Ron Paul is dead.

OK, OK I lied. He’s not dead. But there are speculators, conspiracy theorists if you want, igniting rumours of a possible assassination attempt on Republican candidate, Dr. Ron Paul.

Investigative reporter, Daniel Estulin, revealed a Neocon plot to assassinate Dr. Paul on The Alex Jones Show a week ago. According to Estulin, the plot is in the early stages and concerns the ‘inner core within the inner core’. So he says.

What’s freaky but basically just coincidental is Dr. Paul’s appearance on The Glenn Beck Show. While Beck was interviewing Dr. Paul, the CNN scroll at the bottom read ‘Paul is dead, Paul is dead, Paul is dead’. Chalk it up to coincidence, right?

But what’s a little disturbing about all this is that during the ‘Paul is dead’ scroll, Dr. Paul was actually discussing domestic threats. Do we dismiss this as pure coincidence?

In all likelihood, yes, this is one big coincidence. Or maybe we’re on to them. What if, what if.

Iraq's Sovereignty Violated, Once Again

Before the Bush regime, Clinton and his democrats dropped bombs. With the Bush regime, Corporate America won the support for invasion. The military-industrial-complex lives on. But just what will happen post Bush regime?

Maybe we’ll see evacuation measures taken by the White House under a new administration. But with a strong corporate attachment to Iraq, just exactly who will be allowed to evacuate? Protection - politically and militarily speaking - will be needed to sustain corporate interests of Iraq

Or we could see a larger war blossom from the US occupation and now Turkish incursions. That’s right, the sovereignty of the Iraqi people is being violated yet again. Cross-border attacks against Kurdish rebels has outraged the Iraqi government. But if the Americans can do it, why not the Turks?

The Iraqi people have been murdered; their land, ravaged. So, if the first obligation of a nation is to protect its citizens - thereby, sovereignty - should the Iraqi military begin to move north and protect the border with Turkey? Or is the responsibility of the regional Kurdish government? Prime Minister, Nuri al- Maliki, commented on Kurdish flags in government buildings. He remarked, that ‘the Iraqi flag is the only flag that should be raised over any square inch of Iraq.’

The Kurds have maintained autonomy ever since 1971 when the Iraqi government and Kurdish parties agreed on a peace accord. The accord recognized Kurdish as an official language and the constitution was amended to include that ‘the Iraqi people is made up of two nationalities, the Arab nationality and the Kurdish nationality.‘

So who protects who and who is responsible to who for doing what to who and does why even matter? The US is in Iraq. Turkey is invading the Kurdish north or Iraq. Iran has shelled Iraqi Kurdistan.

Over one million Iraqis have been killed because of all the sanctions and invasions. In a region full of spoils, what is more important: humanity or oil? Life or profit?

P.S. I have decided not to scroll up and figure out if any of this makes sense. Then again, not much of what I read about Iraq or the Middle East seems to make much sense.

Is big media en route to swallow up local media across the US? [the remix]

The F.C.C. voted 3-2 to unleash a new wave of media consolidation over America.

To manipulate media diversity is cause for alarm.

Congress can nullify the decision. But will they?

And, President Bush has threatened to veto any nullification to protect the decision by the F.C.C.

Lawyers Stepping Up

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

www.thenation.com

We are lawyers in the United States of America. As such, we have all taken an oath obligating us to defend the Constitution and the rule of law…. We believe the Bush administration has committed numerous offenses against the Constitution and may have violated federal laws…. Moreover, the administration has blatantly defied congressional subpoenas, obstructing constitutional oversight …. Thus, we call on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to launch hearings into the possibility that crimes have been committed by this administration in violation of the Constitution…. We call for the investigations to go where they must, including into the offices of the President and the Vice President. — American Lawyers Defending the Constitution

Over one thousand lawyers – including former Governor Mario Cuomo and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein – have signed onto the above statement demanding wide-ranging investigative hearings into unconstitutional and potentially criminal activity by the Bush administration.

In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and winner of the 2007 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, said: “The majority of lawyers in this country understand that the Bush administration has really gone off the page of constitutional rights and off the page of fundamental rights, and is willing to push the Congress to restore those rights.” Ratner said he was “dismayed” that a Democratic majority has failed “to push on key illegalities… the torture program, and now the destruction of the tapes involving the torture program; the warrantless wiretapping, the denial of habeas corpus, the secret sites/rendition program, special trials, and of course what we now know is the firing of US Attorneys scandal…. The minimal that absolutely is needed to get us back on the page of law is to have serious investigative hearings that go up the chain of command and figure out who is responsible for what.”

Ratner noted that even with regard to the US attorney’s investigations, where Congressional committees held Harriet Miers, Josh Bolten, and Karl Rove in contempt, leadership has failed to enforce these actions by bringing the resolutions to a vote. “Just announcing that investigations will be held and subpoenas will be issued is terribly insufficient unless Congress is willing to enforce the subpoenas by issuing contempt citations,” Ratner said. “Congress has a constitutional duty to oversee the activities of the executive branch and our entire system of government is threatened when Congress simply folds before an obstinate executive. Issuing contempt citations against Bolten, Miers, and Rove should be Congress’s first order of business in 2008.”

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, discussed the administration’s torture program violating three US-ratified treaties and the US torture statute; the illegal War in Iraq violating the US-ratified UN Charter as a war of aggression; and Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s conflict of interest in overseeing investigations into the torture program and the destruction of the CIA interrogations tapes.

Also speaking with reporters was Jesselyn Raddack, a former Justice Department ethics lawyer who served as an advisor during the interrogation of John Walker Lindh (the “American Taliban”). Raddack said, “My e-mails documented my advice against interrogating Lindh without a lawyer, and concluded that the FBI committed an ethics violation when it did so anyway. Both the CIA videotapes and my e-mails were destroyed, in part, because officials were concerned that they documented controversial interrogation methods that could put agency officials in legal jeopardy…. ” Raddack pointed to the Department of Justice’s investigations of Enron and Arthur Anderson for obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence, and the need for the same aggressive oversight and legal proceedings in these scandals.

This is a vital effort by those charged with defending our constitution, as Ratner said, “This lawyers’ letter and the growing number of signatures we’ll have on it, and prominent people – it’s a way of saying to Congress, ‘You need some backbone. You need to have a serious investigation, wherever it might go, on these issues that really have taken the United States out of the mainstream of human rights.’ It’s absolutely critical… We’ve opened up the door to illegality…. Unless we have accountability on those illegalities, we’re going to be facing a very bleak future in which fundamental rights will not really be obeyed.”

Copyright © 2007 The Nation

Iran meddling of US meddling in Iraq

The talk of the town [Washington] since the illegal invasion by the US into Iraq and the subsequent occupation [illegal] is that Iran has meddled in Iraqi affairs. Iran is meddling? Really?

Meddling is rhetoric penned by Washington [hawks], western media, lobby groups and of course Corporate America. Shhure, there’s other people and groups who blame Iran [largely] for the instability in Iraq, especially the south. But the four horsemen I mentioned are determined to wreak havoc in the Middle East at the expense of Iran - and at the expense of their own population.

The double-speak. The unspeak. The rhetoric. Words are weapons, remember. So it’s a matter of being careful how we read. What we read. And at the end, of what we do with the words we’ve read. We can turn them from word to action, it could get dangerous.

al Qaeda in Iraq [the remix]

Rhetorically I said ‘here’s what I don’t get.’ Oh yeah, but I forgot all about the whole double standards, geopolitical, we want Eurasia and all the oil angle.

Foreign policy in the US can, when scrutinized on an individual basis, screams inconsistency; incoherency. A broader scope of policy bellowed from the White House is more defined. Almost articulate. Eurasia is the goal. The resources, control of a population - that if united, would spell disaster for the Neocons of Washington.

Iraq seemed to be the most logical step in the direction of Eurasia. It was a weakened nation. War torn. Psychologically fucked. Now, Iraq is a Un-united State of America. A freakish love-child of Corporate America and the Military-Industrial-Complex. A punching bag. And, there are more nations with a vested interest in Iraq now more than ever.

Maybe I don’t get it yet. But I know it’s way too fucked up in the Middle East for the US to attempt a conquest of Eurasia. Logically, Iraq is a part of that conquest. An impossible, no chance in hell, kind of conquest.