The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: Second Half of January 2006 Archive

January 29
The entry Monday about Richard Scrushy buying pastoral support for his defense in his accounting fraud trial leads to a related point I didn't have time for then, nor have I been healthy enough to blog since then (an advantage of a figurative over a literal soapbox is you can't catch my infectious diseases). It gets to that phrase Republicans are coming to hate, "culture of corruption" (what, they'd prefer "kleptocracy"?). Corporate accounting fraud has nothing to do with Jack Abramoff, or lobbying scandals, or Congress, or Bush, but is part of it. Scrushy went from corporate CEO under indictment to TV evangelist in Alabama. He couldn't have been more Republican if had elephant jammies. Ken Lay was the acting president's political sugar daddy, and the sharing of personnel between the upper ranks of Enron and the upper ranks of the Bush administration was looking pretty embarrassing until Bush contrived a crisis in Iraq just in time for the 2002 election. Just yesterday, Bloomberg carried this story that another scandal corporation, Tyco, hired as a lobbyist guess who, Abramoff. David Safavian, now under indictment, tipped off Abramoff who tipped off Tyco that they were about to lose eligibility for federal contracts.

As much Republicans understandably wish this culture of corruption was non-partisan, wouldn't it be worse if it was? Think about it: corruption already permeates Congress, the executive branch, we're about to see the approval of a Supreme Court nominee who doesn't recuse himself when he has a financial interest in the outcome of a case; staff jobs are just rungs on the ladder to the more important lobbying jobs; corruption in terms of accounting scandals has been cracked down upon, but executives move in and out of government with the effect industries get to regulate themselves; besides Scrushy's cynical use of religion, many churches act like local party HQ for the GOP while the IRS looks the other way, and lobbyists like Abramoff and Ralph Reed not only manipulate religion for grassroots campaigns, they plead their piety when they get caught; when you look to the media for coverage of what's going on, you discover much positive coverage of these corrupt people was paid for while the recipients of the pay didn't disclose the extra pay they got from the people they praised. Yes, it does seem like the corruption is spreading to every institution, and such a circumstance would have to make us fearful of what's happened to this country except for one common factor in all of it: it's all Republicans/conservatives who are doing it. The upper reaches of corporate America are heavily Republican, the federal government is entirely under Republican control, the corruption of religion is coming from the conservative side, the journalists/columnists who are getting caught on the take have all been conservatives, and even the state governments ridden with scandal have been Republican.

It all goes to show just how much is at stake in the next election. Americans blew their chance in the last election to clean things up, provided you believe the election results. Even if you believe as I do that the Republicans have been stealing elections, the votes were at least close, and crooks have been genuinely winning. The fact the Tom DeLay got elected should tell us there is a long way to go in exposing the corruption to more of the voters. Much of it is still an impression to many and not yet associated with the GOP. I think we're making progress in getting the word out beyond bloggers and news junkies but we're far from being able to stop.The entry Monday about Richard Scrushy buying pastoral support for his defense in his accounting fraud trial leads to a related point I didn't have time for then, nor have I been healthy enough to blog since then (an advantage of a figurative over a literal soapbox is you can't catch my infectious diseases). It gets to that phrase Republicans are coming to hate, "culture of corruption" (what, they'd prefer "kleptocracy"?). Corporate accounting fraud has nothing to do with Jack Abramoff, or lobbying scandals, or Congress, or Bush, but is part of it. Scrushy went from corporate CEO under indictment to TV evangelist in Alabama. He couldn't have been more Republican if had elephant jammies. Ken Lay was the acting president's political sugar daddy, and the sharing of personnel between the upper ranks of Enron and the upper ranks of the Bush administration was looking pretty embarrassing until Bush contrived a crisis in Iraq just in time for the 2002 election. Just yesterday, Bloomberg carried this story that another scandal corporation, Tyco, hired as a lobbyist guess who, Abramoff. David Safavian, now under indictment, tipped off Abramoff who tipped off Tyco that they were about to lose eligibility for federal contracts.

January 23
This "Take the Red Pill Award" goes to the jurors who acquitted Richard Scrushy last June. Scrushy is the former CEO of HealthSouth Corp. and allegedly behind one of the biggest instances of accounting fraud to come out during the spate of scandals in 2001-2002. The verdict was a surprise at the time, the successful defense including religious appeals. Now, it turns out Scrushy paid for the black pastors who oddly sat in on the trial to lend their presence to the argument that Scrushy was a good Christian man. At least one was also planted stories favorable stories in The Birmingham Times. Scrushy himself has turned TV evangelist. Well, it worked. The jury bought the story that this was he was really a good Christian. Surely he couldn't be the corrupt man portrayed by the prosecution and everybody who worked with him --- except it now looks like he purchased the good impression with a little of the money he stole. In hopes that they will learn that publicly praying to Jesus does not a decent man make, those who aqquitted this religious man get a "Take the Red Pill Award."

January 22
I don't know what you or I can do about it necessarily, perhaps get our policy makers, if they'll consider a major factor in deciding Iraq policy which their record indicates they haven't given a thought. Maybe this is just documentation for me when I say "I told you so". Anyway, it appears that the biggest obstacle to a unified Iraq won't be the religious divide between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but the separatist aspirations of the Kurds. This is hardly a new thought to us news junkies, but I really hope the acting president and the people inside the bubble have that thought, and I doubt that they do. With that downer of an opening, let me state that alas it's not my own original thought. Oddly enough, that idea comes from journalists who have actually been to the Kurdish regions of Iraq and spoken to real Kurds rather than soaking up the drivel from administration spokesman.

Frank Viviano wrote The Kurds in Control in this month's National Geographic. The key point is that there are plenty of divisions among Kurds, but they are quite agreed in their desire for independence. There is a very similar article in last month's Smithsonian, where Andrew Cockburn noted the same things, that there is a divisions between two powerful militias/political parties which have fought each other, but the Kurds are unified in hating Arabs and wanting independence. Knight Ridder ran this article by a reporter, Tom Lasseter, who spent time with Kurdish soldiers in the Iraqi army. These soldiers were upfront about their loyalty to their Kurdish militia leaders before anyone in the Iraqi army, and that includes turning on the Arabs in the army if taking Kirkuk comes down to force. Be in no doubt that Kirkuk is the flashpoint, the place more than one side think they have to have. The Iraqi army denied the Knight Ridder report was accurate, but demanded the names of those who talked.

map of Kurdistan which is divided among four countries A common theme is the Kurds know they will have no outside help when they make their bid for independence, but they are preparing slowly. They are building their own economy, separate political structures, making their own deals with foreign businesses, and above all maintaining their own armies. I hope Smithsonian will forgive the copyright infringement as the accompanying map is from their article, but it shows the biggest complication in the whole situation. Maybe they'll consider the link adequate compensation. Anyway, please notice that the Kurds have a contiguous territory divided among four nations. The Iraqi Kurds hate the Arabs for the oppression suffered not just under Saddam but before him too. Turkey has had a long war with its Kurds and threatens to invade Iraq if the Iraqi Kurds declare independence. Personally, I think they mean it. The Kurds have had less documented problems with Iran, and I suspect Iran might intervene to suppress restiveness among its Kurds. I don't know how Syria's Kurds get along, but combine potential separationism with the US neocons fantasy that the war in Iraq is due to arms coming from Syria, and I can imagine potential trouble.

OK, there's not an obvious action item here. You can't just send off a letter to your Congressman demanding this allegation be investigated, or this alleged crime be prosecuted, or this bill be passed or opposed. If I can ask one thing of those in power, it is that they stop and think through this complex situation which could change in ways I suspect they have not considered.

"You don't care about me."
16 year old Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, when he realized the Canadian agent he thought had come to take him out of Hell and home to Canada was just another interrogator.

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at his pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose."
Abraham Lincoln in 1848, during the Mexican War, expressing why allowing a president sole discretion to decide when to invade another country is dangerous to the liberty of his own country.

"The OPR [the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility]also has been far behind in producing required annual public reports summarizing its activities. Last month, it released its report covering fiscal year 2005. That means many investigations undertaken during the tenure of former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales remain under wraps."
LA Times reporter Richard B. Schmit, in an article written in July 2008, on how the OPR is hiding the results of investigations --- assuming they actually are investigating.

"Mr. Chairman, I think the number's actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth � was 25, 26, 27."
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, on the number of detainees killed in Bush's prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and locations still secret.

"Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations."
James Hansen, on the 20th anniversary of his testimony before Congress where he informed them global warming was now certain, and how little time remains to prevent catastrophes.

"Who will chair the commission investigating the secrets of warrantless spying, years from today? Will it be a young senator in this body today? Will it be someone not yet elected? What will that senator say when he or she comes to our actions, reads in the records how we let outrage after outrage after outrage slide, with nothing more than a promise to stop the next one? I imagine that senator will ask of us, 'Why didn't they do anything? Why didn't they fight back? In June 2008, when no one could doubt anymore what the administration was doing---why did they sit on their hands?'"
Sen. Chris Dodd, in his speech on the Senate floor opposing the FISA bill and retroactive immunity.

"We had the worst natural disaster in the history of this country Katrina, and there wasn't a drop of oil spilled."
Sen. Norm Coleman, proposing more offshore oil drilling. There was actually enough oil spilled to match the Exxon Valdez. Whether Coleman is lying, or ignorantly repeating Republican talking points, is unknown.

"I'll go back to square one on this: We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us."
George Carlin, in an interview with Salon, on how he became a disappointed idealist.

"To date, seven long years after we scooped up our first detainees in Afghanistan, not a single one of them has faced evidence, his accusers, or anything remotely resembling a legal court hearing on his guilt or innocence."
Joseph Galloway, military correspondent for McClatchy, on how responsibility for war crimes goes right to the top, despite efforts to confine consequences to the bottom, in light of the recent McClatchy series on detainees.

"As I was leaving the UN food distribution center in Damascus, Layla Atiya, the widow with seven children, touched my arm. 'Can you tell me one thing?,' she pleaded. 'Why did America do this to us? What did we do to America to make her hate us so?'"
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink, writing about her visit to Iraqi refugee camps.

"So we're sitting here and, for example, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who said that he wanted to be a martyr on 9/11, make no mistake about it --- he said that he just couldn't get a visa --- launched into a description of what kind of psychotropic drugs he's taking here at the prison camp, or being given here at the prison camp. And the media monitors hit the white noise button. We didn't get to hear what exactly he's being given and we didn't exactly hear his explanation about why he's on medication.

And one of the escorts here explained that this was HIPAA protection, the Health and Information Protection Act on a place where the Bush Administration says the Constitution doesn't apply."
Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, on the restrictions placed on the press and mistreatment of detainees.

"If the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court was really concerned about fairness, it could have simply asked the Florida Supreme Court to devise a universal standard, appoint a judge to enforce it, and then extend the state's meaningless 'safe harbor' deadline to make it possible to complete the recount. It did not do so because it was not interested in counting the votes. It wanted George W. Bush to win."
Gary Kamiya, Salon writer at large, in a review of the HBO's "Recount", on how the Supreme Court stole the election for Bush.

"Convicting and imprisoning Paul Minor on corruption charges could be a powerful way to curtail contributions to the local Democratic Party."
U.S. House Judiciary Committee report on political prosecutions by the Bush DOJ. Minor was a vital contributor to the Mississippi Democratic Party.

"Where does the madness end? Where do words lose their meaning? Al-Qa'ida is not being defeated. Hizbollah has just won a domestic war in Lebanon, as total as Hamas's war in Gaza. Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza are hell disasters � I need no apology to quote Churchill's description of 1948 Palestine yet again � and this foolish, stupid, vicious man is lying to the world yet again."
Robert Fisk, columnist and resident of Lebanon, responding to remarks by Bush that show he hasn't the least understanding of the region he's mucking up.

"The short version: Republicans in Congress, McCain included, have slashed the United States budget for wind energy since Carter was president, which is why McCain has to speak at a Danish turbine manufacturer instead of an American one."
Mother Jones reporter/blogger Jonathan Stein, noting that McCain made his climate change speech in a Danish wind turbine factory after repeatedly cutting funding for wind development here.

"We get off on warfare."
Rev. Rod Parsley, McCain's spiritual advisor, who calls for mass murder, in a snippet of a sermon in a video by Mother Jones and Brave New Films. That line of Christian charity comes about 1:25 into the video.

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