Thursday, September 05, 2002
Another munchie:
Fuel For the Anti-Bush Fire
By John Passacantando, AlterNet
"And George W. Bush has put a face to all that we find wrong: Political corruption. Corrupt influence from big business. A deaf ear to science. Deaf to the will of the people. The only thing green that matters is the buck.
Trust me on this, the center cannot hold. You cannot treat nature this way without it snapping back, and you cannot treat a democratic populace this way without it snapping back. The anger I am finding out there toward Bush -- from rank-and-file environmentalists, but also from firemen, cops, those coveted soccer moms, surfers, cabbies, anarchists and Republicans -- is unlike anything we have seen in modern times. You have to go back to the dark days of Richard Nixon to find such widespread fury toward a U.S. leader.
And yet compared to our sitting president, Nixon was a smarter and more agile politician who gave the people what they wanted: an end to the Vietnam war, once he politically had no alternative, and good environmental laws, once he saw the mandate from the people. Instead, Bush is out in front running the agenda of the dirtiest and most corrupt corporations in America, full speed ahead. I think the day is not far off when the inner circle of puppeteers working around Bush will envy the problems that Nixon had once his Watergate Plumbers got caught.
So, I will tip my hat to Bush's success so far. He has bested all of us who care about the environment. But I will also toast his rocky future and the eventual victory of the environmentalists. For Bush is a leader without a base, without a following, with only the dirty campaign contributions of America's most retrograde companies to his name."
John Passacantando is executive director of Greenpeace USA.
See full article here
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A little thought food for malnourished righties, from Project Censored at Alternet.org
#4. Bush Administration Ordered FBI Off Bin Laden Trail
Shielding the Saudi royal family and their friends from bad press is a veritable presidential tradition, as Greg Palast learned when he launched an investigation into why the FBI took its agents off the trail of bin Laden family members residing in the U.S. Drawing on information he uncovered in classified FBI documents, Palast reported that bin Laden's brother, Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, was a suspect in terrorist activities as long ago as 1996 but high-up intelligence officials pressured the FBI to discontinue its surveillance. "There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis," an intelligence source told Palast, who broke the story just two months after 9/11. Those restrictions were tightened considerably when George W. Bush took office.
Both the Bush and the bin Laden families have significant holdings in the Carlyle Group, the enormous private investment firm that has grown bloated off U.S. defense contracts. It seems as if the U.S. government is more in the business of protecting the Saudis and its own oil interests than of finding the perpetrators of 9/11. Change is in the wind, however; recent public opinion polls show that Americans are growing increasingly disenchanted with Saudi policy -- and perhaps, by extension, Bush's financial ties to the royal family.
Sources: Greg Palast and David Pallister, The Guardian, Nov. 7, 2001; Rashmee Z. Ahmed, Times of India, Nov. 8, 2001; Amanda Luker, Pulse, Jan. 16, 2002.
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