Web / Press / Offsite Media Updates: June 28th - July 4th

by redjade Mon Jun 28, 2004 12:57

"street meme": a sticker, stencil, or poster that can spread a single image around the world. Unlike traditional graffiti art where each piece is unique, street memes can be copied repeatedly, taking on a life of their own, and spreading through the collective effort of people scattered around the world.

http://www.streetmemes.com/

by redjade Mon Jun 28, 2004 13:09

The Los Angeles Times reports this morning that Nadia McCaffrey — mother of slain California Army National Guardsman Patrick McCaffrey — has plans not only to allow media photographing of her son's casket as it returns to Sacramento, but to encourage it. In conjunction with the California National Guard, Ms. McCaffrey is planning an honor guard at the Sacramento airport, followed by a motorcade from the airport. All of these ceremonies will be open to the press. Ms. McCaffrey intends this to be a protest against the Defense Department's policy against photographs of flag-draped caskets returning from the war.

--
"I don't care what [President Bush] wants," Nadia McCaffrey said of the administration's policy that bans on-base photographing of coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

She planned to hold a short ceremony in front of reporters and photographers inside a Delta Airlines cargo terminal at the airport shortly before Flight 1583 was scheduled to arrive from Atlanta at midnight with the body of her son, National Guard Spc. Patrick McCaffrey, 34.
--

http://inteldump.powerblogs.com/posts/1088419971.shtml

by redjade Mon Jun 28, 2004 13:17

L. Frank Baum: Racist

Indian-Hating in "The Wizard of Oz"

By THOMAS ST. JOHN

Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) advocated the extermination of the American Indian in his 1899 fantasy "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Baum was an Irish nationalist newspaper editor, a former resident of Aberdeen in the old Dakota Indian territory. His sympathies with the village pioneers caused him to invent the Oz fantasy to justify extermination. All of Baum's "innocent" symbols clearly represent easily recognizable frontier landmarks, political realities, and peoples. These symbols were presented to frontier children, to prepare them for their racially violent future.

The Yellow Brick Road represents the yellow brick gold at the end of the Bozeman Road to the Montana gold fields. Chief Red Cloud had forced the razing of several posts, including Fort Phil Kearney, and had forced the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty. When George Armstrong Custer cut "the Thieves' Road" during his 1874 gold expedition invasion of the sacred Black Hills, he violated this treaty, and turned U.S. foreign policy toward the Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee massacre.

The Winged Monkeys are the Irish Baum's satire on the old Northwest Mounted Police, who were modelled on the Irish Constabulary. The scarlet tunic of the Mounties, and the distinctive "pillbox" forage cap with the narrow visor and strap are seen clearly in the color plate in the 1900 first edition of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Villagers across the Dakota territory heartily despised these British police, especially after 1877, when Sitting Bull retreated across the border and into their protection after killing Custer.

more at.....

by redjade Mon Jun 28, 2004 14:24

Iraqi money cannot be accounted for by occupying forces responsible for the funds, according to two new reports.

Discrepancies are highlighted in the handling of $20bn (£11bn) generated from Iraq's oil and other sources since war ended last year.

The Coalition Provisional Authority was given responsibility for the country's finances by the United Nations.

The UN stressed that money in the Development Fund for Iraq must be shown to be used in Iraq's best interests.

It was understood that all revenues would be paid into a central fund.

by Phuq Hedd Tue Jun 29, 2004 08:09

then they wouldn't give me water.
Now that the public has buckled under and is paying the Bin Tax the juggernaut of privatisation is set to repeat the disasters imposed on the UK by Thatcherism. Today's Indo reports that Water Charges are being asked for by the "engineers".

by redjade Tue Jun 29, 2004 10:51

Making Torture Legal
By Anthony Lewis
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17230

Reading through the memoranda written by Bush administration lawyers on how prisoners of the "war on terror" can be treated is a strange experience. The memos read like the advice of a mob lawyer to a mafia don on how to skirt the law and stay out of prison. Avoiding prosecution is literally a theme of the memoranda. Americans who put physical pressure on captives can escape punishment if they can show that they did not have an "intent" to cause "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." And "a defendant could negate a showing of specific intent...by showing that he had acted in good faith that his conduct would not amount to the acts prohibited by the statute."

These quotations are from a draft report to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by an ad hoc group of lawyers he chose, mostly political appointees in the Defense and other departments, to advise him on interrogation techniques for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The report is dated March 6, 2003; on the title page it says, "Classified by: Secretary Rumsfeld."

Another theme in the memoranda, an even more deeply disturbing one, is that the President can order the torture of prisoners even though it is forbidden by a federal statute and by the international Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a party.

The idea that presidential power overrides treaties and congressional laws appeared soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

by redjade Tue Jun 29, 2004 10:55

A Guide to the Memos on Torture
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

he New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have disclosed memorandums that show a pattern in which Bush administration lawyers set about devising arguments to avoid constraints against mistreatment and torture of detainees. Administration officials responded by releasing hundreds of pages of previously classified documents related to the development of a policy on detainees.

by redjade Tue Jun 29, 2004 10:58

A University of Haifa poll released Monday reveals that a majority of the Jewish public in Israel - 63.7 percent - believes that the government should encourage Israeli Arabs to emigrate from Israel.

The survey, conducted by the university's National Security Studies Center, also found that 48.6 percent of the Israeli Jews polled said the government was overly sympathetic to the Arab population.

Compared to similar polls conducted in 2001 and 2003, the current survey indicates an increase in the public's extremism.

The majority of Jewish respondents, 55.3 percent, said Israeli Arabs endangered national security, while 45.3 percent of those polled said they supported revoking Israeli Arabs' right to vote and hold political office.


found at
http://amsam.org/2004/06/poll-64-of-israeli-jews-support.html

source:

by redjade Tue Jun 29, 2004 11:06

As of June 14, Bremer had issued 97 legal orders, which are defined by the U.S. occupation authority as "binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people" that will remain in force even after the transfer of political authority. An annex to the country's interim constitution requires the approval of a majority of Allawi's ministers, as well as the interim president and two vice presidents, to overturn any of Bremer's edicts. A senior U.S. official in Iraq noted recently that it would "not be easy to reverse" the orders.

It appears unlikely that all of the orders will be followed. Many of them reflect an idealistic but perhaps futile attempt to impose Western legal, economic and social concepts on a tradition-bound nation that is reveling in anything-goes freedom after 35 years of dictatorial rule.

The orders include rules that cap tax rates at 15 percent, prohibit piracy of intellectual property, ban children younger than 15 from working, and a new traffic code that stipulates the use of a car horn in "emergency conditions only" and requires a driver to "hold the steering wheel with both hands."

by redjade Tue Jun 29, 2004 11:12

Rumblings of war in heart of Africa
US and UN send envoys to stop Congo conflict.

By Abraham McLaughlin and Duncan Woodside

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA AND KIGALI, RWANDA - There's an eery familiarity to the military maneuvering in and around Congo, a giant nation in the heart of Africa.

Some observers worry that the region is slipping into a second African "world war" - a repeat of the 1998-2003 conflict that involved troops from six nations and left 3 million dead.

Refugees are now streaming out of eastern Congo. Congolese troops are positioning near the border with longtime rival Rwanda, which is threatening retaliation. Congo's young president, Joseph Kabila, reshuffled his cabinet after an alleged coup attempt and has apparently discussed getting military help from Angola and Tanzania.

Yet there are also signs that this war could be more easily prevented than the last. For one thing, this time the players have more to lose.

by redjade Tue Jun 29, 2004 11:23

In a closely fought contest for the presidential endorsement of the Green Party, California lawyer and party activist David Cobb won a narrow victory Saturday, defeating an effort to swing the party behind the independent candidacy of Ralph Nader. Cobb won 408 votes on the second ballot, a majority of the 769 delegates, compared to 308 votes for no nomination, the position adopted by Nader’s supporters, with the remainder of the delegates’ votes divided between two other candidates.

[....]

The outcome was a severe blow to the Nader campaign, which hoped to use the Green Party line in the 23 states where the party has ballot status, thus relieving it of the burden of qualifying for ballot status through petitioning. In California, for instance, Nader would require 165,000 signatures of registered voters to gain ballot status independently of the Green Party line.

Although he never joined the Green Party, Nader was its presidential candidate in both 1996 and 2000. The Green Party eagerly grasped the opportunity to use Nader’s celebrity status to raise its public profile. The long-time consumer advocate decided not to seek the Green nomination this year, running instead as an independent candidate. He also accepted the endorsement of the right-wing Reform Party, the rump organization left behind by the campaigns of billionaire Ross Perot in the 1990s, which has a ballot line in eight states.

by redjade Tue Jun 29, 2004 11:40

The Greens rank-and-file instead nominated Texas attorney David Cobb as its candidate for president Saturday, rebuffing Nader's efforts to secure the party's formal endorsement and likely access to the ballot in key states like Wisconsin and California.

Though no fan of John Kerry, Cobb's strategy for "smart growth" for the Green Party calls for him to aggressively campaign for votes only in safe states while advising party members to essentially vote for Kerry in the ten or so states he considers the battlegrounds which will decide this November's presidential election. This Green candidate understands that Kerry is an imperfect candidate; but he is sane enough to make the clear distinction between imperfection and a candidate like George Bush who, as he says, "is a genuine threat to the planet."

by redjade Tue Jun 29, 2004 12:13

http://www.progressive.org/webex04/wx0626a04.html

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/questionsformichaelmoore.html

by Samizdat Tue Jun 29, 2004 19:37 fgwilson at sbcglobal dot net

Sequel to "911: the Road to Tyranny"
"Masters of Terror" is available on the Internet Archive as part of this pathbreaking video documentary collection!
You have seen the warm-up, and now it's time for the main event.

See the video from which Michael Moore borrowed "Fahrenheit 9/11:"

that video is Alex Jones' (infowars.com) "911: the Road to Tyranny," available now on the

Internet Archive, along with its sequel, "Masters of Terror."


The following collection represents a value of over $200. If you were to inform Alex Jones

of its existence, he would mightily cheer. In fact I encourage you to do so. Watch, learn, and

most of all, organize (anti-Patriot Act kits available at http://infowars.com -- join the

hundreds of cities which have thrown out the Patriot Act,

as Alex Jones did in his home of Austin)!

=======

Matrix of Evil

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/matrix_of_evil_part1_148kbps.wmv

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/matrix_of_evil_part2_148kbps.wmv

Police State 3: Total Enslavement

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/Alex_...ce_State_3_Total_Enslavement.wmv

Police State II: the Takeover

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/Alex_...e_State_II_The-takeover(1of2).rm

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/Alex_...e_State_II_The-takeover(2of2).rm

Police State 2000 (high resolution)

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/police_state_2000_high.wmv

Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/Dark_...nside_Bohemian_Grove_121Kbps.wmv

America Destroyed by Design

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/ADBD_128.wmv

Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/CAFR_FULL_VERSION_Alex_Jones_148KBPS.wmv

Larry Silverstein Admits Pulling WTC 7

http://fyleserva.com/video/911/alex_analysis_wtc7.WMV

911: the Road to Tyranny

http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?id=6061

Masters of Terror

http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?id=8449

by MC Tue Jun 29, 2004 20:44

A new book from Seven Stories Press on the history of fluoride. See:  http://www.fluoridealert.org/fluoride-deception.htm

(NOTE: Ireland is the most fluoridated country in Europe. Hopefully this will change.)
EARLY REVIEWS of The Fluoride Deception:

"Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate." - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson, just published in the US, examines the background of the fluoridation debate. Bryson, who has had the advantage of access to recently declassified files, concludes that fluoridation is a triumph not of medical science but of US government spin.'" - THE GUARDIAN, "A Kick in the Teeth", June 8, 2004

"Christopher Bryson is an excellent narrator, and he reports on recent research previously not known to me... It is my sincere hope that his book will receive the attention it deserves and that its implications will be seriously considered." - DR. ARVID CARLSSON, 2000 Nobel Prize Laureate for Medicine

"The Fluoride Deception points to the suppression of medical information, the sacking of experts who found damaging evidence of potentially nasty side-effects that governments didn't want to hear and a powerful political lobby that grasped fluoridation as a cheap means of mass medication." - IRISH INDEPENDENT, "Teething Trouble", June 22, 2004

"Bryson writes with the skill of a top-selling novelist, but it was not his convincing storytelling that made me finish the book. It was the haunting message that possibly here again was another therapeutic agent, fluoride, that had not been thoroughly studied before it was foisted on the public as a panacea to protect or improve health. Bryson reveals that the safety of fluoride became a firmly established paradigm based on incomplete knowledge. The correct questions were never asked (or never answered when they were asked), thus giving birth to false or bottomless assumptions that fluoride was therapeutic and safe. Certainly, the evidence Bryson has unearthed in this book begs for immediate attention by those responsible for public health." - DR. THEO COLBORN, co-author of Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Discovery Story (1996)

"In much the same way biologist Rachel Carson warned us over forty years ago in Silent Spring about the havoc and harm being caused by the misuse of persistent pesticides, journalist Christopher Bryson here lays bare the secret story and hidden dangers of the introduction of fluoride chemicals from the cold war era into our drinking water. The Fluoride Deception presents a scorching indictment of how researchers and health care officials working closely with government agencies, big industry, and their attorneys have allowed themselves to surrender their responsibility for the medical well-being of their fellow citizens." - DR. ALBERT W. BURGSTAHLER, former president of the International Society for Fluoride Research and Emeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Kansas

"The Fluoride Deception compellingly and inescapably exposes the murderous fraud that heads of state and industry have for decades perpetrated on an innocent public. Extremely well written and tightly researched, The Fluoride Deception is sure to become the 'must read' book in this important and burgeoning field." - DERRICK JENSEN, author of The Culture of Make Believe and A Language Older Than Words

"Bryson is right on in his emphasis on the ineffectiveness of fluoridation of water with industrial wastes, and its risks of nerve and brain damage, and cancer, coupled with the long-standing industrial conspiracy to suppress this information." - DR. SAM EPSTEIN, Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, University of Illinois School of Public Health

ABOUT the AUTHOR:

CHRISTOPHER BRYSON is an award winning investigative reporter and a television producer. He covered Guatemalan Army human rights abuses from Central America in the late 1980's for the BBC World Service, National Public Radio and The Atlanta Constitution. In 1989 he was part of an investigative team that won a George Polk Award and Sidney Hillman Prize with Jonathan Kwitny at Public Television's The Kwitny Report. In 1999 he won a Project Censored award with medical writer Joel Griffiths.

by vb Wed Jun 30, 2004 00:17

thanks for including imc irl link in article harry ;-)

by Foxy Browne Wed Jun 30, 2004 00:21

Skerries and Balbriggan Harbours to stay public
The Government has decided to keep Balbriggan and Skerries Harbours in public ownership by signing them over to Fingal County Council.


The Minister for the Marine, Mr Ahern, has signed an order implementing Section 84 (4) of the Harbours Act 1996, transferring the harbours to Fingal County Council.

Labour Party deputy for Dublin North, Mr Sean Ryan, hailed the decision as a "significant victory for the people of North Dublin."

Commenting on the announcement, Fianna Fail deputy for Dublin North also welcomed the intervention by the Minister to ensure that the harbours stay in public ownership.



Skerries Community Association and Skerries Sailing Club spearheaded a public campaign to ensure that the working harbours were not privatised. Dublin Port had initiated a tender procedure to sell off the harbours last March on the basis that they represented a drain on revenue.

from ireland.com

by Democracy Now Wed Jun 30, 2004 04:01

Interviews done by Democracy Now regarding Iraq.
Life after Death: U.S.-Appointed Iraqi Governing Council Granted Wide Powers in Interim Government

"On the very day that the 25-member council dissolved itself, June 1, it issued a little-noticed decree that guarantees most of its members seats on the Iraqi National Council, a de-facto legislature that will serve until elections are held early next year.

"Members of the Governing Council, which was appointed by the U.S.-led occupation last July and was rejected by many Iraqis as illegitimate, also guaranteed themselves seats on an array of committees that will choose the remaining members of the National Council. "By granting itself such wide powers, critics say, the Governing Council risks tainting the legitimacy of the new Iraqi government set to assume sovereignty on Wednesday."

RealPlayer:
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2004/june/video/dnB20040629a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=28:28.26

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/29/1420213

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 12:38

America's military commander in Iraq ordered British troops to prepare a full-scale ground offensive against Iranian forces that had crossed the border and grabbed disputed territory, a senior officer has disclosed.

An attack would almost certainly have provoked open conflict with Iran. But the British chose instead to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels.

"If we had attacked the Iranian positions, all hell would have broken loose," a defence source said yesterday.

"We would have had the Iranians to our front and the Iraqi insurgents picking us off at the rear."

[....]

The incident began last July when Revolutionary Guards pushed about a kilometre into Iraq to the north and east of Basra in an apparent attempt to reoccupy territory which they claimed belonged to Iran.

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 12:40

The American marine who is being threatened by his kidnappers with beheading had deserted the military because he was emotionally traumatized, and was abducted by his captors while trying to make his way home to his native Lebanon, a Marine officer said Tuesday.

The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he believed that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was betrayed by Iraqis he befriended on his base and ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists.

The officer said Corporal Hassoun, a 24-year-old Marine linguist who was born in Lebanon, was shaken up after he saw one of his sergeants blown apart by a mortar shell.

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 12:43

Digging deeper for help in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is recalling to active duty about 5,600 people who recently left the service and still have a reserve obligation.

In a new sign of the strain the insurgency in Iraq has put on the U.S. military, Army officials said Tuesday the involuntary callups will begin in July and run through December. It is the first sizable activation of the Individual Ready Reserve since the 1991 Gulf War, though several hundred people have voluntarily returned to service since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

[....]

The Pentagon had hoped to reduce its troop levels in Iraq to about 105,000 this spring, but because of increasingly effective and deadly resistance the level has risen to about 140,000.

Military officials have said they may need to stay at that level for at least another year or two, a commitment of forces that could not be maintained by the active force alone.

The Army frequently must integrate reservists with its active-duty forces, but it rarely has to reach into the Individual Ready Reserve. The Army has about 117,000 people in this category of reservist; the Navy has 64,000, the Marine Corps 58,000 and the Air Force 37,000.

The military has relied heavily on National Guard and Reserve soldiers in Iraq, in part because some essential specialties like military police are found mainly in the reserves rather than the active-duty force and partly because the mission has required more troops than planned.

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 12:45

In a few key areas - electricity, the judicial system and overall security - the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday.

The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings:

-In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.

-Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with another $10 billion about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations.


-The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts.

-The new Iraqi civil defense, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped.

-The number of what the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority called significant insurgent attacks skyrocketed from 411 in February to 1,169 in May.

Download the report:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04902r.pdf

read more of the article...

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 12:48

Over 80% of Iraqis want US and other foreign forces to stop patrolling their cities and make their presence less visible by withdrawing to bases, according to the latest survey by Iraq's best-known polling organization.

Forty-one per cent would feel safer if the forces left Iraq altogether, and only 32% would feel less safe.

[....]

Asked if they would support a party which wanted foreign forces to stay until Iraq's army and police were adequately trained and equipped to face threats of violence, only 16% said yes.

Although the collapse of security is the population's top concern, most of those surveyed felt that the problem would be best handled by Iraqi forces and that the presence of foreign armies attracted more violence.

Almost 70% said that if foreign armies remained in Iraq after an elected government took office in January attacks against Iraqi police and government officials would increase.

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 13:08

Michael Moore vs CBS News

CBS Early Show,
June 25 2004
between Michael Moore and CBS’s Hannah Storm:
http://amsam.org/2004/06/moore-gives-it-to-cbs.html

     Storm: "So this is satire and not documentary? We shouldn’t see this as-"
     Moore: "It’s a satirical documentary."
     Storm: "Some have said propaganda, do you buy that? Op-ed?"
     Moore: "No, I consider the CBS Evening News propaganda. What I do is-"
     Storm: "We’ll move beyond on that."
     Moore: "Why? Let’s not move beyond that."
     Storm: "You know what?"
     Moore: "Seriously."
     Storm: "No, let’s talk about your movie."
     Moore: "But why don’t we talk about the Evening News on this network and the other networks that didn’t do the job they should have done at the beginning of this war?"
     Storm: "You know what?"
     Moore: "Demanded the evidence, ask the hard questions-"
     Storm: "Okay."
     Moore: "-we may not of even gone into this war had these networks done their job. I mean, it was a great disservice to the American people because we depend on people who work here and the other networks to go after those in power and say 'Hey, wait a minute. You want to send our kids off to war, we want to know where those weapons of mass destruction are. Let’s see the proof. Let’s see the proof that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.’"
     Storm: "But-"
     Moore: "There was no proof and everybody just got embedded and everybody rolled over and everybody knows that now."
     Storm: "Michael, the one thing that journalists try to do is to present both sides of the story. And it could be argued that you did not do that in this movie."
     Moore: "I certainly didn’t. I presented my side-"
     Storm: "You presented your side of the story."
     Moore: "Because my side, that’s the side of millions of Americans, rarely gets told. And so, all I’m, look, this is just a humble plea on my behalf and not to you personally, Hannah. But I’m just saying to journalists in general that instead of working so hard to tell both sides of the story, why don’t you just tell that one side, which is the administration, why don’t you ask them the hard questions-"
     Storm: "Which I think is something that we all try to do."
     Moore: "Well, I think it was a lot of cheerleading going on at the beginning of this war-"
     Storm: "Alright."
     Moore: "A lot of cheerleading and it didn’t do the public any good to have journalists standing in front of the camera going 'whoop-dee-do, let’s all go to war’. And, and it’s not their kids going to war. It’s not the children of the news executives going to war-"
     Storm: "Michael, why don’t you do you next movie about networks news, okay? Because this movie-"
     Moore: "I know, I think I should do that movie."
     Storm: "-because this movie is an attack on the president and his policies."
     Moore: "Well, and it also points out how the networks failed us at the beginning of this war and didn’t do their job."

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 13:11

Washington Post: “Despite the end of the occupation …”

Knight Ridder: “Iraqis see hope in end of U.S.-led occupation”

Los Angeles Times: “…end of a deeply divisive American-led occupation…”

San Francisco Chronicle: “the U.S.-led military occupation had formally ended…”

Miami Herald: “…ended its occupation of Iraq…”

Associated Press: “…the end of the American occupation …”

Arizona Republic:: “…the 160,000 foreign troops in Iraq were transformed from occupiers into guests of a U.S.-backed government.”

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 13:43

http://radio.indymedia.org/uploads/mmoore-on-cbs.mp3

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 13:57

Hear No Lichtblau, See No Lichtblau
By Howard Kurtz

When New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau wrote a story last fall that the FBI didn't like, the bureau responded by trying to freeze him out.

FBI spokeswoman Cassandra Chandler sent top officials a memo disputing the story and assailing "the slanted and biased report[ing] style of Mr. Lichtblau. In the meantime, we encourage each of you to please avoid providing information to this reporter. He has consistently demonstrated that he lacks the ethics of a respected journalist."

During the same period, the Justice Department revoked Lichtblau's credentials -- a move that a spokesman calls coincidental.

"I was very surprised they took the action they did, both at the FBI and the Justice Department," says Lichtblau, whose credentials were restored after the Times protested. Earlier, he was abruptly disinvited from a Justice Department press briefing.

He reported in November, based on an FBI memo, that the bureau had collected extensive information on antiwar demonstrators. FBI officials were quoted as saying the effort was aimed at identifying extremists plotting violence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10775-2004Jun27?language=printer

----

the article the FBI hates....
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/national/23FBI.html?ex=1384923600&en=a08993408fbbadb7&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 16:34

Here's a comparison of a few basic statistics, comparing the richest country in the world, with a very poor third world country:

United States
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

Infant mortality rate: 6.63 deaths/1,000 live births
Life expectancy at birth: total population: 77.43 years, male: 74.63 years, female: 80.36 years


Poor third-world country
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cu.html

Infant mortality rate: 6.45 deaths/1,000 live births
Life expectancy at birth: total population: 77.04 years, male: 74.77 years, female: 79.44 years

The poor third-world country is, of course, Cuba, a country where health care and everything else is socialized, and people's needs come before profit.

by redjade Wed Jun 30, 2004 17:04

The government needs to establish guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections if terrorists strike the United States again, says the chairman of a new federal voting commission.

Such guidelines do not currently exist, said DeForest B. Soaries, head of the voting panel.

[....]

Soaries noted that Sept. 11, 2001, fell on Election Day in New York City - and he said officials there had no rules to follow in making the decision to cancel the election and hold it later.

Events in Spain, where a terrorist attack shortly before the March election possibly influenced its outcome, show the need for a process to deal with terrorists threatening or interrupting the Nov. 2 presidential election in America, he said.

by eeekkk Wed Jun 30, 2004 19:12

this is fucked up bigtime

by redjade Thu Jul 01, 2004 12:40

While piously declaring its determination to unearth the truth about Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has spent nearly two months obstructing investigations by the Army and members of Congress. It has dragged out the Army's inquiry, withheld crucial government documents from a Senate committee and stonewalled senators over dozens of Red Cross reports that document the horrible mistreatment of Iraqis at American military prisons. Even last week's document dump from the White House, which included those cynical legal road maps around treaties and laws against torturing prisoners, seemed part of this stonewalling campaign. Nothing in those hundreds of pages explained what orders had been issued to the military and C.I.A. jailers in Iraq, and by whom.

by redjade Thu Jul 01, 2004 12:49

In an interview with "Democracy Now!," a Swedish-Iraqi photojournalist who shot some of the Iraq footage in "Fahrenheit 9/11," shows and tells what he saw on raids while embedded with U.S. troops.

link from: http://cursor.org
--

AMY GOODMAN: I'm looking at a man who has got a cane and he is trying to walk and has a hood over his head, and now a number of Iraqis who have something on their heads. What is it that has been put on their heads?

URBAN HAMID: Well, this is a plastic bag that they put over their heads, and it's part of -- as far as I'm concerned -- the process of humiliating the Iraqis. I think we can all relate to what it would feel like to be totally isolated from what's going on: not knowing what's going on, just hearing the sounds of the American soldiers yelling orders in English, being pushed around. It's just horrible. And I saw this. They were used, as you know, the whole time, even when they put people in Humvees and in trucks and in APCs. They put these hoods on their heads and they were -- It must have been extremely difficult to breathe and whatnot.

[....]

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has changed? Now they're showing the photos of Abu Ghraib.

URBAN HAMID: You know, I think that in revealing what happened in Abu Ghraib-- there was no way of stopping this. I feel that the administration felt that, well, you know, it's out, and now we have to sort of try to at least make it look like we are doing something about this. But I really feel that it is a red herring. It's a red herring to cover up what's really happening in Iraq. It's a red herring to cover up how many civilians are being killed. It’s a red herring to cover up what happened in Fallujah, where between 600 and 800 people, most of which were civilians, were killed, massacred, where the U.S. snipers shot women and children.

Interview:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/29/1420223

Urban Hamid's Website
http://www.urbanhamid.com/

by redjade Thu Jul 01, 2004 13:30

Three Part Review of the Documentary: The Corporation
http://www.thecorporation.com/

The Corporation, Take 1 (of 3), Propaganda:
http://www.abstractdynamics.org/archives/2004/06/15/the_corporation_take_1_of_3_propaganda.html

The Corporation, Take 2 (of 3), The Permanent Critique:
http://www.abstractdynamics.org/archives/2004/06/16/the_corporation_take_2_of_3_the_permanent_critique.html

The Corporation, Take 3 (of 3), Constructions:
http://www.abstractdynamics.org/archives/2004/06/17/the_corporation_take_3_of_3_constructions.html

by musicfan Thu Jul 01, 2004 15:55

lonely soldier
new single Lonely soldier by damien and christy moore - out NOW (ireland only)
featuring - lisa hannigan, tomo & shane fitzsimons

track listing
1. lonely soldier (featuring Christy, Damien, Lisa, Tomo & Shane)
2. lonely soldier (acoustic version with Christy & Damien)

this is a non profit cd
all proceeds go to the Irish anti-war movement to help promote a greater
awareness of the futility of war

the rrp of the single is €2.95. please do not pay more than €3 it.
the single will be available to buy in most records stores in ireland and
is also available to buy on the online shop www.damienrice.com/catalog

this is not an anti-military song
it’s not an anti anything song

by SP MEMBER Thu Jul 01, 2004 18:09

TIME FOR BOMFIRES OF RUBBISH IN TALLAGHT CENTRAL
Mick Murphy the newly elected Tallaght Central Councillor was interviewed in the Tallaght echo today outlining his aims and goals for his future involvement in the South Dublin County Council

His main goal is to 'Represent his party and the people that elected him.' Now recognised as the prime mover and shaker in the new council mick is well respected by the people of Tallaght, this was shown by his topping th poll in the last local election.

In its own right and certainly in comparison to other forces on the left, getting Mick elected was a significant achievement and indeed an endorsement of the Socialist Party. We are confident that we will build on this success in terms of recruiting in the communities, in the unions and amongst the youth.

This Government has been significantly weakened and instability is now built in the political situation. We will need to be alive to the potential for significant changes in the political, economic and industrial situation over the next months and years.

by Phuq Hedd Thu Jul 01, 2004 22:00

From The Irish Independent, July 1st 2004, Eleanor Burnhill

Garda 'ripped out part of camera'

A WITNESS in the trial of a garda accused of assaulting a protester at the 2002 'Reclaim the Streets' march in Dublin has claimed that the battery of his video camera was ripped out by a garda.

Aidan O'Brien, who filmed the event for Indymedia, was giving evidence in the trial of Garda Paul Tallon of Mountjoy Station, Dublin, who has pleaded not guilty to assault causing harm to Fergal Leddy on May 6, 2002.

Mr O'Brien told defence counsel Martin Giblin that he was approached by a garda who had a baton at his shoulder. He said the garda grabbed his camera and "we struggled for a moment" before the garda "ripped the battery from my camera".

Mr O'Brien said there was no structure to the way the event was filmed and no one from Indymedia dictated who or what should be filmed on the day.

However, he said he later fell into an organisational role and the group began to work in a "more cohesive way" when they realised they had their hands on "important video footage".

Earlier, Cian O'Callaghan, whose video footage has been shown to the jury by the prosecution, said he had taken more footage on Dame Street, where the assault is alleged to have taken place, than he did on Burgh Quay.

Eleanor Burnhill

by harry potter - hogworts Thu Jul 01, 2004 22:53

it's being going on a while on you know the "Harry Potter" thing.

http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?search_text=harry+potter&search_comments=on

by Paul McAndrew Fri Jul 02, 2004 11:27 ardhanishvara at yahoo dot com

Two Belfast teenagers have been sent to prison for the brutal killing of a 30 year old man in what the judge said was an unprovoked attack simply because of the man's perceived sexuality.
Prison For Teens In Gay Slaying
by Peter Moore
365Gay.com Newscenter
London Bureau

Posted: July 1 2004 2:06 pm ET

by redjade Fri Jul 02, 2004 14:40

BAGHDAD, June 30 -- The videotape of a bound and blindfolded U.S. Marine held hostage in Iraq has produced a backlash of revulsion among Iraqis.

"This is a terrible thing," said Ali Hashim, 33, a shoe salesman in downtown Baghdad. "Hostage-taking, beheading . . . it's not our tradition. We have a tradition of hospitality. This hurts the image of the Iraqi people."

by redjade Fri Jul 02, 2004 14:44

Pat LaMarche, the Green Party's newly nominated candidate for vice president, said Tuesday that her top priority is not winning the White House for her party, but ensuring that President Bush is defeated. She is, in fact, so determined to see Bush lose that she would not commit to voting for herself and her running mate, Texas lawyer David Cobb.

by redjade Fri Jul 02, 2004 17:11

Put simply, multinationals are becoming more, well, multinational. According to UNCTAD, a United Nations agency, in the early 1990s there were 37,000 international companies with 175,000 foreign subsidiaries. By last year, there were 64,000 with 870,000 subsidiaries. Increasingly, such companies are being managed on regional or even global lines, not national ones. An extraordinary 60% of international trade is within these multinationals, ie, firms trading with themselves.

by stef (copy & paste) trad paula Fri Jul 02, 2004 22:23

original article
Antropologos contra el Forum 2004
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27325
For all that, the anthropologists met in this IX Congress in Barcelona, on the first week of September 2002, we want to express our repulse to the use of cultural differences as a justification for discriminatory immigration politics that deny fundamental human rights, and also our worry about the possibility of the Forum 2004 becoming an grandiloquent and empty spectacle, in the service of political and economical interests of their promoters.

The first week of September 2002, organized by Institut Català d'Antropologia (Catalan Institute of Anthropology), it was met the IX Congress of Anthropology of the Spanish Federation of Anthropologies Associations. During four days, more than six hundreds professionals from everywhere in Spain and nineteen other countries were debating about relations between policy and culture. In the concluding act of the Congress, on the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture) at the end of the evening of the 7th September 2002, the congressmen approved this


DECLARATION


Anthropology, some decades ago, reclaimed a protagonist role for the culture notion -central notion of our discipline- on debates about human diversity and inequality causes. With that idea we wanted to contribute, beside the advances of genetics, to scientifically deny the pretension of the existence of any "racial" fundament on human ways of thinking, doing and saying diversity, and much less on their conception as "superiors" or "inferiors". The origin of human heterogeneity kept installed, by the hand of that culture notion -as a changing dynamic decisive entity but also decided by history- into this human being capacity not for just living in a society, but changing incessantly the society they were living at. Some years have gone and this IX Congress of Anthropology has risen as a central effort making a balance of political uses that culture notion has finally received. The idea of culture is used today for very different even antagonist purposes, of those that anthropology wanted when called the attention of its importance on diversity explanation. Far of impugn the irrevocability of human differences, culture has become a mere succedaneum of the disparaged race idea and serves, much more keenly, for the same purposes, which are not others that the naturalization of social asymmetries and the ideological justification of social exclusion.
Discrimination, segregation and marginalization are today, essentially "cultural". What one day were called "inferior races" today are been called "incompatibles with our values" cultures. Xenophobic parties don't claim any more in favour of racial purity, but they notice the dangers that "cultural integrity" suffers of their respective nations. At the same time, the big politics institutions and majorities' parties use the culture idea to justify the disadvantage of thousands of human beings, promoting laws which deny the access to justice and equality. That pretensions can, although, make a public proclaim of their adhesion to values of "tolerance among cultures", that will become in his hands an empty and demagogic rhetoric. In the same frame, "multiculturalism" and "interculturality" serve to design politics frequently not based on the dynamic plurality of life styles presents in a society, but in the existence of a supposed mosaic of hermetic compartments that enclose any person in his own ethnic and "identity" and that insinuate the impossibility of a get away. Media uses culture notion again and again to trivialize and simplify some social conflicts insinuating that its causes have obscurely something to do with the cultural adhesions of their protagonists. The official antiracism assume this as his own discourse, based on a distorted appropriation of culture notion, and makes understand that is a better "comprehension among cultures" what will let us leave behind that brutal injustices that many persons are victims of. In these order of things, it's not easy to perceive how much the exaltation of the "cultural mestizaje" hides a racist premise: that is possible -although is proclaimed to be disagreeable- the existence of pure cultures somewhere.
What is happening today in Spain (2002) about immigration is an example of all this. Here, that use of cultural difference justifying any kinds of outrages is associated to new foreigners' politics (called the Ley de extranjería) which harm in a scandalous way basic human rights. Cultural diversity is shown again and again as something that makes impossible for a State being "of rights" as it's supposed, as if human heterogeneity were an insolvable obstacle to accomplish the basic democratic principles of equality and freedom. The real institutional behaviours involved to workers from other countries and their families - shown insistently as cultures of difficult integration in our society- consist in conquer them to outrageous arriving and staying conditions. A vague official discourse about "immigrants integration" is combined with the condemn of thousands of human beings - simply guilty of arriving here and being poor- to inconceivable working exploitations, to a legal treatment that doesn't recognise them as persons and to a police siege that becomes in arbitrary detentions, deportations with no guarantees and, sometimes, - if reports of different international organisations are true- to bad treatment and, sometimes, even to death. This is, in this moment, the reality of "multiculturalism" in the Spain.
In this context - characterized for institutional laws and practices that systematise and generalise injustice, brutality and exploitation against immigrants-, we are worried about Barcelona, city that lodge our Congress, preparing an maximum exaltation of "the cultures" as a political theme and media spectacle. The perspective of a big event as the Fòrum Universal de les Cultures 2004 (Universal Forum of the Cultures 2004) make us wonder if it will serve, as it pretends, to praise the fertile connivance among different people and the necessity and possibility to create equalitarian frames for surpassing the differences without deny them, or if it will know denounce abuses and inequalities that will happen in front of it. The project looks too loaded of institutional compromises and urban and private properties implications for not seeing it as submitted to plans of the city promotion for tourists and investors and politic self-legitimation face to its own citizenship.

by Stefan Christoff - CKUT Radio Montreal Sat Jul 03, 2004 05:50 christoff at resist dot ca 00 514 398 6788

------------------
Listen to a one hour documentary produced at CKUT Radio in Montreal, which explores the ongoing indigenous struggle on the Mohawk territory of Kanehsatake. In recent months the indigenous community of Kanehsatake, located just outside of Montreal, Quebec has been a focal point for indigenous self-determination struggles in North America (Turtle Island).

This 1 hour documentary highlights the recent developments of the political struggle of Kanehsatake, focusing on the ongoing efforts of Kanehsatake community members to resist a possible multi-police force invasion, combined of Provincial, Federal and Kanehsatake police.

The community of Kanehsatake's resistance to this invasion and implementation of a largely unpopular Mohawk policing agreement, is viewed by many in Kahehsatake as an attack on indigenous self-determination. The documentary begins with speeches which were given at a solidarity rally held in Kanehsatake on May 20th, the rally brought together Mohawk people and supporters from across Quebec and Ontario.

To listen / download the documentary on Kanehsatake visit:
http://www.radio.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/1821.php

To read an in-depth article about Kanehsatake visit:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=5556

by redjade Sat Jul 03, 2004 13:08

American commanders acknowledge that military might alone cannot defeat the insurgency; in fact, the frequent use of force often spurs resistance by deepening ill will.

"This war cannot be won militarily," said Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division, which oversees a swath of the northern Sunni triangle slightly larger than the state of West Virginia. "It really does need a political and economic solution."

But the new government will find it tough to hammer out solutions to problems like high unemployment and lack of electricity any time soon. It will continue to come under attack, American troops will remain exposed, and the elections scheduled for January 2005 could be at risk. The Americans hope that the resistance will view the new government as legitimate, but insurgents are already assassinating Iraqi officials, and violence continues to inflame virtually every corner of the country.

by redjade Sat Jul 03, 2004 13:10

The black hood covering the faces of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib was known as la capuchi in Guatemalan and Salvadoran torture chambers. The metal bed frame to which the naked and hooded detainee was bound in a crucifix position at Abu Ghraib was la cama for a former Chilean patient who survived the U.S.-installed regime of General Augusto Pinochet. In her case, electrodes were attached to her arms, legs and genitalia, just as they were attached to the Iraqi detainee poised on a box, threatened with electrocution if he fell off. The Iraqi man bound naked on the ground with a leash attached to his neck, held by a smiling young American recruit reminds me of the son of peasant organizers who recounted his agonizing torture at the hands of the tonton macoutes, U.S.-backed Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier's right-hand thugs, in Port-au-Prince, in 1984.

The very act of photographing those tortured in Abu Ghraib to humiliate and silence parallels the experience of an American missionary, Sister Diana Ortiz, who was tortured in Guatemala in 1989. Before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus, she reported: "My hand was burned over 100 times with cigarettes. I was gang raped repeatedly. . . . My last few minutes in detention, I met Alejandro, whom the torturers referred to as their boss. He was tall and fair-skinned and spoke halting Spanish, with a thick American accent. His English was American, flawless, unaccented. When I asked him if he was American, his answer was evasive: 'Why do you want to know?' He reminded me that my torturers had made videotapes and taken photos of the parts of the torture I was most ashamed of. He said if I didn't forgive my torturers, he would have no choice but to release those photos and tapes to the press [Congressional Human Rights Caucus Briefing on Torture, June 25, 1988]."

The same sadistic choreography has taken place at the U.S. military base at Bagram in Afghanistan, where named witnesses informed The New York Times that detainees were stripped and hooded "with their arms raised and chained to the ceiling, their feet shackled."

This infernal landscape illustrates methods of torture consistent with U.S. military-intelligence teaching manuals. One example from the manuals produced by the U.S. Army's School of the Americas and declassified by the U.S. government, advises that in order to forcibly recruit spies, "The counterintelligence agent could cause the arrest of the employees' parents, imprison the employee, or give him a beating as part of the placement plan." It suggests that many other techniques could be used, limited only by the agent's imagination.

by redjade Sat Jul 03, 2004 13:19

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Several members of the House of Representatives have requested the United Nations (news - web sites) to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.

Recalling the long, drawn out process in the southern state, nine lawmakers, including four blacks and one Hispanic, sent a letter Thursday to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) asking that the international body "ensure free and fair elections in America," according to a statement issued by Texas representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who spearheaded the effort.

"As lawmakers, we must assure the people of America that our nation will not experience the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election," she said in the letter.

"This is the first step in making sure that history does not repeat itself," she added after requesting that the UN "deploy election observers across the United States" to monitor the November, 2004 election.

The lawmakers said in the letter that in a report released in June 2001, the US Commission on Civil Rights "found that the electoral process in Florida resulted in the denial of the right to vote for countless persons."

by redjade Sat Jul 03, 2004 13:22

Electoral Dysfunction 2.0

After Florida wrongly purged eligible voters from its rolls in 2000, several media organizations decided to follow up on how the state had fixed the problem this time around. But as they learned Thursday, little has changed.

In response to a media-led lawsuit filed in June, Circuit Judge Nikki Ann Clark overuled a state law that prevented the release of the state's controversial list of 47,763 suspected felons. Clark cited the state constitution as ensuring the viewing of public records as a fundamental right:

--
"Whether the public chooses to inspect or copy [the list] is not the choice of the governmental agency which has custody of the record. It is the choice of the person who has requested access."
--

After thus inspecting the names on the list, newspapers found what many have long suspected - thousands of voters who shouldn't be listed, with about three times as many Democrats as Republicans cited.

The Miami Herald (registration required) conducted a further investigation of the list and found that 2,119 listed citizens - 62 percent of them Democrats and only 20 percent Republicans - had their rights to vote formally restored by the state's clemency process and should not be listed.

by :-) - exhausted. but very proud of the achievements we've made :-) as if Sat Jul 03, 2004 17:43

Lovely country. Very flat. Very rich. Loads of Bicycles, Don't really have good diet. Did badly in wars last century, before that very efficiently beat the Brits a few times. People can be very tall but there is no prejudice against the short ones. Into luxury markets- you smoke it they do it. It sparkles they do it too. Very enlightened in some ways, very weird in others. They invented the kick start buzzing caffeine type capitalism which was very bad. They said sorry however. They donated the seeds for a good part of the Palestinian oranges and strawberries. Their state contributes much more in non strings attached aid to the third world than Ireland, the UK, the USA or most of the EU. One of their guys is Chief of the Anti Terror Embryionic Euro-spook thing.

EU Presidency is now transferred from us to the Dutch.

http://www.eu2004.nl
http://www.indymedia.nl

by Phuq Hedd Sat Jul 03, 2004 20:38

Robert Fisk - The Independent / Counterpunch reports that a US admiral dressed in civilan clothing tried to censor the sound out of CNN, CBS videorecordings of the initial hearings into the crimes of the US-created war-criminal Saddam Hussein

by redjade Sun Jul 04, 2004 12:09

The U.S. general who was in charge of Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison said on Saturday she had met an Israeli interrogator in Iraq, a claim Israel denied but which was likely to irritate many in the Arab world.

Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was responsible for military police guarding all Iraqi jails at the time prisoners were abused by U.S. troops there, told the BBC she met the Israeli at a Baghdad interrogation center.

by redjade Sun Jul 04, 2004 13:02

DECORAH, Iowa - The president of a company that owns movie theaters in Iowa and Nebraska is refusing to show director Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."

R.L. Fridley, owner of Des Moines-based Fridley Theatres, says the controversial documentary incites terrorism.

Fridley said in an e-mail message to company managers that the company does not "play political propaganda films from either the right or the left."

"Our country is in a war against an enemy who would destroy our way of life, our culture and kill our people," Fridley wrote. "These barbarians have shown through (the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001) and the recent beheadings that they will stop at nothing. I believe this film emboldens them and divides our country even more."

by redjade Sun Jul 04, 2004 13:05

The Pentagon has already awarded Halliburton Co., the controversial military contractor, deals worth up to $18 billion for its work in Iraq.  But now former Halliburton insiders have come forward with new allegations of massive waste of taxpayer money.

[....]

DeYoung audited accounts for Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR.  She claims there was no effort to hold down costs because all costs were passed on directly to taxpayers.  She repeatedly complained to superiors of waste and fraud.  The company's response, according to deYoung was: "We can be as dumb and stupid as we want in the first year of a war, nobody’s going to care."

DeYoung produced documents detailing alleged waste even on routine services: $50,000 a month for soda, at $45 a case; $1 million a month to clean clothes — or $100 for each 15-pound bag of laundry.

"That money could have been used to take care of soldiers," she said.

DeYoung also claims people were paid to do nothing.  Mike West says he was one of them.  Paid $82,000 a year to be a labor foreman in Iraq, West claims he never had any laborers to supervise. "They said just log 12 hours a day and walk around and look busy," he said. "OK, so we did."

by tickertape. - (come some day the aliens will fry your house won't they?) Sun Jul 04, 2004 15:34

a message from the President.
Mr Bush. the Second.
SPQW.

http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/holidays/july4/message04.htm

by minging vanjans Sun Jul 04, 2004 15:38

Washington
Jefferson
Adams
and try and reconcile all that with
Wookie
Bush
Dubya.

apparantly the greatest export of the USA was it's constitution.

they do a yearly site of jingoism of supremacism.

just like it seems.

by pat c Sun Jul 04, 2004 19:40

FBI questions genetics researchers and more colleagues of Buffalo art professor

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has questioned two University of Pittsburgh genetics researchers in connection with a grand jury probe into possible violations of a US anti-bioterrorism law by a Buffalo art professor. Meanwhile, two more subpoenas have been issued in the case, one to a former student of the professor and the other to the publisher of five books the professor wrote with colleagues.

Steven Kurtz, an associate professor at the Buffalo campus of the State University of New York, is being investigated because police noticed Petri dishes and a mobile DNA extraction laboratory in his home that he used in his most recent project, according to his lawyer and some supporters, after he called 911 early May 11 to report that his 45-year-old wife had died overnight.

by pat c Sun Jul 04, 2004 19:54

Nestled in the heart of the Mourne Mountains, the ancient and the modern
have been cast in stone in memory of Princess Diana.

(Iwonder how long this
heap of crap wil last? Anyone fancy a spot of mountaineering? ;> Pat)

The traditional craft of stonemasonry has been combined with innovative
hi-tech facilities in Northern Ireland to produce the intricate stonework
for the Princess of Wales' memorial fountain.


S McConnell and Sons in Kilkeel, where the 545 pieces for the ?.6m memorial
were cut, claim to have the most technologically advanced stonecutting
facilities in Europe.
But that does not underestimate the mammoth task involved in making the
designer's dream a reality.

Managing Director Norman McKibben told BBC News Online the project was the
equivalent of making a feature film in one week.

"It had never been done before," he said.