ReBelle Daily Dispatch
Hunter Thompson commits suicide
"Fear and Loathing" author dead at 67
Woody Creek - Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek on Sunday night. He was 67.
Regarded as one of the most legendary writers of the 20th century, Thompson is best known for the 1972 classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." He is also credited with pioneering gonzo journalism - a style of writing that breaks tradition rules of news reporting and is purposefully slanted.
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who is a close personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death. His son, Juan, found him Sunday evening.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723492,00.html
---Vio Con Dios...You were one hell of a writer.---
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Fighting Words
ON one more steaming day in Baghdad, word filtered out to the artillery regiment that some of the younger guys were not going to get to fly home for their promised rest-and-relaxation break. Soldiers fumed. They'd spent months of long hours in this crazy place, knowing that at any moment a homemade bomb might explode, a rocket-propelled grenade might land or an Iraqi child might spit at them.
But though they were armed to the teeth, they chose to respond with a different kind of weapon. They stepped outside and, of all things, began to rap.
"I started doing some of the most outlandish freestyle you can imagine," Javorn Drummond, an Army specialist from Wade, N.C., recalled the other day. "We were just going off about how we do all the work, but we can't go home. We didn't care who could hear. We didn't have to care. I'll tell you, it felt good. At that time, they were killing us. We were working so hard we weren't getting sleep."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/arts/music/20dave.html?pagewanted=1
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Talking with the Enemy
Inside the secret dialogue between the U.S. and insurgents in Iraq—and what the rebels say they want
Sunday, Feb. 20, 2005The secret meeting is taking place in the bowels of a facility in Baghdad, a cavernous, heavily guarded building in the U.S.-controlled green zone. The Iraqi negotiator, a middle-aged former member of Saddam Hussein's regime and the senior representative of the self-described nationalist insurgency, sits on one side of the table.
He is here to talk to two members of the U.S. military. One of them, an officer, takes notes during the meeting. The other, dressed in civilian clothes, listens as the Iraqi outlines a list of demands the U.S. must satisfy before the insurgents stop fighting. The parties trade boilerplate complaints: the U.S. officer presses the Iraqi for names of other insurgent leaders; the Iraqi says the newly elected Shi'a-dominated government is being controlled by Iran. The discussion does not go beyond generalities, but both sides know what's behind the coded language.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1029805,00.html
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Appalling
When I visited the museum at the former Dachau concentration camp, many years ago, there was an exhibit of photographs intended to viscerally illustrate the sheer inhuman brutality of life in the camp. One of these photos showed a prisoner hanging from a tree by his wrists, which were tied or cuffed behind his back--one of the more painful positions into which the human body can be forced, according to the exhibit's accompanying text.
I hadn't thought of that image in several years--until I read this:
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA (news - web sites) interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture — suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The U.S. military said back then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed at the time.
The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," the documents reviewed by The AP show. It is unclear whether that position was approved by the Bush administration for use in CIA interrogations.
http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2005_02_13.html#002057
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Texas Ethics Bill Could Allow Appointees to Bar Prosecutions
AUSTIN -- A key Republican legislator has introduced a bill that would give a Texas agency authority to stop prosecution of election law violations, drawing comparisons to a recent attempt in Washington to rewrite ethics rules to keep House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in power if he is ever indicted.
The move by GOP leaders to protect DeLay (R-Tex.) was quashed late last year when even some Republicans in Congress objected. In Texas, critics are calling the bill there a similar bold attempt to protect Republican lawmakers who might get caught in a criminal investigation into illegal campaign fundraising. The bill has yet to get a public hearing, but already, opponents have lined up to fight it.
The bill was filed by state Rep. Mary Denny, the chairwoman of the House elections committee. It would require the Texas Ethics Commission, an eight-member panel appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker, to create a special office to investigate criminal violations of the state election code. Prosecutors would have to notify the office of any alleged violations, and the office would have 45 days to evaluate the information. If the office determined an offense had not been committed, the prosecutor would be prohibited from pursuing charges relating to the alleged violation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38439-2005Feb19.html
---This is as NAZI as you can get before the screams in the night start...THINK ABOUT IT!---
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The 'Bush Tapes' Finds Future President Down on the Press from Git-Go
NEW YORK Even before becoming president in 2001, George W. Bush privately railed against press scrutiny and liberal bias, accusing the news media of a "campaign" against him, according to tapes secretly recorded by a friend. He talked of certain reporters as "pro-Bush" and called Time magazine "awful." Referring to rumors about him that appeared in the press, he commented, "They just float sewer out there." Bush’s views, from 1998 to 2000, emerged Saturday in a lengthy New York Times report, based on a dozen tapes played for the newspaper by Doug Wead, an author and former aide to George H.W. Bush. The White House did not dispute the authenticity of the tapes, the Times said, or respond to their contents.
"Variously earnest, confident or prickly in those conversations, Mr. Bush weighs the political risks and benefits of his religious faith, discusses campaign strategy and comments on rivals," the Times reveals. "And in exchanges about his handling of media questions about his past, Mr. Bush appears to have acknowledged trying marijuana."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000808911
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February 18, 2005
Senate Examining Intelligence on Nuclear Terror
By REUTERS
Filed at 7:08 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate has begun taking a harder look at U.S. intelligence on nuclear threats facing the United States, including revelations of missing nuclear materials in Russia, congressional officials said on Friday.
The Republican-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which held a closed-door hearing on nuclear issues earlier this month, has come to view nuclear proliferation as a threat that overshadows other dangers posed by terrorist groups.
``We're going to be following it very, very closely,'' said Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, ranking Democrat on the Senate oversight panel.
He said the nuclear threat against the United States was posed ``not just from North Korea, but most dangerously from unaccounted for weapons that could be black-marketed to terrorists.''
Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who chairs the Senate panel, first referred to the committee's deepened focus on nuclear terrorism this week when CIA Director Porter Goss presented his agency's annual report on world threats to the committee.
A Senate aide said the heightened scrutiny on nuclear issues is part of a larger effort to enhance intelligence oversight on potential spots including Iran and North Korea.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-security-nuclear.html?pagewanted=print&position
---Sooner or later they will FIND a reason to go to war, no matter how many die, they will live...And they will be left alive with TRILLIONS in stolen money.----
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Our Unnecessary Insecurity
"Sept. 11 changed everything," the saying goes. It is striking, however, how much has not changed in the three and a half years since nearly 3,000 people were killed on American soil. The nation's chemical plants are still a horrific accident waiting to happen. Nuclear material that could be made into a "dirty bomb," or even a nuclear device, and set off in an American city remains too accessible to terrorists. Critical tasks, from inspecting shipping containers to upgrading defenses against biological weapons, are being done poorly or not at all.
Costly as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were in lives, the death toll from a chemical, biological or nuclear attack could be far, far greater. A nation as open and complex as ours can never be totally safe from such dangers.
But there is a great deal that can be done, without compromising our basic liberties, to eliminate obvious openings for terrorist attacks.
The biggest obstacles to making the nation safer have been lack of political will and failure to carry out the most effective policies. The Bush administration and Congress have been reluctant to provide the necessary money - even while they are furiously reducing revenue with tax cuts. The funds that are available are often misdirected. And Washington has caved to pressure from interest groups, like the chemical industry, that have fought increased security measures.
Most of all, the government has failed to lay out a broad strategy for making the nation more secure. Among the most troubling vulnerabilities that have yet to be seriously addressed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/opinion/20sun1.html?
---Not even the NYTs can pretend any longer that Bush has not failed. Wake up America and smell the napalm in Fallujah....Oh you mean you didn't know about the napalm?...Gee guess there is still some things the NYTs is leaving out...--
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Where Was The Press When This Was Going On?
by Danny Schechter
Perhaps now that "the Gates" have festooned themselves across New York's Central Park, we can bid adieu to the use of that term to connote political scandal. After Watergate, begat Contragate, we have had a cloned procession of almost obligatorily named outrages.
There was Filegate, Monicagate and most recently, we watched Memogate morph into Rathergate.
And now there's Gannongate.
Its time to close the door on further uses of this metaphor because gates usually open and close but these tend to have become a permanent feature of our political landscape, more revolving than alarming.
At the moment, everyone is smirking about the antics and improbability of a holier than thou White House conniving with a planted "reporter" who seems to have doubled as an on-line gay sex-for-hire panderer and practitioner, defiling images, no less, of our macho military warriors with websites like militaryescortsm4m. com.
Ooo wee. Yuk! The red white and blue horror of it all! Has the White House become an outhouse?
And yet, what's the question lost in all the focus on the sleazy antics of GOP propaganda plant Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert by a gang bang of bloggers and comedians, including, most hysterically, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart is where was is the rest of the press corps(e) while all this was going on for TWO YEARS?
Why did it take outsiders to expose it? Is it because as Buzzflash argues: "The blogging world did what the lackey mainstream press will no longer do, expose a story that is at the epicenter of the deceit and propaganda media campaign central to how the Bush Cartel continues to control America?"
Where were the other reporters and news rooms with a permanent presence at the White House Press Room when softball questions and partisan points were being offered up routinely in what were supposed to be press conferences aimed to eliciting truth?
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0220-21.htm
---YES ! WHERE WERE THE OTHER REPORTERS???AND can they be PROSECUTED---
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OMG TTOOOOO DAMN FUNNNNYYYY!!!!
Bill Maher on gay prostitutes in the White House...With Robin Williams !...A TRUE MUST SEE
http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/billmaher021805gannon.html
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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SCOTT RITTER SAYS U.S. PLANS JUNE ATTACK ON IRAN, ‘COOKED’ JAN. 30 IRAQI ELECTION RESULTS
By Mark Jensen
United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
February 19, 2005
Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia’s Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.
Olympians like to call the Capitol Theater "historic," but it's doubtful whether the eighty-year-old edifice has ever been the scene of more portentous revelations.
The principal theme of Scott Ritter's talk was Americans’ duty to protect the U.S. Constitution by taking action to bring an end to the illegal war in Iraq. But in passing, the former UNSCOM weapons inspector stunned his listeners with two pronouncements. Ritter said plans for a June attack on Iran have been submitted to President George W. Bush, and that the president has approved them. He also asserted that knowledgeable sources say U.S. officials "cooked" the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.
On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295/2/
----HOLY SHITTOKKI BATMAN!---
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UK link to torture jail's rules Army lawyer saw document on interrogation techniques
Jamie Doward
Sunday February 20, 2005
The Observer http://www.observer.co.uk
A British official was involved in drafting rules permitting extreme interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, centre of the controversy over the use of torture by US forces against Iraqi prisoners.
Last night it emerged that the government has been forced to retract claims that no British military officer had seen or been involved with the crucial document allowing guards to subject detainees to interrogation methods including the use of dogs, sleep deprivation and stress positions, in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Last year the jail achieved notoriety when photographs emerged of guards forcing prisoners to strip naked and simulate sex acts. Other photographs showed detainees being set upon with dogs and beaten.
The Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram, has admitted in a letter to a Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, that a senior British Army lawyer assigned to the coalition's legal department in Baghdad contributed to 'comments provided by his superior' when drafting the document.
It is not known if the officer supported or opposed the document, but the revelation raises serious questions about who in the Army's chain of command knew of the interrogation techniques being employed at Abu Ghraib and when.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1418624,00.html
---Welcome to torture hell with us Britian. By The Way...When we say jump off a bridge...PLEASE DO NOT LISTEN TO US ANYMORE!!!---
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More Military Bases in U.S. to Be Closed
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Safe for a decade, military bases in the United States face an uncertain future.
The Pentagon plans to shut down or scale back some of the 425 facilities, the first such effort to save money in 10 years. The downsizing is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's long-term transformation of the Cold War-era military.
The Pentagon chief argues that closing or consolidating stateside facilities could save $7 billion annually and that the money would be better spent improving fighting capabilities amid threats from terrorists.
"The department continues to maintain more military bases and facilities than are needed, consuming and diverting valuable personnel and resources," Rumsfeld recently told lawmakers.
Shrinking the domestic network of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps bases is a certain source of savings. It also is a high-stakes political fight because it affects local economies in congressional districts.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=718&e=6&u=/ap/20050220/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/base_closings
---This is such BULLSHIT it's hard to know where to begin...---
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Prisoner Uprising In Iraq Exposes New Risk for U.S.
Nonlethal Weapons Proved Ineffective as Chaos Spread
By Bradley GrahamWashington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A01
CAMP BUCCA, Iraq -- A bloody inmate riot three weeks ago at the biggest U.S.-run detention facility in Iraq has exposed an increasingly hard-core prison population that is confronting U.S. forces with a growing risk of prison violence, according to military officers.
U.S. troops who dealt with the clash tell of a chaotic and threatening situation. They say the extent of violence surprised them. They also say the nonlethal weapons available to them at the time for crowd control proved largely ineffectual.
"What happened here on January 31st has changed the dynamics" of managing such situations, said Maj. Gen. William Brandenburg, who oversees U.S. military detention operations in Iraq and toured the facility last week. "It showed that the prisoners could hurl rocks farther than we could fire nonlethal weapons. It also showed that we have to do a better job of understanding who we have in detention."
Four inmates died and six were injured in the uprising the morning of Jan. 31, the most deaths in a prison disturbance since U.S. forces invaded Iraq two years ago. Frightened guards, some having arrived in Iraq only a month before, tried vainly to quell the rioting, spraying pepper gas and shooting rubberized pellets into throngs of prisoners, according to accounts by troops here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40411-2005Feb20.html
---The Iraqis being 'detained'.(yeah those ones we make naked pyramids with..)...These men ARE NOT FOOLS...They understand that THEY out number thier CAPTORS....This is a BADBADBAD situation...The worst...---
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Prepackaged News Gets GAO Rebuke
Walker: PR Must Be Clearly Labeled
By Christopher LeeWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, February 21, 2005; Page A25
The Government Accountability Office warned federal departments last week against using a popular public relations tool that already has landed two agencies in hot water for breaking federal anti-propaganda laws.
In a Feb. 17 memo, Comptroller General David M. Walker reminded department and agency heads that prepackaged news stories that do not identify the government as their source violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda.
"It is not enough that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable," Walker wrote. "Neither is it enough for an agency to identify itself to the broadcasting organization as the source of the prepackaged news story."
Prepackaged news stories, sometimes known as video news releases, have become an increasingly common public relations tool among government agencies and in industry. They are designed to resemble broadcast news stories, complete with narrators who can be easily mistaken for reporters and suggested introductory language for TV anchors to read. Some news organizations have run them without changes and without identifying them as government-produced.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40318-2005Feb20.html
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Robot soldiers to fight wars for US:
Pentagon IANS New York Feb 19:
The Pentagon predicts that robots will become a major fighting force in the United States military within a decade, a crucial part of the army’s effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century force, reports the New York Times.
"They don’t get hungry. They’re not afraid. They don’t forget their orders. They don’t care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes," said Mr Gordon Johnson of the joint forces command at the Pentagon.
http://www.navhindtimes.com/stories.php?part=news&Story_ID=022023
---This cannot be real...I guess this is what Rummy meant by 'The army he may want, or wish to have'...just sick..sick...Mankind is INFESTED WITH A KILLING SICKNESS......Unbelievable.---
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A New Target for Advisers to Swift Vets
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.
The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan.
"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21social.html?ei=5094&en=e53f647d7614f9e4&hp=&ex=1108962000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position
---Oh you idiots picked the WRONG OLD FOLKS TO MESS WITH.......This is gonna get ugly and I personnaly hope a grandma knocks Georgie on his pompass ASS...---
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World War II veteran recalls hellish battle 60 years ago where U.S. Marines raised flag
By DAN BENSONdbenson@journalsentinel.com mailto:dbenson@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Feb. 19, 2005
Thiensville - Rollo Eberhardt, now 80, was 19 years old and 18 months removed from the tranquility of Cedarburg when he met hell face to face 60 years ago this weekend.
Remembering Iwo Jima
World War II veteran recalls Iwo Jima Island of tears
Feb. 19, 1945, was the day he saw the island of Iwo Jima from the railing of a cargo ship that had brought him and thousands of other U.S. Marines from Hawaii, their mission to take the island from 22,000 fiercely resolute Japanese soldiers.
" 'What a beautiful day to die,' " he remembered a comrade saying as he and his fellow Marines looked on the island, wreathed in smoke and flame, a sharp contrast to the day's clear blue sky.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/feb05/303276.asp
---To all the old ones...I have lived life as a free woman because of you. Thank you.----
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The CBS Three Won’t Slink Off; Hiring Lawyers
On Jan. 10, when the 224-page report on the investigation into CBS News’ 60 Minutes Wednesday memo scandal arrived, CBS president Leslie Moonves issued a statement dwelling on the failures of the employees involved in producing the disputed segment.
Prominent among the targets was executive producer Josh Howard. Mr. Howard, Mr. Moonves said, "did little to assert his role as the producer ultimately responsible for the broadcast and everything in it. This mistake dealt a tremendous blow to the credibility of 60 Minutes Wednesday and to CBS News in general."
The producer, he wrote, had been asked to resign, and the network was "taking a variety of actions to put this crisis behind us."
Five weeks later, the crisis is not yet behind Mr. Moonves. And far from resolving the problem of the network’s credibility, the independent report commissioned by CBS appears instead to be leading to a confrontation, with defenders of both the ousted CBS staffers involved in the debacle and top CBS management asserting two different truths from the same document.
Mr. Howard and two other ousted CBS staffers—his top deputy, Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West—haven’t resigned. And sources close to Mr. Howard said that before any resignation comes, the 23-year CBS News veteran is demanding that the network retract Mr. Moonves’ remarks, correct its official story line and ultimately clear his name.
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/nytv.asp
---Good for them...They SHOULD fight it tooth and nail...----
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Gunmen Take Haiti Ex-Prime Minister from Prison
By Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Gunmen stormed Haiti's main prison on Saturday and drove away with jailed former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and other inmates linked to ousted ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, witnesses said.
Neptune and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert appeared to have been taken out at gunpoint by the attackers, who sent poorly armed prison guards fleeing the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, they said.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&u=/nm/20050220/wl_nm/haiti_prison_dc_2&printer=1
---BTW...The USA destabalized this country by rigging a coup...Don't believe me...Ask Colin Powell...---
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Shades of Enron in budget deals
President, Congress aren't telling the whole story on program costs
By CHERYL BLOCK
Maybe it was a coincidence, but I can't think of a timelier one. Earlier this month, as the White House released President Bush's budget for the coming fiscal year, there came the news that a former Boeing Co. executive who had pleaded guilty to ethics violations in the Pentagon's 2003 weapons procurement scandal would be sentenced.
The Boeing scandal, for those who don't recall, involved a deal in which the Air Force lobbied intensively to lease several Boeing tanker planes instead of purchasing them outright, even though one government estimate showed that leasing would cost taxpayers $5.7 billion more than buying. Why was the Pentagon so hot to lease? For no reason other than to avoid up-front budget reporting of the aircrafts' full cost -- and thereby help mask the true extent of the federal budget deficit.
Seeing that news story in the midst of reports about Bush's proposed budget reminded me of just how little has changed. The president and Congress continue resorting to ever more smoke and mirrors to veil the truth about the costs and burdens that will be placed on American taxpayers. Moreover, they're using precisely the sorts of gimmicks and tricks that we wouldn't tolerate in the private sector.
The Boeing deal was eerily reminiscent of corporate deals using the same kinds of long-term leases for exactly the same reasons. I still carry images in my mind of that imposing Enron headquarters building in Houston that we saw on the nightly news as the Enron scandal unfolded about four years ago. Guess what? Enron acquired that building by creating a special entity solely for the purpose of purchasing the building and then leasing it back to the company. Its reasons were the same as the Air Force's in the Boeing deal -- to avoid recording the full cost of the building up front, effectively keeping the purchase "off the books."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3048002
---SOOOO..When are people going to be ARRESTED?....Just askin...----
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Connecticut Questions Federal Wal-Mart Deal
State Announces Follow-Up Investigations After Retailer Agreed to 'Sweetheart Deal' With Labor Department
By CHARLES HERMAN
Feb. 18, 2005 — Connecticut's governor ordered inspections of Wal-Mart stores as the state's attorney general accused the U.S. Labor Department of cutting a "sweetheart deal" with the retailing giant on child labor law violations.
"The teams will be enforcing compliance with child labor laws and making certain that all the rules are being adhered to," Gov. M. Jodi Rell said in a statement today.
The Labor Department published a press release on Monday, Feb. 14, announcing it had fined Wal-Mart $135,540 for violating child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. The department said it had conducted 25 investigations involving 85 workers between the ages of 16 and 17 who allegedly performed prohibited activities such as operating forklifts, using chain saws and operating or unloading paper balers. In one case, a minor was allegedly using a chain saw to cut Christmas trees.
State officials are upset because the agreement between the Labor Department and Wal-Mart gives the company the right to collaborate with the government on any public statements about the fine. The settlement agreement also stipulates that the Labor Department will give Wal-Mart 15 days advance notice before any follow-up investigations by the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division during the next 12 months.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=513063&page=1
----I am getting REALLY sick of Wal-Marts robber baron tactics...---
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Why isn't Bob Novak going to jail?
Friday, February 18, 2005
By Tony Norman
Will someone please explain in simple, easy-to-understand language, why we never see right-wing pundit Bob Novak's name mentioned in the same breath as reporters facing jail time for contempt in the Valerie Plame affair?
Earlier this week, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington upheld an earlier court ruling that New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper should be jailed for contempt for failing to disclose the source of a story neither had any intention of publishing in the first place.
Meanwhile, Bob Novak, the only columnist in the country who actually published Plame's identity in violation of federal law, sits comfortably ensconced on CNN's "The Capital Gang" bloviating as usual.
Miller and Cooper will probably go to jail for "witnessing" a federal crime and refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity. So why is it that only two of the three reporters who allegedly "witnessed" the crime are being threatened?
Novak not only knows the identity of the "senior White House official" who leaked the information to Miller and Cooper, he willingly became a conduit for that information.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05049/459428.stm
---Let us be clear...Novak is involved in an act of TREASON...----
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Why Bush will fail in Europe The President has an enormous political gulf to bridge. The trouble is, he doesn't even know it's there
William Pfaff
Sunday February 20, 2005
The Observer http://www.observer.co.uk
President George W Bush arrives in Europe this week in the belief that the European Nato allies can be persuaded to 'turn away from the disagreements of the past' and open 'a new chapter' in transatlantic relations, as Condoleezza Rice, on her European trip, advised them to do. He is likely to go home without the concessions he wants.
He wants more help from the Europeans in Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably in other places yet to be announced; European backing for American policy on Iran (and Syria and Israel/Palestine); and no European arms sales to China. Those are Washington's priorities. There is a further list of secondary issues, commercial as well as political.
His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the United States today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1418548,00.html
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Venezuela's Chavez Says U.S. Plotting to Kill Him
Sun Feb 20, 2005 05:10 PM ET
By Patrick Markey
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday the United States was planning to assassinate him, but offered no evidence to support his accusation.
"I know I am condemned... I'm sure in Washington they are planning my death," Chavez said in a regular Sunday broadcast. "If anything happens to me, you can forget about Venezuela's oil Mr Bush."
Chavez was reacting to recent criticism of his left-wing government by U.S. officials. He often accuses Washington of backing opposition attempts to oust or even kill him, a charge Washington denies.
"If they manage to kill me there will only be one person in this world to blame: the president of the United States," Chavez said. "If you try, you will regret it Comrade Mr Bush."
Diplomatic ties between the United States and Venezuela, one of its key oil suppliers, have soured since Chavez came to power nearly six years ago promising to fight poverty.
U.S. officials have stepped up their criticism of Chavez since January when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice branded him a "negative force" in Latin America.
A tough-talking former army officer, Chavez presents himself as alternative to what he sees as U.S. imperialist policies. He says President Bush's administration backed a 2002 coup against him, which he survived, and then financed a vote campaign to try and oust him.
U.S. officials worry about Chavez's close ties with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and have suggested he also backs insurgent groups in the region, including Marxist rebels in Colombia.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick last week said Chavez was part of a trend of creeping authoritarianism and Washington is concerned that Russian rifles bought by Venezuela could aid Colombian rebels.
Chavez's accusation on Sunday echoed similar comments by Castro who said earlier this month that United States would be responsible if Chavez were assassinated.
http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7682470
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"Fear and Loathing" author dead at 67
Woody Creek - Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek on Sunday night. He was 67.
Regarded as one of the most legendary writers of the 20th century, Thompson is best known for the 1972 classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." He is also credited with pioneering gonzo journalism - a style of writing that breaks tradition rules of news reporting and is purposefully slanted.
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who is a close personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death. His son, Juan, found him Sunday evening.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723492,00.html
---Vio Con Dios...You were one hell of a writer.---
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Fighting Words
ON one more steaming day in Baghdad, word filtered out to the artillery regiment that some of the younger guys were not going to get to fly home for their promised rest-and-relaxation break. Soldiers fumed. They'd spent months of long hours in this crazy place, knowing that at any moment a homemade bomb might explode, a rocket-propelled grenade might land or an Iraqi child might spit at them.
But though they were armed to the teeth, they chose to respond with a different kind of weapon. They stepped outside and, of all things, began to rap.
"I started doing some of the most outlandish freestyle you can imagine," Javorn Drummond, an Army specialist from Wade, N.C., recalled the other day. "We were just going off about how we do all the work, but we can't go home. We didn't care who could hear. We didn't have to care. I'll tell you, it felt good. At that time, they were killing us. We were working so hard we weren't getting sleep."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/arts/music/20dave.html?pagewanted=1
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Talking with the Enemy
Inside the secret dialogue between the U.S. and insurgents in Iraq—and what the rebels say they want
Sunday, Feb. 20, 2005The secret meeting is taking place in the bowels of a facility in Baghdad, a cavernous, heavily guarded building in the U.S.-controlled green zone. The Iraqi negotiator, a middle-aged former member of Saddam Hussein's regime and the senior representative of the self-described nationalist insurgency, sits on one side of the table.
He is here to talk to two members of the U.S. military. One of them, an officer, takes notes during the meeting. The other, dressed in civilian clothes, listens as the Iraqi outlines a list of demands the U.S. must satisfy before the insurgents stop fighting. The parties trade boilerplate complaints: the U.S. officer presses the Iraqi for names of other insurgent leaders; the Iraqi says the newly elected Shi'a-dominated government is being controlled by Iran. The discussion does not go beyond generalities, but both sides know what's behind the coded language.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1029805,00.html
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Appalling
When I visited the museum at the former Dachau concentration camp, many years ago, there was an exhibit of photographs intended to viscerally illustrate the sheer inhuman brutality of life in the camp. One of these photos showed a prisoner hanging from a tree by his wrists, which were tied or cuffed behind his back--one of the more painful positions into which the human body can be forced, according to the exhibit's accompanying text.
I hadn't thought of that image in several years--until I read this:
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA (news - web sites) interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture — suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The U.S. military said back then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed at the time.
The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," the documents reviewed by The AP show. It is unclear whether that position was approved by the Bush administration for use in CIA interrogations.
http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2005_02_13.html#002057
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Texas Ethics Bill Could Allow Appointees to Bar Prosecutions
AUSTIN -- A key Republican legislator has introduced a bill that would give a Texas agency authority to stop prosecution of election law violations, drawing comparisons to a recent attempt in Washington to rewrite ethics rules to keep House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in power if he is ever indicted.
The move by GOP leaders to protect DeLay (R-Tex.) was quashed late last year when even some Republicans in Congress objected. In Texas, critics are calling the bill there a similar bold attempt to protect Republican lawmakers who might get caught in a criminal investigation into illegal campaign fundraising. The bill has yet to get a public hearing, but already, opponents have lined up to fight it.
The bill was filed by state Rep. Mary Denny, the chairwoman of the House elections committee. It would require the Texas Ethics Commission, an eight-member panel appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker, to create a special office to investigate criminal violations of the state election code. Prosecutors would have to notify the office of any alleged violations, and the office would have 45 days to evaluate the information. If the office determined an offense had not been committed, the prosecutor would be prohibited from pursuing charges relating to the alleged violation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38439-2005Feb19.html
---This is as NAZI as you can get before the screams in the night start...THINK ABOUT IT!---
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The 'Bush Tapes' Finds Future President Down on the Press from Git-Go
NEW YORK Even before becoming president in 2001, George W. Bush privately railed against press scrutiny and liberal bias, accusing the news media of a "campaign" against him, according to tapes secretly recorded by a friend. He talked of certain reporters as "pro-Bush" and called Time magazine "awful." Referring to rumors about him that appeared in the press, he commented, "They just float sewer out there." Bush’s views, from 1998 to 2000, emerged Saturday in a lengthy New York Times report, based on a dozen tapes played for the newspaper by Doug Wead, an author and former aide to George H.W. Bush. The White House did not dispute the authenticity of the tapes, the Times said, or respond to their contents.
"Variously earnest, confident or prickly in those conversations, Mr. Bush weighs the political risks and benefits of his religious faith, discusses campaign strategy and comments on rivals," the Times reveals. "And in exchanges about his handling of media questions about his past, Mr. Bush appears to have acknowledged trying marijuana."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000808911
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February 18, 2005
Senate Examining Intelligence on Nuclear Terror
By REUTERS
Filed at 7:08 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate has begun taking a harder look at U.S. intelligence on nuclear threats facing the United States, including revelations of missing nuclear materials in Russia, congressional officials said on Friday.
The Republican-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which held a closed-door hearing on nuclear issues earlier this month, has come to view nuclear proliferation as a threat that overshadows other dangers posed by terrorist groups.
``We're going to be following it very, very closely,'' said Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, ranking Democrat on the Senate oversight panel.
He said the nuclear threat against the United States was posed ``not just from North Korea, but most dangerously from unaccounted for weapons that could be black-marketed to terrorists.''
Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who chairs the Senate panel, first referred to the committee's deepened focus on nuclear terrorism this week when CIA Director Porter Goss presented his agency's annual report on world threats to the committee.
A Senate aide said the heightened scrutiny on nuclear issues is part of a larger effort to enhance intelligence oversight on potential spots including Iran and North Korea.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-security-nuclear.html?pagewanted=print&position
---Sooner or later they will FIND a reason to go to war, no matter how many die, they will live...And they will be left alive with TRILLIONS in stolen money.----
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Our Unnecessary Insecurity
"Sept. 11 changed everything," the saying goes. It is striking, however, how much has not changed in the three and a half years since nearly 3,000 people were killed on American soil. The nation's chemical plants are still a horrific accident waiting to happen. Nuclear material that could be made into a "dirty bomb," or even a nuclear device, and set off in an American city remains too accessible to terrorists. Critical tasks, from inspecting shipping containers to upgrading defenses against biological weapons, are being done poorly or not at all.
Costly as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were in lives, the death toll from a chemical, biological or nuclear attack could be far, far greater. A nation as open and complex as ours can never be totally safe from such dangers.
But there is a great deal that can be done, without compromising our basic liberties, to eliminate obvious openings for terrorist attacks.
The biggest obstacles to making the nation safer have been lack of political will and failure to carry out the most effective policies. The Bush administration and Congress have been reluctant to provide the necessary money - even while they are furiously reducing revenue with tax cuts. The funds that are available are often misdirected. And Washington has caved to pressure from interest groups, like the chemical industry, that have fought increased security measures.
Most of all, the government has failed to lay out a broad strategy for making the nation more secure. Among the most troubling vulnerabilities that have yet to be seriously addressed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/opinion/20sun1.html?
---Not even the NYTs can pretend any longer that Bush has not failed. Wake up America and smell the napalm in Fallujah....Oh you mean you didn't know about the napalm?...Gee guess there is still some things the NYTs is leaving out...--
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Where Was The Press When This Was Going On?
by Danny Schechter
Perhaps now that "the Gates" have festooned themselves across New York's Central Park, we can bid adieu to the use of that term to connote political scandal. After Watergate, begat Contragate, we have had a cloned procession of almost obligatorily named outrages.
There was Filegate, Monicagate and most recently, we watched Memogate morph into Rathergate.
And now there's Gannongate.
Its time to close the door on further uses of this metaphor because gates usually open and close but these tend to have become a permanent feature of our political landscape, more revolving than alarming.
At the moment, everyone is smirking about the antics and improbability of a holier than thou White House conniving with a planted "reporter" who seems to have doubled as an on-line gay sex-for-hire panderer and practitioner, defiling images, no less, of our macho military warriors with websites like militaryescortsm4m. com.
Ooo wee. Yuk! The red white and blue horror of it all! Has the White House become an outhouse?
And yet, what's the question lost in all the focus on the sleazy antics of GOP propaganda plant Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert by a gang bang of bloggers and comedians, including, most hysterically, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart is where was is the rest of the press corps(e) while all this was going on for TWO YEARS?
Why did it take outsiders to expose it? Is it because as Buzzflash argues: "The blogging world did what the lackey mainstream press will no longer do, expose a story that is at the epicenter of the deceit and propaganda media campaign central to how the Bush Cartel continues to control America?"
Where were the other reporters and news rooms with a permanent presence at the White House Press Room when softball questions and partisan points were being offered up routinely in what were supposed to be press conferences aimed to eliciting truth?
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0220-21.htm
---YES ! WHERE WERE THE OTHER REPORTERS???AND can they be PROSECUTED---
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OMG TTOOOOO DAMN FUNNNNYYYY!!!!
Bill Maher on gay prostitutes in the White House...With Robin Williams !...A TRUE MUST SEE
http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/billmaher021805gannon.html
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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SCOTT RITTER SAYS U.S. PLANS JUNE ATTACK ON IRAN, ‘COOKED’ JAN. 30 IRAQI ELECTION RESULTS
By Mark Jensen
United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
February 19, 2005
Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia’s Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.
Olympians like to call the Capitol Theater "historic," but it's doubtful whether the eighty-year-old edifice has ever been the scene of more portentous revelations.
The principal theme of Scott Ritter's talk was Americans’ duty to protect the U.S. Constitution by taking action to bring an end to the illegal war in Iraq. But in passing, the former UNSCOM weapons inspector stunned his listeners with two pronouncements. Ritter said plans for a June attack on Iran have been submitted to President George W. Bush, and that the president has approved them. He also asserted that knowledgeable sources say U.S. officials "cooked" the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.
On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295/2/
----HOLY SHITTOKKI BATMAN!---
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UK link to torture jail's rules Army lawyer saw document on interrogation techniques
Jamie Doward
Sunday February 20, 2005
The Observer http://www.observer.co.uk
A British official was involved in drafting rules permitting extreme interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, centre of the controversy over the use of torture by US forces against Iraqi prisoners.
Last night it emerged that the government has been forced to retract claims that no British military officer had seen or been involved with the crucial document allowing guards to subject detainees to interrogation methods including the use of dogs, sleep deprivation and stress positions, in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Last year the jail achieved notoriety when photographs emerged of guards forcing prisoners to strip naked and simulate sex acts. Other photographs showed detainees being set upon with dogs and beaten.
The Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram, has admitted in a letter to a Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, that a senior British Army lawyer assigned to the coalition's legal department in Baghdad contributed to 'comments provided by his superior' when drafting the document.
It is not known if the officer supported or opposed the document, but the revelation raises serious questions about who in the Army's chain of command knew of the interrogation techniques being employed at Abu Ghraib and when.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1418624,00.html
---Welcome to torture hell with us Britian. By The Way...When we say jump off a bridge...PLEASE DO NOT LISTEN TO US ANYMORE!!!---
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More Military Bases in U.S. to Be Closed
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Safe for a decade, military bases in the United States face an uncertain future.
The Pentagon plans to shut down or scale back some of the 425 facilities, the first such effort to save money in 10 years. The downsizing is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's long-term transformation of the Cold War-era military.
The Pentagon chief argues that closing or consolidating stateside facilities could save $7 billion annually and that the money would be better spent improving fighting capabilities amid threats from terrorists.
"The department continues to maintain more military bases and facilities than are needed, consuming and diverting valuable personnel and resources," Rumsfeld recently told lawmakers.
Shrinking the domestic network of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps bases is a certain source of savings. It also is a high-stakes political fight because it affects local economies in congressional districts.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=718&e=6&u=/ap/20050220/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/base_closings
---This is such BULLSHIT it's hard to know where to begin...---
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Prisoner Uprising In Iraq Exposes New Risk for U.S.
Nonlethal Weapons Proved Ineffective as Chaos Spread
By Bradley GrahamWashington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A01
CAMP BUCCA, Iraq -- A bloody inmate riot three weeks ago at the biggest U.S.-run detention facility in Iraq has exposed an increasingly hard-core prison population that is confronting U.S. forces with a growing risk of prison violence, according to military officers.
U.S. troops who dealt with the clash tell of a chaotic and threatening situation. They say the extent of violence surprised them. They also say the nonlethal weapons available to them at the time for crowd control proved largely ineffectual.
"What happened here on January 31st has changed the dynamics" of managing such situations, said Maj. Gen. William Brandenburg, who oversees U.S. military detention operations in Iraq and toured the facility last week. "It showed that the prisoners could hurl rocks farther than we could fire nonlethal weapons. It also showed that we have to do a better job of understanding who we have in detention."
Four inmates died and six were injured in the uprising the morning of Jan. 31, the most deaths in a prison disturbance since U.S. forces invaded Iraq two years ago. Frightened guards, some having arrived in Iraq only a month before, tried vainly to quell the rioting, spraying pepper gas and shooting rubberized pellets into throngs of prisoners, according to accounts by troops here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40411-2005Feb20.html
---The Iraqis being 'detained'.(yeah those ones we make naked pyramids with..)...These men ARE NOT FOOLS...They understand that THEY out number thier CAPTORS....This is a BADBADBAD situation...The worst...---
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Prepackaged News Gets GAO Rebuke
Walker: PR Must Be Clearly Labeled
By Christopher LeeWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, February 21, 2005; Page A25
The Government Accountability Office warned federal departments last week against using a popular public relations tool that already has landed two agencies in hot water for breaking federal anti-propaganda laws.
In a Feb. 17 memo, Comptroller General David M. Walker reminded department and agency heads that prepackaged news stories that do not identify the government as their source violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda.
"It is not enough that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable," Walker wrote. "Neither is it enough for an agency to identify itself to the broadcasting organization as the source of the prepackaged news story."
Prepackaged news stories, sometimes known as video news releases, have become an increasingly common public relations tool among government agencies and in industry. They are designed to resemble broadcast news stories, complete with narrators who can be easily mistaken for reporters and suggested introductory language for TV anchors to read. Some news organizations have run them without changes and without identifying them as government-produced.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40318-2005Feb20.html
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Robot soldiers to fight wars for US:
Pentagon IANS New York Feb 19:
The Pentagon predicts that robots will become a major fighting force in the United States military within a decade, a crucial part of the army’s effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century force, reports the New York Times.
"They don’t get hungry. They’re not afraid. They don’t forget their orders. They don’t care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes," said Mr Gordon Johnson of the joint forces command at the Pentagon.
http://www.navhindtimes.com/stories.php?part=news&Story_ID=022023
---This cannot be real...I guess this is what Rummy meant by 'The army he may want, or wish to have'...just sick..sick...Mankind is INFESTED WITH A KILLING SICKNESS......Unbelievable.---
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A New Target for Advisers to Swift Vets
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.
The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan.
"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21social.html?ei=5094&en=e53f647d7614f9e4&hp=&ex=1108962000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position
---Oh you idiots picked the WRONG OLD FOLKS TO MESS WITH.......This is gonna get ugly and I personnaly hope a grandma knocks Georgie on his pompass ASS...---
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World War II veteran recalls hellish battle 60 years ago where U.S. Marines raised flag
By DAN BENSONdbenson@journalsentinel.com mailto:dbenson@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Feb. 19, 2005
Thiensville - Rollo Eberhardt, now 80, was 19 years old and 18 months removed from the tranquility of Cedarburg when he met hell face to face 60 years ago this weekend.
Remembering Iwo Jima
World War II veteran recalls Iwo Jima Island of tears
Feb. 19, 1945, was the day he saw the island of Iwo Jima from the railing of a cargo ship that had brought him and thousands of other U.S. Marines from Hawaii, their mission to take the island from 22,000 fiercely resolute Japanese soldiers.
" 'What a beautiful day to die,' " he remembered a comrade saying as he and his fellow Marines looked on the island, wreathed in smoke and flame, a sharp contrast to the day's clear blue sky.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/feb05/303276.asp
---To all the old ones...I have lived life as a free woman because of you. Thank you.----
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The CBS Three Won’t Slink Off; Hiring Lawyers
On Jan. 10, when the 224-page report on the investigation into CBS News’ 60 Minutes Wednesday memo scandal arrived, CBS president Leslie Moonves issued a statement dwelling on the failures of the employees involved in producing the disputed segment.
Prominent among the targets was executive producer Josh Howard. Mr. Howard, Mr. Moonves said, "did little to assert his role as the producer ultimately responsible for the broadcast and everything in it. This mistake dealt a tremendous blow to the credibility of 60 Minutes Wednesday and to CBS News in general."
The producer, he wrote, had been asked to resign, and the network was "taking a variety of actions to put this crisis behind us."
Five weeks later, the crisis is not yet behind Mr. Moonves. And far from resolving the problem of the network’s credibility, the independent report commissioned by CBS appears instead to be leading to a confrontation, with defenders of both the ousted CBS staffers involved in the debacle and top CBS management asserting two different truths from the same document.
Mr. Howard and two other ousted CBS staffers—his top deputy, Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West—haven’t resigned. And sources close to Mr. Howard said that before any resignation comes, the 23-year CBS News veteran is demanding that the network retract Mr. Moonves’ remarks, correct its official story line and ultimately clear his name.
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/nytv.asp
---Good for them...They SHOULD fight it tooth and nail...----
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Gunmen Take Haiti Ex-Prime Minister from Prison
By Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Gunmen stormed Haiti's main prison on Saturday and drove away with jailed former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and other inmates linked to ousted ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, witnesses said.
Neptune and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert appeared to have been taken out at gunpoint by the attackers, who sent poorly armed prison guards fleeing the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, they said.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&u=/nm/20050220/wl_nm/haiti_prison_dc_2&printer=1
---BTW...The USA destabalized this country by rigging a coup...Don't believe me...Ask Colin Powell...---
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Shades of Enron in budget deals
President, Congress aren't telling the whole story on program costs
By CHERYL BLOCK
Maybe it was a coincidence, but I can't think of a timelier one. Earlier this month, as the White House released President Bush's budget for the coming fiscal year, there came the news that a former Boeing Co. executive who had pleaded guilty to ethics violations in the Pentagon's 2003 weapons procurement scandal would be sentenced.
The Boeing scandal, for those who don't recall, involved a deal in which the Air Force lobbied intensively to lease several Boeing tanker planes instead of purchasing them outright, even though one government estimate showed that leasing would cost taxpayers $5.7 billion more than buying. Why was the Pentagon so hot to lease? For no reason other than to avoid up-front budget reporting of the aircrafts' full cost -- and thereby help mask the true extent of the federal budget deficit.
Seeing that news story in the midst of reports about Bush's proposed budget reminded me of just how little has changed. The president and Congress continue resorting to ever more smoke and mirrors to veil the truth about the costs and burdens that will be placed on American taxpayers. Moreover, they're using precisely the sorts of gimmicks and tricks that we wouldn't tolerate in the private sector.
The Boeing deal was eerily reminiscent of corporate deals using the same kinds of long-term leases for exactly the same reasons. I still carry images in my mind of that imposing Enron headquarters building in Houston that we saw on the nightly news as the Enron scandal unfolded about four years ago. Guess what? Enron acquired that building by creating a special entity solely for the purpose of purchasing the building and then leasing it back to the company. Its reasons were the same as the Air Force's in the Boeing deal -- to avoid recording the full cost of the building up front, effectively keeping the purchase "off the books."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3048002
---SOOOO..When are people going to be ARRESTED?....Just askin...----
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Connecticut Questions Federal Wal-Mart Deal
State Announces Follow-Up Investigations After Retailer Agreed to 'Sweetheart Deal' With Labor Department
By CHARLES HERMAN
Feb. 18, 2005 — Connecticut's governor ordered inspections of Wal-Mart stores as the state's attorney general accused the U.S. Labor Department of cutting a "sweetheart deal" with the retailing giant on child labor law violations.
"The teams will be enforcing compliance with child labor laws and making certain that all the rules are being adhered to," Gov. M. Jodi Rell said in a statement today.
The Labor Department published a press release on Monday, Feb. 14, announcing it had fined Wal-Mart $135,540 for violating child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. The department said it had conducted 25 investigations involving 85 workers between the ages of 16 and 17 who allegedly performed prohibited activities such as operating forklifts, using chain saws and operating or unloading paper balers. In one case, a minor was allegedly using a chain saw to cut Christmas trees.
State officials are upset because the agreement between the Labor Department and Wal-Mart gives the company the right to collaborate with the government on any public statements about the fine. The settlement agreement also stipulates that the Labor Department will give Wal-Mart 15 days advance notice before any follow-up investigations by the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division during the next 12 months.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=513063&page=1
----I am getting REALLY sick of Wal-Marts robber baron tactics...---
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Why isn't Bob Novak going to jail?
Friday, February 18, 2005
By Tony Norman
Will someone please explain in simple, easy-to-understand language, why we never see right-wing pundit Bob Novak's name mentioned in the same breath as reporters facing jail time for contempt in the Valerie Plame affair?
Earlier this week, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington upheld an earlier court ruling that New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper should be jailed for contempt for failing to disclose the source of a story neither had any intention of publishing in the first place.
Meanwhile, Bob Novak, the only columnist in the country who actually published Plame's identity in violation of federal law, sits comfortably ensconced on CNN's "The Capital Gang" bloviating as usual.
Miller and Cooper will probably go to jail for "witnessing" a federal crime and refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity. So why is it that only two of the three reporters who allegedly "witnessed" the crime are being threatened?
Novak not only knows the identity of the "senior White House official" who leaked the information to Miller and Cooper, he willingly became a conduit for that information.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05049/459428.stm
---Let us be clear...Novak is involved in an act of TREASON...----
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Why Bush will fail in Europe The President has an enormous political gulf to bridge. The trouble is, he doesn't even know it's there
William Pfaff
Sunday February 20, 2005
The Observer http://www.observer.co.uk
President George W Bush arrives in Europe this week in the belief that the European Nato allies can be persuaded to 'turn away from the disagreements of the past' and open 'a new chapter' in transatlantic relations, as Condoleezza Rice, on her European trip, advised them to do. He is likely to go home without the concessions he wants.
He wants more help from the Europeans in Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably in other places yet to be announced; European backing for American policy on Iran (and Syria and Israel/Palestine); and no European arms sales to China. Those are Washington's priorities. There is a further list of secondary issues, commercial as well as political.
His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the United States today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1418548,00.html
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Venezuela's Chavez Says U.S. Plotting to Kill Him
Sun Feb 20, 2005 05:10 PM ET
By Patrick Markey
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday the United States was planning to assassinate him, but offered no evidence to support his accusation.
"I know I am condemned... I'm sure in Washington they are planning my death," Chavez said in a regular Sunday broadcast. "If anything happens to me, you can forget about Venezuela's oil Mr Bush."
Chavez was reacting to recent criticism of his left-wing government by U.S. officials. He often accuses Washington of backing opposition attempts to oust or even kill him, a charge Washington denies.
"If they manage to kill me there will only be one person in this world to blame: the president of the United States," Chavez said. "If you try, you will regret it Comrade Mr Bush."
Diplomatic ties between the United States and Venezuela, one of its key oil suppliers, have soured since Chavez came to power nearly six years ago promising to fight poverty.
U.S. officials have stepped up their criticism of Chavez since January when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice branded him a "negative force" in Latin America.
A tough-talking former army officer, Chavez presents himself as alternative to what he sees as U.S. imperialist policies. He says President Bush's administration backed a 2002 coup against him, which he survived, and then financed a vote campaign to try and oust him.
U.S. officials worry about Chavez's close ties with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and have suggested he also backs insurgent groups in the region, including Marxist rebels in Colombia.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick last week said Chavez was part of a trend of creeping authoritarianism and Washington is concerned that Russian rifles bought by Venezuela could aid Colombian rebels.
Chavez's accusation on Sunday echoed similar comments by Castro who said earlier this month that United States would be responsible if Chavez were assassinated.
http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7682470
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posted by Christy at 2:19 AM
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