News Release Archive - 2004

“Michigan Republicans turned in 45,000 of the 50,500 petition signatures on behalf of Nader for a ballot spot.”
— Detroit Free Press, Sept. 4, 2004

“We have not been accepting signatures obtained through organized Republican Party efforts in the three or four states where we have learned of such activity.”
— Op-ed article by Ralph Nader in the Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2004

“The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled Friday [Sept. 3] that Nader qualified to be on the ballot as an independent, despite Democratic objections that 45,000 of the 50,000 signatures turned in on Nader’s behalf were collected by the Michigan Republican Party. Nader had wanted to be on the Michigan ballot as the Reform Party candidate, but a federal judge ruled last week that Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land was allowed to keep him from getting that designation. Two feuding groups claim to be the legitimate Reform Party representative in Michigan.”
— Associated Press, Sept. 8, 2004

“Nader is aware of the tremendous amount of support he has received from conservatives, but despite public announcements that these conservatives have no intention of voting for him, Nader refused to invalidate the signatures or return the money. He has previously denounced Democrats for being beholden to special interests, but has accepted support from people who openly disagree with his platform on issues concerning tax cuts, Social Security and civil rights. He certainly has a right to be on the ballot, but his road onto it is mired in hypocrisy.”
— Staff editorial, Michigan Daily (University of Michigan), Sept. 8, 2004

The Michigan Daily’s editorial page editor, Jason Pesick, can be contacted at: jzpesick@umich.edu

For more information, contact the Institute for Public Accuracy at (202) 347-0020 or David Zupan at (541) 484-9167.

ROBERT HICKEY
Hickey is author of the just-released report “No Holiday For Missouri’s Outsourced Workers: Outsourcing, Executive Campaign Contributions and the 2004 Presidential Election.” He said today: “The report looks at all companies that have been approved for the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program for sending Missouri jobs overseas since January 2001 when Bush became president. For each company, the political contributions made by the CEO and the directors were collected from the Center for Responsive Politics. When contributions to Bush and Kerry were compared, the company CEOs gave more than 13 times as much money to Bush as to Kerry. In other words, the corporate leaders that are shipping Missouri jobs to China and Mexico strongly prefer Bush as president.”

Hickey, who is a research assistant at the New York School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, added: “Since Bush became president, the USA has lost a net of almost 1 million jobs. Missouri has also seen painful job loss, with good-paying manufacturing jobs being outsourced to China and Mexico to find cheap labor. The corporate captains who are shipping our jobs overseas are also overwhelmingly supporting George Bush for president.” The report was released by the Missouri Citizen Education Fund.

BRIDGETTE DALEY
One of the companies examined in the report is American Airlines. Daley said today: “I was laid off last year after working with American Airlines for ten years. They shut down the entire office, about 700 people. We’d already gone through rounds of layoffs. They expanded an office they had in Mexico.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

In an editorial published on September 7, the New York Times stated: “There is no excuse for turning away eligible voters at the polls, but that is what apparently happened in Florida’s primary elections last week. Under Florida law, registered voters can vote without showing identification. But election officials at some polling places misstated the law and tried to keep eligible voters from voting.”
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HEATHER GERKEN
Gerken is an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School and is on the advisory board of Just Democracy. She said today: “Although most Americans assumed that the problems we saw in 2000 have been fixed, we may wake up the day after the election hearing Yogi Berra’s voice: it’s deja vu all over again. Florida hasn’t even succeeded in fixing its election-related problems, and Florida is just the tip of the iceberg. Numerous states — including many swing states — may well encounter problems in administering their elections. Given how close the election is right now, there’s a very good chance that we could find ourselves mired in another recount controversy this year.”

ARIEL NEUMAN
BECCA O’BRIEN
Neuman is the communications coordinator of Just Democracy. He said today: “Just Democracy plans to recruit and place more than 2,000 law students with expertise in election law at what they believe could be high-risk polling places around the nation. According to a recent study by the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project, between 2.5 and 4 million voters were wrongly excluded from the last presidential election. Problems and mistakes that led to the exclusions included voter registration errors and confusion at polling places. Other problems identified in the 2000 election were voter intimidation and improper operation of polling places. Throughout the last few months, Just Democracy has established 45 chapters in over 30 states, and is designing training programs throughout American law schools.”

O’Brien is the co-founder and co-director of Just Democracy. She said today: “Whatever one’s politics, seeing eligible, motivated voters wrongly denied their right to participate is an offense to democratic principles. Just Democracy is a completely non-partisan network of law school chapters.”
Just Democracy

MAGGIE WILLIAMS
Williams is the president of IMPACT, a network of law students that was founded and run out of Columbia University. She said today: “IMPACT has decided to focus its on-the-ground efforts on the 12 states where we believe that polling practices and ballot irregularities could cause the election to swing one way or another. We believe that voter protection is essential in states with highly competitive elections, because historically it is in these battlegrounds that intimidation tactics are most prevalent. As a non-partisan organization, IMPACT has no vested interest in any particular outcome of the 2004 presidential election.”

She added: “We did a trial run during last week’s primary in Florida. We trained and deployed 45 law students to targeted precincts to assist voters. We were able to respond to voters’ inquiries regarding identification requirements and correct precinct assignments. We also gave a voter bill of rights to every voter in the precincts we were able to cover. I encountered many people who were at the incorrect precinct. I was able to call our hotline and inform those voters of the correct precinct. We will be training hundreds more lawyers and law students at Columbia law school September 18.”
IMPACT
More Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Nancy Lessin
Charlie Richardson
Interviews are available with the following relatives of U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq. They can be contacted through Nancy Lessin and Charlie Richardson, co-founders of Military Families Speak Out.

* Celeste Zappala lives in Philadelphia, Pa. Her son Pennsylvania National Guardsman Sgt. Sherwood Baker was killed in Baghdad on April 26, 2004, in an explosion while providing security detail for people looking for weapons of mass destruction.

* Jane Bright is a resident of West Hills, Calif. Her son Evan Ashcraft died in Iraq. She said today: “My son was killed in an ambush near Mosul two days after Saddam Hussein’s sons were killed in Mosul — and three weeks after George Bush challenged the Iraqi resistance with ‘Bring ’em on.'”

* Sue Niederer lives in Pennington, N.J. Her son Army 1st Lt. Seth Dvorin was killed in Iraq on February 3, 2004. Lt. Dvorin deployed to Iraq five days after he was married.

* Eric Blickenstaff lives in Portland, Ore. His brother Spc. Joseph Michael Blickenstaff died December 8, 2003, in Iraq. His stepbrother is a Marine and is currently on his second tour in Iraq.

* Brooke M. Campbell is from Atlanta, Ga. Her brother U.S. Army Sgt. Ryan M. Campbell was killed in Iraq on April 6, 2004. He was scheduled to come home from his one-year tour of duty in Baghdad on April 25, 2004.

* Fernando Suarez del Solar lives in California. His son Jesus was a Marine who died in Iraq in March 2003. Since then, he has traveled to Iraq on a fact-finding delegation with other military families and veterans and has spoken out for peace at a number of rallies, including the August 29 march in New York during the Republican National Convention.

Nancy Lessin and Charlie Richardson are co-founders of Military Families Speak Out (www.mfso.org, mfso@mfso.org). They said today: “It is our loved ones who are, or have been, or will be on the battlefront. It is our loved ones who are risking injury and death. It is our loved ones who are returning scarred from their experiences. It is our loved ones who will have to live with the injuries and deaths among innocent Iraqi civilians.”

The group Military Families Speak Out has released a statement: “The two primary justifications used by the Bush administration to take this nation into war — weapons of mass destruction and a link between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein — have proven to be false. Each day, week and month that this reckless military misadventure continues, the death toll goes higher….

“We remember all the U.S. service men and women who have died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq; the many thousands of Iraqi men, women and children who have died as a result of this war in Iraq; and the fact that these deaths have occurred in a war that is unjust and unjustifiable.

“Military Families Speak Out — an organization of well over 1,600 families with loved ones in the military, including those who have been killed in Iraq, who are currently serving in Iraq, or who are about to deploy to Iraq — calls on the Bush administration and on the United States Congress to BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW! Our loved ones signed up to protect and defend Country and Constitution — not to be put in harm’s way for oil markets and dreams of empire. As we honor the fallen, we call on the administration to stop betraying our troops, their families and this nation! Not one more death in a war based on lies.”

Military Families Speak Out

FERNANDO SUAREZ DEL SOLAR
JUNE BRASHARES
MEDEA BENJAMIN
GAEL MURPHY
JODIE EVANS
They are among the activists who protested inside the convention center during speeches including Bush’s. Fernando Suarez del Solar (whose primary language is Spanish) is the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus Alberto Suarez del Solar Navarro, who died in Iraq on March 27, 2003. He held a sign on the convention floor: “Bush Lied, My Son Died.” Bashares, Benjamin, Murphy and Evans are with Code Pink, a women’s peace group. Benjamin had a banner that read: “Pro-Life — Stop the Killing in Iraq.”

RAHUL MAHAJAN
In his Republican convention speech last night, George W. Bush claimed: “After more than a decade of diplomacy, we gave Saddam Hussein another chance, a final chance, to meet his responsibilities to the civilized world. He again refused, and I faced the kind of decision that comes only to the Oval Office — a decision no president would ask for, but must be prepared to make. Do I forget the lessons of September 11th and take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our country?”

Author of the book Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond, Mahajan said today: “The entire world was watching. Yet the president of the United States now brazenly lies about the central question of how the war started. George Bush says his choice was between trusting Hussein and war. In fact, Iraq had been undergoing intrusive weapons inspections for months before the attack. Iraq allowed inspectors into the country in November 2002. Iraq turned over 12,000 pages of documents to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1441’s disclosure requirements. Both UNMOVIC head Hans Blix and Mohammed el-Baradei of the IAEA had expressed confidence that continuing inspections might be able to account for all unresolved issues in a matter of months. Blix withdrew the inspectors only in March 2003 after Bush stated that the U.S. was about to attack. At the time inspectors withdrew, Iraq was destroying its al-Samoud 2 missiles, as prescribed by UNMOVIC because they were slightly over the range limits in some tests — information that was contained in the original disclosure.”

Mahajan added: “Weapons inspectors had been absent from Iraq since December of 1998 when they were withdrawn by UNSCOM head Richard Butler at the urging of the Clinton administration before the ‘Desert Fox’ bombing campaign.”

See IPA news releases about administration deceptions leading to the Iraq invasion:

“White House Claims: A Pattern of Deceit”

“Bush’s War Case: Fiction vs. Facts at Accuracy.org/bush”
October 9, 2002 (shortly after a major Bush address and just before the Congressional vote on authorizing war)

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

ARTHUR HEITZER
Heitzer is a civil rights attorney and spokesperson for the National Lawyers Guild chapter in Milwaukee, where Chief Justice Rehnquist grew up. Heitzer said today: “The Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial authority on voter and civil rights, which means Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s record on this issue is very crucial. During the early sixties, Rehnquist personally participated in ‘Operation Eagle Eye,’ an Arizona Republican attempt to challenge voting rights of minorities (primarily Hispanics). Rehnquist testified under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings that he had not personally challenged voters, but this has been called into serious question by the testimony of four others involved, including a former assistant U.S. attorney for that district who affirmed that he witnessed Rehnquist in 1962 personally confronting voters and attempting to challenge their right to vote. Rehnquist also wrote a legal memorandum in 1952, ‘A Random Thought on the School Desegregation Cases,’ claiming that it would be unconstitutional for the courts to order school desegregation, and asserting that the notorious decision ‘Plessy v. Ferguson’ was right and should be re-affirmed. Official racial segregation might still be the rule of law today if this view had been accepted, but it was rejected by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Rehnquist’s attempt to later claim that what he wrote did not reflect his own views but those of the Justice he worked for, has been rejected by court historians as not being credible.”

Heitzer added: “And more recently, the Chief Justice helped to stop the recount of Florida votes, which awarded a contested presidency to George Bush. This ruling was based on temporarily expanding the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause in a manner that Rehnquist and his allies on the court had not afforded to citizens of color in civil rights cases, and then ruling that this holding would not have general application in future cases. Meanwhile, the court did not address the widespread exclusion of African-American voters and others in the Florida elections.”

STEVE COBBLE
Cobble is a former political director of the National Rainbow Coalition. He said today: “The Homeland Security Department has been floating plans to delay elections and there have been a series of terror alerts coinciding with politically sensitive moments, later revealed to be based on data predating September 11. Given its expansive power to influence the political climate and elections, the Homeland Security Department has to be operated in a truly non-partisan fashion. Unfortunately, its current head, Tom Ridge, has already distorted on behalf of George W. Bush’s electoral interests. One striking incident occurred on election night in 2000, when the Bush campaign, in an effort to cast doubt on the networks’ projections, asked Ridge to publicly challenge Gore’s easy projected victory in Pennsylvania. As John Nichols describes in his book Jews for Buchanan, both men knew that the exit polls were giving Gore the state by a large margin and that this was totally a political request. As Nichols explains: ‘[Ridge] had run and won Pennsylvania in primary and general elections. He knew his state precinct by precinct, and he knew Bush had lost it…. Yet, Bush told Ridge to get out there and challenge the projections. And Ridge did just that, pushing his message hard so as to suggest that the network decision desks might have more than one problem on their hands. George W. fanned the flames, telling reporters who were hastily summoned to the Governor’s Mansion that Ridge had just confirmed to him that the exit polls were “wrong.”‘ The final result in Pennsylvania was a Gore victory by 5 percent, with a margin of more than 200,000 votes. Not exactly a toss-up. Not exactly too close to call. Yet, Governor Ridge rushed to aid Bush for political reasons. The question is, will he do it again?”

MARK CRISPIN MILLER
Professor of media studies at New York University and author of the just-released book Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New World Order, Miller said today: “This regime is not conservative, but represents a radical subversive movement — one now largely in control of all three branches of the government… What ultimately drives them is irrational. Sure, they’re in it for the money and the oil; but that’s not all that’s going on here. They’re neo-Calvinists, quite clearly working toward the imposition of theocracy on the United States, and then on the whole world…. Certainly the administration represents some dark old strains in U.S. history: nativism, white supremacy, theocratic tyranny. But as far as our mainstream political traditions are concerned, the Bush administration is junking them.”

More information
[See Miller’s and other analysts’ comments during the 2000 Republican Convention on an IPA news release: “Compassionate Conservatism?” ]

ASIA RUSSELL
Russell is a member of Act Up Philadelphia. She said today: “On Tuesday, Act Up members staged a non-violent protest — holding a banner and chanting ‘Bush Lies, Drop the Debt, Stop AIDS Now’ during a speech by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card — demanding that the Bush administration reverse its opposition to 100 percent debt cancellation for Third World countries devastated by the AIDS crisis. The protest was met with violence on the part of officials responding to the action, as well as youth delegates attending the convention. Impoverished African countries are paying out billions of dollars each year to pay old debts. This is taking away from desperately needed resources to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa. Meanwhile, Bush is pandering to extremist elements and backing unproven abstinence policies as a way of addressing the AIDS crisis.”
Health Gap Coalition

MADIS SENNER
New York Governor George Pataki is slated to introduce President Bush tonight. Senner is a community activist in Syracuse, New York. He said today: “Pataki has smeared Dr. Rafil Dhafir as a terrorist. Dhafir is an Iraqi-American doctor facing life in prison for violating economic sanctions against Iraq. He has spent the last year and a half in prison awaiting trial and has been denied bail four times. His ‘crime’ is that he was trying to help the people of Iraq with food and medical supplies. He seems to be the only U.S. citizen ever to be held in prison for violating the sanctions, which were hurting the Iraqi people. Dhafir was arrested on Feb. 26, 2003, just three weeks before the invasion of Iraq began. That same day, Attorney General John Ashcroft connected the forthcoming military attack on Iraq with the fight at home against those who he claimed backed Saddam Hussein by sending money to Iraq. The day Dhafir was arrested, 150 predominately Muslim families were interrogated around Syracuse. Dr. Dhafir is just one example of how this administration has oppressed and intimidated the Muslim community in the U.S. This is hardly an attitude that’s friendly towards immigrants…. Recently, the Syracuse Post-Standard editorialized against Pataki’s smear.” Senner has founded Operation Free Dhafir.
More Information
See the Syracuse Post-Standard editorial criticizing Pataki

CHELLIE PINGREE
Chellie Pingree is the president of Common Cause. She said today: “Last week, a four-day conference for election officials was held, co-sponsored by voting machine vendors who want their business. The conference was organized by the Election Center, a non-profit organization that describes itself as an association of election and voter registration officials, which is a central source of information for United States election officials and related government agencies. In March, it was revealed that the Election Center, which trains election officials and advises Congress and government agencies on election process issues, has taken large donations from manufacturers of electronic voting machines — even as it has issued strong statements supporting the security of the machines.”

She added: “The plans for the event included women in evening dresses and men in tuxedos carrying a six foot-long check made out to ‘election officials’ for ‘parties, cruises, wining and dining’ and signed by voting machine manufacturers Diebold Elections System, Sequoia Voting Systems and Elections Systems and Software. R. Doug Lewis, the center’s executive director, confirmed that the organization had received donations from Sequoia, Elections Systems & Software, and Diebold. Diebold sponsored the welcome reception, while Sequoia took the conferees out on a Potomac River dinner cruise and ES&S sponsored the graduation luncheon and awards ceremony. As election day approaches amid serious concerns that our nation’s voting system has not been fixed since the debacle in 2000, the spectacle of elections officials sailing down the Potomac on a dinner cruise sponsored by voting machine vendors sends the wrong message to voters.”

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FREDDIE OAKLEY
Freddie Oakley is the County Clerk Recorder in Yolo County, California. She said today: “There is a long history of close and congenial relationships between the people who conduct elections and the businesses that supply them with materials and technology. In part, this is inevitable because it’s a small community. However, as a matter of conduct with regard to the public trust, election officials need to be increasingly aware that the scrutiny of the public and the press shines a bright light and that they should probably retreat from the long-time practices of accepting cocktails and dinners from the people they do business with.”

She added: “I have been distressed for a long time that the Election Center, which holds itself out as the impartial association for election officials, engages in and appears to encourage this kind of industry subsidy of get-togethers of election officials. As elected public officials, we should have an arms-length relationship with these businesses. Elections officials should not partake of sponsored entertainment. Regardless of whether or not any impropriety actually takes place, avoiding the appearance of improprieties should be paramount to the members of the election community.”

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GREG PALAST
Palast is author of the New York Times best-selling book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, an expanded election edition of which has just been released. Formerly a professor of statistics, he is analyzing vote machine manipulations for BBC television and a forthcoming Harper’s article titled “Money Poisoning of the Decision to Choose Computers Over Cheaper, More Reliable Methods of Counting Ballots.” He said today: “Politicians who have fallen in love with computer voting machines find their affection well-rewarded. The head of the National Association of Secretaries of State is a big booster of computers by ES&S and Sequoia … and they boost her … as two of her top ten campaign contributors. For ES&S, it’s ‘all in the family’: they hired the husband of the Supervisor of Elections in Pinellas, Florida, and the husband of the state legislator representing Broward County, the place where non-operating ES&S machines failed in African-American precincts. The company obtained multi-million dollar contracts against the recommendation of the state’s panel of experts. Computers in Florida this year experienced a 600 percent higher ‘spoilage’ (error) rate than paper ballots read by scanners … but the computer manufacturers are winning the cash-for-favors race hands down.”
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The New York Times reports today that “Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted interviews with two officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are suspected of passing classified information from a Pentagon analyst to Israeli intelligence, government officials and a lawyer for the committee said on Tuesday. On Friday, F.B.I. agents visited the two officials of the group, Steven Rosen, the organization’s director of foreign policy issues, and Keith Weissman, one of its experts on Iran, said Nathan Lewin, a lawyer for the pro-Israel lobbying group, known as AIPAC…. The authorities said that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew Lawrence A. Franklin, the Defense Department analyst who is suspected of giving them classified information related to American policy toward Iran. Mr. Franklin is a lower-level analyst who works on Iranian issues in the office of Douglas J. Feith, under secretary of defense for policy.”

The following specialists are available for interviews:

STEPHEN GREEN
Author of the book Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations With a Militant Israel, Green was interviewed in June by the FBI about his expertise on Israeli espionage against the United States. Green said today: “Contrary to the rhetoric coming from AIPAC and the Israeli government, there is a long history of Israel spying on the United States.”
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KAREN KWIATKOWSKI
A retired U.S. Air Force colonel, Kwiatkowski worked until the Spring of 2003 in the Pentagon’s office of Near East/South Asia and Special Plans at the Pentagon. She knows Lawrence Franklin and recently wrote the piece “Spies in the Pentagon?” She said today: “Larry is very possibly a patsy. It’s unlike him to go off doing something like giving classified documents to AIPAC unless it was what the higher ups wanted him to do or he considered this a routine channel. Feith and [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz are both very friendly with Israel and supportive of Likud policies. One time shortly before the invasion of Iraq, several Israeli generals came to the Pentagon, and they did not sign in Mr. Feith’s security book, a procedure mandated for all other guests and ambassadors; it was an illustration of the broad cooperative nature we have with Israel…. This starts to get at some of the real motives of U.S. policy in the Mideast, it’s not about fostering democracy. It’s about changing the landscape of the region.” Kwiatkowski has not been interviewed by the FBI about the current case.
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MICHAEL SABA
Author of the seminal book The Armageddon Network and an international business consultant, Saba said today: “I wrote the book after I overheard Stephen Bryen, then a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop [in D.C. in 1978] offering classified documents to an official of the Israeli Embassy. The FBI repeatedly questioned me as to whether AIPAC was involved in the conversation. Bryen is a close associate of Richard Perle’s. This incident led to an investigation and a recommendation to go to Grand Jury, but in time it was business as usual. Currently, Bryen is a member of the China Commission, which requires high level security clearances.”
More Information
See the document “Israeli Spying on the US: A Long History”

JOHN STAUBER
SHELDON RAMPTON
Authors of the book Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State, Stauber and Rampton said today: “Conventions have become giant orchestrated PR and advertising…. In 2000 only 4 percent of the actual Republican delegates were black, but the talent onstage looked quite different featuring Colin Powell, Chris Rock, the Temptations, J.C. Watts and others. This year the emphasis is on projecting an image of moderation to mask the far-right Republican reality … More moderate Republicans including Schwarzenegger, McCain and Giuliani will be featured speakers while far-right factions that are key to the Republican base will be kept more in the wings. As Karl Rove has remarked, ‘It’s all visuals. You campaign as if America was watching TV with the sound turned down.'”
PR Watch

NAOMI KLEIN, [via Jeremy Hurst]
Currently in New York City, Klein is available for a limited number of interviews through Wednesday. She wrote the article “Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in Pursuit of a Neocon Utopia” in the current issue of Harper’s magazine. She said: “What surprises me is what isn’t here: Najaf. Even within the antiwar movement, the events in Najaf are barely visible. The ‘handover’ has worked: Iraq is becoming somebody else’s problem. It’s true that war is at the center of the election campaign — just not the one in Iraq. The talk is all of what happened on Swift Boats thirty-five years ago, not of the cannons being fired from U.S. AC-130 gunships now.” Klein is the author of the book Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate.
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LAURA FLANDERS
Currently in New York City, Flanders is author of the book Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, which includes profiles of Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Laura Bush and others. Flanders said today: “Cloaked in the cynical language of protecting families and ‘life,’ the Bush administration and its allies have mounted an all-out assault on women’s rights, science and family health…. Thirty-three years after Congress passed a joint resolution to celebrate the victory of the women’s suffrage movement and to celebrate Women’s Equality (August 26), the country and the world are more divided than ever. W doesn’t stand for Women, it stands for Wealth, War and Whopper. Women around the world are feeling the effects of the anti-equality, anti-secularist upsurge which George W. Bush has helped to advance.”
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JOHN NICHOLS
Currently in New York City, Nichols is author of the just-released book Dick: The Man Who Is President. Nichols said today: “Dick Cheney selected himself to serve as George W. Bush’s vice president, ran the transition process that shaped the new administration, headed the Energy Task Force of the most oil-obsessed White House in history, personally advances and advocates for the most right-wing judicial nominees, directs White House political operations as Karl Rove’s overseer, manages everything from regulatory policy to tax-cut schemes and continues to serve as Salesman-in-Chief for the Iraq invasion and occupation.”
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PAUL LOEB
Author of the new book The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, Loeb said today: “Too many people hold back from volunteering or even voting, because they feel politics is out of their control. We need to remind ourselves — and others — that history isn’t some inevitable pendulum. It’s contingent on the hope that enables us to act.”
Soul of a Citizen