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P
I C T U R E O F T H E D
A Y
Truth-Seeking - An Often Solitary Endeavour
Photograph
By John Livingston
YUCAIPA, Calif. - A moderate earthquake
shook most of Southern California Thursday, startling
people and knocking items off shelves and desks, but
there were no immediate reports of significant damage
or injuries.
The early afternoon quake had a magnitude of 4.9 and
was centered near Yucaipa in San Bernardino County,
east of Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological
Survey. About 25 aftershocks
followed in a little over an hour, the strongest estimated
at magnitude 3.5.
Residents reported shaking from Los Angeles to San
Diego and in counties to the east. Rock slides were
reported on Highway 38 in the San Bernardino Mountains.
"All of a sudden I heard a loud rumbling sound,
kind of like thunder," said Nick Brandes, 25, manager
of a store in Yucaipa. "At the front, all the customers
were in a panic. They were all just in a hurry to get
out."
Andrea Cabrera, an employee at the Walgreens drug store
in Yucaipa, said the store "just had a few items
falling, that's all." Customers "were just
stunned, and they just stood there," she said.
The Los Angeles Fire Department received no immediate
reports of major damage, spokesman Brian Humphrey said.
None of
Southern California Edison's 4.6 million customers lost
power.
It was the third significant quake
to hit California this week: A magnitude-5.2 quake shook
Riverside County on Sunday, and a magnitude-7.0 quake
struck Tuesday under the ocean 90 miles off Northern
California.
Thursday's quake occurred near the San Andreas Fault
but not on it, said Lucy Jones, scientist in charge
of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Pasadena. She
said the quake was not a direct aftershock from Sunday's
temblor.
"This is not an unusual level of earthquake activity,"
Jones said of the state's recent quakes.
Channon Kelly, 31, was eating her lunch in downtown
Los Angeles when Thursday's quake hit.
"I almost jumped out of my seat," Kelly said.
"I'm starting to get freaked out. We've had so
many in the last week, the one Sunday and then in Northern
California. I could hear the windows rattling and feel
it all at the same time." |
A 4.9 magnitude earthquake centered
in San Bernardino County rattled a large section of
Southern California on Thursday, the third significant
temblor to hit the state in less than a week.
While the quake did not cause major injuries or damage,
it shook nerves across the region just two days after
a 7.2 quake off the Northern California coast prompted
a tsunami warning and four days after many residents
were jolted awake by a 5.2 quake centered near Anza.
|
A
steam shovel, left, pushes debris off the roadway,
south of Crescent City Calif., March 29, 1964, after
a Tsunami struck causing extensive damage. Coastal
dwellers in far northern California and southern
Oregon knew to take it seriously when tsunami sirens
sounded after a 7.0-magnitude offshore earthquake,
Tuesday, June 14, 2005, and thousands of people
were safely evacuated within minutes. Many here
still remember the 1964 tsunami that killed 15 people
along this stretch of the Pacific Coast. And while
there were no destructive waves after Tuesday night's
temblor, experts Wednesday praised the decision
to announce a tsunami warning for the entire West
Coast - better safe than sorry, they said. (AP Photo/File) |
Then around 11 p.m. Thursday, a quake with a preliminary
magnitude of 6.4 rattled the ocean floor off Northern
California, 125 miles west of Eureka. There were no
immediate reports of damage or injuries.
It was not strong enough to generate a tsunami warning,
a spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey said.
It was, however, probably an aftershock from Tuesday's
quake in the area, she said.
Seismologists said that they found no immediate connection
between the other quakes. But they were studying whether
the Thursday afternoon quake, north of Yucaipa, could
be linked to Sunday's Anza quake because they occurred
25 miles apart.
Officials said Southern California usually experiences
quakes of this magnitude several times a year, but acknowledged
that it's rare for them to occur so close together.
"It is unusual. But we've seen it before,"
said Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton, noting that quakes
often come in clusters over periods of years - a phenomenon
that scientists cannot fully explain.
The series of earthquakes was enough to revive anxious
chatter Thursday of the coming Big One, a massive quake
along the San Andreas fault. Hutton and other experts
said they can understand the concern.
"I can empathize why people feel that," added
Lucy Jones, the scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological
Survey's Southern California office. "We don't
handle randomness well. We like to make patterns. The
chances are we expect two 'fives' in a week once every
10 years. It's been very quiet. During the '80s, we
had earthquakes every day from 1987 to 1994. People
are out of habit. They've been lulled down."
The last time the state experienced a similar earthquake
cluster was 1986, when the Bishop area was hit by a
series of quakes of up to 6.1 in magnitude. Experts
said the biggest concern is that smaller quakes could
trigger large quakes. Thursday's quake occurred along
an as-yet-undetermined "splinter fault" near
the San Andreas.
Seismologists said there was a 1-in-20 chance that
Thursday's quake was a foreshock - a quake that precedes
another quake of magnitude 5 or greater. Such quakes
usually occur within hours of each other, but can occur
as far apart as five days.
"There's a small chance that this was a foreshock,
but it's probably not," Hutton said.
Both this week's Inland Empire quakes occurred near
the San Andreas fault, a wide gouge in the Earth's crust
where tectonic plates grind against each other. Thursday's
quake was centered 8 miles from the fault, while the
Anza quake was roughly 25 miles away, along the San
Jacinto fault.
The San Andreas, long considered by scientists as a
likely source of a catastrophic temblor, has erupted
before, causing the great quake of 1906 that devastated
San Francisco.
The entire San Andreas fault system is more than 800
miles long and extends 10 miles deep. Scientists say
the San Andreas and other faults are storing up energy
that is released in an Earth shuddering explosion when
the plates slip against one another.
Scientists speculate that earthquake clusters result
when energy has been stored for long periods and is
released periodically.
"The biggest earthquakes relieve stress,"
Jones said. "They transfer energy. It relieves
stress out of the Earth. When that happens, the Earth
relaxes and it stops producing so many small earthquakes."
Also this week, a magnitude 7.8 temblor hit Chile on
Monday, killing at least 11 people, and a magnitude
6.8 quake struck the Aleutian Islands off Alaska on
Tuesday. Both were preceded and followed by smaller
quakes.
Some scientists believe one earthquake can shake loose,
or trigger, another nearby or elsewhere in the world.
But officials expressed doubts that the Chile or Aleutian
Islands quakes were related to those in Southern California
because of the distance.
For all their ability to describe the size and location
of quakes, scientists acknowledge that there is still
much they don't know. Some say that the San Andreas
and San Jacinto faults are overdue for large earthquakes,
but they cannot say when.
Thirty years ago, seismologists believed they were
on the cusp of discovering how to predict earthquakes.
Today, few scientists hold out such hope.
"In terms of earthquakes, the question now is:
Will they ever be predictable?" Jones said.
"We know the big picture. But why the earthquake
happened today and not yesterday, or last year, or 10
years ago, we just don't know. We also don't know what
makes them stop."
Many Southland residents find this uncertainty troubling.
"I think this is leading up to the Big One,"
said Mentone resident Cora Embry, who grabbed her young
son and ran from her home when the shaking began Thursday.
"I feel a big earthquake coming. They say there
is no such thing as earthquake weather, but there is."
Thursday's first temblor struck about 1:53 p.m., three
miles northeast of Yucaipa, 72 miles east of downtown
Los Angeles. The quake, which struck roughly eight miles
below ground, triggered rock slides in the San Bernardino
Mountains and injured at least one Lake Arrowhead woman
when it sent a chandelier crashing onto her head.
In areas close to the epicenter, residents described
a shock that almost buckled their knees, caused large
panes of glass to shiver and sent furniture pounding
against the floor.
While seismologists characterized the earthquake as
small - it was strong enough to toss items from shelves
and crack walls, but not big enough to damage buildings
- residents who lived near the epicenter said it seemed
larger.
Redlands resident Susan Mosher was home studying for
the bar exam when her dogs began barking, and the interior
living room wall began cracking.
"We've had a lot of earthquakes
- this is the first one that scared me," Mosher
said.
Residents throughout the Los Angeles Basin felt a quivering.
Scientists suggested that the shaking
may have seemed much more severe than it was because
Southern California is coming off a long period of relative
calm, seismically speaking.
"We've had a very quiet decade," Jones said.
"We live in earthquake country and we should remember
that."
Times Staff Writers Monte Morin, Jia-Rui Chong,
Jennifer Delson, Susana Enriquez, Sara Lin, Lance Pugmire,
Stephanie Ramos, Susannah Rosenblatt, Joel Rubin, Andrew
Wang and Daniel Yi contributed to this report. |
EUREKA, Calif. - Just hours after
a moderate earthquake shook most of Southern California,
a strong quake struck off the state's northern coast
to become the fourth significant shaker to jolt California
this week.
Neither quake Thursday caused serious damage. One
person was injured.
A 6.4-magnitude temblor hit about 125 miles off the
coast of Eureka around 11:30 p.m., rattling the ocean
floor. In the afternoon, a 4.9-magnitude quake struck
east of Los Angeles, startling people and knocking items
off shelves and desks. [...]
Four significant quakes have
hit California this week: A magnitude-5.2 quake
shook Riverside County on Sunday, and a magnitude-7.2
quake trembled Tuesday under the ocean 90 miles off
Northern California.
Stephanie Hanna, spokeswoman
for the U.S. Geological Survey, said Thursday night's
quake was likely an aftershock from Tuesday's shaker.
[...] |
A moderate earthquake occurred
at 02:37:36 (UTC) on Friday, June 17, 2005. The magnitude
5.4 event has been located in NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA.
|
The "plan for action"
to tackle climate change for the G8 summit next month
has been drastically watered down following Tony Blair's
visit to Washington, according to a leaked draft.
The new text has been stripped of commitments to fund
programmes that appeared in a previous leak of the communiqué,
which was dated 3 May. In the new document, of 14 June,
some key phrases appear only in square brackets, indicating
that their inclusion is in dispute, while other important
sentences have been taken out altogether.
In this week's version, even the phrase "our world
is warming" has been placed in square brackets.
The sentence, referring to the rise in the earth's temperature:
"We know that the increase
is due in large part to human activity" has been
relegated to square brackets, as has: "The world's
developed economies have a responsibility to show leadership."
Catherine Pearce, the international climate campaigner
at Friends of the Earth, said: "The new text is
really attacking the whole science on climate change.
The previous text was weak but at least it recognised
the science. The US administration has hacked the text
to pieces. I just don't know where we can go from here."
Stephen Tindale, the executive director of Greenpeace
and a former adviser to Tony Blair, said: "President
Bush is an international menace. Blair says climate
change is the gravest threat we face but it seems his
friend in the White House refuses even to admit the
world is warming." [...]
Ms Pearce said: "Every reference to the urgency
of action or the need for real cuts in emissions has
been deleted or challenged. Nothing in this text recognises
the scale or urgency of the crisis of climate change.
If they can't do better than this, the outcome of G8
summit will be worse than hot air: it will be a backward
step in international climate change policy, simply
adding to climate injustice." [...]
The May text had a number of commitments for expenditure
of unspecified amounts, which have disappeared from
the new version. So have previous G8 commitments, for
instance, to fund developing countries to "assess
opportunities for bio-energy" and "a fund
to enable developing countries to participate in relevant
international research projects" are gone. Also
deleted are previous monetary commitments to "the
development of markets in sustainable energy" in
poor countries and funding for "fully operational
regional climate centres in Africa".
Analysts said the new text amounted to a serious blow
for Tony Blair, who has made progress on climate change
one of the two big themes for the meeting of world leaders
due to be held at Gleneagles Hotel in July - the other
being help for Africa. A spokeswoman for Downing Street,
said: "We don't comment on any leaked document.
We are focussed on the action that gets delivered at
the G8 and we not provide a commentary on on-going discussions."
The Bush administration has consistently questioned
the mainstream climate science that shows the world
is warming due to human activity. It wants to wait for
unspecified technological breakthroughs to solve the
problem. |
Boys from Africa
are being murdered as human sacrifices in
London churches.
Police believe such boys are trafficked from cities
such as Kinshasa where they can be bought for a little
as £10.
The report, leaked ahead of its publication next month,
also cites examples of African children being tortured
and killed after being identified as "witches"
by church pastors.
The 10-month study was commissioned after the death
of Victoria Climbié, who was starved and beaten
to death after they said she was possessed by the devil.
The aim of the Met study was to create an "open
dialogue" with the African and Asian community
in Newham and Hackney. In discussions with African community
leaders, officers were told of examples of children
being murdered because their parents or carers believe
them to be possessed by evil spirits. Earlier-this month
Sita Kisanga, 35, was convicted at the Old Bailey of
torturing an eight-year-old girl from Angola she accused
of being a witch.
Kisanga was a member of the Combat Spirituel church
in Dalston. Many such churches, supported mainly by
people from West Africa, sanction aggressive forms of
exorcism on those thought to be possessed.
There are believed to be 300 such churches in the UK,
mostly in London.
The report was put together by an expert social worker
and lawyer for the Met after talking to hundreds of
people in African communities in a series of workshops.
It uncovered allegations of witchcraft spells, child
trafficking and HIV-positive people who believe that
by having sex with a child they will be "cleansed".
An extract reads: "People who are desperate will
seek out experts to cast spells for them.
"Members of the workshop stated that for a spell
to be powerful it required a sacrifice involving a male
child unblemished by circumcision. They allege that
boy children are being trafficked into the UK for this
purpose."
It adds: "A number of pastors maintain that God
speaks through them and lets them know when someone
is possessed.
"It is therefore their duty to deliver the child
or adult from the evil spirit.
"After much debate they acknowledge that children
labelled as possessed are in danger of being beaten
by their families.
"However, they would not accept they played a
role in inciting such violence."
Last month Scotland Yard revealed it had traced just
two out of 300 black boys aged four to seven reported
missing from London schools in a three-month period.
The true figure for missing boys and
girls is feared to be several thousand a year.
The report says there is a wide gulf between these
communities and social services and protection agencies
with many people in ethnic communities scared to speak
out.
The report concludes police face a "wall of silence"
when dealing with such cases.
Experts differ on the merits of the Scotland Yard report.
[...]
"It is people in positions
of power and money that are manipulating poor people."
|
The Senate's No. 2 Democrat has
compared the U.S. military's treatment of a suspected
al Qaeda terrorist at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo
Bay with the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and
Pol Pot, three of history's most heinous dictators,
whose regimes killed millions.
In a speech on the Senate floor late Tuesday, Minority
Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, castigated
the American military's actions by reading an e-mail
from an FBI agent.
The agent complained to higher-ups
that one al Qaeda suspect was chained to the floor,
kept in an extremely cold air-conditioned cell and forced
to hear loud rap music. The Justice Department is investigating.
About 9 million persons, including 6 million Jews,
died in Hitler's death camps, 2.7 million persons died
in Stalin's gulags and 1.7 million Cambodians died in
Pol Pot's scourge of his country.
No prisoners have died at Guantanamo, and the Pentagon
has acknowledged five instances of abuse or irreverent
handling of the Koran, the holy book of Muslims.
After reading the e-mail, Mr. Durbin
said, "If I read this to you and did not tell you
that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had
done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly
believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in
their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others
-- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that
is not the case. This was the action of Americans in
the treatment of their prisoners."
Mr. Durbin also likened the treatment of terror suspects
at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
decision to authorize the internment of Japanese-Americans
during World War II.
"It took us almost 40 years for us to acknowledge
that we were wrong, to admit that these people should
never have been imprisoned. It was a shameful period
in American history," Mr. Durbin said. "I
believe the torture techniques that have been used at
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and other places fall into
that same category."
The White House yesterday reacted angrily to Mr. Durbin's
remarks.
"It's reprehensible, as Defense Secretary [Donald
H.] Rumsfeld said, to suggest that the Guantanamo Bay
facility is anything like a gulag or a mad regime or
Pol Pot," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told
The Washington Times.
"It is reprehensible, has
no place in the current debate, and as we've
seen over several years, the detainees in Guantanamo
Bay are being treated humanely," he said.
"What this is is a disservice to any man and woman
serving in the U.S. military who's putting their life
on the line each day, because they're
trying to paint all military with a broad brush because
of the actions of perhaps a few bad apples, who are
being punished severely."
Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo
- not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence
- and the various roles they played in what went wrong,
Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice
was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales,
who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became
attorney general; deputy secretary of defence Paul
Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World
Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defence
for intelligence and one of those most directly involved
in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld's
closest confidants. President Bush, asked about
accountability, told the Washington Post before his
second inauguration that the American people had supplied
all the accountability needed - by re-electing him.
Only seven enlisted men and
women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offences
relating to Abu Ghraib. No
officer is facing criminal proceedings.
At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld spokesman Larry Di Rita said
of Mr. Durbin's remarks: "I didn't hear what he
said, but any such comparison would obviously be outrageous
and not remotely connected with reality." |
[...] Two days ago, I received
a call from a friend in New York that many American
newspapers were 'encouraged' to post articles AGAINST
closing Guantanamo.
I thought that such idea is insane as I did not read
such articles before in the US media before, and besides,
as a result of the BBC documentary we already know the
majority of the Guantanamo prisoners are innocent Afghani
citizens who were sold by the Pakistanis to the American
forces.
Since my New York friend is usually correct, I set
a Google Alert on the word Gitmo and waited. I did not
have to wait long... It seems that overnight America
was flooded with a major propaganda wave. The wave of
evil and hate campaign sweeping America via your Zionist
controlled press is mind-boggling.
How could America have stooped to such a level? Is
intellectual honesty gone? How could this White House
destroy anything which resembles ethics?
And Americans, by their silence, become a part of it.
I went through my Google email and collected for you
some of the articles from just the last two days. And
these articles circulated on many, many other papers...
This is filth of the highest order:
Close-Up Shop At Gitmo? Such
talk should be flushed
Amarillo.com (Subscription) - Amarillo, TX
Close Gitmo? Be Careful What
You Wish For
Los Angeles Times - CA
Close Gitmo? Bad Idea!
renewamerica.us - Washington, DC
Senate GOP: Closing Gitmo Not
The Answer
ABC News - USA
Stand Firm For Gitmo
Washington Times - Washington, DC
Close Gitmo? Hell, No!
Pardon My English - Salem, MA
No Good Reason To Close Gitmo
Heritage.org - Washington, DC
Gitmo By Any Other Name Is Still
Necessary
Town Hall - Washington, DC
Gitmo Camp Should Stay Open
Sioux City Journal - Sioux City,IA,USA
Trying To Get - And Get Used To - Gitmo
Washington Examiner - Washington,DC
Going Gonzo Over Gitmo
Men's News Daily - Guerneville,CA,USA
Close Gitmo?
National Review Online - New York, NY |
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
- A Halliburton Co. unit will build a new $30 million
detention facility and security fence at the U.S. naval
base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States
is holding about 520 foreign terrorism suspects, the Defense
Department announced on Thursday.
The announcement comes the same week that Vice President
Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended
the jail after U.S. lawmakers said it had created an image
problem for the United States. [...] |
CONGRATULATIONS America: It seems
that we have succeeded where no one else would ever
want to go! This nation took a settled Republic and
dismembered its form of government turning this democracy
into something that looks a lot more like Dumbocracy
- and then has had the temerity to wonder why the world
thinks we're crazy.
Many writers, including this one, have been trying
to figure out why Americans do not react to what this
nation is doing in the world today, both at home and
abroad. Perhaps the answer is much simpler than many
of us imagined.
Initially it appeared that Americans were either just
asleep or were willfully blind to all that is and was
being done in our name.
It appears that the population is behaving like a herd
of dumb animals, slavishly following orders from a certifiable
"leader" who has no qualifications, no leadership
skills, and no accompanying track record that could
ever have justified the failures of GWB in the office
that he now occupies.
His "cabinet" has been filled with equally
unqualified people who collectively have no experience
in military matters, or in the administration of anything
meaningful or real. So why does this nation credit this
spoiled offspring from a truly criminal family, this
AWOL coward who ran away on 911 instead of doing anything
at all to interrupt the attacks of that day? WHY has
Bush not yet explained himself to the nation or the
world?
In the mid nineteen-thirties Sinclair Lewis wrote "It
Can't Happen Here" and in that novel he concluded:
"Where in all history has there ever been a people
so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!"
Even today the US Senate cannot
bring itself to apologize to the victims of lynching
- 4,743 people killed (illegally) between 1882 and 1968,"
and we call ourselves a civilized nation! We
have taken a dire situation and intensified the risks,
destroyed the impediments that might have slowed the
rise of anarchy, and all the while we have remained
deaf, dumb and blind to what we are creating - WHY?
If the dead of all those wars
we entered into - to "Make the World Safe for Democracy"
were to be heard on this subject the chorus would be
deafeningly opposed to our present course of action.
Yet the public in its bubble world of profits and power
continues on the one sure path that will bring death
and ruination to all the Outlaws say they represent.
These men and women who died in our wars would not
applaud what has been done with the sacrifice they did
not really choose to make. In
WWII 50 million died, for this?
In the two wars we have going now, there are officially
over 1700 dead, and there have been over a hundred-thousand
exposed to Depleted Uranium and the malignancy of that
disease that continues to kill long after the guns have
been silenced: this affects not only the GI's but their
families as well - yet the public is still not concerned
enough to demand real answers from those who got us
into this situation.
How many more must die before
we begin to scream ENOUGH? What's the magic number
here 2,000, 10,000 - 20,000 dead? Who decides what that
weighty number will be, who will stand against this
injustice, not just for our dead but also for all the
people that have been maimed or displaced or killed
because of our belligerence?
Why is it so hard for Americans to understand that
the people we kill for the OUTLAWS all have families,
dreams and would have had futures, had we not slaughtered
them, too!
Why do we seemingly not want to know who is responsible
for pulling the strings on our homegrown Outlaws - the
thugs who sign the orders - then lie about the facts
of what they have done and continue to do hourly? One
reason that seems to hold a lot of sway is that Congress
no longer makes our laws, they've sold that privilege
to the highest bidders.
The Government of the United
States of America is now of, by and for the Corporations.
These are the same corporations, the Corporatocracy,
to whom the people of the USA have bequeathed a literal
and legal eternal life, while at the same time allowing
their own corporate "best interests" to override
the needs and interests of the very citizens who made
all that largess possible. All the terms of any
agreements that the workers for such companies signed
on for - are now subject to nullification at the whim
of the corporations. The retirement funds, the health-care,
and the long-term interests of those who made the profits
happen, now represent nothing but "excessive costs"
to the corporations that are failing on all fronts,
because they have destroyed any incentive for anyone
besides the upper-level managers to profit from their
existence.
But it gets worse. Americans gave the newly minted
outlaw corporations the legal right to exist - now those
corporations have no further need for working Americans,
because now they have foreign markets to buy their outsourced
products, so the public here is overripe to become nothing
more than a wage-enslaved herd of animals to be directed
and controlled by what suits the corporations - at each
and every turn in their corporate schedule for hegemony.
The answers to the above questions are not pretty,
but it goes something like this. War is GREAT for business
and it's especially good for stockholders, people with
jobs at those corporations who hold the SECRET no-bid
contracts, and for insiders. Normally Wars are good
for the initiating country for the profits that are
generated by that action. In this
case, since the jobs have been outsourced, down to and
including the manufacture of American Flags in China
- this nation has actually lost millions of jobs because
of the war, and its demands upon our outsourced corporate
legions whose profits have never been greater. All this
while the public was told to "just go shopping!"
Perhaps it is understandable if the above is the real
reason why so many refuse to "know" what's
going on - this could explain many things. For instance
if the above is true, then it would definitely be understandable
that many would indeed fear for
the loss of their jobs, or the loss of the income generated
in their 401K's, or their stock portfolios - IF they
were to publicly demand accountability from those who
created 911 and then started these wars to cover-up
their crimes. No wonder all the little lambs
chose silence over protest: that is what the "smart-money"
always does!
Congratulations are in order - it took real perseverance
to turn this democracy on its head, and to learn to
worship Outlaws while we are killing everything that
we have always professed to "believe in."
Welcome to the Dumbocracy of the New United States of
the Corporatocracy. We have created
a prison of the mind that will destroy any rational
thoughts we ever had of being human. Maybe, we
have become nothing more than pod people without the
capacity for critical thought. We have abdicated all
that we would each have brought to being viable beings,
opting instead to live as footnotes in the margins of
the lives of faceless, soulless corporations. In
the final analysis we are destroying all that makes
each of us valuable - to ourselves or to others.
Think about it - do you really want to be the excuse
given for the USA to continue to live as the world's
sole Dumbocracy? Break the Silence - NOW!
- kirwan
Comment
Jim Mortellaro
6-17-5
Kirwan -
You ask too much of our people. They no longer have
a will. No longer have strength of spirit. No longer.
And I'm not so sure that you are correct. That Americans
fear for their jobs, etc. Maybe not as much as you credit
them.
Maybe it's just a loss of interest and of strength
of will. Maybe Americans are so dumbed down by their
own media, by the "Free Press," dumbed down
by the lies of their elected officials and those who
seek public office, by their elected 'leaders,' that
they are of the mistaken opinion that they will make
it all better. After all, is not that the reason "The
People" elected them?
Of course, this is all a cop out. Americans are merely
lemmings, following the piper piping the same old worn
out tunes, same promises which are rarely or never kept.
Maybe.
One thing is certain, Kirwan, to ask that The People
break their silence now, is foolish beyond measure.
For they will not. The time for
a silent revolution, a revolution aimed at changing
the corrupt politicians in our government, ruled by
money, not by their constituencies, has passed us by.
Only a real revolution will change us. And we've not
the guts for that.
Those of us who want just that are
too damned old. Those of us who do are too damned frightened.
The rest of us just don't give a damn.
So much for speaking out. |
I was a soldier for most of the
time between 1970 and 1996. I signed out on my retirement
from 3rd Special Forces in Ft. Bragg. I had also served
in 7th Special Forces, on three Ranger assignments,
with Delta for almost four years, as a Cavalry Scout
for a while, and in the 82nd Airborne Division as an
infantryman. I started my career in Vietnam with the
173rd Airborne Brigade.
I thugged around in eight different places in East
Asia, Latin America, and Africa, where I pointed guns
at people. Like you, I was an instrument of American
foreign policies policies controlled, then as
now, by the rich.
In the course of that career, I heard everything you
have heard and felt everything you have felt about "loyalty."
Tricky thing, loyalty.
Nowadays, when I talk with some of you, or when I hear
conversations recorded with you, I hear many who have
very serious reservations about these wars of occupation.
I had more than reservations from the get-go about Iraq
and Afghanistan, and I opposed them as hard as I could,
and so did millions of other people around the world.
But that brain-dead piece of sh*t in the White House
who is legally your boss, and all his handlers, starting
with Vice President Dick "Halliburton" Cheney
they sent you to do this thing anyway.
They talked themselves into believing this would be
and these are their words a cakewalk. They
surrounded themselves exclusively with others who echoed
what was already in their minds; and they punished and
villified and isolated anyone who told them what they
didn't want to hear. Because they made up their minds
to conduct these invasions years ago, and with the attacks
of September 11 in which Iraq's role was exactly
nothing they figured now was their chance to conduct
the re-disposition of the old Cold War military into
their new plan to build permanent bases in Southwest
Asia.
Since they'd made up their minds, they didn't want
to hear anything except rosy scenarios for their plans,
because these reptile-minded, preppy gangsters are like
spoiled children who can't abide anyone f*cking up their
toy-emperor fantasies.
But when those fantasies did get f*cked
up, by the realities they ran so hard to escape, they
continued to pursue their grim agenda in spite of the
mounting consequences, because they don't pay those
consequences.
If I had my way, we would issue the whole shriveled,
manicured lot of them their assault rifles, put them
aboard an Air Force transport, tighten the leg straps
on their static line parachutes, and boot their sorry
asses out from 800 feet right over the middle of Ramadi
where they could drop their harnesses in the street
and explain democracy to the locals.
But that's just ranting, because I do so despise them.
I hate people who get away with sh*t just because they
have money and power. And I hate people who sacrifice
the lives of others to amplify or protect that power.
But I'm not telling you anything. You all already know
by now what generation after generation has learned
the hard way. When the rich start their wars, it's not
the rich that get sent to fight them. Yeah, a few go
get their time as part of putting together a political
career, but we know who does the heavy lifting.
And in these conversations that many of you have with
me and thousands of other people, we hear you say
more and more often now that you know this war
is wrong, but that you have to "do your job,"
because you are loyal to your buddies; because you feel
that you have to back them up; and because if you don't
go, someone else will have to. And I respect that sentiment.
But I have to challenge this loyalty thing, and I do
it out of respect for you, and because I care about
you, and because my own son is back there for his second
go-around.
A young friend of mine, Patrick Resta, who recently
returned from Iraq, and who is now a member of an organization
called Iraq Veterans Against the War, recently told
me, "My platoon sergeant
tried to get us to violate the Geneva Convention, and
when we resisted, he threatened us with punishment.
He told us that 'the Geneva Convention doesn't exist
in Iraq, and that is in writing at the Brigade level.'"
You all know that this is bullsh*t, and if you didn't
know, let me give you a news flash about some
not all, but some military lifers; and this is
coming from a military lifer. Some of them are dumber
than dog sh*t. Some of them say things when they don't
have the foggiest f*cking idea what they are talking
about. Some of them will say any goddamn thing to get
you to do what they want you to do.
But then again, there was a memorandum that came down
that suggested the Geneva Conventions were void in Iraq.
It didn't come from the Brigade
level, though; it came from f*cking George W. Bush's
office. And it's a lie. That's why they sat there
in front of Congress before they made the author of
that memo into the Attorney General of the United States
get your head around that and denied that
they meant it.
But it is a lie.
You do not have to follow illegal orders EVER, under
any circumstances, and you ARE bound by International
Law. You should also be bound by what you know is right,
by your sense of plain common decency.
One of the ways they will get
you to do things that you will not want to live with
for the rest of your lives is to impose that group-think
on you. If one of us is guilty, we are all guilty.
And "what happens in Iraq stays in Iraq."
This is one of the many ways they take that buddy-to-buddy
loyalty and twist it into a way to control you, even
when they are trying to get you to violate the law and
not only the formal law, but to violate what you know
is right, to violate your own conscience and jeopardize
your own peace of mind for the rest of your life.
And I'm telling you that you do not owe them or anyone
else that kind of loyalty.
They know that many of you know
that you were sent to do this thing for a pack of lies
about weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds
over New York City and phony al Qaeda connections (and
then when that fell apart, you were there to deliver
democracy at gunpoint). So they know that many
of you can't stay committed to this violent occupation
out of loyalty to that gang of thugs in Washington DC,
who are busy every day at home undermi ning the same
Constitution you swore to protect (from all enemies
foreign and DOMESTIC).
They know that you know that plenty of the officers
are out there trying to get new fruit salad medals on
their Class-A uniforms, and bucking for promotion, by
risking your asses on pointless glory patrols. So they
know t hat they can't rely on the loyalty of many of
you to the chain of command any more either.
Where do they have to go with this,
then, after all? What do they tell you?
"You get out there on that Humvee, and face those
IEDs together, as loyal buddies."
"You get out there and ransack people's houses
in the middle of the night, and make their babies cry
together, as buddies."
"You get out there and set up a road block without
Arabic signs or interpreters and get put into that situation
where you are tense and don't know, and you shoot up
that car and kill parents in front of their children,
an d you have to live with that for the rest of your
lives together, because you are loyal buddies."
"You get out there and lose life, limb, or eyesight
face mental and physical ailments for the rest of your
lives together, as an act of loyalty to your buddies."
That's the pressure you have on you
today. Cover your buddies, and for some of you, go to
Iraq so someone else doesn't take your place.
But let's look at the bigger picture here, and for
that I'll take you back to Vietnam, before many of you
were born. We heard this same bullsh*t then. Almost
verbatim. And do you know what one of the main contributing
fac tors was for getting us out of that war?
We quit being good soldiers.
The United States military got
to the point where it was no longer an effective fighting
force, because US soldiers quit taking orders.
It got to the point where an officer who was using his
men's bodies to chase medals might find himself on the
wrong end of a Claymore mine. Now
I'm not advocating that again, and I hope we can stop
this before it goes that far.
The other thing many soldiers
did was become part of the political resistance at home.
They looked at this question of looking out for their
buddies and for fellow soldiers in the short term, but
staying ina barbaric and immoral war. And they realized
that the best thing they could do for their buddies
not as soldiers, but as human beings was
to enlist in the opposition to the war and bring it
to an end.
In the process, many of them discovered
that it took a lot more endurance and a lot more courage
to oppose the war than it did to demonstrate that macho
bullsh*t they were expected to display as they continued
to do terrible things to those other human beings whose
country they occupied.
Here's how you can exercise a deeper loyalty to the
troops there now, and to all those who will continue
to go as long as this obscenity continues:
Do everything you can to stop the war.
Question every order, and base those questions on the
Geneva Conventions and the Law of Land Warfare. Let
them see you keeping a detailed journal of your experience.
Send your stories home in letters. Open up discussions
about the legitimacy of the war when you are in your
billets, even if it does spark controversy. Spread around
information you get about the war from sources other
than those loud-mouthed news-mannequins on FOX. And
email or mail your anonymous membership in to Iraq Veterans
Against the War. The link is at the end of this letter.
The day this war stops and they put the last of you
on an airplane home, is when you will never again have
to smell that fresh-blood smell that stays in your head
for hours after you've loaded someone onto a stretcher
or rolled them into that big Ziploc bag. The day will
come when you all pull out, because this was a losing
proposition from the outset, but Bush and his crew were
too f*cking stupid to know it.
The best thing is that this war of occupation ends
sooner than later, and as an exercise of loyalty
to your own conscience, of loyalty to those who are
there and those who may go there, and loyalty to the
principle of human decency you can find ways to
hasten that day. You can find ways to bring closer the
day when the Iraqis can get on about the business of
taking control of their own destiny, and you and your
buddies can sleep in security and comfort in your own
homes, play with your children, make love with your
partners, and walk down familiar streets unencumbered
by the rattling luggage of war.
If bringing this day closer for all of you is the goal,
how much more loyal can you get?
Yours for walking unencumbered,
Stan Goff
US Army (Retired)
Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous Dream:
A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti"
(Soft Skull Press, 2000), "Full Spectrum Disorder"
(Soft Skull Press, 2003) and "Sex & War"
which will be released approximately December, 2005.
He is retired from the United States Army. His blog
is at www.stangoff.com. |
American officials lied to British
ministers over the use of "internationally reviled"
napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.
Yesterday's disclosure led to calls
by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened
ministers to allegations that they held back the facts
until after the general election.
Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis
consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as
napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour
MPs in January that US forces had not used a
new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed
MK77, in Iraq.
But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen
in a private letter obtained by The Independent that
he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had
been misinformed by the US. "The
US confirmed to my officials that they had not used
MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of
my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I
regret to say that I have since discovered that this
is not the case and must now correct the position."
Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between
31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military
targets "away from civilian targets", he said.
This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use
only against military targets.
Britain, which has no stockpiles of the weapons, ratified
the convention, but the US did not.
The confirmation that US officials
misled British ministers led to new questions last night
about the value of the latest assurances by the US.
Mr Cohen said there were rumours that the firebombs
were used in the US assault on the insurgent stronghold
in Fallujah last year, claims denied by the US. [...]
The Iraq Analysis Group, which campaigned against the
war, said the US authorities only admitted the use of
the weapons after the evidence from reporters had become
irrefutable.
Mike Lewis, a spokesman for the group, said: "The
US has used internationally reviled weapons that
the UK refuses to use, and has then apparently lied
to UK officials, showing how little weight the UK carries
in influencing American policy." [...] |
Flashback:
FALLUJAH
NAPALMED
|
Nov 28 2004
By Paul Gilfeather Political Editor
Mirror.co.uk |
US
uses banned weapon
US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe
out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah.
News that President George W. Bush has
sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene
and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will
stun governments around the world.
And last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as
furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it.
Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm
attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the
gel bonds flames to flesh.
Outraged critics have also demanded that Mr Blair threatens
to withdraw British troops from Iraq unless the US abandons
one of the world's most reviled weapons. Halifax Labour
MP Alice Mahon said: "I am calling on Mr Blair to
make an emergency statement to the Commons to explain
why this is happening. It begs the question: 'Did we know
about this hideous weapon's use in Iraq?'"
Since the American assault on
Fallujah there have been reports of "melted"
corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries.
|
As American and Iraqi casualties
on the ground mount relentlessly, President George Bush
is in growing political trouble, with Republicans as
well as Democrats questioning his handling of a war
that has never been less popular here.
In the most visible protest, the veteran Democratic
congressman John Conyers organised a forum on the so-called
"Downing Street Memo", the July 2002 British
Government document indicating that the Bush administration
had already made up its mind to invade Iraq, and that
intelligence was being "fixed" to fit that
policy.
Six weeks after it was leaked in the British press,
the memo has belatedly become a hot topic in Washington.
Mr Conyers was to present a petition from more than
100 of his Democratic colleagues in the House, signed
by 500,000 people, demanding that Mr Bush explain himself.
The White House has haughtily brushed aside this criticism,
saying the memo contains nothing new, and again dismissing
charges that the intelligence process was politically
manipulated. But the administration may find it more
difficult to deal with bipartisan demands for an exit
timetable for the 140,000 US troops in Iraq.
One of the sponsors of the congressional resolution
is Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat and staunch opponent
of the war, who ran for the 2004 Democratic presidential
nomination. More worrying for the White House, another
sponsor is the North Carolina Republican Walter Jones,
a strong backer of the invasion (and an author of the
2003 "freedom fries" campaign against France
in Capitol Hill cafeterias). [...]
There is an increasingly sour mood in America, much
disillusioned with Mr Bush, and inclined to share Mr
Conyers' belief that "we got into a secret war
we hadn't planned, and now we're in it we can't get
out". [...]
Mr Bush's approval ratings have tumbled further, to
just 41 per cent, the lowest level of his presidency.
One reason is dissatisfaction with the economy, most
notably the soaring cost of petrol. But the biggest
reason is Iraq, which threatens to undermine his second-term
strategy. [...]
But in the past month alone, 80 US soldiers and more
than 700 Iraqis have died and the Pentagon admits that
the violence is as bad as a year ago. Even some of its
allies blame the White House for not telling the truth
about the extent of the insurgency. "We always
accentuated the positive and never prepared the public
for the worst," Senator Lindsay Graham, a South
Carolina Republican, said.
The President's signature policy - the campaign to
part-privatise social security - has hit a brick wall.
"Exit Policy on Social Security is Sought,"
was a Washington Post headline, above a report explaining
how senior Republicans were urging the White House to
quietly drop the measure, since it had no hope of passing.
Other Bush policies are also under attack. In a rare
act of defiance, the Republican-led House voted by 238
to 187 to scrap a provision of the Patriot Act, which
allows the FBI to check library and bookstore records
in anti- terrorism inquiries. The President vows to
veto any such change, just as he promises to "stay
the course" on Iraq, and to press ahead with social
security reform. But the line is growing more difficult
to hold.
Last night, Senate Democrats planned to block for a
second time a floor vote to confirm John Bolton as the
next US ambassador to the United Nations, until the
White House releases more information on its embattled
nominee.Other Republicans are demanding closure of the
Guantanamo Bay prison, although the White House says
it is vital for security. |
Congressman John Conyers (D-MI)
issued this statement in advance of his hearing on the
Downing Street documents:
Few issues are more important under our constitutional
form of government than the decision to go to war and
place our soldiers lives at risk.
It is no insignificant matter when in the fall of 2002
President Bush told us that war would be his last resort.
It is not unimportant when on March 6, 2003, the president
promised us, "I've not made up [my] mind about
military action."
Over the last two months, the veracity of those statements
has - to put it mildly -- come into question:
- On May 1, the London Times released the now infamous
Downing Street Minutes, in which the head of Britain's
intelligence agency reported "military action
[by the U.S.] was now seen as inevitable ... and "intelligenc
e and facts were being fixed around the policy."
A former senior U.S. official subsequently told Knight
Ridder that the minutes were "an absolutely accurate
description of what transpired."
- On May 29, further documents were released revealing
that in the summer of 2002, British and U.S. aircraft
had doubled their rates of bombing in Iraq, in an
apparent attempt to provoke an excuse for war.
- Last Sunday, the London Times released six new
British documents corroborating the Downing Street
Minutes and indicating that as early as March of 2002,
our government had decided it would be "necessary
to create the conditions" to justify war.
- Today Newsweek is reporting that two high ranking
British Officials confirmed that by 2002, Iraq's nuclear
weapons program was "effectively frozen"
and there was "no recent evidence" tying
Iraq to international terrorism.
If these disclosures are true - and so far no one from
the Bush Administration has bothered to respond to our
letters -- they establish a prima facie case of going
to war under false pretenses. This means that more than
1,600 brave Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent
Iraqis would have lost their lives for a lie.
That is why we are here today. That is why 122 Members
of Congress -- which as of today includes the Minority
Leader -- have asked the president to explain his actions.
That is why more than 550,000 Americans are joining
with us in demanding answers from the Administration.
We are here because many of us find it unacceptable
for any Administration - be it Democratic or Republican
- to put our troops in harms way based on false information.
The fact that our intelligence turned out to be flawed
in no way absolves those who would intentionally mislead
our nation or its allies.
We can't do anything in this hearing to change the
facts on the ground in Iraq today, but we can pledge
today to do everything within our power to find out
how we got here and make sure it never happens again. |
NEW YORK With a hearing about to
begin on Capitol Hill on the so-called Downing Street
Memo, hosted by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), reporters
at today's White House briefing by Press Secretary Scott
McClellan naturally raised the subject, albeit briefly.
Rather than ask about details or implications of the
2003 internal British document -- which seemed to suggest
that the Bush administration was determined to go to
war against Iraq and that intelligence would be “fixed”
to support it -- the correspondents wondered if the
White House was ever going to respond to a letter authored
by Conyers and signed by 88 of his colleagues asking
for information about the memo.
A transcript of two separate exchanges follows:
***
Q: Scott, on another topic, has the President or anyone
else from the administration responded to the letter
sent last month by Congressman John Conyers and signed
by dozens of members of the House of Representatives,
regarding the Downing Street memo? Has the President
or anyone else responded?
McCLELLAN: Not that I'm aware of.
Q: Why not?
McCLELLAN: Why not? Because
I think that this is an individual who voted against
the war in the first place [Conyers] and is simply trying
to rehash old debates that have already been addressed.
And our focus is not on the past. It's on the future
and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq.
These matters have been addressed, Elaine. I think
you know that very well. The press --
Q: Scott, 88 members of Congress
signed that letter.
McCLELLAN: The press -- the press have covered it,
as well.
Q: But, Scott, don't they deserve the courtesy of a
response back?
McCLELLAN: Again, this has been addressed….
***
Q: Scott, on John Conyers, John Conyers is walking
here with that letter again, as you have acknowledged
from Elaine's comment. But 88 leaders on Capitol Hill
signed that letter. Now, I understand what you're saying
about him, but what about the other 88 who signed this
letter, wanting information, answers to these five questions?
McCLELLAN: How did they vote on the war -- the decision
to go to war in Iraq?
Q: Well, you have two -- well, if that's the case,
you have two Republicans who are looking for a timetable.
How do you justify that?
McCLELLAN: I already talked about that.
Q: I understand, but let's talk about this.
McCLELLAN: Like I said --
Q: Well, just because -- I understand -- but if you're
talking about unifying and asking for everyone to come
together, why not answer, whether they wanted the war
or not, answer a letter where John Conyers wrote to
the President and then 88 congressional leaders signed?
Why not answer that?
McCLELLAN: For the reasons I stated earlier. This
is simply rehashing old debates that have already been
discussed. |
Almost five hundred
years ago, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses
to the door of the Wittenberg Church, initiating a sequence
of events which forever altered the geometry of global
religion, politics and power. Luther's Theses began
with the words, "Out of love for the truth and
the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions
will be discussed at Wittenberg."
Another document is going to be nailed to another
door on Thursday, June 16th. This door opens not to
a church, but to the White House. This document is freighted
with hard truths, stern demands and nearly a million
names. This document, once nailed up, likewise carries
with it all the possibilities of change.
Very slowly, and after an embarrassing
gap of silence from the news media, the American people
have come to hear about the Downing Street Minutes.
This document, once confidential but leaked by a British
version of Deep Throat, describes in plain language
the manner in which the Bush and Blair administrations
planned to manipulate their way into an invasion of
Iraq. The Minutes describe how intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the policy of invasion, and
that a pretense for war had to be manufactured in order
to paint a veneer of legitimacy over what everyone involved
knew was a patently illegal military action.
Subsequent secret documents have followed the release
of the Downing Street Minutes, further exposing the
lies, distortions and moral convolutions put forth by
the offices of Bush and Blair in their rush to war.
According to these documents, which have been verified
as genuine by the British government, the
decision to invade Iraq was made as early as April 2002,
months before anyone in America or Britain became aware
that such an act was even being considered.
This April 2002 decision was
made between Bush and Blair at a summit in Crawford,
Texas. The fact that the decision to invade had been
made so early shatters all the mealy-mouthed protestations
of Bush and his people, who spent those months before
the attack preaching peace and international cooperation
while sharpening their knives behind closed doors.
One document, a briefing paper
partnered with the Downing Street Minutes, states bluntly
that British officials knew an invasion would be illegal,
but had no choice but to figure out a way to frame it
as legal, because Bush was going into Iraq no matter
what and would use British bases in Cyprus and Diego
Garcia to do so. This would make Britain complicit
in the invasion even if they decided not to send troops,
and so it was "necessary to create the conditions"
which would make it legal.
How does one go about creating the conditions for
legality? By framing facts and intelligence around the
policy, of course. The word "Lie"
does not appear in any of the released documents, but
the need to lie, the decision to lie, in order to justify
war permeates every word.
This document also exposes the Bush administration's
rhetorical nonsense about "supporting the troops"
by describing how their war plans did anything but.
In a section of this briefing paper titled "Benefits/Risks,"
the authors wrote, "Even with a legal base and
a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure
that the benefits of action outweigh the risks. A post-war
occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly
nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the
U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point."
Virtually silent. 1,706 American soldiers have been
killed in Iraq thanks to the virtual silence of the
Bush administration, for a total of 1,891 "Coalition"
soldiers dead. Multiply that number by at least ten
to count the wounded and maimed. Twenty-five American
soldiers have been killed in the last week alone. Tens
of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and
wounded, and the car bombs continue to explode on a
daily basis.
The decision to make war at all costs, the decision
to lie about the reasons for going to war, the massive
trans-Atlantic effort to make an illegal act appear
legal, and the astounding fact that more effort went
into manufacturing a political pretext for invasion
than went into planning for the invasion and aftermath,
all of this led us into the horror-show that is this
occupation.
The American military has all but conceded the fact
that this war is lost. "I think the more accurate
way to approach this right now is to concede that this
insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists
and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled,
through military options or military operations,"
Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, chief American military spokesman
in Iraq, said last week. "It's going to be settled
in the political process." There are no more viable
military options. The war is lost. It is going to be
settled in the political process.
So be it.
On Thursday, June 16th, Rep. John Conyers will hold
a hearing to investigate and expose the facts revealed
by the release of the Downing Street Minutes and the
other documents. A variety of witnesses will be called
to describe the contents of these documents, and to
describe what has been done to Iraq, and to us all,
by this administration. Lurking in the corners of the
hearing will be a phrase - "High Crime" -
that aptly describes what has taken place.
The Conyers hearing will be held on Thursday at 2:30pm
EST in room HC-9 in the Capitol Building in Washington
DC. This is a small room, so any overflow of public
viewers will be directed to the Wasserman Room in the
headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.
At 5:00pm EST, a rally will take place in Lafayette
Park, at the gates of the White House. Rep. Conyers
will speak, along with Ambassador Joseph Wilson and
Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in Iraq in April
2003, as Bush was unfurling his "Mission Accomplished"
banner. The hearing and rally have been organized by
the After Downing Street coalition, a collection of
more than 120 organizations and news outlets that came
together for the purpose of nailing the facts of the
Downing Street Minutes to the White House door.
That, just before the opening of the rally on Thursday,
is exactly what will happen. Several weeks ago, Rep.
Conyers published a letter demanding answers from the
Bush administration regarding the Minutes. That letter
has been signed by more than one hundred Congresspeople,
and by nearly a million American citizens. Rep. Conyers
will personally deliver this letter and all those signatures
to the White House on Thursday.
Jawaharlal Nehru, who with Mahatma Gandhi successfully
freed India from British colonial rule, once said, "A
moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when
we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends,
and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds
utterance."
Thursday, June 16th, may see such a moment come to
pass. It has been a long time coming, and so much remains
to be done if the terrible damage of these last years
is to be repaired. But a moment is before us. Let us
see where this moment takes us.
|
There is
nothing new in a government lying to their people to
start a war. Indeed because most people prefer
living in peace to bloody and horrific death in war,
any government that desires to initiate a war usually
lies to their people to create the illusion that support
for the war is the only possible choice they can make.
President McKinley told the American people that the
USS Maine had been sunk in Havana Harbor by a Spanish
mine. The American people, outraged by this apparent
unprovoked attack, supported the Spanish American War.
The Captain of the USS Maine had insisted the ship was
sunk by a coal bin explosion, investigations after the
war proved that such had indeed been the case. There
had been no mine.
Hitler used this principle of lying
to his own people to initiate an invasion. He told the
people of Germany that Poland had attacked first. The
Germans, convinced they were being threatened, followed
Hitler into Poland and into World War 2.
FDR claimed Pearl Harbor was
a surprise attack. It wasn't. The United States
saw war with Japan as the means to get into war with
Germany, which Americans opposed. So Roosevelt needed
Japan to appear to strike first. Following an 8-step
plan devised by the Office of Naval Intelligence, Roosevelt
intentionally provoked Japan into the attack. Contrary
to the official story, the fleet did not maintain radio
silence, but sent messages intercepted and decoded by
US intercept stations. Tricked by the lie of a surprise
attack, Americans marched off to war.
President Johnson lied about
the Gulf of Tonkin to send Americans off to fight in
Vietnam. There were no torpedoes in the water
in the Gulf. LBJ took advantage of an inexperienced
sonar man's report to goad Congress into escalating
the Vietnam.
It is inescapable historical reality that leaders of
nations will lie to their people to trick them into
wars they otherwise would have refused. It is not "conspiracy
theory" to suggest that leaders of nations lie
to trick their people into wars. It is undeniable fact.
This brings us to the present case.
Did the government of the United States lie to the
American people, more to the point, did President Bush
and his Neocon associates lie to Congress, to initiate
a war of conquest in Iraq?
This question has been given currency by a memo leaked
from inside the British Government which clearly indicates
a decision to go to war followed by the "fixing"
of information around that policy. This is, as they
say, a smoking gun.
But the fact is that long before this memo surfaced,
it had become obvious that the US Government, aided
by that of Great Britain, was lying to create the public
support for a war in Iraq. [...]
In the end, the real proof that
we were lied to about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
is that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
That means that every single piece of paper that purported
to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was
by default a fraud, a hoax, and a lie. There could be
no evidence that supported the claim that Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction because Iraq did not have weapons
of mass destruction. In a way, the existence of any
faked documents about Iraq's WMDs is actually an admission
of guilt. If one is taking the time to create fake documents,
the implication is that the faker is already aware that
there are no genuine documents.
What the US Government had, ALL that they had, were
copied student papers, forged "Yellow Cake"
documents, balloon inflators posing as bioweapons labs,
and photos with misleading labels on them. And somewhere
along the line, someone decided to put those misleading
labels on those photos, to pretend that balloon inflators
are portable bioweapons labs, and to pass off stolen
student papers as contemporary analysis.
And THAT shows an intention to deceive.
Lawyers call this "Mens Rea", which means
"Guilty Mind". TV lawyer shows call it "Malice
aforethought". This means that not only did the
Bush Administration lie to the people and to the US
Congress, but knew they were doing something illegal
at the time that they did it.
All the talk about "Intelligence
failure" is just another lie. There was no failure.
[...]
The President of the United States and his Neocon associates
lied to the people of the United States to send them
off on a war of conquest. [...]
Defenders of the government will point to the cases
listed at the top of the page as proof that lying to
the people is a normal part of the leader's job and
we should all get used to it. And because "Everybody
does it" th at we should not single out the present
administration. But this is madness. We do not catch
all the murderers, yet when we catch a murderer, we
deal with them as harshly as possible, in order to deter
more murderers.
Right now, we have the criminals at hand. and, while
other leaders in history have lied to start wars, for
the first time in history, the lie stands exposed while
the war started with the lies still rages on, to the
death and detriment of our young men and women in uniform.
We cannot in good moral conscience ignore this lie,
this crime, lest we encourage future leaders to continue
to lie to use to send our kids off to pointless wars.
Lyin g to start a war is more than an impeachable offence;
it the highest possible crime a government can commit
against their own people. Lying to start a war is not
only misappropriation of the nation's military and the
nati on's money under false pretenses, but it is outright
murder committed on a massive scale. Lying to start
a war is a betrayal of the trust each and every person
who serves in the military places in their civilian
leadershi p. By lying to start a war, the Bush administration
has told the military fatalities and their families
that they have no right to know why they were sent to
their deaths. It's none of their business.
Our nation is founded on the principle of rule with
the consent of the governed. Because We The People do
not consent to be lied to, a government that lies rules
without the consent of the governed, and ruling without
the consent of the governed is slavery.
You should be more than angry. You should be in a rage.
You should be in a rage no less than that of the families
of those young men and women who have been killed and
maimed in this war started with a lie.You need to be
in a rage and you need to act on that rage because even
as I type these words, the same government that lied
about Iraq's nuclear weapons is telling the exact same
lies about Iran's nuclear capabilities. The
writing is on the wall; having gotten away with lying
to start the war in Iraq, the US Government will lie
to start a war in Iran, and after that another, and
after that another, and another and another and another
because as long as you remain silent, and as long as
you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop.
As long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason
to stop.
None.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil
is for good men to do nothing" . --Edmund Burke
[...]
So, I want YOU to copy this article off, post it everywhere.
This article is placed in the public domain. Mail it
to your friends. Then send it to your local media and
your Congresscritters and have everyone you know do
the same. Get on the phones. Flood their offices. [...]
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it
is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to
provide new Guards for their future security. -- "The
Declaration of Independence" |
Israeli arms sales
to China have provoked a "crisis" in relations
with the US, according a senior Israeli parliamentary
official.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the parliamentary foreign
affairs and defence committee, made the remarks in an
interview on Israel radio.
The sales have angered the US government which fears
its own technology may could be used against Taiwan.
The US provides $2bn (£1.1bn) of military aid
to Israel every year.
Washington has refused to negotiate with Israel on
the issue of the Chinese arms deal for months.
The US has also imposed sanctions on the Israeli defence
industry, according to media reports. [...]
|
The US Congressional
House International Relations Committee, on June 8,
approved a bill that calls for specific reforms at the
United Nations.
Congress demanded the United Nations General Assembly
to stop what it called, “unilateral decisions
against Israel”, Israeli news website Yedioth
Ahronot reported.
The bill described the Palestinian resistance to the
occupation as terrorism and described its actions against
the Palestinians as self-defense. [...]
The measure, which passed in the committee by a vote
of 25 to 22, includes several critical proposals which
would, allow the United States to withhold dues payments
if the United Nations does not make a series of operational
reforms. [...]
|
Bernie Sanders was the only member
of the House to vote against the original Patriot Act.
Now he's the favorite bet to become the next Senator
from Vermont.
There's no stopping Bernie Sanders. The only Independent
(I) member of the House of Representatives, he sponsored
the amendment that declawed some of the most invasive
provisions of the Patriot Act, namely the parts that
allowed federal agents to snoop into library and bookstore
records without a warrent. Sanders is the favorite bet
to become the next Senator from Vermont, replacing the
only Independent member of the Senate, Jim Jeffords.
In fact, the last poll showed him with an average of
a 40 point lead over two potential Republican opponents.
What does all this prove? That if you stand up for
what you believe in and keep fighting for it, and don't
back down, you earn the respect of your constituents.
In the case of Sanders, Vermont has only one Congressional
Representative, so his Congressional constituents will
be the same people as his Senate constituents.
Americans like someone with backbone and a couple of
fists ready to do battle -- and someone who isn't wishy-washy.
Not to mention, Bernie's a pro-democracy, pro-working
class kind of guy, without apologies. That's why they
love Bernie in the Green Mountain State.
Buzzflash: On June 10,
there was a meeting of the Judiciary Committee chaired
by the Republican chairman from Wisconsin, James Sensenbrenner,
at which Congressman Conyers invited witnesses to speak
to how the Patriot Act is not going well, and is violating
American civil liberties. Congressman Sensenbrenner
summarily gaveled the meeting to a close because he
didn't like the way it was going, meaning that people
were objecting to the Patriot Act, and this was getting
on television.
We [at Buzzflash] have very strong feelings about the
so-called Patriot Act. We view this as a power play
by the Bush Administration to gain powers that would
be centralized in the Executive branch and not subject
to any checks and balances. As you're aware, in the
Senate they had a secret meeting recently about the
Patriot Act in which they discussed giving the FBI subpoena
powers without having to go through the courtroom. What
is your whole take about where we're at with the Patriot
Act?
Congressman Sanders:
I voted against the Patriot Act. I've introduced, I
think, the first legislation to start amending the Patriot
Act, which is to take libraries and bookstores out of
Section 215. By the way, that was brought to the floor
of the House last summer, and at the end of the regulation
time, we had won that vote. Tom DeLay kept the rolls
open for another twenty minutes and twisted some Republican
arms. And we ended up losing it by a 210-210 vote. [That
amendment went before the House again on Tuesday and
we won 238-187!]
The whole idea of the Patriot Act does concern me very,
very much. We do have to be vigorous in protecting the
American people from terrorism, but I do not believe
that you have to undermine Constitutional rights in
order to do so. The Bush Administration's position on
civil liberties has been a disaster, not just with the
USA Patriot Act, but also moving toward a national ID
card, their desire to make sure that the PBS becomes
a Republican outlet, the fact that they entertained
an extreme right-wing blogger in the White House conference
room to allow softball questions to be asked, the fact
that it is extremely difficult for members of the opposition
to get amendments heard on the floor of the House. There
has been a huge abuse of power on the part of the Republican
leadership. The Patriot Act is just another step that
will chip away at Americans' Constitutional rights.
On the Senate side they are mulling over the FBI being
given subpoena powers without having to get the approval
of a judge.
I totally disagree with it. In the Congress a number
of provisions are up for being sunsetted. The Senate
has not sunset anything. In fact, they've expanded the
rights of the government to get information from Americans
without judicial review. Obviously, that is moving in
exactly the wrong direction.
This is a real centralization of power in the Executive
branch. The FBI, of course, works for the Executive
branch. How much of a threat is that?
You have the most secretive Administration probably
in the history of this country, an Administration which
claims to be "conservative," but in fact is
right-wing extremist. Honest conservatives believe in
the decentralization of power. Power back to the states,
back to local communities. This Administration, more
than any that we can remember, wants power for itself,
wants to do away, time after time, with judicial review,
has an Attorney General who wrote a recommendation regarding
and approving detainee torture, is sending prisoners
to other countries to be tortured, has run a very bad
process in Guantanamo, to say the least. Obviously,
in terms of civil liberties, this is a very dangerous
Administration, and we've got to fight back as vigorously
as we can. [...]
Buzzflash: Your neighboring
state, New Hampshire, has the motto, "Live free
or die." The Republican Party traditionally, looking
back forty, fifty years ago, was known for trying to
preserve states' rights and opposing the concentration
of power in Washington. It seems the Bush Administration
has kind of turned that on its head.
Congressman Sanders:
You're absolutely correct, and this is not widely talked
about. I'm on the Financial Services committee, and
we see this every day there. I am not a conservative,
but conservatism is a respectable philosophy which has
given power back to local communities. Conservatives
don't like a big federal government. That happens not
to be my point of view, but it is an intellectually
honest point of view. That is not - underlined - not
- what Bush is.
Bush is a right-wing extremist.
Wherever they can, they will seize power for the Administration.
We see it in terms of issues dealing with financial
matters, and a dozen others - we talked about civil
liberties before - where they are prepared to preempt
states' rights. This medical marijuana thing just the
other day is a perfect case in point. Some people think
that medical marijuana is a good idea. Some people think
it's not a good idea. If a state votes for that, why
is Bush pushing the federal government to overturn that?
But he does this in every instance. So the point must
be made that Bush is many things, but a conservative
he is not. He is rather a right-wing extremist who is
pushing a hard right ideology, and in instance after
instance, is trying to consolidate power in Washington. |
European Union leaders
have extended the November 2006 deadline for ratifying
the EU constitution, seeking to salvage the treaty by
arguing a period of reflection was needed following
its rejection in French and Dutch referenda.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking
on behalf of EU leaders, said they accepted the treaty
would not be ratified by all 25 nations by November
2006, as previously planned. But he said late yesterday
that with more time, voters
could be persuaded to fall in line.
“There must be a period of reflection, explanation
and debate,” he said. “The process of ratification
continues. There will not be a renegotiation because
there was never was a ’Plan B.’ But there
is a ’Plan D’ for dialogue and debate.”
“I am optimistic it will be possible to persuade
people the constitutional treaty is the right instrument
for the future.”
As part of the strategy to salvage the treaty by buying
time, Denmark announced it would indefinitely postpone
its referendum on the charter. Portugal announced early
today it also would put its vote on hold.
EU leaders apparently fear other countries could follow
the French and Dutch “nos” if made to vote
by the previous November 2006 deadline.
Juncker said countries would now be allowed to hold
their votes when they judged the moment to be “opportune”.
Some countries may not be able to
“give us a good response before mid-2007,”
he said. |
Video footage of a
deadly clash between farmers and gangs employed by a Chinese
electricity company to turf them off their land has been
released, providing startling evidence of local conflicts
normally kept hidden or denied.
The video, acquired by the Washington Post from a local
farmer, shows a gang of young men armed with pipes and
shovels as they charge a huddle of peasant protesters
who have refused to abandon their land to developers.
After a short one-sided battle, a single farmer is left
on the ground, where he is beaten senseless by an assailant
armed with a pole. Soon after the cameraman is attacked.
There is an explosion, the sound of gunshots and screams
of "Run!", then the images suddenly end.
According to the Beijing News, six villagers and one
attacker were killed in the incident and at least 48 people
were injured, eight of them seriously. The fighting, which
occurred last Saturday, was reportedly the latest and
most violent of several assaults by up to 300 thugs who
were hired by a local utilities company to force the peasants
off their land.
Tensions had been simmering since 2003, when the villagers
refused to accept an offer from Hebei Guohua Power, a
state-owned company which wanted to build a storage facility
on their land, about 140 miles south-west of Beijing.
Although local officials approved the sale of the property,
the farmers refused to budge. Many have been living in
tents on the land ever since, despite increasingly violent
attempts to force them to move.
In April during one attack in the middle of the night,
the villagers captured a hostage, Zhu Xiaorui.
The 23-year-old told the Washington Post he had been
paid 100 yuan (£7), armed with a metal pole and
told to "teach a lesson" to the farmers. [...] |
WASHINGTON - A
drug targeted specifically for black Americans with heart
problems is on track to become the first drug in the U.S.
marketed to a specific racial group.
A clinical trial of the heart failure medication BiDil
in black Americans was halted early when it became apparent
that those using it did better than those who did not.
The Food and Drug Administration's cardiovascular drug
advisory panel voted 9-0 on Thursday in favor of allowing
sales of BiDil. |
New research is beginning to explain
how the brains of alcoholics become smaller and lighter
compared to those of non-drinkers, and what functions
may be lost due to chronic drinking.
Scientists believe a number of factors - including
alcohol's toxic byproducts, malnutrition, even cirrhosis
of the liver - interact in complex ways to cause brain
damage.
A compilation of studies on alcohol-related brain shrinkage
presented by researchers at a symposium in Germany last
fall is being published Wednesday in the journal Alcoholism:
Clinical and Experimental Research.
The researchers used human and animal studies to map
the damage.
Alcohol appears to be particularly damaging to the
"white matter" or "hard wiring"
-- fat-insulated nerve fibers that allow brain cells
to rapidly communicate with other parts of the brain
-- according to Dr. Clive Harper, a professor of neuropathology
at the University of Sydney in Australia and organizer
of the symposium.
Alcoholics can also have shrinkage or retraction of
dendrites. These shorter connective fibers allow each
nerve cell to "talk" with as many as 10,000
neighboring neurons at a time.
"The most important permanent structural change
is nerve-cell loss," Harper said. "Some nerve
cells cannot be replaced - those in the frontal cortex,
the cerebellum and several regions deep in the brain."
A separate study on mice, published in the same journal
but not one of the symposium reports, showed that continuous
drinking for as little as eight weeks can produce deficits
in learning and memory that continue for up to 12 weeks
after drinking stops.
"The learning and memory deficits we found in
our mice ... affect all types of learning and memory,"
said Susan Farr, an associate professor of medicine
at St. Louis University and an author of the study.
"We found deficits in every type of task we tested
the mice in."
Previous studies had suggested that
mice had to drink steadily for six months or more to
experience permanent deficits.
"Drinking doesn't just produce a hangover,"
said D. Allan Butterfield, a professor of biological
and physical chemistry at the University of Kentucky.
"Chronic drinking may lead
to permanent cognitive deficits," he added, noting
that the findings should be of particular concern to
college students who engage in binge drinking.
Farr said it's difficult to make precise comparisons
between the alcohol dosing of 8-week-old mice and humans.
"This would be equivalent to a human that drank
six to eight beers or a bottle of wine every day for
six years, and could experience learning and memory
deficits for up to nine years after they stopped drinking,"
she said.
But Harper said many studies show that some brain functions
improve with abstinence over time.
"Although working memory, postural stability and
visual-spatial ability may continue to show impairment
for weeks to months with sobriety, with prolonged sobriety,
these brain functions can show improvement."
Harper also noted that, in animal experiments, dendrites
that shrink with chronic alcohol use "have been
shown to grow and spread again after periods of abstinence
- weeks to months - and have been accompanied by improved
brain function."
Although it is widely accepted that a predisposition
to alcoholism has a genetic component, researchers are
still trying to assess how much the physical damage
from alcohol further affects the wiring of addiction.
For instance, one study based on autopsies found that
genes controlling the manufacture of proteins that help
produce nerve insulation - myelin - were suppressed
in the brain tissue of alcoholics compared with such
genes in non- alcoholics. |
Mutilated
cow found near Paradise Hill
He stops short of pointing the finger at aliens, but
Ray Riguidel swears what he saw in his pasture last Friday
evening couldn’t have been done by humans or animals. |
Kirk Sibbald
Wednesday June 15, 2005 |
Lloydminster Meridian
Booster — He stops short of pointing the finger
at aliens, but Ray Riguidel swears what he saw in his
pasture last Friday evening couldn’t have been done
by humans or animals.
Riguidel, 68, has been farming near Paradise Hill his
entire life. During that time he’s lost his share
of cattle under various circumstances, but the 10-year-old
cow he lost this weekend was far different from the rest.
The udder was gone, one eye and ear
had been removed and the sex organs were torn away. The
remaining 50 or so cattle in the pasture had congregated
as far away from the corpse as possible.
There were no tire tracks or footprints.
There was no sign of a struggle.
Perhaps most bizarre, however, was a
glaring lack of blood despite the numerous and carefully
crafted incisions into the carcass.
“When you see a cow go down, you go look, but I
didn’t have to look twice,” said Riguidel.
“There was a guy with me, and we both popped our
eyes.
“I’ve heard about (cow mutilations) before,
but it never really sunk in,” he said.
“But it’s sunk in now. It’s
real.”
Cow mutilations are a relatively recent phenomenon, with
the earliest documented cases dating back to the mid-1900s.
While cows have been the main targets in the cases reported
throughout North America, less frequent victims have included
deer, elk, horses, lambs and dogs.
In some cases, UFO sightings have been reported near
the mutilation sites. And even though skeptics will scoff
at these extra-terrestrial accounts, no surveillance team
has ever come up with any rational explanation for what
took place. [...]
Although Larre didn’t put much faith in extra-terrestrial
life before this incident, he doesn’t think these
stories are so far-fetched any more.
“If you haven’t seen it, I wouldn’t
expect anyone to believe it. But if you really see one
for yourself, and you understand what coyotes will do,
you know it’s not predators,” he said. “Some
people say it’s from up above, and I don’t
know. I’m not going to say it is or it isn’t.
But when you see absolutely no clues and no reason, you
really have to wonder.”
Riguidel said he plans to leave the rotting corpse in
his pasture to see if any birds or animals will start
feeding on the carcass. But since Friday, nothing other
than some interested neighbours and a few flies have even
come close. |
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