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Saturday, October 21, 2006

(Hundreds of) Loud, angry voices greet Bush



They came to protest President Bush, Sen. George Allen, the Iraqi war, the National Security Agency surveillance program and most everything else conservative and Republican.
...
Raunchy signs -- many using language not permitted in a daily newspaper -- were as plentiful as the slogans....

Several took a more tactful approach, such as a well-dressed man in a corduroy sport jacket who quietly held a sign describing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld as a war criminal.

"I'm a swing voter," said the man, Kerry Riley, who lives nearby. "I voted for Ronald Reagan and proud of many Republican people in office, but not the likes of Dick Cheney, President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove. I think they keep real bad company."

The Virginia Anti-War Network helped organize the protest, which drew 150 to 400 people at various stages, according to organizers and police estimates.

LinkHere

Fraud is already happening in my local elections - Please Help

It is just ludicrous, that they can get away with this shit.


This is an E-mail letter I just received from the county Democratic Party. Needless to say, Kathy Richardson, mention in the story, is a Republican.

Dear Friends,

The Hamilton County Democrats have been in the news lately and we wanted to make sure you knew about it. The news stems from a series of errors made by Kathy Richardson, Hamilton County Elections Administrator.

The news started earlier this month when the County Election Board discovered that the name of a candidate was missing from hundreds of absentee ballots. The same week, the Elections Office also missed a deadline for mailing absentee ballots to military personnel The party promptly issued a press release raising its concerns over the errors, which were just the latest in a series. The press immediately took notice. Articles appeared in The Noblesville Daily Times and The Noblesville Ledger.

Days later, Democratic Party candidate for County Council, Bob Threlkeld, discovered his name also wasn't on the ballot while voting early at the government center. With 2 missing names of candidates, from hundreds of ballots, the party issued a second press release expressing greater concern. Our release was again picked up by the media. Articles appeared in the Indianapolis Star, The Noblesville Daily Times, and The Noblesville Ledger. The party is demanding to know why the Elections Office is making so many mistakes at a time when their workload has decreased due to the fact that their office is no longer responsible for voter registration. The Elections Office is managed by Elections Administrator, Kathy Richardson, who is also a State Representative. We are now questioning whether Richardson should even be running the Elections Office, when she herself is running in the election.

With the series of errors in mind, along with the conflict of interest, the party is now demanding that the County Commissioners and County Clerk ask for Kathy Richardson's resignation. If you agree, please contact your County Commissioner and/or the County Clerk. Call the office of the County Commissioners at 776-9719. Their website is here. Call the County Clerk, Tammy Baitz at 776-8534 or email her at TSB@co.hamilton.in.us.in.us . If you are concerned that these errors are occurring less than 20 days from Election Day, please write your newspaper a letter to the editor. Kathy Richardson needs to be held accountable. Hamilton County voters have the right to feel confident about the election process.

On Edit: If you read this story please help by sending an E-mail to our local paper and to the County Clerk's office letting them know that people are watching. I would like to see both these addresses inudated with E-mails. Any support would be greatly appreciated as this is the heart of Red America.

rbrowning@noblesvilledailytimes.com TSB@co.hamilton.in.us

(Repub Cong) Calif. Campaign in Turmoil Over Letters (Say Immigrants Can't Vote)

Congresswoman on page board buried file on husband's child abuse allegation














Brian BeutlerPublished: Thursday October 19, 2006

A file allegedly suppressed by Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) has been obtained by RAW STORY.

In 1995, just three days into her tenure as Secretary of the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, Wilson removed a routine working file alleging that her husband had engaged in inappropriate contact with a minor. The file was then transferred to the department's attorney in her own Albuquerque office, where it soon went missing.

At the time, a local investigative news team learned about the swap, but could not confirm certain details of the file. They were not able to recover the document itself.

More than ten years later, RAW STORY has uncovered and confirmed the authenticity of the police incident report believed to be contained in the missing dossier. Filed as a case of child abuse in 1993, it contends that Wilson's husband Jay Hone, an Albuquerque attorney, touched a then-16 year old boy "in a manner that was not welcome."

Charges were never filed against her husband, but Wilson's handling of the affair drew the ire of Bob Schwartz who at the time served as district attorney in Bernalillo County. He described Wilson's actions to the news team as "absolutely inappropriate," citing her "obvious conflict of interest." He also admonished Wilson for not following official procedure for the removal of official documents. "If this file is behind Secretary Wilson's desk," Schwartz said, "then she shouldn't be behind this desk anymore. She should resign."

Wilson originally denied to the news team that she had removed the file. Footage from that investigation was available on the internet site YouTube as recently as several days ago, but has since been removed by the site over concerns regarding copyright infringment.

In that video, also uncovered by RAW STORY, Wilson flatly denies ordering the removal of the document. The Congresswoman ultimately admitted to doing so in a press conference just days later.

Six years after the incident, in 2001, Wilson began a three year term on the House Page Board, where she sat while rumors of Mark Foley's inappropriate behavior with underage men were reportedly widespread. Her campaign staff told the Albuquerque Tribune that she only became aware of the Congressman's behavior after an ABC news report on the matter prompted him to resign.

Wilson also currently serves on the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's caucus.
RAW STORY spoke with members of Wilson's legislative and campaign staffs, but neither office was able to provide comment before press time.

Scans of the report follow:

Link Here

Baghdad now forced to 'export' bodies

Jihad Karbalai, Agence France Presse

...Islamic custom dictates that a body should be buried within 24 hours of its death, but with sectarian death squads and suicide bombers roaming the streets of Baghdad, the city's mortuaries are overflowing with unclaimed corpses. The city's health authorities have come up with the best solution they can think of in these dark days. Each body is photographed with a digital camera, and assigned a number in a computer database. Then, it is loaded in one of the refrigerated vans and taken to one of the Shiite holy cities for burial. Once upon a time, all bodies just went to the massive graveyard of Najaf, but authorities there could not cope with the constant stream of corpses and now overflow cemeteries have been established in Karbala. Here, the bodies are assigned to numbered graves (...) Many families never find loved ones, and some Sunni relatives would fear to travel to Shiite Karbala amidst the communal bloodletting, but those who match a face to a grave can at least pay last respects...

continua / continued

The David Kelly "Dead in the Woods" PSYOP


Rowena Thursby, Globalresearch.ca

British diplomat David Broucher describes to the Hutton Inquiry a meeting he had with David Kelly in February 2003. An audible gasp goes up when he recalls how the government scientist apparently predicted his own suicide. But evidence subsequently unearthed by Kelly's daughter, shows their one and only meeting actually took place in February 2002 - a whole year earlier. It would have made perfect sense in February 2003 for them to have discussed Resolution 1441, the September dossier and 'the 45 minutes’ as Broucher claims; but wind back the clock to February 2002 and what do we find? None of them were in existence. Was the whole Broucher-Kelly conversation a fabrication? Had this civil servant been sent to help contrive one of the biggest cover-ups in British history?...

continua / continued

David Swanson | The Industrial Services Complex Formerly Known as the Military

"The US military no longer cooks its own food, washes its own laundry, repairs its own vehicles, or guards its own VIPs. We've privatized everything, right down to the shooting - mercenaries make up the second largest contingent in the Coalition of the Killing," says David Swanson as he reflects on "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers," arguably the best film Robert Greenwald has created.

LinkHere

J. Sri Raman | Remembering the Suez Saga - As History Is Repeated



J. Sri Raman writes: "October 2006 marks the 50th anniversary of an important event of modern world history that is going conspicuously unobserved. The Suez crisis of 1956, which should be remembered as a saga of resistance in the Middle East to Western hegemonism, is being pushed into organized oblivion by the current powers and their puppets precisely because of the striking contemporary relevance of the subject."

FOCUS | High Court Allows Arizona to Enact New Voter ID Law

The Supreme Court cleared the way Friday for Arizona to enforce a new rule for next month's election that requires most voters to show proof of identification before casting a ballot. The ruling reverses one by the 9th Circuit. It is expected to benefit Republicans at the polls.

LinkHere

VIDEO | Grassroots on Fire in Midterm Campaign A Report by Sari Gelzer

In California's District 11, Democrat Jerry McNerny is up against GOP Congressman Richard Pombo, who not only has five times the fundraising budget, but has won his seat in the House seven terms in a row. McNerny's grassroots supporters have made this the most competitive campaign this district has seen in over 14 years.

LinkHere

Many Iraqis Have More Faith In Militias Than US Troops...

The New York Times SABRINA TAVERNISE October 21, 2006 09:22 AM

Behind the maze of men with guns in Iraq is a very simple truth: their barrels offer protection, something Iraqis say the government has never given them.

On Friday, the web wound tightly around the southern city of Amara, where the two largest and best-armed militias, both made up of religious Shiites, were fighting for control of the city.

READ FULL STORY

Condi Refers To Mother Of New AIDS Ambassador's Gay Partner As “Mother In Law”...

Snow’s Response: She “Said What She Said”…
The New York Times Kate Phillips October 21, 2006 12:27 PM

Once Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, finished outlining dictionary definitions of strategy vs. tactics vs. goals (but not "course" as an overarching term for Iraq) at the press briefing (and yes we caught that Daniel vs. Noah Webster routine) on Friday, he was asked a question about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's definition of "mother-in-law" last week. (Laura Bush attended the event, too, and even though she knows firsthand the definition of mother-in-law, it wasn't her usage that matters here.)

READ FULL STORY

UN: Iraqi Prime Minister Ordered Civilian Death, Injury Toll Sealed...






The New York Times Warren Hoge October 21, 2006 03:11 PM

The United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country's medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there, according to a confidential cable.

The cable, dated Oct. 17 and sent to United Nations officials in New York and Geneva by Ashraf Qazi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, says the prohibition may hinder the ability of his office to give accurate accounts in its bimonthly human rights reports on the levels of violence and the effect on Iraqi society.

READ FULL STORY

78 US Troops Killed So Far In October...


Associated Press SINAN SALAHEDDIN October 21, 2006 03:26 PM

Three U.S. Marines were killed in combat Saturday in Anbar province, the military said, making October the deadliest month for American forces inIraq this year. The deaths raised the October toll to 78, surpassing the previous high figure of 76 in April and making October -- with more than a week left -- on course to be the deadliest month for American service members in two years.

Also Saturday, a dozen mortars rained down on an outdoor market crowded with holiday shoppers, killing at least 18 people in a Shiite-dominated city that was the scene of a deadly market assault earlier this year, police said.


READ FULL STORY

Negative Phone Sex Ad May Backfire On GOP...

Editor & Publisher October 21, 2006 03:11 PM

It seemed like a "gotcha" moment for Republicans in one of the most closely watched congressional races in the country: catching the Democratic candidate calling a sex phone line and billing the call to the local taxpayers. Now it may backfire on the Republicans.

Newspapers in the upstate New York district have had a field day chronicling the dispute, with the latest twist seeming to reveal that the Democrat, or an aide, had simply dialed a wrong number.

READ FULL STORY

GOP Candidates Dogged By Sex Scandals...

The party of the Holier than Thou Christians, Remind you of the Church hmmmm? time to hide away your kids, the perverts and deviates are in power? no one is safe from their corruption and perversions.
Associated Press NANCY BENAC October 21, 2006 01:34 PM

Cover your eyes, kids, it's time to round up a few of this week's headlines from the midterm elections.

"During National Character Counts Week, Bush Stumps for Philanderer." The Washington Post.
"Gubernatorial race: Gibbons denies doing anything inappropriate, offensive." Las Vegas Review-Journal.

READ FULL STORY

Bush Says He'll Stay The Course In Iraq No Matter What...

Associated Press DEB RIECHMANN and KEVIN FREKING October 21, 2006 08:46 AM

President Bush conceded Friday that "right now it's tough" for American forces inIraq, but the White House said he would not change U.S. strategy in the face of pre-election polls that show voters are upset.

With Republicans anxious about the potential loss of Congress -- and with conditions seemingly deteriorating in Iraq -- Bush addressed the question of whether he would alter his policies.

Giving Osama What He Really Wants

The Republican National Committee and George W. Bush are claiming that what Osama bin Laden really wants is a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq -- and that U.S. voters should deny him that wish. But recent U.S. intelligence actually reveals the opposite, that al-Qaeda realizes that "prolonging" the U.S. occupation serves its interests by attracting thousands of new jihadists. October 21, 2006

LinkHere

Iraqi Turkmen threaten ‘civil’ disobedience

Violence is spiraling in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as the country’s main ethnic groups are fighting for control of its oilfields.... more

VIDEO: Cheney Still Lying About Iraq-Al Qaeda Link



If America has not pinned these lying thugs down yet, they deserve what they get, just understand that the rest of the world does not deserve the Foreign Policy of these punks in Washington

Think Progress

Just last month, the Senate Intelligence Committee — chaired by Bush-ally Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) — concluded that there was absolutely no relationship between Saddam Hussein and the late al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Nevertheless, in an interview with a South Bend, Indiana television station yesterday, Vice President Cheney falsely asserted that Zarqawi was proof of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. Cheney’s statement is a lie. Here’s precisely what the Senate Intelligence Committee found: Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and…the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi...

continua / continued

Bush’s absolute power grab

Carla Binion, Online Journal Associate Editor

On October 17, George W. Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This new law gives Bush power similar to that of Stalin or Hitler, and grants agencies within the executive branch powers similar to those of the KGB or Gestapo. Bush justifies this act by claiming he needs it to fight the "war on terror," but a number of critics, including former counterterrorism officials, have said the administration has greatly exaggerated the threat and used illogical methods to combat terrorism...

continua / continued

ACTION ALERT: Blackwell purged Ohio Voter Rolls Oct 1st.- Vote Early.

Thom Hartman REPORTS. Spread it far and wide Ohio and 3 other States
ARE YOU AWAKE YET, ARE YOU GOING TO LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN IN NOVEMBER.
YOU WANT A GOP HOUSE AND SENATE FOR ANOTHER 4 YEARS.
by KStreetProjector
Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 05:59:14 AM PDT

A friend, in a position to be present at lunches of GOP insiders here in DC called me on Thursday, they know of my ongoing efforts to make hackable voting end.

My friend was present as a group of Moderate GOP members with Ohio ties lamented how far the party had strayed. There was consensus at the table there was no way they should retain control. The table conversation began with the assumption they party would lose control in this election. The moderates started planning how to take back control of the GOP from the extremists.

Then, one insider, probably an extremist, but certainly very close to Mr. Ken Mehlman abruptly stopped the conversation. He told table that it was impossible they would lose either house. He also predicts an Ohio GOP sweep.

More Below.

KStreetProjector's diary :: ::
He informed the group that over the last year, in four critical states the GOP needs to hold huge purges of the voter rolls have just been finished.

The insider did not say which four states, but did say Ohio was among them.

His claim was a new Diebold voter registry system had been installed over the last year. The last week of July and the first week of August a "test run" was made of the systems ability to purge ineligable voters. The purge generated names and test letters sent out to 1.2 million Ohio addresses with a focus on University's, Apartment addresses with high turnover. He claims they made the letters seem just functionary, but they have an action component to avoid being purged from the rolls.

The Insider warmed and said that Blackwell was brilliant in how he did this. The letter went on for a long time about changes in Ohio voting and security and suggested people who might have any concerns about their voting status could come by county offices and confirm their continued voting eligability before election day.

He further added, that since it was conducted as a "test" they only sent letters to a limited number of suspect addresses and "I suspect Blackwell chose criteria very very favorable for us."

Further the insider stated that Blackwell had only purged the lists after a full 60 days was given for people to respond. Which means even if a voter was on the "termination" list, they would still have been eligable to vote in the primary.

He told they table they believe the purge has probably caught up "hundreds of thousands of students, activists and wanderers with no real job" would show up at the polls and have to vote provisionally.

He predicted to the table that tens of thousands of voters will show up on election day, and once the provisionals are used up will simply not be able to at all.

He also said that this "operation" (The Insiders word, my friend was specific about this" had turned up a lot of additional fascinating information including a number of Democrats in elected office who are registered to vote in several places, and they may explore how to use this information against them.

I am going to assume, Mr. Blackwell's "test" purge went to no-one registered GOP. His criteria is something I am trying to get a copy of now.

Friday I called friends in Lorain County and Wayne County Ohio. I told them this DC tale. Neither of them had voted yet and I asked them if they could go on Monday to either early vote, or apply for an absentee ballot. And if possible sit for in the Elections Office for an hour and determine if anyone was expressiing surprise they were no longer registered.

If the sample of 11AM-1PM in Lorain County Ohio and 10AM-11AM in Wayne County Ohio are true. Then Ohio Democratic Voters had better go and Vote Early if they plan to vote at all.

At Lorain County, my friend arrived to find a line of over 15 people, many of whom had come back for a second time, all of them Democrats who had arrived to vote and been told that Drivers Liscence Information, or in one case Home Ownership Information had not matched the address provided for Voter Registration.

In one case a college student had been purged because he had changed dorms on campus.

In another case a local blue-collar worker had been purged because his voter registration had only his building address, but his drivers liscense included an apartment number. This tiny difference in information had led to his purging.

While everyone present seemed to have enough information to allow the records to be updated, my friend told me it was being done by one and only one clerk and was taking a very long time, about 5 minutes per person to resolve. Everyone in line confirmed that several voters had given up in frustration and left.

In Wayne County the sample is smaller, but during the one hour he stated 18 people arrived for absentee ballots or to vote early. Wayne County had 3 Diebold TSX Touch Screens set up for early voters. Of those who arrived two of them had been provisionally purged. The first was again a student from a local college, she was sent away and told she had to bring some ID beyond her student ID to prove she was resident at the College. She was wearing a Sherrod Brown button. The second was a local guy who owns two houses on the same block. His drivers liscence is to the one house where he keeps his cars, but his voter roll is in his house where he actually sleeps four houses away. This got resolved with a series of steps that included filling out two forms, and a clerk having to enter the corrected information into two seperate computers.

As an added bonus, My friend listened in and witnessed 8 retired ladies getting instructions on how to be poll workers on the new TSX machines. The instructor was a local elections board member. She was asked many questions by one of the retirees and her answer to almost all of them was "I don't know how it works, I just know how we are supposed to use it"

Get ready Ohio.

This story also may explain Mr. Blackwell's sudden discovery of the "two homes and is he really a qualifed Voter" now facing Strickland.

This Blackwell discovery of Mr. Strickland is actually "by-catch" of the much larger net thrown to eliminate hundred of thousands of democrats from the voting rolls.

ACTION: Get to your election boards, bring all the documentation you can. Demand a paper absentee ballot. Alert a everyone you know in Ohio.

Good luck out there. This doesn't eliminate the fact your Diebold System is utterly hackable, but it certainly explains how Rove plans to drag all your races into the margin of error so hitting the Diebold Button to steal the election doesn't look so obvious.

He has taken away your right to vote based on any piece of mismatched information in your state records.

I would expect that would be nearly everyone if the test was applied across the board. But I suspect it was not done that way by Mr. Blackwell.

It might be worth other states starting to look at this issue as well.

They are very much in love with the power they have my friends. I am increasing afraid this one one ends as another of my friends now says very often: "By Feeding the Tree of Liberty."


LinkHere

Sentimental Education: Academia Signs Up for Tracking Down Dissent

Tuesday, 17 October 2006

This is my latest piece for Truthout.org.

I.
Why is the United States government spending millions of dollars to track down critics of George W. Bush in the press? And why have major American universities agreed to put this technology of tyranny into the state's hands?

At the most basic level, of course, both questions are easily answered:

1) Power.

2) Money.

The Bush administration wants to be able to root out - and counteract - any dissenting noises that might put a crimp in its ongoing crusade for "full spectrum dominance" of global affairs, while the august institutions of higher learning involved - the universities of Cornell, Pittsburgh and Utah - crave the federal green that keeps them in clover.

But beyond these grubby realities, there are many other disturbing aspects of this new program - which is itself only part of a much broader penetration of American academia by the Department of Homeland Security.

As with so many of the Bush measures that have quietly stripped away America's liberties, this one too is beginning with a whimper, not a bang: a modest $2.4 Department of Homeland Security million grant to develop "sentiment analysis" software that will allow the government's "security organs" to sift millions of articles for "negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas," as the New York Times reported earlier this month. Such negative opinions must be caught and catalogued because they could pose "potential threats to the nation," security apparatchiks told the Times.

This hydra-headed snooping program is based on "information extraction," which, as a chipper PR piece from Cornell tells us, is a process by which "computers scan text to find meaning in natural language," rather than the rigid literalism ordinarily demanded by silicon cogitators. Under the gentle tutelage of Homeland Security, the universities "will use machine-learning algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and opinion and teach them to tell the difference," says the Cornell blurb.

At this point, the ancient and ever-pertinent question of Pontius Pilate comes to mind: "What is truth?" Of course, Pilate, being a devotee of what George W. Bush likes to call "the path of action," gave the answer to his philosophical inquiry in brute physical form: truth is whatever the empire says it is - so take this Galilean rabble-rouser out and crucify him already. In like manner, it will certainly be the government "security organs" who ultimately determine the criteria for what is fact and what is opinion - and whether the latter is positive or negative, perhaps even a candidate for the Bush-Pilate "path."

The academics will be trying out the Sentiment Analysis program (let's call it SAP, for short) on four main clusters of articles from 2001-2002, the Times reports. These include: Bush's famous declaration of an "axis of evil" threatening the world; the treatment of his Terror War captives in Guantanamo Bay; global warming; and the failed Bush-backed bid to topple Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in a coup - all of them issues on which the Bush administration was at odds with much of the world, and large swathes of American opinion as well. Obviously, such issues are fertile fields for terrorist thought-crimes to be snagged and tagged by SAP.

For those with concerns about civil liberties, Cornell assures us that SAP will be limited strictly to foreign publications. Oh, really? Hands up out there, everyone who believes that this technology will not be used to ferret out "potential threats to the nation" arising in the Homeland press as well. After all, the Unitary Executive Decider-in-Chief has already decided that the nation's iron-clad laws against warrantless surveillance of American citizens can be swept aside by his "inherent powers" if he decides it's necessary. Why should he bother with any petty restrictions on a press-monitoring program? And wouldn't dissension within the ranks of the volk itself actually be more threatening to government policy than the grumbling of malcontents overseas?

Chris Floyd

Remember the Eisenhower!

Friday, 20 October 2006

On October 21, a U.S. naval battle group led by the USS Eisenhower will arrive in the Gulf of Hormuz, just off the coast of Iran. There is every good likelihood that such a deliberately provocative act will lead to what will be termed as an Iranian attack on an American vessel. This Tonkin-like incident will be used as the justification for a U.S. military strike against Iran – or alternatively, for a mighty rattling of American sabers at the perfidious Persians that stokes war fever and "rally-round-the-flag" sentiment but falls short of an actual attack at that time. This flashpoint – however it is expoited – will occur some time in the brief interim between the arrival of the Eisenhower group and the U.S. elections on November 5.

Such a scenario is not a sure thing, of course, and this is not a prophecy. It's simply an assessment of the possibilities of the situation, based on the well-established history of the American use of highly convenient "provocations" – of whatever provenance – to launch politically expedient military actions, and on the Bush Administration's record of manipulating the nation into unnecessary wars, along with the highly public calls of some of its most influential members and advisors for a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear program or a full-blown "regime change" action.

Also not to be discounted is the Administration's proven penchant for initiating stupid, murderous policies that deeply harm the interests and security of the United States – but goose the poll numbers for George W. Bush and fill the coffers of his war-profiteering cronies.

In any event, the Eisenhower group will still be there after the election: a hair-trigger waiting to be pulled whenever the time is ripe.

(Dave Lindorff has been all over this story at The Nation and our own Atlantic Free Press.)

Chris Floyd

Bolton: One sex pervert shilling for a country -- Guatemala -- that hides its own pedophilia links to U.S. intelligence.

October 20/21/22, 2006 -- Pagegate swamps two additional female GOP House members. Scandal becoming political equivalent of a general alarm fire. WMR has received further confirmation that Pagegate details were revealed by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement members as a last resort to ensure the defeat of GOP members of Congress who have been blackmailed over the years for their involvement in pederasty or covering it up. In fact, some of the members targeted were originally blackmailed by CIA-connected elements tied to child prostitution as far back as the 1960s. The blackmail was always held in reserve as an insurance policy for elements tied to "the Agency," which have now found it necessary to exercise their "options."

A number of past and present GOP members of the House Page Board have been implicated in the growing scandal. It has been reported that current Page Board member Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico covered up her husband's own brush with the law over "inappropriate contact with a minor" in 1996. Rep. Wilson, while Secretary of the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, managed to cover up the incident involving the16-year old boy and her husband. And in what amounts to further chutzpah on the part of the House GOP, Wilson served on the Caucus for Missing and Exploited Children under its one-time chairman, Mark Foley.

However, caucuses and boards devoted to exploited children, as well as other seemingly "youth development and protection" organizations, have been used by the GOP and Religious Right to mask a pedophile and pederasty agenda.

Wilson is not the only member of the House Page Board who has been covering up for the pederasts who have served on it. Rep. Sue Kelly of New York was Chairwoman of the Board from 1999 to 2001, along with former Chair (who Kelly succeeded) Jim Kolbe of Arizona. Kolbe is under investigation by both the House Ethics Committee and the Justice Department for alleged inappropriate contact with two male pages during a July 4, 1996 camping trip to the Grand Canyon. Under Kelly's Page Board chairmanship, a page approached Kolbe in 2000 with allegations concerning Foley. Nothing was done in what was a close election year.

Neither did Kelly investigate allegations from a page in 1999 that Foley was stalking him and another incident in 2000 when Foley showed up at the Page dormitory in a drunken state and tried to gain entry.

Kelly, like Missouri Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, now want to make their past memberships of the House Page Board simply disappear. Kelly even ran away from a televised debate with her Democratic opponent John Hall. And Emerson will not respond to her Democratic opponent, Veronica Hambacker, about why Emerson lied when she said she was never a member of the House Page Board. Emerson was a member during Session 1 of the 106th Congress, during the time of allegations against Foley and three years after the incident involving her then Board chairman, Kolbe.

In addition, to past and current Page Board members Wilson, Kelly, and Emerson, other GOP members of the House and Senate are embroiled in the sex scandal. WMR has learned that the GOP for a number of years has used pipelines like the House and Senate page systems, political indoctrination organizations like the College Republicans, juvenile "diversion programs," and religious-connected political groups like to groom young men for the predatory sexual appetites of older male GOP members of Congress. The Pennsylvania College Republicans, founded by current Rep. Phil English with the support of current Sen. Rick Santorum, appears to be one such "recruitment" center.


GOP recruits underage male and female sex partners beyond the congressional page programs.

But it is not just young men who are groomed by the GOP predators. Republican Rep. Jerry Weller of Illinois, who is married to the daughter of Guatemalan ex-dictator (and fundamentalist Christian) Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, is rumored to have conducted an illicit affair with a 16-year old female page. This comes at a time when the United States and John Bolton, a supporter of Rios Montt, are attempting to sway the United Nations into electing Guatemala to the UN Security Council. Former CIA officials, well aware of the human rights abuses by past and current members of Guatemala's oligarchy, have leaked information on Weller, former CIA Director Porter Goss, and others to point out that the agency, as far back as the 1960s when Goss served as a Latin American CIA agent, routinely used Mexican and Guatemalan female teens to entrap U.S. and foreign political figures. The "outing" of right-wing Republican Weller, the son-in-law of Rios Montt and champion of Guatemala's oligarchy, as a predator, is no coincidence. It is meant to shine a light on this old blackmail network during a time when Goss' name and those of jailed Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, Brant "Nine Fingers" Bassett, and ADCS contractor Brent Wilkes have arisen again during a House Intelligence Committee investigation of Shirlington Limousine and the transport of young prostitutes of both sexes to "poker parties" at the Watergate and Westin Hotels in Washington, DC. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoesktra, Goss's replacement, seems more interested in covering up this scandal than in discovering the truth.

WMR has been informed of a major scandal in this respect concerning the GOP candidate for Governor of Florida. We have learned that Florida GOP politicians have targeted underage male employees of theme parks in the Orlando/Kissimmee area for long-term sexual relationships. This story is developing.

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October 20/21/22, 2006 -- WMR is on the road to the United Nations. Unconfirmed US ambassador John Bolton is reportedly stirring up hate and discontent as no other delegate to the world body can. WMR will report directly to our readers on Bolton's boorish behavior. Another reason to vote Democratic for US Senate is to ensure this one-time patron of the the former Manhattan sex club, "Plato's Retreat," is sent packing from the United Nations after the Democratic chairman brings down the gavel in January in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It seems fitting that Bolton would be championing a country that hides its past child prostitution links with U.S. intelligence (see article above).



Bolton: One sex pervert shilling for a country -- Guatemala -- that hides its own pedophilia links to U.S. intelligence.

WayneMadsenReport

Bush defies Senate, appoints mine agency head

He's the DECIDER, didn't ya know
By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush appointed former energy executive Richard Stickler to head the federal mine safety agency on Thursday, even though the U.S. Senate rejected Stickler's nomination twice in two months.

Bush made a "recess appointment," taking advantage of the congressional break to put Stickler temporarily in the position, a choice he made when he appointed John Bolton the ambassador to the United Nations.

Currently Stickler, who directed Pennsylvania's mine safety agency for six years, is a contracted adviser for the Department of Labor, which oversees the Mine Safety and Health Agency.

"Richard has extensive experience in mining and protecting miners' lives that he will use to strengthen enforcement of mine safety laws and help ensure the safety and health of miners nationwide," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement.

Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, originally put a hold on the nomination for three months and it was automatically rejected when the Senate adjourned for its August recess. Bush then renominated him in September, but the Senate once again refused to act before it left for the pre-election recess.

U.S. Jails Man Once Tortured by Taliban

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Saturday, October 21, 2006 2:45 AM EDT

WASHINGTON - Abdul Rahim insists he's an apolitical student who fled a strict father. But he's fallen into a black hole in the war on terror in which first the Taliban and then the United States imprisoned him as an enemy of the state.

Arrested by the Taliban in Afghanistan in January 2000, Rahim says al-Qaida leaders burned him with cigarettes, smashed his right hand, deprived him of sleep, nearly drowned him and hanged him from the ceiling until he "confessed" to spying for the United States.

U.S. forces took the young Kurd from Syria into custody in January 2002 after the Taliban fled his prison. Accusing him of being an al-Qaida terrorist, U.S. interrogators deprived him of sleep, threatened him with police dogs and kept him in stress positions for hours, he says. He's been held ever since as an enemy combatant.

Rahim's story is one of several emerging from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay as defense lawyers make bids to free their clients while the Bush administration tries to use a new law to lock them out of federal courts.

LinkHere

U.S. Plan for New Nuclear Weapons Advances

Remember? Hiroshima Was Burnt To Ashes
The friking hypocracy of it all, is just mind boggling
And this punk has the audacity to tell any country what they can do and cannot do.
The United States took another step yesterday toward building a new stockpile of up to 2,200 deployed nuclear weapons that would last well into the 21st century, announcing the start of a multiyear process to repair and replace facilities where they would be developed and assembled and where older warheads could be more rapidly dismantled.

LinkHere

A polite but firm rebuff for Rice

Oct 21, 2006

A polite but firm rebuff for Rice
By Donald Kirk

SEOUL - The Condoleezza Rice road show was such an exercise in bluff and bluster that the only clear conclusion in its wake is that nothing she said had changed anyone's mind on what to do about North Korea's nuclear program.

Moving with the glittery aplomb of a queen between the Foreign Ministry and the Blue (Government) House, ambassadors and junior diplomats surrounding the US secretary of state vied with her Korean hosts for the distinction of which side was the more skilled in diplomatic double-talk.

The winner in a close race was affable, unflappable South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, whose favorite expression, a gentler version of the thinking of President Roh Moo-hyun, was that all contentious issues were "under review" - no doubt while "reviewing the situation".

That response seemed to cover just about everything South Korea might do to fulfill the UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea, ranging from the dreaded Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to the special economic and tourist zones across the line in North Korea. ......

LinkHere

Do ‘computer police' have too much power?

HABEAS CORPUS DIES





"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Well Hun your Country voted the thugs in Washington into power, and stood silently for six years while the took away your freedoms one by one. Now you know what it feels like to live in a fashcist Country

I am a local farmer; my wife teaches elementary school; our three children are well-adjusted, “A” students.

We go to church, work hard, and pay our bills and taxes.

We are law-abiding, responsible members of society; we have never had reason to fear the law.

On Saturday morning, Sept. 23, 2006, many police vehicles appeared in our driveway. Men in black with flak jackets ran to and around our house.

My wife was at home alone. I drove up and asked, “What's going on?”

Men ran at me, dropped into shooting position, double-handed semi-automatic pistols pointed at me, and made me put my hands against my truck.

I was held at gunpoint, searched, taunted, and led into the house. I had no idea what this was about. I was scared beyond description. I feared there had been a murder and I was a suspect.

My wife and I were interrogated about Internet crime. We are not avid computer users; we do not even e-mail. We knew nothing of what they were speaking.

After seemingly convincing them of our computer “illiteracy,” we were questioned about our children and made to doubt their innocence.

Our home was searched by a para-military search-and-seizure team.

Our computers, digital camera, disposable cameras, DVD's, and VHS tapes were seized.

We were held in our home under guard for five hours.

Our children came home and were also interrogated.

It was awful. We were accused of horrible crimes, crimes that even the mention of would ruin our reputations.

The investigation was to be complete within six to nine months. We were in shock.

At 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 2, the chief investigator of Pittsylvania County returned our possessions and said that the wrong IP (computer) address had been identified. We would not be charged.

Pittsylvania County Sheriff's Department, Bedford County Sheriff's Department and Blue Ridge Thunder invaded our peaceful lives with military force based on one piece of wrong digital information.

The investigators did not do their jobs. They did not even know that we had children.

Incompetence? Apathy? Do these computer police have too much power?

No innocent United States citizen should be subjected to this based on so little evidence.

Inexcusable. Civil rights laws have been established to protect the innocent. Our ancestors fought and died for these rights.

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause...”

Invading our home with one bit of incorrect evidence was totally unreasonable.

I support the police and their efforts, but I believe every United States citizen should fear and be angry about these tactics.

I will not rest until I know what went wrong in this investigation. I pray that you will not either.

A.J. Nuckols

Gretna Link

Multi-alarm fire at Maryland building housing Army intelligence group

RAW STORYPublished: Friday October 20, 2006

A blogger has reported that a Fort Meade, Md. compound scorched by a multi-alarm fire houses an Army counterintelligence group. The report has been confirmed by at least one media source, which reports having seen the group's sign outside the building.

The blog, Mia Culpa, quoted information from an article at WJZ.com: "Officials say they do not know why the military building at 4554 Llewellyn Avenue caught fire."

When the blogger googled the address, it pulled up the website of the 902D Military Intelligence Group, nicknamed "The Deuce." The site describes the group as the "US Army's largest Counterintelligence Unit, conducting the full range of CI activities, throughout the spectrum of conflict, and at all echelons, from tactical to strategic."

According to a county fire department spokesman quoted in an article at The Capital, "sixty-nine firefighters started streaming to the scene just after 3 p.m." The fire appears to have burned the upper floors of the building. The only injury report was a minor one to a firefighter, according to the article.

LinkHere

The FBI is investigating the possible theft of software

Ex-Delegate Says FBI Contacted Her About Disks She Received

By Cameron W. Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 20, 2006; B01

The FBI is investigating the possible theft of software developed by the nation's leading maker of electronic voting equipment, said a former Maryland legislator who this week received three computer disks that apparently contain key portions of programs created by Diebold Election Systems.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a former Democratic delegate who has long questioned the security of electronic voting systems, said the disks were delivered anonymously to her office in Olney on Tuesday and that the FBI contacted her yesterday. The package contained an unsigned letter critical of Maryland State Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone that said the disks were "right from SBE" and had been "accidentally picked up."

Lamone's deputy, Ross Goldstein, said "they were not our disks," but he acknowledged that the software was used in Maryland in the 2004 elections. Diebold said in a statement last night that it had never created or received the disks.

The disks bear the logos of two testing companies that send such disks to the Maryland board after using the software to conduct tests on Diebold equipment. A Ciber Inc. spokeswoman said the disks had not come from Ciber, and Wyle Laboratories Inc. said it was not missing any disks.

Diebold spokesman Mark Radke and Goldstein said that the labels on the disks referred to versions of the software that are no longer in use in Maryland, although the Diebold statement said the version of one program apparently stored on the disks is still in use in "a limited number of jurisdictions" and is protected by encryption. The statement also said the FBI is investigating the disks' chain of custody.

Michelle Crnkovich, an FBI spokeswoman in Baltimore, said she had no knowledge of an investigation.

In an unrelated development, Maryland state auditors said in a report yesterday that the State Board of Elections is not properly controlling access to a new statewide database of registered voters or verifying what changes are made to it. The report comes at a time of heightened concern over the security and effectiveness of electronic voting systems.

Legislative auditor Bruce Myers said it was unusual to allow "across-the-board access" by local election officials to a sensitive database, but Lamone defended the board's practices. In a letter released with the Office of Legislative Audits report, she wrote that the board "is unaware of any allegations of the falsification of additions or deletions to the system."

The FBI investigation into the disks could focus further scrutiny on the security of Maryland's electronic voting system.

The disks delivered to Kagan's office bear labels indicating that they hold "source code" -- the instructions that constitute the core of a software program -- for Diebold's Ballot Station and Global Election Management System (GEMS) programs. The former guides the operation of the company's touch-screen voting machines; the latter is in part a tabulation program used to tally votes after an election.

Three years ago, Diebold was embarrassed when an activist obtained some of its confidential software by searching the Internet. The company vowed to improve its security procedures to prevent another lapse.

The release of such software poses a risk, computer scientists say, because it could allow someone to discover security vulnerabilities or to write a virus that could be used to manipulate election results.

In September, computer scientists at Princeton University who had obtained a Diebold voting machine demonstrated how a program they had created could secretly alter the votes cast on the machine. Diebold President Dave Byrd called the demonstration "unrealistic and inaccurate" and said it ignored the "physical security" measures used to safeguard voting machines.

The Washington Post obtained copies of the disks Wednesday and allowed Avi Rubin, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University, along with a colleague and a graduate student, to review the software on the condition that they make no copies of it.

"I would be stunned if it's not real," Rubin said.

Rubin, who has said that electronic voting systems that do not produce a paper record of each vote cannot be secured, led a team that produced an analysis that pointed out security vulnerabilities in the Diebold software found on the Internet in 2003.

Sam Small, the graduate student, said the version of Ballot Station "was consistent with what we've seen previously." Small could not gain access to the GEMS software because the material on two of the disks was protected by a password.

Radke, the Diebold spokesman, said the versions of Ballot Station released since the version identified on the disks have many new security features. The Diebold statement said "it would take years for a knowledgeable scientist" to break the encryption used on the software apparently contained on the disks delivered to Kagan. But Rubin said "the data and files were not encrypted" on the Ballot Station disk he reviewed.

The Office of Legislative Audits report also said the Maryland elections board has paid bills submitted by contractors without proper documentation and has not taken appropriate steps to safeguard its computer network and Web site.

Lamone said, "It seems inappropriate to base findings on a partially implemented system," referring to the new MDVOTERS database, which Maryland has established to comply with federal law.

She said it is appropriate for local election workers to have access to the database and said procedures are in place to verify changes. Lamone concurred with the auditors' criticism of her staff's accounting practices and said they had "obtained nearly all necessary documentation" for contractors' bills.

Providing the sort of local oversight envisioned by the auditors, she said, "simply cannot be conducted with existing resources."

Staff writer Eric Rich contributed to this report.

LinkHEre

Former delegate gets purported Diebold code

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

The availability of the code - the written instructions that tell the machines what to do - is important because some computer scientists worry that the machines are vulnerable to malicious and virtually undetectable vote-switching software. An examination of the instructions would enable technology experts to identify flaws, but Diebold says the code is proprietary and does not allow public scrutiny of it.

Diebold has not confirmed that the code received by Kagan is authentic, said Mike Morrill, a spokesman for the company in Maryland. But Johns Hopkins University computer scientist Aviel Rubin reviewed one of the disks and said he believed it was genuine. If it wasn't, he said, "someone went to great lengths to make it look like it was."

LinkHere

Calif. Republican asks Pentagon to remove embedded CNN reporters

THOMAS WATKINS
Associated Press

SAN DIEGO - The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee asked the Pentagon on Friday to remove CNN reporters embedded with U.S. combat troops, saying the network's broadcast of a video showing insurgent snipers targeting U.S. soldiers was tantamount to airing an enemy propaganda film.

The tape, which came to the network through contact with an insurgent leader, was aired Wednesday night on "Anderson Cooper 360" and repeated Thursday.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., wrote: "CNN has now served as the publicist for an enemy propaganda film featuring the killing of an American soldier."

The letter was also signed by San Diego-area Republican congressmen Darrell Issa and Brian Bilbray.

"This is nothing short of a terrorist snuff film," Bilbray said at a press conference held in San Diego.

CNN producer David Doss wrote in a Web log Thursday the network televised the footage in an effort to present the "unvarnished truth" about the Iraq war.

In one instance, the tape shows a uniformed member of the U.S. military milling in a public area with Iraqis. A shot rings out. CNN fades the screen to black before the result - described as a victim falling forward - is visible.

Hunter said he hasn't received a response from Rumsfeld.

A Pentagon spokesman said Friday he didn't know whether Rumsfeld had seen the letter.

"The department takes this very seriously and will look into the matter and respond accordingly to the member in due course," said Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler.

CNN officials defended their decision to air the footage.

"Our responsibility is to report the news," said Laurie Goldberg, a CNN spokeswoman. "As an organization we stand by our decision and respect the rights of others to disagree with it."

LinkHere

Friday, October 20, 2006


A Grisly New Orleans Murder Mystery Takes Another Twist


Man Suspected of Killing and Mutilating His Girlfriend Before Killing Himself Was an Iraq War Hero
I would say that he learned his job well in Iraq working for Georgie dont you think?
By MARCUS BARAM

Oct. 20, 2006 — New Orleans is still reeling from news this week that a bartender reportedly strangled his girlfriend, dismembered her body, and cooked some of the body parts on his stove before jumping to his death.

Now, it turns out, he was an Iraq war hero.

That's just one of the tragic ironies and mysteries of the suspected murder-suicide that has shaken residents of Crescent City.

Police said the mystery began on Tuesday when the body of Zachary Bowen, 28, was found on top of a parking garage.

A suicide note in his right, front pocket led cops to a grisly crime scene at his apartment in the French Quarter.
According to news reports, two pots were sitting on the stove, one containing a woman's head and another holding her hands and feet. Police believe the body parts belong to Bowen's girlfriend, Addie Hall.

In the oven, detectives reportedly found turkey-basting trays containing legs and arms sprinkled with seasoning.

From Los Angeles to New Orleans

A Los Angeles native, Bowen moved to New Orleans in the mid-'90s, and enlisted in the Army in May 2000.

He served in Kosovo and Iraq as a military policeman, earning several medals including the NATO medal and the Presidential Unit Citation, which is awarded to military units that have performed a heroic act in the face of an armed enemy.

After his discharge, Bowen returned to New Orleans, where he was hired at several bars because of his good looks, charming manners, and long blond hair.

But he seemed haunted by his past, writing in the suicide letter that he had 28 cigarette burns on his body to mark his failures in "school, jobs, military, marriage, parenthood, morals, love" for each year of his existence.

A fellow bartender told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that after downing rounds of Miller High Life and Jameson's Irish Whiskey, Bowen would grow depressed when talking about his military service, indicating that there was an overseas incident involving a child that haunted him

Continued1. 2. NEXT»
LinkHere

Peace Now: 43% of illegal squatter camps are built on stolen Palestinian land :

According to a survey by Peace Now, some parts of 75 of the 102 outposts in the West Bank are on private Palestinian land. The survey, carried out by the organization's settlement monitoring team, found that the total area of the outposts is 16,196 dunams, out of which about 43 percent are on private Palestinian land (6,986 dunams);

LinkHere

Are You Afraid?:

Watch his haunting observational film that explodes the myth around the claims that the Iraqis are preparing to take control of their own country. Contains some strong language. Flash presentation

LinkHere

Heck of a job, Maliki!

Sami Moubayed

...Death squads roam the streets, killing over 100 Iraqis per day. Under Maliki, the death toll has risen to over 3,000 Iraqis killed per month. On the anniversary of his 150th day in power, 50 people were killed in Mosul, Kirkuk and Baquba, and another 100 were wounded, while 33 unidentified bodies - all shot in the head, were found in Baghdad. Earlier in the week, 60 beheaded bodies were found (...) Under Maliki, according to a report in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Iraqi men are carving tattoos on their bodies, with their home address and telephone number. This is so that if they are killed, mutilated or beheaded, police would be able to identify their bodies and send them back to their families for burial...

continua / continued

Iraq Aims to Limit Mortality Data Health Ministry Told Not to Release Civilian Death Toll to U.N.

Colum Lynch, Washington Post Staff Writer

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office has instructed the country's health ministry to stop providing mortality figures to the United Nations, jeopardizing a key source of information on the number of civilian war dead in Iraq, according to a U.N. document. A confidential cable from the United Nations' top official in Baghdad, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi of Pakistan, said the Iraqi prime minister is seeking to exercise greater control over the release of the country's politically sensitive death toll. U.N. officials expressed concern that the move threatens to politicize the process of counting Iraq's dead and muddy international efforts to gain a clear snapshot of the scale of killing in Iraq...

continua / continued

Over 35,000 Christians Have Fled Iraq

The Associated Press

More than 35,000 Iraqi Christians have fled to Syria to escape the violence in their country, the leader of an Iraqi Christian group said Thursday (...) "We want to live in safety. We don't want to be killed. We love life," said another Christian refugee, Saddallah Mardini, 43. Mardini said US forces should leave Iraq now. "The occupation has brought destruction to Iraq," he said. His wife, Wissam, 25, complained of shortages of electricity and water in Iraq. "My kids go to school now (in Syria), which is something they were deprived of in Iraq," she said...

continua / continued

Iraq: Mortar attack targets Baghdad Palestinians

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

UNHCR has repeatedly expressed concern about the many threats faced by thousands of Palestinian refugees in Baghdad and along the borders with Syria and Jordan. Now we have been informed that a mortar attack last night in Baghdad's Palestinian neighbourhood of Al Baladiya left four Palestinians dead, a dozen wounded and many people displaced. Some of the wounded are in serious condition. Ambulances trying to reach the area right after the attack were reportedly turned away by armed militia. There had been previous warnings by militia that Palestinians should leave the neighbourhood. The Al Baladiya area used to house some 8,000 Palestinians. Reports by Palestinian sources now say that there are about 4,000 remaining there...

continua / continued

The End of Maliki?

Tom Engelhardt & Robert Dreyfuss

In some ways, amid the internecine bloodletting, torture, spiking American casualties, death-dealing confusion, and general mayhem, here's all you need to know about the Iraqi "government" of Nouri al-Maliki. When the Prime Minister wanted to check on whether he was going to hang onto his position, he didn't go to parliament or to the Iraqi people, he checked in with the President of the United States. What he needed, it turned out, was George Bush's vote of confidence...

continua / continued

Neocon Declares Iraq War Crimes a “Worthy Mistake”

Kurt Nimmo

It is simply amazing the rabid, psychopathic neocon, Jonah Goldberg, son of Lucianne Goldberg, Lewinsky scandal barker, is allowed to characterize the bloody politicide in Iraq as a "worthy mistake" and nobody challenges him on it. Goldberg got his start as an understudy for the eminent and thus infamous neocon Ben J. Wattenberg. He works behind the scenes at the American Enterprise Institute, the criminal organization in part responsible for the "worthy" mass murder of more than 600,000 Iraqis. It is said the Los Angeles Times is a "liberal" newspaper, and yet Goldberg is a columnist there, and op-ed columnist Robert Scheer, described as a liberal, was fired for taking Bush to task for his illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. In fact, there is not a single "liberal" corporate newspaper in the country, as the entire corporate media is decidedly neocon, that is to say fascist, although occasionally neocon crimes are described as mere peccadilloes in passing, criticism that does not amount to a hill of fetid beans...

continua / continued

They must go, and soon



















Haifa Zangana

...Politically, Maliki's government is totally isolated from the people and unable to provide what any government should: security, basic services, and dignity to people in their daily lives. With no real power, it is consumed from inside, like an old wooden ship eaten by termites, by sectarian, ethnic division, but above all by corruption, militias and death squads. Maliki was so shaken by the news of an imminent US change in strategy that Bush had to call him to reassure him there was no American deadline for the Iraqi government to stand on its own. Corruption is endemic among Iraqi officials and the US administration alike. Billions of dollars have been lost or redirected to "security". Judge Radhi Al-Radhi, head of the Commission on Public Integrity, which is tackling corruption, said around $4.5 billion has "disappeared". Meanwhile, occupation forces, militias, security forces, mercenaries and contractors enjoy immunity from Iraqi law. Indeed, whereas once Iraqi law was the protector of the Iraqi citizen, it is now toothless to ensure Iraqi civil rights. No wonder that support for the popular national resistance is increasing with most Iraqis celebrating the success of attacks on occupation forces...

continua / continued

Electricity Levels In Baghdad At Lowest Level Since U.S. Invasion

Think Progress

In Sept. 2003, President Bush promised that he would help Iraqis "restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads, and medical clinics. This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore, to our own security." But three years later, electricity levels in Baghdad are at an all-time low. Residents of Baghdad are receiving just 2.4 hours of electricity this month, compared to an average of 16-24 hours of electricity before the U.S. invasion. The lowest level prior to this month was 3.9 hours/day...

continua / continued

Top US general says Rumsfeld is inspired by God


Friking DEVIATE, I am sure the Good Lord Sanctions the killing of 650,000 innocent Iraqis.

AFP

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God. "He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Rumsfeld is "a man whose patriotism focus, energy, drive, is exceeded by no one else I know ... quite simply, he works harder than anybody else in our building," Pace said at a ceremony at the Southern Command (Southcom) in Miami...

continua / continued

WASH POST: DIEBOLD TOUCHSCREEN SOURCE CODE DISCOVERED STOLEN IN MARYLAND!


ALSO: State Report Finds Sensitive Voter Registration Database Vulnerable to 'Across-the-Board Access'
Diebold, State Election Director Lamone Continue State of Denial… -->
Guest Blogged by John Gideon (with additional snark provided by Brad Friedman)

The Washington Post is reporting in Friday editions that the FBI is investigating the "possible theft" of Diebold electronic touch-screen voting system source code in Maryland.

While the Maryland State Board of Elections admits that the disks contained "the software…used in Maryland in the 2004 elections," Diebold denies everything. Of course. They gave their catch-all apologia — the software is for "versions…that are no longer in use in Maryland" — although they were forced to acknowledge "the version of one program apparently stored on the disks is still in use in 'a limited number of jurisdictions.'"

The disks feature logos from Ciber Inc. and Wyle Labratories, Inc., two labs that test voting machines and software (sort of) for Diebold. Both firms deny the disks are theirs.

According to the article…

The disks delivered to [ex-Delegate Cheryl C.] Kagan's office bear labels indicating that they hold "source code" — the instructions that constitute the core of a software program — for Diebold's Ballot Station and Global Election Management System (GEMS) programs. The former guides the operation of the company's touch-screen voting machines; the latter is in part a tabulation program used to tally votes after an election.

Three years ago, Diebold was embarrassed when an activist obtained some of its confidential software by searching the Internet. The company vowed to improve its security procedures to prevent another lapse.

The release of such software poses a risk, computer scientists say, because it could allow someone to discover security vulnerabilities or to write a virus that could be used to manipulate election results."

WaPo goes on to report…

The Washington Post obtained copies of the disks Wednesday and allowed Avi Rubin, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University, along with a colleague and a graduate student, to review the software on the condition that they make no copies of it.

"I would be stunned if it's not real," Rubin said.

Rubin, who has said that electronic voting systems that do not produce a paper record of each vote cannot be secured, led a team that produced an analysis that pointed out security vulnerabilities in the Diebold software found on the Internet in 2003.

Sam Small, the graduate student, said the version of Ballot Station "was consistent with what we've seen previously." Small could not gain access to the GEMS software because the material on two of the disks was protected by a password."



The Diebold statement said "it would take years for a knowledgeable scientist" to break the encryption used on the software apparently contained on the disks delivered to Kagan. But Rubin said "the data and files were not encrypted" on the Ballot Station disk he reviewed.

So will Diebold just continue to deny that anything has happened or can happen? Will MD State Election Director, Linda Lamone, just pass on Diebold disinformation as she always does (despite knowing better…since she's seen the unredacted scientific reports on these systems from security organizations like SAIC and RABA?) Or will someone finally understand that this is a massive problem that needs immediate attention?

Maryland, along with Georgia, was one of Diebold's original "showcase states," implementing Diebold's hackable paperless touch-screen voting across virtually the entire state since 2002. With failure after failure, we might add.

If it's all not bad enough, in what is reported by WaPo as "an unrelated development" in the same article, a new report from Maryland state auditors revealed that the state's new voter registration database does not have proper security controls in place for access to the data

— Click here for REST OF STORY!… —

First Time: Women Prison in Abu-Ghraib


Roads to Iraq

A first publish women prison section in Abu-Ghraib, women wear yellow uniform. Shamelessly imprisoned by the occupation forces...

continua / continued

Waitress Accuses GOP Congressman Of Threatening To Rape Her, Recants Charges...

Wonkette.com October 19, 2006 06:20 PM

A couple of mysterious 911 calls to Las Vegas police -- all apparently made from the bathroom of a Starbucks on Paradise Road by a terrified drunk gal -- have suddenly derailed Congressman Jim Gibbons and his campaign for Nevada governor.

The story is changing so quick we can't even get a timeline in order, so let's just randomly toss together some of the filthier details, after the jump.

READ FULL STORY

GOP REP: ANOTHER CONGRESSMAN “INAPPROPRIATELY” INVOVLED WITH PAGE...

MyWebTimes EDWARD FELKER October 20, 2006 05:22 PM

Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Morris, through his election attorney, moved Thursday to inform the House that a former male page or intern may have been the subject of inappropriate attention from another lawmaker, Weller's campaign manager said Thursday.

Steven Shearer said the congressman was not prepared to reveal the identity of the youth, the timing, nor the identity of the lawmaker, but felt confident that a former page or intern was "inappropriately invited to a social function by another congressman."

READ FULL STORY

Putin To Israel's PM: “Say Hello To Your President.” “He Raped 10 Women...We All Envy Him”...


NY Times STEVEN LEE MYERS October 20, 2006 09:10 AM

President Vladimir V. Putin has a penchant for making pithy, acerbic, sometimes coarse comments. On Wednesday, a microphone inadvertently left on during a brief appearance with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel captured his views on the sex scandal involving Israel's president.

According to journalists and officials in the room and published accounts by Agence France-Presse late Wednesday and Kommersant and The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Mr. Putin was heard saying, "Say hello to your president," to Mr. Olmert, referring to President Moshe Katsav, who could face criminal charges that he raped and assaulted two former employees. Mr. Putin added, "He really surprised us."

READ FULL STORY

Govt. Death Squads Ravaging Baghdad

*Inter Press Service*
Ali Al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail

*BAGHDAD, Oct 19 (IPS) - Death squads from the Ministry of Interior posing as Iraqi police are killing more people than ever in the capital, emerging evidence shows.*

The death toll is high - in all 1,536 bodies were brought to the Baghdad morgue in September. The health ministry announced last month that it will build two new morgues in Baghdad to take their capacity to 250 bodies a day.

Many fear a government hand in more killings to come. The U.S. military has revealed that the 8th Iraqi Police Unit was responsible for the Oct.

1 kidnapping of 26 Sunni food factory workers in the Amil quarter in southwest Baghdad. The bodies of ten of them were later found in Abu Chir neighbourhood in the capital.

Minister for the Interior Jawad al-Bolani announced he is suspending the police unit from official duties, and confining it to base until an investigation is completed.

But sections of the ministry appear responsible for the abductions and killing. Ministry of Interior vehicles were used for the kidnapping in this case, and most men conducting the raid wore Iraqi police uniforms, except for a few who wore black death squad 'uniforms', witnesses told IPS.

The leader of the police unit is under house arrest and faces interrogation for this and other crimes, according to an official announcement.

"It is for sure that they did it," one of the victim's neighbours told IPS on condition of anonymity. "The tortured bodies were found the second day. They came in their official police cars; it is not the first time that they did something like this. They do it all over Baghdad, and we hope they will get proper punishment this time."

Men of the police unit meanwhile do not face imminent punishment. "They are going to be rehabilitated and brought back to service," director-general of the Iraqi police Adnan Thabit told IPS. >>>cont

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Missy Comley Beattie | Surges: The Dow and the Death Count


















"The people we've elected to the highest offices in our country have sacrificed leadership and their consciences to remain in power. Yes, there is a fight between good and evil. But the evil is within each of us who fails to recognize the duplicity of our own government, a huge wheel grinding on, greedy and insatiable," writes Missy Comley Beattie.

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