October 3, 2008 archive

Here’s what Sarah Palin told an international audience about the information and attitudes she has toward Iran, a nation that will loom large in the next decade and more of America’s future:

An armed, nuclear armed especially Iran is so extremely dangerous to consider. They cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons period. Israel is in jeopardy of course when we’re dealing with Ahmadinejad as a leader of Iran. Iran claiming that Israel as he termed it, a stinking corpse, a country that should be wiped off the face of the earth. Now a leader like Ahmadinejad who is not sane or stable when he says things like that is not one whom we can allow to acquire nuclear energy, nuclear weapons.

{snip}

…leaders like Ahmadinejad who would seek to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe off the face of the earth an ally like we have in Israel…

and

 dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms…

Palin and her handlers must be aware that her words will be fact-checked.  So you have to ask: where does she get her information?  How does her information square with other sources of information about Ahmadinejad? If her information is not consistent with other facts and reports, who is wrong?  Do Palin and her information sources know that their information is wrong?  If so, WHY DO THEY PERSIST IN LYING?  And if Palin and her handlers are lying, what can we assume about their character, their respect for the integrity of the communications process by which Americans make an extremely important decision — the choice of the next leader of the nation; their respect for the people of the United States; their respect for Constitutional principles that are “what America stands for”?  

Who hates America more, Sarah Palin and her handlers, or Ahmadinejad and Iran?

You decide.

Above the fold:  What Sarah Palin said.

Below the fold:  Eye witness accounts from religious and civic leaders who spoke with Dr. Ahmadinejad on September 24, 2008.

Debates Have Questions And Usually Have Answers

Except One Person On That Stage In

St Louis Some How Failed To Notice

Palin and Biden Are Cordial but Pointed  

 

 By PATRICK HEALY

Published: October 2, 2008  

Gov. Sarah Palin used a steady grin, folksy manner and carefully scripted talking points to punch politely and persist politically at the vice-presidential debate on Thursday night, turning in a performance that her rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., sought to undermine with cordially delivered but pointed criticism.

If the issues and positions were familiar to many viewers – on taxes and the economy, energy and oil, same-sex marriage, Iraq and Afghanistan – it was Ms. Palin’s debut in a nationally televised debate that made for unusual theater.

March marks 1968 Mexico killings

 The massacre of students in the capital by troops just before the Olympics has yet to be properly investigated.

By Tracy Wilkinson and Deborah Bonello, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 3, 2008  

MEXICO CITY — Thousands of Mexicans marched across their nation’s capital Thursday to demand justice for victims of a 1968 massacre of students by government troops — contemporary Mexico’s most traumatic atrocity and one that remains unresolved.

Survivors of that bloody night 40 years ago and Mexicans who had not been born then joined forces, chanting “Dos de octubre! No se olvide!” (Oct. 2! Don’t forget!) as they converged on the downtown Zocalo plaza.

USA

Support Rallied as House Readies for Its Second Bailout Vote

 

By Lori Montgomery and Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, October 3, 2008; Page A01  

A tide of lobbyists representing corporate executives, small-business owners, farmers and retirees swamped Capitol Hill yesterday in hopes of pushing an emergency economic rescue plan through Congress, but the fate of the measure remained uncertain as the House prepared for a climactic vote at midday today.

Leaders of both parties said they were optimistic that they would be able to marshal more support for the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout than they mustered on Monday, when the House delivered a shocking defeat to the measure and sent the Dow Jones industrial average plummeting 778 points, or about 7 percent.

So in the 2008 vice presidential debate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said:

Well , first, McClellan did not say definitively the surge principles would not work in Afghanistan. Certainly, accounting for different conditions in that different country and conditions are certainly different. We have NATO allies helping us for one and even the geographic differences are huge but the counterinsurgency principles could work in Afghanistan. McClellan didn’t say anything opposite of that. The counterinsurgency strategy going into Afghanistan, clearing, holding, rebuilding, the civil society and the infrastructure can work in Afghanistan. And those leaders who are over there, who have also been advising George Bush on this have not said anything different but that.

And you know, she’s absolutely correct. However, she is only correct because she blew the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan.

Readers of this blog know that dissident psychologists, along with human rights and anti-torture organizations and individuals have been working for years now to get the American Psychological Association to change its policy of supporting the use of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo, CIA black-site prisons, and other governmental sites involved in Bush’s Global War on Terror.

Last month, a referendum that called for banning such participation was passed by a large majority of voting APA members. At first, APA bureaucrats mumbled something about instituting this new policy come August 2009! But large scale protest by the membership seems to have caused them to back down, and today, APA has released a letter to George W. Bush informing the head of the U.S. executive branch and commander-in-chief of U.S. armed forces of the new change in APA policy.

An editorial from Socialist Worker (UK):