Airport Security Saga Continues

More and more I am persuaded that the Arab-Americans and all those of Arabic decent should begin wearing a green patch... I think we have entered the era of open racism disguised as security concern. So let's be honest about it.

Arabic T-shirt sparks airport row

An architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words "We will not be silent" before boarding a flight at New York.

Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.

Mr Jarrar said he was shocked such an action could be taken in the US.

US transport officials are conducting an inquiry after a complaint from the US Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

JetBlue said it was also investigating the incident but a spokeswoman said: "We're not clear exactly what happened."

Pink Email

Be careful-before you get happy for not having received your dismissal via email, better look into your spam folder!


RadioShack Uses E-Mail to Fire Employees

RadioShack Corp. notified about 400 workers by e-mail that they were being dismissed immediately as part of planned job cuts.

Beware of the Lone Jars!

Suspicious jar at O'Hare

Investigators have determined a suspicious jar of liquid that was found this morning aboard an empty airplane at O'Hare International Airport, prompting a hazardous materials response, may have contained only baby juice, WGN-Ch. 9 reported.

The small jar was found in the bathroom of a plane in the United hangar at O'Hare. Chicago Fire Department personnel along with Police Bomb and Arson Unit investigators were sent to the hangar about 12:30 a.m., fire department spokesman Will Knight said. A canine unit also was called in.

After an investigation, the plane was deemed safe around 2:45 a.m. with no injuries reported, he said.

If You Gellin' You Ain't Flyin'

What can I say...

CNN.com - Your e-mails - Aug 11, 2006

I was not allowed to board a plane from Fresno to [San Francisco] yesterday (August 10) because my shoe insole was supposedly made of "gel".


Ragui Michael, San Francisco

Who Says the War Is Not Going According to Plans?

War on Iraq: Blatantly Boasting War Profiteers

In their glossy annual reports, military contractors are typically modest about how much loot they've gotten from a bloody and increasingly unpopular "War on Terror." But read the transcript of virtually any Q&A session with Wall Street and the truth comes out. While millions are suffering from the human and economic costs of the Iraq war, the violence has been very good for the bottom lines of military contractors and their top executives.

Read on...

That Would be a Hoot!

I say "pay per view" it...

Iran's leader calls for TV debate with Bush

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on U.S. President George W. Bush to participate in a "direct television debate with us," so Iran can voice its point of view on how to end problems in the world.

"But the condition is that there can be no censorship, especially for the American nation," he said Tuesday.

WOW... No Wonder We Need More Troops!

You wouldn’t catch me dead in Iraq

It is impossible to put a precise figure on the number of American troops who have left the army as a result of the US involvement in Iraq. The Pentagon says that a total of 40,000 troops have deserted their posts (not simply those serving in Iraq) since the year 2000.

This Mother-Fucker is Still Around?

Demagoguery abounds in this guy's rhetoric. First, he wants us to believe that the Moron-in-Chief is akin to Winston Churchill. Dubya is no Winston Churchill--either in intellectual capacity nor in stature.

Second, he wants to to believe that the al-Qaeda is akin to Hitler. Yet, he fails to see that Hitler had a country, al-Qaeda is country-less. Hitler had a clear identifiable army, al-Qaeda has no such things. Hitler had an enormous military industry, al-Qaeda has no such thing and in fact is dependent on other states for its military goods. The differences are abundant.

Yet, this guy is talking like we are idiots.

Rumsfeld Lashes Out at Bush's Critics

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces "a new type of fascism" and likened critics of the Bush administration's war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis in the 1930s.

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from "moral or intellectual confusion" about what threatens the nation's security. His remarks amounted to one of his most pointed defenses of President Bush' war policies and was among his toughest attacks on Bush's critics.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gestures as speaks at the 107 annual Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Reno, Nev. Monday, Aug. 28, 2006. Rumsfeld said Monday he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gestures as speaks at the 107 annual Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Reno, Nev. Monday, Aug. 28, 2006. Rumsfeld said Monday he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media" to influence Westerners. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) (Rich Pedroncelli - AP)

Public defender Seth Temin is surrounded by journalists following a meeting with John Mark Karr, the man suspected of killing 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, at the Boulder County Jail in Boulder, Colo., Friday, Aug. 25, 2006. (AP)

Speaking to several thousand veterans at the American Legion's national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failure to confront Hitler. He quoted Winston Churchill as observing that trying to accommodate Hitler was "a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last."

It's Deja Vu All Over Again...

Cooking Intelligence Again - by Gordon Prather

"A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.

"The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that "all options are on the table."

Linzer doesn't say whether the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear programs took into account at all – much less was largely based upon – the quarterly reports the on-the-ground IAEA inspectors had been making to the IAEA Board and to the Security Council.

And a year later, IAEA inspectors have yet to see any indication – much less evidence – that Iran has engaged in any activity involving the use of any amount of proscribed nuclear materials in furtherance of a military purpose.

Surprised?

Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

Ferenccz said that after Nuremberg the international community realized that every war results in violations by both sides, meaning the primary objective should be preventing any war from occurring in the first place.

So It Continues

Are they going to release these tapes little by little up to the time of the elections and blame it on "bad management"?

More Frantic '9/11' Tapes Released

Why the release of the tapes now when others were released earlier this year? The Fire Commissioner blames bad management, someone missed these, now, they're public and so is the pain again.

The Ironi of It All...!

G.O.P. Deserts One of Its Own for Lieberman - New York Times

Facing Senator Joseph I. Lieberman’s independent candidacy, Republican officials at the state and national level have made the extraordinary decision to abandon their official candidate, and some are actively working to help Mr. Lieberman win in November.

Despite Mr. Lieberman’s position that he will continue to caucus with Democrats if re-elected, all three Republican Congressional candidates in Connecticut have praised Mr. Lieberman and have not endorsed the party’s nominee, Alan Schlesinger. An independent group with Republican ties is raising money for Mr. Lieberman, who has been a strong supporter of President Bush on the Iraq war.

Wait a Minute...

I thought our Commander in Chief told us that the Israelis won the war... so what's all this?

The blame game | Economist.com

No sooner had the ceasefire taken effect than the patriotic fog of war was cleared by a cold blast of recriminations. Returning troops—in particular reservists, who unlike young active-duty conscripts have few compunctions about mouthing off—are griping about poor preparation, substandard equipment, missing supplies, constantly-changing orders given with too little notice. As for those left in Lebanon, a decision to make a last-ditch push for the Litani in the two days before the ceasefire took effect means some units are dangerously spread out, forbidden to move or fire unless threatened, and thus sitting ducks if Hizbullah decides to attack them.

We Don't Get No Respect

Easy bourse

LONDON (AP)--The U.S. should "shut up" over Beijing's growing military spending, China's ambassador to the U.N. said in comments broadcast Thursday.
Ambassador Sha Zukang told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that U.S. concerns about the country's burgeoning military might were misguided.
"It's better for the U.S. to shut up," Sha said. "Keep quiet. It's much, much better.
"China's military buildup is not threatening anyone," he added. "This is a legitimate defense."

China's 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army is the world's largest fighting force, and Beijing has alarmed its neighbors with double-digit percentage increases in military spending nearly every year for a decade.
Beijing has tried to allay such fears by saying much of its spending is defensive.
U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has called for closer military ties with China. But U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have expressed unease about Beijing's intentions and complained about its military secrecy.
Sha said other countries need not worry about China's growing economic and military might, because "China basically is a peace-loving nation."

Here Is A Neat Idea

Why not have all people of Arab decent wear green patches so as to recognize who they are and make it easier to monitor them. Let's be honest, we are leaving in racist times. Race is very much an issue. Religion is very much as issue. So why not stop pretending? Lit them wear little green patches on their right shoulder...

We can even mark their businesses with this: "Akhtung... Arab" so we know who we can do business with and who we should not.

IslamOnline.net- News - III

Thousands of Muslims and Arabs were rounded up and questioned in the US in the weeks and months following the September attacks.

Some of the detainees have sued the US government after their release for inhumane and degrading treatment and a total blackout of communications in detention centers on the US soil.

The US government agreed in February to pay $300,000 to settle an illegal detention lawsuit brought by an Egyptian man who was among hundreds of Muslims rounded up in New York after 9/11.



Late March, two US federal officials were charged with hiding evidence to win conviction in a terrorism case against four Muslim men following the 9/11.

It Had to be Said...

IslamOnline.net- News - III

Thousands of Muslims and Arabs were rounded up and questioned in the US in the weeks and months following the September attacks.

Some of the detainees have sued the US government after their release for inhumane and degrading treatment and a total blackout of communications in detention centers on the US soil.

The US government agreed in February to pay $300,000 to settle an illegal detention lawsuit brought by an Egyptian man who was among hundreds of Muslims rounded up in New York after 9/11.

Late March, two US federal officials were charged with hiding evidence to win conviction in a terrorism case against four Muslim men following the 9/11.

These Are Lies... Simply Lies!

None of this happened the way it has been reported. She did not have vaseline, nor a screwdriver nor a letter or letters from al-Qaida. None of it is true. None. Someone simply wants you to be scared. Is it working?

Disturbance Diverts London-D.C. Flight

Fighter jets escorted a diverted London-to-Washington, D.C., flight to Boston's Logan airport Wednesday after a distraught passenger pulled out a screw driver, matches, Vaseline and a note referencing al-Qaida, an airport spokesman said.

United Flight 923 landed safely, Logan airport spokesman Phil Orlandella said.

The flight, with 182 passengers and 12 crew members landed safely, UAL Corp. spokesman Brandon Borrman said. Borrman said a female passenger was spotted engaging in some "suspicious" activity, but he could not immediately say what the activity was.

Be Sceptical. Be Very, Very Sceptical

The UK Terror plot: What's Really Going On?

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

Hell Is Waiting

Sharon's Condition Worsens

The condition of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been in a coma for more than seven months, has worsened, a hospital official said Monday.

What An Idiot

Never mind that in the Middle East conflict, the United States is supposed to play a neutral position so as to allow all sides to trust and respect its opinion when it comes time to broker peace; but this guys is such an idiot in that all the evidence show that the Israeli Army was soundly defeated.

Why? Let me ask you: Was the Hezbollah disarmed? No. Did the missiles stop being launched over Israel? No. Did the Christian and Sunni communities of Lebanon raised against the Hezbollah? No--In fact, polls show that Hezbollah is now enjoying utter support from more than 80% of the Lebanese population... Where the soldiers taken prisoner by the Hezbollah released? Nope.

So how was the Hezbollah defeated you stupid fuck?

Bush Says Israel Defeated Hezbollah

President Bush, just hours after a cease-fire took hold Monday, said Hezbollah guerillas had suffered a sound defeat at the hands of Israel in their monthlong Mideast war.

"There's going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon," Bush said, referring to plans for the Lebanese government, backed by an international force, to reassert control in the area that has been dominated by Hezbollah fighters.

The Blind Leading the Cripple...

Don't these people ask experts? Don't they have people who tell them: "listen, that plan of yours... it's idiotic." Evidently, not!

Consortiumnews.com

Amid the political and diplomatic fallout from Israel’s faltering invasion of Lebanon, some Israeli officials are privately blaming President George W. Bush for egging Prime Minister Ehud Olmert into the ill-conceived military adventure against the Hezbollah militia in south Lebanon.

Bush conveyed his strong personal support for the military offensive during a White House meeting with Olmert on May 23, according to sources familiar with the thinking of senior Israeli leaders.

Olmert, who like Bush lacks direct wartime experience, agreed that a dose of military force against Hezbollah might damage the guerrilla group’s influence in Lebanon and intimidate its allies, Iran and Syria, countries that Bush has identified as the chief obstacles to U.S. interests in the Middle East.

Liquidation of Palestine

A Letter from 18 Writers

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly--who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear, for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognized for what it is and resisted.

Does This Make Any Sense?

What were they going to do? Get their chemistry sets out and begin measuring and mixing liquids so as to make a bomb and then assemble timers (why do they need timers?) and detonators to do the deed? It just don't make any sense... Or am I missing something?

Britain Thwarts Airline Terror Plot

British authorities said the threat involved terrorists who aimed to smuggle liquid explosive material aboard airplanes in hand baggage, including timers and detonators that could be assembled in flight...

Liberal Media? My Ass...

Media Views

Carpetbagger Report: If a Report Falls in a Forest… (8/7/06) by Steve Benen

Last Friday the head of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, released a report finding the U.S. Constitution in Crisis due to the Bush government committing fraud, "making false statements to Congress," misusing government funds, enabling torture and "leaking and...misus[ing] intelligence." Yet days later, Benen's Lexis-Nexis and Google News search of mainstream media turns up exactly one 200-word brief on CNN and:

"nothing in the AP; nothing in any of the major dailies; nothing on ABC, CBS, or NBC. Not one word.... Over the weekend, the AP ran a 1,000-word puff piece on how the GOP base considers Dick Cheney "a rock star," but the AP managed to blow off the Conyers document entirely. It's an extra challenge for the party when Democrats are aggressive but the public never hears about it."

Some Still Have a Conscience

Israel: 'Refuseniks' say they won't attack civilians

Called up to serve in the conflict against Hezbollah, reserve soldier Israeli Tom Mehagel decided he couldn't fight.

"I don't believe that Hezbollah has any goal but destroying Israel," the artillery staff sergeant told IRIN. "But we shouldn't use our force against civilians."

Mehagel is one of a small group of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reservists who have refused to fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon because they don't think it is right. Soldiers in Israel who refuse to fight are known as 'refuseniks'.

Act II

Israel responded to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah, right? Wrong

On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The Emperor is Wetting His Shorts

So knowing that he and his cabal have violated not only International Law but the US law (the very ones he took an oath to uphold) he now wants to be exempt from the law. It's nice...no? Violate the law and then pass another law exempting yourself. Is that the sort of democracy these people plan to export?

Bush seeks war crimes exceptions

The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading prisoners of war, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.



Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.

The Original Plan

Some would venture to guess that this is exactly the final result sought by Washington and cheered on by AIPAC. A divided Iraq is a harmless/powerless entity for years to come...

Shia Embrace Partitioning of Iraq

They have a new constitution, a new government and a new military. But faced with incessant sectarian bloodshed, Iraqis for the first time have begun openly discussing whether the only way to stop the violence is to remake the country they have just built.



Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim political bloc have begun aggressively promoting a radical plan to partition the country as a way of separating the warring sects. Some Iraqis are even talking about dividing the capital, with the Tigris River as a kind of Berlin Wall.

Mine is 1.5 Ghz

"G"... As in GiGahertz!

UNIVAC Memories

In 1968 you could pick up a 1.3 MHz CPU with half a megabyte of RAM and 100 megabyte hard drive for a mere US$1.6 million. Oh, and you want a printer too...?

Respect?

We don't need no stinkin' respect...!

Lieberman Concedes Primary Race, Will Run as Independent

Sen. Joe Lieberman, crippled by his support for the Iraq war, lost the Democratic nomination for a fourth term Tuesday to a political newcomer who portrayed him as an apologist for the Bush administration. Lieberman vowed to run as an independent in November.

The Wolf in Sheep Clothing Loses

:) Other Democrats better watch out...

Lieberman Trailing Antiwar Challenger

Antiwar challenger Ned Lamont took a narrow early lead tonight over Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary, a contest that has attracted national attention as a potential bellwether of opposition to the war in Iraq among Democratic voters.

You Are Kidding Me... Right?

Presidential Prayer Kids

For kids who pray, now is the time to ask God to send His Spirit to stop the fighting and to protect all the innocent people in both Lebanon and Israel. Pray that kids who are scared will have responsible adults to comfort and care for them, and pray that everyone will agree to stop the fighting and bombing. It’s also a great time to thank God for helping thousands and thousands of American citizens get out of the region with the fantastic help and support of the U.S. military.

There Is A Difference

The Race for whom can appear more pro-Israeli in the American Politics.

Middle East policy | To Israel with love | Economist.com

Opinion polls confirm that Americans are solidly on Israel's side. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on July 28th-30th showed that eight in ten Americans believed that Israel's action was justified—though a majority were worried about the scale of the action. A plurality (44%) thought that America was doing “about the right amount” to deal with the conflict. An earlier USA Today poll found that 53% put “a great deal” of the blame for the current crisis on Hizbullah, 39% put the blame on Iran and only 15% blamed Israel.



Similarly, Americans are far more likely than Europeans to side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Pew Global Attitudes survey taken between March and May found that 48% of Americans said that their sympathies lay with the Israelis; only 13% were sympathetic towards the Palestinians. By contrast, in Spain for example, 9% sympathised with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians.

This Is Getting Weirder and Weirder

CNN.com - Transcripts

Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other? THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.



KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?



RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.



KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.



RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

I suppose It is Better than...

... a rectal probe.

Walk-through machine

When Fantasy Takes Over

How do you battle this? There is no reason, no evidence, no common sense that can be used here to show the reality. Half the US has decided to accept a fantastic tale over reality. There is no way to deal with this... Other than the media stop exposing their audience to opinions disguised as news.

Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD

Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did
Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in
Iraq.



People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.



The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.



Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents — up from 36 percent last year — said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.

All In Favor of Paris Hilton Say: "Ay"

And we know how much she deserves every penny she has been given.

The Progressive

The Republicans just barely missed pushing through a bogus minimum wage bill that also would finally accomplish their thick-headed goal of eliminating the estate tax so that Paris Hilton gets every damn penny she deserves. Well, perhaps that’s imprecise phrasing.

:|

Surprised?

Ambassador claims shortly before invasion, Bush didn't know there were two sects of Islam

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.



In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.



A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.



Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

Out of His Mind

The man has completely lost all his senses. Not that he had much to begin with, but whatever he had is gone.

The Sound of One Domino Falling - New York Times

“If we left Iraq prematurely,” he said, “the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines.” And finally, he intoned, America will be forced “to make a stand nearer home.”

No one in charge of American foreign affairs has talked like that in decades. After Vietnam, of course, the communist empire did not swarm all over Asia as predicted; it tottered and collapsed. And the new “enemy” that Mr. Rumsfeld is worried about is not a worldwide conspiracy but a collection of disparate political and religious groups, now united mainly by American action in Iraq.

Them and US

Can you say "Propaganda"?

Media Views

London Guardian: It's Like Watching Two Different Wars (8/2/06) by Julian Borger



The overwhelming emphasis of television and press coverage in the UK was the civilian casualties in Lebanon. Day after day, those were the "splash" stories. The smaller number of civilian casualties from Hizbullah rockets in northern Israel was also covered but rarely made the top headlines or front pages. Back in DC, watching Lebanon through American camera lenses, the centre of the action seemed to be Haifa. CNN, for example, sent two of its top anchors, Miles O'Brien and Wolf Blitzer, to the Israeli port city. Much of the morning news was devoted to showing O'Brien scurrying in and out of shelters when the air raid sirens sounded. Another correspondent was sent on patrol with a Haifa ambulance crew to look for casualties. On the morning I was watching, the crew only came across a man who had a fatal heart attack as a result of the rockets. The paramedics' attempts to save him were shown. This emphasis on Israeli casualties relative to Lebanese was taken to its breathtaking extreme by Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist on the Washington Post, who described the Hizbullah rocket attacks as "perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London blitz."

Just a Reminder

Raketeering Foiled

Just say NO and they will have to go away.

Woman forces US record industry to drop file-sharing case | The Register

A group of US record labels agreed to drop a music piracy case in the US after the alleged file-sharer argued that it could not be proved that she downloaded any illegal music. The case may set a precedent that undermines scores of other music piracy cases.



Tammie Marson of Palm Desert, California refused to pay the initial $3,500 demanded by a group of record labels and opted to fight the case in court. Marson and her lawyer Seyamack Kouretchian of Coast Law Group argued that the fact that Marson's computer contained illegal music files downloaded over her internet connection was not proof that she had committed a crime.



The record companies – Virgin, Sony BMG, Arista, Universal and Warner Brothers – agreed to dismiss the case and pay their own legal costs.



"They don't take these cases to trial, they either settle or dismiss," Kouretchian told OUT-LAW. "It was our position that they could not ever prove that Tammie Marson downloaded this music or that Tammie Marson made it available. It was just an absolute impossibility. The best they could ever prove was somebody had used Tammie Marson's internet account to download the music or make it available. That's the best they could ever do."

However...

... And there is always a "however"

What they don't tell you is that while the minimum wage has been increased, the workers who get tips (read waiters, waitresses etc...) will see their wages decrease by up to $3 per hour just because they get tips. So in a sense the public will be subsidizing these workers' wages to the benefit of their employer.

And all this aside from the tax breaks-major and minor-which is included in this bill.

Does anyone think about the people at all?

An Estate Tax Twist Reverses Party Roles On Minimum Wage

Prodded by moderate Republicans eager to undercut criticism by Democrats that GOP economic programs overwhelmingly favor the rich, the House approved the package last week, including a three-year phased-in boost in the nation's minimum allowable hourly wage to $7.25 from the current $5.15. It would be the first increase in the minimum wage in nine years.

... Self Explanatory

Fascinating...

The Rats Are Getting Ready to Play

Look at them having fun... They will happily sell their soul for a feastful of Dollars.

Cheers over Castro news gives way to questions for many exiles

Joyous celebration in Little Havana over news that an ailing Fidel Castro was temporarily ceding power gave way Tuesday to rampant speculation among Cuban exiles: Is he already dead? What will happen in Cuba after he's gone? Is this just a trick?

"Basically, we are seeing what the Cuban government is saying but we don't know if that is true,'' said Ninoska Perez of Cuban Liberty Council, an anti-Castro exile group. "I think they are just gaining time. For all we know, Castro may already be dead or critically ill.''

A Criminal Administration

And this is only for starters...

Report Alleges Bush Has Violated 26 Statutes

The Bush administration may have broken over two dozen federal laws and regulations - some of them multiple times - according to an unreleased report from the House Judiciary Committee Democrats.



"The misconduct I have found is not only serious, but widespread," reads a draft summary of the report by Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI):



The laws implicated by the Administration's actions include federal laws against making false statements to congress [sic]; federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other government employees; Executive Orders concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence; federal regulations and ethical requirements governing conflicts of interest; the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; communications privacy laws; the National Security Act; and the Fourth Amendment.

*Remember Conyers stands to be the head of the Judiciary Committee should the Democrats get the control of the House!

:-|

Why Do They Hate US?

Why Do They Hate Us?Listen to Qana (Again) - by Jonathan Cook

The rage we saw directed against the United Nations building in Beirut, as if we needed reminding, will be converted in time into more violence against the West, to more 9/11s and to more London and Madrid bombings. Will these attacks wake up the slumbering Western publics to stop their leaders engineering a global war, or will more of us simply be persuaded that the Arab world is fundamentally irrational and savage?

Why do they hate us? Qana provides the answers, but it appears few in the West are really listening.

Dangerous Times

I can see the spark in the eyes of thousands of Cuban refugees/Old American Businesses in Florida hoping to go back and to re-create the backyard entertainment center Cuba once was. I can see profitable prostitution, gambling and various criminal activities to start and all of it with the blessing of a "democratic" government.

Castro‘s condition unknown after surgery

The news came Monday night in a statement read on state television by his secretary Carlos Valenciaga. The message said Castro‘s condition was apparently due to stress from a heavy work schedule during recent trips to Argentina and eastern Cuba. He did not appear on the broadcast.

Raul Castro, Cuba‘s defense minister who turned 75 in June, also did not appear on television and made no statement on his own. For decades the constitutional successor to his brother, Raul Castro has assumed a more public profile in recent weeks.