinton, who we met personally on a few occasions, was as charismatic and personable as they come. He wanted you to like him, SO much. You just couldn't help it.
But enough of the BuzzFlash commentary, Clinton's new book (released on September 4th) has nothing to do with any of this.
Bill Clinton's "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World" is a Jimmy Carteresque exhortation for all of us to follow the famous Margaret Mead quotation: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
More precisely, it is about how one person -- each of us -- can take actions that make the world a better place by the action of our own hands.
One online reviewer writes:
"Even conservatives will like this book. It's interesting, inspiring, clearly written, not at all political and, believe it or not, only a tad self-centered. Filled with dozens, maybe hundreds, of specific examples of charitable individuals and successful grassroots programs, it argues -- in fact, proves -- that you don't have to be a big shot to make the world a better place. Clinton clearly believes in what he writes; the book is passionate and powerful on topics that, in our hands, would be detached and dull.
Besides the subject matter, what I liked best about the book is its organization. Written so you don't have to read it all at once, it breaks down philanthropy into six different categories, and gives each its own chapter. Those are:
* Giving time
* Giving things
* Giving skills
* Giving "gifts of reconciliation and new beginnings" (citing everything from the efforts of Nelson Mandela to PeacePlayers International, a group that sets up basketball leagues in the Middle East)
* Giving gifts that keep on giving (such as the work of Heifer International, which gives millions of poor farmers free cows -- as long as they agree to donate one its first offspring to someone else)
* Giving to good ideas
Clinton also cites examples of successful charitable programs that are easy to use as model strategies for your own ideas, how businesses can make money out of acting in the public interest, and what roles governments (not just Washington, but cities and states) can play."
Yes, it's an easy read and a bit overly effusive at times, but it's got the right spirit.
Who can argue with Clinton's premise or his or Jimmy Carter's examples of their lives after their presidencies?
Excerpt from the book:
A few years ago Sheri Saltzberg and Mark Grashow of New York, recently retired from public health administration and teaching, went to Zambia for a wedding. Their son suggested they go to Zimbabwe to visit a family that had befriended him and to see Victoria Falls. While they were there, they visited several schools and were appalled to see that there were no textbooks, empty libraries, no science equipment, no basic school supplies, and often no school breakfast or lunch.
When they got home they founded their own NGO, the U.S.-Africa Children's Fellowship, and formed a partnership with the Zimbabwe Organization of Rural Associations for Progress, which had been working since 1980 to help improve the economy and education in individual communities.
Over the next two years, they located thirty-five U.S. schools to partner with thirty-five schools in Zimbabwe, and they've shipped four forty-foot containers to the schools, with more than 150,000 books, school supplies, toys, games, sports equipment, bicycles, clothing, sewing machines, agricultural tools, and other items. They raise funds for items needed but not donated–school uniforms, locally printed books, and educational materials and scholarships.
In the U.S. partner schools, Mark and Sheri try to give students an appreciation for what life is like for their counterparts in Zimbabwe. American kids learn that the kids in their partner school often get up at 5 a.m. to walk several miles to school, may well have nothing to eat, and may have lost one or both parents to AIDS. They also learn that many kids don't go to school at all because they can't afford the school fees, uniforms, or even a notebook and pencil; they have to work to support or stay home to care for a sick parent or younger sibling; or they don't have shoes and can't walk long distances in winter. The American children are empowered to take action—collecting donations and writing letters to the Zimbabwean students.
Mark and Sheri themselves fly to Zimbabwe as each shipment arrives and help distribute the donations to the schools. "The effects of the shipment have far exceeded anything we dreamed of" says Mark. "For the first time, students can take books home to read. Five percent of the kids in the seventh grade used to pass reading tests; now it's 60 percent. Three years ago, only one student in his district passed his A-level exams for university. This year, thirty-eight students passed. There are now art and sewing classes. Soccer flourishes because there's an abundance of soccer balls. Attendance in many kindergartens has increased threefold due to the introduction of toys. In September we'll increase the schools we partner with from thirty-five to fifty." The program has proven so successful, there's now a waiting list of three hundred schools.
Why did they do this? Mark says, "I believe that each of us has an obligation to level the playing field of life. Schools that have no books, communities without water, and people without access to medical care are not someone else's problem. We all have a capacity to make a difference somewhere. We just have to decide if we have the will to do it."
Bill Clinton's "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World" (Hardcover)
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
Whatever reconsiderations BuzzFlash or our readers may have about the triangulating, globalization, welfare cutting policies of the former head of the DLC, we still consider Bill the Big Dog.
He was a Democrat who knew how to fight for his territory, and whatever his "centrist" shortcomings, America was a better place for his 8 years of service (and let's not forget Al Gore). He left our nation in a fiscally sound position and at peace. It took the GOP Bush/Cheney goon squad just a short time to trash the country -- and the world. With Bill Clinton as president, we could push for more progress and we knew that our Constitution was protected, instead of having to wake each morning to a new horror and travesty, as incompetent, arrogant fools trash our nation's freedom and put our national security increasingly at risk.
And Clinton, who we met personally on a few occasions, was as charismatic and personable as they come. He wanted you to like him, SO much. You just couldn't help it.
But enough of the BuzzFlash commentary, Clinton's new book (released on September 4th) has nothing to do with any of this.
Bill Clinton's "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World" is a Jimmy Carteresque exhortation for all of us to follow the famous Margaret Mead quotation: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
More precisely, it is about how one person -- each of us -- can take actions that make the world a better place by the action of our own hands.
One online reviewer writes:
"Even conservatives will like this book. It's interesting, inspiring, clearly written, not at all political and, believe it or not, only a tad self-centered. Filled with dozens, maybe hundreds, of specific examples of charitable individuals and successful grassroots programs, it argues -- in fact, proves -- that you don't have to be a big shot to make the world a better place. Clinton clearly believes in what he writes; the book is passionate and powerful on topics that, in our hands, would be detached and dull.
Besides the subject matter, what I liked best about the book is its organization. Written so you don't have to read it all at once, it breaks down philanthropy into six different categories, and gives each its own chapter. Those are:
* Giving time
* Giving things
* Giving skills
* Giving "gifts of reconciliation and new beginnings" (citing everything from the efforts of Nelson Mandela to PeacePlayers International, a group that sets up basketball leagues in the Middle East)
* Giving gifts that keep on giving (such as the work of Heifer International, which gives millions of poor farmers free cows -- as long as they agree to donate one its first offspring to someone else)
* Giving to good ideas
Clinton also cites examples of successful charitable programs that are easy to use as model strategies for your own ideas, how businesses can make money out of acting in the public interest, and what roles governments (not just Washington, but cities and states) can play."
Yes, it's an easy read and a bit overly effusive at times, but it's got the right spirit.
Who can argue with Clinton's premise or his or Jimmy Carter's examples of their lives after their presidencies?
Excerpt from the book:
A few years ago Sheri Saltzberg and Mark Grashow of New York, recently retired from public health administration and teaching, went to Zambia for a wedding. Their son suggested they go to Zimbabwe to visit a family that had befriended him and to see Victoria Falls. While they were there, they visited several schools and were appalled to see that there were no textbooks, empty libraries, no science equipment, no basic school supplies, and often no school breakfast or lunch.
When they got home they founded their own NGO, the U.S.-Africa Children's Fellowship, and formed a partnership with the Zimbabwe Organization of Rural Associations for Progress, which had been working since 1980 to help improve the economy and education in individual communities.
Over the next two years, they located thirty-five U.S. schools to partner with thirty-five schools in Zimbabwe, and they've shipped four forty-foot containers to the schools, with more than 150,000 books, school supplies, toys, games, sports equipment, bicycles, clothing, sewing machines, agricultural tools, and other items. They raise funds for items needed but not donated–school uniforms, locally printed books, and educational materials and scholarships.
In the U.S. partner schools, Mark and Sheri try to give students an appreciation for what life is like for their counterparts in Zimbabwe. American kids learn that the kids in their partner school often get up at 5 a.m. to walk several miles to school, may well have nothing to eat, and may have lost one or both parents to AIDS. They also learn that many kids don't go to school at all because they can't afford the school fees, uniforms, or even a notebook and pencil; they have to work to support or stay home to care for a sick parent or younger sibling; or they don't have shoes and can't walk long distances in winter. The American children are empowered to take action—collecting donations and writing letters to the Zimbabwean students.
Mark and Sheri themselves fly to Zimbabwe as each shipment arrives and help distribute the donations to the schools. "The effects of the shipment have far exceeded anything we dreamed of" says Mark. "For the first time, students can take books home to read. Five percent of the kids in the seventh grade used to pass reading tests; now it's 60 percent. Three years ago, only one student in his district passed his A-level exams for university. This year, thirty-eight students passed. There are now art and sewing classes. Soccer flourishes because there's an abundance of soccer balls. Attendance in many kindergartens has increased threefold due to the introduction of toys. In September we'll increase the schools we partner with from thirty-five to fifty." The program has proven so successful, there's now a waiting list of three hundred schools.
Why did they do this? Mark says, "I believe that each of us has an obligation to level the playing field of life. Schools that have no books, communities without water, and people without access to medical care are not someone else's problem. We all have a capacity to make a difference somewhere. We just have to decide if we have the will to do it."
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