But Judicial Watch has fought for and won access to some of the task force's documents, including this smoking gun — a map of Iraq oil fields:
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org.
[The title above the graphic says "Iraqi Oilfields and Exploration Blocks."]
Remember that these meetings were held six months before 9/11/01, so any associations of the American invasion of Iraq with a "war on terrorism" or alleged Al Qaeda connections are well after the fact of these documents, which prove an abnormal interest in Iraqi energy resources long before the Twin Towers fell.
Earlier this week, Dr Kelly denied being the BBC's main source for a story claiming Downing Street had "sexed up" a dossier about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
[...]
Huge media attention has been on Dr Kelly since the Ministry of Defence said he had admitted meeting Andrew Gilligan, the BBC correspondent behind the controversial Iraq story.
Mr Gilligan said a source had told him that the dossier on Iraq had been "sexed up" by Downing Street.
The BBC correspondent has refused to name his source, but the MoD said Dr Kelly had come forward to say it may have been him.
The knowledge of "sexed up" British intelligence dossiers that are used by an American president to launch a unilateral invasion can now be credibly categorized as lethal knowledge.
Actually, as reported quite thoroughly by David Neiwert at Orcinus, all of these are true stories. But instead of Al Qaeda members the subjects were (1) an Amercian cop-killing Christian Identity religious terrorist, (2) a New Jersey anti-Semite, and (3) an American white supremacist who routinely denounces cultural diversity, mixed-race couples, homosexuals, Jews and feminists.
Why didn't anyone beyond the local areas hear about these stories? Because the churlish Bush-Ridge variety of "homeland security" involves creating imaginary WMDs and chasing phantoms instead of pursuing tangible threats. And American national news editors, in their self-censoring bovine conformism, reflect the Bush-Ridge editorial bias of "all distractions, all the time."
(2) All of their billboards are also owned by Clear Channel.
During a recent drive I did not see a single non-Clear Channel radio station advertised on the entire 20-plus-mile stretch of Interstate 94 that snakes through Chicago.
Billboard spaces (called showings) on major highways rent for many thousands of dollars per month. The costs increase dramatically with higher traffic, location visibility, arterial street sightlines, and so on.
Does anyone truly believe that these five stations are paying cash at the exorbitant retail value of the billboards' placement? No doubt Clear Channel has established some kind of byzantine, cashless barter scheme in which only its own stations can participate. All other stations — the ones without sweetheart ad deals from their centralized owners — are left out in the cold.
With media consolidation continuing along its current path as sanctioned by the Republican-dominated FCC, not only will big media control the distribution of news and entertainment but also who gets to advertise.
The net result: based on the billboards they see, Chicago highway commuters are left with the impression that there are only five radio stations in Chicago — all of which are also quietly owned by Clear Channel. This is a market effect that FCC Chairman Michael Powell views as "competitive."
Many stations, many billboards, one exclusive owner. Ignoring the esthetic cesspool of consultant-decreed and format-driven commercial radio or billboard advertising for the moment, can there be a clearer or more glaring example of "unfair business practice"?
Just tuning in? Clear Channel is notable for being the largest radio consolidator in the US, with a weekly audience of over 100 million people, as well as for its recent funding and support of nationwide pro-war rallies in advance of the Iraq invasion.
An unusual manifesto is circulating through the e-mail boxes of prominent Washingtonians from an ad hoc group calling itself the "Committee for the Republic." Its five sponsors include conservative C. Boyden Gray, a White House lawyer in the first Bush administration; Chas. W. Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia; and Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The manifesto is a work in progress, its authors say. But the goal is clear: to educate Americans about the dangers of empire.
[...]
The U.S. is operating open-ended protectorates in Afghanistan and Iraq, at a combined cost of $5 billion a month, or $60 billion a year. That's roughly triple the entire foreign-aid budget, and almost double the federal government's budget for elementary and secondary education. Meanwhile, intervention in Liberia appears just around the corner. U.S. soldiers reside in nearly 100 different countries. During the president's trip last week to Africa, there was talk of opening bases elsewhere on that continent.
[...]
You can argue that none of this is "empire" of the British or Roman variety, since it doesn't involve, for the most part, elaborate systems of civil as well as military governance. But it's close enough. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. has struggled with what it means to be the world's sole remaining superpower. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush moved with surprising force and speed -- and with surprisingly little resistance -- to put an expansive definition on that role.
The Committee for the Republic is saying, in effect: "Whoa, hold on a minute. Shouldn't we talk about this first"?
"The American Revolution was a nationalist revolt against the British Empire," the draft manifesto argues. "Our country was born as a defiant rejection of the legitimacy of imperialism." Citing the lessons of the classics, it argues that the "inevitable cost of empire" is a loss of political and economic freedom at home. "Domestic liberty is the first casualty of adventurist foreign policy."
While the draft was written before the latest flap over bad intelligence used in the State of the Union address, it also argues: "To justify the high cost of maintaining rule over foreign territories and peoples, leaders are left with no choice but to deceive the people."
The events of the past week have provided new heat to the debate over the war in Iraq. For the first time since this past fall, Mr. Bush's defense and foreign policies are encountering serious questioning at home. For the first time, Democrats seem to have found a consistent voice in criticizing those policies. And for the first time, Washington's political punditocracy has begun saying that the defining issue of the 2004 election might not be the economy or health care but foreign policy.
That is a good thing. Mr. Bush may have defined a bold new course for the U.S. in foreign policy, but he hasn't yet had to defend it before a skeptical public. And while the leading Democratic presidential hopefuls are getting more aggressive in their foreign-policy attacks, none has yet articulated a clear alternative vision.*
The Committee for the Republic thinks it is time to have a great national debate about America's role in the post-Cold War world. I say: Bring it on.
*Some solutions are beneath articulation. A clear alternative vision to driving off a cliff would be to stay on the road. Do we really need to spell that out?
The alternative to unilateralist military mania, built on a foundation of 9/11 fraud, is to secure the homeland (instead of Iraqi oil fields) and to build a multilateral front against stateless terrorism.
How can we have a debate without a forum? For almost two years, Americans who want to discuss these issues have had to endure a cheap, ersatz "patriotism" promoted relentlessly by a corporate media cabal working in lockstep.
But the last several days offer fresh hope for something resembling a national discussion. Even Time Magazine is beginning to connect the dots, and is drawing the conclusion that our national hallucination may not hold up to inspection.
"You woke me out of oh! such a nice dream!" — Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass.
Spellbound, not the film by Hitchcock, follows the trails of eight 8th-graders who make it to the National Spelling Bee in Washington DC. In our age of ignorant cynicism, this wonderful documentary on a curious piece of Americana and the last days of prepubescent childhood offers a fascinating portrait of intelligence with a heart of innocence.
Contrary to many North American assumptions, France - according to wealth produced per hour worked - is one of the most productive countries in Europe. Labor is expensive in France, so industries are extremely mechanized. The French would be even richer if they limited their paid holidays to two weeks, but they look at the problem differently. If fewer people are necessary to produce the same wealth, they reason, then why not translate that wealth into more holidays? As many of our French friends remarked, whether holidays are good or bad for the economy is beside the point: "The economy is supposed to work for us, not the other way around!"
[...]
The French also have a very distinct work ethic. They pretend they're not busy even when they're working like crazy.
"To us, looking relaxed shows you're in control," a friend explained. Hence, long leisurely lunches at cafes. Make no mistake: They're working hard, they just don't have stigmas about taking their time and looking relaxed in public.
[...]
Although 98 percent of the French lead urban lifestyles, they vacation in the countryside. This injection of capital helps preserve ancient ways of life in barely productive rural areas - a major reason French regional cuisine continues to flourish.
American vacations, often childlike exercises in canned environments like Disney World, preserve nothing at all — except media monoliths and vested corporate interests in the copyright on the damn Mouse.
Oddly enough, it is Dubya who most resembles the French in that he takes the whole month of August off every year (excluding fundraising excursions), something that the workers who empower his corporatocracy are simple unable to do. (How else could he have missed those ominous August 2001 intelligence warnings that something big and awful was on its way? He was busy not riding nonexistent horses on his Crawford ranch.)
We Americans are sacrificing our regional cuisines and cultures to corporations whose interests do not overlap with our own. The relatively mature French society manages to put its own heritage and lifestyle above the commercial agenda, something that the adolescent American society has not yet figured out for itself.
She said she received an email Sharon Bushfrom her husband saying, he wasn't sure they should remain married.
"And I, after 22 years was stunned," she says. "I said, 'You're firing me?' I said, 'What do you mean, you're firing me?' He said, 'No, I just don't love you.'"
Why do I bother keeping up with this story? Because it represents three themes of great currency: (1) the inner machinations of the Bush dynasty, which has so far supplied the American people with two lousy presidents and is prepping a third (Jeb) in the wings, (2) Neil is one of the crooked Silverado beneficiaries of the 1980s savings and loan multibillion dollar bailout engineered by his father, and (3) the shabby treatment and blackmail of Sharon Bush exposes "compassionate conservatism" as the tissue of lies it is.
Citigroup Inc., in a significant change in the way it rewards investors, declared a 75% increase in its dividend, a move that more companies are expected to follow as earnings announcements pick up this week.
Dividends, those quarterly payouts that investors and companies dismissed as irrelevant during the stock-market bubble, are back in vogue, driven by improving business conditions, investors seeking the relative safety of dividend-paying stocks and, perhaps most important, a tax cut that has made dividends more valuable to individuals.
"It's on everyone's mind, it's on everyone's calendar, you know it's in every boardroom," said Howard Silverblatt, a quantitative analyst at Standard & Poor's. "This looks like it's getting more attention than earnings."
Citigroup's annual dividend is jumping to $1.40 a share from 80 cents. While boosting its dividend, Citigroup, which also posted a 5% quarterly earnings rise, said it would cut back on share repurchases. It cited the new tax law, which makes dividends just as attractive as share repurchases, which are designed to boost stock prices and had become the most favored way for companies to return cash to shareholders. "This substantial increase in our dividend will be part of our effort to reallocate capital to dividends and reduce share repurchases," said Sanford I. Weill, Citigroup's chairman and chief executive.
Citigroup, the sixth-largest stock by market capitalization, said that the dividend increase will be funded with capital previously used to buy back shares. The dividend program will cost the company about $1.8 billion per quarter, up from about $1 billion before the increase. During the second quarter, the company spent $359 million buying back shares, down from $1.2 billion in the first quarter, to preserve capital for the dividend increase, according to Todd Thomson, the company's chief financial officer.
One of the largest beneficiaries of the dividend increase will be Mr. Weill himself, who owned 22.4 million shares of stock as of July 1. His annual dividend income will rise to $31.4 million, up from $17.9 million previously.
The Citigroup CEO's $13.5 million raise in dividend income will be tax-free, thanks to the generosity of the George W Bush tax cut. The simultaneous reduction in stock repurchases will likely have a long-term depressing effect on the stock price (at least in the absence of its stimulating effect), which will in turn keep a heavy lid on the upside potential of the stock price. While Weill cashes his check for $13.5 million in tax-free dividends, anyone with Citigroup stock in a 401(k) or brokerage account, which depend more upon the long-term increasing value of the stock rather than its dividend yield, will see a whole lot of nothing.
Now that one of every two Americans owns stock it is in the best interests of the ruling class to depress the stock market in order to maintain the distinction and hierarchy among the classes that keeps them on top. So even while they cash their dividend checks, they have moved on to hedge funds, timberland and Old Master paintings as core investments. Meanwhile, the little people are stuck with the stagnating stocks and mutual funds in their low-balance 401(k) accounts. The partial privatization of retirement income, defined as 401(k) plans, helps speed the net flow of capital away from workers and toward owner-shareholders.
Think Enron, played across the entire S&P 500. It's three-card monte played on a multitrillion dollar scale.
Sorry, retirement investor — you picked the wrong card. Tough luck.
For recent work, 9 is the highest score. The Skimble system is on a 10-point scale, but to receive a rating of 10 a work must be at least ten years old and still be recognized as an indisputable masterpiece.
