U.S. Supporting Assassinations?
After yet another assassination of a Hamas leader, America still fails to condemn the murders. The
EU condemned both assassinations as acts of "terrorism." While the U.S. went as far as blocking a
UN Security Council Resolution condemning the attacks.
How is it that the US can condemn a suicide bomb (as it rightly should) but fail to condemn a missile attack on a wheelchair bound man on his return from evening prayers? Granted, Yassin was by no means a harmless man, but his assassination will only fuel more violence. Pres. Bush condemned the assassination of the
Israeli Tourism Minister and called the act a "despicable act" and an example of why we need to fight terrorism. It's sad that we have so far removed ourselves from any hope of a peacemaking role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by taking such a blindly supportive role of Israel, instead of holding both sides to the same standards.
9/11 Hearings: Was anyone actually in charge?
Hi everyone, I'm heading off to Vegas for a bit (Vegas Baby! Vegas), but decided I'd give you something to mull over while I'm away. From listening to a great portion of Rice's testimony, it sounds as if no one had any clue who was really calling the shots. Rice said that several documents, including the PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) that said OBL wanted to hijack jets and a memo from Clarke that said there were known Al Quieda cells in the US, were not actionable or did not include a recommendation for action. Now I'm confused, isn't it her job or Bush's job to tell their subordinates what action to take? Asleep at the wheel?...
check it out for yourself
for some reason, this whole mess makes me think of a Fastball song:
Sometimes I feel
Like I am drunk behind the wheel
The wheel of possibility
However it may roll
Give it a spin
See if you can somehow factor in
You know there's always more than one way
To say exactly what you mean to say
Was I out of my head? Was I out of my mind?
How could I have ever been so blind?
I was waiting for an indication
It was hard to find
Don't matter what I say only what I do
I never mean to do bad things to you
So quiet but I finally woke up
If you're sad then its time you spoke up too
Anti-War Protests Scheduled this Friday - Chicago info:
Emergency Demonstration in Response to Escalation of U.S. War in Iraq
Friday, April 9, 2004
4:30 - 6:00 PM
Federal Plaza, Adams & Dearborn
Protest the Escalation of U.S. Attacks on the Iraqi people.
U.S. Out of Iraq Now! Bring the Troops Home Now.
Money for Jobs, Healthcare, Housing and Education, Not for Wars and Occupation.
A countrywide uprising against the U.S. occupation has erupted in Iraq. The Bush administration and the Pentagon are responding with unprecedented violence directed against the Iraqi people, and are threatening to increase both the length of deployments and the number of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. Casualties on both sides have soared.
Demonstrations are being organized in cities across the U.S. in response to the escalation in U.S. attacks.
The Chicago demonstration is being convened by the Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism and supported by groups and individuals from throughout the greater Chicago area.
Peace Chicago
Iraq: Playing into the hands of the Rebellion?
It appears that today the US dropped a 500 pound bomb and launched a “hellfire” missile on an Iraqi Mosque. Obviously, this will not play out well in the Arab world. Did the US fall into a trap?
It was only Tuesday when the leader of the Shiite uprising, al-Sadr,
left the mosque he was hiding at for fear that the American’s would destroy the holy site.
"I feared that the sanctity of a glorious and esteemed mosque would be violated by scum and evil people," he said. The Americans "will have no qualms to embark on such actions."
And on Wednesday what did we do? That’s right we blew up a mosque. Actions like this appear to be doing a great job of uniting the Iraqi rebels against us. Before we even dropped the bomb on the mosque, an uprising in Baghdad was
uniting Sunni and Shiite rebels.
Instead of any diplomatic or peace keeping rhetoric coming out of Washington to help quell the insurgency while keeping our soldiers out of harm’s way, we get more of the same “we’re not going to be intimidated” b.s..
While Washington focuses on what did or didn’t happen before 9/11 are we leaving our cities as open targets?
After reading Jack Newfield’s recent article
Bush to City: Drop Dead , I began looking into the security funding for urban areas. Being a resident of Chicago, you might say I have a vested interest in increased urban security and disaster preparedness. But I don’t think anyone in America wants to witness another 9/11 in any city.
Newfield’s article, for the most part, examines the distribution of Federal homeland security funding in New York City. NYC percentage of Homeland Security funds and many other cities have been steadily decreasing over the last three years:
In February Bush proposed an increase to $1.4 billion in homeland security funding for so-called "high-risk cities." But fifty cities are still designated as high risk, so New York's share is only $94 million--a fraction of what is needed. On a per capita basis, New York State ranks forty-ninth among the states in antiterrorist funding, far below rural, sparsely populated Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. According to the New York Daily News, New York is also forty-ninth in per capita funding among cities: $5.87 per person. Compare that with $35.80 for Pittsburgh. But then, Tom Ridge was governor of Pennsylvania. Or look at Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor. Miami gets $52.82 per person. Orlando gets $47.14--as if Disney World is a bigger terrorist target than the New York subway system, the United Nations, the Stock Exchange, Times Square, JFK Airport, Yankee Stadium on opening day, or our reservoirs and water system. What's the biggest recipient of any US city, at $77.92 per person? New Haven, Connecticut. Is Yale a high-priority target because both Bushes are alumni?
Or consider the Bush Administration's treatment of first responders. It has recently eliminated its only program providing funds for upgrading police and fire department radio communications. On 9/11 the FDNY's radios did not function. Warnings over police radios to evacuate the towers immediately were not received by the firefighters trying to rescue trapped office workers. On that one day, 343 New York City firefighters died, and about 120 of these deaths have been attributed to the futile radio transmissions.
Now this all seems well and good, let’s put all the blame of the inadequate funding on the department of homeland security or Bush, but the Federal funds are largely being distributed by individual states. The US Conference of Mayors created a Homeland Security Monitoring Center to ensure that the “federal plan for the distribution of the funds, which works through the states, must be closely monitored to determine whether it is being followed, whether it is performing adequately, and whether improvements can be made.” Their
September 2003 report , sent to all 50 state governments, largely showed that funding was not adequately being directed to cities in need, from the states themselves. The first part of the report looks at the $1.5 billion allocated to First Responders through the Department of Homeland Security:
Survey city officials were asked whether their governments had received
funds from their state under this program, or whether they had been notified that they would receive funds, by August 1.
90 percent reported that they had not received these funds from their states – 37 percent have been notified that funds will be received, but 53 percent had neither received funds nor been notified that they would.
10 percent reported that they had received funds. The cities, as a group, have received or been notified that they will receive a total of $76,715,907.
It then becomes a little less clear as to whether the DHS is not issuing the funds or if the states are simply not passing them along.
Luckily for us Chicagoans we know exactly when we can expect to see funds for this program from Illinois – never. That’s right:
Chicago, IL: Chicago has been informed that since it is receiving its own direct funding from the federal government, it will not be receiving any funds from the State from this grant.
Chicago isn’t receiving any of this funding because they fall under the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative which allocated $600 million in funding 30 urban areas. Interestingly enough, only 80% of the funding received by the state for this initiative are required to actually make it to the cities themselves, 20% can be kept by the state to complement state assets that provide direct assistance like: “planning, equipment acquisition, training, exercises, management and administration, and operations.”
The report found that more than one third (36%) of the cities eligible for the funding were actually involved in the state planning, and of those that were 38% believed they didn’t have any influence over the funding decisions. Worse than that for Chicagoans, the state is exercising its right to keep 20% of the funding and the 80% received will be distributed to both the county and the city. Worse than that, the state is keeping the two other homeland security allocations it will be receiving.
Chicago, IL: Chicago is not receiving funding from either of the State's two Homeland Security Grant allocations, which total $68 million.
In light of the recent FBI warnings about
possible terror strikes on American transit systems, it seems that little money has been allocated to protecting them.
Officials in cities being served by a transit system funded through this program were asked whether they were responsible for providing security or other services to that system.
Well over half of the cities (54 percent) said they have such responsibilities.
Of these, 69 percent said they were not receiving funding through this Mass Transit Security program.
Forty-four percent of the cities reported that their state was exercising its option to keep a portion of the transit security funds to complement state assets at transit sites.
So the real question is not why isn’t the Department of Homeland Security giving adequate funding for urban preparedness, but why aren’t the state governments taking care of their people? With a state population of 12 million people, nearly half, 5.3 million people live in cook county, which doesn’t even accurately include all of the Chicago metro area.
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