Chris Floyd, Richard Kastelein, Paul William Roberts, Mike Whitney, Chris Cook, William Cook, William Blum and more... http://www.atlanticfreepress.com Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:58:31 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/images/M_images/120x240.jpg http://www.atlanticfreepress.com Chris Floyd, Richard Kastelein, Paul William Roberts, Mike Whitney, Chris Cook, William Cook, William Blum and more... http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/4498/81/ by Bernard Weiner Dear Diary: These final months are not fun. The economy is a disaster. My ratings have sunk even deeper into the toilet. Congress, sensing my lame-duck weakness, has started over-riding my vetos. Republican candidates are staying away from me like I'm toxic waste. The Democrats are licking their lips, already tasting victory in November. (But, lucky for us, the Democrat leaders are still wimps and aren't really coming after us in the White House. Karl was right: Make the Democrats complicit in the Iraq War and on domestic spying and on tax-cuts, economic bailouts, etc; with the Dems locked into our policies, at least tangentially, on those issues, they won't dare come at us frontally or they'll go down along with us. I love the beltway!) There's not much for me to do around here, so mostly I'm just officiating at numerous ceremonial events, using the bully pulpit on occasion, and traveling around the globe saying my goodbyes. Most of the world leaders seem to be tolerating me, but with no great warmth, almost as if they're happy I'm departing the scene. Can that really be true? The Vice President continues to more or less run the show, with his CoC Addington doing the heavy lifting and providing the ideological underpinnings. In short, Dick's got himself an even-better Libby. Cheney seems to have every neo-con in Washington on his staff or under his control — what an operation! (The GOP may pay a price in November for my having commuted Libby's sentence, but it was important that he not go to prison so that all our closest former advisers, especially Alberto, would get the message: Keep your mouth shut and, if it comes to that, we'll take care of you with a full pardon.) Opinion - Opinion Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:09:19 +0100 http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/4495/81/ by Stephen Soldz, Brad Olson, Steven Reisner, Jean Maria Arrigo, Bryant Welch - Coalition for an Ethical Psychology Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, has refocused attention on psychologists’ participation in Bush administration torture and detainee abuse. In one chapter Mayer provides previously undisclosed details about psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen’s role in the CIA's brutal, “enhanced interrogation” techniques. These techniques apparently drew heavily on the theory of learned helplessness developed by former American Psychological Association President Martin Seligman. (Seligman’s work involved tormenting dogs with electrical shocks until they became totally unable or unwilling to extract themselves from the painful situation. Hence the phrase “learned helplessness.”) Mayer reports and Seligman has confirmed that, in 2002, Seligman gave a three-hour lecture to the Navy SERE school in San Diego. SERE is the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program, which attempts to inoculate pilots, special forces, and other potential high-value captives against torture, should they be captured by a power that does not respect the Geneva Conventions. For reasons that are not clear, Seligman reportedly was not invited to the presentation by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) that runs this program, but directly by the Central Intelligence Agency itself. Opinion - Opinion Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:00:58 +0100 http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/4492/81/ by Michael Gillespie The New Yorker magazine’s July 21 cover cartoon by Barry Blitt depicting Barak and Michelle Obama as armed Muslim terrorists burning an American flag in the White House Oval Office caught the country by surprise and shocked many Americans. In a society that has become inured to the flagrant excesses and criminality of Big Media corporations, that’s saying something. The New Yorker has enjoyed a reputation as being a cut above the rest, a publication where not just adults but well-educated, politically sophisticated adults are in charge, a magazine with an urbane tone that reflects a certain commitment to intellectual rigor and professionalism that is often lacking elsewhere in American journalism. That’s what makes the Obama cover more worrying than it would be had it been published elsewhere. Google “Barak Obama Michelle New Yorker Cover” and you’ll find a sponsored link for The New Yorker Store hawking “New Yorker Cover Prints. Buy the Obama Cover Print the Press is Buzzing About – On Sale Now.” Click on the link and you can take your pick of a large framed cover for $280, a large matted cover for $200, a small framed cover for $156, a small matted cover for $100, or a custom box of cover note cards for $29.95.” If you want to remember this particular moment in journalism history and, after seven and a half years of Republican foreign and economic policy, you still have a home, wall space, and money to burn, The New Yorker has a price for every budget. The Obama campaign was not impressed. Opinion - Opinion Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:56:32 +0100 http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/4489/81/ by Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D. The legal minions of Christian Dominionism (http://www.jewsonfirst.org/dominionism.html) have been busy for some time finding ways pastors can use the pulpit for political purposes. The Alliance Defense Fund, a group of lawyers dedicated to realizing the dominionist goal of marrying church and state, has taken another step in that direction (http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/issues/religiousfreedom/churchandstate.aspx?cid=4491): The Pulpit Initiative Reclaiming pastors’ constitutional right to speak Truth from the pulpit On Sunday, September 28, 2008, we are seeking pastors who will preach from the pulpit a sermon that addresses the candidates for government office in light of the truth of Scripture. The sermon is intended to challenge the Internal Revenue Code’s restrictions by specifically opposing candidates for office that do not align themselves and their positions with the Scriptural truth. By standing together and speaking with one voice, it is our hope to recapture the rightful place of pastors and churches in American life. [italics added] Do those “Scriptural truths” include the passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that sanction selling one’s daughter into slavery, stoning to death non-virgin brides, people who work on the Sabbath, and those who wear clothes made of two different threads? How about Paul’s scriptural edict in First Timothy: “suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence”? No doubt the ADF’s pocketed pastors will cite Leviticus 18:22 (http://www.biblestudytools.net/OnlineStudyBible/bible.cgi?version=nrsv passage=le+18 notes=1) and Romans 1:26–27 (http://www.biblestudytools.net/OnlineStudyBible/bible.cgi?passage=ro+1 version=nrsv notes=1) as proof positive of their bible-based socio-political position. They will, of course, forget to tell the flock that Romans was penned by the same St. Paul who had those “enlightened” thoughts about women’s divinely ordained place in the scheme of things. “Scriptural truths” one and all, are they not? Or does one get to pick and choose which biblical passages are true and which aren’t? If so, what are the criteria for such judgments? Opinion - Opinion Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:51:49 +0100 http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/4486/81/ by Rosemarie Jackowski Come November some will head for the hills. Some will head for the polls. Some have already decided to sit this one out. Most will cast uninformed votes. A few will break the mold. They have done their homework. They will vote for peace and justice. Informed voters, who have researched what has been missing from the electronic and print media, know that one of the offices being contested will have the potential to make history. Neither McCain nor Obama is running for this office. Across the country the office of State Attorney General will be more important during this election than at any time in the past. County Prosecutors and District Attorneys will also have a significant role to play. The time for War Crimes trials has finally come. We can stop holding our collective breath. The second shoe is about to drop. The Bush Indictment Project has begun. The difference between Impeachment and Indictment is like the difference between night and day. The call for Impeachment looks like a Sunday School picnic by comparison. Impeachment has its flaws. It trivializes the war crimes. It is better than nothing, but not by much. Opinion - Opinion Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:42:36 +0100