On today's Signs page, along with
other essential news items and analysis, we present
a series of current articles that present a very clear
picture of the true nature of the United States and
just how far it has fallen from the position of "greatest
nation on earth", if indeed it was ever worthy
of that title.
We urge readers to consider sending the articles
and commentaries on today's page to anyone you know
that still maintains a spark of awareness that goes
beyond the daily 9 to 5. At this stage, there really
is no reasonable excuse for all rational and intelligent
people not to see the massive contradiction between
what the Bush government claims it is doing and what
it is REALLY doing.
The fact is, this world, and our place in it have
NEVER been what we believed them to be. Now, more
than any other time in our recent history, there
exists the opportunity for human beings to wake up
from our collective millennia-long sleepwalk and
begin to understand what this world is all about
and where it is headed.
To do so, however, takes a level of self-control
and maturity that is lacking in many, yet the rewards
of taking this step will surely not be slight. Indeed,
we cannot even imagine what might result if even a
tiny percentage of human beings were to 'change the
script', so to speak. The reason we cannot imagine
the result of such an event is simply because it
has never happened before.
So who wants to contribute to making history today?
The CIA has been holding and
interrogating al Qaeda captives at a secret facility
in Eastern Europe, part of a covert prison system established
after the September 11, 2001, attacks, The Washington
Post reported on Wednesday.
The Soviet-era compound is part of a network that
has included sites in eight countries, including
Thailand and Afghanistan, the newspaper reported,
citing U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the
arrangement.
The newspaper said the existence and locations of
the facilities are known only to a handful of officials
in the United States and, usually, only to the president
and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The CIA has not acknowledged the existence of a secret
prison network, the Post said. A CIA spokesman did
not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The prisons are referred to as "black sites" in
classified U.S. documents and virtually
nothing is known about who the detainees are, how they
are interrogated or about decisions on how long they
will be held, the report said. [...]
The secret detention system was conceived shortly
after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington,
when the working assumption was that another strike
was imminent, the report said.
Comment: As
we have been told many times before, the men and women
being held captive in these "prisons"
have not been accused of anything and there is no evidence
against them, other than the claim by the Bush administration
that they are
"terrorists". Dozens of these unfortunate people
have been murdered during the "interrogation" sessions.
So tell us, is THIS what "freedom and democracy" is
all about? Is THIS what America is all about? And if
so, do YOU support it?
WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld says the government was right to keep
United Nations human rights investigators from meeting
with detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Last week, the Pentagon invited three U.N. experts
to visit the detention facilities in Cuba, but the
experts turned down the invitation. One said it made "no
sense" to go to Guantanamo "without talking
to the detainees."
Rumsfeld also told reporters Tuesday
at the Pentagon that a hunger strike by some of the
detainees is meant to "capture press attention." Seven
of the protesters are being force-fed in a hospital.
Many of the nearly 500 prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay have been held for more than three and
a half years without being charged or having access
to lawyers.
Comment: Again
we see the true nature of the men that American citizens
have "elected" to govern them. Note Rumsfeld's
heartless dismissal of the desperation of prisoners
as designed to "capture press attention".
Yet we are disinclined to think that this state-sanctioned
torture of the innocent is merely a matter of evil
men acting out their sadistic power games. The real
question here is: why is the Bush administration
so cavalier about allowing the public access to information
about the existence of these prisons and the inhuman
treatment that goes within their walls? Surely one
would expect them to try and keep such information
secret at all costs, lest it damage their reputations
and attempts to present a "democratic" image
of the "American way"?
One very plausible answer to this question is that,
by allowing the public to become aware that their government
is engaging in the torture and murder of innocent people,
and presenting that torture and murder as part of protecting
the "freedoms" of American people, the U.S.
government is acclimatising the American public to
ACCEPTING torture and murder as necessary.
When the time comes (which it surely will), and the
American public is faced with having to accept or reject
the brutal treatment of their fellow citizens by their
own government, they will already have made the difficult
decision and the process of making them accomplices
in their own destruction will be complete.
By TIM GOLDEN and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
November 2, 2005
The Bush administration is embroiled
in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of
Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects
should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" treatment,
administration officials say.
Advocates of that approach, who include some Defense
and State Department officials and senior military
lawyers, contend that moving the military's detention
policies closer to international law would prevent
further abuses and build support overseas for the
fight against Islamic extremists, officials said.
Their opponents, who
include aides to Vice President Dick Cheney and some
senior Pentagon officials, have argued
strongly that the proposed language is vague, would
tie the government's hands in combating terrorists
and still would not satisfy America's critics, officials
said.
Comment: Let's
look at the Bush's gang's arguments: "The proposed
language is vague". Well, it's hard to see how
it could be made any more clear. The point is that
torture in any form should not be allowed, and prisoners
in the war on terror should be covered by the Geneva
Conventions. Any other policy is a violation of international
law. There's nothing vague about that.
"The proposed language...
would tie the government's hands in combating terrorists".
Those who are pushing the new standard are not saying
to stop prosecuting terrorists; they are simply requesting
that it be done in a way that adheres to international
law. Obviously, the Bush administration wants full
authority to do as it pleases, no matter the costs
to the American people.
"The proposed language...
still would not satisfy America's critics". Here
we find the most insidious of the three arguments.
First of all, the "critics" - an emotional
charged word in of itself - do not have a problem with
the US as a whole. Instead, they have a problem with
the Bush administration's disdain for international
law and promotion of torture. To steer the argument
into the realm of criticising America as a whole is
manipulation, plain and simple.
The debate has delayed the publication of a second
major Pentagon directive on interrogations, along with
a new Army interrogations manual that was largely completed
months ago, military officials said. It also underscores
a broader struggle among senior officials over whether
to scale back detention policies that have drawn strong
opposition even from close American allies. [...]
"It goes back to the question of how you want
to fight the war on terror," said a senior administration
official who has advocated changes but, like others,
would discuss the internal deliberations only on the
condition of anonymity. "We
think you do that most successfully by creating alliances." [...]
Comment: The
Bush gang does not want alliances - it wants lapdogs
like Blair, Howard, and Berlusconi.
The behind-the-scenes debate over the Pentagon directive
comes more than three years after President Bush decided
that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the fight
against terrorism. It mirrors a public battle between
the Bush administration and Senator John McCain, Republican
of Arizona, who is pressing a separate legislative
effort to ban the "cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment" of any detainee in United States custody.
After a 90-to-9 vote in the Senate last month in favor
of Mr. McCain's amendment to a $445 billion defense
spending bill, the White House
moved to exempt clandestine C.I.A. activities from
the provision. A House-Senate conference committee
is expected to consider the issue this week. [...]
Mr. Cheney and some of his aides have spearheaded
the administration's opposition to Senator McCain's
amendment; they were also quick to oppose a draft of
the detention directive, which began to circulate in
the Pentagon in mid-September, officials said.
A central player in the fight over
the directive is David S. Addington, who was the vice
president's counsel until he was named on Monday to
succeed I. Lewis Libby Jr. as Mr. Cheney's chief of
staff. According to several officials, Mr. Addington
verbally assailed a Pentagon aide who was called to
brief him and Mr. Libby on the draft, objecting to
its use of language drawn from Article 3 of the Geneva
Conventions.
"He left bruised and bloody," one Defense
Department official said of the Pentagon aide, Matthew
C. Waxman, Mr. Rumsfeld's chief adviser on detainee
issues. "He tried to champion
Article 3, and Addington just ate him for lunch." [...]
Comment: Yup,
and Addington no doubt used the same irrational arguments
and blatant manipulation that we saw above. It seems
Libby has been replaced with a Neocon pitbull. That
whole "justice" thing that Fitzgerald was
supposed to be spearheading may have actually made
things worse...
WASHINGTON - The US Senate held
a rare secret session to discuss a scandal that led
to the resignation of a top White House aide last week
and now-discredited intelligence used to justify the
2003 invasion of Iraq.
The two-hour secret session came at the demand
of opposition Democrats, who said the closed-door
debate was necessary to allow a full discussion on
alleged manipulation of prewar intelligence by President
George W. Bush's administration.
Democrats used a rare parliamentary maneuver to force
lawmakers to discuss the issue on the Senate floor
-- a move that infuriated majority Republicans. [...]
Frist said the move to invoke the
rarely used "Rule 21" allowing for secret
debate on the Senate floor was "unprecedented" in
recent history, and accused Democrats of hijacking
the US legislature.
Democrats however said the
session was necessary because the Senate's Intelligence
Committee had failed to examine the national security
implications of a CIA leak scandal, which
led last week to the resignation of Vice President
Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
[...]
After Democrats threatened
to use the parliamentary manuever repeatedly this
week to force debate on the intelligence question,
Republicans relented and said they would create a
bipartisan, six-member task force that will issue
a report by November 14 on how best to complete the
investigation. [...]
"Americans deserve a searching
and comprehensive investigation about how the Bush
administration brought this country to war," said
Reid. [...]
Comment: Somehow,
we doubt that the "opposition" Democrats
are going to reveal anything that even partially resembles
the truth. The fact is that the Bush administration
brought the US to war with the Democrats' help.
WASHINGTON - Breaking with the
White House and fellow conservatives, Republican Sen.
Trent Lott and the head of the Cato Institute questioned
on Tuesday whether top White House adviser Karl Rove,
who remains in legal jeopardy in a CIA-leak probe,
should keep his policy-making job.
Rove was not indicted on Friday along with Vice
President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby.
But lawyers involved in the case said Rove, President
George W. Bush's top political adviser and deputy
chief of staff, remains under investigation and may
still be charged by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
[...]
Lott of Mississippi and William
Niskanen of the libertarian Cato Institute both echoed
Democratic calls for a White House shake-up.
"He (Rove) has been very successful, very effective
in the political arena. The question is, should he
be the deputy chief of staff for policy under the current
circumstances?" Lott told
MSNBC's "Hardball." [...]
Of all the scribbled sentences
that have converged to create the Valerie Plame affair,
the most remarkable, in literary terms, may belong
to Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s recently deposed
chief of staff. “Out West, where you vacation,
the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters,
because their roots connect them. Come back to work—and
life,” he wrote in a jailhouse note to Judith
Miller. Meant as a waiver of confidentiality, the letter
touched off the sort of fevered exegesis more often
associated with readings of “The Waste Land” than
of legal correspondence. For even more difficult prose,
however, one must revisit an earlier work. “The
Apprentice”—Libby’s 1996 entry in
the long and distinguished annals of the right-wing
dirty novel—tells the tale of Setsuo, a courageous
virgin innkeeper who finds himself on the brink of
love and war.
Like his predecessors, Libby
does not shy from the scatological. The narrative
makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness,
bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits,
arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and
blood (regular and menstrual). One passage
goes, “At length he walked around to the
deer’s head and, reaching into his pants,
struggled for a moment and then pulled out his
penis. He began to piss in the snow just in front
of the deer’s nostrils.”
Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes. The
main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the “mound” of
a little girl. The brothers of a dead samurai have
sex with his daughter. Many things glisten (mouths,
hair, evergreens), quiver (a “pink underlip,” arm
muscles, legs), and are sniffed (floorboards, sheets,
fingers). The cast includes a dwarf, and an “assistant
headman” who comes to restore order after a crime
at the inn. (Might this character be autobiographical?
And, if so, would that have made Libby the assistant
headman or the assistant headman’s assistant?)
When it comes to depicting scenes of romance, however,
Libby can evoke a sort of musty sweetness; while one
critic deemed “The Apprentice” “reminiscent
of Rembrandt,” certain passages can better be
described as reminiscent of Penthouse Forum. There
is, for example, Yukiko’s seduction of the inexperienced
apprentice:
He could feel her heart beneath his hands. He moved
his hands slowly lower still and she arched her back
to help him and her lower leg came against his. He
held her breasts in his hands. Oddly, he thought, the
lower one might be larger. . . . One of her breasts
now hung loosely in his hand near his face and he knew
not how best to touch her.
Other sex scenes are less conventional. Where his
Republican predecessors can seem embarrassingly awkward—the
written equivalent of trying to cop a feel while pinning
on a corsage—Libby is unabashed:
At age ten the madam put the
child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with
young girls so the girls would be frigid and not
fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through
the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it
seemed to lose interest. [...]
Comment: In
our opinion, Libby's penmanship gives us an accurate
insight into the mind of not just the author, but of
most of the Cabal that is currently ensconced in Washington.
Indeed, it provides us with a way to better understand
why, since the coming to power of the Bush regime,
the world seems caught in an ever decreasing spiral
of bloodshed and brutality.
We need no longer grasp in the dark in our attempts
to understand just what it is that drives men like
Libby, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush - just pick up a
copy of Libby's book, and keep some nausea tablets
and a trash can close to hand.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A judge
presiding over the money laundering and conspiracy
case involving U.S. Republican Rep. Tom DeLay, one
of America's most powerful politicians, was ordered
to step aside on Tuesday after
DeLay's attorneys said the judge was too staunchly
Democrat to give a fair trial.
State District Judge Bob Perkins will be replaced
by another judge to be named by a regional administrator
without input from either side in the politically
charged case.
Visiting Judge C.W. Duncan granted a defense motion
to recuse Perkins without explanation after a hearing
in which DeLay's lawyer Dick DeGuerin complained that
Perkins had given money to candidates and organizations,
especially liberal activist group MoveOn.org, opposed
to DeLay and could not be impartial. [...]
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who
has led the investigation against DeLay, argued that
Perkins should be allowed to stay on the case and disagreed
that the case is political.
"This is not a political case. This is a criminal
case in which Mr DeLay stands charged with a felony," he
said.
"There is no basis, no precedent for recusal
based on a judge's political contributions," said
Earle, who is a Democrat.
DeLay is accused of laundering $190,000 in corporate
campaign contributions gathered by his Texans for a
Republican Majority political action committee through
the Republican National Committee to candidates for
the state legislature in Texas in 2002.
Texas law forbids the use of corporate funds in political
campaigns.
His efforts contributed to Republicans
taking control of the Texas Legislature for the first
time since the Reconstruction era after the U.S. Civil
War, and then remapping congressional districts to
increase the number of Republicans in the U.S. House.
Earle said the several thousand dollars Perkins had
given Democrats over the years was "paltry" in
comparison to how much money DeLay has raised and in
some cases, used in "intimidating
judges with whom he disagreed."
Earle also accused DeLay, through
partisan zeal, of fomenting divisions within U.S. society
that could lead to Americans becoming like "Shi'ites,
Sunnis and Kurds" in deeply divided Iraq.
"We may be Republicans or Democrats, but we
are all Americans and we believe in equal justice under
the law," he said.
DeLay, sitting beside his wife,
Christine, smiled broadly at Earle's comments.
Comment: Indeed,
like a true pyschopath, Delay smiles at the list of
abhorrent crimes of which he is accused. The sad part
however, is that, given that the new judge will probably
be one of the people that Delay has either paid off
or
"intimidated", he probably has good cause to
smile.
Congress has always had its share
of extremists. But the DeLay era is the first time
the fringe has ever been in charge.
A decade ago, I paid a call on Tom DeLay in his
ornate office in the Capitol. I had heard a rumor
about him that I figured could not possibly be true.
The rumor was that after the GOP took control of
the House that year, DeLay had begun keeping a little
black book with the names of Washington lobbyists
who wanted to come see him. If the lobbyists were
not Republicans and contributors to his power base,
they didn't get into "the people's House." DeLay
not only confirmed the story, he showed me the book.
His time was limited, DeLay explained with a genial
smile. Why should he open his door to people who
were not on the team?
Thus began what historians will regard as the single
most corrupt decade in the long and colorful history
of the House of Representatives. Come on, you say.
How about all those years when congressmen accepted
cash in the House chamber and then staggered onto the
floor drunk? Yes, special interests have bought off
members of Congress at least since Daniel Webster took
his seat while on the payroll of a bank. And yes, Congress
over the years has seen dozens of sex scandals and
dozens of members brought low by financial improprieties. But
never before has the leadership of the House been hijacked
by a small band of extremists bent on building a ruthless
shakedown machine, lining the pockets of their richest
constituents and rolling back popular protections for
ordinary people. These folks borrow like banana
republics and spend like Tip O'Neill on speed.
I have no idea if DeLay has
technically broken the law. What interests me is
how this moderate, evenly divided nation came to
be ruled on at least one side of Capitol Hill by
a zealot.
This is a man who calls the
Environmental Protection Agency "the Gestapo
of government" and favors repealing the Clean
Air Act because "it's never been proven that
air toxins are hazardous to people"; who insists
repeatedly that judges on the other side of issues "need
to be intimidated" and rejects the idea of a
separation of church and state; who claims there
are no parents trying to raise families on the minimum
wage—that "fortunately, such families
do not exist" (at least Newt Gingrich was intrigued
by the challenges of poverty); who once said: "A
woman can't take care of the family. It takes a man
to provide structure." I could go on
all day. Congress has always had its share of extremists.
But the DeLay era is the first time the fringe has
ever been in charge.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. terrorism
experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have reached
a stark conclusion about the war on terrorism: the
United States is losing.
Despite an early victory over the Taliban and al
Qaeda in Afghanistan, the two former Clinton administration
officials say President George W. Bush's policies
have created a new haven for terrorism in Iraq that
escalates the potential for Islamic violence against
Europe and the United States.
America's badly damaged image in the Muslim world
could take more than a generation to set right. And
Bush's mounting political woes at home have undermined
the chance for any bold U.S. initiatives to address
the grim social realities that feed Islamic radicalism,
they say.
"It's been fairly disastrous," said Benjamin,
who worked as a director for counterterrorism at the
National Security Council from 1994 to 1999. [...]
Benjamin and Simon's criticism of the Bush administration
in Iraq follows a path similar to those of other critics,
including former U.S. national security adviser Brent
Scowcroft and former White House counterterrorism chief
Richard Clarke.
"We may be attacked by
terrorists who receive their training in Iraq, or
attacked by terrorists who were inspired, organized
and trained by people who were in Iraq," said
Simon, a Rand Corp. analyst who teaches at Georgetown
University.
Comment: We
beg to differ, although we can understand why some
people might think that the U.S. is losing the "war
on terror". The problem, you see, is that the
only way that the U.S. could ever lose the "war
on terror" is if it were actually fighting a war
on terror. Clearly, it is not. The so-called war on
terror is merely an EXCUSE for the Bush administration,
under the guidance of the Israeli "Zionists",
to wage a war of conquest in the Middle East and elsewhere
around the world. The direct and indirect goals of
this military aggression and the promotion of the illusion
of a terrorist threat are:
To establish Israel as the unchallenged power
in the Middle East
To establish the required military infrastructure
in the Middle East so that Israel can then freely
obliterate its Arab neighbours and kick off the
escalation of the current war that will become
global in nature.
To herd the global population to a much finer
order of control and institute a world-wide clampdown
on civil liberties in preparation for upcoming
cataclysms (earthquakes, volcanoes meteorite impacts).
To realign the global balance of power to ensure
that certain members of the governing elite will
be in a position to re-emerge (from their underground
hideouts) and retake positions of power.
To murder millions of people in the Middle East,
including the Jewish people of Israel.
DUBAI - Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani said he opposed military action against neighbouring
Syria but lacked the power to
prevent US troops from using his country as a launchpad
if it chose to do so.
"I categorically refuse the
use of Iraqi soil to launch a military strike against
Syria or any other Arab country," Talabani told
the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat in
an interview published Tuesday.
"But at the end of the day my
ability to confront the US military is limited and
I cannot impose on them my will."
Talabani spoke before the UN Security Council unanimously
approved a resolution Monday demanding full Syrian
cooperation with a UN inquiry into the assassination
in Beirut in February of five-time Lebanese prime minister
Rafiq Hariri.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had stern words
for Syria in her speech to the council accusing it
of supporting terrorism, interfering in the affairs
of neighbouring countries and having a "destabilising
behaviour in the Middle East."
The Iraqi government and its US backers have long
accused Syria of not doing enough to prevent the flow
of men and materiel across its borders to insurgents
fighting US-backed troops in Iraq.
On Monday, US warplanes struck what commanders described
as a house sheltering an "Al-Qaeda cell leader" near
the border town of Al-Qaim, in the latest in a string
of operations against suspected foreign fighters in
the region.
But medics in the town and Arabic
media reports spoke of 35-plus civilian deaths in the
air strike.
Comment: Apart
from giving evidence for the fact that the U.S. military
is engaging in what amounts to genocide in Iraq, the
above report clearly spells out another fact that we
have been stating since before the beginning of the
Iraq war: At NO point was it the intention of the Bush
government to confer "freedom and Democracy" on
the Iraqi people.
Anyone who wishes to challenge this point needs
to first answer one question:
How can a country be "free" and "Democratic" when
the newly-elected President of that country must bow
down to the wishes of the military of another country?
Throughout history, any country where the final decision
lay in the hands of the military was understood as
being in the grip of a, usually brutal, dictatorship.
What then would we call a country where final policy
decisions lie in the hands of the military of a foreign
nation? Dictatorship by proxy perhaps?
Other than giving us clear and irrefutable evidence
of the real nature of the Iraq invasion, the Iraq President's
comments suggest that we can expect a U.S.-led invasion
of Syria (no doubt with Israel's secret support) in
the not-too-distant future.
CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait (Reuters)
- A U.S. military probe recommended on Tuesday that
a sergeant charged with murdering two colleagues in
Iraq face a possible death sentence at a court martial
for the first such crime since the 2003 invasion.
Martinez was charged with the premeditated murder
of company commander Captain Phillip Esposito and
Lieutenant Louis Allen in a blast in Iraq on June
7. All three served in the headquarters company of
the 42nd Infantry Division, a reserve unit drawn
from the New York Army National Guard. [...]
In April, U.S. Sergeant Hasan Akbar
was convicted of murdering two officers by rolling
grenades into their tents in Kuwait on the eve of the
invasion that toppled Saddam. Akbar has since been
sentenced to death, the first U.S. soldier convicted
of murdering a colleague in war since Vietnam.
Comment: Someone
please tell us, from a truly moral point of view, how
one soldier can kill one of his colleagues and be sentenced
to death for doing so, while another soldier can kill
an innocent woman and child and be given a medal for
doing so. While we are dealing with evidence of how
far the U.S. has fallen, stories of the U.S. army murdering
other human beings in cold blood is as old as the U.S.
itself.
We who have made the "ultimate sacrifice" know
the true cost of war.
Cindy Sheehan
ICH
10/31/05
This immoral invasion and occupation
of Iraq has cost the world so much.
George and his reckless war of choice have cost
the American taxpayers billions of dollars that could
be better spent at home. Judging from Katrina, Iraq
has cost our country much of its security. It has
cost the US any good standing we enjoyed in the world
community. It cost America the post 9/11 good will
from almost the entire world. We Americans are the
laughing stock of the world community. Not
only is our callous and careless leadership disdained,
but we the people are scorned because we "re"-elected
George for a 2nd term and not only that, we are allowing
him to continue to mis-lead our country into ruin.
The price many of us are paying is so much costlier
than the mere monetary expense or loss of reputation.
Over 2000 American families have paid the price of
our dear loved ones to the insanity. Over 15,000
of our young people are wounded with many, many of
those being amputees. The Veterans Administration
estimates that over ¼ of our children will
come home with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. I
believe that number is higher, because I know of
many cases where the military refuses to allow soldiers
to seek treatment for PTSD. Many of them are sent
back to battle if they even dare suggest they may
be suffering from PTSD. Even if they are not wounded
emotionally or physically, or killed, our soldiers
will not come home entirely whole.
I was standing in front of the White House the other
day when the indictments against Scooter were handed
down. I was helping to hold a banner that said: Support
our Troops: Bring Them Home Now.
When we received word of the indictments,
many of us protestors outside the White House were cheering
with happiness and relief. At last, someone could be held
accountable for the lies that led our country into a disastrous
invasion of Iraq.But I wasn't
cheering. I put down my end of the banner and sat down
on the curb and cried.
Scooter is just a lap dog for Cheney. He
and this administration don't do anything unless the dirty
deed is analyzed and planned for maximum damage to the
offending party and minimum harm to Bush and Co. The criminals
in power meant to hurt Joe Wilson and his family because
Joe had the temerity and the audacity to call them liars:
and to do it with such intelligence and alacrity was too
much for the crooks to bear. If this crooked administration
let Joe Wilson get away with telling the truth and calling
them liars, then who would be next? Colin Powell? Judith
Miller? The main stream media? (It could happen).
I cried because there are people
in this world who have lied about smaller things and have
been punished more harshly. I cried because there was a
shill of the right near me holding a sign that read "Put
Cindy in Abu Ghraib" when there are war criminals
and immoral war profiteers running amok in our country.
I cried because George, Dick, Condi, Colin, Alberto, Donald,
Scooter, Paul, Karl, Judith, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh,
etc., lied about the reasons for invading Iraq and because
of their lies, my son, who rarely told anything but the
truth, is dead.
The liars and lies that led the US to invade Iraq
are legion and well documented. (Once, just for giggles,
I put George Bush/Lies in a Google search and 272,000
references came up). The lies to maintain the occupation
are the same. The liars are now starting to beat
the war drum for invading Syria. [...]
We who have made the "ultimate sacrifice" know
the true cost of war.[...]
When are we going to stand up as a country and yell
a collective: "bull-shit?!!" I
have been screaming this until my voice is getting
hoarse and people are getting sick of hearing it.
How much and how many more are we going to allow
the serial liars to rob from us?
Israeli occupation forces have
detained more than 20 Palestinians in an overnight
raid across the West Bank.
Aljazeera's correspondent reports that Israeli troops,
backed by 50 military vehicles, raided Jenin and
detained Palestinians who they say are on Israel's "most-wanted" list.
[...]
Comment: Ah
yes, indiscriminate internment, the hallmark of a truly
fascist regime.
ONE of America's top spy agencies
faked key intelligence used to justify its intervention
in the Vietnam War, it has been revealed.
But the revelation was kept secret by the National Security
Agency, partly because of fears that it would boost criticism
of the intelligence services over the war in Iraq.
According to material uncovered by the
NSA's own historian, Robert Hanyok, middle-ranking officers
altered material relating to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. [...]
Comment: You
mean lies and deception have been used before to sway
the American public into supporting war?!
The Labor Department's inspector
general strongly criticized department officials yesterday
for "serious breakdowns" in procedures involving
an agreement promising Wal-Mart Stores 15 days' notice
before labor investigators would inspect its stores
for child labor violations.
The report by the inspector general faulted department
officials for making "significant concessions" to
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, without
obtaining anything in return. The report also criticized
department officials for letting Wal-Mart lawyers
write substantial parts of the settlement and for
leaving the department's own legal division out of
the settlement process.
The report said that in granting Wal-Mart the 15-day
notice, the Wage and Hour Division violated its own
handbook. It added that agreeing to let Wal-Mart jointly
develop news releases about the settlement with the
department violated Labor Department policies.
Comment: We
wonder why Walmart would be so eager to negotiate a
2 week notice period before labor investigators would
inspect its stores for child labor violations. Could
it, by any chance, have anything to do with the possibility
that Walmart is indeed using child labor to manufacture
and sell its useless plastic crap?
In mid October, Australian Prime
Minister John Howard attempted to push through shoot-to-kill "anti-terror" laws.
The provision was leaked ahead of its presentation
to the Australian Parliament and led to protests from
opposition MPs:
"[Law Council of Australia president John]
North said the
government was not conducting proper consultation
over the proposed laws, which he said threatened
basic Australian freedoms.
"The government is acting with indecent
haste to bring in these laws," he told public
radio.
The laws are due to be introduced to parliament
on October 31 and the government has given a Senate
inquiry only one sitting day to scrutinise their
contents.
Howard described the release of the draft laws
as irresponsible and said they were being implemented
as soon as possible because they were vital for
national security.
"We can't have any undue delay," he
told reporters."
This naturally presented Howard with a problem, but
not an insurmountable one. These days, when you want
to pass draconian laws that push your country closer
towards police state status but find that you are meeting
with opposition from "bleeding heart liberals",
you simply invent a terror threat to shut them up.
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia has received specific
information about a possible "terrorist threat" to
the country, Prime Minister John Howard said on Wednesday,
but Australia's medium security alert remained unchanged.
A staunch U.S. ally with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Australia has never suffered a major peacetime attack
on home soil. The country has been on medium security
alert since shortly after the September 11, 2001,
attacks on the United States.
"The government has received specific intelligence
from police information this week which gives cause
for serious concern about a potential terrorist threat," Howard
told reporters in Canberra.
"I don't want to over-alarm people. I have
said for a long time the possibility of an attack
is there," he said.
Howard refused to give any
details about the nature or location of the threat,
but said the government would rush through changes
to anti-terror laws to enable police to respond. [...]
LONDON - Amnesty International
has told British lawmakers preparing to debate Prime
Minister Tony Blair's draft anti-terror laws that the
measures are "ill-conceived and dangerous," a
newspaper reported.
In a submission to members of parliament, the London-based
human rights group denounces the proposals to increase
police powers of detention and make a new offense
of the glorification of terrorism, the Independent
newspaper said.
Amnesty called them "ill-conceived
and dangerous", amounting to an attack on "the
independence of the judiciary and the rule of law," according
to the daily.
The group launched its attack as the Blair government
braced itself for heavy opposition to the Terrorism
Bill when it is debated in the House of Commons starting
Wednesday.
The bill has already been
condemned by senior judges, lawyers and civil liberties
groups. [...]
The Amnesty submission states: "Since
the war on terror was declared by the US government
in 2001, the UK authorities have mounted a sustained
attack on human rights, the independence of the judiciary
and the rule of law." [...]
Comment: Blair
is no doubt thrilled that Amnesty's blasting of his
government's policies has ensured that he is a good
little doggie in the eyes of the PTB, and that he will
surely have secured his place in the comfy underground
bunker when things really go pear-shaped on the BBM.
Perhaps he hasn't yet realised that double crosses
are standard operating procedure for the man behind
the curtain...
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday his
government may give its U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets
to Cuba or China and replace them with Chinese or Russian
aircraft after accusing Washington of blocking purchases
of U.S. military parts.
Any exchange of military hardware to those countries
would break an agreement with the U.S. government
on the transfer of technology without Washington's
permission and further strain fraying ties between
Venezuela and the United States.
A fierce critic of the Bush administration, Chavez
has rattled Washington by strengthening ties with anti-U.S.
states like Cuba and promoting his self-described socialist
revolution as a counterweight to U.S. regional influence.
"If they don't comply with the contract ... we
can do whatever we want with these aircraft, whatever
the hell we want. Maybe we'll give 10 planes to Cuba
or to China so they can study the technology," Chavez
said.
PARIS - Gangs of youths in towns
around Paris clashed with police and torched cars and
trash cans overnight as riots that have plagued one
poor, high-immigrant suburb for almost a week spread
to other areas near the French capital, police and
local authorities said. [...]
Police sources on Wednesday reported some 60 vehicles
torched throughout the Seine-Saint-Denis area overnight.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio
that 34 people were arrested in the latest night of
violence, which has gone on unabated despite his vow
to crack down with "firmness and justice".
[...]
President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique
de Villepin have come under fire from the opposition
Socialist Party for their "inexcusable" silence
over the violence, but most
anger has been directed at Sarkozy, who has
made it clear he intends to be a candidate in 2007
presidential elections on a tough law-and-order platform.
"When an interior minister
doesn't hesitate to use insulting terms, branding
as 'rabble' communities which have the misfortune
to be fragile and wanting to turn water-cannon on
them, it is the image of the country that is tarnished," the
Socialists said in a statement. [...]
Villepin has moved to take charge of the government's
response. His office said he was pushing back his departure
for a trip to Canada Wednesday to attend a parliamentary
session certain to be dominated by the riots.
On Tuesday, he issued a statement calling for "a
return to calm" after meeting the families of
the two dead teenagers.
Sarkozy, who had tried to
see the angry families but was rejected by them as "very,
very incompetent", was also invited to Villepin's
office for the talks. [...]
The Big Three US carmakers, General
Motors, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler, announced huge
falls in domestic sales in October after a year of
giving heavy subsidies to keep buyers in showrooms.
While Japanese rivals nearly all produced sales
rises in the US market, General
Motors posted a 23 percent decline from a year ago
to 257,623 vehicles. Ford said its October sales
were down 26 percent to 199,847. DaimlerChrysler
sales were not as bad, but still fell three percent
to 183,163 cars and trucks.
"Although a slowdown after the record sales
of the last several months was expected, October was
a difficult month for us and the industry," said
Mark LaNeve, head of GM North America sales. [...]
PARIS - A proposal aimed at stamping
out smoking in all public places across France, including
bars, restaurants and workplaces, was to be presented
in parliament on Wednesday.
But the measure, to be outlined at a seminar on
the need for tougher anti-smoking legislation, is
still at a pre-bill stage and faces a number of hurdles
before it is even debated in the assembly.
Neither the ruling Union for a Popular
Movement (UMP) nor the government are expected to back
a full ban on smoking in public places, which is opposed
both by tobacconists and by the country's main catering
federation.
Such a ban would see France join Ireland, Italy, Norway
and Malta in banning public smoking. [...]
ONTARIO, N.Y. That rumbling felt
in a section of western New York on Halloween night
was no trick. It was an earthquake. Dozens of residents
of towns just east of Rochester reported feeling their
homes shake at around seven o'clock Monday night.
The U-S Geological Survey confirms that a micro
earthquake measuring two-point-six occurred in the
Wayne County town of Ontario.
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The New York Times
November 2, 2005
If emissions of heat-trapping
gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at the
current rate, there may be many centuries of warming
and a near-total loss of Arctic tundra, according to
a new climate study.
Over all, the world would experience profound transformations,
some potentially beneficial but many disruptive, and
all at a pace rarely seen in nature, said
the authors of the study, being published today in
The Journal of Climate.
"The question is no longer
whether we will need to address this problem, but
when we will need to address the problem," said
Kenneth Caldeira, an author of the study and a climate
expert at the Carnegie Institution's Department of
Global Ecology, based at Stanford University.
"We can either address it now, before we severely
and irreversibly damage our climate, or we can wait
until irreversible damage manifests itself strongly," Dr.
Caldeira said. "If all we do is try to adapt,
things will get worse and worse." [...]
By Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters
Tue Nov 1,11:37 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Pluto, that cosmic
oddball at the far reaches of our solar system, may
have three moons instead of one, scientists announced
on Monday.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope glimpsed
the two new satellites back in May, and were intrigued
when the pair of possible moons appeared to move
around Pluto over three days in what looked like
a nearly circular orbit.
If confirmed by the International Astronomical Union,
they will get official names based on classical mythology,
joining Pluto's moon Charon, which is named for the
ferryman of the dead. Pluto is named for the lord of
the underworld. [...]
The newfound putative satellites are likely much smaller
than Charon, ranging in size from perhaps 30 miles
to 100 miles in diameter. Scientists are still trying
to figure this out.
Charon is about 745 miles across, and Pluto is about
1,430 miles across.
The discovery of the two additional satellites means
Pluto is the first known object of the Kuiper Belt
-- a ring of rocky debris circling outside Neptune's
orbit -- with more than one moon, said Hal Weaver,
of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
[...]
Comment: You
can find more images and information here.
Pilgrims are flocking to the flat of a Romanian
family who claim the images of Jesus and two disciples
have appeared on their wardrobe.
Valeriu Junie, 66, of Drobeta Turnu Severin, says
he first noticed the images about a year ago, just
before Christmas.
He said: "It all started one night when I was
watching TV and noticed some shadows on our wardrobe.
"I turned on the light and saw the image of Jesus
in the middle and those of St Peter and St Paul on
the sides.
"I didn't say a word to anyone for a few weeks
but then the images started to become clearer everyday.
I decided to call the priests and since then lots of
people come to my house to see the miracle."
The wardrobe is made from walnut and is nearly 50-years-old.
Valeriu's wife, Geta, 72, got it as a dowry on her
wedding day from her parents.
Local priest Vasile Nuhaiu said: "I was shocked
by what I saw there. There were three shadows on that
wardrobe with the face of Jesus Christ in the centre.
"It is a miracle when Saints
reveal themselves to us mortals and I crossed myself
and started to pray. I told the two old people they
should fast and pray to those holy images."
By Mark Baard
Wired News
02:00 AM Nov. 01, 2005 PT
LEWISTON, Maine -- As a cryptozoologist,
Loren Coleman rarely gets to play the straight man
at meetings with his fellow scientists.
"I had to put up with people saying, 'Oh,
you're the one who believes in little green men,'" said Coleman,
a writer and academic who investigates Bigfoot and
other folkloric monsters.
Maybe that's because he's surrounded by artwork featuring
depictions of Bigfoot as a hairy lesbian, subterranean
reptilian humanoids and cave people wearing Viking
helmets.
Coleman was keynote speaker at an exhibition of artwork
inspired by his quest for proof of mythological creatures.
The point of the Bates symposium, said the museum's
director, Marc Bessire, "is not to legitimize
or de-legitimize cryptozoology, but to find where it
intersects with (art and popular culture)."
It's a hot topic at the moment. Though
the art exhibit is relatively small, popular culture
is currently going cryptozoology crazy.
Coleman noted the television
networks' fall prime-time lineup is chockablock with
shows such as Lost, Invasion and Surface, all of
which have cryptozoological themes running through
them. He said in recent weeks he has been busy doing
hundreds of TV and radio interviews. [...]
Comment: Gee,
it seems like the population is being prepared for
something...
On the fourth
anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Laura Knight-Jadczyk
announced the availability of her latest book:
In the years since the 9/11 attacks, dozens of books
have sought to explore the truth behind the official
version of events that day - yet to date, none of
these publications has provided a satisfactory answer
as to WHY the attacks occurred and who was ultimately
responsible for carrying them out.
Taking a broad, millennia-long perspective, Laura
Knight-Jadczyk's 9/11:
The Ultimate Truth uncovers the true nature of
the ruling elite on our planet and presents new and
ground-breaking insights into just how the 9/11 attacks
played out.
9/11: The Ultimate
Truth makes a strong case for the idea that September
11, 2001 marked the moment when our planet entered
the final phase of a diabolical plan that has been
many, many years in the making. It is a plan developed
and nurtured by successive generations of ruthless
individuals who relentlessly exploit the negative
aspects of basic human nature to entrap humanity as
a whole in endless wars and suffering in order to
keep us confused and distracted to the reality of
the man behind the curtain.
Drawing on historical and genealogical sources, Knight-Jadczyk
eloquently links the 9/11 event to the modern-day
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also cites the clear
evidence that our planet undergoes periodic natural
cataclysms, a cycle that has arguably brought humanity
to the brink of destruction in the present day.
For its no nonsense style in cutting to the core
of the issue and its sheer audacity in refusing to
be swayed or distracted by the morass of disinformation
that has been employed by the Powers that Be to cover
their tracks, 9/11:
The Ultimate Truth can rightly claim to be THE
definitive book on 9/11 - and what that fateful day's
true implications are for the future of mankind.