Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Plame's Lawsuit Against Cheney, Rove


by Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t
June 23, 2009


The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a civil lawsuit filed by Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, against Bush administration officials who were responsible for leaking her covert CIA status to the media and attacking her husband for accusing the White House of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence.

The Supreme Court's rejection effectively brings the three-year-old case to a close. The Wilson's had sued Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Cheney's ex-chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage for violating their civil rights. Libby was convicted on four of five counts and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. President George W. Bush later commuted the sentence, sparing Libby jail time.

"The Wilsons and their counsel are disappointed by the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case, but more significantly, this is a setback for our democracy," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an attorney representing the Wilsons.

"This decision means that government officials can abuse their power for political purposes without fear of repercussion. Private citizens like the Wilsons, who see their careers destroyed and their lives placed in jeopardy by administration officials seeking to score political points and silence opposition, have no recourse."

US District Court Judge John Bates dismissed the civil lawsuit two years ago. At the time, Bates wrote, as a technical legal matter, Plame and Wilson can't sue under the Constitution. Bates added that the defendants - Cheney, Rove, Libby, and others -had the right to rebut criticism aimed at Wilson, who accused the administration of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence. Bates said the leak of Plame's undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters was "unsavory," but simply a casualty of Wilson's criticism of the administration.

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote. "But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence by speaking with members of the press, is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials."

"This case is not just about what top government officials did to Valerie and me," Wilson said following Bates's ruling. "We brought this suit because we strongly believe that politicizing intelligence ultimately serves only to undermine the security of our nation. Today's decision is just the first step in what we have always known would be a long legal battle and we are committed to seeing this case through."

The Wilsons petitioned the Supreme Court after the Republican-dominated US Court of Appeals for DC Circuit, in a 2 to 1 vote last August, turned down their request for a rehearing. The panel said there was no constitutional precedent established to allow the case to move forward and the court declined to set one.

A federal investigation led by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later found that numerous White House officials - including Cheney and Libby - had retaliated against and sought to discredit Ambassador Wilson for publicly claiming that the administration had manipulated prewar Iraq intelligence.

Administration officials countered Joseph Wilson's criticism by disclosing to reporters, privately, that Plame worked at the CIA and had arranged to send her husband to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium. The White House was trying to imply that Wilson's trip was the result of nepotism. Plame testified before Congress last year that she had had no role in selecting her husband for the mission to Niger.

Senior Bush administration officials disclosed Plame's identity to several journalists in June and July of 2003 amid White House efforts to discredit her husband, former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for challenging Bush's use of bogus intelligence to justify invading Iraq.

Her CIA employment was revealed in a July 14, 2003, article by right-wing columnist Robert Novak, effectively destroying her career. Two months later, a CIA complaint to the Justice Department sparked a criminal probe into the identity of the leakers.

Initially, Bush professed not to know anything about the matter, and several of his senior aides, including Rove and Libby followed suit.

However, it later became clear that Rove and Libby had a hand in the Plame leak and that Bush and Cheney had helped organize a campaign to disparage Wilson by giving critical information to friendly journalists.

On June 24, 2004, Fitzgerald interviewed Bush for 70 minutes about the Plame leak. The only other member of the Bush team in the room during the meeting was Jim Sharp, the private lawyer that Bush hired, according to a press briefing by then-press secretary Scott McClellan.

"The President ... was pleased to do his part to help the investigation move forward," McClellan said. "No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the United States."

Fitzgerald had interviewed Cheney a couple of weeks earlier.

Last week, Obama's Justice Department argued against the release of the Cheney transcript that CREW sought via a Freedom of Information Act request explaining his role in blowing Plame's cover.

Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith told a federal judge that release of the transcript might open Cheney to ridicule from late-night comics and thus could discourage other White House officials from cooperating with government prosecutors.

"If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren't going to cooperate," Smith said during a court hearing last Thursday. "I don't want a future Vice President to say, 'I'm not going to cooperate with you because I don't want to be fodder for The Daily Show.'"

When asked by US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan whether the Obama administration was standing behind the refusal of George W. Bush's Justice Department to release the transcript, Smith answered, "This has been vetted by the leadership offices. This is a department position."

McClellan says Rove arranged a private meeting with Libby in 2005 when the two men were under mounting suspicion for leaking Plame's identity.

Calling the scene "one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss," McClellan writes in his new memoir "in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, [the meeting] sticks vividly in my mind...."

"Following [a meeting in chief of staff Andy Card's office], Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. 'You have time to visit?' Karl asked. 'Yeah,' replied Libby."

In his book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and the Culture of Washington Deception," McClellan doesn't offer substantive evidence that Rove and Libby used the meeting in 2005 to coordinate their cover stories.

"I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately," McClellan writes.

"At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much," McClellan said. "I don't know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic?"

For more than a year in three separate appearances before a federal grand jury, Rove had insisted he was not a source for columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, two journalists who were told about Plame's CIA identity when it was still secret.

Rove told the grand jury that he first learned that Plame worked for the CIA when he read it in Novak's column, according to Rove's attorney Robert Luskin. But the truth was Rove had been an unnamed source for both Novak and Cooper.

During closing arguments at Libby's trial, Cheney was implicated in the leak, as Fitzgerald acknowledged that Cheney was intimately involved in the scandal and may have told Libby to leak Plame's status to the media.

Fitzgerald told jurors that his investigation into the true nature of the vice president's involvement was impeded because Libby obstructed justice.

Libby's attorney, Theodore Wells, told jurors during his closing arguments that Fitzgerald had been trying to build a case of conspiracy against the vice president and Libby and that the prosecution believed Libby may have lied to federal investigators and to a grand jury to protect Cheney.

"Now, I think the government, through its questions, really tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney," Wells said.

Rebutting Wells, Fitzgerald told jurors, "You know what? [Wells] said something here that we're trying to put a cloud on the vice president. We'll talk straight. There is a cloud over the vice president. He sent Libby off to [meet with New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting - the two-hour meeting - the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]."

CREW had been hoping that the Obama administration would approach the lawsuit in a different manner.

But last month, the Obama administration's representative before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, had also sought the dismissal of the civil suit. Kagan argued that the Wilsons had no legitimate ground to sue and further argued that Ambassador Wilson failed to prove that he was harmed by the attacks he endured from Cheney and others for accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence.

That was not the first time Obama's Justice Department has backed the Bush administration's position on issues related to the CIA leak case.

One day after Obama was sworn in, as he was signing executive orders ushering in what he called a new era of government openness, the Justice Department quietly filed a motion in federal court to dismiss a long-running lawsuit that sought to force the Bush administration to recover as many as 15 million missing White House emails, including some from Cheney's office that special counsel Fitzgerald had subpoenaed in connection with the leak of Plame's identity.

Last Thursday, CREW revealed in newly released documents that the emails from Cheney's office went missing right around the time the Bush White House faced a deadline for turning over the emails to Fitzgerald in accordance with a grand jury subpoena.

Jason Leopold is editor in chief of The Public Record, www.pubrecord.org.

Source:
http://www.truthout.org/062309J
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Consumers Boycott Nokia, Siemens for Selling to Iran


By Kim Zetter
Wired
Surviellance
June 23, 2009


Consumers are calling for a boycott of telecom equipment makers Nokia and Siemens after the Wall Street Journal reported that the companies’ joint networking firm sold sophisticated internet surveillance equipment to Iran — a story that the company says is false.

Despite the denial, boycotters have written Nokia saying they’ve destroyed their Nokia phones, and are telling friends and family to avoid Nokia products until the company “can make the right ethical choices.”

According to the Journal, a system installed in Iran by Nokia Siemens Networks — a Finland-based joint venture between Nokia and Seimens — provides Iranian authorities with the ability to conduct deep-packet inspection of online communications to monitor the contents and track the source of e-mail, VoIP calls, and posts to social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. The newspaper also said authorities had the ability to alter content as it intercepted the traffic from a state-owned internet choke point.

A spokesman for Nokia Siemens Networks, however, said the Journal got the story wrong, and that the system it installed in Iran late last year is incapable of conducting deep-packet inspection of internet communications — or conducting any internet surveillance at all. The company said it installed a cell phone network in Iran, and like all modern telecom switches, the equipment includes a capability that allows the government to conduct wiretaps of telephone calls made from targeted numbers.

Telecommunication companies in the United States and other countries are required to provide this so-called “lawful intercept” capability so that domestic law enforcement agencies can eavesdrop on calls to investigate criminal activity. “Lawful,” of course, means different things in different countries. In the U.S. such interception generally requires a court order.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this,” wrote spokesman Ben Roome in an e-mail to Threat Level. “But we do not provide any web or internet monitoring or filtering. We do provide the capability for millions of Iranians to communicate via mobile networks, and as part of this provide voice call lawful intercept capability. Mobile networks are not allowed to be built in Iran (and most other countries) without this feature. It is part of telecoms network architecture.”

The Journal says it stands by its reporting.

“We have no reason to believe the facts in our story are incorrect,” wrote a spokeswoman in an e-mail.

Roome attempted to quell uproar over the Journal story Monday by explaining in a blog post the tradeoff behind supplying telecom equipment to Iran.

Mobile networks in Iran, and the subsequent widespread adoption of mobile phones, have allowed Iranians to communicate what they are seeing and hearing with the outside world. The proof of this is in the widespread awareness of the current situation.

The fact that telecom networks in Iran - as they are all over the world - are required by law to have the ability to monitor specific voice calls, needs to be weighed against the huge empowerment that connectivity brings to ordinary Iranians.

When asked, we have been transparent about the communications capability, and the limited monitoring functionality, provided to Iran. . . .

We did have a choice as to whether we bring the Iranian people this connectivity, in the knowledge that telecoms networks have the ability to monitor voice calls as they do all over the world, and believe there is a net benefit to the people of Iran.

But many people commenting to the blog post say the company has no business being in Iran at all.

“I have started a boycott of all your products until you offer no succor to these fascist dictators and mass murderers,” writes one commenter using the name “ihatefascists.” “We see the friends you keep and we do not like it. The message is reaching every corner. People are throwing away your products turning them off and binning them as I speak."

“Switch off any thing you have supplied to Iran,” the boycotter continues.

It’s not clear if Nokia Seimans has the capability to remotely “switch off” Iran’s cell phone networks.

Another commenter named “Freeman Lowell” says that even if Nokia Siemens didn’t provide internet monitoring gear to Iran, it’s not acceptable to sell surveillance-friendly telephone switching equipment to a country with Iran’s dismal human rights record.

“What happens when your ‘Lawful Intercept’ capability is sold to regimes which are likely to use it a way which would be considered unlawful under European and UN Human Rights conventions — say to suppress freedom of speech?” he writes. “Your statement seems to be suggesting that the benefits to the Iranian people outweigh the potential costs, but tell that to the people that may have been arrested or have ‘disappeared’ - perhaps permanently — because of what you have done.”

Update: This story has been updated with a response from the Wall Street Journal.

Sources:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/wsj-nokia-and-siemens-help-iran-spy-on-internet-users/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/nokia-siemens-boycott/
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Big Nuke's desperate radioactive hoax in impoverished Ohio

Job-starved southern Ohioans are being promised a shiny new nuclear plant. But the announcement has come with a cruel reminder, and the scent of a desperate hoax.


By Harvey Wasserman
Smirking Chimp
Jun 19 2009


Using the gargantuan corpse of the shuttered Portsmouth-Piketon uranium enrichment plant as his backdrop, U.S. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) punctuated his enthusiastic endorsement the new nuke by proclaiming that, with his support, the US government has paid thousands of Ohio workers hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the health damage they suffered from being irradiated while working there.

What was he thinking?

Just north of the Ohio River, Portsmouth-Piketon was a mainstay of the nuclear power/weapons complex dating back to 1954 (it shut doen in 2001). Generations of workers and their progeny suffered a devastating plague of radiation-related diseases from the facility's radioactive fallout, inside and around the plant boundaries. It took decades of brutal, grinding grassroots campaigning to win even a modicum of compensation.

Now the heaviest of nuclear hitters want to use this same site for a 1600-megawatt French-designed plant that would anchor a "Clean Energy Park." In a region devastated by the enrichment plant's shutdown, and by the decimation of the American industrial economy, it would be a flagship for the "nuclear power renaissance."

It is a cruel hoax.

Voinovich was joined by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and a bevvy of heavy industry hitters that included Jim Rogers, head of Duke Energy, and representatives of Unistar, the United States Enrichment Corporation, Electricite de France and hundreds of plant workers who surrounded a tuxedoed band and the kind of high-profile reception that bespeaks an excess of corporate cash.

But the most critical spot was occupied by Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of AREVA, the French government's nuclear front group. She ended her brief speech with a heavily inflected "Go Buckeyes!"

Lauvergeon is a top A-List industry hitter, the flamboyant, hard-nosed chief of the world's number one reactor pusher. But AREVA's finances have been hard-hit by an outdated technology teetering at the brink of collapse, even as its supporters push ahead with high-profile---but hollow---events like this one.

After her talk, Lauvergeon continually referred me to her website regarding AREVA's catastrophic failures [1] at its first "new generation" reactor project in Finland. It will be finished in 2012, she said, years after originally planned.

It will be billions of Euros over budget.

The problem, she complained, was that Finnish regulators demanded to see "so much documentation….Hundreds of thousands of pages."

There were no such problems in France, she said, where AREVA's Flamanville project is, nonetheless, also over budget and behind schedule. Nor, apparently, in China, where two reactor orders are on shaky ground because of worries excited by the problems in Finland.

Lauvergeon could not speak to the radioactive waste problem in the US, she said, because "that is a government matter." Elsewhere, "utilities have control of their wastes." In Finland they "will be disposed of right next to the reactor." Elsewhere, "recycling" reduces the wastes to "a fraction of their original volume."

Laugergeon's glib assessments are cruelly misleading. Radioactive fuel reprocessing is prohibitively expensive, extremely dirty and technologically suspect, at best. France's high-level waste problem is as unsolved as that of the US, where the Yucca Mountain Dump has been cancelled, putting the industry back where it was fifty years ago.

The proposed Ohio project, which has received saturation media coverage throughout the US, is years away from getting any kind of license.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has never turned down an applicant. But the line for new permits is long and twisted. Changes are still being made to the designs. The French entry has never been fully examined by the NRC, which must sift through thousands of pages of documents before issuing the inevitable permit, a process that nonetheless will take years.

Other bothersome details remain to be solved, most importantly: who will actually pay for all this?

Voinovich pledged his strongest efforts to provide federal funding. But resistance to such handouts continues to be firm. Wall Street has displayed little interest in funding new reactors.

There is talk the French would finance it themselves, but the fiasco in Finland and the pressures of a declining European economy have cast doubt on that.

Nor has the insurance industry come forward to provide liability coverage in case of a major accident. New design criteria may require containment domes designed to resist a jet crash. But the cost requirements to do that may add to the already prohibitive financial burden.

Indeed, beneath all the hoopla lurk hints that the final deals between the various partners may actually not have been completed. The announcement ceremony was long on hype but short on contractual specifics.

Among other problems might be: where will the water come from to cool this plant?

Reactors in France, Alabama and elsewhere have been forced shut because waste water has caused overheating of streams---up to 90 degrees Farenheit and higher.

Early polls indicate area residents appear to support the project for its jobs potential. But the residual wounds from the radiation diseases and deaths caused by the enrichment plant run deep. The local resistance may be small, but it is fierce.

Nor is the plant's timetable secure.

With years needed to get a license, and untold years more needed to build it, there is no way this proposed reactor could generate any electricity until well into the 2020s. Even if nuclear power could help---which it can't---solutions to climate change, to which the speakers continually referred, must come far sooner.

By then, the high cost of atomic energy will be even more prohibitive than now.

A definitive study of reactor economics released as the Ohio promoters spoke could adorn the tombstone of the entire "renaissance." Authored by Prof. Mark Cooper of the Vermont Law School, "The Economics of Nuclear Power: Renaissance or Relapse? [2]" says it would cost from $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion more to generate power with 100 new nuclear plants than from a comparable combination of renewables and efficiency.

In a conference call, Cooper emphasized "a striking parallel" between today's "new generation" projections and those that led to the devastating cost overruns and delays that doomed the first generation of US reactors. Lauvergneon's AREVA experiences in Finland and Flamanville seem to underscore that parallel.

In the 1980s, Ohio also suffered a "Peaceful Atom" fiasco. The infamous Zimmer Reactor, built by a consortium of southern Ohio utilities, was virtually finished before a cascade of scandal wiped away its credibility. Constructed at Moscow, on the Ohio River not far from Portsmouth, Zimmer was plagued by thousands of construction defects. Finally, in face-saving desperation, it was converted to a coal burner, at a cost of hundreds of millions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars.

Given that experience, and all those questions and more surrounding new reactor construction in general, there's a sense of mystery surrounding this very forced high profile announcement in southern Ohio. Perhaps it was prompted by the fact---sorrowfully announced at the beginning of this speech---that Sen. Voinovich will be retiring next year. This project's backers may have thought it prudent jump in now, while their chief advocate might still wrest money from Congress for a project that will otherwise have a hard time finding it.

Whatever the reason, the announcement reeks of desperation.

Duke Power, for example, has recently signed an efficiency deal that will save large quantities of electricity at far less cost than even the most optimistic nuclear boosters say reactors can produce it.

The true green reality is that in today's world, new power projects have far more credibility when announced before a backdrop of operating windmills or solar panels, rather than the seething corpse of a Cold War uranium facility.

Southern Ohioans are good people who deserve jobs and a real economic future. No matter how much Big Nuke spends on them, rushed high-profile corporate announcements touting a doomed technology can only add to their grief.

Harvey Wasserman is co-author, with Bob Fitrakis and Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by the New Press. He is author of SOLARTOPIA! and HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE U.S., available at www.harveywasserman.com.

References:
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v43ahQHvObI
[2] http://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/ Cooper Report on Nuclear Economics FINAL[1].pdf
[3] http://www.harveywasserman.com
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Article Source:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/22401
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China, Russia call for talks on Iran, North Korea


MOSCOW (Reuters)
Wed Jun 17, 2009


The presidents of Russia and China on Wednesday called for a diplomatic push to resolve tensions over the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea after wide-ranging talks in Moscow.
In a joint statement Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russia's Dmitry Medvedev also made a thinly veiled attack on the United States, saying no country should base its defense on expanding military alliances and building missile defenses.

Medvedev also said the two sides had agreed a record $100 billion in energy deals, although it was not clear how much of this figure represented previously announced agreements.

"Russia and China assert that the regulation of the situation around the Iranian nuclear program is possible only by political and diplomatic methods," the statement said.

"The heads of state expressed their serious concerns in relation to the situation on the Korean peninsula... and call for the speedy restarting of six-sided talks," it said.

Hu came to Russia for a state visit which included two summits of developing world countries covering global trade, security and greater representation for emerging market powers on the world stage.

"Russia and China consider international security indivisible and all-encompassing," the joint statement said.

"The security of certain countries cannot be ensured at the expense of the security of others, including through the expansion of military political alliances and the creation of global and regional missile-defense systems."

Earlier on Wednesday Hu met Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and praised efforts by Russia and China to pool their influence on the world stage.

"We have enacted effective strategic cooperation, which allows us...to assert our joint forces and provide the necessary contribution to achieving peace and stability in the world," Hu said, according to a Russian translation of his comments.

Hu invited Putin to visit Beijing in October. The two leaders know each other well, having met several times when Putin was president of Russia from 2000-2008.

After the meeting with Putin, Hu laid a wreath at the tomb of Russia's unknown soldier at the foot of the Kremlin walls.

Coinciding with Hu's visit, Russia's Economic Development Ministry released figures showing that in the first months of 2009, China had become Russia's biggest trading partner, overtaking Germany and the Netherlands.

(Reporting by Denis Dyomkin and Toni Vorobyova; writing by Conor Humphries; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Source:
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE55G1DY20090617
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Ahmadinejad re-elected under cloud of fraud

But outcome doesn't change goals for Obama -- dealing with Iran's nuclear program and its anti-Israel activities.


By Juan Cole
Salon
Jun. 13, 2009


A few thousand Iranian young people demonstrated in Iran on Saturday morning to protest the announcement by that country's Interior Ministry that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a second term by an overwhelming margin of 63 percent. The president's rivals decried ballot fraud and many observers saw the results as a hard-liner coup. If the government really has descended to the level of fixing the presidential elections, it is a sign of deep insecurity and fear of change, as Tehran is challenged by the Obama administration's outreach and by reformist stirrings among youth and women.

Obama administration officials were privately casting doubt on the announced vote tallies. They pointed out that it was unlikely that Ahmadinejad had defeated his chief opponent, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, by a margin of 57 percent, in Moussavi's own home city of Tabriz. Nor is it plausible, as claimed, that Ahmadinejad won a majority of votes in the capital, Tehran, from which he hails.

The final tally also gave only 320,000 votes to the other reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, who had helped force Ahmadinejad into a runoff election when he ran in 2005. It seems odd that he get less than 1 percent of the votes in this round. Karoubi, an ethnic Lur from Iran's west, was even alleged to have done poorly in those provinces.

The final vote counts alleged for cities and provinces, even more so than the landslide claimed by the incumbent nationally, strongly suggest a last-minute and clumsy fraud. A carefully planned theft of the election would at least have conceded Tabriz to Moussavi and the rural western Iranian villages to Karoubi.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei quickly recognized Ahmadinejad's victory, hailing a remarkable turnout of 80 percent of eligible voters. With the backing of the clerical supreme leader, Ahmadinejad's victory is unassailable in the theocratic Iranian system, where Shiite clerics hold ultimate power. In the past decade, despite occasional demonstrations launched by students, the regime has easily been able to repress dissent with right-wing popular militias and other pro-conservative paramilitaries. They also succeeded in excluding reformists from political power by denying them the right to run for office on the grounds that they do not pass an ideological litmus test. The repressive abilities of the hard-liners should not be underestimated, despite the public anger over a possibly stolen election.

The primary challenger to incumbent Ahmadinejad, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Moussavi, was widely thought to have a number of crucial constituencies behind him. Urban youth and women, who had elected a reformist president in 1997 and 2001, showed enthusiasm for Moussavi. He also showed an ability to bring out big crowds in his native Azerbaijan, where a Turkic language, Azeri, is spoken rather than Persian. (Azeris constitute about a third of the Iranian population.) It was expected that if the turnout was large, that would help Moussavi.

But not only did Iran's Electoral Commission announce that Ahmadinejad had won almost two-thirds of the general vote, it also gave him big majorities in major cities such as Tehran and Tabriz (the latter is the capital of Azerbaijan). These results seemed unbelievable not only to Moussavi supporters but to many professional Iran observers. Although candidates in Iran's presidential elections are closely vetted, and only four out of hundreds of applicants were allowed to run this time, once the candidates were certified the elections have been relatively free and fair in the past. If proved true, electoral fraud on the scale being charged by Ahmadinejad's rivals risks further undermining the legitimacy of the regime in the eyes of the public.

Less was at stake in these elections than many outsiders assumed, however, since the Iranian presidency is weak and most important policy is set by Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei (his title is the giveaway).

The election was mostly about style, rather than substance. Mir-Hossein Moussavi complained that Ahmadinejad's bizarre downplaying of the Holocaust had made Iran a laughingstock, and that the incumbent had dictatorial tendencies. But he expressed support for the Palestinians. He objected to the cost of ramping up Iran's civilian nuclear energy research program, though he said he was committed to continuing it at a slower pace. He offered to negotiate with American President Barack Obama if the latter was found to be acting in good faith.

But most of his differences with Ahmadinejad were on domestic policy, including his advocacy of more personal liberties, more rights for women, and a freer media environment, including private television channels.

The outcome of the election therefore changes little for the Obama administration. The outstanding issues between Iran and the U.S. mainly have to do with Iran's support for the Palestinians against Israel and with Iran's nuclear enrichment program, which Washington fears could ultimately be put to dual use and eventuate in a nuclear warhead. Those two outstanding issues would have remained no matter who won the presidency.

Obama is determined to deal with them by undercutting Iran on the Palestine issue by making strides toward a Palestinian state, by avoiding military confrontation, and by direct talks over better safeguards that Iran's nuclear program remains purely civilian in character. These policies are the most promising ones for achieving U.S. and NATO goals with regard to Iran, and should be pursued regardless of who holds the weak and ineffectual office of president in Tehran.

Source:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/13/iran/
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Remembering Tiananmen
20 years later


Boston.com
June 5, 2009


June 4th, 2009, marked the 20th anniversary of the military crackdown on student protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.

Beginning in April of 1989, thousands of students and other citizens started gathering in groups large and small, protesting many issues, centered on a desire for freedom and democratic reform.

By mid-May of 1989, hundreds of thousands of protesters occupied the square, staging hunger strikes, and asking for dialogue. Chinese authorities responded with a declaration of martial law, and sent soldiers and tanks from the People's Liberation Army, preparing to disperse the crowds.

Late on June 3rd, 1989, the tanks and armored personnel carriers rolled into the square, killing and wounding many, mostly civilians - estimates vary widely, from several hundred to several thousand dead.

The first 17 photos below were taken in 1989, the rest are from this year, as people remember the events, the ideals, and the fallout from that fateful day.

View Photos Commemorating Tiananmen

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/remembering_tiananmen_20_years.html
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The Top 20 Things You WON'T Be Reminded Of Tomorrow


by tokin woody
June 03, 2009


Tomorrow, Thursday, June 4, is the fifth anniversary of the death of Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States and arguably the author (in a Foucauldian sense, anyway) of more mischief upon the Nation than any other previous official political actor. No regime before his had more actively sought to overthrow, undermine, undo, obstruct, and otherwise hamstring the authority of the Congress and the Constitution in the pursuit of mere political advantage, without any appeal to, or concern for, the real good of "the People."

So I won't be listening to the radio, or watching SCUM TeeVee, either.

I wanted to spare my dogs.

Poor dumb beasts, they get worried when I hurl loud invective and obloquy--to say nothing about ash-trays and flower pots--at the disembodied voices on the radio.

And, given the outpouring of sanctimonious twaddle, gratuitous propaganda and lugubrious schmaltz over the anniversary of the death of Ronald Reagan which will surely occupy virtually the entire news spectrum of the day, I would have plenty of opportunity to launch barrages of vivid vituperation, epic expletive, and ubiquitous obloquy against both the dearly-departed "American Hero," and the obsequious drone of the sycophants who will be reciting their eulogies.
Lest we/you forget, I have assembled a list of some 20 of the most compelling reasons that Ronald Reagan SHOULD NOT BE so universally esteemed, his passing so mourned, and his memory so honored:

1) Treason: As a private citizen, and BEFORE the election, in contravention of both law and tradition, Reagan's minions and handlers illegally negotiated with the Iranians to induce them hold the American Embassy hostages until after the elections,to embarrass President Carer and to prevent his successful negotiation of an "October Surprise." Sent future VP George Bush, Sr., and future CIA chief William Casey to Paris to negotiate the deal.

2) Sent arms, including chemical weapons, to both Iraq and Iran during the decade-long Iran-Iraq war, making those two countries the two biggest US arms trading partners at precisely the time when it was illegal to trade with either due to both US and UN laws.

3) Iran/Contra: Used drug traffickers to transport illegal arms to Nicaragua, ignoring the contraband which was brought back on the return trip, creating a massive and immediate increase in cocaine trade in urban California. Illegally used the CIA to mine harbors and ferry Contra troops in Nicaragua. Eventually, several administration staffers were convicted of crimes ranging from lying to Congress to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. The scandal involved the administration selling arms to Iran and using proceeds from the sales to fund a guerrilla insurgent group in Nicaragua

4) Created alQaeda in Afghanistan to oppose the Soviet puppet/occupation there

5) Sponsored right-wing, State terrorism in El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, and Guatemala against indigenous insurgents who were fighting the dictatorial, hereditary regimes there. Illegally invaded and occupied Grenada, overthrowing the democratically elected President.

6) Lied about ALL of this activity before Congress, and suborned his Secretary of Defense to perjury, as well.

7) Rescinded Carter policy that all US international financial support be based upon valid human rights records.

8) Took the world to the brink of nuclear war, putting nuclear weapons into Europe, violating the very provision that was the settlement to the Cuban missile crisis.

9) Instituted the so-called "Mexico City" doctrine, effectively barring recipients of U.S. foreign aid from promoting abortion as a method of family planning.

10) Instigated trickle-down/voodoo economics, which was the beginning of what has recently culminated in the crash of the bubbles. Here is a subset of his regime's economic sins:

a) Within the first year of the policy, we were in a depression caused in large measure by the policy. The "historic" 27% tax-cut was skewed two to one in favor of those making over $200,000 per year, in percentages, and far more in real dollars. By the end of the second year, increases in state and local taxes more than replaced the cuts for the middle class.

b) Wages throughout Reagan/Bush remained stagnant in real dollars for the next 12 years, the longest and worst growth performance in middle class wages in US history. Average national growth was the lowest since the early 30s.

c) Conspired with corpoRat and congressional allies to sustain spending by loosening credit, to replace the wages they were not going to increase.

d) Named Ayn Rand acolyte and free-market apostle Alan Greenspan as Chief of the Federal Reserve.

11) The HUD/DoI Scandals: Samuel Pierce and his associates were found to have rewarded wealthy contributors to the administration's campaign with funding for low income housing development without the customary background checks, and lobbyists, such as former Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt, were rewarded with huge lobbying fees for assisting campaign contributors with receiving government loans and guarantees. Sixteen convictions were eventually handed down, including several members of the Reagan administration.

12) Appointed some of the "worst" Federalist Society/strict constructionists to the federal bench, including Scalia, Kennedy, and O'Connor, ALL of whose votes were crucial in (illegally) installing GW Bush in the presidency in 2000, and named Rehnquist Chief Justice.

13) Ordered the revocation of the FCC regulation called "the Fairness Doctrine," and opened up the Press to the rash of consolidations which has led, now, to a compromised, toothless, stenographic, lap-dog "Fourth Estate."

14) Initiated the attack on labor unions by attacking PATCO, the Air Traffic Controllers union, creating a crisis in airport control towers nation-wide, and importantly, started the slow erosion of US worker wages and benefits.

15) Through the appointment of James Watt, who claimed that the environment was "expendable" since the "second coming of Christ was at hand,", Reagan reduced clean water and air standards, reduced labor, mine, and industrial safety standards,and cut funding to supervisory and regulatory agencies charged with monitoring those industries.

16) Increased the defense budget to 240% previous levels.

17) Systematically ignored the beginning of the AIDS/HIV epidemic, blaming the victims publically.

18)The S&L collapse: Reagan's "elimination of loopholes" in the tax code included the elimination of the "passive loss" provisions that subsidized rental housing. Because this was removed retroactively, it bankrupted many real estate developments made with this tax break as a premise. This with some other "deregulation" policies ultimately led to the largest political and financial scandal in U.S. history: The Savings and Loan crisis. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around USD$150 billion, about $125 billion of which was consequently and directly subsidized by the U.S. government, which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.

19) Called ketchup a vegetable for the purposes of school-lunch funding and reduced early education and head-start funding.

20) Symbolically ripped the solar panels, installed by Pres. Carter, from the WhiteHouse,and blamed trees for causing air pollution.

No, I do not miss the son-of-a-bitch. To the extent that the coverage of the anniversary of the demise of this traitorous, vile sock-puppet ignores or ignored these "tiny missteps," that is the extent to which I would have been obliged to disturb my dogs with my curses.

I would without compunction defile his grave.

If either Jon Stewart of Colbert has the stones to cover the memorials "unfairly," I could be tempted. C'mon, Jon, Stephen! TEMPT ME!!!

Source:
http://www.freespeechzoneblog.com/diary/4447/the-top-20-things-you-wont-be-reminded-of-tomorrow
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