Out with the old

The I-Word is Gaining Ground
In 1998, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, currently under indictment on corruption charges, proclaimed: "This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law...The other road is the path of least resistance" in which "we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us...[and] close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system." That arbiter of moral politics was incensed about the possibility of Bill Clinton escaping unpunished for his "crimes."
Fast forward to December 2005. Not one official in the entire Bush Administration has been fired or indicted, not to mention impeached, for the shedding of American blood in Iraq or for the shredding of our Constitution at home. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter put it--hours after the New York Times reported that Bush had authorized NSA wiretapping of US citizens without judicial warrants--this President has committed a real transgression that "goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power."
In the last months, several organizations, including AfterDowningStreet, Impeach Central and ImpeachPAC.org, have formed to urge Bush's impeachment. But until very recently, their views were virtually absent in the so-called "liberal" MSM, and could only be found on the Internet and in street protests.
The I-word has moved from the marginal to the mainstream--although columnists like Charles "torture-is-fine-by-me" Krauthammer would like us to believe that "only the most brazen and reckless and partisan" could support the idea. In fact, as Michelle Goldberg reports in Salon, "in the past few days, impeachment "has become a topic of considered discussion among constitutional scholars and experts (including a few Republicans), former intelligence officers, and even a few politicians."
Even a moderately liberal columnist like Newsweek's Alter sounds like The Nation, observing: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator."
As Editor & Publisher recently reported, the idea of impeaching Bush has entered the mainstream media's circulatory system--with each day producing more op-eds and articles on the subject. Joining the chorus on Christmas Eve, conservative business magazine Barron's published a lengthy editorial excoriating the president for committing a potentially impeachable offense. "If we don't discuss the program and lack of authority of it," wrote Barron's editorial page editor Thomas Donlan, "we are meeting the enemy--in the mirror."
Public opinion is also growing more comfortable with the idea of impeaching this president. A Zogby International poll conducted this summer found that 42 percent of Americans felt that impeaching Bush would be justified if it was shown that he had manipulated intelligence in going to war in Iraq. (John Zogby admitted that "it was much higher than I expected.") By November, the number of those who favored impeaching Bush stood at 53 percent--if it was in fact proven that Bush had lied about the basis for invading Iraq. (And these polls were taken before the revelations of Bush's domestic spying.)
For those interested in some of the most compelling charges against the president, I offer a brief summary:

* Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean argued in his aptly-named book Worse than Watergate that Bush's false statements about WMDs in Iraq--used to drum up support for an invasion--deceived the American people and Congress. This constituted "an impeachable offense," Dean told PBS' Bill Moyers in 2004. "I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people." Bush's actions were actually far worse than Watergate, Dean contends, because "no one died for Nixon's so-called Watergate abuses."
Lending credence to Dean's arguments, the Downing Street Memo revealed that Britain's MI-6 Director Richard Dearlove had told Tony Blair that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush Administration. John Bonifaz, a Boston-based attorney and constitutional law expert, said that Bush seemingly "concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated," and "must certainly be punished for giving false information to the Senate." Bush deceived "the American people as to the basis for taking the nation into war against Iraq," Bonifaz argued--an impeachable offense.

* Rep. John Conyers argued as well that the president committed impeachable offenses" because he and senior administration officials "countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq" at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, including Guantanamo Bay and the now-notorious "black sites" around the world.

* The most compelling evidence of Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors is the revelation that he repeatedly authorized NSA spying on US citizens without obtaining the required warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Constitutional experts, politicians and ex-intelligence experts agree that Bush "committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans." Rep. John Lewis--"the first major House figure to suggest impeaching Bush," said the AP--argued that the president "deliberately, systematically violated the law" in authorizing the wiretapping. Lewis added: "He is not King, he is president."

Meanwhile, Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University School of Law--a specialist in surveillance law--told Knight Ridder that Bush's actions "violated federal law" and raised "serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors." It is worth remembering that an abuse of power similar to Bush's NSA wiretapping decision was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. [This comparison was brought home in the ACLU's powerful full page ad in the NYT of December 22nd.]
There are many reasons why it is crucial that the Democrats regain control of Congress in '06, but consider this one: If they do, there may be articles of impeachment introduced and the estimable John Conyers, who has led the fight to defend our constitution, would become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Wouldn't that be a truly just response to the real high crimes and misdemeanors that this lawbreaking president has so clearly committed?

Comedy of terror
And now there is open talk in the Senate of impeaching George Bush; the New York Times accuses him of "recklessness" and claims he "may also have violated the law".

Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say

President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show.

Lawyers For Terror Suspects Plan Legal Challenges Over Wiretaps
The New York Times is reporting defense lawyers for several Muslim men detained for alleged ties to Al Qaeda plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the government used illegal wiretaps against them.
The challenges would affect some of the biggest terrorism cases in the country. Several lawyers said they intend to press the government on whether prosecutors misled the courts about the origins of their investigations and whether the government may have withheld wiretaps that could prove their clients' innocence.
Meanwhile, Justice Department prosecutors told the Times they were concerned the wiretaps could create problems for past and future terrorism cases. One prosecutor said: "If I'm a defense attorney, the first thing I'm going to say in court is, 'This was an illegal wiretap.' "

Bush Arrogantly Ignores FOIA Demand

The White House is again demonstrating how it feels above the law, as it arrogantly has refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made six months ago by 52 Congressmen.

Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them

U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

Bush's envoy sparks another diplomatic incident over war claims

The US ambassador in London has been forced into an embarrassing retreat after his embassy clarified comments he made denying that the United States was involved in removing terrorist suspects to Syria. Robert Tuttle told Radio 4's Today programme last Thursday that there was no evidence that US forces had sent suspected terrorists for questioning in Syria, a practice known as "extraordinary rendition". The US embassy issued a statement yesterday acknowledging that there had been claims that a suspect arrested in New York had been sent by the CIA for torture in Syria. It is the second time in recent weeks that Mr Tuttle has had to correct misleading statements about the actions of US forces, and provoked a fresh outcry from Labour MPs over the practice of extraordinary rendition. Mr Tuttle was involved in an earlier embarrassing denial when he insisted in a letter to The Independent that US forces did not use white phosphorous as a weapon. His remarks were quickly contradicted by US gun crews in their own internet magazine, in which they boasted of using white phosphorous in a "shake and bake" mission against insurgents in the assault on Fallujah. The US Marines said they had used white phosphorous to attack insurgents dug in around the Iraqi city. Mr Tuttle had insisted it was only used as an incendiary device to illuminate enemy combatants.

Denying democratic right to Hamas

THERE is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the western project of bringing democracy to Arab-Islamic societies. Stripped of rhetoric, democracy is meant to be a procedure to elect representatives and rulers approved in advance by the principal arbiters in centres of global hegemony.

Red Cross Employees Indicted in Katrina Fraud
The Washington Post is reporting nearly 50 people have been charged for taking part in a scheme to defraud a Red Cross program of hundreds of thousands dollars intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Seventeen of the accused worked at a Red Cross claim center in California. The rest were relatives and friends of the workers. The claim center was responsible for taking calls from Katrina victims and authorizing cash payments to them.

Enron Accountant To Testify Against Former Top Execs
The former chief accountant for the scandal-plagued energy corporation Enron has reached a plea deal that will see him testify against two of the company’s top former executives. Richard Causey will appear in a Houston court today to plead guilty to at least one of the dozens of criminal charges against him. In return for leniency, Causey will testify against Enron founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling. Causey is the 16th former Enron executive to reach a plea bargain. He was expected to stand trial alongside Lay and Skilling next month. Enron's collapse in 2001 ended the jobs of more than 5,000 workers and decimated the retirement savings of millions of investors.

Stop these maniacs

Updated MSNBC poll results:

Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? * 151019 responses
	Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial. 85%
	No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors." 5%
	No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching. 8%
	I don't know. 2%

C.I.A. Chief Warns Allies to Prepare for U.S. Bombing of Iran and Syria

Goss Tells Turks to Prepare for Iran Attack
Kurt Nimmo

Another Day in the Empire
December 20th 2005

You’d think the fact Porter Goss, head broom sweeper at the CIA, recently told the Turkish government the United States plans to attack Iran and Syria would be headline splashing news in the New York Times and the Washington Post. But although the news was carried in the Turkish press, it elicited hardly a murmur here in America, with the exception of United Press International and Reuters.

As for the latter, only Goss’ meeting with Turkish officials on the “separatist terrorist organization” known as the Kurdistan Workers Party was mentioned and nothing about the impending attack, while the UPI mentioned it in the fourth paragraph, stating: “Goss said that Iran sees Turkey as an enemy and will ‘export its regime,’ warning Ankara to be ready for a possible U.S. aerial operation against Iran and Syria.”

PHX News was more specific and noted the lack of attention the story: “In an overlooked story, the Turkish press reported last week that CIA Director Porter Goss went to Ankara recently and informed the Turkish government that Iran already has nuclear weapons and they should be ready for ‘a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria.’”

The Turkish Press added more details:

During his recent visit to Ankara, CIA Director Porter Goss reportedly brought three dossiers on Iran to Ankara. Goss is said to have asked for Turkey’s support for Washington’s policy against Iran’s nuclear activities, charging that Tehran had supported terrorism and taken part in activities against Turkey. Goss also asked Ankara to be ready for a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria. Goss, who came to Ankara just after FBI Director Robert Mueller’s visit, brought up Iran’s alleged attempts to develop nuclear weapons. It was said that Goss first told Ankara that Iran has nuclear weapons and this situation was creating a huge threat for both Turkey and other states in the region. Diplomatic sources say that Washington wants Turkey to coordinate with its Iran policies. The second dossier is about Iran’s stance on terrorism. The CIA argued that Iran was supporting terrorism, the PKK and al-Qaeda.

In short, Goss and Mueller were sent by the neocons to shop around an “air operation against Iran and Syria” in Turkey in exchange for a hardline against the Kurds and using the unestablished “fact” the Iranians have nukes and the desire to use them as enticement.

As I have written here for months, the neocons are determined to attack Iran and Syria, if only with airstrikes. Of course, if this is accomplished it will stir up even more chaos and strife, precisely what the neocons want, regardless of all the nonsense Bush mumbles about democracy and Iraqi elections. As we should know if we pay attention, the Bushcons are playing by the Zionist script in an effort to balkanize the Muslim Middle East by way of mass murder and sectarian violence.

from http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/
What Are We Waiting For? Christmas?
Bush Should Be Impeached NOW
By Gerald Rellick

“In all of this, George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, George W. Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.”

Substitute the name Richard Nixon for George Bush and you have the closing words of the three Articles of Impeachment from the House Judiciary Committee against Richard Nixon in July 1974.

After more than 30 years I still find these words chilling. Today we again face such somber judgment and must be prepared as a nation to confront the reality that these same words apply to George W. Bush and, like Richard Nixon, Bush’s conduct as president “warrants impeachment and trial and removal from office.”

The three articles of impeachment cited Nixon for:

(1) obstruction of justice involving the investigation of the Watergate break-in;
(2) “knowingly misusing [his] executive power… [and] violating the constitutional rights of citizens” by ordering illegal surveillances of U.S. citizens, using the agencies of the IRS, FBI, CIA and Secret Service to carry out such surveillances and other obstructions; and (3) “willfully disobeying subpoenas” issued by the Judiciary Committee.

Following the Judiciary Committee vote, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, in a now-famous visit to the White House, informed Nixon that if a Senate trial went forward, Nixon could expect no more than 10 votes in his favor, and that he, Barry Goldwater, “would not be one of them.” Nixon resigned the presidency shortly thereafter, avoiding formal House impeachment.
With the recent revelations by the New York Times of George Bush’s domestic surveillance program without court-approved warrants, Bush is seen to be in clear violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed in 1978 specifically to prevent the kind of illegal surveillances that occurred in the Nixon years. However, the second article of impeachment against Nixon, directed at illegal surveillance, added that Nixon misused federal agencies “for purposes unrelated to national security…”
Perhaps seeing this as a loophole, Bush and his legal team initially claimed that the president has the legal authority to contravene or suspend certain laws in the interests of national security in his role as commander in chief. This is clearly a specious argument and raises the obvious question of which laws the president is obligated to follow and which he is free to ignore. Bush’s stance prompted one Los Angeles Times letter writer to ask if Bush might suspend the 2008 elections if he felt it was “in the interests of national security.”
Most recently however, the White House backed off slightly from this imperialist argument and stated in a formal letter to Congress on December 22 that the September 2001 Congressional resolution, known as the “Authorization to Use Military Force” gave the president the authorization he needed for warrantless wiretaps. The resolution authorizes “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11.
Such a broad interpretation is clearly unwarranted. In an op-ed column in the Washington Post the following day, former Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, states that President Bush got no such authorization from Congress. In fact, says Daschle, just before this resolution was about to be voted on, the White House attempted to make one more change, to add the words “in the United States” after “appropriate force.” The request was rejected. Writes Daschle:

“This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority.”

Daschle adds that if the administration believed the resolution gave Bush the legal authority to go around FISA to spy on U.S. citizens, it would never have asked for the revision in language.
Bush’s admission of domestic spying without FISA-mandated warrants has led to a number of calls for his impeachment. This latest manifestation of Bush illegality is easier to focus on because there exists a specific law that prohibits it. However, it has become clear over the last two years that a budding-form of dictatorial power has been at the heart of the Bush presidency since its beginning. Illegal spying on a “few thousand” Americans -- while certainly not to be ignored – does not begin to compare in magnitude to Bush’s fraud in selling the Iraq war; and appropriately, some calls for impeachment include this fraud perpetrated on Congress. It’s interesting that this latest revelation may just be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back and opens the way for a full investigation of the white House’s actions in the post-9/11 period.
The most compelling truth remains that George W. Bush, along with members of his cabinet and staff, misled and deceived Congress and the American people about the true situation in Iraq and about their own intentions. As a consequence of this deceit, they were able to bully and trick Congress into giving Bush a green light to invade Iraq, an action he subsequently took, with results now seen as so utterly disastrous that they would have been incomprehensible to any sane, intelligent person three years ago.
More than 2,000 of our men and women in uniform have been killed, 15,000 more wounded, and at least 30,000 Iraqis have been killed, most of them civilians, including many women and children. Iraq's infrastructure has been almost totally destroyed, its environment grievously poisoned, billions of US tax dollars have vanished in the depthless pit of death and destruction that has become Iraq today, and Iraq borders on civil war. To add to this colossal debacle, U.S. troops and CIA personnel were directed to disobey the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners, setting the stage for torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq, witnessed embarrassingly by the entire world in graphic detail when the Abu Ghraib prison abuses became public. As a result the U.S. is routinely mocked as a global pariah and a threat to world peace – all thanks to one man, George W. Bush.
Bush’s arrogant defense of his illegal spying activities is reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s statement during the period of his impeachment hearings: "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal." And like with Nixon, it forces a showdown with Congress. As Jonathan Schell writes in The Nation:

“Members of Congress have no choice but to accept [Bush’s] challenge…If Congress accepts his usurpation of its legislative power, they will be no Congress and might as well stop meeting. Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.”

It should be added that such a showdown must of necessity address all of Bush’s suspect activities following 9/11. The evidence for illegal White House action is now compelling. For Congress to turn away its head now would be an egregious failure of its constitutional responsibilities. A bipartisan Congress faced up to the challenge in 1974 when the laws of the land were being usurped by a rogue president. They can do it again.

Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., worked in the defense sector of the aerospace industry for 22 years. He now teaches in the California Community College system. He can be reached at grellick@hotmail.com.

You know it's bad when Conservatives like Steve Chapman start saying these things about Bush:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Beyond the imperial presidency
by Steve Chapman

President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but doesn’t think he should be constrained by their intentions. He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government. His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration’s secret eavesdropping program is justified because “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it.”
But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What’s good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.
Even people who should be on Bush’s side are getting queasy. David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, says in his efforts to enlarge executive authority, Bush “has gone too far.”
He’s not the only one who feels that way. Consider the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in 2002 on suspicion of plotting to set off a “dirty bomb.” For three years, the administration said he posed such a grave threat that it had the right to detain him without trial as an enemy combatant. In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit agreed. But then, rather than risk a review of its policy by the Supreme Court, the administration abandoned its hard-won victory and indicted Padilla on comparatively minor criminal charges. When it asked the 4th Circuit Court for permission to transfer him from military custody to jail, though, the once-cooperative court flatly refused. In a decision last week, the judges expressed amazement that the administration suddenly would decide Padilla could be treated like a common purse snatcher—a reversal that, they said, comes “at substantial cost to the government’s credibility.” The court’s meaning was plain: Either you were lying to us then, or you are lying to us now.
If that’s not enough to embarrass the president, the opinion was written by conservative darling J. Michael Luttig—who just a couple of months ago was on Bush’s short list for the Supreme Court. For Luttig to question Bush’s use of executive power is like Bill O’Reilly announcing that there’s too much Christ in Christmas.
This is hardly the only example of the president demanding powers he doesn’t need. When American-born Saudi Yasser Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan, the administration also detained him as an enemy combatant rather than entrust him to the criminal justice system. But when the Supreme Court said he was entitled to a hearing where he could present evidence on his behalf, the administration decided that was way too much trouble. It freed him and put him on a plane back to Saudi Arabia, where he may plot jihad to his heart’s content. Try to follow this logic: Hamdi was too dangerous to put on trial but not too dangerous to release. (it's obvious, they are afraid of what would come out about prisoner treatment at the trials)
The disclosure that the president authorized secret and probably illegal monitoring of communications between people in the United States and people overseas again raises the question: Why? The government easily could have gotten search warrants to conduct electronic surveillance of anyone with the slightest possible connection to terrorists. The court that handles such requests hardly ever refuses. But Bush bridles at the notion that the president should ever have to ask permission of anyone.
He claims he can ignore the law because Congress granted permission when it authorized him to use force against Al Qaeda. But we know that can’t be true. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales says the administration didn’t ask for a revision of the law to give the president explicit power to order such wiretaps because Congress—a Republican Congress, mind you—wouldn’t have agreed. So the administration decided: Who needs Congress?
What we have now is not a robust executive but a reckless one. At times like this, it’s apparent that Cheney and Bush want more power not because they need it to protect the nation, but because they want more power. Another paradox: In their conduct of the war on terror, they expect our trust, but they can’t be bothered to earn it.

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Bulldozers to sweep New Orleans homes away
Residents fighting mass demolition project of hurricane-ravaged houses

Remnants of homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina are seen in St. Bernard Parish, La. on Dec. 17, 2005. The government plans a large-scale demolition project in the area to knock down ruined houses.
A bulldozer is likely to arrive before the new year in one of the first large-scale government bulldozing projects in the New Orleans area since Hurricane Katrina’s Aug. 29 assault. Bulldozing, with its crushing note of finality, is an approach heavy with emotions in post-hurricane Louisiana. It is so emotional that “No Bulldozing” campaigns are being waged to save the sodden homes in parts of New Orleans, where several thousand houses may be demolished soon. The battle over bulldozing is most fervent in neighborhoods such as the predominantly black Lower Ninth Ward, where skeptical residents fear that their communities will not be rebuilt.

U.S. Congress approves transfer of $600 million in aid to Israel
Of the $600 million, $133 million will be used to develop the Arrow missile program, a collaborative project between Israel Aircraft Industries and Boeing. Some $10 million will be invested in developing a missile capable of intercepting short-range missiles. Israel carried out a successful test of its Arrow anti-missile system earlier this month, which Defense Ministry officials called a response to the increasing threat of ballistic missiles in the region. The test launch came as a Russian newspaper reported that Iran has signed a deal to buy Russian tactical surface-to-air missile systems. The reports comes one day after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned of the dangers of a nuclear Iran.
While cutting social programs like college aid and food stamps here at home. Wouldn't this money be better spent helping the less fortunate or the hurricane victims than helping Israel create weapons?

Rep. Conyers Releases Potentially 'Lethal' Impeachment Doc

In the lengthy report submitted to Congress and being distributed widely across America for citizens signatures, Sen. Conyers said he took this drastic action to "save the country" after President Bush arrogantly refused to respond to a letter submitted by 122 members of Congress and more than 500,000 Americans last July, asking him whether information in the infamous Downing Street Memo, alleging doctoring of WMD intelligence, was accurate. Since Bush failed to acknowledge the letter, Conyers staff prepared the legal document released this week, finding substantial evidence that Bush and Cheney misled Congress and the American people regarding decisions to go to war with Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for entering into the war, mandated torture and cruel inhumane treatment in the execution of the war, as well as permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of the administration.

U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq Take Toll on Civilians

U.S. Marine airstrikes targeting insurgents sheltering in Iraqi residential neighborhoods are killing civilians as well as guerrillas along the Euphrates River in far western Iraq, according to Iraqi townspeople and officials and the U.S. military. Just how many civilians have been killed is strongly disputed by the Marines and, some critics say, too little investigated. But townspeople, tribal leaders, medical workers and accounts from witnesses at the sites of clashes, at hospitals and at graveyards indicated that scores of noncombatants were killed last month in fighting, including airstrikes, in the opening stages of a 17-day U.S.-Iraqi offensive in Anbar province.
On Nov. 7, the third day of the offensive, witnesses watched from the roof of a public building in Husaybah as U.S. warplanes struck homes in the town's Kamaliyat neighborhood. After fires ignited by the fighting had died down, witnesses observed residents removing the bodies of what neighbors said was a family -- mother, father, 14-year-old girl, 11-year-old boy and 5-year-old boy -- from the rubble of one house.

Iran hails “first Islamist Arab state” in Iraq

The editorial of Iran’s leading hard-line daily hailed the outcome of Iraq’s parliamentary elections as “the creation of the first Islamist state in the Arab world”, and warned against “American plots” to prevent the formation of the new Iraqi government by Iranian-backed Shiite groups.

Lincoln Group made $100 million running the Pentagon's propaganda war in Iraq It was astounding enough for Washington’s political elite: last month they discovered that the man at the heart of a scandal over the planting of US propaganda in Iraqi newspapers was a dapper but unknown 30-year-old Oxford graduate who had somehow managed to land a $100 million Pentagon contract. What is even more remarkable however, after an investigation by The Times, is that just ten years ago Christian Bailey, whose US company the Lincoln Group is under investigation for planting fake news stories in Iraqi newspapers, was a nerdy, socially awkward English school dropout called Christian Jozefowicz.

Alito Defended Use of Domestic Wiretaps
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito defended the right of government officials to order domestic wiretaps for national security when he worked at the Reagan Justice Department, an echo of President Bush's rationale for spying on U.S. residents in the war on terror.
A memo written by Alito released under a Freedom on Information Act request by Associated Press, dealt with whether government officials should have blanket protection from lawsuits when authorizing wiretaps. In its court brief, the government argued for absolute immunity for the attorney general on matters of national security.
"The danger that high federal officials will disregard constitutional rights in their zeal to protect the national security is sufficiently real to counsel against affording such officials an absolute immunity," the court held.
The decision was consistent with the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in 1972 that it was unconstitutional for the government to conduct wiretaps without court approval despite the Nixon administration's argument that domestic anti-war groups and other radicals were a threat to national security.
Democrats seized on the memo and vowed to press Alito on the matter at his confirmation hearings.
"At a time when the nation is faced with revelations that the administration has been wiretapping American citizens, we find that we have a nominee who believes that officials who order warrantless wiretaps of Americans should be immune from legal accountability," said Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Among the documents released Friday was a June 1985 memo in which Alito said abortion rights should be overturned but recommended a roadmap of dismantling them piece by piece instead of a "frontal assault on Roe v. Wade."

NY Times: NSA eavesdropping wider than White House admitted
The volume of information gathered from telephone and Internet communications by the National Security Agency without court-approved warrants was much larger than the White House has acknowledged, The New York Times reported on Saturday. Citing current and former government officials, the Times said the information was collected by tapping directly into some of the U.S. telecommunication system's main arteries. The officials said the NSA won the cooperation of telecommunications companies to obtain access to both domestic and international communications without first gaining warrants.
George W. Bush and his aides have said his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to monitoring international phone and e-mail communications linked to people with connections to al-Qaeda. What has not been acknowledged, according to the Times, is that NSA technicians combed large amounts of phone and Internet traffic seeking patterns pointing to terrorism suspects. Some officials described the program as a large data mining operation, the Times said, and described it as much larger than the White House has acknowledged.
Several officials said senior government officials went to the nation's big telecommunications companies to get access to switches that act as gateways between U.S. and international communications.
The officials who spoke to the newspaper requested anonymity because the program's details remain classified. Bush administration officials declined to comment on the operation's technical details, the Times said.

Emboldened Congress is challenging Bush
After four years in which Congress repeatedly laid down while President Bush dictated his priorities, 2005 will go down as the year legislators stood up. This week's uprising against a four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act was the latest example of a new willingness by lawmakers in both parties to challenge Bush and his notions of expansive executive power.
What is most striking is that the pushback is coming not just from Democrats and moderate Republicans, who often disagree with Bush, but also from mainstream conservatives.
The year's events, say some legislators and scholars, reflect more than just a change in the president's legislative scorecard. They suggest Bush may have reached the outer limits of a long-term project to reshape the powers of the presidency. This month's revelations about the administration's use of the highly secret National Security Agency to monitor some domestic communications without judicial review has whetted a new -- and critics say overdue -- appetite for congressional oversight. Hearings are planned next month into whether Bush acted lawfully. But several factors are working against him as he heads into the final three years of his presidency without obvious momentum. Many of the priorities he laid out at the start of the year, such as a Social Security overhaul, went nowhere.
Bush's task is complicated by a leadership crisis in the House -- prompted by the indictment of former majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) on charges of campaign finance violations -- which has made it harder to enforce loyalty from rank-and-file Republicans. In the unwieldy Senate, meanwhile, party discipline remains difficult even though Republicans hold a majority of 55 to 45, as was proved this week when the leadership had to yield on an Alaska oil-drilling proposal and the Patriot Act extension. Bush cannot run again, and the closer lawmakers get to the next congressional elections, the more inclined they are to oppose him if it helps them at home.
"This is partly a function of approval ratings," said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). "People pay attention [to polls] and start saying, 'Lets take a more independent tack.' It is frankly self-interest, self-preservation."
Democrats have shown unusual solidarity in thwarting his agenda elsewhere. They have also instituted a leadership system to discourage dissent by threatening members with the loss of committee seats if they work too closely with the GOP.
Now, some in Congress are trying to take back some of the authority they granted the Bush White House last term. When four Senate Republicans joined nearly all the Democrats in filibustering a four-year renewal of the domestic surveillance law called the Patriot Act -- which Bush ardently sought -- his Senate allies were forced to accept a temporary six-month extension instead. Yesterday, the House dealt a tougher blow to the president, agreeing only to a one-month extension. Bush repeatedly had said he would not accept "a short-term extension," but the GOP-controlled House left him no choice.

Ho Ho Ho!

Daschle: Bush Administration Was Denied Spy Authority
In Washington, former Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle has disclosed previously unknown details that challenge the Bush administration's claim it has legal authority to eavesdrop on Americans and foreign nationals in the US. The White House says the authority was implicitly granted in the joint Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force passed shortly after 9/11. But in today's Washington Post, Daschle claims the Bush administration requested, but was denied, the authority it now claims it was granted.

• Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle: "Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words 'in the United States and' after 'appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused."

Justice Dept. Admits Spy Program Does Not Comply With FISA
The disclosure comes as the Justice Department has admitted that the President's eavesdropping program does not comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Along with another wiretapping statute, FISA defines itself as:

"the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted."

The admission came in a letter to Congress Thursday.
House Rejects Senate-White House Compromise On Patriot Act
The House has rejected a Senate-approved six-month extension of the USA Patriot Act -- granting it only a one-month extension instead. The Senate measure had been seen as a face-saving measure for the Bush administration, which had pushed to make most of the Patriot Act permanent. The move will force the White House and Senate leaders back into negotiations that had stalled over concerns the proposed legislation lacked adequate safeguards for civil liberties.

Abramoff to Testify Against GOP Congressional Associates in Plea Deal
Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is reportedly close to a plea agreement that would see him provide testimony against former political and business associates. A source told the New York Times the deal could come as early as next week. Abramoff has been the focus of a wide-ranging corruption probe that has widened to implicate several Republican legislators and aides on Capitol Hill. Abramoff faces charges in Miami stemming from his purchase of several casino boats in the year 2000.

Federal Judge Calls Gitmo Detentions "Unlawful"
The Washington Post is reporting a federal judge has ruled the detention of two ethnic Uighurs at the U.S. prison is "unlawful", but says he does not have the authority to release them. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said the government has taken too long to release Abu Bakker Qassim and Adel Abdu Hakim -- who have been jailed for four years. The two have been cleared for release, but not returned to China where they would likely face torture or execution.. The two men are among nine detainees that remain at Guantanamo despite having been declared "no longer enemy combatants." In his ruling, Judge Robertson wrote: "The government's use of the Kafka-esque term 'no longer enemy combatants' deliberately begs the question of whether these petitioners ever were enemy combatants."

California Jury Awards $172M to Wal-Mart Employees
And in California, a jury has awarded $172 million dollars to over 110,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees who said they were illegally denied lunch breaks. The jury found that Wal-Mart violated a state law that guarantees an unpaid half-hour lunch break to workers who work at least six hours, and grants them an extra hour's pay if they are denied this break. Wal-Mart says it will appeal the ruling. The case is one of around 40 across the country where Wal-Mart stands accused of workplace violations.

Cast your vote

FROM MSNBC: Cast your vote HERE Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? * 82204 responses
	Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial. 87%
	No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors." 4%
	No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching. 7%
	I don't know. 1%

Heads roll at Veterans Administration:
Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed
by Bob Nichols, Project Censored Award Winner

Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the U.S., the Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war

Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War. Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.” Bernklau continued, “This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed. Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems! The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam. The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000. He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, (it) ... is far too big to hide or to cover up! Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported that ‘Gulf Era Veterans’ now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 Veterans,” said Berklau.
“The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence,” stated Berklau. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers (from the 2003 Iraq War) as ‘spectacular … and a matter of concern!’”
When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for “destroying things and killing people,” Fulk was more specific: “I would say it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people!”
Principi could not be reached for comment prior to deadline.

NYPD Planted Undercover Agents At Protests, Rallies, Vigil
The New York Times says it has obtained videotapes that show the New York Police Department conducting surveillance by planting undercover officers at anti-war protests, bike rallies, and even a street vigil for a dead cyclist. The officers held protest signs, held flowers with mourners, rode their bicycles – and videotaped the people present. In one case, the faked arrest of an undercover officer at a demonstration outside the Republican National Convention led to a serious confrontation between riot police and bystanders that led to the arrest of two people. The bystanders had shouted “Let him go!” The Times says the tapes show at least 10 undercover operatives taking part in seven public gatherings since the Republican Convention in August 2004.

New Orleans Police Officers Fired Over Videotaped Beating
In New Orleans, two police officers that took part in the videotaped beating of a 64-year old African-America man have been fired. On October 11th, Robert Davis was walking in the city’s French Quarter when police accosted him. Three officers hit Davis at least four times in the head, dragged him to the ground, and kneed him in the back. Davis was left bleeding from the head. A crew from the Associated Press caught the incident on tape. Two unnamed FBI agents were also involved in the incident, but their status has not been disclosed.

Appeals Court Rejects White House on Padilla Transfer
This news on the case of Pentagon detainee Jose Padilla -- in a strong rebuke to the Bush administration, a federal appeals court has refused to approve Padilla’s transfer to a civilian court -- and suggested the Bush administration only made the request to thwart his Supreme Court appeal. Padilla was charged only last month after being held for three years by the Pentagon. His indictment did not mention the two most serious charges cited at the time of his 2002 arrest – that he planned to detonate a “dirty bomb” and launch on attack on the US.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said prosecutors could not transfer Padilla to Miami, where he faces the new charges. In its ruling, the court suggested the Justice Department’s effort to transfer Padilla gave: "an appearance that the government may be attempting to avoid consideration of our decision by the Supreme Court.” The administration charged Padilla just days before it was expected to file papers in his Supreme Court appeal. The administration then argued the Supreme Court review was no longer necessary, as his case would be moved to a civilian court.
The judges warned the government’s actions have left "the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if justifiably, by mistake.” As a result, the court said the government’s action may hurt its "credibility before the courts." Legal experts called the decision significant in that the Four Circuit is perceived as one of the nation’s most conservative courts, a reputation that has made it a favorite for White House terrorism cases. In September, the same court granted the Bush administration sweeping authority to detain Padilla indefinitely without trial.

Surveillance Court Judges To Hold Briefing on Espionage Program
In other news, the Washington Post is reporting the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has arranged a briefing for fellow judges to address the revelation President Bush authorized domestic-spying without court warrants only they can approve. The news comes as one of the court’s 10 presiding judges, James Robertson, submitted his resignation in protest Monday.

Tamiflu found ineffective in bird flu treatment

The drug most of the world is counting on to prevent an avian flu pandemic may not be a failsafe defence, according to a New England Journal of Medicine report. The authors say they have found evidence the H5N1 virus can mutate into a form unaffected by Tamiflu -- rendering the world's ever-growing stockpiles of the drug ineffective if the mutated strain were to spread. According to the study, completed by Dr. Menno de Jong at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, four out of eight avian flu patients who were given the medication died despite the treatment. This has many health care experts worried, since many predict bird flu will be the world's next major pandemic.
Toronto infectious disease consultant Dr. Neil Rau says the study has serious implications. "Here you have the optimal situations, the right dose, the right duration, the right timing and administration and yet you have a bad outcome. That's not a good thing to see," Rau told CTV News. The drug's maker, Swiss firm Roche AG, said it's trying to figure out why it doesn't work in some patients, (Perhaps because it doesn't work at all?) and is looking at whether severe cases should be given a higher dose or longer duration of treatment. Another article in the same journal cautions doctors against prescribing the drug for patients to stockpile. It says if not administered in a large enough dose, the chemical structure of Tamiflu could allow the virus to develop a resistance to the treatment. Dr. Allison McGeer thinks this should remind doctors and researchers to keep looking for new solutions.
Bird flu has not yet appeared in North America and there is no proof that it can spread from person to person. Now, consumers are starting to have to deal with questions about Tamiflu's authenticity as well as its efficacy. U.S. customs officials recently seized a shipment of counterfeit Tamiflu in San Francisco.
Stockpiles of the drug in the UK
Abramoff: Ready to spill his guts & betray all his slimy pals

Jack Abramoff could end up pleading guilty under an arrangement that would settle a criminal case against him in Florida as well as potential charges in Washington, said the person close to the probe. Asked how many members of Congress Abramoff could implicate, the person said only that “cooperation is cooperation; it’s full cooperation.” An agreement could be reached quickly, as early as “the beginning of next week." The items included travel, golf fees, frequent meals, entertainment, campaign donations, election support for candidates and employment for officials and their relatives. The official acts included agreements to support and pass legislation, agreements to place statements in the Congressional Record, agreements to contact officials at executive branch agencies to influence agency decisions, meeting with clients of Abramoff and Scanlon and awarding contracts. Abramoff's ex-business partner, Adam Kidan, pleaded guilty last week and agreed to testify against Abramoff, putting pressure on the Washington lobbyist to reach a settlement to reduce any potential prison term. (Like they say--No honor among thieves)

Bush’s Snoopgate
By Jonathan Alter, Newsweek
Dec. 19, 2005 - Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on Dec. 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.
The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.
No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.
What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extraconstitutional action.
This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.
This time, the president knew publication would cause him great embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for that reason—and less out of genuine concern about national security—that George W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York Times story.

The "I" word...

CONSTITUTION: The 10 Suggestions?

Saddam Claims Americans Beat, Tortured Him
Saddam Hussein again grabbed center stage at his trial Wednesday with claims that Americans beat and tortured him and other defendants while in detention.
After sitting quietly through several hours of testimony, Saddam launched into an extended monologue, saying he'd been beaten "everywhere on my body. The marks are still there. I want to say here, yes, we have been beaten by the Americans and we have been tortured," Saddam told the court before gesturing toward his seven co-defendants, "one by one."
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad called Saddam's allegations "completely unfounded" but said "we are prepared to investigate." The trial's chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, said if authorities found evidence of abuse Saddam could be transferred to the physical custody of Iraqi troops.
With the trial televised across Iraq, his claims of torture at the hands of U.S. troops may resonate with Iraqis who have been shocked by the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, a scandal which led to the convictions of nine Army reservists. Saddam had been defiant and combative during previous sessions of the trial, often trying to dominate the courtroom. He and his half brother Barazan Ibrahim, who was head of the Iraqi intelligence during the Dujail crackdown, have used the procedures to protest their own conditions in detention. On some previous occasions during the trial, Saddam appeared disheveled and complained about being held in unsanitary conditions.

Bush Forcing The Nation To Choose Degradation Of Our Values Or Impeachment
The New York Observer, Joe Conason
Recklessly and audaciously, George W. Bush is driving the nation whose laws he swore to uphold into a constitutional crisis. He has claimed the powers of a medieval monarch and defied the other two branches of government to deny him. Eventually, despite his party’s monopoly of power, he may force the nation to choose between his continuing degradation of basic national values and the terrible remedy of impeachment.
Until Mr. Bush openly proclaimed as commander in chief that he can brush aside the law, cries for impeachment were heard only on the political fringe, although most Americans have long since realized that he misled America into war. Much as he is disliked and disdained by liberals, even they have shown little enthusiasm for impeachment. In addition to the obvious obstacle of a Republican-controlled Congress, there appeared to be no firm proof of an offense that justified such action. To mention the word was to be dismissed—even by people who believe that this President may well have committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”


Stand with Congressman Conyers:
Demand Censure for Bush-Cheney Misconduct, Investigate Impeachable Offenses
I am taking steps against the Bush Administration’s handling of the Iraq War and its collection of intelligence. I am going to need you to stand with me in fighting for accountability. Join me to demand censure for Bush and Cheney in addition to the creation of a Special Committee to investigate impeaching the Bush Administration for its widespread abuses of power.
I have sought answers from the administration to questions arising from the Downing Street Minutes, the Valerie Plame leak, and scores of other abominable abuses of power that pervade the activities of this White House. 121 Members of Congress and many citizens like you have joined me in asking these questions of the President.
I have just completed a thorough review of this administration’s misconduct and have produced a 250-page report that provides evidence suggesting further steps to be taken. [A copy of the report may be found at RawStory.com, and also at CensureBush.org where additional action items may be found.]
It is time to take bolder measures in our pursuit of justice. This White House has responded to questions about its conduct with misleading statements, obfuscation, and vicious attacks against their critics. We must take the next step towards restoring accountability in our federal government. To this end I have:
• Introduced a resolution of censure for both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, and;
• I am calling upon Congress to create a select committee similar to the Ervin Committee, which investigated President Nixon’s Watergate crimes. This select committee should investigate those offenses which appear to rise to the level of impeachment.
This administration must be held accountable for its misdeeds. We have considerable work to do and I am going to need your help to make this effort successful.
Join me in sending a message to the President, the media, and the American people that we are not going to stand for an imperial presidency any longer.
Sincerely,
John Conyers

Senate Blocks Arctic Drilling and Approves Budget Cuts
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 - The Senate blocked an effort today to use a Pentagon spending bill to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, but it passed a $40 billion budget-cutting plan as lawmakers traded legislative moves in a tense end-of-session chess match.
Vice President Dick Cheney, voting for the first time since mid-2003, broke a 50-50 tie on a measure to lower government spending by $39.7 billion over the next five years, a victory that Republicans said illustrated their renewed commitment to reining in federal spending. (What hypocrites--after spending Billions on the war & handouts to Oil companies).
But that measure hit a procedural snag as well, since Democrats were able to use parliamentary tactics to strip some minor policy provision from the budget bill, forcing it back to the House of Representatives for a final vote. Since members of the House left town following an all-night session that concluded Monday morning, it was unclear when that chamber would act. Senate Republicans said welfare programs would expire if nothing is done before Jan. 1.
Earlier today, Senate Republicans hailed the narrow passage of the $39.7 billion budget-cutting plan as evidence of their determination to control federal spending.
"Victory No. 1," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, declared.
The decisive vote by Mr. Cheney, who cut short an overseas trip to be on hand, was needed because five Republican senators joined all 44 Democrats and an independent in opposing the budget plan, which Democrats argued cut too deeply into social programs.
"This bill targets Americans with the greatest needs and the fewest resources," said Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is the Senate minority leader. (What's new?)


Transit Strike Leaves NYC Homeless in Cold
In a city crippled by a transit strike, Samuel Thenor hasn't worried about how to get to work. Instead, he wonders where he'll sleep. Thenor, 23, says he normally rides subways all night as "a stress reliever."
"I feel like a normal person, not a bum," he said Wednesday after wandering into Penn Station seeking warmth.
Homeless advocates and city officials say the walkout that has closed the nation's largest transit system has also potentially displaced hundreds of homeless people who use the subway's trains, stations and tunnels for shelter, especially during winter.

"A lot of people sleep on the trains in the cold weather," said Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless. "It's a survival tactic, so it's a concern when the trains are shut down."
A citywide census of the homeless taken in February 2004 found an estimated 4,395 people living on the streets. Manhattan had the largest population at 1,805. The next largest group, 845 people, was found in the subway system.
Where all the subway dwellers have gone is unclear. The city has seen only a slight increase in the number of people checking into homeless shelters since bus and subway workers walked off the job. But, as of Wednesday morning, a police homeless outreach unit had taken 71 people to shelters — more than 10 times the usual count.
Police spokesman Paul Browne said many of those were people first encountered by officers as authorities secured the vacated subway system against vandalism and sabotage. Roughly one-third of the system's 468 stations have been locked up; the rest were being patrolled around-the-clock by roughly 800 uniformed patrol officers. Homeless advocates predicted that if the strike drags on, more people will turn to the city for shelter and other help. The strike "is having a disproportionate impact on the 1-in-5 New Yorkers who are poor, including the homeless," the homeless coalition said in a statement. "We urge the transit authority to reach a swift settlement with its workers." The city Department of Homeless Services believes the shelter system "is well prepared to accommodate increased demand during the strike and throughout the winter," spokeswoman Angela Allen said.

Abramoff said to discuss plea deal
Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say, The New York Times will report.
Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a "unique resource." Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.
What began as a limited inquiry into $82 million of Indian casino lobbying by Mr. Abramoff and his closest partner, Michael Scanlon, has broadened into a far-reaching corruption investigation of mainly Republican lawmakers and aides suspected of accepting favors in exchange for legislative work.

Sound of Impact

A CounterPunch Special Report
9/11: Missing Black Boxes in World Trade Center Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by NTSB, Concealed by FBI
By DAVE LINDORFF
One of the more puzzling mysteries of 9-11 is what ever happened to the flight recorders of the two planes that hit the World Trade Center towers. Now it appears that they may not be missing at all.Counterpunch has learned that the FBI has them.
Flight recorders (commonly known as black boxes, though these days they are generally bright orange) are required on all passenger planes. There are always two-a flight data recorder that keeps track of a plane's speed, altitude, course and maneuvers, and a cockpit voice recorder which keeps a continuous record of the last 30 minutes of conversation inside a plane's cockpit. These devices are constructed to be extremely durable, and are installed in a plane's tail section, where they are least likely suffer damaged on impact. They are designed to withstand up to 30 minutes of 1800-degree heat (more than they would have faced in the twin towers crashes), and to survive a crash at full speed into the ground.
All four of the devices were recovered from the two planes that hit the Pentagon and that crashed in rural Pennsylvania. In the case of American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, the FBI reports that the flight data recorder survived and had recoverable information, but the voice recorder was allegedly too damaged to provide any record. In the case of United Airlines Flight 93, which hit the ground at 500 mph in Pennsylvania, the situation was reversed: the voice recorder survived but the flight data box was allegedly damaged beyond recovery.But the FBI states, and also reported to the 9-11 Commission, that none of the recording devices from the two planes that hit the World Trade Center were ever recovered.
There has always been some skepticism about this assertion, particularly as two N.Y. City firefighters, Mike Bellone and Nicholas De Masi, claimed in 2004 that they had found three of the four boxes, and that Federal agents took them and told the two men not to mention having found them. (The FBI denies the whole story.) Moreover, these devices are almost always located after crashes, even if not in useable condition.
Now there is stronger evidence that something is amiss than simply the alleged non-recovery of all four of those boxes. A source at the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that has the task of deciphering the date from the black boxes retrieved from crash sites-including those that are being handled as crimes and fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI-says the boxes were in fact recovered and were analyzed by the NTSB.
"Off the record, we had the boxes," the source says. "You'd have to get the official word from the FBI as to where they are, but we worked on them here."
The official word from the NTSB is that the WTC crash site black boxes never turned up. "No recorders were recovered from the World Trade Center," says the NTSB's Lopatkiewicz. "At least none were delivered to us by the FBI." He adds that the agency has "always had a good relationship' with the FBI and that in all prior crime-related crashes or flight incidents, they have brought the boxes to the NTSB for analysis.
For its part, the FBI is still denying everything, though with curious bit of linguistic wiggle room. "To the best of my knowledge, the flight recording devices from the World Trade Center crashes were never recovered. At least we never had them," says FBI spokesman Stephen Kodak.
What the apparent existence of the black boxes in government hands means is unclear.
Why would the main intelligence and law enforcement arm of the U.S. government want to hide from the public not just the available information about the two hijacked flights that provided the motivation and justification for the nation's "War on Terror" and for its two wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, but even the fact that it has the devices which could contain that information? Conspiracy theories abound, with some claiming the planes were actually pilotless military aircraft, or that they had little or nothing to do with the building collapses. The easiest way to quash such rumors and such fevered thinking would be openness.
Instead we have the opposite: a dark secrecy that invites many questions regarding the potentially embarrassing or perhaps even sinister information that might be on those tapes.

The Administration has Contorted the Constitution
No President is Above the Law
By Sen. ROBERT BYRD
Senate floor speech, December 19, 2005

Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.
We have been stunned to hear reports about the Pentagon gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. Those Americans who choose to question the Administration's flawed policy in Iraq are labeled by this Administration as "domestic terrorists."
We now know that the F.B.I.'s use of National Security Letters on American citizens has increased one hundred fold, requiring tens of thousands of individuals to turn over personal information and records. These letters are issued without prior judicial review, and provide no real means for an individual to challenge a permanent gag order.
Through news reports, we have been shocked to learn of the CIA's practice of rendition, and the so-called "black sites," secret locations in foreign countries, where abuse and interrogation have been exported, to escape the reach of U.S. laws protecting against human rights abuses.
We know that Vice President Dick Cheney has asked for exemptions for the CIA from the language contained in the McCain torture amendment banning cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. Thank God his pleas have been rejected by this Congress.
Now comes the stomach-churning revelation through an executive order, that President Bush has circumvented both the Congress and the courts. He has usurped the Third Branch of government ­ the branch charged with protecting the civil liberties of our people ­ by directing the National Security Agency to intercept and eavesdrop on the phone conversations and e-mails of American citizens without a warrant, which is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. He has stiff-armed the People's Branch of government. He has rationalized the use of domestic, civilian surveillance with a flimsy claim that he has such authority because we are at war. The executive order, which has been acknowledged by the President, is an end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it unlawful for any official to monitor the communications of an individual on American soil without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
What is the President thinking? Congress has provided for the very situations which the President is blatantly exploiting. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, housed in the Department of Justice, reviews requests for warrants for domestic surveillance. The Court can review these requests expeditiously and in times of great emergency. In extreme cases, where time is of the essence and national security is at stake, surveillance can be conducted before the warrant is even applied for.
This secret court was established so that sensitive surveillance could be conducted, and information could be gathered without compromising the security of the investigation. The purpose of the FISA Court is to balance the government's role in fighting the war on terror with the Fourth Amendment rights afforded to each and every American.
The American public is given vague and empty assurances by the President that amount to little more than "trust me." But, we are a nation of laws and not of men. Where is the source of that authority he claims? I defy the Administration to show me where in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the U.S. Constitution, they are allowed to steal into the lives of innocent America citizens and spy.
When asked yesterday what the source of this authority was, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had no answer. Secretary Rice seemed to insinuate that eavesdropping on Americans was acceptable because FISA was an outdated law, and could not address the needs of the government in combating the new war on terror. This is a patent falsehood. The USA Patriot Act expanded FISA significantly, equipping the government with the tools it needed to fight terrorism. Further amendments to FISA were granted under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002. In fact, in its final report, the 9/11 Commission noted that the removal of the pre-9/11 "wall" between intelligence officials and law enforcement was significant in that it "opened up new opportunities for cooperative action."
The President claims that these powers are within his role as Commander in Chief. Make no mistake, the powers granted to the Commander in Chief are specifically those as head of the Armed Forces. These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens. They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing within the powers granted in the Commander in Chief clause that grants the President the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians. We must not allow such groundless, foolish claims to stand.
The President claims a boundless authority through the resolution that authorized the war on those who perpetrated the September 11th attacks. But that resolution does not give the President unchecked power to spy on our own people. That resolution does not give the Administration the power to create covert prisons for secret prisoners. That resolution does not authorize the torture of prisoners to extract information from them. That resolution does not authorize running black-hole secret prisons in foreign countries to get around U.S. law. That resolution does not give the President the powers reserved only for kings and potentates.
I continue to be shocked and astounded by the breadth with which the Administration undermines the constitutional protections afforded to the people, and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the Legislative and Judicial Branches. The President has cast off federal law, enacted by Congress, often bearing his own signature, as mere formality. He has rebuffed the rule of law, and he has trivialized and trampled upon the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizures guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution.
We are supposed to accept these dirty little secrets. We are told that it is irresponsible to draw attention to President Bush's gross abuse of power and Constitutional violations. But what is truly irresponsible is to neglect to uphold the rule of law. We listened to the President speak last night on the potential for democracy in Iraq. He claims to want to instill in the Iraqi people a tangible freedom and a working democracy, at the same time he violates our own U.S. laws and checks and balances? President Bush called the recent Iraqi election "a landmark day in the history of liberty." I dare say in this country we may have reached our own sort of landmark. Never have the promises and protections of Liberty seemed so illusory. Never have the freedoms we cherish seemed so imperiled.
These renegade assaults on the Constitution and our system of laws strike at the very core of our values, and foster a sense of mistrust and apprehension about the reach of government.
I am reminded of Thomas Payne's famous words, "These are the times that try men's souls."
These astounding revelations about the bending and contorting of the Constitution to justify a grasping, irresponsible Administration under the banner of "national security" are an outrage. Congress can no longer sit on the sidelines. It is time to ask hard questions of the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the CIA. The White House should not be allowed to exempt itself from answering the same questions simply because it might assert some kind of "executive privilege" in order to avoid further embarrassment.

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.--
Edward R. Murrow

Stand with the TWU!

Members of T.W.U. Local 100, which represents the 33,700 transit workers whose three-year contract expired on Friday, often invoke two mottoes: "We Move New York" and "United, Invincible." Both speak to the union's confidence in its ability to shut down the city, as it has done twice before, in 1966 and 1980.
"A transit strike, from the point of view of union power, is almost perfect. It is not absolutely devastating in a life-or-death way, but on the other hand is incredibly potent as a weapon."
Transit workers are more militant because they are conscious of that power, but the very conditions of their job also grind them down and generate resentment, said Marian Swerdlow, a sociologist and the author of "Underground Woman," a memoir of her four years as a subway conductor.
"The working conditions are more physically onerous, the treatment by managers more disrespectful, and the abuse from the public more hurtful, than any other group of public workers in the city experiences. Whoever it is that works as a transit worker, they do a hard and dirty job, which is often quite dangerous and becomes visible to the public only when something goes wrong."
The looks, sounds and smells of subway car barns and bus depots have changed little in a century. And unlike many in the service and clerical industries, transit workers know that their jobs cannot be easily outsourced, although technological innovations have begun to threaten the security of some workers, like subway conductors.
"Transit workers, because of the schedules they work and the conditions they work in, are often in industrial environments that most New Yorkers have left behind a long time ago," said Dr. Snyder, an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University in Newark. "The idea that a motorman has to scramble to find a place to urinate on a busy day is not something most of us face on the job."
Roger Toussaint, the Trinidadian native who has led Local 100 since 2000, echoed the views of aggrieved transit workers, past and present, during a rally yesterday afternoon outside Gov. George E. Pataki's office in Midtown.
"When it comes to dignity and respect, transit workers are tired, tired, tired," he said.

All the more reason why they should be in the 95% tax bracket:
Study Shows the Superrich Are Not the Most Generous
Working-age Americans who make $50,000 to $100,000 a year are two to six times more generous in the share of their investment assets that they give to charity than those Americans who make more than $10 million.
The least generous of all working-age Americans in 2003, the latest year for which Internal Revenue Service data is available, were among the young and prosperous - the 285 taxpayers age 35 and under who made more than $10 million - and the 18,600 taxpayers making $500,000 to $1 million. The top group had on average $101 million of investment assets while the other group had on average $2.4 million of investment assets.
On average these two groups made charitable gifts equal to 0.4 percent of their assets, while people the same age who made $50,000 to $100,000 gave gifts equal to more than 2.5 percent of their investment assets, six times that of their far wealthier peers.
Those making $50,000 to $100,000 made gifts equal to nearly 2 percent of their investment assets, compared with less than 1 percent for those making $200,000 to $10 million. But those with income greater than $10 million, whose investments averaged $81 million, made gifts equal to 1.54 percent of their assets.
The superrich, with incomes of $10 million or more and average assets of $214 million, made gifts equal to 1.5 percent of their assets.

The Wrong shall fail

Distinguished University of Minnesota Philosophy Professor Joins 9/11 Fight, Saying the Truth Must Be Uncovered
“I stand with Steve Jones, professor of physics at BYU and (former CIA analyst) David Ray Griffin, professor emeritus of Theology at Claremont and other students and scholars of 9/11, who believe that extraordinary times require extraordinary measures,” said James H. Fetzer, PhD., a distinguished McNight University professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth.
Fetzer has published more than 100 articles and reviews as well as 20 books in the philosophy of science and on the theoretical foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science.
“One fascinating aspect of 9/11 is that the official story involves collaboration between some nineteen persons in order to bring about illegal ends and thus obviously qualifies as a conspiracy theory,” wrote Fetzer. “When critics of the government offer an alternative account that implicates key figures of the government in 9/11, that obviously qualifies as a ‘conspiracy theory’, too. But what matters now is that we are confronted by alternative accounts of what happened on 9/11, both of which qualify as "conspiracy theories". It is therefore no longer rational to dismiss one of them as a "conspiracy theory" in favor of the other. The question becomes, which of two ‘conspiracy theories’ is more defensible?”
After setting the record straight on conspiracy theories, Fetzer in his paper delves into an analysis of the 9/11 evidence, saying that the controlled demolition of the WTC must be taken seriously.
“Most Americans may not realize that no steel-structure high-rise building has ever collapsed from fire in the history of civil engineering, either before or after 9/11,” wrote Fetzer. “If we assume that those fires have occurred in a wide variety of buildings under a broad range of conditions, that evidence suggests that these buildings do not have a propensity to collapsed as an effect of fire. That makes an alternative explanation, especially the use of powerful explosives in a controlled demolition, a hypothesis that must be taken seriously.”
In his paper, he states:
“If a small fighter jet rather than a Boeing 757 had hit the Pentagon, that would tend to explain the small impact point, the lack of massive external debris, and a hole in the inner ring of the building, which the fragile nose of a Boeing 757 could not have created. It would also suggest why parts of a plane were carried off by servicemen, since they might have made the identification of the aircraft by type apparent and falsified the official account. A small fighter also accommodates the report from Danielle O'Brien, an air traffic controller, who said of the aircraft that hit, "Its speed, maneuverability, the way that it turned, we all thought in the radar room—all of us experienced air traffic controllers—that it was a military plane.”
In concluding his academic look at 9/11, Fetzer boldly asks Americans to endeavour to seek the truth in every possible way, suggesting the “government-dominated” mass media has presented one of the biggest obstacles.
“Which raises the question, who had the power to make these things happen and to cover it up,” asks Fetzer. “Once the evidence has been sorted out and appropriately appraised, the answer is no longer very difficult to find. Like the assassination of JFK, the events of 9/11 required involvement at the highest levels of the American government. This conclusion, moreover, receives confirmation from the conduct of our highest elected officials, who took extraordinary steps to prevent any formal investigation of 9/11 and, when it was forced upon them by tremendous political pressure, especially from the survivors of victims of these crimes, they did whatever they could to subvert them. I therefore believe that those of us who care about the truth and the restoration of responsible government in the US have an obligation to make use of every possible media venue from talk radio and the internet to newspapers and television whenever possible. The American people can act wisely only when they know the truth. So, while the truth is said to "make us free", the truth only matters when the American people are able to discover what is true. Obstacles here that are posed by the government-dominated mass media, including the use of stooge "reporters" and of prepackaged "news releases", only make matters that much more difficult. As John Dean asks in Worse than Watergate (2004), if there has ever been an administration more prone to deceiving the American people in our history, which one could it be?”

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” - Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, before committing suicide at the Nuremberg Trials
“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed.” -- George Orwell, "1984"
George Bush's desperate litany of failure and lies
He made no mention of secret wiretaps of American citizens, FBI spying on anti-recruitment & peace protesters, secret torture chambers across the world, profiteering in New Orleans & the abandonment of its scattered citizens who are having their requests for help denied by the federal government. It was sort of like the "Five Minutes Hate" in 1984, just more reasons for continuing the ill-conceived and failure of a war:

Three days ago, in large numbers, Iraqis went to the polls to choose their own leaders. In coming weeks a new government formed and a people who suffered in tyranny for so long will become full members of the free world. (With their own Islamic theocracy)
This election will not mean the end of violence. (Heaven forbid! What would the Carlysle Group do?) But it is the beginning of something new: constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East. And this vote means that America has an ally of growing strength in the fight against terror. (An ally? Is he insane? We already have an ally in the heart of the middle east--Israel, the major world proponent of terror against Arabic people. How can they both be our "allies"?) From this office, nearly three years ago, I announced the start of military operations in Iraq. Our coalition confronted a regime that defied United Nations Security Council resolutions, violated a cease-fire agreement, sponsored terrorism and possessed, we believed, weapons of mass destruction. (Identical charges could be make against Israel, and we've never taken action against them--in fact, we fund their military activities) If you think the terrorists would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might make sense to leave them alone.(Yes, that is exactly what I think) These terrorists view the world as a giant battlefield (Don't you, George? Don't Rummy & Cheney, too?) The terrorists do not merely object to American actions in Iraq and elsewhere -- they object to our deepest values and our way of life. (Especially when our way of live is achieved by large American corporations stealing their natural resouces and destroying their way of life) And if we were not fighting them in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Southeast Asia and in other places, the terrorists would not be peaceful citizens -- they would be on the offense, and headed our way. (Bullshit, the same old booga-booga drumbeat)
My conviction comes down to this: we do not create terrorism by fighting the terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them. And we will defeat the terrorists by capturing and killing them abroad. (The conventional wisdom is not to poke a hornet's nest with a stick)
America, our coalition, and Iraqi leaders are working toward the same goal (Oh really? I wouldn't be too sure about that--the consensus in Iraq is that they want the occupation to end)
First, our coalition will remain on the offense -- finding and clearing out the enemy (Yes, that's worked really well so far, creating a magnet for anyone in the Middle East to come and join in the fight against the occupying forces) Second, we are helping the Iraqi government establish the institutions of a unified and lasting democracy, in which all of Iraq's peoples are included and represented. Third, after a number of setbacks, our coalition is moving forward with a reconstruction plan to revive Iraq's economy and infrastructure. (Really? Last I remember reading was that since we have spent all the money on KBR Halliburton & other private contractors, we have no funds to repair their water treatment plants, electrical grid, sewage treatment plants, and other parts of their infrastructure destroyed by our bombings and military activities)
We will continue to listen to honest criticism...Yet there is a difference between honest critics who recognize what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right. (But George, NOTHING IS RIGHT!) Defeatism may have its partisan uses, but it is not justified by the facts. (You are the one neglecting to consider the facts) For every scene of destruction in Iraq, there are more scenes of rebuilding and hope. (That is completely untrue, and the majority of Iraqis want the US out of their country) I know that some of my decisions have led to terrible loss -- and not one of those decisions has been taken lightly. (Only loss of human lives, on the other hand those decisions have led to incredible profits for your war profiteer buddies)
Yet now there are only two options before our country -- victory or defeat. (And your upcoming defeats will be very sweet) To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor and I will not allow it. (Well, you are certainly an expert on Recklessness & Dishonor) (Talk about setting up a semantic labyrinth, now the "slogan" will be "We can't retreat before victory"

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” - Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels

"I Did Not Volunteer To Be Lied To, To Fight An Illegal War And Protect Multinational Corporations"

John Stockton's son Simon told him before going to Iraq "Dad, there is a madman over there and he can deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes." But, Mr. Stockton said: "The madman turned out to be the man in charge of our country."

U.S. Troops in Iraq Pepper Cheney With Questions About War
During his visit to Iraq, Cheney met with a group of U.S. soldiers who expressed reservations about the war. One Marine Corporal said "From our perspective, we don't see much as far as gains"

An Impeachable Offense? Bush Admits Authorizing NSA to Eavesdrop on Americans Without Court Approval
President Bush has admitted he secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without ever seeking court approval. Famed constitutional attorney Martin Garbus and former intelligence officer, Christopher Pyle both say it is an impeachable offense. The New York Times exposed the story, but why did they hold it for more than a year?

Sen. Leahy: No More Secret Orders, Secret Courts, Secret Torture
Many legal experts have accused the President of breaking the law by ordering the wiretappings without a court warrant as required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

• Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT): "This warrant-less eavesdropping program is not authorized by the patriot act, it's not authorized by any act of congress, and it's not overseen by any court. And according to reports it has been conducted under a secret presidential order, based on secret legal opinions by the same justice department, lawyers who argued secretly, that the president could order the use of torture. Mr. President, it is time to have some checks and balances in this country, we are a democracy. We are a democracy. Let's have checks and balances, not secret orders and secret courts and secret torture, and on and on."

Senate Blocks Renewal of USA Patriot Act
The New York Times broke the story on the domestic spying on Friday after holding it for a year at the request of the White House. Hours after the story appeared in the paper, the Senate handed Bush a major legislative defeat by failing to renew portions of the USA Patriot Act. The Senate fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to end a Democratic-led filibuster. Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin said the Times story highlighted why the powers of the government must be curtailed under the Patriot Act.

Bush Says Iraq War Is Good for Israel
Why wasn't this in his televised speech? You know it's bad when the Israelis begin to disagree...
In sharp contrast to the growing consensus of Jerusalem's security and political establishment, President Bush argued this week that Israel's safety depends on democratization of the Arab world.
"If you're a supporter of Israel, I would strongly urge you to help other countries become democracies," President Bush declared Monday, in a major address defending American policy in Iraq and his wider vision for the region. "Israel's long-term survival depends upon the spread of democracy in the Middle East."
Israeli security officials argued the opposite view at this month's American-Israeli strategic dialogue, warning that regime change and democratization threatened to destabilize the Middle East. Israel sees its security tied to regimes such as Egypt and Jordan, and fears that democratization could turn those countries against Israel.
"I am skeptical when it comes to the supposition that democracy is a panacea. Not all democracies are good," said General Shlomo Brom, former chief of the Israeli army's strategic planning division. "What about a democracy in Egypt — let's say — which is governed by the Muslim Brotherhood? Would Egypt then have better relations with Israel than under Mubarak's regime?"
In a speech on Wednesday, Bush criticized anti-war opponents who would suggest that America went to war for Israel. At the same, he and other Republicans defending his foreign policy by linking it to Israel's security needs.
But several Israeli experts insisted that any pro-war argument — even a valid one — linked to Israel's security could end up undermining American public support for the American-Israeli relationship.
"I maintain that the U.S. presence there actually causes harm to some of our interests," said Brom, who is currently a guest scholar at the federally funded United States Institute of Peace in Washington. "Take Iran. America's presence in Iraq does not allow an appropriate dealing with the Iranian problem. It also erodes, over time, the powerful image of the United States. That's not good for Israel, as an ally of the U.S."

Even Reuters disbelieves it
Iraq group posts video of U.S. hostage's 'killing'
DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group posted on the Internet on Monday a video it said showed the killing of a U.S. security consultant it had abducted earlier this month. The Islamic Army in Iraq said on December 8 it had killed the man, identified as Ronald Schultz, because the U.S. government had not fulfilled its demands, which included freeing all Iraqi prisoners and compensation for Iraqi families. The brief video showed a gunman repeatedly shooting an automatic rifle at a blindfolded man who was kneeling on the ground. It did not show his face.The video, which was posted on an Islamist Web site often used by Iraqi militant groups, included a still photograph of identity cards bearing Schultz's name and picture.
Many foreign hostages have been released, but around 50 have been executed, some by beheadings broadcast on the Internet.

Blair Knew About London Attacks
By Anadolu News Agency (aa)
For the past two days, Britain’s Tony Blair government has become the new target of heavy criticism over the London subway bomb attacks. After it surfaced that British intelligence had issued a clean report on two individuals who were the suspects in the attacks, The Sunday Times claimed Prime Minister Blair was pre-warned of the bomb attacks that occurred on July 7. The paper reported Blair had turned down a detailed investigation last week since he was afraid of not sufficiently assessing the intelligence information sent to him.

FLASHBACK to July 11 & 8, 2005 on this blog:

Blair 'to reject bombs inquiry'
"As police and security services on Sunday continued searching for the bombers - thought to be Islamist terrorists - Downing Street said the prime minister believed an inquiry now into the outrage which killed at least 49 people would be a "ludicrous diversion." Instead, in a statement to the Commons on Monday following last week's Group of Eight summit, Mr Blair is expected to focus on the direction the government must take to ensure future terrorism is defeated."
and:
"Tony Blair is expected to reject Conservative demands for an inquiry into the London bombings when he makes a statement to MPs later on Monday. Conservative leader Michael Howard has called for an inquiry, to see if any lessons could be learned.

"It's not time for a knee-jerk response," the spokesman added."
What makes an inquiry a knee-jerk response?

Who warned the British Police prior to the blasts?
British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said. Israel was holding an economic conference near the scene of one of the explosions. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was supposed to attend, but the attacks occurred before he arrived. Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy and said warnings of possible attacks had been received, the official said.

Who profits from these attacks?
The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address and economic summit. The warning contradicts the fact that the original explanation of a power surge went out for an hour or more. They knew it was an attack but put out a false explanation. Plus why did Netanyahu get a warning and the victims didn't? But, of course, now the mainstream media is starting to change their story, saying that there was no warning.

The trail of slime...

Writer Suspended for Taking Story Payments
SAN DIEGO - The Copley News Service is suspending syndicated columnist Doug Bandow while it investigates allegations he accepted payments from Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write positive stories about Abramoff's clients.
"We want to make sure we have all the facts before we take final action, but it has never been our policy to distribute work paid for by third parties whose role is not disclosed by the columnist," said Glenda Winders, vice president and editor of CNS.
On Thursday, Bandow resigned from the Cato Institute after confirming a report by BusinessWeek Online that said Abramoff paid him for writing between a dozen and 24 articles over nearly a decade. The Washington think-tank's Web site Friday referred to Bandow as a "former senior fellow." BusinessWeek Online said Bandow acknowledged accepting payments from Abramoff, quoting him as saying, "It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it."
Bandow did not return a call or e-mail for comment early Saturday.
Abramoff, a top Republican fundraiser and lobbyist, was indicted in August by a federal grand jury in Florida on charges of fraud and conspiracy stemming from his role in the 2000 purchase of a fleet of gambling boats. He also is being investigated on suspicion of defrauding Indian tribe clients of millions of dollars and using improper influence on members of Congress.
Bandow's case is the latest involving members of the news media accused of taking money for stories without disclosing it to readers. Earlier this year, congressional auditors concluded that the Education Department engaged in illegal "covert propaganda" by hiring columnist Armstrong Williams to endorse the No Child Left Behind Act without requiring him to disclose he was paid.
Congress' Government Accountability Office is looking into the Heath and Human Services Department's contract with columnist Maggie Gallagher to help promote a marriage initiative. Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon paid a consulting firm, the Lincoln Group, and Iraqi newspapers to plant favorable stories about the Iraq war and rebuilding efforts.



Reid Seeks Probe of Bush Domestic Spying
WASHINGTON - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid called Sunday for congressional hearings and investigations into President Bush's authorization of domestic spying as part of the war on terror.
"This Congress has done very little oversight," Reid, D-Nev., said on "Fox News Sunday." "There should be an investigation and hearings." Reid acknowledged that he was briefed by the administration about the surveillance program "a couple of months ago." But he said the program apparently has been going on for four years and "there's no way the president can pass the buck."
Bush acknowledged Saturday that since October 2001 he has authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails of people within the United States without seeking warrants from courts.

Domestic Spying Issue Inflames Debate Over Patriot Act Renewal
Washington Post
President Bush escalated his attack yesterday on Senate Democrats and four Republicans for blocking efforts to renew the USA Patriot Act, but key lawmakers insisted they will not budge until stronger privacy protections are added to the domestic surveillance law.
Democrats hit back yesterday, saying Bush's aggressive use of domestic spying must be curbed by Congress and courts to protect civil liberties. "There is going to be no breakthrough" in the Senate impasse, said Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), adding that "the act as written is bad, and we need time to work it out."
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, said of Bush's speech: "Fear mongering and false choices do little to advance either the security or liberty of Americans."
The stalemate marks an increase in tensions between the administration and Congress over Bush's anti-terrorism and surveillance policies and the conduct of the war in Iraq. Although Democrats have led the criticisms, a number of Republican lawmakers have joined in, pressing for a troop withdrawal timetable, a curb on interrogation techniques for detainees and, now, stricter limits on the administration's powers to spy on residents of the United States.
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a leader of the filibuster, said yesterday: "Nobody wants these parts of the Patriot Act to expire. We want to fix them before making them permanent, by including important protections for the rights and freedoms of innocent American citizens."
The Senate fell eight votes short Friday of the 60 needed to end the filibuster and allow a vote on the proposed renewal of the Patriot Act, which the House approved Wednesday. Four Republican senators joined all but two Democrats in voting to sustain the filibuster.
Critics say the proposed renewal would do too little to let targeted people mount a meaningful challenge to national security letters and special subpoenas used by federal agents pursuing records.
Greatly complicating the bid to renew the act was last week's New York Times article disclosing that Bush had signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on citizens and foreign nationals in this country. Patriot Act provisions set to expire Dec. 31 include those permitting "roving wiretaps" of suspects, FBI access to their business and library records, and the pursuit of "lone wolf" suspects with no known ties to foreign powers or agents.
On Friday, Frist likened the bill's opponents to those who "have called for a retreat and defeat strategy in Iraq."

New Patriot Act Amendments would Create Secret Police
Infowars
The Patriot Act Amendments to HR3199 include a portion for creating a Secret Service Uniformed Division. This "Secret Police" will have rights to warrantless arrest. They can be called upon by the president at special events of national significance, as determined by the President.

(1) When directed by the President, the United States Secret Service is
authorized to participate, under the direction of the Secretary of Homeland
Security, in the planning, coordination, and implementation of security
operations at special events of national significance, as determined by the
President.

the entire text:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/R?cp109:FLD010:@1(hr333)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r109:FLD001:H11280

Argentina to Pay Entire IMF Debt 4 Years After Default
Argentina said it will pay back its entire $9.8 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund, severing 22-year-old ties with the lender that the government blames for its 2001 debt default.
President Nestor Kirchner, who at rallies and speeches this year has called IMF officials ``rude'' and demanding, said at a press conference in Buenos Aires the government will make the payment after three years of economic growth bolstered foreign currency reserves. The economy grew 9.2 percent in the third quarter on a surge in public spending, the government said today. Kirchner, 55, vowed to take the decision on several occasions this year to ensure the administration isn't dependent on policies endorsed by the Washington-based lender, including spending caps and higher utility rates. The announcement comes two days after neighboring Brazil said it would repay its $15.5 billion IMF debt.
``The objective of this is more political than economic,'' said Alberto Bernal, an economist at Bear, Stearns & Co. in New York. ``It's to get rid of the IMF obligations.''

HISTORY CORNER:
Eisenhower's German POW Death Camps - A US Guard's Story
By Martin Brech
In October, 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the "Battle of the Bulge," my training was cut short. My furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box cars and shipped to the front. . In late March or early April, 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was forbidden. Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out members of the S.S. (I found none.)
In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets; many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring and their misery from exposure alone was evident.
Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease their hunger pains. Quickly, they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including no medical assistance.
Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders from "higher up." No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was "out of line," leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners' food and that these orders came from "higher up." But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with and would sneak me some.
When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense," and one officer angrily threatened to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, Why?," he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit.
This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.
Famine began to spread among the German civilians also. It was a common sight to see German women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for something edible -- that is, if they weren't chased away. Hunger made German women more "available," but despite this, rape was prevalent and often accompanied by additional violence. In particular I remember an eighteen-year old woman who had the side of her faced smashed with a rifle butt and was then raped by two G.I.s. Even the French complained that the rapes, looting and drunken destructiveness on the part of our troops was excessive. In Le Havre, we'd been given booklets warning us that the German soldiers had maintained a high standard of behavior with French civilians who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this we failed miserably.
READ MORE

Britain ran torture camp after WWII: report
Britain ran a secret prison in Germany for two years after the end of World War II where inmates including Nazi party members were tortured and starved to death, the Guardian says. Citing Foreign Office files that were opened after a request under the Freedom of Information Act, the newspaper says Britain had held men and woman at a prison in Bad Nenndorf until July 1947. Locals at the time said you could hear prisoners scream at night. The Foreign Office files detailed an investigation carried out by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward, who found evidence of torture and said at least two inmates had starved to death while another had been beaten to death.
"Even today, the Foreign Office is refusing to release photographs taken of some of the 'living skeletons' on their release," the newspaper said.
Former prisoners told Inspector Hayward they had been whipped as well as beaten and any prisoner thought to be uncooperative during interrogation was taken to a punishment cell.
"Threats to execute prisoners, or to arrest, torture and murder their wives and children were considered 'perfectly proper' on the grounds that such threats were never carried out," the paper reports.
Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi members or former members of the SS, rounded up in an attempt to prevent any Nazi insurgency, although a significant number were also businessmen who had done well under Adolf Hitler, the paper says. One of the men who starved to death, Walter Bergmann, had offered to spy for the British and fell under suspicion because he spoke Russian.
"There seems little doubt that Bergmann, against whom no charge of any crime has ever been made, but on the contrary, who appears to be a man who has given every assistance, and that of considerable value, has lost his life through malnutrition and lack of medical care," Inspector Hayward wrote in his report.
The newspaper says the then Prime Minister Clement Attlee had been briefed about the camp and was told guards were instructed "to carry out physical assaults on certain prisoners with the object of ... making them more amenable to interrogation".
Three men were court-martialled following the report. Two were acquitted and another found guilty of neglect of inmates and dismissed from the service.

Psy-Ops American Style

Bush Acknowledges Approving Eavesdropping
President Bush said Saturday he has no intention of stopping his personal authorizations of a post-Sept. 11 secret eavesdropping program in the U.S., lashing out at those involved in revealing it while defending it as crucial to preventing future attacks. Angry members of Congress have demanded an explanation of the program, first revealed in Friday's New York Times and whether the monitoring by the National Security Agency without obtaining warrants from a court violates civil liberties. One Democrat said in response to Bush's remarks on the radio that Bush was acting more like a king than the elected president of a democracy.
Reacting to Bush's defense of the NSA program, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said the president's remarks were "breathtaking in how extreme they were." Feingold said it was "absurd" that Bush said he relied on his inherent power as president to authorize the wiretaps. "If that's true, he doesn't need the Patriot Act because he can just make it up as he goes along. I tell you, he's President George Bush not King George Bush. This is not the system of government we have and that we fought for."

It's dirty tricks all over again
By Arianna Huffington
READING THE new reports that the Pentagon is conducting surveillance of peaceful antiwar groups and protests, I feel like I'm having a bad '60s flashback. I'm remembering how the Defense Department aggressively infiltrated antiwar and civil rights groups during that era, spying and compiling files on more than 100,000 Americans — and how J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI used every dirty trick in the "black bag operation" handbook to sabotage the antiwar and civil rights movements. Now it looks like those ugly days of government paranoia and officially sanctioned lawbreaking might be making a comeback. A secret Defense Department database obtained by NBC News and the Washington Post this week indicates that Pentagon intelligence and local law enforcement agencies are using the guise of the war on terror to keep an eye on the constitutionally protected activities of antiwar activists.
The Pentagon appears to be doing so despite the existence of strict legal restrictions on the military maintaining records on domestic civilian political activity. According to NBC, the database includes "at least 20 references to U.S. citizens," while other documents indicate that "vehicle descriptions" are also being noted and analyzed. And it's not just the Pentagon. Documents recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been recording the names and license plate numbers of peaceful antiwar protesters. The Bush administration has a long and ignominious history of rhetorical intimidation, routinely equating dissent with a lack of patriotism and a lack of support for our troops. Now, however, it seems to be moving on to actual intimidation.
The national security agencies responsible for the Pentagon database were originally tasked with creating "a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats." This intelligence-gathering system is a tangle of acronyms — including CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity), TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notice), and NORTHCOM (U.S. Northern Command) — but they are all geared toward helping the government keep ahead of terrorists.
There is even a U.S. Army-operated 800 number for reporting suspicious activity, 1-800-CALL-SPY. I kid you not, dial it and you will hear: "You've reached the U.S. Army Call-Spy Hotline….Please leave a detailed message of the incident you wish to report. Your call is important. If you wish to be contacted, please leave your name and telephone number…."
But, as usual with this administration, these agencies now appear to be overreaching, moving away from identifying "possible terrorist pre-attack activities" and heading into the murky waters of spying on U.S. citizens who are doing nothing more than voicing their objections to U.S. policy.
Congress needs to flex its oversight muscle — and make sure that the tragic mistakes of the past are not repeated. It wasn't that long ago that Hoover's notorious COINTELPRO program was illegally infiltrating Students for a Democratic Society and setting out to destroy the reputations and lives of "Negro radicals" such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Our government lied, cheated, harassed, intimidated, burglarized, vandalized, framed and spread false rumors — to say nothing of keeping voluminous files on everyone from John Lennon to Lucille Ball — in an effort to quash legitimate dissent against the Vietnam War and the racist practices of the South. We can't let it happen again.

Media use backfires on U.S. Military
Many ask if Pentagon altered information to make case for war
Six months after U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad in April 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put his name on a 73-page directive to the U.S. military to employ the news media, public opinion and the Internet as a weapon of war. Now, however, the Pentagon's use of information, in war and at home, may be backfiring. Citing efforts to establish and control media outlets within Iraq to the control of information at home, an increasingly skeptical Congress, media and public are examining how the Bush administration and Pentagon made the case for the war in Iraq, and whether civilian and uniformed leaders used disinformation to influence the public's support for military operations abroad.
Rumsfeld and other top administration officials have vehemently denied misleading the public or using false information or intelligence to build the case against Iraq. But surveys suggest that the public has grown increasingly skeptical of the administration's case for war. A New York Times/CBS News poll last week found that 57 percent of those questioned said Congress is not asking enough questions about the administration's policies on Iraq.
A review is under way in the Senate over the administration's use of intelligence to make the case for war, especially within the Pentagon, and still another by the Pentagon's inspector general is examining the influence of one of Rumsfeld's former top aides, Douglas Feith, over the use of prewar intelligence. The most recent accusations of media manipulation--a Los Angeles Times report that the U.S. military has been using a Washington public relations firm, the Lincoln Group, to pay Iraqi newspapers to run favorable stories--are still unresolved. Though the Senate Armed Services Committee met with Pentagon officials to examine the charges, Rumsfeld and committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) have said more information is needed to determine what really happened. The Pentagon and military officials in Iraq are investigating the claim.
The Information Operations Roadmap signed by Rumsfeld on Oct. 30, 2003, notes that the Pentagon must "keep pace with emerging threats and . . . exploit new opportunities afforded by innovation and rapidly developing information technologies." The plan provides the architecture for the use of information and intelligence in military operations, a Defense Department official said, shaping how commanders should use everything from the Internet, the services' public affairs offices and psychological operations to shape the outcome of battles and win converts. It also warns that in today's global, 24-hour news environment, psychological warfare operations, or "psyops," that are meant to fool an enemy could easily get picked up and reported by the media.
"The likelihood that psyop messages will be replayed to a much broader audience, including the American public, requires that specific boundaries be established," the roadmap states. (Or maybe that's what they're hoping will happen...)
Within weeks after U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad in April 2003, employees of a Pentagon contractor, SAIC Corp., complained that the supposedly independent Iraqi television network they were hired to help create for the new government was becoming a propaganda organ of the U.S.-led civilian authority and the military.
"There were some pretty solid plans and papers drawn up to establish a democratic media," said Don North, a former NBC journalist who was hired to help create the network. "Once we got there, it started changing. It was always difficult to know who was really pulling the strings, but I don't think it was the military on the scene. I think it was from the Pentagon or even the White House."
Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, in a lengthy 2003 study, cited 50 stories in U.S. publications based on information that the Pentagon disseminated even though it knew that the information was false. "It's a culture that believes that it's OK to manipulate the story," Gardiner said. "It goes all the way from the senior leaders down to the battalion commanders."
Rumsfeld recently blamed the media for failing to report the full story of Iraq and instead relying on readily available images of destruction for news reports. "To find the truth out takes weeks," he said on PBS last week. "To spread something that's not true takes five minutes. And it's all over the globe." (He should know).

Whew!

NYC Transport Workers Announce Selective Strike As Talks Halt
A midnight deadline for the resolution of a public transportation labor dispute has passed with the city and the Transport Workers Union unable to reach an agreement. The union has announced a selective strike that will initially affect the city’s public buses. Union officials say the strike could eventually extend to the subway system.

Bush Administration Drops Opposition to Senate Torture Ban
The Bush administration has finally dropped opposition to a Senate measure that bans torture of detainees in US custody. Republican Senator John McCain, who spearheaded the torture ban, made the announcement with President Bush Thursday.

• Arizona Senator John McCain: “I'm very pleased that we reached this agreement, and now we can move forward and make sure that the whole world knows that, as the President has stated many times, that we do not practice cruel, inhuman treatment or torture. This agreement basically does two things: One, puts into the Army Field Manual the specific procedures for interrogations. And two, it prohibits cruel, inhumane [treatment] -- or torture.”

In recent months, the White House had aggressively lobbied for an amendment that would have exempted CIA operatives from the torture ban. At one point, the Bush administration threatened to veto Congress’ entire defense bill if it included McCain’s provisions. But opposition has come even within the administration’s own party. On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House passed a non-binding resolution backing McCain’s effort.

Workers in New Orleans Denied Pay, Proper Housing and Threatened with Deportation
In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina whipped the Gulf Coast region, companies like Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root - a Halliburton subsidiary - and EEC Operating Services were given huge contracts by the federal government to clean up hurricane debris and start rebuilding the area. Undocumented immigrants and other economically marginalized people were lured to the region by promises of work and good pay. But it turns out that many of those workers have never been paid and have little recourse in collecting their promised checks. Some undocumented workers were even threatened with deportation when they demanded their pay. An article on Salon.com stated that the problem is "a shadowy labyrinth of contractors, subcontractors and job brokers, overseen by no single agency, that have created a no man's land where nobody seems to be accountable for the hiring-and abuse of these workers." Listen to interview

New Orleans Residents Face Eviction From Homes as Rents Skyrocket and Legal Protections Remain Weak
Three months after fighting for their lives in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, many survivors are now fighting to keep their homes in the city of New Orleans. Listen to interview with attorney Ishmael Muhammad and a N.O. resident being evicted about the rising costs of rent and the legal challenges facing evacuees. They are victims of a combination of massive forced evictions taking place throughout the city, a failure of the city to reopen public housing projects and price gouging that is raising rents as much as three times as high as their pre-Katrina level. Again, it is mostly the poor, and African-Americans who face these conditions. Louisiana had some of the weakest tenant protection laws in the nation even before Katrina hit. And in the weeks after the storm, landlords began evicting thousands of people a day, most of whom had evacuated the city. The landlords cite increased insurance costs and the need to repair damaged property. They also point out that neither FEMA nor the state, are helping them to pay their bills. But there have been many reports of landlords jacking up the rents of undamaged property and evicting people who tried to pay their rent. The vast majority of public housing units in the city have also not been reopened, even though it is estimated that about half of the units are either ready for occupation or can easily be made so.

WTO Talks At Standstill in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, considerable divisions between industrialized and developing countries at the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization are lowering expectations for significant agreements before talks end Sunday.

• European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson: "It is hard to see where progress can be achieved in Hong Kong if talks continue in their present direction. I see no point in an outcome here that simply locks in low ambition, diminishes benefits for developing countries and falls short of our responsibilities to the global economy."

Negotiations have stalled on a number of key trade issues. On Thursday, the Group of 77 – the coalition of 132 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in the Third World – announced they would reject any deal that eliminates protections for their farmers and access to foreign markets. Another group of developing nations, the Group of 20 – which represents half the world’s population – accused the US and European Union of holding up talks by refusing to cut state agricultural subsidies.

Meanwhile, outside the meetings, thousands of protesters continue to make their voices heard.

• Oxfam’s Alison Woodhead: "The system in theory should work, but at the moment it's rigged in favour of the richest countries. The rich countries benefit from the trade rules as they exist at the moment. They're able to protect their own markets and destroy the markets of poorer countries."

Fourth Ex-U.S. Official Charge in Iraq Graft Case
A fourth official to work for the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq has been arrested and charged with corruption while overseeing Iraqi reconstruction projects. Government investigators say Lt. Col. Debra Harrison received at least $80,000 dollars, a luxury sports-utility vehicle and several illegal weapons in exchange for steering reconstruction contracts to a US company operating in Iraq. Three other former occupation officials have been arrested on similar charges since October. Prosecutors say several further indictments are forthcoming.

Return of the King

Viggo Mortensen blasts President Bush

Now, that's a REAL man!
Viggo Mortensen isn’t backing off his stinging critique of George Bush. Viggo took some heat for criticizing the president’s policies lately, and in a recent interview, Mortensen is unrepentant.“I’m not anti-Bush; I’m anti-Bush behavior,” Mortensen told Progressive magazine. “In other words, I’m against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.”
Mortensen also blasted the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and discussed why he supported anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who has protested the war in Iraq since her son was killed there. “Cindy Sheehan and how badly Katrina was bungled are two shots to the heart,” he said. “I hope the beast does fall down soon. What’s more shameful than the criminal negligence that made a bad situation much, much worse is the arrogant attitude after the fact. The outright lying—even though we’ve become accustomed to lying from this Administration—has broken new ground in the field of dishonesty. They’re so clumsy in their attempts to come off well. And there is so little heart in what they say. Even the sound of their voices is so false."


Saddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli Says
If at first you don't succeed, lie, lie again!

Rumsfeld's war plan: First, attack the messenger

In other words it's those pesky damned reporters. They tend to focus too much on roadside mines and bombs blowing up American soldiers and Marines and the foreign jihadist nut-job suicide bombers. Not to mention the assassins who slaughter political enemies in broad daylight on the roads of Baghdad.

Bush: Iraq Invasion My Responsibility
Bush Takes Blame for Iraq Invasion, Intel
Does that mean you can be prosecuted for War Crimes some day?

Over 77,000 Katrina Home Loan Applications Rejected
New York Times is reporting hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast families are being denied government loans to rebuild homes lost or damaged in Hurricane Katrina. According to the Times, the Small Business Administration -- the federal agency in charge of the main disaster recovery program for businesses and homeowners -- has processed only a third of the 276,000 loan applications it has received. Of those that have been reviewed, the government has rejected 82 percent of home loan applications – over 77,000 rejections. In New Orleans, approved loans appear to be heavily tilted towards wealthy neighborhoods over poor ones. Herbert Mitchell, director of the Small Business Administration’s disaster assistance program, told the Times the government could not risk taxpayer money by lending to people with low incomes or poor credit history. Mitchell said: "We're just dealing with the demographics in the area."

Patriot Act Renewal Moves to Senate as House Approves Renewal
On Capital Hill, the House of Representatives voted to renew the Patriot Act Wednesday, setting the stage for a showdown in the Senate. A bipartisan Senate group threatens to hold up the bill over concerns it would give the FBI too much power over civil liberties. The Bush administration is lobbying intensively for a renewal. Republican leaders are reportedly considering a fall-back position that would extend the current Patriot Act by one year if efforts to push through new provisions fail.

House Passes Non-Binding Measure in Support of Senate Torture Ban
Meanwhile, the House overwhelmingly approved a non-binding vote Wednesday in support of Senator John McCain’s push for a Senate ban on torture of detainees in US custody. The measure is now being negotiated in Congress, where the White House is pushing for an amendment that would exempt interrogators from punishment.

Bloomberg Pushing For Heavy Fines Ahead of Possible Transit Strike
In New York City, the city is gearing up for the possibility of a transit workers’ strike that could begin Friday. With a contract deadline set for midnight tonight, negotiators with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the transit workers' union warn they are at a standstill. The biggest differences center around an MTA proposal to create a two-tier pension and health insurance plan for the workers. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also pushing for severe fines that would force the union to pay $1 million dollars and individual transit workers $25,000 dollars on the strike’s first day -- with those fines doubled each successive day.

Scientists in Spain link additive to obesity
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a food additive (E-621) used as a flavor enhancer in a variety of foods. Until now it has been generally considered as one of the least offensive additives used by the food industry. But Spanish scientists have concluded that aswell as enhancing flavour, MSG also enhances hunger and as such could be one of the key factors behind the problem of obesity, especially among children.

RIC BURNS documentary disinformation
Last night, I saw the PBS Ric Burns' & Lisa Ades' doc "Center of the World", the history of the WTC. I was looking for disinformation, and what I heard blew my mind. I guess Burns & Ades didn't bother to fact-check their sources' statements. This source has been called a liar by NYPD:
William Langewiesche, a journalist who writes for Atlantic Monthly , was filmed stating that the "burning paper" ignited by the jet fuel was hot enough to melt the steel buildings. Paper has an ignition temperature of approximately 232 degrees Celsius. Tempered steel is harder and more durable than untempered steel. The melting point of Tempered Steel is 2,740 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, burning paper cannot melt a steel building.
The floors were grids of steel. In order for a floor to fall, hundreds of joints had to break simultaneously on 236 exterior columns and 47 interior columns of solid steel. FEMA does not bother to explain how this could occur. Langewiesche has also written a book about the clean up at the WTC that states a fire company killed by the collapse were looting the Gap store, and their truck, filled with stolen items, was dug out of the rubble, a story the NYFD contends is a lie:

Firefighters Protest New Book
Chanting “liar, liar,” more than 100 city firefighters showed up at a Manhattan book-signing Monday night to denounce an author who wrote that firefighters engaged in looting at the World Trade Center
Firefighters are protesting a new book, which says that some firefighters looted stores while the towers were collapsing. The book "American Ground" states that when workers uncovered a fire truck in the rubble, they found stolen Gap jeans were in Ladder 4. The author of the new book, William Langewiesche, said that he never actually saw the jeans or the fire truck. The firefighters who manned Ladder Truck 4 all died in the collapse. Firefighters protesting this book say that the author is a liar.

The narration stated, amazingly, that Building 7 was destroyed by "raging gas fires" supposedly enough to pulverize into dust a 47 story steel structure. How many people know enough about steel construction & engineering to disbelieve these fallacies? The documentary did, however, explain that the three WTC buildings each collapsed in approximately 10 seconds, (impossible except for the use of explosives). It also mentioned the continous burning the the sub-basements for Months after the controlled demolition of the buildings, which would only result from the heat of explosive charges. Leslie Robertson, one of the buildings' designers, also mentioned that the buildings were constructed with a supporting outer structure, composed of 220,000 TONS of steel, (they used 80 tons per day when constructing the buildings). How can that be destroyed by fire? It can't.
As a reader's letter to the Village Voice, commenting on last week's less-than-in-depth story "The 9/11 Files"states:

"(The) piece on the questions surrounding the bombing of the World Trade Center states that 'we still don't know why' Seven World Trade Center collapsed (the 9/11 Commission report & FEMA's report couldn't figure it out either) ...it appeared to be a textbook demolition job, in which all of the building's underpinnings gave way at the exact same instant -- a physical impossibility otherwise."

Another reader wrote in:

"Even if the towers had 'sheetrock over steel' (they in fact contained TONS of concrete) it still would have been an impossibility for a fire to bring them down. The only fire that can weaken steel beams to that extent is one caused by an oxygen-fuelled blast furnace. The only way they could have collapsed was by planted explosives. Do you have the guts to print an accurate story? So far, the few that have have been dismissed as lunatics, whereas the real lunatics believe a concrete building can burn down." (Of course, the heading on these readers' letters is "Conspiracy Corner")

1,000 days of lies

Bush Says Iraq's Path to Democracy Like That of U.S.
Um, yeah. And does anyone remember what the colonial Americans did to the occupying Imperialist forces from Britain?

Bush Blames Arabic Media For The Deteriorating Image of U.S.
On Monday Bush blamed the Arabic media for the deteriorating image of the United States abroad.

• President Bush: "Look, I recognize we got an image issue...It's difficult. I mean, their propaganda machine is pretty darn intense. And so we're constantly sending out messages, we're constantly trying to reassure people, but we're also -- we're also acting. And that's what's important for our citizens to realize."

President Bush's comments come just weeks after it was revealed that the U.S. has been paying the private firm the Lincoln Group to plant articles in the Iraqi press and to pay off sympathetic Iraqi journalists. Last month the Daily Mirror of London reported President Bush considered bombing the headquarters of Al Jazeera in 2004.

Bush: 30,000 Iraqis Dead So Far in War
Wednesday marks the 1,000th day since the U.S. invasion. On Monday President Bush again defended his decision to go to war and said 30,000 Iraqis had died so far in the war. The admission marks one of the few times an administration official has cited a death toll in Iraq. Some outside estimates put the Iraqi civilian death toll over 100,000. (And that 100,000 was a year ago, try 130,000, George).

1,000 Days Of War By The Numbers:

• US Cost Of War So Far: $204.4B
• Allied Troops Killed: 2,339
• US Troops Wounded: 15,955
• Number Of Journalists Killed: 66
• Average Monthly Salary Of An Iraqi Soldier: $343
• Number Of Daily Attacks Last Month: 90
• Number Of WMD's Found: 0...

Poll: More Than 2/3 of Iraqis Oppose U.S. Troops
In Iraq, ABC News and Time Magazine has conducted a nationwide poll of Iraqis ahead of this week's elections. It found that more than two thirds of those surveyed oppose the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. Only 44 percent of the country feels the country is better off now that it was before the war.

Supreme Court to Hear Texas Redistricting Case
In Washington, the Supreme Court announced Monday it would determine whether the Texas state legislature illegally redrew the state's Congressional district barriers two years ago. The redrawn map resulted in the Republicans gaining an extra four seats in Congress. Critics say the redistricting diluted the voting strength of Latinos and African-Americans in Texas in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Department lawyers initially recommended rejecting Texas's redistricting plan but were overruled by senior Justice officials.
(This is what the whole Tom DeLay/TRMPAC debacle was for).

Yes, We Murder Journalists

If the Bush administration had its way, the whole criminal siege of Fallujah, with its depraved indifference to human life, would have gone unnoticed. The corporate media’s Pentagon-spun propaganda stories about liberation would have gone unchallenged by any unseemly intrusions of reality. Toward that end, the Pentagon declared Fallujah a no-reporting zone, barring all un-embedded journalists from the city. In short, the Pentagon hoped to control all images coming out of the massacre. And they would have pulled it off, had it not been for one independent freelance journalist from Alaska, Dahr Jamail, and an Al Jazeera TV crew.

Bush's original "Detention" order

This was the order signed by Bush in November of 2001 authorizing the imprisonment without trial of people suspected of connections to Al Qaeda or to terror in general. Note that section three appears to require humane treatment of detainees.

Cheney's torture camp tour
Informed sources in Washington report that when Dick Cheney flew to Poland for the 60th anniversary ceremonies marking the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp last January, his three day visit also included a clandestine visit to a secret CIA camp in Poland where suspected "Al Qaeda" prisoners were being subjected to torture.

BUSH REMARK MOST GRAVE?
“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”
“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
----------
The President must swear to uphold the US Constitution before taking office. Thus Bush's assertion, if pubicly corroborated, constitutes grounds for impeachment. An additional complication is that anyone in public office hearing such a remark - deeming it serious - and not revealing it is then complicit with the president and thus must be seen in sympathy with the sentiment.

California Executes Stanley Tookie Williams
In California Stanley Tookie Williams has died after being executed by lethal injection early this morning by the state of California. He was 51 years old. On Monday California Governor Arnold "Terminator" Schwarzenegger refused to spare his life and grant him clemency. (Look forward to losing the next election, Arnie).

Raise the White Flag

Psy-Ops Come Home: Anti-war Party = "Defeaticrats"
Have government-bought preferred opinions come home from Iraq? Did they ever leave?
A propaganda operation at the hands of the Bush Administration and its supporters is underway as I write this. The intention is to manufacture consent in the continuance of a great national purpose. To do this, the propaganda must manipulate, confuse and ultimately assist in the defeat of the great enemy. The enemy is all around you. It looks like you. It IS you. That's right, the American people are the enemy.The propaganda is aimed at you and it is about you. This propaganda effort is about smearing the opinion of the majority of Americans as mere politics and "defeatism".
The Drudge Report reports that, according to a "top GOP operative", "the Republican National Committee will provide state parties with a web video prior to release that shows a white flag waving over images of Democrat leaders making anti-war remarks." It’s hard to believe this is the first time the Republicans have heard of such an idea. It’s also hard to believe they haven’t been behind the smear tactics before now.

(The $70 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy currently in congress is ostensibly to "encourage business and create jobs". In addition, congress has cut billions out of programs to help the poor, handicapped, & elderly. The real results of keeping the money in the pockets of the wealthy leads to a country with statistics such as the following. When is this country going to wake up and end this economic slavery?)
From "Hidden Holocaust USA" from "Dirty Truths" by Michael Parenti:
Some Grim Statistics:
Conservatives are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this is. The only thing that matches their love of country is the remarkable indifference they show toward the people who live in it. To their ears the anguished cries of the dispossessed sound like the peevish whines of malcontents. They denounce as "bleeding hearts" those of us who criticize existing conditions, who show some concern for our fellow citizens. But the dirty truth is that there exists a startling amount of hardship, abuse, affliction, illness, violence, and pathology in this country. The figures reveal a casualty list that runs into many millions. Consider the following estimates. In any one year:

• 27,000 Americans commit suicide.
• 5,000 attempt suicide; some estimates are higher.
• 26,000 die from fatal accidents in the home.
• 23,000 are murdered.
• 85,000 are wounded by firearms.
• 38,000 of these die, including 2,600 children.
• 13,000,000 are victims of crimes including assault, rape, armed robbery, burglary, larceny, and arson.
• 135,000 children take guns to school.
• 5,500,000 people are arrested for all offenses (not including traffic violations).
• 125,000 die prematurely of alcohol abuse.
• 473,000 die prematurely from tobacco-related illnesses; 53,000 of these are nonsmokers.
• 6,500,000 use heroin, crack, speed, PCP, cocaine or some other hard drug on a regular basis.
• 5,000+ die from illicit drug use. Thousands suffer serious debilitations.
• 1,000+ die from sniffing household substances found under the kitchen sink. About 20 percent of all eighth-graders have "huffed" toxic substances. Thousands suffer permanent neurological damage.
• 31,450,000 use marijuana; 3,000,000 of whom are heavy usuers.
• 37,000,000, or one out of every six Americans, regularly use emotion controlling medical drugs. The users are mostly women. The pushers are doctors; the suppliers are pharmaceutical companies; the profits are stupendous.
• 2,000,000 nonhospitalized persons are given powerful mind-control drugs, sometimes described as "chemical straitjackets."
• 5,000 die from psychoactive drug treatments.
• 200,000 are subjected to electric shock treatments that are injurious to the brain and nervous system.
• 600 to 1,000 are lobotomized, mostly women.
• 25,000,000, or one out of every 10 Americans, seek help from psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, or medical sources for mental and emotional problems, at a cost of over $4 billion annually.
• 6,800,000 turn to nonmedical services, such as ministers, welfare agencies, and social counselors for help with emotional troubles. In all, some 80,000,000 have sought some kind of psychological counseling in their lifetimes.
• 1,300,000 suffer some kind of injury related to treatment at hospitals.
• 2,000,000 undergo unnecessary surgical operations; 10,000 of whom die from the surgery.
• 180,000 die from adverse reactions to all medical treatments, more than are killed by airline and automobile accidents combined.
• 14,000+ die from overdoses of legal prescription drugs.
• 45,000 are killed in auto accidents. Yet more cars and highways are being built while funding for safer forms of mass transportation is reduced.
• 1,800,000 sustain nonfatal injuries from auto accidents; but 150,000 of these auto injury victims suffer permanent impairments.
• 126,000 children are born with a major birth defect, mostly due to insufficient prenatal care, nutritional deficiency, environmental toxicity, or maternal drug addiction.
• 2,900,000 children are reportedly subjected to serious neglect or abuse, including physical torture and deliberate starvation.
• 5,000 children are killed by parents or grandparents.
• 30,000 or more children are left permanently physically disabled from abuse and neglect. Child abuse in the United States afflicts more children each year than leukemia, automobile accidents, and infectious diseases combined. With growing unemployment, incidents of abuse by jobless parents is increasing dramatically.
• 1,000,000 children run away from home, mostly because of abusive treatment, including sexual abuse, from parents and other adults. Of the many sexually abused children among runaways, 83 percent come from white families.
• 150,000 children are reported missing.
• 50,000 of these simply vanish. Their ages range from one year to mid-teens. According to the New York Times, "Some of these are dead, perhaps half of the John and Jane Does annually buried in this country are unidentified kids."
• 900,000 children, some as young as seven years old, are engaged in child labor in the United States, serving as underpaid farm hands, dishwashers, laundry workers, and domestics for as long as ten hours a day in violation of child labor laws.
• 2,000,000 to 4,000,00 women are battered. Domestic violence is the single largest cause of injury and second largest cause of death to U.S. women.
• 700,000 women are raped, one every 45 seconds.
• 5,000,000 workers are injured on the job; 150,000 of whom suffer permanent work-related disabilities, including maiming, paralysis, impaired vision, damaged hearing, and sterility.
• 100,000 become seriously ill from work-related diseases, including black lung, brown lung, cancer, and tuberculosis.
• 14,000 are killed on the job; about 90 percent are men.
• 100,000 die prematurely from work-related diseases.
• 60,000 are killed by toxic environmental pollutants or contaminants in food, water, or air.
• 4,000 die from eating contaminated meat.
• 20,000 others suffer from poisoning by E.coli 0157-H7, the mutant bacteria found in contaminated meat that generally leads to lifelong physical and mental health problems. A more thorough meat inspection with new technologies could eliminate most instances of contamination--so would vegetarianism.

At present:

• 5,100,000 are behind bars or on probation or parole; 2,700,000 of these are either locked up in county, state or federal prisons or under legal supervision. Each week 1,600 more people go to jail than leave. The prison population has skyrocketed over 200 percent since 1980. Over 40 percent of inmates are jailed on nonviolent drug related crimes. African Americans constitute 13 percent of drug users but 35 percent of drug arrests, 55 percent of drug convictions and 74 percent of prison sentences. For nondrug offenses, African Americans get prison terms that average about 10 percent longer than Caucasians for similar crimes. (And many prisons are now privatized industries that make a lot of money)
• 15,000+ have tuberculosis, with the numbers growing rapidly; 10,000,000 or more carry the tuberculosis bacilli, with large numbers among the economically deprived or addicted.
• 10,000,000 people have serious drinking problems; alcoholism is on the rise.
• 16,000,000 have diabetes, up from 11,000,000 in 1983 as Americans get more sedentary and sugar addicted. Left untreated, diabetes can lead to blindness, kidney failure and nerve damage.
• 160,000 will die from diabetes this year.
• 280,000 are institutionalized for mental illness or mental retardation. Many of these are forced into taking heavy doses of mind control drugs.
• 255,000 mentally ill or retarded have been summarily released in recent years. Many of the "deinstitutionalized" are now in flophouses or wandering the streets.
• 3,000,000 or more suffer cerebral and physical handicaps including paralysis, deafness, blindness, and lesser disabilities. A disproportionate number of them are poor. Many of these disabilities could have been corrected with early treatment or prevented with better living conditions.
• 2,400,000 million suffer from some variety of seriously incapacitating chronic fatigue syndrome.
• 10,000,000+ suffer from symptomatic asthma, an increase of 145 percent from 1990 to 1995, largely due to the increasingly polluted quality of the air we breathe.
• 40,000,000 or more are without health insurance or protection from catastrophic illness.
• 1,800,000 elderly who live with their families are subjected to serious abuse such as forced confinement, underfeeding, and beatings. The mistreatment of elderly people by their children and other close relatives grows dramatically as economic conditions worsen.
• 1,126,000 of the elderly live in nursing homes. A large but undetermined number endure conditions of extreme neglect, filth, and abuse in homes that are run with an eye to extracting the highest possible profit.
• 1,000,000 or more children are kept in orphanages, reformatories, and adult prisons. Most have been arrested for minor transgressions or have committed no crime at all and are jailed without due process. Most are from impoverished backgrounds. Many are subjected to beatings, sexual assault, prolonged solitary confinement, mind control drugs, and in some cases psychosurgery.
• 1,000,000 are estimated to have AIDS as of 1996; over 250,000 have died of that disease.
• 950,000 school children are treated with powerful mind control drugs for "hyperactivity" every year--with side effects like weight loss, growth retardation and acute psychosis.
• 4,000,000 children are growing up with unattended learning disabilities.
• 4,500,000+ children, or more than half of the 9,000,000 children on welfare, suffer from malnutrition. Many of these suffer brain damage caused by prenatal and infant malnourishment.
• 40,000,000 persons, or one of every four women and more than one of every ten men, are estimated to have been sexually molested as children, most often between the ages of 9 and 12, usually by close relatives or family acquaintances. Such abuse almost always extends into their early teens and is a part of their continual memory and not a product of memory retrieval in therapy.
• 7,000,000 to 12,000,000 are unemployed; numbers vary with the business cycle. Increasing numbers of the chronically unemployed show signs of stress and emotional depression.
• 6,000,000 are in "contingent" jobs, or jobs structured to last only temporarily. About 60 percent of these would prefer permanent employment.
• 15,000,000 or more are part-time or reduced-time "contract" workers who need full-time jobs and who work without benefits.
• 3,000,000 additional workers are unemployed but uncounted because their unemployment benefits have run out, or they never qualified for benefits, or they have given up looking for work, or they joined the armed forces because they were unable to find work.
• 80,000,000 live on incomes estimated by the U.S. Department of Labor as below a "comfortable adequacy"; 35,000,000 of these live below the poverty level.
• 12,000,000 of those at poverty's rock bottom suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition. The majority of the people living at or below the poverty level experience hunger during some portion of the year.
• 2,000,000 or more are homeless, forced to live on the streets or in makeshift shelters.
• 160,000,000+ are members of households that are in debt, a sharp increase from the 100 million of less than a decade ago. A majority indicate they have borrowed money not for luxuries but for necessities. Mounting debts threaten a financial crack-up in more and more families.

A Happy Nation?

Obviously these estimates include massive duplications. Many of the 20 million unemployed are among the 35 million below the poverty level. Many of the malnourished children are also among those listed as growing up with untreated learning disabilities and almost all are among the 35 million poor. Many of the 37 million regular users of mind-control drugs also number among the 25 million who seek psychiatric help.

You are what you eat

Can you imagine IF the avian flu did suddenly appear in the US chicken population, with its hideous conditions of overcrowding and pre-existing disease and filth, how fast it would spread? And here they are (UPI) telling us that "importing countries" use "screening tests" that can't tell "immunized" birds from sick birds? Could that be because someone wanted to export "sick" birds to those countries?

U.S. in dilemma over poultry vaccine
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The United States is stockpiling poultry vaccine to fight a possible bird flu outbreak, but is reluctant to use it for fear of hurting exports, a report said. Scientists say the best way to prevent a human pandemic of avian influenza is to stop the H5N1 virus while it is still mostly a problem in birds, the Wall Street Journal reported. But poultry-industry executives say importing countries would likely close their borders to chickens from states where poultry had been vaccinated. That's because the screening tests many importing countries use for bird flu can't tell whether chickens have been treated with a vaccine or infected with the disease itself.

The U.S. exports about 15 percent of its chicken meat annually, with $2.2 billion in shipments last year, the Journal said. The Agriculture Department bought 40 million doses of poultry vaccine last year for four strains of bird flu and is seeking money from Congress to increase its stockpile to a total of 110 million doses. It wants about two-thirds of its stockpile to be vaccines that protect poultry from the H5N1 strain. The H5N1 strain has killed about 70 people in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, China and Cambodia.

Israel's prospective strike against nuclear Iran

To complicate matters, Iran has enough capacity to strike against US naval forces in the Gulf region to draw in the United States. According to the Times article, Israel has been monitoring Iranian nuclear development using a signals listening station in Northern Iraq, presumably with tacit US cooperation. That is either a damaging leak, or a signal to Iran that the US and Israel are in this together.

Bush's War Means More Bush Lies

The president would like us to believe the Iraqi insurgency against U.S. occupation forces 10,000 miles away that is fought with small arms and homemade bombs is a grave and imminent security threat to the United States.
(booga booga)

Pope says materialism pollutes Christmas spirit Pope Benedict warned on Sunday against rampant materialism which he said was polluting the spirit of Christmas. (Of course, he is living in a palace...)

WHOM not to vote for in 2006:
How Abramoff Spread the Wealth

We create our own reality...

White House Liars on the Defensive
The bullying Bush insider warned: "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Ron Suskind says he "didn't fully comprehend" this now famous remark at the time (summer 2002). But he believes "it gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency." I think so too. This is an administration that as Suskind observes rejects "the principles of the enlightenment and empiricism." It believes that not only does might make right, but might makes what's real. It manufactures truth. The "wise," in the empire-building community that transcends empirical reality, create their own reality not only through vicious violence but through control of information. They know that information is power. So they fabricate it, disseminate it through the corporate press, pay for positive spin in that "free press" , stage favorable press briefing questions, buy positive press coverage of the U.S. occupation in the "free" Iraqi press. They talk among themselves about "perception management" as though the perceptions of the masses like threatening flood waters must be channeled and contained lest they get out of control. They petulantly punish truth-telling whistle-blowers, disparage ex-officials become honest and knowledgeable critics, and seek to intimidate objective academics.

U.S. Rebuffs Red Cross Request for Access to Detainees Held in Secret

The United States said Friday that it would continue to deny the International Committee of the Red Cross access to "a very small, limited number" of prisoners who are held in secret around the world, saying they are terrorists being kept incommunicado for reasons of national security and are not guaranteed any rights under the Geneva Conventions. (or because they might tell the Red Cross what they've been subjected to--hey, maybe the Red Cross could get "intelligence" out of them that the torturers couldn't???) (My question--why doesn't the New York Times question this instead of just "reporting" it?)

How very strange. The Nazis allowed the Red Cross access to all their camps, POW, slave-labor, all of them. The US refuses. QED the US is doing something worse than the Nazis did.

Condi's trail of lies
Condoleezza Rice's contradictory, misleading and outright false statements about the US and torture have taken America's moral standing - and her own - to new depths.

• "Torture is a term that is defined by law. We rely on our law to govern our operations."
• "The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances."
  
• "Moreover, in accordance with the policy of this administration: The United States has respected - and will continue to respect - the sovereignty of other countries."
• "The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured."

Rice's legal interpretations were authoritative, bland and bogus. It is hard to say whether they should be called Orwellian for their intentional falsity or Kafkaesque for their unintentional absurdity.

Two Workers Accused of Stealing 9-11 Funds
Two former employees in the city medical examiner's office were charged with embezzling millions of dollars intended to help identify victims of the World Trade Center attack. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency forwarded millions of dollars to help the medical examiner buy computer hardware, software and support services to identify the dead. Prosecutors said Friday that the defendants, both administrators in the medical examiner's office, steered an $11.4 million contract to a company controlled by an associate of Venkataram's. The company did some work, but most of the money went to companies that did little or nothing and were sometimes controlled by the defendants, prosecutors said. About $5.5 million was allegedly transferred at Venkataram's direction to bank accounts in India. (Well, there wasn't much left to identify...)

Family Upset Over Marine's Body Arriving As Freight

Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag -- greeted by a color guard.But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners -- stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo. John Holley and his wife, Stacey, were stunned when they found out the body of their only child, Matthew, who died in Iraq last month, would be arriving at Lindbergh Field as freight.

The. Biggest. Scandal. Ever! Phony Front Companies Cycle Millions Back to GOP!
Brent Wilkes & Mitchell Wade - Bagmen in the Successful Plot to Take Over the United States and Enrich GOP Officeholders
I hope you are sitting down when you read this. The Duke Cunningham scandal goes much deeper than just the $2.4 million in bribes being reported by the media. There is a lot the media is not telling you. Ever wonder why the Republicans have SO much money in every national election?
If you were a totally crooked neo-con former CIA financier Republican who hangs with the corrupt Delay-Abramoff crowd, what would be the most unethical, diabolical way to funnel SO much money to the Republican Party and neo-con schemes that you could take back the government from the Democrats? Easy! With your corrupt Republican buddies, form a slew of your own brand-new Defense Companies, submit bids on things the Pentagon never even asked for to the Delay/Cunningham network and Bingo!--those contributions to the GOP and K Street will flow in like never before. Then you and your criminal gang take over the United States of America with your ill-gotten gains. Once in power, you can use your connections to weasel your way iuto intelligence agency contracts so you can help said Neo-Cons cook up a case for the Iraq War by a phony analysis of some aluminum tubes.

FLASHBACK: The Art of CashHarvest

In fact, Wilkes, his company-run political action committee, the firm's employees, and members of their families have for the past four years been heavy contributors to federal campaign committees, according to financial disclosure records. From 1996 until this year, for example, Wilkes is listed as personally contributing $40,000 to a variety of congressional campaigns, including those of San Diego ­area Republican congressmen Ron Packard, Brian Bilbray, and Randy "Duke" Cunningham; Democratic senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii; and Democratic Virginia senator Charles Robb. During the same period, Wilkes also gave $10,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee and $5000 to a political action committee run by ADCS.

Gary Webb: More Pieces In The Suicided Puzzle
The government thinks you are stupid enough to believe that Gary Webb committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a .38, TWICE.

Gary Webb believed that journalists were revolutionaries. In 2003 Gary shared his radical perspective about journalists with aspiring Journalism students while a guest instructor/editor at The Narco News School of Authentic Journalism in Mexico. Webb exclaimed: "Journalists are revolutionaries and don't let anyone tell you otherwise," Webb continued, "You have to fight to change the world."

" 'I told Gary not to go near this story," his source replies, in an emotional voice. " 'You do not understand the power of these people,' " he adds, referring to the US intelligence services. " 'Do not quote me. Do not quote me on anything. '"

"You sound very scared," Moreira remarks.

" 'I am scared," the voice replies. ' " 'Look at what happened to Gary Webb. Do something else with your life, like enjoy it.' "

http://gnn.tv/headlines/5415/Susan_Bell_a_shameful_secret_history

Iran: U.S. can bid on nuclear plant

Iran will allow one of its fiercest critics, the United States, to bid on the construction of a nuclear plant, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Sunday in his weekly press briefing.

Very clever! Not only will this mean that the US is in a position to undeniably know exactly what the reactor can and cannot do, but it pits the nuclear corporations of the US against the pro-Israel faction.

It's all interconnected

Contractors in Cunningham Probe Supported Other Lawmakers
Two defense contractors at the center of ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's bribery case also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to curry favor with other influential lawmakers, records show.One contractor, Brent Wilkes, provided private jet flights to lawmakers, including Reps. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who is serving as majority leader while DeLay fights money-laundering charges in Texas.
Wilkes also raised at least $100,000 for President Bush's 2004 re-election bid and donated more than $70,000 to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed him to two state boards.There's no indication that these donations were improper. Prosecutors have not suggested that the investigation that snared Cunningham, R-Calif. — who resigned last week after pleading guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes — involves other lawmakers. Wilkes and defense contractor Mitchell Wade, along with their families and companies, donated generously to dozens of political campaigns — mostly Republican — beginning in the 1990s. Among the top beneficiaries, according to an AP analysis of records from PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks campaign spending, were:

—DeLay, who got $70,000 from Wilkes and his associates.
—House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who got $46,000 from Wilkes, Wade and their associates.
—House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., who got about $50,000 from Wilkes, Wade and their associates.
—Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., a member of the House Appropriations Committee, who got about $46,000 from Wilkes and his associates.

The contractors' political activity came as they landed valuable government contracts, drawing the attention of campaign finance watchdog groups.
"There's no question that both Wilkes and Wade were expert at greasing the wheels of the legislative machine," said Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "They knew who and when to give money to, and it really gave them free rein over taxpayer-funded defense contractors."
The list of lawmakers who took money also includes Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Fla.; Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va.; Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-Va., top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee; House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.; and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Wyo. Hunter, Lewis, Harris and Hoekstra have donated the money to charity, or plan to. Craig, Mollohan, DeLay and Doolittle have said they will hang on to it. As of Thursday, Goode had not decided, an aide said.
"I just think it was the appropriate thing to do," said Hunter, who is giving the money to help injured Marines. He also released two letters Thursday that he sent Pentagon officials in 1997 and 2000 urging them to use their judgment on pursuing projects to convert paper documents to digital form — the specialty of Wilkes' company ADCS Inc., which has its headquarters in Hunter's San Diego-area district. (That way, no need to shred, just delete with the press of a button!)
Wilkes and his wife and companies donated heavily to Schwarzenegger; the governor subsequently appointed him to a state fair board and a board that oversees racetrack issues. Wilkes resigned those positions last week at the suggestion of Schwarzenegger's office.
Wilkes' donations to DeLay included $15,000 from one of his companies to Texans for a Republican Majority, the state committee whose spending is at issue in DeLay's criminal case. Wilkes' company also hired Alexander Strategies, a consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife, Christine.
Wilkes' private jet company, Group W Transportation, provided flights to DeLay three times and Blunt twice. In each case the lawmakers reimbursed Group W as required, records show. Sometimes donations from Wade or Wilkes came around the same time their companies were getting contracts or lawmakers were passing favorable legislation. Wade's company, MZM, got a five-year blanket purchase agreement contract from the General Services Administration that went into effect May 13, 2002. On May 15, 2002, MZM donated $1,000 to Cunningham. Wilkes and his associates increased their political donations to the tens-of-thousands-per-year level about 1996. In 1996, 1997 and 1998 lawmakers earmarked money for document conversion programs even though none was requested in the president's budget, and ADCS got a major contract to digitize documents in the Panama Canal Zone around the time of the canal handover in 1999.

ACLU: Protesters placed in terror files
The names and licenseplate numbers of about 30 people who protested three years ago in Colorado Springs were put into FBI domestic-terrorism files, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Colorado said Thursday.

FEMA gets an F minus

Mama Dee, Ms. Dyan French of New Orleans
New Orleans Evacuees and Activists Testify at Explosive House Hearing on the Role of Race and Class in Government's Response to Hurricane Katrina
Listen to Excerpts
It has been three months since Hurricane Katrina ripped through the southern coast of the United States, decimating communities in Mississippi and Louisiana. After the initial slow government response to the disaster, President Bush flew to the region and promised the government will "do what it takes, stay as long as it takes, to help our citizens rebuild their communities and their lives." Well that promise is feeling increasingly hollow to many people. Today is the start of the Survivors General Assembly and Strategy Conference in Jackson, Mississippi. Katrina survivors are gathering at this conference and demanding the right to return to their homes and to take part in the reconstruction process. They are also calling for reparations for what they say is the government's criminal indifference and malicious actions towards the survivors before, during and after Katrina.
The city of New Orleans remains in a state of emergency with most residents unable to return. Many say they have been abandoned by the federal government, the same way they were abandoned during the first days of the storm. The Times-Picayune carried an editorial on the front page recently pleading "Do Not Let the City Die." Local advocates say the government is not committed to rebuilding the city for all of its citizens. They point to the fact that few public housing units have been reopened and that landlords are being allowed to evict people in mass numbers. (By posting a sign on the doors of apartments whose tenants are not in the city).
80% of New Orleans residents have not returned. And those who have are mostly white and wealthy. African-Americans especially feel the government is not making an effort to ensure that they are able to return. A group of homeless evacuees are filing a lawsuit in Federal Court today contending that FEMA engaged in illegal practices by denying or delaying their requests for temporary housing. They are also demanding that the agency back off of its plan to kick people out of their hotels in the coming days. The FEMA deadline for evacuees to be out of their hotels is December 15th with evacuees in some states granted until January 7th to find new housing.
Victims of hurricane Katrina have told a US congressional bipartisan select committee that they were held at gunpoint, treated like criminals and left to sleep next to dead bodies. They said the Government at all levels failed to protect them as they tried to escape floodwaters. In an emotional and sometimes contentious hearing, most witnesses said they believed racism played a key part in the aftermath of the disaster and that they were still suffering without basic services and feared that promised help and housing would never arrive.
Patricia Thompson, a New Orleans resident, told a harrowing tale of trying to escape floodwaters with her family only to be neglected and mistreated by police. "We slept next to dead bodies. We slept on streets," she said. "The way we were treated by police was demoralising and inhuman. They made everybody lie on the ground with their hands on their heads, even babies." She also told how a laser target was pointed at her 5-year old granddaughter's head by a soldier's rifle.
Leah Hodges, said with tears in her eyes that people were allowed to die as New Orleans was turned into a "mass grave." She called the response an "ethnic cleansing" and an "act of genocide" and said police screamed racial slurs at family members who were trying to get help for sick neighbours.
The hearing was prompted in part by a request from Democrat congresswoman Cynthia McKinney for a hearing on "African-American voices" related to hurricane Katrina. She said a history of racism in the region should not be ignored, including reported incidents of racial profiling and racist comments by police in Jefferson Parish.
One heated exchange during the hearing came between Republican congressman Christopher Shays and Dyan French, a New Orleans resident who stayed in the city throughout the hurricane and its aftermath. Shays said he did not believe Ms. French's claim that the levees in her neighborhood had been destroyed on purpose by a bomb, and asked her if she could see the levees from her home. Ms. French said it was not possible to see it thru the treelined streets, but that everyone heard an explosion, and then the water began to rise. She said that anyone who witnessed it would not have lived to tell about it, because they would have been drowned.
ISHMAEL MUHAMMAD, an attorney for the Advancement Project, part of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund, who testified on Day Two:
'Denise, a 42-year-old black woman from New Orleans, interned in the Convention Center, reports, “I thought I was in hell. I was there for two days with no water, no food and no shelter, with my 63-year-old mother, 21-year-old niece and two-year-old grandniece and thousands of others. Police would not come out of their cars. National Guard trucks rolled by, completely empty, with soldiers with guns cocked and aiming at us. Nobody stopped to drop off water. A helicopter dropped a load of water, but all of the bottles exploded on impact. Many people were delirious from lack of water and food, completely dehydrated. Inside the Convention Center, conditions were horrible. Outside wasn't much better, between the heat, the humidity, the lack of water, and old and very young dying from dehydration. Many people decided to walk across the bridge to the west bank, but armed police ordered them to turn around at the top of the bridge. The first day, four people died next to me, the second day, six. Make sure you tell everybody,” she said, “that they left us there to die.”
Nicole, a young black woman from New Orleans, who was interned in the Superdome, states, "We survived despite being abandoned by federal, state and local government. Black families with children and no money were the majority in the Superdome. The National Guard did not serve or protect. They were constantly threatening us and herding us by machine guns like cows. I saw a teenage boy beaten up by a National Guard officer in front of a crowd of thousands of people. The U.S. is the richest country in the world. I don't understand why so many people would have to die in Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. has the money to evacuate people in a disaster, especially one that has been awaited for a number of years.”
Shelly, a 31-year-old who was trapped in the Superdome, adds, "When buses came to take us from the Superdome, they were taking tourists first. White people, they were just picking them out of the crowd. I don't know why we were treated the way we were. But it was like they didn't care.”
Alva, a 51-year-old grandmother from New Orleans East, remembers, “When we were taken to the higher ground in Jefferson Parish, what did we have to greet us? A line of military police with M-16 rifles. They watched us, caged us, laughed at us, took pictures of us with their camera-phones. I saw a young man get down on his knees and beg for water for his little baby, and I saw the child die right there on the concrete. This was murder. They wanted us dead. They just didn't think so many of us would survive."

Tammy, a black woman in her mid-30s, “I was trying to evacuate with my two daughters by car, when we were stopped by police, made to get out and told, ‘Lie down on the ground, you black monkey bitch.’ I was arrested and thrown in jail with my daughters and could not get out for several weeks.” John, a New Orleans resident displaced at the Houston Astrodome, says, “I was in the Astrodome and told to move from the bleachers to the field on the lower area, but I refused because I had seen dead bodies down there and I was with some of my 12 children in the upstairs area. There were just too many unsafe issues down there. I was forced to leave the stadium. Me and my family were taken out at rifle-point.”
Agnes, a 70-something-year-old Creole woman, a resident of Iberville Public Housing Development; Maybell, a woman in her late-70s, a resident of St. Bernard Public Housing Development; Joseph and Cynthia, residents of B.W. Cooper Public Housing Development; and Alberta, a resident of Lafitte Public Housing Development, have all been displaced, and all are wondering why they have to be locked out of their public housing residence when their homes have received little to no flooding and are habitable.

Ex-FEMA Chief Brown Was Warned Agency Was Unprepared
Newly released e-mails show former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown was warned at least a year before Hurricane Katrina the agency was unprepared for a major disaster. In one e-mail dated June 2004, a FEMA official wrote national response managers were getting: “zero funding for training, exercise or team equipment." The managers, the official wrote, "provide the only practical, expeditious option for the (FEMA) director to field a cohesive team of his best people to handle the next big one." The official, William Carwile, said top FEMA officials ignored his recommendations and subsequent budget requests to fund national response teams.

How Many Are Missing and Dead After Katrina? Three Months After the Hurricane, the Numbers are Still Unknown
Questions still remain over how many people died after Hurricane Katrina as well as the whereabouts of all of the evacuees. The official death toll stands at about 1,300 but thousands of people are still reported missing. One newspaper reported the whereabouts of 6,600 people reported missing have not been determined.
Listen to Interview

Al-Libi Fabricated Iraq Claims to Avoid Torture in Egypt
New details are emerging in the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi -- the detainee whose faulty claims on links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were used to justify the invasion of Iraq. The New York Times is reporting government officials have acknowledged al-Libi fabricated his claims to avoid harsh punishment while in Egyptian custody. Al-Libi was handed over to Egypt by US agents in January 2002. The Times notes the disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of detainees.

US Military to Probe Video of Contractor Shootings
Meanwhile, the US military has announced a probe into allegations private contractors with the defense company Aegis have randomly shot at Iraqi cars. A video recently posted on a website maintained by Aegis employees contained footage of an unidentified gunman shooting at cars in Iraq. In one clip, a Mercedes is fired on before it crashes in to a civilian taxi. In another, a white sedan is shot at repeatedly as it drives on an open highway. London-based Aegis is in Iraq under a $290 million dollar contract. In a written instruction posted on the same website, Aegis CEO Tim Spicer wrote employees: "Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to the company since this could result in the loss or curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for everybody."

Amnesty Criticizes European Leaders For Accepting Rice Comments on Torture Amnesty International is criticizing European leaders for accepting Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s recent explanation U.S. interrogators are forbidden to use torture both at home and abroad. The issue followed Rice throughout a trip to several European countries this week amid allegations the CIA has used European airports to transfer detainees and is also running a secret prison in a former Soviet state. European leaders had hailed Rice’s comments as a major shift in US policy. Natacha Kazatchkine, Amnesty International’s top officer for human rights in Europe, said: “The European Union, as a Union of States, must reaffirm that they do not accept any practise violating the international convention on torture, and they have to explain what occured, and be all transparent on information we recently heard about this case."

Iranian President Says Israel Should Be Moved to Europe
In an interview with Iranian state television, Iranian President MahmoudAhmadinejad said Israel should be relocated to Europe. "You believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price? You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want. We would support it. So, Germany and Austria, come and give one, two or any number of your provinces to the Zionist regime so they can create a country there ... and the problem will be solved at its root. Why do they insist on imposing themselves on other powers and creating a tumour so there is always tension and conflict?" Ahmadinejad drew world-wide condemnation in October for saying “Israel must be wiped off the map.”
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the EU's nuclear diplomacy was "not made easier by the fact that Mr Ahmadinejad comes up with new ideas, that the people of Israel could move to Germany and Austria, to resolve the Middle East problem". (What, Herr Steinmeier, you don't want the Zionists back in Germany?)

Chavez Allies Claim CIA Plot to Assassinate Him
In Venezuela, allies of President Hugo Chavez are pressing with allegations the CIA has drafted plans to kill him. Nicolas Maduro, president of the country’s National Assembly, said he planned to file charges with the attorney general over “a plot orchestrated by the CIA against the Venezuelan democracy". At a news conference, pro-Chavez leaders played taped conversations in which current and former army officers reportedly discuss assassinating Chavez and other top government officials. Opposition leaders and a CIA official denied the charges. In a vote boycotted by the opposition last weekend, pro-Chavez legislators were overwhelmingly elected to fill a majority of seats in the National Assembly.

U.S. Citizens Launch March on Guantanamo
Twenty-five U.S. citizens are in Cuba to protest prison conditions at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo. The group began a 50-mile march to the prison from Santiago de Cuba on Wednesday. Freda Berrigan, in Cuba with Witness Against Torture told Democracy Now: "It's unlikely that we'll get all the way into the base at Guantanamo. We're marching with a prayerful intention to visit the prisoners. at the same time we're calling on our friends around the world, people in the United States to call on the American government to let us in. And we intend to arrive as close to Guantanamo as we can get on Saturday which is International human rights day.Because we don't believe the President we don't believe that torture and abuse isn't happening at Guantanamo and we also don't believe that the men who are there, the fathers the brothers the sons who are being held there are making us that much safer as Americans."

Deadly force unnecessary?

Eyewitness: "I Never Heard the Word 'Bomb'"
from TIME
At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.
"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb. "I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."
When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"
Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."
By the time Alpizar made it to the front of the airplane, the crew had ordered the rest of the passengers to get down between the seats. "I didn't see him get shot," he says. "They kept telling me to get down. I heard about five shots."
McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming. I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."
In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."
McAlhany said he saw Alpizar before the flight and is absolutely stunned by what unfolded on the airplane. He says he saw Alpizar eating a sandwich in the boarding area before getting on the plane. He looked normal at that time, McAlhany says. He thinks the whole thing was a mistake: "I don't believe he should be dead right now."

WAS IT WORTH IT, RANDY?
Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and his wife sold their Rancho Santa Fe house Tuesday for $2.6 million, just $50,000 more than they paid for it two years ago in a major part of his bribery case. The couple originally listed it at $3.5 million in August, a few weeks after federal officials moved to seize it during the investigation that led to Cunningham's convictions and resignation.
Lawmakers shed cash tied to two contractors: With the election year fast approaching, some members of Congress are moving quickly to distance themselves from two of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's alleged co-conspirators by shedding campaign contributions linked to the defense contractors.
Ill-gotten furnishings headed for auction block: The antiques and other furnishings forfeited by former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in his corruption case were laid out yesterday in a Poway warehouse as if on display at a garage sale.
Ex-congressman may go to 'Club Fed' if he's lucky: Trading up to a Rancho Santa Fe mansion helped get former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham into trouble. Now, it looks like he'll have to trade down to a barracks he'll share with 100 other men.
Cunningham's loot put on display: Some of the loot acquired by former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham for his Rancho Santa Fe mansion was laid out on display Tuesday in a cold, dark warehouse.
Cunningham resignation formally submitted to House: Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's resignation letter was formally submitted to the House of Representatives when the House reconvened Tuesday afternoon from its Thanksgiving recess.
Contractor 'knew how to grease the wheels': In government documents, he is referred to as "co-conspirator No. 1": a man who gave more than $630,000 in cash and favors to former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham for help in landing millions of dollars in federal contracts.
Bribery admission spotlights favoritism: Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's admission that he accepted bribes from defense contractors has renewed scrutiny of the growing power that lawmakers have to steer business to favored companies and causes.
Rep. Harris to donate contributions linked to Cunningham: U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris said she plans to donate to charity $51,000 in contributions linked to disgraced ex-Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham.
Donors to lawmaker angered at his 'greed': They liked the war-hero congressman, liked his conservative bona fides and his back-slapping good nature, and so they contributed money to Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham over the years. Maybe a $250 check. Maybe a bit more – $1,000, $2,000.
Republicans returning Cunningham money: Seeking to distance themselves from disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham – and silence Democratic criticism – some of Cunningham's fellow Republicans are donating campaign cash he gave them to charities.
MORE LINKS, click here

John Lennon, spokesman for Peace

John Lennon 1940-1980: History Professor Jon Wiener Discusses Lennon's Politics, FBI Files and Why Richard Nixon Sought to Deport Him Listen to Interview from Democracy Now! 25 years ago today John Lennon died after being shot dead by a gunman named Mark Chapman. Millions mourned the death of perhaps the most famous Beatle. Today memorials are being held across the world. You'd think that maybe 25 years later they could have done some investigation into the fact that Lennon's murder by Chapman was a CIA-orchestrated hit. "Laurel and Hardy, that's John and Yoko. And we stand a better chance under that guise because all the serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot." -- John Lennon Fenton Bresler begins his book "Who Killed John Lennon?" by questioning the "lone nut" theory. Since 1835, 15 men and 2 women have attacked "nationally prominent political leaders in sixteen separate incidents." Of those 17, only 3 have been ruled insane by law. Mark David Chapman was never found to be legally insane. (He confessed to the crime, which conveniently made an investigation and trial unneccessary). "The 'lone nut' theory simply does not stand up as an all-embracing explanation covering all--or even most--instances of American political assassination." Bresler offers the possibility that "Lennon, the politcally most active rock star of his generation... was shot dead outside his own home by a killer who was merely a tool, a human gun used and controlled by others to destroy a uniquely powerful radical figure who was likely to prove a rallying point for mass opposition to the policies soon to be implemented... by the new United States government headed by Ronald Reagan." Bresler quotes the late radio journalist Mae Brussell, who broke the Watergate story 2 months before the Woodward-Bernstein expose'. Brussell had no doubts: "It was a conspiracy. Reagan had just won the election. They knew what kind of president he was going to be. There was only one man who could bring out a million people on demonstration in protest at his policies -- and that was Lennon." (Who was on the brink of releasing his first new album in years, and would get tons of media coverage & interviews in which to criticize Reagan). Bresler speculates that Chapman was a "Manchurian Candidate," brainwashed and pre-programmed to kill on command. When the moment had arrived, Chapman received his signal and performed his task. Bresler interviewed Arthur O'Connor, the lieutenant who was commanding officer of the twentieth precinct of the New York police that dealt with Lennon's murder. He quotes O'Connor as saying, "As far as you are trying to build up some kind of conspiracy, I woul support you in that line. Like I said originally over the phone, if this gentleman [Chapman] wanted to get away with it, e could have got away with it. There was the subway across the road and no one around to stop him." Instead, once Chapman had accomplished his task, he calmly sat and waited for police to come. "Why one method rather than the other, the amateur as against the professional? Because that way you avoid any awkward questions. If Lennon had been gunned down by a professional killer, the whole world would have known: such swift expert assassinations carry their own individual hallmark. It would have been obvious what had happened and, with Lennon's history of anti-government radical political activity, there would have been [an in-depth investigation]. But if you program an amateur to do the job, a so-called 'nut', very few questions are asked." In 1975, Mark David Chapman began working for a Laotian refugee camp. The camp was run by World Vision, an evangelical charity which has assisted numerous CIA operations. Its camps along the Honduran border were used to recruit the death squads of El Salvador. Researcher John Judge writes: "World Vision appears to be an elaborate training cover for the recruitment, training, and placement of assassins worldwide.. Among its employees at the Fort Chaffee Refugee Camp it was running for Laotian, Thai, and Vietnamese refugees was a young man named Mark David Chapman - responsible for the death of a very political musician who could have brought a million people out in response to Reagan's war efforts in a single day, named John Lennon. Mark David Chapman had military training. He was in Beirut, interestingly enough, when military training was going on there by Wilson and Terpil. And he moved to Hawaii, worked for the large military firms. You'll remember he took a military stance at the time. The chairman of the board in those days of World Vision was none other than John Hinckley, Sr. The funding for World Vision was, primarily, during the Vietnam period, CIA directly funding it." Why, for instance, did Chapman, in 1975 a 19-year-old, religious, anti-Communist Southerner, select Russia as his preferred destination in a YMCA exchange program, and end up instead in Beirut? After returning from Lebannon he had a nervous breakdown and went to Hawaii to recover. He got a job as a gardener at the mental hospital, which unbelievably gave him six months off and loaned him the money to travel to the USSR. Bresler posits that Chapman was recruited by the CIA as a killer and kept "on hold" until the agency found a target: Lennon, portrayed here as a magnet for leftist causes. He argues that Chapman spent three "missing days" in Chicago before arriving in New York to shoot the rock star.

Human Rights Commissioner Says “War on Terror” Undermining Torture Ban
The UN’s top human rights official says the US-led so-called war on terrorism is undermining international safeguards against torture. Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, made the remarks in a statement marking Human Rights Day. Arbour wrote “[the] absolute ban on torture, a cornerstone of the international human rights edifice, is under attack. The principle once believed to be unassailable -- the inherent right to physical integrity and dignity of person -- is becoming a casualty of the so-called 'war on terrorism.' " Meanwhile, sources told the Washington Post the Bush administration is backing down on efforts to push for a Senate measure that would exempt the CIA from a ban on torturing detainees.

Plinter Blasts US, UK in Nobel Acceptance Speech
British playwright Harold Pinter accepted a Nobel Prize Wednesday by delivering a stinging criticism of US and British foreign policy. Pinter said: “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore the public."

78 journalists die in Iran crash
Gee, if "something" were to happen in Iran right now, we would only get the western media's view of events...
TEHRAN: A military cargo plane attempting an emergency landing Tuesday in Tehran clipped an apartment building and crashed short of the runway, killing at least 115 people, including 78 journalists who were en route to cover military maneuvers in southern Iran.

Businessman may get plea deal in SunCruz case and testify against powerful lobbyist

If the deal goes through, Kidan, who was looking at up to 30 years in prison, could now face a maximum of 10 years. That sentence could be reduced depending upon the extent of his cooperation as a witness, not only against his co-defendant -- embattled super lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- but also in the prosecution of three men charged in the Feb. 6, 2001, slaying of Boulis.

This will drag the connection between Abramoff and Mohammed Atta into the light.

House Passes 3 Tax Cuts, Plans a 4th

"Our economic policies have done the trick," said Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio). "We are in the middle of one of the strongest economies this country has ever seen." (HUH????)

US millionaire linked to looted Middle Eastern relics
A top US businessman and an international network of smugglers and academics are making millions of dollars through their illegal dealings in looted Middle Eastern artefacts. Former self-confessed smuggler and police informant Michel Van Rijn told Aljazeera.net that multi-millionaire James Ferrell, the CEO of America's second largest propane gas company Ferrellgas, is running a London-based business that deals in smuggled relics. Van Rijn says Ferrell established his network on 29 January 2000 with Hungarian-born antiquities dealer William Veres and academic Henry Kim of Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum. After just eight months of dealing, a copy of Ferrell's own profit calcuations - provided to Aljazeera.net by Veres - show that the Texan-born tycoon had made a 400% profit on his initial $2.5m investment. And even though Van Rijn invited the FBI to investigate evidence he supplied in 2003, the agency declined to investigate allegations of crimes that had not been committed in the US. But Veres provided documentation after his relations with Ferrell soured in 2003.


NY Times conservative columnist David Brooks slashes conservatives in Thursday column
"For a movement that is supposed to be winning the battle of ideas, conservatives are in a mess.... There are a number of consequences. A lot of the energy that used to go into ideas is now devoted to defending Republican politicians. Many former conservative activists have become Republican lobbyists.When conservatism was a movement of ideas, it attracted oddballs; now that it's a movement with power, it attracts sleazeballs. ...Third, conservative media success means intellectual flabbiness. Conservatives used to live in a media world created by people who thought differently than they did... Now conservatives can be just as insular as liberals, retreating to their own media sources to be told how right they are..." (And I'm sure Dave will be there to assure them of it...) But, Brooks reserves his finest sword for the left: "And the final bit of good news for the right is the left. No matter how serious the conservative crisis is, liberals remain surpassingly effective at making themselves unelectable." (I have a feeling he will find this to be incorrect in the near future).

Ann Coulter cuts university speech short
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter cut short a speech at the University of Connecticut amid boos and jeers, and decided to hold a question-and-answer session instead.
"I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am," Coulter told the crowd of 2,600 Wednesday. (That's the only way she can win an argument). Before cutting off her speech after about 15 minutes, Coulter called Bill Clinton an "executive buffoon" who won the presidency only because Ross Perot took 19 percent of the vote. Coulter's appearance prompted protests from several student groups. About 100 people rallied outside the auditorium where she spoke, saying she spread a message of intolerance. "We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech," said Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major who heads campus group Students Against Hate.
It wasn't the first time Coulter has had trouble at a university speech. In October 2004, two men ran onstage and threw custard pies as she was giving a speech at the University of Arizona.

FLASHBACK:
According to Indictment, AIPAC Has Been Under Investigation Since Early 1999

And during all that time, members of Congress continued to accept money from them.

Inuit Group Files Global Warming Complaint Against US Government
A group representing Inuit peoples in the northern Artic region has filed a landmark human rights complaint against the United States before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference says the US role as the world’s number one carbon polluter is helping to foster global warming that is destroying their habitat. A spokesman for the group said: "For Inuit, warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy their hunting and food-sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, and possibly become extinct". The complaint comes as over 100 countries continue to meet in Montreal at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The US is leading calls to block a global accord on mandatory emissions standards.

Racism, Scandals & Liars

Katrina Victims Testify on Racism's Role

Black survivors of Hurricane Katrina said Tuesday that racism contributed to the slow disaster response, at times likening themselves in emotional congressional testimony to victims of genocide and the Holocaust.
The comparison is inappropriate, according to Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla) "Not a single person was marched into a gas chamber and killed," Miller told the survivors.
"They died from abject neglect," retorted community activist Leah Hodges. "We left body bags behind."
Angry evacuees described being trapped in temporary shelters where one New Orleans resident said she was "one sunrise from being consumed by maggots and flies." Another woman said military troops focused machine gun laser targets on her granddaughter's forehead. Others said their families were called racial epithets by police.
"No one is going to tell me it wasn't a race issue," said New Orleans evacuee Patricia Thompson, 53, who is now living in College Station, Texas. "Yes, it was an issue of race. Because of one thing: when the city had pretty much been evacuated, the people that were left there mostly was black."
The hearing was held by a special House committee, chaired by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., investigating the government's preparations and response to Katrina. It was requested by Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
"Racism is something we don't like to talk about, but we have to acknowledge it," McKinney said. "And the world saw the effects of American-style racism in the drama as it was outplayed by the Katrina survivors."
The five white and two black lawmakers who attended the hearing mostly sat quietly during two and a half hours of testimony. But tempers flared when evacuees were asked by Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., to not compare shelter conditions to a concentration camp.
"I'm going to call it what it is," said Hodges. "That is the only thing I could compare what we went through to."

Photo taken outside of DeLay fundraiser at protest

Condoleezza Rice on renditions to Romania:
"I am not going to talk about whether such activities take place," Rice said when asked about the Romanian base. "To do so would clearly be to get into a realm of discussion about supposed or purported intelligence activities and I simply won't do that."
Then what's the point of making a statement at all?

We choose not to call it torture

"In sum, the White House's policy which we can expect Condi to elaborate "comprehensively" is "we don't torture because we choose not to call it torture and we will fight all efforts to define torture according to its ordinary meaning." -- Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Alberto Gonzales: "I'm not going to get into a discussion about specific methods of questioning people who have information that may save American lives. I'm not going to talk about specific methods that are used by the United States government. What I can say is that everyone in the United State government understands what our legal obligations are."

No wonder the troops are confused. If the Attorney General won't say what constitutes torture then how is the night shift at Abu Ghraib supposed to know? Gonzales added, somewhat discordantly, that although he could not share the particulars of the administration's secret definition of torture, everyone in the federal government was already thoroughly aware of those details.
(Well, if not we will explain it to you at your war crimes trials, Al.)

DC Sex Scandal About To Break?
Sometimes we read too many political clips and overlook some amazing things staring us in the face. Among those in Monday's edition, this little factoid, culled from Sunday's San Diego Union-Tribune blockbuster digging deeper into the Duke Cunningham's relationship with "co-conspirator No. 1," a.k.a. lobbyist Brent Wilkes. According to the U-T, Wilkes also "ran a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms, in" DC -- "first in the Watergate Hotel and then" in a Capitol Hill hotel.
Come again? A "hospitality suite with several bedrooms"? Talk about raising more questions, including:-- Why does a lobbyist need a "hospitality suite with several bedrooms"?-- Who uses those bedrooms and for what? These lobbying scandals involving Cunningham and Wilkes and Abramoff are looking more and more like a bad movie script every day. Except with one difference from the movies: this stuff actually happened.

'Vanity Fair' Offers Fresh Details on Judith Miller Saga
Elsewhere, Mnookin pulls no punches in stating that over the years Miller "had built a reputation for sleeping with her sources." (EEEWW!)

Doin' the Nasty

Halliburton (KBR) workers in Iraq paid 50 cents an hour
While the United States spends billions on troop support in Iraq, the people serving the meals, scooping the ice cream, and washing the dishes make as little as 50 cents an hour.

The U.S. military has paid Halliburton subsidiary KBR about $12 billion so far for so-called logistics support to U.S. military personnel in Iraq, the largest contract of its kind ever. Around 80,000 troops are served meals at dining facilities every day under the contract -- the other 60,000 or so fend for themselves in field kitchens or by eating military issue "Meals Ready to Eat." KBR in turn hires that work out entirely to subcontractors whose job it is to recruit, transport, house, feed and pay "third-country" nationals to stock, prepare, serve and clean up at the dining facilities at 43 bases across Iraq. Those workers are recruited from countries with already low wages, where jobs are scarce. And as pressure to keep the logistics contract cost down has increased, subcontractors have moved from country to country in search of cheaper labor markets. MORE


Rice Denies U.S. Engages In Torture
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice denied Monday that the U.S. is engaging in torture and defended how the Bush administration's waging of the so-called war on terror. Rice did not deny the U.S. has secretly picked up detainees overseas and flying them to other countries but she denied this is being done "for the purpose of being tortured."

Human Rights Watch Accuses Rice of Misleading Statements
Officials from Human Rights Watch accused Rice of failing to acknowledge that the United States has transported detainees to countries such as Egypt and Syria where it knows torture is used. The group said Rice also failed to address the existence of secret CIA prisons inside Europe.

Hard Evidence of US Torturing Prisoners to Death Ignored by Corporate Media
Military autopsy reports provide indisputable proof that detainees are being tortured to death while in US military custody. A recent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) posting of one of forty-four US military autopsy reports reads as follows:

"Final Autopsy Report: DOD 003164, (Detainee) Died as a result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to strangulation as evidenced by the recently fractured hyoid bone in the neck and soft tissue hemorrhage extending downward to the level of the right thyroid cartilage. Autopsy revealed bone fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid abdomen, back and buttocks extending to the left flank, abrasions, lateral buttocks. Contusions, back of legs and knees; abrasions on knees, left fingers and encircling to left wrist. Lacerations and superficial cuts, right 4th and 5th fingers. Also, blunt force injuries, predominately recent contusions (bruises) on the torso and lower extremities. Abrasions on left wrist are consistent with use of restraints. No evidence of defense injuries or natural disease. Manner of death is homicide. Whitehorse Detainment Facility, Nasiriyah, Iraq."

The ACLU website further reveals how:

"a 27-year-old Iraqi male died while being interrogated by Navy Seals on April 5, 2004, in Mosul, Iraq. During his confinement he was hooded, flex-cuffed, sleep deprived and subjected to hot and cold environmental conditions, including the use of cold water on his body and hood. The exact cause of death was "undetermined" although the autopsy stated that hypothermia may have contributed to his death.

Another Iraqi detainee died on January 9, 2004, in Al Asad, Iraq, while being interrogated. He was standing, shackled to the top of a doorframe with a gag in his mouth, at the time he died. The cause of death was asphyxia and blunt force injuries.
So read several of the 44 US military autopsy reports on the ACLU website -evidence of extensive abuse of US detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan 2002 through 2004.
Anthony Romero, Executive Director of ACLU stated, "There is no question that US interrogations have resulted in deaths." ACLU attorney Amrit Sing adds, "These documents present irrefutable evidence that US operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogations."
Additionally, ACLU reports that in April 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the use of "environmental manipulation" as an interrogation technique in Guantánamo Bay. In September 2003, Lt. Gen. Sanchez also authorized this technique for use in Iraq. So responsibility for these human atrocities goes directly to the highest levels of power.
AP/UPI news releases and direct quotes from the ACLU website appeared widely on internet sites and on various news-based listservs around the world, including Common Dreams, Truthout, New Standard, Science Daily, and numerous others.
What little attention the news of the US torturing prisoners to death did get has completely disappeared as context for the torture stories now appearing in corporate media.
How can the American public understand the gravity of the torture that is currently being committed in our name when the issue is being reported with no reference to the extent to which these crimes against humanity have gone? Has the internet become the only source of real news for mainstream Americans while the corporate media only tells us what they want us to know?

Hidden in Plane Sight: US Media Dodging Air War in Iraq
The US government is waging an air war in Iraq. "In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased," Seymour Hersh reported in the December 5 edition of The New Yorker. "Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war." Here's a big reason why: Major US news outlets are dodging the extent of the Pentagon's bombardment from the air, an avoidance all the more egregious because any drawdown of US troop levels in Iraq is very likely to be accompanied by a step-up of the air war. MORE

ABC: U.S. Moved 11 Detainees From Secret European Prison Last Month
ABC News is reporting that just last month the U.S. moved 11 al-Qaida suspects from a secret site in Europe to somewhere in North Africa. (Maybe things finally are changing in the MSM?)

Report: CIA Lied to Italy About Kidnapping of Islamic Cleric
Meanwhile the Washington Post has uncovered new information about one of the best-known cases of extraordinary rendition - the CIA's kidnapping of the Islamic cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. According to the Post, the CIA purposely mislead the Italian government about his disappearance by claiming he had fled to the Balkans. In fact, he disappeared after a team of CIA agents abducted him from the streets of Milan and secretly flew him to Egypt where he was interrogated and allegedly tortured. An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of over 20 CIA agents involved in the kidnapping.

Randy & 'the boys':
Scandal figure tied to Iran Contra Drug Trafficking
*World Exclusive*
by Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Morning News

San Diego businessman Brent Wilkes, a key figure in the Randy “Duke” Cunningham bribery scandal—as well as the Justice Department investigation of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff—worked in Honduras during the 1980’s for a company accused by federal prosecutors of deep involvement in cocaine trafficking.
Over the weekend the San Diego Union-Tribune, Cunningham’s hometown paper, reported that Brent Wilkes has a two decade long history of close links with the CIA. The company which provided Wilkes his initial entree into the world of lucrative government defense contracts, said the paper, was World Finance Corp. World Finance Corp. achieved notoriety during the Iran Contra Scandal for highly questionable activities in Honduras.
"It was drugs, it was money-laundering, it was everything," South Florida detective James Rider told Robert Perry of The Consortium at the time. "I know the CIA was in there somewhere. Police and federal prosecutors reported pressure from Washington and CIA headquarters in Langley to back off WFC. Too many of WFC's principals, it turned out, had cooperated with U.S. intelligence."
From Robert Perry, who broke the Iran Contra Scandal while working as a reporter for the Associated Press:

“In the mid-1970s, Cartaya launched his most ambitious endeavor, an international financial holding company called the World Finance Corp., later renamed WFC Corp. The firm's maze of banks reached to the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, London, the Caribbean, Miami, Colombia and Panama.”
“As the investigation developed, authorities uncovered other corporate links between WFC and Aerocondor, a South American airline that had been caught smuggling drugs. Police also discovered that WFC agents had contacts with the Mafia drug syndicate of Santo Trafficante, Jr., whose lucrative narcotics operations had dominated Cuba prior to Castro's revolution. Police came to suspect that WFC was an intelligence front."

When the FBI tried to prosecute World Finance Corporation (an international lending company) for laundering drug money, the Bureau was reportedly informed by an Internal Revenue Service agent that "WFC was a legitimate company: if it dealt in drug money so much the better narcotics money that stayed in the U.S. was good for the economy."

From the book In God's Name, by David Yallop:

“During an investigation by the Dade County, Florida District Attorney's office, their investigators discovered that a local bank, the World Finance Corporation, was the largest and oldest North American money launderer for cocaine traffickers. The World Finance Corporation was regularly sending cocaine profits to the Sisalpine Bank in the Bahamas. The Sisalpine Bank was partly owned by Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the manager of the Vatican bank...”

From Forbes Magazine:

"Recent events, such as the arrest of Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya in Miami by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (for entering the U.S. on a false passport), suggest that massive fraud may have been involved in the Ajman collapse. Hernandez-Cartaya, a Cuban who did time in a Havana jail for fighting on the losing side of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was until recently chairman of WFC Corp. -- a $90-million-assets Coral Gables merchant bank that owned 40% of the Ajman Arab Bank. (The local Ajman potentate owned another 40%.) WFC Corp., whose London branch has already been shut down, is reportedly being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the House Select Committee on Narcotics & Drug Abuse for possible criminal violations in a number of areas."

Brent Wilkes and his counterpart Mitchell Wade at MZM, INC. work at separate subsidiaries... of the same Home Office. Or, to put it in spook-speak: they are dummy front companies with the same real owner: a larger and as-yet unnamed organization which secretly serves as the parent company of both their seemingly-unrelated (except by national scandal) firms. Referred to in Justice Dept. documents released after Cunningham pled guilty as "co-conspirator No. 1" (MZM Inc is “co-conspirator #2”) Wilkes defense contractor subsidiary, ADCS, in Poway, California, has a level of expertise which remains hazy. Nonetheless the firm boasts on its website of receiving more than $500 million in Cunningham-assisted government appropriations. Moreover, the various “companies” which comprise the Wilkes Corporation seem to comprise something resembling an extremely invisible empire.

What’s undisputed is that Wilkes’ firm was one of two obscure defense contractors that secretly showered Cunningham with an estimated $2.4 million in cash and expensive gifts — including a Rolls-Royce, money to buy a posh 8,000-square-foot house, and a cornucopia of antique furniture, Oriental rugs and jewelry. In addition to passing over $600,000 in bribes to the now-convicted Cunningham, the busy San Diego businessman was also paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to a lobbying firm run by two top former aides to Tom DeLay and suspected of being controlled by Jack Abramoff.
The Cunningham Abramoff Scandal is no longer about greedheads gaming the system.
The essential question posed by the Abramoff-Cunningham scandal is chilling in its ramifications:
Did U.S. intelligence agencies assist in funneling rivers of cash from suspect defense contractors into the campaign coffers of pro-war Republican lawmakers?
Was U.S. taxpayer money secretly used to subvert American democracy?

Judge Upholds Money Laundering Charge Against Tom Delay
Republican Congressman Tom Delay suffered a setback Monday after a Texas judge refused to throw out money laundering charges against him. Delay is accused of illegally funneling $190,000 in corporate donations to 2002 Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature. Money laundering is punishable by five years to life. Despite the indictment the Bush administration remains close to Delay. Last night Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to Houston to headline a fundraiser for the Texan Congressman. (Maybe he's got some incriminating evidence against them?)

A Tax Cut Like It's 1986

The key idea behind the ‘86 reform was not to lower tax rates, but to eliminate loopholes. It also took a key step that stands in opposition to the current flavor of Republican tax breaks. The ’86 tax reform treated all types of income—wage income, capital gains, dividends and rents—the same way. This meant that a person who earned $70,000 from working would pay the exact same tax as someone who got $70,000 in dividend checks or who made $70,000 in profit on stocks.Taxing all income the same way meant that there was no money to be made by gaming the system—for example, by disguising wage income as capital gains income. Reagan proudly boasted when he signed the bill that people would now make money by working and investing, not gaming the tax code.

Anti-War Democrats to Challenge Sen. Hillary Clinton's Re-Election Bid
In other political news, New York Senator Hillary Clinton is about to face a challenge in her re-election bid from within her own party. Jonathan Tasini -- the former president of the National Writers Union -- has announced plans to run against Clinton. His campaign will focus on opposing the Iraq war, renegotiating so-called free trade deals and extending Medicare to all Americans. The Nation Magazine described Tasini as "one of the most outspoken progressive activists in the U.S. labor movement."
Meanwhile a former Green Party candidate named Steve Greenfield has also announced plans to run on the Democratic ticket against Clinton. Greenfield says the centerpiece of his campaign will be the rapid withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq.

From Al Franken's new book "The Truth (with Jokes)"
“You can’t count on them to give you straight information.
You can’t count on them to tell us straight why we’re going to war.
You can’t count on them to tell us what’s happening over there.
You can’t count on them to do their homework.
To keep track of our money.
You can’t count on them to punish war profiteers.
You can’t count on them to protect our troops.
You can’t rely on them for much of anything.
Armor. Veterans’ benefits.
You can’t count on them for the true story of how Jessica Lynch was captured, or how Pat Tillman died. Even for how the “Mission Accomplished” sign went up on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. They actually lied about that.
You can’t count on them to count terrorist attacks.
You can’t count on them to count civilian victims.
You can’t count on them to listen to military commanders and send in enough troops, or to not lie about the commanders asking them to send more troops, or to listen to Colin Powell and not torture people, or to not lie about whether the torture policies started at the top.
You can’t trust them to care. About Iraqis. About Americans.
You can’t trust them to do the work of actually signing killed-in-action letters.
You can’t trust them not to lie about not signing killed-in-action letters.
You can’t count on them to acknowledge any mistakes whatsoever.
You can’t trust them not to lie when confronted with those mistakes.
You can’t trust them not to believe their own propaganda.
You can’t trust them. Period.”

The Parasites of Power

FOX News discovers the 9/11 documentary "Loose Change"
Watch the video clip

From AfterDowningStreet.org :
Did Plame out WH plans for finding WMD in Iraq?
Did the White House plan to 'find' WMD in Iraq until Brewster-Jennings (which was Vallerie Plame's "cover" employer) intercepted their shipment? Was that why Plame was in their crosshairs long before Wilson's editorial? Buried in a TPM Nov 18 blog about what the WH was really thinking when it invaded Iraq, Joshua Micah Marshall writes "This even leads to a sort of inverted conspiracy theorizing when people ask, 'If he knew there was no WMD, why didn't they at least try to plant some to avoid the catastrophic embarrassment which ensued after the war...."
This WH may be diabolical, but it's not stupid. Apparently, they gave it a lot of thought if the following is true. As Wayne Madsen reports (Nov 11):

"According to U.S. intelligence sources, the White House exposure of Valerie Plame and her Brewster Jennings & Associates was intended to retaliate against the CIA's work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network."

The corruption behind THE CUNNINGHAM SCANDAL
In government documents, he is referred to as "co-conspirator No. 1": a man who gave more than $630,000 in cash and favors to former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham for help in landing millions of dollars in federal contracts. The former Rancho Santa Fe congressman announced his resignation Monday after pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion and conspiracy.
ADCS has received at least $80 million in government contracts since 1996. Its $11 million headquarters is located in Poway. Poway military contractor Brent Wilkes – whom Justice Department officials identify as the co-conspirator – has long been active in local political circles, serving as the San Diego County finance co-chairman of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign and the state finance co-chairman for President Bush. Wilkes has not been charged with a crime in the Cunningham case.
Over the past 20 years, Wilkes has devoted much of his career to developing political contacts in Washington. He and his associates have spent at least $600,000 on political contributions and $1.1 million on lobbying beyond the gifts mentioned in the Cunningham plea agreement, as they cultivated such politicians as House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis.
And since 1996, he has received at least $95 million in government contracts for the small family of firms based in his $11 million headquarters in Poway, including ADCS Inc. and Group W.
Those who know Wilkes describe him as gregarious and ambitious, a person who can make friends easily and toss them aside just as quickly. Born in San Diego County in 1954, Wilkes graduated from Hilltop High School in 1972, along with his football teammate and best friend Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, currently third-in-command at the Central Intelligence Agency.

1972 yearbook photo

Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo (top), now the CIA's executive director,
was a friend of Brent Wilkes' at Hilltop High School in Chula Vista.

Wilkes and Foggo were roommates at San Diego State University, were best men at each other's weddings and named their sons after each other. Wilkes' career in political relations dates to the early 1980s, shortly after Foggo joined the CIA. Foggo was sent to Honduras to work with the Contra rebels who were trying to topple the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, according to sources within the CIA. Wilkes had moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a business named World Finance Corp. about three blocks away from the White House. One of his chief activities, sources say, was to accompany congressmen – including then-Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego, whom Wilkes met during his participation in the SDSU Young Republicans organization – to Central America to meet with Foggo and Contra leaders. A number of sources who have had business dealings with Wilkes say he hinted at that time and afterward that he was affiliated with the CIA. CIA sources say he was never employed by the agency. By the time Wilkes returned to San Diego in the late 1980s, he had established relationships with members of the House Armed Services, Intelligence and Appropriations committees. Neither Wilkes, Foggo nor Lowery responded to requests for comment.
CONTINUE ARTICLE

more from Cannonfire.blogspot.com:
Deeper into the Cunningham/Wilkes/MZM scandals (Updated)
(Note: If you came here by way of LiePar Destin's excellent piece in Kos, you may want to read "Wilkes: The Invisible Empire" first. Also, I'm happy to report that this blockbuster piece on Wilkes in the San Diego Union Tribune strengthens the thesis presented here.)

The good news is that reporters working for the mainstream media have caught on -- in part. They understand that Randy "Duke" Cunningham is hardly the only Republican politician to receive economic "assistance" from Brent Wilkes, head of the Poway-based "defense" firm ADCS -- a.k.a. the Wilkes Corporation, a.k.a. Group W Advisors, a.k.a. lots of other names. But they still treat this company as though it were something real. Not a single mainstream reporter has scrutinized those web sites and reported on the obvious signs of fakery. No reporters -- and, for that matter, no procurement officers at the Pentagon -- bothered to do any checking at the patent office. If they had, they would have found that there are no patents covering the "proprietary" designs and innovative equipment advertised by the many ADCS subsidiary firms.
The truth: Wilkes was a mechanism by which public funds earmarked for national defense were funneled to G.O.P. candidates and causes.Want proof?
Defense contracts are a matter of public record. A reader named John Dean (no, not the Watergate-related John Dean) has been going through some of the records related to Wilkes -- a job which ought to be done by congressional investigators. On one form, the given address does not relate to the massive Wilkes complex on Stowe Avenue in Poway. Instead, the address is 15092 Avenue of Science, San Diego CA 92128.That, we are told, is the address of a defense firm called Mirror Labs, allegedly a leading firm in the field of testing military equipment. They are referenced in this edition of the Homeland Defense Journal. Their website, we are told, is www.mirrorlabs.com. That URL goes nowhere. Google has no cache of anything ever being there.
However, this archive page reveals that they once did have a site up, from 2001 to early 2004, at which point the firm, such as it was, seems to have become defunct. The web pages speak of a company with branches in Virigina and Panama. But the only satisfied customers mentioned are a couple of small-ish private companies (real companies) who had some software beta-tested. Google presents no external evidence that a San Diego company named Mirror Labs has ever done anything related to defense, or that it had Virginia and Panama branches.
(Update: A background check on www.mirrorlabs.com shows that the URL address was registered by Group W Media, Wilkes' fake ad agency. The listed administrative contact is PerfectWave Techonologies, another fake company.)
I believe that, for all practical purposes, there is no Mirror Labs, although a firm by that name may well have performed an actual service at one time. So where did the money go? When that nice fat check filled with taxpayer dollars was sent to 15092 Avenue of Science, who opened it? And what did they do with the money?
Here is the organization that really has -- or had -- offices at that address: ADCS PAC. That's where the money went. Apparently, Wilkes felt queasy about housing his PAC at the same address as ADCS proper, so he set up a small office in a San Diego business park. Someone must have put down the wrong address on one of the applications. So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?

Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.

All Republicans, of course. As the scandal unfolds, the pundits will try to convince us that "both sides do it." That simply is not true.
The donations amounted only to $5000 or so. But ADCS Pac was hardly the only mechanism by which Wilkes could distribute the Christmas candy. Remember, Perfect Wave Technologies, Pure Aqua Technologies, Group W. Advisors and other "subsidiaries" were also used as funding mechanisms.
By keeping the donations small, and by maintaining the illusion that the donors are numerous, the conspirators could line many a pocket with relative safety. Clever, eh?
Other recipients of Wilkes' largesse: President Bush, Katherine Harris, Tom Delay, Virgil Goode Jr. and Elizabeth Dole -- whose husband, as you may recall from yesterday's post, lent his name to Reverend Moon's "stamp out the cross" crusade. Talk about being on the Dole! Did all these pols understand the ultimate source of the funds? Perhaps not. However, we know that Duncan Hunter -- chairman of the House Armed Services Committee -- was a big ADCS pusher:

Since 1994, Wilkes and ADCS gave $40,700 in campaign contributions to Rep. Duncan Hunter, a San Diego Republican who now chairs the House Armed Services Committee. Hunter has acknowledged that he joined with Cunningham in 1999 to contact Pentagon officials who reversed a decision and gave ADCS one of its first big contracts, for nearly $10 million." (USA Today, 11/29/05)

And then there's Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, who ordered continued funding of ADCS even after the DOD raised objections. Obviously, Hunter and Lewis must go under the microscope. Even so, you're missing the point if you waste much time castigating the above-named politicians for receiving the money. What is significant is the device itself -- using "false fronts" to translate IRS-collected revenues into Republican campaign commercials. Much evidence indicates that Wilkes is but one of many villains involved with such schemes.
I rarely beg my readers, but in this case I must: Please get the word out. This type of investigative work should not be left to the likes of me (or John Dean, or Daniel Hopsicker). Someone in the major media -- or Congress, or the Justice Department -- must investigate. This scandal could and should be bigger than Plamegate
Who is the "inside man" in the Pentagon? I cannot believe that checks went to Wilkes based purely on the say-so of Duke Cunningham or the other bribed pols. Someone in the Pentagon's procurement offices must be signing off on these expenditures. If investigators identify the person or persons involved, then this conspiracy can be blown wide open.
John Dean found that each of the DOD contracts to ADCS and its related firms were prepared by "DOD_MIGRATOR" -- whoever or whatever that may mean. I'm hardly an expert on Defense Department procurement procedures, so I cannot tell if this nomenclature is standard or unusual. But since each award is numbered, it should not be difficult for an investigator to track down the real person behind DOD_MIGRATOR. Another oddity: According to Dean, on each ADCS form -- whatever the year -- the company is listed as having 130 employees and annual revenues of "$13,345,9." (Yes, that is the figure given.) These numbers, I am told, never vary. On the MZM front: Is the other company that bribed Cunningham real or fake? What, precisely, do they do? Ah, there's the rub: We're dealing with black budget stuff. We're not supposed to know what they do. Alas, in such a world we cannot easily know if they do...anything. MZM, run by Mitchell Wade -- a longtime member of the Wilkes/Cunningham "posse" -- began life in the early 1990s. Yet during most of the ensuing years, it made little impact on the world. As a "defense and intelligence" firm, it seems to have sprung from nothing in 2002, like a Rambo-ized Venus from the brow of Ares.

MZM Inc. is a high-tech national security firm based in Washington, D.C. The private firm provides intelligence gathering, technology and homeland security analysis and consulting for both international and domestic governments and private-sector clients. The firm also provides consulting on political and public message strategies. Its government clients include Congress, the White House, the Defense Department, the U.S. intelligence community, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and state and local governments, according to the company's Web site. MZM refused to provide any information, however, about its corporate structure, including names of other principals.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, MZM expanded its counterintelligence and national security efforts. It soon experienced an influx of government contracts. The company now predicts a growth rate of more than 35 percent in the 2003 fiscal year. Mitchell Wade, president and CEO, reportedly expects to increase sales from $25 million to $120 million and to hire 230 more employees over the next five years. Wade told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that recently the company has "come out of a flat period" with defense industry contracts.
In September 2003, MZM collaborated with 16 other organizations, called the General Dynamics team, as part of a five-year, $252 million contract to provide engineering and information warfare services to the Air Force Information Warfare Center at Lackland Airforce Base in Texas.

At least we are given some indication of what the firm actually does. But how much of this data is on the level? One would think that so august a firm would have a web site. However, the listed URL -- www.mzinc.com -- is blank, as is Google's cache for that page. Interestingly, Dean found an MZM contract with the DOD dated February 13, 2003 in which MZM states that it has zero employees and zero revenue. The contract is for a mere $12,740,000. However, we do know that they did open a fairly large facility in Martinsville, Virgina. The Center for Public Integrity is trustworthy, but they can only relate what they've been told -- and at this point, who can be sure if a company like MZM is telling the truth? Obviously, Wade's creation (unlike many of the Wilkes pseudocompanies) does actual work for the military/intelligence complex; as we've seen, they've even provided office furniture for the White House. Even so, we must still ask: How and why did Wade's tiny firm suddenly grow? Who is Mitchell Wade? Is he a lawyer, a businessman, a spook, or...what? Which brings us to the larger question surrounding these out-of-nowhere defense firms: How much of this stuff is real?

Everyone's a victim

Bush takes Cheney out of the loop on national security

"I'll get you--and your little dog, too!"
From Insight.com
The role of Vice President Dick Cheney as the administration's point man in security policy appears over, according to administration sources.Over the last two months Mr. Cheney has been granted decreasing access to the Oval Office. The two men still meet, but the close staff work between the president and vice president has ended.
"Cheney's influence has waned not only because of bad chemistry, but because the White House no longer formulates policy," a source said. "There's nothing to input into. Cheney is smart and knowledgeable, but he as well as Bush are ducking all the time to avoid the bullets."
The sources said the indictment and resignation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby marked the final straw in the deterioration of relations between President Bush and Mr. Cheney. They said Bush aides expect that any trial of Mr. Libby, Mr. Cheney's long-time chief of staff, would open a closet of skeletons regarding such issues as Iraq, the CIA and the conduct of White House aides.
"There's a lack of trust that the president has in Cheney and it's connected with Iraq," a source said.
The sources said Mr. Bush has privately blamed Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the U.S.-led war in Iraq. They said the president has told his senior aides that the vice president and defense secretary provided misleading assessments on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, as well as the capabilities of the regime of Saddam Hussein. As a result, the sources said, Mr. Cheney has been ousted from his role as the administration's point man in the area of national security. They said presidential staffers have kept Mr. Cheney out of the loop on discussions on policy as the White House has struggled with the political and intelligence fallout from the war in Iraq.
Mr. Bush is not expected to replace Mr. Cheney unless the vice president follows the fate of his former chief of staff. The sources also said Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to remain in his post until U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq.

Masked Man
By Chris Floyd, Context.com
The recent revelations about the virulent spread of death squads ravaging Iraq have only confirmed for many people the lethal incompetence of the Bush Regime, whose brutal bungling appears to have unleashed the demon of sectarian strife in the conquered land. The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn't boil an egg without causing collateral damage."
But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?
Investigative journalist Max Fuller marshals a convincing case for this conclusion in a remarkable work of synthesis based on information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents. Piling fact on damning fact, he shows that the vast majority of atrocities attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias are in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets, Global Research reports.
We first reported here in August 2003 that the United States was already hiring Saddam's security muscle for "special ops" against the nascent insurgency and reopening his torture haven, Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, powerful Shiite militias -- including religious extremists armed and trained by Iran -- were loosed upon the land. As direct "Coalition" rule gave way to various "interim" and "elected" Iraqi governments, these violent gangs were formally incorporated into the Iraqi Interior Ministry, where the supposedly inimical Sunni and Shiite units often share officers and divvy up territories.
Bush helpfully supplied these savage gangs -- who are killing dozens of people each week, Knight-Ridder reports -- with U.S. advisers who made their "counter-insurgency" bones forming right-wing death squads in Colombia and El Salvador. Indeed, Bush insiders have openly bragged of "riding with the bad boys" and exercising the "Salvador option," lauding the Reagan-backed counter-insurgency program that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians, Newsweek reports. Bush has also provided a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" to coordinate the operation of his Iraqi "commandos," as the Pentagon's own news site, DefendAmerica, reports. The Iraqi people can go without electricity, fuel and medicine, but by God, Bush's "bad boys" will roll in clover as they carry out their murders and mutilations.

For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again -- unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police aegis are rarely investigated by the police.
The Bushists may have been forced to ditch their idiotic fantasies of "cakewalking" into a compliant satrapy, but they have by no means abandoned their chief goals in the war: milking Iraq dry and planting a permanent military "footprint" on the nation's neck. If direct control through a plausible puppet is no longer possible, then fomenting bloody chaos and sectarian strife is the best way to weaken the state. The Bushists are happy to make common cause with thugs and zealots in order to prevent the establishment of a strong national government that might balk at the ongoing "privatizations" that have continued apace behind the smokescreen of violence, or at the planned opening of Iraq's oil reserves to select foreign investors -- a potential transfer of some $200 billion of Iraqi people's wealth into the hands of a few Bush cronies, The Independent reports.
The violence is already dividing the county into more rigid sectarian enclaves, The New York Times reports, as Shiites flee Sunni commandos and Sunnis flee Shiite militias in the grim tag team of their joint endeavor. It's all grist for the Bushist mill: An atomized, terrorized, internally riven society is much easier to manipulate. And of course, a steady stream of bloodshed provides a justification for maintaining a U.S. military presence, even as politic plans for partial "withdrawal" are bandied about.

There's nothing new in this; Bush is simply following a well-thumbed playbook. In 1953, the CIA bankrolled Islamic fundamentalists and secular goon squads to destabilize the democratic government of Iran -- which selfishly wanted to control its own oil -- and pave the way for the puppet Shah, as the agency's own histories recount. In 1971, CIA officials admitted carrying out more than 21,000 "extra-judicial killings" in its Phoenix counter-insurgency operation in Vietnam. In 1979, the CIA began sponsoring the most violent Islamic extremist groups in Afghanistan -- supplying money, arms, even jihad primers for schoolchildren -- to destabilize the secular, Soviet-allied government and provoke the Kremlin into a costly intervention, as Robert Dreyfus details in his new book, "Devil's Game." Later, Saudi magnate Osama bin Laden joined the operation, and sent his men to the United States for "anti-Soviet" terrorist training, as the BBC's Greg Palast reports.
The policy has been remarkably consistent for more than half a century. To augment the wealth and power of the elite, U.S. leaders have supported -- or created -- vicious gangs of killers and cranks to foment unrest, eliminate opponents and terrorize whole nations into submission. The resulting carnage in the target countries and the inevitable blowback against ordinary Americans mean nothing to these Great Gamesters; that's simply the price of doing business. Bush's "incompetence" is just a mask for stone-cold calculation.

WWII Massacre of German POW's
The sound of machine-gun fire jolted the young lieutenant from his cot. He stumbled outside, trying to make sense of the pandemonium that greeted him. Screams and moans carried clearly through the night as the chattering gun stopped. Glancing up at the guard tower, he saw smoke rising from the gun barrel.
He looked in horror at the riddled tents of German POWs. He shouted to the guard to cease fire - too late - and to come down. "Send up more ammo!" the guard shouted back. "I'm not done yet!"
Walking past the Fort Douglas Military Cemetery two weeks ago, I witnessed a wreath-laying ceremony by men in uniform. Wondering why someone was celebrating Veterans' Day two days late, I introduced myself and ran into a problem. The group was chatting among themselves in German. The uniforms, which I had thought were American, were German Air Force. Capt. Fritz Goothuis, the liaison officer at Hill Air Force Base, explained that the stone monument in the southwest corner memorializes German POWs who died in Utah.
With the help of Goothuis, the Internet and old copies of the Salt Lake Telegram, I pieced together some of the local history of POWs. Utah was home to about 7,000 Italian and 8,000 German POWs from 1944 to '45. The Germans, most of them tough veterans of Rommel's Afrikacorp, were kept in a dozen compounds, most in the northwest corner of the state. Utah was also the site of a prisoner massacre.
In July 1945, 250 German POWs were in Salina to help with the harvest. They were housed in wooden floored tents watched over by three guard towers. A farmer's three-year-old girl once wandered in among the laboring Germans. The farmer found that she'd been picked up and was held by a prisoner. Alarmed, he asked for the girl. The German at first refused to surrender the child. Then the farmer saw the man had tears in his eyes and realized "he had a child of his own back home that he thought he would maybe never see again."
On July 7, after a full day of work in Salina's beet fields, the Germans were marched back to their compound. Following the evening meal, they went to their tents to sleep. At midnight, the guard changed. Pvt. Clarence V. Bertucci climbed into the tower nearest the camp commander's office. Bertucci, a native of New Orleans, had a record of minor infractions of military discipline, but nothing serious. Bertucci waited a few minutes for the previous watch to find their beds. Then he opened an ammunition box containing a belt of 250 bullets, slapped the belt securely into the tower's machine gun, and swung the loaded weapon toward the tents of sleeping POWs. Thirty seconds after pulling the trigger the belt was exhausted. Nine POWs were killed. The wounded were taken to the Salina hospital where it's remembered that blood flowed out the front door. One prisoner, nearly cut in half, would survive six hours. Bertucci went quietly with a soldier who was ordered to bring him down. Asked why he had gunned down the prisoners, he expressed a hatred of Nazis. He showed no remorse at a later hearing. The Army declared Bertucci insane and committed him to a mental institution. Criminal under any circumstances, these killings were especially senseless. Germany had surrendered two months before. The Germans picking beets in Salina were the sons of a defeated nation in U.S. Army custody waiting to be shipped home. The local papers didn't dwell on the tragedy. News space was taken up with fresh stories of Nazi atrocities just coming to light. News of the killings never made it to Germany where the populace was still picking through the ruins of their homes. The families wouldn't be informed until 1948 about what happened in Salina. Two of those who were wounded returned to Utah in 1988 to witness the rededication of the German War Memorial. It was on Nov. 13, the second Sunday of the month when Germans commemorate Volkstrauertag, their national day of mourning.

Empire In Descent: The Deliberate Destruction Of America
Worldwide despise of the United States an intentional pre-cursor for world government takeover
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones, PrisonPlanet.com
There is a deliberate agenda at hand to reflect an image of America to the world as a corrupt, evil, deceiving, hypocritical and brutal power. The Bush administration is being played like a fiddle and as each horror story scandal emerges, America sinks further into the waiting jaws of its 'savior' - the dark stalker of global government.America was once the model of world freedom. Even as recently as the late 1980's, the United States was perceived as a benchmark of how free societies should operate, this despite a slow erosion of respect which began in the Vietnam era.However, that was a drop in the ocean compared to now. America is universally hated by the population of almost every country on the planet.Even in my homeland of Britain, America's supposed biggest ally, hatred of all things American, including the American people themselves, is at an all time high. The British hate Americans even more than they do the French or the Germans. In many cases the scope of the resentment is because individuals have difficulty separating the actions of an incumbent government from the real history of a country and its people.

Ceaseless warmongering, a worldwide torture policy and scandal after scandal have left America with a soiled global reputation.
America is the new evil empire, the new Soviet Union. Playing the role of the good guys is the EU/UN global government watchdog. This is the landscape of the manufactured multi-polar world. In reality, both entities are working towards the establishment of a unipolar world dictatorship and for that to happen, America has to be brought down from within.
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the lies that justified Iraq, indictments of high level Bush administration officials, brazen war profiteering, and the fallen cartoon character image of George W. Bush, all these issues were meant to come out and they were meant to contribute to the world's decaying tolerance of America as a superpower.
The European Union/United Nations global power bloc is waiting in the wings for when nationwide chaos engulfs America and they have to send in their 'peacekeeping' troops to restore order. Far from just being the plot of X Box video games, Republican Congressman Ron Paul recently warned of this outcome.

In a sense, every time we report on the latest embarrassment to inflict America's geopolitical standing, we are helping the Globalists further their ultimate end game. Should we be silent on such issues? Obviously not. But we should go to great lengths to stress that these events are designed to make America look bad and they are designed to prop up the world government fake left-wing alternative of the EU and the UN.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Both Republicans and Democrats are reading off a script. On the very same day people like Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Joe Lieberman will come out in support of the war while Bush repeats tiresome cliches of staying the course. This is meant to make Americans turn away from the now obvious one party system and look to the international stage for relief.
The fact that a President who has to ask permission to use the bathroom and loses a battle of wits with a door is supposedly in charge of the biggest superpower on earth is again designed to make America look foolish in comparison to the austere, enlightened and rational image of the global government model.

The gigantic mess in Iraq fits in this same picture. When American troops finally do pull out they will be replaced by NATO forces. Even though, as is the case in Afghanistan, the turmoil will continue just the same, the media will rarely report on it and so the wider world will be hoodwinked into thinking that global government saved the day and cleaned up another filthy American quagmire. Smaller scale terror attacks, as debated in the recent GOP 'terror memo,' occurring around the world and blamed on America's occupation of Iraq, will have the impact of locking in the domestic police state, while still giving the impression that the Bush administration is incompetent and wayward in prosecuting a 'war on terror' that doesn't even exist in the first place.
This whole unfolding scenario is only going to become clearer as we hurtle towards 2006.
America is meant to lose the war in Iraq. America is meant to lose the war on terror. America is meant to descend into anarchy at home.
The end of the age of American superpower status will be the entree for world government to step across the breach in the name of 'securing the interests of the planet' and any notion of national sovereignty will be cast aside and we will witness the birth of a new world order.

Dante's Inferno

A horror movie brings out the zombie vote to protest Bush's war
by Dennis Lim, Village Voice

What if our soldiers came back from the dead, and instead of wanting to eat us, just wanted to vote in the next election? As the president's callous campaign manager quips to his political consultant about their reason for returning: "It couldn't be the disability benefits."
"This is a horror story because most of the characters are Republicans," director Joe Dante announced before the November 13 world premiere of his latest movie, Homecoming, at the Turin Film Festival. Republicans, as it happens, will be the ones who find Homecoming's agitprop premise scariest: In an election year, dead veterans of the current conflict crawl out of their graves and stagger single-mindedly to voting booths so they can eject the president who sent them to fight a war sold on "horseshit and elbow grease."
The dizzying high point of Showtime's new Masters of Horror series, the hour-long Homecoming (which premieres December 2) is easily one of the most important political films of the Bush II era. With its only slightly caricatured right-wingers, the film nails the casual fraudulence and contortionist rhetoric that are the signatures of the Bush-Cheney administration. Its dutiful hero, presidential consultant David Murch, reports to a Karl Rove–like guru named Kurt Rand and engages in kinky power fucks with attack-bitch pundit Jane Cleaver, a blonde, leggy Ann Coulter proxy with a "No Sex for All" tank top and "BSH BABE" license plates. Murch's glib, duplicitous condescension is apparently what triggers the zombie uprising: Confronting an angry mother of a dead soldier on a news talk show, he tells this Cindy Sheehan figure, "If I had one wish . . . I would wish for your son to come back," so he could assure the country of the importance of the war. The boy does return, along with legions of fallen combatants, and they all beg to differ.
How fitting that the most pungent artistic response to a regime famed for its crass fear-mongering would be a cheap horror movie. Jaw-dropping in its sheer directness, Homecoming is a righteous blast of liberal-left fury (it was greeted with a five-minute ovation in Turin, the most vocal appreciation seeming to come from the American filmmakers and writers in attendance).
At once galvanic and cathartic, Dante's film uncorks the rage that despondent progressives promptly suppressed after last year's election and that has only recently been allowed to color mainstream coverage of presidential untruths and debacles. For all its broad, bludgeoning satire, Homecoming is deadly accurate in skewering the callousness and hypocrisy of the Bush White House and the spin industry in its orbit.
Zombie flicks, with their built-in return-of-the-repressed theme, have always served as allegories of their sociopolitical moments. But Homecoming, very much a movie on a mission, casts aside metaphor—it derives its power from its disconcerting literalness. The zombies do not represent—but are—the unseen costs of this futile war. Implicit in the film's unapologetic bluntness is a sickened urgency, an insistence that this is no time for subtlety.
"If you're going to code the message, which is the way horror movies have always done it, that's fine, but it's not going to reach an audience like a movie that's overt, and this is not exactly subtle," says Dante. "Somebody has to start making this kind of movie, this kind of statement. But everybody's afraid—it's uncommercial, people are going to be upset. Good, let them be upset. Why aren't people upset? Every minute, somebody's dying in this war, and for nothing. To establish a religious theocracy in Iraq? It doesn't seem to me quite worth it."
Homecoming tailors its provocative scenario to accommodate a devastatingly specific checklist of accusations, from the underreporting of war casualties to last November's dubious Ohio count. As if in defiance of the Pentagon's policy to ban photographs of dead soldiers' coffins, Dante's film shows not just the flag-draped caskets at Dover Air Force Base but their irate occupants bursting out of them. "There's a lot of powerful imagery in this movie that has nothing to do with me," Dante says. "When you see those coffins, which is a sight that's generally been withheld from us, there's a gravity to it. Even though there's comedy in the movie, there's something basically so serious and depressing about the subject that it never gets overwhelmed by satire."
In any case, as Homecoming suggests, there are ways in which the current administration is essentially beyond satire. The nuttiest attitudes the film ascribes to its ruthless Republicans are scarcely more extreme than anything Dick Cheney or Karl Rove has been credited with.
"Have you seen Network lately? Everything has happened," Dante says. "And Arthur Hiller's The Hospital, which was also [written by] Paddy Chayefsky. They wanted to make the picture as outrageous as possible, so they tried to think of the most impossible situations, like going into an emergency room and having somebody say, 'You can't get any care until you fill out these forms.' And it's all come true!" Real events were indeed catching up with Homecoming before it was completed. "It was only when we started shooting that Cindy Sheehan emerged," Dante says. "It was weird, because everybody said [of the war mother character], 'Oh, you based that on Cindy Sheehan!' It was just a coincidence, but I guess it was inevitable that somebody like that would show up."
Dante hopes Homecoming functions as a wake-up call—not so much for politicians but for filmmakers. "If this spurs other people into making more and better versions, it will have done its job. I want to see more discussion," he says. "Nobody is doing anything about what's going on now—compared to the '70s, when they were making movies about the issues of the day. This elephant in the room, this Iraq war story, is not being dramatized."
"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see what a fucking mess we're in," he continues. "It's been happening steadily for the past four years, and nobody said peep. The New York Times and all these people that abetted the lies and crap that went into making and selling this war—now that they see the guy is a little weak, they're kicking him with their toe to make sure he doesn't bite back. It's cowardly. This pitiful zombie movie, this fucking B movie, is the only thing anybody's done about this issue that's killed 2,000 Americans and untold numbers of Iraqis? It's fucking sick." While gratified by the warm reception to Homecoming in Turin, Dante says he's eager for the right-wing punditocracy back home to see it: "I hope this movie bothers a lot of people that disagree with it—and that it makes them really pissed off, as pissed off as the rest of us are."

Uh-Oh!

Embedded TIME Reporter: Bush Lied In Speech Yesterday About Iraqi SecurityForces
From thinkprogress.org:
Yesterday, President Bush claimed that Iraqi security forces “primarily led” the assault on the city of Tal Afar. Bush highlighted it as an “especially clear” sign of the progress Iraq security forces were making in Iraq.

The progress of the Iraqi forces is especially clear when the recent anti-terrorist operations in Tal Afar are compared with last year’s assault in Fallujah. In Fallujah, the assault was led by nine coalition battalions made up primarily of United States Marines and Army — with six Iraqi battalions supporting them…This year in Tal Afar, it was a very different story. The assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces — 11 Iraqi battalions, backed by five coalition battalions providing support.

TIME Magazine reporter Michael Ware, who is embedded with the U.S. troops in Iraq who participated in the Tal Afar battle, appeared on Anderson Cooper yesterday. He said Bush’s description was completely untrue:

I was in that battle from the very beginning to the very end. I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with al Qaeda. They were not leading. They were being led by the U.S. green beret special forces with them. MORE

Justice Dept.: Delay Redistricting Plan Violated Voting Act
A memo obtained by the Washington Post shows lawyers at the Justice Department concluded a controversial Texas redistricting plan spearheaded by indicted Congressmember Tom Delay violated the Voting Rights Act. The memo argued the redistricting plan illegally diluted the voting influence of minorities in several Texas congressional districts. The memo said: "The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect." Texas lawmakers approved the plan anyway, the memo says, because it stood to increase the number of elected federal Texas Republicans. Following the plan’s approval in 2003, Republicans gained five seats in the following year’s congressional elections. The redistricting plan is currently being challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Congressmember Delay is facing state charges of money laundering and conspiracy in connection with state elections.

Abramoff, lobbyists linked to troubled multibillion-dollar Homeland Security contract

It was supposed to be “the deal of the century.”
The Transportation Security Administration awarded a $1 billion contract to Unisys to devise a cutting-edge computer network linking hundreds of airports to the TSA’s state-of-the-art security centers. The contract was ideal, they argued, because if the company failed to meet its goals, Unisys would pay money back to the agency. It didn’t turn out that way. In October, the Washington Post revealed the Pennsylvania-based information services company had overcharged the government for a whopping 117,000 hours -- billing $131 an hour for employees who were paid less than half that amount. Officials now see the project costing taxpayers as much as $3 billion.
Unisys’ prime lobbyists? A team from the Greenberg Traurig lawfirm led by Neil Volz, former chief of staff to Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) -- which included indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. RAW STORY has found that Unisys acquired the contract, said riddled with fraud, in a process that included backroom dealings and almost no competitive bidding, and former Abramoff associates say his lobbyists had a hand in the deal. At the time, the chief of staff to the General Services Administration was David Safavian, a former Abramoff colleague and later chief of federal procurement who was arrested in September for obstructing an investigation into the Abramoff's attempts to buy government property. Lobbying reports compiled by the Center for Public Integrity show Unisys paid Greenberg $480,000 in 2003 and $116,000 in 2004 .MORE

Utah Republicans to 'date' lobbyists
SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Utah Republicans are at odds over a new fundraising scheme that allows lobbyists to pay to meet state house members in what's being called a "speed date." Speed dating is a concept in which people pay to spend a five minutes apiece chatting one at a time with a series of people. The Salt Lake Tribune reports the Utah House Republican Caucus has organized a similar event on Jan. 5, but featuring Republican state representatives and lobbyists. Rep. Kory Holdaway called the event "absurd" and said "payment for access" isn't the right way to go about raising cash. The lobbyist payments would go to the party's state caucus.

As many as 60 U.S. Congressmen may be implicated in Bribery scandal
The Abramoff affair: Corruption scandal threatens Republican control of US Congress
Michael Scanlon, a Republican political operative, publicist and former press spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, pled guilty November 21 to conspiring with lobbyist Jack Abramoff to bribe a Republican congressman and cheat several American Indian tribes out of tens of millions of dollars. Scanlon’s guilty plea-and even more his agreement to cooperate fully with federal prosecutors and testify against former colleagues-has sent a chill through Republican ranks and raised the prospect of numerous indictments, convictions and jail terms for congressmen and congressional staffers as well as Bush administration officials involved in the rampant corruption of official Washington.
By the end of last week, there were press reports that at least four Republican legislators and 17 staffers and former staffers were the targets of the Justice Department investigation into the Abramoff affair. The Wall Street Journal named DeLay, Congressman Robert Ney of Ohio, Congressman John Doolittle of California, and Senator Conrad Burns of Montana as targets, as well as several former Bush administration officials. The Washington Post reported that prosecutors had informed Congressman Ney that he was the subject of a bribery investigation and added that the wives of DeLay and Doolittle had also been linked to Abramoff’s influence-peddling schemes. The Abramoff affair could have much wider implications. A reporter for BusinessWeek, on a television interview program, said that his Justice Department sources had told him that as many as 60 congressmen could be implicated in the bribery scandal-far more than enough to threaten control over the House of Representatives, where the Republican majority is 231-202, with one independent.
The Associated Press named eight more congressmen and senators who received contributions engineered by Abramoff in return for political favors, four Republicans and four Democrats. The Republicans were congressmen Charles Taylor of North Carolina, J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, Todd Tiahrt of Kansas and Dave Camp of Michigan. The Democrats included three senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota (the senior Democrat on the committee now investigating the Abramoff affair), and Congressman Dale Kildee of Michigan.
Previous press accounts have noted that House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois, a Republican, and the leading Democrat in the Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid, received substantial campaign contributions from groups directed by Abramoff, most of them Indian tribes seeking congressional favors for their casino gambling operations.
...
There may well be further White House reverberations. According to documents released November 9, Abramoff sought a $9 million payment from the West African nation of Gabon to arrange a meeting with President Bush. Abramoff asked for the money to be paid through wire transfers to a company he controlled privately, rather than to the lobbying firm of Greenberg Traurig, where he was then employed. President Omar Bongo met with Bush in the Oval Office 10 months later, but there has as yet been no confirmation that he either made the payment to Abramoff or received the invitation in return. White House officials denied any connection, claiming that the Bongo visit was “part of the president’s outreach to the continent of Africa.”

Forget Duke Cunningham.
Take a look at THE PEOPLE WHO BRIBED HIM
From CANNONFIRE.blogspot.com:
I've done some research into previously-unexplored areas of a corruption scandal. The journey began when I made a stop at Daniel Hopsicker's site, where he has an important new story up: "Cunningham Stripped $700 Million from U.S. Defense -- 'Dukester's' Epic Boo-Hoo Hiding Massive Pentagon Rip-Off." Hopsicker looks at a California firm called ADCS, which is part of the Wilkes Corporation, which lobbies -- and funds -- a number of Republican politicians, not just Cunningham. Wilkes operates under a variety of names -- the primary sobriquet seems to be "Group W Advisors." The whole shebang is owned by a 50 year-old businessman named Brent Wilkes and his wife Regina. According to Hopsicker, Wilkes may have subterranean ties to the sleazy world of Jack Abramoff. At this point, I'm not sure. Those interested in pursuing that angle should read Hopsicker's piece and come to their own conclusions. Even without the Abramoff connection, a little hard-core Googling placed this company in a very interesting light.
Before we go any further, let's clarify one matter: Mitchell Wade, owner of MZM -- the other company accused of bribing Duke Cunnigham -- is described as a "former employee" of Wilkes. And since Wilkes has a dizzying number of "spin-off" firms, who can really say, at this point, where Wilkes ends and MZM begins? Wilkes runs his own PAC, named ADCS Inc. PAC. He uses that venue and a number of others to grease his way through the corridors of power. ADCS is frequently referred to as a "defense" firm or an "IT" firm. While it does seem to have some history in the field of document services, few have looked into the question of just what it is these people do for the DOD. When folks show up for work at 13970 Stowe Drive in Poway, California, how do they occupy their time?
I believe that this "defense firm" is little more a Potemkin village. A movie set. A false construct.
So I started to do some research.
NOTHING ABOUT THAT FIRM MAKES ANY SENSE!
These people built an ostentatious, massive $11 million facility in a small town. Their web page and their ad on Monster list a LOT of subsidiary or related firms. Note: The subsidiary firms are no longer listed and described on the main web page for Wilkes. You can find that stuff on the old page, still available via Google's cache function. Yet this story says that ADCS has only about 100 employees. Only a hundred staffers in a place like that? Each worker must have his own suite!
By the way, the "Bryan Wilkes" listed in the above-cited story is probably the same person who functions as the press secretary for Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA). Check out Royce -- his background might prove as interesting as Cunningham's.
You want to know how weird ADCS is? One of their sub-companies is called Group W Media. The ADCS website describes this company thus: "Group W Media is a full-service marketing agency offering marketing, advertising, web design and hosting, event planning and graphic design services."
Now go to their web site: www.groupwmedia.net
That is NOT the website for any kind of legitimate advertising or marketing firm.
Look, I've done a lot of work for advertising agencies. I know what an ad firm's web page should look like. Any site in that field will always be flashy, glitzy, cutting edge, "in your face" -- and generously filled with samples of previous work. You would NOT have to log in to see what's going on at a real ad agency. As a moment's thought will tell you, any ad firm is going to pull out out all the stops when it comes to advertising itself.
Group W Media is some sort of cover.
That may sound overly dramatic, but I'm dead serious. That web page is fishier than "Finding Nemo." I've been taking a look at all the subsidiary firms, and I have yet to see any indication that ADCS actually provides any kind of services to anyone. Admittedly, my research is preliminary -- but right now, nearly ALL of those subsidiary firms have the odor of the bogus. Well, there is one ADCS subsidiary that DOES seem to do something -- Group W Events. They do catering. They also host events at the ADCS corporate HQ in Poway. This whole thing seems to be headed up by Brent's wife Regina. One of her few known clients was...herself. She catered her own fiftieth birthday party. She also put together a huge bash for Republican legislator John Doolittle, another recipient of Wilkes' largesse.
We know that ADCS -- a.k.a. Group W advisors -- has made quite a few political payoffs. This page lists two of the mechanisms as Perfect Wave Technologies and Pure Aqua Technologies. Google provides no hint that either of those companies does any actual work. Note: Perfect Wave also seems to have funneled money to Texans for a Republican Majority. This may be part of the money that Tom Delay sent out for laundering. See here. The only Group W employee I've been able to find any background on is a guy named Mark Turok. He has identified himself as Group W's "senior legislative analyst." He seems to have arranged for some of the political donations. He also ran a not-terribly-interesting right-wing blog for a while, although he stopped posting about the time the Cunningham scandal came to light. The most interesting thing I could find out about Turok is that he's the alumni of "Christian Unified Schools," an institution founded by Tim LaHaye. That factoid may or may not be relevant. My point is this: I'm unconvinced that the Wilkes corp actually does ANYTHING. Gina Wilkes knows how to throw a nice party, but that's about it. I have a strange feeling that this company exists for the sole purpose of getting massive Defense contracts, which are probably subcontracted out to real firms that do the real work.
UPDATE: I've been privately told by someone I trust that the closest thing to an actual service Wilkes has provided to the DOD was, in essence, xeroxing. If that's true, then -- well, what can one say? Look at the amount of money involved! There's a sort of genius at work here...

Third US Official Charged for Iraq Reconstruction Graft
And in other Iraq news, a US Army officer has become the third person to be charged for graft in the US-run reconstruction of Iraq. Lt. Col. Michael Brian Wheeler was charged with smuggling hundreds of thousands of dollars in reconstruction funds to purchase machine guns and other illegal arms. Lt. Col. Wheeler helped supervise millions of dollars in reconstruction projects from September 2003 until July 2004. According to the New York Times, the affidavit submitted him indicates US authorities plan to bring charges against several other former occupation officials.

National Guard Offering $1,000 Recruiting “Finders Fee”
Faced with dwindling recruiting numbers, the Army National Guard is offering a finder’s fee to soldiers who can enlist new recruits. According to a report in USA Today, The Guard Recruiter Assistant Program, launched this week in five states, offers National Guard members rewards of $1,000 dollars for enlisting a recruit and an additional $1,000 dollars if the recruit shows up for basic training. The National Guard says recruiting has fallen 20% short of its goal this year.

Senate Committee to Hold Session on Newspaper Propaganda
Meanwhile, top Pentagon officials will appear before a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee today to answer reports the US is paying Iraqi newspapers to publish military propaganda. Senior Pentagon officials say they have yet to receive an explanation. After the story broke earlier this week, General George Casey argued the program should not be publicly discussed because it was classified. Asked about the issue Thursday, military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch appeared to defend the program without confirming its specifics. Major General Lynch said: "We don't lie. We don't need to lie. We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact, not based on fiction."

Rumsfeld, Pace Differ on US Response to Iraqi Abuse
At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld engaged in an unusual exchange with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Peter Pace at a press conference Tuesday. Asked whether US troops are responsible for preventing human rights abuses by Iraqi forces, General Pace answered: "It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it." As Pace elaborated, Rumsfeld interrupted him, saying: "But I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it." But General Pace replied: "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it", he said.

BBC broadcast ’fake’ news reports

A Spinwatch investigation has revealed that journalists working for the Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC) have been commissioned to provide news reports to the BBC. The BBC has been using these reports as if they were genuine news. In fact, the SSVC is entirely funded by the Ministry of Defence as a propaganda operation, which according to its own website makes a ’considerable contribution’ to the ’morale’ of the armed forces.

Spinwatch can reveal that we have our very own fake journalists operating in the UK. The government pays for their wages and they provide news as if they were normal journalists rather than paid propagandists. Normally they work in a little known outfit with the acronym BFBS, which stands for British Forces Broadcasting Service. BFBS exists to ‘entertain and inform’ British armed forces around the world and is entirely funded by the British Ministry of Defence. BFBS is run by the SSVC. But on this occasion no mention of Ministry of defence funding was made.
The Foreign Office runs a network of fake news operations and has done for years. In recently times these have been contracted out to private production companies with the helpful effect that the government funding is further camouflaged. They have also been extended markedly to focus more cetnrally on the middle east since 2001. One such is the London Press Service which is described as follows on the government I-uk site: ’an agency offering the latest British headline news, news round-ups, features and pictures for use by journalists overseas.’
This is a rather coy way to describe a government propaganda service. Click on its website for an admission of the defining feature of this whole network of agencies; that the news on the site ’is for free use by journalists’. Look in vain for an indication of who really funds this service. All you will see is a notice at the bottom of the home page : ’The london Press Service is operated and maintained by Intelfax Ltd.’ Intelfax is in turn an independent production company but the London Press Service is funded entirely by the Foreign Office. MORE

CNN Online Poll: 89% Believe There's Been a 9/11 Cover-up
On Wednesday, November 10th, Anderson Cooper featured Kyle Hence and Jimmy Walter regarding the latter's TV ad campaign to expose 9/11 truth on WTC 7 and the Pentagon strike. Although Cooper also introduced "official story" apologist Gerald Posner to discredit the ads (with already stale and discredited excuses), the viewers were apparently not impressed and 89% of respondents to the show's online poll remain convinced there's been a government cover-up.

It's getting worse, not better

Welcome to the chambers of death
By Jamal Mudhafar
Azzaman, November 20, 2005

The U.S.-led occupation, that was forecast to end dictatorship and introduce democracy, seems to have been a harbinger of more violence, more oppression and more killings. Terrorist attacks are surging and suicide bombers mushrooming. And there seems to be no end to abuses and atrocities whether by U.S. troops, government security forces or the secretive and fearful militias. In the aftermath of U.S. occupation, there is no Iraqi family or home without a tragic story to tell or a calamity to moan. Acts of violence and terror taking place in Iraq are unprecedented in their horror and barbarism. These are perhaps the ugliest crimes and most appalling human rights violations in the history of mankind. Not every thing reaches the outside world. Even international media representatives based in Iraq are not aware of them as they, for security reasons, spend their reporting stints in fortified hideouts in Baghdad. Horrendous crimes are being committed in Iraq in addition to major bombings the terrorist launch to attract international media attention. Mass killings and liquidations have become the norm with kidnapping a way of life and identity card murder a daily practice. Mutilated bodies thrown on roadsides and garbage dumps have become a common sight. Amid the gloom and uncertainty about the future, reports surface of prisoner abuses and squandering of millions of dollars by government ministries.
Death counts have lost their significance in Iraq with fatal incidents, bombings and trigger-happy militia gangs killing hundreds and even thousands very week. In the midst of this horror, assassinations of Iraqi professionals, former army officers, Baathists, clerics and Iraqis of note continue with impunity. Some Iraqis may understand that it is beyond the power of the government and the mighty U.S. army to put an end to the insurgency. But they cannot understand why atrocities like those of Abu Ghraib and most recently those of the secret jail run by the Interior Ministry could happen. They cannot understand why Iraqi and U.S. forces cannot put an end to the abduction of innocent people and the assassination of university professors, medical doctors and other professionals. Every now and then the government sets up an investigation committee to look into incidents like these but to no avail. We know that these committees are formed but we are never told about their outcome. So the killers, the torturers, the kidnappers, the corrupt officials, the liars and the cheats are free. We the innocent people have become their prisoners. This is exactly the reality of the current situation in our country, the ominous harbinger of even much worse to come.

Taking care of Big Business

Is the U.S. Training Iraqi Death Squads to Fight the Insurgency?
Bush has repeatedly linked a U.S. withdrawal to improvements in the capability of Iraqi forces. But the mainstream media has recently detailed the existence of death squads within the largely Shiite police and special commandos.Operating through or with the Iraqi security forces, these militias have abducted, tortured and executed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Sunnis. The New York Times reported Tuesday "Some Sunni males have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished."
At a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was questioned about the death squads.

Pentagon press conference, November 29
Q: Mr. Secretary, are you concerned over -- and in fact, is the United States looking into growing reports of uniformed death squads in Iraq perhaps assassinating and torturing hundreds of Sunnis? And if that's true, what would that say about stability in Iraq?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I'm not going to comment on hypothetical questions. I've not seen reports that hundreds are being killed by roving death squads at all. We know for a fact that it's a violent country. We know for a fact that there have been various militias. We know that there have been some militias that have been Iran-oriented. We also know there's been some militias in the north that have been very helpful. The Peshmerga have been very constructive in what they've done. But I'm not going to get into speculation like that.
Q: But, sir, that's not a hypothetical, I don't believe. The Sunnis themselves are charging that hundreds have been assassinated, people shot in the head, found in alleys.
SEC. RUMSFELD: What you're talking about are unverified -- to my knowledge, at least -- unverified comments. I just don't have any data from the field that I could comment on in a specific way.

While the story only recently made front-page news, it actually first appeared in the press over six months ago. Investigative journalist Arun Gupta was one of the first to report on the presence of death squads in Iraq back in April of this year. We interviewed him at the time, he joins us again in our firehouse studios. Arun is an editor with New York City Independent Media Center's newspaper, The Indypendent.
Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3

Prevented from Leaving
In the following article, a startling claim leaped out, that is absolutely horrific in it's implications. Before Fallujah was attacked by US forces, US marines prevented any male of fighting age from leaving the city. There is a link to an article written just before the offensive that supports this claim. This age range was 14 to 45. It is possible, even likely, that many of these fighting age males were civilians. In Iraq, because only men drive cars, many whole families were forced to stay in Fallujah during the bombing. One estimate of the number of fighting age men was reported by Dave Lindorff as 100,000.

The Pentagon’s body armor scandal

Nancy Durst told a reporter last month that her husband, a soldier with an Army reserve unit from Maine serving in Iraq, spent four months without body armor. According to Durst, her husband says that reservists have not been given the same equipment as active duty soldiers. "They're so sick of being treated as second-class soldiers," she said. Maybe one reason the military wants to keep quiet about the problem is because the Pentagon’s sole supplier of body armor--Point Blank Body Armor--is swimming in scandal. Point Blank is owned by DHB Industries--which stands for "David H. Brooks." Brooks is a corporate crook of the highest order. In 1992, he was implicated in an insider-trading scam, and since then, he’s racked up several Securities and Exchange Commission complaints for shady deals.

The growing problem of defense industry profiteering
By David Sirota
If you thought it impossible to top the image of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) driving around a Rolls Royce and living on a yacht thanks to defense industry cash, just stop and take a look Lloyd Grove's story today in the New York Daily News. In their own ways, they each touch on a subject that we rarely ever discuss in America:
defense industry profiteering. We hear a lot out of Washington about how we need to cut programs for the poor and middle class, in order to deal with the deficit or finance new tax cuts. The rhetoric makes it seem as if these programs are the real culprit driving our country into oceans of red ink. But a quick look at the numbers shows that it is defense/security spending that is soaring, while non-defense discretionary spending has been flat. For a more local view of how most of your tax dollars go to defense and not "social programs," just see this 2005 study by the National Priorities Project.
We've heard countless stories of private defense companies with connections to the Bush administration pocketing multi-billion dollar contracts and then overcharging our government. We've seen sweetheart deals that have raised the ire of nonpartisan watchdogs. And now, with Cunningham, we've gotten a glimpse at the pay-to-play auction that is going on the Defense Appropriations Committees. Even many necessary defense programs get sucked into this profiteering net, with defense contractors charging exorbitant prices for their goods/services (for instance, the $10 million bat mitzvah sponsor produces armor - but having that much cash means there's likely more going on there than just "doing well by doing good").
Most politicians of both parties are either too bought off, or too frightened of being labeled "weak" to even talk about defense industry profiteering. They simply throw more and more money at the defense industry, with almost no regard as to whether what we are spending money on will actually help us effectively shore up our national security in a 21st century where we face unconventional threats. They are rewarded with huge campaign contributions from a politically well-connected defense industry swimming in cash.
But while politicians may be too corrupt or too pathetically wimpy to address defense spending seriously, former Reagan Pentagon official Larry Korb notes that there's one group of people who clearly support a major reevaluation of defense spending: the vast majority of Americans. As Korb notes:

"[A] survey conducted by the Program for International Policy Alternatives shows that 65 percent of the American public believes the federal government should transfer tax dollars out of several areas of the defense budget that have nothing to do with fighting the global war on terrorism."

And Korb points out there are ways to immediately start seeing savings - savings that could be put either into more important national security priorities, or other pressing priorities altogether:

"Over $40 billion in savings from wasteful Pentagon programs could be achieved quickly – by cutting only the most egregious examples of misplaced priorities. These programs include the F-22 Raptor fighter jet and Virginia Class submarines, designed to achieve superiority over Soviet jets and submarines that were never built; missile defense, proposed when terrorists were not our primary enemy; bases in Asia, Europe and here at home that are irrelevant in today's geopolitical reality."

Before anyone tries to paint these facts with the pathetically hackneyed "weak on national security" brush, remember - it was none other than neoconservative poster boy Donald Rumsfeld who recently advocated for military "transformation" - including major cuts to outdated weapons systems that contractors were getting fat off of. The defense industry is getting hugely wealthy off of America's misguided national security policy - a policy that allows defense industry profiteering to go on with no restriction, a policy clearly pushed by this industry as a way to make more money.
Whereas in eras past, courageous leaders like Harry Truman opened up investigations into this kind of profiteering, today, lawmakers go out of their way to actually prevent scrutiny. Remember, it was the Senate last year that voted down legislation to create stiffer penalties for war profiteers, and it was Vice President Cheney who went to the Senate floor to curse off the bill's sponsors for having the nerve to even raise the issue. When will it end? When lawmakers of both parties start putting America's national security concerns over the concerns of their defense industry campaign donors. In an era where every politician wants to be "pro-national security" - allowing defense industry profiteering is exactly the opposite. It drains resources away from the programs that actually protect our troops but have been underfunded, and it undermines a more effective 21st century defense policy that would better protect America.
UPDATE: Joe Bua points out that the defense contractor whose owner held a $10 million bat mitzvah actually produced potentially defective products that may unnecessarily have put our troops in harms way.

GM crop failure a warning, says US adviser

A former agricultural adviser to US presidents says the failure of a genetically modified field pea trial should act as a warning for future GM crop testing. The 10-year CSIRO trial was abandoned when tests found the peas were making mice seriously ill.

EPA Dissolves Panel, Halts Dust Testing
In a move that has angered local politicians and health advocates, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced it will no longer test for World Trade Center dust contamination in Brooklyn and north of Canal Street in Manhattan. The suspension of testing in the areas came as part of a $7 million dollar reduced-testing plan. Testing will also exclude buildings set for demolition. The EPA also announced it is halting a panel of toxicologists, doctors, environmentalists and residents formed to review the testings. The panel’s last meeting will be held in December. In a statement, Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York said: "This testing and cleanup plan is a breathtaking slap at the residents and workers of Lower Manhattan. Once again, EPA is quite callously demonstrating that the health and safety of those affected by 9/11 are simply not a priority."