They'll fix you. They fix everything.

Europeans Seek to Revive Nuclear Weapons Ban

The European Union is trying to revive a movement to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, proposing a global ban on nuclear testing and a moratorium on the production of all fissile material, according to a letter from the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, made public on Monday.

Rice: U.S. is still ‘very well-regarded’ in terms of ‘popularity.’

In an interview with CBS today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked how the U.S. image has fared under President Bush. Rice acknowledged that there were “some negative perceptions” but added that the U.S. is still quite popular.

DELUSIONAL...



Role of Alleged CIA Asset in Mumbai Attacks Being Downplayed
Recent press reports on developments with regard to last month’s attacks in Mumbai, India indicate the role of Dawood Ibrahim, a wanted crime boss, terrorist, and drug trafficker, is being downplayed, possibly the result of a deal taking place behind the scenes between the governments of the US, Pakistan, and India, to have others involved in the Mumbai attacks turned over while quietly diverting attention from a man who some say could reveal embarrassing secrets about the CIA’s involvement in criminal enterprises.

Mumbai Terror Group Trained American Jihadists
A growing chorus of intelligence officials in the U.S. and in south Asia have pinned the Mumbai attacks on the Kashmir-based militants Lashkar-e-Taiba. But there's been hardly any mention of the extremist group's deep ties to American-based jihadists.

India demands Pakistan hand over 40 wanted 'terrorists'

India has demanded that Pakistan hand over 40 people it believes were involved in attacks on Indian soil and other serious crimes, the Indian Foreign Minister announced today.
Pranab Mukherjee also called on Pakistan to follow up on its recent arrest of several militants by completely dismantling the facilities of terrorist groups operating on its territory.
However, Pakistan says it wants proof of their role in Mumbai and has categorically ruled out handing them to India, pledging to try them on its own territory if there is evidence against them.

Bush's flock expected to go out to pasture quietly
But for Mr. Bush and his colleagues, the post-executive period is unlikely to mimic the elder statesman efforts of Jimmy Carter or the globe-trotting celebrity of Bill Clinton. After presiding over two unpopular wars, a tanking economy and the lowest approval ratings in recent U.S. political history, most agree that Mr. Bush will eagerly leave behind both Washington and the public spotlight.

Injured Veterans Denied Promised Reviews
There was nothing dramatic about how Spc. Cristapher Zuetlau's career in the Army came to an end: he stepped in a hole. But the damage to the tank crewman's wrenched back was so brutal he can barely walk.
The Army agreed he was no longer fit to serve, but in doing so determined his disability was not severe enough to warrant long-term care by the military. That turned his health care over to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which left him with no retirement benefits and cut off his family from government health care.
Thousands of similar stories caused veterans advocates to protest that the military was manipulating disability ratings to save money, and Congress last year ordered the Pentagon to accept appeals from wounded and injured troops.
So far, officials have yet to examine a single case.

Prosecutor removed from Cheney case
A judge removed a South Texas prosecutor from cases related to Vice President Dick Cheney, a state senator and a private prison group Wednesday, calling the district attorney biased and ordering Texas Rangers to escort him to his office so he could hand over case files.

Musicians don't want tunes used for torture
The tactic has been common in the U.S. war on terror, with forces systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. military commander in Iraq, authorized it on Sept. 14, 2003, "to create fear, disorient ... and prolong capture shock."
Now the detainees aren't the only ones complaining. Musicians are banding together to demand the U.S. military stop using their songs as weapons.

UK runs 'Guantanamo camps', say detainees

Asylum-seekers who claim to have been abused by British security guards accused the Government yesterday of running Guantanamo Bay-style detention camps.
Mafungasei Maikokera, a Zimbabwean asylum-seeker attending a meeting at the House of Commons, said guards had beaten her when she resisted attempts to deport her, and had discussed "bonuses" they were paid for removing asylum-seekers.

Ohio sheriff orders deputies not to evict

A sheriff in southwest Ohio has ordered deputies to ignore eviction orders when people have nowhere else to live.
Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones says evictions in winter weather and during an economic recession are heartless and those cases should be sent back to the courts and resolved some other way.

The Next Shoe to Drop: Pension Payments

Dozens of millions of newly retired “baby-boomers” are beginning to call upon payback from these [pension] funds. According to our team, it is likely that, by the end of 2008, this crisis will be the dominant aspect of the current global financial crisis. It will also provoke a social crisis affecting pensioners, in particular in the US (45 percent of pension funds’ total assets in the world), in Japan (18 percent) and in various European countries depending heavily on capital-based pension systems.

Time to redefine the Economic Paradigm
Lack of regulation and the quest for short term profit at the expense of long term sustainability has brought the World to it's knees. A new paradigm is desperately needed to restore sanity to a world gone mad. As we travel the downside we cannot expect the same failed mechanisms to save us.

Does this look like a vehicle regular Americans want or need?

Big 3 Auto Rescue Bill Bails Out Transit SILO Tax Shelters
Grassley said the tax shelter bailout within the auto bailout is related to abusive leasing transactions called SILOs, where transit agencies have sold public transportation assets like rail lines, only to lease them back from purchasers, with the result of providing tax depreciation deductions to the purchasers. Such transactions were motivated solely by collection of fees on one side and tax benefits on the other, rather than any change to the services provided by transit agencies.

Revoking Israel's UN Membership
The Gaza Strip is now the largest concentration camp in the world. The situation grows steadily more insufferable for the 1.5 million Palestinians who live there. Deliveries of food, medicine and fuel are made difficult or stopped altogether. Child malnutrition is increasing. Water supplies and drainage have ceased to function. Children die for lack of healthcare. Tunnels to Egypt, dug by hand, are the only breathing space. Journalists and diplomats are denied entry. Israel is planning more military efforts.

Livni calls of a large-scaled military offensive in Gaza
Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, stated on Wednesday that the Israeli army should carry a large-scaled military offensive in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for what she described as "the violation of the truce".
On the ground, Israel already violated the truce, carried offensives, killed, wounded and kidnapped Palestinians, and kept the border crossings sealed in spite that the truce states that Israel should open the border terminals.
Yet, Livni said that Israel must make it clear to Hamas that it is responsible for the deterioration of the situation.

Israeli army awaiting order for ground offensive in Gaza
As the fragile Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, is ending in eight days, Israeli military leaders stated on Wednesday that the Army is ready to carry out any military offensive the political leaders order, Israeli Ynet News reported.
Military sources said that the army already submitted to the political leadership in Israel several scenarios of action that were in turn handed to the cabinet.

Iran to send relief ship to Gaza
Iran's Red Crescent announced on Wednesday that it is sending a relief ship to the Gaza Strip, in the face of an Israeli blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory.
The official did not disclose the nationality of the ship, but said the cargo will include 500 tonnes of wheat, 200 tonnes of sugar, 200 tonnes of rice, 50 tonnes of cooking oil and 50 tonnes of medical supplies.

Settler who shot a Palestinian in al-Khalil released

Israeli radio reported on Wednesday that an Israeli settler who shot a Palestinian in al-Khalil was set free by a magistrate who rebuked the IOF for not arresting the Palestinians who were throwing stones. Malka Aviv, a judge at the magistrates court in Jerusalem, ordered the release of Ze'ev Brauda from "house arrest" after his lawyer claimed that Brauda acted in self defence and even claimed that the Palestinian who was shot got up again and started throwing stones.

When FBI Called, Governor Asked: 'Is This A Joke?'
Robert Grant, the FBI special agent in charge, called the house on the phone.
"I advised him that we had a warrant for his arrest, that there were two FBI agents outside his door. I woke him up. So the first thing was, he asked if this was a joke. He tried to make sure that was an honest call."
Once convinced, Blagojevich gave himself up to the agents on his front porch and was taken away in handcuffs to FBI headquarters where he sat for four hours before he was moved to court.

A Whitewash for Blackwater?
The federal manslaughter indictment of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards in the horrific massacre of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad may look like an exercise in accountability, but it's probably the exact opposite -- a whitewash that absolves the government and corporate officials who should bear ultimate responsibility.

A tattered safety net for US unemployed
As a rising number of Americans sign up for unemployment benefits, many of the state-funded trusts that pay them are on the decline. At least 12 of them are on the brink of insolvency. In 20 other states, the funds have lost value, even before the big job losses of the past two months.

9/11 families condemn tribunals

Thirty-three relatives of people killed in the 9/11 attacks on the US have denounced the Guantanamo war crimes trials as illegitimate and unfair.

Rep. Reyes: Since Torture Might Be Necessary, Obama Should Keep Torture Apologists Hayden, McConnell

Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Congress Daily that President-elect Obama should keep Mike McConnell on as Director of National Intelligence and Michael Hayden as head of the CIA. He said Obama should keep “continuity” in the intelligence sector because we live in “a world that is very dangerous.”
Reyes dismissed concerns over Hayden and McConnell’s records as apologists for torture. He insisted that that “there are some options that need to be available” to interrogators — presumably beyond the Army Field Manuel — to get the best information.

WRONG!

Gen. Hayden and the claimed irrelevance of presidential appointments

If, less than 3 years later, Obama chooses as his CIA Director the very same Michael Hayden -- who, during his confirmation hearing, justified Bush's illegal NSA spying and said how proud he was to help implement it [to say nothing of his (at best) equivocations on torture] -- then it should be quite . . . let us, for the moment, say "interesting" . . . to watch him and his most loyal supporters explain and justify that.

CIA Drug Trafficking and remembering Gary Webb

Check out this new story by Robert Parry reflecting on journalist Garry Webb's suicide, after being totally blacklisted by the mainstream media because he had the guts to speak the truth about the CIA and other parts of the US government that helped the Contras and their allies import cocaine into the US, during the period that President Reagan was talking about "fighting drugs" and locking up all those drug users in a cage, beefing up the police state and the prison industrial complex.

The CIA and Drugs
Just say "Why not?"
by William Blum
"In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA."
Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit.
On August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury initiated an extended series of articles about the CIA connection to the crack epidemic in Los Angeles. Though the CIA and influential media like The Washington Post , The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times went out of their way to belittle the significance of the articles, the basic ingredients of the story were not really new -- the CIA's Contra army, fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua, turning to smuggling cocaine into the U.S., under CIA protection, to raise money for their military and personal use.

Babylon's history swept away in US army sandbags
Fragments of bricks, engraved with cuneiform characters thousands of years old, lie mixed with the rubble and sandbags left by the US military on the ancient site of Babylon in Iraq.
In this place, one of the cradles of civilisation, US troops in 2003-2004 built embankments, dug ditches and spread gravel to hold the fuel reservoirs needed to supply the heliport of Camp Alpha.




Police taser man in diabetic shock
Luckily for a driver who went into severe diabetic shock last month in Oklahoma, police arrived on the scene and called in an ambulance.
But not before they tasered and handcuffed him.

Torture and murder at a Florida reform school
He was beaten so badly that his underwear was buried into his skin. The nurse on campus had to surgically remove it. He says his face was unrecognizable after multiple lashes with a whip.



'White House Boys' win inquiry of reform school graves

Roger Kiser, Michael McCarthy, Bryant Middleton and Dick Colon talked about whippings and beatings and other boys who disappeared.
They discussed the 32 crosses marking the graves of persons unknown on the grounds of the former Florida Industrial School for Boys.
They called their group the White House Boys, taking the name from the single story concrete building where, they say, boys were beaten and tortured decades ago.
The White House Boys believe that delinquents and orphans sent to the concrete White House were killed and their remains buried to cover up the brutality.

Larry Summers’ Hedge Fund Freezes Redemptions
Larry Summers’ company, D.E. Shaw, announced this week that it has frozen client withdrawals. Summers, who was tapped to lead President Obama’s White House National Economic Council, served as a managing director to the hedge fund up until the announcement of his cabinet appointment.
D.E. Shaw Co, is a New York based hedge fund with a reputation surrounded in secrecy.

On Global Warming

Is it possible (just possible) that our "dear leaders" have once again diverted our energy and good intentions away from REAL threats (like genetically modified food, neurotoxins in our vaccines, carcinogenic pesticides all over our food, etc) into something that serves them (expands their power and their profits) while doing NOTHING to "make us safe?"

EU carbon trading system brings windfalls for some, with little benefit to climate
The European Union started with the most high-minded of ecological goals: to create a market that would encourage companies to reduce greenhouse gases by making them pay for each ton emitted into the atmosphere.
Four years later, the carbon trading system has created a multibillion-euro windfall for some of the continent's biggest polluters, with little or no noticeable benefit to the environment so far.

Carbon Trading is a Scam

Obama must ensure that the banks use the trillions of dollars in federal bailout assistance to renegotiate mortgages and make new loans to worthy homebuyers and businesses. Obama must make certain that banks do not continue to squander federal largess by padding executive bonuses, acquiring other banks and pursuing new high-return, high-risk lines of businesses in merger activity, carbon trading and complex derivatives.