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It seems as though the issue of NPR journalists casually airing personal opinions on other media outlets has drawn complaints from many listeners and caused a bit of an internal ruckus, so much so that the news service is reviewing its ethics policies.  

A recent column by NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin refers specifically to an episode last fall in which NPR correspondent Mara Liasson, speaking on Fox News, chastised Congressmen Jim McDermott of Washington and David Bonior of Michigan for visiting Iraq and suggesting that President Bush was misleading the nation about Iraq's weapons capabilities in order to win support for an military invasion.

Here, exactly, is what Liasson said: "These guys [McDermott and Bonior] are a disgrace. Look, everybody knows it's 101, politics 101, that you don't go to an adversary country, an enemy country, and badmouth the United States, its policies and the president of the United States. I mean, these guys ought to, I don't know resign."

As the Bush administration's deception about Iraq's potential nuclear capacity has come to light, the administration and Congress have begun to quietly re-ignite the nuclear arms race.

  a. They are preparing to build new nuclear weapons and resume nuclear testing.
  b. The administration's official nuclear plan lowers the threshold for using nuclear weapons and calls for developing "more usable" nuclear weapons for "certain battlefield situations."
  c. The administration is threatening non-nuclear countries with nuclear weapons. These are some of the most dangerous developments in two decades. They could decimate international efforts to control, and ultimately abolish these weapons.

We are launching ads nationwide as part of our Campaign for a New Foreign Policy in order to challenge these hypocrisies.

With your help, we are going to run ads just like this one across the county:

You can make this ad campaign happen. Just go to: www.peace-action.org/forms/WMDads.php
I suppose I should have a colorful Howard Dean anecdote, but I don’t. When he was governor here, the newspapers would run a photo of him every year, ceremonially tapping the first sugar maple. His blue blood was betrayed by his choked-up grip on the hammer; obviously a man not used to swinging a tool. One year, he wore a helmet for the ceremony. I can’t begin to explain that.

That’s the Howard Dean I know; I’m not sure who this guy is I keep reading about in the newspaper. Al From and Joe Lieberman keep warning Howard Dean will drive the Democratic Party off the left side of the road, but where’s the evidence for that?

Howard Dean was governor of the only state where it’s legal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit and the only state where it’s legal to shoot fish. He has high marks from the National Rifle Association. In 1997, when Gov. Dean first began to covet the presidency, he announced his switch from anti- to pro-death penalty. Definitely a political move, but not to the left.

Dribbling, Droning, Cloning, Consumers!
Get a grip.
Put Down your Nintendo joysticks and step out of your vehicles.
I and I have arrived at a cusp.

The human species
dependence addiction
to consumables
is altering the global biosphere upon which 2 million species depend.

Thousands already,
Committed to extinction,
The light of their stars,
Extinguish,
with blatant disregard.
I throw a flag on that foul.
This ain’t no game,
It might go by many names,
But it’s all suicide.

Foolish indeed
Our lust and our greed,
For disposability.
That desire is sold to us everyday in everyway,
Convenience is our culture.


Temptation of cheap transportation
Has HUMAN bounding across a sky that might look clear,
But I swear,
From here,
From here airplanes drop sound bombs on my ears every 15 minutes,
the numbing roar punctuates the low drone that is another rush hour.
My Peoples
Pounding out a combustible rhythm,
That is a constant reminder,
I live under the devil of petrotyranny.
Genetic Evolution
Will outlast this nation
This U.S. nation,
hijacked by corporations,
funding Solutions in solutions of chemicals,
mixtures of bombs and beauty creams,
preformed lifeforms of plastic pieces replace scenic mountains and plains,
where
All is Free…
for those who can pay,
and where,
There ain’t enough clean water to go around.

But… but, wait,
this Is a great nation.
And many a great notion was born here.
So listen here.

Adaptive radiation
Will bring back
The trees, the bees, the bugs, the fish, and the cubs,
but it might just take
a revolution,
And 500 million years…
I just ain’t got that long to wait.
No, I ain’t got that long to wait.

I say,
Cultural Revolution
In this Generation,
Yes, Cultural Revolution.
Representing a quantum leap
in evolution,
Will save this nation.
‘Cause Material Wealth
is not the same as
Strength and Health.
No, Material Wealth
is not the same as
Strength and Health.
CAMDEN, Maine -- Let us stop to observe a few mileposts on the downward path to the utter degradation of political discourse in this country.

            A recent newspaper advertising campaign by "independent" groups supporting President Bush shows a closed courtroom door with the sign, "Catholics Need Not Apply," hanging on it. The ad argues that William Pryor Jr., attorney general of Alabama and a right-wing anti-abortion nominee to the federal appeals court, is under attack for his "deeply held" Catholic beliefs.

            Actually, Pryor is under attack because he's a hopeless dipstick. That he also happens to be Catholic and anti-abortion has nothing to do with his unfitness for the federal bench. The only person I know who believes one's closely held religious and moral convictions should make one ineligible for the federal bench is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia argued last year that any judge who is opposed to the death penalty should resign, on account of it is the law.

            By that reasoning, any judge who is opposed to abortion out of deep moral conviction should also resign. Even though that would include
Stonewall Columbus, Central Ohio's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center seeks applicants for appointments to the Board of Trustees. Stonewall Columbus offers numerous programs and services, including the annual Pride March and Festivities, a Resource Library, Town Hall Meetings and offers a meeting space for community groups.

The board consists of twenty-one positions, which are on three-year terms on a rotating basis. In addition to meeting monthly, board members also serve on committees such as Programming, Development, and Communications.

Appointments will begin in October of 2003 and are replacing expired terms of current board members.

Ideal candidates should be energetic, enthusiastic, dedicated and able to work collaboratively with board members and staff to meet the needs of the community. Don Laufersweiler, board member and chair of the Nominations Committee states, "Stonewall Columbus is continuously looking for individuals that can assist with and are dedicated in helping Stonewall Columbus meet its mission and moving forward."

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main architects for the war in Iraq, admitted for the first time that Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks, contradicting public statements made by senior White House and Pentagon officials whose attempt to link Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda was cited by the Bush administration as one of the main reasons for launching a preemptive strike in March against Iraq.  

In an interview with conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham, Wolfowitz was asked when he first came to believe that Iraq was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks.  

"I'm not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it," Wolfowitz said in the interview, aired Friday, a transcript of which can be found at www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030801-depsecdef0526.html

 
I gave a talk about current politics at Diesel, a fine Oakland independent bookstore, late last week. No one in the leftish crowd seemed notably put out when I declared myself dubious of the proposition, espoused by many in the store, that the only element of mystery about 9/11 was whether George W. Bush had ordered the attacks on the World Trade Center on his own initiative or was merely acting as the cats-paw of Dick Cheney.

            Nor was there any outcry when I denounced Ariel Sharon as a war criminal and his U.S. claque as a bunch of unconscionable rogues.

            But as soon as I said I couldn't see much reason to get excited about Howard Dean as a candidate for the Democratic nomination and he seemed to me to be a thoroughly conventional right winger, there was an audible ripple of irritation in the crowd. In the course of an angry denunciation of my unsparing comments about Dean, a woman said that the left should be rallying not only to the standard of the former governor of Vermont, but of Governor Gray Davis of California, now facing a recall vote in early October.

AUSTIN, Texas -- There are messy-desk people and there are clean-desk people. I'm a major messy. About every six months, I am seized by a desire to Get Organized, so I start doing archaeological excavations into the midden heap on my desk. The result this time was a sort of time-lapse photography of where the country is headed.

            Going through stacks of old newspaper articles, speeches, reports, studies and press releases at a high rate of speed left one overwhelming impression: deception ... government by deception. I'd like pass along some of what I found without the usual journalistic standards of sourcing because I want to recreate the impression it all left -- rather like leafing through a book rapidly, catching sentence here and there. Leaving aside the missing weapons of mass destruction (hey, we found the oil), I found so many little things that fit the same pattern.

            -- Administration announces with great fanfare new regs to control listeria, a deadly bacteria that can contaminate certain foods. Great, they put in new regs, but first they eviscerated them so they have no real impact.

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