Cobbers

Mates on a mission

Scary Clinton history of lies

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Dan Calabrese writes about a Watergate-era Judiciary Chief of Staff who fired Hillary Clinton in 1974 for lies and unethical behaviour.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee.

Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair.

When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

‘Because she was a liar,’ Zeifman said in an interview last week. ‘She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.’

Some numbers from Iraq

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crosses.jpgPhotograph by Kevin Dooley

Within hours, or days, the inevitable will happen … a luckless US military member will be killed and become the 4,000th victim of the war in Iraq.

It is time to look at the real numbers behind this futile, stupid war, a war launched on lies and corruption.

The Cost to US Forces in Iraq

3,990: American troops who have died in Iraq since the start of the war. [icasualties.org, 3/17/08]

29,395: Number of U.S. service members that have been wounded in hostile action since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq. [AP, 3/11/08]

2,100: Number of troops who tried to commit suicide or injure themselves increased from 350 in 2002 to 2,100 last year. [US News and World Report, 2/25/08]

The Cost to Iraqis and Journalists

8,000: Number of Iraqi military and police killed since June 2003. [Brookings Institute, Iraq Index, March 13, 2008]

82,000-89,000: Estimate of Iraqi civilians casualties from violence since the beginning of the Iraq War. [Iraq Body Count]

127: Number of journalists killed in Iraq since March 2003. [Committee to Protect Journalists]

The Cost to US National Security

1,188: Number of global terrorist incidents from January – September 11th, 2001. [American Security Project, “Are We Winning?,” September 2007]

5,188: Number of global terrorist incidents in from January- September 11th, 2006. [American Security Project, “Are We Winning?,” September 200

The Cost of Funding the War in Iraq

$50-60 Billion: Bush Administration’s pre-war estimates of the cost of the war. [New York Times, 12/31/02]

$12 Billion: Direct cost per month of the Iraq War. [Washington Post, Bilmes and Stiglitz Op-Ed, 3/9/08]

$526 Billion: Amount of money already appropriated by Congress for the War in Iraq. [CRS, 2/22/08]

$3 Trillion: Total estimated cost of the Iraq War. [Washington Post, Bilmes and Stiglitz Op-Ed, 3/9/08]

Economic Costs of War in Iraq

$33.51: Cost of a barrel of oil in March 2003. [Energy Information Administration]

$105.68: Cost of a barrel of oil on March 17, 2008. [NYMEX]

There are many more revealing and scary numbers.

Cheney says Iraq invasion was successful endeavour

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Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani, right, sits next to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in his office in Baghdad

Over on the post “U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday declared the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a ‘successful endeavor’ in a visit to Iraq.

‘If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor … and it has been well worth the effort,’ Cheney told a news conference in Baghdad after meeting Iraqi leaders.

The Iraq war is a major issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. As it enters it sixth year, the war has cost the U.S. economy $500 billion and seen nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed.

Shortly after Cheney spoke, a woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up in a cafe in the southern holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala, killing 25 people and wounding 50, police and health officials said. Bombs in Baghdad killed four and wounded 13.

Worth more than a thousand words …

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An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen who were expelling the woman and some 200 other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon March 11, 2008. The landless peasants tried in vain to resist the eviction with bows and arrows against police using tear gas and trained dogs. — [REUTERS/Luiz Vasconcelos-A Critica/AE].

In ‘What makes a great picture?’ David Viggers of Reuters writes:

Images of heavy-handed oppression really don’t come much better than this – defenceless, screaming woman clutching naked child is shoved and beaten by faceless, armoured authority.”

Japan’s bizarre whale experiments

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A review of the controversial scientific research conducted by Japan and its whalers has uncovered a list of ‘bizarre’ and useless experiments, including how to cross breed cows with whales.

Scientists have analysed 43 research papers produced by Japan over 18 years, finding most were useless or esoteric.

The scientific research included injecting minke whale sperm into cows eggs, and attempts to produce test-tube whale babies.

For years Japan has continued its whaling program under the guise of scientific research, to the disgust of anti-whaling nations such as Australia.

1 in 99 US adults behind bars

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According to this story in the New York Times, the United States prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

A trashy tale

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A picture worth a thousand sad words from Sierra Magazine.

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Ocean-borne trash plagues the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The stomach of this dead albatross held more than a half pound of plastic.

They captioned it with this damning quote from Art Buchwald — written in 1970:

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate and the disposable bottle, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy his food all in one place and he could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use.

And pretty soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles, and there was nowhere left to sit down or to walk.

And Man shook his head and cried, ‘Look at all this God-awful litter’.

(Via Sierra Magazine)