Hypocryptonite

Supreme Court Rebukes White House Over Guantanamo Tribunals
In a landmark decision the Supreme Court has rebuked the Bush administration for forming military tribunals to try prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. In a five to three ruling, the court said the military tribunals violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention.
The impact of the case is expected to go well beyond Guantanamo as the justices ruled that the so-called war on terror must be fought under international rules. Legal experts say the ruling challenges the Bush administration’s legal defense of harsh interrogation methods, the CIA’s secret prisons and the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program. The court ruled that the Geneva Convention must apply to detainees captured in the war on terror.
The Los Angeles Times reported "The real blockbuster in the Hamdan decision is the court's holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies to the conflict with Al Qaeda — a holding that makes high-ranking Bush administration officials potentially subject to prosecution under the federal War Crimes Act." In Thursday’s ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote "the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction."

NYT: Decision "A Historic Event, a Defining Moment”
The New York Times called the decision a "historic event, a defining moment in the ever-shifting balance of power." Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union hailed the Supreme Court's ruling.

• Ben Wizner: "It's a very important decision today. And we have to remember what Guantanamo is. Guantanamo was an attempt on behalf of the administration to create an island outside the law; to bring these detainees to a place where no law applied to them and where the United States could do whatever it wanted to them. And what the Supreme Court said today is that even in Guantanamo Bay, U.S. law and international law apply, and if we're going to try these people for crimes, we have to try them under a legal system - not a system that we make up as we go along."

Scalia, Alito, Thomas Back Military Tribunals
Voting in favor of the military tribunals were three justices: Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. For the first time in his 15 years on the court Thomas read part of his dissent from the bench. He said the court’s decision would ’sorely hamper the president’s ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.’” Chief Justice John Roberts abstained from the case because he had ruled on the case in favor of the military tribunals when he served as a federal judge. Unknown at the time of that ruling was that Roberts was already being interviewed by the White House for a seat on the Supreme Court.

Guantanamo Attorney:
The Supreme Court Ruling on Tribunals Proves
"The Entire Structure of the War on Terror is Unlawful"

Clive Stafford Smith: First Casualty Of War Shouldn't Be the Rule of Law
Human rights groups around the world hailed Thursday's Supreme Court ruling. This is British attorney Clive Stafford Smith who represents several detainees at Guantanamo.

• Clive Stafford Smith: "I think the message for the Bush administration is very clear that if you are fighting a war for democracy and the rule of law, the first casualty shouldn't be the rule of law. We should live up to our principles. And you know if you do, if you respect human rights, then not only do more people respect you and want to help you, there are far fewer people who want to blow you up. It's just good policy as well as being decent."

Israeli Bombs Palestinian Interior Ministry
Israel air strikes in Gaza set ministry ablaze
Was There Really An Attack On Israeli Soldiers?
Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip has entered its third day as Israel attempted to recover a captured soldier. Overnight Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza more than 30 times. One Israeli bomb hit the Palestinian Interior Ministry office in Gaza City and set it ablaze.

Over 1 Million Palestinians Spend Another Night in Terror
The actions taken by the Israeli government unjustly impose collective punishment on all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and violate international law. ADC is also deeply concerned with the overnight arrests of elected Palestinian Legislative Council Members, and calls for their release.



House GOP: Gov't "Expects The Cooperation of All News Media"
The Republican-led House of Representatives has passed a resolution condemning news organizations for reporting on classified information that the government wants to keep secret. The vote came less than a week after the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal revealed the U.S. Treasury Department was secretly monitoring international bank transactions. The resolution's co-sponsor Ohio Republican Mike Oxley said the government "expects the cooperation of all news media" as it fights the so-called war on terror. Democrat Maurice Hinchey of New York accused his Republican counterparts of trying to intimidate the press. Meanwhile House Republican J.D. Hayworth of Arizona has collected the signatures of 70 House members to call for the media credentials of the New York Times to be revoked.


UN Council Approves Anti-Disappearances Treaty
The United Nations Human Rights Council has approved a new international treaty to ban states from abducting individuals and hiding them in secret prisons or killing them. The treaty -- which still has to be approved by the UN General Assembly -- would require nations to keep registers of detainees and tell their families the truth about their disappearance. The United States is not expected to ratify the pact, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
But will the UN bother to enforce it, that's the question.

Gov’t Sued Over New Medicaid Citizenship Rules
And a coalition of advocacy groups are suing the federal government in effort to challenge a new law that requires all Medicaid recipients to prove their citizenship or lose their benefits or long-term care. The rule goes into effect tomorrow. Critics fear millions of U.S. citizens may not be able to produce the necessary paperwork. Most affected might be elderly African Americans who were born in the rural South at a time when many black women were barred from maternity wards.

84% of National Security Experts Say U.S. Not Winning War on Terror
A new poll of one hundred leading counter-terrorism and national security experts has found that 84 percent believe the U.S. is not winning the war on terror. And 87 percent of the experts said the war in Iraq is hurting the global antiterrorism campaign. The poll was conducted by the magazine Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress. One former CIA official who described himself as a conservative Republican, said the war in Iraq has provided global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza and a valuable training ground.

Man charged after videotaping police
"They were waiting for a warrant to seize the cameras and the tapes in my house . . . because they said having these cameras was against the law. They’re security cameras," she said, adding, "They said they could do that. They could seize my apartment."

No agency left intact - NASA's demise under Bush
Unidentified sources at NASA told ABC News Camarda has been feuding with Wayne Hale, the manager of NASA`s space shuttle program, and NASA Administrator Mike Griffin about treatment Camarda's engineers received when they raised concerns about the upcoming Discovery launch. Some engineers believe more substantial changes need to be made.
'I cannot accept the methods I believe are being used by this Center to select future leaders,' he wrote. 'I have always based my decisions on facts, data and good solid analysis. I cannot be a party to rumor, innuendo, gossip and-or manipulation to make or break someone`s career and-or good name.'

FDA has declared that all drug companies are now immune to lawsuits . . . . .
This "Final Rule," which may as well be called a "Final Solution" for drug consumers, claims that consumers can no longer sue drug companies for the harm caused by any FDA-approved drug, even if the drug's manufacturer intentionally misled the FDA by hiding or fabricating clinical trial data.

Caution: New World Order ahead

Specter's NSA Bill Eradicates Fundamental Liberties

The White House and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) are nearing a compromise on legislation that would authorize the National Security Agency (NSA) domestic spying program. The bill, unfortunately, as it currently stands, poses a severe threat to fundamental civil liberties.

Group files for injunction to halt evoting in Colorado, California

Voter Action will file a motion for a preliminary injunction today to halt the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems in Colorado's November elections. This comes on the heels of a complaint filed by the nonprofit on June 1 against the use of DRE's made by Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems, ES&S, and Hart InterCivic in upcoming state elections.

A Single Person Could Swing an Election

The report concluded that the three major electronic voting systems in use have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities. But it added that most of these vulnerabilities can be overcome by auditing printed voting records to spot irregularities. And while 26 states require paper records of votes, fewer than half of those require regular audits.

Supreme Court Upholds GOP Redistricting of Texas
The Supreme Court has issued a major ruling that could lead to the redrawing of many legislative districts for partisan reasons. The court largely upheld Texas' controversial 2003 redistricting plan devised by former Congressman Tom Delay that helped Texas Republicans gain six seats in Congress. The Court said it was OK for state legislators to redraw district boundaries as often as they like. Up until now it was customary for states to redraw the districts once a decade based on new census information.
The League of Women Voters, Common Cause and other groups criticized the court ruling because it is expected to lead to a new round of partisan gerrymandering. The Supreme Court didn’t fully back the Texas plan. It found that Texas lawmakers had violated the Voting Rights Act when it redrew the borders of one district to remove 100,000 Mexican-Americans in order to help a Republican candidate.

Top Court Rules States Free to Redistrict
A fractured Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that states are free to redraw congressional districts at a time of their choosing, largely blessing Tom DeLay's bitterly contested handiwork in Texas and the gains it gave national Republicans.

Berkeley Ballot Will Include Referendum on Impeachment
Berkeley California has become the country’s first city to put a referendum on the ballot to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Bringing It All Back Home: The Bush War on Liberty Intensifies
And as we all know, desperate times call for desperate measures. If slander and hate don't do the trick, if they are ineffective in cowing Establishment opposition, then the next step is the criminalization of dissent. Thus the not-so-subtle hints from Torturer General Alberto Gonzales about pursuing leakers -- and the leaked-to -- with federal charges. And thus the current trial balloons in the media about charging the NYT with treason. These are serious threats; but just in case they're not enough, we're also getting the increasingly open call for violence against Bush opponents, for the "outraged public" to "take the law into their own hands."


Senate Committee Rejects Net Neutrality
The Senate Commerce Committee has dealt a setback to efforts to keep the Internet open and accessible to everyone. The Committee rejected an amendment that would have preserved net neutrality. But media activists who support net neutrality said the close vote showed momentum is growing in their favor. The amendment fell just one vote short of passing.

More children in U.S. living in poverty
U.S. children are poorer and less healthy now than in the 1990s, a child advocacy group says.
There were more than 13 million children living in poverty in 2004 -- an increase of 1 million over four years. There was also an increase in the percentage of low birth-weight babies between 2000 and 2003 and an increase in the number of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment.

Former Public Housing Residents In New Orleans File Suit
In New Orleans, public housing residents have filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Housing Authority of New Orleans and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The residents are accusing the agencies of preventing low-income black families from returning to the city. Two weeks ago HUD announced plans to tear down five thousand units of public housing.

Judge Sentences Katrina Looters to 15 Years in Jail
In other news from New Orleans, a judge has sentenced three people to fifteen years in prisons for looting in the days after Hurricane Katrina. The three were convicted of taking liquor, wine and beer from a grocery store.
Sounds like Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables" who got 20 years for taking a loaf of bread.

A corporate scandal that dwarfs Enron
As part of a scandal that's been running nearly two years, Fannie Mae has "misstated earnings" to the tune of $10.8 billion. That's some tune. So far, the Fannie fiasco has cost Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines and several other top executives their jobs. The stock has dropped from nearly $80 a share to around $50 -- roughly $30 billion in lost value. And the company recently settled with the federal government and agreed to pay $400 million in fines, stemming from allegations the firm fiddled with the books to ensure bigwigs got performance bonuses.

Official Charged in Abramoff Scandal
Roger G. Stillwell, an employee of the department's Insular Affairs Office, was charged with a single misdemeanor count of making a false filing, according to papers filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court. Federal officials said he is expected to enter a guilty plea at a court appearance set for July 21 before Magistrate Deborah A. Robinson.

Russia chastises U.S. over energy
President Vladimir Putin's top political adviser Wednesday accused the United States of seeking international energy domination under the guise of promoting democracy and insisted that Russia is committed to building its own style of political pluralism without outside interference.

Supreme Court Blocks Trials at Guantanamo
The ruling is a major political and legal setback for President Bush, saying he overstepped his authority by ordering military war crimes trials for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Get ready for a lot more "suicides" of detainees who have been tortured, rather than be allowed to tell of what they went through following a release

Guantanmo interrogators trained by torture school instructors
A March 22, 2005, sworn statement by the former chief of the Interrogation Control Element at Guantánamo said instructors from SERE also taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba.

Ex-Guantanamo Detainees Speak Out
The Supreme Court is expected to rule today on the legality of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. The case – Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld -- may decide the future of the prison camp. Today's ruling comes as a number of former Guantanamo prisoners are speaking out. Mamdouh Habib, a citizen of Australia, spoke with Reuters this week and discussed the conditions at the prison where he was held for almost three years.

• Mamdouh Habib: "Very bright light and cold freezing like fridge and they are very secure, and always light on and you are not allowed to, you can see nobody, all the time, 24 hours. Torture is very different, they give you injection all the time, they make you feel like...they try to make you crazy, and sometimes no water, they give you no water, toilet is always blockage, and sometimes they have like a water, a black water, like oil, comes from the ceiling."

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, another former detainee named Sher Bad Khan described his experience at Guantanamo.

• Sher Bad Khan: "There was no respect for human beings in Guantanamo, they don't treat the prisoners as a human beings, we were inside a cage. During interrogation we were treated very badly, they were beating, slapping, punishing us. They had no respect for human beings at all."

CIA Sabotage Manual
In the early 1980s, the right-wing Reagan U.S. Government was determined to undermine or overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. As part of this campaign, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a small illustrated booklet in both Spanish and English designed to destabilise the Nicaraguan Government and economic system. It instructed dissaffected individuals on acts of sabotage they could carry out to this end.
If such a manual was found in this country, authored by a foreign government, it would be denounced as an a plan for a terror campaign.

President Bush pledges to try to phase out Social Security again after the November election.

Bush Losing Core Supporters

President Bush appears to be losing support among a key group of voters who had hitherto stood firmly with the president even as his poll numbers among other groups fell dramatically.

Bush: Dems Are Waving “White Flag of Surrender”
In news on Iraq, President Bush accused Democrats last night of waving the "white flag of surrender" for backing proposals to bring the troops home from Iraq.
At least it's not the black flag with Skull & Bones on it, that he flies.

Next We Take Tehran
By inaugurating a war of choice against a nation that had not attacked the United States, and by justifying his actions under a new doctrine of unilateral, preventive war, Bush shattered the U.S. establishment’s policy consensus while alienating America’s closest allies, angering its rivals, and provoking a storm of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world. Now, like a high-stakes blackjack player doubling down, the president is letting the world know that he is ready to do it all over again in Iran.
And if the United States launches the sort of bombing campaign against Iran that is being considered—involving attacks against not just nuclear research facilities but also airfields, command and control centers, and other intelligence and military targets—to say that the consequences would be unpredictable is an understatement. The administration and many of its supporters are apparently ready to take the gamble that after an armed confrontation with Iran, a moderate, pro-American regime might emerge from the wreckage.

Spreading Cancer
Depleted uranium turns Bush's lies into high-tech horror

Depleted uranium — DU — is the Defense Establishment euphemism for U-238, a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process and the ultimate dirty weapon material. It’s almost twice as dense as lead, catches fire when launched and explodes on impact into microscopically fine particles, or "nano-particles," which are easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin; it’s also radioactive, with a half-life of 4.468 billion years.

And we make bombs and bullets out of it — it’s the ultimate penetrating weapon. We dropped at least 300 tons of it on Iraq during Gulf War I (the first time it was used in combat) and created Gulf War Syndrome. This time around, the estimated DU use on defenseless Iraq is 1,700 tons, far more of it in major population centers. Remember shock and awe? We were pounding Baghdad, in those triumphant early days, with low-grade nuclear weapons, raining down cancer, neurological disorders, birth defects and much, much more on the people we claimed to be liberating. We weren’t spreading democracy, we were altering the human genome.

As we "protected ourselves," in the words of the president, from Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, we opened our own arsenal of WMD on them, contaminating the country’s soil and polluting its air — indeed, unleashing a nuclear dust into the troposphere and contaminating the whole world.

"We used to think (DU) traveled up to a hundred miles," Chris Busby told me. Busby, a chemical physicist and member of the British government’s radiation risk committee, as well as the founder of the European Committee of Radiation Risk, has monitored air quality in Great Britain. Based on these findings, "It looks like it goes quite around the planet," he said.
continued

The High Price Of American Gullibility
What explains the gullibility of Americans, a gullibility that has mired the U.S. in disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that promises war with Iran, North Korea, and a variety of other targets if neoconservatives continue to have their way? If so many Americans cannot discern that they have acquiesced to conditions from which tyranny can arise, how can they understand that it is statistically impossible for the NSA's mass surveillance of Americans to detect terrorists?

Marine Recruiter Featured in Fahrenheit 9/11 Killed in Iraq
A U.S. Marine who appeared in Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11 has been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Sgt. Raymond Plouhar was seen in the film trying to recruit young men and women to join the military at a shopping mall in Flint Michigan.

THOUSANDS OF DISPLACED FAMILIES FLEE RAMADI AS HOSPITALS RUN OUT OF MEDICINE: CITY IS THREATENED BY MASSIVE US / IRAQI MILITARY ATTACK
Doctors for Iraq has received reports that an estimated 3,250 families from the city of Ramadi have been forced to flee the city because of the threat of an imminent US/ Iraqi military attack on the city.

200,000 Gather at Lopez Obrador Rally In Mexico City
In Mexico, as many as 200,000 people gathered Wednesday for the final campaign event for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ahead of Sunday’s election. Opinion polls show the populist candidate has a slight lead over his main rival Felipe Calderon. At the event Lopez Obrador vowed to renegotiate NAFTA and help the poor.

Report: U.S. Cars Responsible For Nearly Half of World’s Greenhouse Gases
A new report by Environmental Defense has determined that American cars and pickup trucks are responsible for nearly half of the greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles globally although they comprise only 30 percent of the world’s cars. The study found that cars in the U.S. are driven more miles, face lower fuel economy standards and use fuel with more carbon than many of those driven in other countries.

Rice visits Afghanistan in support of Karzai
"I don’t know anyone who is more admired and respected in the international community than President Karzai for his strength, for his wisdom and for his courage to lead this country first in the defeat of the Taliban and now in rebuilding a democratic and unified Afghanistan," Ms Rice told reporters at a press conference in the heavily fortified presidential palace.
The 'defeat of the Taliban'? Excuse me, Secretary Rice, did you not get the memo? Apparently, the people of Afghanistan do not think quite as highly of Karzai as does the international community, and many are joining the Taliban to oust this government. The Taliban insurgency, particularly in the south, is at an all-time high since the U.S. lead invasion.

Israel Seizes 64 Palestinian Lawmakers
Israel has arrested and detained 64 Palestinian lawmakers and ministers from the ruling Hamas party, including the government’s Foreign Minister and eight other cabinet members. Hamas called the arrests an "open war against the Palestinian government and people," and vowed retaliation.

• Hamas official Ziyad Daya: "These are not acts of a state that respects international law and respects democracy. These are acts of bandits."

Israel made the arrests as it continues its military operation to recover a captured Israeli soldier. Nearly half of the Gaza Strip remains without power following Israeli air strikes that knocked out a main power station. In other news Syrian television is reporting Israeli warplanes flew over the home of President Bashar al-Assad.
Why does the UN just sit on their hands? Why don't they send in Peacekeeping forces? Here is the real agenda. Even Israel has not claimed that the legally elected government of Palestine was responsible for the capture of an IDF occupier, yet the Palestinian government is being arrested.

Israel's attack against Gaza pre-planned

"Nobody understands the logic," Rafik Maliha, the plant's manager, said as firefighters worked to keep down smoke that still rose hours after the attacks. "They want to keep people in the dark so kidnappers don't move? What's the relationship?"

Israelis arrest dozens of Hamas officials
Imagine the US invading Canada and arresting the government because the US did not approve of the Canadian voters' choice.

Saddam: returned to office?

Saddam believes U.S. may reinstate him as president

Saddam Hussein believes that President Bush may reinstate him as president some day, according to a story slated for Sunday's New York Times.
"Saddam Hussein has no illusions, his chief lawyer says," writes Edward Wong. "As he sits in his prison cell reading the Quran and writing poetry, he knows the inevitable is coming -- a death sentence handed down by the Iraqi court trying him for crimes against humanity.
Yet Saddam refuses to submit to the fate that awaits him, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said, for he believes there is a way out," the article continues. "According to Mr. Hussein's logic, President Bush will use the court's sentence as leverage to try to persuade him to tamp down the insurgency, so desperate are the Americans to stanch their losses. Mr. Hussein believes the Americans might even reinstall him as president of Iraq, his lawyer said," Wong writes.

VIDEO: Snow Lashes Out at Media, Suggests NYT Has Undermined Americans’ ‘Right to Live’

Click to watch
President Bush today called the New York Times story revealing the administration’s monitoring of bank records "disgraceful," and said the decision to publish details of the program "does great harm to the United States of America." Press Secretary Tony Snow followed up with another attack at today's press briefing:

"The New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public's right to know in some cases might override somebody's right to live, and whether in fact the publications of these could place in jeopardy the safety of fellow Americans."

Asked whether the White House attacks on the New York Times represented an effort "to create a chilling effect on media outlets," Snow responded, "I don’t think so."
Whose "right to live" is endangered by releasing that information? The reporters?

Former Bush Spokesman Urges Newspapers to Run Pro-War Stories by Former Vets With GOP Ties
The Buffalo News has revealed that a former spokesman for President Bush has been encouraging U.S. newspapers to run news stories from Iraq written by two combat veterans who are now embedded reporters in Iraq. The veterans are from a pro-war group called Vets for Freedom that has ties to the Republican Party. We speak with John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy.

US Expels 50 Iraqis From Ramadi Homes
In other Iraq news, the New York Times is reporting US forces expelled fifty Iraqis from their homes this weekend to set up a military outpost in Ramadi. The Iraqis were sent into the streets carrying their food and clothing. The US is currently in the midst of a major operation in Ramadi that has already led to the expulsion of thousands of people.

Supreme Court To Rule On Challenge To Bush C02 Stance
Back in the United States, the Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on whether the Bush administration must regulate emissions of carbon dioxide to stop global warming. A group of US states, cities and environmental groups filed suit three years ago to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's insistence it is not required to curb CO2 under the Clean Air Act. Bush said he supported regulation during his first presidential campaign but later reversed his position after coming into office.

Bush: US Should "Get Beyond" Global Warming "Debate"
Meanwhile, President Bush said Monday he believes global warming is a serious problem but urged Americans to: "get beyond the debate" over whether it is caused by human activity. His comments came just days after the National Academy of Sciences released a study showing recent surges in global temperatures are unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia. The study concludes: "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."

Watergate Echoes in NSA Courtroom

It was perhaps inevitable that someone would compare President Bush's extrajudicial wiretapping operations to Richard Nixon's 1970s-era surveillance of journalists and political enemies. Both were carried out by Republican presidents; both bypassed the courts; both relied on the cooperation of U.S. telecommunications companies.

But there's some irony in the fact that it was AT&T to first make the comparison in a federal courtroom here, while defending itself from charges of complicity in Bush's warrantless spying.
Company attorney Bradford Berenson cited the case of The New York Times reporter Hedrick Smith, who'd been illegally wiretapped by Nixon's Plumbers as part of an investigation into White House leaks. In 1979, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Smith couldn't sue Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company -- then part of AT&T's Bell System -- for installing the wiretaps at the Plumbers' behest.
The Nixon Defense was one of several arguments offered Friday by AT&T and the Justice Department in their bid to win summary dismissal of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit. The suit accuses the company of providing the National Security Agency with access to customer and non-customer internet traffic passing through AT&T's systems, without a warrant.
(Disclosure: Wired News has filed a motion to intervene in the case asking the court to make public evidence filed under seal of AT&T's alleged wiretapping activities.)
Without confirming the allegations, AT&T said if it is cooperating with the NSA, it can't be held responsible, because -- as in the Nixon case -- it's serving as a "passive instrument or passive agent of the government," said Berenson.
"AT&T could refuse, could it not, to provide access to its facilities?" countered U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker.

FBI's role in 9/11 investigation needs investigation
Ptech's customers included sensitive government and intelligence agencies such as the FBI and the Air Force. "But until last fall," the GLOBE reported on Jan. 22, 2003, "few seemed aware an early financial backer of Ptech was Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi businessman named as a suspected terrorist financier by the Bush Administration in October 2001."
Reports of ineptitude at FBI headquarters have already surfaced in numerous places: in Phoenix, Chicago, and Minneapolis, for example. What makes reports of the Boston FBI’s bungled investigation into Ptech different is the unmistakably dark suggestion that this poor performance may have been intentional. Why would the Boston FBI do such a thing? Maybe because they were shielding a money laundering vehicle, goes the allegation, that was created back in the 1980's as part of the CIA's program of arming the Afghan mujahedeen.

How Doctors Got Into the Torture Business
Some of the medical involvement in torture defies belief. In one of the few actual logs we have of a high-level interrogation, that of Mohammed al-Qhatani (first reported in TIME), doctors were present during the long process of constant sleep deprivation over 55 days, and they induced hypothermia and the use of threatening dogs, among other techniques. According to Miles, Medics had to administer three bags of medical saline to Qhatani — while he was strapped to a chair — and aggressively treat him for hypothermia in the hospital. They then returned him to his interrogators.

New details on WMD 'fabricator' emerge
A veteran CIA officer has revealed new details of how the Bush administration built the case for invading Iraq. In an interview with the Washington Post, former CIA officer Tyler Drumheller said he repeatedly warned administration officials over the discredited Iraqi source known as "Curveball."
"Curveball" is the Iraqi expatriate whose claims were used to help build the case Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Drumheller says he personally removed the paragraph from a draft of Colin Powell's United Nations speech that claimed Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories. But Bush administration officials intervened, and Powell delivered the speech with the bio-lab claim intact.

Afghan Leader Losing Support
"This is a crucial time, and there is frustration and finger-pointing on all sides," the official said. "President Karzai is the only alternative for this country, but if he attacks us, we can't help him project his vision. And if he goes down, we all go down with him."
His excellency the President from UNOCAL is not doing too well, even for a puppet.

US military sees "oil nationalism" spectre

Future supplies of oil from Latin America are at risk because of the spread of resource nationalism, a study by the US military that reflects growing concerns in the US administration over energy security has found.
The Financial Times is reporting an internal US military study has warned that future oil supplies are at risk because of the spread of "resource nationalism" in Latin America. Both Bolivia and Ecuador have recently taken steps to nationalize oil fields, while Venezuela has raised taxes on foreign oil production. In the report, analysts with the US Southern Command say re-emerging state control over energy will "increase inefficiencies and... hamper efforts to increase long-term supplies and production." The report also warns oil production in Mexico is at risk because of state restrictions on foreign investment. The military concludes: "Pending any favorable changes to the investment climate, the prospects for long-term energy production in Venezuela, Ecuador and Mexico are currently at risk."
'Resource nationalism' - so that's what countries are being accused of which want a reasonable, fair share of oil profits these days? Well, I guess the US military are experts.

Fox News Cuts off Cheney Appearance After Tough Question
Cheney was speaking at the National Press Club, taking written questions from reporters. Fox News stuck with Cheney for a couple questions, but then came one asking whether he had underestimated the insurgency's strength in Iraq. Fox News immediately cut away back to its scintillating programming on "Dayside" about whether wine and beer are good for you.

Sheriff's Deputy Mistakes Pistol for Taser
A sheriff's deputy who was trying to get a man down from a tree shot and wounded him after mistakenly pulling a gun instead of a Taser, authorities say.

Study links pesticides with Parkinson's
People with long-term, low-level exposure to pesticides have a 70 percent higher incidence of Parkinson's disease than people who have not been exposed much to bug sprays, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

THE FOX NEW FOUR PART STORY ON ISRAELI SPYING IN THE US
These are the videos AIPAC lobbied FOX News to remove from their website. Since then,. AIPAC has found itself embroiled in yet another espionage case, this time involving an operative inside the very Pentagon office from which many of the now discredited claims abut Iraq's WMD.
FOX News threatened this website to force the removal of these videos, but they appear here at this outside website for those of you unaware that on 9-11, the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered in the US was in the process of being rounded up, and that evidence linking these arrested Israeli spies to 9-11 has been classified by the US Government

It's Time to Do Away With Political Parties in America
The single biggest problem facing America today gravely undermines the viability of our once-great Democracy. This threat is posed by Republican voters who have lost their way. Their sense of purpose. The responsibility they have to themselves and to their fellow citizens. Their understanding of what it means to be a true American patriot. They've been brainwashed into putting party before country.

FLASHBACK: Who Grew This Daisy?
A mysterious group based in Texas called Aretino Industries has released a new attack ad modeled after the infamous "Daisy" commercial that President Johnson aired (once) in 1964. The original ad showed a little girl picking petals from a daisy and ended with a countdown to a nuclear explosion. It was intended to show that Johnson's GOP foe, Barry Goldwater, might lead the U.S. into nuclear war. The new ad uses the same visuals but levels a different accusation: that President Clinton and Vice President Gore sold nuclear technology to Red China in exchange for campaign contributions.

Today’s Anti-Republicans; Tomorrow’s Heroes?

Nice editorial from Jesse at TVNEWSLIES.org blog:
Today’s Anti-Republicans; Tomorrow’s Heroes?
First let me state this: being anti-Republican today is not really being anti-Republican. It is being anti-fascist. The political party associations claimed by our current crop of government officials have nothing to do with the actual political ideologies of their respective parties, but the American public for the most part is too lazy to take notice.
Americans today are fooled by labels. They could care less if their brightly labeled bottle of Kool-Aid actually contains poison; they will just keep drinking as they die while defending the purity of their Kool-Aid. And they could care less if their Republican candidate is actually a neo-Conservative who is more like a lying power mongering a Machiavellian than a law and order Republican.
At least the Democrats don’t get fooled by Democrats who only pretend to be Democrats. Are you listening Hillary? That seems to be the only difference between the political parties these days. Democrats don’t tolerate their politicians who do not follow party principles where Republicans are content as long as their party is used by the politician. They could care less about their Republican politician’s actual position on anything other than God and hating gay people; for all they care their candidate could actually be a Communist…they don’t notice and they don’t seem to care.
So for the sake of reality let’s just say that the current crop of Americans who are alarmed by the destruction of the U.S. Constitution and the rise of the corporate fascist state that is enveloping our nation, are anti-Republican. Let say that for one reason: it is because the current crop of people in office who call themselves Republicans are openly supporting and actively expediting this transition to fascism. On the other hand, the Democrats in Congress, many of whom are part of this anti-American initiative, at least on the surface try to appear as if they are opposed to that agenda.
Now for as long as I can remember I have heard that we must support our military because they fight/fought to protect our freedom. I have been told that I have to support them even when their mission directly conflicts with the principles of freedom both in America and abroad. I am told to support the military no matter what they do or to whom they are doing it. I am told that anything the military does has something to do with supporting my freedom. Well, I know now that that notion is a load of shit. As a matter of fact our troops have been misused and have acted in violation of the principals of freedom and democracy more than they have been used to protect my freedom. Well at least that is how it has been during my forty two years on this planet. And now they are being misused like never before. As a matter of fact from the look of things they may be used against me/us soon; directly!

On the other hand there are a bunch of good people who are really fighting for our freedom. We are not taking up arms or marching into civilian territories with guns and bombs and secret torture prisons. We are fighting to inform the rest of our brothers and sisters about what is really happening in our world and about who really poses threats to us!
There are a few of us who are fighting directly for the freedom of the only industry that is important enough to be explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution: the press. We are fighting the real enemy of freedom the people who have hijacked our political process and are in the process of eliminating individual freedoms and the concept of national sovereignty around the world. We are fighting the people who have hijacked the only industry protected by the Constitution. We are fighting to inform our fellow Americans about the issues that impact their freedom and their lives. We are fighting for them; even for the ones that think we are the enemy.
You may call us anti-Republican. I call myself pro-Constitution. Personally I am anti-Republican and anti-Democrat. I am not foolish enough to think politicians of either corporate party are going to save our nation. I am of the opinion that we have to purge both parties, remove money completely from the political electoral process, eliminate all modern electronic technology (and private ownership) from the election voting system, and we have to replace our entire leadership with people who actually represent their constituents. We also have to eliminate ALL connections between industry and government. ALL CONNECTIONS! We need protection from corporations, not of corporations. Well, that’s just my opinion.
I may be called anti-American today by some, but if I and my fellow pro-Constitutional soldiers will one day be referred to with the same respect and admiration as any army that fought so hard so you can have your freedom. The difference is that we fight for real freedom, not corporate capitalist freedom! Think about it!

The Fearmongers & the Liberty City Seven

Larry Silverstein buys the Chicago Sears Tower
(Same guy who owned the World Trade Center & WTC 7)
Attention insurance companies: you do NOT want to sell this policy!


Controlling the News June 22, 2006
This was a Karl Rove style "Scare ‘Em Into Voting for you" racket like the "Red Terrorist Alerts" of a few years ago that, strangely enough, always cropped up at election time. The Canadian caper was so silly it died aborning. Next we have the article below claiming, falsely, that we have discovered the WMDs at last!
(Three years ago of course but Our Clever Leaders kept it quiet until before election time) and now the Blowing Up of the Sears Tower, again, just before election time. We can now expect a solemn Gonzales, surrounded by Men in Suits, giving a pre-emptive press conference on CNN to alert all of America to the stunning news and telling them that He is Always Vigilant and Protecting America!


From Wayne Madsen Report:
The case of the "Liberty City Seven," a group of self-employed youths of mainly Haitian descent, is yet another example of the propaganda of the neo-cons creating new bogeyman. The barrage of fear mongering was best represented by agenda-laden cable news polemicists like Steven Emerson, Joel Mowbray, Sean Hannity, William Kristol, Ann Coulter, and Byron York, to demonize yet another sector of American society, this time Miami's Haitian and non-Cuban Caribbean community. First, it was the Arabs and Muslims, then, it was the turn of the Hispanics, now, it is the Haitians. Tomorrow, it will be sub-continental Indians, then, Native Americans, and Chinese and Koreans. "Homeland security," that awful Teutonic phrase, is being used to establish an apartheid South African-style racial regime in the United States under the cover of "counter terrorism" and "homeland security."
The Liberty Seven are said to have run a "temple" in an old warehouse in the desperately poor Liberty City section of Miami. The seven, who gave out bottled water to people in the wake of Hurricane Wilma last year and sold shampoo and hair tonic on the street, studied Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. That is a far cry from being members of Al Qaeda or Black Muslims, which was claimed by the mainstream media. It is clear the neo-cons are now looking for Fallujahs and Ramadis right here in the good old USA. Liberty City was perfect for the neo-con agenda. It is poor, ethnic, and populated by people who the neo-cons despise -- legal and illegal Haitian immigrants.
The Liberty Seven appear more like a self-styled Caribbean ersatz religious sect than an "Al Qaeda" affiliate. The group seems to be a milder and smaller version of Philadelphia's M.O.V.E. group, which, because of their odd "back to nature" beliefs, drew the ire of their neighbors. M.O.V.E. was ultimately shattered by violence created by itself and an overreaction by the Philadelphia police in 1985. It is interesting to note that Miami's current police chief, John Timoney, was appointed Philadelphia's police chief by then-Mayor Ed Rendell. Rendell was a chief prosecutor against M.O.V.E. and Timoney was a proponent of attacking the headquarters of "subversive" groups during major conferences and political conventions.
Timoney called the anti-globalist Ruckus Society "a cadre of criminal conspirators" who "go in and cause mayhem." In 2000, Timoney raided the Ruckus Society warehouse and confiscated wire and gasoline-soaked rags. Immediately, Timoney charged Ruckus with planning terrorist acts, even though the materials were used to construct large puppets used in protests during the Republican National Convention. Timoney did not care that Ruckus was supported by the Ted Turner Foundation, the Ben and Jerry's Foundation, Body Shop International, and Patagonia, Inc., hardly terrorist groups.
Now Timoney is in Miami, and seven Miami residents belonging to a religious order calling itself the "Seas of David" find themselves charged by the Justice Department with conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and the FBI Building in Miami. It is clear that these not very smart Seas of David members were entrapped in an FBI sting. It is doubtful that they could bring down any building. They were not even interested in obtaining explosives from the FBI informant who posed as an "Al Qaeda" representative -- they merely wanted a video camera and boots.
It is also suspicious how the charges against the Liberty Seven were announced. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made the announcement of the arrest at a heavily-covered Washington, DC news conference in the same manner as John Ashcroft's announcement of the arrest of "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla in June 2002.
FBI Director Robert Mueller chose a suspicious outlet to discuss the case -- the Larry King Show on CNN.
Meanwhile, the neocon-run Fox News, NBC, and CNN were all speaking of a derailed violent Islamist Jihad plan to launch a terror attack worse than 911. All this was false. The Seas of David, which number no more than 50 adherents, is a quasi-Christian group, with elements of Caribbean animism. Iy has been linked to the Chicago-based Moorish Society Temple of America, a group that combines Islam with the teachings of Jesus. Hardly the Islamist Jihadi group ballyhooed by the droning neocon commentators who receive their talking points from Israeli-influenced propaganda outlets in Washington, New York, Boston, and Jerusalem.
What attracted the attention of local police and the FBI was the fact that the Seas of David members dressed up fezzes and dashikis and flew the flags of Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica at their warehouse compound. They were also seen practicing karate. If wearing fezzes is a sign of terrorist activity, perhaps the FBI would think of rounding up all the fez-wearing Shriners in the United States. As for dashikis, the aficionados of any Tiki bar in the United States could soon be rounded up as terrorists.

The arrests in Miami are similar to the recent incidents in Toronto and London. In Toronto, 12 men and 5 teens were arrested for planning terrorists attack in Canada, including attacking the Canadian Parliament, taking MPs hostage, and beheading Canada's new right-wing kooky Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The Royal Canadian Mounted Policy (RCMP) raid was obviously concocted by Harper's Public Safety Minister, the Christian fundamentalist lunatic Stockwell Day, who also sees gays as threats to Canadian public safety. The leader of the so-called "terror cell," Steven Vikash Chand, aka Abdul Shakar, turned out to be a former member of Royal Regiment of Canada, a reserve unit. He and others, mostly teens who were members of a mosque in Mississauga, Ontario, were charged with planning terror attacks because they dressed up in military fatigues, played with paintball guns, and discussed ancient Islamic battles. The team was "stung" by a group of Muslims in northern Virginia were arrested and charged with terrorism because they, too, played with paintball guns. The Toronto "terrorists" were set up in an entrapment arranged by the neocon-imbued Canadian Tory government in order to advance the same neocon agenda for Canada as had been implemented in the United States. The first target of the Canadian neocons was Canada's "multiculturalism." They cited this as a cause for Canadian "home grown terrorism." As in the United States, the target of the Canadian neocons includes immigrants from Third World countries, especially Muslim and Arab nations.


The arrest of two east London Muslim brothers on June 2 by 250 armed police was the result of a false tip from a prison inmate who claimed the two brothers were planning an Al Qaeda chemical attack in London. One of the brothers was shot in the chest during the raid of their Forest Gate home. They were also beaten by police. The brothers were later released over lack of any evidence that they were planning any crime. The prison inmate involved in the hoax has an IQ of 69. Nevertheless, the neocons, including Rupert Murdoch's media network in Britain, hyped the raid on the two brothers as proof that Britain's large immigrant population represents a huge "home grown" terrorist threat. "Home grown terrorism" is the new neocon and Israeli propaganda talking point. It has been successfully used to hype faux terrorist incidents in London, Toronto, and now, Miami. However, the only real examples of a home grown terrorist attacks remain the Oklahoma City bombing and the Washington, DC sniper shootings, both carried out by military veterans of Desert Storm.

Money-tracking leak angers Cheney

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has condemned as "offensive" US media disclosures of a secret programme that probes global financial transactions.

It's Time to Do Away With Political Parties in America

The single biggest problem facing America today gravely undermines the viability of our once-great Democracy. This threat is posed by Republican voters who have lost their way. Their sense of purpose. The responsibility they have to themselves and to their fellow citizens. Their understanding of what it means to be a true American patriot. They've been brainwashed into putting party before country.

Congressman: charge newspapers over reports on terrorist-tracing program

King, a New York Republican, said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the country's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times - the reporters, the editors and the publisher."
"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.

Senate panel calls Abramoff connections with Delay aide 'astonishing'
We're not. We've been watching the mess unfold all along.


Nonprofit Groups Funneled Money For Abramoff

Newly released documents in the Jack Abramoff investigation shed light on how the lobbyist secretly routed his clients' funds through tax-exempt organizations with the acquiescence of those in charge, including prominent conservative activist Grover Norquist.

Bush's domestic spying: How America is rapidly becoming a police state

A professor of constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law Center, Susan Lo Bloch, said that Bush was "taking a hugely expansive interpretation of the Constitution and the president's power under the Constitution." That's a nice way of saying it. Actually, Bush is making up his own laws and his own power as he goes along. Actually, he is destroying the Constitution because he is making it increasingly irrelevant with each transgression of the limitations of power set forth by the Constitution.

Israel uses World Cup as cover for murder

Uri Avnery notes how the Israeli government has exploited the focus of attention on the World Cup to murder more than 20 Palestinians, including children, a pregnant woman, a doctor and several paramedics.

Rumsfeld due to visit Israel on regional tour

Rumsfeld's visit to Israel is expected to indicate that relations between the two defense establishments are "business as usual. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is expected to visit Israel this week. Gonzales, whose post in the American government is equivalent to that of Justice Minister, is one of President George Bush's closest advisors. He will give a lecture at Tel Aviv University on international law enforcement in the post-9/11 era.

International - Israeli hawks call for troops to storm Gaza

PRIME Minister Ehud Olmert's government is under growing pressure to reoccupy the northern part of Gaza in a move to end the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel by Palestinian militants.

Avoiding The ¨F¨ Word
Powerful Americans have long had a fascination with power-mad rulers

Benito Mussolini was a darling of the American business community. Captains of industry courted his favor, drank his wine and laughed at his jokes, envious as they were of Italy´s perfect waves of union-free capitalism, state-run media dispensing right-wing propaganda as news, its religious fervor and preemptive military actions in Africa and the Middle East.
Thus, when the most respected imprint in America, Scribner´s -- home of Fitzgerald -- published Il Duce´s My Autobiography in 1928, it was not seen as an ominous portent. Indeed, it was a success, though its sales were dwarfed in the 1930s when Fascism-smitten Henry Ford published a U.S. edition of Hitler´s Mein Kampf . Americans were bedazzled by the new wealth of corporations and, hey, if Il Duce and der Fuhrer were friends of America´s business leaders, how bad could they be?
As Mussolini and Hitler showed, fascism -- for all its gut-level, simplistic appeal to the basest human instincts -- can never last. This may be because the fertilizer that´s needed to maintain it eventually sickens even the most ignorant and unquestioning. That is, fascism is brought to power by illegal, often violent means. In the Black Shirt Putsch and Reichstag Fire, echoes of our own purged votes, calls for the "murder" of war hero Rep. John Murtha (as the best-selling Coulter made this week) and the daily nonsense that spews from the mouths of Malkin, O´Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al., can be found.
All of this, to succeed, must be driven by a never-ending "crisis" against an easily maligned "them" (Bolsheviks, Jews, terrorists) as well as a constant reinforcement -- by public rhetoric and military parades and secret police and a controlled media -- of what Mussolini called "righteous force."
This ugly paradigm cannot be described any more clearly than this, from Il Duce: "In certain contingencies violence has a deep moral significance ... It was necessary to give timely, genial recognition to chivalrous violence."

Legacy of Treason: Depleted Uranium and the Poisoning of Humanity

In recent years I have become aware of the issue of depleted uranium (DU) and its use by the US Military in Iraq in 1991 and again in the current Iraq war. The photos of birth deformities and stories of suffering resulting from DU shocked me, reminding me of the Agent Orange victims of America's Vietnam war. It is undoubtedly by far the most significant issue on the planet today, and yet the mainstream media stays quiet.

British 'helpless' as violence rises in southern Iraq

British forces are facing rising violence among Shia Muslim factions in southern Iraq, but are powerless to contain it, military and diplomatic sources have told The Independent on Sunday. Both British and Iraqi authorities were seeking to play down the situation, they added.

What's new? More Lies.

Army Lies to Mother of Slain Guardsman for Two Years, Says Killed by Insurgents Instead of Allied Iraqi Soldiers
Two years after National Guardsmen Spc. Patrick McCaffrey and 1st Lt. Andre Tyson were killed in Iraq, the truth about their deaths has been exposed. Military officials initially told the families that the two men had been killed in an ambush by insurgents but an Army investigation concluded that they were in fact murdered by members of the allied Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. The military only told the families the truth this week.

Victims' Families Say Gov't Secrecy Keeping 9/11 Truth Hidden
Families of those killed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 said Thursday that excessive secrecy by the government is keeping from them what went wrong before the hijackings.
"All we want is the truth," said Michael Low of Batesville, Ark., whose daughter Sara was a flight attendant on one of the airplanes that flew into the World Trade Center. "We believe in freedom and open government, but at times it seems like we're getting the old Soviet Union."
A handful of family members held a news conference in the Capitol to push for a law that would unlock secrets kept by the Transportation Security Administration. The families are especially angry that the TSA refuses to give them information that was given to the lawyers for convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, including about 150,000 FBI interviews of witnesses and several thousand CDs. During Moussaoui's trial, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema twice ordered the government to turn over the information to the families.
"It's quite extraordinary that TSA has a tougher policy on disclosure than the CIA or the FBI or the NSA (National Security Agency)," Brinkema said.

Muslims 'Still in Denial' About 9/11, Pew Survey Finds

In what the survey, part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2006, called one of its most striking findings, majorities in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey — Muslim countries with fairly strong ties to America — said, for example, that they did not believe that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Iran rejects US 'pressure' on nuclear issue

The US is determined to topple Iran's Islamic government whether or not the crisis over the country's nuclear activities is resolved, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said today. US enmity towards Iran was entrenched, Mr Larijani told the Guardian. "The nuclear issue is just a pretext. If it was not the nuclear matter, they would have come up with something else."

Congress quietly holds classified briefings on Iran as Democrats seek access to intelligence

In an effort to stave off what appears to be a Congressional blackout by the Bush administration with regard to Iran intelligence and policy, Senate Democratic leaders introduced the Iran Intelligence Oversight Act on Monday. It's difficult to determine who has been briefed on any portion of the administration’s Iran policy because of the secretive nature of the Bush administration.
Apparently, the 'cherry picking' on intelligence to justify an invasion of Iran is in full swing with the current Administration. That Congressional Democrats felt they had to introduce this legislation speaks volumes.

US: Danger, danger everywhere

Will this new war party succeed, as its predecessors did, in winning new public and policymaker support for what this latest CPD describes as "World War IV"? Or will the US reject the politics of fear and hate this time, and move toward a more measured, less militaristic course in international relations - one that ensures national security without burdening the US with new wars and a self-serving military-industrial complex?

Former detainee paints harrowing portrait of life at Guantánamo Bay

Jailers at the US base in Guantánamo Bay have coerced confessions they knew to be false, beaten prisoners to the point of disability, and given detainees psychotropic drugs they believed were for common physical ailments, according to an account one former detainee gave RAW STORY.

Harkat informant called 'insane'

Suspected Ottawa terrorist Mohamed Harkat was freed on bail yesterday as evidence emerged that a former "high-ranking" al-Qaeda informant who triggered his arrest was, in fact, a relatively minor and "certifiably insane" operative. What's more, Abu Zubaydah only revealed his information, including now questionable details about supposed al-Qaeda plots against the United States, while being tortured by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators.

New Bankruptcy Law Will Not Protect You from Identity Theft
What a wonderful tool to wreck the lives of "troublemakers". Buy a bunch of cool stuff on a dissenter's stolen ID and ruin them for financially! No gulags needed!

AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn't yours

AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers' personal data with government officials.

U.S. losing its middle-class neighborhoods

Middle-class neighborhoods, long regarded as incubators for the American dream, are losing ground in cities across the country, shrinking at more than twice the rate of the middle class itself.

Roger Waters, due to perform Thursday in Neve Shalom, scrawls
'tear down the wall' on Israel's security fence

Another brick in the wall (Photo: AP)
"I've seen pictures of it, I've heard a lot about it but without being here you can't imagine how extraordinarily oppressive it is and how sad it is to see these people coming through these little holes," he added. "It's craziness."

GOP Rebellion Stops Voting Rights
House leaders abruptly canceled a vote to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act yesterday after rank-and-file Republicans revolted over provisions that require bilingual ballots in many places and continued federal oversight of voting practices in Southern states.

Enron boss wants verdict quashed
Former Enron boss Jeffrey Skilling is asking a judge to overturn last month's court verdict that found him guilty of fraud and conspiracy at the firm.

2 Indicted Brokers Generous to Voinovich

Lewis and O'Neil, who brought in nearly $3 million in commissions from investment business they received from the state agency, are among nine people charged in an investment scandal that began last spring. It extended into Ohio's Republican-controlled government, leading to Gov. Bob Taft's historic no contest plea on ethics charges. Campaign finance filings show that Lewis and O'Neil gave to politicians of both parties, but the majority of their giving has gone to Republicans.

Report: Iraq Prepares Sweeping Amnesty Offer
The Times of London is reporting the Iraqi government is preparing a major amnesty offer to Iraq’s resistance groups. The amnesty would promise a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops; inclusion in the political process; a halt to US operations on insurgent strongholds, and compensation to civivilian victims of armed attacks. There are no signals the US government has backed the proposal. A White House official said the administration has not agreed to any offer that would grant amnesty to insurgents who have killed US troops.

House Rolls Back Estate Tax
The House voted Thursday to roll back parts of the estate tax. Republicans call the bill a “compromise” because it does not completely eliminate the estate tax on those who inherit property. The House bill exempts taxes on individuals with estates valued up to $5 million dollars and on couples with estates valued up to $10 million dollars. Heirs of estates valued at up to $25 million dollars would also see a drop in their tax rates. The bill will now go to the Senate. Congressional tax experts estimate that only 5100 estates would now face taxation, down from the current number of 30,000. The bill is estimated to cost up to $300 billion dollars. The House vote came just one day after the Senate rejected a measure that would have raised the minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade.

Study: Recent Climate Change Unprecedented
The National Academy of Sciences has released a study showing that the recent surges in global temperatures are unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia. Keeping in mind natural factors such as volcanic eruptions and solar radiation, the study nonetheless concludes that available evidence supports the argument that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.

Global Warming Accounts For Half of Hurricane-Inducing Water Warmth
A new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research has found global warming accounted for close to half of the extra warmth found in the tropical North Atlantic waters that fueled hurricanes last year. The study said natural cycles were only a minor factor, contradicting claims that natural cycles are responsible for the recent increase in Atlantic hurricane activity.

Killing is Business

Hundreds of people marched through the streets of Vienna today carrying banners reading "World's No. 1 Terrorist."
Thousands Protest Bush in Austria
At least 15,000 people gathered in Vienna Wednesday to protest the visit of President Bush. The President is in Austria for talks with European Union leaders. A group of protesters wore orange jump suits similar to those worn by detainees at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. European leaders have used the meeting to call for Guantanamo’s closure.

• Unidentified protester: "We don't like Bush. We don't accept Bush, Bush is just a killer, a murderer, he doesn't make policy, he is just killing people for economic interests, it's mainly for oil, everybody knows it.”

Frist Slips 'Poison Pill' to Minimum Wage Bill
The Senate rejected a measure Wednesday that would have raised the minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade. The proposal called for a 40 percent increase from the current wage of Five Dollars and Fifteen cents an hour. A study released this week by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the real-dollar value of the minimum wage is now at its lowest level in more than fifty years. With nothing more than their routine disregard for the poor as an excuse, the GOP leadership killed two bills offered by Kennedy in 2005 to raise minimum wage.
This year it's tougher, because Republican Senators up for reelection may have to explain screwing working Americans in a more recent vote while, at the same time, managing to give themselves nine pay raises, totaling almost $32,000, in the same ten-year span.
So Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has found a new way to pull his Simon Legree act and this time it takes the form of attaching a "poison pill" amendment to Kennedy's S.AMDT.4322, which would gradually raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour over the next two years. Frist's intent is clear: To force red-state Democrats to vote "yea" on an anti-abortion bill -- or face the wrath of their conservative constituents this year -- which, if it passes, would then force all Democrats to vote against the minimum wage to nullify the anti-abortion part.
Come November, REMOVE THEM FROM OFFICE!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a $427.6 billion Pentagon funding bill on Tuesday after rejecting a bid by Democrats to force the Bush administration to get court orders for its domestic surveillance program. The House voted 407-19 for the defense bill, which includes another $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Senate has not taken up its version of the bill. Voting 219-207 largely along party lines, the House defeated an amendment to make the National Security Agency obtain warrants before listening to the international phone calls and reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens.

3 Poll Workers, 3 Felons Charged With Election Violations in Tennessee
Three poll workers accused of casting ballots in the name of dead voters were among six people indicted on charges of violating election laws in a state Senate race, a prosecutor announced Wednesday. Prosecutor Bill Gibbons said his investigation found no evidence of a widespread conspiracy to throw the election to either candidate.
Oh really? Mr. Gibbons, who did "the dead" vote for?

House GOPers Delay Renewing Voting Rights Act
House Republican leaders have put off a measure to reauthorize the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The decision was made following complaints from southern Republican lawmakers that the reauthorization unfairly targeted their states. The law was originally passed to reverse years of disenfranchisement of African Americans. On Wednesday, NAACP President Bruce Gordon criticized the Republicans’ delay, saying: “Their actions would return us to a time when the rights of racial and ethnic minority Americans - specifically the right to vote -- were not protected or enforced.”

John Kerry: Republicans in Iraq plan is "Lie and Die"

They've found their three words, they love to do that, and they're gonna try to make the elections in November a choice between "cut and run" or "stay the course." That's not the choice. My plan is not "cut and run." Their plan is "lie and die." And that's what they're doing...Our plan is very simple. It's re-deploy to win the war on terror. Change to succeed....(in other words, "Stay & Die)

on Words of Power blog:
An interview with Mark Crispin Miller on campaign finance reform and...media reform.
Mark Crispin Miller: Election fraud has been a problem in the USA for quite some time. However, from this historical fact it does not follow that the fraud last time was just business as usual. The rip-off in 2004 was different from its antecedents in three major ways.
First of all, the theft was on an infinitely larger scale. We're not talking here about a close race whose results were muddied only in one state--as in, say, Illinois in 1960, or, for that matter, Ohio in 2004. (It was not really that close in Ohio, but that's another issue.) What happened in 2004 happened from coast to coast, at every level from the top down to the grass-roots, and at every step of the whole process: i.e., before, on and following Election Day. There is abundant evidence of massive fraud in many states, and in the treatment of US expatriate votes. Conservatively, I'd guess that Kerry won, or would have won, by some 8 to 10 million votes.


Kabul riots Riots reveal problems facing coalition troops hoping to win hearts and minds
US tactics in Afghanistan have come under criticism
There is still not an official figure for the number of people killed or injured in the rioting, but there were heavy bursts of firing for two hours at the height of the violence and many buildings were burned. For hours, law and order broke down - the police could not cope with the hundreds of people who were demonstrating, setting fire to cars and police checkpoints and marauding through Kabul.
President Karzai has criticised the coalition for not taking enough care to avoid civilian casualties in bombing raids, innocent people have on a number of occasions been fired upon by nervous soldiers for approaching checkpoints in the wrong manner.

7 Marines, Naval Corporal Charged With Murdering Iraqi Civilian
The US military has charged eight service members with the murder and kidnapping of an unarmed Iraqi. Hashim Ibrahim Awad was pulled from his home last April in the town of Hamdania. Military investigators believe the Marines shot him and then planted a shovel and an AK-47 rifle at the scene to make it appear he was an insurgent. Awad was in his 50's with a lame leg and bad eyesight. His family has alleged a small group of U.S. servicemembers offered them money in exchange for supporting the Marines' version of the killing. The charges were announced Wednesday at California’s Camp Pendleton, where the servicemembers are being held. If convicted, the suspects could face the death penalty.

Ron Susskind: US Blew Up AL-Jazeera purposefully

Ron Suskind appeared on "The Situation Room" today to talk about his new book "One Percent Doctrine," and said that the US took out Al-Jazeera office in Kabul purposefully.

Safavian Guilty

From left to right, convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, golf organizer Jason Murdoch, former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, former Bush administration official David Safavian and Rep. Bob Ney, R-OH. Quite the photo, isn't it?

U.S. Laboratory Testing Transgenic Rice On Peruvian Children
The Peruvian Medical Association denounced that Ventria, a pharmaceutical company from the U.S., is experimenting with lactating infants to evaluate the effectiveness of their pharmaceutical rice for use in acute diarrhea, reports Eduardo Aragon from TeleSur in Venezuela. This transgenic rice is modified to produce the protein Lactoferrin. According to Herbert Cuba Garcia, spokesman for the association, "these genetic changes are not allowed in Peru".
Cuba Garcia announced that Ventria Biosciences is performing a test in 140 children in public hospitals in the Peruvian capital, Lima, and in the locality of Trujillo, with the approval of the Ministry of Health. Lawyers mounting a defense of children's rights have considered this case as a violation of the laws and the Codes for Children and Adolescents.
"Children, as any other human being, have rights and have the right of freedom in their development and health, which should not be a matter of experimentation, especially when the possible outcomes of the experiments are not known", said Norma Rojas, attorney for Accion por los Ninos (Action on Behalf of Children).

The Dark Side

Safavian Found Guilty in Lobbyist Trial

A jury found former Bush administration official David Safavian guilty Tuesday of covering up his dealings with Republican influence-peddler Jack Abramoff. Safavian was convicted on four of five felony counts of lying and obstruction. He had resigned from his White House post last year as the federal government's chief procurement officer. The verdict gave a boost to the wide-ranging influence peddling probe that focuses on Abramoff's dealings with Congress.
In the Safavian case, prosecutors highlighted the name of Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio. They introduced a photograph of the congressman and Abramoff standing in front of a private jet that whisked them and other members of a golfing party for a five-day trip to the storied St Andrews Old Course in Scotland, and a second leg of the journey to London.

IPod and the Sound of Slavery

If you don’t have one, then you most certainly know someone who does. In a matter of about five years, they’ve become the most popular way to listen to music on the go. Of course I am talking about iPods. They are convenient, easy to use, and very, very hip.
But try telling that to the sweatshop workers who make them.

Police Debate if London Plotters Were Suicide Bombers, or Dupes
"Hey, you, Muslim guys, c'mere. We're having this terror drill, see, and we wanna hire you to pretend to be terrorists, and all you have to do is take these bombs, I mean FAKE bombs, yeah, that's it FAKE bombs, into ... Anyway here's the deal. We will pay you each 1000 pounds just to carry these into the train station and ride the train, just to see how far you get before the guards catch you, okay? Ummmm... I'll pay you when you get back."

Bush says 911 drives US policy

A reporter asked about a poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that found Europeans see the US involvement in Iraq as more of a danger than Iran's nuclear program. Bush dismissed that idea as "absurd," saying the US is an open democracy and a threat to no one.

US Accused of Killing Iraqi Civilians in Baquba
The US military is being accused of committing a new massacre of Iraqi civilians. On Tuesday, witnesses, family members and a Sunni parliamentarian said US troops killed a group of civilians near the town of Baquba. An Iraqi human rights worker said two of the dead were young boys aged ten and twelve. In a statement, the US military claimed it killed 15 'terrorists' and had captured their weapons. But an Iraqi police officer told the Washington Post no weapons were found at the scene of the attack.

Pariah President

It's embarrassing to have a president who's so universally loathed. Bush arrives in Austria today and will be greeted by scorn and widespread protests, not to mention Cindy Sheehan. Random posters have been up across Vienna since April, depicting Bush's face and a German-language caption reading "A mass murderer is coming."

EU Leaders To Press Gitmo Closure in Talks With Bush
President Bush is in Austria today for a summit with European leaders. The US-EU talks are expected to focus on a host of issues including Iran, trade, and immigration. European Commission president José Manuel Barroso said the EU would press demands for the US to close its prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In an interview with the International Herald Tribune, Barroso said that the threat posed to civil liberties by the so-called war on terror means: "We risk losing our souls."

I DON’T UNDERSTAND….

Why is there not the same anger over the brutalization of the people of Iraq perpetrated by the Bush crime family from the death and destruction of Shock and Awe to the murderous attacks at Fallujah and Haditha? Is that why we can confront the deaths of two young men more easily than we can fathom slaughter in greater numbers?

China Purchased US Spy Plane Technology from Israel

According to The Times report, it appears the spy technology the Chinese technicians were experimenting with was American-made, and they acquired it through Israel.

Israeli TV Backs Allegations Gaza Bomb Was Israeli Shell
Israeli network Channel Two is reporting new developments that bolster accusations the Israeli military was responsible for the recent Gaza beach bombing that killed eight people. Sources inside the Israeli hospital that treated some of the victims said they removed shrapnel used in Israeli shells, and not by Palestinian militants. The claims back the analysis of a Human Rights Watch military expert who investigated the scene of the bombing. The Israeli army maintains the blast was likely caused by bombs planted by Palestinian militants.

Russia Says Hands off Iran
Russia considers the use of force against Iran inadmissible, no matter how the situation around its nuclear program might develop, a source from the foreign ministry affirmed Tuesday

GOP Kills Senate Bill to Police Halliburton

In an effort to stop companies like Halliburton and its subsidiaries from cheating our troops and stealing from Americans, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), introduced S.AMDT.4230 and attached it to the Defense Authorization bill currently being debated in the Senate. The bill was intended to improve contracting "by eliminating fraud and abuse and improving competition in contracting and procurement."
Dorgan's bill -- cosponsored by 17 Democrats and called the Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act of 2006 -- was tabled by a roll call vote of 55-43, effectively rejecting the amendment. Every single Senate Republican voted against the measure to make the contracting process honest and impose penalties on those who break the law.

Professors of Paranoia
How DARE a scientist agree with those wacky conspiracy theorists!???
A soft-spoken physicist from Brigham Young University, Steven E. Jones' hypothesis is that the buildings were taken down with preplanted thermite — a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum powder that burns hot enough to vaporize steel when it is ignited. Mr. Jones says that this hypothesis offers the most elegant explanation for the manner in which the buildings collapsed. He says it best explains various anecdotal accounts that molten metal remained pooled in the debris piles of the buildings for weeks. And he says it offers the only satisfying explanation for a weird sight captured in video footage of the south tower just before its collapse.
Near a corner of the south tower, at around 9:50 a.m., a cascade of a yellow-hot substance started spewing out of the building. The National Institute of Standards and Technology says in its report that the substance was most likely molten aluminum from the airplane fuselage. But Mr. Jones points out that aluminum near its melting point is a pale-silver color, not yellow. By his reckoning, then, that spew is a thermite reaction in plain sight.
Mr. Jones is petitioning Congress to release the raw data that went into the National Institute of Standards and Technology report. "If they just give us the data," he says, "we'll take it from there."

World Oil Prices Could Triple If Bush Admin. Fails To Solve Iran Conflict Diplomatically...
Isn't that the whole point?

The Dark Side

FRONTLINE tells the story of vice president Dick Cheney's role as the chief architect of the war on terror and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the dark side. Drawing on more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents, the film provides a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils of war. (Watch online or read transcripts).

Chicago court hears chilling tales of torture

In federal court in Chicago Tuesday, chilling stories about the torture of political prisoners by Israeli police. Testimony came during a hearing in the case against Muhammad Salah, who is accused of laundering money for Palestinian terrorists. Muhammad Salah's lawyer put on the witness stand Tuesday a world renowned human rights lawyer who says that he has interviewed hundreds of detainees in Israeli prisons who were systematically tortured to force them to confess. That is precisely the defense that Salah is claiming, that only after months of torture, did he sign a confession that is now the basis for his prosecution as a Hamas terrorist.

The perfect monster kills quietly

When anyone makes nuclear energy or nuclear weapons, a massive amount of radioactive waste is created. In the U.S., Depleted Uranium is harnessed by the government as a component for bombs, shells and automatic weapons bullets.
This is not only having its effect on Iraqis and Afghanis: it is also killing our men and women in uniform who have been exposed to it, and causing the same kinds of birth defects in their kids. Of course, to this Administration, this problem simply doesn't exist.

Ames Lab Dumps Prion Wastes Into Public Sewers!

Prions are tiny bits of mis-folded proteins. They are not considered life forms. However, some prions, like viruses, have the property of being able to re-insert themselves back into a healthy cells, and by so doing, corrupt the biochemical processes. Because prions operate at such a low level, inside cells already part of the host, the host's defenses seldom detect the prions. As the infected cell reproduces, copies of the prion are made. When the cells die and break open, the new prions are released.
Many illnesses, including Chronic Wasting Disease, are known to be caused by prions. (also including BSE or Mad Cow disease).
So, the reason there is a concern here is that prion-laden waste products are being flushed into the public sewer system, and it is known that the sewage treatment processes do not destroy the prions. Everyone downstream from the plant is at risk.

Report: CO2 Emissions in 28 States Doubled Since 1960
A new report says twenty-eight US states have more than doubled their carbon dioxide emissions since 1960. According to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, increased oil consumption accounted for forty percent of the total increase.

New Orleans Suicide Rate Nearly Triples
New York Times is reporting that New Orleans is experiencing what it calls 'a near epidemic of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders' in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. According to local officials, the city's suicide rate has nearly tripled since the storm devastated the city ten months ago. The rise has been accompanied by a severe collapse in the local mental health system. State officials estimate New Orleans has now lost more than half its psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and other mental health professionals.

GOP Leaders To Postpone Immigration Talks
Republican House leaders have announced they will postpone final negotiations on immigration reform until after the summer. Instead, the Republicans plan to hold several 'public forums' on immigration in cities around the country during the month of August. Analysts say the announcement likely means Congress will be unable to pass an immigration reform bill before November’s mid-term elections.
To avoid making the Nov. elections a referrendum on the WAR.

Got democracy?

Pentagon Report Reveals New Iraqi Detainee Abuse
A newly released Pentagon study reveals that U.S. forces held Iraqi detainees for up to seven days at a time in cells so tiny that they could neither stand nor lie down. The cells measured four feet high, four feet long and twenty inches wide. One Iraqi detainee alleged his captors duct-taped his mouth and nose before placing him in the box-like cell. The Pentagon investigation also determined some Iraqi detainees were fed only bread and water for up to seventeen days during which time they were chained to the floor of their cells. Other Iraqis were stripped naked, deprived of sleep and assailed with loud music. The Pentagon report was completed in November 2004 but only made public last week in response to a Freedom of Information request from the American Civil Liberties Union.
The report’s author, Army Brigadier General Richard Formica, determined the troops used unauthorized interrogation methods that violated the Geneva Conventions. But he recommended that no U.S. troops be disciplined for abusing Iraqis.



HUD to New Orleans Poor: "Go F(ind) Yourself (Housing)!"

Patience is in short supply in New Orleans as over 200,000 people remain displaced.
"I just need somewhere to stay," Patricia Thomas told the Times-Picayune.
Ms. Thomas has lived in public housing for years.
"We're losing our older people. They're dropping like flies when they hear they can't come home."

New Orleans Activists Protest Cuts to Public Housing
In New Orleans, public housing advocates are protesting the federal government’s decision to eliminate 5,000 units of public housing. NAACP Civil Rights Attorney Tracie Washington has announced plans to sue the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And activists with the group United Front for Affordable Housing has vowed to use any means necessary to stop the bulldozing of their apartments.
If the federal government’s plan goes forward, New Orleans will have lost 85 percent of its public housing over the past decade.
The development has been welcomed by some. Shortly after Katrina devastated the city, Republican Congressman Richard Baker from Baton Rouge reportedly said "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

Bush Administration Tries to Block State’s Probe of Telecoms & NSA
The state of New Jersey has subpoenaed records from five major telephone companies in an effort to determine whether they broke the state’s consumer protection laws by providing records to the National Security Agency. The companies subpoenaed are: AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Sprint Nextel and Cingular Wireless. Now the Bush administration is attempting to block New Jersey’s investigation. Last week the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to halt the subpoenas.

Pardon talk for Libby begins

Now that top White House aide Karl Rove is off the hook in the CIA leak probe, President George W. Bush must weigh whether to pardon former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the only one indicted in the three-year investigation.

Iraq mother condemns army 'blood money'

The mother of a soldier killed in the Iraq war has condemned the army's decision to offer a lucrative bounty to troops who persuade their friends to join the forces. Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed in Basra a month after completing his training, called it 'blood money'.

RESTORING THE DRAFT: THE UNIVERSAL NATIONAL SERVICE ACT OF 2006

The article republished below entitled "Warning: The Impending Draft," February 25, 2004, was written two years ago as a warning regarding the impending restoration of the draft. It is now more important than ever since the legislation that article predicted and warned about is now in committee and waiting to be acted upon.

U.S. learns to live with less freedom

"People are more afraid of terror than having their privacy violated," says Tomasso, chair of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance. "For so long the rhetoric has been about fear, not hope and more traditional American values."

Flight of Capital

At least among those with a mind for such things, it's fairly well-remembered that on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld made the shocking announcement that the Pentagon "couldn't track" $2.3 trillion of its transactions. "Iroquois" observes, "What's interesting to me is that he made his press release on a Monday. In DC, I always see bad news given on a Friday, usually late in the afternoon on Friday. The exception, of course, would be when someone happens to know that there is a far bigger story coming out."

Thousands of U.S. Troops Surround Ramadi
Meanwhile thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have completely surrounded the Sunni city of Ramadi. New checkpoints were established on Saturday. The United Nations is reporting that nearly ten thousand residents of Ramadi have already fled the city fearing a Fallujah-like assault.

House Rejects Call For Iraq Withdrawal Timetable
In Washington, the House of Representatives has voted to reject setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The vote was 256 to 153. The Republican leadership accused dissenting Democrats of failing to support the troops.

From the Embassy, a Grim Report
The US does not control anything outside the Green Zone.

'Wash Post' Obtains Shocking Memo from U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked "sensitive," that it says shows that "the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees." The memo reveals that the situation in the Iraqi capital is far more dire than portrayed by the Bush administration.
The memo mentions that one Arab newspaper editor is preparing an extensive study of how ethnic cleansing is now occurring in almost every Iraqi province.
"Personal safety depends on good relations with the 'neighborhood' governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by militias. People no longer trust most neighbors."

U.S.-trained expert: explosive that killed 8 Palestinians on Gaza beach was Israeli shell

US chiefs honoured in secret by Britain
Tthe Observer newspaper reports the British government has been secretly awarding honors to senior U.S. military and business leaders connected to the Iraq invasion. The list includes Riley Bechtel, the head of the U.S. company Bechtel; General Tommy Franks and Vice Admiral Timothy Keating.

House Votes to Remove Rep. Jefferson From Committee Seat
In news from Capitol Hill, the House has voted to remove Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana from the Ways and Means Committee. Jefferson is under federal investigation for bribery but he has not yet been charged with a crime. The Congressional Black Caucus opposed the move. It is believed that the House has never taken such a harsh step against a member not charged with a crime. Last month the FBI raided Jefferson’s Congressional office touching off a constitutional debate over the powers of the executive body to seize evidence from lawmakers.

200 Protest At Ground Zero Over 9/11 Health Issues
In New York, over 200 people demonstrated at Ground Zero on Saturday to protest the government’s failure to respond to the health effects of 9/11. Among the protesters was Joseph Zadroga. His son, New York police detective, James Zadroga died at the age of thirty-four in January from heart and lung complications directly related to the 9/11 incident.

FBI says, it has “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”

BYU Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples, Building Collapses an Inside Job

Michael Chertoff and the sabotage of the Ptech investigation
Mossad: RSA Security & Ptech Run US Govt Computers
Israelis Hold Keys To NSA/US Military Computer Networks
Prior to becoming a director at Cyota, Yoran, a 34-year old Israeli, had already been the national "Cyber Czar," having served as director of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division. Yoran had been appointed "Cyber Czar" at age 32 by President George W. Bush in September 2003.
Amit has also held critical positions in the U.S. government overseeing computer security for the very systems that apparently failed on 9/11.
In the wake of 9/11, during the Citizens' Commission hearings in New York, Indira Singh, a consultant who had worked on a Defense Advanced Research Project, pointed to Ptech and MITRE Corp. being involved in computer "interoperability issues" between the FAA and NORAD.
"Ptech was with MITRE Corporation in the basement of the FAA for two years prior to 9/11," Singh said. "Their specific job is to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force in the case of an emergency. If anyone was in a position to know that the FAA ­ that there was a window of opportunity or to insert software or to change anything ­ it would have been Ptech along with MITRE."

HEAD OF AIPAC BOASTED OVER HIS CONTROL OF THE WHITE HOUSE IN 1992
In 1992, AIPAC Harry Katz phoned the President of AIPAC, David Steiner, to offer contributions. Steiner proceeded to make several claims, including negotiating with then-candidate Bill Clinton over who would be Secretary of State, and had already "cut a deal" with Baker for more aid to Israel. Unknown to Steiner, Katz taped the phone call and gave the recording to the media, worried that AIPAC's influence had grown to dangerous levels.

False address voting scam targeted servicemembers

African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List
by Greg Palast
The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.
Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website. One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.
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For Greg Palast's discussion with broadcaster Amy Goodman on the Black soldier purge of 2004, go to http://gregpalast.com/armedmadhouse/palastdn6-14-06.mp3
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Here's how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable." The lists of soldiers of "undeliverable" letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot being counted. One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron. [See this scrub sheet here]
Our team contacted the homes of several on the caging list, such as Randall Prausa, a serviceman, whose wife said he had been ordered overseas.
A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be required to vote by "provisional" ballot.
Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.
Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County (Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: "The only thing I can think of - African American voters listed like this – these might be individuals that will be challenged if they attempted to vote on Election Day."
These GOP caging lists were obtained by the same BBC team that first exposed the wrongful purge of African-American "felon" voters in 2000 by then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Eliminating the voting rights of those voters -- 94,000 were targeted -- likely caused Al Gore's defeat in that race.
The Republican National Committee in Washington refused our several requests to respond to the BBC discovery.

Dan L'Allier, an emergency medical technician, poses in front
of his ambulance Wednesday, June 14, 2006. in Ellsworth, Wisc.
Documents Expose Sept. 11 Fraud
As firefighters searched for survivors after the Sept. 11 attacks, heat from the World Trade Center's smoldering ruins burned the soles off their boots. They needed new ones every few hours, and Chris Christopherson made sure they got them. The disaster specialist was proud to dispatch replacement boots from the Long Island warehouse of a company paid by the government to manage rescue supplies donated by Americans. Then came the moment that crushed Christopherson's faith.
His employer dispatched trucks to the warehouse and loaded hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donated bottled water, clothes, tools and generators to be moved to Minnesota in a plot to sell some for profit, according to government records and interviews. Dan L'Allier said he witnessed 45 tons of the New York loot being unloaded in Minnesota at his company's headquarters. He and Christopherson complained to a company executive, but were ordered to keep quiet. They persisted, going instead to the FBI. The two whistleblowers eventually lost their jobs, received death threats and were blackballed in the disaster relief industry. But they remained convinced their sacrifice was worth seeing justice done. They were wrong.
Kieger Enterprises of Lino Lakes, Minn., went unpunished for the Sept. 11 thefts after the government discovered FBI agents and other government officials had stolen artifacts from New York's ground zero.
Today, the whistleblowers worry their fate might chill others from exposing wrongdoing.
"They felt they had to come forward about the theft because it was so wrong," Turner said. "I've lost my career. They've lost their jobs. The price is so high for telling the truth."

The Bar is Set So Low for Bush That Anything Short of Drooling and Babbling is Considered a Monumental Success
Repuglicans across the land are rejoicing over President Bush's alleged resurgence.
He's back, they say. The Comeback Kid, they're calling him. One right wing columnist, Clark S. Judge, went so far as to say that "the president just had the best week of his second term, perhaps of his entire presidency...". and talks of Bush's "stunning new momentum that's proving a transformative success on the domestic as well as international front."
Excuse me, but I seem to have missed the memo outlining Bush's big accomplishments this past week. As usual, the bar is set so low for this president that all he needs to do is show a pulse and we're supposed to declare a national holiday in his honor.

A quote from David Rockefeller's autobiography 'Memoirs'

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

Fentanyl-laced Heroin Kills Hundreds Of Addicts In USA
Fentanyl-laced herion has killed hundreds of addicts from Chicago to Philadelphia. Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic drug, a prescription painkiller. It is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine and can kill humans in small doses. Most likely, the fentanyl is not pharmaceutical grade - it is probably made in illicit labs. Just 125 micrograms is enough to kill an adult - the equivalent of a few grains of salt.
According to Chicago police, a West Side gang member has been arrested. The police say the arrest will hopefully lead them to the main supplier of the deadly heroin cocktail. Police say the killer heroin is also being sold in Ohio. Over the last month three cases of heroin with fentanyl have been found.

Aerospace Writer's Mystery Death
Michael A. Dornheim, who spent 22 years covering the super-secret multi-billion-dollar aerospace industry in California, vanished on June 3 after having dinner with friends. On Monday, the journalist was found dead at the bottom of a ravine inside his crushed Honda Accord.
"He navigated the turns just fine, and then, in a straightaway, for whatever reason, he went off the cliff," Tang told the Los Angeles Times. "Not a rock was disturbed. Not even the brush was disturbed."
Dornheim, 51, was the acclaimed West Coast editor of Aviation Week, the industry's bible. His last cover story for the aerospace journal was a June 5 article on the Pentagon's "lunatic fringe" technology unit, DARPA, and its new Orbital Express space mission. The roving robotic spacecraft will reportedly repair and refuel Defense Department satellites while in orbit. In recent years, Dornheim has covered DARPA taking over the X-37 space plane program from NASA and the remarkable story of Burt Rutan's SpaceShip One. An engineer and private pilot, Dornheim used his expertise and skills to get outrageous scoops, such as the time he rented a single-engine plane in order to photograph the Stealth Bomber from angles the Pentagon attempted to block at the B-2's limited unveiling for aerospace reporters in 1988.

The key to understanding Iraq

Keeping Iraq's Oil In the Ground
by Greg Palast
Did the U.S. invade Iraq to tap its oil reserves or to make sure they stayed under the sand?

• 1991-2003 United Nations Oil embargo (zero legal exports) followed by Oil-for-Food Program limiting Iraqi sales to 2 million barrels a day.
• 2003-? "Insurgents" sabotage Iraq's pipelines and infrastructure.
• 2004 Options for Iraqi Oil The secret plan adopted by U.S. State Department overturns Pentagon proposal to massively increase oil production. State Department plan, adopted by government of occupied Iraq, limits state oil company to OPEC quotas.

Did Dick Cheney send us in to seize the last dwindling supplies? Unlikely. Our world's petroleum reserves have doubled in just twenty-five years -- and it is in Shell's and the rest of the industry's interest that this doubling doesn't happen again. The neo-cons were hell-bent on raising Iraq's oil production. Big Oil's interest was in suppressing production, that is, keeping Iraq to its OPEC quota or less. This raises the question, did the petroleum industry, which had a direct, if hidden, hand, in promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover of Iraq to prevent overproduction?

New Orleans To Demolish Most Public Housing Units
In New Orleans, officials have announced plans to tear down much of the city’s public housing units. The units suffered extensive damage during Hurricane Katrina. Rebuilding plans call for much of the public housing to be replaced by mixed-income units. The move will greatly reduce the number of available public housing units in New Orleans. Just 1,000 of the more than 5,000 families who lived in public housing have been able to return to their homes since Katrina struck last August. Curtis Muhammad, a housing advocate with the People's Organizing Committee, criticized the plan, saying: "These are the people who were left in New Orleans to die, who were locked up in the Superdome and the Convention Center [and now] the government wants to get rid of any housing for them.”

Lawsuit: CIA defines who's a news outlet
The CIA has adopted internal rules allowing it to define what constitutes a news organization and what doesn't, a Washington-based research group contended in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday. The lawsuit by the National Security Archive, which operates the largest non-governmental library of declassified documents, says the spy agency has begun charging illegal search and duplication fees under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Translation: unless you have a great deal of money, you won't be able to request info from the Archive on a FOIA. This of course limits private citizens' access to these Archives, which is precisely the design intent.

Federal Gov't Sues State Officials
The New Jersey attorney general and other state officials are being sued by the federal government to end their further inquiries on the extent of telephone firms' participation with the National Security Agency (NSA).
The AP reports that the filing in U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J., is the latest effort by federal authorities to halt legal proceedings aimed at revealing whether and how often AT&T, Verizon and other phone companies have provided customer records to the NSA without a court order.

Congress keeps itself, public in the dark on surveillance
With its wiretapping of international phone calls and collecting a database of domestic phone records, the Bush administration is busy watching for evildoers.

Lebanese man confesses to killings on behalf of Israel
A Lebanese man has confessed to assassinating a series of senior Hezbollah and Palestinian militants over a seven-year period on behalf of Israeli intelligence, the Lebanese Army said on Tuesday.
Palestinian territories: UN health agency warns of looming crisis due to funds cut-off
Calling for urgent action to avert a health crisis in the occupied Palestinian territory following the recent cut-off of donor aid after the formation of the new Hamas government, the United Nations health agency has said an interim mechanism is needed at once to prevent disruption of basic services.
Revealed: the shrapnel evidence that points to Israel's guilt
As the military investigation team insisted that artillery fire had stopped by the time the explosion occurred and suggested it had been caused by a bomb planted in the sand, Amir Peretz, the Defence Minister, declared: " The accumulating evidence proves that this incident was not due to Israeli forces. But the official interpretation was strongly challenged by a former Pentagon battle damage expert who has surveyed the scene of the beach explosion. He said yesterday that "all the evidence points" to a 155mm Israeli land-based artillery shell as its cause.
Annan retracts remarks on IDF's Gaza blast probe
After meeting with Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Gillerman, Secretary General Kofi Annan pulls back comments he said after conclusion of IDF report on civilian casualties on Gaza beach
One has to wonder just what it was Gillerman told him to cause him to do this.
Spineless.

Unted States military struggles with mental health care for troops
In addition to a high rate of suicides among U.S. troops, brutal atrocities they are now accused of committing in Iraq could be a consequence of the military’s deployment into combat of mentally unfit soldiers with severe psychological problems.
Or the brutal atrocities could be the cause of future severe psychological problems when they return home.

First US Female Conscientious Objector Sentenced
On November 17, 2005, Jashinski made a public statement of conscientious objection on the eve of her scheduled deployment to Afghanistan. Eighteen months after filing, the Army denied her application for a discharge. She was then court-martialed for refusing to train with weapons.

Is the US Army Trying to Silence Lt. Watada?

On Wednesday, June 7th, Lieutenant Watada became the first commissioned officer to publicly announce his refusal to deploy to Iraq. He said, "The war in Iraq violates our democratic system of checks and balances. The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice, but a contradiction to the Army's own Law of Land Warfare."
The very next day, Watada's commanding officers read him his rights. They opened an investigation into Lieutenant Watada's alleged violations of Articles 133 and 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ): conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and making "contemptuous" statements against the president, respectively.

Depleted Uranium - An American War Crime That Has No End

Since 1991, the United States has staged four wars using depleted uranium weaponry, illegal under all international treaties, conventions and agreements, as well as under US military law. The vast majority of servicemen and women in the U.S. military are unaware of the use and dangers of depleted uranium munitions, or of the protective clothing and procedures which can minimize or prevent serious short-term exposures.
Think about how expendible this government must consider its own soldiers who are sent on missions with not a clue about this.

Iraq exodus drives growth of world refugee population

An exodus of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis was the driving factor behind the growth of world refugee population to a total of 12 million last year, a U.S. watchdog said in Washington Wednesday.

Congress launches into new Iraq debate
Reacting to the new milestone on combat deaths, White House press secretary Tony Snow said, "It's a number."

Pentagon confirms Iranian directorate as officials raise new concerns about war
Ledeen goes to Rome
A recent trip by Michael Ledeen to Rome has raised red flags among those concerned about a potential war with Iran. Some believe that Ledeen -- a long-time advocate of Iranian regime change -- was involved in the Niger forgeries scandal.

President Bush To Legally Blind Reporter: 'Are You Going to Ask That Question with Shades On?'
"Following up on the other Peter’s question about Karl Rove, you said that you were relieved with what happened yesterday. But the American public, over the course of this investigation, has learned a lot about what was going on in your White House that they didn’t know before, during that time, the way some people were trying to go after Joe Wilson, in some ways. I’m wondering if, over the course of this investigation, that you have learned anything that you didn’t know before about what was going on in your administration. And do you have any work to do to rebuild credibility that might have been lost?"

Crow Nation settles federal land case
As a result of that 1996 audit, it was determined that the Department of the Interior mismanaged trust funds held for tribes. In the past few years six tribes have reached settlement, indicating that the federal government admits it mismanaged the lease funds. To this date only 20 tribes have filed claims for settlement.

Each American citizen owes the world one million dollars

Warcrimes court finds multiple Darfur massacres
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said his office had documented massacres with hundreds of victims in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region as well as hundreds of rape cases.

Dirty little secrets

EPA quietly attempts to radically change pollution rules

During the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina, local officials and the Environmental Protection Agency depended on one source to find hotspots of toxic chemicals: a database known as the Toxic Release Inventory. Until a few weeks ago, the inventory was to be slashed to comply with the Federal Paperwork Reduction Act. The EPA said they were gutting the 20-year-old database to save paper. What they didn't say was that the decision would dramatically reduce pressure on polluters.
Under the plan, companies would report biannually instead of annually and would only have to report toxic releases of more than 5,000 pounds. Currently, the EPA requires reporting of any releases greater than 500 pounds.
"During the off year, they could release any toxic chemical without having to report it," Northouse said. "There's already an 18-month delay." Environmental watchdogs say the inventory is critical to public health.

The Abramoff/Plame connection
Wayne Madsen Report has learned from informed sources of a link between those who "outed" CIA counter-proliferation covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates cover firm and convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The link centers around convicted Israeli-South African nuclear components smuggler Asher Karni, a former officer in the Israeli Defense Force and Orthodox Jew who illegally smuggled 66 U.S.-made triggered spark gap nuclear detonators, via Cape Town, South Africa, where his company was located, to the Pakistan-based network of Abdul Qadeer ("A Q") Khan, a major target of Plame Wilson's CIA team. The A Q Khan network sold nuclear materials to Libya, North Korea, and most importantly, Iran.

Convicted Israeli nuclear smuggler to Pakistan Asher Karni
linked to convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff
In a inexplicable development, after his arrest in Denver on Jan. 1, 2004, Karni was granted, over federal prosecutors' objections, $100,000 bail by US District Judge for the District of Columbia Thomas Hogan. The government did not appeal Hogan's bail decision and Karni was released to the custody of the Hebrew Sheltering Home in Silver Spring, Maryland. After pleading guilty to smuggling charges, Karni was sentenced on August 4, 2005 to three years in prison by US Judge Ricardo Urbina.
WMR has learned of a link between Karni and Abramoff. Rabbi Herzel Kranz, the head of the Hebrew Sheltering Home in Silver Spring where Karni was housed after his bail, is also a colleague of Abramoff's. The January 12, 2006 issue of The Forward contained an article citing praise of Abramoff by Kranz. At the time, Abramoff had just pleaded guilty to federal fraud and racketeering charges. Kranz praised Abramoff for donating to Jewish projects and, referring to Abramoff's conviction, said, "people make mistakes."
The Turkish nexus of the Karni-Bilmen-Humayun/A Q Khan smuggling network was of primary interest to both the CIA and FBI. Essentially, Abramoff money was being used by the Justice Department as a weapon against Bush administration critics. Abramoff's money was also used to blackmail other members of Congress who were investigating the Israeli connection to nuclear smuggling and the A Q Khan network.
In any case, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is now dealing with a much larger case with the same limited budget and relatively small staff of prosecutors and FBI agents, in addition to a Justice Department that is dangerously using evidence gathered in the Abramoff money and influence-peddling probe as a political weapon against GOP opponents of Bush-Cheney policies. It is clear that the Justice Department is being politically manipulated and one effect of the high-level interference is likely today's early morning announcement that Fitzgerald has decided that he does not plan to indict Karl Rove, one of the chief suspects in the Plame/CIA leak.

Karl Rove Won’t Be Indicted in CIA Leak Case
Federal prosecutors have decided not to charge President Bush's top advisor Karl Rove with any crimes in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. No official statement has been made by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. But Rove’s attorney says Fitzgerald announced the decision in a letter to him on Monday. Rove had been at the center of the investigation for over two years and had been forced to testify on five occasions to a federal grand jury on his role in the outing of Plame.

NSA Train Wreck

The bill, which the committee could take up this week, does a whole lot more, just about all of it bad. In an effort to win votes, Mr. Specter has turned it from a flawed accountability measure into one that rewrites the rules of domestic surveillance and gives the administration an all but blank check to spy.

Defense lawyers shut out as war on terror spawns courtroom secrecy

Witnesses used bogus names, the public was barred from the courtroom and part of the hearing was behind closed doors in the judge's chambers - with defense lawyers shut out. Such secret procedures, once rare in American courts, have become more common since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Prosecutors say they need secrecy to protect undercover agents, informants and witnesses from terrorist reprisals and keep critical information pipelines from being shut down.

NSA Blocking Whistleblower From Telling Committee About Shocking, Illegal Activities

Tice said his information is different from the terrorist surveillance program that President Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts last month that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. Because he worked on special access programs, however, it has not been clear on Capitol Hill which committees have jurisdiction to debrief him.
CongressDaily also reports that House Government Reform National Security Subcommittee, through its Chairman Christopher Shays (R-CT) and ranking member Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), is seeking to interview Tice, but the NSA is resisting. Shays and Kucinich gave the NSA until Friday to explain any legal reason why they cannot interview him. But that deadline passed without a response, and a subcommittee aide today called the missed deadline troubling.

Bush Admin. Requests Court Throw Out NSA Spy Lawsuit
The Bush administration requested a federal judge on Monday to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union over the government's warrantless domestic surveillance program. Monday marked the first time a lawsuit over the National Security Agency’'s program made its way to court. The ACLU asked the court in Detroit to force the NSA to shut down the program. The group maintains President Bush was not authorized by Congress to order the NSA to begin eavesdropping on Americans. The ACLU also believes the president violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that forbids surveillance of people inside the United States without a warrant.
Attorneys from the Justice Department defended the legality of the program but told the judge that the evidence needed to demonstrate its lawfulness cannot be disclosed without causing grave harm to national security. After the court hearing, the ACLU's executive director Anthony Romero called the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege ''Orwellian doublespeak.'' Romero said, ''They argued essentially that the N.S.A. program was off limits to judicial review."

Zarqawi Stayed Alive for 52 Minutes After Strike
The official autopsy showed Zarqawi stayed alive for 52 minutes after the first blast and 24 minutes after US forces arrived at the scene. The military initially claimed Zarqawi died in the strike. The U.S. is denying reports from Iraqi witnesses that Zarqawi died after a U.S. soldier stomped on his chest.

Global Military Spending Tops $1.1 Trillion; Bush Spends $1,600 Per Capita
The United States accounted for nearly half of the world’s military spending. According to the report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States spent $1,600 on its military for every American. Meanwhile China spent just $31 per person. India spent less than $19 per person. The study also determined that military spending is actually decreasing in Europe with the biggest cuts recorded in England and Spain.

Religious Leaders Call on Bush To Abolish Torture
Twenty-seven religious leaders including have signed a statement urging the United States government to "abolish torture now -- without exceptions." The group’s statement appears in a series of newspaper ads bought by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. The statement reads in part "Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation."

Dead detainee 'was to be freed'
Mark Denbeaux, who represents some of the foreign detainees said the man was among 141 prisoners due to be released. He said the prisoner was not told because US officials had not decided which country he would be sent to.

Bush Refuses to Close Guantanamo
The Bush administration is once again rejecting calls to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison following the suicide of three men on Saturday. In Washington, the Center for Constitutional Rights held a press conference condemning the administration’s treatment of detainees at the military base.

• Attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez: "There is a reason why our constitution ensures the rule of habeas corpus, there is a reason why the magna carter incorporates the rights to challenge imprisonment by the king and its because that kind of detention leads to the exact results we saw this weekend, a kind of desperation and futility that would make someone rather die that continue to be held like that."

New York Times' Bob Herbert: Kerry 'almost certainly' won Ohio in 2004

In the 2004 presidential election, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) "almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots," writes Herbert for Monday's edition of The New York Times.

Florida House candidate to face litany of criminal charges after alleging vote fraud
Charlie Grapski, a Democrat running for the Florida House of Representatives, was arrested in April after filing a lawsuit alleging that City officials abused power and influenced the outcome of an election by manipulating the absentee voting process. The story, however, does not start or end with election fraud allegations.
What Grapski tells is a tale that one cannot imagine occurring in a law abiding country, one of false arrest, intimidation, and a crony-business system all centered around money interests.

Another US Cover-Up Surfaces in Iraq
More children killed in Iraq after US raids
In the wake of the Haditha massacre, reports of another atrocity have surfaced in which U.S. troops killed two women in Samarra, and then attempted to hide evidence of their responsibility.

Iraqis in Al Anbar province leaving army in droves
"Many of my soldiers have not gotten paid in six months. Sometimes, they don’t eat for two or three days at a time. I tell my commander, but what else am I supposed to do?" said Lt. Moktat Uosef, a 29-year-old Iraqi army company commander based in Husaybah.

Bad Apples Keep Bobbing Up
This whole endeavor is so appallingly pervaded by the most blatant moral hypocrisy that one scarcely knows where to begin a denunciation. We are still being treated to mock-shocked media reports and make-believe discussions of "bad apples" and all the rest of the public-relations pretense trotted out to cloak the ongoing mass murder.

The Owners Of War
This morning, listening to C-Span, I was sickened at the inhumane remarks made by callers from across the country (both parties). I would estimate that 90% of the people had no problem with the recent massacre of civilians in Haditha. It was apparent, listening to their comments that few had bothered to read the initial accounts of this massacre.

Looking for Iraq Support: Germany Says No to Rumsfeld Request for Help

Mainstream 9/11 - The Art of Overlooking the Obvious

At 9:52 a.m. Battalion Chief Palmer clearly stated there were only two isolated pockets of fire on the 78th floor, so that floor contained no inferno. Other firefighters were on floor 77, so that floor contained no inferno, and it is documented that there were no infernos above floor 78.
No infernos = no truss failures.
No truss failures = the building should have remained standing.

Why are glaring inconsistencies in the official story of 9/11 and real world events overlooked by the mainstream media?

Where's the moral courage?

Iraqis Claim U.S. Soldiers Beat Zarqawi to Death
New Questions are being raised over the circumstances of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. U.S. military officials initially claimed that Zarqawi died when a U.S. F-16 dropped two 500 pound bombs on his hideout outside of the town of Hibhib.
But on Friday the military admitted Zarqawi survived the initial bombing and was semi-conscious when Iraqi and U.S. officials arrived at the scene. The U.S. maintains he died on a stretcher while being treated by U.S. personnel.
But an Iraqi police lieutenant told the Los Angeles Times that Zarqawi died after a U.S. soldier repeatedly stepped on his chest, causing blood to flow from his mouth and nose. The officer said U.S. troops removed Zarqawi from an Iraqi ambulance and placed him on the ground. Then a U.S. soldier tried to question Zarqawi and began stepping on his chest. Another Iraqi man who lived nearby told Associated Press Television News that he had witnessed Americans beating Zarqawi. He said:

"He was still alive. We put him in the ambulance, but when the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose."

The top American commander in Iraq on Sunday rejected these accounts saying they were "baloney.” General George Casey said, "the idea that there were people there beating him is just ludicrous." The U.S. military has finished an autopsy on Zarqawi but has not released the findings.

U.S. Payouts to Relatives of Killed Iraqis Skyrocket
The Boston Globe is reporting the amount of money the U.S. is paying out to families of Iraqi civilians killed or injured by U.S. troops is skyrocketing. In 2004, the military paid $5 million. Last year the figure quadrupled to $20 million. The military pays up to $2,500 for each Iraqi killed by the U.S. military.

Guantanamo's First Suicides Pressure U.S.
Three prisoners at Gunatanamo Bay in Cuba - two Saudis and a Yemeni - killed themselves over the weekend - the first successful suicides at the US prison camp since it opened in 2002 and the latest incident to highlight the fierce controversy over its continued existence. An increasing number of critics believe the prison's ongoing operation and the Bush administration's refusal to place the prisoners before the courts represents a stain on the nation's reputation.
Washington condemns first suicides by Guantanamo inmates as 'a PR exercise'

Rear-Admiral Harry Harris of the US Navy, the prison commander, claimed the men were "committed jihadists" who died in acts, not of desperation, but of "asymmetrical warfare against us. The methods of hanging themselves were similar," he said. "I believe this was a co-ordinated attempt." The US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Colleen Graffy, described the suicides as a "good PR move to draw attention".
In that case, it was a success.
Camp suicides 'hard to believe'

The sister of a UK inmate of Guantanamo Bay has said she is "suspicious" about the suicides of three detainees at the US base in Cuba.
Guantanamo suicides 'acts of war' The camp commander said the two Saudis and a Yemeni were "committed" and had killed themselves in "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

US backs Israel's right to kill children
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that Israel had the right to defend itself, especially while terrorists were attacking it.
Defend itself? Against WHAT? Beach balls?!? Surf boards?!? Even Israel admits the military that fired on the crowd was not under any kind of attack. Hamas has had a cease fire going for the last 18 months, up until Israel opened fire on the kids relaxing on the beach. I am ashamed of the US Government for this blatant pandering to Israel's criminal actions.
Army “apologizes” after killing 10 civilians, including two infants

After the Israeli army shelled the Gaza beach killing 10 civilians, including two infants aged 6 months and 18 months, and injuring forty other residents, army spokesperson “apologizes” and says that the incident could be labeled as “work accident”. At least forty civilians were killed in the attack.
Brigadier General Says Israel is the problem not Iraq

Neocon Prince of Darkness Sighted at Bilderberg Meeting
According to Megan Gillis, writing for the Ottawa Sun, the Straussian neocon "Prince of Darkness," Richard Perle, is in Ottawa, possibly to attend the Bilderberg Group meeting held there, along with the standard fare of neolibs and globalists, including "David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of Holland, former N.B. premier Frank McKenna and a host of other bigwigs," as Gillis puts it.

We've all been miffed and let down by Arlen Specter's behavior over the NSA wiretapping scandal.
Jack Cafferty blasted him last week by first calling him another gutless Republican worm cowering in the face of pressure from the administration and fellow Republicans, and then saying his actions "have boggled what's left of my mind."
Specter came out today on Late Edition and denied the reports that he's offered amnesty and vowed to use his subpoena power and hold hearings. I still take this with a grain of salt since he usually whips out his big rubber stamp and sides with the administration, but we need to hold him accountable on this incredibly important issue.

COMPREHENSIVE MORAL SQUALOR

The Hagel-Martinez Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 is a swindle wrapped in a deception inside a lie. Although marketed as immigration reform, the bill provides corporate welfare on an unprecedented scale. Hagel-Martinez is a historically significant bait and switch that will diminish the prosperity of the average citizen.

Ralph Nader: “Americans Need Moral Courage!”

Nader said a vast majority of Americans need a dose of “moral courage.” They have allowed “a few,” to rule over the many. “Democracy,” Nader said, “isn’t a slogan. People need to get motivated, show up and get organized.”

U.S. Denies Political Motives in Blocking Russia's WTO bid
Of course, this would have nothing to do with Russia's not wanting to impose sanctions or use military force against Iran, now would it?

Mad cow cases in Texas, Alabama appear to be mysterious strain
In the Texas and Alabama cows, tests found patterns distinct from what turned up in an infected cow in Washington state and a cluster of Canadian cases, researchers say. The Washington and Canadian cases resemble the classic British cases.
No matter what the origins might be of an atypical strain, the government says there is no reason to change federal testing or measures that safeguard animals and people from the disease.

Denver Election Office Loses Voter Information
Records with Social Security numbers, addresses and other personal information on more than 150,000 people are missing at city election offices, and officials are trying to determine if the files were lost, moved or stolen.

At least 1,000 UK soldiers desert

More than 1,000 members of the British military have deserted since the start of the Iraq war, the BBC has learned. Figures for those still missing are 86 from 2001, 118 from 2002, 134 from 2003, 229 from 2004, 377 from 2005, and 189 for this year so far. The news comes as Parliament debates a law that will forbid military personnel from refusing to participate in the occupation of a foreign country. The MoD insists "absent without leave" figures have remained constant. A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said the soldiers currently missing were considered to be "absent without leave" and would have to be court martialled before they could be found guilty of deserting.

End of the boogeyman

From Joseph Cannon's CANNONFIRE blog:
Zarqawi's real name: Lieutenant Kije
Here is a briefing slide prepared for Army General George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq:

The slide appeared as an adjunct to the Washington Post's famous article from April 10, which described the psyop campaign to create a Zarqawi myth. Since that time, we have seen the emergence of a Zarqawi video of questioned authenticity, in which the oft-"killed" terrorist was seen conducting exercises in a landscape that resembled the American southwest.
Previously, I asked a question that remains unanswered: If, in fact, Zarqawi conducted these maneuvers (which included the firing of anti-tank weaponry in open desert beneath a clear sky) within the borders of Iraq, why didn't American spy satellites catch sight of him immediately? Google Earth has spotted firefights on Baghdad streets. Surely, American overseers must scrutinize Iraq from the sky carefully and routinely.
Shortly after this video hit the net, the American military released outtakes which showed that Z handled his weapon in an amateurish fashion. Everyone was so busy giggling that few thought to ask questions about the source of this convenient footage. Supposedly, American soldiers found it during a raid. Which raid? Why not humor us with a few details?
On second thought, don't bother. Any details provided by officaldom would never convince, since so many recent events have justified cynicism. The Casey slideshow confirmed what many had already suspected: Zarqawi existed solely because he fulfilled a propaganda function. Once that fact became known, it was necessary to bury the revelation. First came the video. When that ploy failed, Zarqawi lost his value as bogeyman and thus had to die.
Maybe we should put quotation marks around the word “die.” Maybe those gruesome images of his corpse were photoshopped. (A General admitted in footage on the McNeill Newshour in a press briefing that they WERE photoshopped). Maybe they were real. Who can say? The only thing we can know for sure is that the scarecrow no longer performed its intended function and was thus subject to removal.
If you know classical music, you've probably heard Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije" suite, which originated as the score for a now-lost Russian film based on an old short story. (The same story inspired an early episode of MASH.) The Lieutenant was the fictional creation of a group of pankster soldiers who wanted to give their unit an heroic and inspiring figure. When the Tsar asked to meet this famed warrior, his "death" became mandatory.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article753708.ece

Dead again
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's most recent death was announced less than an hour ago. Supposedly, he was killed by American Special Forces. No, make that an air raid. We have no word yet on whether the corpse had one or two legs.
Could be true. Or the whole thing could be a "wag the dog" operation designed to give the impression that Bush's war has actually accomplished something. Given the infinitude of hoaxes which have festooned every stage of this war, we have no reason to believe a single official word.

"There's a battle for your mind and you are losing..."

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Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.

DOE computers hacked; Info on 1,500 taken

The data theft occurred in a computer system at a service center belonging to the National Nuclear Security Administration in Albuquerque, N.M. The file contained information about contract workers throughout the agency's nuclear weapons complex, a department spokesman said.
"Shall we play a game?"

Murtha Will Run for Majority Leader if Democrats Win
Rep. John Murtha, a 16-term Democrat known for his close ties to the military and his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq , said Friday he will run for House majority leader if Democrats win control in November. Murtha, 73, wrote in a letter to Democratic colleagues that he would seek the post "if we prevail, as I hope and know we will, and return to the majority this next Congress."

Lewis Aide Got Buyout From Lobby Firm

A top aide to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis received $1.96 million in severance payments from a lobbying firm with ties to Lewis, according to documents released Friday.
The connection between Lewis, a California Republican, and the Washington-based firm, Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton, & White, is under federal investigation.

House for Sale: more on Letitia White and Trident Systems
It looks like there might be more problems in store for Letitia White, a lobbyist and former staffer to GOP Representative Jerry Lewis of California. And there may be even more problems for Lewis, the head of the House Appropriations Committee who is under federal investigation for his ties to lobbyists and for possibly steering money to well-connected companies.
It has recently been reported that Representative Jerry Lewis, a California Republican who heads the House Appropriations Committee, is under federal investigation for possibly steering federal monies to well-connected corporations. In a story on June 2, the New York Times profiled Letitia White, a lobbyist and former Lewis staffer, who also appears to be attracting attention from investigators.

William Jefferson: Tollbooth Operator on the Road to Africa
As has been widely noted, Rep. William Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat who reportedly keeps his cash in the icebox, is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly taking a bribe from the owner of iGate Inc. to arrange deals for the high-tech company in Nigeria and several other African countries. According to court records, the FBI is also looking into “at least seven other schemes in which Jefferson sought things of value in return for his official acts.”

Specter 'compromise' gives Bush amnesty for wiretaps Sen. Arlen Specter's approach modifies his earlier position that the NSA eavesdropping program, which targets international telephone calls and e-mails in which one party is suspected of links to terrorists, must be subject to supervision by the secret court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Another part of the Specter bill would grant blanket amnesty to anyone who authorized warrantless surveillance under presidential authority, a provision that seems to ensure that no one would be held criminally liable if the current program is found illegal under present law.
No oversight, no rules - how wonderful. With this proposal, every citizen is now guilty until proven innocent, and no one, in the executive branch of government, can be held accountable for their actions. Did I fall asleep and wake up in the wrong country this morning?--Michael Rivero

"Op-Scan Voting Machines Miscount Ballots in Iowa Republican Primary!
Hand Count Reveals Other Candidate Leads By Far!"
The counting in Tuesday's Pottawattamie County primary election came to a sudden halt shortly after midnight today when Pottawattamie County Auditor Marilyn Jo Drake announced to the waiting courthouse crowd that something wasn't right with the new computers purchased to count the ballots.
Uh-oh, I was afraid of that.

"BUSBY/BILBRAY ELECTION IN DOUBT: The Diebold Machine Sleepovers at Poll Workers Houses..."
The touch-screen voting machines used in the Busby/Bilbray election were taken HOME by poll workers for as long as a week before the actual polling day, raising the possibility that the machines could have been tampered with.

War Criminal Nation
Faced with mounting civilian carnage, both from war crimes committed by demoralized and broken U.S. troops and from the raging civil war unleashed by Bush's ill-fated, illegal invasion of Iraq, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has decided to waste another $50 billion to continue the lost war for five more months. Our elected "representatives" are so in thrall to the powerful military-industrial complex that no amount of American shame, pariah status, and military defeat can shut off the flow of taxpayers' funds to the merchants of death.

Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing hard-pressed U.S. taxpayers $300,000,000 per day! These wars are lost. Yet, imbecilic members of Congress are in the process of funding the war for another year. Multiply $300 million by 365 days and you get $109,500,000,000. These are not the full costs.
The huge figure does not include the destroyed equipment, destroyed lives, and long-term care of the maimed and disabled.
If the goal is to keep Iraq from selling its oil in the world market, and to make the American taxpayers fund it, mission accomplished.

"Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims." -Endgame, Derrick Jensen

Fears of 'regime change' policy after US cancels Palestinian pay talks

A European diplomat said the move reinforced fears that the US was intent on "regime change" in the Palestinian-ruled territories. Tensions between Hamas and Fatah forces in Gaza and the West Bank have been exacerbated by the aid freeze by countries who continue to brand Hamas a terrorist group.

Israelis Fear Spread Of War Crimes Cases

Laws passed in wake of Nuremberg trials now being pressed in Europe against Israeli generals.

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!

Hamas Abandons Israel Truce After Israeli Rocket Attack

The ruling Hamas group fired a barrage of homemade rockets at Israel on Saturday, hours after calling off a truce with Israel in anger over an artillery attack that killed seven civilians in Gaza.
Now, let's clarify something--who abandoned the "truce" first here??

President Abbas Describes Israel's Massacres in Gaza "Annihilation War"
Is genocide, rightly condemned when Germany did it, now the acceptable solution to Israel's "Demographic Threat"?

Love Thy God and Kill. Good o'l Christian values hard at work:

Native Americans (1776-2002): 4M

West Africans (1776-1865): 4M

Philippines (1898-1904): 600K

Germany (1945): 200K

Japan (1945): 900K

China (1945-60): 200K

Greece (1947-49): 100K

Korea (1951-53): 2M

Guatemala (1954-2002): 300K

Vietnam (1960-75): 2M

Laos (1965-73): 500K

Cambodia (1969-75): 1M

Indonesia (1965): 500K

Colombia (1966-2002): 500K

Oman (1970): 10K

Bangladesh (1971): 2M

Uganda (1971-1979): 200K

Chile (1973-1990): 20K

East Timor (1975): 200K

Angola (1975-2002): 1.5M

Argentina (1976-1979): 30K

Afghanistan (1978-2002): 1M

El Salvador (1980-95): 100K

Nicaragua (1980-90): 100K

Mozambique (1981-1988): 1M

Turkey (1984-2002): 50K

Rwanda (1990-1996): 1M

Iraq (1991-2002): 1M

Somalia (1991-1994): 300K

Yugoslavia (1991-2002): 300K

Liberia (1992-2002): 150K

Burundi (1993-1999): 200K

Sudan (1998): 100K

Congo (1998-2002): 3M

A New "Perle Harbor": Neocon Foreign Policy Architect Richard Perle reveals US War Plans in the Iranian Theater
"I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world. Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world." --Zbigniew Brzezinski, Vanity Fair, 2006.
While Perle stated his hope that the need for military interventions would be minimal, he left the impression that his definition of excessive use of military power might well differ from that of the average American or European citizen. Perle is on the public record advocating pre-emptive strikes against North Korea, Syria, Iran and a list of other countries. Some of his critics accuse Perle of darkly malignant machinations.
An Iranian student asked Perle whether he considered the Mearsheimer and Walt paper, “The Israel Lobby,” to be, “anti-Semitic.” Castigating the eighty-five page paper as, “bad scholarship,” Perle admitted that he did not know what he was talking about when he confessed that he had not read it in its entirety. This question put Perle on the defensive, and he asserted that there was no secret agenda amongst America’s plethora of, “Jewish groups,” that sought to place the national security of Israel above that of the United States.

Russia Shifts Part of Its Forex Reserves from Dollars to Euros

On Thursday, June 8, Russia became the latest in the list of countries that shifted a part of its Central Bank reserves from the dollar. Sergei Ignatyev, chairman of the Central Bank, said that only 50 percent of its reserves are now held in dollars, with 40 percent in euros and the rest in pounds sterling. Earlier it was believed that just 25-30 percent of Russia’s reserves were held in euros, with virtually all the rest held in dollars.

Enough about Ann Coulter: Answer the Jersey Girls' questions about 9/11!

1. Was NORAD aware of the four hijacked planes veering off course even before being reported by the FAA? If not, please explain why NORAD, which monitors 7000 flights a day, was unable to track the four aberrant flights.
2. At precisely what time was NORAD notified of each plane being hijacked? What was their response?
3. Who determined from which bases the F-16s should be scrambled? Why were fighter jets scrambled from such distant bases such as Langley Base in Va. instead of Andrews Air Force Base, a mere 10 miles from the Pentagon? Who were the pilots of these F-16s?
4. Why weren’t the jets able to intercept the hijacked planes if they were airborne within eight minutes of notification? What was their airspeed?
5. It is reported that there were two F-15s off the coast of Long Island while Flights 11 and 175 were in the air. If there were indeed fighters off Long Island, why weren’t they diverted to investigate Flights 11 and 175? Were any other military planes flying routine missions on the morning of September 11th which could have responded?
6. Why did NORAD wait until after the second plane hit the WTC to try and prevent possible further attacks? Why weren’t the fighter jets that tailed flights 11 and 175 as they crashed into New York’s WTC, immediately rerouted to intercept flights 77 or 93, before they crashed into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania?
7. Why wasn’t the Pentagon defended?
8. Were surveillance satellites orbiting North American airspace on 9/11?

• What exactly does the satellite imaging reveal?
• What companies own these satellites?
• Where are the records and logs for these orbits?

9. Why were these four planes able to evade all radar? Even when the transponders are disconnected, a plane is still able to be located by its “skin” on radar screens.
10. In June 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld modified NMCC response procedure in the event of a hijacking. Could this procedural change have slowed NORAD’s response time?
11. Who was directing the defense of our country that morning?
12. What defensive actions were ordered to protect our nation during the crisis?

Did Jack know what Adam knew?

Report: Abramoff ex-partner knew of slaying
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A man who purchased SunCruz Casinos with lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2000 has told authorities he knows who killed the casino's founder the following year, according to a report published Friday. Adam Kidan told authorities in a 2 1/2-hour interview last month that John Gurino, who was later killed by a business partner, shot SunCruz founder Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis in 2001, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. The paper did not say how it obtained the taped interview.
Kidan and Abramoff had previously insisted, through their attorneys, that they knew nothing about Boulis' killing. Three other men are charged with murder in the case. Kidan's attorney, Joseph R. Conway, confirmed that Kidan met with authorities but would not discuss what was said. He noted that Kidan's plea agreement to fraud charges stemming from the SunCruz purchase requires him to cooperate in state and federal investigations. "He has been and will continue to do so," Conway told The Associated Press on Friday. Abramoff's attorney in Miami, Neal Sonnett, said in an e-mail Friday that he had no comment "other than to repeat what I've said publicly before: that Mr. Abramoff has never had knowledge of any facts related to the Boulis case."
Both Kidan and Abramoff are cooperating with authorities after pleading guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges in the SunCruz purchase. They were sentenced in March to nearly six years in prison for concocting a fake wire transfer to get bank funding for the purchase. Abramoff also pleaded guilty in a federal bribery investigation that is examining his dealings with members of Congress.
The three men charged with murder in Boulis' death are Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello, 68; Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari, 49; and James "Pudgy" Fiorillo, 28. All have pleaded not guilty. Kidan told investigators he learned the details of the killing from Moscatiello and Ferrari but that he was not told the triggerman's name, the newspaper reported. He said Moscatiello told him in 2004 that the man was dead and he pieced together who it was after learning the man was killed in a Florida deli by his business partner in 2003. Gurino's business partner, a deli owner, was convicted of manslaughter last year after arguing that he killed Gurino in self-defense. Gurino's brother, Angelo Gurino, told the Sun-Sentinel that he had never heard of the Boulis murder and did not think his brother could been involved.


Democrats want DeLay's name on ballot
The Texas Democratic Party won a temporary restraining order Thursday blocking the process that would name a replacement for Republican U.S. Rep.Tom DeLay on the November ballot. State District Judge Darlene Byrne ordered Texas GOP Chairwoman Tina Benkiser not to convene party officials to decide on DeLay's replacement until after a June 22 court hearing. Democrats are trying to keep DeLay's name on the ballot, which would also keep his legal problems in front of voters. DeLay leaves Congress on Friday.
State Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie said Democrats are trying to keep the GOP from creating a "sham vacancy" for the Republican nomination for the 22nd Congressional District.
DeLay is awaiting trial on money laundering charges.


Coulter draws fire for bashing 9/11 widows
Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit with a penchant for creating controversy, caused a ruckus when she called 9/11 widows "witches" and accused them of using their husbands' deaths for their own political gain. In her latest book, Coulter criticizes the four New Jersey widows who pushed for an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed their husbands at the World Trade Center. The women also backed Democrat John Kerry's presidential candidacy in 2004.
"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Coulter wrote.

Among Coulter's previous statements, she advocated the invasion of non-Christian nations after Sept. 11 and the deportation from the U.S. of "all aliens from Arabic countries." She said American Taliban John Walker should be executed to show liberals what happens to traitors. And she said the only real question about
President Clinton was "whether to impeach or assassinate."

Defeat for net neutrality backers
US politicians have rejected attempts to enshrine the principle of net neutrality in legislation. Some fear the decision will mean net providers start deciding on behalf of customers which websites and services they can visit and use. The rejection of the principle of net neutrality came during a debate on the wide-ranging Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (Cope Act). Among other things, this aims to make it easier for telecoms firms to offer video services around America by replacing 30,000 local franchise boards with a national system overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
An amendment to the Act tried to add clauses that would demand net service firms treat equally all the data passing through their cables. The amendment was thought to be needed after the FCC ripped up its rules that guaranteed net neutrality.
Prior to the vote net firms worried about the effect of the amendment on their business lobbied hard in favour of the amendment. They fear their sites will become hard to reach or that they will be forced to pay to guarantee that they can get through to web users.
Speaking at a conference in late May, web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee warned that the net faced entering a "dark period" if access suppliers were allowed to choose which traffic to prioritise. The debate over the issue now moves to the US Senate which will vote on its version of the act in late June.

June 8, 2006 -- The story about Laura Bush and her marital problems with George W. Bush and Mr. Bush's reported extramarital affair with Condoleezza Rice is not going away.

The alternative media continues to write and talk about this story. With the killing of Zarqawi in Iraq, the mainstream media now has a reason to avoid the Bush infidelity story entirely. The Zarqawi story came at an opportune time for Messrs. Bush and Rove. Some mainstream media reporters were beginning to look into the Bush marital issues the same day the attack came on the Al Qaeda safe house in Iraq. Laura Bush reportedly has the moral support of her daughters over marital difficulties.

Eat the rich

Senate rejects effort to abolish estate tax

The Senate refused Thursday to kill the estate tax on inherited wealth, marking the clearest sign yet that at least some of the tax cuts passed at the initiative of President Bush in 2001 won't be made permanent. By blocking repeal now, most Senate Democrats and two Republicans dealt a blow to Bush's top domestic priority: making the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 permanent. Opponents of the estate tax say killing it will be even more difficult after this fall's elections, when Republicans are expected to suffer losses.
First established in 1916, the estate tax looked like a strong candidate for repeal last year. The GOP-controlled House already had voted 272-162 to kill it; Senate action was slated for September. Then Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, hijacking the congressional agenda. Since then, support for repeal has waned for several reasons:

• The post-Katrina focus on poverty and suffering made it tougher for lawmakers to cut taxes on the rich. Fewer than 1% of Americans face the prospect of estate taxes.
• Proponents of the estate tax, such as Bill Gates Sr., have made more forceful arguments. Gates, the father of the world's richest man, said those with large estates owe much of their success to government innovation. "I call it the 'grateful heirs tax,' " he said.
• More attention is being paid to the estimated $300 billion federal deficit and the rising costs of the Iraq war, Medicare and Social Security. Repealing the estate tax would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.

"The world is very different from when these tax cuts were first implemented," said Maya MacGuineas of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "The deficit picture is making a number of senators queasy."

Estate size	Number of filers	Average tax paid
$1 million — $2.5 million	21,152	$175,000
$2.5 million -$5 million	5,630	$825,000
$5 million -$10 million	2,166	$2 million
$10 million — $20 million	808	$4 million
More than $20 million	520	$10.8 million

Boo hoo. Eat the rich.

Toronto Terrorist Ringleader Has Military Connections
The much vaunted Toronto terrorist plot sank deeper into the abyss of absurdity late Wednesday when it was revealed that the alleged ringleader of the cell, Steven Vikash Chand, was a former Canadian soldier.
CBC News reports, "The lawyer for Steven Chand, also known as Abdul Shakur, said Tuesday that his client is accused of wanting to storm Parliament, behead the prime minister and attack a number of sites, including the CBC building in Toronto.
A newspaper report on Wednesday said Chand had been a member of the Royal Regiment of Canada, a reservist unit, and that he had been given weapons training. The Toronto Star said the military confirmed, but downplayed, Chand's military connection." In every high profile case that we have studied, terrorist links to security and intelligence services as well as the military are uncovered. From the evidence it is starting to appear that Chand was the kingpin for a government entrapment program that sought to manufacture a terrorist alert by creating a de facto terrorist cell.
"The whole thing is smelling stinkier and stinkier. According to the Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star ["Suspects seem strictly second rate", Jun. 7, 2006] the suspects made certain that they bothered the neighbours in the vicinity of their "training camp" by trespassing and giving them "lip". They drew attention to themselves by "shooting of firearms", and playing "paintball They could easily be set up to do it in order that an impression could be made."

Pentagon holds brain injury data
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
The Pentagon is refusing to release data on how many soldiers have suffered brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. It says disclosing the results would put the lives of those fighting at risk.
The data come from screenings of 1,587 soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and 9,000 at Fort Carson in Colorado. Army Medical Command spokesman Jaime Cavazos said Wednesday that the results of the tests represent "information the enemy could use to potentially make soldiers more vulnerable to harm." (This is the excuse they give for everything these days!)
Pentagon scientists and other health officials have already made public similar data from other installations. Those results show that about 10% of combat troops — and 20% in front-line infantry units — suffered concussions during their tours. The injuries frequently go undiagnosed; multiple concussions can lead to permanent brain damage.
The screening is done with a questionnaire prepared by the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, a research arm of the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments. The questionnaire is used at four military bases, and center director Deborah Warden has urged that it be used throughout the military. So far, the Pentagon has declined to do so because it questions whether troops can accurately answer the questions in the screening.
Naval Medical Center San Diego, which has been screening Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton for two years — and, more recently, soldiers from the Army's Fort Irwin — released data this week. Those data show that 10% of 7,909 Marines with the 1st Marine Division suffered brain injuries. Researchers tried to follow up with 500 Marines who suffered concussions. They reached 161 of them and found that 83% were still suffering symptoms on average 10 months after the injury. At Fort Irwin, 1,490 soldiers were screened, and almost 12% suffered concussions during their combat tours.

Marines in Haditha “totally tweaked out on speed”?
Meanwhile, the wife of a marine admitted that the unit involved in Haditha was out of control. The wife of the unnamed staff sergeant claimed there had been a "total breakdown" in the unit's discipline after it was pulled out of Falluja in early 2005.
"There were problems in Kilo company with drugs, alcohol, hazing [violent initiation games], you name it," she said. "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha."
The Newsweek account described a gung-ho battalion that had staged a chariot race, complete with captured horses, togas and heavy metal music, before the battle for Falluja in late 2004.
The marines were given loose rules of engagement in the vicious urban warfare that followed.
"If you see someone with a cellphone," said one of the commanders was quoted as saying, half-jokingly, "put a bullet in their fucking head".
About a month after the killings, al-Hadithi said, a Marine major refused a request by the victims' families to offer a formal apology, arguing that the Iraqis were killed in the roadside bombing or caught in crossfire between the Marines and insurgents. The officer, whose name al-Hadithi said he could not remember, also warned them that the next time a roadside bomb hits a Marine convoy in Haditha he would order an airstrike to level anything within 500 yards.

Iman Walid Abdul-Hameed, a young girl who said she was in the house when the Haditha shootings occurred, said her brother and several other relatives had been killed and she demanded revenge.
"We want the Americans to be hurt just like us," she told the cameraman.

Bush's televised gloating over Zarqawi backfires
No sooner did boy blunder invoke the memory of victims allegedly beheaded by Zarqawi than WaPo quoted Michael Berg, the father of one of the victims as saying that he felt no sense of relief at the killing of Zarqawi "the end of the war and getting rid of George Bush" would give him satisfaction. Berg, who is running as a Green Party candidate, has repeatedly blamed President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his son's death.

Halliburton sees earnings doubling in coming years

Cheney's Office Declares Exemption from Secrecy Oversight
Thickening the haze of secrecy surrounding the executive branch, the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has declared itself exempt from a yearly requirement to report how it uses its power to classify secret information.
In its 2005 report to the president released last month, the Information Security Oversight Office, a branch of the National Archives, provides a quantitative overview of hundreds of thousands of pages of classified and declassified documents. But the vice president’s input consists of a single footnote explaining that his office failed to meet its reporting requirements for the third year in a row.

Open-government advocates say Cheney’s refusal to divulge even basic information about classification activities reflects an alarming pattern of broadening executive privilege while narrowing public accountability. Though not the only government entity to shrug off the reporting duties, Cheney’s office is unique in that it has actually issued a public justification for its non-compliance. Cheney’s office argued on Monday that its dual role in the federal government places it above the reporting mandate.

Report details failure of U.S. prison system
Americans spend $60 billion a year to imprison 2.2 million people — exceeding any other nation — but receive a dismal return on the investment, according to a report to be released today by a commission urging greater public scrutiny of what goes on behind bars. (Maybe we should stop allowing them to be privatized industries--it's all about profits, which come from taxpayer dollars and are obviously not spent on helping the prisoners).
The report, "Confronting Confinement," says legislators passing get-tough laws have packed the nation's jails and prisons to overflowing with convicts, most poor and uneducated, but have done little to help them emerge as better citizens upon release. The consequences of that failure include continuing financial strain on states, public-health threats from parolees with communicable diseases and a cycle of crime and victimization driven by a recidivism rate of more than 60 percent, the report says.
"If these were public schools or publicly traded corporations, we'd shut them down," said Alex Busansky, executive director of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, established by a private think tank in New York. With 20 members representing diverse perspectives, the bipartisan panel urges Americans to ignore the costs of incarceration no longer. Among the findings in the 126-page report that the commission will deliver to a Senate subcommittee today:

• Violence remains a serious problem in prisons and jails, with gang assaults, rapes, riots and, in Florida, beatings by "goon squads" of officers.
• High rates of disease in prison, coupled with inadequate funding for health care, endanger inmates, staff and the public, with staph infections, tuberculosis, hepatitis C and HIV among the biggest threats.
• The rising use of high-security segregation units is counterproductive, often causing violence in prisons and contributing to recidivism upon release.

The commission includes members who run correctional systems and those who litigate on behalf of prisoners, as well as lawmakers and others from the criminal-justice field. All 20 members unanimously supported the report's findings, concluding that "we should be astonished by the size of the prisoner population, troubled by the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and Latinos and saddened by the waste of human potential."
(Isn't that what it's all about? Keeping that segment of the population disabled and disfunctional?)

Why does Pentagon need nonnuclear warheads?

Any country is free to spend money on new weapons. But President Vladimir Putin has warned in his latest state of the nation address that the launch of a ballistic missile with nonnuclear warheads could provoke an inappropriate response from nuclear powers and a full-scale counterattack using strategic nuclear forces.

Fear is the mind-killer

Toronto Star: 'Perhaps Toronto 17 Not Terrorists At All'
The Toronto Star postulates that the 17 alleged terrorists accused of plotting to bomb city landmarks may not be terrorists at all. In an op ed, Thomas Walkom chronicles the history of Canadian terror arrests and how in every case the supposed evidence against the accused has always evaporated. The piece also highlights the alarming absence of bullet proof evidence to suggest the Toronto suspects were plotting anything at all.
"If the alleged conspirators knew they were under surveillance, it seems odd that they continued along merrily with plans to make explosives. But perhaps they are not bright terrorists. Or perhaps they are not terrorists at all," writes Walkom.
Developments today have centered around the bizarre assertion that the 17 suspects, 5 of whom are teenagers, planned to storm the Canadian parliament and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper, accusations labelled as absurd by defence lawyers.
One of the lawyers is quoted as saying,"whether you're in Ottawa or Toronto or Crawford, Texas, or Washington, D.C., what is wanting to be instilled in the public is fear".
Another commented that there was, "little evidence after two years of investigation," against the suspects.

ACLU Calls For Delay In NSA-Linked Telecom Merger
The American Civil Liberties Union is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to hold off approving the merger of telecom giants AT&T and BellSouth until the FCC investigates the companies’ role in the government’s domestic spy programs. Last month USA Today revealed that AT&T, BellSouth as well as Verizon provided the National Security Agency with the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans.

Justice Dept. Says Gov. Can Prosecute Journalists Over Classified Information
A top Justice Department official testified on Tuesday before Congress that the federal government has the authority to prosecute and jail journalists who disclose classified information. Matthew Friedrich, who heads the criminal division of the Justice Department, reiterated a statement made recently by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Friedrich claimed that reporters are not exempt from the Espionage Act of 1917.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter questioned the Justice Department’s claim and said: "It's highly doubtful in my mind that that was ever the intent of Congress.”
Friedrich was called to testify on why the FBI was trying to review the papers of the late investigative journalist Jack Anderson. But Friedrich refused to comment on the case.
At one point Senator Patrick Leahy asked "Are there any questions you guys are allowed to answer other than your title and time of day?"

Specter Won't Subpoena Telecom Executives
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Tuesday he will hold off subpoenaing the telecommunications chiefs while he works with the White House on his legislation that would ask a secretive federal court to review the constitutionality of Bush's surveillance operations.
Specter said he couldn’t make the executives talk because a company lawyer and Vice President Dick Cheney said they could not discuss classified information.
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy responded: "Why don't we just recess for the rest of the year? Vice President Cheney will just tell the nation what laws we'll have."

A fellow Republican is calling on Vice President Cheney to butt out of a congressional investigation. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter is firing off a three-page letter to Cheney. At issue is the committee's review of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program. The letter asks Cheney to stop lobbying other committee Republicans to oppose subpoenas for phone company executives.

Soldiers to get £1,300 'bounty' for recruiting friends
Soldiers are being paid a "bounty" of £1,300 to persuade friends to join the Army because officers believe the conflict in Iraq is making parents turn their children away from the forces. Bounties worth £650 were introduced last autumn to combat a "recruiting shortfall" the Ministry of Defence said. The scheme produced 110 recruits, so senior officers decided to rerun the scheme this summer, starting this month, doubling the bounty to £1,300 for each recruit who passes basic training.

Mandatory Draft Bill Snuck In - To Be Debated 6-6-6
On February 14, 2006, Congressman Charles Rangel (Democrat - NY) introduced a bill (Universal National Service Act of 2006 - HR 4752 IH) aiming at drafting everyone - men and women alike - from the ages of 18 to 42 into the military for a minimum period of 2 years.

9/11 Firefighters: Bombs and Explosions in the WTC

[Firefighter Louie] Cacchioli was called to testify privately [before the 9/11 Commission], but walked out on several members of the committee before they finished, feeling like he was being interrogated and cross-examined rather than simply allowed to tell the truth about what occurred in the north tower on 9/11.
"My story was never mentioned in the final report and I felt like I was being put on trial in a court room," said Cacchioli. "I finally walked out. They were trying to twist my words and make the story fit only what they wanted to hear. All I wanted to do was tell the truth and when they wouldn't let me do that, I walked out. ... It was a disgrace to everyone, the victims and the family members who lost loved ones. I don't agree with the 9/11 Commission. The whole experience was terrible."

FBI says, "No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11"
When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

The Courage of Lieutenant Ehren Watada
"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others" ~ Aristotle
When Lieutenant Ehren Watada's Army unit from Fort Lewis, WA leaves for Mosul in northern Iraq this month, he will not be among them. The 28-year-old Army officer will formally refuse today to ship out when his unit deploys to Iraq.
"I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to watch families torn apart, while the President tells us to 'stay the course,'" said Watada, on a web site supporting his cause. "I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression."

Special forces to use strap-on 'stealth wings'

Elite special forces troops being dropped behind enemy lines on covert missions are to ditch their traditional parachutes in favour of strap-on stealth wings.
The lightweight carbon fibre mono-wings will allow them to jump from high altitudes and then glide 120 miles or more before landing - making them almost impossible to spot, as their aircraft can avoid flying anywhere near the target.


Photos seem to contradict Marine version of Haditha killings
Jamie McIntyre / CNN | June 8 2006
Pentagon sources say some of the most incriminating evidence against Marines under investigation in the deaths of civilians at Haditha is a set of photographs taken by another group of Marines who came along afterward and helped clean up the scene.
Pentagon sources say the 30 images of men, women and children are some of the strongest evidence that, in some cases, the victims were shot inside their homes and at close range -- not killed by shrapnel from a roadside bomb or by stray bullets from a distant firefight, as Marines had claimed.
Senior Pentagon officials have said a probe into the November deaths tends to support allegations that Marines carried out an unprovoked massacre after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb. The military is investigating both the deaths and a possible cover-up.
The Marines originally reported that Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha, a town on the Euphrates River in northwestern Iraq that was the scene of heavy fighting in 2005. They later added that eight insurgents were killed in an ensuing gun battle.
There are images of 24 bodies, each marked with red numbers. Some of numbers are written on foreheads, others on the victim's backs. A senior military official told CNN that in some cases the numbers may denote the location of bullet wounds. Among the images:

A woman and child leaning against the wall, heads slumped forward.
Another woman and child shot in bed.
A man sprawled face down with his legs behind him.
An elderly woman slumped over, her neck possibly snapped by the force of gunfire.

All of the victims were wearing casual attire. Some had been shot in the head. Some were face down, others face up. The pictures appear to show the locations of the bodies in the houses before a Marine unit loaded them into a truck and brought them to a morgue. Pentagon officials said there are no plans to release the gruesome images, even after the criminal investigation is complete. The Haditha photos, like the images of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, would incite anti-American fervor and therefore constitute a threat to national security, they said.

US Troops Accused of New Civilian Killings
US troops are being accused of a new round of killings of Iraqi civilians. On Wednesday, the Iraqi Islamic Party, Iraq’s main Sunni group, said it had evidence US troops killed more than two dozen Iraqis in incidents last month. According to the group, the most deadly attack occurred in a house in Yusifiyah south of Baghdad – killing 13 people, including women and children.

600 Iraqi Prisoners Released From Jail
In Iraq, almost 600 prisoners were released from jails across the country today. The Iraqi government says a total of 2500 people will be released as a gesture of national reconciliation. An estimated 28,000 people remain imprisoned in Iraqi jails. Just over half are believed to be detained by US troops.

3 UK Soldiers Acquitted in Drowning of Iraqi Teen
In Britain, a military court has found three British soldiers not guilty in the drowning death of a 15-year old Iraqi teen. The soldiers were accused of forcing four Iraqis to swim across a canal by threatening to shoot them. The 15-year old, Ahmed Jabber Kareem, did not know how to swim.

For the women of Iraq, the war is just beginning
Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women's secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country.Across Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes that are being labelled simply as "inappropriate behaviour". The insurrection against the fragile and barely functioning state has left the country prey to extremists whose notion of freedom does not extend to women.
A journalist, Shatta Kareem, said: "I was driving my car one day when someone just crashed into me and drove me off the road. If a woman is seen driving these days it is considered a violation of men's rights."
"In the Muslim religion, if a man dies his money goes to a male member of the family. After the Iran-Iraq war, there were so many widows that Saddam changed the law so it would go to the women and children. Now it has been changed back." Mrs Alebadi estimated that as many as 70 per cent of women in Basra had been widowed by the constant conflicts. "You see widows on the streets begging at the intersections."

Baghdad targeted civilian killings soar in May

Nearly 1,400 Iraqi civilians died in a wave of targeted killings in Baghdad last month, according to a high-ranking Iraqi Health Ministry official.

White House cancels classified Iraq 'progress' briefing with senators
US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad had been set to brief Senators today. Democratic aides tell RAW STORY that the meeting, set to address "all members," was cancelled abruptly yesterday. Requests for a briefing by another administration official went unanswered.

Wake up: the American Dream is over
Even America's richest think they're getting too many tax breaks from a government determined to keep the poor in their place. As poverty in the US grows, Paul Harris wonders what happened to the Land of Opportunity.

Estate Tax Pyramid Scheme
In ancient times, rulers were buried with vast amounts of their wealth. These traditions served a real purpose, which was to prevent the accumulation off too much wealth into any one single family, an event which tends to destabilize any society and lead to eventual revolution. This economic safety valve is no longer religiously ordained, but is imposed via the estate tax, which strips excess wealth from the recently dead and diverts it back to the society as a whole. Again, the purpose is the same, to prevent the accumulation of too much wealth into a single family and the attendant social imbalance. Sadly, under fascism, which is where big money and big government work together against the common people, such checks and balances are quickly removed, which condemns such a fascist nation to eventual ruin.

US-born Israeli soldier found dead

An Israeli soldier who recently emigrated from the United States was found dead in a West Bank mosque Tuesday, where he apparently committed suicide after shooting at the walls of the empty building with his M-16 assault rifle.

NY Subpoenas Records of Pinnacle Group
Manhattan District Robert Morgenthau has subpoenaed records of the Pinnacle Group LLC -- a huge Manhattan landlord Democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzales has been investigating in the New York Daily News. His reports show the Pinnacle Group has driven out hundreds of tenants and systematically abused tenants in gentrifying neighborhoods and illegal driving up rents.

For months, hundreds of angry tenants and neighborhood leaders have claimed that Pinnacle is a virtual eviction mill. They say Pinnacle systematically harasses and forces out long-term tenants, many of them immigrants, elderly or poor, then illegally charges newcomers far higher rents than permitted by state housing law. The News has documented many of these horror stories, prompting authorities to act. Last month, this column revealed that Pinnacle and its various subsidiaries filed an astonishing 5,000 eviction proceedings in Housing Court since January 2004 - nearly one for every four apartments it owns. In some cases, the company sought to evict more than half of a building's residents within months of taking over a property, city records show.

Documents Disclose CIA Knew of Eichmann’s Whereabouts
And newly released CIA documents have provided fresh details of the US government’s lax and at times cooperative attitude towards Nazis after the Second World War. According to the New York Times, the CIA learned the pseudonym and whereabouts of the fugitive Holocaust administrator Adolf Eichmann in 1958 -- but took no action. Eichmann helped implement the policy of extermination that killed millions of people, mostly Jews. Two years after the CIA found out he was in Argentina, Eichmann was kidnapped by Israeli agents. He was tried and executed in Jerusalem in 1962.
The documents also reveal the CIA successfully lobbied Life Magazine to delete a reference to a former Nazi government official who went on to serve in the West German government. The reference appeared in Eichmann’s memoirs, which Life magazine published in 1960. The CIA made the request on behalf of the Western German government, which did not want the official’s role to become publicly known.

Salon: George Bush Sr. asked retired general to replace Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld
"Former President George H.W. Bush waged a secret campaign over several months early this year to remove Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld," writes Sidney Blumenthal for Salon.com.
The elder Bush went so far as to recruit Rumsfeld's potential replacement, personally asking a retired four-star general if he would accept the position, a reliable source close to the general told me. But the former president's effort failed, apparently rebuffed by the current president. The elder Bush's intervention was an extraordinary attempt to rescue simultaneously his son, the family legacy and the country. The current president had previously rejected entreaties from party establishment figures to revamp his administration with new appointments.

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