sometimes myowndamnself too shiftless & lazy...
not terribly proud of it either, to be truthful, so am thankful
that there are plenty of other folk doing the hard work,
like many of those contributing here at American Samizdat.
I wanted to share something I came across only this Am,
whilst visiting many bloggos favoritos,
our pal el dee (who recently posted hereabouts) mentions a
learning experience she had recently re the School of the Americas
(see the 4.12 post specifically,
the permalinks on that page are, ahhhh, troublesome...)

Bill Aimed at Reversing Bush Order on Records

Aiming bipartisan fire at what it described as the Bush administration's alarming penchant for secrecy, a group of House Republicans and Democrats yesterday introduced legislation to cancel President Bush's executive order restricting the release of presidential records.

Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Calif.), the chief sponsor of the measure, said the order was a violation of "the letter and spirit" of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which declared for the first time that the records of a former president belong to the public.
[more]

Maybe we'll find out about Iran/Contra, and Reagan's vice-president, after all. Enquiring minds want to know.

Renegade View on Child Sex Causes a Storm: "When the University of Minnesota Press agreed more than a year ago to publish a book called Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, it was clear that it would be controversial." Written as an attack on the abstinence-only school of sex education, it has been roundly criticized as an apologia for pedophilia, which it does not in fact endorse. But, arriving in the midst of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, it has prompted attacks on its publisher which has responded by agreeing to an unprecedented review of the way it selects books for publication. Civil libertarians are alarmed at the implications for publishing. NY Times

The Bush Doctrine, R.I.P.

'As a statement of principle set forth by an American chief executive, the now defunct Bush Doctrine may have had a shelf life even shorter than Kenny Boy's Enron code of ethics. As a statement of presidential intent, it may land in the history books alongside such magisterial moments as Lyndon Johnson's 1964 pledge not to send American boys to Vietnam and Richard Nixon's 1968 promise to "bring us together."

(...) But even as he fudges his good/evil categorizations when it comes to Mr. Arafat and other players he suddenly may need in the Middle East, it's not clear that Mr. Bush knows that he can no longer look at the world as if it were Major League Baseball, with every team clearly delineated in its particular division. "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance," he told a British interviewer a week after the Passover massacre in Netanya. "My job is to tell people what I think. . . . I think moral clarity is important."

Mr. Bush doesn't seem to realize that nuances are what his own administration is belatedly trying to master — and must — if Colin Powell is going to hasten a cease-fire in the Middle East. Mr. Bush doesn't seem to know that since the routing of the Taliban his moral clarity has atrophied into simplistic, often hypocritical sloganeering. He has let his infatuation with his own rectitude metastasize into hubris. ' NY Times

The Hole in the Reactor: Incredible revelations from the former director of the Union of Concerned Scientists about how the Atomic Energy Commission did business in the face of known doubts about reactor safety:

It's appropriate now, I think, several years after his death, to identify the Deep Throat who helped acquaint Henry Kendall and me with the problems in American nuclear power plants. In 1974, at the Cosmos Club in Washington, Kendall and I were handed a briefcase full of papers by John F. O'Leary, the director of licensing of the A.E.C. He believed in nuclear energy, he said, but only if it were done right. And it wouldn't be unless more details of the problems got out and better regulation was demanded. We studied the papers and distributed them to journalists. Major reports ran in the national press.
Maintenance, quality control, equipment testing and inspection — these had been described as bywords of nuclear safety. But most nuclear plants, according to the commission's own internal audits, were failing badly on all counts. When we asked O'Leary how he could possibly sign off on more and more plant licenses, he offered his personal rationale: Things would leak before they broke. There would be some warning, and the surrounding area could be evacuated in time.

Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) accuses the Bush government/Caryle group of 9/11 prior knowledge and war profiteering:

"In the radio conversation, McKinney delivered a stinging attack on the administration. In 2000, she charged, Bush forces 'stole from America our most precious right of all, the right to free and fair elections.' With the September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, McKinney said, 'an administration of questionable legitimacy has been given unprecedented power.'

She suggested that the administration was serving the interests of a Washington-based investment firm, the Carlyle Group, which employs a number of high-ranking former government officials from both parties. Former president George H.W. Bush -- the current president's father -- is an adviser to the firm. McKinney said the war on terrorism has enriched Carlyle Group investors by enhancing the value of a military contractor partly owned by the firm."

The words conspiracy theory, like terrorist, are just used now to discredit enemies, not to clarify and define issues and problems (if they ever were.)

Homefront Confidential:
How the War on Terrorism Affects Access to Information and the Public's Right to Know
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
via bittershack...

______________________________________

Tom Ridge's Non-Testimonial Appearance Before Congress:
Another Nixon-style Move By The Bush Administration
By John W. Dean
findlaw

"President Richard Nixon didn't like Congress asking him a lot of questions about how he was performing as the head of the Executive Branch. In fact, Congressional oversight annoyed the hell out of him. Accordingly, he was dead set against his aides testifying on Capitol Hill. Today, the world knows why. It's called abuse of power.

For that reason alone, it is remarkable that the Bush White House regularly employs Nixonian tactics - even, most recently, on an issue as important as homeland security. The Bush Administration sure looks to me like they found an old Nixon presidency playbook down in the basement of the White House, since they have borrowed more than one page. Why it's being done remains inexplicable."... (more)

Warblogger Watch

Letter From Israel
Israel – A Suicide Bomber?
by Ran HaCohen

Palestinian suicide attacks have been singled out, overemphasised and isolated from their context in Israel's 35- year occupation of the Palestinian territories, the proper infrastructure of Palestinian terrorism. (...)

The Talmud reminds us that people often accuse others of their own faults. Is this the case with Israel as well? Can Israel be seen as a suicide bomber? Well, the latter part of the term obviously holds true: reports of Israeli bulldozers digging mass graves in Jenin have not been confirmed yet, but the enormous scale of Israeli bombing in occupied territories hardly needs this evidence. During the British Mandate in Palestine (1917-1948), the Royal Army considered bombing Jenin from the air, but dropped the idea for humanitarian reasons; the Israeli army has now used F-16 jets, helicopters and airborne missiles against this city, while destroying dozens of houses as well as the entire water, sewage and electricity infrastructure by tanks and bulldozers. (...)

Bombing Occupation Soldiers is LAWFUL

When acting against soldiers, the suicide bomber has international law on his side. Yes: international legislation acknowledges the right of occupied people to use force against their oppressors, both inside the occupied territories and outside them. Based upon the principles of the Hague International Convention of 1907 and confirmed in the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II, this determination was essential to forestall Nazi claims that partisans, Ghetto fighters, and other underground resistance forces in the territories occupied by Germany had allegedly been "terrorists". In the Nuremberg Tribunal it was unequivocally set down that resistance fighters, including those who had struggled within Germany itself, acted in accordance with the regulations of international law.

A fact actually unheard of in the media.
[more]

The irony here is that those Ghetto fighters were Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Tony Blair has his detractors...
oh yahhh, "Get a grip on yourself Tony"

Patti Smith, r.e.f.m. "progess is not future - it is keeping up w/ the present..." A flyer given away at a May 1978 concert, b/w Poem #2, by Patti Smith and Richard Hell.

Make them ALL accountable!
Bush Is Said to Consider a New Security Department;
so, anyone willing to lay odds on this happening?

Hey, where are the rest of the fellow harbingers?
too quiet around here folks,
let's put your collective two cents in...
this fine item
IDs -- Not That Easy: Questions About Nationwide Identity Systems
brought to my attention via the fine mind behind Medley,
where you'll find some related linkage.

color us unsurprised...
and please tell us something we didn't already know.
NYT links: White House Ties Oil Cutoff by Iraq to Drilling in Alaska;
and I would really like to know the definition of ultimatum as used
by el residente & his chief minion Tricky Dick the Second
Environmentalists Had 48 Hours to Comment to Energy Dept.;
yeah, plenty of other peoples blood being shed to insure Big Oil
profits & the maintenance of the status quo hereabouts.
What a sorry herd of ignorant fools the American public has become.

Red Hiefer birth getting more press. You can feel the apocalyptic excitement in the air!

Uncensored: Graffiti Photography by Pete Maginnis. "...Graffiti is uncensored, anonymous and public. As a form of expression it sits outside usual constraints. The result is a huge variety of visual and verbal statements, spanning ugly to attractive, extreme to moderate, profound to meaningless, unique to repetitive, sacred to profane."

Global Women Intact

"OUR OVERALL MISSION: End female circumcision through education, information, and alternative form of initiation ceremony."

Hear! Hear! GLOBALIZE NO MUTILATION . . .

"The life of an Arab is equally sacred to the life of a Jew." --Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor-In-Chief, Tikkun

Now, there's a religious figure I can muster some respect for! I extend my most heartfelt love and appreciation to all Jews all over the world who are finding the courage to oppose Sharon and his policies right now.

Urgent every hour and every minute counts

Jenin - Briefings ---
Several heavy shielded bulldozers of the army digging a wide road 8 - 10 m wide from west to east ..to cut off the camp into two halves.

This is done also with air bombings , hundreds of bombs, from 2 - 7 Cobra and Apatchi helicopters,,each raid…it is still continuing from around 20.00 last night…till now.

More than one third of the camp houses have been destroyed…total destruction….tens of people died in this way. (...)

In the past 36 hours..only 2 corps and one injured were received by the hospital……this is a proof that what is going as the people there see another bigger intentional massacre than sabra and shatila……

Health situation and living is so much to a degree that people are now drinking from the sewage and eating leaves of trees.

We got now from a witness that hundreds of bodies are under rubles of the houses..the people who saved themselves are gathered in the university.(...)

In these days it is not fair for the victims to make analysis..and if some politicians reading these lines wouldn’t understand what mentality is behind these atrocities…….. then ….humanity and conscious is lost.

Still alive
Issa
[more]

----------

Jenin - Remember This Word

Jenin. Remember this word, for every time your lose faith in humanity, all you need to do is to recall it. Repeat inside of you, slowly, when you are down and frail. It should give you vigor and lift your spirit. It's a symbol of courage, courage beyond these times of despair and degradation, courage that's legendary, almost mythological. How else can we explain that a small refugee camp, less than a kilometer sq. length and width stands for days in the face of hundreds of tanks, Apache helicopters and thousands of trained killers, they call soldiers?

Established in 1953 as a make-shift tent city to host thousands of Palestinian refugees, this small camp breeds tenacity and defiance. Many of those Palestinians who were uprooted from their villages in Palestine to live in the most humiliating conditions were still able to see the land that once was theirs, by simply gazing west.
[more]

Cybersmut and Debt Undermine Penthouse: Bob Guccione acknowledges that Penthouse is going under. Ill-conceived plans to diversify into 'legitimate' businesses have not succeeded and the highly-leveraged company's revenues are falling dramatically because of free online porn. Not to be outdone, Guccione has his sights set on moving his smut-peddling to the internet.

uh oh... it's him again...
yep, big as life & twice as ugly.
we mentioned this at the dumbmonkey,
something to be aware of taking place 4.20,
visit the International ANSWER site

"Bush speaks loudly, carries a tiny stick"
(s'how the SF Chron has A. Huffington's column headlined,
that stick size fits right in w/el residente's tiny mind....)
Arianna H., on The New Bush Doctrine: "See You Next Week"
and,
Why are the Feds involved with Medical Marijuana?

America is waiting for a message
of some sort or another.
Takin' it again. Again! Again!
Takin' it again.
Well now... no, no... now, we ought to be mad
at the government not mad at the people.
Takin' it again. Again! Again!
Takin' it again.
I mean, yeah, well... wha-what're ya gonna do?
America is waiting for a message
of some sort or another.
No will whatsoever. No will whatsoever!
Absolutely no honor.
No will whatsoever. No will whatsoever!
Absolutely no integrity.

Byrne, Eno... My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. 20 years ago.

‘I always feel on the side of the loser’
yah, it's me again, and w/a mention of N. Chomsky.
No, to you fools & idiots out there, Mr. Chomsky is not my god or idol,
simply a man I hold in high esteem for his willingness to investigate in
order to satisfy his own curiosity, along w/that willingness to share
what he has learned and discovered with those of us with far lazier habits.
So, without further ado, and yah, we know, it's from 1992,
but as timely now, as it was then.
N. Chomsky, interviewed by John Pilger, BBC2, 11.25.92
and we wish a personal welcome to the esteemed el dee

& more, in the spirit of "feeling on the side of the loser"
Revolutionary Democracy

What? You mean that "fur-lined sink" isn't necessary? That sarcophagus shaped "electronic valet" that steam cleans my underwear and spit shines my shoes isn't really needed for a happy life? Gah! My hope for a better world is just shot if I can't own that nearly extinct reptile and buy the vee-hickle that gets 2 gallons to the mile and seats 23. I just can't live in such a world. I can't go on...

Behind Consumption and Consumerism. You know, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make your life a little easier. It seems to me the problem is, the harder we work to keep multi-national conglomerates happy, the more we have to spend to make our lives easier. It's almost like the solution becomes the problem becomes the solution becomes the problem. And we stand in the middle of all of this, scratching our asses heads, wondering how we can pay off those mountains of credit card debt.

(Can I say asses heads?)

Warblogger Watch.

Sharon's Wars: How The News Gets Through
But there is a difference. A huge one. Twenty years ago, at least for people living here in the United States, it was harder, though far from impossible, to get first-hand accounts of what was going on. You had to run out to find foreign newspapers, or have them laboriously faxed from London, or Paris. Reporting in the mainstream corporate press here was horrifying tilted into putting the best face on Israeli deeds. Mostly, it still is. But the attempted news blackout by the Sharon government and the Israeli military simply isn't working.

Victor Rebuffo... Tribunes at the crossroads of despair (1952, woodcut). From La Rebelión: Cuento Gráfico - The Insurrection: A Graphic Story (Argentina, 1952). "...it tells a tense story of relations between labor and capital. It is not based on any specific event but rather real occurrences transformed in the artist's imagination. At the time these wood blocks were made, Juan Perón was in power. Since Perón saw himself as the perfect embodiment of workers' desires, no suggestion of labor discontent was tolerated outside of official channels. Hence the artist kept the blocks safely hidden away and they were never printed until 1978."

a word, fraught w/much weight & meaning
and applicable to many, both individuals and governments.
What Do You Mean, 'Terrorist'?
Me?, oh hell, I'm a pussycat...

I've been meaning to add a way to leave comments about a particular post, but am not sure which blog-comments system is the best--any recommendations? Or do you have any other comments about the Samizdat, so far? You can post them here . . .

Muckraking pic courtesy of Lisa over @ the newly-minted Herd Of Cows

Menlo: "Don't you MOO on me, baby!"