Let’s play a game of "Name That Representative"
In August of 1966, a young Republican Congressman from Illinois gave a lengthy speech about the need for Congressional oversight over Vietnam war related contracts.
This congressman insisted that only "an investigating committee to be controlled by the minority, can assure vigorous investigation . . ."
By the way, the company that had obtained the contracts that this congressman railed against was Brown and Root - which later became Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton that is now the largest contractor in Iraq.
As a Republican congressman from Illinois in 1966, [he] raised questions about the 30-year association between Halliburton’s chairman and then-president Lyndon Johnson. "Why this huge contract has not been and is not now being adequately audited is beyond me," [he] said. "The potential for waste and profiteering under such a contract is substantial."
The name of that Congressman questioning long term relationships with war profiteers and demanding minority party oversight?
From A Tiny Revolution:
Two Disney Movies, Two Titles Containing "9/11," Two Strangely Different Outcomes
Why is the U.S. media such an eternal catastrophe? My standard explanation is that 99% of the disaster can be explained by the fact the media is (mostly) giant corporations, required by law to make as much money as possible. No conspiracy is required.
But...maybe I need to revise the 99% estimate downward:
ABC, after exploring all advertising avenues, has decided to show its upcoming two-part U.S. film, "The Path to 9/11," commercial-free when it airs next week...In yet another surprise move, ABC has revealed it will also offer both parts of the film as a free online download at Apple's iTunes Music Store and stream the miniseries on its own Web site, ABC.com.
So..."The Path to 9/11" cost $30 million and was written and directed by conservative ideologues. Factually speaking, it's predictably craptastic. And yet Disney is glad to lose at least $30 million on it.
By contrast, this was Disney's treatment of another political movie—one that eventually grossed over $200 million:
The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday...A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company had the right to quash Miramax's distribution of films if it deemed their distribution to be against the interests of the company. The executive said Mr. Moore's film is deemed to be against Disney's interests not because of the company's business dealings with the government but because Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film, which does not have a release date, could alienate many.
''It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle,'' this executive said.
So, right wing movie: Disney happily loses $30 million by running directly into a "highly charged partisan political battle."
Left-wing movie: Disney refuses to make gigantic amounts of money because they're so very scared they'll "alienate many."
Hmm. This would almost make me believe the media is conservative rather than liberal. Thank god we got the dispensation on this one that allows us to ignore all evidence forever.
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The Reconstruction of New Orleans vs. the Reconstruction of Lebanon
Immediately after the war in Lebanon ended, I predicted that Hezbollah would do a better job rebuilding southern Lebanon than the US government (federal, state and municipal) had done with New Orleans. Joyce Chediak has done a comparison:
In New Orleans, the people who could not self-evacuate the city, including the sick and people too poor to afford cars, were left to their own devices when the waters rose. Many of the most vulnerable drowned in their homes.
The tens of thousands of old, sick and infirm people who the city encouraged to gather in the Superdome until the storm passed were left there for five days. They had no medical attention, no sanitation, little water and food. Many died. Thousands of other flood survivors stranded at the Convention Center suffered the same fate.
All day the television networks showed footage of people stranded on roofs waving hand-made “help me” signs and others in the Superdome begging for water and medicine for dying seniors. Yet FEMA head Michael Brown said he didn’t realize the extent of the crisis until four days after the levees collapsed. Then he took another four days to rescue the survivors.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah, the force fighting and defending the villages, at the same time started helping the population as soon as the Israeli bombing began. The Lebanese resistance provided the ambulances and scores of searchers who pulled people from the rubble. They helped organize getting tens of thousands of refugees to schools, public parks and private homes (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 16).
In Beirut alone, Hezbollah organized 10 mobile medical teams that cared for 14 schools each, in two-day rotations, helping 48,000 people. Another 70,000 were treated in houses by other professionals.
In a Hezbollah kitchen near downtown Beirut, volunteers prepared 8,000 hot meals a day — part of a daily total of 50,000 they distributed across Beirut, reported the Monitor.
So. They handled things better during the disaster. How about after?
On Aug. 14, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he would give money for “decent and suitable furniture” and a year’s rent to any Lebanese who lost their home in the war. Beginning in the very poorest community of Dehiya south of Beirut, the resistance is distributing $12,000 per family, a huge sum in Lebanon where monthly rents average $300 (New York Times, Aug 16).
A year later after the New Orleans flood, “Thousands of people are living amid ruins that stretch for miles on end. ... All you see is debris, debris, debris. ... The reminders of death are everywhere” (New York Times, June 21).
Little to nothing has been done to rebuild the 9th Ward. This majority African-American community is filled with rubble, coated with mud and mold. Advocates point out that much damage, such as advancing mold, could have been stopped if the area had been cleaned early on. Many residents would have gladly organized their own cleaning brigade, but they were banned entry for the first four months after the flood.
In Lebanon, on Aug. 14, the very day of the cease-fire, while Israel was withdrawing its troops from Southern Lebanon, there were reports that hundreds of Hezbollah members spread over dozens of villages across southern Lebanon began cleaning, organizing and surveying the damage. Men on bulldozers were busy cutting lanes through giant piles of rubble. Roads blocked with the remnants of buildings were, just a day after a cease-fire began, fully passable....
...In September, the home insurance giant Allstate refused to reimburse New Orleans homeowners who had flood insurance policies. The company claimed the homes were destroyed by the wind, not by flood (MarketWatch, Sept. 20, 2005).
In October, the Bush administration reneged on its promised to provide thousands of mobile homes as temporary housing for returning refugees (New York Times, Oct. 31, 2005).
After promising New Orleans federal housing loans to repair and rebuild, it became apparent that no special loan provisions had been made for victims of the flood and that the White House was pushing for hurricane disaster-recovery loans at a higher rate than any other administration in the last 15 years (USA Today, March 15)....
...Meanwhile in Lebanon, a Hezbollah spokesperson announced, “We have full information on all the buildings that have been destroyed or damaged. … “We will either pay for new flats or rebuild the buildings that were destroyed”
(Aljazeera.net, Aug. 19).......“There are people from Hezbollah coming regularly to check on us and give us bread and other basic items,” said Mohammad Bazih, 30, from the village of Baakline. Residents of Zabqine, where tobacco is cultivated, told the press that Hezbollah was providing them with basic services (Beirut Daily Star, Aug. 22).
Bottom line. Hezbollah is more competent than the US government, the State of Louisiana and the municipality of New Orleans. It is also better at fighting wars than the US (who is 0/2 where Hezbollah is 2/0) and, based on actions, not words, it cares more about the people it rules.
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From AMERICAblog:
GOP Congress blocked Clinton push for anti-terror legislation
by John in DC - 9/04/2006 11:10:00 AM
CNN, July 30, 1996Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, emerged from the meeting and said, "These are very controversial provisions that the [Clinton] White House wants. Some they're not going to get." ....[Hatch] also said he had some problems with the president's proposals to expand wiretapping.
So Bill Clinton, rather than just breaking the law as Bush did (then again, perhaps this is why Bush broke the law - he knew from history that the Republicans controlling the congress would oppose his efforts to expand wiretapping), decided to go to the Republican congress in 1996 and ask them for increased authority to do more eavesdropping in order to stop the terrorists - stop September 11. Senior Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, one of the GOP's top picks for the Supreme Court and a GOP committee chair, objected.
The Republicans stopped President Clinton from getting all the tools he needed to stop the next September 11 - well, no, actually they opposed giving President Clinton all the tools he needed to stop the actual September 11. Could September 11 have been stopped if the GOP had given President Clinton the tools he requested to stop Osama and Mohammad Atta from killing 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington?
Maybe we need to ask the Republicans up for re-election why they wanted to appease the terrorists?President Clinton urged Congress Tuesday to act swiftly in developing anti-terrorism legislation before its August recess.
There's even an audio clip of President Clinton practically begging the Republicans to give him the tools he needed to stop Osama and the terrorists. Trent Lott said no. Orrin Hatch said no. Do these men really deserve to run the Congress during a time of war?
"We need to keep this country together right now. We need to focus on this terrorism issue," Clinton said during a White House news conference.
But while the president pushed for quick legislation, Republican lawmakers hardened their stance against some of the proposed anti-terrorism measures.
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