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"You get America out of Iraq and
Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."
- Cindy Sheehan |
P I C T U R E
O F T H E D A Y |
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©2005 AP/Scott Erskine
Michael Sessions is sworn in as mayor of Hillsdale, Mich. Monday, Nov.
21, 2005. Sessions, an 18-year-old senior, became Hillsdale's youngest
mayor on Monday when he took the oath of office.
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By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 25 November 2005
The report provides the most detailed and remorselessly critical account yet produced by a Western international body of Israel's policy in East Jerusalem, which has been occupied since its seizure in the 1967 Six Day War. It points out that Jerusalem "is already one of the trickiest issues" on the road to a final peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. It adds that, as a result of the measures, "prospects for a two state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine are receding".
European Foreign Ministers this week vetoed planned publication of the report - which also warns that rapid expansion of Jewish settlements in and around East Jerusalem, along with use of the separation barrier to isolate East Jerusalem from the West Bank, "risk radicalising the hitherto relatively quiescent Palestinian population of East Jerusalem".
European governments should consider direct intervention in an attempt to curb the systematic measures being undertaken by Israel to increase its control and population in the historically - and legally - Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem, a highly sensitive EU report concludes.
The confidential report, prepared by top diplomats representing the 25 EU governments in the city, warns that the chances of a two-state solution are being eroded by Israel's "deliberate policy" - in breach of international of law - of "completing the annexation of East Jerusalem".
Among the recommendations in the report, drafted in October during the British EU presidency which ends next month, the EU is urged to consider a series of steps including direct support for projects that help Palestinians to conduct legal battles against house demolitions, which it points out tripled in the city during 2004, and the persistent refusal to grant building permits to all but a small minority of Palestinians. The report also suggests holding meetings with the Palestinian leadership in East Jerusalem, presumably to demonstrate that - contrary to the Israeli government's goal of Jerusalem as its "undivided capital" - it sees East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state.
The EU foreign ministers' meeting was widely reported in Israel to have decided against publication of the report in its present form because of the risk to its relationship with the Jewish state especially when for the first time Israel has given its blessing to the EU having a key security role in the region by monitoring the Rafah crossing point from Gaza into Egypt. The EU will be represented at senior level at a ceremonial opening of the crossing by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today.
The 11-page report, leaked to The Independent, says the E1 project for a major expansion of Ma'ale Adumim, the largest Israeli West Bank settlement, to join it to Jerusalem "threatens to complete the encircling of the city by Jewish settlements, dividing the West Bank into two separate geographical areas." It says that, while the present 30,000 residents of the settlement at present occupy only 15 per cent of the planned area, the total plan envisages an area of 53 square miles - "larger than Tel Aviv" - extending through the West Bank between Jerusalem and Jericho.
While the plans will divide the West Bank from itself and from East Jerusalem, the report says "the economic prospects of the West Bank [which has a GDP per year per head of $1,000] are highly dependent on access to East Jerusalem [GDP of $3,500]. It adds: "From an economic perspective, the viability of a Palestinian state depends to a great extent on the preservation of organic links between East Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem".
The document says when the separation barrier is completed, Israel will "control all access to and from East Jerusalem, cutting off its Palestinian satellite cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah, and the rest of the West Bank beyond. This will have serious economic, social and humanitarian consequences for the Palestinians. By vigorously applying policies on residency and ID status, Israel will be able finally to complete the isolation of East Jerusalem - the political commercial and infrastructural centre of Palestinian life."
It adds: "Israel's activities in Jerusalem are in violation of both its Roadmap obligations and international law. We and others in the international community have made our concerns clear on numerous occasions with varying effect. Palestinians are, without exception, deeply alarmed about East Jerusalem. They fear that Israel will 'get away with it' under cover of disengagement [from Gaza]." The document says smaller Jewish settlements inside Palestinian areas are sometimes installed by would-be settlers "preying on Palestinians suffering financial hardship or simply [occupying] properties by force".
Besides suggesting that a formal call by the EU and the US-led international quarter on Israel to stop prejudicing final status negotiations by its actions in East Jerusalem would be "timely", one proposal is for the EU to consider "excluding East Jerusalem from certain EU/Israel joint co-operation activities." While the document does not say so, this could realistically mean halting European funding for road, rail and projects which contribute to the process of annexation.
The reports says the purpose of keeping West Bank ID holders out of East Jerusalem and East Jerusalem ID holders out of the West Bank "is almost certainly demographic , to reduce the Palestinian population of Jerusalem while exerting efforts to boost the number of Israelis living in the city - East and West."
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By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 24 November 2005
A series of recommendations drawn up by a government-appointed lawyer to curb the building of illegal settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank has been rejected by the Israeli Justice Ministry.
The move was seen by Israeli peace campaigners as an ominous first sign of a possible attempt to stop important parts of the report - which exposed a long history of secret government connivance in the creation of the outposts - from being implemented or enforced.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, promised this week when he announced he was forming a new party that he would meet a US demand to dismantle the illegal outposts built since he came to power but omitted to say when.
Mr Sharon himself commissioned the report from the former state prosecutor Talia Sasson, which called for "drastic steps" to halt the outposts - up to half of which she identified as being in breach of Israeli as well as international law.
The government puts the figure built since 2001 at around 21 but Peace Now, which monitors settlement growth, puts it at nearer 50.
While the Justice Ministry says it has agreed to implement some recommended legislative changes, such as making the construction of an illegal outpost a criminal violation, it has rejected four, which it claimed last night were "not so relevant on this issue". It strongly defended its decisions last night, insisting it was already putting in motion "all the changes we need to make to prevent the building of illegal outposts".
Ms Sasson said in an interview with the Haaretz newspaper, which revealed the decision yesterday, that she had pointed out in her report that "political approval of construction in the territories is essential in that it has political significance".
Dror Etkes of Peace Now said the organisation would ensure that the illegal settlements would be raised during the election.
In a separate development, Shimon Peres, ousted as Labour party leader by Amir Peretz, announced that he will staywith Labour and not join Mr Sharon.
The Foreign Minister, Silvan Shalom, and the Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, the two rivals to Benjamin Netanyahu for the leadership of Likud after Mr Sharon's decision to quit, vied to present themselves as worthy contestants in an electoral fight with Mr Peretz.
When Mr Shalom and Mr Mofaz proclaimed their credentials on social issues, Mr Shalom described Mr Mofaz as a "cream-fed kid from Rehavia (an upmarket area of Jerusalem) who hurt the poor". Mr Mofaz responded: "There are many leaders who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth and Bibi [Netanyahu] is one of them."
* An Israeli civilian was rescued by troops after his hang-glider was blown across the Lebanon border. The man was seen landing 50 metres inside Lebanon by Hizbollah militants and sprinted to an Israeli army outpost where troops opened the gate as the militants started shooting.
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By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Friday, November 25, 2005
DAMASCUS: Syria's official Al-Thawra newspaper claimed Thursday that more than 400 agents from Israel's spy agency Mossad are in Lebanon in the latest volley in an increasingly vitriolic war of words with Lebanon's new leaders.
"You have to recognize the danger of having more than 400 men from Israel's Mossad in Lebanon who are working with the other (Lebanese) agents who once supported the Zionist enemy and its militias," wrote editor Fayez Sayegh.
"These agents are encircling Lebanon like a belt that will explode when Israel and its strategic ally the United States decide," he said, charging there was also an increasing number of agents from the CIA and European states in the country.
"All these agents came to Lebanon... to sow dissent, revive hatred, reinforce pressure on Lebanon and Syria and above all spy on national forces, the Lebanese resistance and Palestinians," said the paper.
Syria's state run Tishrin newspaper and the Baath newspaper had tried to stir up strife in Lebanon earlier this month, when they ran editorials calling on its allies to hold demonstrations in Lebanon against Premier Fouad Siniora's government and the economic situation in Lebanon.
The call was widely dubbed by the local media as a flagrant intervention in Lebanon's domestic affairs in defiance of unrelenting global pressure on the regime of President Bashar Al Assad to take its hands off Lebanon. No demonstrations took place and no political group in Lebanon announced any plans to demonstrate.
Syrian troops left Lebanon in April, ending a 29-year presence, amid the political turmoil that followed the assassination in February of former premier Rafik Hariri.
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By Greg Szymanski
18 Nov 05
Except for Ellen Mariani, whose husband was reported on Flight 175, others who lost relatives on the airplanes have kept quiet in stark contrast to those who lost loved ones at Ground Zero. But when those from the 'airplane community' talk like Linda Gay and Frank Calley, who respectively had family members on Flight 11 and 77, they accept the government 9/11 story hook, line and sinker.
In contrast, family members who experienced Ground Zero losses have been more than happy to speak, as over a hundred family members of Ground Zero victims have been contacted by the Arctic Beacon, and even more by other publications, with an overwhelming majority having no problem to talk openly about their loss and their feelings about the 9/11 investigation.
W hy the difference? There are no polls or experts to figure this out, but one simple explanation is the flight families are hiding something. Although this may be jumping to conclusions, what other conclusion can be drawn when nobody wants to talk?
Linda Gay believes her husband died in the fiery crash on Flight 11, believes the government conducted a fair investigation and blames the entire event on President Clinton who had eight years to catch Osama bin laden but failed.
Gay lost her husband, Peter, 54, a vice president of Raytheon Co. on 9/11. Four years later, she still lives in Tewksbury, Mass., claiming as she did right after the tragic event, she is satisfied with her government's efforts at getting at the truth behind 9/11, satisfied with the money she received from the victim's compensation fund and satisfied with not pursuing her husband's death any further.
"I guess I am different than most people, but I just don't believe in suing the airlines or the government over something they couldn't control," said Gay this week in a rare conversation this week from her home in Tewksbury, as she reflected back about the death of her husband, a top executive with a defense technology company doing business with the Pentagon.
"Looking back, one thing strange was that the night before the flight and the early morning on 9/11, Peter seemed more reluctant than usual to leave for California on business like he did every Tuesday for the last year.
"He was the type that didn't like to be away from home, but on 9/11 he seemed more apprehensive about leaving than usual. The last thing we said was the normal goodbyes before he took the limousine and that was it. I never saw him again and had it confirmed he was on Flight 11 late in the afternoon at 2p.m. when American Airlines called."
Giving a rare interview, Gay's belief in the official 9/11 story and her reluctance to speak out is a pattern seen among many of the families of those who died on the four doomed airliners.
In fact, save Ellen Mariani, who lost her husband on Flight 175, the rest of the jetliner family community has never publicly questioned the government's official 9/11 story and has pretty much stayed quiet in the background, out of the public eye.
What makes this surprising, if not downright suspicious, is that it is in stark contrast to the majority of family members who lost loved ones at Ground Zero, a group that has hundreds of outspoken critics of the government's official story, a group unafraid to publicly blame the Bush administration for being the real culprits behind 9/11.
For example, there are literally hundreds of survivors and family members from Ground Zero who protest the government regularly, saying Bush and the neo-cons are hiding the truth about 9/11 to protect their own skin.
But in stark contrast only Mariani has gone public with her disgust of the government from the airline group, a fact that shouldn't be ignored when trying to unweave the complex web of deceit woven by the neo-con culprits behind 9/11.
Take, for example, the across the board silence from the airline family community who has never really spoken out about obvious irregularities in the flights themselves, NORAD's slow response, flight manifest irregularities and, basically, the total lack of a serious investigation regarding their missing relative.
If we want to believe Gay, the answer is simple: total trust in the government and the system. But if we want to look farther, we may find the silence among the flight family community as the tip of the iceberg behind the entire 9/11 mystery.
Take, for example, the simple law of averages. Doesn't it make sense that at least a handful out of the approximately 261 who died on the planes would have had a few family members as outspoken critics?
But besides this strange veil of silence blanketing the entire group, there are many other stranger things concerning the airline families, a series of unexplainable facts and occurrences that draws attention to what may be the 'Achilles heel' of the 9/11 mystery if, that is, investigators dig deep enough.
First, the Arctic Beacon has tried to contact at least 10 airline family members besides Gay, all who have repeatedly refused to answer the telephone or return emails. Julie Sweeney, whose husband, Brian, a former Navy F-14 pilot on Flight 175 who made two calls prior to the plane supposedly hitting the South Tower, said she was too busy to talk, acting apprehensive and wondering how the Arctic Beacon got her phone number.
After making a phone appointment the next day, Sweeney at the time of this publication failed to answer the phone at least 10 times, a sign she no longer wanted to speak after having time to reflect on the situation.
In contrast, family members who experienced Ground Zero losses have been more than happy to speak, as over a hundred family members of Ground Zero victims have been contacted by the Arctic Beacon, and even more by other publications, with an overwhelming majority having no problem to talk openly about their loss and their feelings about the 9/11 investigation.
Why the difference? There are no polls or experts to figure this out, but one simple explanation is the flight families are hiding something. Although this may be jumping to conclusions, what other conclusion can be drawn when nobody wants to talk?
Besides these speculations, it also should be noted that several psychologists and psychiatrists contacted said the typical reaction to a loss of a loved one in a situation like 9/11 is to strip all allegiance to state, country and employer, as the only motivation left for those who have paid the ultimate price is getting at the truth and nothing but the truth.
However, strangely, the reaction by the 9/11 airline community, less Mariani, is just the opposite. Let's look at some of the glaring oddities about the airplane family members and why the government's story should have at least sparked some doubt among them:
Remember Gay and those who remained silent, as the law construes silence as consent, believe or give the appearance to believe the official government story hook, line and sinker, despite the existence of credible evidence Flight 11 and 77 never even existed and, for all intents and purposes, may very well have been only 'phantom flights.'
According to Bureau of Traffic Safety (BTS) statistics both flights officially never took- off on 9/11, as well as showing no elapsed run-way time, wheels-off time and taxi-out time. However, Flights 11 and 77 on both 9/10 and 9/12 had all the recorded data properly logged.
Why the discrepancy? No one has ever given an official explanation for the BTS missing flight data, even though it is well known that airports are extremely meticulous about recording accurate BTS data for each and every flight in and out of its airport for liability purposes.
But, more importantly, if this is a clear indication Flight 11 and 77 were only 'phantom flights" and never existed, why then wouldn't some of the family members publicly voice their concerns?
Four years after 9/11, the answer still remains a guarded mystery, but then there is a lot of mysterious evidence regarding the flights, or the absence thereof, which has never been answered.
For example, why hasn't the government turned over airport surveillance tapes, readily available for all flights, but suspiciously unavailable for all of the four doomed flights on 9/11? Again, why hasn't there been a public outcry by the 9/11 family airplane community when obvious information regarding their loved ones is being withheld?
But, again a major question is why with this glaring evidence staring the whole world in the face, hasn't the real people with a vested interest and loss - the airline family members -- demanded a public investigation?
Why? For the same reason they haven't, excluding perhaps Mariani, demanded an investigation into the BTS records, the missing surveillance tapes, NORAD's pitiful response time, unsubstantiated autopsy reports, miraculous evidence and personal belongings recovered from the wreckage and glaring inconsistencies concerning the actual flight lists, not to mention the fact that seven of the 19 hijackers are reportedly alive, well and living abroad.
However, specifically concerning the recovery of 'miraculous evidence' and discrepancies in the flight lists, one of the most interesting cases is that of Waleed Iskandar, purported to be a passenger on Flight 11.
As unbelievable as it sounds, Iskandar's parents were notified by the Ground Zero Recovery Team a year after 9/11 that they found the unscathed Wells Fargo ATM card of their son, who allegedly perished on the doomed flight.
After being notified of the miraculous find, Joseph and Samia Iskandar were sent their son's bank card within days, noting it was in "perfect condition," but never really publicly questioned the late timing of the incredible find or the suspicious nature of a flimsy ATM card surviving such a towering inferno.
What's even more suspicious is that their son, a 34-year-old Harvard graduate, was never even listed as a passenger on Flight 11, either on the original manifest or on the official list provided by American Airlines, even though every reference to him afterwards on internet memorials or in newspaper accounts lists him as a Flight 11 passenger.
One would think, Iskandar's family would have publicly questioned the numerous errors and discrepancies concerning Flight 11 and, of course, the official passenger list which never listed their son. But instead they have remained silent, his parents even failing to return over 25 messages left and emails sent over a two-week period concerning these very important issues.
"It's only my opinion but if that was my son, I'd be raising holy hell about the crazy government investigation and the information withheld about Flight 11," said one 9/11 family member who lost a loved one, but wanted to remain anonymous.
Besides the strange silence from the Iskandar's, the miraculous recovery of Flight 77 passenger, Suzanne Calley's, California ID card, driver's license and wedding ring, all found in perfect condition at the Pentagon, has also been accepted without questions asked by her surviving husband, Frank. Despite numerous questions regarding Flight 77 and the Pentagon crash, Calley's husband believes the government has done its level best when it came to the handling of his wife's case, his wife's military autopsy and subsequent government investigation into the Pentagon crash.
And it's hard to believe Calley and the other Flight 77 family members haven't been screaming from the rafters, demanding justice after looking at the facts of the secret investigation and the glaring inconsistencies concerning the military autopsy performed under the cloak of darkness.
But, again, Calley and the others seem to be in 100 percent agreement with the Pentagon since none of them have so much as whispered criticism against a government investigation lacking obvious credibility.
To make the point clear, here is exactly what Calley had to say about the Pentagon investigation and a run-down of the discrepancies in the Pentagon autopsy of the alleged Flight 77 victims as reported last week in the Arctic Beacon:
As told to another family member who lost a loved one in 9/11, Calley said:
"They told me they found her remains, but I decided not to look. The Pentagon officials also said the remains of at least 19 others on board the plane were also identified by a military medical group.
"Immediately after the crash, I was assigned a personal liaison who handled my case. He was cooperative and helpful and I decided I didn't want to see Suzanne's remains."
What's strange about the autopsy investigation is that none of the family members, including Calley, have demanded an independent investigation, relying solely on government medical reporting as advised by the Pentagon liaisons, a personal military attaché conveniently provided for each individual family.
The question has to be asked why would the military go to such extremes as to provide personal attachés unless they wanted to hide manipulate and control what should have been an independent crime scene investigation.
And, even stranger, questions like this should have been asked and independent investigations demanded by family members, all collectively as a group remaining strangely silent when it is the natural reaction of someone who loses a loved one, to travel to the ends of the earth to get at the truth.
Although the government medical team played up the fact it undertook the most comprehensive autopsy in medical history, utilizing DNA and dental records, none of the family members of those who allegedly died on 9/11, like Calley, can now ever be 100 percent sure of the results since the government controlled the autopsy, an independent investigation never being allowed and in the case of Calley, the remains of his wife's body has subsequently been cremated.
"Even though it's four years after 9/11, I still understand that family members can still be grieving. But wouldn't they want positive independent DNA testing done to prove their loved ones actually died in the crash," said on family member who lost a loved one 9/11 but wanted to remain anonymous.
"I never received any remains or evidence of the person I lost on 9/11, but if there were any remains, I surely would have had them independently tested instead of relying on the word of the government.
And that's exactly what transpired in the strange and unexplainable autopsy investigation of the Flight 77 passengers, conducted essentially in the cover of darkness by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP).
And after reading the report, it is filled with so many inconsistencies and generalities that it makes one wonder why Calley and the other family members - not a single one of them - ever insisted on independent DNA proof, matching the remains held by the government with that of their loved ones.
In fact, the AFIP in its report dated November 16, 2001, incredibly said it positively identified nearly all the bodies, including the Flight 77 passengers, a medical feat which several medical experts considered miraculous if not, impossible, considering the short amount of time and the amount of devastation at the crime scene.
Remember that Calley was told by his private Pentagon attaché that 19 passengers were positively identified from Flight 77, but the AFIP reports that 184 of the 189 who died at the scene, including all but one of the airplane passengers, were positively identified within about two months.
But, to make matters worse, even these numbers have been seriously questioned by an independent medical investigator named Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D., who made a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in order to get to the bottom of what he calls a staged and phony government autopsy report in order to cover up for "monsters who planned this crime."
Dr. Olmsted said about the AFIP autopsy:
"A list of names on a piece of paper is not evidence, but an autopsy by a pathologist, is. I undertook by FOIA request to get the autopsy list. Guess what? Still no Arabs on the list. It is my opinion that the monsters who planned this crime made a mistake by not including Arabic names on the original list to make the ruse seem more believable.
"When airline disasters occur, airlines will routinely provide a manifest list for anxious families. You may have noticed that even before Sep 11th, that airlines are pretty meticulous about getting an accurate headcount before takeoff. It seems very unlikely to me, that five Arabs sneaked onto a flight with weapons."
Dr. Olmsted then calls attention to the blatant discrepancy of the names on the airline passenger manifest and the names provided by the official Pentagon autopsy report, showing also that three names were on the autopsy that never even were listed as passengers on the airplane, an obvious indication of foul play never explained by the Pentagon.
Further Dr.Olmsted found through his FOIA request that although the medical examiners positively all of the passengers, they did not identify any of the Arab hijackers onboard, who were also not listed on the original flight manifest.
"The AFIP suggest these numbers; 189 killed, 125 worked at the Pentagon and 64 were passengers on the plane. The AA list only had 56 and the list just obtained has 58. They did not explain how they were able to tell "victims" bodies from "hijacker" bodies," said Dr. Olmsted. "In fact, from the beginning no explanation has been given for the extra five suggested in news reports except that the FBI showed us the pictures to make up the difference, and that makes it so.
"No Arabs wound up on the morgue slab; however, three additional people not listed by American Airline sneaked in. I have seen no explanation for these extras (on the autopsy list but not listed as passengers.) I did give American the opportunity to "revise" their original list, but they have not responded. The new names are: Robert Ploger, Zandra Ploger, and Sandra Teague.
"The AFIP claims that the only "passenger" body that they were not able to identify is the toddler, Dana Falkenberg, whose parents and young sister are on the list of those identified. The satanic masterminds behind this caper may be feeling pretty smug about the perfect crime, but they have left a raft of clues tying these unfortunates together."
Editor's Note: Of course, not all family members of the airline victims have been contacted. If there exists anyone who disagrees with the official 9/11 story or wants to comment about this article, the Arctic Beacon requests you contact our office so that your story and opinions can be heard.
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24 Nov 2005
By Greg Szymanski
The head of a Chicago-based court reform group said the attorney, Paul Young, was targeted by 'American Gestapo Agents' posing as businessmen. Sherman Skolnick says he has been warned by a federal judge that he also is a target of a bogus Homeland Security probe that may land the 50-year 'judge busting' truth seeker in jail.
A prominent Utah lawyer, working on an explosive Coca-Cola patent case appeal linking five U.S. Supreme Court justices with taking Coke bribe money in the Bush v. Gore decision, was hospitalized last week in Salt Lake City under suspicious circumstances.
Paul Young, a former law professor touted as a brilliant legal mind, was unexpectedly hospitalized with serious respiratory or pneumonia like conditions and remains in serious condition.
Unavailable for comment, Young told an associate this week who heads up a nationwide public interest court reform group that he immediately fell ill and was rushed to the hospital after being approached by two men in business suits who tricked him into inhaling toxic chemicals.
In what sounds like something out of a James Bond movie, Sherman H. Skolnick, the head of the Chicago based court reform group, told the Arctic Beacon Wednesday in an extended telephone conversation from his south side Chicago home:
“I just got off the telephone with Paul and he could hardly talk, but he told me he was approached by two large Samoan-looking men in suits, saying they were businessmen. While making conversation, they handed him a ball point pen and as they walked away, they turned to Paul, saying strangely without a clear meaning ‘you’ll be needing us.’
“When he clicked the pen, a substance was ejected and that’s when he said he immediately fell ill.”
Skolnick said Young also was notified the two businessmen played the same potentially deadly trick on one of his female legal assistant’s, who is still missing and her condition unknown.
“These guys are playing for keeps now and it’s all apart of the attack on all of us because of the information we have in our possession regarding the Supreme Court judges and the Coca-Cola/Disney bribery money passing hands in the Bush v. Gore case, which installed George W. Bush as the current resident and occupant of the White House” said Skolnick, adding he was recently notified through credible sources that he and others in his court reform group have been specifically targeted by Homeland Security or what he calls the American Gestapo.
Skolnick said he was recently tipped-off by a Chicago federal judge, one of his numerous contacts made in his 50 year career of ‘judge busting,’ that he, Young and others are smack dab in the middle of a ‘scam Bush administration probe’ to put them behind bars for bogus homeland security violations.
“In my younger days, I would go right over to the court house and ask the judges if they were looking for me. But if they want me, they know where I’m at and will have to haul me out of the house. I’ve been told this attack on us stems from recent secret meetings of federal judges chaired in person or via teleconferencing by Antonin Scalia, an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Skolnick, who did not want to reveal the federal judge who tipped him off for his protection. “The judges asked for and received from George W. Bush, an order signed by proxy Karl Rove, designating certain persons linked to the court-reform group, as ‘domestic terrorists’ during a ‘war emergency’.
“Because of this certain members of our Chicago-headquartered court-reform group face seizure of their properties, assets, goods, licenses, and records, and face the possibility of also being stripped of our citizenship and making us detainees without time limits and without trials and without right to consult attorneys.”
Skolnick claims the Bush administration is pulling out all the stops, as the attack on Young demonstrates, to use intimidation, life-threatening tactics and the Patriot Act to silence the group in an effort to protect the five high court judges from felony charges, stemming from their majority decision installing Bush as President in an illegal fashion.
The case, pinning the judges to the wall, is long and legally complicated but involves a federal copyright infringement case filed against Coca-Cola by a graphic designer named Robert E. Kolody, the man who Young represented in his appeal.
Skolnick, helping Kolody in his case, uncovered shenanigans by Kolody’s original attorney who admitted to Skolnick in the courthouse cafeteria that he permitted Coca Cola and their attorneys to spy on his client’s confidential legal strategies.
The accusations opened up a can of worms, as well as leading to other secret documents obtained by Kolody and the court reform group, showing not only that the 14 judge federal en banc panel assembled in Chicago unfairly and arbitrarily blocked Kolody’s appeal, but also that they blocked information that secret Coca-Cola and Disney funds were used, according to Skolnick, “to bribe and corrupt the five judge majority, spear-headed by Justice Anton Scalia, who installed Bush in the Oval Office.”
“Thereafter, to try to unblock the appeal, Kolody retained Young, the brilliant Utah lawyer who was unsuccessful in getting the appeal to proceed which would have obviously implicated the fourteen appeals judges in obstructions of justice to assist Scalia and four others on the High Court to hush up the Coke/Disney bribery in Bush vs. Gore,” said Skolnick.
“To put Paul Young out of action, first a prosecutor and judge in Utah framed up Paul Young on phony criminal charges. Now, they obviously attacked him and he is still in grave condition as I just finished talking with him from the hospital.
“This all comes from the information we have that the Bush v Gore decision was corruptly and arbitrarily procured through secret use of funds, obtained by book-cooking, from Coca-Cola and also Disney. It should also be mentioned that many of Coke's overseas offices are in great part proprietary operations of the American CIA.”
Those under surveillance and targeted for arrest by Homeland Security include Skolnick, Young, two associates named Robert J. Corr and Michael W. Lynch, as well as an international business consultant who wishes to remain anonymous although well-known by authorities.
Regarding the arrests and its implications on the deteriorating conditions of civil rights in this country, Skolnick has these parting words:
“We have been designated, by the Bush White House, as U.S.-born citizens, as "Domestic Terrorists" for directly confronting, or seeking to directly confront, Federal Judges who they accuse of corruption. Homeland Security contends that this tends to interfere with the operation and credibility of the Federal Judiciary, such as in Chicago and at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
“Most all Americans obey ‘Court Orders’, whether taking away their Liberty, or Property, or Peace of Mind. As a result, the Federal Courts, for example, do not have to, so far, enforce their ‘Court Orders’ by ‘bayonet law’, where a military unit would have to be sent in to guarantee that the ‘Court Order’ as stated and written, is complied with by persons against whom the ‘Court Orders’ operate. Large, corrupt corporate interests, so far, have been assured by the corrupt, politicized, venal ‘for sale’ Federal Judiciary that their "Court Orders" will be enforced against the peons of America, the ‘shirtless ones’.
“In the current era, any supposed Insurrection of the American common folk, using the Second Amendment or otherwise, in opposition to the quiet enforcement and submission to Federal ‘Court Orders’, will be met with brute military force, primarily by the several hundred thousand foreign troops almost permanently resident on U.S. soil, but little known to most Americans.”
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Jamie Wilson in Washington
Friday November 25, 2005
The Guardian
Dirty bomb evidence came from al-Qaida leaders
CIA worried case would expose prison network
The Bush administration decided not to charge Jose Padilla with planning to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a US city because the evidence against him was extracted using torture on members of al-Qaida, it was claimed yesterday.
Mr Padilla, a US citizen who had been held for more than three years as an "enemy combatant" in a military prison in North Carolina, was indicted on Tuesday on the lesser charges of supporting terrorism abroad. After his arrest in 2002 the Brooklyn-born Muslim convert was also accused by the administration of planning to blow up apartment blocks in New York using natural gas.
The administration had used his case as evidence of the continued threat posed by al-Qaida inside America.
Yesterday's New York Times, quoting unnamed current and former government officials, said the main evidence of Mr Padilla's involvement in the plots against US cities had come from two captured al-Qaida leaders, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a leading al-Qaida recruiter. But the officials told the newspaper Mr Padilla could not be charged with the bomb plots because neither of the al-Qaida leaders could be used as witnesses as they had been subjected to harsh questioning and could open up charges from defence lawyers that their earlier statements resulted from torture. Officials also feared that their testimony could expose classified information about the CIA prison system in which the men were thought to be held.
The CIA has never publicly acknowledged it is detaining Mr Mohammed and Mr Zubaydah. It is not known where they are being held. But it was reported last month the CIA was using secret detention centres in eastern Europe, possibly in Poland and Romania, for interrogations, thus beyond the reach of US law.
Internal reviews by the CIA have raised questions about the treatment and credibility of the two men. The New York Times said one review, completed in spring last year by the CIA inspector general, found that in the first months after his capture Mr Mohammed had suffered excessive use of "waterboarding", a technique involving near drowning which entails the detainee being strapped to a board and then submerged.
Announcing the charges against Mr Padilla on Tuesday, the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, repeatedly refused to answer questions on why none of the allegations involving attacks on the US had been included. "I am not going to talk about previous accusations and allegations that are outside the indictment," he said. However, the New York Times said the officials had emphasised that the government was not backing off its initial assertions about the seriousness of Mr Padilla's actions.
Mr Padilla was arrested at O'Hare airport in Chicago in 2002 after returning from Pakistan. President George Bush declared him an enemy combatant, and the administration resisted calls to charge and try him in civilian courts. His case became a cause célèbre, with human rights groups claiming it was an extreme example of how civil liberties had been brushed aside in pursuit of the war on terror.
Mr Padilla was handed over last week to the justice department for civilian proceedings, avoiding a potentially embarrassing supreme court showdown over how long the US government could hold one of its citizens in military custody without charges.
Torture has become an emotive issue around the world since prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was uncovered. A new law sponsored by Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate and a war hero who was tortured in Vietnam, would ban inhumane treatment and oblige all US agencies to abide by international law on torture. The draft law was approved by 90 votes to nine in the Senate earlier this month, but the House of Representatives has yet to give its support and Dick Cheney has launched an aggressive effort to modify the legislation to allow the CIA to be exempted - causing the Washington Post to label him "Vice President for Torture" in an editorial.
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By Peter Popham and Anne Penketh
Published: 23 November 2005
"When Saddam used WP it was a chemical weapon," said Mr Ranucci, "but when the Americans use it, it's a conventional weapon. The injuries it inflicts, however, are just as terrible however you describe it."
The Italian journalist who launched the controversy over the American use of white phosphorus (WP) as a weapon of war in the Fallujah siege has accused the Americans of hypocrisy.
Sigfrido Ranucci, who made the documentary for the RAI television channel aired two weeks ago, said that a US intelligence assessment had characterised WP after the first Gulf War as a "chemical weapon".
The assessment was published in a declassified report on the American Department of Defence website. The file was headed: "Possible use of phosphorous chemical weapons by Iraq in Kurdish areas along the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian borders."
In late February 1991, an intelligence source reported, during the Iraqi crackdown on the Kurdish uprising that followed the coalition victory against Iraq, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorous chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships."
According to the intelligence report, the "reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly among the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas" across the border into Turkey.
"When Saddam used WP it was a chemical weapon," said Mr Ranucci, "but when the Americans use it, it's a conventional weapon. The injuries it inflicts, however, are just as terrible however you describe it."
In the television documentary, eyewitnesses inside Fallujah during the bombardment in November last year described the terror and agony suffered by victims of the shells . Two former American soldiers who fought at Fallujah told how they had been ordered to prepare for the use of the weapons. The film and still photographs posted on the website of the channel that made the film - rainews24.it - show the strange corpses found after the city's destruction, many with their skin apparently melted or caramelised so their features were indistinguishable. Mr Ranucci said he had seen photographs of "more than 100" of what he described as "anomalous corpses" in the city.
The US State Department and the Pentagon have shifted their position repeatedly in the aftermath of the film's showing. After initially saying that US forces do not use white phosphorus as a weapon, the Pentagon now says that WP had been used against insurgents in Fallujah. The use of WP against civilians as a weapon is prohibited.
Military analysts said that there remain questions about the official US position regarding its observance of the 1980 conventional weapons treaty which governs the use of WP as an incendiary weapon and sets out clear guidelines about the protection of civilians.
Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, called for an independent investigation of the use of WP during the Fallujah siege. "If it was used as an incendiary weapon, clear restrictions apply," he said.
"Given that the US and UK went into Iraq on the ground that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people, we need to make sure that we are not violating the laws that we have subscribed to," he added.
Yesterday Adam Mynott, a BBC correspondent in Nassiriya in April 2003, told Rai News 24 that he had seen WP apparently used as a weapon against insurgents in that city.
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THE HAGUE
25/11/05
Bot declined to say at what stage the Netherlands might no longer want to collaborate with the US. "This remains a weighing-up of the interests of the fight against terrorism on the one hand and respect for human rights on the other."
Bot added: "We must not now say definitively: there lies the point beyond which we will not go. We are involved in operations with the Americans; we will carry on with these and we put the emphasis on proper treatment of prisoners and compliance with the Geneva Conventions."
- If the Americans "continue to beat about the bush" on reports on CIA prisons, this could have consequences for the Dutch contribution to new military missions, said Foreign Minister Ben Bot during yesterday's Lower House debate on his budget.
"The United States must not play hide-and-seek. Sooner or later, it will come out anyway," said Bot on the EU's request for clarification on the alleged CIA prisons. Bot also said the Americans "have sought out the boundaries" of what is permissible in the fight against terrorism.
Bot declined to say at what stage the Netherlands might no longer want to collaborate with the US. "This remains a weighing-up of the interests of the fight against terrorism on the one hand and respect for human rights on the other."
Bot added: "We must not now say definitively: there lies the point beyond which we will not go. We are involved in operations with the Americans; we will carry on with these and we put the emphasis on proper treatment of prisoners and compliance with the Geneva Conventions."
The Netherlands will demand from its NATO partners in Afghanistan and from Afghan President Karzai that prisoners are treated according to humanitarian war law. Bot wants to enshrine agreements in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). This is an important condition for making a decision on the mission in Uruzgan, said Bot.
The cabinet is likely to decide on Friday next week whether to send 1,100 soldiers to the south Afghan province of Uruzgan. Bot said no promises have yet been made within NATO. The risks are still being discussed with the British, Canadians and Americans; these are high, according to the Dutch military intelligence service MIVD.
The conservatives (VVD) had pressed Bot on Wednesday to raise the alarm more forcefully with the US government on human rights violations. The agreements Bot now wants to make with the allies within the ISAF international security force in Afghanistan are new. Until now, the cabinet has never received guarantees from the US on the treatment of so-called 'illegal fighters' such as Taliban, who the Americans claim do not come under the Geneva Conventions.
Bot wants assurances from Karzai that Afghan prisoners handed over by the Dutch to local authorities will not be given the death penalty. He also wants there to be a "reasonable chance" that the Uruzgan mission could in two years contribute towards stabilisation, a legal system, an operational local government, a safe environment for citizens and reconstruction of the region.
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By M'Hamed Ben Youssef
Translated By Mike Goeden
November 21 - November 27 Issue
With Katrina, 'Plamegate' the situation in Iraq and 'the rash of scandal' spreading, Bush's poll numbers have never been lower. He is even accused of having misled Congress and the nation about Saddam and his WMDs. According to this op-ed article from the Tunis Hebdo of Tunisia, 'the crook Nixon fell flat on his face for less than that.'
Three years ago, Bush enjoyed an approval rating of 70% in pursuit of his unjust, crudely-conducted war against Iraq. Today, current polls show his popularity to have shrunk, like so much untanned leather, to a mere 34%! One of the lowest approval ratings of any president in the history of the United States.
This dramatic drop - which bodes ill for the White House's current occupant - is primarily due to the deteriorating situation in Iraq, where GIs have been caught in the quagmire of guerrilla warfare, suffering heavy losses to both personnel and material. Besides, each week brings with it further developments which only serve to further darken an already bleak media landscape.
Above all, there is the spreading rash of scandal, from the lack of judgment in dealing with Hurricane Katrina, to the use of banned weapons like white phosphorous against the inhabitants of Falluja, to the revelations of "Plamegate" which included the indictment of close aides to [Vice President] Dick Cheney. Senator John Kerry couldn't have handled him more roughly when he stated: "It would be difficult to name a member of government with less credibility regarding Iraq than the Vice President."
In addition, there are the thunderous "indiscretions" concerning the existence of 24 secret prisons scattered about the world, including Europe and the Arab countries, managed by the CIA (today's "globetrotting torturer"), and where heavy-handed interrogations have been carried out on some 3,000 suspected Islamic terrorists. The total number of kills attributed to these fiendish centers has already reached 108, in addition to the 150 kidnappings [extraordinary renditions] carried out in Third World countries. All crimes that have been insincerely condemned by decision makers of the countries hosting American security forces, either "voluntarily or against their wishes": Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Morocco, etc. Investigations have been launched in Italy and Germany…
What's more, various defections - such as the announced withdrawal (full or partial) of certain expeditionary forces, including the Japanese contingent - only serve to further stress an already weakened coalition. All of this quarrelling has certainly not left the Senate indifferent, especially now that the Republicans' foreign policy is collapsing on more than one front - the recent [4th] Summit of the Americas being a case in point.
Several Senators have completely changed positions. After having fervently supported the war in Iraq, they today loudly renounce their previous stands in the columns of such prestigious newspapers as The Washington Post by stating "I was wrong" and explaining that their earlier votes "rested on deeply erroneous, not to say manipulated, intelligence." These numerous reversals have raised the pressure on the hawks close to Bush, who face a particularly rough ride ahead.
Already, the Senate has begun to demand periodic progress reports from the president on the war in Iraq: "Every three months, until all American combat units have left Iraq, the president will deliver to Congress a public report on American policy and operations in Iraq." In other words, the Senate now demands that Bush deliver detailed accounts on the war in the Middle East. For the first time, and for the same impetus, Republicans and Democrats have declared themselves massively in favor of a resolution specifying that "2006 must mark an important transition towards full Iraqi sovereignty … creating the necessary conditions for a progressive withdrawal of American forces from Iraq."
Clearly, a way must be found to get the marines out as soon as possible. The Senate has even gone so far as to call for an explicit ban on the torture of prisoners by the military or the CIA. This is a genuine vote of defiance directed against Bush and his destructive political agenda, meant to limit even further his freedom of maneuver.
These days, the White House is facing accusations of all sorts and emanating from all sides, even from within its own party. The president and his "eminence grise," Dick Cheney, are accused of having "manipulated the available intelligence on Saddam Hussein's WMDs." The Democrats have even accused the White House of having "deliberately misled Congress and the nation."
Looking back at history, one is reminded that the crook Nixon fell flat on his face for less than that. Can we expect Bush to someday suffer the same fate? For having invaded a weaker power, for having instigated a bloody civil war between Shiites and Sunnis with terrifying consequences for a country many thousands of years old, Bush and his supporters risk an agonizing political decline both nationally and internationally.
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by Ward Sutton
November 18th, 2005
Political cartoon. Click link to chuckle.
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by Andy Ostroy
http://www.opednews.com
The war in Iraq has caused the death of 2100 U.S. soldiers and has maimed or wounded another 20,000. The financial cost has topped $400 billion, and our standing in the world has taken a huge blow since the invasion in March 2003. But the gravest consequence of all has been how the Bush/Cheney deception campaign over Iraq has sapped Americans' will to wage war on what is the real enemy, Al Qaeda, and the various terrorist cells hidden throughout the world. As Frank Rich pointed out Sunday in his NY Times column, polls show that the percentage of Americans who view fighting terrorism as a top priority have dropped precipitously to only single digits or low double digits. And that is one very scary statistic.
The Bushies' Wag the Dog strategy has backfired big time, and has put our nation at much greater risk than before the September 11 attacks. Americans have been running a political and military marathon, and they're exhausted. The Bush/Cheney cabal has shamelessly deceived them, sending 130,000 troops to fight an enemy that wasn't, and searching for WMD that didn't exist. They were duped into believing, albeit temporarily, that we were fighting terrorists; the same terrorists that attacked us on 9-11. This fairly tale that the Bushies concocted and perpetuated over the past four years was its own deadly WMD: weapon of mass distraction. While they were lying to us about Saddam and the imminent mushroom clouds, the sadistic murderer of 3000 Americans, Osama bin Laden, was making his getaway in the hills of Tora Bora, perhaps forever to elude our grasp.
And now a rapidly growing majority of Americans not only are saying the war was a mistake and want a withdrawal of the troops, a majority of them also now believe that the Bushies misled them into battle by manipulating and exaggerating pre-war intelligence. Bush and Cheney lied, and everyone now knows it. But this entire ordeal has sadly taken its emotional, physical and financial toll on the populace. Americans have become apathetic and indifferent to the overall struggle against the terrortis threat. What the Bush and Cheney lie machine has accomplished is to desensitize and demoralize our citizenry. They want an end to the death in Iraq, and their will to fight terror has been shattered. We can only hope that the will of the terrorists, the real enemy, has been depleted as well.
www.OstroyReport.blogspot.com
Andy Ostroy, theostroyreport@aol.com, a NYC-based 45-year-old entrepreneur and political commentator, is an aggressive counter to the Bush administration, the Republican Party and the powerful right wing media machine. Our mission is to do whatever possible to help Democrats take back the House and Senate in 2006 and win back the White House in '08. http://www.ostroyreport.blogspot.com/
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Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael White
Thursday November 24, 2005
The Guardian
The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair took place at a time when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers, and British military commanders were expressing outrage at the scale of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, in which up to 1,000 civilians are feared to have died. Pictures of the attack shown on al-Jazeera had infuriated US generals.
Fears that fresh revelations about disputes between Tony Blair and George Bush on the Iraq conflict could damage Downing Street's intimate relationship with the White House prompted this week's unprecedented threat by the attorney general to use the Official Secrets Act against national newspapers.
Senior MPs, Whitehall officials and lawyers were agreed yesterday that Lord Goldsmith had "read the riot act" to the media because of political embarrassment caused by a sensitive leak of face-to-face exchanges between the prime minister and the US president in the White House in April 2004. He acted after the Daily Mirror said a memo recorded a threat by Mr Bush to take "military action" against the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera. Mr Blair replied that that would cause a big problem, reported the Mirror. David Keogh, a former Cabinet Office official, has been charged under the secrets act with sending the memo on the Blair-Bush conversation to Leo O 'Connor, researcher to the former Labour MP Tony Clarke. Mr Keogh and Mr O'Connor will appear before Bow Street magistrates next week.
The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair took place at a time when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers, and British military commanders were expressing outrage at the scale of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, in which up to 1,000 civilians are feared to have died. Pictures of the attack shown on al-Jazeera had infuriated US generals. The government was also arguing with Washington about the number of extra British troops to be sent to Iraq at a time when it was feared they would be endangered by what a separately leaked Foreign Office memo called "heavy-handed" US military tactics.
There were UK anxieties that US bombing in civilian areas in Falluja would unite Sunnis and Shias against British forces. The criticism came not only from anti-war MPs, but from Mr Blair's most senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers. When Mr Blair met Mr Bush in Washington, military advisers were urging the prime minister to send extra forces only on British terms. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, said while British troops had to fight with the Americans, "that does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans".
Andrew Nicol QC, a media law expert, said he was unaware of any case going to trial where a newspaper or journalist had been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. He said Lord Goldsmith appeared to be trying to "put down a marker" to prevent further leaks or publication of further disclosures from the document already allegedly leaked.
Last night the former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle tabled a Commons motion saying Mr Blair should publish the record of his discussion with Mr Bush.
Downing Street stressed that the decision to take action was "entirely up to the attorney general" and was intended to "draw a line in the sand" on further leaks.
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by Susan Lenfestey
The biggest turkey, make that a five-deferment capon, was Dick Cheney, emerging from the bunker in a plumped-up tuxedo, which managed to give him an uncanny resemblance to Batman's old nemesis, the Penguin. Accusing those politicians who once supported the war but now criticize its conduct of losing their memory, he snarled, "The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out.”
No, the saddest part is that they're being maimed and killed, day in and day out, due to the Penguin's own pernicious falsehoods that put them in harm's way.
Having just watched both houses of congress pass their reverse-Robin Hood budget bills while preserving their home-state funding projects, I started to think that pork was more in season than turkey this Thanksgiving.
But then came the gobble-fest over Congressman John Murtha's call to withdraw our troops from Iraq in a responsible and timely way, and turkeys once again ruled the day.
I'm not talking about those breast-heavy birds, locked up in gulags with code names like Butterball and Jennie-O. I'm talking about the ones who will still be with us long after old gobbler's bones are boiled to broth, the ones in Washington with their waddles flowing over their neckties, denouncing the handful of Democrats who refuse to be chickens any longer. Talk about a pecking order.
The usually avuncular Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, chastised Congressman Murtha saying, "Americans don't want platitudes of moral indignity,” which seems a little like Ronald MacDonald saying America's kids don't want a diet of burgers and fries as he hands them a Big Mac.
The newest member of Congress, Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, known as “Mean Jean” back in Cincinnati, proved you don't need . . . well, manhood, to peck with the big toms by suggesting that the much-decorated combat veteran Murtha was a coward. When the boos and catcalls ruffled her feathers, Mean Jean retreated to her perch and later retracted her comments.
The biggest turkey, make that a five-deferment capon, was Dick Cheney, emerging from the bunker in a plumped-up tuxedo, which managed to give him an uncanny resemblance to Batman's old nemesis, the Penguin. Accusing those politicians who once supported the war but now criticize its conduct of losing their memory, he snarled, "The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out.”
No, the saddest part is that they're being maimed and killed, day in and day out, due to the Penguin's own pernicious falsehoods that put them in harm's way.
President Bush, meanwhile, still a bantam but a little less cocky, weighed in from China with his one-note message of stay the course. With bird flu on our doorstep, did anyone tell him why it's called Asian bird flu?
But Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, emerged closer to that crazy Cajun concoction, the turducken -- a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey - than any of his peers. With only 627,000 residents, Alaska receives more federal dollars--$12,279 per person in 2003 - than any other state. Senator Stevens, who's primarily responsible for this federal feedbag, is a pork-stuffed turkey who's been brining in the senate for 37 years.
So when Senator Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, balked at the budget bill's appropriation of $442 million for two unnecessary bridges in Alaska, including the now infamous bridge to nowhere (in reality an island with 50 residents) and suggested that the money be used instead to repair Katrina-damaged interstate bridges, Stevens screamed foul and threatened to “resign from this body” if the funds weren't restored.
Did anyone call his bluff? Cluck-cluck, they fell in line and restored all the funding, though dodged the bridge issue by not allocating the highway money to any specific project. We know where the money is going to go, but does anyone know where the fiscally conservative Republicans have gone?
But despite the strutting on both sides of the aisle, when we sit down to our, um, turkey dinner this Thanksgiving there are many things we'll be thankful for. There are the obvious gifts of health and family and yes, living in America, where we are free to disagree with our leaders. Aren't we?
And this year we'll also be grateful for a hulking old veteran named Jack Murtha, a most unlikely eagle who soared above the halls of congress and left the turkeys and chickens scratching in the dust.
Susan Lenfestey soolen@aol.com is a Minneapolis writer.
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By Jamal Mudhafar
November 20, 2005
Iraqis 'may understand' that the Americans and the government cannot end the insurgency, but what they 'cannot understand' according to this op-ed article from Iraq's Azzaman newspaper, are the atrocities committed by and ignored by the occupation forces and Iraqi government officials.
The U.S.-led occupation that was forecast to end dictatorship and introduce democracy, seems to have been a harbinger of more violence, more oppression and more killing.
Terrorist attacks are surging and suicide bombers mushrooming, and there seems no end to the abuses and atrocities, whether by U.S. troops, government security forces or the secretive and fearful militias.
In the aftermath of the American occupation, there is not a single Iraqi family or home without a tragic story to tell or a calamity to moan.
Acts of violence and terror now taking place in Iraq are unprecedented in their horror and barbarism.
These are perhaps the ugliest crimes and most appalling human rights violations in the history of mankind.
Not everything reaches the outside world. Even international media based in Iraq are unaware of many of these things, who for security reasons, spend their time reporting from fortified hideouts in Baghdad.
In addition to the major bombings launched by the terrorists to attract international media attention, more horrendous crimes are being committed.
Mass killings and liquidations have become the norm, with kidnapping a way of life and identity card murder a daily practice.
The sight of mutilated bodies piled on roadsides and garbage dumps have become common occurrences. Amid the gloom and uncertainty for the future, reports regularly surface of prisoner abuse and the squandering of millions of dollars by government ministries.
Death counts have lost their significance, with fatal incidents, bombings and trigger-happy militia gangs killing hundreds and even thousands very week.
In the midst of the horror, assassinations of Iraqi professionals, former army officers, Baathists, clerics and Iraqis of note continue with impunity.
Some Iraqis may understand that it is beyond the power of the government or the mighty U.S. Army to put an end to the insurgency.
But they cannot understand why atrocities like those of Abu Ghraib and most recently of the secret jail run by the Interior Ministry can happen.
They cannot understand why Iraqi and U.S. forces cannot put an end to the abduction of innocent people and the assassination of university professors, medical doctors and other professionals.
Every now and then the government sets up an investigation committee to look into incidents like these, but to no avail.
We know that these committees are formed, but we are never told about the outcome.
So the killers, the torturers, the kidnappers, the corrupt officials, the liars and the cheats are free. We, the innocent people, have become their prisoners.
This is the reality of the current situation in our country, an ominous harbinger of even worse to come.
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By SAMEER N. YACOUB
Associated Press
November 25, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A key witness against Saddam Hussein has died of cancer, but his testimony has been recorded on audio and video tape for presentation in the trial scheduled to begin next week, the main prosecutor said Friday.
Wadah Ismael Al-Sheik died on Oct. 27, four days after talking to court officials, said Jafaar al-Mousawi, the main prosecutor. He said the testimony at a U.S. detention center was "on the side of the victims."
Al-Sheik, was a senior Iraqi intelligence officer at the time of the Dujail massacre in 1982 that Saddam and seven other co-defendants are charged with. The trial is set to resume on Monday.
If convicted, the Saddam and the others could face the death penalty for their role in the killing of 148 people from the mainly Shiite town of Dujail north of Baghdad after a failed attempt on Saddam's life.
In violence Thursday, a suicide bomber blew up his car outside a hospital south of Baghdad while U.S. troops handed out candy and food to children, killing 30 people and wounding about 40, including four Americans.
Three women and two children were among the dead in the attack outside the hospital in Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad in the "triangle of death" notorious for attacks on Shiite Muslims, U.S. troops and foreign travelers.
A civil affairs team from the U.S. Army's Task Force Baghdad was at the hospital studying ways to upgrade the facility when the bomber struck just outside the guarded compound, a U.S. military statement said.
Elsewhere, 11 Iraqis were killed and 17 injured Thursday when a car bomb exploded near a crowded soft drink stand in Hillah, a mostly Shiite Muslim city 60 miles south of Baghdad. More than 200 people — mostly Shiites — have died from suicide attacks and car bombs since Friday.
U.S. and Iraqi officials had been expecting a rise in violence before the Dec. 15 election, when voters will select their first fully constitutional parliament since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
In trial developments, a spokesman for the defense said Thursday in Amman, Jordan, that Saddam's defense lawyers will attend the trial despite recent assassination of two team members.
"A decision has been taken not to leave the president alone," Issam Ghazawi told The Associated Press, referring to Saddam as president.
"We will not allow the court to appoint other lawyers," Ghazawi said. "The lawyers are forced to attend the hearings, despite serious threats on their lives, but they want to do that to serve justice."
On Oct. 20, the day after the trial began, attorney Saadoun al-Janabi was kidnapped by masked gunmen. His body was found the next day with bullet holes in the head.
On Nov. 8, defense lawyer Adel al-Zubeidi was killed in an ambush and a colleague, Thamir al-Khuzaie, was wounded. Al-Khuzaie fled the country and asked for asylum in Qatar.
Saddam was captured by U.S. troops nearly two years ago after spending eight months on the run following the fall of his regime in April 2003.
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By ANGELA K. BROWN
Associated Press
November 25, 2005
CRAWFORD, Texas - The mother of a fallen soldier whose vigil against the war in Iraq outside President Bush's ranch returned to Texas, saying she is "heartbroken" that the troops are not home.
When Cindy Sheehan arrived at the Waco airport Thursday, three dozen supporters erupted into cheers and tears and grabbed her for lengthy embraces. Before they whisked her back to Crawford, the group chanted, "Stop the war! Bring them home now!"
"I feel happy to be back here with all my friends ... but I'm heartbroken that we have to be here again," said Sheehan, who hoped to arrive earlier in the week, but was delayed by a family emergency. "We will keep pressing and we won't give up until our troops are brought home."
Sheehan asked protesters to return to Crawford this week during Bush's family Thanksgiving gathering. She was unknown when she set up camp outside Bush's ranch during his August vacation, but as the vigil drew thousands, she attracted national attention.
Friday, Sheehan's itinerary included attending a dedication of a garden at the Crawford Peace House in honor of her 24-year-old son, Casey, who died in Iraq last year. An anti-war rally was scheduled at a downtown park Saturday.
A few miles away in a field beside the main road leading to Bush's ranch, a Bush supporter set up camp Thursday with a tent and signs saying "A Noble Cause" showing pictures of smiling Iraqi children.
The war protesters' camp this week is at the same 1-acre private lot that a landowner let them use in August when Sheehan's original campsite became too crowded. The grassy lot is about a mile from Bush's ranch.
Before Sheehan's arrival, more than 100 protesters at the camp ate a traditional Iraqi meal for Thanksgiving — salmon, lentils, rice with almonds and a salad of parsley, tomatoes, cucumbers and bulgur wheat. They said they wanted to call attention to the innocent Iraqi victims in addition to the more than 2,100 U.S. soldiers killed since the war began in March 2003.
"It's significant because the people of Iraq are suffering under our occupation, and for people in America it's business as usual stuffing themselves on fat turkeys," said Tammara Rosenleaf, whose husband is an Army soldier to be deployed in a few weeks.
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by Stephen Crockett
http://www.opednews.com
Rumors are being floated that some Republicans close to the Bush White House would like to eliminate the interest deduction on home mortgages from federal income tax laws. This measure would fall harshly on struggling middle class homeowners. It would badly undermine the real estate, construction and banking industries. It is not a reasonable response to the public debt crisis created by Bush Republican policies.
The middle class and the poor have made enough financial sacrifices in order to enrich the rich. These Americans should not provide one penny more as citizens, taxpayers and voters to the misguided policies of the Bush Republican elite.
The Republican Party under the leadership of Bush, Cheney, Frist, Delay and crew has pushed the tax burden from the wealthiest of Americans and large corporations onto the middle class. They have combined this financial assault on the middle class with huge cuts in government services for the middle class and the poor.
In order to pay for the huge tax cuts to the wealthiest of the wealthy, our nation has developed a growing, severe government debt problem. Combined with irresponsible government spending on a senseless war in Iraq and an reckless, ineffective expenditures on homeland security, the Bush Republican tax cuts for the Super Wealthy has finally produced a rebellion from both fiscal conservatives and the general public.
Rumors are being floated that some Republicans close to the Bush White House would like to eliminate the interest deduction on home mortgages from federal income tax laws. This measure would fall harshly on struggling middle class homeowners. It would badly undermine the real estate, construction and banking industries. It is not a reasonable response to the public debt crisis created by Bush Republican policies.
The middle class and the poor have made enough financial sacrifices in order to enrich the rich. These Americans should not provide one penny more as citizens, taxpayers and voters to the misguided policies of the Bush Republican elite.
Republicans in Congress and the Senate will likely be defeated in the next election unless these misguided Bush Republican priorities are quickly and completely abandoned. They are facing a taxpayer revolt that could return them to a permanent, small minority political Party.
The Wall Street interests that finance and control the Bush Republican political machine has pushed average Americans to the wall financially. Price-gouging, out-sourcing and exporting American jobs by large corporations are serious threats to middle class America. Government policy under the Bush Administration serves these same Wall Street policies and threatens middle class America equally.
The nation stands at the threshold of a dramatic choice between different views of our future. We will become a nation of a few very wealthy ruling over a huge majority of working poor if we follow the Bush Republican path. Our other choice is to remain a predominantly middle class nation dominated by middle class values like our Founding Fathers envisioned.
It is the firm belief of this writer that American citizens will side with our Founding Fathers. American Democracy is at stake along with the American Dream.
Written by Stephen Crockett (co-host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.democratictalkradio.com ). Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland 21919. Email: midsouthcm@aol.com . Phone: 443-907-2367.
Feel free to publish as Guest Editorial, Op Ed, Letter to the Editor or Democratic Voices column in your newspaper, newsletter, website or blog.
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By April Castro, Associated Press Writer
November 22, 2005
"This time the Supreme Court has ruled. There is no back door," said Texas Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, a member of the House Public Education Committee. "This deadline is a real, hard, firm deadline. At that point, you can't finance schools the same way, you have to make the system constitutional, otherwise you run the risk of not being able to open schools in August."
AUSTIN, Texas --Texas school districts illegally tax property owners to pay for public education and the state must find a new way to fund schools by June 1 or classrooms will remain closed in the fall, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
Texas' highest civil court ruled that the property taxes for schools have become an unconstitutional statewide property tax and charged lawmakers with repairing the $30 billion funding system. State funding would be stopped if the deadline isn't met.
The nine-member Republican panel agreed 7-1 with one of three arguments in a lawsuit brought against the state by hundreds of school districts, but found the system meets constitutional requirements for "adequate education" and equitable facilities funding. Justice Scott Brister dissented and Justice Don Willett did not participate.
June 1 is an extension of an earlier court deadline set in the long-running case, and one lawmaker said it this one is much more serious.
"This time the Supreme Court has ruled. There is no back door," said Texas Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, a member of the House Public Education Committee. "This deadline is a real, hard, firm deadline. At that point, you can't finance schools the same way, you have to make the system constitutional, otherwise you run the risk of not being able to open schools in August."
The court declined to offer its own solution, pushing the issue back to lawmakers.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry praised the ruling and said he plans to call lawmakers back to Austin to take up the issue in a special legislative session "at an appropriate time before that deadline."
The Legislature has failed to remedy the system during the last two regular sessions and three 30-day special sessions called by Perry.
"I'm also pleased to see that the court agreed with a position that I have long advocated: simply pouring more money into the same system will not alleviate the property tax problem," Perry said. "Our entire tax system needs substantial reform to make it fair, more modern and that will ensure schools have a reliable stream of revenue."
The court has been considering the case for months on appeal from a district court in Austin. Property-rich and poor districts sued, claiming the method for funding education did not meet requirements set in the state constitution.
State District Judge John Dietz in September 2004 agreed. He ordered that the three problems get repaired or the state would have to halt funding for schools Oct. 1. That deadline was suspended pending the high court ruling.
The state appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that changes to the system should be made by the Legislature, not the courts.
"The court recognized -- as all Texans recognize -- that we can and should do a better job of educating students in Texas," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office represented the state in the case. "But, just because we can do a better job does not mean that the job being done now is unconstitutional."
The Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiffs' argument that the system is unconstitutional because so many school districts are forced to tax property owners at the maximum limit of $1.50 per $100 in property value. That amounts to a statewide property tax because districts don't have room to set their own rates, the high court ruled.
Districts argued that to fund all state and federal education mandates -- such as the 22-student per class limit and minimum teacher salaries -- they must tax at the legal limit. The property tax cap, they said, had become both a minimum and a maximum rate.
Money for the Texas school system comes primarily from property taxes and a loophole-ridden franchise tax. The business tax probably will be overhauled to make more entities pay.
While the court said that state spending on education satisfies the constitutional requirements of an "adequate" education, the ruling cast doubt on the future of the system if there is not "increased funding, improved efficiencies, or better methods of education."
"The court is obviously worried about the future of the system," said Scott McCown, a retired state judge whose decisions helped shape Texas' school funding system.
Still four months away from the March primary, the ruling already offered political fodder for the upcoming gubernatorial race. Comptroller and Perry challenger Carole Keeton Strayhorn attacked the governor for his "inaction" and urged him to call an immediate special session. Perry aides pressed Strayhorn to offer her own school funding plan rather than more political attacks.
Perry has appointed former comptroller John Sharp, a Democrat and former political rival, to head a commission that will recommend how to restructure the tax system that pays for schools. It met for the first time Monday.
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November 24, 2005
CNN
Retailers are nervous, the discounts will be deep. But will consumers shop till they drop?
Even if spending holds up well this season, some economists say rising interest rates and the slowdown in the housing market, as well as jitters about jobs, will cause consumers to pull back in 2006.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Consumers are clearly in the driver's seat as nervous retailers get set to kick off the "official" start of the holiday shopping season on Friday.
Worries about high gas prices, home heating bills and rising interest rates have made many merchants nervous that shoppers will be tight-fisted with their holiday spending this year.
Still, forecasts for the holiday shopping season aren't all that bad.
The National Retail Federation on Tuesday upped its holiday sales forecast to a 6 percent increase from 5 percent, saying the recent decline in prices at the pump has given retailers more optimism for a better season overall.
The holiday shopping season is critical for the nation's retail industry.
Many store chains chalk up more than half their annual sales and profits in November and December alone, hence the term "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving that traditionally marks the season when stores start moving into the black.
With all the uncertainty, though, it's not surprising that stores are taking some unusual steps this year in a bid to jump-start holiday sales.
Stores at some malls are opening as early as midnight on Black Friday in a bid to win a bigger chunk of crucial holiday dollars.
But even if retailers see a Black Friday sales bonanza, industry analysts caution that it's not always a guarantee of success for the rest of the holiday season.
And many retailers feeling especially jittery have started slashing prices much earlier than usual this year.
For its part, Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest retailer, is eager not to repeat last year's blunder when it declined to aggressively discount merchandise, and sales suffered as a result.
Wal-Mart said that this year it will be very aggressive, even offering to match competitors' holiday prices.
The Internet will play a bigger role this season, with many more people expected to do their holiday shopping online and e-tailers getting ready for "Cyber Monday."
What happens after the last gift is unwrapped? Stores are getting more particular about taking stuff back so don't expect an easy time with gift returns after the holidays.
Of course, there are some people affiliated with the Church of Stop Shopping who would rather have you buy nothing at all this season.
Then there's the world for retailers after the holidays.
Even if spending holds up well this season, some economists say rising interest rates and the slowdown in the housing market, as well as jitters about jobs, will cause consumers to pull back in 2006.
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AP
November 25, 2005
ORLANDO, Fla. - Security guards wrestled a man to the ground in a Wal-Mart after he cut in line to get laptop computers that were on sale Friday, a television station reported.
The man started arguing with people inside the store, WFTV-TV in Orlando reported. He then started fighting with the guards, the station reported
One man told WFTV that the laptops were being thrown into the air and people rushed toward them, collapsing on each other. Another man described the scene as crazy.
Orlando police and Orange County sheriff's officials didn't return phone messages seeking comment. The store's manager referred questions to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., where officials at had no immediate comment.
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November 24, 2005
CNN
The lawsuit alleged that there was a gap between federal funding and the cost of complying with the law. Illinois, for example, will spend $15.4 million annually to meet the law's requirements on curriculum and testing but will receive $13 million a year, the lawsuit said.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A judge threw out a lawsuit Wednesday that sought to block the No Child Left Behind law, President Bush's signature education policy. The National Education Association said it would appeal.
The NEA and school districts in three states had argued that schools should not have to comply with requirements that were not paid for by the federal government.
Chief U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman, based in eastern Michigan, said, "Congress has appropriated significant funding" and has the power to require states to set educational standards in exchange for federal money.
The NEA, a union of 2.7 million members and often a political adversary of the administration, had filed the suit along with districts in Michigan, Vermont and Bush's home state of Texas, plus 10 NEA chapters in those states and Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah.
The school districts had argued that the law is costing them more than they are receiving in federal funding.
The law requires states to revise academic standards and develop tests to measure students' progress annually. If students fail to make progress, the law requires states to take action against school districts.
Reg Weaver, president of the NEA, said his group would appeal.
"Parents in communities where school districts are financially strained were promised that this law would close the achievement gaps," he said. "Instead, their tax dollars are being used to cover unpaid bills sent from Washington for costly regulations that do not help improve education."
The lawsuit alleged that there was a gap between federal funding and the cost of complying with the law. Illinois, for example, will spend $15.4 million annually to meet the law's requirements on curriculum and testing but will receive $13 million a year, the lawsuit said.
Friedman said that the law "cannot reasonably be interpreted to prohibit Congress itself from offering federal funds on the condition that states and school districts comply with the many statutory requirements, such as devising and administering tests, improving test scores and training teachers."
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said, "This is a victory for children and parents all across the country. Chief Judge Friedman's decision validates our partnership with states to close the achievement gap, hold schools accountable and to ensure all students are reading and doing math at grade-level by 2014."
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by Mary Shaw
OpEd News
Right here in the United States, 11.2 percent of households (including 13 million children) suffer from hunger or the risk of hunger due to poverty. Many of these families must routinely skip meals, sometimes for a full day, sometimes for much longer. The lucky ones are able to get food assistance to keep themselves alive.
It was another typical Thanksgiving, wasn't it?
The family gathered. They hugged. They talked. They annoyed each other. They argued. They drank too much. And, of course, they ate too much. They stuffed themselves fuller than your grandma stuffed the turkey. It's the biggest meal of the year. Gotta have that extra helping of mashed potatoes. Extra gravy. Don't bother saving room for the desserts - we'll just find a way to force those down on top of everything else.
After the meal, everyone complained about how full they felt, as they patted their extended stomachs and loosened their waistbands. Some took naps to sleep off the overstuffed feeling.
And they were proud of it. After all, this is what Thanksgiving is all about, isn't it?
It's a grand American tradition. This harvest holiday of thanks has become a celebration of gluttony and excess.
Meantime, right here in the United States, 11.2 percent of households (including 13 million children) suffer from hunger or the risk of hunger due to poverty. Many of these families must routinely skip meals, sometimes for a full day, sometimes for much longer. The lucky ones are able to get food assistance to keep themselves alive.
These people don't have so much to be grateful for on Thanksgiving. And, as long as they remain invisible to the rest of us and our leaders, they'll continue to suffer as we go for that second slice of pie.
Cities do their best to keep the homeless off the streets. The poor families who do have roofs over their heads are usually segregated to neighborhoods where the rest of us fear to tread. So the poor are, for the most part, an abstract concept. We hear about them from time to time, but the words represent something far, far away from the world in which the rest of us live.
Out of sight, out of mind.
We give our occasional donations to churches and charities, and we feel that we've done our part. And it helps. It's better than nothing. But those children are still dying. Our government needs to do more.
When he was a student at Harvard Business School, a young George W. Bush told one of his professors that "poor people are poor because they're lazy." It's their own fault.
Tell that those 13 million babies.
It couldn't possibly have to do with government policies that favor the corporation over the individual, could it?
It couldn't possibly have to do with an administration that gives tax breaks to the rich while running up huge spending deficits that the rest of us and our grandchildren will have to pay for, could it?
It couldn't possibly have to do with huge companies, like Wal-Mart, that pay their hourly workers poverty-level wages and price the company health benefits so high that thousands of their employees must rely on public assistance, could it?
Well, yes, by George, it could.
Many of those facing starvation in this country are members of the working poor. Some of them work two or more jobs to survive. While we're choosing between the apple pie and the pumpkin, they are having to choose between food and medicine.
While they suffer, George W. Bush calls himself a "Christian" and a "compassionate conservative" as he showers his rich pals with more incentives to ship American jobs overseas to India and communist China.
Where is the America that our founding fathers envisioned?
Where is the America in which all are created equal, in which all are endowed with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - not just the richest 2 percent?
Where is the America that the world once looked upon as the land of opportunity, where anyone willing to work hard could get ahead in life?
Where is the America in which the rich get richer, but the poor get richer too?
And why have 200 billion of our tax dollars been spent so far on the quagmire in Iraq, when that money could have been better spent on health care, education, and jobs here at home?
The problem of domestic poverty might never be completely solved, but it can be significantly reduced. However, for that to happen, our leaders must do a serious reality check and adjust their priorities. Our government cannot continue to be a government of, by, and for the wealthy elite and their oil interests. We must resurrect the vision of our founding fathers, in which the United States of America is a government of, by, and for the people. All people.
Until then, the middle class may well continue to shrink, and more and more ordinary Americans may well find themselves struggling to make ends meet.
The change must start now. By the 2006 mid-term elections, it will be too late for so many poor children.
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http://www.maryshawonline.com
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She currently serves as Philadelphia Area Coordinator for Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed in this article are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail mary@maryshawonline.com.
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John Plunkett
The Guardian
Thursday November 24, 2005
Rupert Murdoch has forecast a gloomy future for newspapers with the growth of the internet, saying he doesn't know "anybody under the age of 30 who has ever looked at a classified ad".
The owner of the Sun, Times, Sunday Times and the News of the World, who once described newspaper classified advertising revenue as providing "rivers of gold", now says: "Sometimes rivers dry up".
"This is a generational thing; we've been talking about a 15- or 20-year slide on this," the News Corp chairman and chief executive tells trade paper Press Gazette in a rare interview.
"Certainly I don't know anybody under 30 who has ever looked at a classified advertisement in a newspaper. With broadband they do more and more transactions online."
But Mr Murdoch denies he has been forced into "panic buying" internet companies because of falling ad revenues. At a conference last month, the WPP group chief executive, Sir Martin Sorrell, accused Mr Murdoch of buying web operations "willy nilly".
"There's no panic, and there was certainly no overpayment," he says. "It was a very careful strategy to go for the two biggest community sites for people under 30. If you take the number of page views in the US, we are the third biggest presence on the internet already.
"Now we're not the most profitable, or anything like it; we have a huge amount of work ahead to get that whole thing right. And we're working very hard to keep improving."
News Corp began its $1bn new media spending spree in July when it bought myspace.com parent company Intermix.
Fox Media Interactive, a News Corp subsidiary, bought US online and magazine sports publisher Scout Media and online video gaming company IGN Entertainment.
And UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB, in which News Corp is the largest shareholder, paid £221m for broadband outfit Easynet.
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Raw Story
John Byrne
November 24 2005
“I requested the Pentagon's FOIA request logs because I believed that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller may have filed FOIA requests, and I was curious to know what she and other New York Times journalists had FOIAed,” Petrelis said. “The best to way to learn about any FOIA requests from either New York Times reporters or other journalists was to simply FOIA the FOIA logs.”
According to the logs, Miller made no FOIA requests of the Pentagon.
A listing of all requests made of the Pentagon under the Freedom of Information Act since 2000, acquired by RAW STORY, provides new insight into the aggressiveness of American news agencies.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the public can request records of government agencies. Records seen as jeopardizing national security or individual rights are typically exempted. All requests are public.
The request for a list of all who made inquiries of the Pentagon was filed by Michael Petrelis (http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/, a San Francisco-based activist and blogger. He provided a copy to RAW STORY, which will be released in full next week.
The Pentagon’s records reveal that the law is broadly used—more than 10,000 requests have been made since 2000. But they also illuminate a seeming dearth of curiosity by news organizations about the internal files of the U.S. military establishment.
This lack of curiosity appears particularly evident among the nation’s three largest newspapers.
In total, the three papers with daily circulations greater than one million--USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times -- made just 36 requests of the Pentagon between 2000 and February 2005. USA Today made nine; the Journal, six; and the Times, 21.
The Associated Press, the nation’s most widely used wire service, made 73 requests. Two other AP reporters made a handful of requests not identified by their employer.
Leading print newspapers was the Los Angeles Times, with 42 inquiries. The Times recently ditched its national edition and announced last week it would lay off 85 newsroom staffers. Following the LA Times was the Washington Post, with 34—just shy of the total requests made by the three largest U.S. newspapers combined.
The largest television networks made slightly fewer requests than the top print outlets.
CBS News led the pack with 32 queries; Fox News followed with 22; and NBC News just was shy of that with 21. Fox—a frequent target of the left—filed more requests than the New York Times. CNN, the most-watched 24 hour news channel, made just 11 inquiries.
What they requested
The New York Times requested “epidemiology and ecology reports” from Utah, information on Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s holdings, and information for plans on biological attacks on Cuba and mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq.
The Washington Post went after an “ethics agreement” made between Rumsfeld and the Defense Department’s ethics group, Rumsfeld’s travel records, Clinton’s meetings with Indonesian president Suharto, and conversations of erstwhile Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The Los Angeles Times sought information regarding defense contractors, alleged Iraq ties to Al-Qaeda, President George W. Bush’s National Guard service, payroll information for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and Defense Department contracts with public relations firms.
Fox News’ requests included audio and video of U.S. attacks on Iraq, footage on freed Private Jessica Lynch, an accidental bombing by “U.S. A-10 aircraft of British troops,” and reports of civilian casualties in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
CNN mostly went after images and video of U.S. ships and aircraft attacks. A reporter also made a request for all video related to the Sept. 11, 2001 Pentagon attack.
CBS sought information related to Navy Pilot Michael Spiecher, a U.S. pilot killed in the Gulf War, research on a “human brain research lab” involved in “brain fingerprinting,” charge sheets for those accused of prisoner abuse, and material on Jesse Jackon’s travel as a special human rights envoy to Africa.
Other requestors, request areas
The largest individual requestor was the National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute and library based at George Washington University.
The Archive filed 895 requests, representing about 8.4 percent of the total, considerably more inquiries than the 20 largest U.S. newspapers and all major television and cable news networks combined.
The group’s spokesperson had left for the Thanksgiving holiday and could not be reached for comment.
A sampling of the group’s requests: records regarding U.S. drug policy in Latin America, declassified atomic energy commission files, information on Indian affairs in the 1960s, reports and briefing papers on an alleged X-ray rocket interceptor program under Reagan, and any information on China’s nuclear program.
Also among top FOIA watchdogs are the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog. Both groups filed more than 50 requests.
The man who FOIAed the FOIAs
Michael Petrelis, who obtained the FOIA logs, said his initial request was tied to former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who left after coming under fire by her own reporters for questionable reporting on weapons of mass destruction and her role in the CIA leak case.
“I requested the Pentagon's FOIA request logs because I believed that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller may have filed FOIA requests, and I was curious to know what she and other New York Times journalists had FOIAed,” Petrelis said. “The best to way to learn about any FOIA requests from either New York Times reporters or other journalists was to simply FOIA the FOIA logs.”
According to the logs, Miller made no FOIA requests of the Pentagon.
He said he was surprised at the speed at which the Pentagon got back to him with the list.
“I expected an acknowledgement letter from the Pentagon and a vague promise to search their files. To my surprise, in less than three weeks after filing my FOIA request, the Pentagon mailed me five years worth of FOIA logs.”
Petrelis cheered the media’s filings and said he hoped news organizations would expand their inquiries.
“It's great that mainstream media outlets are filing hundreds of FOIA requests with the Pentagon every year,” he remarked. “I would ask that reporters not only continue doing so, but that they increase the number of requests.”
RAW STORY will release the complete FOIA logs next week, providing a fuller breakdown of what was requested. This is the first in a series of articles analyzing the requests.
For the purpose of this article, RAW STORY counted the number of times groups came up by name as having made requests. Individuals at these groups may have also made requests without identifying their organizations; for example, this happened a handful of times with the Associated Press. Because of the sheer size of the logs, checking by individual names would be wholly impractical.
Following is a document which includes the requests from many major U.S. media organizations for the period in question, starting in fiscal year 2000 and running through Feb. 2005.
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By David Usborne in New York
Published: 23 November 2005
While he has yet to discuss the specifics of his next venture, he has hinted at an interactive website on which users could decide which parts of the news really matter to them and even report some of it themselves.
"Things need to change," he said. "The big issue in the US is that newspapers are afraid to talk truth to power. The White House press corps don't speak the truth to power - they are frightened to lose access they don't have anyway."
The White House press corps seems to enrage him especially. "No one is taking their job seriously there," he recently remarked. "Now it could be that they could be under a directive to not do so. We don't know. I've spoken to a lot of journalists who are very frustrated."
The internet entrepreneur Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist site provided a hugely successful free alternative to classified advertising, has trained his sights on the old-fashioned newspaper industry.
Mr Newmark - whose craigslist.org is the seventh-most visited internet site in America, just after eBay - has diverted millions of dollars of advertising revenue away from newspapers.
At a seminar at the Said Business School at Oxford University this week, Mr Newmark rehearsed his new media paradigm: the combination of improving Web technology and a popular groundswell of distrust for reporters - especially, he says, because of ill- informed reporting of the Iraq war and its build-up - means that ordinary people are ready to take over the newsroom.
Mr Newmark said that he expects to launch a project in the coming weeks to harness the "wisdom of the masses" that has fuelled his advertising site and apply it to daily journalism.
The success of Craigslist means that when Mr Newmark talks, the newspaper business would do well to listen. In the San Francisco area alone, it is reckoned he has denied local newspapers about $50m (£29m) in classified advertising revenue annually. The site makes a modest income, charging only for recruitment ads in big markets like New York. Everything else is free. There are sites for almost every major US city and 35 international cities including London.
While he has yet to discuss the specifics of his next venture, he has hinted at an interactive website on which users could decide which parts of the news really matter to them and even report some of it themselves.
"Things need to change," he said. "The big issue in the US is that newspapers are afraid to talk truth to power. The White House press corps don't speak the truth to power - they are frightened to lose access they don't have anyway."
Some observers expect Mr Newmark to make a bid for wikipedia.com, an encyclopedia site that explicitly invites users to contribute with their own definitions and descriptions. Mr Newmark may have it in mind to transform the site into a huge cyber-based community news forum. "I do think professional and citizen journalism will blur together," he predicts, "because we will find that some amateurs are as talented as a professional journalist."
The White House press corps seems to enrage him especially. "No one is taking their job seriously there," he recently remarked. "Now it could be that they could be under a directive to not do so. We don't know. I've spoken to a lot of journalists who are very frustrated."
Part of the problem lies with the newspapers themselves. The race for dollars, he insists, has obscured the race for truth. "They're being run as profit centres, and they're trying to get pretty high profit margins. As a result, investigative reporting has been seen as a problem."
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by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 24, 2005
One of the first times electronic voting machines were used, in the 1988 New Hampshire presidential primary, former CIA director George Herbert Walker Bush pulled off a stunning and unpredicted upset. The last poll before that primary showed Senator Bob Dole winning with 8 percentage points. Bush won by 9 points, a startling 17-point shift. Bush’s e-voting victory allowed him to claim the White House and paved the way for his son to become the United States’ chief executive.
Massive Election Day irregularities are emerging in reports from all over Ohio after the introduction of Diebold's electronic voting in nearly half of the Buckeye State’s counties. A recently released report by the non-partisan General Accountability Office warned of such problems with electronic voting machines.
E-voting machine disasters
Prior to the 2005 election, electronic voting machines from Diebold and other Republican voting machine manufacturers were newly installed in 41 of Ohio’s 88 counties. The Dayton Daily News reported that in Montgomery County, for example, “Some machines began registering votes for the wrong item when voters touched the screen correctly. Those machines had lost their calibration during shipping or installation and had to be recalibrated. . . .”
Steve Harsman, the Director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections (BOE), told the Daily News that the recalibration could be done on site, but poll workers had never performed the task before.
The city of Carlisle, Ohio announced on November 22 that it is contesting the results of the November 8 general election as a result of Montgomery County vote counting problems. Carlisle Mayor Jerry Ellender told the Middletown Journal that the count on the city’s continuing $3.8 million replacement fire levy is invalid “since they are not sure if Carlisle voters received the right ballots on the new electronic voting machines.”
Harsman, according to the Journal, said, “poll workers incorrectly encoded voter cards that are used to bring up the ballots on the electronic machines in precincts in Germantown and Carlisle.”
At least 225 votes were registered for the fire levy in precincts with only 148 registered voters, according to the Journal. In addition, 187 voting machine memory cards were lost for most of election night in Montgomery County, according to the Dayton Daily News.
In Lucas County, election results appeared more than 13 hours after the close of polls. The Toledo Blade cited “‘frightened’ poll workers,” intimidated by the new “touch-screen voting machines.”
The Blade found that despite an $87,568 federal grant to the Lucas County Board of Elections for “voter education and poll worker training . . .” only $1,718.65 was spent from the grant.
The Blade also reported that ten days after the 2005 election, “Fourteen touch-screen voting machines have sat unattended in the central hallway at the University of Toledo Scott Park Campus.” The GAO report warned that touch-screen machines are easily hacked and should be kept secure at all times.
In Miami County, the Board of Elections fired the Deputy Director, Diane Miley, following a 20-minute closed-door session reviewing the November 8, 2005 general election.
The Free Press had reported that in the 2004 presidential election, Miami County was cited in the seminal Moss v. Bush election challenge case. The county was specifically cited for an early morning influx of 19,000 additional votes, mostly for Bush, after 100% of the vote had been reported.
The AP reported additional irregularities in the 2005 election in Ohio. In Wood County, election results were not posted until 6:23 a.m. after poll workers at four polling places accidentally selected the wrong option on voting machines preventing the machine memory cards from being automatically uploaded, according to the Board of Elections Deputy Director Debbie Hazard.
In five counties – Brown, Crawford, Jackson, Jefferson and Marion – using Diebold machines, there were problems with the counting of absentee ballots as a result of “the width of the ballot,” the AP reported.
In Scioto County, the vote count was not finished until 4:30 a.m.. Board of Elections Director Steve Mowery informed the Portsmouth Daily Times that, as a result of machines undergoing insufficient testing and absentee problems, things went “poorly.”
Many counties used “roving employees” assigned to pick up memory cards from voting machines. In Lucas County, these “rovers” traveled “to multiple locations before delivering the cards to the election office at Governmental Center.” The polls closed at 7:30 p.m. but, “The final memory cards were delivered to the Board of Elections office just before midnight,” according to WTOL Channel 11 News, Toledo.
Toledo’s WTOL Channel 11 News posed the simple question: “Did the delay in returning memory cards to the election office open the door to possible vote fraud?”
Amidst these massive glitches, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who personally negotiated the deal for the Diebold machines that he called the “best in the nation,” insisted through his spokesperson Carlo LaParo that “The new touch-screen systems went well.”
Odd results for election reform initiatives
The Reform Ohio Now (RON) campaign saw polls throughout the state showing two of its four election reform to be passing easily. Both the Columbus Dispatch and University of Akron Bliss Institute polls predicted victories for Issue 2 and Issue 3, only to see them go down to sudden and statistically unexplainable defeat. Issue 2 allowed for early voting in Ohio and Issue 3 reduced the amount of money an individual can give a candidate from $10,000 to $2,000. Both were predicted to pass with 59% and 61% of the vote, respectively.
The Bliss Institute of Applied Politics’ survey was completed on October 20 at the University of Akron Survey Research Center, and found that Issue 2 seemed likely to win approval with more than three-fifths of likely voters.
The Dispatch mail-in poll was completed on Thursday Nov. 3, just prior to Election Day. The Dispatch poll is so accurate, that at least two academic studies have been published about it in the Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ). The first paper documents that the Dispatch poll between 1980-1984 was far more accurate than telephone polling. The study showed the Dispatch error rate at only 1.6 percentage points versus phone error rates of 5%. A companion study published in POQ in 2000 dealt specifically with the question of statewide referenda. A quote from the study: "The average error for the Dispatch forecast of these referenda was 5.4 percentage points, compared to 7.2 percentage points for the telephone surveys."
The academic study concluded that the Dispatch's mail survey outperformed telephone surveys for both referenda and candidate's races.
The fact that the Dispatch was nearly 30 points off in predicting the "YES" vote on Issue 3 should raise concerns.
Dispatch Associate Publisher Mike Curtin shrugged off the worst polling performance since the infamous Literary Digest predicted that Alf Landon would beat FDR in 1936. In an email obtained by the Free Press, Curtin told California voting rights activist Sheri Myers, “There is no evidence of any irregularities in Ohio’s 2005 voting results.” Curtin, according to election attorney Cliff Arnebeck, had also dismissed anyone who raises issues about Ohio’s 2004 presidential election results as “conspiracy theorists.”
Curtin co-authored the scholarly papers on the Dispatch’s legendary polling accuracy. Editorially, the Dispatch has not endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
Curtin pleaded with the voting rights activists, “Please don’t buy into the conspiracy theories without any shred of evidence.” Curtin did not deal with the specifics about how the polling, which he was so proud of, was up to 40 points off on certain issues for the first time ever. In another email explaining the unprecedented Dispatch polling debacle, Dispatch Editor Darrel Rowland told a Tribune Media Services columnist that, “I also can’t imagine voting technology is to blame, when both Democrats and Republicans are involved in every crucial step of the way.”
Under oath testimony at public hearings sponsored by the Free Press after the 2004 presidential election revealed that election workers admit that they have little or no knowledge of how e-voting technology works and are totally reliant on private vendors for vote counting inside the “black box.” Ohio’s other major newspapers routinely suggest what Rowland “can’t imagine.”
Rowland did note that despite the Dispatch’s recent embracing of its unprecedented incompetence at polling that, “Over the years we have found that the people who return our mail poll are likely voters – the holy grail in political polls. Our track record in gauging public opinion in this state regarded as a national political bellwether is unparalleled.
Don McTigue, the attorney for RON, told the Free Press that Blackwell had issued a ruling barring RON volunteers from the county vote counting rooms on election eve. McTigue and the RON volunteers had filled out a request form to view the counting eleven days prior to Election Day, but Blackwell had added a new form to verify which group was representing the issues. This new form was not filled out, McTigue admits.
Matt Damschroder, the Franklin County Board of Elections Director, allowed the RON observers in anyway, despite their being barred from the vote counting rooms in other counties.
This is the second straight election in which the polling organizations were spectacularly wrong in Ohio. In the 2004 election, the media consortium exit polls, as well as the Harris and Zogby polls, all declared Kerry the winner on Election Day.
Democracy in jeopardy
One of the first times electronic voting machines were used, in the 1988 New Hampshire presidential primary, former CIA director George Herbert Walker Bush pulled off a stunning and unpredicted upset. The last poll before that primary showed Senator Bob Dole winning with 8 percentage points. Bush won by 9 points, a startling 17-point shift. Bush’s e-voting victory allowed him to claim the White House and paved the way for his son to become the United States’ chief executive.
Diebold electronic voting machines use non-transparent, proprietary software to count the votes. Diebold’s CEO Wally O’Dell is one of President Bush’s major donors and fundraisers.
Election Day news coverage from the 41 counties that adopted Diebold touch-screen machines makes it clear that poll worker ignorance about how to use the high-tech equipment and machine glitches were widespread problems in 2005. Diebold technicians in many areas were key in producing the final vote results.
Use of e-voting machines has resulted in two elections with improbable results in Ohio, with potentially catastrophic outcomes for American democracy – especially if they are ignored.
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Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at www.freepress.org and at www.harveywasserman.com, and, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, to be published by the New Press in 2006.
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Alan Travis in Brussels
Friday November 25, 2005
The Guardian
UK closing in on levels seen in American cities
Deaths involving drug double in three years
Although the use of cocaine in Britain is approaching American levels, there have not been the same kind of crack cocaine "epidemics" that have been a feature of some US cities.
Britain is now top of the European "league table" for cocaine abuse and is fast approaching levels seen in America, according to the EU's drug agency. Nearly 12% of all young adults under the age of 35 in Britain have tried the drug at least once.
But the arrival of cocaine as the "stimulant drug of choice" for many young Europeans is bringing in its wake a growing death toll and health problems as it spreads from middle class dinner tables to the backstreets of council estates.
In Britain the latest figures show that drug deaths involving cocaine have risen from 85 in 2000 to 171 in 2003.
The EU's experts believe that these figures underestimate the situation as there is a serious under-reporting of cocaine-related deaths with the drug playing "a determining role" in around 10% of all drug deaths. Mixing cocaine with alcohol leads to a sharp increase in its toxicity.
The annual report of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction on the state of the drugs problem, published yesterday, confirms that the high levels of drug abuse in England and Wales mean that the countries remain at or near the top of the European table for cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy.
But the depressing message is that rising drug use in Spain, the Czech Republic and France means Britain is no longer alone in facing such widespread drug abuse among its younger generation.
In overall terms, some 9 million Europeans have tried cocaine at some time, an astonishing 62 million have smoked cannabis, and 2.6 million have taken ecstasy. The report also warns that cannabis is no longer just a weekend "recreational drug" but is now being used on an intensive daily basis on a large scale with unknown public health implications.
The drugs agency voices concern about the growing popularity across Europe of naturally occurring hallucinogens, such as "magic mushrooms" or "crazy mushrooms" as they are called in parts of eastern Europe. In nine EU countries, including France, Germany and Italy they are now more popular than ecstasy. Magic mushrooms became illegal in the UK earlier this year.
The sharp rise in use of cocaine in Britain took place between 1996 and 2000 but it has since stabilised at the much higher level with a more moderate increase in the last few years.
The EU drug agency's report says that nearly 12% of 15- to 34-year-olds in Britain say they have tried cocaine at least once with 4% saying they have used it in the last month. The only other European country that comes even close to this level is Spain, where 8% of under-35s have tried the once-glamorous drug.
The EU agency says these estimates are now approaching levels of cocaine abuse experienced in the US, fuelling worries that cocaine is establishing itself as the stimulant drug of choice for many young people in parts of Europe.
The agency's director, Wolfgang Gotz, said: "Cocaine is now becoming a street drug and not just part of higher levels of society and has to be dealt with in this way. It needs to be taken much more seriously than it has up until now."
A Home Office spokeswoman claimed that the latest British Crime Survey figures showed cocaine use had stabilised and cannabis use had fallen slightly in the last year. "We are not complacent about drugs or the damage and misery they cause," she said.
But latest Customs figures show that the amount of cocaine seized in the EU nearly doubled between 2002 and 2003 from 47 to 90 tonnes, suggesting that Europe is now a major market for the drug. Most is imported from South America through Spain and the Netherlands with some African and Caribbean countries used as transit zones.
Although the use of cocaine in Britain is approaching American levels, there have not been the same kind of crack cocaine "epidemics" that have been a feature of some US cities.
The report says the number of crack cocaine users in Britain is low and concentrated in a few major urban areas and among socially disadvantaged minority ethnic groups. Two-thirds of black people seeking drug treatment in London are crack cocaine users. However, the EU drugs agency suggests that the central feature of European patterns of drug abuse is "polydrug" use, including the interaction between illicit drugs and alcohol.
There are, however, some encouraging signs. Over half a million problem heroin and other opiate drug abusers across Europe are now receiving some form of substitution treatment - usually methadone - under what was once called "the British system" before it was discouraged by the Thatcher government in the 1980s. But while heroin treatment has been a success story, treatment programmes for other drugs including cocaine and cannabis remain underdeveloped.
The report also says there is a growing trend across Europe to offer treatment instead of prison for convicted drug addicts.
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November 24, 2005
CNN
An execution once every 10 days since moratorium lifted
"Let's do it."
With those last words, convicted killer Gary Gilmore ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States, an age of busy death chambers that will likely see its 1,000th execution in the coming days.
After a 10-year moratorium, Gilmore in 1977 became the first person executed following a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that validated state laws to reform the capital punishment system. Since then, 997 prisoners have been executed, and next week, the 998th, 999th and 1,000th are scheduled to die.
Robin Lovitt, 41, will likely be the one to earn that macabre distinction next Wednesday. He was convicted of fatally stabbing a man with scissors during a 1998 pool hall robbery in Virginia.
Ahead of Lovitt on death row are Eric Nance, scheduled to be executed Monday in Arkansas, and John Hicks, scheduled to be executed Tuesday in Ohio. Both executions appear likely to proceed.
Gilmore was executed before a Utah firing squad, after a record of petty crime, killing of a motel manager and suicide attempts in prison. His life was the basis for a TV miniseries and Norman Mailer's book, "The Executioner's Song."
While his case was well-known, most people today probably couldn't name even one of the more than 3,400 prisoners -- including 118 foreign nationals -- on death row in the U.S. In the last 28 years, the U.S. has executed on average one person every 10 days.
The focus of the debate on capital punishment was once the question of whether it served as a deterrent to crime. Today, the argument is more on whether the government can be trusted not to execute an innocent person.
Thomas Hill, an attorney for a death row inmate in Ohio who recently won a second stay of execution, thinks the answer is obvious.
"We have a criminal system that makes mistakes. If you accept that proposition, that means you have to be prepared for the inevitability that some are sentenced to death for crimes they didn't commit," Hill said.
But advocates of the death penalty argue that its opponents are elitist liberals who are ignoring the real victims.
"Since 1999, we've had 100,000 innocent people murdered in the U.S., but nobody is planning on commemorating all those people killed," said Michael Paranzino, president of Throw Away the Key, a group that supports the death penalty.
The race factor
Race also is a key question in the debate. Since 1976, 58 percent of those executed in the U.S. were white while 34 percent were black, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But non-Latino whites make up 75 percent of the U.S. population, while non-Latino blacks comprise just over 12 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Some supporters say ending the death penalty would be harmful to poor minorities, who are disproportionately murder victims.
"Increasingly violent crime is primarily for the working class folks, poor people and people of color," Paranzino said.
Opponents of capital punishment also point to the unfair role of class and race in death penalty cases.
"The race of the victims has a lot to do with who winds up getting executed," said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the New York-based Innocence Project, a legal clinic that seeks to exonerate inmates through DNA testing. "There is tremendous arbitrariness to the death penalty."
Death sentences nationwide have dropped by 50 percent since the late 1990s, with actual executions down by 40 percent, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Twelve states do not have the death penalty, and at least two states -- Illinois and New Jersey -- have formal moratoriums on capital punishment, according to the center.
An October Gallup poll showed 64 percent of Americans support use of the death penalty. But that is the lowest level in 27 years, down from a high of 80 percent in 1994.
Still, some powerful political forces are looking to speed up the trying and executing of prisoners. Both houses of the U.S. Congress are considering bills that would lessen the ability of defendants in capital cases to appeal to federal courts.
Proponents of the legislation say such appeals add up to 15 years to the process of executing a prisoner. Detractors say the law will not allow federal courts to review most cases and will result in innocent people being put to death.
Executing the innocent?
Since 1973, 122 prisoners have been freed from death row. The vast majority of those cases came during the last 15 years, since the use of DNA evidence became widespread. While there is no official proof an innocent person has been executed, opponents of the death penalty say the number of prisoners whose convictions have been reversed should fuel skepticism.
"I don't think any rational person seriously examining the evidence can have any confidence that an innocent hasn't already been executed," said Scheck.
Using post-conviction DNA evidence, the Innocence Project has helped in more than half of the 163 cases vacated -- 14 of which were from death row. "We've demonstrated that there are too many innocent people on death row," Scheck said.
But that argument does not impress Charles Rosenthal, district attorney for Harris County, Texas, which has sent more prisoners to the death chamber -- 85 -- than any other U.S. county and all but two states, Texas and Virginia, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice statistics.
"I don't know about every death penalty case in Texas, but I feel quite sure that no one that this office has had anything to do with was factually innocent," Rosenthal said.
Scheck believes Rosenthal's claim is based "more on faith than fact." He noted that the police DNA lab in Houston has been shut down since 2002 because an investigation found problems with poor training and contaminated evidence.
"What kind of confidence can you have when the jurisdiction that executes more people than any other is fraught with unreliable testing results?" Scheck said.
Questions raised
In at least two cases, questions are being raised about whether an innocent person was put to death. In St. Louis, Missouri, Larry Griffin was convicted for the 1980 fatal shooting of a 19-year-old drug dealer, Quintin Moss. He was executed in 1995. His conviction largely rested on the testimony of a career criminal who was in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Now, a policeman whose testimony backed up the criminal's story says the man was lying, and Moss' own family thinks Griffin was innocent.
In Texas, the case of Ruben Cantu, who was executed in 1993, also is receiving attention. Cantu was convicted in 1985 of killing a man and wounding another during a robbery attempt that happened the previous year, when he was 17. A decade after his execution, however, the only witness in the case and Cantu's co-defendant have both come forward to say he was innocent. (Full story)
In St. Louis, City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce has led a review of 1,400 cases to see if DNA evidence can prove the guilt or innocence of those convicted. With only 12 cases left to review, evidence led to the exoneration of just three men, none of whom were on death row.
"Most of the time there is testing, it confirms the guilt of the defendant," Joyce said.
Virginia Gov. Mark Warner is examining Lovitt's case, and could decide whether or not to grant clemency over the weekend. It would be the only likely way Lovitt could avoid execution. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reconsider the case.
DNA tests on the scissors used in the stabbing were inconclusive, and the scissors were later thrown away because of a lack of storage space. One of his lawyers, former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, said though he supports the death penalty in principle, it should not apply to Lovitt for reasons "including -- above all right now -- the destruction of the DNA evidence."
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November 24, 2005
CNN
'Presumed Guilty' by Matthew Daltondue to hit bookstores next month
Dalton was employed with Geragos & Geragos during the early stages of the Peterson case. He was removed after violating a judge's order not to speak with the media. In an August 2003 conversation with reporters, Dalton floated a human-sacrifice theory in the killing of Peterson's wife, Laci.
Geragos said Dalton left before Peterson's preliminary hearing and has not seen many of the documents that were filed in the case. He also does not have permission to reveal any information about Peterson.
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Scott Peterson is attempting to halt publication of a book written by a lawyer who was kicked off his case for violating a judge's gag order.
A Superior Court judge declined to grant a request for emergency relief during a hearing Wednesday, likely pushing the case before an appellate court next week, Peterson's attorney, Mark Geragos, said Wednesday night.
"We're seeking appellate relief to prevent a lawyer who was employed for the briefest of times from capitalizing on that employment and violating his oath as a lawyer," Geragos told The Associated Press.
Matthew Dalton was employed with Geragos & Geragos during the early stages of the Peterson case. He was removed after violating a judge's order not to speak with the media. In an August 2003 conversation with reporters, Dalton floated a human-sacrifice theory in the killing of Peterson's wife, Laci.
Peterson was sentenced to death for the 2002 murder of his pregnant wife and their unborn son. His lawyers did not pursue the human-sacrifice defense at trial. His case is on automatic appeal.
Dalton's book, "Presumed Guilty," is scheduled for publication December 13 by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The book's subtitle is "What the jury never knew about Laci Peterson's murder and why Scott Peterson should not be on death row."
Messages left after hours for Dalton and Simon & Schuster officials were not immediately returned.
Geragos said Dalton left before Peterson's preliminary hearing and has not seen many of the documents that were filed in the case. He also does not have permission to reveal any information about Peterson.
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AP
Nov 24 3:28 PM US/Eastern
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Gov. Bill Richardson is coming clean on his draft record - the baseball draft, that is, admitting that his claim to have been a pick of the Kansas City A's in 1966 was untrue.
For nearly four decades, Richardson, often mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate, has maintained he was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics.
The claim was included in a brief biography released when Richardson successfully ran for Congress in 1982. A White House news release in 1997 mentioned it when he was about to be named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And several news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported it as fact over the years.
But an investigation by the Albuquerque Journal found no record of Richardson being drafted by the A's, who have since moved to Oakland, or any other team.
Informed by the newspaper of its findings, the governor acknowledged the error in a story in Thursday's editions.
"After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter ... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's," he said.
Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos declined to comment when reached by the AP on Thursday.
Richardson, a right-handed pitcher who played at Tufts University, said he was actively scouted by several major league teams in the 1960s.
He insisted his name appeared on "a draft list of some kind" created by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates. He named team scouts, whom he said told him that he "would or could" be drafted. The scouts have since died.
Richardson later developed arm trouble, eliminating any possible pro career.
In the summer of 1967, he played for the amateur Cape Cod League's Cotuit (Mass.) Kettleers. The words "Drafted by K.C." appear next to his name on a faded team program, the Journal reported.
"When I saw that program in 1967, I was convinced I was drafted," Richardson said. "And it stayed with me all these years."
Then-general manager Arnold Mycock said the biographical information was supplied by players or their college coaches.
On a biographical sheet Richardson completed for Tufts in his junior year, he wrote, "Drafted by Kansas City (1966), LA (1968)." He said he wrote those words because he believed they were true.
"I never tried to embellish this," he said. "I never tried to mask it."
Richardson, elected governor in 2002, is seeking a second term next year.
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AP
Fri Nov 25, 5:25 AM ET
DENVER - Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.
"If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses — because that goes straight to the bottom line — then I hope I can help the country in some way," Brown told the Rocky Mountain News for its Thursday editions.
Brown said officials need to "take inventory" of what's going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.
In the aftermath of the hurricane, critics complained about Brown's lack of formal emergency management experience and e-mails that later surfaced showed him as out of touch with the extent of the devastation.
The lawyer admits that while he was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency mistakes were made in the response to Katrina. He also said he had been planning to quit before the hurricane hit.
"Hurricane Katrina showed how bad disasters can be, and there's an incredible need for individuals and businesses to understand how important preparedness is," he said.
Brown said companies already have expressed interested in his consulting business, Michael D. Brown LLC. He plans to run it from the Boulder area, where he lived before joining the Bush administration in 2001.
"I'm doing a lot of good work with some great clients," Brown said. "My wife, children and my grandchild still love me. My parents are still proud of me."
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Increase blamed on fossil fuel use since 19th century
Cut in greenhouse gases futile, researchers say
Ed Brook, a climate scientist at Oregon State University said the rise in greenhouse gases ... was a stark indication of the influence industry was having on the environment.
Global warming is doubling the rate of sea level rise around the world, but attempts to stop it by cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be futile, leading researchers will warn today.
The oceans will rise nearly half a metre by the end of the century, forcing coastlines back by hundreds of metres, the researchers claim. Scientists believe the acceleration is caused mainly by the surge in greenhouse gas emissions produced by the development of industry and introduction of fossil fuel burning.
Today's warning comes from US researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey who analysed cores drilled from different sites along the eastern seaboard. By drilling down 500 metres through layers of different sediments and using chemical dating techniques, the scientists were able to work out where beaches and dry land were over the past 100m years.
The analysis showed that during the past 5,000 years, sea levels rose at a rate of around 1mm each year, caused largely by the residual melting of icesheets from the previous ice age. But in the past 150 years, data from tide gauges and satellites show sea levels are rising at 2mm a year.
"The main thing that has happened since the 19th century and the beginning of the modern observation has been the widespread increase in fossil fuel use and more greenhouse gases," said Professor Kenneth Miller, who led the study. "We can say the increase we're seeing is much higher than we've seen in the immediate past and it is due to humans."
The rising tide is expected to make oceans 40cm higher by 2100. "This is going to cause more beach erosion. Beaches are going to move back and houses will be destroyed," he said. Rising sea levels will also add to the destructive power of storm surges triggered by hurricanes such as Katrina which battered New Orleans and surrounding areas this year.
The research, published in the US journal Science, comes a week before the countries that embraced the Kyoto protocol meet for the first time in Montreal to discuss future agreements for cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions further. While Britain has adopted the protocol, the government has suggested that voluntary targets rather than the mandatory cuts demanded by Kyoto could be a more practical way to trim greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Prof Miller, there is little chance of slowing the rising tide caused by global warming. "There's not much one can do about sea level rise. It's clear that even if we strictly obeyed the Kyoto accord, it's still going to continue to warm. Personally, I don't think we're going to affect CO2 emissions enough to make a difference, no matter what we do. The Bush administration should stop asking whether temperatures are globally rising and admit the scientific fact that they are, but then turn the question around politically and say: 'We can't really do anything about this on any kind of cost basis at all'," he said.
In two further studies, also published in Science, a team of German researchers put figures on the extent to which the climate is warming compared with any time during the past 650,000 years. They report that levels of the most ubiquitous greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, are rising 200 times faster than could be caused by any natural process. Carbon dioxide levels are now 380 parts per million, some 27% higher and methane levels 130% higher than at any time over the period they analysed.
The researchers measured levels of greenhouse gases locked into a core of ice drilled from Antarctica. At more than 3km long, the ice core holds pockets of air that were in the earth's atmosphere from nearly 1m years ago until the present day.
The cores are the best record left on the planet of the earth's environmental history. By analysing the gases locked up in 10cm chunks of ice, the researchers can reconstruct the gases that made up the atmosphere at any time from present day until before the four previous ice ages.
"If you really want to make a case for global warming, you just have to look at the past 1,000 years, because the current increase in carbon dioxide stands out dramatically," said lead author Dr Thomas Stocker at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland.
Ed Brook, a climate scientist at Oregon State University said the rise in greenhouse gases ... was a stark indication of the influence industry was having on the environment. "The levels of primary greenhouse gases such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are up dramatically since the industrial revolution, at a speed and magnitude that the earth has not seen in hundreds of thousands of years. There is now no question this is due to human influence."
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By Usha Lee McFarling, Times Staff Writer
A nearly two-mile-long core of ice -- the oldest frozen sample ever drilled from the underbelly of Antarctica -- shows that levels of two greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, have not been as high as they are today for 650,000 years.
A nearly two-mile-long core of ice -- the oldest frozen sample ever drilled from the underbelly of Antarctica -- shows that levels of two greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, have not been as high as they are today for 650,000 years.
The new research, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, describes the content of the greenhouse gases within the core and shows that carbon dioxide levels today are 27% higher than they have been in the past 650,000 years and levels of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, are 130% higher, said Thomas Stocker, a climate researcher at the University of Bern and senior member of the European ice coring team that wrote two new papers based on the core.
The work provides more evidence that human activity since the industrial revolution has dramatically altered the planet's climate system, scientists said. "This is saying, 'Yeah, we had it right.' We can pound on the table harder and say, 'This is real,'" said Richard Alley, a Penn State University geophysicist and expert on ice cores who was not involved with the new analysis.
Previous records, from an ice core drilled at the Russian Antarctic station Vostok, extended back 440,000 years. Extracting and analyzing that core was a major achievement, but the core stopped short of a time period scientists are anxious to study because it was like today's.
Climate scientists called the analysis of the older records spectacular because they are so clear and said they would become "canonical" additions to the climate record.
"It's really important," Ed Brook, an ice core expert at Oregon State University said of the new research. "Those 200,000 years were a lot harder to get than the previous 400,000 -- and those were hard enough."
Ice cores are plugs drilled from glaciers and ice sheets. They are composed of tens of thousands of layers of fallen snow and air bubbles that become compressed over time. Ice cores are among the most powerful tools available to climate scientists. The chemistry of the ice reveals what temperatures were in the distant past, while bubbles within the ice are minuscule time capsules that capture samples of air and greenhouse gases just as they existed hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The ice core was drilled by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica from a high plateau in East Antarctica called Dome C that rises more than two miles above sea level. It is one of driest, coldest parts of the icy southern continent, where summer temperatures can fall to 50 degrees below 0. Temperature records from the core were published in a paper in 2004, and scientists have been waiting for an analysis of the core's gases ever since.
The last time carbon dioxide levels were as high or higher than today was probably tens of millions of years ago, Alley said. Over millions of years, carbon dioxide levels shift because of slow geological processes, like weathering of rocks, swallowing of crust into subduction zones and the release of gases from volcanoes. But these processes are much slower and more gradual than the current rapid increase of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, Alley said.
Scientists are enthusiastic about the ice core because it includes nearly eight full glacial cycles and not just four, as Vostok had. Glacial cycles occur roughly every 100,000 years and include long periods of cold, when ice ages occur and brief, warm interglacial periods, such as the one we live in today. The cycles are controlled by shakes, wobbles and tilts in the Earth's orbit around the sun that determine the amount of sunlight falling on and warming the planet.
The Vostok core showed that warm interglacial periods lasted about 10,000 years. Since our current temperate interglacial period has lasted about 12,000 years, many scientists had speculated that the planet was overdue for the next ice age.
But the new core shows that the interglacial period of 440,000 years ago, when the Earth's position relative to the sun was very similar to what it is today, lasted nearly 30,000 years and was not ended by natural decreases in carbon dioxide, Stocker said. The work suggests that the next ice age is some 15,000 years away.
"Anyone counting on an ice age to head off global warming, or hoping to justify human greenhouse-gas emissions as a useful attempt to head off the next ice age, will find no comfort in the ice-core record," Alley said.
The latest findings also run counter to a theory presented two years ago by William Ruddiman, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, that humans who lived 5,000 or more years ago are responsible for delaying the next age because their activities -- forest clearing and rice growing -- started to raise greenhouse gas levels when they should have been naturally declining.
"This claim can no longer be upheld," said Stocker, because the ice core shows greenhouse gases do not naturally decline after 10,000 years in the longer interglacial periods like today's.
Scientists are eager to look even farther back into earth's climatic past. About a million years ago, the earth shifted from ice age cycles that were 40,000 years long into cycles that were 100,000 years long. This shift from a "40K world to a 100K world" is a major mystery, said Oregon State's Brook, and will require a core that reaches deeper into the ice and much farther back in time.
Brook is co-chairing a joint European and American group that hopes to start drilling in coming years a core that could produce ice and bubbles that are 1.2 to 1.5 million years old.
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November 24, 2005
CNN
Scientists found a 50 by 20 kilometre iceberg that had collided with an underwater peninsula and was slowly scraping around it.
"Once the iceberg stuck fast on the seabed it was like a rock in a river," said scientist Vera Schlindwein. "The water pushes through its crevasses and tunnels at high pressure and the iceberg starts singing."
BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- Scientists monitoring earth movements in Antarctica believe they have found a singing iceberg.
Sound waves from the iceberg had a frequency of around 0.5 hertz, too low to be heard by humans, but by playing them at higher speed the iceberg sounded like a swarm of bees or an orchestra warming up, the scientists said.
The German Alfred Wegener institute for polar and marine research will publish the results of its study, done in 2002, in Science magazine on Friday.
Between July and November 2002 researchers picked up acoustic signals of unprecedented clarity when recording seismic signals to measure earthquakes and tectonic movements on the Ekstroem ice shelf on Antarctica's South Atlantic coast.
Tracking the signal, the scientists found a 50 by 20 kilometre iceberg that had collided with an underwater peninsula and was slowly scraping around it.
"Once the iceberg stuck fast on the seabed it was like a rock in a river," said scientist Vera Schlindwein. "The water pushes through its crevasses and tunnels at high pressure and the iceberg starts singing."
"The tune even goes up and down, just like a real song."
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CNN
Friday, November 25, 2005
BOGOTA, Colombia -- A volcano erupted Thursday in southwestern Colombia, spewing smoke and ash, and raising fears for the safety of nearby villagers, officials said.
Police and emergency officials were on high alert after the 14,110-foot Galeras volcano became active at dawn and dumped heaps of ash on the city of Pasto, 12 miles away.
"It was a brief eruption of ash for 30 minutes that was not preceded by a temblor inside the volcano," said Marta Lucia Calvache of Colombia's Volcanology Institute. "But there is still a thin plume of ash leaving the crater, and we can't rule out the possibility of further eruptions."
The government this month ordered the preventive evacuation of thousands of people living in the shadow of the volcano amid signs of an imminent eruption. But many farmers are believed to have defied the order and stayed behind, fearful of losing their livelihoods by leaving crops unattended.
Calvache urged any families who remain in a wide area surrounding the volcano to leave immediately and seek medical treatment if they have trouble breathing.
"A lot of ash has fallen. We are scooping it up and putting it into plastic bags. There is a strong smell of sulfur in the air," said Yolanda Casas, a Pasto resident wearing protective goggles and a face mask.
Schools and many offices in Pasto were closed for the day.
The Galeras has a long history of activity, fraying nerves in Pasto. More than 100 minor tremors were felt in the city during the volcano's last major eruption, in April 2002, although no damage or injury was reported.
A 1993 eruption killed nine people, including five scientists from around the globe who had descended into the crater to sample gases at the moment it blew.
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Paul Myers
Monday November 25, 1991
The Guardian
For nearly 20 years he was one of the most flamboyant figures on the British rock scene.
Freddie Mercury, rock's showman incarnate, died last night, 24 hours after he confirmed that he was suffering from Aids.
Mercury, lead singer with the band Queen, had become a recluse at his home in Kensington, west London, over the past two years, fuelling speculation that he was suffering from the disease. He was 45.
A brief statement by his publicist, Roxy Meades, said: "Freddie Mercury died peacefully at his home. His death was the result of bronchio-pneumonia, brought on by Aids."
Mercury was born Frederick Bulsara in Zanzibar, the son of a government accountant.
He attended Ealing College of Art, then joined Brian May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor to form Queen in 1971.
Their debut album was Queen in 1973, followed by Queen II a year later, with a single Seven Seas of Rhye, which made the UK charts.
The Sheer Heart Attack album gave them a big hit with Killer Queen. But it was A Night at the Opera which furnished the group with a number one hit.
The seven-minute Bohemian Rhapsody anticipated the pop-video boom of the eighties by being one of the first pop records to be marketed with a promotional film.
Its overblown operatic tones and melodramatic tempo changes came to epitomise the style lampooned by rock critics as pomp rock.
Queen's Greatest Hits remains one of the biggest sellers in rock history.
Singles such as We Are the Champions (which was employed by the Labour Party at its conference this year) and Crazy Little Thing Called Love, plus Mercury's solo efforts such as The Great Pretender, were all hits.
The band played stadium concerts to six-figure audiences all over the world, with the theatrical Mercury taking centre-stage. For nearly 20 years he was one of the most flamboyant figures on the British rock scene, once appearing with 50 sets of false bosoms as he sang I Want To Break Free.
Mercury's after-show parties went on for days and were legendary among those who retained any recollection of them.
As questions began to be asked about his health, he adopted a more sedate lifestyle, which he insisted was more the real Freddie Mercury.
He said: "I'm so powerful on stage that I seem to have created a monster. When I'm performing I'm an extrovert, yet inside I'm a completely different man."
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AP
Thursday, November 24, 2005
CINCINNATI, Ohio -- Wanted posters offering rewards for Jesse James and other outlaws were a common sight in America's Old West. Now a modern twist on that idea is showing up increasingly across the country: wanted billboards.
Many of the billboards, which typically include a suspect's photo or a sketch drawn from witness descriptions, have resulted in tips leading to an arrest.
Eight of the 10 suspects shown on billboards in the Kansas City, Missouri, area have been arrested, seven of them because of the billboards, authorities say.
And police in Passaic, New Jersey, say a billboard was instrumental in catching a man charged in the stabbing death of a police officer's son.
"This is an idea that is working fabulously," said Lt. James Wood, leader of the Major Crimes Unit of the Passaic County prosecutor's office. [...]
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AP
Wed Nov 23, 6:14 PM ET
MARYSVILLE, Wash. - A man being sought in a hit-and-run case was caught in a doghouse by - what else? - a police dog, authorities said.
"Now he's in our doghouse," police Cmdr. Robb Lamoureux said.
Lamoureux said parents began calling police about 7 a.m. Monday as a vehicle rammed numerous cars in a neighborhood while children were getting ready to board a school bus in this town about 30 miles north of Seattle.
The vehicle was gone when police arrived, but officers were summoned again after the vehicle crashed through a fence. A tracking dog led officers to a man in a doghouse and he was arrested and jailed, Lamoureux said.
Todd Aron Fowler, 35, was being held for investigation of hit-and-run driving, second-degree assault and a drug law violation with bail set at $15,000, according to the Snohomish County Jail's Web site.
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Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday November 25, 2005
The Guardian
According to a scientific report, planet Earth's computers are wide open to a virus attack from Little Green Men.
As if spotty teenagers releasing computer viruses on to the internet from darkened rooms were not enough of a headache. According to a scientific report, planet Earth's computers are wide open to a virus attack from Little Green Men.
The concern is raised in the next issue of the journal Acta Astronautica by Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. He believes scientists searching the heavens for signals from extra-terrestrial civilisations are putting Earth's security at risk, by distributing the jumble of signals they receive to computers all over the world.
The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (Seti) project, based at the University of California in Berkeley, uses land-based telescopes to scour the universe for electromagnetic waves. Just as stray radio and TV broadcasts are now zooming away from Earth at the speed of light, the Seti scientists hope to pick up stray signals, or even intentional interplanetary broadcasts, emitted from other civilisations.
All signals picked up by Seti are broken up and sent across the internet to a vast band of volunteers who have signed up for a Seti screensaver, which allows their computers to crunch away at the signals, when they are not at their desks.
So far, the only signals detected are bursts of radiation from stars and a murmur of background noise left over from the big bang. But, says Dr Carrigan, improved telescopes and faster computers mean scientists are ever more likely to detect a signal from extra-terrestrials.
In his report, entitled Do potential Seti signals need to be decontaminated?, he suggests the Seti scientists may be too blase about finding a signal. "In science fiction, all the aliens are bad, but in the world of science, they are all good and simply want to get in touch." His main concern is that, intentionally or otherwise, an extra-terrestrial signal picked up by the Seti team could cause widespread damage to computers if released on to the internet without being checked.
Computer scientists argue that to hack a computer, or write a virus that will infect it, requires a knowledge of how the computer and the software it is running work: a computer on Earth is going to be as alien to the aliens as they would be to us. But Dr Carrigan says there is still a risk.
Rather than dismiss his concerns, Dr Carrigan wants the Seti scientists to build safety features into their network to act as a quarantine so any potentially damaging signals can be trapped before they infect the internet.
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SOTT
November 25, 2005
"Der wahre Weg geht uber ein Seil, das nicht in der Hohe gespannt ist, sondern knapp uber dem Boden. Es scheint mehr bestimmt stolpern zu machen, als begangen zu werden."
"The true way is along a rope that is not crossed high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling rather than to be walked upon."
[Franz Kafka]
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SOTT
On the fourth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Laura Knight-Jadczyk announced the availability of her latest book: 9/11: The Ultimate Truth.
9/11: The Ultimate Truth is the definitive book on the secrets of September 11th. Never before has so much information come together for one purpose, to reveal the hidden agenda of 9/11 and answer the question: Why?
Laura Knight-Jadczyk succeeds in laying open the clandestine
plans behind the attack on America. Revealing for the first time ever the shadowed intent of the P3nt4gon Str!ke, why the Twin Towers were selected, and finally, who was behind it all.
Now you will have the Ultimate Truth!
Published by Red Pill Press
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.
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