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Volume III, Number 8: 3 March 2003

This Week's Articles:

Trickle-Down Liberation Theology

Paul Corrigan

Americans can forget about the separation of church and state. President Bush believes the United States was called to bring God's gift of liberty to "every human being in the world." Like no president before him, Bush has mixed politics and religion. We are told to take comfort that the man who turned the White House into a bible-reading class takes his direction from God. The bridge that Bill Clinton was building to the twenty-first century has led to trickle-down economics and trickle-down liberation theology. According to Bush, Jesus would not support land reform or redistribution of wealth to empower the world's poor. He might want the meek to inherit the earth, but only after it trickled down to them.

Affirmative Reaction

Tim Francis-Wright

Based on what conservatives are saying, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is doing a horrible disservice to education in America. In January, President Bush claimed that the university had established a racial "quota" because "a perfect SAT score is worth only 12 points in the Michigan system. Students who accumulate 100 points are generally admitted, so those 20 points awarded solely based on race are often the decisive factor." The truth about the Michigan admissions system is much more complicated than that, of course. And conservatives would generally prefer to describe the Michigan admission as equivalent to a quota rather than describe it for what it is.

[Click on a title to read a particular article.]

Last Week's Articles:

The New Despot

Paul Corrigan

The radical conservatism that runs through much of George W. Bush's policy is not what the Bush campaign promised. The American voter was promised a compassionate conservative and a competent executive. Absent the compassion and competency, the administration and the media continuously tell the American public that we should trust the president based on his character and his faith in God. What have we received in return for our trust? Bush has brought to America an ugly combination of domestic repression, militarism, racism, and imperial expansion.

Assigning the Blame

Tim Francis-Wright

In January 2001, George Bush took office after receiving just under 48% of the popular vote for president in the November 2000 elections. In the aftermath of the elections, many Democratic partisans blamed Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and his followers for taking away votes in key states from Democrat Al Gore. But they have a much bigger problem—the turncoats in their midst. Lots of Democrats voted for Bush in 2000, and millions more are now propping up his popularity, despite a term in office riddled with error, cant, and sophistry.

[Click on a title to read a particular article.]

Older Articles:

Alos two hundred articles from previous weeks are in our archives. If you're not careful, you might learn something.

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Links of the Week

  • UNSCOM/IAEA Interview with Hussein Kamel: In 1995, the former head of Iraq's weapons programs claimed that Iraq had destroyed all of its biological weapons (Committee Against Sanctions on Iraq).
  • Revealed: US Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War: The United States is bugging the phones and computers of several key countries involved in United Nations votes on Iraq (Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy, and Peter Beaumont, The Observer).
  • US Prepares to Use Toxic Gases in Iraq: The use of tear gas and pepper spray would violate the Chemical Weapons Convention (Geoffrey Lean and Severin Carrell, The Independent).
  • "Proof" of Energy Scam: California officials claim that illegal behavior by power providers caused most of the recent run-up in energy costs (Mark Martin, San Francisco Chronicle).
  • Bush's Deficits: The actual budgeting principle of this administration is all tax cuts, all the time (Max Sawicky, Tom Paine.com).
  • Out of the Wreckage: The Bush administration has threatened to dismantle two institutions which have best served its global interests (George Monbiot, The Guardian).
  • Prosecutors See Limits to Doubt in Capital Cases: Actual innocence isn't the defense that it used to be in American appelate courtrooms (Adam Liptak, New York Times).
  • Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: Primary source documents show how the United States tilted towards Iraq from 1980 to 1984 (National Security Archive).
  • 2004 National Budget Simulation: It's your turn to try to make the federal budget work (Nathan Newman and Anders Schneiderman).

Links of Previous Weeks are in our voluminous archives.

Check out our Link Library for news, opinion, and just plain interesting stuff!

Fact of the Week

A London newspaper has printed the text of a top secret e-mail sent from the National Security Agency on 31 January regarding upcoming efforts in the United Nations Security Council. The sender, one Frank Koza, refers to ongoing surveillance of phone calls and e-mails of the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea, and Pakistan.

Source:
The Observer, 2 March 2003.

 

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