On September 27th, here in Philadelphia, the Liberty Medal for 2007 was awarded to Bono and his organization DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), for their work in fighting AIDS and poverty in Africa. Each year, the National Constitution Center awards the Liberty Medal to a person or persons for outstanding work in advancing the cause of liberty around the world.

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If you’ve been reading the excellent cross-section of articles on Climate and Capitalism (‘Ecosocialism or Barbarism: There is no third way’) you will hopefully have come across the exchanges on the ‘Green versus Red’ issue. If you haven’t then it’s time you did. [1]

In a nutshell, the argument goes like this: ‘Real socialists’ are intrinisically green, thus the Green bit is surplus to requirement. All socialists are for a ‘sustainable’ economy, so are the Greens except they don’t adopt the view that you’ve gotta get rid of capitalism if you want to really want to deal with the issue. So basically it comes down to a difference over economics (never mind the politics of it).

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"It's about hoping, it's about dreaming, it's about never not believing. It's about taking a walk out on the wall, and....never looking down. It's about living, instead of dying, it's about spreading your wings and...flying. It's all about trying." - Pam Tillis, Country Music Superstar

I think it goes without saying that the last thing we want children to do is stop trying. This is especially true given the stark reality that far too many children these days possess an unhealthy sense of entitlement. Not to mention, they have an insatiable urge to seek instant gratification no matter the consequence.

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Now it is Iran’s turn; and the Evil de jour is Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Nothing in the entire world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

Every now and then when some poor country is about to receive some American military attention, the American people are prepared by an intense and unceasing propaganda. They are bombarded day in and day out by what a threat the leader of that country is to the peace loving, civilized and democratic people of the United States. Newspapers, TVs, Radios, blogs and anything else that can in anyway convey a message to the people are employed to present this person as the worst of the worst.

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Vail Daily

I just went online and found out that 72 percent of people think Editor-in-Chief David McSwane at Colorado State University should be fired for allowing the F-bomb to appear in the editorial section of CSU’s student newspaper. Only 27 percent say he should not be fired.

First, let me say I heartily disagree with the majority. The issue at stake is the First Amendment. There’s no way around that. Every American has the right to free speech and expression.

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An Afghan man stands near two dead bodies
of Afghan civilians who were killed by American
soldiers after a car bombing on an American
convoy in Barayekab in Nangarhar province
eastern Afghanistan, Sunday, March 4, 2007.
(AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Index Research

Mr. Nawab Buntangyar was shot in the face / head by an American soldier in Afghanistan. The case focused not on the murdered Afghan’s plight but on the `procedures’, And, so, yet another American has been let off the hook for murder.

Mr Nawab Buntangyar's murder in Afghanistan was brought to my attention through an article by Robert Parry, George Bush’s Thug Nation. “According to evidence emerging from a military court hearing at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, US Special Forces are empowered to kill individuals who have been designated “enemy combatants,” even if they are unarmed and present no visible threat.

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Information regarding military exercises is classified and difficult to research. Though there was unusually high and confusing drill activity on 9/11, this strange coincidence has not gained much public notice. This essay quotes military officials from their own magazines, and compares their statements to what the 9/11 Commission wrote about the so-called surprise factor, and also to the Commission's position that the drills aided the response.

Though both the 9/11 Commission Report and members of the Bush Administration repeatedly stated that the use of planes as weapons could not have been predicted, other official sources indicate that military exercises had been underway to counteract this very possibility.

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Ali Shaito implored his mother, Muntaha, to stay conscious as she lay dying from
shrapnel wounds (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad / Getty Images).

Haaretz

Nineteen inhabitants of Beit Hanun were killed with malice aforethought. There is no other way of describing the circumstances of their killing. Someone who throws burning matches into a forest can't claim he didn't mean to set it on fire, and anyone who bombards residential neighborhoods with artillery can't claim he didn't mean to kill innocent inhabitants.

Therefore it takes considerable gall and cynicism to dare to claim that the Israel Defense Forces did not intend to kill inhabitants of Beit Hanun. Even if there was a glitch in the balancing of the aiming mechanism or in a component of the radar, a mistake in the input of the data or a human error, the overwhelming, crucial, shocking fact is that the IDF bombards helpless civilians. Even shells that are supposedly aimed 200 meters from houses, into "open areas," are intended to kill, and they do kill. In this respect, nothing new happened on Wednesday morning in Gaza: The IDF has been behaving like this for months now.

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© by Sara Heinrichs (awfulsara)

Harper's Magazine

President Bush sees himself as a divine messenger of freedom and liberty. On his watch, a great and ancient people have risen up to shake off the chains of oppression. They look to America and its leader for help and encouragement. And what do they find? He ignores them. He is too busy with his plans for wars–past and coming. The democratic moment is on the world stage now. It is played out in Burma. And Bush and his crew turn a blind eye on it.

It’s a day to remember the challenge of the tyrant. And a day to remember the words of W.H. Auden:

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

–W.H. Auden, Epitaph on a Tyrant (1939) in: Collected Poems p. 183.

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National Prayer Network

By a vote of 60 to 39 this morning, Sens. Kennedy and Smith’s hate crimes amendment was attached to the defense authorization act. After three days of virtual silence, several Republican senators spoke against the bill within the two hours of debate. Sen. Lindsey Graham briefly argued that, if passed, the President will veto the hate bill and arms bill together, jeopardizing timely support of our troops. Sen. Jeff Sessions contended that states are adequately dealing with hate crimes and that Kennedy’s amendment burdens the defense authorization bill. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, arriving after the debate, was allowed to very briefly state that a hate bill was irrelevant to an arms bill.

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Counter Punch

A Dire Situation Gets Worse Every Day

In these days of warmongering, peace and justice are tossed about like hot potatoes with no end to the suffering in sight. But, where is the compassion for the children, women and men who are being subjected to the excesses of power in all its guises?

Right now, some mercy for the Palestinians in Gaza is desperately needed before it is too late.

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Finally the Imperial Senate calls for Iraq's partition.

US lawmakers voted Wednesday to split Iraq into a loose federation of sectarian-based regions and urged President George W Bush to press Iraqi leaders to agree.

The proposal came from Senator Joseph Biden, the smart-ass who heads the chamber's foreign relations committee and is running for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

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"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." ~ Unamuno, wall graffiti in Paris, May 1968

Last week in the Al Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza, a USA made Caterpillar bulldozer was the weapon that brutally murdered 19 year old Mahmoud Khafafi. Bulldozers and tanks entered Mahmoud's farmland village at dawn and uprooted olive trees, razed the land and demolished thirteen homes. Young Palestinians threw stones at the tanks, which began shooting in return. The victim ran behind an olive tree and when the bulldozer began to uproot the tree, Mahmoud was shot in the neck, yet attempted to flee until the blade cut his head off and his brains spilled out. [http://www.mezan.org human rights organization in Gaza gathered the details]

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The Rev. Billy Graham sits for his portrait in the Carnegie Hall, New York
studio. By John Howard Sanden

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.” - Stendhal

The propaganda machine of the Evangelical Christian Right will soon be in counter attack mode. One of its darling preachers is about to take it on the proverbial chin. The Rev. Billy Graham, who has created a multimillion dollar media empire, that a Rupert Murdock would envy, is the subject of a shocking expose’ due out on Nov. 15, 2007. It’s entitled, “The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire.” The author is Cecil Bothwell. He hails from Asheville, North Carolina and is an award winning investigative reporter. Bothwell’s unflattering portrait of Rev. Graham shows him as a wily warmonger and a lackey for the Establishment. He describes Rev. Graham as a public figure who: “Undermined the Founders’ skeptical Deism and sought to rebrand the U.S. as a Christian nation, [and] its armies [as] the rightful instruments of [a] Christian crusade and empire.”

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Peace Palestine

Julien Salingue, 27 years old, Doctoral student of Political Science at Paris, militant of the solidarity movement for Palestine, director of the film “Palestine, live free or die”, and co-director of the film “Samidoun”, answers Al-Oufok’s questions. Translated by Mary Rizzo and Manuel Talens members of TLAXCALA, a network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Of all the contradictions in the Palestinian situation, which seems to be the most fundamental issue in your view to be the most fundamental issue?

Regardless of the current evolution of the situation in Palestine, I think that it is essential to remember that the most fundamental contradiction that exists right now, as it always has, is the one between the Zionist project and the national rights of the Palestinian people. The establishment of a Jewish State in the greatest possible portion of Palestine meant and always means colonisation, expulsion and repression. This is the structural contradiction, which includes the current situation with it. Evidently this does not mean that things shall be simplified, and the blame for the dead end shall also be put on the contradictions in the Palestinian “camp”, especially in the current moment, but these contradictions must be thought about within the general framework of the negation of rights for the Palestinian people that is part of the Zionist project.

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Like most Palestinians, I don’t count much on Mahmoud Abbas to put up a meaningful resistance to Israel’s persistent attempts to obtain a formal Palestinian recognition of it as “a state of and for the Jews.”

This is why it is extremely important that the Palestinian masses tell this man that he is already going too far in sacrificing vital Palestinian national interests in order to appease the explicitly fascist government of Israel.

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Kavkaz Center / Al Jazeera

Iran's president has launched a blistering attack on the US and the UN Security Council, but says his country is ready for constructive talks with anyone. In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said the issue of Iran's nuclear programme was "closed" and a matter to be handled by the UN nuclear watchdog.

Ahmadinejad accused Washington of arrogance and human rights abuses, speaking at the same spot where his American counterpart, George Bush had earlier spoken of the primacy of human rights and freedom.

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Rana Ghassan's "David and Goliath"

When one commits to the life of an active citizen, spending their hours days and years reading and writing about current events, it becomes a daily struggle to overcome the cynicism that chases after you with the despairing headlines marking each newspaper or magazine. Rare is it when someone or something comes along to revive the feelings of courage, tenacity and wilfulness of the young and hopeful activist.

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It is evident that the US or Israel is going to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran in the near future, just as it did against Iraq and countless other defenseless nations within recent memory. As a result, untold numbers of innocent people will die and huge sums of money will change hands. Both the U.S. and Israel will consolidate their power in the Middle East and injustice and death will follow in their wake.

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Wayne Madsen Report

WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community.

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Kavkaz Center

American supporters of Israel were delighted to learn that an Israeli company, Magal Security Systems-owned in part by the government of Israel-is in charge of security for the most sensitive nuclear power and weapons storage facilities in the United States.

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Ha'aretz

Mahmoud Abbas has to stay home. As things stand right now, he must not go to Washington. Even his meetings with Ehud Olmert are gradually turning into a disgrace and have become a humiliation for his people. Nothing good will come of them. It has become impossible to bear the spectacle of the Palestinian leader's jolly visits in Jerusalem, bussing the cheek of the wife of the very prime minister who is meanwhile threatening to blockade a million and a half of his people, condemning them to darkness and hunger.

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Crescent & Cross

~~Two Palestinian men visit the spot where the remains of their children lie--INNOCENT CHILDREN KILLED BY ISRAELI MISSILES, SUPPLED BY THE 'CHRISTIAN' COUNTRY OF AMERICA--and pray for the repose of their souls. NOT A TEAR is shed in the so-called "Christian West" over the suffering that the families of the Middle East--THE HOMELAND OF JESUS CHRIST--must endure at the hands of the Jews driven by the fanatical and diabolical hatred of their Talmud who know nothing of the human qualities of pity, remorse, compassion or justice. Just as Jesus warned that the kind of compassion shown is the kind of compassion that will be received, so too will the parents of the West weep one day over their dead children as they find out first-hand what the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters of the Middle East have been enduring now for the last half century.~~

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Commentary by Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem

In his landmark address before students and faculty at Columbia University in New York Monday, 24 September, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke on behalf of hundreds of millions of human beings around the world, including millions of Americans, who are disgusted with George Bush’s criminality, hypocrisy and mendacity.

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What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that's been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. It has the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for owning guns, yet the two seem oddly unconnected. Violent films are some of its most popular, and similar video games crowd out the simpler, more innocent street play of generations earlier. Prescription and illicit drug use is out of control as well when tobacco, alcohol and other legal ones are included.

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The ORB's study suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the conflict in Iraq
since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age).

"I always thought it was very important that Saddam Hussein be deposed." - Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006

The puppet's guts

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"We - Israeli Soldiers - were put there to punish the Palestinians"

....Actually, in my opinion the testimonies of what the soldiers did is not the most important aspect of the piece. Many such testimonies can be had from Breaking the Silence, from Courage to Refuse, and B'tselem sources. For me the 2 most important parts are (a) the fact that 2/3 of the 21 interviewed have left Israel for other pastures, and the final sentence, where the mother states: "I sent to the army a nice kibutznik, and got back an Arab hater." The last, more than anything else shows the impact of serving in the military, especially in combat units, on the individual mind. Best, D

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Common Dreams

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the president of Iran spoke at Columbia University today. I heard that he was invited there because the President of Columbia wanted to foster a “free exchange of ideas.” Even though I am not an Ahmadinejad supporter, I know he was elected in Iran in a knee-jerk and understandable response to the USA’s bloodily unnecessary invasion of Iraq, as many reactionery governments have been elected in that region and all over the world in response to the spreading US corporate and military empire.

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ADE Review

On the Think Progress website, in the “Radical Right-Wing Agenda” column, a post by Satyam informs us that Norman Podhoretz has Bush’s ear.

First and foremost, it is no secret Podhoretz, one of the most dangerous neocons on the planet, has Bush’s attention, and second the neocon agenda is not “radical right-wing,” as the old broken down left-right political paradigm no longer works. Podhoretz’s sermon on the White House mount is simply another chapter in the neocon-neolib plan to domesticate the Middle East by way of cruise missile and bunker busters.

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Reflections in a Petri Dish

Yes it is. It is often inconvenient; uncomfortable, embarrassing- confining under the wrong circumstances and… dangerous. There are countless examples in history of how the truth interferes with you; ask Galileo, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno. It’s no different today than it ever was.

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International Solidarity Movement

After reports of reprisals by IOF against the peaceful inhabitants of Qusin, two ISM activists visited the village today to receive first hand accounts of the harassment the villagers have received. After a non-violent and successful demonstration led by the people of Qusin and supported by international activists, the village has endured two nights of arrests.

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New York- Newly unearthed records reveal that, in 2004, when Americans were in the midst of a brutal electoral battle over whether to reelect a president posing as a war hero, a commanding US reporter, Dan Rather, went AWOL.

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Columbia University, by inviting Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak, has shown confidence in the wisdom and adultness of their students and our republic.

Ahmadinejad is the president of a major nation in a vital part of the world, and we should have enough self-assurance and belief in our own system of government, and in the intelligence of our college students, that we can let them (and our larger public) evaluate his words, whatever they may be.

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Peace Palestine

Appeal to end a genocidal embargo

In 1996 the Palestinians, voting massively for Fatah, expressed their hope for a just peace with Israel. This hope has, however, been frustrated by Israel’s systematic violation of the Oslo Accords, which stipulated that Israel should withdraw its troops from and dismantle its settlements on 90% of the Occupied Territories.

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"From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught...that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, 'vomit you out' if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]: "When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself' but also 'you shall love the other.'" -Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007

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California Living Magazine. Dianne Feinstein
as the 1954 Livestock Queen of 1954

Common Dreams

In the wake of the series of profound failures that define the 2007 Democratic Congress, there is much debate over what accounts for this behavior. There are almost 300 “Congressional Democrats” and they are not a monolithic group. Some of them are unrelenting defenders of their core liberal political values and some are committed to providing meaningful opposition to the radicalism and corruption of the Bush administration. But as the sorry record of the 2007 Congress conclusively proves, they are easily outnumbered in the House and Senate — especially the Senate — by Bush-enabling and Bush-supporting Democrats.

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America in Viet Nam

World War II presented the perfect opportunity to launch a revolution. Ho Chi Minh mobilized an army of 5,000 soldiers. On September 2, 1945, Viet Nam’s Independence Day, Ho Chi Minh borrowed the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson when he said “We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal.” A Vietnamese band played the Star-Spangled Banner and American warplanes flew overhead. U.S. Army officers were adjacent the reviewing stand. Ho thought Viet Nam had a special friendship with the U.S. However, the support given to the Viet Minh by the local OSS hierarchy did not reflect the political goals of the Power Elite who controlled the U.S. government. [1]

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"a week ago the respected British polling firm ORB released the results of
a poll estimating that 22% of households had lost a member to violence
during the occupation of Iraq, equating to 1.2 million deaths."

Not wanting to think about civilian deaths in Iraq has become almost universal. The average American believed approximately 9,900 Iraqis had died as a result of the war according to a February 2007 AP poll. Unfortunately, recent evidence suggests that things in Iraq may be one-hundred times worse than Americans realize.

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Northern Rock, and U.S. banks 1933

By now, you’ve probably seen the photos of the angry customers queued up outside of Northern Rock Bank waiting to withdraw their money. This is the first big run on a British bank in over a century. It’s lost an eighth of its deposits in three days. The pictures are headline news in the U.K. but have been stuck on the back pages of U.S. newspapers. The reason for this is obvious. The same Force 5 economic-hurricane that just touched ground in Great Britain is headed for America and gaining strength on the way.

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Members of AIPAC called to say that Rep. Carson was wrong for opposing the bill because it
helped Israel. She tried to explain, but in all honesty, some of the callers were really angry.

Before the discussion gets too off track, let me say that the intent of this diary is not to deride AIPAC per se. What concerns me more -- much more -- is a system that allows AIPAC, or anyone else, to influence our government at the highest levels with money. Just wanted to point that out... Yesterday, I promised to diary about my own personal experience with AIPAC. I figured now is a good a time as any, because it ties in well with the frustration I expressed in my diary from yesterday. Hopefully the neat little package will come together once you finish reading this.

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Racism is, among many things, convenient. It provides simplified, definite and ready-to-serve answers to complex and compounded questions. Racists, in turn, come from all walks of life; their motivation and the root causes behind their contemptible views of others may differ, but the outcome of these views is predictably the same - racial discrimination, social and political oppression, religious persecution and war.

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Everyone thinks of terrorism and homeland security for lessons learned from 9/11. There is another opportunity. Make our government trustworthy and truthful.

The 9/11 truth movement is stronger than ever, though it is generally derided by politicians and ignored by the mainstream media. It is fueled by people passionate about alternative explanations to the official 9/11 story. Understandable, considering that the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission admitted: “We were set up to fail.”

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Yet as the government promised depositors of Northern Rock they would not loose a
penny as the bank's share price plunged, thousands queued to withdraw their savings.

Except for a select group of corrupt politicians, powerful businessmen, media barons and pundits of the law, the rest of the world was fooled into the Iraq war. Granted not everybody believed it¹s declared motives and a few tried to stop it, but in the end we are all paying the price, notwithstanding the Iraqi people. Donald Rumsfeld said at the beginning of the war, "I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that." We are now in the fifth year of what I dare term Ogenocide¹.

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The Toronto Star informed us today:

"The death toll could be twice our number, but it could not possibly be 10 times higher," he [John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University, and a co-founder of IBC] told me, referring to the other studies.

Question: How can a professor of psychology who collects Iraqi deaths through media reports possibly know what the death toll could be? We are in prophecy territory here. Don’t take me wrong; I love mythology and I find the oracles some of the most fascinating and suggestive figures in that kind of literature. But I prefer science, especially when in Iraq we are responsible for a GENOCIDE!

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Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby,
John Bolton, Eliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, William Kristol, Frank Gaffney Jr.

I don't think this is what Margaret Mead had in mind but I admit it was the first thought that popped into my mind when I saw this composite photograph and read some of the accompanying blog commentary on DownWithTyranny! back on August 9th (a portion of which follows):

The above "Dirty Dozen" are listed as the top 12 Neocons in America. They are enabled by the secondary tier of Neocons:

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"Manias, panics, and crashes are the consequence of an economic environment that cultivates cupidity, chicanery, and rapaciousness rather than a devout belief in the Golden Rule." - Peter L. Bernstein, Foreword to Manias, Panics, and Crashes (4th ed.) by C. P. Kindleberger

"In a crisis, discount and discount heavily." - Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), British economist

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"The America of today is an abomination and desecration...
an unrecognizable mutation..."

I have grown sick, embarrassed and, ultimately disillusioned with what has happened to my country. The United States of America- at one time those five magical words mesmerized both citizens and foreigners alike.

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Photo courtesy of Uruknet

Countercurrents

In February 2007, as we approached the Fourth Anniversary of the US-UK-Australian invasion of Iraq, I published an article on Countercurrents entitled "US Iraqi Holocaust and 1 million Excess Deaths". I detailed and documented the following horrendous circumstances in Occupied Iraq: "as of February 2007: (a) the accrual cost has been $2.3 TRILLION; (b) there are 3.7 million Iraqi refugees; (c) the post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 1.0 million (ONE MILLION); (d) post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.6 million; (e) there were 1.7 million excess Iraqi deaths associated with the Western-imposed 1990-2003 Sanctions War; (f) there were 1.2 million under-5 year old infant deaths in the 1990-2003 Sanctions War; and (g) Coalition deaths total about 3,360." It is now September 2007and after a further SEVEN months of US-UK-Australian war and occupation the horrendous human and economic cost has inevitably increased.

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Consortium News

It’s said that over time Presidents – especially two-termers – imbue the nation with their personalities and priorities, for good or ill. If that’s true, it could help explain the small-minded mean-spiritedness that seems to be pervading the behavior of the United States these days, both at home and abroad.

On a global level, the world reads about trigger-happy Blackwater “security contractors” mowing down civilians in Baghdad, the U.S. military killing unarmed people under loose “rules of engagement” in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the CIA “rendering” suspected Islamists to secret prisons or to third-country dungeons where torture is practiced. Inside the United States, too, a police-state mentality is taking hold.

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The single largest anti-Constitutional contribution to the Bush Regime by the Protect America Act (PAA) is its effective cancellation of legislative and judicial oversight on warrantless wiretapping. It authorizes open-ended surveillance of Americans' overseas phone calls and e-mails without a warrant.

When this bill was signed into law on 08-05-07, legislative and judicial power in the executive branch instantly grew by several orders of magnitude. The Constitution's separation-of-powers principle had its arms ripped off. [1]

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Palestinian Information Centre

From Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem

Condoleezza Rice, the unglamorous American Secretary of State, arrived in Occupied Palestine on Wednesday to promote the putative American-proposed “peace” conference, slated to take place in November.

Rice will meet with Zionist political and military leaders in an effort to convince them to show some flexibility vis-à-vis the so-called core issues that define the Palestinian question. These include, inter alia, ending the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 as well as finding a solution to the plight of nearly five million Palestinian refugees brutally uprooted from their homes by Zionist terror when Israel was created six decades ago.

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"Conservatives are eager to embrace false narratives: The surge is working..."

One would think that from the cries of (feigned) indignation and calls for repentance arising from conservatives regarding Move-On.org's ad in the N.Y. Times that the liberal-leaning group had not simply questioned the insights and intentions of a public servant, promoting, in a public forum, the policy of an illegal and immoral occupation of a sovereign nation; rather, the folks of Move-On.org had committed blasphemy against the holy name of some revered saint -- General Mary Petreus, Mother of God.

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Image © Ben Heine

The UK Telegraph should change its name to The UK Stovepipe, as it serves up only the best quality news (*wink*) straight from Washington D.C. and Tel Aviv. Case in point, from "Britain's No. 1 quality newspaper website":

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Since George W. Bush is completely ignoring the views of both the vast majority of American citizens and the majority of the members of Congress concerning the ending of the Iraq War, impeachment hearings should be started. Bush will not conform to democratic norms. He will not respect public opinion or democracy. There are plenty of reasons to hold immediate joint impeachment hearings for both Bush and Cheney.

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As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air-however slight-lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness. ~Justice William O. Douglas~

In April, 2007 I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf's article, "Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps" posted in several places online. I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. I had been looking for a list-or more specifically, an encyclopedia of the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might clarify for my history students the extent to which America has become a fascist empire. Wolf's "10 Easy Steps" was perfect, but her just-published book, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot, from which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller picture-a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil liberties have been hijacked in the past decade. It is the most poignant, powerful, genuinely patriotic piece of literature I have encountered since Thomas Paine's Common Sense. No wonder then, that the book's cover greatly resembles that 46-page tract by Paine written in 1775-as well it should.

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Truth Seeker / Rumor Mill News

It is widely reported that President George W. Bush will nominate former Manhattan federal Judge Michael [Bernard] Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general. With the fraudulent "War on Terror" in full swing and with 9-11 cases in legal limbo, this is a critical appointment at a crucial time.

As I had expected, Bush has appointed a radical Zionist with close ties to the State of Israel. Mukasey, if confirmed as U.S. Attorney General, will protect the Zionist state and its agents who are suspected of involvement in the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11.

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Global Research

The mass propaganda media has taught the US public to believe that the extermination of thousands of Iraqi citizens is in their best interests: they can sleep sound, as long as 'our boys' kill them 'over there'.

Almost the entire population of Iraq is opposed to the US military and its puppet regime--yet the media refer to the patriots defending their country from the imperial invaders as--'insurgents' minimizing the significance of a nation-wide patriotic liberation movement.

I am reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary, a journalist's account of Nazi political propaganda during the 1930's, as I watch the US 'news' reports of the violent assault on Fallujah. The US mass media 'reports', the style, content and especially the language echo their Nazi predecessor of 70 years ago to an uncanny degree. Coincidence? Of course! In both instances we have imperialist armies conquering countries, leveling cities and slaughtering civilians--and the mass media, private in form, state appendages in practice, disseminate the most outrageous lies, in defense and praise of the conquering 'storm troopers'--call them SS or Marines. Both in Nazi Germany and contemporary US, we are told by the mass media that the invading armies are "freeing the country" of "foreign fighters", "armed terrorists", who are preventing "the people" from going about their everyday lives. Yet we know that of the 1,000 prisoners there are only 4 foreigners (3 Iranians and 1 Arab); Iraqi hospitals report less than 10% of foreign fighters. In other words over 90% of the fighters are Iraqis--most of who were born, educated, and raised families in the cities in which they are fighting.

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© benaa.com

Redress

Nuclear hypocrisy in the Middle East

Former CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison argue that a US and/or Israeli attack on Iran to bring about regime change and strengthen US and Israeli dominion over the Middle East is likely to take place before the Bush administration leaves office unless a concerted effort is made to impeach Bush and Cheney.

The internet is loaded these days with reports of the inevitability of a US, or a US-Israeli, attack on Iran. Some writers allege that the attack is imminent. Others, including the writers of this article, argue only that the attack will happen sometime before January 2009, when the Bush administration leaves office. Many of these stories have by now been picked up by the mainstream media. In fact, it is probably safe to say that today a majority of the traditionally cautious and so-called respectable foreign policy experts in the US think it is at least possible that Bush will attack Iran before he leaves office.

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"[Palast] said you won the 2004 election - isn't that amazing? There were multiple reports of disenfranchising of Black voters on the day of the election in 2004 in Florida and Ohio. ... How could you concede the election on the day?" See the amazing video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CheY0jYXJjY

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So Hillary finally presented us with her "health plan". Whoopee! That will fix everything. Right? Wait a minute, isn't that what Romney did in Massachusetts? Isn't that the same pattern set by George Bush's Medicare Part D? We must, by law, buy insurance from the already-money-bloated insurance industry while still being obligated to pay deductablss and co-payments that will further burst our shrinking budgets? Does that make sense? Those who are suffering from lack of medical care because they cannot afford to pay for health care absolutely cannot afford to pay insurance premiums because, even after they do so, they will not be able to afford the additional costs that are built into the system.

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Naomi Klein is an award-winning Canadian journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and activist. She writes a regular column for The Nation magazine and London Guardian that's syndicated internationally by the New York Times Syndicate that gives people worldwide access to her work but not its own readers at home.

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Media Lens

We Can’t Talk About Oil

The media are not, as is commonly supposed, windows on the world; they are more like paintings or sketches of windows on the world - both the ‘window’ and the ‘reality’ beyond are manufactured corporate products.

The problem is that the manufacturers selling their wares, while portraying themselves as disinterested, are anything but. They are profit-seeking media corporations that have a very clear interest in highlighting certain issues and in burying others out of sight.

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The inter-Palestinian war of words and the mutual violations of the freedom of press and expression by the Hamas - led government of Ismael Haniyyeh in the Gaza Strip and the Fatah – led government of Salam Fayyad in the West Bank have presented Israel with its biggest propaganda prize that is overshadowing the violations of human rights committed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

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Photo by Fady Adwan, PalestineFreeVoice

PalestineFreeVoice

Gaza City September 18 2007: Invading Israeli State Terrorist units launched wide scale attacks into the Al-'Ayn refugee camp in Nablus in two stages on Tuesday morning. In the first incursion, more than fifty Israeli armed vehicles stormed the camp just before dawn, and imposed a curfew. Members of the Israeli State Terrorists units seized four Palestinians and blasted through the walls in the alleys between the buildings, trespassed through Palestinian territorial land - and stationed themselves inside Palestinian homes.

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Vietnam

From October 1944 to May 1945, Hanoi and the surrounding area suffered a horrific famine that resulted in the starvation deaths of nearly two million people, out of a population of about ten million. There were many reasons for the famine, the first and foremost was war! Remember, the Japanese invaded and occupied Viet Nam beginning in 1941.

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U-2 plane

I would like to recognize Francis Gary Powers and give him a tribute for his courage and patriotism. He was just another American and became just another of countless causality at the hands of elements, cabal, and factions which currently exist in the United States government. These groups are still able to conceal their existence; any person attempting to draw attention to the possibility of these elements is deemed a conspiracy theorist, tin-foil hat, and part of the black helicopter crowd.

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© A.A.Skolnick

Irregular Times

As of this week, the Bush Administration's descent into totalitarian depravity has reached a new low so despicable that even a few Republicans are beginning to criticize it. It was revealed this week that the Bush Administration is planning to keep people as prisoners for their entire lives, even though there is no evidence that those people have committed any crime against the United States. The lack of evidence against these people is so striking that the American government does not even have enough grounds to bring them before a form of military tribunal that has been set up by George W. Bush precisely for the purpose of evading the standards of justice set by the United States Constitution.

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© Jupiter Images, Comstock

McClatchy / Iraqirabita

Since the start of the Iraq war four years ago, Americans have bought more than 110 million cellphones and spent $35 billion on HDTV sets. They have moved into 5 million new homes, bought about 60 million new cars and trucks and watched the Dow Jones industrial average climb from 8,200 to 12,000 and beyond.

Despite bloodshed from a conflict lasting longer than U.S. participation in World War II, life for most Americans has clicked along without personal loss or even higher federal taxes to cover the fighting in Iraq.

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1. Sheik Abu Risha wasn't a sheik.
2. He wasn't killed by Al Qaeda.
3. The new alliance with former insurgents in Anbar
is as fake as the sheik - and a murderous deceit.

A special investigative report from inside Iraq

Monday, September 17, 2007- Did you see George all choked up? In his surreal TV talk on Thursday, he got all emotional over the killing by Al Qaeda of Sheik Abu Risha, the leader of the new Sunni alliance with the US against the insurgents in Anbar Province, Iraq.

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Politically Correct Apostate

I recently was browsing through the headlines at Michael Rivero’s excellent information clearing house, Whatreallyhappened.com, when I stumbled upon an article written by one Edward Bernard Glick entitled “America’s youth must serve their country, one way or another.” The article was the typical bilge one sees so commonly these days, the author asserted that “The United States military has a very big problem: Too many global conflicts and commitments - and too few soldiers.” His solution? Reinstate the draft of course. Glick, the gentleman that he is, prepared his article in just such a way as to appeal to all of the tired and worn out politically correct ideals held by his ilk for the last forty years – he wants his reader to believe that a draft will somehow further “gender equality” and be “fairer to African Americans and other minorities.”

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Cartoon by Khalil Bendib

CorpWatch

John Owens didn’t realize how different his job would be from his last 27 years in construction until he signed on with First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting in November 2005. Working as general foreman, he would be overseeing an army of workers building the largest, most expensive and heavily fortified US embassy in the world. Scheduled to open in 2007, the sprawling complex near the Tigris River will equal Vatican City in size.

Then seven months into the job, he quit.

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ZioPedia

"When I first read extensive sections of the Talmud, even with the Jewish published translations in front of me, I did not want to believe they were authentic. I approached another Jewish acquaintance, Mark Cohen, and gave him a page of these quotations. He seemed equally upset by them. By the look on his face, I knew instantly that he was completely unfamiliar (and unsympathetic) with this Talmudic writ. He offered to ask his rabbi about their authenticity. The rabbi confirmed that the quotations were genuine but claimed that those views were not currently held by most Jews of today. I willingly believed this, and I still believe it is true of the average Jew. At the same time, however, knowing that such passages existed helped me to understand why there has been so much anti-Jewish sentiment over the centuries."

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Investigating New Imperialism

’Order 150 passed in 1987 by Saddam Hussein banned public sector workers from organizing trade unions …. Oil Minister Hussein al-Sharistani declared all oil unions illegal in July 2007, using [the same] Ba’ath regime anti-union law’[1]

Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the mainstream media have deliberately downplayed the role of oil in the invasion, indeed even so-called liberal newspapers like the London Independent, have poured scorn on the idea, going as far as labelling anyone who raised the issue as “conspiracists”. The closest the BBC ever gets to it is when it mentions ‘energy security’ but it never mentions the dreaded ‘O’ word when it comes to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

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Photo © IBA

Rense via Uruknet

The Massacre

It happened twenty-five years ago 16 September 1982. A massacre so awful that people who know about it cannot forget it. The photos are gruesome reminders charred, decapitated, indecently violated corpses, the smell of rotting flesh, still as foul to those who remember it as when they were recoiling from it all those years ago. For the victims and the handful of survivors, it was a 36-hour holocaust without mercy. It was deliberate, it was planned and it was overseen. But to this day, the killers have gone unpunished.

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MOUNTAIN SENTINEL via Speaking Truth to Power

Bush now has the ability to declare martial law at his own discretion, and in so doing dissolve the other branches of government, throw out the constitution, and suspend elections. He appropriated the right to do this largely by executive order. He can declare martial law whenever he deems there is sufficient cause; cause being an act of terrorism, an economic crisis, an act of war, civil unrest, or a natural catastrophe. For more information about the executive orders and legislation granting Bush these rights, please watch the short video at mountainsnetinel.com (What We Choose to Ignore), or visit the US Martial Law Timeline.

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When truth no longer matters, America – and Mankind – are doomed.

Once upon a time, the writer had great respect for members of Congress and, generally speaking, for all people elected to government positions, including on the local level. However, in 1995 the writer began becoming aware of inconsistencies and downright lies by politicians and the media that sucks after them as if they – the politicians – deserve respect as outstanding people. By December of 1997 he was on the Internet and the oceans of corruption, treason, and terrorism by government were revealed to him.

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Walter Mitty fantasized himself as a pilot of a US Navy
flying boat in a storm; Bush Fantasized himself as a
fighter pilot making a ‘tailhook’ landing on the deck
of an aircraft carrier: Mission Accomplished!

Reuters headline yesterday read, “Bush links terror war to U.S. independence war.” Bush visited Mount Vernon mansion on the Presidents Day holiday and laid a wreath at the tomb of the first American president to mark Washington’s birth 275 years ago.

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"We shall create, with sweat and blood, a race of men, strong, brave and cruel."

Zionist leaders have taught that Israel can only exist, that it can only have peace and security, by beating the Palestinians (and indeed the entire Arab world) into total submission to its demands. Since the earliest days, Zionist leaders have recognized the need to forcefully dictate terms of surrender to the Palestinians, to the Arab world, even to all the Jews of the diaspora, in order to colonize the land formerly known as Israel. The central demand in this involuntary agreement calls for a Jewish majority to be established in Eretz Yisrael by physical intimidation (including the West Bank and Gaza) and absolute Israeli dominance over all the land of "Greater Israel" (from southern Turkey to the Nile River, all the way to the Euphrates River). [1]

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© QT Luong / Terra Galleria

Mountain Sentinel

The Federal Reserve Bank should be abolished. It is a private institution, not a branch of the federal government, given the right to print money and so control our economy. It was established in defiance of the constitution and the intentions of our founding fathers, who rebelled against the central bank of England as much as against King George. The Fed is responsible for our system of debt financing, which is nothing more than a legalized pyramid scheme.

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Below is the speech given by Kevin Zeese at the September 15th peace demonstration in Washington, DC.

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice to Deceive

This war started on a pack of lies and continues with more lies piled on. To end this war we must break the tangled web of deceit with the truth.

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Osama bin Laden has once again managed to occupy the stage and to insist on his relevance to the story of September 11, 2001. In his most recent video message, released by Reuters a few days before the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, bin Laden voiced some typically absurd statements, calling on Americans to embrace Islam and so forth.

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Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission now admits that the official evidence they were given was 'far from the truth'.

Six years after 9/11, the American public have still not been provided with a full and truthful account of the single greatest terror attack in US history.

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As the 2007 economic collapse picks up speed, it’s time to take a hard look at the performance of the U.S. national political leadership in meeting some of their most fundamental responsibilities. It’s time to face the fact of serious failure over the last quarter century.

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IBC is actively helping the Bush junta to carry on this genocidal
carnage because it actively helps the huge propaganda cam-
paign aimed at making people ignore the scale of that carnage.

The Weekly Standard, the voice of the Neo-Con in Washington and whose Editor, William Kristol, is also Chairman of the Project for the New American Century, has published this brilliant endorsement of Iraq Body Count:

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I became aware of the power of the climate decades ago in college classes that were the most interesting that I had. The professor was not talking about 'Global Warming' or 'Climate Change' at all, only about the immensity of the oceans and their affect on the climate and weather. I've since been collecting articles from around the world about recent research into the warming that has taken place (not modeling, which is somewhat suspect) and I've become amazed at how little of this research has made it's way into the US corporate media.

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Abutamam Blogspot

"While Gen. Petraeus repeatedly cited the Sunni tribal turn against al-Qaeda as the most significant development in Iraq over the last year, he balks at the suggestion that his command is providing them with guns. "We have never given weapons to tribals," he said. "What we have done is applaud when they ask if they can point their guns at al-Qaeda."" Petraeus: We're Not Arming Sunni Tribes September 10, 2007

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The Patriots

► Preventing a Rogue President from Committing a War Crime: Open Letter to the New Generation of Military Officers

► Should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran, you are duty-bound to refuse that order

"I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order. I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal." (Dr., Lt. Col. Bob Bowman)

Dear Comrades in Arms,

You are facing challenges in 2007 that we of previous generations never dreamed of. I'm just an old fighter pilot (101 combat missions in Vietnam , F-4 Phantom, Phu Cat, 1969-1970) who's now a disabled veteran with terminal cancer from Agent Orange. Our mailing list (over 22,000) includes veterans from all branches of the service, all political parties, and all parts of the political spectrum. We are Republicans and Democrats, Greens and Libertarians, Constitutionists and Reformers, and a good many Independents. What unites us is our desire for a government that (1) follows the Constitution, (2) honors the truth, and (3) serves the people.

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Nadia Abu El-Haj is the latest American professor to be finkelsteined, this time for having the bad manners to point out some of the propaganda uses by Israel of the bullshit known as biblical archaeology. The Lobby and its minions are making a big effort to deny her tenure at Barnard College.

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No issue is more sensitive in the US than daring to criticize Israel. It's the metaphorical "third rail" in American politics, academia and the major media. Anyone daring to touch it pays dearly as the few who tried learned. Those in elected office face an onslaught of attacks and efforts to replace them with more supportive officials. Former five term Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney felt its sting twice in 2002 and 2006. So did 10 term Congressman Paul Findley (a fierce and courageous Israeli critic) in 1982 and three term Senator Charles Percy in 1984 whom AIPAC targeted merely for appearing to support anti-Israeli policy.

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Dissident Voice

Martyrs Square
Sabra-Shatilla Palestinian Refugee Camp
Beirut

A Letter to Janet

Dearest Janet,

It’s a very beautiful fall day here in Beirut today. Twenty-five years ago this week since the September 15-18, 1982 Massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra-Shatila. Bright blue sky and a fall breeze. It actually rained last night. Enough to clean out some of the humidity and dust. Fortunately not enough to make the usual rain created swamp of sewage and filth on Rue Sabra, or flood the grassless burial ground of the mass grave (the camp residents named it Martyrs Square–one of several so named memorials now in Lebanon)) where you once told me you that on Sunday September 19, 1982, you watched, sickened, as families and Red Crescent workers created a subterranean mountain of butchered and bullet riddled victims from those 48 hours of slaughter. Some of the bodies had limbs and heads chopped off, some boys castrated, Christian crosses carved into some of the bodies.

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"We Shall Return..." by Ismail
Shammout (Oil on canvas, 1954)

From: Annie's Letters

Rachel, Cindy, and Craig Corrie

[East Jerusalem and Arlington, Virginia] "Everyday I must figure out what is the thing for me to do today to seek justice and accountability," Cindy Corrie, mother of Rachel, told the crowd of over 100 nonviolent justice and peace activists who attended the 6th annual U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation of Palestine held at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. this past weekend.

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Saving a Palestinian partner, whom they have rejected until Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, has become the most important mission preoccupying the U.S. Administration and the Israeli government, a mission which nonetheless Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is taking seriously, against all the odds, pursuing a “hope” that their preoccupation could yet be a window of opportunity to revive serious Palestinian – Israeli peace negotiations and break through the siege imposed on him and his people by the both deadlocked inter-Palestinian and the peace process crises.

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September 11 has come and gone, again without incident, despite the new warning videos that have been released by the new improved version of a left-wing "bin Laden." http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osama_newfake.html Whoever this Osama double is, he fails to inspire the fear and hatred associated with the original author of 9/11 terror, or the covert co-authors of the piggyback attack that finished the job. http://www.pacificfreepress.com/content/view/1588/81/ The focused fear, hatred and anger that were let loose on that fateful day seems to have diminished, as our trusted leaders took advantage of our trust and used it as a weapon against us and the world. The American outrage and desire for vengeance, which united much of the world behind us, was twisted into a license to kill indiscriminately and a mandate for dictatorship.

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From Orwell Today

jimmarrs.com

Turn Off Your Television

Read this powerful indictment of uncontrolled TV viewing written in the early 1990s and then take stock of how much the Boob Tube is on in your own home. Its message is even more important today with TVs blaring in airports, bars, even offices. It is time to try Mr. Wolfe's therapy: "Do you want to stay stupid and let your country go to hell in a basket? Why don't you just walk over to the set and turn it off. That's right, completely off. Go on, you can do it. Now isn't that better? Don't you feel a little better already? You've just taken the first step in deprogramming yourself. It wasn't that hard, was it? Until we speak again, try to keep it off. Now that will be a bit harder." -Jim Marrs

The subconscious is powerful. It is aware of every particle and detail around you. But it doesn't know the difference between fact or fiction and acts on all information passing through the conscious mind as fact, and responds to it. So what do you think happens when you watch silly, moron, goofy commercials and television programs? They are training your thought processes. -Hey buddy, I'm talking to you. Yes, you, the guy sitting in front of the television. Turn down the sound a bit, so that you can hear what I am saying. Now, try to concentrate on what I am going to say. I want to talk to you about your favorite pastime. No, it's not baseball or football, although it does have something to do with your interest in spectator sports. I'm talking about what you were just doing: watching television.

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The Lost Generation of Palestine

Children - of second Intifada - live in despair - immeasurably deep cavity - seared by violence - overpowered by grief- cut off - from the world -inside segmented - by barriers - checkpoints Israelis - ripped up a home - deprived a child - of Freedom

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“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” - Abraham Lincoln

Washington, D.C. -- It was just a press conference! The northwest corner of Lafayette Park, just north of the White House, was the site. It was called on September 6, 2007, by the ANSWER Coalition to promote the massive antiwar demonstration scheduled for September 15th in this city and to spotlight the ongoing harassing conduct used against that organization by the government, both local and national. The ANSWER Coalition has challenged, in Federal Court, the city’s patently discriminatory sign regulations, which have selectively targeted it for punitive fines for its placement of posters about the rally in public places. Activists Tina Richards, a Marine Mom, who’s the CEO of Grassroots America, spoke first. She was followed by former U.S. Marine Sergeant Adam Kokesh. He’s the co-chair elect of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. After the speeches, Sarah Sloan, the ANSWER Coalition's National Staff Director, who ran the press conference, asked: “Are there questions?” Well, as soon as she did, all hell broke loose! (1)

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IMEMC via Um Khalil

The following story highlights Israel's despicable methods of recruiting Palestinian collaborators and the inhumane, undemocratic, and inequitable measures it employs in order to maintain its "Jewish" demographics. Because Dalia Basheer's husband, Saed Awad refused to collaborate, Dalia was denied entry to Jerusalem to visit her hospitalized daughter, six, who died ten days later, and Dalia was forced to leave for Jordan, separating her from her husband and her two surviving children.

Within the space of twenty four hours Dialaia Basheer's life was changed – instead of going to Jerusalem to visit her daughter in hospital she ended up in Amman. This happened when Israeli soldiers at the nearby military checkpoint of Al Zea'im detained her and forced her to leave for Jordan because she did not have a permit to enter Jerusalem.

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The eerie juxtaposition of General Betrayus testifying today before Congress, and it being 9/11 (which helped Bush bring us disasters ranging from the PATRIOT Act to the Iraq War and Occupation) brings an opportunity to re-understand what’s been happening here and in Iraq these past six years, and offers an insight into a way forward.

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Press Gazette

Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj has been on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay for more than 230 days. Clive Stafford Smith tells his story.

The week began with a letter from a Guantánamo Bay officer suggesting that I might have smuggled some Speedo swimming trunks and “Under Armour briefs” to my client, British resident Shaker Aamer. Shaker was apparently caught wearing both “contraband” items in his prison cell.

I was unsure whether to be amused or annoyed.

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"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." - Woodrow Wilson

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a total collapse of consumer markets, economic paralysis, and
widespread homelessness and starvation. Yes, even in the U.S.

No one can predict how deep the decline in Western economies that is underway will go, because there is so little transparent information. Within the U.S., the government is hiding the severity of the crisis in order to prevent a collapse of consumer confidence.

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The world is very weary of all this and wants to laugh again

Okay, Bush ain't gonna get out of Iraq no matter what anyone says or does short of a) impeachment, b) a lobotomy, or c) one of his daughters setting herself afire in the Oval Office as a war protest. A few days ago, upon arriving in Australia, "in a chipper mood", he was asked by the Deputy Prime Minister about his stopover in Iraq. "We're kicking ass," replied the idiot king.[1] Another epigram for his tombstone.

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Editors' note: This is for our newer readers.

fahim knight's blog

"The invisible power brokers: conspiracy talk & myth --or reality?"

The majority of society the world-over has been taught and conditioned to reject and/or are ignorant to the notion that there exist an invisible Elitist society that was un-elected by the people, who cloak and operate behind a conceal invisible government, which determines the political, economic, and social realties of world humanity. Nothing happens in the world unless this Elitist body dictates and determines its past, present and future ramifications relative to their goals and objectives.

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israelinsider

On August 14, at 9 PM, Israel's Channel Ten television screened a documentary film which exposes the ugliest secret of Israel's Labor party founders: the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi youths of a generation.

"The Ringworm Children" (translated in Hebrew as "100,000 Rays"), directed by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias, recently won the prize for "best documentary" at the Haifa International film festival, and in the past year has made the rounds of Jewish and Israeli film festivals around the world. But it had yet to come to Israeli television screens. The subject is the mass irradiation of hundreds of thousands of young Israeli immigrants from Middle Eastern countries -- Sephardim, as they are called today. The story goes like this:

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An article in Newsweek, "Why We Need a Draft: A Marine's Lament," stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest online recently. It was written by a marine who fought in Fallujah, Iraq, and actually gave a pretty compelling overview of the practical need for selective service.

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Executive Intelligence Review

On Aug. 28, after George W. Bush delivered a speech to the American Legion where he raved about a "nuclear holocaust" coming from Iran, and vowed to continue-and even escalate-the war in Iraq, Lyndon LaRouche warned that British interests were goading the President into a suicidal flight-forward that would lead to a cataclysmic Hundred Years War. LaRouche said that the President is clearly in very bad psychological shape, and any British effort to encourage him to order strikes on Iran, based on deluded claims of American military capabilities that do not exist, is dangerous and perfidious.

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2007 © Carlos Latuff

[Editors' note: We are not surprised or amazed that the Zionists are attacking the free discourse of open societies. -Again. They have done this many times before. They hate free speech. They hate democracy. They have made their choice long ago: fascism. First for the Palestinians; for the rest of us later. The Palestinians know all about the fascist character of the Zionists state. We should support them. And we should and must support the friends of the Palestinians. Ben Heine is such a friend. That is why the Zionists don’t like him. -We do! He needs our support.]

Desert Peace

Ben Heine, one of our resident artists, my Associate and dear friend has again been chosen to 'lead the way', so to speak... He was one of the first anti zionists that was censored and eventually banned from Daily Kos a few months ago merely for his honesty and refusal to compromise his principles. It seems that Wikipedia has followed suit and has deleted his entry from their pages. The entry looked like this....

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The People vs. the Establishment: Peace March on September 15th Scares the Powers that Be Because the People Have The Power to End the War

The Washington, DC establishment is coming to a conclusion – we’re staying in Iraq. There is only one thing that can change that conclusion – the power of the people. The March against the war, scheduled for September 15th, is a unique opportunity for anti-war activists to stand in coalition with Iraq Veterans who oppose the war and have taken the lead on this historic march.

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Israel's population today is about 7,150,000. About 5.4 million are Jews (76%) plus another 400,000 Jewish settlers in over 200 expanding settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank that includes Palestinian East Jerusalem. They're the chosen ones afforded full rights and privileges under the laws of the Jewish state for Jews alone.

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Yeah, folks, you can bet the ranch: we’re going in. I’ve heard all the arguments from the nay sayers, so let that go. We’re going in.

This is déjà vu time, for sure, as we look back on the months before Shock and Awe, when so many of us tried to warn the nation about the coming catastrophe in Iraq. But those of us who shouted went unheard and those of us who marched in protest went unseen. Yet in the end we were right on the mark.

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Speculation is swirling about who will replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- everyone from Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch to former Solicitor General and Clinton stalker Theodore Olsen. Until last week, the name most bandied about was Secretary of Homeland Security and USAPATRIOT Act co-author Michael Chertoff. You'd think selecting Chertoff in light of the New Orleans debacle would be a stupid thing to do since Chertoff's continued ideological mishandling of the Katrina disaster borders on the criminally insane.

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The benign climate that has allowed the human race to multiply, develop and prosper has remained more or less unchanged for 10,000 years. Its stability accounts for the entire span of civilised human history.[1]

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The decision made by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to halt his Mahdi Army's attacks on occupation forces and Iraqi security is likely to be considered the single most promising breakthrough for the US military in Iraq. Although the move comes ahead of several reports to be presented to the US Congress later this month, the decision was ultimately an outcome of a long-brewing intersectarian conflict between Shiite Iraqis, which will further complicate the devastating American failure in Iraq.

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"The Khazars - or Ashkenazis (Hebrew for German) how they call themselves today - are actually the descendants of ethnic Turk tribes that entered Europe as part of Attila's hordes and their local Germanic rape victims. For speed and logistical reasons they couldn't bring their women along, all the way from Mongolia, and had to 'source' them locally, usally by killing everybody else in the tribe.

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Pictured- My Lai left and Fallujah

With President Bush recently bringing up the killing fields of South East Asia as justification for the US continuing the war in Iraq [1], I could not help but think of John Pilger's 1991 film "Cambodia: The Betrayal." This documentary investigates and outlines the West's, particularly the US's, behind the scenes and ongoing support for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Indeed, this backing began during the Carter administration and it continued throughout both the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.

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President of the Hip Hop Caucus

On July 1, 2007 I sought the support of regular Americans after receiving notification from the U.S. Air Force Reserve that they were threatening to discharge me on the basis of behavior that, in their words, is “clearly inconsistent with the interest of national security.” The behavior in question is my outspoken opposition to the occupation of Iraq and the inadequate and inhuman response to the tragedy of Katrina.

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"I cannot digest the book in a vacuum unless I choose to ignore
the current reality..."

The word is out that economics, never a science, has always been politics in disguise - Hazel Henderson

Just recently I learned of Hazel Henderson and her latest book, Ethical Markets: Growing The Green Economy as well as Henderson's Quality of Life Indicators which assess America's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), not in the terms used by traditional economics, but in terms of qualities such as: education, income, employment, infrastructure, energy, national security, environment, public safety, health, recreation, human rights and shelter.

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God Bless America with integrity to rise up and demand NO MORE WAR in our
name! (Portland Protest)

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. ... Genius will not. ... Education will not. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."- President Calvin Coolidge

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Online Journal

On December 21, 1988, a Pan Am plane mysteriously exploded over Scotland causing the death of 270 people from 21 countries. The tragedy provoked global outrage. In 1991, two Libyans were charged with the bombing.

In the event, only Abdulbaset Ali Mohammad Al Megrahi, a Libyan agent, was pronounced guilty by a panel of three judges, who based their decision on largely circumstantial evidence. Al Megrahi and the Libyan government have protested their innocence all along.

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Consortium News

The 9/11 tragedy did become a demarcation point for the United States, although not in the way many Americans understand. Before that date six years ago, there existed an American Republic – albeit one in decline – but afterwards a New Age authoritarian state quickly took shape.

Though some defenders of the old Republic rose up, nobody was strong enough to protect it. -How this historic calamity happened – one of the most under-reported events of modern times – is the centerpiece of our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, which looks at the roles of aggressive Republicans, accommodating Democrats, bullying pundits and careerist journalists.

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Dissident Voice

Standing Firm With Norman G. Finkelstein and DePaul’s Heroic Students: A Defining Moment

I am an untenured, assistant professor at DePaul University in Chicago, where Norman G. Finkelstein, the most heroic critic of U.S. and Israeli policy in Palestine ever to set foot in the U.S. academy, was denied tenure over nearly three months ago. I was, and am, deeply saddened that DePaul University, the institution where I have chosen to make a career, has so effectively undermined its social justice mission in a series of actions that have put us, as a faculty body, in grave peril.

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Administration rhetoric is heated and the dominant media keep trumpeting it. It signals war with Iran of the "shock and awe" kind - intensive, massive and maybe with nuclear weapons. Plans are one thing, action another, and how things play out, in fact, won't be known until the fullness of time that may not be long in coming. For now, waiting and guessing games continue, and one surmise is as good as another. The more threatening they are, the less likely they'll happen, or at least it can be hoped that's so.

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After Downing Street

I know just a little bit about Mr. William Kristol:

► He is the son of one of the founders of the "neo-conservative" movement, Irving Kristol. ► He is a commentator on Fox News. ► He was Chief of Staff for one of the political "geniuses" of our time: VP Dan Quayle. ► He is editor of another Rupert Murdoch war-propaganda rag, "The Weekly Standard."► He is a member, and signer, of the Project for the New American Century, which is a game plan for US global hegemony based on military strength and one of its goals and objectives was the over-throw of the Hussein Regime in Iraq with a next stop in Iran and Syria (because the PNAC plan is going so well, so far). ► By all accounts, Mr. Kristol is a brilliant man, who like his father before him, uses his brilliance for destruction. He is a shameless supporter of a failed, murderous, and miserable strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan and one of the "mushroom cloud" crowd.

One thing Mr. William Kristol is not, is a combat vet.

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In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, George Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it".

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A book by the dean of Argentine writers, the 96-year old Ernesto Sabato, bears the title, La Resistencia, though the word Resistance itself is used sparingly in his 150-page book-essay. Yet, his message is clear: man must resist against injustice. I began this essay from that point.

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[West Bank: Occupied Territory] In a verdict released on Sept 4, 2007, justice ruled in the Holy Land!

In the petition of the village of Bil'in against The Wall (HCJ 8414/05), which in that area of the occupied territory of the West Bank, is mostly an electrified fence with miles of rolled barbwire that prevents the indigenous landowners access to their olive groves, Judges Beinish, Prokachya and Rivlin, of the Supreme Court ruled against the current route of The Wall/separation barrier and ordered the State to prepare a proposal for an alternative route.

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Atlantic Free Press

Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America

When I was 18, before student tracking in the public schools had been formalized, an informal tracking system was nevertheless in place: the university track, the craft track, the poultry worker track, and the prison track. I was somewhere between the last two. Both my parents were working in a defense contractor factory, and I was left adrift in the factory-worker ’burbs to be trained by television and alcohol. Raised on a curriculum of McCarthyism, I did the most logical thing I could think of to avoid both the factory and eventual incarceration with the ne’er-do-wells with whom I was keeping company. I joined the Army, and volunteered to fight communists in Vietnam.

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Photo from the International Solidarity Movement.

Electronic Intifada

Universally regarded as the symbol of peace, the olive tree has become the object of violence. For more than forty years, Israel has uprooted over one million olive trees and hundreds of thousands of fruit trees in Palestine with terrible economic and ecological consequences for the Palestinian people. Their willful destruction has so threatened Palestinian culture, heritage and identity that the olive tree has now become the symbol of Palestinian steadfastness because of its own rootedness and ability to survive in a land where water is perennially scarce.

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The Sunday Times of London is reporting that the Pentagon has plans for three days of massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran . Last week, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center , told a meeting of The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal, that the military did not intend to carry out "pinprick strikes" against Iranian nuclear facilities. He said, "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military."

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Lyndon LaRouche today denounced a British think tank study claiming that the United States can obliterate Iran's nuclear program, defense infrastructure, and government in a matter of hours, calling it "a filthy pack of lies," aimed at inducing President George "My name is legion" Bush into a flight-forward attack on the Islamic Republic, that would throw the world into a cataclysmic Hundred Years War.

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Christopher Bollyn/Rumor Mills

Photo: Arnon Milchen (a.k.a. Milchan), Mossad's man in the middle, with two of his best friends - Shimon Peres (left) the current president and architect of Israel's illegal nuclear arsenal, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of the Zionist "War on Terror."

The government and controlled media have lied to the public about 9-11 for 6 years. Those who have discerned and exposed the lies about the "false flag" terror attacks and the fraudulent "War on Terror" have been treated like madmen and criminals. It's time for this criminal nightmare to end.

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We have only begun to see the reverberations of the mortgage meltdown. They will be as sweeping and mindboggling as global warming or an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale.

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"An apartheid society is much more than just a 'settler colony'. It involves specific forms of oppression that actively strip the original inhabitants of any rights at all, whereas civilian members of the invader caste are given all kinds of sumptuous privileges." [1]

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Electronic Intifada

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets with the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem 28 August 2007. (Omar Rashidi/MaanImages/POOL)

Over the past two months a coalition has formed around Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to bolster his rule. Desperate to maintain his hold on power, Abbas has chosen to forgo national unity and rely on support from the US and Israel to tighten his hold on the West Bank and target Gaza. Abbas and his benefactors have made it clear to the residents of Gaza that only by abandoning Hamas will the siege be lifted.

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Ever since Lincoln’s “Civil War,” America has been “transformed from a limited, constitutional government to a highly centralized welfare-warfare state.” [1] War is allegedly initiated for “national security” reasons – “newspeak” for resource seizure and/or control by multinational corporations/banks through their financial grip on governments. What! You think the United States would not participate in or condone plunder? The government plunders your pocket for interest payments (AKA income tax) on their loans from the Federal Reserve to finance all war-like activities, whether subversive or public!

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Some people just can't handle the truth (or the consequences thereof — real or imagined — for that matter).

The following is similar to what is happening to Dr. Norman Finkelstein and others who are fraudulently deemed by self-styled thought police as being too polemical for public consumption.

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According to a UN report, Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein admitted that "Israel today was an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status...even if the wall followed strictly the line of the pre-1967 border, it would still not be justified. The two peoples needed cooperation rather than walls because they must be neighbors." [1]

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On 29 August, 2007, Israeli soccer fans were heard cursing the Prophet Muhammed (PUH) while accompanying an Israeli soccer team to Turkey.

According to the Ynet, the Yedeot Ahronot news website, a Turkish reporter working for the Channel 24, Elif Ural, who accompanied the Israeli soccer team, Maccabi Tel Aviv on its flight from Israel to the Turkish city of Kayseri, videotaped a group of fans while signing songs cursing the Prophet of Islam and Muslims in general.

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If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break
If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break,
Some people are still sleeping
Some people ARE WIDE AWAKE.- Bob Dylan, 2006 "Modern Times"

It has been two years since Hurricane Katrina blew in and exposed that the empire has no clothes. What happened in the Big Easy was foretold five years ago in a five-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

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Antonio Gramsci

"Telling the truth is always revolutionary."

Today I visited the tomb of Antonio Gramsci in the Poets’ Cemetery in Rome, a final resting place for artists, poets, writers and illustrious foreigners and lovers of Italy. An inconspicuous urn resting in the center of the mound contains the ashes of the philosopher, Marxist thinker and founder of the Italian Communist Party. The tombstone bears only his name and his dates—1891-1937. The fresh red flowers indicate that the site is regularly tended.

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"to compete in our own domestic market with the poorest of the poor workers from
all over the world is a recipe for long-term economic decline for America."

The most recent statements coming from Ford and General Motors, demanding massive cuts in the benefits paid to auto workers or those companies will move their factories to low-wage countries, demonstrates the complete failure of current government economic policies. The automobile manufacturers should not be able to make such threats nor should they need to make such demands. The failures of current government economic policy makes both a reality. Changes in government economic policies can quickly correct the situation.

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You know, the patience that you are asking the American people to provide while you continue to slog around in the quagmire called Iraq; while the "surge" creates conditions that will unite the Iraqi people. May I be so bold as to remind you that one of your campaign promises was to unite the American people? Seven years later, the United States is more divided than at any time since the infamous Civil War. And that is only problem one.

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"It took many painful years of organizing, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling
police and National Guard forces, and paying with their blood and lives before real gains were won."

Labor Day is commemorated on the first Monday in September each year since the first one was celebrated in New York in 1882. Around the world outside the US, socialist and labor movements are observed on May 1 to recognize organized labor's social and economic achievements and the workers in them. This day gets scant attention in the US, but where it's prominent it's commonly to remember the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886 in Chicago. It followed the city's May 1 general strike for an eight hour day that led to violence breaking out on the 4th.

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Palestine-Info

Comment by Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem

Seeking to demoralize Palestinians into total submission and surrender, the Israeli occupation army on Wednesday, 29 August, murdered in cold blood three Palestinian children in the northern Gaza Strip.

According to eyewitnesses, an Israeli tank fired a large artillery shell at a northern Gaza neighborhood, killing three children from the same family. The children, whom the Israeli media, parroting army disinformation, referred to as “teenagers,” have been identified as Muhammed Ghazal, 10, Yahya Ghazal 12, and Sara Ghazal, also 10 years. According to the victims’ family, the kids were playing Tag in the backyard of their home when the artillery shell struck, killing them on the spot and mutilating their tender bodies.

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