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The question remains: Why?

NEW YORK CITY -- Much as I hate to interrupt what is apparently a deeply felt triumphalism on the American right, now that it's over, does anyone see any reason for our having invaded Iraq?

I realize that's what we all kept trying to figure out before the invasion, but don't you think it should at least be visible in hindsight? Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire.

These are early days, certainly, to attempt a full historical evaluation. Could be a case of the forest and the trees. Perhaps we're well along the road to having everything work out magnificently, and I'm just missing it. Still, I can't see anything that's going right.

Iraq is in chaos, and apparently the only way we'll be able to stop it will be to kill a lot of Iraqis. Just what Saddam used to do. The other day, we announced we were going to shoot looters, and when that produced nightmare scenarios of children dead for stealing bread, we had to cancel that plan. Now we're going to try gun control -- that should have the enthusiastic support of the NRA. Meanwhile, the chaos in Iraq seems to be

Media ownership

AUSTIN, Texas -- This is a gross scandal. The Center for Public Integrity has a stunning study out on the concentration of ownership in telecommunications. The even more stunning news is that the Federal Communications Commission, which theoretically represents you and me, is about to make all of it even worse. And behind this betrayal of the public trust is nothing but rotten, old-fashioned corruption. It's the old free-trip-to-Vegas ploy, on a grand scale.

The Public Integrity people examined the travel records of FCC employees and found that they have accepted 2,500 trips, costing nearly $2.8 million over the past eight years, paid for by the telecommunications and broadcast industries, which are, theoretically, "regulated" by the FCC. The industry-paid travel is on top of about $2 million a year in official travel paid for by taxpayers.

According to the center, FCC commissioners and agency staffers attended hundreds of conventions, conferences and other events all over the world, including Paris, Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro. They were put up at luxury hotels such as the Bellagio in Las Vegas and ferried about by limo.

The Road Map hoax

Don't waste your time fretting over the fortunes of the "road map" to peace in the Middle East. It's all a fraud, following the contours of all the other frauds down the years, back to such museum pieces as the Rogers Plan, conceived in Nixon time.

The recipe is unvarying. The Palestinians are required to pledge that they will instantly abandon all vestiges of resistance to Israel's onslaughts on their persons, children, houses, land, crops, water, trees, livestock, roads, schools, universities, graveyards and public buildings.

In return Israel agrees that a few years down the road the government of Israel will begin to ponder the outlines of a dim possibility of formal ratification as a Palestinian statelet of whatever tiny sliver of territory they haven't already appropriated.

Amid choruses of approbation for its courage from Israel's vast lobby of politicians and opinion makers in the United States, Israel gouges a couple of extra billion out of Uncle Sam and gets on with the day-to-day business of making life hell for Palestinians. Anytime Israel wants to

Oppose media deregulation

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is planning to vote next week on a proposal to weaken rules that protect the public from media monopolies – even though it hasn't released the proposal publicly. From the details that have emerged, this proposal would weaken rules governing how many TV stations one company can own, and may even permit a company to own newspapers and television stations in the same local market. This would allow a few huge conglomerates to monopolize what we see, hear and read in the media.

Please take a moment to tell the FCC and your members of Congress that you oppose the FCC's proposal to deregulate media ownership rules. Then, forward the informationto your family and friends.

Take action now: pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=467&id4=OHFreep

Background:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already deregulated radio, where the massive Clear Channel now owns at least 1200 stations, including multiple stations in the same markets. Now the FCC has scheduled a vote for

More than Ninety Religious Leaders and Organizations Representing 15 Faiths Call Indonesian Court on East Timor 'Not Acceptable'

Call for International Tribunal, Regardless of Indonesian Court Verdicts

May 26, 2003 More than ninety leading religious leaders and organizations from across the U.S. released a statement today urging the U.S. government to support the establishment of an international tribunal for East Timor. The statement follows the last week's acquittal by an Indonesian court of former Indonesian military commander Brigadier General Tono Suratman for crimes against humanity committed in East Timor in 1999.

The religious figures called the Indonesian ad hoc Human Rights Court for East Timor a "sham" and said: "The U.S. and other governments must not pretend the Indonesian judicial process is in any way acceptable. We call on the U.S. Mission to the UN to actively work with its Security Council colleagues to pass a resolution establishing an international tribunal for East Timor. The world's powers must not again turn a blind eye to East Timor's suffering."

"The Indonesian court's recent acquittal of Brigadier General Suratman dramatically highlights the failure of the process to meet international

Thanks, Harvey.

Thanks for the terrific article by Mr. Wasserman. A real honest comparrison to the "MATRIX". We need writers like him if there is any hope of saving our damaged nation.

PEACE!!

GUY FALGOUT
TERRYTOWN,LOUISIANA.

The Texas Legislature

AUSTIN, Texas -- It was horrible and sickening, but I could not stop watching the final days of the Texas Legislature. Fellow Texans, the ripple effects of this disaster will come to haunt us all.

Just for starters, this budget is going to cost about 144,000 jobs. Perhaps its most serious effect is on public hospitals. A health-care system so fragile that it is almost overwhelmed now -- turning away ambulances for hours at a time, unable to admit a single patient -- will be swamped after this. The counties will be desperate, the cities not much better. Every area of social service has been cut, not because we have a $9 billion deficit but because House Republicans do not believe government SHOULD help people.

We are watching government morph into something very strange. Benito Mussolini said, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." The real driving force behind this session is something I bet most of you have never heard of -- ALEC. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded,

Reloading to fight the Bush Matrix: 'The Matrix Reloaded'

Now showing at the Arena Grand and Elsewhere

The mystery is solved:

HEMPSTERS: Plant the Seed

Dallas, TX - We are pleased to announce the completion and premiere of the documentary project, "HEMPSTERS: Plant the Seed," a passionate, outspoken and sometimes fiery treatise on industrial hemp and, specifically, on seven activists who, although separated by economics, geography and lifestyle, are allied in the fight to legalize the growing and utilization of Industrial Hemp. A project that has been in the works for seven years.

This film recently screened rough cuts of the project at The Santa Monica Film Festival and The Deep Ellum Film Festival in Dallas and is premiering in The Maui Film Festival June 11th-15th, 2003.

Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson, Stephen Jenkins (Lead Singer of Third Eye Blind), Merle Haggard, Gatewood Galbraith, and Ralph Nader, Craig Lee, Donna Cockrell, Andrew and Jake Graves, Alex White Plume, Julia "Butterfly" Hill, Milos Yellow Hair, Tom Cook and Joe American Horse are the notables speaking out in "HEMPSTERS: Plant the Seed," each with a vested interest in championing this cause.

Animals as liberators

Already drafted into World War III

Briefly, I heard reports about the war and how some of my fellow animal friends were helping to “liberate Iraq.” I hate it when my daddy leaves CNN on all day while he’s at work, because the news is so horrifying. I like the music channel or Animal Planet much better. But apparently, the U.S. military has drafted dolphins, seals and monkeys to carry out their dirty work, which in most cases, causes the liberation of the poor drafted animal from his life.

Dolphins have been used for many years in military situations, including learning how to carry nuclear missiles to a target. Now, seals are learning how to attack “enemy” undersea divers. One researcher found that these animals actually had to be brainwashed or mentally altered with electrodes implanted in their brains to make them killers. I wonder if they are doing the same things to military humans, or it is easier to talk a person into killing those of its own species?

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