News


to Me



...like a new Pearl Harbor



"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it."
  — Dwight David Eisenhower



"I fully understand that the intelligence was wrong,
and I'm just as disappointed as everybody else is."
  — George W. Bush, April 7, 2006



"I will not convene an accountability board
to judge the performances of any individual
CIA officers."   — J. Porter Goss



"Once a government is committed to the
principle of silencing the voice of
opposition, it has only one way to go, and
that is down the path of increasingly
repressive measures, until it becomes a
source of terror to all its citizens and
creates a country where everyone lives in
fear."
  — Harry S Truman



"It is the Iraqis' country, 28 million of
them. They are perfectly capable of running
that country. . . . Our problem is that
anytime something needs to be done, we have a
feeling we should rush in and fill the vacuum
and do it ourselves."
  — Donald Rumsfeld, 29 November 2005



Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates

As soon as the government was gone,
mysterious European ships started appearing
off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast
barrels into the ocean. The coastal
population began to sicken. At first they
suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed
babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami,
hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels
washed up on shore. People began to suffer
from radiation sickness, and more than 300
died.

15, Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret
Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima
To Three-Mile Island"

Faced with these disturbing discoveries, the
leaders of the local environmental groups in
Beaver County decided to hold a public
meeting at which both the Duquesne Light
Company and spokesmen for a Pittsburgh
environmental group would be able to present
their views to the people of the area. The
meeting took place early in January of 1973
at a shopping mall in the town of Monaca,
just a few miles from the Shippingport
plant. After the superintendent of the
Shippingport plant explained that the new
power station would be "the Cadillac of the
industry" -- with a waste-disposal system
that would permit only "minimal" amounts of
radioactivity to escape -- the head of
Environment Pittsburgh, David Marshall, and I
presented the data gathered by the Duquesne
Light Company's own consultants. Slide after
slide showed the localized concentrations of
radioactivity in the milk, the soil, and the
river sediments rising to many times their
normal value, together with the peaks during
the months when there was no nuclear-weapons
testing. Obviously, the findings in our
presentation were completely at variance with
what the utility had told the local people
over the years.

Black Rain Affecting Health Of Shippingport Residents? - kdka.com

It's difficult to prove, but on the surface
it raises suspicions. There are quite a few
people getting sick in the Beaver Valley and
some with very strange conditions, including
one little girl who lost all of her hair
within weeks of last year's black rain.

Gracie, 4, lost all of her hair last year to
a skin condition called alopecia.

Hellhole

America now holds at least twenty-five
thousand inmates in isolation in supermax
prisons. An additional fifty to eighty
thousand are kept in restrictive segregation
units, many of them in isolation, too,
although the government does not release
these figures.

E.J. Dionne Jr. - A Wave of Populism, a Test for Obama

A study of compensation levels in 2007 found
that average CEO pay at S&P 500 companies was
344 times higher than the average worker's
wage, and that the top 50 investment fund
managers took home 19,000 times -- yes,
that's with three zeroes -- as much as
typical workers earned.

Now, I am not against people getting rich or
entrepreneurs reaping profit from their
investments of time and energy. But there is
no moral or practical justification for such
levels of inequality.

Scholar presaged U.S. descent to destitution

After the fall of the Soviet Union, "I
realized we would do anything to protect the
military-industrial complex. Nothing scared
our government more in the last century than
the realization that we got out of the Great
Depression because of World War II."

In other words, we don't believe we can
afford to stop waging conventional warfare.

Judge questions law giving telecoms immunity

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has
asked President Obama's Justice Department to
present its views by Wednesday on whether the
law gives the attorney general too much power
to decide whether a company is immune from
lawsuits. Obama supported the measure as a
senator when Congress approved it last year.

U.S. May Ease Police Spy Rules

The Justice Department has proposed a new
domestic spying measure that would make it
easier for state and local police to collect
intelligence about Americans, share the
sensitive data with federal agencies and
retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal
government's rules for police
intelligence-gathering for the first time
since 1993 and would apply to any of the
nation's 18,000 state and local police
agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion
each year in federal grants.

Quietly unveiled late last month, the
proposal is part of a flurry of domestic
intelligence changes issued and planned by
the Bush administration in its waning
months.

Police concerned about order to stop
weapons screening at Obama rally

The order to put down the metal detectors and
stop checking purses and laptop bags came as
a surprise to several Dallas police officers
who said they believed it was a lapse in
security.

Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence,
head of the Police Department's homeland
security and special operations divisions,
said the order -- apparently made by the
U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed up
the long lines outside and fill the arena's
vacant seats before Obama came on.

ElBaradei 'to declare Iran clean'

The sources said that the US is exerting
pressure on ElBaradei's aides to convince him
to change the tone of his upcoming report and
that the delay in the release of the report
is a result of Washington's efforts.

The US and its allies, including Britain and
France, are reportedly planning to slam the
report at the upcoming meeting of the IAEA
Board of Governors, should ElBaradei go ahead
with its plan and release the positive
report.

The least dangerous branch: 19%!
Ponies all around!! Whee!!!

George W. Bush's overall job approval rating
has dropped to a new low in American Research
Group polling as 78% of Americans say that
the national economy is getting worse
according to the latest survey from the
American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 19% approve of the way
Bush is handling his job as president and 77%
disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling
of the economy, 14% approve and 79%
disapprove.

Former Gitmo Prosecutor: Pentagon
Official Said "We Can't Have Acquittals"

"I said to him that if we come up short and
there are some acquittals in our cases, it
will at least validate the process," Davis
continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes
got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we
can't have acquittals. If we've been holding
these guys for so long, how can we explain
letting them get off? We can't have
acquittals, we've got to have convictions.'

The invasion of America

by Andrew P. Napolitano
The 4th Amendment was written in response to
the Colonial experience whereby British
soldiers wrote their own search warrants,
thus literally authorizing themselves to
enter the private property of colonists.

The amendment has been uniformly interpreted
by the courts to require a warrant by a
judge; and judges can only issue search
warrants after government agents, under oath,
have convinced the judges that it is more
likely than not that the things to be seized
are evidence of crimes. This standard of
proof is called probable cause of crime. It
is one of only two instances in which the
founders wrote a rule of criminal procedure
into the Constitution itself, surely so that
no Congress, president or court could tamper
with it.

Court rejects ACLU challenge to wiretaps

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge
Tuesday to the Bush administration's
domestic spying program.

The justices' decision, issued without
comment, is the latest setback to legal
efforts to force disclosure of details of
the warrantless wiretapping that began
after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Don't Cry For The Telcos - Bush & Cheney
Are The Only Ones That Are Dying For
Immunity

Simply put, telco legal departments are huge,
experienced, and cutthroat competent. They
did not fall off the turnip truck last night,
nor any other night; and they have been
dealing with wiretapping issues for law
enforcement and national security concerns
since the telephone came into use. As someone
that has had dealings with such entities
regarding bad/illegal wiretaps, I can attest
that they always protect themselves vis a vis
the governmental entity they are working for
and are not shy about the use of indemnity
provisions.

"State Secret" Privilege Used to Block
Lawsuit on Behalf of Torture Victims

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and
legal resident of the United Kingdom, was
abducted in 2002 by masked men and flown,
blindfolded, from Pakistan to Morocco. For 18
months, Mohamed was regularly beaten into
unconsciousness by his interrogators. After a
scalpel was used to cut into his body, hot,
stinging liquid was poured into his wounds.

Mohamed is just one victim of the CIA's
"extraordinary rendition" program, which the
Bush administration has defended openly, yet
is now arguing it cannot discuss without
endangering national security.

Philip Giraldi: What FBI whistle-blower
Sibel Edmonds found in translation

Prior to 2006, Rep. Henry Waxman of the House
Government Reform and Oversight Committee
allegedly promised Ms. Edmonds that if the
Democrats gained control of Congress, he
would order hearings into her charges. But
following the Democratic sweep, he has been
less forthcoming. It is suspected that
Mr. Waxman fears that the revelations might
open a Pandora's box, damaging Republicans
and Democrats alike.

Clinton would seek to try 9/11
plotters inestablished courts

If elected president, Hillary Clinton would
ask the Justice Department to determine if
alleged 9/11 plotters currently held at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be tried in
civilian courts or regular military courts
rather than face military commissions that
have sparked controversy both inside and
outside the United States, her campaign says.

Clinton's response to questions about charges
filed last week against six Guantanamo
prisoners was the most far reaching of the
three leading presidential candidates.

Her opponent for the Democratic nomination,
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said that the
so-called "high-value detainees'' at
Guantanamo should be tried in federal or
traditional military courts, but did not say
what actions he would take to move the
trials.

Republican Sen. John McCain, the likely
Republican nominee, said he plans to continue
the military commissions even if the
detention center in Cuba is closed, as he has
advocated.

Once Upon a Time...: No One Is Safe:
The Ruling Class Unleashed

The Democrats may condemn the Iraq invasion
and occupation as the worst "blunder" in our
history, but they will not condemn it as the
war crime it is. And they keep paying for
it. They are not murderers themselves, but
every member of Congress who votes to pay for
this continuing obscenity is an accomplice to
murder and genocide.

Debate on Surveillance Bill

REP. PETER HOEKSTRA: So, Steny, why are we
home today? Why did we go home on Thursday
afternoon? We should have stayed in
Washington Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday until this got worked out, because it
does weaken our national security.

REP. STENY HOYER: Peter...

REP. PETER HOEKSTRA: The president said he
was willing to postpone his trip to Africa to
work this out.

REP. STENY HOYER: Peter...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Gentlemen...

REP. STENY HOYER: ... I'm in
Washington. Reyes is in Washington. Conyers
is in Washington, and Rockefeller was in
Washington. So you're the one that's home.

Error Gave F.B.I. Unauthorized Access to E-Mail

F.B.I. officials blamed an "apparent
miscommunication" with the unnamed
Internet provider, which mistakenly turned
over all the e-mail from a small e-mail
domain for which it served as host. The
records were ultimately destroyed, officials
said.

Bureau officials noticed a "surge" in
the e-mail activity they were monitoring and
realized that the provider had mistakenly set
its filtering equipment to trap far more data
than a judge had actually authorized.

2/14/2008: Newly Released FBI Timeline
Reveals New Information about 9/11 Hijackers
that Was Ignored by 9/11 Commission

A contributor to the History Commons has
obtained a 298-page document entitled
Hijackers Timeline (Redacted) from the FBI,
subsequent to a Freedom of Information Act
request. The document was a major source of
information for the 9/11 Commission's final
report. Though the commission cited the
timeline 52 times in its report, it failed to
include some of the document's most important
material.

Bush plans to veto waterboarding ban

US President George W. Bush plans to veto
legislation passed by the Senate to bar the
CIA from using harsh interrogation methods
including waterboarding.

Bush Says Congress Putting US in Danger

McConnell says an extension would fail to
address a central problem: delaying legal
immunity for companies that help in the
warrantless wiretapping program could lead
phone companies to challenge wiretapping
orders in court as a way to insulate
themselves from future lawsuits.

Already, he says the roughly 40 lawsuits
filed against telecom companies nationwide
have chilled the private sector's willingness
to help the intelligence agencies in ways
unrelated to electronic surveillance. Exactly
how is classified, and he won't elaborate.

Thousands of Guantanamo
interrogations were taped: report

A spokesman for the "war on terror" camp
told AFP that while officials monitor
interrogations, the prison was not required
to videotape them and did not do it on a
routine basis.

But professors and students at Seton Hall
University School of Law released a report
which cites officials documents that they
said provide new evidence that the government
has recorded interrogations at Guantanamo.

They cite a May 2005 internal report from
Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley in which he
wrote: "All interrogations are videotaped."

Bush Wants Limits on Access to Evidence

At the Guantanamo hearings, detainees are not
allowed to have lawyers present and the
Pentagon decides what evidence to
present. And unlike in criminal trials, the
government is not obligated to turn over
evidence that the defendant might be
innocent.

OPEC considers dumping US dollar

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
plans to discuss a proposal by Iran and
Venezuela to price oil in non-dollar
currencies.

Bush Spy Bill Stance Called Fear-
Mongering, President: U.S. Could Face
Attacks That Would Make 9/11 "Pale By
Comparison"


The House-passed version does not include
telecom immunity. This past week, the Senate
approved a similar version which includes a
provision that protects telecoms from civil
lawsuits.

There are approximately 40 lawsuits now
brought by citizens and consumer groups
against companies that enabled the government
to illegally eavesdrop on Americans' phone
and Internet communications.

No immunity

Earlier this week, President Bush actually
suggested that al-Qaida operatives are
watching the calendar, poised to plot new
attacks freely with Congress absent - and
U.S. intelligence officials will be largely
powerless to stop them.

Don't insult the American public,
Mr. President. You'll still have the ability
to wiretap suspected terrorists - and the
warrantless surveillance powers in the bill
are valid until August.

Crowds 'pick leaders to follow'

"We've all been in situations where we get
swept along by the crowd but what's
interesting about this research is that our
participants ended up making a consensus
decision despite the fact that they weren't
allowed to talk or gesture to one another."

FISA 101

FISA and the Protect America Act both equally
allow eavesdropping on the Terrorists Who
Want to Kill Us. The material difference is
that FISA requires warrants for eavesdropping
on Americans (after the fact, if necessary)
while the Protect America Act allows the
President to eavesdrop on any Americans
without having any oversight at all. The
difference does not relate to the ability to
eavesdrop on the Terrorists but on the nature
and level of oversight from that
eavsdropping. Moreover, the FISA Court is and
always has been a rubber-stamping tribunal
that does not ever block any surveillance on
any suspected Terrorists.

US: Broken Satellite Will Be Shot Down

Shooting down a satellite is particularly
sensitive because of the controversy
surrounding China's anti-satellite test last
year, when Beijing shot down one of its
defunct weather satellites, drawing immediate
criticism from the U.S. and other countries.
...
It is not known where the satellite will
hit. But officials familiar with the
situation say about half of the 5,000-pound
spacecraft is expected to survive its blazing
descent through the atmosphere and will
scatter debris _ some of it potentially
hazardous _ over several hundred miles. The
officials spoke on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the matter.

237 nuke handling deficiencies cited since 2001

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear
Information Project at the Federation of
American Scientists, issued a Freedom of
Information Act request for all ACC Bent
Spear and Dull Sword incidents from June 1992
--when the ACC took over the nuclear
mission from Strategic Air Command--to
Sept. 27, 2007, when he made the request.

The response he received went only as far
back as June 2001 because the ACC Safety
database no longer has any records of Dull
Sword incidents from 1992 to 2001, said
Maj. Thomas Crosson, an ACC spokesman. Air
Force officials could not explain why those
incidents got deleted from the database.

Valerie Plame Wilson Describes Sibel
Edmonds Disclosures as'Stunning'

Says She Has Been Following Recent
Blockbuster Series in British Paper
Concerning U.S. Nuclear Secrets Espionage,
Allegations That Her Cover Company, Brewster
Jennings, Was Exposed by a Former High-
Ranking State Department Official as Far
Back as 2001...

Military Loses Records On Bin Laden's Driver

A U.S. Justice Department lawyer argued that
although no international law or treaty

specifically listed conspiracy as a war
crime, the Nuremberg war court set a
precedent by prosecuting German SS members
after World War Two. They were accused of
membership in what had been declared a
criminal organization, essentially the
equivalent of conspiring with al Qaeda, said
the attorney, Jordan Goldstein.

A Brief Concerning Impeachment
Implications of Bush Administration's
Admission of Torture

It seems there is reason to believe that the
Congress has to proceed with investigations,
and those investigations must be impeachment
investigations. The Justice department cannot
do the investigation; it is implicated,
having written the opinions supporting the
system of torture. In an impeachment
investigation, there is no claim of executive
privilege.

The compelling development is the admission
of water-boarding, which up until now the
Administration has refused to acknowledge.
(Perhaps they have determined that enough
time has elapsed that it is now politically
feasible to do that, that the U.S. citizenry
has "acclimated" to the idea.) However, if my
understanding of the treaty implications is
correct, they have made a tactical miscalculation,
creating an opening for legal action against
them, by virtue of the water-boarding
disclosure.

Dodd: It's up to The House

After the bill passes in the Senate, as is
expected late today or tomorrow, the bill
would head to a conference. There, conferees
from both houses will try to hash out the
significant differences between the House
and Senate versions, the issue of retroactive
immunity chief among them.

However, Dodd said, if the final bill
emerging from that powwow does contain
retroactive immunity, he said he'd
"absolutely" filibuster that bill; he'd
use "whatever vehicles we can" to stop it.

Dodd won't block Senate FISA update,
sees House as best bet to strip immunity

After failing to strip immunity from the
Senate bill, Sen. Chris Dodd announced he
would abandon his effort to block the bill
with a filibuster, arguing that the House,
which has passed an immunity-free bill, would
be a better place to try to strip immunity
from Congress's final piece of legislation.

Anatomy of a Dishonest Editorial

Who did the Senate Committee call as
witnesses? What evidence did they consider?
We have no idea. We have a very well-defined
system for determining innocence and guilt in
this country, and it does not involve the
legislative branch making broad proclamations
following secretive procedures.

Again, the logic at the root is that these
companies need amnesty because they did
nothing wrong. Curious.

How Karl Rove and Torture
Influenced the 9/11 Report

Goodman: Philip Zelikow, did you ask Tenet
whether these people were tortured?

Zelikow: I did not, but that wasn't -- I
wasn't the person who was pushing the issue
directly with Tenet. That was more the job of
my bosses on the Commission: Tom Kean, Lee
Hamilton and other commissioners. It was --

Goodman: And did they question George Tenet
directly?

Zelikow: I'm sorry?

Goodman: Did they ask him, were these
prisoners tortured?

Zelikow: They did not ask him, as far as I
know.

YouTube - 20080211 Senator Dodd quotes
Glenn Greenwald on FISA 8:30pm

The WSJ editorial page lies
about our surveillance laws

The shamelessly fear-mongering claim that
telecoms won't "cooperate" in the future
without amnesty -- a central prong of the
WSJ's Editorial, needless to say -- is
nothing more than the standard authoritarian
tactic of warning that unless we succumb to
Bush's demands and give the Government and
its allies everything they want, we're all
going to die at the hands of the
Terrorists. Telecoms were already granted
prospective immunity by the Protect America
Act -- meaning they cannot be held liable in
the future if they act pursuant to government
certification that the requests are
legal. That already ensures all the
"cooperation" that we could possibly want.

Moreover, we want telecoms and all other
private actors to be incentivized to abide by
the law, not to break the law. That's why we
enact laws in the first place, along with
penalties for breaking them -- because we
want an incentive scheme that causes
companies to refuse illegal requests from the
government. The full-scale immunity that
Congress is about to bestow rewards
lawbreaking and incentivizes rational
telecoms to ignore our laws in the future,
knowing that they are free to act illegally
without consequence. What rational person
would want to endorse that framework?

Why Not Abolish the Fed?

Most Americans probably still believe that
the Great Depression was caused by "the
failure of the free-enterprise system." It
is a false belief. The truth is that the
worst economic disaster in American history
was caused by the Federal Reserve. Give
current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke credit for
publicly acknowledging that fact in a speech
delivered in 2002 commemorating Friedman's
90th birthday.

Pentagon to charge 9/11 suspects

The Pentagon is planning to charge six
detainees at Guantanamo Bay for the Sept. 11
terror attacks on America and seek the death
penalty.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman
said an announcement of the charges could
come Monday.

A second official said that military leaders
also will seek the death penalty for the
attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

Bush seeks armed guards
on all flights from Europe

According the document leaked to the
Guardian, the administration also wants EU
states to supply personal data on all air
passengers flying over the United States even
if they are not landing in America.

Further, the Administration is also demanding
that European airlines provide personal data
on non-travelers, such as family members who
are allowed beyond departure barriers to help
the elderly or infirm board jets embarking
for America.

Cheney fights release of videos

The office of Vice President Dick Cheney is
seeking to block the release of videotaped
depositions given by two aides who witnessed
a physical encounter between an Iraq war
opponent and Cheney.

In a motion filed Saturday, Cheney's office
contended that the videotapes could be used
to invade the privacy and embarrass two aides
called to testify about the encounter in a
civil lawsuit.

Let impeachment process begin

Saddam Hussein offered in February 2002, a
month before his country was invaded,
personally to leave Iraq for exile in Egypt
or Saudi Arabia. His offer was kept secret --
and rejected. Regime change was in fact a
facade for a more ambitious objective: The
Bush administration was already committed to
the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Also kept secret was a standing offer from
the Taliban to the Bush administration to
surrender Osama bin Laden -- an offer made
long before the Trade Towers fell and the
Pentagon burned. Three times before 9/11 and
twice afterward, the administration refused
the surrender. Bin Laden's capture was in
fact a facade for a more ambitious objective:
The administration already was committed to
the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Bulletins from the Ministry for Torture

Bush may very well say that "we do not
torture." He said it in the teeth of the
photographs from Abu Ghraib, the gruesome
scenes of Guantanamo, the deaths in Bagram
and the scandalous reports from the system of
CIA blacksites. It is one of Bush's most
practiced, most artfully delivered and least
believed lies. But we know he is wedded to
torture. It is, for the Bush years, the
surest evidence of the morally corrosive
wielding of power for the sake of power, of
power untamed by accountability, of power
placed beyond the hold of Law.

AP Poll: to Fix Economy, Get Out of Iraq

The heck with Congress' big stimulus
bill. The way to get the country out of
recession _ and most people think we're in
one _ is to get the country out of Iraq,
according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.

Pulling out of the war ranked first among
proposed remedies in the survey, followed by
spending more on domestic programs, cutting
taxes and, at the bottom end, giving rebates
to poor people in hopes they'll spend the
economy into recovery.

Bush Would Forgo New FISA Programs
to Make Sure Dick Gets Immunity

Bush is willing to forgo implementing new
FISA programs (all the existing ones will
continue for at least six months) all because
he wants Dick to get his immunity
... now. This is about Bush putting Dick's
interests--and his own--above the security of
the country.

Because They Said So

According to Mr. Rockefeller, the companies
were "sent letters, all of which stated that
the relevant activities had been authorized
by the president" and that the attorney
general--then John Ashcroft--decided the
activity was lawful. The legal justification
remains secret, but we suspect it was based
on the finely developed theory that the
president does not have to obey the law, and
not on any legitimate interpretation of
federal statutes.

When Mr. Bush started his spying program,
FISA allowed warrantless eavesdropping for up
to a year if the president certified that it
was directed at a foreign power, or the agent
of a foreign power, and there was no real
chance that communications involving United
States citizens or residents would be caught
up. As we now know, the surveillance included
Americans and there was no "foreign power"
involved.

The FBI Deputizes Business

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of
private industry are working quietly with the
FBI and the Department of Homeland
Security. The members of this rapidly growing
group, called InfraGard, receive secret
warnings of terrorist threats before the
public does - and, at least on one occasion,
before elected officials. In return, they
provide information to the government, which
alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it
than that. One business executive, who showed
me his InfraGard card, told me they have
permission to "shoot to kill" in the event of
martial law.

CIA Director Confirms Details of Waterboarding

It's a message and rationale that fits with
Mukasey's testimony before Congress last
week, that you have to "balance the value of
doing something against the cost of doing
it." And although Hayden seems to be
stressing the uniqueness of those
circumstances (in and of itself highly
debatable), Mukasey clearly refused last week
to declare that such circumstances will never
arise again. He was, however, at pains to say
that every major official from Hayden to
Mukasey to the President would have to sign
off on its use again.

Somehow I don't think that all this is going
to serve to diminish Congressional concern.

Jello Jay Advocates Illegal
Spying on Americans

Unlike traditional FISA applications, which
permits the collection of information on one
target, the new FISA provision permits a
system of collection. The Court's role in
this system of collection is not to consider
probable cause on individual targets, but to
ensure that the procedures used to collect
intelligence are adequate. The Court's
determination of the adequacy of procedures,
therefore, impacts all of the electronic
communications gathered under the new
mechanism, even if it involves thousands of
targets.

Sen. Rockefeller Lets Slip the Spying
Truth: Drift Nets To Be Legalized

Under the new rules, secret spying court
judges will no longer be evaluating whether
the government has probable cause to
eavesdrop on a spy or a terrorist who is
inside the United States or to wiretap a
particular foreigner via wiretaps inside the
United States.

Instead the judges will simply evaluate
descriptions of how NSA filters in the
infrastructure are designed to not catch
purely domestic traffic. They can also
approve or disapprove of how the spooks
'disguise' or reveal the identities of
Americans who are one of the parties in any
communication that involves a foreigners.

McCain Seals GOP Nod As Romney Suspends

Romney's decision leaves McCain as the top
man standing in the GOP race, with Mike
Huckabee and Ron Paul far behind in the
delegate hunt. It was a remarkable turnaround
for McCain, who some seven months ago was
barely viable, out of cash and losing
staff. The four-term Arizona senator, denied
his party's nomination in 2000, was poised to
succeed George W. Bush as the GOP standard-
bearer.

Guilt-free spying

Editor - Attorney General Michael Mukasey and
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell
claim retroactive protection for the
telecommunication companies that spied on
U.S. citizens by writing: "Private citizens
who respond in good faith to a request for
assistance by public officials should not be
held liable for their actions."

Can they truly believe that? They do not
expect citizens to take personal
responsibility for their actions? Since when
is that a good idea? I have always understood
that the excuse, "I was only following
orders" does not serve as a rational for
illegal behavior. And heaven knows, all of
our public officials are above reproach and
should be followed without question ...

MAUREEN BARNATO

El Sobrante

Editor - I'm sorry: Did Attorney General
Michael Mukasey and Intelligence Director
Mike McConnell skip history class the day
they taught the Nuremberg Trials? Does "never
again" mean nothing?

Yes, eavesdropping and massacring Jews are
not in the same ballpark as far as
transgressions go, but the principle of law -
international law supported by this country
after the horrors of WWII - holds true today
as it did then. You cannot have a populace
run and hide behind the illegal actions of
its own government and claim clemency based
on, "they told me to" defense.

WILL HARDE

San Francisco

This article appeared on page B - 6
of the San Francisco Chronicle

Stimulus Plan a Scam to Benefit the Rich
Higher loan limits will lead to Fannie
Mae, Freddie Mac bailout

Here's how we got to this point. Domestic and
international investors hold hundreds of
billions of dollars in bad debt, because
U.S. investment houses sold them junk
securities based on often fraudulent
mortgages. Many of these mortgages were sold
to unqualified buyers under terms that made
widespread foreclosures a certainty once the
housing market began to fall.

Investment banks and bond rating agencies sat
down and tried to figure out how to describe
Americans with insufficient incomes and
little for a down payment as great credit
risks on loans too big for their incomes. The
new rules focused on credit scores, because
it was a good excuse to avoid looking at
income and down payment, factors that would
have restricted this moneymaking fiasco.

Now, thanks to Congress, junk bond investors
will be able to pawn off their bad debt to
Fannie and Freddie, instead of suing the big
investment houses for ripping them off. This
shift will certainly doom Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, so don't be surprised if we, the
taxpayers, have to bail out poor Fannie and
Freddie - to the tune of more than $1
trillion.

Bush's defense department budget request
[does] not include war spending

U.S. President George W. Bush requested on
Monday for 515.4 billion U.S. dollars as the
defense department budget in fiscal year 2009
that does not include war spending in Iraq
and Afghanistan.

The president also asked for an
"emergency allowance" of 70billion
dollars to cover the war costs in the
first six months after the 2009 fiscal
year starts on Oct. 1, 2008.

The total amount Bush requested for
defense affairs reached 585.4 billion
dollars, compared to the 668.6 billion
dollars that the administration has
demanded for the current 2008 fiscal
year, including 479. 5 billion dollars in
Defense Department spending and 189.1
billion dollars for war costs.

Internet problems continue
with fourth cable break

The cause of damage is not yet known, but
ArabianBusiness.com has been told
unofficially the problem is related to the
power system and not the result of a ship's
anchor cutting the cable, as is thought to be
the case in the other three incidents.

Flag plays down net blackout
conspiracy theories

Those theories were fuelled further on Monday
when Egypt said damage to the cables in the
Mediterranean Sea was not caused by ships, as
previously thought.

Egypt's Transport Ministry said footage
recorded by onshore video cameras of the
location of the cables shows no maritime
traffic in the area when the cables were
damaged.

"The ministry's maritime transport committee
reviewed footage covering the period of 12
hours before and 12 hours after the cables
were cut and no ships sailed the area," a
statement by the Communications Ministry
said.

"The area is also marked on maps as a no-go
zone and it is therefore ruled out that the
damage to the cables was caused by ships."

It is not clear how badly Iran's internet
access has been affected by the cable breaks.

Prison Call Centers Put Squeeze
on Service Sector

Most of the centers handle orders for items
the prisoners are making themselves and deal
almost exclusively with the non-profits and
government agencies that are allowed to buy
their goods. But in a few cases, prisons have
offered their call centers' services to
private companies on the outside who want to
outsource their own departments. The
companies say they would have sent the
centers overseas if they hadn't given the
business to the prisons.

The prison industry in the United States:
big business or a new form of slavery?

Along with war supplies, prison workers
supply 98% of the entire market for equipment
assembly services; 93% of paints and
paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of
body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of
headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of
office furniture. Airplane parts, medical
supplies, and much more: prisoners are even
raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

Telecom Group Key Player in
Immunity Battle

A think tank with close ties to the
telecommunication industry has been working
with a key Democrat in the Senate on a
domestic surveillance bill that would provide
telecommunications companies with retroactive
immunity for possibly violating federal law
by spying on American citizens at the behest
of the Bush administration.

Third Way, a non-profit "progressive"
think tank that is funded and controlled
by hedge fund managers, corporate lawyers
and business executives has advised
Sen. Jay Rockefeller on a domestic
surveillance bill that includes immunity
for telecommunications companies with
which Third Way board members have close
ties.

The Worst Addiction of Them All

A compulsive preparer for war wants to go to
big-time war no more than an alcoholic
stockbroker wants to pass out with his head
in a toilet In the Port Authority bus
terminal.

"State of exception: Bush's war on the
rule of law" by Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

At its finest moments the Republican Party
has been a vocal and unsparing advocate for
human rights. "Though force can protect in
emergency," insisted Dwight D. Eisenhower,
the party's great warrior-president, "only
justice, fairness, consideration, and
cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn
of eternal peace." But under the current
administration, those designated as enemies
have no rights, neither under the laws of war
nor under any notion of criminal justice. A
radical rupture has occurred; American legal
tradition has been swept aside and, with it,
long-established precedents for dealing with
adversaries in wartime--even those accused
of heinous crimes.

Antiwar Radio Blog Archive
Philip Giraldi

One of the more interesting charges was that
she says that she reviewed the transcript of
a conversation in which Grossman warned the
Turks that Brewster Jennings, the CIA cover
company that Valerie Plame worked for, was
"government"--you know, a code word
for the Agency, and this apparently took
place in late 2001, so it was way before
Robert Novak outed Valerie Plame and her
cover company. In this case, it went to the
Turks, and the FBI was listening in on the
Turks, when they called the Pakistanis and
informed Pakistani intelligence about this.

G.W. Bush Is a Criminal, Like His Dad

At one point, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,
D-Rhode Island, even made a George Orwell
reference in noting that Mukasey's discussion
about the criminality of waterboarding had
"melted into the abstract."

Mukasey responded: "We could engage in a
discussion. It would not be a concrete and
factual discussion because we would be
talking about if this, if that, if the
other."

When Whitehouse called Mukasey's answer
"totally not credible" because Bush
administration officials already have
acknowledged that CIA interrogators did use
waterboarding against several terror
suspects, Mukasey continued

The Fine Print

It's glaringly obvious why Mr. Bush rejected
the fourth provision, which states that none
of the money authorized for military purposes
may be used to establish permanent military
bases in Iraq.

Sibel Edmonds: 'Buckle up,
there's much more coming.'

As you know, this case is spread over two
administrations, and that appears to make it
difficult for the reporters to cover the
story. Even within one news organization you
might have one journalist who wants to use
the story to indict Clinton, and another who
wants to use the story to bash Bush, and in
the end neither of them write about the story
because it doesn't fit their partisanship,
their 'narrative', so they just drop it
altogether.

CBS Falsifies Iraq War History

It's Bush World, with Pelley--like other
prominent U.S. news correspondents--ignoring
the well-established facts of the run-up to
war and following the made-up story first
presented by Bush four months after he forced
the U.N. inspectors out, when he began
claiming that Hussein had never let them in.

GOP Unable to Force Vote
on Bush Surveillance Bill

Congress broadly supports passing a new
u9version of the controversial legislation at
issue, named the Protect America Act by its
sponsors. But congressional Democrats and the
White House are battling over President
Bush's demands that any bill include immunity
for telecommunications companies that
cooperated with intelligence agencies in
warrantless wiretaps after the attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001.

The telecommunications companies are now the
targets of dozens of lawsuits alleging that
they violated privacy rights by aiding the
government's surveillance.

What's at stake today in the
Senate's FISA filibuster vote

Just as most of the press falsely depicted
the NSA scandal from the beginning as whether
we should eavesdrop on The Terrorists (rather
than whether we should let the President
eavesdrop on Americans with or without
judicial oversight and warrants), now they're
depicting the current debate as whether FISA
should be allowed to expire -- as though
Congressional Democrats are about to remove
altogether the government's eavsdropping
powers. It's just not possible to know the
most basic facts about any of this and
describe it that way.

Statement of Senator Dodd
on FISA Telecom Immunity

"It's one thing for a president to express
that kind of contempt for the process of
legislation. It's another for the members
legislative branch to express it themselves."
...
He asked us to do it on trust. There are
classified documents, he says, that prove his
case beyond a shadow of a doubt. But we're
not allowed to see them! I've served in this
body for 27 years, and I'm not allowed to see
them! Neither are a majority of my
colleagues.

And when we resist his urge to be a law unto
himself, how does he respond? With fear. When
we question him, he says, we are failing
"to keep the American people safe."

UK Times: Brewster Jennings outed by
'treasonous' US govt official in 2001, not 2003


More from the Times:

One group of Turkish agents who had come
to America on the pretext of researching
alternative energy sources was introduced
to Brewster Jennings through the
Washington-based American Turkish Council
(ATC), a lobby group that aids commercial
ties between the countries. Edmonds says
the Turks believed Brewster Jennings to
be energy consultants and were planning
to hire them

UK Times: Brewster Jennings
outed by 'treasonous' US govt official in 2001,
not 2003


The claims that a State Department official
[Marc Grossman] blew the investigation into a
nuclear smuggling ring have been made by
Sibel Edmonds, 38, a former Turkish language
translator in the FBI's Washington field
office.

Bush oversteps on FISA. But
will Congress roll over again?

In August, this very bill was so important to
Bush that he threatened to veto anything
else, and to force the Congress to stay in
session until they gave him the custom-built
law he wanted.

Now, Congress offers to extend the very same
law for 30 days, and Bush threatens to veto
it. Yes, the same one he practically wrote
himself, when he stomped his feet and held
his breath back in August. Now that bill
isn't good enough for him. And what's the
difference between now and August? In August,
we hadn't yet found out the details of how
and the extent to which the "administration"
had asked the telecoms to break the law on
their say-so.

The FISA Follies, Redux

Mr. Bush says without amnesty, the government
won't get cooperation in the future. We don't
buy it. The real aim is to make sure the full
story of the illegal wiretapping never comes
out in court.

Mr. Reid--who is still falling for the
White House's soft-on-terrorism bullying--
set up deliberations in a way that ensured
that a better Judiciary Committee version of
the bill would die a procedural death and
that the Intelligence Committee bill would
pass.

Where the President's Power is Strongest,
the Rule of Law Should be Strongest as Well
U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd


Both versions of the bill authorize the
president to conduct overseas surveillance
without individual warrants. Both allow the
president to submit his procedures for this
new kind of surveillance for the review of
the FISA Court--after those procedures are
already in place.

But only one version of the bill balances
these significant new presidential powers
with real oversight from the Congress and the
courts. That is the Leahy Amendment.

Power We Didn't Grant

Just before the Senate acted on this
compromise resolution, the White House sought
one last change. Literally minutes before the
Senate cast its vote, the administration
sought to add the words "in the United States
and" after "appropriate force" in the
agreed-upon text. This last-minute change
would have given the president broad
authority to exercise expansive powers not
just overseas -- where we all understood he
wanted authority to act -- but right here in
the United States, potentially against
American citizens. I could see no
justification for Congress to accede to this
extraordinary request for additional
authority. I refused.

U.S. Asking Iraq for Wide Rights on War

With its international mandate in Iraq set to
expire in 11 months, the Bush administration
will insist that the government in Baghdad
give the United States broad authority to
conduct combat operations and guarantee
civilian contractors specific legal
protections from Iraqi law, according to
administration and military officials.

Senate delays eavesdropping vote

Further action on the legislation was delayed
until Monday, pushing Congress closer to the
deadline, and leaving unresolved the most
contentious issue in the bill: whether to
grant legal immunity to telecommunications
companies that helped the government conduct
warrantless surveillance.

The Bush administration is insisting that any
new law protect from potentially crippling
civil lawsuits those telecom companies that
helped the government eavesdrop on Americans
after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

935 Lies on the Way to a War

There is a key distinction between the
mainstream media's coverage of the Clinton
lies and the Bush lies. The difference is
that the media was fully complicit in the
dissemination of the Bush lies. It
transmitted them uncritically, repeatedly,
with dramatic amplification, over a period of
years. Therefore, in the minds of many if not
most of the media moguls, highlighting these
lies is an exercise in self-criticism. Now
there's nothing the American mainstream media
views with greater distaste than
self-criticism. And there's nothing more
needed.

So what about Congress? Isn't it supposed to
be a check on the audacious falsehoods spread
by the Executive Branch? That's what the
Founding Fathers had in mind, of
course. Moreover, many of them--especially
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson--were
focused on the risk that an Executive would
push the country into an unnecessary war
simply to aggrandize his powers through the
commander-in-chief clause. Congress was
supposed to act as a check against this.

AT&T and Other I.S.P.s May
Be Getting Ready to Filter

At a small panel discussion about digital
piracy at NBC's booth on the Consumer
Electronics Show floor, representatives from
NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering
companies and the telecom giant AT&T said
discussed whether the time was right to start
filtering for copyrighted content at the
network level.

Such filtering for pirated material already
occurs

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak: Action Alert.
Grossman to appear in DC Wednesday 10am

Former ambassador to Turkey and former State
Department #3, Marc Grossman is the unnamed
senior official in the UK Times' recent
blockbuster "For sale: West's deadly nuclear
secrets"

"(Marc Grossman) was aiding foreign
operatives against US interests by
passing them highly classified
information, not only from the State
Department but also from the Pentagon, in
exchange for money, position and
political objectives."

The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt
By Richard Hofstadter

Who is the pseudo-conservative, and what does
he want? It is impossible to identify him by
class, for the pseudo-conservative impulse
can be found in practically all classes in
society, although its power probably rests
largely upon its appeal to the less educated
members of the middle classes. The ideology
of pseudo-conservatism can be characterized
but not defined, because the
pseudo-conservative tends to be more than
ordinarily incoherent about politics.

Jose Padilla is sentenced to 17 years

Prosecutors had sought a life sentence, but
Cook said she arrived at the 17-year sentence
after considering the "harsh conditions"
during Padilla's lengthy military detention
at a Navy brig in South Carolina.
...
Cooke said that as serious as the conspiracy
was, there was no evidence linking the men to
specific acts of terrorism anywhere.

Israel slams 'torture' label

Alan Baker said yesterday he contacted
Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa as soon
as he learned of the matter and demanded that
Israel be deleted from the list of suspected
human rights abusers.

Pelosi greeted with "Impeach"
Bush and Cheney buttons

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy
Pelosi says she's drawing heat from fellow
Democratic lawmakers as well as people across
the nation for refusing to move to impeach
President George W. Bush or Vice President
Dick Cheney.

"I go through airports, and people have
buttons as if they knew I was coming," Pelosi
said with a smile, mimicking a protester
pointing to an "Impeach" button on their
chest.

Padilla Sentence Due in Terror Case

The accusations that he plotted to set off a
radioactive "dirty bo9mb" are long gone, but
Jose Padilla was still convicted last summer
of conspiring to support Islamic extremists
around the world.

Now a federal judge who sat through a
three-month trial and seven-day sentencing
hearing was set to decide Tuesday the fate of
the 37-year-old U.S. citizen and two
co-defendants.

Ex-official sued over terrorism memos

Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla
sued a key architect of the Bush
administration's counterterrorism policies
Friday, claiming the official's legal
arguments led to Padilla's alleged
mistreatment and illegal detention at a Navy
brig.

Highly skilled and out of work

An unusually large share of workers have been
out a job for more than six months even as
overall unemployment has remained low, a
little-noted weakness in the labor market
that analysts said threatens to intensify the
impact of the unfolding economic downturn.

Crash! Biggest fall in
shares since September 11

It was the day that the fear factor took
over. From Asia to South America, share
prices tumbled yesterday as the world's
investors gambled that a US recession was now
inevitable. In London, the City endured its
darkest day since the nadir of 9/11. What
Alan Greenspan once called the "irrational
exuberance" of traders gambling on rising
asset values has gone. In its place, a
deep-rooted pessimism has taken hold.

Documentary segment on FBI Abuse of
Patriot Act's National Security Letters
and NSA Spying on Americans without warrants

Documentary segment on FBI Abuse of Patriot
Act's National Security Letters and NSA
Spying on Americans without warrants

Dan Ellsberg slams MSM's failures
re: Sibel Edmonds

Of course, we don't have any evidence that
Sibel 'stumbled on some big time national
security, covert operation,' all evidence
points to the fact that powerful people are
profiting from the entire enterprise and
that's why they want to keep it under
wraps. As far as we know, nobody from the
government has asked Sibel to keep quiet and
explained that there are legitimate national
security implications, all we have is a few
journalists cravenly using that 'excuse' as
cover for their cowardice.

Covering Up the Coverage - The American
Media's Complicit Failure to Investigate
and Report on the Sibel Edmonds Case

For the second time in two weeks, the entire
U.S. press has let itself be scooped by
Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a
dynamite story of criminal activities by
corrupt U.S. officials promoting nuclear
proliferation. But there is a worse
journalistic sin than being scooped, and that
is participating in a cover-up of information
that demands urgent attention from the
public, the U.S. Congress and the courts.For
the last two weeks -- one could say, for
years -- the major American media have been
guilty of ignoring entirely the allegations
of the courageous and highly credible source
Sibel Edmonds

Pentagon Explores 'Human Fear' Chemicals

Pheromones are effective in minute
quantities, so a wide area can be blanketed
with just a few liters. Given sufficient
concentration, would everyone exposed start
suffering from an unidentifiable dread? The
contagious aspect means that those affected
would start churning out fear pheromone as
well.

Tom Ridge: Waterboarding Is Torture

"One of America's greatest strengths is the
soft power of our value system and how we
treat prisoners of war, and we don't
torture," Ridge said in the interview. Ridge
was secretary of the Homeland Security
Department between 2003 and 2005. "And I
believe, unlike others in the administration,
that waterboarding was, is--and will
always be--torture. That's a simple
statement."

Swiss Suspend CIA Abduction Probe

Under Swiss law, a sentence of up to three
years in prison can be imposed on anyone who
undertakes actions for a foreign government
on Swiss territory without permission.

The law also specifies a prison term of at
least one year for abduction through
violence, trickery or threats, followed by
delivery to a foreign agency or organization
outside Switzerland.

All the accused Americans have left Italy.

Obama's Dubious Praise for Reagan

On Feb. 25, 1999, Guatemala's Historical
Clarification Commission issued a report on
the human rights crimes that Reagan and his
administration had aided, abetted--and
concealed. The independent human rights body
estimated that some 200,000 Guatemalans had
died, with the most savage bloodletting
occurring in the 1980s.

Caution: Elephants Brake for Food
on Bangkok's Roads - New York Times

"To be honest, nobody wants to do this
job, nobody wants to deal with the
elephants," said Prayote Promsuwon, who is
in charge of the Stray Elephant Task Force,
which was formed after an elephant handler,
fleeing the police, raced his elephant the
wrong way down a large Bangkok boulevard,
causing traffic chaos.

The police shy away from detaining the
elephants' handlers, also known as mahouts,
because the officers fear they will not be
able to control the animals on their own.

Torture awareness manual 'wrongly'
lists Cdn allies, to be rewritten: Bernier

Bernier said the manual is neither a policy
document, nor a statement of policy, and that
he has directed it to be reviewed and
rewritten.

Along with the U.S. prison camp in Cuba and
the United States, the list includes
Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi
Arabia, Israel, Mexico and Syria.

TheHill.com - Wiretaps for sale

President Bush declared he would veto any
bill that did not include telco immunity,

leading Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to
reason that "the president has said that
American lives will be sacrificed if Congress
does not change FISA.

But he has also said that he will veto any
FISA bill that does not grant retroactive
immunity ... So if we take the president at
his word, he's willing to let Americans die
to protect the phone companies."

Daily Kos: Sibel Edmonds Case:
Nukes for sale (Pt 2)

As I documented here, it is very possible
that Giza one of those companies. In Kill The
Messenger, an anonymous "U.S intelligence
officer" who is "very familiar with Turkish
espionage activities" - including Giza and
the American Turkish Council - says:

"There are people within the State
Department and also in the U.S Congress
that were facilitating the Israelis and
the Turks in obtaining proprietary
information or restricted technology.

That's why there is a gag order against
Sibel Edmonds!"

Lawbreaking telecoms still conniving to
obtain immunity from Congress

Over the past several months, Democratic
Senators Jay Rockefeller and Harry Reid have
been the two most valuable instruments in the
Bush administration's efforts to obtain
vastly expanded warrantless eavesdropping
powers and immunity for lawbreaking
telecoms. As the Senate returns to Washington
next week, Reid is apparently now more
determined than ever before to ensure that
the Bush administration's FISA demands are
complied with in full.

Congressman calls hearing after White
House admits 473 days of email'missing'

On Thursday night, Waxman said he was
scheduling a hearing for Feb. 15 and
challenged the White House to explain
spokesman Tony Fratto's remark that "we
have absolutely no reason to believe that
any e-mails are missing."

FreeRice

Learn Free Vocabulary & Give Free Rice

Huckabee Directly Equates
Homosexuality With Bestiality

lampwick wrote on January 17, 2008 12:17 PM:
"So it's ok to slather a squirrel in oil and
fry it on a popcorn popper, but not to marry
and have sex with it? That hardly seems
fair."

Dancing Spychief Wants to Tap Into Cyberspace

Spychief Mike McConnell is drafting a plan to
protect America's cyberspace that will raise
privacy issues and make the current debate
over surveillance law look like "a walk in
the park," McConnell tells The New Yorker
in the issue set to hit newsstands
Monday. "This is going to be a goat rope
on the Hill. My prediction is that we're
going to screw around with this until
something horrendous happens.

At issue, McConnell acknowledges, is that in
order to accomplish his plan, the government
must have the ability to read all the
information crossing the Internet in the
United States in order to protect it from
abuse. Congressional aides tell The Journal
that they, too, are also anticipating a fight
over civil liberties that will rival the
battles over the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act.

Dodd Facing Fight Within His Caucus on FISA

When Chris Dodd pulled out of the
presidential race, he promised to keep up the
good fight on the FISA bill and filibuster it
if it contained retroactive immunity for
telecoms. For showing this leadership, there
was an outcry from the netroots to support
Dodd as Majority Leader. Unfortunately, that
support from the electorate (I mean, how dare
he listen to the people who put him in
office? The nerve!) as well as his continued
pledge to filibuster the FISA bill is making
Chris Dodd a very isolated person within his
caucus

President Bush wants Congress to
bury the truth by stopping pending

lawsuits against phone companies that
illegally handed over the phone calls and
emails of Americans. Stopping lawsuits that
could uncover the truth about illegal spying
lets him off the hook. And it gives no
incentives for companies to follow the law in
the future. Tell Senator Reid to bring up
reasonable bill that does not let lawbreakers
off the hook, a bill that brings spying in
line with the Constitution.

Tell Senator Reid to bring up a reasonable
bill that does not let lawbreakers off the
hook, and does not let the government seize
your phone calls and emails without a
warrant.

Senator Reid needs to hear from every
American who wants him to stand up for our
privacy and not let phone companies off the
hook. You can take action by signing a
petition to Senator Reid now.

American Civil Liberties Union:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act:
Mythsand Facts

The administration is asking for greater
authority to wiretap without warrants in a
proposal being floated to House and Senate
Intelligence Committees today. President Bush
wants Congress to make significant changes to
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
that would allow warrantless spying on calls
and communications between Americans and
their friends and relatives overseas.

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PRESS CONFERENCE ON WORLD
DISTRIBUTION OF HOUSEHOLD WEALTH

The richest 2 per cent of the world's adults
owned more than half of global household
wealth, while the bottom half owned barely 1
per cent, New York University economics
professor Edwin Wolff said at a Headquarters
press conference this afternoon.

Threats to US ships in
Gulf may have come from heckler: report

Threatening comments heard at the end of a
Pentagon-released audio recording designed to
prove harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol
boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come
from a local heckler known as the "Filipino
Monkey," The Navy Times reported.

Romney: It's not torture
unless you admit it

"I just don't think it's productive for a
president of the United States to lay out a
list of what is specifically referred to as
'torture,'" he responds.

Citing "ticking time bomb" scenarios, Romney
disagrees with the notion of admitting that a
particular practice could violate the Geneva
Convention, thereby preventing its
utilization by the United States in the event
of an urgent need to extract information to,
for example, prevent a nuclear attack.

US court rebuts torture
claim by Britons

"In addition to Rumsfeld's approval of these
interrogation techniques, the detainees
assert that the other defendants implemented,
supervised and condoned their torture and
detention," the court decision said.

Without addressing the details of the alleged
treatment, the judge said the officials could
not be made individually responsible for it
under the terms of the suit brought against
them, since they were doing their jobs.

Tata reveals world's cheapest car

For millions of people in the developing
world, Tata Motors' new $2,500 four-door
subcompact - the world's cheapest car - may
yield a transportation revolution as big as
Henry Ford's Model T.

The potential impact of Tata's Nano has given
environmentalists nightmares, with visions of
the tiny cars clogging India's already-choked
roads and collectively spewing millions of
tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

U.S. Issues National ID Standards,
Setting Stage for a Showdown

Civil libertarians counter that the new
licenses must have all the information
encoded into a machine-readable bar
code. These will be read by retail stores,
hotels and other companies, the American
Civil Liberties Union predicted, creating
powerful intrusions of privacy.

Barry Steinhardt of the A.C.L.U. predicted
that the program would never take effect. By
setting deadlines so far in the future, he
said, the administration had "kicked the
can down the road" to the next one.

The schedule released Friday calls for
compliant licenses for everyone under 50 by
May 11, 2014, and for those 50 and over, by
Dec. 1, 2017.

Iran showdown has echoes
of faked Tonkin attack

"The parallels (between Tonkin and Hormuz)
speak for themselves, but what they say is
that even the most basic factual assumptions
can be made erroneously [or] can prove to be
false," Steven Aftergood of the Federation of
American Scientists, told Raw Story.
"Therefore extreme caution is always
appropriate before drawing conclusions
... that might leave to violent
conflict. That's almost so obvious that I
feel embarrassed saying it, but there is a
history of mistaken interpretations of these
kinds of encounters that ought to teach us
humility."

Iran Aweigh (Again)

It happens that one Bryan Whitman is the
deputy assistant secretary of Defense for
Public Affairs, which makes him part of the
Office of Strategic Influence (AKA Ministry
of Truth) apparatus that Donald Rumsfeld
established to support his wars through
misinformation, disinformation, and
psychological operations. One of Whitman's
most notable contributions to the cause was
his attempted whitewashing of the Pentagon's
Jessica Lynch hoax.

US warplanes pound Baghdad

US warplanes dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs
on more than 40 targets on Baghdad's southern
outskirts, the military said in a statement.

Bush: US should have bombed Auschwitz

"We were talking about the often-discussed
'Could the United States have done more by
bombing the train tracks?'" Rice told
reporters later aboard Air Force One. "And so
we were just talking about the various
explanations that had been given about why
that might not have been done."

The Allies had detailed reports about
Auschwitz during the war from Polish
partisans and escaped prisoners. But they
chose not to bomb the camp, the rail lines
leading to it, or any of the other Nazi death
camps, preferring instead to focus all
resources on the broader military effort, a
decision that became the subject of intense
controversy years later.

Between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people
were killed at the camp.

"We should have bombed it," Bush said,
according to Shalev."

How Bush's grandfather
helped Hitler's rise to power

"The petition to The Hague states: "From
April 1944 on, the American Air Force could
have destroyed the camp with air raids, as
well as the railway bridges and railway lines
from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of
about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims
could have been prevented."

The case is built around a January 22 1944
executive order signed by President Franklin
Roosevelt calling on the government to take
all measures to rescue the European Jews. The
lawyers claim the order was ignored because
of pressure brought by a group of big
American companies, including BBH, where
Prescott Bush was a director.

Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling
from the court it will cause [president] Bush
huge problems and make him personally liable
to pay compensation."

George Bush, Gold Fillings and Auschwitz

"When the plan to use Soviet prisoners as
forced labor fell through, the Nazis began
shipping Jews, communists, gypsies and other
minority populations to the camp the Nazis
had set up. This was the beginning of
Auschwitz. The reason Auschwitz was located
there was because of the abundant supplies of
coal which could be processed into aviation
fuel. I.G. Farben soon built a plant near
Auschwitz to take advantage of not only of
the nearby coal deposits but also of the
slave labor supply available at
Auschwitz. According to a Dutch intelligence
agent, Prescott Bush managed a portion of the
slave labor force in Poland."

Bush book: Chapter -3-

On March 25, 1942, U.S. Assistant Attorney
General Thurman Arnold announced that William
Stamps Farish (grandfather of the President's
money manager) had pled "no contest'' to
charges of criminal conspiracy with the
Nazis. Farish was the principal manager of a
worldwide cartel between Standard Oil Co. of
New Jersey and the I.G. Farben concern. The
merged enterprise had opened the Auschwitz
slave labor camp on June 14, 1940, to produce
artificial rubber and gasoline from coal. The
Hitler government supplied political
opponents and Jews as the slaves, who were
worked to near death and then murdered.

Iran denies threat to blow up US ships

Iran on Tuesday rejected US charges that its
naval forces threatened to blow up American
ships in the Strait of Hormuz, amid renewed
tensions ahead of US President George
W. Bush's visit to the region.

US Complaints of Harassment by Iran
"Blown out of the Water" by Video

"Coalition warship number 73, this is an
Iranian patrol," the Iranian commander is
heard to say in English, asking for the
vessel to confirm its number.

"This is coalition warship number 73. I am
operating in international waters," replied
the American voice.

The tape showed "warship number 73," the USS
Port Royal, in the foreground and the two
other US vessels in the incident, the USS
Hopper and the USS Ingraham. A helicopter was
also shown hovering above the US ships in the
Iranian footage, shot with a hand held-camera
inside the speedboat.

"Request your present course and speed!"
added the Iranian commander, who was wearing
a yellow lifejacket and the kefiyeh scarf
often worn by Iranian revolutionary
forces. The dialogue in the video was
repetitive and occasionally technical, with
the sides agreeing to switch from channel 16
to channel 11 on their radios.

The video supports Iran's claims that the
incident was purely a routine matter of
identification that ended without any
hostilities or incidents. "Iran clearly just
wanted to identify the vessels and find out
what they were doing," concluded the Press-TV
anchor. The Revolutionary Guards had earlier
said that the film released by the Pentagon
was a "clumsy fake" where the sound and image
were not properly synchronized and clearly
that is the case for anyone who scrutinizes
the film.

Technology News: Law: Federal Judge
Orders White House to Report on Missing E-Mails

A federal magistrate ordered the White House
on Tuesday to reveal whether copies of
possibly millions of missing e-mails are
stored on computer backup tapes.

The order by U.S. Magistrate Judge John
Facciola comes amid an effort by the White
House to scuttle two lawsuits that could
force the Executive Office of the President
to recover any e-mail E-Mail Marketing
Software - Free Trial. Click Here. that has
disappeared from computer servers where
electronic documents are automatically
archived.

Two federal laws require the White House to
preserve all records including e-mail.

White House ordered to say
whether it has e-mail backups

The White House has five days to tell a
federal magistrate whether there are backup
copies of missing e-mails -- possibly more
than 10 millions-- sent between 2003 and
2005.

Former Dateline reporter blasts NBC

A former "Dateline NBC" correspondent claims
that in the aftermath of September 11, the
network diverted him from reporting on al
Qaeda and instead wanted him to ride along
with the country's "forgotten heroes,"
firefighters.

John Hockenberry, who was laid off from
"Dateline" in early 2005, wrote in this
month's Technology Review that on the Sunday
after the September 2001 attacks he was
pitching stories on the origins of al Qaeda
and Islamic fundamentalism.

Report: FBI translator says Israel
planted nuclear 'moles' in U.S. -
Haaretz -Israel News

A Britsh newspaper on Sunday published
allegations by a former FBI translator that
Israel has planted "moles" in United States
institutions dealing with nuclear technology.

According to the report in The Sunday Times,
Sibel Edmonds worked on translating
"thousands of hours of conversations by
Turkish diplomatic and political targets"
that had been secretly taped by the FBI.

Letters: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds
warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses


#795

I predict this thread will reach 1000.

And no one will be able to answer why.
--Anonymous Permalink Sunday, January 6, 2008
06:24 PM

CES: Gadget of the day

You know what a bother it is to carry both
your MP3 music player and your Taser gun?

Worry no more.

Iranian boats 'harass'
U.S. Navy, officials say

Five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats
"harassed and provoked" three U.S. Navy ships
early Sunday in international waters, the
U.S. military said Monday, calling the
encounter a "significant" confrontation.

An Iranian official, however, said it was not
a serious incident, the state-run news agency
IRNA reported.

Iranian boats harass US navy
in Strait of Hormuz: Pentagon

US defense officials, who asked not to be
identified, said no shots were fired during
the encounter, which occurred Saturday in
international waters as the three US navy
ships transited the Strait of Hormuz.

"Five Iranian speedboats pretty much swarmed
three US warships as they were transiting
through international waters," the first
Pentagon official said.

The speedboats came within a couple hundred
meters of the US vessels, the officials said.

CNN, which first reported on encounter, said
the speedboats were believed to be operated
by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The officials would not identify the US navy
ships passing through the Strait at the time
of the incident, but said one of the warships
was a destroyer.

The incident, which occurred at 0400 GMT
January 6, lasted about 20 minutes, the
official said.

Sibel Edmonds case: Front page of the (UK)
papers (finally) IMPORTANT UPDATE

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Sibel has published on her
site, without comment, photos of 18 people.
This is clearly her way of getting around the gag
orders and 'naming names' - the guilty parties -
without naming them!

The BRAD BLOG : SIBEL EDMONDS SPEAKS TO
UK SUNDAY TIMES: SAYS U.S. OFFICIALS
INVOLVEDIN RELEASE OF NUKE SECRETS TO TURKEY,
PAKISTAN, IRAN, OTHERS, POSSIBLY EVEN
AL-QAEDA

While that "well-known senior" State
Department official is not named by the
paper, Australia's Luke Ryland, who writes at
a number of sites as "Lukery", is perhaps the
world's foremost expert concerning the Sibel
Edmonds story. Ryland has told The BRAD BLOG
that the official, unnamed by the Times, is
Marc Grossman.

Former US presidential candidate
urges Bush's impeachment

"They have repeatedly violated the
Constitution," McGovern writes of Bush and
Cheney. "They have transgressed national and
international law. They have lied to the
American people time after time. Their
conduct and their barbaric policies have
reduced our beloved country to a historic low
in the eyes of people around the world."

Bush may claim privilege in CIA case

President George W. Bush Thursday ordered
White House lawyers to use claims of
executive privilege to prevent senior White
House aides from cooperating with the Justice
Department's criminal investigation into
destruction of videotapes that showed CIA
interrogators torturing terrorism suspects.

The Top Eleven Myths about Iraq, 2007

Fact: Iran has not been proved to have sent
weapons to any Iraqi guerrillas at all. It
certainly would not send weapons to those who
have a raging hostility toward Shiites.

For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets -
Times Online

The Pakistani operation was led by General
Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and
his colleagues stationed in Washington were
in constant contact with attachés in the
Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the
ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after
9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of
sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to
Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers,
immediately before the attacks.

The results of the espionage were almost
certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the
Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While
running Pakistan's nuclear programme, he
became a millionaire by selling atomic
secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He
also used a network of companies in America
and Britain to obtain components for a
nuclear programme.

US blocks Pakistan aid
The Australian

Controversy surrounding the assassination
intensified yesterday amid reports that
crucial records had been removed from the
Rawalpindi General Hospital where Bhutto was
taken, and claims she was killed using
laser-beam technology.

The Nation on its front page said the gunfire
and bomb blasts at Bhutto's election rally
"were a decoy to hide the real shooters" and
claimed laser technology similar to that used
by American forces in Iraq had been used.

British detectives inspect Bhutto murder scene

"We have respect for Scotland Yard but this
is inadequate."

Musharraf bristled Thursday when asked
whether the Britons would be allowed to
question politicians and an intelligence
chief whom Bhutto had previously accused of
plotting to kill her, saying there would be
no "wild goose chase."

Will Justice Go After Cheney?

Cheney has been the administration's central
figure on all things related to torture. It
was Cheney who pushed so hard for
"flexibility" in interrogations of terrorist
suspects. Former secretary of state Colin
Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson,
has long argued that it is "clear that the
Office of the Vice President bears
responsibility for creating an environment
conducive to the acts of torture and murder
committed by U.S. forces in the war on
terror."

Failure to stop warrantless spying
tops ACLU's 2007 'worst of' list

On an optimistic note for the new year,
however, the ACLU also released a companion
list of reasons that Americans should still
cling to faith in their government.

US: No need for UN probe
into Bhutto slaying

"Scotland Yard being in the lead of this
investigation is appropriate and necessary
and we don't see a need for an investigation
beyond that at this time," White House
spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.

Doctors Cite Pressure to
Keep Silent On Bhutto

"The truth is, there really is no
investigation at all," said Babar Awan, a top
official in Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party
who said he saw Bhutto's body after the
attack and identified two clearly defined
bullet wounds -- entry and exit points.

He said that the principal professor of
surgery at the hospital, Muhammad Mussadiq
Khan, was "extremely nervous, but eventually
told me that Bhutto had died of a bullet
wound."

"Why was this man so nervous?" Awan said. "He
told me firsthand he was under pressure not
to talk about how she died."

Criminal probe opened over CIA tapes

The Justice Department opened a full criminal
investigation Wednesday into the destruction
of CIA interrogation videotapes, putting the
politically charged probe in the hands of a
mob-busting public corruption prosecutor with
a reputation for being independent.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced
that he was appointing John Durham, a federal
prosecutor in Connecticut, to oversee the
investigation of a case that has challenged
the Bush administration's controversial
handling of terrorism suspects.

Rudy Surrogate: "I Don't Subscribe To The
Principle That There Are Good Muslims And Bad
Muslims"

"I most assuredly do. I've been very
concerned about this Muslim thing for quite
awhile. The average American does not know
beans about what the Muslims are about. I am
talking about the Muslims in general. I don't
subscribe to the principle that there are
good Muslims and bad Muslims. They're all
Muslims."

In the earlier interview with The Guardian,
Deady said of Muslims: "We need to keep the
feet to the fire and keep pressing these
people until we defeat or chase them back to
their caves or in other words get rid of
them."

When I asked Deady to elaborate on his
suggestion that we need to "get rid" of
Muslims, Deady said:

"When I say get rid of them, I wasn't
necessarily referring to genocide."

Informed Comment: Former US interrogator
recounts torture cases in Afghanistan andIraq

They tell them they are going to kill their
children, rape their wives. And you see on
their faces, in their eyes, the terror that
that causes them. Because, of course, we know
all about those people. We know the names of
their children, where they live - we show
them satellite photos of their houses. It is
worse than any torture. That is not morally
acceptable under any circumstances. Not even
with the worst terrorist in the world", says
Corsetti, before adding: "Sometimes, we put
one of our women (female US military
personnel) in burqas and we made them walk
through the interrogation rooms and we told
them: 'That is your wife'. And the prisoner
believed it. Why wouldn't they! We had those
people going without sleep for a whole
week. After two or three days with no sleep,
you believe anything. In fact, it was a
problem. The interpreters couldn't understand
what they were saying. The prisoners were
having hallucinations.

Kidnapping Not a Crime, Claims Bush
Justice Department

Continuing its recent spree of criminality in
the alleged pursuit of law enforcement, the
Bush Justice Department formally advised a
British Court last week that it is fully
entitled to kidnap foreigners (i.e., Britons)
off the street around the world and carry
them off to secret prisons. The claim was
formerly thought to relate to terrorists. But
no longer. Now the Bush Justice Department
asserts the right to kidnap anyone it
suspects of a crime.

Stonewalled by the C.I.A.

As a legal matter, it is not up to us to
examine the C.I.A.'s failure to disclose the
existence of these tapes. That is for
others. What we do know is that government
officials decided not to inform a lawfully
constituted body, created by Congress and the
president, to investigate one the greatest
tragedies to confront this country. We call
that obstruction.

Constitutional scholar: 'At least six
identifiable crimes' possiblein CIA tape
affair

"I think it's more than an inference at this
point, which is one of the reasons there's a
call for a special prosecutor," he
said. "There are at least six identifiable
crimes here, from obstruction of justice to
obstruction of Congress, perjury, conspiracy,
false statements, and what is often
forgotten: the crime of torturing suspects.

Added Turley, "If that crime was committed it
was a crime that would conceivably be ordered
by the president himself, only the president
can order those types of special treatments
or interrogation techniques."

Pakistan and 9/11

On October 1, 2001, did the FBI uncover
evidence that Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed, the
Director of the Pakistani Intelligence
Service (the ISI) authorize the wiring of
$100,000 to Florida to Mohammed Atta
(supposed hijack ringleader of the 911
attack) through Omar Saeed Sheikh (an alleged
ISI agent)?

Why did only a single US press outlet, the
Wall Street Journal website, mention this
connection in the editorial section (James
Taranto writing) on October 10, 2001, saying
it was an "internet only" story - when in
fact it was a major story reported at great
length in the main line Indian press?

Bhutto report: Musharraf
planned to fix elections

The day she was assassinated last Thursday,
Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new
evidence alleging the involvement of
Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging
the country's upcoming elections, an aide
said Monday.

Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen
Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy,
D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that
the military Inter-Services Intelligence
agency was planning to fix the polls in the
favor of President Pervez Musharraf.

U.S. official shot dead in Sudan

A 33-year-old U.S. diplomat and his driver
were shot to death Tuesday in an attack a day
a joint African Union-United Nations force
took over peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur
region, the U.S. Embassy said.

NBC has learned that the slain diplomat was
John Granville, from South Buffalo, N.Y. He
worked for the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) on a
program to bring radios to the population of
South Sudan, according to USAID's Web site.

Hillary Signals Free Pass for Bush

If Bill Clinton is telling the truth about
Hillary Clinton's "first thing" to do
as President--recruiting George H.W. Bush
for a worldwide goodwill tour on behalf of
America's image--that will require
closing the door on any serious investigation
of George W. Bush.

The two dynastic families then can look to
the future, again.

Hospital lawyer: Pakistani police stopped
doctors from conducting Bhutto autopsy

The police chief of the Pakistani city of
Rawalpindi prevented doctors from performing
an autopsy on the corpse of former Pakistani
prime minister Benazir Bhutto, according to a
lawyer on the hospital's board.

The dramatic new revelation emerged as new
videotape showed a gunman in close proximity
to Bhutto in the moments before her
assassination, and a surgeon said he'd felt
pressure to conform to the government's
official story on Bhutto's killing.

Benazir's last address: Pakistan is in danger

"Why should foreign troops come in? We can
take care of this, I can take care of this,
you can take care of this," she
said. "Political orphans tried hard to delay
the polls. They planned the proclamation of
emergency rule in the country and wanted
President (Pervez) Musharraf to stay in
uniform for five more years but all such bids
failed miserably," she said.

The 54-year-old leader, who died a few
minutes later after she was shot by a suicide
attacker, regretted that the year 2007 had
witnessed the removal of the Chief Justice of
Pakistan "twice", detention of judges of the
superior judiciary and the military operation
on Islamabad's Lal Masjid that resulted in
the loss of over 100 lives.

Philip Giraldi: CIA Torture
and other War Crimes

In May 2003, CIA told Federal Judge Leonie
Brinkema that there were no recordings or
other records of the interrogations. That was
a lie. In 2003 and 2004, the Congressional
9/11 Commission made "repeated and detailed
inquiries relating to interrogations." The
CIA said there was no additional material,
another lie. In June 2005, Director of
Operations Jose Rodriguez ordered the tapes
destroyed. The order came, perhaps not
coincidentally, just as the Italian
authorities were entering into the
investigative phase of a major inquiry into
CIA renditions in Italy.

Turmoil grips Pakistan

As she waved, gunshots sounded and she was
hit in the head and neck, aides said. Bhutto
sank back into her seat, just as a suicide
bomber detonated explosives to the left of
her vehicle. People inside the SUV said her
face and neck were badly bloodied, apparently
from the bullets. As blood poured from her
body in the back seat she lost consciousness,
aides said, and never regained it.

Everything I know I learned since
Jan. 20, 2001

People in high office -- like the president
and the vice-president -- have difficult,
complicated jobs. If they forget to do stuff,
or if they cut corners here and there, or if
they tell a white lie now and then, that's
OK, because the important thing is for them
to protect us not only from bad things but
also from thinking about bad things, unless
they feel we need to.

Revealed: Pakistan hosed away
scene after Bhutto attack

On Friday, doctors at Rawalpindi General
Hospital, where she died, said that Bhutto
had been killed by shrapnel to the head from
an explosion, not by two bullets that Bhutto
supporters cited in the aftermath of the
attack. Bhutto, 54, was killed as in the
aftermath of a shooting and suicide bombing
as she left a political rally in the city of
Rawalpindi.

The government soon changed their story,
saying she'd been killed by hitting the
sunroof of her LandCruiser after she'd stood
up to wave to a crowd. Doctors said there
were no bullet marks on the former prime
minister's body, and released a limited x-ray
of what they said was her skull.

More alarming, however, to Bhutto supporters
was the fact no autopsy was conducted prior
to burial. The official line -- according to
Pakistan's interim prime minister
Mohammadmian Soomro -- was that Bhutto's
husband had insisted no autopsy be performed.

But according to veteran lawyer Athar
Minallah who spoke to McClatchy Newspapers
Friday, "an autopsy is mandatory under
Pakistan's criminal law in a case of this
nature."

Vermont group wants Cheney,
Bush charged with war crimes

President Bush and Vice President Cheney may
soon have a new reason to avoid left-leaning
Vermont: In one town, activists want them
subject to arrest for war crimes.

Vote to abolish Nepal's monarchy

The decision to make Nepal a "federal
democratic republican state" was taken by an
overwhelming majority - 270 MPs out of 371
voted to abolish the monarchy, with only
three against.

Behind the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

The Musharraf government is again dismissive
of the lapse in security by the Army and
security services. They allowed a
sophisticated assassin to kill her at close
range while the crowd was distracted by a
suicide bombing -- the same scenario
attempted in the November attack.

The government holds Bhutto to blame for
taking the risk of public
campaigning. Musharraf previously had
confined her under house arrest. When that
produced an international outcry, he warned
her to stay out of sight. "We don't want a
dead Benazir on our hands," Humayun Gauhar,
Musharraf's confidant, argued in an interview
with me. "She'd be just another unlikely
martyr that we don't need."

Freedom of Information Act strengthened

Congress struck back yesterday at the Bush
administration's trend toward secrecy since
the 2001 terrorist attacks, passing
legislation to toughen the Freedom of
Information Act and increasing penalties on
agencies that don't comply.

The White House would not say whether
President Bush will sign the legislation,
which passed the House unanimously by voice
vote yesterday, a few days after it sailed
through the Senate. Without Bush's signature,
the bill would become law during the
congressional recess that begins next week.

ANALYSIS: Conspiracy theories abound over
Benazir Bhutto slaying - Haaretz - IsraelNews

The most astounding aspect of Thursday's
events is the negligence displayed by
Bhutto's security detail. According to
reports, the assassin managed to approach
Bhutto and position himself within a short
distance of her, before proceeding to shoot
her and detonate the explosives with which he
was strapped. Not only did the assassin want
to cause maximum casualties, but he also
hoped that authorities would later be unable
to identify him and thus ascertain which
organization he was working for.

'Surge' Of US Special Forces
Expected In Pakistan In Early 2008

In the wake of the assassination of Benazir
Bhutto, a 'surge' of US Special Forces for
Pakistan's remote tribal lands is unlikely to
face heavy opposition from President
Musharraf, who will be busy trying to stop
his own name, and that of his political
party, from being linked with Bhutto's
assassins.

Benazir Bhutto killed in suicide attack;
supporters in uproar across Pakistan

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto
was killed Thursday in a suicide attack as
she drove away from a campaign rally attended
by thousands of supporters, aides said.
...
Some at the hospital began chanting, "Killer,
Killer, Musharraf," referring to Musharraf,
Bhutto's main political opponent.

"We repeatedly informed the government to
provide her proper security and appropriate
equipment including jammers, but they paid no
heed to our requests," Malik said.

The Spectrum Swindle

In a nutshell, underlay and overlay devices
broadcast on "owned" frequencies. However,
they continuously jump, scan and detect when
a channel is open or occupied; thus
preventing any interference.

It is hoped that smart antennas, cognitive
radios, ultra-wideband emitters and even
white-space devices will be able to utilize
unused spectrum in the near future.

"The President's Coming-Out Party"

The NSC is chaired, of course, by George
W. Bush, whose personal authority is invoked
for each and every instance of torture
authorized. And, according to Kiriakou as
well as others, Bush's answer is never
"no." He has never found a case where
he didn't find torture was appropriate.

The Court That May Not Be Heard

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,
the special court that reviews government
requests for warrants to spy on suspected
foreign agents in the United States, seems to
have forgotten that its job is to ensure that
the government is accountable for following
the law--not to help the Bush
administration keep its secrets.

PopSci's Best of What's New 2007

The machine is a microwave emitter that
extracts the petroleum and gas hidden inside
everyday objects--or at least anything made
with hydrocarbons, which, it turns out, is
most of what's around you. Every hour, the
first commercial version will turn 10 tons of
auto waste--tires, plastic, vinyl--into
enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs
of energy (it will use 956,000 of those BTUs
to keep itself running).

Police academy class slogan: Cause PTSD

Each class at the Idaho Police Officer
Standards and Training Academy is allowed to
choose a slogan that is printed on its
graduation programs, and the class of 43
graduates came up with "Don't suffer from
PTSD, go out and cause it."

Former CIA Analyst Says
Evidence Abounds for Impeachment

The evidence for impeachment of the president
and vice president is overwhelming, former
CIA analyst and daily presidential briefer
Ray McGovern told a room full of people at
the Portsmouth Public Library Monday night.

Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950

Principle IV The fact that a person acted
pursuant to order of his Government or of a
superior does not relieve him from
responsibility under international law,
provided a moral choice was in fact possible
to him.

Lakota Sioux - The Bravest Americans

Means stated, "We are no longer citizens of
the United States of America and all those
who live in the five-state area that
encompasses our country are free to join us."
The lands of the Lakota Sioux encompass
portions of Nebraska, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. In the coming
weeks, they will take their diplomatic
mission overseas to seek further support.

Ron Paul is Highest-Polling
Republican Among Black Voters

Public opinion service Rasmussen Reports
recently released data indicating that Texas
congressman Ron Paul is the top Republican
presidential candidate among African-American
voters.

Officer Accused of
Stealing $1M in Coke

Joshua Blackburn, 32, broke into the evidence
locker room at highway patrol headquarters in
Santa Ana early Friday and made off with
several pounds of cocaine, Deputy District
Attorney Susan Schroeder said. He was
arrested later that day in Riverside County
and the cocaine was recovered, she said.

Lawsuit Against Splenda Moves Forward

As of 2006, only six human trials had been
published on Splenda (sucralose), and of
those six trials, only two were completed and
published before the FDA approved sucralose
for human consumption. The two published
trials had a grand total of 36 total human
subjects. Of those, only 23 people were
actually given sucralose for testing.

Additionally, the longest trial had lasted
only four days and looked at sucralose in
relation to tooth decay, not human
tolerance. They claim that over 100 studies
have been conducted on Splenda. What they
don't tell you is that most of the studies
are on animals.

Who Obstructed Justice? : NO QUARTER

She ordered the government to determine if
interrogations of suspected terrorists were
recorded. Two days later, 9 May 2003, Judge
Leonie Brinkema asked, "whether the
interrogations are being recorded in any
format"? The Department of Justice, based
on info from the CIA, said "NO".

Israel upholds use of cluster bombs

Announcing the results of a more than
year-long probe, the army said investigators
determined Israel's use of cluster bombs was
a "concrete military necessity" and did not
violate international humanitarian
law. Lebanese officials accused the army of
covering up war crimes.

Jeb Bush to arrive in
Israel for private visit

Two weeks before US President George W. Bush
is scheduled to arrive on his first visit to
Israel as President, his younger brother Jeb
Bush is scheduled to arrive Monday for a
private visit.

Bush, the former governor of Florida, will be
accompanied by his wife and children, and
will travel around the country, including
visits to Massada, Nazareth and a tour of the
northern border with Deputy Chief of General
Staff. Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel.

Bush is scheduled to meet Monday with Knesset
Speaker Dalia Itzik and a number of Knesset
members.

When the CIA plays hide and seek

Almost immediately, it was the 9/11
Commission's members that publicly criticized
the CIA's deception. Co-chairman Lee Hamilton
said of the agency, "Did they obstruct our
inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether
that amounts to a crime, others will have to
judge."

The NYT moves the ball forward today, noting
that the Commission requested information,
repeatedly, about detainee interrogation, but
were blatantly misled.

Turkish Jets 'Bomb Pkk Bases'

Overnight on Tuesday, about 300 Turkish
soldiers crossed over into northern Iraq in
an operation targeting PKK fighters.

Justifying the Iraq War:
Why the NIE Is Wrong

In any case, Kissinger, Schlesinger and the
Likudniks argue that the principal reason the
Iranians "halted" their alleged nuclear
weapons program in the fall of 2003-if
they, indeed, did--was that Bush launched
his war of aggression on Iraq and they were
afraid they would be next.

In other words, the 2007 NIE on Iran
justifies Bush's war of aggression against
Iraq.

Of course, if Scott Ritter is right, the
Iranians never had a nuclear weapons program
to halt. And, the Likudniks and the
neocrazies have known that all along.

Break-In at Nuclear Site
Baffles South Africa

On Tuesday, officials belatedly acknowledged
that the Pelindaba reactor had come under
attack that same night by a second team of
gunmen who were also repelled--and also
escaped--after guards sounded an alarm.

The Nuclear Energy Corporation of South
Africa, the government-created heir to the
apartheid nuclear program, said it suspended
six security officials after the assaults and
hinted that the break-ins were inside jobs,
made possible only by intimate knowledge of
the elaborate defenses.

Mitt Romney forced to backpedal
over Martin Luther King claim

When he said that as a boy he "saw" his
father march with the civil rights leader
Martin Luther King--a claim debunked
yesterday--Mr Romney now says that he
used the word "saw" as a figure of
speech. Mr Romney said: "If you look at
the literature, if you look at the
dictionary, the term 'saw' includes
'being aware of' in the sense I've
described. I did not see it with my own eyes,
but I saw him in the sense of being aware of
his participation in that great [civil
rights] effort."

FBI prepares vast biometrics database

More than 55 percent of the search requests
now are made for background checks on
civilians in sensitive positions in the
federal government, and jobs that involve
children and the elderly, Bush
said. Currently those prints are destroyed or
returned when the checks are completed. But
the FBI is planning a "rap-back" service,
under which employers could ask the FBI to
keep employees' fingerprints in the database,
subject to state privacy laws, so that if
that employees are ever arrested or charged
with a crime, the employers would be
notified.

9/11 Panel Study Finds
That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes

A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip
D. Zelikow, the panel's former executive
director, concluded that "further
investigation is needed" to determine
whether the C.I.A.'s withholding of the tapes
from the commission violated federal law.

In interviews this week, the two chairmen of
the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas
H. Kean, said their reading of the report had
convinced them that the agency had made a
conscious decision to impede the Sept. 11
commission's inquiry.

Break-In at Nuclear Site
Baffles South Africa

The Nuclear Energy Corporation of South
Africa, the government-created heir to the
apartheid nuclear program, said it suspended
six security officials after the assaults and
hinted that the break-ins were inside jobs,
made possible only by intimate knowledge of
the elaborate defenses.

Constitutional scholar:
'At least six identifiable crimes'
possible in CIA tape affair

"Just when you think this scandal can't get
worse, it does," the George Washington
University Law School professor told CNN's
John Roberts. "I mean, this is a very
significant development because it shows that
this was not just some rogue operator at the
CIA that destroyed evidence being sought by
Congress and the courts. It shows that this
was a planned destruction, that there were
meetings, and those meetings extended all the
way to the White House."

Turley went on to say that the high-level
discussions, particularly those involving
Miers and Gonzales, were "a hair's breath
away from the president himself."

Authoritarian Temptation

Exactly as one would expect, Giuliani has
enthusiastically endorsed virtually every one
of the most controversial Bush/Cheney
assertions of presidential power. He wants to
keep Guantanamo open and mocks concerns over
the use of torture, even derisively comparing
sleep deprivation to the strain of his own
campaign. He not only defends Bush's
warrantless surveillance, but does not
recognize the legitimacy of any concerns
relating to unchecked government power.

Ousted Georgia lawmaker
to run for president

In a video posted on the Internet on Tuesday,
McKinney criticized the war in Iraq and
complained about Democrats and Republicans,
saying both parties are beholden to corrupt
corporate interests. She called the Green
Party "my new political home."

Hillary the Hawk

More contributions from war contractors
have reached Hillary for President
than any competing campaign.

House Judiciary witness: Destroyed
CIA tapes are 'ultimate cover-up'

"[T]he rationale for destroying the tapes to
protect the identity of the interrogators is
almost as embarrassing as the destruction
itself," said Saltzburg, who is also general
counsel for the National Institute of
Military Justice. He said that the tapes
could easily have been modified to obscure
the faces of those involved, and that
regardless, the CIA keeps a written record of
which officers interrogated detainees.

Kristol, Krauthammer Are Out of Time

Neither William Kristol nor longtime
contributor Charles Krauthammer will be on
contract with the magazine starting next
month. Mr. Krauthammer confirmed the news to
Off the Record, and a spokeswoman for Time
said Mr. Kristol's contract would not be
renewed.

Is Bush Stopped in His Tracks on Iran?

"This unexpected bump in the road has, in my
opinion, stimulated the Bush administration
to develop its own new rationale to justify
what will in effect be a full-speed-ahead
continuation of past and present policy
toward Iran, almost as if the NIE issue had
never intervened," said Ray Close, a
retired Middle East specialist for the CIA.

License Plate Scanners To
Protect Holiday Shoppers

"We're going to be the eyes and ears of law

enforcement when they can't be here," Arden
Fair Mall Security Manager Steve Reed
said. "We'll be able to scan plates as we go
down each aisle and find stolen cars or
vehicles with a felony warrant."

Retired FBI agent: Waterboarding produced
'crap' information from detainee

Contradicting the assertions of President
Bush and waterboarding advocates at the CIA,
federal investigators say a suspected al
Qaeda operative who was subjected to the
simulated drowning technique produced
increasingly unreliable information after his
interrogators began treating him harshly.

Dodd's filibuster threat scuttles
immunity in Senate, for now

Kennedy also excoriated President Bush's
threat to veto any FISA update that lacks a
retroactive immunity provision.

"So if we take the president at his word,
he's willing to let Americans die to protect
the phone companies," Kennedy said, his voice
rising in anger. "The president's insistence
on immunity as a precondition for any FISA
reform is yet another example of disrespect
for honest dialogue and the rule of law."

Bush administration moves to block
inquiries into CIA's destruction of torture
tapes

The administration is essentially arguing
that because it is investigating itself and
possible crimes that it committed, no other
investigations can proceed.

Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan
for Telecom Industry

Other N.S.A. initiatives have stirred
concerns among phone company workers. A
lawsuit was filed in federal court in New
Jersey challenging the agency's wiretapping
operations. It claims that in February 2001,
just days before agency officials met with
Qwest officials, the N.S.A. met with AT&T
officials to discuss replicating a network
center in Bedminster, N.J., to give the
agency access to all the global phone and
e-mail traffic that ran through it.

The accusations rely in large part on the
assertions of a former engineer on the
project. The engineer, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, said in an interview
that he participated in numerous discussions
with N.S.A. officials about the proposal. The
officials, he said, discussed ways to
duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland
so the agency "could listen in" with
unfettered access to communications that it
believed had intelligence value and store
them for later review. There was no
discussion of limiting the monitoring to
international communications, he said.

Congress will defy Justice Dept. on
destroyed CIA tapes; Harman:'We're in
Constitutional crisis'

Despite the Justice Department's objections,
a Congressional panel will press ahead with
its investigation into destroyed CIA
interrogation tapes, according to a key
Republican on the panel.

"I think we will issue subpoenas," said
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the House
Intelligence Committee's ranking Republican,
on Fox News Sunday (video below). "And once
these witness appear in front of the
committee, then I think we'll have to make
the decision as to whether we're going to
provide them with immunity or not. But our
investigation should move forward."

Democrats Call for Inquiry
in Destruction of Tapes by C.I.A.

The tapes were destroyed in part because
officers were concerned that video showing
harsh interrogation methods could expose
agency officials to legal risks, several
officials said.

"But that excuse won't wash," Senator
Kennedy said today. "Does the director
believe the C.I.A.'s buildings are not
secure? Would it be beyond the agency's
technical expertise to preserve the tapes
while hiding the identity of its employees?
Does the director believe that the C.I.A.'s
employees cannot be trusted not to leak
materials that might harm the agency?"

Bush's assault on habeas corpus

The Federalist Society is a product of a past
time when Republicans were said to have "a
lock on the presidency" but could not get
their agenda into law because the Democrats
had a lock on Congress. Republican
frustrations manifested themselves in
attempts to heighten the president's powers
so that a Republican agenda could prevail
over a Democratic Congress. Like generals who
fight the last war, the Federalist Society is
stuck in its assault on the separation of
powers in the interest of "energy in the
executive."

Congress Defies Bush on CIA
Tape Probe

"This is becoming increasingly bizarre," said
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George
Washington University Law School. "The
Justice Department insists it will
essentially investigate itself and then tells
the court that because it is investigating
itself it won't turn over evidence of its
possible criminal misconduct. It's so
circular, it's maddening."

An investigation could be embarrassing to
politicians in both parties who received
classified briefings five years ago on
interrogation tactics, possibly including
waterboarding.

Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom
Industry

In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a
Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early
2001 to give the agency access to their most
localized communications switches, which
primarily carry domestic calls, according to
people aware of the request, which has not
been previously reported. They say the
arrangement could have permitted
neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of
phone traffic without a court order, which
alarmed them.

Finding link to anthrax, professor set
NAU apart

One of the world's foremost anthrax
researchers toils in a cramped, windowless
lab at Northern Arizona University.

Inside a locked room only a few can enter, he
and his research team study germs so
dangerous that the U.S. government considers
them top bioterror threats.

It was here that Professor Paul Keim made a
significant discovery: the 2001 anthrax
letter attack on a Florida photo editor came
from a genetic strain identical to one
developed in U.S. government labs. The
finding led the FBI to rule out foreign
terrorist attacks in the jittery days after
Sept. 11. The FBI called the anthrax letters
the worst biological attacks in U.S. history.

Schwarzenegger says he will declare
fiscal emergency

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday said he
would declare a fiscal emergency in
California so he and state lawmakers can
start cutting programs before shrinking tax
revenue from the collapsed housing market
leaves the state with up to a $14 billion
shortfall over the next year-and-a-half.

The emergency will likely mean cuts to
schools, colleges, prisons and aid programs
for the poor, elderly, and out-of-work that
have already spent nearly half their promised
funding for the year.

Losing and Restoring the Republic

The discomforting reality is that in his role
as a military "commander in chief" in
the never-ending "war on terror," the
president now has the power to ignore all
constitutional restraints on his power.

Moreover, in what would constitute one of the
most monumental legal revolutions in American
history, the president, operating in
conjunction with the CIA and the
U.S. military, now claims the omnipotent
power to take any American into custody as an
"enemy combatant," deny him due process
of law and trial by jury, torture him, and
detain him for the rest of his life.

In China, Farming Fish in Toxic Waters

"Our waters here are filthy," said Ye
Chao, an eel and shrimp farmer who has 20
giant ponds in western Fuqing. "There are
simply too many aquaculture farms in this
area. They're all discharging water here,
fouling up other farms."

Farmers have coped with the toxic waters by
mixing illegal veterinary drugs and
pesticides into fish feed, which helps keep
their stocks alive yet leaves poisonous and
carcinogenic residues in seafood, posing
health threats to consumers.

The Associated Press: GOP Seeks to
Restore Harsh Interrogation

Senate Republicans blocked a bill Friday that
would restrict the interrogation methods the
CIA can use against terrorism suspects.

The legislation, part of a measure
authorizing the government's intelligence
activities for 2008, had been approved a day
earlier by the House and sent to the Senate
for what was supposed to be final action. The
bill would require the CIA to adhere to the
Army's field manual on interrogation, which
bans waterboarding, mock executions and other
harsh interrogation methods.

U.S. Official Avoids Sex Assault Rap

The Department of Justice declined to
prosecute a State Department employee who
allegedly sexually assaulted a female
Halliburton/KBR worker in Iraq, despite a
recommendation from the State Department that
he be charged, according to an internal
document obtained by ABC News.

Ali Mokhtare, who is still employed by the
State Department, was investigated in 2005
after a female Halliburton/KBR employee said
he sexually assaulted her at the company-run
camp in Basra, Iraq. Mokhtare was a
diplomatic official in Basra who first came
to Iraq as a Farsi translator interviewing
detainees.

The U.S. Diplomatic Security Service
investigated the allegations against Mokhtare
and presented the case to the Justice
Department for prosecution, but "the case was
declined for prosecution" states the
document.

Bush administration pushes for control
of promotions of military lawyers


The Bush administration is pushing to take
control of the promotions of military
lawyers, escalating a conflict over the
independence of uniformed attorneys who have
repeatedly raised objections to the White
House's policies toward prisoners in the war
on terrorism.

The administration has proposed a regulation
requiring "coordination" with politically
appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member
of the Judge Advocate General corps - the
military's 4,000-member uniformed legal force
- can be promoted.

Delay Is Sought by Justice Dept. on
C.I.A. Inquiry

The Justice Department asked the House
Intelligence Committee on Friday to postpone
its investigation into the destruction of
videotapes by the Central Intelligence Agency
in 2005, saying the Congressional inquiry
presented "significant risks" to its
own preliminary investigation into the
matter.
The department is taking an even harder line
with other Congressional committees looking
into the matter, and is refusing to provide
information about any role it might have
played in the destruction of the
videotapes. The recordings covered hundreds
of hours of interrogations of two operatives
of Al Qaeda.

Is World War III on Hold?

Was Bush aware that Iran had abandoned its
nuclear weapons program, years ago, when he
was using his apocalyptic rhetoric about
nuclear holocaust and World War III?

If so, that is indefensible.

Bush Demands Freedom to Torture

President Bush's repeated insistence that
"we don't torture" appeared even more
transparently bogus yesterday as the White
House threatened to veto a House bill that
would explicitly ban a variety of abhorrent
practices.

The bill would require U.S. intelligence
agencies to follow interrogation rules
adopted by the armed forces last year.

Mukasey Rejects Call for CIA Tape Details

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey today

sharply rebuffed congressional demands for
details about the Justice Department's
inquiry into the destruction of CIA
interrogation tapes, saying that providing
such information would make it appear that
the department was "subject to political
influence."

In letters to the leaders of the Senate
Judiciary Committee and others, Mukasey also
reiterated his opposition to appointing a
special prosecutor to the tapes
investigation, saying he was "aware of no
facts at present" that would require such a
step.

Activists see Senate Dems backing down
to Bush, ready to give immunity to phone
companies

It is up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-NV) to decide which proposal the full
chamber will consider. As things stand now,
Reid is expected to send to the floor the
Intelligence Committee's bill, which includes
immunity, with the immunity-free Judiciary
bill pending as a substitute amendment.

The way things stand now, observers expect 60
votes would be required to substitute the
immunity-free judiciary proposal for the
intelligence committee bill, a standard few
believe could be reached. Debate on the bill
will begin Monday, Reid said from the Senate
floor Friday.

Spurned by major newspapers, Dem
Congressman takes 'impeach Cheney'
appeal to Web

As the House Judiciary Committee continues
to refuse any action on proposals to impeach
Vice President Dick Cheney, three of that
panel's members tried to take their case to
influential op-ed pages of the nation's
largest newspapers.

They were turned down by every one --
including the New York Times, Washington Post
and Miami Herald -- so now one of the
lawmakers has taken his campaign to the
Internet.

Kucinich to File Impeachment Articles
Against George W. Bushas Wexler Schools Dems
on Constitutional 'Obligation' to Hold Such
Hearings

Wexler said that impeachment hearings weren't
just an option available to Congress, but a
requirement.

"This administration has abused its power in
office...and it is the obligation --- not
discretionary --- but it is the obligation of
this Congress to investigate," he said. "And
that's what I and some of my colleagues are
beginning to call for."

Rudy's Ties to a Terror Sheikh

Giuliani Partners, the consulting company
that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the
Qatar trough, doing business with the
ministry run by the very member of the royal
family identified in news and government
reports as having concealed KSM--the
terrorist mastermind who wired funds from
Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the
1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and
who also sold the idea of a plane attack on
the towers to Osama bin Laden--on his Qatar
farm in the mid-1990s.

Was Pelosi aware of CIA's tactics?

Of course our president claims he knew
nothing about this whitewash, and he may
be speaking the truth, since plausible
deniability seems to be the defining
leadership style of our commander in chief.

But what about those congressional leaders
who were briefed on the torture program as
early as 2002? That includes Democrats like
Nancy Pelosi, who has specialized in
heartfelt speeches condemning torturers in
faraway places like China.

Bilal Hussein

Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein
has been held in detention in Iraq by the
U.S. military since April 12, 2006, accused
of being a security threat. Yet during that
time he has never been charged with anything,
nor has any evidence been disclosed to
suggest wrongdoing. Instead, the military has
pointed to a range of suspicions it says
links Hussein to insurgents. An extensive
internal review of his work by AP found
nothing to indicate inappropriate contact
with insurgents.
It is beyond dispute that American Jews
overwhelmingly oppose core neoconservative
foreign policy principles. Hence, in large
numbers, they disapprove of the way the
U.S. is handling its "campaign against
terrorism" (59-31); overwhelmingly believe
the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq
(67-27); believe that things are going
"somewhat badly" or "very badly" in Iraq
(76-23); and believe that the "surge" has
either made things worse or has had no impact
(68-30).

Are the Wheels Coming Off
the Government's 9/11 Myth?

That the tapes are said to have been
destroyed is made the focus here, as
elsewhere. Speculation is that these tapes
recorded exculpatory evidence for the
detainees, else why destroy them. But few
observe that until those tapes were
destroyed, most officials were unconcerned
about the process of their creation, least of
all the 9/11 Commission, which actually
supplied questions for the torturers to apply
during their various methods. In other words,
the Commission assumed the guilt of the
detainees and added to their burdens a few
hours or days of apparently fruitless
questioning.

Howard Zinn's 'History' Comes to
TV: Documentary Miniseries to feature
Damon, Vedder

Production is finally set to begin on a
long-delayed TV version of Howard Zinn's
landmark 1980 tome "A People's History of
the United States." The four-hour
documentary miniseries--titled "The
People Speak"--will include
performances by Matt Damon, Marisa Tomei,
Viggo Mortensen, Danny Glover, Josh Brolin,
David Strathairn, Kerry Washington, Eddie
Vedder and John Legend.

We sentenced Japanese for this

Hata, the camp doctor, was charged with war
crimes stemming from the brutal mistreatment
and torture of Morris Killough "by beating
and kicking him (and) by fastening him on a
stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils."
Other American prisoners, including Thomas
Armitage, received similar treatment,
according to the allegations.

The risk in nanotechnology

Atoms on the surface of a material are
generally more reactive than those inside
(which is why powders dissolve more quickly
than solids do). Half of the atoms in a
five-nanometre particle are on its surface,
which can make it many times more toxic than
expected by weight alone. Nanoparticles are
small enough to be transported into the human
body more easily and into the environment in
new ways.

Research on animals suggests that
nanoparticles can even evade some of the
body's natural defence systems and accumulate
in the brain, cells, blood and
nerves. Studies show there is the potential
for such materials to cause pulmonary
inflammation; to move from the lungs to other
organs; to have surprising biological
toxicity; to move from within the skin to the
lymphatic system; and possibly to move across
cell membranes. Moreover, these effects vary
when particles are engineered into different
shapes. There is currently no way of knowing
how each shape will behave, except by
experiment.

After Guantanamo, 'Reintegration' for
Saudis

to modern society and learn the meanings of
Islam. About 40 of the more than 100
Guantanamo detainees from Saudi Arabia who
have been transferred to Riyadh since last
year have been released after participating
in the program, and the rest are scheduled to
be let go in coming months.

The Defense Department considered more than
90 percent of the transferred detainees to be
terrorist threats to the United States and
its allies, but sent them home as part of an
agreement that Saudi Arabia would mitigate
the threat, according to Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a
Pentagon spokesman.

Letters: "Missing" evidence is familiar Bush pattern - Salon

As for knowing about the September 11th
attacks in advance, look, I hate to say this
but anyone who did not know that al Qaeda
was, in general, trying to fly fuel-laden
airplanes into the World Trade Center was
willfully ignorant, and it didn't take
special knowledge or genius intelligence to
observe that by 2001 it had been longer than
usual since the last time al Qaeda had been
caught.

And by "anyone" I don't mean anyone in the
Bush administration, or people with
top-secret security clearances. I mean anyone
-- you, me, everyone in America who could
read the New York Times, which quietly
covered enough of the covert war against al
Qaeda to convey everything one needed to know
except the names and dates of the next
attack.

So why should "so and so knew about 9/11 in
advance" be such a damning crime? Why would
the CIA need to protect itself from
Congressional knowledge of that fact? Many
Americans who knew nearly as precisely about
al Qaeda's plans, and said so at the highest
levels of government, are alive and well--
if somewhat demoralized at having been proven
so tragically prescient.

American Empire Project: Commentary by Noam Chomsky

The issue of enriching uranium to weapons
grade is a very serious problem. The fate of
the species depends on it. If such enrichment
continues, we may not survive much
longer. There are proposals as to how to deal
with the problem. The major one comes from
Mohammed ElBaradei, the highly respected head
of the International Atomic Energy Agency and
Nobel Prize laureate. His proposal is that
production of weapons-grade fissile materials
be placed under international control and
supervision. Anyone who wants to apply for
fissile materials can apply to the IAEA for
peaceful use.[v] That's a very sensible
proposal. As far as I'm aware, there is only
one country in the world that has accepted
it--Iran. Try to find a reference to that
somewhere.

NYC, the NYPD, the RNC, and Me

In 2006, according to a Metropolitan Transit
Authority (MTA) spokesman, the MTA already
had a "3,000-camera-strong surveillance
system," while the NYPD was operating "an
additional 3,000 cameras" around the
city. That same year, Bill Brown, a member of
the Surveillance Camera Players -- a group
that leads surveillance-camera tours and maps
their use around the city, estimated,
according to a Newsweek article, that the
total number of surveillance cameras in New
York exceeded 15,000 -- "a figure city
officials say they have no way to verify
because they lack a system of registry."
Recently, Brown told me that 15,000 was an
estimate for the number of cameras in
Manhattan, alone. For the city as a whole, he
suspects the count has now reached about
40,000.

NJ parents try to block first-in-nation
vaccine mandates

Several parents noted that unlike other

common vaccines, most of the influenza
vaccine available contains mercury, a toxic
heavy metal that has been widely blamed by
parents as a cause of autism, despite the
lack of any such evidence.

A few speakers also said there's no research
showing that it is safe to give children all
the vaccines required today _ more than 30
for New Jersey children.

Some in Congress knew of CIA methods

With one known exception, no formal
objections were raised by the lawmakers
briefed about the harsh methods during the
two years in which waterboarding was
employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats
and Republicans with direct knowledge of the
matter.

The lawmakers who held oversight roles during
the period included Pelosi and fellow
Democrats Rep. Jane Harman, of California,
and Sens. Bob Graham, of Florida, and Jay
Rockefeller, of West Virginia, and
Republicans Rep. Porter Goss, of Florida, and
Sen. Pat Roberts, of Kansas. Individual
lawmakers' recollections of the early
briefings varied dramatically, but officials
present during the meetings described the
reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not
outright support.

Paul Craig Roberts:When Will Bush Come Clean?

The White House has known about the finding
for six months while Dick Cheney tried to
suppress the NIE finding. Neocon National
Security Advisor Steve Hadley even lied to
the press that the NIE finding was new and
that's why Bush didn't know about it.

Bush Spins Iran's Centrifuges

By Ray McGovern
Back in 1976--with Gerald Ford president,
Dick Cheney his chief of staff, Donald
Rumsfeld secretary of defense--the Ford
administration bought the Shah's argument
that Iran needed a nuclear program to meet
its future energy requirements.

That argument, of course, is even more valid
today, with the price that can be obtained
for oil and the specter of Peak Oil.

Cheney and Rumsfeld persuaded a hesitant
President Ford to offer Iran a deal that
would have meant at least $6.4 billion for
U.S. corporations like Westinghouse and
General Electric, had not the Shah been
unceremoniously dumped three years later.

The offer included a reprocessing facility
for a complete nuclear fuels
cycle--essentially the same capability that
the U.S. and Israel now insist Iran cannot be
allowed to acquire.

French Author Accused of Outing Secrets

One of two publications under investigation
is an April article by Dasquie published in
Le Monde called ``Sept. 11: The French Had
Long Known,'' which included excerpts of
confidential documents from the DGSE
intelligence agency. One note, dated Jan. 5,
2001, said al-Qaida was plotting a hijacking
and listed potential airline targets,
including the two carriers, United and
American, that were targeted in the Sept. 11
attacks later that year.

Credit card crunch

Two major card issuers, Chase and CitiCards,
have agreed to stop raising interest rates in
response to lower credit scores. That, at
least, should give those who are struggling a
little more breathing space to keep up
repayments. Others though - including Bank of
America and Discover - are sticking to their
guns.

Baer Suggests Saudis Could Stage Terror
In America to Pre-empt Iran Attack

Baer pointed out that the alleged masterminds
behind 9/11 were all being protected by the
U.S. government and its allies before the
attacks.

"There were several Americans that could have
grabbed Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 1996 when he
was in Dohar who are now working for that
government (Qatar), there's been no
explanation of how he got away....there's
been no explanation of why these American
officials went to work for the same man - the
Minister of the Interior, including Rudy
Giuliani, he has an enormous amount of
contracts with Dohar today with the same guy
who protected Khalid Sheik Mohammed," said
Baer.

"I'd like to know what are those connections
and why is the Minister of the Interior still
in power, he's given us no explanation of why
he tipped off Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 1996,"
he added.

Baer also agreed that questions need to be
answered about the Pakistani financier of the
alleged hijackers, ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad,
visiting top U.S. government and intelligence
officials in the week before and during 9/11.

The Manichean Style in American Politics

After it became clear that the case for war
was bunk, the press adopted the tactic of
saying that it was an honest mistake -
everyone was duped. Yet, as Greenwald
reminds, there were anti-invasion voices
before the war who turned out to be
remarkably prescient, but during the pre-war
"debate" they were only talked about to the
extent that they could be used as foils to be
depicted as unserious "useful idiots."

"Missing" evidence is familiar Bush pattern

Not even the Bush administration could be so
inept as to "lose" videotape records of the
interrogations they conducted with one of the
highest-profile "War on Terror" detainees,
whose case had been the subject of intense
judicial proceedings from the early stages of
his lawless detention in 2002. The
revelations yesterday of deliberate
destruction of interrogation videos by the
CIA obviously compels an investigation into
how such videotapes in the Padilla case
disappeared as well.

There is another aspect of this pattern of
lawlessness highlighted by yesterday's
revelations: the endless complicity by two
key Democrats on the Intelligence Committees
-- Jay Rockefeller and Jane Harman -- in
many, if not most, of the incidents of Bush
law-breaking. As the ranking Democrats on the
Intelligence Committees (Harman's tenure as
such ended this year when Nancy Pelosi wisely
refused to name her as Committee Chairman),
both have been notified of most of these
abuses, and in virtually every case, they
have done nothing to stop them.

Team Spirit: Bush's B-Siders
Replay Their Greatest Hits

At every turn, the B-teamers cooked and
distorted intelligence data to fit their
agenda. Scare stories were regularly leaked
to credulous journalists to whip up public
fear; legislators were plied with
"top-secret" briefings to win Congressional
support for massive increases in military
spending. During the Reagan-Bush years, the
B-Teamers and their acolytes spread
throughout the corridors of power, where they
launched covert operations and proxy wars
around the world, always citing "credible
evidence" of "imminent threats" -- such as
Ronald Reagan's famous warning that tiny
Nicaragua, then besieged by a U.S.-backed
terrorist army, could invade the sacred
American heartland of Texas "in a matter of
hours."

The Two Biggest Public Secrets, and
How Bush Just Signing Statemented Iraq

One of the two biggest open secrets in
American politics is that no bill is needed
to end the legal funding of the occupation of
Iraq. The occupation can be ended with an
announcement by Congressional leaders that
there will be no more funding. Any proposal
to fund it can be blocked by 41 senators, or
by one if his name is Reid. Bush has plenty
of money for withdrawal (an understatement so
dramatic it feels dishonest) and could be
given more for that exclusive purpose (if
Congress insisted). When your television
tells you that the Democrats need 60 or 67
senators in order to end the occupation, your
television is lying to you.

Played for Fools Yet Again: About
that Iran "Intelligence" Report

A few comments are in order about the blog
posts noted above. Several of the reactions
collected by Glenn Reynolds advance the
notion that, assuming the NIE is accurate,
this demonstrates that the invasion and
occupation of Iraq did in fact lead to the
elimination of a gravely serious threat,
namely, the threat that an Iran with nuclear
weapons would have represented. If the
invasion and occupation of Iraq prevented
such a development, that means the Iraq
catastrophe was justified.

Our Man in the BugHouse: He Just
Made Me More Nervous Than Ever

His other musings were no less demented or
utterly disconnected, which some mental
health professionals, if bribed enough, I
suppose, might label as merely severely
revisionist. Such as his claim that our
relations with Iran in 2002 were "hopeful" --
as opposed to the later dark days of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's reign -- forgetting,
suppressing, or completely blocking from
memory that that was the year he slapped on
Iran the moniker of its "axis of evil"
membership.

Bush Drops Standard on Iran
as Credibility Questioned

President George W. Bush, his credibility
under fire because of intelligence that
Iran halted its nuclear weapons drive in
2003, adopted a new argument yesterday to
justify tougher sanctions: Just knowing how
to produce a bomb is dangerous.

America is going fascist

in February 2007, Republican Congressman Don
Young said "Congressmen who wilfully take
actions during wartime that damage morale and
undermine the military are sabateurs, and
should be hanged." This would be amusing,
were it not for the Bush administration's
revival of the draconian 1917 Espionage Act
after half a century's slumber.

And finally, the Bush administration shows
contempt for the law.

Dicked Around: Cheney War Pushers
Get Slapped By Spy Services

Every time an anti-war activist, blogger,
pundit or politico says the words, "Iran
stopped it's nuclear weapons program" they
are doing Bush's work for him because they
are reinforcing the notion that such a
program is known to have existed at all, a
notion with no factual basis whatsoever. Once
they have enough liberal and anti-war figures
repeating that a enough times do you know
what the next step is?

"Oh, no one disputes that Iran had nuclear
weapons program that they're just waiting to
restart! Even [insert liberal sucker here]
said so!"

Tasers: the next generation

The first electrode hooks on to the target,
the second electrode falls and makes contact
elsewhere on the body, completing the circuit
and activating the shock. It can blast
someone as far as 30 metres away, and, unlike
the current stun guns, whose shock lasts five
seconds, the XREP lasts 20 seconds, enough
time to "take the offender into custody
without risking injury to officers."

Firefighters asked to report
people who express discontent with
the government

It was revealed last week that firefighters
are being trained to not only keep an eye out
for illegal materials in the course of their
duties, but even to report back any
expression of discontent with the government.

A year ago, Homeland Security gave security
clearances to nine New York City fire chiefs
and began sharing intelligence with
them. Even before that, fire department
personnel were being taught "to identify
material or behavior that may indicate
terrorist activities" and were also "told to
be alert for a person who is hostile,
uncooperative or expressing hate or
discontent with the United States."

Unlike law enforcement officials, firemen can
go onto private property without a warrant,
not only while fighting fires but also for
inspections.

Rep. Rush Holt: What's Really in the
RESTORE Act - Politics on The Huffington
Post

What our bill does is both protect
Constitutional norms and require that the
government meet some basic evidentiary
standards - as evaluated by a judge - before
allowing the National Security Agency, the
FBI, and the other elements of our federal
law enforcement and intelligence communities
to conduct surveillance on Americans. Having
to meet a standard in the intelligence
business isn't simply about protecting
American rights, it's about targeting the
right people in the first place. We must not
let anyone advance the bogus argument -
repeated by Mr. Klein - that protecting
American's against unwarranted search and
seizure necessarily requires a compromise in
their security. The opposite is true.

Judge: Feds must release telecom records

An electronic privacy group challenging
President Bush's domestic spying program
scored a minor victory when a judge ordered
the federal government to release information
about lobbying efforts by telecommunications
companies to protect them from prosecution.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation in January
2006 filed a class-action suit against AT&T
Inc., accusing the company of illegally
making communications on its networks
available to the National Security Agency
without warrants.

Wells Fargo plunges into the
mortgage muck with $1.4B in losses

Wells Fargo, the fifth-largest U.S. bank,
waded into the mess by saying it will
recognize $1.4 billion in losses in the
fourth quarter on home equity loans that
aren't being repaid as the real estate slump
deepens in California, the Midwest and other
major markets.

Bush acknowledges administration
official leaked Plame's name,
immediately 'moves on'

No questions were asked at the press
conference about Bush's pledge to fire anyone
in the administration found to be involved in
the leaking of Plame's name, a pledge whose
origins go back to September 29, 2003, when
Helen Thomas asked Scott McClellan at a press
briefing, "Scott, has anyone -- has the
President tried to find out who outed the CIA
agent? And has he fired anyone in the White
House yet?"

All You Need to (Not) Know
About the Proposed FISA Fix

Seventeen years ago, the very first Bush (41)
Administration was considering whether to ask
Congress for an amendment to FISA very
similar to the one the current Administration
is now seeking. Mary Lawton, the FISA guru
within DOJ at the time (she tragically died
shortly thereafter), wrote a memo to Daniel
Levin in the Deputy's Office (yes, that
Daniel Levin) discussing why such a proposal
might not be such a good idea. That memo has
recently been released under FOIA.

Civil Asset Forfeiture:
The Looting of America

According to the Pittsburgh Press, 80% of
seizure victims are never even charged with a
crime. Law enforcement agencies often keep
the best seized cars, watches and TVs for
their "departments", and sell the rest.

How extensive are seizures in America
today? The Washington Post has reported
that the US Marshals Service alone had
an inventory of over $1.4 billion in
seized assets, including over 30,000
cars, boats, homes and businesses.

Dick Cheney's top aide: "We're
one bomb away" from our goal


"We're one bomb away from getting rid of
that obnoxious [FISA] court," Goldsmith
recalls Addington telling him in February
2004.

Their goal all along was to "get rid of the
obnoxious FISA court" entirely, so that they
could freely eavesdrop on whomever they
wanted with no warrants or oversight of any
kind. And here is Dick Cheney's top aide,
drooling with anticipation at the prospect of
another terrorist attack so that they could
seize this power without challenge. Addington
views the Next Terrorist Attack as the golden
opportunity to seize yet more power. Sitting
around the White House dreaming of all the
great new powers they will have once the new
terrorist attack occurs -- as Addington was
doing -- is nothing short of deranged.

Bush isn't the only decider

American presidents do have unilateral
authority to make foreign agreements on minor
matters. But the Constitution requires
congressional approval before the nation can
commit itself to the sweeping political,
economic and military relationship
contemplated by the "declaration of
principles" signed by Bush and Maliki to kick
off the negotiations.

U.S. legislative approval can come in two
forms: Either two-thirds of the Senate can
vote for a treaty under Article II of the
Constitution, or a simple majority of both
houses can authorize the agreement under
Article I. But there is no constitutional
provision or precedent authorizing this new
form of Bush unilateralism.

Rove's Version of 2002 War Vote Is
Disputed - washingtonpost.com

"The administration was opposed to voting on
it in the fall of 2002," Rove said. Asked
why, he said: "Because we didn't think it
belonged within the confines of the
election. There was an election coming up
within a matter of weeks. We thought it made
it too political. We wanted it outside the
confines of it. It seemed to make things move
too fast. There were things that needed to be
done to bring along allies and potential
allies abroad."

Democrats accused him of rewriting
history. "Either he has a very faulty memory,
or he's not telling the truth," said
ex-Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle
(D-S.D.). In an interview, Daschle said he
asked Bush during a breakfast to delay the
vote until after the election. "They told us
time was of the essence and they needed the
vote and they were going to move forward," he
said.

Bill Clinton Pretends He Opposed
Bush's Iraq Invasion,Media Go Along
for the Ride

So, you're sitting there as president, you're
reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah,
you want to go get bin Laden and do
Afghanistan and all that. But you also have
to say, well, my first responsibility now is
to try everything possible to make sure that
this terrorist network and other terrorist
networks cannot reach chemical and biological
weapons or small amounts of fissile
material. I've got to do that. That's why I
supported the Iraq thing.


Clinton added: "So that's why I thought Bush
did the right thing to go back. When you're
the president, and your country has just been
through what we had, you want everything to
be accounted for."

Remarks like these should be referenced when
a political figure attempts to dramatically
recast his record. But establishment media go
out of their way to avoid questioning
powerful politicians, especially presidents:
"You can't say the president is lying," as
New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller
once proclaimed (Extra!, 1-2/05).

The papers of record have given George
W. Bush license to eliminate well-known
events from the recent history of Iraq,
claiming of Saddam Hussein (7/14/03): "We
gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in,
and he wouldn't let them in." As FAIR pointed
out (7/18/03), in fact, after a Security
Council resolution was passed demanding that
Iraq allow inspectors in, they were given
complete access to the country; their
well-publicized search for the non-existent
WMDs was ongoing until four months before
Bush's claim. The Washington Post (7/15/03),
describing Bush's remarkable statement, could
only say that his assertion "appeared to
contradict the events leading up to war this
spring."

Bush has repeatedly made the same claim
(1/27/04, 3/21/06, 5/24/07, 11/7/07; see
Consortium News, 11/9/07), with little or no
note taken by the news outlets that chronicle
his every move. "Historians will wonder
someday how a free press permitted the
world's most important official to say such
things without contradiction," Salon's Joe
Conason reported (3/31/06).

David Bromwich: The Torture Compromise of
2007 - Politics on The Huffington Post

research (See profile | I'm a fan of
research) If "24" were accurate, the bomb
would be set, they would torture the
deactivation code out of the terrorist, type
it in...and the bomb would exploded. Reply |
Parent | posted 02:21 pm on 11/30/2007

Environment: Dress for Excess:
The Cost of Our Clothing Addiction

We're spending $282 billion on new clothes
annually, up from $162 billion in 1992, based
on U.S. Census figures.

Importantly, the steady upward march of
clothing expenditures doesn't fully reflect
the increase in the actual quantities being
made and bought, because the same-size
spending spree can bring in more garb with
every year that goes by.

Johann Hari: The plot to
rig the 2008 US election

It is the worst part of the Constitution,
producing perverse results again and
again. On four occasions there has been such
a big gap between the national popular vote
and the state-by-state electoral college
votes that the guy with fewer real supporters
in the country got to be President. It
happened in 1824, 1876, 1888 and -- most
tragically for the world -- in 2000.

Today, the Republicans are trying to exploit
the discontent with the electoral college
among Americans in a way that would rig the
system in their favour. At the moment, every
state apart from Maine and Nebraska hands out
its electoral college votes according to a
winner-takes-all system.

The politics of
wiretapping and encryption

In the 1970s, independent cryptographers
startled the cryptographic world by
demonstrating that privacy can be
manufactured "end to end" without the help of
any centralized resources. Diffie-Hellman key
exchange allows two parties to derive a
secret from negotiations in which every bid
and every response is public. This changed
the basic power relationships in
cryptography. Before public-key technology,
cryptography always required centralized
facilities to manufacture and distribute
keys, a feature particularly compatible with
the top-down organization of the military. By
contrast, public-key cryptography was
developed to support the interactions of
businesses in a community of equals.

Both parties cooperate to keep
administration crimes secret

Perhaps Turley's most telling observation was
that members of both parties are happy to see
these cases dismissed because they are
determined to keep impeachment off the
table. "There's a lot of people, both
Democrats and Republicans, that ... don't
want a court to say that the president did
something that is a federal crime. That's why
they're trying to get all these cases thrown
out of court. ... When a federal judge says
the president committed a crime, it's pretty
darn hard to ignore that."

Impeachment Must Happen

Elections will not prevent a president
Clinton from declaring you an enemy combatant
and shipping you off to Guantanamo. They
won't prevent a president Obama from sweeping
up Americans and holding them indefinitely on
his word alone. They won't prevent a
president Guiliani from illegally and
immorally murdering millions of Iranians for
no legitimate reason. They won't prevent a
president Romney from seizing your home and
assets because he alleges you are impeding
operations in Iraq. It won't prevent a
president Thompson from exempting himself,
his entire administration and his political
supporters from the rule of law. It won't
prevent any president from leaving the nation
unprotected by ignoring or rewriting the
intelligence to suit his or her political
agenda. Elections won't guarantee that anyone
you elect to lead or represent you has to
tell you, the congress or the judiciary the
truth.

The Truth about Colin Powell

A pilot named Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. from
Stone Mountain, Georgia, was furious at the
killings he saw happening on the ground. He
landed his helicopter between one group of
fleeing civilians and American soldiers in
pursuit.

Thompson ordered his helicopter door gunner
to shoot the Americans if they tried to harm
the Vietnamese. After a tense confrontation,
the soldiers backed off.

Later, two of Thompson's men climbed into one
ditch filled with corpses and pulled out a
three-year-old boy whom they flew to safety.
Federal prosecutors issued the subpoena last
year as part of a grand jury investigation
into a former Wisconsin official who was a
prolific seller of used books on
Amazon.com. They were looking for buyers who
could be witnesses in the case.

The official, Robert D'Angelo, was indicted
last month on fraud, money laundering and tax
evasion charges. Prosecutors said he ran a
used book business out of his city office and
did not report the income. He has pleaded not
guilty.

D'Angelo sold books through the Amazon
Marketplace feature, and buyers paid Amazon,
which took a commission.

How Cell Phones May Cause Autism

The study, which involved over five years of
research on children with autism and other
membrane sensitivity disorders, found that
EMR negatively affects cell membranes, and
allows heavy metal toxins, which are
associated with autism, to build up in your
body.

Meanwhile, the researchers pointed out that
autism rates have increased concurrently
along with the proliferation of cell phones
and wireless use.

Blackwater probe stifled by conflicts

As a result of the bureaucratic crosscurrents
between State's top auditor and Justice, the
investigation has been bogged down for
months.

A key date was July 11, when Howard Krongard,
State's inspector general, sent an e-mail to
one of his assistant inspector generals,
telling him to "IMMEDIATELY" stop work on the
Blackwater investigation. That lead to
criticisms by Democrats that Krongard has
tried to protect Blackwater and block
investigations into contractor-related
wrongdoing in Iraq.

Joe Klein digs Time's hole deeper still

Joe Klein has just posted yet again about his
FISA confusion, and it has now moved well
beyond farce into an almost pity-inducing
realm. If Time has any dignity at all,
someone there will intervene and put a stop
to this. It's actually difficult to watch.

If Kucinich wins nomination,
Ron Paul could be his veep

"Dr. Paul and Rep. Kucinich are friends and
there is a lot of mutual respect," Paul
communications director Jesse Benton said in
an e-mail when asked whether a running-mate
spot on the Kucinich ticket would be
attractive to Paul. "They have worked, and
will continue to work, together on the ending
the war and protecting civil liberties.

"However, Ron wants to substantially cut the
size and scope of the federal
government. There are too many differences on
issues such as taxes and spending to think a
joint ticket would be possible."

Congress, courts examine
state secrets

Under grilling from lawmakers and attack by
lawsuits alleging Bush authorized the illegal
wiretapping of Americans, the White House has
invoked a legal defense known as the "state
secrets" doctrine--a claim that the
president has inherent and unchecked power to
shield national security information from
disclosure, either to plaintiffs in court or
to congressional overseers.

The principle was established a half-century
ago when, ruling in a wrongful-death case
brought by the widows of civilians killed in
a military plane crash, the Supreme Court
upheld the Air Force's refusal to provide an
accident report to the plaintiffs. The
government contended releasing the document
would compromise information about a secret
mission and intelligence equipment.

Reckoning: The Economic
Consequences of Mr. Bush

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been
that Herbert Hoover, whose policies
aggravated the Great Depression, is the
odds-on claimant for the mantle "worst
president" when it comes to stewardship of
the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt
assumed office and reversed Hoover's
policies, the country began to recover. The
economic effects of Bush's presidency are
more insidious than those of Hoover, harder
to reverse, and likely to be
longer-lasting. There is no threat of
America's being displaced from its position
as the world's richest economy. But our
grandchildren will still be living with, and
struggling with, the economic consequences of
Mr. Bush.

FISA Confusion and Correction - Swampland

Democrats say that I was wrong to report that
the bill includes a FISA court review of
individual foreign terrorist targets who
might communicate with U.S. persons, although
it does include an annual "basket"
review of procedures used by
U.S. intelligence agencies to target foreign
suspects. The Republican Committee staff
disagrees and says my reporting is correct.

I have to side with the Democrats. I reported
as fact a provision of the bill that seems to
be disputable, to say the least. Clearly, I
didn't do sufficient vetting of the facts.

Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request

Federal officials are routinely asking courts
to order cellphone companies to furnish
real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint
the whereabouts of drug traffickers,
fugitives and other criminal suspects,
according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the
requests without requiring the government to
demonstrate that there is probable cause to
believe that a crime is taking place or that
the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime.

Army Desertion Rate Up 80 Pct. Since '03

Soldiers strained by six years at war are
deserting their posts at the highest rate
since 1980, with the number of Army deserters
this year showing an 80 percent increase
since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

While the totals are still far lower than
they were during the Vietnam War, when the
draft was in effect, they show a steady
increase over the past four years and a 42
percent jump since last year.

Bush More Emphatic In Backing Musharraf

Bush was asked in the interview if there is
any line Musharraf should not cross. "He
hasn't crossed the line. As a matter of fact,
I don't think that he will cross any lines,"
Bush replied, according to an ABC transcript.

Joe Klein: both factually
false and stuck in the 1980s

For the sake of its own credibility, Time
Magazine needs immediately to prohibit Joe
Klein from uttering another word about the
eavesdropping and FISA controversy. He simply
doesn't know what he's talking about and he
publishes demonstrably false statements.

Bush, Cheney lied about Plame,
ex-press chief says

Former White House press secretary Scott
McClellan blames U.S. President George
W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney for
efforts to mislead the public about the role
of White House aides in leaking the identity
of a CIA operative.

Daniel Ellsberg Says Sibel Edmonds
Case 'Far More Explosive Than Pentagon
Papers'

"From what I understand, from what she has to
tell, it has a major difference from the
Pentagon Papers in that it deals directly
with criminal activity and may involve
impeachable offenses," Ellsberg
explained. "And I don't necessarily mean the
President or the Vice-President, though I
wouldn't be surprised if the information
reached up that high. But other members of
the Executive Branch may be impeached as
well. And she says similar about Congress."

Opinion: In the U.S. of A.,
we are all suspects now

Make no mistake, telecom immunity is about
keeping a flagrantly illegal program from
public scrutiny and maintaining the illusion
that the president ordered a small, precision
surveillance program, when the opposite is
true.

Publisher thanks cops for not beating
him during Giuliani incident, but files
complaint

When GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani
stopped off for a little retail politicking
at a Colorado coffee house last Saturday, he
came prepared to hammer home his commitment
to the war on terror, make a jab or two at
Hillary Clinton, and field some tough
questions about recently indicted pal Bernard
Kerik -- but he apparently wasn't ready for
Sander Hicks.

House passes FISA update without telecom immunity

House Democrats succeeded Thursday in passing
a foreign surveillance law update that would
restore judicial oversight to foreign
intelligence gathering efforts aimed at
Americans and would not grant legal immunity
to telecommunications companies that
facilitated the warrantless surveillance of
Americans.

On a 224-192 vote, largely along party lines,
the House adopted its proposal to update the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The
measure, known as the RESTORE Act, would
replace a temporary FISA update approved in
August.

The bill does not include a provision to
grant legal immunity to telecommunications
companies that the Bush administration has
demanded and it restores the role of the FISA
court in approving surveillance methods used
by the National Security Agency that could
ensnare Americans.

More Trouble for State Dept Investigator

In addition to removing himself from all
queries related to Blackwater, Inspector
General Howard Krongard has given up his role
in looking into corruption allegations
involving the construction of the new
U.S. embassy in Baghdad, State Department
spokesman Sean McCormack said.

The move came at the request of a
congressional oversight committee chaired by
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., which Krongard
testified before a day earlier. During the
hearing he learned, apparently for the first
time, that his brother is a member of
Blackwater's advisory board.

State Dept. Official Reveals Blackwater Tie

In a dramatic turn of events on Capitol Hill
today, the State Department inspector general
recused himself from all Blackwater-related
issues after admitting to Congress that his
brother served on the private security
contractor's advisory board.

After initially rejecting allegations that
his brother, Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, was a
Blackwater board member, Howard Krongard
later told lawmakers that his brother was in
fact on the board.

CIA 'let atomic expert Khan go'

Pakistani nuclear expert AQ Khan was not
arrested when living in the Netherlands as
the CIA was monitoring him, an ex-Dutch prime
minister says.

Ruud Lubbers said the CIA had asked the
Netherlands in 1975 not to prosecute Abdul
Qadeer Khan, who is now dubbed the father of
Pakistan's atom bomb.

Mr Khan admitted last year that he had leaked
nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and
Iran.

Where Are the E-mails?

Why is it taking White House officials so
long to restore millions of deleted e-mails
from the backup tapes they claim to have?

The e-mails in question date from March 2003
to October 2005 -- a crucial period that
includes the Iraq invasion, a presidential
election and Hurricane Katrina.

Justice Deptartment to re-
open no-warrant wiretap probe

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehkasse
-- who said the letter had been sent to five
members of the House of Representatives --
stressed the limited nature of the probe.

"The Department of Justice's Office of
Professional Responsibility investigation
will focus on whether the DOJ attorneys who
were involved complied with their ethical
obligations of providing competent legal
advice to their client and of adhering to
their duty of candor to the court," he said.

US, Israel refuse to cooperate with
inquest into Syria strike: diplomat

The diplomat close to the IAEA also confirmed
the lack of radiation signatures, but
explained that a reactor still under
construction would not yet be fully loaded
with the necessary materials and would not
therefore give off any radiation. The
diplomat, however, again pointed to the
satellite images, which do not show a nuclear
reactor under construction in any case,
explaining certain geometric configurations
are necessary for such a facility, including
certain height indicators as well as the lack
of security such as armed guards.

Justice Department Reopens Warrantless
Wiretapping Inquiry That Was Halted By
Bush

Just a few months later, the inquiry was shut
down because Alberto Gonzales refused to
grant security clearances to
investigators. Gonzales later suggested to
the Senate that Bush made the decision to
block the investigation. "The President of
the United States ultimately makes decisions
about who ultimately is given access,"
Gonzales said.

The National Journal's Murray Waas reported
that Bush shut down the investigation upon
learning that Gonzales "would likely be a
focus of the investigation."

Bush Still Refuses to Admit
Ever Making An Error As President

BUSH: Well, I would rather go
disappointments, rather than errors. The
disappointment is not getting a Social
Security package, Social Security reform,
because that truly is the big deficit
issue. I'm sorry it didn't happen. I laid out
a plan to make it happen -- to enable it to
happen. I was the first president to have
addressed it as specifically as I did. I wish
Congress wasn't so risk-averse on the issue.

Iraq, Afghanistan wars twice as
expensive as expected, report says

President Bush's six-year invasion of
Afghanistan and Iraq will end up costing
Americans about $1.5 trillion, or nearly
twice as much as the White House has actually
spent to fight its wars, because of unseen
costs like inflation, rising oil prices and
expensive care for wounded veterans.

Judge orders White House to hold e-mails

The Federal Records Act details strict
standards prohibiting the destruction of
government documents including electronic
messages, unless first approved by the
archivist of the United States.

Justice Department lawyers had urged the
courts to accept a proposed White House
declaration promising to preserve all backup
tapes.

"The judge decided that wasn't enough," said
Anne Weismann, an attorney for CREW, which
has gone to court over secrecy issues
involving the Bush administration and has
pursued ethical issues involving Republicans
on Capitol Hill.

WNBC catches Giuliani getting
'tripped up' by 9/11 activist

Giuliani's politely-phrased response, caught
by WNBC newscameras filming the event, was "I
didn't know that the towers were going to
collapse."

That response contradicts remarks the former
New York City mayor made about being warned
about the collapse during a phone interview
with onetime ABC anchor Peter Jennings on
September 11, 2001, as shown in a transcript
WNBC obtained from the Giuliani 2008
campaign.

Bush to Musharraf: 'We Believe in
Elections' & 'You Can't Be President
and Head of Military at Same Time'


The Mouse That Spied

A former Disney "imagineer"--to use
the Magic Kingdom's preferred term for its
personnel--designed the operations center
for the National Counterterrorism Center in
Northern Virginia. Another Disney veteran
headed up the director of National
Intelligence's science and technology
division, and he remains a contributor to the
intelligence community. Two panels at a
conference in Chicago this past summer on
intelligence analysis offered the Disney
perspective on spycraft. And the list goes
on.

Government seeks to redefine privacy

A top intelligence official says it is time
people in the United States changed their
definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says
Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national
intelligence. Instead, it should mean that
government and businesses properly safeguards
people's private communications and financial
information.

Brazil's Pirahã Tribe:
Living without Numbers or Time

The results, published in Science magazine,
were astonishing. The Pirahãs simply don't
get the concept of numbers. His study, Gordon
says, shows that "a people without terms for
numbers doesn't develop the ability to
determine exact numbers."

His findings have brought new life to a
controversial theory by linguist Benjamin
Whorf, who died in 1941. Under Whorf's
theory, people are only capable of
constructing thoughts for which they possess
actual words. In other words: Because they
have no words for numbers, they can't even
begin to understand the concept of numbers
and arithmetic.

Secret DHS Agreement to Share
Passenger Data in Violation of
Agreements Is Confirmed

The text of a secret agreement that the
Department of Homeland Security executed with
the Centers for Disease Control to share
airline passenger data confirms what the
American Civil Liberties Union had feared,
which is that the U.S. government is
distributing information that it explicitly
promised it would not share. This is very
troubling for several reasons.

First, it is continuing evidence that the
American government, and especially its
security establishment, does not take privacy
and data protection seriously.

Medicare audits spark protest that nudges Feinstein

The California Hospital Association first
raised concerns last November that
PRG-Schultz was targeting rehabilitation
hospitals for billing Medicare for taking
patients after knee or hip replacement
surgery. It said the auditor has been
reviewing thousands of cases as far back as
2002. Nearly all of those have been rejected
as medically unnecessary.

Her husband's business interests in
PRG-Schultz have become awkward for
Feinstein, the state's senior Democratic
senator, as the hospital association turns to
Congress for relief.

Halt sought on Medicare audit program

PRG-Schultz has focused on more than 70
rehabilitation hospitals statewide that take
patients after surgery.

Auditors began demanding case files as far
back as five years and have rejected more
than 90 percent of them. CMS so far has
defended the rejections based on old Medicare
rules under which it said the patients should
have been shunted to nursing homes or
out-patient therapy.

The rejections have resulted in tens of
millions of dollars being automatically
withdrawn from the affected hospitals'
Medicare accounts, putting several in
financial difficulty. PRG-Schultz, meanwhile,
was paid a commission of 25 or 30 cents out
of each dollar the hospitals surrendered.

Superfast Laser Turns Virus Into Rubble

We have demonstrated a technique of using a
laser to excite vibrations on the shield of a
virus and damage it, so that it's no longer
functional," said Kong-Thon Tsen, a professor
of physics at Arizona State
University. "We're testing it on HIV and
hepatitis right now."

Sibel Edmonds Case: the
untellable story of AIPAC

Not only were the ATC and AIPAC 'sister
organizations,' they also had something else
in common: there have been 'sister
investigations' into both organizations. And
of course, both investigations uncovered
serious criminality at the highest levels of
the US administration - Congress, the
Pentagon and the State Department.

Committee delays consideration of telecom immunity

The Senate Judiciary Committee is delaying
consideration of a controversial proposal to
grant legal immunity to telecommunications
companies that facilitated a warrantless
wiretapping program.

A committee aide tells RAW STORY it is
"likely" the panel will produce legislation
that differs from an Intelligence Committee
bill. The Intel bill includes telecom
immunity, but it remains unclear whether
immunity will be struck by the Judiciary
committee.

AT&T whistleblower: I was forced
to connect 'big brother machine'

My job was to connect circuits into the
splitter device which was hard-wired to the
secret room," said Klein. "And effectively,
the splitter copied the entire data stream of
those internet cables into the secret room --
and we're talking about phone conversations,
email web browsing, everything that goes
across the internet."

Spooks refuse to toe Cheney's line on Iran

The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
on Iran has been held up for more than a year
in an effort to force the intelligence
community to remove dissenting judgments on
the Iranian nuclear program. The aim is to
make the document more supportive of Vice
President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive
policy toward Iran, according to accounts
provided by participants in the NIE process
to two former Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) officers.

Hide your old pills in poop, government says

Ferret waste, like nearly any other form of
pet waste, can be effectively used to help
prevent the abuse of unused prescription
drugs," SAMHSA spokesman Mark Weber said.

Bush's Favorite Lie

Bush also insists that Americans must heed
what Osama bin Laden says, like when this
homicidal maniac supposedly calls Iraq the
"central front" in the "war on terror," the
American people must keep troops there
indefinitely.

But it's never explained why it makes sense
for the United States to let bin Laden's
public declarations shape Washington's
policies.

In a sound-bite society, reality no longer matters

Anti-Empire Report, November 6, 2007
Last month, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni told assembled world leaders at the
United Nations that the time had come to take
action against Iran. "None disagrees," she
said, "that Iran denies the Holocaust and
speaks openly of its desire to wipe a member
state - mine - off the map. And none
disagrees that, in violation of Security
Council resolutions, it is actively pursuing
the means to achieve this end. Too many see
the danger but walk idly by - hoping that
someone else will take care of it. ... It is
time for the United Nations, and the states
of the world, to live up to their promise of
never again. To say enough is enough, to act
now and to defend their basic values."[1]

Yet, later the same month, we are informed by
Haaretz, (frequently described as "the New
York Times of Israel"), that the same Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni had said a few months
earlier, in a series of closed discussions,
that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons
do not pose an existential threat to Israel."
Haaretz reported that "Livni also criticized
the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue
of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is
attempting to rally the public around him by
playing on its most basic fears."[2]

What are we to make of such a self-contradiction,
such perfect hypocrisy?

Mukasey nomination sent to full Senate

Michael Mukasey's nomination as the nation's
next attorney general was sent to the full
Senate on Tuesday as a vehicle for the
broader, and more bitter, debate over the
legality of the Bush administration's
interrogation techniques for terrorism
suspects.

Politics at Guantanamo: The
Former Chief Prosecutor Speaks

In September of this year, Davis threatened
to resign if anyone tried to intimidate
him. He has now done so, stating bluntly
that, "as things stand right now, I think
it's a disgrace to call it a military
commission--it's a political
commission."

What makes this all the more alarming is that
Colonel Davis is the last person you would
expect to stand up as a whistleblower.
White House aides say the only way Bush seems
to be able to influence the process is by
vetoing legislation or by issuing
administrative orders, as he has in recent
weeks on veterans' health care, air-traffic
congestion, protecting endangered fish and
immigration. They say they expect Bush to
issue more of such orders in the next several
months, even as he speaks out on the need to
limit spending and resist any tax increases.

Groundbreaking solar plane
to test flight in 2008

A prototype of the "Solar Impulse"
round-the-world solar plane should make its
first piloted flight in autumn 2008, the
Swiss project leaders said Monday.

NKorea starts disabling
nuclear facilities

North Korea on Monday started an
unprecedented disabling of its nuclear
programme under the supervision of a US
team of experts, US officials said.

The nine experts had begun work on plutonium
production facilities at the Yongbyon complex
in North Korea, said Tom Casey, a State
Department spokesman speaking in Washington.

Top US legal adviser refuses
to rule out 'torture' technique

The top legal adviser within the US state
department, who counsels the secretary of
state, Condoleezza Rice, on international
law, has declined to rule out the use of the
interrogation technique known as
waterboarding even if it were applied by
foreign intelligence services on US
citizens. John Bellinger refused to denounce
the technique, which has been condemned by
human rights groups as a form of torture,
during a debate on the Bush administration's
stance on international law held by Guardian
America, the Guardian's US website. He said
he would not include or exclude any technique
without first considering whether it violated
the convention on torture.

Mukasey Is (Much) Worse Than Gonzales

Consider the nominee's suggestion that the
president can ignore any law, including the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, if he
and his lawyers determine that the law
impinges on his authority as commander in
chief during wartime.

"The president is not putting somebody above
the law; the president is putting somebody
within the law," Mukasey explained, with a
response that employed legalese at levels not
heard in Washington since Richard Nixon
boarded that last plane for San
Clemente. "The president doesn't stand above
the law. But the law emphatically includes
the Constitution."

Experts: No evidence of
Iranian nuclear weapons program

Despite President Bush's claims that Iran is
pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger
"World War III," experts in and out of
government say there's no conclusive evidence
that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons
program.

Stop Prisoner Rape

In a study of Midwestern prisons in 1991,
Helen Eigenberg of the University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga found that 16
percent of officers thought inmates deserved
rape if they were homosexual; 17 percent if
they "dressed or talked in feminine ways"; 23
percent if they had "previously engaged in
consensual sexual acts in prison"; and 24
percent if they had taken "money or
cigarettes for consensual sexual acts prior
to a rape." An earlier study Eigenberg
conducted in Texas echoed those findings.

Chalabi back in action in Iraq

Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial, ubiquitous
Iraqi politician and one-time Bush
administration favorite, has re-emerged as a
central figure in the latest U.S. strategy
for Iraq.

Rice taps Clinton, Carter for Middle East advice

Anxious not to repeat mistakes of past Middle
East peace-making, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice has turned to former
presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter for
tips ahead of her own conference this year.

A tale of two decisions (or,
how the FBI gets you to confess)

Last week, my eyes lit up when I checked the
daily decisions and saw that one case
involved a guy who claimed he was forced to
confess to a crime that he did not
commit. This scenario surfaces from time to
time for murders and other crimes, but this
case was different because it involved the
crime of the century: the 9/11 hijackings
which launched this country into a new era.

The long and the short of it was that an
Egpytian national, Abdallah Higazy, was
staying in a hotel in New York City on
September 11 and the hotel emptied out when
the planes hit the towers. The hotel later
found in the closet of his room a device that
allows you to communicate with airline
pilots.

Donald Rumsfeld charged with
torture during trip to France

Former US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld got an unpleasant surprise during
his visit to France today when human rights
groups filed a complaint with the Paris
Prosecutor before the "Court of First
Instance" (Tribunal de Grande Instance)
charging the chief architect of President
George W. Bush's "war on terror" with
ordering and authorizing torture.

I can has database - Google Search

USATODAY.com - DNA database can flag suspects
through relatives The FBI has begun
permitting police investigators to pursue
some criminal suspects by tracking the DNA
... DNA database can flag suspects through
relatives ...

Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?

The Constitution is being trampled and
nothing less than American democracy itself
is endangered -- a presidential coup is
taking place. Where is Congress?

War on Iraq: Bush's World War III 'Solution'

Don't worry, the White House is telling
us. The world's most powerful leader was
simply making a rhetorical point. At a White
House press conference last week, just in
case you haven't heard, President Bush
informed the American people that he had told
world leaders "if you're interested in
avoiding World War III, it seems like you
ought to be interested in preventing [Iran]
from having the knowledge necessary to make a
nuclear weapon." World War III. That is
certainly some rhetorical point

Dennis Kucinich's Borderline Treasonous
Actions In Syria - Right Wing News
(Conservative News and Views)

Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions
are obtained -- by torturing children while
their parents are made to watch

Hersh: children raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos

The women were passing messages out saying
'Please come and kill me, because of what's
happened' and basically what happened is that
those women who were arrested with young
boys, children in cases that have been
recorded. The boys were sodomized with the
cameras rolling. And the worst above all of
that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking
that your government has.

Intermediary: Iraq talks deserved a chance

Nov. 7, 2003
HAGE: The fact of the matter, Bill, is that
the Iraqis at some stage, through the
director of intelligence, visited me in
Beirut [Lebanon], had indicated that [they]
would be willing to allow between 1,000 to
2,000 U.S. agents, FBI and/or scientists,
into Iraq to verify, according to them, the
absence of weapons of mass destruction or
that they no longer had weapons of mass
destruction.

The second point, they offered to turn over
Abdul Rahman Yasin, [under indictment in] the
World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

And on the third issue, they offered to hold
free and fair elections in Iraq within a year
or two.

They kept on asking why they were targeted or
they would be targeted, that they didn't wish
confrontation with the United States. If it
was about oil, they'd be willing to make
concessions on oil.

Why I fight and why we all must

It was a rough ride to Baghdad. Right from
the start 150,000 troops were cluttered and
stacked upon each other with our vehicles
breaking down due to the harsh terrain of the
southern Iraqi desert. We were in the middle
of nowhere and out in the open. If there were
ever a time for Saddam to use his weapons of
mass destruction it would have been the
perfect opportunity for him. We were in the
perfect location for him to attack us -- out
in the open desert with no other
population. He could have launched the
alleged stockpile of WMD directly upon the US
military and killed no one but our troops. If
Bush really was convinced that Saddam had
such a massive WMD arsenal why would he place
us in the most vulnerable position for him to
use them on us?

Letting slip the drugs of war --
Is the CIA helping itself to the Afghan
heroin harvest?

Officially available flight details for known
aircraft of the CIA's clandestine fleet
combined with observations by Amnesty's
global network of plane spotters reveal that
these aircraft fly too often, and touch down
far more often, than can be explained by the
rendition of the hapless suspects they were
carrying at the time. They often stopped at
US air bases where the local authorities have
no control over what gets loaded or
unloaded.

Israel Warns World War III May
be Biblical War of Gog and Magog

US President George W. Bush said a nuclear
Iran would mean World War III. Israeli
newscasts featured Gog & Magog maps of the
likely alignment of nations in that potential
conflict.

Israel "mole" took photos of Syrian target: report

Israel urged the United States to destroy the
complex, but Washington hesitated because no
fissionable material was found that would
prove the site was nuclear, ABC said.

Marshall Islands: US opposes nuke-test health plan

US President George Bush has opposed US
Senate legislation to fund health care for
the nuclear-test-affected
Marshallese. Sixty-seven US nuclear bombs
were detonated in the Marshall Islands
between 1946 and 1958.

Blackwater and me: A love story it ain't

I know something about Blackwater USA. This
opinion is both intellectually driven as well
as moderately emotional. You see, during my
own yearlong tour in Iraq, the bad boys of
Blackwater twice came closer to killing me
than did any of the insurgents or Al Qaeda
types. That sort of thing sticks with
you. One story will suffice to make my
point.

Bush's Spying Hits Americans Abroad

The law states: "Notwithstanding any other
law, the Director of National Intelligence
and the Attorney General may for periods of
up to one year authorize the acquisition of
foreign intelligence information concerning
persons reasonably believed to be outside the
United States."

The law's advocates claimed that this
provision was intended to intercept
communications when at least one party was
linked to a terrorist group or a terrorist
affiliate and was outside the United States.

But the law's language didn't limit the
surveillance to "terrorists" or "enemy
combatants" -- indeed those words were not
mentioned in the legislation.

Nor does the Protect America Act, which was
drafted by the Bush administration's national
security team, specify what happens to a
one-year surveillance order against a target
if the person then enters--or returns--to
the United States.

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

Among the big telecommunications companies,
only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the
sources said. According to multiple sources,
Qwest declined to participate because it was
uneasy about the legal implications of
handing over customer information to the
government without warrants.

Terror drill turns into the
real deal near Lloyd Center

Police immediately cordoned off the area so
they could investigate. They later
discovered that the dogs had detected traces
of explosives in police and military vehicles
that were involved in the exercise that was
being staged. The bomb residue is something
common in those type of vehicles.

Senate and Neocons Agree to Carve Up Bill of Rights

In standard doublespeak fashion, the Post is
attempting to put the best face on the fact
the Senate has dealt the telecoms a get out
of jail free card. It is, as well, typical
that the Post characterizes the legislation
as a "control" mechanism when in fact
it is a blank check. Of course, this hardly
matters, as the NSA has worked with the
telecoms for decades to subvert the
constitutional rights of Americans, who are
basically none the wiser when it comes down
to the fact the government is a police state,
long engaged in snooping of the sort
Germany's Stasi employed.

Pentagon Using FBI to Spy On Americans

Apparently the Pentagon is in cahoots with
the FBI to look at our financial, telephone
and Internet records without court approval.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which
has successfully challenged key planks of
US anti-terrorism legislation, said it
had uncovered 455 "National Security
Letters" issued at the behest of the
Department of Defense.

The ACLU says that the Pentagon and FBI had
collaborated "to circumvent the law" and
"provided misleading information to Congress"
about the nature and reach of the requests.

Telecom Amnesty would forever foreclose
investigation of vital issues

The documents that were released as part of
the criminal prosecution of Joseph Nacchio,
the former Qwest CEO who refused to
participate in what he believed to be illegal
government surveillance programs (and was
then prosecuted for insider trading by the
Bush administration), are revealing in
numerous important respects.

Nacchio -- who was convicted earlier this
year of insider trading for selling his Qwest
shares with insider knowledge that the
company was about to lose substantial value
-- is attempting to prove that, at the time
he sold his shares, he anticipated that Qwest
would receive highly lucrative government
contracts (for surveillance and other
programs) that were being negotiated almost
immediately upon Bush's inauguration in 2001
-- months before the 9/11 attacks (the bulk
of those projects was ultimately awarded to
AT&T, Verizon and others).

NSA Spying: What Did Pelosi Know?

By Ray McGovern
October 15, 2007
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has admitted
knowing for several years about the Bush
administration's eavesdropping on Americans
without a court warrant. She said she was
briefed on it when she was ranking Democrat
on the House Intelligence Committee. But was
she told that the illegal surveillance began
well before 9/11?

The NYT weighs in, and
I think we have it Backward

It is backwards to complain about sleazy
corporate lobbyists illegally corrupting
government officials to bend the rule of law
about surveillance. Through the looking
glass, it is sleazy government lobbyists
illegally corrupting corporate officials to
bend the rule of law about surveillance.

Former Phone Chief Says Spy Agency
Sought Surveillance Help Before 9/11

The phone company Qwest Communications
refused a proposal from the National Security
Agency that the company's lawyers considered
illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months
before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the
former head of the company contends in newly
unsealed court filings.

The executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, also
asserts in the filings that the agency
retaliated by depriving Qwest of lucrative
outsourcing contracts.

Spies, Lies and FISA

The House bill would permit the government to
conduct surveillance for 45 days before
submitting it to court review and
approval. (Mr. Bush is wrong when he says the
bill would slow down intelligence gathering.)
After that, ideally, the law would require a
real warrant. If Congress will not do that,
at a minimum it must require spying programs
to undergo periodic audits by the court and
Congress. The administration wants no
reviews.

Mr. Bush and his team say they have
safeguards to protect civil liberties,
meaning surveillance will be reviewed by the
attorney general, the director of national
intelligence and the inspectors general of
the Justice Department and the Central
Intelligence Agency. There are two enormous
flaws in that. The Constitution is based on
the rule of law, not individuals; giving such
power to any president would be
un-American. And this one long ago showed he
cannot be trusted.

Mukasey Made His Name With Terror Cases

By the time of the September 11, 2001,
attacks, Mr. Mukasey and his wife had already
spent the better part of a decade under
24-hour armed protection. He had received
death threats stemming from his 1995 trial of
Egyptian Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the
blind sheik, who along with nine
co-defendants was convicted of conspiracy to
blow up New York landmarks, including
commuter tunnels and the World Trade
Center. U.S. marshals were posted outside
Mr. Mukasey's chambers and his Upper East
Side apartment. The judge was hustled around
in an armored limousine with a chase car and
sometimes bomb-sniffing dogs in tow.

Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm

A former Qwest Communications International
executive, appealing a conviction for insider
trading, has alleged that the government
withdrew opportunities for contracts worth
hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest
refused to participate in an unidentified
National Security Agency program that the
company thought might be illegal.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio,
convicted in April of 19 counts of insider
trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more
than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, according to court documents
unsealed in Denver this week.

Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008

#1 No Habeas Corpus for "Any Person"

With the approval of Congress and no outcry
from corporate media, the Military
Commissions Act (MCA) signed by Bush on
October 17, 2006, ushered in military
commission law for US citizens and
non-citizens alike. While media, including a
lead editorial in the New York Times October
19, have given false comfort that we, as
American citizens, will not be the victims of
the draconian measures legalized by this
Act--such as military roundups and
life-long detention with no rights or
constitutional protections--Robert Parry
points to text in the MCA that allows for the
institution of a military alternative to the
constitutional justice system for "any
person" regardless of American
citizenship. The MCA effectively does away
with habeas corpus rights for "any
person" arbitrarily deemed to be an
"enemy of the state." The judgment on
who is deemed an "enemy combatant" is
solely at the discretion of President Bush.

Sanchez, former U.S. commander in
Iraq, calls war 'a nightmare with no
end in sight'

Asked why he did not speak out about his
concerns, Sanchez said general officers take
an oath to carry out the orders of the
president while in uniform.

Joe Klein's defense of warrantless
eavesdropping and telecom amnesty

Read what they write about government
surveillance and the only argument one
finds, literally, is that our Leaders
need more power because they want to
protect us.

What FISA capitulations
are Democrats planning next?

That bill would compel the administration
"to reveal to Congress the details of all
electronic surveillance conducted without
court orders since Sept. 11, 2001, including
the so-called Terrorist Surveillance
Program." It would also require the
maintenance of a data base to record the
identities of all Americans whose
conversations are surveilled. And it provides
nothing at all in the way of amnesty or
immunity for lawbreaking telecoms or
administration officials. The bill introduced
by House leadership is a bill the White House
will never accept and would certainly veto,
and it is vastly better -- in important ways
-- than the atrocity they enacted in August.

Did White House Lie About Solution
Provider's Role in Loss of 5 Million
E-mails?

The research institute alleges that the
Executive Office of the President abandoned
the automated record management system (ARMS)
built by the previous administration to
securely archive e-mails in 2002, never
implementing another system for that
purpose. The time period for the abandonment
of the legacy archival system coincides with
the Executive Office of the President's
switch from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange
and Outlook, referred to by White House Press
Secretary Dana Perino in an April 13 press
briefing.

"In 2002, they abandoned Lotus Notes, went to
Microsoft Outlook, abandoned ARMS, but never
put in a new electronic records management
system. So I'm told they just dumped e-mail
on servers. This meant that anybody with
access to the servers could potentially dump
data and delete documents," said Weismann.

"Each agency of the EOP's records are
commingled. It's all just a dump. How much is
missing? I think 5 million is the low end of
what's missing."

Do laws matter?

Secret Justice Department legal opinions on
interrogation were leaked to the press last
week, and apparently, they offer a reversal
of the administration's stated policy in 2004
renouncing torture. The word apparently
applies because the administration has so far
refused to disclose those memos to House and
Senate Democrats, though the administration
maintains that certain lawmakers - the pliant
ones, we suspect - have been briefed.

"It's over, George" -- and
that's your friends talking

"For much of this year, the U.S. military
strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce
violence so that politicians could bring
about national reconciliation, but several
top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in
that broad goal."

That's it, George. That's the
ballgame. That's all she wrote. There now
officially remains not one solitary
justification for staying the course, for
there is no acceptable course on which to
stay.

No matter what the question is, Rudy says 9/11

ARE YOU RELIGIOUS? "I need God's help for everything, and I
probably feel that the most when I'm in
crisis and under pressure, like Sept. 11,
when I was dealing with prostate cancer, or
when I'm trying to explain death to people."
- September interview with CBN News.

Off-duty Wis. deputy sheriff kills 6

An off-duty sheriff's deputy went on a
shooting rampage early Sunday at a home where
seven young people had gathered for pizza and
movies, killing six and critically injuring
the other before authorities took him down,
officials said.

Murdering Butter with Guns

It's harder than might be imagined to track
federal expenditures, because there are lots
of accounting choices (and nifty tricks, if
you so desire to trick people) involved. But,
near as I can tell, the US is now
contemplating a budget of $672 billion this
year for 'defense'. That, by the way, is
up from $385 billion in 2000, measured in
constant (2007) dollars. And that, of course,
is nearly a doubling, from what was already a
huge amount. These numbers don't include the
costs of past wars

Man's Pants Catch Fire At Airport

"I'm still kind of freaked out that after
only a year and a half my iPod caught fire in
my pocket," said Williams.

The iPod uses a lithium ion battery -- the
same type of battery under recall for setting
laptops on fire.

Williams said the fact is iPod Nano burst
into flames while he was at work was bad
enough, where he works could have been
another issue. He works at a kiosk in
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International
Airport.

Congress approves $1.2 billion worth of
US-funded Israeli arms purchases, including
50 huge GBU-28 guided bunker busters

The American DefenseNews.com quotes Israeli
industry executives, including the
state-owned Rafael Armament Development
Authority, Israel Aerospace Industries and
Military Industries, as concerned by the
country's increasing dependence on American
weaponry. While appreciative of American
generosity, they complain that locally made,
alternative products are often more capable
than US systems and better adjusted to
Israeli needs. They took particular exception
to the defense ministry's plans to stock up
on US Sidewinders and AMRAAM missile when the
Python-5, Derby and follow-on indigenous
systems are specifically designed for the
Israeli Air force.

This massive purchasing program, say Israeli
industry sources, not only denies their firms
billions of shekels in new orders, but
threatens to erode their international sales
of such items as Israeli-built air-to-air
missiles, which have made their mark on world
markets.

Man Bush chose to lead Pentagon
contracting probes left under fire
to become Blackwater COO

"The resignation comes after Sen. Charles
Grassley (R-IA) sent Schmitz several letters
this summer informing him that he was the
focus of a congressional inquiry into whether
he had blocked two criminal investigations
last year," according to a 2005 article in
the LA Times.

Then-Chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee, Grassley "accused Schmitz of
fabricating an official Pentagon news
release, planning an expensive junket to
Germany and hiding information from
Congress. Schmitz is the senior Pentagon
official charged with investigating waste,
fraud and abuse."

Targeting travelers

Turns out what he meant was that Customs and
Border Protection officials are making
long-lasting electronic notes of such
personal details as traveling companions and
reading material, credit card and telephone
records, itineraries, hotel and rental car
information and a preference for king or
double beds.

Burma: Thousands dead in massacre
of the monks dumped in the jungle

Thousands of protesters are dead and the
bodies of hundreds of executed monks have
been dumped in the jungle, a former
intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta
has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far,
Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been
killed in recent days than you've heard
about. The bodies can be counted in several
thousand."

US corners 42 percent of world arms market

The United States reaffirmed last year its
leadership in world arms trade, cornering
nearly 42 percent of the market as the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan prompted a weapons
shopping spree among neighboring nations,
according to a congressional report set to be
released Monday.

Almost all CCTV systems are illegal, says expert | OUT-LAW.COM

As many as 95% of CCTV systems in the UK are
operating illegally, according to a CCTV
expert. The revelation comes as new
legislation is about to take effect in
Scotland which could render even more
systems illegal.

Companies whose premises have CCTV systems in
operation must alert the Information
Commissioner that they are gathering personal
information about the people they are
recording. They must also put up signs to
warn the public that recording is taking
place.

Iraq: We'll Negotiate Long-Term Presence,
Asks U.N. Security Council To Extend Mandate
For U.S. Forces Through End Of Next Year

Officials said Iraq would seek a long-term,
bilateral security agreement with the United
States like the ones Washington has with
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and
Egypt.

Aides to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said
the mandate extension for the U.S.-led forces
in Iraq, due to be discussed at the end of
this year, would be "the last extension for
these forces."

Gareth Porter: Lieberman-Kyl vs. the Evidence

The following six points summarize some --
but certainly not all -- of the evidence
contradicting the line on which the poisonous
Liberman-Kyl amendment is based.

BREAKING NEWS: Electoral initiative backers give up

Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a
statewide initiative drive to change the way
California's 55 electoral votes are
apportioned, first revealed here by Top of
the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on
that effort.

U.S. checking possibility of pumping
oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via
Jordan

The U.S. telegram included a request for a
cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa
pipeline that was in use prior to
1948. During the War of Independence, the
Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and
the pipeline fell into disrepair over the
years.

Female 'Ninjas' Rob Richland
Gas Station With Sword, Dagger

"They were all covered in black and carrying
swords, so it did appear that they were
dressed like ninjas," said Chief Robert Amman
of the Northern Regional Police Department.

America's Police Brutality Pandemic

Bush's "war on terror" quickly became Bush's
war on Iraqi civilians. So far over one
million Iraqi civilians have lost their lives
because of Bush's invasion, and four million
have been displaced. Iraq's infrastructure is
in ruins. Disease is rampart. Normal life has
disappeared.

Self-righteous Americans justify these
monstrous crimes as necessary to ensure their
own safety from terrorist attack. Yet,
Americans are in far greater danger from
their own police forces than they are from
foreign terrorists.

House Panel Says Rice Is Hindering Its Work

An ongoing battle between Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and a House committee
investigating Iraqi government corruption and
the activities of the Blackwater security
firm erupted into another skirmish yesterday
as Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) accused
Rice of interfering with the committee's work
and preventing administration and Blackwater
officials from providing pertinent
information.

NSA 'may not realize' it collected
info on innocent Americans, top US spy
says

"You may not even realize it's in the
database because you do lots of collection,"
Director of National Intelligence Michael
McConnell said, referring to the "inadvertent
collection" of Americans' communications
through a vast surveillance program
instituted after 9/11.

An untold number of communication logs on US
citizens could exist within a National
Security Agency database of information
gained through warrantless wiretaps of
foreigners abroad, McConnell said, because
NSA spies do not examine the full contents on
all the information it collects until it has
a reason to do so.
...

McConnell told the El Paso Times last month
that "100 or less" US persons were targets of
foreign intelligence gathering. But that
number only represents those for whom the
government received a warrant to spy on,
McConnell clarified in later congressional
testimony.

The Next Hurrah: NSA Takes
Over Internet Security from DHS

n a major shift, the National Security Agency
is drawing up plans for a new domestic
assignment: helping protect government and
private communications networks from
cyberattacks and infiltration by terrorists
and hackers, according to current and former
intelligence officials.

Is That Big Brother in Your Pocket,
or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

While most courts considering the issue have
held that police need "probable cause" to
track your movements, a new decision (.pdf)
last week out of the U.S. District Court of
Massachusetts holds that law enforcement need
show only "relevance to an ongoing
investigation" to get a historical record of
your past movement (something like the Jeffy
trail in The Family Circus cartoon).

Why are courts treating past and prospective
tracking so differently, and should they?

Giuliani party seeks $9.11 per person

According to the invitation, "$9.11 for Rudy"
is an "independent, non-denominational
grass-roots campaign to raise $10,000 in
small increments to show how many individual,
everyday Americans support 'America's
Mayor.'"

Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented

The U.S. government is collecting electronic
records on the travel habits of millions of
Americans who fly, drive or take cruises
abroad, retaining data on the persons with
whom they travel or plan to stay, the
personal items they carry during their
journeys, and even the books that travelers
have carried, according to documents obtained
by a group of civil liberties advocates and
statements by government officials.

The personal travel records are meant to be
stored for as long as 15 years, as part of
the Department of Homeland Security's effort
to assess the security threat posed by all
travelers entering the country. Officials say
the records, which are analyzed by the
department's Automated Targeting System, help
border officials distinguish potential
terrorists from innocent people entering the
country.

Read Part One Of Scott Pelley's
Interview With Iran's Leader

PELLEY: What do you mean the American
election is telling? What did you take from
it?

AHMADINEJAD: What I'm saying is that the
American people very clearly have shown that
they do not endorse what certain American
officials are saying and doing. I remind you
of the rallies in Washington a couple of days
ago. What were they saying and shouting?
Perhaps 70, 80 percent of the American people
are against their troops, their sons and
daughters being in Iraq and war. And as I
said, they're very much against war. And for
that matter, the American people are
peace-loving people. You shouldn't think that
what the American officials are doing and
their behavior reflects completely the mood
of the American people. And American
officials must not make the American people a
victim of their wants and wishes. And we make
a distinction between the American people and
American officials. And the American people
are opposed to occupation, the use of force,
and also terrorism, the killing of the people
of other nations. And this is what we are
saying.

Brzezinski: U.S. in danger
of 'stampeding' to war with Iran

"If we escalate the tensions, if we succumb
to hysteria, if we start making threats, we
are likely to stampede ourselves into a war,
which most reasonable people agree would be a
disaster for us," he said.

"And just think what it would do for the
United States, because it would be the United
States which would be at war. We will be at
war simultaneously in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan
and Pakistan. And we would be stuck for the
next 20 years."
...
Ahmadinejad also said Iran has no use for an
atomic bomb.

"If it was useful, it would have prevented
the downfall of the Soviet Union," he
said. "If it was useful, it would [have]
resolved the problem the Americans have in
Iraq. The time of the bomb is passed."

The International Atomic Energy Agency said
last week it has verified that Iran's
declared nuclear material has not been
diverted from peaceful uses, though
inspectors have been unable to reach
conclusions about some "important aspects" of
Iran's nuclear work.

Full Interview With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
Video And Transcript Of Scott Pelley's
Interview With The Iranian President

Part 2: Iranian Weapons In Iraq Ahmadinejad
denies claims Iranian weapons are being used
against American soldiers in Iraq, saying,
"If they accuse us 1,000 times, the truth
will not change."

Part 3: Iran And The War In Iraq
Saying Iran is very much "opposed to war,"
Ahmadinejad maintains there are no Iranian
forces in Iraq but says his country is doing
everything in their power to provide
security.

U.S. says Iran sending missiles to Iraq

Officials said earlier that as much as
100,000 tons of chlorine was being held up at
the border for fear it would be hijacked and
used in explosives. Several chlorine truck
bombs blamed on suspected Sunni insurgents
earlier this year killed scores of people.

Naeem al-Qabi, the deputy chief of Baghdad's
municipal council, said warehouses in the
capital were preparing to accept the
chlorine, which would help purify water
supplies.

"There is some administrative work needed to
be done and it will be finished very soon,"
al-Qabi said.

Iraq now has a total of 1,652 confirmed cases
of cholera after three new cases were
confirmed in Salahuddin province, according
to an update on the World Health
Organization's Web site on Sunday.

Arabs push through U.N.
watchdog vote against Israel

Arab and other Islamic nations, targeting
Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal, pushed
through a U.N. atomic watchdog resolution on
Thursday calling on all Middle East nations
to renounce atomic weapons.

Bush wants permanent warrantless wiretap law

"The statutory penalties for warrantless
wiretapping are relatively small per
person--even if AT&T was ordered to pay the
maximum penalty, a few hundred illegal
wiretaps would amount to less than a rounding
error in the phone company's quarterly
statements," EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl wrote
in a recent blog entry. "If the NSA was truly
limiting its spying to suspected terrorists,
the potential liability would be like an
annoying gnat on an elephant. So why are the
companies so worried?"

Sex-slave whistle-blowers vindicated

DynCorp is a privately held company that
relies on government contracts for over 95
percent of its business. Among other
services, it provides pilots to the State
Department; maintenance crews, communications
specialists and weapons experts to the armed
forces; and police officers to the U.N.

Ben Johnston claims that buying prostitutes
-- many of whom were clearly underage -- had
become so common among DynCorp employees at
Camp Comanche, outside Tuzla, Bosnia, that he
was forced to report the problem to the
U.S. Army's Criminal Investigative Command.

Deputies subdue autistic boy with Taser

The 15-year-old O.C. boy had run away from
his parents and was dashing through traffic,
authorities said.

Questions for Mukasey

The Bush administration says "the long war"
-- the war on terrorism -- is a perpetual
emergency that will last for
generations. Waged against us largely by
non-state actors, it will not end with a
legally clarifying and definitive
surrender. The administration regards America
as a battlefield, on which even an American
citizen can be seized as an "enemy combatant"
and detained indefinitely. You ruled that
presidents have this power, but you were
reversed on appeal. What do you think was the
flaw in the reasoning of the court that
reversed you?

Florida Tasering incident
divides faculty opinions

"Any use of force beyond the necessary amount
is excessive," Saldana said.

Saldana said he believes Meyers has a strong
case against the police in terms of using
excessive force.

"The student did not do anything wrong. He
asked a question," he said. "I don't see
where he broke any law."

Saldana said the police aggravated the
situation and the use of a Taser was an
example of excessive force in the
circumstance, considering there were four
cops trying to cuff a single student.

"The situation was exacerbated from the
start, and they didn't have cause to arrest
him," he said. "Was there a crime? Did he ask
a bad question?"

Giuliani's proposal for endless Middle
East wars on behalf of Israel

Of course, none of Giuliani's extremism on
this issue should be surprising, given that
his senior foreign policy advisor is Norman
Podhoretz, whose life has been devoted to
trying to induce the U.S. to wage war against
any country hostile to Israel. Podhoretz was
one of the signatories on the 2002 PNAC
letter to President Bush which declared that
"No one should doubt that the United States
and Israel share a common enemy" and --
listing Iraq, Iran and Syria, among others --
argued that "Israel is fighting the same
war." Podhoretz currently "prays" that the
U.S. bomb Iran.

Defense Dept. pays $1B to outside analysts

"Private contractors don't have to undergo
congressional oversight or justify their
budgets to appropriators," Aftergood
says. "We're starting to create a new kind of
intelligence bureaucracy, one that is both
more expensive and less accountable (than
government's own intelligence agencies)."

The Giuliani Doctrine

The only tools available are coercion --
military and economic. Of course, signaling
an American desire to invade lots of
countries only makes other countries more
eager to get nuclear bombs. What's needed,
then, is a credible threat to fight a whole
series of wars. This, in turn, becomes one of
the motives for trying to do Iraq and
Afghanistan with super-light forces. We want
to signal that we're ready and willing to do
this again and again and again until all
countries submit to our will.

Run away the ray-gun is coming:
We test US army's new secret weapon


This machine has the ability to inflict
limitless, unbearable pain.

What makes it OK, says Raytheon, is that the
pain stops as soon as you are out of the beam
or the machine is turned off.

But my right finger was tingling hours later
- was that psychosomatic?

Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon

It concerns so-called Pulsed Energy
Projectiles (PEPs), which fire a laser pulse
that generates a burst of expanding plasma
when it hits something solid, like a person
(New Scientist print edition, 12 October
2002). The weapon, destined for use in 2007,
could literally knock rioters off their
feet.

Iran leader denied on WTC wreath request

A request by Iran's president to lay a wreath
at the World Trade Center site next week has
been turned down by police and blasted by
U.S. diplomats as an attempt to turn ground
zero into a "photo op."

Terror Watch: A Secret Lobbying Campaign

The nation's biggest telecommunications
companies, working closely with the White
House, have mounted a secretive lobbying
campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a
measure wiping out all private lawsuits
against them for assisting the
U.S. intelligence community's warrantless
surveillance programs.

'Don't Tase me bro!'

Mr Meyer was released yesterday after a night
in the cells, while students protested
outside the police station claiming police
brutality had been used.

He was arrested on charges of resisting an
officer and disturbing the peace but the
State Attorney's Office has yet to make the
formal charging decision.

Mr Meyer's lawyer, Robert Griscti, said it
appeared his client had been shocked after
handcuffs had been put on him.

John Kerry says he tried to prevent a
riot at Fla. event before police used Taser
on student


"I stopped them from arresting him."
--John Kerry

FOXNews.com - University of Florida
Student Tasered, Arrested During John
Kerry Forum

Meyer was scheduled to appear in court
Tuesday morning, a jail official said.

NSA Spying Myths

Myth 1: Following existing law would require
the NSA to turn off a wiretap of an Al Qaeda
member calling in to the United States.

Why Cheney Likes Mukasey for A.G.

Ironically, the post-9/11 round-up of Arab
cab drivers, pizza delivery men and students
came as the Bush administration was granting
special permission for rich Saudis, including
members of Osama bin Laden's family, to flee
the United States after only cursory FBI
questioning.

Iraqi Report Says Blackwater
Guards Fired First

A preliminary Iraqi report on a shooting
involving an American diplomatic motorcade
said Tuesday that Blackwater security guards
were not ambushed, as the company reported,
but instead fired at a car when it did not
heed a policeman's call to stop, killing a
couple and their infant.
...
Sean McCormack, the spokesman for the State
Department, said in a briefing that
contractors "are subject to Department of
State rules of engagement."

China's Hot Stock: Orwell Inc.

To be sure, leading American companies have a
long and sordid record of investing in
totalitarian states, including Hitler's
Germany, Stalin's Russia and axis-of-evil
Iran (hello, Halliburton). But, distinguish
as we must among the various levels of hell,
at least those American companies did not
invest in the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB,
the Revolutionary Guard. Maybe that was only
because it was hard to turn a buck on the
Stasi. Once China turned communist repression
into an investment opportunity, however,
capitalism responded as capitalism is
supposed to respond: It wanted in. There are
mega-bucks to be made, the hedge funds
concluded, in hedging against democracy.

Iran to use "all means" to
defend itself if attacked

Iran said on Wednesday it would use "all our
means" to defend itself if attacked by the
West, three days after France's foreign
minister publicly raised the possibility of
war over Tehran's disputed nuclear
activities.

Why Bush won't attack Iran

The 18 people at the party, including former
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then
voted with a show of hands for either
Brzezinski's or Scowcroft's
position. Scowcroft got only two votes,
including his own. Everyone else at the table
shared Brzezinski's fear that a U.S. strike
against Iran is around the corner.

TASER Remote Area Denial (TRAD)

The TRAD is a ruggedized, stand-alone device
that integrates the TASER NMI engine with the
TASER CAM Infrared Imaging system to create a
network ready security device that can
observe, warn, incapacitate and retain
intruders in a TASERNET secured area. The
TRAD can fire multiple TASER cartridges, each
independently controlled to deliver the
patented TASER X26 waveform.

Student assaulted and tasered by police
for asking John Kerry the wrong question

U.S. courts have ruled on numerous occasions
that resisting a false arrest is not merely a
citizen's right, but his duty! In fact,
courts have gone so far as to rule that if a
law enforcement officer is killed as a result
of actions stemming from a citizen's attempts
to defend themselves against a false arrest,
it is the fault of the officer, not the
citizen.

TASER Danger?, 70 Deaths After Use Of
Stun Gun Lead To Questions Over Its Safety -
CBS News

the weapon had been connected
to more than 40 deaths.

Dozens gather to protest Taser death

did you see the miami 2003 ftaa protest? they
were tasering people all over the place. the
cops used a taser-shield on someone praying
on their knees completely non aggressive.

Police Taser woman walking on train tracks

Tuesday Aug 21
Atherton police Tasered a 45-year-old Menlo
Park woman Sunday night who told officers she
had a handgun minutes after she stepped in
front of a northbound Caltrain.

"She was noncompliant and suicidal," Sgt. Tim
Lynch said Tuesday. "It was the only way to
get her subdued."

Lynch said that once the woman was on the
ground, officers saw that she was unarmed.

Kerry Taser Video Raw Footage Afterwards

ElBaradei warns against striking Iran

Saying only the UN Security Council could
authorize the use of force, ElBaradei urged
the world to remember Iraq before considering
any similar action against Teheran.

"There are rules on how to use force, and I
would hope that everybody would have gotten
the lesson after the Iraq situation, where
700,000 innocent civilians have lost their
lives on the suspicion that a country has
nuclear weapons," he told reporters.

Conservatism isn't what it used to be

It seems only yesterday that conservatives
were complaining about the liberties that
liberals took with the Constitution. Liberals
were expanding rights, fancifully
perhaps. But today conservatives are
curtailing long established rights, such as
habeas corpus and protection against
self-incrimination. Conservatives abandoned
"original intent" and all of their
constitutional scruples once they had a
chance to cram more power into the
presidency.






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