Web / Press / Offsite Media Updates: May 23rd - May 30th

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 03:20

One of the key political moderates in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet deplored the Israel army's offensive in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, saying TV images reminded him of the suffering of his family during the Holocaust.

In stark and emotional language, Deputy Prime Minister Yosef Lapid, who also holds the Justice ministry portfolio and is himself a Holocaust survivor, told Israeli radio that the country risked further international condemnation if the army continued its campaign of pursuing Palestinian gunmen, demolishing homes and expelling civilians from the heart of the populous Rafah refugee camp.

"On TV I saw an old woman rummaging through the ruins of her house looking for her medication, and it reminded me of my grandmother who was thrown out of her house during the Shoah" or Holocaust, said Lapid in a radio interview after the weekly cabinet session.

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 03:48

The Bush administration has refused to answer repeated requests from the Sept. 11 commission about who authorized flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of 2001.

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of the independent, bipartisan commission, disclosed the administration’s refusal to answer questions on the sensitive subject during a recent closed-door meeting with a group of Democratic senators, according to several Democratic sources.

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 03:53

Michael Moore's Candid Camera
By Frank Rich

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is not the movie Moore watchers, fans or foes, were expecting. (If it were, the foes would find it easier to ignore.) When he first announced this project last year after his boorish Oscar-night diatribe against Mr. Bush, he described it as an exposé of the connections between the Bush and bin Laden dynasties. But that story has been so strenuously told elsewhere — most notably in Craig Unger's best seller, "House of Bush, House of Saud" — that it's no longer news. Mr. Moore settles for a brisk recap in the first of his film's two hours. And, predictably, he stirs it into an over-the-top, at times tendentious replay of a Bush hater's greatest hits: Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court, Harken Energy, AWOL in Alabama, the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, the lazy Crawford vacation of August 2001, the Patriot Act. But then the movie veers off in another direction entirely. Mr. Moore takes the same hairpin turn the country has over the past 14 months and crash-lands into the gripping story that is unfolding in real time right now.

Wasn't it just weeks ago that we were debating whether we should see the coffins of the American dead and whether Ted Koppel should read their names on "Nightline"? In "Fahrenheit 9/11," we see the actual dying, of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike, with all the ripped flesh and spilled guts that the violence of war entails. (If Steven Spielberg can simulate World War II carnage in "Saving Private Ryan," it's hard to argue that Mr. Moore should shy away from the reality in a present-day war.) We also see some of the 4,000-plus American casualties: those troops hidden away in clinics at Walter Reed and at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital in Fort Campbell, Ky., where they try to cope with nerve damage and multiple severed limbs. They are not silent. They talk about their pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. "I was a Republican for quite a few years," one soldier says with an almost innocent air of bafflement, "and for some reason they conduct business in a very dishonest way."

[....]

Mr. Moore says he obtained his video from an independent foreign journalist embedded with the Americans. "We've had this footage in our possession for two months," he says. "I saw it before any of the Abu Ghraib news broke. I think it's pretty embarrassing that a guy like me with a high school education and with no training in journalism can do this. What the hell is going on here? It's pathetic."

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 04:43

There were big demonstrations Friday throughout the Shiite world, including Lebanon, Bahrain, Iran and Pakistan, against continued US fighting in Karbala, a key holy city for Shiite Muslims.

Geo-strategically, this entire episode is a huge disaster. Some Americans may feel it is unfair of Shiites to blame only the US for the fighting, when it is Muqtada's militia that is firing from the shrines. But life is unfair. People always mind what foreigners do to the symbols of their native identity more than they mind what their own radicals do.

Al-Qaeda's declaration of war on the US was a ploy to turn Sunni Muslims, especially hard liners like Wahhabis and Salafis, against America and recruit them as foot soldiers. In 2002 and 2003, the Pentagon replied in part by seeking Shiite allies. These included the Hazaras, who were part of the Northern Alliance that defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan. They also included the Iraqi Shiites, which the Department of Defense wooed as allies against Saddam and the Baathists. In his unwise decision to try to get Muqtada al-Sadr dead or alive and to send GIs into Shiite holy places with heavy firepower, Bush is in the process of turning the Shiite world decisively against the US and perhaps creating new centers of anti-American paramilitary action.

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 04:59

As the occupation of Iraq dissolves further into bloody
chaos, the colonial overseers in Baghdad are keeping their eyes fixed on
what is really important: Iraq's money and how to keep it. Whatever apology
for a "sovereign" Iraqi government is permitted to take office after June
30 -- and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi admits in private that he "has to do"
whatever the Americans tell him to do -- the United States is making sure
that the Iraqis do not get their hands on their country's oil revenues.

We are talking about big money here: Iraq's oil exports are slated to top
$16 billion this year alone. U.N. Security Resolution 1483, rammed through
by the United States a year ago, gives total control of the money from oil
sales -- currently the only source of revenue in Iraq -- to the occupying
power, i.e., the United States. The actual repository for the money is an
entity called the Development Fund for Iraq, which in effect functions as a
private piggy bank for Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority. The
DFI is directed by a Program Review Board of 11 members, just one of whom is
Iraqi.

In case anyone should be moved to challenge this massive looting exercise in
the courts, President Bush followed up the May 2003 resolution with
Executive Order 13303, which forbids any legal challenge to the development
fund or any actions by the United States affecting Iraq's oil industry.
Since then, the Iraqi oil ministry, famously secured by the U.S. military
during post-invasion riots and looting, has been kept under the close
supervision of a senior U.S. advisor, former ExxonMobil executive Gary
Vogler.

By Andrew Cockburn
Salon.com
http://tinyurl.com/2xplj

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 06:21

Regarding the Torture of Others
by Susan Sontag

The media may self-censor but, as Rumsfeld acknowledged, it's hard to censor soldiers overseas, who don't write letters home, as in the old days, that can be opened by military censors who ink out unacceptable lines. Today's soldiers instead function like tourists, as Rumsfeld put it, ''running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise.'' The administration's effort to withhold pictures is proceeding along several fronts. Currently, the argument is taking a legalistic turn: now the photographs are classified as evidence in future criminal cases, whose outcome may be prejudiced if they are made public. The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner of Virginia, after the May 12 slide show of image after image of sexual humiliation and violence against Iraqi prisoners, said he felt ''very strongly'' that the newer photos ''should not be made public. I feel that it could possibly endanger the men and women of the armed forces as they are serving and at great risk.''

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 06:27

A videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 07:19

More than 5,500 Iraqis died violently in just Baghdad and three provinces in the first 12 months of the occupation, an Associated Press survey found. The toll from both criminal and political violence ran dramatically higher than violent deaths before the war, according to statistics from morgues.

There are no reliable figures for places like Fallujah and Najaf that have seen surges in fighting since early April.

by Ray McInerney Mon May 24, 2004 13:59

China will invest 1 billion yuan (US$121 million) in projects to improve rural public health infrastructure for the country's 800 million rural population.

The investment will be the starting capital for those projects, which will be completed in the next three to five years.

The Ministry of Public Health announced the decision by the central government Saturday at a press conference on public procurement.

The central government has approved a package of procurement programs worth of 2.073 billion yuan (US$252 million) for the country's public health infrastructure projects, including facilities for emergency public health incidents and local disease control centers, AIDS prevention programs.

China was caught ill-prepared last year in the fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) due to a lack of proper facilities and training.

The central government vowed earlier this year to increase investment in public health projects to meet growing needs and challenges, including AIDS.

by concerned obsever Mon May 24, 2004 19:35

(5/21/2004 - Joe Peacock )
from www.brokennewz.com

The United States Army defended today the position that the dozens of Iraqi's killed in an attack were not civilians at a wedding and were, in fact, "Bad guys."

"I can't make it any clearer," said Mstr. Sgt. Joe Pentangelo. "We are the GOOD guys.
......
The United States Army defended today the position that the dozens of Iraqi's killed in an attack were not civilians at a wedding and were, in fact, "Bad guys."

"I can't make it any clearer," said Mstr. Sgt. Joe Pentangelo. "We are the GOOD guys. Good guys don't bomb civilians. So that proves it, we couldn't have made a mistake."

"Our bombs are SMART bombs," added PFC Michael Morano. "SMART bombs know the difference between guerillas and wedding guests. Guerillas are BAD guys and wedding guests are GOOD guys. And those SMART bombs killed all those people, So obviously, the people who died were BAD guys." He then hung his tongue out of the side of his mouth, crossed his eyes, and said "DUH!"

The reaction has remained the same all the way up the chain of command. All concerned agreed that, since we are at war with "BAD Guys", a casualty is proof that the person who died was, indeed bad. "It's simple logic," said Wesley Dobbs, Strategic Commander. "If we, the U.S. Army, are the GOOD guys, and it's in the "Good Guy Charter" that we only kill BAD guys, then those people had to have been guerillas." When the recent torture of prisoners at Abu Garib prison was brought up as an example of the blurring line between the relativeness of good versus bad, Dobbs replied, "Well, they were in prison, so obviously, they were bad. Besides, that's all in the past. Quit living in the past, focus on the NOW."

"I think we're missing the more important point here," responded President Bush at a press conference this afternoon. "Irregardless of the inproprieterness of this situation, we must ask ourselves, 'If this was, indeed, a wedding, then why were we not invited?' Sure, there was a lot of smoke, but after the fires died down, our boys checked the bodies - and there was no wedding gown or tuxedos. That alone is proof of the hineyness of these Guerillas in the Mist."

by redjade Mon May 24, 2004 19:39

"I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper. ... He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."
-- NYT reporter Judith Miller, 5/1/03 (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000516946)

VERSUS

"The Bush administration should have known what it was doing when it gave enormous credence to a questionable character whose own self-interest was totally invested in getting the Americans to invade Iraq."
-- NYT editorial, 5/21/04 (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/opinion/21FRI1.html)

found at http://www.progressreport.org/

by redjade Wed May 26, 2004 03:25

A former military police officer said in a television interview broadcast Monday that he was severely beaten while posing as a detainee during a January 2003 training exercise at Guantanamo Bay.

Sean Baker, a former member of the 438th Military Police Company, said he played the role of a prisoner and was beaten so badly by four U.S. soldiers that he suffered a traumatic brain injury and seizures.

"I don't want this to happen to anyone else, what I'm living with daily," Baker told WLEX-TV in Lexington.

[....]

In the interview, Baker said that as part of the training drill, he was given an orange detainee jumpsuit to wear and turned over to four soldiers. Baker said the soldiers beat and choked him, stopping when they saw he was wearing parts of an Army uniform.

by redjade Wed May 26, 2004 03:30

As part of an aggressive recruiting effort, Army and National Guard officials have warned inactive reservists that they could face being sent back to Iraq unless they re-enlist in the active reserves or join their local Guard units, according to a published report.

MariAnn Curta told the Chicago Tribune in a story published Sunday that a recruiter called her last weekend, saying her 22-year-old son Bill — who recently completed a nine-month tour of duty in Iraq — could be headed back there unless he enlisted in the Illinois National Guard.

“It’s devious, it’s deceptive, it’s dishonest, it’s valueless.,” she said. “I can’t believe they’d pull this kind of fast trick on kids who have already served.”

by redjade Wed May 26, 2004 04:01

http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2004/05/24/

by redjade Wed May 26, 2004 16:28

``Where 100 years ago authorities had to worry about the anarchist placing a bomb in the downtown square, now we must worry about the terrorist who places that bomb in the square, but packed with radiological material,'' Abraham told an International Atomic Energy Agency conference on nuclear safety.

by redjade Wed May 26, 2004 16:30

A U.S. Army sergeant who gave an insider's view of Abu Ghraib prison to the media has lost his security clearance and has been disciplined by the military for speaking out, he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Sgt. Samuel Provance said that although soldiers he served with in Iraq were treating him as a pariah, he would not change a thing if given a second chance.

"My soldiers who were at Abu Ghraib are so scared now they're not even talking to me anymore - I'm like a villain, but would I do it again? Of course I would, because I stand behind what I said," Provance said in a telephone interview from Heidelberg, Germany, where his military intelligence unit is based.

"I knew what was being reported was not true."

by redjade Wed May 26, 2004 17:20

http://cdn.moveon.org/hooded/ads/rumsfeld.mov
5 meg download

more info
http://moveon.org

by iosaf Wed May 26, 2004 17:44

out today. deals with last year.
http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/index-eng
read it. qoute it. use it.

by redjade Wed May 26, 2004 18:29

"Instead of one big-shot controlling all the media,
now there's a thousand freaks Xeroxing their worthless opinions."

http://www.newmediamusings.com/blog/2004/05/homer_on_citize.html

by redjade Thu May 27, 2004 10:16

The Army then charged him nearly $6,000 for the stay at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, billing records show.

"They are definitely retaliating against me," said Army Reserve Lt. Jullian Goodrum, a 16-year veteran of the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Doctors say Goodrum suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, or combat stress, from Iraq. Last summer Goodrum asked for an investigation into the death in Iraq of a 22-year-old soldier in his 212th Transportation Company. He was also quoted in a United Press International article about poor medical care at Fort Knox, Ky., that helped spark investigations in Congress.

by redjade Thu May 27, 2004 10:24

When Iraqi and US agents sift through documents and computer files from Thursday’s raid of Ahmed Chalabi’s home and Iraqi National Congress office in Baghdad, it’s likely that they will find plenty of communications with the Washington Post and New York Times.

Chalabi has been a political activist in exile for most of his 59 years, and for many of those years the Post has trumpeted and championed his causes. In some ways, Chalabi is a creation of the Post and to a lesser extent the Times, where Judith Miller relied on him as a source in reporting on weapons of mass destruction.

The Post published a generally positive 5,938-word profile of “the passionate and relentless” Chalabi by Sally Quinn in November 2003. The Style-section feature, by the wife of former executive editor Ben Bradlee, chronicled Chalabi’s meeting with 50 Senate Republicans, among others he lobbied during a day in DC. It detailed his close ties with Paul Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives.

[....]

Did the Post’s editorial page also absorb Chalabi’s analysis in its crusade for military action against Hussein? It has been a mystery to many why the Post editorialized so heavily in favor of the war. Is Chalabi a piece of the puzzle?

Says editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt, “Chalabi and his advocacy of regime change were not a factor in the formation of editorial-page positions as long as I have been part of the process.”

by redjade Thu May 27, 2004 10:30

By Andrew Cockburn

If reports that US intelligence has at last woken up to Chalabi's Iranian connection are true, then taking his Koran may have been more than personal spite, since, according to a former close associate, the Pentagon's erstwhile favorite Iraqi owns one bearing an affectionate inscription from the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself, evidence of how deep and long standing a relationship he has had with the Islamic Republic. "Ahmad helped Iran very much during the war [the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s]," recalls this former associate and friend. "Khomeini was very pleased, and he sent him a copy of the Holy Koran inscribed 'To My Son Ahmed.'"

[....]

Bob Baer, a longtime covert operator who, for a period in the mid 1990s, was the senior CIA official posted to northern Iraq [.....] says that "a lot of people in the CIA believe that the Iranians used Chalabi, and or Arras, to manipulate us into a war. Maybe they just thought they were steering us to keep up the pressure on Saddam, keeping him under sanctions and no fly zones, never dreaming that he would actually get the US to go to war and put the US army right on the Iranian border. It's the law of unintended consequences."

by redjade Thu May 27, 2004 10:37

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

[....]

A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at http://nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.

We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

by redjade Thu May 27, 2004 11:19

The U.S. Army has, for the second time, awarded a contract to supply the Iraqi security forces to a consortium of companies with little arms experience and whose participants include a friend of controversial Iraqi official Ahmad Chalabi.

ANHAM, a joint venture based in Vienna, Va., was the winner of a $259-million contract to equip the new Iraqi army and security forces with guns, trucks and other equipment, it was announced late Tuesday.
 
The consortium includes many of the same companies as a group headed by Nour USA, whose contract to supply the Iraqi forces was canceled this year amid protests from competing firms and confusion surrounding the bidding procedures.

"Nour and ANHAM Joint Venture are proud of our original and subsequent proposals to equip the Iraqi army," Robert Hoopes, an ANHAM spokesman, said in a statement. "We are very pleased to have been selected for this effort, and we look forward to getting to work to deliver the best quality and value to the Iraqi army and the American taxpayer."

Army spokeswoman Jan Finegan identified one of ANHAM's component companies as HAIFinance, founded in part by A. Huda Farouk. Another is American International Services, of which Farouki is part-owner. Both were part of the Nour USA consortium.

Farouki is a Washington financier and political donor whose friendship with Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, dates back more than a decade. Chalabi's Petra Bank helped rescue Farouki from bankruptcy with a series of favorable loans in the 1980s. Chalabi's Baghdad headquarters was raided by Iraqi security forces last week, and he was accused of spying for Iran, an allegation he denies. Another company in the joint venture, Finegan said, is the Munir Sukhtian Group, a Jordanian conglomerate active throughout the Middle East that was also part of the previous consortium.

by iosaf Thu May 27, 2004 17:27

at 03h00 GMT the Finsbury mosque was raided and shortly after the transfer of Abou Hamza al Masri to the US homeland was secured.
He's the face of AlQ, Taliban, etc., His mosque was responsible like most for offering muslims not only a place to worship and meet, but also food, water, bedding. Many London muslims and people with fake IDs (who never drank) lived longer for the charity offered.
But that was not all. The Finsbury mosque has been known for years to be the main luanching ground for recruitment for all the extremist islamic groups you could think of.
there will be lots of press coverage tomorrow.

by - Thu May 27, 2004 17:46

according to British Press the US want to chop off his head.
Maybe Disney will do a video?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1225790,00.html

This sits oddly with the secretary for homeland lynching fear that Al Q will attack the USA in the month of June.

Which was I assure you José maria Aznar's idea. Seemingly he did win points for it after all. This is all psychological. On a lighter note the US would I suppose if going for physical castigation in "bad boy mode" have to chop off his head, coz his hands have been done already.

as we say in know all land:-
watch the middle east.
Zarqwaurk is going to do something now.

by iosaf - preparé Juin 5-6-7 Thu May 27, 2004 20:07 00447979324324

Now the scotsman is a bit silly, isn't it, like they had achance to boot Blair and they effed it up. I let them know they really had a goods chance.
Anyway. A U.S. soldier is suing the U.S. Army for brain damage he recieved whilst acting as a "torture volunteer" in Guantanamo.
Yep- I can't get my head around it either.
the anaylsis from blue dragon (who can't get his head around it) and the horses mouth:-
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/93066/index.php
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=602732004
just remember the scotsman said the synarchists did M11 to M14 as a coup.
I reckon they've just given up the ghost on accurate news. Very brave of them. olé!
{get me to the gig}

by iosaf Fri May 28, 2004 20:02

"Docs are still spending a lot of time writing things on paper. And sometimes it's difficult to read their handwriting," Bush told an audience at Vanderbilt University in the election battleground state of Tennessee.

"Sometimes information gets lost. Sometimes people inadvertently prescribe the wrong drug," he added. "So the fundamental question is: how do we use technology, how do we modernize health care? That's what we're talking about."

dubya Delta Bush.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=1QYC4D32OTFD4CRBAEKSFEY?type=politicsNews&storyID=5280837

by :-) Fri May 28, 2004 20:04

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The California Supreme Court is deciding whether to throw out the conviction of a 15-year-old boy who served 100 days in juvenile hall for writing a poem that included a threat to kill his fellow students.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/05/28/violent.poetry.ap/index.html

by iosaf - I do indeed havea great story about the Shah of iran, but it comes in "Iran the advanced guide". Sat May 29, 2004 19:18 ipsiphi at diplomats dot com

has a terrorist day of it.
Suadi Arabia is west of Iraq.
it's about one fifth the size of the USA.
It is a tyranical monarchy with a humanrights record just lightly worse than Texas, which the careful reader will remember is about a third of the size of Mexico.

reports:-
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3218,36-366819,0.html
BBC say the Saudi (who were royalised by thew British Hun in the early XXth century) have the terrorist group surrounded and they are thought to be holding hostages.
The Saudi are the "royal" family who's extended members have been accused of holding more hostages than any other, need i go on by making the difference of the purpose of hostage clear?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3760287.stm
A statement proporting to come from Al Q, probably Zwuarqaurk, has said "we did dat".
They always say "we did dat", that's coz they really want "to do dat". They honestly can't wait for the day they blow themselves and take some one else out.
Anyway, Saudis have not been taken out, coz they rather cleverly have a country where they _don't work_ like ever, so the dead are 1 U.S. 1 Briton (tobe confirmed) and other Suadi employees.


check out the list of characters again if you still don't believe me or nurse any ignorant type of pride in your poorly formed opinions on what the middle East is really about :-
http://www.idleworm.com/nws/2002/11/iraq2.shtml

by eeeekkkk Sat May 29, 2004 19:50

Subtitle: The theory and practice of terrorism divulged for the first time

by squeek Sat May 29, 2004 23:45

South Africa press report
"Dubai - One American and three Filipinos were among those killed in an attack by al Qaeda-linked militants in the Saudi city of Khobar on Saturday, Al Arabiya television said.

US embassy official have confirmed the report, in which the Dubai-based television aired footage of a dead man with Western features, slumped behind the steering-wheel of his car, apparently shot by the gunmen. Al Arabiya gave no more details".
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1085834881802B226&set_id=1

French Press Report
Stockholm has not confirmed a victim in today's terrorist attack in Saudi.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/dh/0,14-0@14-0@2-3208,39-23008144,0.html

British Media has not yet confirmed a Briton in the missing.

by knowing full well that I could eat you for breakfast. Sun May 30, 2004 20:28

Reclaim the Republic and
stop the slums breeding.


The Vice President of St Vincent de Paul, John Monaghan, has said he is astounded by remarks made by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell, about inequality.

In an interview with The Irish Catholic, the minister said inequality was an incentive in the Irish economy.

www.rte.ie/news/2004/0528/equality.html
Labour MEP Prioinsias De Rossa has said:-
"How does sending children to school too hungry to concentrate on their lessons grow the Irish economy?
"How does abandoning people to poverty and distress enhance our GNP?
"How does it make economic sense to bar the gates of our third level institutions to the best and brightest from low-income backgrounds, while those who can pay second-level fees get ahead?
"Does the Minister not know that it was women, and their increased participation in the workforce who were one of the driving forces behind the Celtic Tiger?

oh yeah right.
women like
Ms McDonald SF MEP candidate who said:

"Since 1997 the PDs have pursued an agenda of inequality with relish. They led an unprecedented assault on communities across Ireland with their policy of slashing Community Employment Schemes. In 1997, there were almost 40,000 CE participants. Seven years later the number is 25,000. Almost one thousand CE Schemes have disappeared. These cutbacks have devastated community projects and services across the state. Home helps, meals-on-wheels, childcare, environmental and heritage projects have all suffered.

"The value of these schemes to communities is immeasurable, and there is nothing to replace them. CE Schemes, and other programmes like them, are an example of the role the State can play in empowering communities, in providing them with the skills, resources and personnel to make a difference, whether it is in Ballymun, Ballyfermot, or the South Inner City.

"And it doesn't stop there.....

never did.
http://sinnfein.ie/euteam/news/detail/4939

oh the other side of the House :-

McDowell’s Admiration of Inequality Reflects his ‘Dog Eat Dog’ Vision for Ireland – O’Dowd
Fine Gael Spokesperson on Community Affairs, Fergus O’Dowd TD, has today (Friday) condemned Justice Minister’s Michael McDowell’s comments - that inequality was good for the Irish economy. “The very idea that the Justice Minister expresses a level of admiration for inequality in society is utterly disgraceful and reflects his ‘dog eat dog’ vision for Ireland.

“Minister McDowell’s comments are hardly surprising, reflective as they are of the usual laissez faire attitude adopted by his party, the PDs. His party’s political philosophy dictates that their economic policies are finely tuned to enrich the minority elite above all else. For everyone else it would appear that Minister McDowell advocates a policy of survival of the fittest, and for anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves on the margins of society – tough.

“I reject this warped logic










http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?search_text=mc+dowell

by io Sat Oct 16, 2004 13:36

The "infamous radical cleric of Finsbury Park, and self admited organiser of British Jihad and Mujaheedin volunteers"

"Abu Hamza, the radical Muslim cleric, is to face terrorism charges in the UK, delaying US extradition proceedings and upsetting the American authorities who wanted to try him for separate offences.
Mr Hamza, 47, has been in the high security Belmarsh jail, in south-east London, since May, fighting extradition. But it emerged last night that British police are to charge the Egyptian-born preacher in the next week.

The UK proceedings will take precedence over the extradition case, which was due to start next Tuesday, and will frustrate the Americans, who wanted to hold trials in the US and in Yemen.

A UK legal source said the case had "deeply political ramifications", reaching all the way to the White House, and was subject to "very high level" discussions.

British officials have explained to their US counterparts that the UK government has no power to interfere with the legal process.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had to obtain the consent of Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, who took his decision in his capacity as guardian of the public interest rather than his role as government minister. "

read more on this interesting story which broke (sloppily) in the media updates page above at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1328841,00.html

[Because this earlier version of the current "other press" section was presented as a series of comments, it's more difficult to search, and since the complete "other press" section is not included for text or image search with the newswire these "real world sources" can get sort of lost. But never fear they are never really really lost like the ark of the covenant, which only got found in the movies and in real life is still "in hiding".
Hamza would have been a consolation prize for the Bush Presidency to put before the electorate as a "al Qaeda" chief on TV trial. He is exactly what Democrats wouldn't like to see as a Bush trophy. The seriously disabled imam, has metal hooks for hands and only one eye and his name sounds all to much like "hamas" and we must remember Osama still hasn't come in for questioning.