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WWW TVSet.org

SPY AGENCY FAKED KEY VIETNAM WAR DATA
[One of America's spy agencies faked key intelligence used to justify its intervention in the Vietnam War, it was disclosed yesterday. But the revelation was kept secret by the National Security Agency, partly because of fears that it would boost criticism of the intelligence services over the war in Iraq.]
Link to Story...

CHARLIE STEPHENS SPEAKS AT PORTLAND PEAK OIL
[Charley Stephens, Serior Oregon Policy Analyst, spoke to Portland Peak Oil for over two hours on Peak Oil and also on Oregon's state-level preparation for Peak Oil.]
Link to MP3...

CO-HO E. DOES THE BIG EASY
[Co-Ho E. has gone to New Orleans with Code Pink volunteers to help assist disaster victims and to help them recover from the triple-disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita and Bush Administration incompetence. Co-Ho E. is sending to TVSet, multimedia reports from the scene of recovery efforts.]
Co-Ho E. Report #1 (October 27, 2005)...
Co-Ho E. Report #2 (October 28, 2005)...

CHENEY'S CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST
[The coming months are likely to see senior Bush administration officials frog-marched out of the White House to be booked, unless the president moves swiftly to fire Fitzgerald – a distinct possibility.]
Link to Story...

CHENEY CABAL HIJACKED US FOREIGN POLICY
[In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.]
Link to Story...

SECRETS, EVASIONS AND CLASSIFIED REPORTS
[With no weapons of mass destruction having been found in Iraq and new questions being raised about the case for war, Libby assured Miller that day that the still-classified document, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), contained even stronger evidence that would support the White House’s conclusions about Iraq’s weapons programs, according to Miller’s account.]
Link to Story...

A CIA COVER BLOWN, A WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED
[WASHINGTON — Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq...]
Link to Story...

THE U.S. IS ALWAYS TWO WEEKS AWAY FROM THE DRAFT...
[Information On How To Establish Consentious Objector Status.]
Link to Story...

"TOGETHER WE ARE MANY, WE CAN NOT BE DEFEATED!"
[This Ukranian song that helped inspire a popular uprising that forced a re-vote and gave the people a fair election. The people of the Ukraine showed the world that elections mattered and that every vote actually would be counted. The song has been set to images of the popular uprising (sub-titles are included).]
Download Hi-Quality video, then view in Windows Media Player (11.7 MBytes)
Download Medium Quality video, then view in Windows Media Player (4.1 MBytes)

NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE IS DOA
[Scott Ritter, former marine, former weapons inspector, correctly assessed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. He tried to tell the country, even going so far as to make a documentary film ("Shifting Sands") that attested to the fact that the weapons were destroyed, months before President Bush took the United States, under false pretenses, into an illegal war. He also went public and warned America about the deadly situation that could result from invading Iraq. The very situation our military now finds itself enmired in. Here Scott Ritter speaks on the Bush lunacy of substituting weapons technology for diplomacy. Is anyone paying attention? - JW]
Link to Story...

1987: THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA
[John Stockwell is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. Stockwell's book In Search of Enemies, published by W.W. Norton 1978, is an international best-seller.]
Link to Story...

IRAQ AND THE DRESDEN OPTION
[What the military would have done in Vietnam ... remains unclear; they never offered the government a coherent alternative plan ... short of the Dresden option (an option retested in November at Falluja in Iraq).]
Link to Story...

TSUNAMI DISASTER AID, THE GRAPHS
[Three Pictures worth 3000 words]
Link to Story...

HISTORY WILL SHOW U.S. LUSTED AFTER OIL
[The World's Largest Petrolium Consumer Is Also The Most Heavily Armed Nation]
Link to Story...

TSUNAMI!
[Tsunami Results From Largest Earthquake in Fourty Years]
Link to Story...

THEY TRIED TO WARN US
[there were so many warnings—from both our friends and enemies alike—often specifically suggesting the targets or method of attack. In at least one case, the warnings actually mentioned hijackers by name. This type of communication between intelligence agencies normally occurs in secret, so one can only wonder what additional warnings or details were provided to us that have never been made public.]
Link to Story...

KEVIN SITES DESCRIBES SHOOTING IN MOSQUE
["Since the shooting in the mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well."]
Link to Story...

CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN
["She said she was sent to help me and to train me," Perkins said. "She is extremely beautiful, sensual, seductive, intelligent. Her job was to convince me to become an economic hit man, holding out these three drugs - sex, drugs and money. And then she wanted to let me know that I was getting into a dirty business. And I shouldn't go off on my first assignment, which was going to be Indonesia, and start doing this unless I knew that I was going to continue doing it, and once I was in I was in for life."]
Link to Story...

NEWS FROM THE FRONT
[When I hear bombs falling around my neighbourhood, I keep thinking - any moment now, I could be killed. It is worst during the night, when the bombardment is most intense. If a big bomb lands somewhere nearby, you often hear crying and wailing afterwards. It is a very strange feeling because in between the screaming, there is the sound of more missiles flying. That is when I think - I could be next. Another sound you hear during the bombing is that of prayers. People pray loudly because they are so scared. Sometimes, you hear people say quite unusual things - they improvise, making up their own prayers.]
Link to Story...

Daily Mirror: "GOD HELP AMERICA"
[THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world. This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.]
Link to Story...

WAS ELECTION STOLEN? EXIT POLL GRAPHIC
[Substantial Differences Between Exit Polls And Machine Tallys]
Link to Graphic...

ARUNDHATI ROY WINS SYDNEY PEACE PRIZE
[The good news is that the advance party began the climb some time ago. They're already half way up. Thousands of activists across the world have been hard at work preparing footholds and securing the ropes to make it easier for the rest of us. There isn't only one path up. There are hundreds of ways of doing it. There are hundreds of battles being fought around the world that need your skills, your minds, your resources. No battle is irrelevant. No victory is too small.]
Link to Story...

OSAMA BIN LADEN: CNN vs. AL JAZEERA
[CNN version printed in blue, Al Jazeera printed in balck]
Link to Story...

380 TONS OF EXPLOSIVES MISSING IN IRAQ
[The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."]
Link to Story...

WITHOUT A DOUBT
[The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."]
Link to Story...

LAPPÉ'S HOMAGE TO WANGARI MAATHAI
[Several prominent Norwegians have questioned the Nobel Committee for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai. Why honor environmental activism in an era when war, terrorism and nuclear proliferation are even more urgent problems?]
Link to Story...

CHINA'S THIRST FOR OIL
[Iran supplies 13.6 percent of Beijing's oil imports, and China is competing with several other countries to develop its big Azadegan oil field. China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), in partnership with Shell, is also bidding for substantial flows from Iran's oil.]
Link to Story...

7-28-04: THE 'REAL DEAL' ON THE DARFUR CRISIS
[The deepening humanitarian disaster in the Darfur region of Sudan has given media hacks and western politicians the chance to put their feigned moral outrage into overdrive. They see the opportunity to justify a military intervention in a key oil producing country that would otherwise be all too clearly recognised as an imperialist venture.]
Link to Story...

DARFUR AID WORKERS SEE 'WRITING ON THE WALL'
[Citing international aid workers, an October 3 article in the British Observer newspaper challenges the US government’s characterization of the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan as “genocide.”]
Link to Story...

CHINA FEARS CUT-OFF OF SUDAN OIL
[China is trying to stop the United Nations imposing sanctions on Sudan over the crisis in the Darfur regionto protect its oil imports from the country, say western diplomats.]
Link to Story...

CHINA'S INTEREST IN SUDAN'S OIL
[China is trying to stop the United Nations imposing sanctions on Sudan over the crisis in the Darfur regionto protect its oil imports from the country, say western diplomats.]
Link to Story...

MARK TWAIN: THE WAR PRAYER
[...help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-- (more)]
Link to Story...

US DEBATES MILITARY STRIKES ON 'NUCLEAR IRAN'
[Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think-tank, says that with "enough intelligence and spadework", the US could "do a good job" of slowing Iran's programme for a while.]
Link to Story...

US'S IMPASSE OVER A 'NUCLEAR' IRAN
[In the final analysis, the current policy impasse in Washington is temporary. It may even be spurious in the sense that the Bush administration only creates an impression of remaining undecided about a "nuclear" Iran. That appearance is also misleading. Choices regarding Iran have already been made. The only necessity is to await the decision of US voters on November 2.]
Link to Story...

'FOLLY OF EMPIRE' OFFERS CRITIQUE OF U.S. IMPERIALISM
[When U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, some American policymakers were unprepared for the intensity of the resistance that ensued. John Judis' latest book, The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, finds the postwar developments in Iraq entirely unsurprising.]
Link to Story...

BLOOD AND OIL: 'Fresh Air' Interview
[Michael Klare maintains that the US military is being converted into a global oil protection service.]
Link to MP3 of interview...

LAWSUIT UNCOVERS NEW BUSH GUARD RECORDS
[In May 1972, Bush was given permission to move to Alabama temporarily to work on a US Senate campaign, with the provision that he do equivalent training with a unit in Montgomery. But Bush's service records do not show him logging any service in Alabama until October of that year. And even that service is in doubt. Since the Globe first reported Bush's spotty attendance record in May 2000, no one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973. While Bush was in Alabama, he was removed from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical in July 1972. On May 1, 1973, Bush's superior officers wrote that they could not complete his annual performance review because he had not been observed at the Houston base during the prior 12 months.]
Link to Story...

GEORGE W. BUSH'S MISSING YEAR
[The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father. Did they see him do any National Guard service? "Good Lord, no."]
Link to Story...

G.W.BUSH MILITARY RECORDS
[The following documents were obtained using the processes outlined in the Freedom Of Information Act]
Link to Story...

ISRAELI SPY IN THE PENTAGON?
[Related links are updated daily...]
Link to Story...

FBI INVESTIGATES DOD FOR ISRAELI SPYS
[The FBI has intensified its investigation of senior members of what was formerly known as the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans on suspicion that one of them passed highly classified U.S. military information to the government of Israel, according to federal law enforcement officials.]
Link to Story...

JOHN KERRY'S SPEECH TO THE U.S.SENATE, 1971
Hear audio of John Kerry speech...
[I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.]
Link to Story...

TRY CONNECTING THESE DOTS
[re-election period … pre-election plot … pre-election threats": these rolled off National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's lips no less than seven times Sunday on CNN's Late Edition as she discussed the likely timing of a terrorist attack. She stayed on message. Dr. Rice said the government had actually "picked up discussion" relating to "trying to do something in the pre-election period," and added that information on the threat came from "active multiple sources."]
Link to Story...

MEMO: 'TERROR' ELECTION BARRING VOTERS COULD STAND
[Arecently unearthed government memorandum prepared for the U.S. Congress addresses the power of the administration to postpone elections. But more notably, it reviews actions the executive branch might take that could preclude large numbers of Americans from casting a ballot in the coming presidential vote. The memorandum highlights that should such disenfranchisement occur, the Nov. 2 election could well remain legally intact and binding. Concerns have arisen that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is actively seeking to manipulate the presidential vote, using exaggerated terror threats to provide the political smokescreen for this.]
Link to Story...

THE WARLORDS OF AMERICA
[Most of the US's recent wars were launched by Democratic presidents. Why expect better of Kerry? The debate between US liberals and conservatives is a fake; Bush may be the lesser evil.]
Link to Story...

THE POST ON WMDS: AN INSIDE STORY
["People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media's coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war," Downie said.]
Link to Story...

ORIGINAL SONG BY JOHN KELLERMANN: "FOX IN THE HENHOUSE"
[A "Fair and Balanced" comment on Rupert Murdock's media mouthpiece (Fox Television) that is, in function, a propaganda conduit for the Republican party. (See the new video "OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism"]
Link to Song...

MEDIA COMPLICITY: NEW YOUR TIMES
[In his now-famous editors' note of May 26, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, dodged many of the central questions about the paper's highly misleading and highly influential coverage of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but promised to get to the bottom of the WMD controversy in the months ahead.]
Link to Story...

GOVERNMENT INSIDER HELPED WMD STORY
[By using his contacts, R. James Woolsey provided a pipeline to the Pentagon -- that bypassed the CIA -- for Maj. Mohammad Harith's information. For years, the CIA had been highly distrustful of the exile group that produced Harith.]
Link to Story...

LETTER TO TVSET.ORG REGARDING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
["When I called the domestic violence hotline and asked what I could do to prevent you from hurting Claire any more than you already have, they listened quietly to the horror stories of name-calling, torn tendons, chunks of torn-out hair, broken feet, the host of other “accidental” injuries, but mostly, the slow murder of her soul."]
Link to Story...

INTELLIGENCE REPORT:'THE DOTS NEVER EXISTED'
[The more he read, the more uneasy he became. In early February 2003 Colin Powell was putting the finishing touches on his speech to the United Nations spelling out the case for war in Iraq. Across the Potomac River, a Pentagon intelligence analyst going over the facts in the speech was alarmed at how shaky that case was. Powell's presentation relied heavily on the claims of one especially dubious Iraqi defector, dubbed "Curve Ball" inside the intel community. A self-proclaimed chemical engineer who was the brother of a top aide to Iraqi National Congress chief Ahmad Chalabi, Curve Ball had told the German intelligence service that Iraq had a fleet of seven mobile labs used to manufacture deadly biological weapons. But nobody inside the U.S. government had ever actually spoken to the informant—except the Pentagon analyst, who concluded the man was an alcoholic and utterly useless as a source. He recalled that Curve Ball had shown up for their only meeting nursing a "terrible hangover."]
Link to Story...

WILL THE 9/11 COMMISSIONERS CAVE?
[Will the Sept. 11 Commission follow the example set by Congress and the Intelligence Community and let itself be intimidated by Vice President Dick Cheney?]
Link to Story...

HEAD OF SHELL OIL ADMITS PLANET IN DANGER
[The head of one of the world's biggest oil companies has admitted that the threat of climate change makes him "really very worried for the planet".]
Link to Story...

ONE MILLION 'SPOILED' BLACK VOTES
[Herein lies the problem. An apartheid vote-counting system is far from politically neutral. Given that more than 90 percent of the black electorate votes Democratic, had all the "spoiled" votes been tallied, Gore would have taken Florida in a walk, not to mention fattening his popular vote total nationwide. It's not surprising that the First Brother's team, informed of impending rejection of black ballots, looked away and whistled.]
Link to Story...

FRANK TRUTH: CONSTITUTION TRASHED
[Who is defending the document that begins with " We the People." Our Constitution. Will it be the lawyers? Will it be the nine judges that put our current leader in place? Will it be the corporations that so generously fund our political process?]
Link to Editorial...

ISRAEL'S PLAN B: THE KURDS
[In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the war’s most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency—a campaign of bombings and assassinations—later that summer. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urged the United States to seal the nine-hundred-mile-long border, at whatever cost.]
Link to Story...

TONIGHT ON TVSet: "MYTH AMERICA"
["Myth America" exposes the lag of major American institutions behind the demands of the 21st century and the reinforcement of this lag by the media and schools that miseducate the public. The author shows how the priorities of these institutions are undermining rather than achieving ecological sustainability and social justice. Corporate power is driving public policy and Americans are propagandized in the name of education to believe that capitalism is the basis for a democratic society. Foreign policy then projects self-righteous myths to justify world dominance and threatens the future of humanity. The search for strategies to gain public control of these dangerous currents is interwoven throughout the book.]
Link to "Myth America"...

FROM A TVSET READER: A FATHER'S ESSAY ON JOINING THE MILITARY
[Far too many times our government has lied to us about the reasons for going to war and therefore you should be damn sure you have all the facts necessary to make an informed decision before you put your butt on the line. I am writing this not because I’m unpatriotic or anti-American but because I am a true patriot and not afraid to speak my mind. I criticize our government because just as a good parent criticizes and disciplines their children so they’ll mature into honorable men and women, I criticize the government in the hope that it too can learn from its mistakes.]
Link to Story...

CHALMERS JOHNSON: OUR FIRST VICTORY WAS [The Election of] ZAPATERO
[The United States faces a real crisis. It's not just the military failure of Bush's policies in Iraq or the discrediting of our armed forces and intelligence agencies as corrupt, incompetent, and criminal. It is above all our international isolation and disgrace because of our contempt for the rule of law. Article six of the U. S. Constitution says, in part, "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." The Geneva Conventions of 1949 covering the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians in wartime are treaties the U.S. government promoted, signed, and ratified. They are therefore the supreme law of the land. Neither the President nor the Secretary of Defense has the authority to alter them or to choose whether or not to abide by them. President Bush's invention of such hitherto unknown categories as "illegal combatant," "evil-doer," or "bad guy" and his claim of a unilateral right to imprison such persons indefinitely, without charging them or giving them access to the courts and legal counsel, is a usurpation of the Constitution. It is precisely why the United States should have ratified the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. It is intended to deal not only with genuine terrorists and people like Saddam Hussein but also with the kind of crimes President Bush has committed.]
Link to Story...

NADER INTERVIEWED BY PAT BUCHANAN
["...we have been supporting despots, dictators, and oligarchs in all those states for a variety of purposes. We supported Saddam Hussein. He was our anti-Communist dictator until 1990. It’s also cultural; they see corporate culture as abandoning the restraints on personal behavior dictated by their religion and culture. Our corporate pornography and anything-goes values are profoundly offensive to them. The other thing is that we are supporting the Israeli military regime with billions of dollars and ignoring both the Israeli peace movement, which is very substantial, and the Palestinian peace movement. They see a nuclear-armed Israel that could wipe out the Middle East in a weekend if it wanted to."]
Link to Story...

GEN. SANCHEZ GRANTED WIDE LATITUDE AT PRISON
[Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents.]
Link to Story... (WARNING: Graphic Images)

TERRORISM DEBACLES IN THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION
[Many Americans are unaware of the dark side of U.S. foreign policy’s past. Some conservatives think that Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy began and ended with the thwarting of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, there were many other U.S. actions during his reign that did not reflect favorably on the U.S. government’s devotion to human rights.]
Link to Story...

FULL TEXT OF D.O.J. MEMO ASHCROFT WOULDN'T RELEASE (08/01/2002)
[PDF Copy Available]
Link to Memo...

ASHCROFT WON'T RELEASE OR DISCUSS TORTURE MEMO
[U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, warned that he might be risking a contempt citation from Congress, told lawmakers he won't release or discuss memoranda that news reports say offered justification for torturing suspected terrorists.]
Link to Story...

RATIONALIZING TORTURE
[THE WORST thing about a recently disclosed March 2003 "Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism" is not any tenuous connection to the humiliation and abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The report was produced in response to a request from the Central Command general in charge of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was meant to delineate exactly which harsh interrogation techniques would be permissible for inmates there.]
Link to Story...

FULL TEXT OF PENTAGON MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE (03/06/2003)
[Both PDF And HTML Copies Are Available]
Link to Memo...

SEXUAL HUMILIATION
[In the weeks since photographs of naked detainees set off the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, military officials have portrayed the sexual humiliation captured in the images as the isolated acts of a rogue night shift. But forced nudity of prisoners was pervasive in the military intelligence unit of Abu Ghraib, so much so that soldiers later said they had not seen "the whole nudity thing," as one captain called it, as abusive or out of the ordinary.]
Link to Story...

GREG PALAST REMEMBERS RONALD REAGAN
[In Chaguitillo, all night long, the farmers stayed awake to guard their kids from attack from Reagan's Contra terrorists. The farmers weren't even Sandinistas, those 'Commies' that our cracked-brained President told us were 'only a 48-hour drive from Texas.' What the hell would they want with Texas, anyway? Nevertheless, the farmers, and their families, were Ronnie's targets.]
Link to Story...

BUSH'S ERRATIC BEHAVIOR WORRIES WHITE HOUSE AIDES
[In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”]
Link to Story...

BUSH HIRES DEFENSE ATTOURNEY (THE IMPLICATIONS)
[Recently, the White House acknowledged that President Bush is talking with, and considering hiring, a non-government attorney, James E. Sharp. Sharp is being consulted, and may be retained, regarding the current grand jury investigation of the leak revealing the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert operative.]
Link to Story...

DOWN GOES TENET
[Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran CIA analyst said "It is pretty clear this resignation came for two reasons. The first is the failed policy in Iraq. The cry for accountability and resignations has reached a din here in Washington D.C. Things have gone from bad to worse, the White House was looking for a sacrificial lamb, and Tenet being the good soldier he is, took the fall. An ancillary reason," continued McGovern, "is the Pat Roberts report coming out of the Senate Intelligence Committee next week. The report excoriates Tenet and the entire intelligence community for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You need to remember that Roberts is the archetypal GOP stalwart. The whole name of the game now is to blame the intelligence community and protect the White House."]
Link to Story...

US INTERVENTION IN VENEZUELA
[As with Iraq, the most respected newspapers are being used to justify overt US intervention in Venezuela. Unlike Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez was democratically elected and has one of the best human rights records anywhere ... yet we hear constant references to him as dictator, demagogue, populist.]
Link to Story...

US stance on condoms slammed
[American President George Bush's administration has been accused of using "pseudoscience" to dispute the efficacy of condoms in preventing the spread of Aids. While the United States has pledged $15-billion (about R100-billion) to fight Aids in Africa, it has insisted that a third of the money be used for sexual abstinence and monogamy programmes.]
Link to Story...

BUSH v. CIA
[Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq. Their damning testimony has prompted Bush to contact an outside lawyer for legal advice because evidence increasingly points to his involvement in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak. ]
Link to Story...

BLIND INTO BAGHDAD
[The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge. The inside story of a historic failure...]
Link to Story...

CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS BEYOND REACH OF LAW?
[The U.S. civilian interrogators questioning prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq work not under a military contract but on one from the Department of the Interior, a bureaucratic twist that could complicate any effort to hold them criminally responsible for abuse of detainees or other offenses.]
Link to Story...

ISRAELI AGENTS BELIEVED INVOLVED IN ABU GHRAIB
[The "contractors" are said to be veterans of Israel's domestic intelligence unit, Shin Bet, as well as the more famous international intelligence agency, the Mossad.]
Link to Story...

SONG: "SORRY ('BOUT THE PRISONERS)"
[Hillarious song by Wayne Lammers]. This song, with remarkable detail, highlights the horror of the Abu Graib prison tortures and President Bush's tepid appology. As heard on Air America Radio.
Link to MP3 (3 megs)...

WHISTLE BLOWER UNDER ATTACK BY MILITARY
[A witness who told ABCNEWS he believed the military was covering up the extent of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison was today stripped of his security clearance and told he may face prosecution because his comments were "not in the national interest."]
Link to Story...

THE GENEVA CONVENTION
[Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest. Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity. Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited.]
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WHITE HOUSE MEMO WHICH OPENED THE GATES OF HELL
[1/25/02 - Alberto Gonzales (White House Counsel) Memo to President Bush]
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ARMY, CIA WANT TORTURE TRUTHS EXPOSED
[...three major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt and abuse by them, it's payback time. Those three institutions are: The United States Army, the Central Intelligence Agency and the old, relatively moderate but highly experienced Republican leadership in the United States Senate. None of those groups is chopped liver: Taken together they comprise a devastating Grand Slam.]
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THE ROOTS OF TORTURE
[But as a small group of legislators watched the images flash by in a small, darkened hearing room in the Rayburn Building last week, a sickened silence descended. There were 1,800 slides and several videos, and the show went on for three hours. The nightmarish images showed American soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison forcing Iraqis to masturbate. American soldiers sexually assaulting Iraqis with chemical light sticks. American soldiers laughing over dead Iraqis whose bodies had been abused and mutilated. There was simply nothing to say. "It was a very subdued walk back to the House floor," said Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "People were ashen."]
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THE WAR CRIMES ACT OF 1996 (It's the law)
[Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.]
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THE GRAY ZONE
[The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.]
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GENERAL BOYKIN TIED TO POW CASE
[The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas.]
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ORIGINAL SONG BY JOHN KELLERMANN: "WHO'LL MAKE IT STOP?"
[Original song by John Kellermann: Adresses the shocking revelations of torture in Abu Ghraib Prison. Mr. Kellermann remembers what the President, the Military, The House and the Senate have forgotten - this is not the result of a few "bad apples." The United States has a long history of human rights abuse, as pointed out in later verses of his song.]
Download MP3 "Who'll Make It Stop?" (High-Quality 2Mb)...
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ROW OVER ANTI-ISRAEL ART DISPLAY
[The Melbourne City Council is likely to review public art funding policy after a row broke out yesterday over an artwork in a Flinders Street shopfront. Jewish groups and the State Opposition yesterday criticised the work, funded by the council, as deeply offensive and probably in breach of racial vilification laws.]
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TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB PRISON
[In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.]
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LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH FROM FORMER U.S. DIPLOMATS
[We former U.S. diplomats applaud our 52 British colleagues who recently sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair criticizing his Middle East policy and calling on Britain to exert more influence over the United States. As retired foreign service officers we care deeply about our nation's foreign policy and U.S. credibility in the world.]
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"WHY WE DIDN'T REMOVE SADDAM"
[Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.]
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BLAIR GETS NEGATIVE CRITIQUE ON IRAQ POLICY
[In a rebuke to British and American policy in the Middle East, 52 former ambassadors and senior government officials on Monday criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair for his unflinching support for the Bush administration's approach to post-war Iraq and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.]
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1,500,000 WOMEN MARCH ON WASHINGTON
[Photographs From The Largest Washington DC Political Rally In US History]
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EXERPTS FROM "PLAN OF ATTACK"
[Bob Woodward's New Book About The Bush Administration's Run Up To War]
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SECURITY CONTRACTORS = MERCINARIES
[Company executives argue that their services have freed up thousands of troops for offensive combat operations. But some military leaders are openly grumbling that the lure of $500 to $1,500 a day is siphoning away some of their most experienced Special Operations people at the very time their services are most in demand.]
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MERCINARIES ARE NOW LARGEST COALITION FORCE, AFTER US MILITARY
[In other wars, such as in Africa's colonial conflicts during the late 1950s and early 1960, these civilian contractors were simply called mercenaries. In today's more politically correct world, the term mercenary has been sidelined for the more acceptable PC "civilian contractor."]
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PRE-9/11 FILES SHOW WARNINGS WERE MORE DIRE AND PERSISTENT
[The new information produced by the commission so far has led 6 of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission."]
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USDA REJECTS PRIVATE TESTS FOR MAD COW
[To Creekstone Farms manager Bill Fielding, his company's idea does not seem unreasonable. In order to satisfy its very important customers in Japan — customers the company needs to survive — Creekstone wants to test for mad cow disease every one of the cattle it slaughters]
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DEATHS OF SCORES OF MERCENARIES NOT REPORTED
[At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq, some of them earning $1 000 (about R6 300) a day. But their companies rarely acknowledge their losses unless - like the four American murdered and mutilated in Fallujah three weeks ago - their deaths are already public knowledge.]
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WHY DO POLITICIANS SEEM LIKE FLESH ROBOTS?
[O'Neill was told to answer the first question by praising the President's economic stimulus proposals, "no matter the question." "You need to interject the President's message"]
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VISA FOR SAUDIS (ONLY) STREAMLINED FOUR MONTHS PRIOR TO 9/11
[The Visa Express program, put in place just four months before the attacks, allowed the three hijackers to arrange their visas through a State Department-designated travel agency, the official says. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers obtained their U.S. travel visas in Saudi Arabia.]
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ORIGINAL SONG BY JOHN KELLERMANN: "THE NEW PEARL HARBOR"
[Original song by John Kellermann: Like a jetliner loaded with fuel, this song flies straight into the media's sanitized story of 9/11.]
Download MP3 "New Pearl Harbor" (2Mb)...
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"SAY IT AGAIN CONDI..."
[I Believe The Title Was, "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The United States"]
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DARK SUSPICIONS ABOUT 9/11
[President's secret briefing (PDB) noted pre-9/11 "pattern of suspicious activity"]
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PRESIDENTIAL DAILY BRIEF, AUGUST 6,2001
["Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US"]
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IRAQIS DO NOT WANT US
[The War's One Simple Truth]
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REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
["[Sadr's] Capture May Unleash Far More Violence From His Supporters"]
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FOSSIL-FUEL DEPENDENCY
[Gasoline prices have reached their highest mark ever in the United States -- just as oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell has slashed its petroleum reserve estimates by 20 percent, after a monumental accounting scandal. While soaring prices at the pump have the public worried about another 1970s- style oil crisis, waiting in line might ultimately be the least of our concerns. An increasing number of prominent petroleum geologists -- including many former oil company employees -- have warned that official estimates of available global oil reserves are dangerously exaggerated.]
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CONDI RICE'S OTHER WAKE-UP CALL
[Richard Clarke was not the only national security expert who warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials about terrorist threats before 9/11. Former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado also directly told senior Bush officials loudly and clearly that, in his words, "The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming."]
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JOHN W. DEAN: WORSE THAN WATERGATE
["...what the world opinion is, is irrelevant to them. What the Americans' opinion, other than their base, is irrelevant. They're on their own wavelength, and not listening. And they're men of zeal, while I think in their hearts they believe they're doing the right thing. This is the most dangerous kinda situation. When you move in secrecy and you're not taking outside advice, when you get that bunker mentality, which I'm sure you saw in the Johnson administration, we saw in the Nixon White House. This is when you make bad decisions."]
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MERCENARIES 'R' U.S.
[Private Pentagon contractors are paying soldiers of fortune from Chile and South Africa up to $4,000 per month for stints in Iraq.]
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BUSH WHITE HOUSE ON THE DEFENSIVE
[Two career government officials have courageously challenged the secretive Bush administration's credibility on crucial matters affecting every American.]
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FBI TRANSLATOR BLOWS WHISTLE ON CONDI
[A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.]
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CHINA: U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD , 2003
[The United States is a country plagued most seriously by violence and crimes. According to the statistical figures released in June 2003 by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a total of 11.9 million criminal cases were reported in 2002 in the United States, including homicides, rapes, robbery and theft. Of these cases, 19,940 cases were reported in Detroit, where 2,073 people committed crimes in every 100,000 people. In Baltimore, where 2,055 people committed crimes in every 100,000 people. With regard to personal offenses, cases of murders and rapes rose by 0.8 percent, and 4.0 percent, respectively, over 2002(see The Sun, USA on June 18, 2003).]
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DANIEL ELLSBERG: TELL ALL WHILE THE ISSUE IS HOT
["I think these people are heroes. They're really acting appropriately in a very dangerous situation," he said. "It's as if we are learning about the Tonkin Gulf a month or two later instead of years later."]
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ORIGINS OF WOLFOWITZ'S OVERCONFIDENCE
[Why did Wolfowitz trust his own judgment over the findings of the FBI and CIA? Why, similarly, did Wolfowitz blandly assume that post-Saddam Iraq would quickly get back on its feet? Slate editor Jacob Weiberg last fall offered a plausible explanation for the overconfidence of the Pentagon hawks (including Wolfowitz)...]
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IRAQ WAR LAUNCHED TO PROTECT ISRAEL?
[IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 – the 9/11 commission – in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.]
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NEW SONG BY ÉIREEN CULLEN (© Éireen Cullen 2004)
[In describing her lovely and sensitive song, "Beautiful Day", Ms. Cullen says, "The song was actually inspired by the Portland decision to legalize gay marriage. I was down there at the County building on Hawthorne the first day they were issuing marriage licenses here. I knew we were making history in Portland, and I wanted to be there to celebrate!"]
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JIMMY CARTER: 'THERE WAS NO NEED FOR THAT WAR'
[Jimmy Carter: Stirring up a hornet's nest]
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US COMPLICITY IN ISRAEL'S MISDEEDS
[The murder of Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheik Yassin, makes perfect sense as long as you understand Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's strategy. That strategy is to make peace impossible.]
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WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION SUPPRESSED DU STUDY
[An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been kept secret.]
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SILENT GENOCIDE
["After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced us all to death."]
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PENTAGON TELLS BUSH: CLIMATE CHANGE WILL DESTROY US
[A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.]
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BUSH INSIDER, PHILIP ZELIKOW GUIDES,
LIMITS AND SANITIZES 9/11 INQUIRY
[...it is Mr. Zelikow who decides which among the many people offering information will be interviewed. Efforts by the families to get the commission to hear from a raft of administration and intelligence-agency whistleblowers have been largely ignored at his behest. And it is Mr. Zelikow who oversees what investigative material the commissioners will be briefed on, and who decides the topics for the hearings.]
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WAR RATIONALE: VERSION 10.0
[various reasons given for the loss of life and treasure]
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BUSH FAILED TO EXECUTE THE REAL WAR ON TERRORISM
["The White House carefully manipulated public opinion, never quite lied, but gave the very strong impression that Iraq did it," he said, adding: "They did know better. We told them. The C.I.A. told them. The F.B.I. told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were avenging Sept. 11, when Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. I think for a commander in chief and a vice president to allow that to happen is unconscionable."]
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CLINTON: BUSH HAD URGENT WARNINGS ON AL-QAEDA
[Senior Clinton administration officials called to testify next week before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks say they are prepared to detail how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation — and how the new administration was slow to act. They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush's national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice's deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.]
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INTERVIEW: CHALMERS JOHNSON
["...we are dependent on the favors of East Asia and their governments to transfer capital to us on a daily basis in order to finance our huge federal deficit and trade deficit. If they ever decide the Euro looks like a better investment than the dollar, it’s over for the United States’ short, happy life as an empire."]
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THE UNMENTIONABLE SOURCE OF TERRORISM
[The source of much of this danger is Israel. A creation, then guardian of the west's empire in the Middle East, the Zionist state remains the cause of more regional grievance and sheer terror than all the Muslim states combined. Read the melancholy Palestinian Monitor on the Internet; it chronicles the equivalent of Madrid's horror week after week, month after month, in occupied Palestine. No front pages in the West acknowledge this enduring bloodbath, let alone mourn its victims. Moreover, the Israeli army, a terrorist organisation by any reasonable measure, is protected and rewarded in the west.]
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KAY: THE PRESIDENT BADLY NEEDS TO APOLOGISE
["There was no adult leadership at the top forcing a realistic assessment."]
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THE PINOCCHIO PRESIDENCY
[In these perilous times the president should be held accountable for his stewardship. He should run on his record. But what do we see from him and his campaign? First, a political ad that desecrates the memories of our dead at the World Trade Center, using flag-draped bodies as political props. Now we see an ad that racially profiles olive-skinned men as terrorists while mendaciously suggesting that the Democratic candidate and war hero John Kerry is soft on terrorism. Some have rightly made the connection between that ad and the infamous Willie Horton ad of the Bush/Dukakis campaign of 1988, an ad that exploited racial fear, but a better comparison might be with the negative ad run against triple amputee and Vietnam veteran, Max Cleland. In that one Cleland was made to appear as part of a trio whose other members were Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. When not running nasty ads, Bush's attack dogs are busy launching vicious attacks on the characters of those who would dare to point out where this administration has failed the American people. Who will soon forget Ann Coulter's two articles defaming Max Cleland? It's worth noting that not a single supporter of Bush had the decency to defend Cleland and criticize that smear. Instead Coulter's libel was widely circulated by conservatives. And just the other day, Max Boot, a neoconservative publicist who coined the "jodhpur and pith helmet" term to promote his imperialistic view of America's future, decided to smear former Air Force officer Karen Kwiatkowski, as well as retired CIA officer Ray McGovern and myself. These smears must be understood as part of the Bush campaign strategy of "slime and defend."]
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ORIGINAL SONG: "OPERATION SWEATSHOP"
[Original song by John Kellermann - A timely treatment of the recent Hatian coup, set to a wry tropical tune.]
Download MP3 "Operation Sweatshop" (800KB)...
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IRAQ: ONE MORE SUCH VICTORY AND WE ARE RUINED
[In my view, two primary objectives drove the U.S. invasion of Iraq: oil and its support for Israel.]
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US REVEALED TO BE SECRETLY FUNDING OPPONENTS OF CHAVEZ
[Washington's antipathy towards Mr Chavez is fuelled by his friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro and his open criticism of Washington-backed free market policies. But Venezuela is also America's fourth largest supplier of oil - something that gives Mr Chavez a degree of leverage but, at the same time, makes him vulnerable to those who would like to see a more pro-American leader in power.]
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THE NEW PENTAGON PAPERS
[I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.]
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WITNESSES: "ARISTIDE UNDER LOCK & KEY"
[“We were stopped at the gates by a guard who contacted a Central African Republic official inside the building. A representative of the Central African Republic came out to speak with us,” Ives reported. “We asked to go in to visit President Aristide and were told we could not. We asked if he could come out to see us, and we were told no. We asked if we could send in a note or our phone number, and we were told no. The official then told us that he had spoken with the Minister of Defense and that Aristide was not allowed to receive visitors.”]
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ON HAITI: REP MAXINE WATERS AND RANDALL ROBINSON
[The U.S. plan for regime change in Haiti has entered a new phase. In the past week, armed elements of the U.S.-backed opposition seized control of a number of towns, including Haiti’s fourth largest city, Gonaïves. At the time of this writing, Cap-Haïtien was also threatened. Rebels have publicly executed and mutilated policemen, and have systematically driven government supporters from their homes.]
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COUP IN HAITI: THE FRENCH CONNECTION
[Haiti this week started to look a lot like the Congo in 1960. That was when the United States and Belgium, the Congo’s colonial master until June 1960, fomented a rebellion against newly elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. The rebellion, which not coincidentally flared in the oil- and mineral-rich Katanga province, was led by Moise Tshombe, a wealthy plantation owner who was backed by 10,000 Belgian troops.]
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OPERATION SWEATSHOP
[This week, the Bush administration added another violent "regime change" notch to its gunbelt, toppling the democratically elected president of Haiti and replacing him with an unelected gang of convicted killers, death squad leaders, militarists, narcoterrorists, CIA operatives, hereditary elitists and corporate predators -- a bit like Team Bush itself, in other words.]
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2004: CHOOSE YOUR FAVORITE PRO-WAR CANDIDATE
[A myth equal to the fable of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is gaining strength on both sides of the Atlantic. It is that John Kerry offers a world-view different from that of George W Bush. Watch this big lie grow as Kerry is crowned the Democratic candidate and the "anyone but Bush" movement becomes a liberal cause celebre.]
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DOUBLE GAME IN HAITI
[Not quite a year ago, after returning from Haiti, I wrote that “the United States government is playing the same game as in Iraq - pushing for “regime change” in Haiti. Their strategy includes a massive disinformation campaign in USA media, an embargo on desperately needed foreign aid to Haiti, and direct support for violent elements, including former military officers and Duvalierists, who openly seek the overthrow of President Aristide.” Events in Haiti today show how bloody the USA game has become.]
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ARISTIDE DETAILS LAST MOMENTS IN HAITI
[“In overthrowing me, they have uprooted the trunk of the liberty. It will grow back because its roots are many and deep.”
"Dear compatriots, it is with these first words that I am saluting our brothers and sisters from Africa, while I am standing on the soil of the Central African Republic. Allow me to salute you by repeating that same declaration that is, “In overthrowing me, they have uprooted the trunk of the tree of peace.” During the night of the 28th of February 2004, there was a coup d’etat. One could say that it was a geo-political kidnapping. I can clearly say that it was terrorism disguised as diplomacy. To conclude, this coup d’etat and this kidnapping are like two quarters and 50 cents side by side."]
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FAIRY TALES, BUSH & THE 9-11 COMMISSION
[Aesop once told the story of a jaybird that ventured into a yard where peacocks used to walk. There the jay found a number of feathers fallen from the majestic birds when they had last molted. He tied them all to his tail and strutted toward the peacocks. His cheat was quickly discovered, and the peacocks harassed the imposter until all his borrowed plumes had fallen away. When the jay could do no more than return to his own kind, having watched him from afar, they were equally affronted by the jay's actions. The moral of the story, said Aesop, is that it takes more than just fine feathers to make fine birds.]
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THE DIVISION OF LABOR BEHIND THE US-MADE COUP IN HAITI
[The US government is engaged in a cynical charade to distance itself from the right-wing terrorists and thugs who marched into the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince over the weekend, leading to the forced resignation and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.]
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FOR TELLING THE TRUTH
[Few Americans have heard of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee facing charges that she violated the Official Secrets Act. So far, the American press has ignored her. But the case raises profound questions about democracy and the public's right to know on both sides of the Atlantic.]
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ORIGINAL TEXT OF NSA's 'SURGE' MEMO
[The Memo That Placed Katharine Gun's Conscience at Odds With National Policy]
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OBSERVER REVEALS TRUTH BEHIND KATHARINE GUN STORY
[What happened next was to change the 29-year-old's life. Opening one email, Gun stiffened as she saw the contents. She could not believe what she was reading. Trying not to panic, Gun looked round the office. None of her colleagues had seen her. She took off her headset and walked casually as possible to the ladies' lavatory, where she locked the door and sat in silence, trying to take it all in.]
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CABINET MINISTER QUESTIONS THE LEGALITY OF CONFLICT
[Her lawyers made clear that her defence would rest on the argument that her action was justified because the war was illegal. They therefore intended to call for evidence on how the Attorney General came to the conclusion that there was legal authority for war. The lawyers concluded that the case was dropped because he did not want his advice to be subject to scrutiny.]
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BRITISH WHISTLE-BLOWER (U.N. SPY CASE) FACES PRISON
[Friends of liberty, raise hell! To the barricades, or at least to the post office and the e-mails. A British citizen named Katharine Gun faces two years in prison for revealing that the U.S. National Security Agency tried - and succeeded - in getting the Brits to help us with illegal spying operations at the United Nations. The targets were the delegations of the six countries on the U.N. Security Council that were undecided on how to vote on the critical Iraqi war resolution.]
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"TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING"
[Original song by John Kellermann - An up-beat song about a very serious problem which has the potential to undermine the basis of democratic participation. Here rendered in lovely three part harmony by Cameron, Machado and Wilde.]
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ALL THE PRESIDENT'S VOTES?
[A Quiet Revolution is Taking Place in US Politics. By the Time It's Over, the Integrity of Elections Will be in the Unchallenged, Unscrutinized Control of a Few Large - and Pro-Republican - Corporations. Andrew Gumbel wonders if democracy in America can survive]
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WILL YOUR VOTE BE COUNTED?
[What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.]
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VOTING MACHINE PRIMER
[We've developed safeguards to prevent tampering with ballots. We've figured out ways to impede tampering with the voters themselves. But we DO NOT have adequate safeguards to prevent the most dangerous election-rigging of all: Tampering with programmers, vendors and technicians! Why has everything changed, and what are the dangers to Democracy?]
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READ "Black Box Voting", an amazing source of information on voting machine fraud, written by Bev Harris (AKA: The Eric Brockovich of electronic voting)

WHO MAKES ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES?
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Get Involved: Activist Forum

PORTLAND HARBOR

Portland Harbor Fact Sheet FINAL.doc

Trust Fund Balance.doc

Key Findings of the EPA IG.doc

NO SKUNKS ALLOWED
[INR has been forced to sit with its face to the wall ever since it resisted White House pressure to cook intelligence to the recipe of high policy. CIA Director George Tenet and other malleable intelligence managers acquiesced in that pressure and became accomplices in the Bush administration's successful effort in the fall of 2002 to deceive Congress into forfeiting to the president its constitutional prerogative to declare war.]
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CONTRACT SPORT
[Vice-President Dick Cheney is well known for his discretion, but his official White House biography, as posted on his Web site, may exceed even his own stringent standards. It traces the sixty-three years from his birth, in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1941, through college and graduate school, and describes his increasingly powerful jobs in Washington. Yet one chapter of Cheney’s life is missing. The record notes that he has been a “businessman” but fails to mention the five extraordinarily lucrative years that he spent, immediately before becoming Vice-President, as chief executive of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil-and-gas-services company. The conglomerate, which is based in Houston, is now the biggest private contractor for American forces in Iraq; it has received contracts worth some eleven billion dollars for its work there.]
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KWIATKOWSKI: SOLDIER FOR THE TRUTH
["But developing policy is not the same as developing propaganda and pushing a particular agenda. And actually, that’s more what they really did. They pushed an agenda on Iraq, and they developed pretty sophisticated propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress, and even internally to the Pentagon — to try and make this case of immediacy. This case of severe threat to the United States."]
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"THEY BUILT A WALL"
[Original song by John Kellermann - A poignant song that draws parallels between the Israeli wall, the Berlin wall and Aparteid in South Africa.]
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TRUE COLORS
[In 1937 WH Auden and Stephen Spender asked 150 writers for their views on the Spanish Civil War. The result was the book Authors Take Sides. Jean Moorcroft Wilson and Cecil Woolf have repeated the exercise, asking literary figures if they were for or against the Iraq war and whether they thought it would bring lasting peace and stability.]
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US KNEW IRAQ WAS WMD FREE
["It was a deliberate marginalising of reliable sources, of the people involved directly in Iraq's WMD programme."]
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THE FANTASY OF DEMOCRACY IN AN ARAB STATE
[Arab states are largely squalid, corrupt, brutal dictatorships. No surprise there. We created most of these dictators]
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BRITISH SPY OP WRECKED PEACE MOVE
[Aguilar Zinser claimed that the intervention could only have come as a result of surveillance of a closed diplomatic meeting where the compromise was being hammered out. He said it was clear the Americans knew about the confidential discussions in advance. 'When they [the US] found out, they said, "You should know that we don't like the idea and we don't like you to promote it."']
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CHALMERS JOHNSON: AMERICA'S EMPIRE OF BASES
[As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class.]
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AL GORE: "Fear: Its Political Uses And Abuses"
[The real meaning of those words of Kay’s devastating verdict is that for more than two years, President Bush and his Administration have been - - wittingly or unwittingly - - distorting America’s political reality by force feeding the American people a grossly exaggerated fear of Iraq that was hugely disproportionate to the actual danger posed by Iraq. Now how could that happen?]
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NOT EVERYONE GOT IT WRONG ON IRAQ'S WEAPONS
[The Kay remarks appear to be an attempt to spin potentially damaging data to the political advantage of President George W. Bush.]
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"REAGAN ON THE DIME"
[Original song by John Kellermann - "Reagan on the Dime" ridicules the Republican plot to replace F.D.R with Reagan on the dime.
For more information on the plot, merely search Google for "Reagan Dime"]
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THE DAY CHENEY WAS ROCKED TO THE CORE
[If United States Vice President Dick Cheney was hoping that the cold, crisp air of Davos and his private audience with Pope John Paul II late last month would revive his spirits, as well as his standing in the polls, he must be deeply disappointed.]
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BOSTON GLOBE STORY: ONE-YEAR GAP IN BUSH'S NATIONAL GUARD DUTY
[AUSTIN, Texas - After George W. Bush became governor in 1995, the Houston Air National Guard unit he had served with during the Vietnam War years honored him for his work, noting that he flew an F-102 fighter-interceptor until his discharge in October 1973.]
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THE LIE FACTORY
[Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story for how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.]
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WHISPERS OF REVOLUTION IN BAGHDAD
[Whispers of "revolution" are growing louder in Baghdad this month at teahouses, public protests and tribal meetings as Iraqis point to the past as an omen for the future.]
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LIFE IMMITATES FARCE
[A group of activist-pranksters were taken seriously by WTO representatives and invited to formal WTO meetings. To their horror, their ironic theatrics were regarded by the WTO attendees as workable solutions. As an example, they posed as a company which offered the technology to apply electric shocks to third-world workers, remotely from anyplace in the world. Other weird ideas were also met with eager approval.]
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AL FRANKEN: COMMENTS ON BUSH STATE OF THE UNION
[Al Franken in internet conference call to a younger audience. Funny, irreverent, insightful. 17.3 minutes, 4.1 megs]
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MCNAMARA: 'IT'S JUST WRONG WHAT WE'RE DOING'
["We're misusing our influence," he said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. "It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong." While he did not want to talk on the record about specific military decisions made Mr. Rumsfeld, he said the United States is fighting a war that he believes is totally unnecessary and has managed to destroy important relationships with potential allies. "There have been times in the last year when I was just utterly disgusted by our position, the United States' position vis-à-vis the other nations of the world." On Monday night, we heard the United States at its very worst with George W. Bush's caustic State of the Union address, in which he declared, over and over, that America is serving God's will directly and does not need "a permission slip" from other nations since "the cause we serve is right, because it is the cause of all mankind."]
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BUSH-CHENEY ENERGY STRATEGY
[When first assuming office in early 2001, President George W. Bush’s top foreign policy priority was not to prevent terrorism or to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction—or any of the other goals he espoused later that year following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Rather, it was to increase the flow of petroleum from suppliers abroad to U.S. markets. In the months before he became president, the United States had experienced severe oil and natural gas shortages in many parts of the country, along with periodic electrical power blackouts in California. In addition, oil imports rose to more than 50% of total consumption for the first time in history, provoking great anxiety about the security of the country’s long-term energy supply. Bush asserted that addressing the nation’s “energy crisis” was his most important task as president.]
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TOM CIVILETTI COMMENTS:
[Consider: Shrub is an oilman. Cheney is an oilman. National security Advisor Condi Rice had a damn oil tanker named after her. This is not trivial.]
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RAY McGOVERN SPEAKS IN TAOS, N.M.
[Ray McGovern, retired from the CIA after 27 years. Here he gives one of the most lucid accounts of the lies that have cost America over 500 lives and at well over 87 billion dollars. He spoke at Taos New Mexico on October 26, 2003]
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