Thursday June 28th 2007

Judging the 'Surge': Wait Until Tomorrow
A quote....""Tomorrow," Mrs. Mustache said, "never comes, because tomorrow becomes today."  -  Believe it or not, I spent the rest of the day marveling over her wisdom. No wonder she was the teacher and I, merely the unworthy and penmanship-challenged student.  -  Mock if you must, but it appears Mrs. Mustache knew of what she spoke. After all, "tomorrow," or several variations thereof, have become the Bush administration's entire strategy for prolonging the ongoing, never-ending failure and defeat in Iraq.  -  The administration is currently in the midst of its elevendy-billionth version of the semiannual "clear, hold, and rebuild" surge and surge again plan. Actually, it is officially the third 'surge'. It is easy to remember the exact number of surges, because Joe Lieberman marks each one with an op-ed piece that is published in the Wall Street Journal. Each of Mister Lieberman's articles is the same: things are improving, life in Iraq is near perfection, and "we need just another four, five, six months to know if we are succeeding."

Village disputes story of deadly attack
A quote....."A group of villagers in Iraq is bitterly disputing the US account of a deadly air attack on 22 June, in the latest example of the confusion surrounding the reporting of combat incidents there. The BBC's Jim Muir investigates:  -  On 22 June the US military announced that its attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen who had been trying to infiltrate the village of al-Khalis, north of Baquba, where operation "Arrowhead Ripper" had been under way for the previous three days."

Government said to have lost control of Basra
A quote...."Azzaman, June 27, 2007  -  As U.S. troops battle to retake Baghdad and surrounding areas, the government is reported to have lost its control of Basra where almost all of the country’s oil exports originate.  -  The city, according to well-placed sources, is under the hegemony of militias who do not run its streets only but have imposed levies and taxes on oil output.  -  “It may be too late for Prime Minister Nouri al-Naliki to restore control of Basra,” one source working for Iraqi intelligence said."
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Iraqi Labor Leaders Blame US for the Bloodshed in Iraq and say Get Out!
A quote...."Don’t tell Faleh Abood Umara or Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein that want the U.S. quit Iraq, but that you’re worried about a resulting civil war.  -  The two Iraqi labor leaders, currently in Philadelphia as part of a U.S. tour sponsored by a coalition of American labor unions called U.S. Labor Against the War, say the U.S. is the cause of all the violence in Iraq, and argue that the sooner U.S. forces leave their country, the sooner things will start to get better

Nir, I Mean What Are You Talking About?
A quote...."So, Nir, nobody ever imagined that the Palestinians would break down into two competing statelets. But the U.S. policy in bucking up Mahmoud Abbas and at the same time trying to isolate Hamas, could that back fire?

NIR ROSEN, JOURNALIST: Well, it already did. We created a civil war. This is actually outrageous. Ongoing U.N. envoy to the Middle East peace process, Alvaro De Soto, himself accused the U.S. of fomenting a civil war by training, funding and arming Fatah thugs and inserting them into Gaza to destabilize the Hamas government.

Iraq: Police commandos implicated in mosque bombings
A quote...."The Post reported that witnesses it interviewed said a unit of Interior Ministry police commandos, apparently from Baghdad, arrived at the mosque on the night of June 12, replacing the local, mainly Sunni, police unit that was guarding the mosque. The mosque’s minarets were blown up the next morning.  -  The US Special Forces-trained police commandos are overwhelmingly made up of former members of the Badr Brigade militia of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), the largest of the Shiite religious parties in Maliki’s government. Their involvement led to immediate suspicions among Sunni political and religious leaders that the June 13 attack was a police commando provocation.

Explaining How Depleted Uranium Is Killing Civilians, Soldiers, Land Nano-particles pinpointed
A quote...."Depleted uranium weapons, and the untold misery they wreak on mankind, are taboo subjects in the mainstream media. This exclusive report should break the media embargo imposed on the American people.  -  Despite being a grossly under-reported subject in the mainstream, there is intense public interest in depleted uranium (DU) and the damage it inflicts on humankind and the environment."

Regarding the four articles shown above see....The Method - 05-07-07 - mpg
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Senior Russian diplomat says Moscow to keep Hamas contacts
A quote...."Russia intends to keep up its contacts with Hamas, a senior Foreign Ministry official said on Thursday, rejecting Western calls to isolate the Palestinian group after its takeover of the Gaza Strip. -  The 'divide and conquer policy' is not helping to solve the conflict," said Oleg Ozerov, deputy head of the ministry's Middle East directorate.  -  The United States and the European Union pledged to bolster Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and sideline Hamas financially and diplomatically after its armed wing defeated his Fatah forces in a Gaza civil war two weeks ago."

Report: Cheney backs off on claim that he is 'fourth branch of government'
A quote...."With a vote looming in Congress on Thursday to defund the Office of the Vice President in the White House's annual appropriation, a report at The Politico claims that the White House will no longer advance the argument that the Vice President's office is not a part of the executive branch." - bold/italics by website author

The constitution doesn't matter, the good opinion of mankind doesn't matter, the moral and legal traditions of this nation don't matter, public opinion doesn't matter, all the destruction and death throughout the Middle East doesn't matter.....but  just threaten to take away their money and suddenly they're all ears and at attention.

The wealthy elites really are predictable folks....all you have to do is just "follow the money" or in this case just threaten it.- that's the ONLY thing that matters to them. - mpg
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Justices End 96-Year-Old Ban on Price Floors
A quote...."WASHINGTON, June 28 — Striking down an antitrust rule nearly a century old, the Supreme Court ruled today that it is no longer automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on setting minimum retail prices."

Ahhhh.....the good'ol days of the robber barons are back again. - mpg
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Bush Won’t Supply Subpoenaed Documents
A quote...."President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers’ demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.  -  Bush’s attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor.  -  In reaction, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy accused the administration of shifting “into Nixonian stonewalling” and revealing “disdain for our system of checks and balances.”
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Agency's Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4
A quote...."EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities". -  "Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects."  -  Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest.  -  "We have no answer to the moral issue," former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects."
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Open Letter to the President of the American Psychological Association
A quote...."We write you as psychologists concerned about the participation of our profession in abusive interrogations of national security detainees at Guantánamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at the so-called CIA “black sites.”  -  Our profession is founded on the fundamental ethical principle, enshrined as Principle A in our Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.” Irrefutable evidence now shows that psychologists participating in national security interrogations have systematically violated this principle."

Peter Dale Scott - Richard Cheney, Continuity of Government, and 9/11 - posted at ICH
A quote...." Peter Dale Scott presents a condensed version of the two chapters from his forthcoming book, "The Road to 9/11", that deal with the actions of Dick Cheney on the morning of 9/11, and a host of troubling contradictions on that day, in lecture form. "

911 Culprits? Why the Towers Really Fell
A quote...."There is probable cause to begin an official investigation of George W. Bush in connection with the mass murders of US citizens on 911. In US law, investigations proceed from probable cause that a crime has been committed. Commonly, it refers to a standard by which an officer may make an arrest in connection with a crime. There are other, related senses of the term -but for our purposes here we focus upon the legal standard by which a grand jury may assert that a crime has been committed and that charges may be brought against a person or persons."

Giuliani Acknowledged Explosions on 9/11, Didn't Believe They Were 'Gas Related'
A quote...."This clip is from Fox News on September 11, 2001, and is from a Press Conference given by Mayor Giuliani. In the clip, Mayor Giuliani states that he does not believe gas is responsible for the explosions being reported, and emphasizes that the gas has been turned off."
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Once More on the New York Times
A quote...."Poor Archimedes. Among his many interests, the Greek scientist loved levers. Pappus of Alexandria claims that Archimedes once boasted that with a good lever he could lift up the globe. "Give me a place to stand on, and I can move the earth," he is reputed to have said. From this fragment we get the philosophical conceit that a human being can observe the happenings on the earth from a distance, with omniscience. Such an objective standpoint, we now call an Archimedean point."

Save Small Political Magazines
A quote...."' Postal regulators have accepted a scheme designed in part by lobbyists for the Time Warner media conglomerate. In short, mailing costs for mega-magazines like Time Warner's own Time, People and Sports Illustrated will go up only slightly or decrease. But smaller publications like The Nation will be hit by an enormous rate increase of half a million dollars a year."

Americans are now subsidizing the five corporate media conglomerates.....isn't that just great. - mpg
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Big Oil and Big Media V. Hugo Chavez
A quote...."On June 27, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal vied for attention with feature stories on oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips "walking away from their multi-billion-dollar investments in Venezuela" as the Journal put it or standing "Defiant in Venezuela" as the Times headlined. Both papers can barely contain their displeasure over Hugo Chavez wanting Venezuela to have majority ownership of its own assets and no longer let Big (foreign) Oil investors plunder them. Those days are over. State oil company PDVSA is now majority shareholder with a 78% interest in four Orinoco joint ventures. That's up from previous stakes of from 30 to 49.9%. That's how it should be, but it can't stop the Journal and Times from whining about it."

Four Oil Companies Sign Agreements with Venezuela, Two Pull Out
A quote...."Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips have decided the profits are not worth the risk of staying in Venezuela and are writing off multibillion-dollar investments in the South American country.  -  But other major oil companies have accepted the increasingly tough terms posed by President Hugo Chavez's government because they face few appealing alternatives elsewhere. Terms are even tighter in Russia; they're barred from the Middle East, and Africa comes with its own troubles of violence and instability."

Gazprom takes over another gas deposit
A quote...."MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti economic commentator Oleg Mityayev) - The Russian government is making efforts to regain control of its energy resources. Last week, BP's Russian subsidiary, TNK-BP, sold the rich Kovykta gas deposit in the Irkutsk Region in Eastern Siberia, one of the largest in the world, to Russia's Gazprom"

Kremlin lays claim to huge chunk of oil-rich North Pole
A quote...."It is already the world's biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But yesterday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic."

Russia test launches sea-based ballistic missile - Navy-1
A quote...."MOSCOW, June 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Navy has successfully tested a new Bulava sea-launched ballistic missile in the White Sea, a Navy spokesman said Thursday.  -  "A [simulated] warhead reached the testing grounds [on the Kamchatka Peninsula] on schedule," Igor Drygalo said.  -  The scheduled launch was conducted from the submerged Dmitry Donskoi, a Typhoon-class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, in the northern Russia's White Sea, and the missile reached its target at the Kura testing grounds on the Kamchatka Peninsula, about 6,700 kilometers (4,200 miles) east of Moscow."

Investment in Russia's economy grew 23.1% in May - 1
A quote...."MOSCOW, June 28 (RIA Novosti) - Growth of investment in Russia's economy hit a record level of 23.1% in May, the economics minister said Thursday.  -  "The figure is 20.8% for the first five months of the year," German Gref said.  -  The minister said the growth was largely due to macroeconomic stability and companies' growing revenues.  -  But he said the other side of the coin was that the $70 billion capital influx expected this year could create inflationary pressure."

China's economy expected to grow 10.8 percent in 2007: central bank
A quote...."Growth in China's economy is expected to expand at a rapid rate in 2007, with inflation ticking higher to 3.2 percent, state media reported Friday, citing the central bank.  -  The nation's gross domestic product (GDP) should expand 10.8 percent this year, slightly higher than the 10.7 percent in 2006, the fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth, according to the bank's research report published in the China Securities Journal."

THINKING INFLATION
A quote...."I’ve been thinking about inflation. Actually I’ve been thinking about definitions, indexes, housing, real estate taxes, education, and energy. Inflation is the situation when the prices of things increase - where you end up paying more for the same goods/services; or the price appears to stay the same, but you end up getting less in return. It is commonly defined as “too many dollars chasing too few goods.” Traditionally... it is broken down two ways – cost-push inflation: when driven from the sellers’ side, or demand-pull inflation: when driven from the buyers’ perspective. In both cases, it has it roots in the excessive liquidity afforded by a US dollar money supply run amok, enhanced by debt-financed consumption when the nominal interest rates are below “the rate of inflation.”

For more on this see also....The Scourge of the Wealthy - Deflation / The Balm of the Wealthy - War 09-30-06
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Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts
A quote....."WASHINGTON, June 26 — As states begin to require that drug companies disclose their payments to doctors for lectures and other services, a pattern has emerged: psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty."

For more on our over-drugged society see......THX-1138

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Wednesday June 27th 2007

A Republican 'surge' against Bush
A quote...."WASHINGTON - In a potentially significant setback to President George W Bush's efforts to sustain Republican support for his "surge" in Iraq, three key senators this week called on the White House to revise US strategy there before September.  -  The defections, which were set off by a major policy address on Monday on the floor of the Senate by the ranking Republican on the chamber's Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, suggest that patience for Bush's approach among his own party is fast running out."

Slandering the Dead: The American Massacre at al-Khalis
A quote...."As Glenn Greenwald, among others, has pointed out, the new Bushist line is that everyone killed by American forces in Iraq is "al Qaeda" – a transparent falsehood belied by the Pentagon's own assessments but now mindlessly adopted by almost every corporate media venue, with the honorable exception (as always) of McClatchy Newspapers. Of course, the Invader-in-Chief and his multitude of bootlickers in traditional media and the blogosphere have always vastly inflated the numbers and importance of those elements in Iraq that are associated with al Qaeda in some way, however tenuous. Indeed, we know, again from the Pentagon itself, that the exaggeration of al Qaeda's influence in Iraq has been part of a deliberate, well-funded "psy-ops" scheme. (See "Hubub in Hibhib: The Timely Death of al-Zarqawi.") But now they have decided to dispense with the subtleties of psy-ops and simply repeat "al Qaeda" with every breath, in an effort to demonize all resistance (both in Iraq and at home, both violent and non-violent) to Bush's murderous boondoggle.

IRAQ:  Curfew-Bound Fallujah On The Boil Again
A quote...."FALLUJAH, Jun 27 (IPS) - Strict curfew and tight security measures have brought difficult living conditions and heightened tempers to residents of this besieged city.  -  The siege in this city located 60km west of Baghdad has entered its second month. There is little sign of any international attention to the plight of the city. Fallujah, which is largely sympathetic to the Iraqi resistance, was assaulted twice by the U.S. military in 2004."

Iraqi court hands down 22 death sentences in four weeks
A quote...."Over the four weeks from May 6 to June 2, the Central Criminal Court in Iraq (CCCI) sentenced 22 people to death, 21 to life imprisonment and dozens more to terms of between 10 and 30 years. At this rate, the US-backed Iraqi regime will order the judicial murder of well over 250 people by the end of the year and condemn another 2,000 to lengthy prison terms. In numerous cases, the “crimes” for which Iraqis have been convicted were acts of war against US occupation forces."

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The Four Biggest Myths about the US War Against the People of Iraq
A quote...."Lies about Iraq are easily disproved. The myths die harder. Bush lied about Iraq in order to attack and invade. The many myths, however, have to do with the geo-political significance of Iraq, US motives and incompetence, and the nature of the resistance to the illegal US occupation."

Officials: Soviet-Era Caches, Not Iran, Arming Taliban
A quote...."MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan - While United States officials accuse Iran of arming a resurgent Taliban, officials here say the weapons are actually part of vast caches left behind by the Soviet army that fought a nine-year war in Afghanistan before withdrawing in 1988."

THE GATES INHERITANCE
Part 1- The tortured world of US intelligence - posted June 24th 2007

Part 2 - Great games and famous victories
Part 3 - The world that Bob made
From part 3 - A quote...."It's Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, March 8, 1985, an Islamic Sabbath. In Bir el-Abed, an impoverished, crowded Shi'ite quarter in the southern reaches of the Lebanese capital, Muhammad Husain Fadlallah stops on the street to speak to an elderly woman; and so, the revered 51-year-old cleric, delayed momentarily, will not be home at the usual time when a car bomb explodes at his apartment doorstep with a force felt kilometers away in the Chouf Mountains and well out in the Mediterranean. "

The Banality of Greed
A quote...."As the Iraq war that Vice President Dick Cheney created continues to shred American—and many more Iraqi—lives, further documentation has emerged proving that, even during failed wars, the merchants of death profit. No company has profited more from the carnage in Iraq than Halliburton, which Cheney headed before choosing himself as Bush’s running mate. One shudders at the blissful arrogance of this modern Daddy Warbucks, who sees no conflict of interest over the blood-soaked profits garnered by the once-bankrupt division of the company that left him rich"

The "Use of the Armed Forces" in America under a National Emergency
War Update - A quote...."Unrestricted & Arbitrary Powers conferred to the President & Vice President - In October 2006, Bush signed into law the Department of Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007.  -  DDAA 07 includes specific provisions which allow the military to take control of  normal policy and law enforcement functions at the Federal and State levels.  -  Sec. 1042 of the DDAA 07 overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prevents the military from intervening in the conduct of civilian government activities, including the conduct of Justice and Law Enforcement. Posse Comitatus has been central to the functioning of constitutional government. (It should be noted that other previous pieces of legislation have already invalidated the substance of Posse Comitatus).

What is significant in these specific provisions of DDAA 07 (Sec. 1042) is that  they dovetail the provisions of Bush's National Security Presidential and Homeland Directive (NSPD 51, HSPD 20) enacted on May 9, 2007.
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Neoconned Again?
War Alert - A quote...."That the rhetoric used to justify war against Iraq sounds eerily similar to the case being made to start a war against Iran and Syria is not purely a coincidence. Many of the advocates of a muscular policy against countries regarded as outside the pale or perceived as a threat to Israel come from the same circle of neoconservatives, "resident scholars," and sound-bite experts who move seamlessly from think-tank to advocacy group to academia and back again. The pundits who made the case that led to the Iraq catastrophe are continuing to urge a larger, greater war that would engulf the entire Middle East, though many of them are now arguing that negotiations should precede nuking, if only to prove that diplomacy does not work."

With Release of “Family Jewels,” CIA Acknowledges Years of Assassination Plots, Coerced Drug Tests and Domestic Spying  --  Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3  ||  Watch 128k stream || Watch 256k stream       Read Transcript  --  A quote...."The CIA has released its so-called “family jewels” -- nearly 700 pages of documents detailing some if its most infamous and illegal operations dating back to the 1950s. These include assassination plots against foreign leaders, drugs tests on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on activists, opening mail, break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and more. We speak with John Prados of the National Security Archive, an independent research institute that filed the original Freedom of Information Act request for the “family jewels” 15 years ago. [includes rush transcript]"

Next Generation of 'Family Jewels'?
Must Read - A quote...."The CIA’s belated release of its infamous “Family Jewels” sheds light on U.S. intelligence abuses during the CIA’s first quarter century, but this openness may actually obscure a darker reality – that the subsequent three-plus decades have witnessed worse national-security crimes committed under the cloak of greater secrecy and deception."

Papers detail decades of FBI surveillance
A quote...."NEW YORK: One entry, dated April 14, 1954, was about I. F. Stone, who was described as a writer from New York. Stone, it was noted, condemned Senator Joseph McCarthy's "persecution of innocent citizens" and likewise the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate's corresponding committee."

FBI Whistleblower Describes Government Muscle Tactics
A quote...."A whistleblower who lost her job and was gagged by the Bush administration after revealing careerism, corruption and widespread incompetence at the FBI detailed her difficult search for justice to an audience on Monday at the American Library Association’s annual conference. Sibel Edmonds, hired by the FBI as a translator shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 after reporting a range of problems at the bureau, including:"

New documents link Kissinger to two 1970s coups
A quote...."Release of CIA’s ‘Family Jewels’ provides insight into political juggernaut and Bush Administration adviser. - Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pushed for the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and allowed arms to be moved to Ankara for an attack on that island in reaction to a coup sponsored by the Greek junta, according to documents and intelligence officers with close knowledge of the event."
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9/11 - From The History File..'Power Down' Condition at the WTC on the Weekend Preceding 9/11
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Iraqi president visits neighbouring Iran
A quote...."TEHRAN (AFP) - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani arrived in neighbouring Iran for talks with senior officials, state television reported Tuesday."

Adding insult to injury
A quote...."When you hear the news of Tony Blair's possible appointment as the Quartet's peace envoy to the Middle East, you don't know whether to laugh or cry. His selection for the job takes American policy in the Middle East to new heights of absurdity. The proposal we all know was put forward and pushed neither by Russia, nor the EU, but by the US as a reward for years of good service. But the decision is lunacy itself. The guiding question could only have been: who is the most profoundly resented and bitterly hated man in the Middle East? Bar Bush, the honour could only have gone to Blair."

Robert Fisk: How can Blair possibly be given this job?
A quote...." Here is a politician who has failed in everything he has ever tried to do in the Middle East  -  I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going to create "Palestine". I checked the date - no, it was not 1 April - but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being "our" Middle East envoy."

Fighting War Protesters
A quote...."In the early 1970s, as Vietnam War-era protests swirled around the Washington area, local police borrowed riot equipment and received intelligence training from an unusual source: the CIA.  -  The agency, which is barred from domestic law enforcement, provided gas masks, stun guns, searchlights and protective vests. CIA specialists trained more than 20 officers -- from the District, Fairfax and Arlington counties, and Alexandria -- in surveillance photography, countersabotage and surreptitious entry."

Mika Brzezinski of MNSBC rips Paris report [after trying to burn it - on air]
Must View !!!!! - The first case of on-the-air "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" has just occurred, instigated by none other than Ms.Mika Brzezinski....who happens to be the daughter of noted Polish-American political scientist and geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski - a man who himself has recently undergone his own political "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" moment.

One would have to assume intolerance for silly BS and respect for the truth runs in that family....Mr. Brzezinski must be one proud dad. - mpg
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Bush Official in ‘Shouting Match’ with Open Access Supporters
The Bush administration’s top telecommunications official reportedly tried to “shout down” Net Neutrality and open access supporters after they called him out for spinning America’s Internet market as a wonderland of competition and consumer choice.  -  John Kneuer, assistant secretary of commerce and head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), “quickly lost his temper and began shouting” after an audience of technology experts pressed him to explain how the U.S. had fallen so far behind other developed countries in providing Internet access to citizens." -  bold/italics by website author

An uneducated, "mass-media" controlled political "consumer" is our best customer  --  quote by unnamed political lackey of this Nation's ruling elites. - mpg

For more on this see....The Last Bastion of Freedom is Falling
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How Low Can He Go?
A quote...."President Bush registers the lowest approval rating of his presidency—making him the least popular president since Nixon—in the new NEWSWEEK Poll. - June 21, 2007 - In 19 months, George W. Bush will leave the White House for the last time. The latest NEWSWEEK Poll suggests that he faces a steep climb if he hopes to coax the country back to his side before he goes. In the new poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low. Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans." - bold/italics by website author.

World crisis of confidence in Bush [and the U.S.]
A quote...."Pluralities in most countries now express distaste for notions of democracy promoted by the US, blame it for contributing to global inequality and “hurting the world’s environment”, while also disliking the way American businesses operate."

How the People May Bring Criminal Charges Against Bush
A quote...."The people themselves may petition a court to convene a grand jury to investigate Bush's corrupt administration. Such a panel will have the power of the subpoena and the indictment.  -  It's not just 911 that such a panel might investigate. An overwhelming number of those favoring Bush's impeachment say that there is "plenty" to warrant Bush's removal from the office he seized."

White House, Cheney's Office, Subpoenaed
A quote...."WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office Wednesday for documents relating to President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program."

Cheney and the Constitution
A quote...."Any veneer of intellectual legitimacy that executive power defenders have caked on their vision of a monarchical executive evaporates in the glare of this naked opportunism. And the scope and nature of today's constitutional crisis comes into clearer focus.  -  The term "constitutional crisis" is much abused, invoked generally whenever Congress shows some life. Confrontations on war funding and Congressional subpoenas, to cite recent examples, are in fact as old as the Republic. They are but healthy sparks from a constitutional confrontation of "ambition against ambition," precisely as the Framers intended."

The DC Madam, again (UPDATE: SHE MENTIONS CHENEY!)
A quote...."The Prissy Patriot claims that she has confirmation from sources other than Wayne Madsen that Dick Cheney was a client of girls employed by the so-called DC Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey. The site also links to a raw sound file of an interview with Palfrey."

Gonzales nixes public appearance amidst protest
A quote...." BOISE -- A peaceful protest turned vocal Tuesday afternoon as America’s top attorney refuses to speak before those who oppose him."

 TOP TEN REASONS TO IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY
A quote...."Number 10. Not the idea solution, but guillotines are hard to find these days......"

Tuesday June 26th 2007

Imperial presidency declared null and void
A quote...."June 21, 2007 | In private, Bush administration sub-Cabinet officials who have been instrumental in formulating and sustaining the legal "war paradigm" acknowledge that their efforts to create a system for detainees separate from due process, criminal justice and law enforcement have failed."

More on the Al-Marri decision - mpg
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911truthseattle.org meets Norm Mineta - (YouTube - 5 min 32 sec - Added:  June 26, 2007) @ The Jones Report
A quote...."911truthseattle.org had the opportunity of meeting Norm Mineta. We were able to ask Mineta a few questions about his testimony before the 9/11 commission and the ommissions from the final report."

9/11 Coincidences - (YouTube  - Various Lengths 1min -10 mins - Added: April 06, 2007 - June 21 2007)
Must View - P1 - P2 - P3 - P4 - P5 - P6 - P7 - P8 - P9 - P10 - P11 - P12 - P13 - P14 - P15
A quote...."How much more evidence do we need before the government and mainstream media finally talks about this issue? By ignoring this issue, the government and media are just insulting our intelligence. 9/11 witnesses - who include fire crew, police officers and media reporters - heard and saw explosions going off inside the towers, long before they actually fell. Many witnesses reported powerful explosions in the basements of the buildings long before they collapsed....."

See also....9/11 & It's Fallout - Videos

VIDEO: 9/11 and the British Broadcasting Conspiracy - (Google - 1 hr 20 min 41 sec - 25-Jun-2007)
A quote...."911 and the British Broadcasting Conspiracy - new documentary by Adrian Connock and David Shayler about the BBC's selective and distorted  ... all » 911 coverage. With particular reference to the Conspiracy Files programme aired on BBC Two on February 18th 2007.
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CIA Releases Scandalous Reports Of Drugs, Spying
A quote...."AP) CHICAGO The Central Intelligence Agency released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday on agency misconduct that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s over domestic spying.  -  The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders like Cuba's Fidel Castro, the testing of mind- and behavior-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China, break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others."

CIA, Mafia Linked In Castro Plot
A quote...."The plot, described in detail in CIA documents released today, involved six poison pills, a bungled wire-tapping and CIA operatives working with two mob bosses on the FBI's ten-most wanted list."
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“Demonstration” Government in Palestine
A quote...."In 1984 (a year of Orwellian significance), activist and media and social critic Edward Herman wrote one of his many important books titled “Demonstration Elections.” In it, he analyzed the US-staged elections in the 1960s in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam and the 1982 one in El Salvador. In the book’s Orwellian glossary of terms, he defined the process as “A circus held in a client state to assure the population of the home country that their intrusion is well received. The results are guaranteed by an adequate supply of bullets provided in advance (and freely used as necessary to achieve the desired outcome).”

Bringing Africa Together: The Unsung Triumph of George W. Bush
A quote...."You know, we give George W. Bush a lot of good-natured guff around here – strictly for fun, of course, in the spirit of frat-boy raillery that the president loves so well – but sometimes you have to put joking aside, and give our leader the credit he deserves."

Dick Cheney is A War Criminal
A quote...."At long last, the Pentagon Post tells the inside story of how the Bush Administration betrayed our history, our Constitutiona, and our laws to make us a nation that engages in torture, despite flat-out denials from Bush, Cheney, Tenet, and all the others who lie when they yell "We do not torture."

Antiwar Radio: Charles Goyette Interviews Seymour Hersh
A quote...."Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh discusses the torture of innocents at Abu Ghraib, the persecution of general Taguba, who led the initial investigation and the cover-up of the fact that it was all ordered from the very top."

Alabama Getaway: Bush-Rove Legal Perversion Goes South
A quote...."Scott Horton has put out a detailed and entirely damning piece about the corruption of the judicial process for partisan gain engineered by Karl Rove and the White House down south:"

Poll: Support for Iraq war reaches new low
A quote...."WASHINGTON (CNN) — A new low of 30 percent of Americans say they support the U.S. war in Iraq and, for the first time, most Americans say they don’t believe it is morally justified, a poll released Tuesday said."

China’s New Weapons
A quote...."In military matters, China has taken America by surprise a number of times recently, and surprises of this nature are not things with which Americans deal well; some portion of America’s political establishment are becoming irritable and uncomfortable. It is not clear how much of this is based on genuine analysis and how much on the kind of paranoid reaction which characterizes America’s attitude towards Arabs since 9/11. There is also the distinct possibility of traces of anti-Asian prejudice which has a long history in America and in its policies."

The fight for the world's food
A quote...."Most people in Britain won't have noticed. On the supermarket shelves the signs are still subtle. But the onset of a major change will be sitting in front of many people this morning in their breakfast bowl. The price of cereals in this country has jumped by 12 per cent in the past year. And the cost of milk on the global market has leapt by nearly 60 per cent. In short we may be reaching the end of cheap food."

A looming food crisis
Related article - A quote...."IN TRYING to solve the nation's energy crisis, lawmakers and policymakers in Washington may be unintentionally creating a food crisis.  -  America remains the world's breadbasket, but if Congress and the president continue their love affair with ethanol, the corn-based "alternative" fuel, the nation's farms no longer will have the capacity to feed the world. They won't be able to supply Americans with relatively cheap food, either."