New Middle East policy: U.S. secretly
chooses sides in Sunni-Shiite conflict| |
Excerpt: To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites.
Comment: If you only read one article this week, we cannot recommend Seymour Hersh's shocking article about the White House's new and dangerous Middle East policy strongly enough. Among the bombshells:
• We have secretly chosen sides in the region-wide Sunni-Shiite conflict. We are taking the side of the Sunnis, despite the fact that most of the Iraq insurgents are Sunnis and that some of the Sunnis we're supporting have links to Al Qaeda.
• A task force assembled inside the Pentagon has finalized plans for attacking Iran on 24 hours' notice.
• The real U.S. goal in Iraq may be fracturing the country into three smaller states for Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. We then would try to do the same in other Middle East countries so that the Arab states surrounding Israel would be smaller and weaker.
• Clandestine pro-Sunni operations are being run by military intelligence, which does not have the same Congressional oversight that the CIA does.
• John Negroponte resigned as National Intelligence Director in part because his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Bush administration secretly funds violent Al Qaeda-linked groups
Excerpt: Reporter Sy Hersh says the "single most explosive" element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups.
Hersh says the U.S. has been "pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight" for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to "stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence." Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of "three Sunni jihadist groups" who are "connected to al Qaeda" but "want to take on Hezbollah."
Bush funding of al-Qaeda
makes him an unlawful combatant
Excerpt: It should be pointed out that under anti-terrorism legislation submitted by the administration and passed into law by the Congress, providing aid to Al-Qaeda or to organizations in any way linked to terrorism is a federal crime and classifies the perpetrator as an abettor of terrorism and even as an "unlawful combatant," subject to loss of citizenship rights, and suitable for rendition to Guantanamo or some other secret torture hell-hole. |
Iran / Run-up to the next war:
Claim of Iranian weapons
in Iraq further debunked| |
Excerpt: Two weeks ago, the Bush administration organized an intelligence briefing for journalists in Iraq to demonstrate that Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi insurgents. According to the anonymous briefers, the weapons -- particularly explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s -- were manufactured in Iran, ... a fact that meant direction for the operation was "coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government." ...
A raid in southern Iraq on Saturday seems to have complicated the case. There, The Wall Street Journal reports, troops "uncovered a makeshift factory used to construct advanced roadside bombs that the U.S. had thought were made only in Iran." ... The New York Times reports ... the finding of "cardboard boxes of the gray plastic PVC tubes used to make the canisters. The boxes appeared to contain shipments of tubes directly from factories in the Middle East, none of them in Iran." |
Pentagon whistle-blower
on the coming war with Iran| |
Excerpt: "All the signs are there, the suggestions that Iranian bombs are killing American soldiers, that's not true, but it's certainly been made in, I think every American newspaper, the suggestion that Iran is somehow killing Americans. The suggestion that Iran has nuclear weapons, is imminently close to nuclear weapons. That is not true but that's been, those claims are made, even by this Administration. The idea that we have two carrier battle groups currently in the region and in fact I just saw today, Admiral Walsh, one of the big guys in the Navy said that we're very concerned about what Iran is doing even more so than Al Qaeda. So there, all the signs are there that we are being, we're going to wake up one morning soon, very soon, and we will be at war with Iran. We will have bombed them in some sort of shock and awe campaign destroying many lives and setting back U.S. relations even further than we've already done it with Iraq." |
Sen Webb demands answers about
Bush's authority to attack Iran| |
Excerpt: This is what the Congress is supposed to do, and was supposed to be doing for the past six years. |
U.S. won't talk with Iran at Iraq summit| |
Excerpt: The Bush administration has dismissed suggestions its presence at an international conference on Iraq could lead to direct talks with Iran and Syria. Hopes were raised after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed the U.S. would join a regional meeting called by the Iraqi government. But on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said the administration has not dropped its pre-condition that Iran abandon nuclear activities. Iran says its weighing the Iraqi invitation. |
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White House officials: Prosecutors
were fired for purely political reasons| |
Excerpt: The White House approved the firings of seven U.S. attorneys late last year after senior Justice Department officials identified prosecutors they believed were not doing enough to carry out President George W. Bush's policies on immigration, firearms and other issues, say White House and Justice Department officials. The list of prosecutors was assembled last fall, based largely on complaints from members of Congress, law enforcement officials and career Justice Department lawyers, administration officials said. Since the mass firings were carried out three months ago, Justice Department officials have consistently portrayed them as personnel decisions based on the prosecutors' "performance-related" problems. But on Friday, officials revealed the White House's role in the matter and acknowledged that the ousters were based primarily on the administration's unhappiness with the prosecutors' policy decisions.
House subpoenas unfairly
fired federal prosecutors
Excerpt: Democrats issued their first major subpoenas Thursday since taking control of Congress, as a House subcommittee voted to compel testimony from four former U.S. attorneys -- including former Seattle U.S. Attorney John McKay -- who were part of a wave of firings by the Justice Department. Democrats on a House Judiciary subcommittee voted 7-0 Thursday to subpoena fired prosecutors Carol Lam of California, David Iglesias of New Mexico, H.E. "Bud" Cummins of Arkansas and McKay.
Federal Prosecutor fired for not
indicting Democrats during election
Excerpt: Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico pressured the U.S. attorney in their state to speed up indictments in a federal corruption investigation that involved at least one former Democratic state senator, according to two people familiar with the contacts. ...
David Iglesias, who stepped down as U.S. attorney in New Mexico on Wednesday, told McClatchy Newspapers that he believed the Bush administration fired him Dec. 7 because he resisted the pressure to rush an indictment.
Purge of U.S. Attorneys
(partially) explained
Excerpt: The Department of Justice figured out a way to slip party loyalists into high office without having to answer for it, and they proceeded to do so with gusto, canning eight apparently competent U.S. attorneys-six in a single day!-and replacing them with folks more willing to dance to the White House pipes. |
Tortured American must stand trial| |
Excerpt: A federal judge ruled Wednesday that suspected al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla is competent to stand trial on terrorism support charges, rejecting arguments that he was severely damaged by 3 1/2 years of interrogation and isolation in a military brig. Padilla was in court when U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke announced her decision, but he showed no reaction.
Video of Padilla being
tortured mysteriously "lost"
Excerpt: The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It contains a video of the last interrogation session of Padilla, then a declared "enemy combatant" under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. But in recent days, in the course of an unusual court hearing about Padilla's mental condition, a government lawyer disclosed to a surprised courtroom that the Defense Intelligence Agency-which had custody of the evidence-was no longer able to locate the DVD. |
"National security" trumps Constitution,
so Court won't hear CIA torture lawsuit| |
Excerpt: Khaled El-Masri, an unemployed German car salesman who sued the United States for allegedly ordering his abduction and secretly detaining him for months in a dingy Afghanistan prison, has been dealt another setback in the U.S. courts. ...
A three-judge panel was unanimous in a 24-page ruling that the suit could jeopardize national security by disclosing "state secrets" -- sensitive military intelligence information that remains classified.
Comment: We'd never want to see it happen, goodness no, but one wonders whether these judges would see it the same way if the CIA kidnapped them, and sent them to be tortured in Afghanistan. |
Many CIA 'ghost prisoners'
still 'disappeared'| |
Excerpt: Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released, Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention. The report prominently features the experiences of Marwan Jabour, a Palestinian who was detained in Pakistan in May 2004 and released in Jordan in July 2006. In the interim, Jabour was "disappeared," and held in a secret prison run by the CIA, which he believes was in Afghanistan. Jabour alleges that he was tortured, beaten, and often deprived of sleep.
New light shed on
CIA's 'black site' prisons
Excerpt: Human Rights Watch has identified 38 people who may have been held by the CIA and remain unaccounted for. Intelligence officials told The Post that the number of detainees held in such facilities over nearly five years remains classified but is higher than 60. Their whereabouts have not been publicly disclosed.
"The practice of disappearing people -- keeping them in secret detention without any legal process -- is fundamentally illegal under international law," said Joanne Mariner, director of the terrorism program at Human Rights Watch in New York. "The kind of physical mistreatment Jabour described is also illegal." |
Memo to Democrats: STOP THE WAR!
Democrats' new plan: Troops will leave
Iraq ... except the ones who won't| |
Excerpt: House Democratic leaders have coalesced around legislation that would require troops to come home from Iraq within six months if that country's leaders fail to meet promises to help reduce violence there, party officials said Thursday. If the Iraqis fail to live up to their promises, some troops could be left behind under the Democrats' plan to train Iraqi troops or conduct counterterrorism missions, Moran said. The plan would retain a Democratic proposal prohibiting the deployment to Iraq of troops with insufficient rest or training or who already have served there for more than a year. Under the plan, such troops could only be sent to Iraq if President Bush waives those standards and reports to Congress each time.
Comment: So we'll pull out our troops in six months, except for the ones that Bush claims are being used to train Iraqi troops or fight terrorists, which will of course be all of them. And we won't send in overworked, untrained troops, unless Bush really really wants to. Has anybody told the Democrats yet that they WON the last election? |
Feingold warns Democrats:
Oppose 'George Bush's War'
now, or we'll 'start owning' it| |
Excerpt: Sunday on MSNBC, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), a strong advocate for redeployment from Iraq, urged the Senate to "use the power of the purse" to end the war. He added, "You know what? If the Democrats don't use their power, when we're in the majority in both houses, we're going to start owning this war. It is George Bush's war, but if we don't get serious we're going to start owning this war." |
Democrats back away from
all plans to actually stop the war| |
Excerpt: On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders are reportedly backing away from aggressive plans to limit President Bush's war authority. On Monday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wants to delay votes on a measure that would repeal the 2002 war authorization and narrow the mission in Iraq. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she doesn't support tying war funding to strict training and readiness targets for U.S. troops. A new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News has found that a majority of Americans now support setting a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. |
Democrats reject proposal
to cut Bush's war budget| |
Excerpt: Just hours after floating the idea of cutting $20 billion from President Bush's $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, Kent Conrad, Senate Budget Committee chairman, was overruled by fellow Democrats yesterday.
"It's nothing that any of us are considering," Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, told reporters. |
Majority of Americans want
timetable for Iraq withdrawal| |
Excerpt: Fifty-six percent say U.S. forces should be withdrawn eventually even if civil order has not been restored in Iraq, reflecting a continued and gradual departure from the "you break it, you've bought it" sentiment, ABC said. Fifty-three percent support setting a date for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, up from 47 percent over the summer and 39 percent in late 2005. |
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Poll: two-thirds of Americans
want universal health care| |
Excerpt: Nearly two-thirds said the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans and half said they would be willing to pay as much as $500 more in taxes a year for universal coverage, it said. |
Muslim-only Indiana prison
tramples rights of minor offenders| |
Excerpt: The Justice Department has quietly opened a new prison unit in Indiana that houses a hodgepodge of second-tier terrorism inmates, most of them Arab Muslims, whose ability to communicate with the outside world has been tightly restricted. At the Communications Management Unit, or CMU, in Terre Haute, Ind., all telephone calls and mail are monitored, the number of phone calls limited and visits are restricted to a total of four hours per month, according to special rules enforced by the Justice Department's U.S. Bureau of Prisons. All inmate conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated.
Defense lawyers and prisoner advocates complain that the unit's communication restrictions are unduly harsh for inmates not considered high security risks. They also say that the ethnic makeup of the CMU's population may indicate racial profiling. "If they really believed these people are serious terrorists, they wouldn't be in this unit," said David Fathi, staff counsel for the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "They'd be in Colorado with Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph and the Unabomber and the rest of the people that the Bureau of Prisons thinks are serious threats." |
Here's how Republicans "support our troops:"
U.S. troops forgo training in rush to Iraq| |
Excerpt: Rushed by President Bush's decision to reinforce Baghdad with thousands more U.S. troops, two Army combat brigades are skipping their usual session at the Army's special training range in California. They are now making preparations to leave their home bases.
Some in Congress and others outside the Army are beginning to question whether that decision means the Army is cutting corners in preparing soldiers for combat. The desert training was designed specially to prepare soldiers for the challenges of Iraq.
Comment: They're sent over to war without adequate equipment, without safety armor, and now without even adequate training. Jeez, President Bush, if you hate the troops so much, wouldn't it be more cost effective to simply order them shot and killed here? |
Soldiers face inspections, press ban
after Walter Reed scandal| |
Excerpt: "Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center's Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media," our Gannett colleagues at Army Times report this afternoon.
According to Army Times, some of the soldiers believe this is a form of punishment because many of them went on-the-record with The Washington Post to talk about problems -- including mold and rodent infestations -- at the medical facility's Building 18. The Post's reporting caught attention across nation and sparked calls for action to fix the problems that wounded soldiers were facing. The newspaper adds that "it is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training."
Comment: As a Veteran I know the drill. Tell your buddies if anyone else complains you will all be up at 5:00AM ready for inspection. If you don't like that we will conduct barracks inspections any time of day or night and you and your friends with missing limbs or faces will all be responsible for not keeping this place up to military standards. |
Secretary of Army, head of Walter Reed,
Army surgeon-general all fired over
publicity about mistreatment of veterans| |
Excerpt: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Army Secretary Francis Harvey on Friday as the Bush administration scrambled to respond to an outcry over poor treatment for veterans at the Army's top hospital. The announcement came a day after the Army fired the head of the Walter Reed Medical Center, Maj. Gen. George Weightman. On Thursday, after Weightman was removed from his post, the Army said its surgeon-general, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, would take temporary charge of Walter Reed. Defense officials said Gates was not satisfied with Harvey's choice of Kiley, a former commander of the hospital who had been accused of ignoring earlier complaints about outpatient care. Kiley served only one day, as the Army on Friday named Maj. Gen. Eric Schoomaker as permanent commander of Walter Reed. Schoomaker is brother to the Army's top military official -- Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker.
Comment: Because the real problem with Walter Reed this whole time is that there wasn't a non-fire-able crony in charge. |
Hospital officials knew
of neglect for years| |
Excerpt: Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army's surgeon general, have heard complaints about outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups and members of Congress for more than three years.
A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews. |
Bush-Cheney push for privatization may
have helped create Walter Reed 'disaster'| |
Excerpt: "We have learned that in January 2006, Walter Reed awarded a five-year $120 million contract to a company called IAP Worldwide Services for base operations support services, including facilities management," Waxman continues. "IAP is one of the companies that experienced problems delivering ice during the response to Hurricane Katrina." |
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U.S. commanders admit:
U.S. faces a Vietnam-style collapse in Iraq| |
Excerpt: An elite team of officers advising the U.S. commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq -- or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat. |
Sects slice up Iraq as
U.S. troops 'surge' misfires| |
Excerpt: According to Iraq's Migration and Displacement Ministry, nearly 100,000 Iraqi families, about 500,000 individuals, have been displaced since February 2006. It is a Catch-22 situation -- every problem that is addressed by U.S.-Iraqi security policies has another in its wake. They are problems so deeply entrenched within Iraq's disastrous decline that the security plan, now in its third week, is struggling to gain a proper traction.
As the U.S. and Iraqi forces clamp down in Baghdad -- reducing violence from Shia elements by up to 40 per cent although failing to tackle Sunni bombs -- it has seen both factions shift their fight out of the city to other locations. |
New Orleans suing Army Corps of
Engineers for Hurricane Katrina damages| |
Excerpt: The city of New Orleans is suing the Army Corps of Engineers for $77 billion for damages caused from levee breaks in the city suffered during Hurricane Katrina. ...
The lawsuit alleges the levees' poor design and negligence on the part of the Army Corps are to blame for the breaches. Also named in the suit are loss of tax revenue and losses from damage city-owned properties. |
Will FDA put humans at risk with cow drug?| |
Excerpt: The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency's own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people.
The drug, cefquinome, belongs to a class of potent antibiotics that are among medicine's last defense against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.
The American Medical Association and about 12 other health groups warned the Food and Drug Administration that giving cefquinome to animals probably would speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that important class of antibiotic, as has happened with other drugs. Those supermicrobes could then spread to people. |
Democrats pick Lieberman
to deliver radio address| |
Excerpt: Since losing the Connecticut primary election last summer, Senator Joe Lieberman is no longer a Democrat and was re-elected as an independent. However, Lieberman, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was tapped by the Democrats to deliver the party's weekly radio address.
Comment: Is there a Democratic Party member out there who can explain why Joe Lieberman speaks for Democrats? Whose decision was this, and why shouldn't Democrats be furious? Why, for that matter, should Democrats be members of the Democratic Party, if its hierarchy allows someone who's not a Democrat speak for the Democrats? |
Ominous federal ID requirements issued| |
Excerpt: The Department of Homeland Security released long-delayed requirements for the standardization of state identification documents Thursday. States must start issuing the new internal passports by May 2008, or else their citizens will not be able to board planes or enter federal courthouses. Civil libertarians say the requirement, known as the REAL ID Act, creates a national identity card that presents significant privacy risks to Americans. Many states oppose the rule as an unfunded mandate and an encroachment on states rights. |
| | Excerpt: The Energy and Defense departments have chosen the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to design the country's first new nuclear warhead since the Cold War, giving the Bay Area institution the central role in a program that could involve billions of dollars. "This is absolutely not an announcement to build a new warhead," said Thomas D'Agostino, the acting director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the weapons complex. "This is absolutely proceeding on a design effort. ... This is not about starting a new arms race." However, lab officials said researchers not only have produced extensive designs -- each lab prepared more than 1,000 pages of testing and design specifications -- but they have already conducted non-nuclear tests of the critical detonation devices and other components. They have even begun to plan in detail how the weapons would be manufactured. |
House votes to make it easier
to start unions (and Bush vows veto)| |
Excerpt: The bill would allow workers to form a union by individually signing cards rather than having to participate in a secret-ballot election. It has for years been a top priority of union officials and their allies, who called it the most important piece of pro-labor legislation to pass a house of Congress in decades. The legislation, which passed 241-185 on a mainly party-line vote, faces an uphill journey to gain the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster and pass in the Senate. The White House also announced Wednesday that President Bush would veto the bill if it reaches him. Under current law, if a majority signs the union cards, the employer can still demand an election, a process the unions have argued is ripe for employer intimidation of workers. |
Afghan media: U.S. troops
destroyed photos of carnage| |
Excerpt: Afghan journalists covering the aftermath of a suicide bomb attack and shooting in eastern Afghanistan Sunday said U.S. troops deleted their photos and video and warned them not to publish or air any images of U.S. troops or a car where three Afghans were shot to death.
Afghan witnesses and gunshot victims said U.S. forces fired on civilians in cars and on foot along at least a six-mile stretch of road in Nangarhar province following a suicide attack against the Marine convoy. The U.S. military said militants also fired on American forces during the attack. |
U.S. troops kill Afghan civilians| |
Excerpt: An incident described by U.S. forces in Afghanistan as a "complex ambush" has left 16 civilians dead.
The incident occurred on the road from the eastern city of Jalalabad to Pakistan when a suicide bomber targeted a convoy, sparking a fire fight. The killing of the civilians has reportedly sparked a protest by thousands of local people. |
Chalabi surges back to prominence in Iraq| |
Excerpt: Ahmad Chalabi, the wily Iraqi exile banker who cozied up to Iranian intelligence under the very nose of the CIA and then helped land us in war with Iraq through intelligence misinformation ... now is in charge of the Iraqi government's civilian liaison for the "surge."
He's Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new right-hand man -- a role that should give every planner at the Pentagon pause -- running what the Wall Street Journal calls the "popular committee for mobilizing the people."
U.S. patrols in Baghdad still
unable to tell friend from foe
Excerpt: But U.S. troops, Iraqi soldiers and officials, and Baghdad residents say the plan is hampered because security forces cannot identify, let alone apprehend, the elusive perpetrators of the violence. Shiite militiamen in the capital say they are keeping a low profile to wait out the security plan. U.S. commanders have noted increased insurgent violence in the Sunni-dominated belt around Baghdad and are concerned that fighters are shifting their focus outside the city. |
Bush picks manufacturing lobbyist
to head consumer product safety| |
Excerpt: Bush nominated Michael Baroody, executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, to head the commission charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from more than 15,000 types of consumer products. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who sits on the Commerce Committee that will consider the nomination, [said] "This administration seems incapable of doing anything in the public interest. I intend to give this nomination thorough scrutiny."
Comment: Indeed, Senator, give this nomination due scrutiny before flushing it down the toilet. Your job is to stop nominations like this. Bush-Cheney routinely, repeatedly named outspoken opponents of regulation to regulatory positions while Republicans controlled Congress, and got away with it. This is the kind of nomination that'll show whether anything changed when Democrats took |
White House policy to expel
people for bumper stickers| |
Excerpt: Alex Young, Karen Bauer and Leslie Weise obtained tickets from the office of then-U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez. They arrived in a red Saab hatchback with a bumper sticker on the back: "No more blood for oil." They also wore "No more lies" T-shirts under their jackets.
Bouncer Jay Bob Klinkerman pulled them out of a line and told them to wait, then called another bouncer, Michael Casper, who had heard from other Republican Party officials who deemed the three suspicious. |
'Nuclear winter' may kill
more than a nuclear war| |
Excerpt: A regional exchange of relatively small nuclear weapons could plunge the world into a decade-long "nuclear winter", destroying agriculture and killing millions, according to a new study. Weapons experts consider that small-scale nuclear exchanges are now more likely than the massive U.S.-Soviet exchanges feared during the Cold War.
Comment: If Bush/Cheney/Israel manages to touch off just a relatively 'small' regional war in the Middle-east, it could cause a global environmental calamity of unheard of proportions. Dire shortages of food would no doubt set off many subsequent wars in the years after as a byproduct. But by golly, human history would sure never forget Bush II -- if we survived
his insanity, that is. |
Propaganda and spying on each other
will win war on terror, says U.S. General| |
Excerpt: U.S. should use propaganda to win hearts and minds while turn everyone into spies in order to win the war on terror instead of going after terrorists, according to U.S. Army General.
"If we look at is as terrorism, we have a tendency to think that the solution is to kill or capture all the terrorists," Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and war-fighting support, said. "That's a never-ending process." He lamented that in the information age U.S. was not utilizing propaganda to manipulate the public opinion. |
Judge orders Kansas City Star
not to publish news about local utility| |
Excerpt: Jackson County Circuit Judge Kelly Moorhouse issued the temporary restraining order Friday against The Kansas City Star, a daily, and The Pitch, a weekly alternative newspaper that publishes on Thursdays.
The judge also ordered the papers to remove articles about the Board of Public Utilities of Kansas City, Kan., from their Web sites. Both papers had posted the stories Friday before the order but removed the articles by Saturday morning.
Comment: Hey, we lived in Kansas City for several years, and this is the quick-folding "journalistic integrity" we'd expect from the Kansas City Star. Would've expected Pitch Weekly to do the right thing, though, and tell the Judge to cram it sideways. |
Advertising as Payola: Who really owns CNN?| |
Excerpt: See for yourself -- start taking notes of the ads you see on CNN. The next time you see an ad telling you how great it is that GE makes weaponry for the Department of Defense, mark it down. The next time you see a defense contractor advertise products you can't buy -- mark it down. Because these are the companies that REALLY own CNN. |
U.S. expert on Russian
intelligence shot in Washington| |
Excerpt: Paul Joyal, 53, was hit several times as he returned home on Thursday evening, FBI spokeswoman Michelle Crnkovich told AFP.
The shooting came four days after Joyal alleged in a major television network interview that the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in the radiation poisoning of a former KGB agent in London.
Who's killing Putin's enemies?
Excerpt: Vladimir Putin has presided over a staggering economic boom in the six years since he took control of the Kremlin. Meanwhile, a dozen of his critics have been assassinated and the country's vast natural resources are in the pockets of a chosen few. |
Pakistan rejects U.S. authorization to
pursue al Qaeda, Taliban in Pakistan| |
Excerpt: Islamabad yesterday "vigorously rejected" assertions made by Washington last week that it has the authority to cross into Pakistan to pursue al Qaeda and Taliban militants, reports Gulf Times. |
Aussie kangaroo-skinner will
have kangaroo trial at Guantanamo| |
Excerpt: The Bush administration has filed charges against David Hicks, an Australian citizen suspected of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan and the first terrorism-war era detainee to be charged by the Pentagon under new rules for military commissions. The decision was made even though officials of Australia already had asked the United States not to bring such charges. Australia has been a steadfast ally to the Bush administration in its war on terrorism.
Hicks details terror and
torture at Guantanamo
Excerpt: Injected with drugs, hooded, tightly bound and wearing goggles and ear muffs and the infamous orange overalls, he was thrown into one of the small, open-air cages of Camp X-Ray. For weeks, he says, he and other prisoners were forbidden to talk and permitted to lie in only two positions -- prone and looking up, or sitting looking straight down. No other movement was permitted other than at meal times, and any deviations from the edict, or muttered conversations, were met with savage beatings by the guards.
In their cages, he says, prisoners had one bucket of water and another to be used as a toilet. They also were given a toothbrush and, if requested, a copy of the Koran. Guards interrupted them every hour, supposedly to check if they still had their toothbrushes, but in effect to deprive them of sleep. If prisoners covered their faces to block out the sun or floodlights as they tried to sleep, he says, they were woken by screaming guards kicking their cages.
Comment: This guy David Hicks has been held for five years without charge or trial, and now he is headed to Kangaroo Court. He is charged with only one count -- material support -- which was not even a law until 2006. Tortured repeatedly by Americans and ignored by his Australia, now the shame of democracy cannot be expunged without criminal trials of our president and his co-conspirators. This is American Nazism -- fascist, immoral, and beyond all global laws and decencies. We have become what we claimed to be fighting: animals. Nay, lower than animals because we have become |
Al-Jazeera cameraman imprisoned
at Guantanamo since 2002| |
Excerpt: Sami al-Hajj, of the Al-Jazeera TV network, was stopped at the Afghanistan border by Pakistani authorities in December 2001, turned over to U.S. forces and hauled in chains six months later to Guantanamo, where about 390 men are held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
Al-Hajj, a 38-year-old native of Sudan, has been held in this U.S. military prison ever since. |
CIA papers reveal 1950s Japan coup plot| |
Excerpt: Declassified documents reveal that Japanese ultra-nationalists with ties to U.S. military intelligence plotted to overthrow the Japanese government and assassinate the prime minister in 1952.
The scheme -- which was abandoned -- was concocted by militarists and suspected war criminals who had worked for U.S. occupation authorities after World War II, according to CIA records reviewed by The Associated Press. The plotters wanted a right-wing government that would re-arm Japan. |
Uninsured Maryland boy dies of toothache| |
Excerpt: Some poor children have no dental coverage at all. Others travel three hours to find a dentist willing to take Medicaid patients and accept the incumbent paperwork. And some, including Deamonte's brother, get in for a tooth cleaning but have trouble securing an oral surgeon to fix deeper problems. |
NYC faces contempt charge for
enforcing stricken-down panhandling law| |
Excerpt: A federal judge said Friday that she will consider holding the city in contempt after learning that police have been enforcing a panhandling law ruled unconstitutional 15 years ago. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said more than 700 summonses had been issued to people since she ordered the city to stop using the unconstitutional law.
"I'm mystified how 15 years later you can issue a warrant for a statute that's been declared unconstitutional," U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said. "That's really terrible."
Comment: The city does it because they're pretty sure they'll get away with it, and they've gotten away with it for fifteen years. If she's brave and true, Judge Scheindlin will pronounce a punishment strong enough to dissuade further and other official scofflaws. |
Trigger bill that could end abortion
in Utah falters in final minutes| |
Excerpt: The 2007 Legislature was gaveled to an end, just as Utah was poised to ban most abortions if some other state led the charge and paid the legal bills.
The move appeared to be a sign that leaders did not support passage of the bill this year. They allowed measure after measure to be debated, delaying final action on the abortion bill until the clock struck midnight, ending the 45-day session. |
News from America's
very bestest ally, Israel:
Livni: Israel cannot accept Arab
peace initiative in current form| |
Excerpt: Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told a Palestinian newspaper in an interview published Thursday that Israel could not accept a 2002 Arab League peace initiative [still circulating] in its current formulation. |
'Nature preserves' used for
Israeli settlement housing| |
Excerpt: The analysis indicates that the territory claimed by 21 settlements and 10 outposts includes land belonging to nature reserves or national parks. According to the report, the settlements have claimed a total of 1,900 dunam in land in this manner. |
Legitimization of land theft| |
Excerpt: The theft of private land and lawless construction, with the authorities' collaboration, have long been routine in the land of the settlers. The scope of these deeds and their seriousness are described extensively in the report on illegal outposts compiled by Talia Sasson, formerly a senior state prosecution attorney. The report was buried almost two years ago. |
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Court overturns 22-year prison
sentence for trashing 3 SUVs| |
Excerpt: The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday overturned the 22-year sentence given to environmental activist Jeffrey Michael Luers for burning three SUVs at the former Romania truck lot and for trying to set fire to the Tyree Oil Co. in Eugene. The court upheld all 10 of Luers' felony convictions from his 2001 trial, but ruled that he was improperly sentenced to back-to-back prison terms in each of the crimes. Luers, 28, is considered a "political prisoner" among some activists who contend his 22-year, eight-month sentence is disproportionately harsh, considering that no one was injured in either crime and damage to the SUVs was estimated at less than $50,000. |
BBC reported Building 7 had collapsed
almost half an hour before it fell| |
Excerpt: An astounding video uncovered from the archives today shows the BBC reporting on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of 9/11. The incredible footage shows BBC reporter Jane Standley talking about the collapse of the Salomon Brothers Building while it remains standing in the live shot behind her head.
Minutes before the actual collapse of the building is due, the feed to the reporter mysteriously dies.
More Ground Zero heroes on the record: Building 7 was deliberately brought down
Excerpt: Two more ground zero emergency rescue personnel are on the record as stating they were told Building 7 was going to be brought down on 9/11 hours before its symmetrical implosion, completely contradicting the official explanation of accidental collapse. |
Justice Department takes aim
at image-sharing websites| |
Excerpt: The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate. |
Owners of Seattle SuperSonics
underwrite anti-gay hate group| |
Excerpt: The campaign finance records I've reviewed show that Sonics/Storm co-owner Tom Ward has contributed $475,000 to Gary L. Bauer's Americans United to Preserve Marriage. And another Sonics/Storm co-owner, Aubrey McClendon, contributed $625,000.
Both men made their first contributions to the group, $250,000 apiece, on September 8, 2004 -- the day after the group was formed. |
Florida Appeals Court rules against
girl based on fantasized future events| |
Excerpt: This month, a Florida Appeals Court voted 2-1 to uphold the charge against Amber. Writing for the majority, Judge James R. Wolf, speculated that both Amber and Jeremy could have eventually sold the photos to child pornographers or shown them to friends. He also said that transferring the digital images from a camera to a computer and then sending them via email created "innumerable problems" because the computers could be hacked.
Judge Wolf's reasoning must make every Florida parent with photos of their naked children a bit uncomfortable. |
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Lightning round news
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Vice Pres Cheney flies on The Spirit of Strom Thurmond
Cavemen from Geico commercials
might become TV sit-com
Hundreds mourn passing of first Wendy's
Maker of star-studded audio Bible
sued for not paying scriptwriter
Armed robber offers bank customers loans
Travolta: Scientology would have
saved Anna Nicole Smith
Fringe Rabbis want sheep sacrifice
Bird flu vaccine linked to
18 teenage suicides in Japan
Swiss accidentally invade Liechtenstein
Gayest corporate logos (not that
there's anything wrong with that)
Woman swallowed lover's false teeth
Gone 25 years, Belushi still funny
FDA approves first drug for carsick dogs
Have you clicked our Mystery links?
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A short history of STUFF
by The Feral Metallurgist, Unknown News
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Excerpt: It all would have been so different if humans hadn't discovered some STUFF called oil. |
Here's your gun, go to war now
by Kathy Fisher, Unknown News
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Excerpt: I want you to look me straight in the eye without tearing up, and tell me this sh*t of a lie of a war is worth your kid's life! |
DNA bouillabaisse gumbo
by Kevin Good, Unknown News
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Excerpt: Genealogists and historians have taken this mess to the full sixth degree of separation. They discovered the Thurmond family bought their slaves from Dutch seafaring entrepreneurs who were the ancestors Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Captain Rodham, in Africa, bought people from the Kenyan ancestors of Senator Barack (did you know his middle name is Hussein?) Obama and offered them free passage to a new life in America, a fast track through the INS system, a Social Security number and jobs Americans wouldn't do. |
Conspiracies:
What's credible and what's not?
by Debby, Unknown News
| |
Excerpt: I personally paid attention to Ronald Reagan speak about the shadow government and the likes when he was running for President. I heard it come out of his mouth and how he was against the power it held over the government. I had never heard of anything like that until then. After he went in to office an attempt was made on his life. ...
Conspiracies:
Who am I to discredit someone else? by Debby, Unknown News
Excerpt: I am not interested in talking about a conspiracy about Reagan. ... |
Bush leaves cities defenseless
after blowing $300 billion on security
by Lambert's Blog| |
Excerpt: "Although the Bush administration has warned repeatedly about the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack [especially during election campaigns] and spent more than $300 billion to protect the homeland [or, in the original German, Heimat], the government remains ill-prepared to respond to a nuclear catastrophe."
Katrina all over again. Except worse, of course. Whoopsie! This is McClatchy, not Pravda on the Potomac or Izvestia on the Hudson, so I don't have to ram the obvious conclusion home: the reporter does it all by themselves:
"Experts and government documents suggest that, absent a major preparedness push, the U.S. response to a mushroom cloud could be worse than the debacle after Hurricane Katrina, possibly contributing to civil disorder and costing thousands of lives." |
John Wolf must wonder, What's a journalist?
by Think & Ask| |
Excerpt: His clips made their way onto television news and across the Internet for free distribution at the time. Wolf's footage later became the focus of grand jury investigation at the scene of the
protest to determine how a police officer was injured and how a police car was damaged by an explosive device during the protest, which was held to coincide with the G8 Summit in Scotland.
In 2006, Wolf refused to hand-over the footage to prosecutors, claiming he was a journalist and needed to protect his sources as guaranteed by the First Amendment. His decision landed in him jail 1 August 2006. Judge William Alsup of the Federal District Court did not buy the argument that Wolf was
or is a journalist.
Comment: It's a ruling that says, broadly speaking, only journalists under corporate control count as 'journalists'. |
American Gulag: Petty criminals doing hard time
by Sasha Abramsky, San Francisco Chronicle
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Excerpt: How tragic that over the past 20 years, the country's political leaders have so often decided to deal with many of the most noxious side-effects of poverty -- from chronic drug use and the establishment of street drug markets, to hustling, gang membership and spraying graffiti on public buildings -- through a vast over-reliance on incarceration.
How doubly tragic that this has occurred in tandem with a political assault on the Great Society anti-poverty programs put in place during the 1960s; that the investments in infrastructure, public education, public health care and job training which might curtail crime more effectively are, instead, being replaced by massive public expenditures on building new prisons. |
Right and wrong among the pundits
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Comment: This is a well-done look at a few popular pundits who favored the stupid attack on Iraq, and a few others who opposed it. Guess which ones have flourished, and which ones have been effectively flushed away? |
Marijuana: It's a wonder drug
by Lester Grinspoon, The Boston Globe
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Excerpt: A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine -- and U.S. drug policy -- that we still need "proof" of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years. |
The War on Terror is the
leading cause of terrorism
by Kim Sengupta and Patrick Cockburn,
The Independent [London, UK]
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Excerpt: An authoritative U.S. study of terrorist attacks after the invasion in 2003 contradicts the repeated denials of George Bush and Tony Blair that the war is not to blame for an upsurge in fundamentalist violence worldwide. The research is said to be the first to attempt to measure the "Iraq effect" on global terrorism.
It found that the number killed in jihadist attacks around the world has risen dramatically since the Iraq war began in March 2003. The study compared the period between 11 September 2001 and the invasion of Iraq with the period since the invasion. The count -- excluding the Arab-Israel conflict -- shows the number of deaths due to terrorism rose from 729 to 5,420. As well as strikes in Europe, attacks have also increased in Chechnya and Kashmir since the invasion. |
Top 10 modern delusions
by Francis Wheen, The Guardian
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Excerpt: 9. America's economic success is entirely due to private enterprise -- In the 19th century, the American government promoted the formation of a national economy, the building of railroads and the development of the telegraph. More recently, the internet was created by the Pentagon. American agriculture is heavily subsidized and protected, as are the steel industry and many other sectors of the world's biggest "free-market economy". At times of economic slowdown, even under presidents who denigrate the role of government, the U.S. will increase its deficit to finance expansionary fiscal and monetary policies. But its leaders get very cross indeed if any developing country tries to follow this example. |
If you want your America back
by Mr. Chuckles, Unknown News
| |
Excerpt: These war criminals, these lying, deceiving, murdering thieves who sh*t on our Constitution, who sent our soldiers to die for Exxon's oil, who stole our tax money, who sent our jobs overseas and rewarded the job-shipping corporations with tax breaks, those people understand nothing but power and force.
Show it to them. |
That election that was supposed to change everything
by Leon Fisher, Unknown News
| |
Excerpt: Despite all the hoopla and high-sounding talk from the newly elected Congress, it appears that it is going to be business as usual. It is not the will of the people which matters, but that of a small body of politicians who represent the interests of those entities which can pay the most for their favors. |
The Mad Hatter's court TV
by Kevin Good, Unknown News
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Excerpt: The White House Rabbit who led us down the holes to our current wars says Iran is a threat to America. They are developing WMDs, the people hate their tyrannical leader, and they will greet us as liberators. |
The point of no return for World War III
by Pavel C., Unknown News
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Excerpt: The rest of the world, especially the Islamic people, will not allow Bush and America to rule them. Even the Afghanistan war is not only not ending, it is now going into the next stage -- which is a righteous war of liberation to eject the occupation forces. The USSR lost there, just as every occupier has always lost in Afghanistan back into the dawn of time. Does anyone believe that the Strategic Retards in the White House are more competent than others who have attempted to rule Afghanistan? |
9/11 and tooty-fruity conspiracy theories
by James B., Unknown News
| |
Excerpt: When you open a discussion of 9/11 with a plot to depopulate the world, with our air, food, and minds being poisoned, with the conspiracy to kill JFK, the Council on Foreign Relations, Skull & Bones, Bilderbergs, secret societies, a plan to destroy U.S. sovereignty, the North American Union, and the devaluation of the dollar, not a lot of people are going to keep listening.
Conspiracies:
A progression of persuasion
by James B., Unknown News
Excerpt: The world is 180 degrees apart from what we are taught. The leadership was bought out by financial interests following the Treason of 1913. This is the Federal Reserve act. It gave private bankers the sole right to print fake money and loan it out as real. Since then USA has been a slave society, meaning you are actually working to pay the bankers.
An ongoing and very active conspiracy
by DanD, Unknown News
Excerpt: There is, in fact, an ongoing and very active conspiracy in this world that is targeting for primary elimination the greater masses of humanity. I quite understandably realize now that this grand scheme is so monstrous that most people, yourselves included, summarily prefer not to even entertain it at all. Why? BECAUSE THE VERY THOUGHT OF IT IS JUST TOO DAMNED SCARY. |
Murder, Inc.: That's the
reality of American foreign policy
by Justin Raimondo, AntiWar
| |
Excerpt: America is, today, the fountainhead of evil in the world. No-one is killing people faster, and with more cruelty and indif-
ference, than the warlords of Washington. The temptation is to turn away in disgust and resign oneself to the degeneration of Jefferson's benevolent legacy into a maelstrom of malevolence worthy of Caligula.
Comment:
This is powerful. Have we forgotten Abu Ghraib, the tortures implemented under the authority of Donald Rumsfeld? And how about the 500,000+ Iraqis who are dead now that would not have been -- if the
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Democrats had spines? I still, to this day, display the color photo of young Ibtihal Jassem after her liberation in Basra on March 22, 2003. That was an atrocity. Or to George W. Bush, a typical day at the office, a glorious day... |
An Australian view of America
by Peter Hartcher,
Sydney [Australia] Morning Herald
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Excerpt: Dick Cheney is generally regarded in Washington DC as the most powerful vice-president in memory. It is a pity of historical proportions that he used that power to advance dismally unsuccessful and destructive policy. |
Maybe we deserve to be
ripped off by Bush's billionaires
by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
| |
Excerpt: I'm not one of those curmudgeons who freaks out every time that Bradgelina moves the war off the front page of the Post, or Katie Couric decides to usher in a whole new era of network news with photos of the imbecile demon-spawn of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. I understand that we live in a demand-based economy and that there is far more demand for brainless celebrity bullshit than there is, say, for the fine print of the Health and Human Services budget.
But that was before this week. I awoke this morning in New York City to find Britney Spears plastered all over the cover of two gigantic daily newspapers, simply because she cut her hair off over the weekend. To me, this crosses a line. My definition of a news story involves something happening. If nothing happens, then you can't have "news," because nothing has changed since the day before. Britney Spears was an idiot last Thursday, an idiot on Friday, and an idiot on both Saturday and Sunday. She was, shockingly, also an idiot on Monday. It will be news when she stops being an idiot, and we'll know when that happens, because she'll have shot herself for the good of the planet. Britney Spears cutting her hair off is the least-worthy front page news story in the history of humanity. |
Republican fundraising 'insider'
accused of terrorism. Media yawns.
by RJ Eskow, The Huffington Post
| |
Excerpt: Apparently the story that a Republican Party fundraiser has now been accused of financing terrorism is no big deal. The media's more interested in Obama's smoking, the Clintons' sex life, and the state of decay on the face of Anna Nicole's corpse (which Larry King covered the other night, thanks to a talkative county coroner.) ...
Can you imagine how they'd cover it if a Democratic Party fundraiser had been accused of financing terror training camps, transferring funds to pay for "night vision goggles and other equipment" needed to train terrorists manqué? It would be an even bigger story than the plane Nancy Pelosi (didn't) request -- by, oh, a factor of a million or so. Doncha think? |
Bonds playing a game of criminal pursuit
by Greg Cote, The Miami Herald
| |
Excerpt: Barry Bonds might be the greatest ballplayer ever; his seven MVP trophies present a pretty sound deposition. But there must be an asterisk by his name. He put it there. And now he is denigrating hallowed ground by galling to steal Hank Aaron's record. |
Pop quiz on Latin America
by BoRev
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Question: Which South American president gags newspapers from reporting on corruption, jails journalists without trial, gives himself the power to rule by decree, overrides Supreme Court decisions by fiat, refers to human rights monitors as "political agitators in the service of terrorism," and amends the Constitution to allow himself a new term?
Answer: Colombia's Alvaro Uribe. Last week Condoleezza Rice praised Uribe's "commitment to social, economic and judicial reform that she hoped would improve the lives of all Colombians" as the U.S. pledged an additional 3.9 billion dollars in "aid" to South America's most repressive regime. |
Against Israeli rationality
by Gideon Samet, Ha'aretz [Jerusalem, Israel]
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Excerpt: Condoleezza Rice came without any new ideas. She yielded to Olmert, who struck a deal behind her back in a phone call to President George W. Bush.
Thus, in a rare sequence of events, we heard a senior representative of the superpower declaiming the inflexibility of the local leader. The guest also allowed Olmert to humiliate her.
He was not present when she read, as though she were his cabinet secretary, the joint announcement after the meeting -- most of which was devoted to Olmert's reprimands of "Ya, Abu Mazen."
But all of this is much less surprising than the narrow scope of American moves, not to say blunders, across the region. |
Evicted from Wikipedia
by Timothy Noah, Slate
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Excerpt: If you've never been listed in Wikipedia, you can always argue that your omission is an oversight. Not me. I've been placed under a microscope and, on the basis of careful and dispassionate analysis, excluded from the most comprehensive encyclopedia ever devised. Ouch! |
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"Money trumps peace, sometimes. In other words, commercial interests are very powerful interests throughout the world. And part of the issue in convincing people to put sanctions on a specific country is to convince them that it's in the world's interest that they forgo their own financial interest."
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Hate 'the elite' -- but first, know who they are
by Underground Panther in the Sky, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: The system we call 'society' has been and still is designed deliberately for the benefit of wealthy elitist f*ckers, to systematically use others -- to torment, to keep ignorant, to deprive, to engineer, to terrorize, and to control people and sap them of everything. |
Mountains of suffering
obscure our view of reality
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
| |
Excerpt: The fact that such murderous behavior is seen merely as a financial matter, as a financial risk undertaken by the HMO in the "normal course of business," nicely highlights the depths of depravity to which our so called "system of justice" has fallen. That should be the headline and the gist of the coverage. "HMO complicit in murder by medical neglect and depraved indifference" would be my choice of wording. |
Support the troops?
by Kevin Good, Unknown News
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Excerpt: The way I see it 'Support our troops' takes two forms.
The first is to remove the troops from the ill-conceived 'not greeted as liberators' un-anticipated civil war the U.S. created.
The second is to send more and more troops down the same road again and again, putting their lives and limbs on the line, looking for the next IED.
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Art Bell hung up on me
by Kathy Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Let me remind Art Bell that there would be no America if the Founding Fathers of our Country had taken Art's advice and left the Country because they disagreed with the other tyrant of the day, King George. |
Sharing dreams brings
oneness with the world
by Kathy Fisher, Unknown News
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Excerpt: I am no longer a body of solid mass. I have been turned into a mist of translucent powder particles, but at the same time I feel elongated, like my hands and body are growing, stretching. I rise like a giant into the highest part of what seems like sky going right up to the stars slowly rising. |
Where's the "due diligence"?
by Daniel F., Opening Inner Space
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Excerpt: Neither Congress, nor Senate, nor media, nor editorial writers nor voters performed Due Diligence and as a result we have lost more than 3,000 service men and women and face certain defeat in Iraq. Yet now these same institutions that have the responsibility to thoroughly examine proposed military actions before they are allowed to just happen have again refused to do Due Diligence with respect to the deployment of more than 20,000 sailors and marines to the Persian Gulf. |
How quickly we forget!
by Jim Kirwan, Kirwan Studios
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Excerpt: Whose interests do these crimes against the world really "serve"? Millions are displaced as refugees, wandering between countries with no status and only the clothes on their backs, while "back home" the death tolls approach millions of dead or desecrated by "American Interests." Have we really become this vile, this narrow and this pig-headed, in just six years? We wave a flag that has become heavy with the blood of innocent people while nationally we speak of heroes, and sacrifice and being "number one"! We're "Number One" alright, but not in any of the things that count. If this keeps up the short and arrogant life of the United States will be expunged from the history of the world as the most heinous of nation states since Ghengis Khan destroyed the East in the 1200's. |
Killers in the classroom
by June Scorza Terpstra, InformationClearingHouse
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Excerpt: The American military and mercenary soldiers who "sacrificed" their lives did not do so for the teacher's freedom to teach the truth about the so-called war on terror, or any of US history for that matter. They sacrificed their lives, limbs and sanity for money, some education and the thrills of the violence for which they are socially bred. Sacrificing for the "bling and booty" in Iraq or Afghanistan, The Philippines, Grenada, Central America, Mexico, Somalia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the other numerous wars and invasions spanning US history as an entity and beginning with their foundational practice of killing the Indians and stealing their land. |
The media escalates its lies about Iran
by David Swanson, AlterNet
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Excerpt: The mainstream media's most recent justification that the Bush White House is telling the truth about Iran and the need to start another war is, incredibly, that the administration used lies to start the last one. That's right, according to the latest dispatch from the Associated Press, "No one who has seen the files has suggested the evidence is thin. But senior officials -- gun shy after the drubbing the administration took for the faulty intelligence leading to the 2003 Iraq invasion -- were underwhelmed by the packaging."
See? It's just the "packaging." They've got solid proof, and they're even being extra careful in presenting it to us, because we were so hard on them last time. In fact, you can tell just how careful these senior officials are being from the fact that in all the articles in all the newspapers, so many of them (or is it all one guy?) are never identified by name. |
Selling our cows to buy milk
by Peter Schiff, 321 Gold
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Excerpt:
On Tuesday of this week we learned that in 2006 Americans racked up a record $763.6 Billion trade deficit, and that two Australian mining firms, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, were each contemplating $40 billion bids for U.S. aluminum giant Alcoa. Not only did Wall Street and the media fail to grasp the negative significance of each story, but they also failed to see the strong connection between the two.
By running huge trade deficits, Americans are literally selling cows to buy milk. Alcoa is just the latest heifer headed for the auction block. In other words, because we do not trade enough domestically manufactured consumer goods for those we import, we are making up the difference with our assets instead. To the extent that foreigners are tiring of buying more Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, they are casting their eyes on industrial assets. Last year's trade deficit alone provided foreigners with enough dollars to buy twenty Alcoa's.
Many Americas do not see the downside of such a transfer. In fact, they might even see it as a benefit, as shares of Alcoa would likely rise sharply. However, in exchange for losing one of the world's preeminent mining companies to Australia, Americans would only be compensated by the return of their paper dollars. Future profits that would have been earned by Americans will now be earned by Australians instead.
Comment: Alcoa is in the Dow Industrial Index, one
of the crown jewels. The trend continues -- selling assets
to foreigners holding petrodollars and Chinabucks we exported.
I just bought a USB cable for my new HP printer. Even the
cables are made overseas, this one -- top of the line, with
gold plated connectors -- was made in Malaysia.
Reminds
me of Other People's Money and the story about New England
Wire and Cable. But we don't convert our factories to build
air bags or USB connectors. We either smelt them, because
they are obsolete (China has lots of totally modern factories,
it isn't all peasants doing things by hand...), or we ship the
machines overseas. |
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