From Atomic Gay Wonk 7/15/08:

Obscene: Dole tries to name AIDS bill after Helms

Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) yesterday introduced an amendment that would have added the name of Jesse Helms to the title of the HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria bill that is before the Senate. Helms, who died eleven days ago, was the nation's most vociferous foe of federal funding for HIV/AIDS programs from the epidemic's beginning until he left the Senate.

The name of the Act proposed in S. 2731 is "Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008". The Act would be named after former Reps. Tom Lantos (D-CA-12) and Henry Hyde (R-IL-06), who worked together in their last years in Congress to achieve bipartisan support for federal funding for the fight against these diseases. Sen. Dole apparently thought the title was missing something. From the Congressional Record:

There really is typical of the off the charts nastiness of Republicans. They really like being hateful and obnoxious for the sake of being hateful and obnoxious.

Jesse Helms did everything in his power to promote the spread of HIV through his heterosexist and sexphobic attacks on HIV prevention programs. You would almost think Ms. Dole is trying to give Helms credit for doing so much to make the problem worse.

 

The ACLU's decision to fight the FISA law which attempts to legalize government spying of political dissidents is important on its merits. This attack on the Fourth Amendment must be resisted in the courts of law and the courts of public opinion.

There also is a broader significance. The unconstitutional FISA law must be resisted as part of a broader campaign to resist all of the post 911 attacks on our constitution by rightists and enablers who kept saying it was the terrorists "who hate us for our freedoms."

Here is the text of the ACLU's 7/10/08 press release. It is important for lovers of freedom not to shut up about this.

ACLU Sues Over Unconstitutional Dragnet Wiretapping Law

Group Also Asks Secret Intelligence Court Not To Exclude Public From Any Proceedings On New Law’s Constitutionality

NEW YORK - July 10 - The American Civil Liberties Union filed a landmark lawsuit today to stop the government from conducting surveillance under a new wiretapping law that gives the Bush administration virtually unchecked power to intercept Americans’ international e-mails and telephone calls. The case was filed on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose ability to perform their work – which relies on confidential communications – will be greatly compromised by the new law.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed by Congress on Wednesday and signed by President Bush today, not only legalizes the secret warrantless surveillance program the president approved in late 2001, it gives the government new spying powers, including the power to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international communications.

“Spying on Americans without warrants or judicial approval is an abuse of government power – and that’s exactly what this law allows. The ACLU will not sit by and let this evisceration of the Fourth Amendment go unchallenged,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “Electronic surveillance must be conducted in a constitutional manner that affords the greatest possible protection for individual privacy and free speech rights. The new wiretapping law fails to provide fundamental safeguards that the Constitution unambiguously requires.”

In today’s legal challenge, the ACLU argues that the new spying law violates Americans’ rights to free speech and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. The new law permits the government to conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and email addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it’s conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing.

Plaintiffs in today’s case are:

• The Nation and its contributing journalists Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges
• Amnesty International USA, Global Rights, Global Fund for Women, Human Rights Watch, PEN American Center, Service Employees International Union, Washington Office on Latin America, and the International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association
• Defense attorneys Dan Arshack, David Nevin, Scott McKay and Sylvia Royce

“As a journalist, my job requires communication with people in all parts of the world – from Iraq to Argentina. If the U.S. government is given unchecked surveillance power to monitor reporters’ confidential sources, my ability to do this work will be seriously compromised,” said Naomi Klein, an award-winning columnist and best-selling author who is a plaintiff in today’s lawsuit. “I cannot in good conscience accept that my conversations with people who live outside the U.S. will put them in harm’s way as a result of overzealous government spying. Privacy in my communications is not simply an expectation, it’s a right.”

The ACLU’s legal challenge, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York today, seeks a court order declaring that the new law is unconstitutional and ordering its immediate and permanent halt.

In a separate filing, the ACLU asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to ensure that any proceedings relating to the scope, meaning or constitutionality of the new law be open to the public to the extent possible. The ACLU also asked the secret court to allow it to file a brief and participate in oral arguments, to order the government to file a public version of its briefs addressing the law’s constitutionality, and to publish any judicial decision that is ultimately issued.

“The new law allows the mass acquisition of Americans’ international e-mails and telephone calls,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The administration has argued that the law is necessary to address the threat of terrorism, but the truth is that the law sweeps much more broadly and implicates all kinds of communications that have nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activity of any kind.”

In 2006, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) to stop its illegal, warrantless spying program. A federal district court sided with the ACLU, ruling that warrantless wiretapping by the NSA violated Americans’ rights to free speech and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, ran counter to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and violated the principle of separation of powers. The Bush administration appealed the ruling, and an appeals court panel dismissed the case. However, the court did not uphold the legality of the government's warrantless surveillance activity and the only judge to discuss the merits of the case clearly and unequivocally declared that the warrantless spying was unlawful. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case earlier this year.

“A democratic system depends on the rule of law, and not even the president or Congress can authorize a law that violates core constitutional principles,” said Christopher Dunn, Associate Legal Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The only thing compromised in this so-called ‘compromise’ law is the Constitution.”

Attorneys on the lawsuit Amnesty v. McConnell are Jaffer, Melissa Goodman and L. Danielle Tully of the ACLU National Security Project and Dunn and Arthur Eisenberg of the NYCLU. Attorneys on the motion filed with the FISC are Jaffer, Goodman, Tully, as well as Arthur Spitzer of the ACLU of the National Capital Area.

More information, including today’s complaint, a video discussing the ACLU’s legal challenge, plaintiff statements in support of the lawsuit and the FISC motion, is available at: www.aclu.org/faa

Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important social analysts and economic critics of our time. A 7/9/08 Time interview includes an important observation of hers on a similarity between fundie Christian megachurches here in the US and Hamas.

What struck me when I have visited mega-churches from time to time is that they are really great big social service centers. You won't see references to Jesus in a mega-church. I mean the trappings I associate [with church]are gone, the crosses and everything. What you will see is over here we have our battered women's support group, over here we have our after-school activities. We have our group for the unemployed professionals and so on. They have really filled in where maybe there would have been public services or secular services at some other time. In the same way that Hamas, and I understand Hizballah also, gain a base by providing social services that people aren't getting otherwise.

Of course, we can all think of some other similarities:

- Superstitious world views

- Hatred of people who don't share their religious views

- Heterosexism

- Misogyny

One important aspect of this issue is a danger posed by the hate-based initiatives of Bush, and now Obama, to shift government funding from inclusive non-profits to religious ones. Government funds will be used to lure people into cultish compounds of Christian fundamentalism.

 

This New York Times article ( "U.S. Weighs Takeover of Two Mortgage Giants" - 7/10/08) is typical of how the corporate media omit underlying causes in reporting on current economic difficulties.

You can see how the Iraqtastrophe is impacting events, but you have to think very carefully while you read. Here's one example, a sentence starting the second paragraph:

The companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been hit hard by the mortgage foreclosure crisis.

Let's review three of the ways that the war on Iraq has contributed to this foreclosure crisis.

- The resulting increase in oil prices has pushed some people who were near default on their mortgages over the edge.

- The rising oil prices and increased budget deficits have slowed the overall US economy down. Newly unemployed people are much more likely to lose their homes to foreclosure.

- Higher oil prices have increased trade deficits. Those deficits, along with growing budget deficits, have resulted in a falling dollar. A weak dollar is unattractive to foreign investors, including risk tolerant ones that otherwise might be interested in buying heavily discounted US mortgage paper.

Now, let's review a paragraph later in the article (bolding mine).

The companies are by far the biggest providers of financing for domestic home loans. If they are unable to borrow, they will not be able to buy mortgages from commercial lenders. In turn, that would make it more expensive and difficult, if not impossible, for home buyers to obtain credit, freezing the United States housing market. Even healthy banks are reluctant to tie up scarce capital by offering mortgages to low-risk home buyers without Fannie and Freddie taking the loans off their books.

One of the reasons capital is so scare is that the Bush regime is borrowing so much money to pay for their colonial occupation of Iraq. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been borrowed to feed this fiscally voracious war, money which is unavailable for home and commercial credit.

Obviously, Iraq isn't the only cause of our economic difficulties. Financial market deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and other policies which shift wealth from the middle class and the poor to the super rich all are important as well. Yet, how can we have an informed political debate if so much of what is ailing us is kept off of the metaphorical table?

Some opponents of the war say that the vast majority of Americans are not sacrificing anything to the war in Iraq. It certainly is true that military members and their families make much larger sacrifices than everyone else. However, all of us are sacrificing for this unpopular war. We are just being lied to about it.

Iraq is a proverbial "elephant in the living room" of American economic discussion. Our nation better start talking about it.

 

The passage of the unconstitutional FISA legislation to expand federal wiretapping powers to political opponents and dissidents did not happen in a vacuum. There is a context that needs to be examined.

At a National Gay and Lesbian Task Force conference over a decade ago, Urvashi Vaid warned the audience of a "creeping fascism" and gave a series of examples and arguments to build her case. At the time, the idea seemed novel, but it merely registered in my mind as something to pay attention to in the future.

In 2008, the creep has gone quite far. Here are some examples:

- Restrictions of domestic political activity at the state and federal level under NAFTA and the GATT agreement that started the World Trade Organization. The unconstitutional nature of the agreements and their enforcement was a bad sign as well. (They function as treaties yet did not get the required 2/3 Senate vote treaties need.)

- Unconstitutional Warrantless wiretapping

- Roundups based on religious beliefs

- Illegal detentions without charges at Guantanamo Bay

- The Unpatriotic Act

- Kidnapping of uncharged, alleged terrorists and sending them to foreign countries to be tortured. ("extraordinary rendition")

- Routine use of torture

- Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without the constitutionally mandated Declarations of War

- Executive branch "signing statements" which attempt to nullify laws they don't like (expanded dramatically under Bush)

- Hate based religious patronage systems which violate state/church separation, discriminate against atheists, and amount to incumbent administrations bribing preachers for political support

- Concentration of television and radio station license holders of frequencies owned by the American people, not the corporations that license them

- Supreme Court decisions falsely claiming that campaign contributions are "speech," undermining democracy and ceding greater powers to the wealthy and to corporations over the government.

- Restricting freedom of assembly through "free speech zones" and other means

I'm sure you can come up with more. The point is that when people don't raise enough hell over one attack on our freedoms as Americans, more follow. Things are moving in a terrible direction, and we should be less willing to accept it.

During the 18th - 20th centuries, the US was transitioning to a more representative democracy where constitutionally mandated civil liberties were gaining more respect. The nation went from a situation where only landowning white males had suffrage and the Bill of Rights was largely theoretical to a place where every adult had the right to vote and courts, legislators, the media, and the public were strongly defending our freedoms.

That is all being unraveled by money, power, and religious extremism.

 

As you probably know by now, the US Senate voted 69-28 to pass a FISA bill which gives immunity to Telecoms who illegally spied on Americans at the request of the Bush regime and which gives an attempted legal license to the unconstitutional spying of political opponents and dissidents.

Three votes are of particular interest to followers of Presidential politics. Obama voted in favor of this attack on the Constitution and on basic political freedoms; John "Keating Five" McCain didn't bother to vote; and Hillary Clinton actually voted against it, despite her earlier vote against a filibuster of the reprehensible legislation.

Much has been written on Obama's betrayal on this issue, despite previous promises to filibuster any bill with Telecom immunity. It raises serious questions not only about his commitment to constitutional rights, but also to his credibility and trustworthiness.

The lack of a vote by John McCain is interesting. Did age and frailty make it too difficult for "Keating Five" McCain to carry on his Senate duties while campaigning for the White House? Was he afraid that voting for the bill would alienate anti-government conservatives who might vote for Bob Barr?

Hillary Clinton's No vote was a rare break from the rightist wingnuttery which has typified her time in the Senate and her presidential campaign. Was she trying to take both sides of an issue to triangulate? Was she trying to move to the left to stay politically viable in New York? Her vote suggests that those of us in New York should see if this represents an opportunity to try to pull her away from her generally Republican behavior, admittedly an enormous task.

What about the rest of our not so esteemed Senate? There wasn't even one Republican honest enough to vote against the legislation, demonstrating how completely corrupt and unAmerican that party has become. The votes of 20 "Democrats" for the bill shows that corruption has made enormous inroads in that party. Webb's vote for the bill, along with his pro-war record (as opposed to anti-war rhetoric) shows the folly of trusting a former Reagan administration official.

Here is the vote tally from the US Senate Website:

Yes ---69 Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Barrasso (R-WY) Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Bennett (R-UT) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Craig (R-ID) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Feinstein (D-CA) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Gregg (R-NH) Hagel (R-NE) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK)	Inouye (D-HI) Isakson (R-GA) Johnson (D-SD) Kohl (D-WI) Kyl (R-AZ) Landrieu (D-LA) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN) Martinez (R-FL) McCaskill (D-MO) McConnell (R-KY) Mikulski (D-MD) Murkowski (R-AK) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Obama (D-IL) Pryor (D-AR) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Shelby (R-AL) Smith (R-OR) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (R-PA) Stevens (R-AK) Sununu (R-NH) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wicker (R-MS)
No ---28 Akaka (D-HI) Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Byrd (D-WV) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Clinton (D-NY) Dodd (D-CT) Dorgan (D-ND) Durbin (D-IL) Feingold (D-WI)	Harkin (D-IA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Menendez (D-NJ) Murray (D-WA) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Wyden (D-OR)
Not Voting - 3 Kennedy (D-MA) McCain (R-AZ) Sessions (R-AL)

 

Here's a report from the Real News Network from back in May. You probably didn't hear or read this in the corporate media.

Air strikes against Iraqi civilians have been going up during the "surge," an important story that is being censored by corporate news outlets.



Anyone who says that the violence is going down in Iraq is either ill informed or isn't counting the escalating violence by US troops acting under orders of the Bush regime.

Here is another Real News Network story (June 23, 2008) that covers the minimal network news coverage of Iraq, about 2 minutes per week. The lack of information on Iraqi casualties also is discussed. The lack of bad news we are getting from Iraq is primarily due to the lack of total news we are getting from Iraq.



 

Reuters 7/5/08:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Saturday his plan to end the Iraq war was unchanged and he was puzzled by the sharp reaction to his statement this week that he might "refine" his timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat troops.

Of course, if you have followed past Democratic betrayals, you know that "refine" almost always means "capitulate" when it is uttered by most centrist and conservative Democrats. Obama's quote may or may not be reassuring.

"For me to say that I'm going to refine my policies I don't think in any way is inconsistent with prior statements and doesn't change my strategic view that this war has to end and that I'm going to end it as president," Obama told reporters on his campaign plane.

One key question is:

When?

Obama's prior 16 month timetable is absurdly long. It only took weeks for the Bush regime to get our troops into Iraq, the notion that it could possibly take more than 6 months for a full withdrawal insults the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 50.

The possibility that such an outlandishly long timeline might be extended is sickening. One deadline does present itself to congressional Democrats. If we are still in Iraq in November 2010, the Democrats will face enormous losses in the midterm elections.

Maybe Obama's prior comments were a trial balloon. If so, we need to fight like heck to pop it.

Will he try to filibuster the war to the end of his first term? To the end of a second term? After Obama betrayed people concerned with the Constitution and civil liberties on FISA and hate-based initiatives, we need to push as hard as we can for a full and immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Democrats tend to follow social movements rather than lead them.

We better be one of those social movements.

 

The claims by the fascist government in Columbia, the Bush regime, the "Keating Five" McCain campaign, and the corporate media that the FARC hostages were released through trickery and this all just happened to take place in time for McCain's visit to that country were fishy from the start. Any decent bullshit detector should have been going off the charts.

It turns out the whole story was a bunch of bullshit.

FARC was paid millions of dollars to release the hostages. (The Australian 7/4/08)

LEADERS of the Colombian FARC rebel movement were paid millions of dollars to free Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages, Swiss radio has said, quoting "a reliable source".
The 15 hostages released Wednesday by the Colombian army "were in reality ransomed for a high price, and the whole operation afterwards was a set-up," the radio's French-language channel said.

Saying the US, which had three of its citizens among those freed, was behind the deal, it put the price of the ransom at some 20 million dollars.

The radio said its source was "close to the events, reliable and tested many times in recent years.'

The Bush regime and its corrupt cronies in Columbia staged the whole thing to help McCain's campaign, and it sounds like they used our taxdollars to pay off FARC.

 

Yes, I know I'm harping on this, but most people in the corporate media are downplaying the main reason why gas prices are so high while stirring up anger over high gas prices. The independent media, including you and me, need to counter this propaganda.

Many people in the peace movement have neglected to connect the dots between the Iraq War, its resulting reduction in Iraqi oil production, its destabilization of the Middle East, and rising prices at the pump. That critique doesn't apply to all peace groups, though. The West Virginia Citizens Action Group is calling for a "separation of oil and state."

"I think really people are smarter than the politicians let on. I think people really know that the unrest in the mideast is really causing a large part of the gas problem in this country," Gary Zuckett of Citizen Action Group said.

Leaders of Citizen Action Group point to a recent study that tracks how gas prices have risen dramatically since the start of the war.

Be sure to watch the video included with the WSAZ news story where the grassroots activist makes some excellent points.

The problems caused by the war on Iraq are hardly limited to present and potential petroleum supply disruptions. Sen. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) brought up another way that the Iraq War is increasing gas prices: devaluing the dollar. (The Hill's Blog Briefing Room 7/1/08)

"We cannot economically afford to keep borrowing two to three billion dollars a week from China," McCaskill said on MSNBC. "That's why gas prices are so high. People are speculating in commodities because nobody wants to go near our dollar. We cannot–it is unsustainable to continue to prop up, in the middle of a civil war, an Iraqi government that will not step up and do what they need to do."

Let's face it. Jesse Helms was an incredibly evil man. He was an uncompromisingly racist, sexist, and heterosexist bigot who did everything in his power to promote the spread of HIV in the queer community. Helms had absolutely no personal or public integrity whatsoever, being as much of a liar as he was a bigot. He also was a bought politician, doing whatever he could to please the tobacco companies and other corporate interests.

Now, Jesse Helms is dead.

If you want sympathy or false praise for that piece of garbage, you will have to go elsewhere. Helms deserved to die a lot younger than 86.

If you want to get an idea of how evil and bigoted the so-called "Heritage Foundation" is, read the quote from the article from their president on Helms.

Ed Feulner, president of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, hailed Helms as "one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century."

"Along with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, he helped establish the conservative movement and became a powerful voice for free markets and free people," Feulner wrote.

Free people, my ass.