In the Wake Of the Tsunami, the Vultures Begin to Circle

Didn't take 'em long, did it? from RightMarch.com, the people who would, strangely, presume to inform you that "Giving these predatory monsters our money and a new relief mission is tantamount to giving them a new license to rape and pillage people who need love and compassion." As long as the UN exists, "it will siphon off vast amounts of money, manpower and resources that might otherwise accomplish some good." No matter what horrors the United Nations perpetrates on innocent people, there is no accountability, no punishment, no consequence. That's why it is inevitable that we will only create new victims of this global monstrosity by sending more relief money to the UN. What did the United Nations do to these guys that would incur such hatred, such venom? And what do I do with my aid contributions? They've got an opinion on that too... Missionaries! Yes! RightMarch feels that those damned "furrriners" at the UN, those no-goodniks who would deign to hold the United States accountable for things that only tyrannical despots like Idi Amin would do; things like torture, war crimes, aggressive war, etc., would just pocket your money! So they have just the right place for your money. in fact they've even sent out the ollowing: ALERT: We've found what is probably the best way to help victims of last week's killer tsunami -- and it does NOT involve corrupt organizations like the United Nations. Please give now:http://www.adnamis.org/specialGiving.cfm?project_id=70001SU ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Imagine my surprise when I looked further into the site where I would be sending my aid dollars and saw this: "The Advancing Native Missions Organization (ANM) exists for one purpose: to help take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world’s remaining unreached peoples. We do this by standing behind 3,500 indigenous or native missionaries who are reaching their own people in more than 60 countries of the world." Well....I don't know what to say..... Not a Relief organization like UNICEF or Red Cross/Crescent? what? Why? And why their tirade against UN aid efforts? What's the connection here? And then it dawns on me. RightMarch! Neo-cons. Haliburton! Of course. That's Haliburton's job isn't it? To rebuild nations that have been flattened by flood, war and....and.... well... that's good enough! Damned UN is cutting Halliburtons grass! -- Gary Williams ......Taking bets on the first day that we see a no-bid contract go to Halliburton (Kellogg, Brown & Root...you know the guys? Whitehouse? Ring any bells?) -- Gary Williams http://mycos.blogspot.com/

Justice Expands 'Torture' Definition (washingtonpost.com)

It appears that it may have taken a few years, but hopefully, finally,......the nightmare vision of 9/11 has receded in peoples minds enough that they are beginning to behave with reasonable intent rather than anger and raw emotional feelings for vengeance. I believe this to have been the popular state of mind and one that the Bush cabal calculatedly used in perhaps the most cynical abuse of America's power ever seen since Hitlers use of the collapse of Weimar Germany to justify his excesses. Gary Williams ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Justice Expands 'Torture' Definition Earlier Policy Drew Criticism By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, December 31, 2004; Page A01 The Justice Department published a revised and expansive definition late yesterday of acts that constitute torture under domestic and international law, overtly repudiating one of the most criticized policy memorandums drafted during President Bush's first term. In a statement published on the department's Web site, the head of its Office of Legal Counsel declares that 'torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms' and goes on to reject a previous statement that only 'organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death' constitute torture punishable by law." Continued.......

Donahue: The Narco-Terrorist Who Came In from the Cold

December 30, 2004 Please Distribute Widely Dear Colleague, In September of 2002, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced, with great fanfare, the indictment and extradition order against Colombian paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC, in its Spanish initials), on the State Department's list of international terrorist organizations: "Salvatore Mancuso caused the brutal murder of another Colombian drug trafficker as retribution for failing to pay a drug debt," charged Ashcroft. "Today, we see more clearly than ever the interdependence between the terrorists that threaten American lives and the illegal drugs that threaten American potential. As today's indictment reminds us, the lawlessness that breeds terrorism is also a fertile ground for the drug trafficking that supports terrorism. To surrender to either of these threats is to surrender to both.” Earlier this month Mancuso - who, after the mysterious disappearance of paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño earlier this year, became the boss of this narco-terrorist organization - turned himself in to Colombian authorities, as Stewart Tuttle, head of the Political Affairs division of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota looked on. Sean Donahue reports: "Tuttle and his superiors were strangely silent a week later when the government of President Alvaro Uribe announced that it would not extradite Mancuso to the U.S. to face cocaine trafficking and money laundering charges as long as the death squad leader agreed to 'cease all illegal activities' and encourage other paramilitaries to take part in the government’s demobilization process. While the U.S. hasn’t formally dropped its extradition request, neither the U.S. Embassy nor the U.S. State Department has issued a public statement about Uribe’s decision to delay or cancel Mancuso’s handover to U.S. authorities – which is highly unusual to say the least, given that Mancuso is the head of a terrorist organization and is accused of conspiring to smuggle over seventeen tons of cocaine to the U.S. and Europe..." Read more at: http://www.narconews.com/ Once again, the "war on drugs" is enforced selectively. Even when an accused international terrorist is involved in cocaine trafficking, U.S. officials (and their favorite Latin American president Alvaro Uribe of Colombia) let the big fish slip through the net while devoting billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of prison cells to punishing the poor, the voiceless, the little fish... >From somewhere in a country called América, Al Giordano Publisher The Narco News Bulletin http://www.narconews.com/ new email: narconews@gmail.com Narco News is supported by: The Fund for Authentic Journalism P.O. Box 71051 Madison Heights, MI 48071 USA http://www.authenticjournalism.org The Fund receives online donations at this web page: http://www.authenticjournalism.org Apply for your co-publisher's account, here: http://www.narconews.com/copublisher/application.php Subscribe for free alerts of new reports: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconews http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconewsbrasil <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: narconews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Coalition News

Item: Findlaw: December 28 2004 BIN LADEN, AL-ZARQAWI BENEFIT IN ALLIANCE Associated Press An audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden suggests the al-Qaida chief has accepted Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's offer to unite the world's most famous terror group and the bloodiest insurgency inside Iraq, national security experts say. http://news.findlaw.com/ap/a/w/1152/12-28-2004/20041228001505_01.html Analysis: <> A number of recent government reports indicate that the widespread insurgency cannot be defeated and that the stated goals of the invasion will not be achieved. Maj. Isaiah Wilson III,who served as an official historian of the Iraq war and later as a war planner in Iraq, states in a Washington Post article that, "those who planned the war suffered from stunted learning and reluctance to adapt. the 'western coalition' failed, and continues to fail, to see Operation Iraqi Freedom in its fullness the U.S. military remains perhaps in peril of losing the 'war,' even after supposedly winning it." Wilson's comments are a powerful indictment of imperial hubris and the stubborn unwillingness to accept the parameters of brute force. <> Counterpunch via ICH: Read the ICH newsletter online: http://207.44.245.159/ Disappearing Act: Fallujah and the Media: The extent of America's war crimes in Falluja is gradually becoming apparent. On December 24, approximately 900 former residents of the battered city were allowed to return to their homes only to find that (according to BBC) "about 60% to 70% of the homes and buildings are completely crushed and damaged, and not ready to inhabit. http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney12272004.html <> The siege, which began on November 8, was intended to rid the city of an estimated 5,000 insurgents who were using it as a base of operation. The results have been devastating. Over 250,000 people have been expelled from their homes and the city has been laid to waste. The US military targeted the three main water treatment plants, the electrical grid and the sewage treatment plant; leaving Fallujans without any of the basic services they'll need to return to a normal life. Many believe that this was done intentionally so that major US corporations and constituents of the Bush administration can rebuilt the city at some future time. Most of the city's mosques have been either destroyed or seriously damaged and entire areas of the city where the fighting was most fierce have been effectively razed to the ground. So far, the army has only removed the dead bodies from the streets; leaving countless decomposed corpses inside the ruined buildings. A large percentage of these have been devoured by packs of scavenging dogs. The stench of death is reported to be overpowering. The displaced families who returned on Thursday were hoping to escape the cold weather and lack of food and water at their improvised tent cities. Many of those who have inspected their homes say the damage is too great and they don't expect to stay. The siege of Falluja was planned to send a message that the US would take a "get- tough" approach with the burgeoning resistance. They wanted to demonstrate that defiance was futile in the face of the world's most powerful military. The full force of America's arsenal, including F-16s, C-130s, Abrams tanks, and Apache Helicopters were unleashed on a few thousand rebels in a civilian enclave. The stupidity of that action is now apparent. Two weeks into the campaign, the military claimed victory saying they had "broken the back of the insurgency", but the truth has proved to be far different. In reality, the assault has only dispelled the illusion of US invincibility. Pockets of resistance still maintain a tenacious grip on parts of the city and the guerilla-style tactics have negated the overwhelming force of their adversary. If anything, the siege has only emboldened the resistance and broadened its sphere of influence. Violence has now spread throughout the Sunni triangle; ending last week with a devastating mortar attack that killed 22 in a mess tent outside Mosul. Now, the occupation forces are in a defensive mode; having to spend much of their energy simply trying to protect supply lines and oil facilities. Insurgents are increasingly able to "operate at will". <> http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney12272004.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Today, Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. <> When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government." -- Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting.

Another Neo-Con Imperial Plot

Another Neo-Con Imperial Plot:Who's behind the Oil-for-Food Scandal? by Jude Wanniski www.wanniski.com 8 December 2004 www.globalresearch.ca 10 December 2004 The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/WAN412A.html It was nice to see the White House finally pull the plug on the transparent scheme of the neo-cons to smear U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan over the alleged 'oil-for-food scandal.' For a while, it looked like the imperialist wing of the GOP was in control, but U.N. Ambassador John Danforth has now made it clear the President is not one of the pack after Kofi`s scalp. Kofi`s safe, but the neo-cons are still intent in weakening the U.N. as much as they can, as I made clear in this commentary I wrote earlier this week for the English-language website of Al Jazeera." continued......

Break on Through: Pandora's Black Box: Did it Really Count Your Vote?

Pandora's Black Box: Did it Really Count Your Vote? Relevance November 1996 Anonymous Part One SECRET BALLOT, SECRET TALLY: ELECTRONIC VOTING ON TRIAL On November 5th, 1996, millions of Americans voted by secret ballot for thousands of elected officials from the Presidency to the local dog catcher. What few realized is that a key aspect of the vote-counting was also done in secret. What's more, they have been legally denied the right to find out precisely how their vote is counted." continued~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please Read. The Freepers themselves are getting worried that it was stolen...and that we can prove it.

CBC News: Release information and clear my name: Arar to Martin

" Release information and clear my name: Arar to Martin Last Updated Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:50:47 EST OTTAWA - A Canadian who spent time in a Syrian jail is accusing the federal government of withholding information from an inquiry because it reflects well on him. Maher Arar spoke at a news conference in Ottawa Monday afternoon, protesting the government's 'editing' of a summary from a federal inquiry. The inquiry is examining what role Canadian police and security organizations played in his deportation to Syria in October 2002. Maher Arar (CP photo) 'We are learning that CSIS [the Canadian Security Intelligence Service] played a major role in what happened,' said Arar. Arar, a Syrian-Canadian, was detained in New York City by U.S. officials on his way back from a vacation in Tunisia. They deported him to Syria, claiming he had links to al-Qaeda. Arar returned to Canada about a year later, claiming he had been tortured." continued...

Getty Images Editorial - Detail View

Getty Images Editorial - Detail View: "Image #51877481 Title: A combo shows pictures released by the U Subject: News, Unrest, Conflicts and War A combo shows pictures released by the U Caption: FALLUJAH, IRAQ: A combo shows pictures released by the US Marines 18 December 2004 of a US soldier being hit by enemy fire while trying to pull a fatally wounded Marine to safety during battles in the restive city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. The US military cannot recommend to the Iraqi interim government the return of residents to Fallujah, where insurgents are still holed out in the battle-scarred city, a marine officer said. AFP PHOTO/HO/USMC (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images) Copyright: 2004 AFP By/Title: -/Handout Date Created: 18 Dec 2004 12:00 AM City, State, Country: FALLUJAH, , Iraq Credit: AFP/Getty Images Collection: AFP Source: AFP Date Submitted: 18 Dec 2004 08:38 AM File Size/Pixels/DPI: 413K/1327x2200/300 Keywords: NIK45 Orientation: Horizontal Object Name: NIC2004121808309 Restrictions: Contact your local office for all commercial or promotional uses. Full editorial rights UK, US, Ireland, Canada (not Quebec). Restricted editorial rights elsewhere, please call local office. Release Information: No release. Barcode: USMC"

Torture Begins at the Top

"Torture Begins at the Top By Joe Conason 12/17/04 'Salon.com' -- Renewed exposure of prisoner abuse, torture and even murder by American military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan is widening already deep divisions between the Pentagon and the intelligence community - and creating an untenable situation for Donald Rumsfeld, the beleaguered secretary of defense. A recently disclosed FBI memo indicates that 'marching orders' to abandon traditional interrogation methods came from the defense secretary himself. In recent days, a coalition of human rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights has brought new cases of abuse to public attention. Using the Freedom of Information Act, they have pried thousands of pages of previously secret documents from the Defense Department and other agencies. continued..... "

ONN. Ohio News Now: Kerry lawyer asks for visual inspection of some Ohio ballots

Kerry lawyer asks for visual inspection of some Ohio ballots COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Democrat John Kerry is asking county elections officials to allow his witnesses to visually inspect the 92,000 ballots cast in Ohio in which no vote for president was recorded, a Kerry lawyer said Sunday night. The request is one of 11 items that Kerry is asking for as part of the recount that Ohio's 88 county boards of election will begin this week, according to a letter sent to the boards over the weekend. 'We're trying to increase the transparency of the election process,' said Donald McTigue, the lawyer handling the recount for the Kerry campaign. Two minor presidential candidates who received 0.30 percent of the votes in last month's election requested the recount, claiming that the election was full of irregularities that need to be addressed. President Bush, a Republican, beat the Massachusetts senator by about 119,000 votes in Ohio on Election Day. Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which will be cast on Monday, put Bush over the top in the race. Kerry's campaign supports the recount but says it won't change the election outcome. Bush's campaign has criticized the recount effort, saying it won't change anything."

Gary Webb commits suicide

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/11744167p-12630255c.html Obituary: Gary Webb, prize-winning investigative reporter By Sam Stanton and Sandy Louey -- Bee Staff Writers /Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, December 12, 2004/ [Excerpt] Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative journalist whose star-crossed career was capped with a controversial newspaper series linking the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, died Friday of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said. Mr. Webb, 49, was found dead in his Carmichael home Friday morning of gunshot wounds to the head, the Sacramento County Coroner's Office said Saturday. He left a note, but officials would not disclose its contents. The Bee's Sam Stanton can be reached at (916) 321-1091 or sstanton@sacbee.com

CNN.com - Court allows church to use hallucinogenic tea - Dec 10, 2004

Court allows church to use hallucinogenic tea Friday, December 10, 2004 Posted: 10:33 PM EST (0333 GMT) ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court sided Friday with a New Mexico church that wants to use hallucinogenic tea as part of its Christmas services, despite government objections that the tea is illegal and potentially dangerous. The high court lifted a temporary stay issued last week against using the hoasca tea while it decides whether the Brazil-based O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal is permitted to make it a permanent part of its services"

Boy tries to sell bomb for $35 "Only in America," you say?

"Principal: Boy tries to sell bomb for $35 Saturday, December 11, 2004 Posted: 10:18 AM EST (1518 GMT) McDONOUGH, Georgia (AP) -- A 14-year-old boy accused of bringing a pipe bomb to school wanted to sell it to pay for Christmas presents, but several classmates thought his $35 asking price was too high, the principal said. The Rev. James West said the boy, whose name has not been released because of his age, wasn't thinking when he brought the bomb to Lake Dow Christian Academy. The academy's roughly 150 students had to be evacuated because of the incident Thursday. The bomb did not explode. 'He didn't mean any harm, he just did a stupid thing,' West told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for its Saturday editions. 'Boys are all the time doing stupid things.'" continued...............

SERMON: Living Under Fascism]

SERMON: Living Under Fascism Davidson Loehr 7 November 2004 First UU Church of Austin [Excerpt] You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word 'fascism' in a serious discussion of where America is today. It sounds like cheap name-calling, or melodramatic illusion to a slew of old war movies. But I am serious. I don'€™t mean it as same-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying. That'€™s what I am about here. And even if I don’t persuade you, I hope to raise the level of your thinking about who and where we are now, to add some nuance and perhaps some useful insights. The word comes from the Latin word '€œFasces'€ denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it'€™s worth knowing that the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker'€™s podium in the chamber of the US House of Representatives. Still, it'€™s an unlikely word. When most people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that the use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there was also an economic dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism", which was an essential ingredient of Mussolini'€™s and Hitler'€™s tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930's and was held up as a model by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe. continued...... Gary Williams http://mycos.blogspot.com/

Images From The War in Iraq :: Fallujah Photos

Fallujah Dead

Salon.com News | Whitewashing torture?

Whitewashing torture? A veteran sergeant who told his commanding officers that he witnessed his colleagues torturing Iraqi detainees was strapped to a gurney and flown out of Iraq -- even though there was nothing wrong with him." continued....

Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation

Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation ABOUT DISINFORMATION: Like a good lie, it has elements of truth. Trouble is, the truth doesn't relate to the nuts and bolts of the story. For example in the Tom Feeney vote-manipulation story, people are documenting relationships between Tom Feeney and Yang, and between the writer of the story and other scandals, but so far the evidence presented does not back up the vote manipulation story itself" Continued.....

"The Bookie of Virtue" by Joshua Green

"The Bookie of Virtue" by Joshua Green: "The Bookie of Virtue William J. Bennett has made millions lecturing people on morality--and blown it on gambling. By Joshua Green 'We should know that too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing...[We] need ... to set definite boundaries on our appetites.' --The Book of Virtues, by William J. Bennett No person can be more rightly credited with making morality and personal responsibility an integral part of the political debate than William J. Bennett. For more than 20 years, as a writer, speaker, government official, and political operative, Bennett has been a commanding general in the culture wars. As Ronald Reagan's chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was the scourge of academic permissiveness. Later, as Reagan's secretary of education, he excoriated schools and students for failing to set and meet high standards. As drug czar under George H.W. Bush, he applied a get-tough approach to drug use, arguing that individuals have a moral responsibility to own up to their addiction. Upon leaving public office, Bennett wrote The Book of Virtues, a compendium of parables snatched up by millions of parents and teachers across the political spectrum. Bennett's crusading ideals have been adopted by politicians of both parties, and implemented in such programs as character education classes in public schools--a testament to his impact." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Seems to have a little gambling problem You seriously have to wonder if the real frive behind these loudmouthed moralists is denial of "self" or a well thought up means to divert attention away from themselves. Mycos

Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software

Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software By Wayne Madsen Online Journal Contributing Writer December 6, 2004—The manipulation of computer voting machines in the recent presidential election and the funding of programmers who were involved in the operation are tied to an intricate web of shady off-shore financial trusts and companies, shady espionage operatives, Republican Party politicians close to the Bush family, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contract vehicles. An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link between current Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a Florida computer services company with whom Feeney worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist while he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush administration. continued..... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quite the story. Lets hope it marks the beginning of the end of the Bush crime family

Kerik nomination is a ticking time bomb

Kerik nomination is a ticking time bomb Ellis Henican December 3, 2004 Campaign bodyguard to Rudy Giuliani. Errand boy for the Saudi royal family. Energetic exploiter of Sept. 11th tragedy. Tough-talking publicity-hound vowing to bring law and order to Iraq - then hightailing it out of there after a disastrous 14 weeks, leaving the place far less safe than he found it. Oh, the bullet points on Bernie Kerik's real-life resume just go on and on. But is this really the guy we want standing between us and the terrorists? George W. Bush apparently thinks so. White House sources were saying last night that Kerik, the scandal-scarred former commissioner of the New York Correction and Police departments, will be named today to take Tom Ridge's job as head of homeland security. For now, let's give the Bush folks the benefit of the doubt: Maybe they've been wowed by Kerik's shameless swing-state Kerry-bashing in Bush's behalf. ('I fear another attack, and I fear that attack with ... Senator Kerry being in office responding to it.') Maybe they've been bullied by Giuliani's bulldog lobbying for a loyal business buddy and after-hours pal. ('OK, Karl,' you can almost hear Rudy say, 'I won't be attorney general, but you gotta take Bernie at homeland security!') Or maybe it's just that the FBI background check isn't back from the field.Whatever the reason, the White House personnel office really ought to ask some probing questions around New York. You can bet they'll get an earful of heads-up about this hard-charging, thick-necked, shaved-head lightweight. Let this be a warning from someone who's followed the man's ladder-climbing career: He's a personal and professional time bomb the Bushies will learn to regret. Don't say I didn't warn you, guys! That's certainly the message that smart law-enforcement professionals......" Continued

U.S. Admits Torture Used to Obtain Evidence Against Terrorists

U.S. Admits Torture Used to Obtain Evidence Against Terrorists By Staff and Wire Reports Dec 3, 2004, 07:07 Evidence gained by torture can be used by the U.S. military in deciding whether to imprison a foreigner indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an enemy combatant, the government concedes. Statements produced under torture have been inadmissible in U.S. courts for about 70 years. But the U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of 550 foreigners as enemy combatants at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are allowed to use such evidence, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle acknowledged at a U.S. District Court hearing Thursday." continued.....

Capitol Hill Blue: Halliburton Lost U.S. Property Worth Millions in Iraq, Kuwait

Capitol Hill Blue: Halliburton Lost U.S. Property Worth Millions in Iraq, Kuwait: "Halliburton Lost U.S. Property Worth Millions in Iraq, Kuwait By JOHN SOLOMON Nov 28, 2004, 07:50 Email this article Printer friendly page A third or more of the government property Halliburton Co. was paid to manage for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq could not be located by auditors, investigative reports to Congress show. Halliburton's KBR subsidiary 'did not effectively manage government property' and auditors could not locate hundreds of CPA items worth millions of dollars in Iraq and Kuwait this summer and fall, Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen reported to Congress in two reports. Bowen's findings mark the latest bad news for Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, which is the focus of both a criminal investigation into alleged fuel price gouging and an FBI inquiry into possible favoritism from the Bush administration." Continued.....

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | One gulp, and Bush was gone

One gulp, and Bush was gone Behind the scenes at the Clinton library, we saw America's future Sidney Blumenthal Thursday November 25, 2004 The Guardian At the dedication of the Clinton library last week in Little Rock, Karl Rove and President Bush received separate tours of the dramatic building, a glistening silver, suspended boxcar filled with light and with a panoramic view of the Arkansas river. Flung across the river stands an old railroad bridge - and to Clinton watchers, bridges represent 'the bridge to the 21st century', the former president's re-election slogan in 1996. The opening ceremony was biblical in its spectacle, length and rain. For more than four hours we huddled in thin ponchos under the downpour, awaiting four presidents. For the Democrats among us - former advisers and cabinet secretaries, celebrity supporters and high school friends of Bill - this was an unofficial convention, a kind of counter-inaugural, with rueful discussions of the recent defeat. John Kerry arrived to defiant cheering from the crowd. Then, when the presidents were announced, Bush tried to push his way past Clinton at the library door to be first in line, against the already accepted protocol for the event, as though the walk to the platform was a contest for alpha male." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Then the asshole went on to declare,"If this was Poland, they wouldn't even have let you build this thing", giving a sideways wink at Condi-sleaza, who giggled coyly, thinking in manner reminiscent of Olive Oil "Man, Oh man...I just lovvve that man o'mine!". Mycos

Hypocrisy and the Holy Father

July 3, 2002 Hypocrisy and the Holy Father The Pope gracing Canada with his presence for World Youth Day in mid-July stirs memories of an earlier visit by his holiness almost 20 years ago. One of my memories is of a photo of a transvestite holding a sign along one of the Pope’s parade routes. It read “Just Another Guy in a Dress.” continued.......

CBC News: Afghan boy heads home with healthier heart

Forgive me while indulge in a littlwe of the Canadian version of nationalist propaganda Mycos ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Afghan boy heads home with healthier heart Last Updated Fri, 26 Nov 2004 22:44:38 EST TORONTO - Djamshid Popal began his journey home Friday night, five months after the boy arrived in Canada from Afghanistan for emergency heart surgery. 'I'll miss the whole Canadian public,' Djamshid, who turned 10 during his time in Canada, said through a translator at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. 'I came in a wheelchair and I'm leaving on foot. This is because of their help.'"

Smoking while Iraq burns

Smoking while Iraq burns Its idolisation of 'the face of Falluja' shows how numb the US is to everyone's pain but its own Naomi Klein 11/27/04 'The Guardian ' -- Iconic images inspire love and hate, and so it is with the photograph of James Blake Miller, the 20-year-old marine from Appalachia, who has been christened 'the face of Falluja' by pro-war pundits, and the 'the Marlboro man' by pretty much everyone else. Reprinted in more than a hundred newspapers, the Los Angeles Times photograph shows Miller 'after more than 12 hours of nearly non-stop, deadly combat' in Falluja, his face coated in war paint, a bloody scratch on his nose, and a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips. Gazing lovingly at Miller, the CBS News anchor Dan Rather informed his viewers: 'For me, this one's personal. This is a warrior with his eyes on the far horizon, scanning for danger. See it. Study it. Absorb it. Think about it. Then take a deep breath of pride. And if your eyes don't dampen, you're a better man or woman than I.' A few days later, the LA Times declared that its photo had 'moved into the realm of the iconic'. In truth, the image just feels iconic because it is so laughably derivative: it's a straight-up rip-off of the most powerful icon in American advertising (the Marlboro man), which in turn imitated the brightest star ever created by Hollywood - John Wayne - who was himself channelling America's most powerful founding myth, the cowboy on the rugged frontier. It's like a song you feel you've heard a thousand times before - because you have. " continued.......

Bush On The Fly

SANTIAGO, Chile (via PLDT) — The 12th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit held here last weekend was not without its lighter moments. And some of the 3,000 journalists from all over the world who covered the summit, including members of the Philippine media, were witnesses to the slip-ups of the leaders of some of the most dynamic economies in the world.

Bush Fly Open At Summit

Yahoo! News - World Photos - AP

Funds for Atomic Bomb Research Cut From Spending Bill

What else has the Worm-Tongue been trying to get passed behind our backs? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Funds for Atomic Bomb Research Cut From Spending Bill By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 23, 2004; Page A06 Congress has eliminated the financing of research supported by President Bush into a new generation of nuclear weapons, including investigations into low-yield atomic bombs and an earth-penetrating warhead that could destroy weapons bunkers deep underground. The Bush administration called in 2002 for exploring new nuclear weapons that could deter a wide range of threats, including possible development of a warhead that could go after hardened, deeply buried targets, or lower-power bombs that could be used to destroy chemical or biological stockpiles without contaminating a wide area. But research on those programs was dropped from the $388 billion government-wide spending bill adopted Saturday, a rare instance in which the Republican-controlled Congress has gone against the president. The move slowly came to light over the weekend as details of the extensive measure became clear. Continued.....

Raw Story: RNC Chairman "nod" & National Feild Director Gurley are Gay

"Just hours after deleting his Gay.com profile, RNC National Field Director Daniel Gurley admitted to Raw Story that DGCapitol was his handle on the male dating service and then tried to claim his name had been reused by someone else. Tuesday, November 16, 2004 Editor of Washington Blade puts Mehlman's Sexual Orientation on the Table. Chris Crain, editor of the Washington Blade has gone on line speculating about the sexual orientation of RNC Chairman-designate Ken Mehlman. The press in the nations capital considers Mehlman's private life relevant! One of my sources inside the Blade told me this piece was coming from Crain. While, I expected it to have something a little more "juicy" -- I will share with you how one very sharp attorney parses his words to make you believe he has no information. As a great American once said, "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is."...still developing and more news on the way! Gurley Admits: Yes that was my Gay.com Screenname Just hours after deleting his Gay.com profile, RNC National Field Director Daniel Gurley admitted to Raw Story that DGCapitol was his handle on the male dating service and then tried to claim his name had been reused by someone else. Nice try Dan....you're a liar! --GAY.COM DOES NOT ALLOW SCREEN NAMES TO BE REUSED! COMPLETE STORY AT WWW.RAWSTORY.COM Here is the profile DAN GURLEY LIED to the press about. Here is the Profile Dan Gurley pulled down TODAY... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6.11 The Iraqi Resistance Spreads

The Iraqi Resistance Spreads The Iraqi Resistance Spreads published November 16, 2004 © 2004 by Dahr Jamail and Salam T. While the US military says it now controls Fallujah and is simply “mopping up” what is left of the Iraqi resistance, over 400 soldiers wounded in the fighting have been flown out of Iraq to US air bases in Germany. As giant C-141 transport planes carrying wounded and maimed American soldiers roar over the Iraqi desert, armed men carrying rocket propelled grenades and kalashnikov machine guns roam freely in the streets of Mosul, the third largest city in Iraq. After the US military withdrew from inside Mosul, looters with mattresses tied to the tops of cars and pushing desks in wheelbarrows emptied the abandoned American base of its contents. The horrendous situation afflicting civilians in Fallujah, which the Iraqi Red Crescent Society refers to as a big disaster, didn’t seem to concern a contractor from India who works supplying US bases in Iraq. “One thing I feel is that in Fallujah, most of the insurgents are there and nobody bothered to clear them off,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, “So many innocent people were killed and no actions were taken.” He then added, “So one way is good to clear those insurgents.” Continued......... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Salaam T. is in Baghdad. His name is being witheld for his own protection. Mycos

RIGHTS: U.N. Report Slams Use of Torture to Beat Terror

U.N. Report Slams Use of Torture to Beat Terror excerpt: According to Francis A Boyle, who teaches international law at the University of Illinois, ''As White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales originated, authorised, approved and aided and abetted grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which are serious war crimes.” ''In other words, Gonzales is a prima facie war criminal. He must be prosecuted under the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. War Crimes Act,'' Boyle told IPS. In any event, the U.S. Senate must reject his nomination, because, as a presumptive war criminal, Gonzales is not fit to be attorney general of the United States, he continued. ''Should Gonzales travel around the world in that capacity, human rights lawyers such as myself will attempt to get him prosecuted along the lines of what happened to (former Chilean dictator) General (Pinochet,'' said Boyle, author of 'Destroying World Order'. Jordan J Paust, law foundation professor at the University of Houston, agrees with Boyle's thesis. ''The denial of protections under the Geneva Conventions is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and every violation of the laws of war is a war crime. Complicity in connection with war crimes (such as aiding and abetting the denial of protections) is also criminally sanctionable,'' Paust told IPS. more at http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=26261

Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill

Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill: "Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and CARL HULSE Published: November 20, 2004 WASHINGTON, Saturday, Nov. 20 - House and Senate negotiators have tucked a potentially far-reaching anti-abortion provision into a $388 billion must-pass spending bill, complicating plans for Congress to wrap up its business and adjourn for the year. The provision may be an early indication of the growing political muscle of social conservatives who provided crucial support for Republican candidates, including President Bush, in the election." Continued...... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And awaaayyy we go ............! Mycos

Now outspoken, Cronkite rips Bush's record

No longer the just-the-facts newsman, retired CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, 88, blasted the Bush administration during a charity appearance on Fisher Island. BY GLENN GARVIN ggarvin@herald.com What America needs right now, legendary TV anchor Walter Cronkite said Thursday, is a new election -- and, he warned a laughing press conference full of reporters, he wasn't kidding. ''That's not entirely a joke,'' Cronkite said solemnly, arguing that the Bush administration has spent itself into ruin while embroiling the country in a war that will eventually make public revulsion to the war in Vietnam look like peanuts.''" Continued........

Grand Jury Hears Testimony From Powell

"Grand Jury Hears Testimony From Powell By The Associated Press The New York Times Sunday 01 August 2004 Warsaw, Poland - The U.S. grand jury investigating the leak of an undercover CIA operative's name has interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell, but he is not a subject of the inquiry, the State Department said Sunday. Department spokesman Richard Boucher, traveling with Powell on a diplomatic visit to Poland, said Powell appeared on July 16 at the grand jury's invitation. 'The secretary is not a subject of inquiry,' Boucher said. 'He was pleased to cooperate with the grand jury.' Powell is the latest official from the Bush administration to be called before the grand jury in Washington. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and spokesman Scott McClellan have been summoned, and grand jury investigators have interviewed President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in their offices. Powell's appearance was first reported Sunday by Newsweek. Continued.... "

The Smoking Gun That The Election Was "Hacked"?

FAQ/Feedback: "FAQ / Feedback Q: How'd you get involved with this? Aren't you a Republican? A: I get asked this a lot, and it really shows how focused our country is on partisan politics. I am a voter, first and foremost. That being said, yes, I am a Republican and have been since being sent to Republican Indoctrination Camp at age 2. That's where we are taught supply-side economics and the values of mutually assured destruction. :-) continued..... The money quote: " What I found truly shocked me, and made me physically ill. That's what is documented on the other page. It IS that bad. I personally don't have conclusive evidence that voter fraud was perpetrated, but I can tell you as an Information Security professional that it would have been very, very easy to do. If I had to choose between someone conspiring with exit poll workers nationwide or someone changing values in an Access Database as the cause of the difference between the poll numbers and the "actual" results, I'll go with the easier, more effective option every time. Why choose the hard way when it's more trouble and you're less likely to succeed? Again, I'm staying clear of making specific allegations - I'll leave that to the activists who are gathering data - but I would be much more surprised if the election weren't hacked than to find out that it was. "

UC Berkely: Florida electronic voting favored Bush

In visual form, with the summary of the findings at: -- JULES SIEGEL Apdo. 1764 77501-Cancun Q. Roo Mexico http://www.cafecancun.com/portfolio Newsroom-l, news and issues for journalists http://www.newsroom-l.net/blog

Backward, Christian soldiers.

This article should clarify exactly who and what the real threat to democracy is. It should also make clear, for those who care about America, where and against who they should be combining their efforts to push back. The mess George W. Bush has made of the economy, privacy laws, wars, ecology.....on every yardstick one can think of , is just a small taste of what's to come should they succeed in turning America into a theocracy.And have no doubts about it. That is what they intent is, and so far they have been overwhelmingly successful. Gary Williams http://mycos.blogspot.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Backward, Christian Soldiers By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist Published November 14, 2004 excerpt: "What we are experiencing is the rise of Dominion Theology. This ideology says Christians must begin to take over all secular institutions of government, reclaiming them for Jesus Christ. It is seen as a readying for the Second Coming. See www.theocracywatch.org for more information. "Our aim is to gain dominion over society," Pat Robertson told a gathering in 1984. He later described how this would be accomplished: By gaining a working control of the Republican Party.And they've succeeded.In 2004, 41 out of 51 Republican senators were given 100 percent ratings by the Christian Coalition for their votes on behalf of fundamentalist issues. Meanwhile, 31 out of 48 Democrats scored zero. Similar splits can be found in the House, where Minority Leader Tom DeLay expressly uses dominionist language. During a "Worldview Weekend" conference in 2002, he said: "(God) is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for a biblical worldview in everything that I do." continued........ --

Why I Love Unverifiable Voting Machines, by the Prez

How I Stole Your Election by George W. Bush The first thing I did to steal your election was to make friends with ALL the manufacturers and code-verifyers of the Electronic Voting Machines. They were really nice, especially Diebold who gave me $600,000 for my campaign. Wow, thanks dude! http://nuclearfree.lynx.co.nz/stealing.htm Next, I had my attack dog, Karl Rove, convince these companies to either alter the vote totals on the central tabulator machines (simple PCs running windows using Remote Access Server -- RAS), or reprogram (via a downloadable software patch) the voting machines themselves so that they would give the advantage to ME! Isn't America great?!? A little money and some religious zealotry goes a looooong, loooong way. Oh, the religious zealotry thing? That's just a cover. I'm not really a Christian -- or at least I don't act like one. Anyway, I digress. http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-25.htm#rig Did you ever hear the media complaining about how inaccurate the exit polls were in prior elections? No. That's because they basically ARE accurate. But this election, the exit polls showed Kerry WAY ahead. No problem. My buddies rigged the machines (and all they needed to do was rig it in one state, Ohio, but they took care of at least Florida for me too) not only to make me squeak by in the important battleground states, like Florida and Ohio, but they also made sure that when I did get a state that I was expected to win, the margin was HUGE so that my "popular" vote would make it look like I had a mandate. So let's recap how the popular vote thing worked again. Let's say we didn't want it to look suspicious by taking states that Kerry really would have won (except for Ohio and Florida, gotta take those! heh heh). So we let him win there, but in order once again to boost the "popular" vote (I put that in quotes because as you know, I'm not REALLY popular), we bring my vote tallies RIGHT UP NEXT to Kerry's, to jack up the "popular" vote as much as possible, even if I didn't win the state. Then, with states like North Carolina, we know we're going to steal the state anyway (at least according to what the exit polls were telling everyone.... and according to the long, long lines of new voters were telling everyone ... because we all know most of those people were voting for Kerry, not the status quo), so we just jack the crap out of the vote total to REALLY stuff a crapload of "popular" votes in my pocket. You see, this way I can get on the TV and declare that I have a "mandate" and that I'm going to "cash in" on my political "capital" (which I don't really have of course, but we made it look that way). Here's a nice chart to show you what I mean. Take special note of how the electronic voting machine totals compare to the paper ballot totals. And see what I mean about North Carolina? http://www.bandsagainstbush.org/cgi-bin/archives/exit_poll.gif Look folks, if you really want me out of office, first you're going to have to impeach me. But you know what, if you don't have verifiable paper trails at the polls like these folks recommend ( http://openvotingconsortium.org/ ), and if you don't take these voting machines out of the hands of private companies that are aligned with one end of the political spectrum, then I'm gonna just continue to hose you (and then my brother Jeb will be president too cause we're into this dynasty thing, kind of like my buddies the Saudis... ain't it cool?!?). Also, in 2006, we're going to steal about five more senate seats, and then we'll have the "super-majority". That means the Democrats can't do that confounded fillerbs... fillas.... fillbusters.... CRAP, well, they can't get in the darn way any more and we can pass ANY laws we want about ANYTHING and put whoever we want on the Supreme court. Ha ha, then you're REALLY screwed. So if you don't fix this mess (I mean great system) in two years and have a verifiable voting system nationwide, America is MINE!!!!! (and Jeb's and my daddy's and Cheney's and Rove's... hey, we could even pass a law saying I could be president for FOUR MORE YEARS after 2008! That would be SOOO cool!) Anyway, I digress once again. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI411B.html And that pesky Bev Harris. Man I wish she would go away. If too many of you contribute to her cause, I might just get in trouble so KNOCK IT OFF!! http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Fool me once.....", oh CRAP,I forgot again. Well how about this? "This would be a heck of lot easier if this was [grammar incorrect] a dictatorship.... just so long as I'm the dictator. Heh, heh." Well, sorry to say folks, but I got my way. What are you gonna do about it, huh? Bring it on!!! http://votergate.tv/votergate/votergatethemovie_64kb.mov "Sincerely" Yours, "President" George W. Bush P.S. Pass it on! I dare ya.

Exposing Karl Rove

Exposing Karl Rove By Wayne Madsen CounterPunch.org 11-2-2 He's America's Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush. Rove's dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon's 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national stage. From his Eagle's Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill. Continued.....

Is the U.S. Committing War Crimes in Iraq? -- Interviews Available

----- Original Message ----- From: Institute for Public Accuracy To: mediagen@lists.accuracy.org ; mediafp@lists.accuracy.org ; mediale@lists.accuracy.org Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 11:35 AM Subject: Is the U.S. Committing War Crimes in Iraq? -- Interviews Available Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org ___________________________________________________ Tuesday, November 9, 2004 Is the U.S. Committing War Crimes in Iraq? Interviews Available MARJORIE COHN, (858) 484-2387, (858) 204-3565, libertad48@san.rr.com, http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml Professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and author of the article "Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime," Cohn said today: "Between 10,000 and 15,000 U.S. troops with warplanes and artillery have begun to invade the Iraqi city of Fallujah. To 'soften up' the rebels, American forces dropped five 500-pound bombs on 'insurgent targets.' The Americans destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of town. They stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances to go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions...." MICHAEL MANDEL, (416) 736-5039, mmandel@osgoode.yorku.ca, http://osgoode.yorku.ca/osgmedia.nsf/Faculty3/58A423F79AD0352C85256AED007470B6?OpenDocument Mandel is a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada and author of the book "How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity." He said today: According to international law, America's war on Iraq constitutes the supreme international crime. If the Nuremberg Tribunal were reconstituted tomorrow, the president and his whole administration would stand charged. ... The full-scale assault on a major population center like Fallujah, coming more than a year and a half into the war, only proves its madness and criminality." CONN HALLINAN, (510) 843-5116, connm@cats.ucsc.edu , http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0411warcrimes.html Hallinan is a policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He said today: "On Oct. 8, U.S. fighter bombers carried out what the Pentagon called a 'precision strike' against 'terrorist leaders' in Fallujah, a sprawling city of 300,000 west of Baghdad. For the past two months Fallujah has been the target of a bombing campaign. According to the New York Times, the attack wounded 17 people, nine of whom were women and children. The victims were apparently from a wedding party that had just dispersed. The Times went on to quote a 'senior Pentagon official' who said, 'We know what the strike was supposed to hit and we hit it. If a wedding party was going on, well, it was in concert with a meeting of a top Zarqawi lieutenant.' ......... But according to Article 50 of the [Geneva] Conventions, 'The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character.' In short, the attack violated the [Geneva] Conventions. ... 'Pentagon official' also told the Times: 'If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, the locals at some point have to make a decision. Do they want to harbor the insurgents and suffer the consequences that come with that?' In other words, terrify the civilian population into cooperating, a strategy that Article 51 [of the Geneva Conventions] explicitly forbids: 'Acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population, are prohibited.'" For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 ==

CBC News: U.S. forces battle into Fallujah's core

Last Updated Tue, 09 Nov 2004 21:39:43 EST FALLUJAH, IRAQ - U.S. and Iraqi troops pushed through to Fallujah's centre Tuesday afternoon, fighting intense street battles and searching house to house on the second day of an all-out assault." Continued..........

Government of the Stupid, By the Stupid and For the Stupid

Capitol Hill Blue: Government of the Stupid, By the Stupid and For the Stupid: "Government of the Stupid, By the Stupid and For the Stupid By DOUG THOMPSON Oct 20, 2004, 05:41 If the surge in voter registrations can be trusted, the turnout for the Presidential elections on November 2 may be the highest in history. That's the good news. The bad news is that most of the people who go into the voting booth will be casting an uninformed vote based on belief in skewed information from biased sources." Continued..... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I wish I'd written this GW

Ashcroft's Reign of Terror Comes to an End

Capitol Hill Blue: Ashcroft's Reign of Terror Comes to an End: "Ashcroft's Reign of Terror Comes to an End By DOUG THOMPSON Nov 10, 2004, 06:58 From the time he took the oath of office as Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft declared war on the Constitution and freedom as we know it in the United States. President George W. Bush capitulated to the rabid, right-wing of the Republican Party by appointing Ashcroft, a bible-thumping zealot from Missouri who holds a narrow, ultra-conservative moralistic view of the world. Ashcroft showed his true colors from day one, ordering drapes for nude statues in the Justice Building of Washington. His prudishness came as no surprise for long-time Ashcroft watchers. As Missouri attorney general, Ashcroft often put his own extremist beliefs over the law, threatening to prosecute business who opened on Sunday even after a statewide voter referendum overturned the state's archaic 'blue laws' that forced retail establishments to close on the Seventh Day." Continued...... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One down, 4 more to go........

Capitol Hill Blue: Hiding Behind a Wall of Secrecy

Capitol Hill Blue: Hiding Behind a Wall of Secrecy: "Hiding Behind a Wall of Secrecy By LINDA SEEBACH Nov 8, 2004, 06:23 Email this article Printer friendly page A coalition of journalism groups is very concerned that the bill establishing a national intelligence director will emerge from a conference committee with provisions that would make it harder to expose government misconduct as well as making the nation safer. Given the tendency of officials to try to restrict public access to information that makes them look bad, the former outcome is unfortunately more likely than the latter." Continued....... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Of course they will. They're already doing everthing they can to hide their ineptitude under the "National Security" rug. GW

Wrestling with a Gorilla

AlterNet: Election 2004: Wrestling with a Gorilla It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired." – Robert Strauss I've been working on digesting the results of the election. Mark Moford of the San Francisco Chronicle gave perhaps the best description of how I am feeling: "It simply boggles the mind: we've already had four years of some of the most appalling and abusive foreign and domestic policy in American history, some of the most well-documented atrocities ever wrought on the American populace and it's all combined with the biggest and most violently botched and grossly mismanaged war since Vietnam, and much of the nation still insists in living in a giant vat of utter blind faith, still insists on believing the man in the White House couldn't possibly be treating them like a dog treats a fire hydrant." excerpted: Perhaps the best indicator of what a now-unfettered Bush is going to be like over the next four years came during his Thursday press conference. Associated Press reporter Terence Hunt opened the questioning with a three-part query. Bush responded to his questions by saying, "Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule. That was three." When another reporter dared to ask a multi-pronged question, Bush's response was, "Again, he violated the one-question rule right off the bat. Obviously you didn't listen to the will of the people." In other words, journalists, sit down and shut up. continued........ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is frightening. The man seems to think that he has been granted all moral authority and the indusputable certainty that whatever he himself even *thinks* is right.And that this authority has been granted by God himself. I see the birth of a psychopath.

Aljazeera.Net - 'Scores of civilians' killed in Falluja

Aljazeera.Net - 'Scores of civilians' killed in Falluja: "Scores of civilians' killed in Falluja Tuesday 09 November 2004, 23:53 Makka Time, 20:53 GMT Residents say scores of civilians have been killed Muhammad Abbud said he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death at their Falluja home, unable to take him to hospital as fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down on the Iraqi city. In the midst of a US onslaught and hemmed in by a round-the-clock curfew, he said he had little choice but to bury his eldest son, Ghaith, in the garden. 'My son got shrapnel in his stomach when our house was hit at dawn, but we couldn't take him for treatment,' said Abbud, a teacher. 'We buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go out. We did not know how long the fighting would last.'" Continued...

Live Body Counts at Guantanamo

The US currently holds about 600 prisoners in Guantanamo, of whom 367 have been identified by a Washington Post research editor. They have a list of their names, countries, and release status at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/guantanamo_nationalities.html I am astounded at the clarity of the message given by the counts of these prisoners by country. Here is the list of 29 countries (plus 2 unknowns) below. Feel free to check my count. Afghanistan 44 Algeria 8 Australia 2 Bahrain 6 Belgium 1 Canada 2 Denmark 1 Egypt 2 France 7 Iraq 1 Jordan 5 Kuwait 13 Libya 1 Maldives 1 Mauritania 1 Morocco 14 Pakistan 60 Russia 8 Saudi Arabia 90 Spain 1 Sudan 4 Sweden 1 Tajikistan 3 Tunisia 6 Turkey 10 Uganda 1 United Kingdom 9 United States 1 Unknown 2 Yemen 62

Florida electronic voting machine problem

I'm a brand new mostly-lurker here, and thought you all might like to see something that a good friend of mine sent me today (Sunday). He's been volunteering with ACT in NH all fall, and has contacts around the country in the volunteer community. This is a firsthand report from some volunteers on the ground in Florida on Election Day. Not a good sign of a fair and democratic election that is supposed to accurately reflect what the electorate wants..... dayle ----- Original Message ----- Subject: Fw: Election day in One Florida county More FYI--from Donna who lives in FL. From: Ingrid This was passed on to me by a very reliable source: This is one of many reports that I have seen. It is a first hand volunteer account of their Florida experience. A forwarded report on Florida by the following: Libby Anker Libanker@berkeley.edu Ryan Centner rcentner@berkeley.edu Jill Greenlee jillgs@socrates.berkeley.edu Rachel Van Sickle-Ward rvansick@berkeley.edu Spurred by the unwillingness of the broadcast media to report voting problems during the 2004 election race, we want to alert our friends, family and colleagues to the widespread voter suppression and disenfranchisement that occurred in Broward County, Florida. We staffed the emergency hotline for the Kerry Campaign Headquarters in Broward County from late October through the election. All of us were devastated by the margin of Bush's win in Florida, particularly since polls predicted the race would be extremely close. Many of the calls to our hotline were from voters who had pressed the Kerry button on their electronic voting screen, only to have Bush light up as the candidate they had chosen. In some cases, this would happen repeatedly until about the 5th or 6th time the voter pressed Kerry and eventually his name would light up. In other cases, the voters pushed Kerry but were later asked to confirm their Bush vote. We had calls about a road block, put up by the police at 7am on Nov. 2, which blocked road access to two precinct locations in majority lack districts. There was no justification for the road block no accident or crime scene or construction. Many of our calls dealt with voter suppression, or manipulation, of the Haitian population occurrences which seem too numerous, and their targets too indefensible, as primarily poor, first-time-voter, Creole-speaking refugees, to be anything but systemic. In one example, a voter whose hands were bandaged could not press the touch-screen himself; he asked the nonpartisan election official to press Kerry for him, but the election official pressed Bush and sent his vote immediately into the machine. Many, many others were denied the right to vote and were not given provisional ballots, while others were refused assistance at the polls, even though provisional ballots and voter assistance are legal rights. Others were told they had already voted and were turned away, although they had never voted previously. This latter experience was a complaint not isolated to Haitians but also included other surprised voters with no recourse except their word against that of the supervisor of Elections. We spoke with hundreds of voters who were certain they had registered to vote in the past 6 months, well before the October 18 deadline, but were not on the rolls. And those were just the people who had the information to contact us. The local paper, citing the Supervisor of Elections office as its source, told all people voting by absentee ballot that they could turn in ballots by hand to any of its seven offices by 5pm on Tuesday, Nov. 2. Every single one of those offices except one was closed on Tuesday. We had numerous calls from voters on Nov. 2 whose precincts had closed, yet the Supervisor of Elections office had given voters no notification of the closure, and no notification of where to go to vote. Thousands of people were likely disenfranchised because of inexcusable mishaps such as this. We had many calls from people who had been harassed by poll workers, who were turned away without being allowed the right to vote provisionally (another breech of voter rights). Other people were turned away because the address on their driver's license did not match the address on their voter registration card; again, this is in direct violation of election law. All of these problems do not even take into account the 58,000 absentee ballots that had been "lost" by the Supervisor of Elections, in perhaps the most Democratic county in the state, disenfranchising thousands of people who were disabled, out of the country, or elderly and unable get to the polls. These events, and many others, have been documented and also reported to lawyers, but we fear they will not get the attention they deserve. This is what we witnessed in just one county. We believe that these voting irregularities raise serious concerns about the legitimacy of the results in Florida, and more broadly, about the health of democracy in this country. Please circulate this widely. --

War Crime

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/middleeast/08falluja.html?oref=login&th American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had been killed. The hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties. "It's a center of propaganda," a senior American officer said Sunday.

Why are corporations counting votes?

Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong? By Thom Hartmann, AlterNet. Posted November 5, 2004. The rallying cry of the emerging "honest vote" movement must become: Get Corporations Out of Our Vote! [Excerpt] The hot story in the blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't erroneous at all – it was the numbers produced by paperless voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes? Continued.....

A BONE OF CONTENTION

A BONE OF CONTENTION by Rosemary R. Brasch I heard it. I knew I would. John Kerry said it. George W. Bush said it. And myriad others will join the chorus. They told us it's now a time of healing. But, I don't want to heal, and I don't intend to be healed. "Healing" is merely code for shutting up and allowing the President to do whatever it is he plans to do. But we did that for four years. Four years we waited for the President to stop rending this nation apart and be a uniter not a divider, as he promised. Four years we gave him the benefit of the doubt as to his truthfulness. Four years the subservient press went along with whatever he and his minions said; there was almost no investigating, no insisting on substantive answers to important questions, no in-depth reporting on the effect the Bush administration was having on the country. And we kept watching. Now we should "heal"? I think not. It's ludicrous to even use that word given the state of our country's health care, with 45 million Americans unable to afford medical insurance. Possibly, I've mistaken the spelling of "heal." Perhaps what the politicians want from us is not to "heal," but to "heel." Like subservient pets, we're supposed to be quiet, walk behind them, and continue to obey their commands without question. I don't want to obey. I don't want to agree with this President's immoral war. I don't want to quietly accept the unnecessary deaths and maiming of our good young men and women and innocent Iraqi children. I don't want to be forced to stand in a "Free-speech zone" to disagree-about anything. I want to protest wherever and however I can. It used to be a right under the First Amendment in the pre-Bush and Ashcroft era. I want to dissent even more fiercely and disagree more loudly than before. My voice still isn't being be heard in Washington. I want my civil rights-I want your civil rights-returned. I don't want to accept that my liberalism is worse than leprosy. I don't want to accept that my Christian, Baptist, background is boiled down to immoral heathenism because I don't agree with many of the President's followers and their views of religion. And, as a registered Republican, I don't want my political views to ever be equated with those who think they have a God-given mandate to crusade against all who see things differently. George Bush again says he'll reach out to Democrats. How about reaching out to all good Americans-regardless of their beliefs-who disagree with his first four year reign of terrorism? The last time he reached out to all of America, he patted us with a tax refund with one hand and with the other hand swatted away our civil liberties by shredding our Constitution with the PATRIOT Act. A second term, with a conservative House and Senate, will give him the opportunity to add to the PATRIOT Act with even more restrictions in the name of "freedom." No second term "honeymoon." Four years was long enough. And, while we wait for the next election, the war against Iraq rages, destroying lives of Americans and Iraqis while al-Qaeda flourishes and grows. Our environment continues to reek with Presidential destruction. Our health care system continues to deteriorate. The President, more of a "tax and spend" fanatic than any liberal ever was, will continue to weaken our economy by adding to the national debt he created. And, most of all, our rights and liberties will continue to wither under the guise that the "war on terrorism" means we have to sacrifice our country's principles, while the upper classes become even richer through tax cuts and no-bid contracts. I want the world's people (I think God may have even created them-hard to believe he made such a huge mistake with everyone but us) to see massive demonstrations throughout our country against an unjust and inhumane war and against a president who lied to get us into it-while deceiving us about how well it's going. It's not going well-and the rest of the world knows it-while we Americans get the purified propaganda spoon fed at "briefings" and "press conferences" about the wonders of a new democratic Iraq by a scared-to-be-called-liberal press. Read the opinions of the rest of the world about Bush-not America, but Bush. We need to protest and demonstrate loudly and constantly until the Administration, the House, and the Senate-ever fearful of not being reelected-are moved to act. I want once again to be a proud American. So heal/heel if you want to-but it behooves those millions of Americans who disagreed before to do so even more vociferously now. Patriotic citizens need to be the nation's watchdogs-we've allowed ourselves to be lapdogs too long. [Rosemary R. Brasch is a national disaster family services specialist for the Red Cross and a former union grievance officer. You may contact Brasch at espyrose@hotmail.com] ~~~~~~~ Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D. professor of journalism Bloomsburg University Bloomsburg, Pa. 17815 570-389-4565 http://www.walterbrasch.com ~~~~~~~

Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked

Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked: " Published on Saturday, November 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked by Thom Hartmann When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat. 'It was practice for a national effort,' Fisher told me. And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004. The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling." Continued...... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And it will continue until he's in handcuffs Mycos

Mercy and Murder at Issue in Iraq Death

Mercy and Murder at Issue in Iraq Death THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ Mercy and Murder at Issue in Iraq Death * Two U.S. soldiers face charges after taking life of injured youth. They say he was already gone. By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer BAGHDAD — As a U.S. Army patrol rolled into Sadr City one night in August, soldiers received a tip that militants in dump trucks were planting roadside bombs. American troops had been clashing regularly with Al Mahdi militiamen in the restive Baghdad slum. So when Staff Sgt. Cardenas Alban of Carson saw an object fall from a garbage truck in the distance, his company took positions around the vehicle and unleashed a barrage of fire from rifles and a 25-millimeter cannon atop a Bradley fighting vehicle. The truck exploded in flames. As soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, approached the burning vehicle, they did not find insurgents. The victims were mainly teenagers, hired to work the late shift picking up trash for about $5 a night, witnesses said. Medics scrambled to treat the half-dozen people strewn around the scene. A dispute broke out among a handful of soldiers standing over one severely wounded young man who was moaning in pain. An uninjured Iraqi claiming to be a relative pleaded in broken English for soldiers to help the victim. But to the horror of bystanders, Alban, 29, a boyish-faced sergeant who joined the Army in 1997, retrieved an M-231 assault rifle and fired at the wounded man. Seconds later, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., grabbed an M-16 rifle and also shot the victim. continued...... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bring 'em home ? This incident raises the question, "Do we really want to be teaching our youth how to kill in cold blood?" Yes, sometimes war is neccesary to protect our borders. Like Vietnam, Iraq wasn't one of them. The more soldiers we train then send off, only to return to our streets with wounded, often angry, tortured souls, is not going to make our country any safer. Mycos

TomPaine.com - Kerry Won. . .

TomPaine.com - Kerry Won. . . Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. In the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided—known as “spoilage” in election jargon—because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Drawing on what happened in Florida and studies of elections past, Palast argues that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots. So far there's no indication that Palast's hypothesis will be tested because only the provisional ballots are being counted. Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on his New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this month on DVD . Kerry won. Here are the facts.

One Last Job .../ 18-29 year olds 2-1 for Kerry

- From: Michael Moore Subject: One Last Job for Us to Do Today, Election Day, to Honor a Soldier from Flint November 2, 2004 -- Election Day Friends, In addition to your local MoveOn/ACT/Dem Party HQ still needing help at this hour, to make calls and go door to door (call them now or just leave the house and go down to their office and volunteer!), each of us can do something at this very moment that could tip the election -- and we don't even have to leave our chairs. Pull out your cell phone as you are reading this and go to your cell address book on your phone. Now just go down the list of your family and friends, one by one, hit the green "OK/Send" button and call each of them up. Ask them if they've already voted and, if not, gently remind them that you need them to vote today. It's just a quick call to say "hi" and "PLEASE get to the polls as soon as possible." Ask them if they need any help with a ride or watching the kids or whatever. Offer to take them yourselves. Take them to lunch or dinner afterward. If they don’t know where to go to vote, they (or you) can find out by calling 1-866-OUR-VOTE or going to http://www.michaelmoore.com/takeaction/vote/wheretovote.php. We are hours away from what we hope will be the good news about President-elect Kerry. But it won't happen unless each of us puts everything we can into every minute we have left. I'm in Tallahassee this morning, and Cleveland this afternoon. I won't stop ‘till the last polls have closed. I promised Lila Lipscomb, the mother from Flint who lost her son in Iraq, that I would do whatever I could to honor her son's last wish in his last letter home to her from the battlefield in Iraq: "What in the world is wrong with George 'TRYING TO BE LIKE HIS DAD' Bush? He got us out here for nothing whatsoever. I am so furious right now mama. I really hope they do not-elect that fool honestly." Please join me, wherever you are in this great country, and make Sgt. Michael Pedersen's last request to us, the American people, become a reality. We owe it to him and to the rest of the world. Yours, Michael Moore www.michaelmoore.com MMFlint@aol.com P.S. To the millions of 18 to 29-year-olds I've met or seen on this tour, I truly believe YOU are the ones who are going to make the difference today. You are going to vote in record numbers and you are going to be the ones responsible for removing George W. Bush from the White House. You were taken for granted by the pollsters and the pundits for the past year and now you are about to show them just what kind of power the 40 million of you hold in your hands. Sweet! See ya at the victory party! Cf: Pollster John Zogby: "Razor thin margin here, if there is one at all. The President still does not get above 48%. The real news here is that 18-29 year olds favor Kerry 64% to 35%, with 1% for Nader €”and 0% undecided. When I see a low undecided number it means that group is going to vote. I am factoring this group to be 12% of the total vote -- but it could be higher. Each point it goes higher translates into two-thirds of a percent for Kerry -- if these numbers hold up." Zogby International conducted interviews of 1208 likely voters chosen at random nationwide. All calls were made from Zogby International headquarters in Utica, N.Y., from October 29 through October 31, 2004. The margin of error is +/- 2.9 percentage points. Slight weights were added to region, party, age, race, religion, gender, to more accurately reflect the voting population. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups. In 1996, John Zogby came within one-tenth of 1 percent of the presidential result, and was one of the first pollsters to accurately foresee Vice President Al Gore'€™s popular-vote victory in 2000 http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews922.html Oil traders tip Kerry win, driving prices lower Speculation that Senator John Kerry will win the United States presidential election has helped oil prices to fall sharply, as analysts said he could ease the geopolitical friction that helped fuel this year's record-breaking rally. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200411/s1232648.htm

NRO panics on early exit polls

Tuesday, November 02, 2004 CRIMINEY! [Jonah Goldberg] I went out for a brief lunch with missus and I come back to discover things are going south? What the...? From what I'm hearing, Florida's an uphill climb right now and New Hampshire's a lost cause. Trying to nail things down. Posted at 02:34 PM [Meanwhile, on dailykos.com: Exit polls by kos Tue Nov 2nd, 2004 at 18:03:32 GMT Jerome over at MyDD gets the big scoop on the 2 p.m. VNS numbers: AZ CO LA PA OH FL MI NM MN WI IA NH Kerry 45 48 42 60 52 51 51 50 58 52 49 57 Bush 55 51 57 40 48 48 47 48 40 43 49 41 In 2000, the early numbers favored Bush. In 2002, exit polling was terribly innacurate. Exit polling also doesn't account for absentee and early ballots. And it's still early in the day. PA and MN will be much closer than these number indicate. So please, please take with a giant grain of sand. GOTV!

License to steal ?

Late Ruling Allows GOP to Challenge Ohio Voters By Henry Weinstein [Excerpts] CINCINNATI-Ruling early this morning, a divided federal court of appeals handed Republicans a potentially significant election-day legal victory in this fiercely contested state, clearing the way for the party to challenge thousands of newly registered voters. On Monday, two federal district judges, one a Democratic appointee and one a Republican, had barred Republicans from challenging voters, saying that the planned challenges could cause chaos at the polls that would deny people the right to vote. The 2-1 appeals court majority disagreed. "Longer lines may, of course, result from delays and confusion when one side in a political controversy employs" challenges "more vigorously than in previous elections," Judge John M. Rogers wrote for the court. But "such a possibility does not amount to the severe burden upon the right to vote" that would justify a court order, he said. Rogers, who was appointed by President Bush in 2002, was joined by Senior Judge James L. Ryan, who was appointed by President Reagan in 1985. Appeals Court Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., a 1995 appointee of President Clinton, dissented. Under the Republican plan, he wrote, "partisan challengers for the first time since the civil rights era seek to target precincts that have a majority African American population and without any legal standards or restrictions, challenge the voter qualifications of people as they stand waiting to exercise their fundamental right to vote." continued...

Dirty Tricks Abound

DIRTY TRICKS ABOUND ON ELECTION EVE - Election skulduggery is nothing new, voting rights workers said on Monday, but the 2004 contest has been remarkable for the number of bogus flyers, phone calls and other ploys aimed at suppressing the black vote. http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5624.shtml

Florida electronic voting machine problem

My question is, Why aren't these machines immediately seized and sealed,the software and votes therein subsequently checked for evidence of intentional tampering. The continued problems and the demonstrated reluctance by Diebold to repair the problem makes it seem clear to me that these machines do indeed have an "issue" with them that they wish to leave in place. I hear people saying that the huge voter turnout is good for Kerry. Not so if these machines are rigged to produce a Republican edge, machines such as the one below. The greater the turnout, the more machines will be wrongly converting votes to the Bush camp. That requires 2 extra Kerry voters to overcome the deficit produced by one rigged Kerry-to-Bush voting machine. Gary Williams http://mycos.blogspot.com/ Just saw an amazing story on CNN International (19:08 Europe time). A lady in Florida had gone through and voted democrat on all the screens, and when she got to the review screen it showed all republicans. The poll worker told her to just go ahead and complete the vote, that the review screen is not important. She refused, and called over a lawyer. It was not clear where this lawyer came from. The lawyer, the voter, and the poll worker reviewed allher screens, and they confirmed that she had in fact voted all democrat, and the review screen showed all republican. The voter and the lawyer convinced the poll workers to take that machine out of service, and the voter re-cast her vote on another machine without problem. Very scary. Best regards, Mickey Coggins

My apologies for the earlier declaration that I would be providing you with breaking coverage of the election. It seems that my ability to post to my Blog via email is not working this evening. Unfortunately, these are precisely the posts that I had been counting on to provide you with the most interesting and/or unique angle. I could be re-posting CNN or ABC, Daily KOS, Alternet, etc. updates, but you all have simple access to the same. Surely you would prefer to read items from those sites for yourself. If you're anything like me you would anyhow . Fingers and toes..... Mycos

Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech: 11/01/04

Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech: 11/01/04

A family's debt paid with blood - Paul Sheehan - www.smh.com.au

A family's debt paid with blood - Paul Sheehan - www.smh.com.au: "family's debt paid with blood November 1, 2004 Bush's grudge over Iraq has diverted the US from the real enemy, writes Paul Sheehan. Nine marines died in Fallujah over the weekend. Their names have not yet been released but the names of the US forces who have previously died in Iraq are available. The roll call has its own momentum. October 28: Sergeant Michael Battles Snr, 38, died when a bomb detonated near his checkpoint in Baghdad. October 27: Staff Sergeant Jerome Lemon, 42, died when an improvised explosive detonated near his vehicle in Balad. October 24: Marine Richard Slocum, 19, died in a motor vehicle accident near Abu Ghraib. And so it goes, week after week, month after month, because President George Bush wanted to avenge his father, George Bush snr, whose failure to finish off the mocking, bellicose Saddam Hussein cost him the presidency. That sits at the core of the 'war on terrorism'. To settle this family debt, vast amounts of American power, credibility, blood and money have been squandered. Eleven hundred American military personnel are dead and 8000 have been wounded or injured since Bush the younger let loose the dogs of war in Iraq on March 19 last year. More than 90 per cent of these casualties have occurred since May 1 last year, the day a giant 'Mission Accomplished' sign was placed behind Bush during a photo opportunity aboard the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, sailing off the coast of California. One of history's more disquieting chapters will be written tomorrow, November 2, election day in the United States, if the man who avoided combat during the Vietnam war, George Bush, defeats the man who served with courage in Vietnam, Senator John Kerry. Kerry served and Bush deferred. Kerry was wounded in combat, Bush" ........ continued'' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Why can't people see this? It is so clear, so obvious! Strange........ Mycos

Bush Flip-Flops

And they have the nerve to say Kerry Flip-Flops... http://seanbonner.com/flipflop/ Click the images. Mycos

bush bulge reappears]

That's probably the most reasonable assertion I've heard yet. However, it seems to me that either scenario; a receiver for voice or a transmitter for a "LoJack"-type signal, still falls short on the basis that neither requires a device that bulky. I'll admit that I'm not an expert on these sorts of electronic devices, but I have seen various transmitter tags used to track animals over large areas and they can be made extremely small. These however are merely directional and not of the precision that one might suppose the Secret Service would want to use. Another possibility for a voice receiver having to be so big however might be that it uses a special technology that isn't able to be picked up by any normal scanning and receiving device that might be monitoring for just such a cheat taking place, as was the case with James Randy when he nailed televangelist Peter Popoff years ago doing precisely that. Gary Williams Mark Kernes wrote: > on 10/30/04 7:27 AM, Preston Peet wrote: > > >> I was sorry to see during John Stewart's visit to CNN's Crossfire >> that he apparently hadn't yet heard about the bulge under Bush's >> coat during the debates, as I'd have loved to hear his opinion on >> what it possibly is/was. I was also disappointed in Paul Begala's >> immediate and enthusiastic assertion that the bulge was merely a >> myth, that it wasn't really there, pushing the White House line >> that it was merely wrinkled clothing, when it so obviously was >> something under that coat, at least from how it looked(s) watching >> the actual moving footage (and now the still images in this new >> Salon article below). I don't suppose it really "matters" in the >> long run, but still, I'm curious as to whether Bush was really >> receiving coaching during the debates or not- and if not, what was >> that thing? > > > I have it on reasonably good authority that it's essentially a > presidential LoJack, so the Secret Service will know where he is at > all times. > > Mark Kernes, Sr. Ed., AVN >

Capitol Hill Blue: Pathological liars from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Capitol Hill Blue: Pathological liars from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: "Pathological liars from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue By DOUG THOMPSON Oct 6, 2004, 07:31 You almost have to feel sorry for the bumbling idiots that infect the Bush Administration like lice. Almost. They have told so many lies, twisted the facts so many times and changed their stories so often that you need a playbook to keep tabs on all the misinformation that comes out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" continued...... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` Doug Thompson. The man has a lot to say and he makes a lot of sense. I encourage y'all to check him out. Mycos

By Our Hand And In Your Name: 100,000 Dead Iraqis

Rick Burgess 10/30/04 'ICH' 'In August 2004, the United States Congress unanimously adopted a resolution labeling the situation in Darfur as genocide. On September 9, American Secretary of State Colin Powell in turn declared before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, '[that] genocide has taken place and may still be continuing in Darfur'. These declarations echoed attempts to compare events in Darfur with Rwanda in 1994. Observers almost immediately claimed that the American 'genocide' declaration had more to do with the US elections than the reality of events in Darfur.' Today a report by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland published in the Lancet estimates (conservatively) 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the (primarily) USA and the UK. Most of these are civilians, women and children. Therefore by the Bush administrations own 'standards' we (I am a UK citizen) have committed genocide. I don't know about you but I do not like to be partially responsible for such war crimes, whether 100,000 deaths is genocide or not, it is an unforgivable crime. As a citizen in a democratic country we must take some responsibility for the actions of our elected governments. What would we expect of a person in a criminal regime to do? " continued.....

Blair Lied To Parliament- New Evidence

News: "US gave date of war to Britain in advance, court papers reveal By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor 27 October 2004 Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday. The revelation strengthened suspicions that Tony Blair gave his agreement to President George Bush to go to war while the diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions were continuing. Alan Simpson, the leader of Labour Against the War, said the documents were 'dynamite', if genuine, and showed that Clare Short was right to assert in her book, serialised in The Independent, that Mr Blair had 'knowingly misled' Parliament." Continued.........

Capitol Hill Blue: Rummy got trapped in The Big Lie

Capitol Hill Blue: Rummy got trapped in The Big Lie

America Ranks 22nd In Press Freedom

IOL: Europe: " Reporters Without Borders check media freedom October 27 2004 at 08:52PM Paris - The United States ranked 22nd alongside Belgium and behind countries including Bosnia, France and Trinidad and Tobago on a media freedom index released this week by Reporters Without Borders. Eight countries shared the top spot on the Paris-based press freedom group's list, and repressive North Korea was last for the third year running. " Continued....... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Another story you're not going to see in the press. Ohhhh, the irony..........

Alleged Terror Tape Gives ABC Pause (washingtonpost.com)

Alleged Terror Tape Gives ABC Pause (washingtonpost.com): "Alleged Terror Tape Gives ABC Pause News Division Delays Airing Video as FBI, CIA Evaluate By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 28, 2004; Page C01 It has all the makings of an incendiary story: a chilling pre-election videotape featuring a supposed member of al Qaeda, declaring in English that 'blood will run red in the streets of America.' The problem, say ABC News executives, is that they can't determine whether the tape, obtained by a producer, involves a real threat -- or even the identity of the figure on it, a man wearing an ammunition belt and a headdress that obscures his face. The network enlisted the aid of the FBI and CIA but still can't authenticate the 75-minute videotape." continued....... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Could we be witnessing another of Karl Roves tricks? The timing is typical "Rove". Mycos

By Jove ! I Think They've (Finally) Got It

North Coast Cafe: "By Jove! I think They've [finally] Got it. The LA Times reports that some Christians are wondering whether the right to life might apply to innocent Iraqis who never did anything to us: 'It's hard for me to say that Christians should be marching against abortion and carrying signs, and then turn around and giving a pep rally for the war in Iraq without even contemplating that hundreds and hundreds of people are being killed on a regular basis over there.'" continued.....

The Bush Cult

The Bush Cult: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality" By Chris Floyd 10/22/04 "Moscow Times" -- Now we come at last to the heart of darkness. Now we know, from their own words, that the Bush Regime is a cult -- a cult whose god is Power, whose adherents believe that they alone control reality, that indeed they create the world anew with each act of their iron will. And the goal of this will -- undergirded by the cult's supreme virtues of war, fury and blind faith -- is likewise openly declared: "Empire." You think this is an exaggeration? Then heed the words of the White House itself: a "senior adviser" to the president, who, as The New York Times reports, explained the cult to author Ron Suskind in the heady pre-war days of 2002. First, the top Bush insider mocked the journalist and all those "in what we call the reality-based community," i.e., people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." Suskind's attempt to defend the principles of reason and enlightenment cut no ice with the Bush-man. "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality," he said. "And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Anyone with any knowledge of 20th-century history will know that this same megalomaniacal outburst could have been made by a "senior adviser" to Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or Mao. continued at...... http://207.44.245.159/article7137.htm

Conservative Genes? Yes....

North Coast Cafe:: "North Coast Cafe 'I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right.' --George W. Bush A local radio host I listen to most mornings today made a comment suggesting there must be a 'politics gene' because that's the only way to explain how Bush supporters could reach conclusions about politics and policy polar opposite of what he believes. " continued.....