"The Salvadoran Option"

On December 2, 1980, three American nuns and a church worker, were abducted by the Salvadoran National Guard as they traveled from the San Salvador airport. They were raped and murdered, and their bodies were found four days later [link]. Four Salvadoran soldiers were convicted of the crime in 1984, but they claim they were following orders [link]. These killings were part of a civil war, waged by the government, and heavily supported with U.S. money by the Reagan Administration [link,link,link]. Right-wing "death squads" carried out countless atrocities against government opponents [link], including the assasination of Archbishop Oscar Romero while he performed mass [link]. An estimated 30,000 people were killed [link].

Well, why am I bringing this up now, you might ask? Well, it seems that the Salvadoran death squads were such a success in preserving a friendly right-wing dictatorship in El Salvador that last January, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld publicly comtemplated supporting a similar strategy in Iraq [link], and it is clear by the appointment of John Negroponte, former ambasador to Honduras under the Regan administration and chief architect of U.S. policy in Latin America during the 1980s that Rumsfeld has the administration's support.

Cheney's Loyalty Oaths

In the hopes that my family will actually read this, here is a link to an article about the loyalty oaths that Cheney made reporters sign in order to be admitted to a press conference he had in Wyoming before the election last year. I would also encourage you to read the entry below, titled "Pentagon Spying on Anti-War Groups" from December 16th. I encourage any comments you might have.

NYC Transit Strike

As a commuter who uses public transportation every day, I can't imagine what I would do to get to work every day if Chicago's transit workers went on strike. That being said, however, I fully support the union's right to strike in New York City. As I understand it, they are striking because they are unwilling to take future cuts in wages and benefits while there is a billion dollar surplus.

There are much deeper issues here. Workers in all professions are losing wages and benefits. This trend is evident in pretty much all professions, other than, of course, the profession of "rich white asshole," which has for decades enjoyed an exponential increase.

The union workers have a right to fight these losses. If it is illegal to strike, what power do they have? It seems that there is a strong correlation between the decline in the power of unions and the decline in wages and benefits. More and more unions are losing the legal right to strike, not based on the safety and health of American citizens, but based on the lost profits of businesses. That seems to be, really, the central issue here. What Mayor Bloomberg mentions over and over is the monetary cost to the city, and how businesses rely on this time of year to make money. Does the short-term profit of businesses outweigh the long-term effects of wage and benefit cuts for thousands of workers? I guess that's a really stupid question, if you know anything about American society.

Pentagon Spying on Anti-War groups

This is almost unbelievable. According to NBC, the Pentagon has been collecting infomation on anti-war activists, and spying on anti-war demonstrations [link].

This, sadly, is only the latest in a long string of abuses commited by this administration:

1. They are not shy about the use of propaganda, domestically as well as internationally, such as bribing Iraqi [link] and American [link] journalists , producing video news releases that are supposed to be mistaken for real news [link], and a new $300 million dollar Department of Defense program to spread disinformation to foreign media outlets [Link], which seems to be essentially a renewal of programs under the Office of Strategic Influence [link], a comprehensive program aimed at misleading foreign media in favor of US policies.

2. They have set up a network of secret prisons throughout Europe and the Middle East in countries which have less strict laws regarding torture [link], and President Bush has threatened to use his first presidential veto against legislation sponsored by John McCain, which passed the senate by a vote of 90-9, against cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners [link]. He threatened to veto the bill unless it included a provision making the CIA exempt. Bush gave in, but only under intense public pressure.

3. They leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent in retribution against the main who exposed their justification for war as a fabrication [link].

4. They have held two US citizens for years in a military brig without access to a lawyer [link]. Yasser Hamdi was accused of fighting alongside the Taliban, and held for three years in solitary confinement, until he was released without charges, under the condition that he agree not to sue the US government over his imprisonment [link]. Jose Padilla was accused of plotting to attack the United States with a radioactive "dirty bomb," and held him in a Navy brig for three and a half years without charging him. He was transfered to the criminal justice system only recently, on charges completely unrelated to the original accusations [link].


This is getting ridiculous.