Riding Downhill

Dining: Colors, NYC

Here is an example of people taking the terrible acts of September 11th, five years ago, and creating something positive out of the destruction. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, this group of intrepid entrepreneurs have created a unique and truly interesting destination.

However, I think it would be better if we could avoid the ashes, and make positive proactive changes in our societies anyway.

Steaks, not sympathy

When the World Trade Centre in New York was destroyed five years ago, the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th floor lost over 70 of its staff. Now the survivors have opened Colors, and would rather you enjoyed your meal than offered your condolences.

By Nick Bradshaw
Published: 10 September 2006

It was called Windows on the World, and it was one of America's most prestigious restaurants. Located on the 106th floor of Tower One of New York's World Trade Centre, it offered high-quality dining at high altitude. The restaurant's name may have slightly overstated the extent of the view, but on a clear day it was possible to see across much of New York, a city that is home to people of just about every nation and every ethnic variation.

On the wall of Colors, a new and decidedly more modest restaurant a few blocks away from what is now known as Ground Zero, a simple black plaque serves as a permanent memorial to the Windows staff who were on duty the morning of 11 September 2001. Every person who was working that morning - more than 70 in total - died alongside their customers. A quick scan of the plaque gives little away: there are no ages, no job titles, no indication of where they stood in the restaurant hierarchy. On closer inspection, the names do, however, reveal one thing - that the restaurant was not only a window on the world but also a microcosm of it. There are Anglo Saxon-sounding names such as Stephen Adams and John E Puckett, and also those of Sophia Buruwa Addo Ameyaw and Antonio J Alvarez. Alongside these, Yang-Der Lee, Orasri Liangthanasarn and Mohammed Jawara.

Significantly, the plaque is positioned beyond those areas normally frequented by customers. But then, it is not meant for them. Colors is both owned and staffed by 27 people who worked alongside those who perished in Windows on the World but were not on duty when the towers were hit, together with 23 others who worked in the other food and drink outlets on the now-notorious site.

When Colors opened in January, it became America's first restaurant co-operative. Every member of staff - from the person who welcomes you to the person who washes your plates - has a financial interest in ensuring your visit is enjoyable.

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Link: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/

Historians Disturbed by Alleged "Flagrant Falsehoods" Urge Halt to Broadcast

The netrooters are really up in arms over this ABC Docudrama "The Path to 9/11." With good reason. It is attempts to air such programs that edge us closer, step by step, to a true Orwellian reality.

Let's play it safe, and demand that the public's airwaves do not become a medium for the transmission of political and historical white washing and falsifications.

Without further ado, here's the letter:

Dear Robert Iger:

We write as professional historians, who are deeply concerned by the continuing reports about ABC’s scheduled broadcast of “The Path to 9/11.” These reports document that this drama contains numerous flagrant falsehoods about critical events in recent American history. The key participants and eyewitnesses to these events state that the script distorts and even fabricates evidence into order to mislead viewers about the responsibility of numerous American officials for allegedly ignoring the terrorist threat before 2000.

The claim by the show’s producers, broadcaster, and defenders, that these falsehoods are permissible because the show is merely a dramatization, is disingenuous and dangerous given their assertions that the show is also based on authoritative historical evidence. Whatever ABC’s motivations might be, broadcasting these falsehoods, connected to the most traumatic historical event of our times, would be a gross disservice to the public. A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it. We strongly urge you to halt the show’s broadcast and prevent misinforming Americans about their history.

Sincerely,

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University
Lizbeth Cohen, Harvard University,
Nicholas Salvatore, Cornell University;
Ted Widmer, Washington College;
Rick Perlstein, Independent Scholar;
David Blight, Yale University;
Eric Alterman, City University of New York.

Here is a link: http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com... (I came across this letter via media matters.org.)

I don't watch television, and this is part of the reason why. Besides the anti-social aspects of TV watching, the tendency to pick up faulty and inflammatory information is a real drawback. TV just isn't as good as moving around, and enjoying the great outdoors, or being amongst neighbors and fellow citizens.

In summary: Kill Your Television.

From the White House to the Big House?

September 7, 2006
A Fear of War Crimes Tribunals and Impeachment
Why Bush Really Came Clean About the CIA's Secret Torture Prisons
By MARJORIE COHN

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Congress enacted the War Crimes Act in 1996. That act defines violations of Geneva's Common Article 3 as war crimes. Those convicted face life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

The President is undoubtedly familiar with the doctrine of command responsibility, where commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander in chief, can be held liable for war crimes their inferiors commit if the commander knew or should have known they might be committed and did nothing to stop or prevent them.

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Indeed, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act in December, which codifies the prohibition in United States law against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners in U.S. custody. In his speech yesterday, Bush took credit for working with Senator John McCain to pass the DTA.

In fact, Bush fought the McCain "anti-torture" amendment tooth-and-nail, at times threatening to veto the entire appropriations bill to which it was appended. At one point, Bush sent Dick Cheney to convince McCain to exempt the CIA from the prohibition on cruel treatment, but McCain refused.

Bush signed the bill, but attached a "signing statement" where he reserved the right to violate the DTA if, as commander-in-chief, he thought it necessary.

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By challenging Congress to focus on legislation about treatment of terrorists - which he called "urgent" - Bush seeks to divert the election discourse away from his disastrous war on Iraq.

This cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners, which is a policy that is obviously handed down from the nation's highest office is inappropriate to the USA in the 21^st century. How do we expect to gain the respect of people around the world, when the president dictates torturous treatment?

No Threat of Nuclear Weapon from Iran: Intelligence Finding

Intel Estimate on Iran Blocks Neo-Con Plans

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - In the struggle over U.S. policy toward Iran, neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration spoiling for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites have been seeking to convince the public that the United States must strike before an Iranian nuclear weapons capability becomes inevitable.


Iranian employees pose for a picture at the newly opened heavy water plant in Arak, 320 kms south of Tehran, 26 August 2006. US President George W. Bush called Iran 's leaders "tyrants" as dangerous as Al-Qaeda terrorists and said they must not be allowed to get nuclear weapons -- "the tools of mass murder."(AFP/File/Atta Kenare)

In order to do so, they must discredit the intelligence community's conclusions that Iran is still as many as 10 years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon and that such a weapon is not an inevitable consequence of its present uranium enrichment programme.

Those findings were first circulated in a top secret National Intelligence Estimate on Iran completed in May or June 2005, and could be a rallying point for Democrats and dissident Republicans inclined to oppose an attack on Iran. It has also inhibited the neoconservatives from being able to launch the kind of propaganda campaign against Iran they would prefer.

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link: commondreams.org

I am looking forward to the day when the people of the USA understand and reject the neo-conservative agenda.

If Iran doesn't pose a nuclear threat, why is the US government pushing for political and economic sanctions against it?

Robert Fisk: 'America's aggression is fuelling extremism', says Iran's ex-president

Here is a sort of journalism that is all but non-existent in mainstream US media.

By Robert Fisk in Chicago
Published: 04 September 2006

As the West's "war on terror" burns across the Muslim world, one of Islam's most principled leaders - the former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami - issued a grave warning yesterday from the very heart of America, the country whose troops and allies are fighting Islamists across the Middle East in a war that is costing thousands of Muslim lives.

"The policies of the neo-conservatives have created a war that creates more extremists and radicals," he told The Independent in Chicago. "The events of 9/11 gave them this ability to create fear and anxiety ... and to create new policies of their own and now events are creating an expansion of extremists on both sides. A struggle is under way to dominate this world multilaterally ... We are a witness to war - with suppression from one side and extremist reaction in the form of terror from the other."

Mr Khatami might appear an improbable figure in the breakfast room of one of Chicago's smartest hotels, dressed in his black turban and long gown, his spectacles giving him t+he appearance of a university don - which he once was - rather than the seer of Iran, a man whose demands for a civil society and democracy at home were overwhelmed by the ascetic clerics who surround the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet he is enormously important in the Sunni as well as the Shia Muslim worlds as a philosopher-scholar, which is probably why the Bush administration gave him a visa, and his message was the sharpest he has ever delivered to the Muslim world and the secular West.

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link: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk...

If "America's aggression is fuelling extremism", is it possible that positive action taken by America will subdue the problem with extremism? For example, if the USA military gets serious about reconstruction of Iraqi civilian infrastructure, and repairs the water systems, sewage systems and trash management - if they see fit to build schools and hospitals - will the insurgency be lessened? I suggest that it is certainly, at the very least, worth a try - stop the bleeding, no more violence - no more killing in my name.

Constitution in Crisis

These are the opening paragraphs of the "Constitution in Crisis" report commissioned by Conyers as a result of suspected Bush administration malfeasance vis a vis the marketing of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This report is available from a variety of sources on the Internet.

This Minority Report has been produced at the request of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He made this request in the wake of the President's failure to respond to a letter submitted by 122 Members of Congress and more than 500,000 Americans in July of this year asking him whether the assertions set forth in the Downing Street Minutes were accurate. Mr. Conyers asked staff, by year end 2005, to review the available information concerning possible misconduct by the Bush Administration in the run up to the Iraq War and post-invasion statements and actions, and to develop legal conclusions and make legislative and other recommendations to him.

In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.

There is a prima facie case that these actions by the President, Vice-President and other members of the Bush Administration violated a number of federal laws, including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) Making False Statements to Congress; (3) The War Powers Resolution; (4) Misuse of Government Funds; (5) federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; (6) federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals; and (7) federal laws and regulations concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence.

While these charges clearly rise to the level of impeachable misconduct, because the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have blocked the ability of Members to obtain information directly from the Administration concerning these matters, more investigatory authority is needed before recommendations can be made regarding specific Articles of Impeachment. As a result, we recommend that Congress establish a select committee with subpoena authority to investigate the misconduct of the Bush Administration with regard to the Iraq war detailed in this Report and report to the Committee on the Judiciary on possible impeachable offenses.

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Let's support our troops by ensuring that they don't have to serve in an unjustified and illegal military action.

Mt. Rainier Carbon Glacier

Is Criticism of Israel Anti-Semitic?

Check out this Rosa Brooks article.

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But what's most troubling about the vitriol directed at Roth and his organization isn't that it's savage, unfounded and fantastical. What's most troubling is that it's typical. Typical, that is, of what anyone rash enough to criticize Israel can expect to encounter. In the United States today, it just isn't possible to have a civil debate about Israel, because any serious criticism of its policies is instantly countered with charges of anti-Semitism. Think Israel's tactics against Hezbollah were too heavy-handed, or that Israel hasn't always been wholly fair to the Palestinians, or that the United States should reconsider its unquestioning financial and military support for Israel? Shhh: Don't voice those sentiments unless you want to be called an anti-Semite — and probably a terrorist sympathizer to boot.

How did adopting a reflexively pro-Israel stance come to be a mandatory aspect of American Jewish identity? Skepticism — a willingness to ask tough questions, a refusal to embrace dogma — has always been central to the Jewish intellectual tradition. Ironically, this tradition remains alive in Israel, where respected public figures routinely criticize the government in far harsher terms than those used by Human Rights Watch.

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I didn't know that a reflexively pro-Israel stance has come to be mandatory to the American Jew. I know that there are American Jews who support Israel in general, but who do not support the attacks on Lebanon. I know there are American Jews who support Israel and the attacks on Lebanon. There are American Jews who are anti-zionist.

What will be effective in helping to find a solution to the anti-semite problem? We all know that anti-semitism does exist. We must be allowed to talk about it in an open and truthful environment.

People must be allowed to criticize the political and military activites of Israel, without automatically being labeled as an anti-semite.

Pentagon Gives Gloomy Iraq Report

By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
Friday, September 1, 2006; 4:13 PM

WASHINGTON -- Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report said Friday.

In a notably gloomy report to Congress, the Pentagon reported that illegal militias have become more entrenched, especially in Baghdad neighborhoods where they are seen as providers of both security and basic social services.

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I wonder what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have to say about this.

A tragic and most unfortunate state of affairs. The war is illegal. It is time to start bringing the troops home now. the presence of the US military is only exacerbating tensions and violence in Iraq.

No more killing in my name. Bring the troops home now.