"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shallseem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

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by William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute

The hasty retreat of Taliban forces from the major cities of northern Afghanistan in mid- November marked a surprising turn in the war. The speed with which the Taliban collapsed took most analysts by surprise. But the shift in the war could not have come at a better time for the Bush administration, which was beginning to face rising criticism from European allies and sustained questioning from some journalists in the U.S. on the issues of civilian casualties and the military effectiveness of the bombing campaign.

While Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld took pains to point out that the Taliban retreat was only a first step towards the administration's goal of "rooting out" Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, the white-collar warriors of the Washington press corps were in a much more expansive mood. An analysis piece by Eric Schmitt of the New York Times was entitled "Surprise. War Works After All." Michael Kelly of the Washington Post took the U.S. peace movement to task for even daring to question the legitimacy or efficacy of the war effort, and went out of his way to ridicule columnist James Carroll of the Boston Globe for his critical pieces on the war. Charles Krauthammer led the charge of U.S. pundits who argued that the interim success against the Taliban meant that the United States could (and should) overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Before we get too carried away with the wonders of U.S. military intervention, it probably makes sense to reflect for a few moments on what has actually been accomplished in Afghanistan.

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The Rights Women Need in Afghanistan are Basic Human Rights
by Laura Flanders

There was a moment in this war when the Bush administration appeared to care about nothing so much as women's liberation.

Out came First Lady, Laura Bush, to talk to the nation about the matter. Mrs. Bush became what her publicists cheered was "the first first lady to deliver an entire presidential radio address" by herself November 16, in which she denounced the "severe repression against women of Afghanistan."

Laura Bush's speech was coordinated with the release of a State Department report that condemned conditions for women and children under the Taliban and the Al Qaeda terror network.

"The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women," intoned Laura Bush. A few days later, she brought women's rights activists from groups like the Feminist Majority and Equality Now! along with Afghan women exiles to the White House for a photo opportunity and press conference.

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by Norman Solomon

The P.U.-litzer Prizes were established a decade ago to give recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year.

As each winter arrives, I confer with Jeff Cohen of the media watch group FAIR to sift through the large volume of entries. This year, the competition was especially fierce. We regret that only a few journalists can win a P.U.-litzer.

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by Frank Smyth

YESTERDAY, the Bush administration finally released the homemade movie that officials say U.S. military forces discovered in a house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. If one believes the tape is real, as I do, it implicates Osama bin Laden in planning the Sept. 11 attacks.

The tape is consistent with bin Laden's press interviews before Sept. 11, as he has long promised that he and his followers would attack the United States. While the radical Saudi did not become a household name in America until this fall, he has been our most-wanted man since the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998.

Unfortunately, however, what we Americans see clearly on our TV sets as a smoking gun will look like no more than a smokescreen to countless others abroad, and the Bush administration's media policies are no small reason why.

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by Sara Austin

BRUSSELS -- Sima Wali, president and CEO of Refugee Women in Development and driving force behind the Afghan Women's Summit, originally envisioned the event as a way to promote women's involvement in the peace process in Afghanistan--an ambitious strategy session for fifty Afghan women activists supported by Western feminists, UN and European Union officials, and women peacemakers from war-torn nations all over the world. But with the Taliban crumbling faster than anyone had imagined, by the time the Summit opened here on December 4, the peace process was already wrapping up in Bonn--and the Brussels contingent found to their amazement that their original agenda was, in essence, moot.

Wali herself was at the table in Bonn, alongside Seddighe Balkhi, leader of the Afghan Women's Political and Cultural Activities Center in Iran, and Northern Alliance representative Amina Afzali, an Iran-based activist whose husband was murdered by the KGB. As the three shuttled back and forth between Bonn and Brussels, word spread that the interim authority had appointed a moderate chair, Hamid Karzai, filled three of thirty Cabinet positions with women (it later turned out to be only two) and agreed to include more in the Loya Jirga, or general assembly. To the delight of many, Suhaila Seddiqi, a Tajik surgeon from Kabul, was named health minister in the new interim government. And while some continued to lambaste the male-dominated peace proceedings and the troubling human rights record and misogyny of an emboldened Northern Alliance, most were thrilled with the selection of Sima Samar--an activist for women as well as the persecuted Hazara minority--as minister of women's affairs.

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Here are two columnists who were impressed by the performance of North Carolina Senator John Edwards' intelligent and focused questioning of Ashcroft at the recent hearings on tribunals. Many of you saw this on C-Span, but I wanted to pass along the fact that Edwards is getting high marks outside DU as well.

Here's Walter Shapiro from USA Today:
...That held until John Edwards, the final questioner and a noted trial lawyer before his election to the Senate in 1998, proved how much a practiced courtroom questioner could accomplish in just 5 minutes. The North Carolina Democrat pressed Ashcroft on whether the low threshold of proof in the executive order setting up the military tribunals ("a preponderance of evidence") meant that an accused terrorist could be convicted even if there were a 49% chance of his innocence. Ashcroft's vague answer: "That an issue still to be determined, and beyond my power to speculate on."

Edwards followed up by asking whether the death penalty could be imposed by a divided 2-to-1 verdict. Faced with this onslaught, all the attorney general could do was concede that "two out of three is two-thirds."
Like a prizefighter pummeled in the final round, Ashcroft was mercifully saved by the bell.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/e98/shapiro/588.htm

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Working the night shift as a truck driver affords one an ample amount of time to listen to the best electronic media.

Radio. AM specifically, as the FM stations fade in and out on the open road.

My favorite show used to be Coast To Coast AM, before they became little more than an apologist for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Seemingly in existence only to disseminate disinformation and cover up the abuses of the ruling elite. There's a reason that Jim Marrs, the man who wrote "Rule By Secrecy", hasn't been invited back on the show since 9-11. Once frequent guests who wrote of the New World Order are not welcome.

Ian Punnett, who hosted weekends for about a year, is moving on to Minnesota to host his own show. On Sunday, his final show with Coast, he had on as a guest Devon Jackson.

Jackson's book, Conspiranoia, is loaded with almost every conspiracy theory, real or imagined. Verifiable or not, rumor and innuendo, with no editorial direction.

Here's an excerpt of a review of the book at Amazon.

His choice of a guidebook format (each chapter proposing an evanescent overall conspiracy, in which all relevant paragraphs are cross-referenced by pictogram to the other conspiracy chapters) makes the material easier to grasp than a narrative like Gravitys Rainbow, but strangely numbs the unease that much of it provokes. Jacksons buzz-friendly nature demonstrates how such conspiracy culture ( at once personal, therefore unsettling) has been vitiated by the public mode of entertainment, in which myth becomes inseparable from malfeasance, the vital nature of malign conspiracy arguably reduced to simulacra. Whats missing is any effort to perform a larger, graver task: to figure out which of these malicious netherworlds of corruption might still be brought to account by an increasingly fractious, distracted citizenry.

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