Index Research

England is a nicer place to be right now. We don’t have the relentless siege of Blair’s lies anymore. What a relief. Blair's hubris still shines from afar as he bleats about terrorism and gives instructions about US-NATO, while earning himself £millions from speeches no one should pay to hear. Blair's shadow still hangs over us: Trident; longer pretrial detention; ID cards; 6 million surveillance cameras; shameful ‘rendition’; access to phone records by government agencies; nuclear power; and the pointless ‘robocop’ British soldiers in Basra, whose feelings are echoed by american soldiers, some of whom avoid patrol.

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The Bush Administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, has again escalated its drive for senseless military action against Iran, through a combination of new unilateral sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and a new hyperventilating propaganda push, led by the Vice President and President, aimed at provoking Tehran into providing a pretext for war. At the same time, anti-war forces around the globe-including Russian President Vladimir Putin, and some factions within the Bush Administration itself-have taken some extraordinary actions, aimed at averting an attack on Iran, that would almost certainly escalate out of control to global war.

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Last December, Hugo Chavez announced his idea for a Banco
del Sur, or Bank of the South, as part of his crusade against
the institutions of international capital he calls "tools of
Washington."

In July, 2004, the IMF and World Bank commemorated the 60th anniversary of their founding at Bretton Woods, NH to provide a financial framework of assistance for the postwar world after the expected defeat of Germany and Japan. With breathtaking hypocrisy, an October, 2004 Development Committee Communique stated: "As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Bretton Woods Institutions....we recommit ourselves to supporting efforts by developing countries to pursue sustainable growth, sound macroeconomic policies, debt sustainability, open trade, job creation, poverty reduction and good governance." Phew.

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As European officials express concern about the fact that the Bush administration's designation of Iranian agencies and firms as supporters of terrorism could block relations with Tehran for years to come, President Vladimir Putin's description of these new U.S. sanctions, as America "running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand," seems appropriate and worrisome.

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Christian Zionism is a growing enigma to traditional Christians and to non-Christians alike. Most of those inside its churches are very certain of what they believe, but they are not at all sure why they believe it.

It is this author’s conclusion, based on personal observations at some 60 churches where Project Strait Gate has confronted and interviewed congregation and staff, that none of the dispensational or Judeo-Christian inside can open a New Testament and support what they believe from its pages. Most will not try. This paper is dedicated to the friends and families of some 60 million Americans who are in this dilemma.

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Martinez blamed the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land on Hezbollah
which did not even exist until 1982; fifteen years AFTER the occupation of
Palestine began...

"REBELLION is as old as authority itself, and so therefore is the business of putting it down. Nearly 2,000 years ago Jewish militants—known as Zealots, hence the English word—took up arms against the world's greatest power and terrorised those deemed collaborators. The Romans dealt with the revolt in Palestine in familiar fashion, laying waste any town that resisted, prompting many to commit suicide rather than suffer capture... http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10015844

"I rebel, therefore I exist." -Albert Camus

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While the world is looking on passively, Israel is perfecting its strangulation of the Gaza Strip’s 1.4 million civilians.

On Sunday, Oct. 28, the Israeli army reduced by more than 20% fuel supplies to the Strip. More cuts are slated to take place in the next few days and weeks, according to Israeli officials.

Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered a gradual cutoff of fuel and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip, ostensibly in preparation for a deep blitz into the occupied coastal territory. Given past experience, hundreds of mostly innocent Palestinians can be expected be murdered and maimed in such a blitz.

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“America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.” – Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine

Does my profanity offend? If so, accept my sincere apologies for having the audacity to use a vulgar expletive in reference to the malignant force that is raping the Earth and murdering its sentient inhabitants.

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[Leesburg, Florida Oct. 29, 2007] The Leesburg Area Chamber of Commerce sponsored a luncheon and Town Hall Q+A with the Republican Senator from Florida, Mel Martinez and I traveled with hope to the affair on an overcast drizzly Monday for Martinez has only accepted $10,000 from Pro-Israel PAC Funds for the 2005-2006 election cycle.

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Question: When is a Plan not a Plan? Answer: When the Plan is not a Plan, Plan

The BBC is currently flighting a programme in two parts entitled ‘No Plan, No Peace – the Inside Story of Iraq’s Descent into Chaos’ (28 and 29 October on BBC1). Way back and many times inbetween I have asserted that there was never meant to be a plan (at least in the generally accepted sense of the word) and indeed in 2003, the Bush regime stated that deposing Saddam was never about ‘nation-building’.

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Global Research

Missing Nukes on August 29-30, 2007

According to a wide range of reports, several nuclear bombs were “lost” for 36 hours after taking off August 29/30, 2007 on a “cross-country journey” across the U.S., from U.S.A.F Base Minot in North Dakota to U.S.A.F. Base Barksdale, near New Orleans, in Louisiana. [1] Reportedly, in total there were six W80-1 nuclear warheads armed on AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles (ACMs) that were “lost.” [2] The story was first reported by the Military Times, after military servicemen leaked the story.

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The sheer scale and rate of concurrent liquidation of terrestrial habitat, atmospheric change,
ocean and water dimnishment, and all the rest, I suggest, may well make the Earth
uninhabitable for organic life. (7,000 sq. mile DEAD ZONE- Gulf of Mexico)

Earth Meanders

It is late, despair high; yet ambitious policies emphasizing sacrifice and preparation can keep the Earth from dying.

Human caused ecosystem destruction has progressed well beyond the Earth's carrying capacity -- its ability to provide goods and services, and to regenerate. Global heating is occurring at a rate and extent far exceeding expectations. There are too many people to meet basic needs for all based upon further habitat destruction for resources, much less making possible Western lifestyles. Ecological crises have progressed to the point where global ecological, economic and social upheavals are guaranteed. This is ecological fact, truth, knowledge -- it is what it is, and no value is gained by stating otherwise.

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Abbas reportedly may be willing to accept the Israeli-American view, and, now, the French
view, that there is no way the refugees can return to their original homes

There have been real fears of late that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas may compromise fundamental Palestinian national rights for the sake of “reaching peace with Israel.”

According to insiders within Abbas’ immediate circles, “the President!” may be willing and ready to offer far-reaching concessions to the Israeli apartheid state on three major issues:

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Why would Reid, Kennedy, McCain, Schumer, Specter,
Hagel, Martinez, Hatch, Kyle, Hatch, Bennett and the
rest of the senate work so hard for open-borders – and
to leave our borders unguarded for the past 20 years?

Ever hear of the musical, "Wild about Harry"? Do you remember the toe-tapping, clapping and singing? After seeing the show, you danced into the street and celebrated being alive! It proved thoroughly American.

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Canada - "13th highest military spender in the world."

"Canada is spending more public money on its military today than it has since the Second World War, says a new study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

According to the study, by Steven Staples, Director of the Rideau Institute and CCPA Research Associate, and Bill Robinson, Senior Advisor with the Rideau Institute, Canada's military spending will reach $18.24 billion in 2007-08 - an increase of 9 percent over 2006-07 - and will continue to rise to $19.418 billion by 2009-10.

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While on stage, Gravel admitted, "You bet I am angry!... Our education system is in the toilet,
our tax system is corrupt and our infrastructure is tumbling and we consume more energy than
anybody else!The U.S.A., the great free country has imprisoned six times per capita more than
Hitler had in prison in 1938!

[Orlando, Fl. October 27, 2007] As a veteran of justice and peace marches, my estimate is that 3,000 concerned justice and peace patriotic Americans and 50 counter demonstrators took it to the streets of Orlando on a humid overcast Saturday. A comrade from the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a member of the Steering Committee of United for Peace and Justice, Omar Masri, American Lebanese, kicked off the happening and roused the crowd, "I f-----g believe in peace! 70% of Americans say NO more occupation of Iraq, bring back the troops! Power to the people and we will not be silent! End the occupation now!"

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© Ben Heine

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)

An interview with Economist Jeffrey Sachs, PhD, who developed the plan for the UN Millennium Project and served as its director and as Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, from 2002 to 2006.

Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is an ambitious goal, to say the least. But this is the aim of the UN (United Nations) Millennium Project, a global plan to meet a set of 8 targets to improve the human condition. These targets, called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), include halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on $1 a day.

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I have been writing political essays for a few years now. I do so as a reluctant enthusiast, not because I wanted to write on these themes; but because, it seemed to me, that professional journalists were not telling the whole story; that significant parts that would allow people to connect the dots and understand what is happening from a historical perspective, was being deliberately omitted from the official version of current events, and from history.

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© Ben Heine

Gilad Benari is a most talented photographer (conceptual artist more precisely) and poet. With his astounding photos, he lets us see the simple elements of our world in a different and beautiful way.

He says himself: "I love to vary my experience in photography. I believe that the real joy in photography is in the trivial, in small things". Gilad comes from Israel (Tel Aviv).

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Um Khalil

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948

Article 13

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.

2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

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The ‘Boo ain’t no N.O.
Plus: George Bush, Flame Retard

What color is your disaster? It makes a difference. A life and death difference.
Dig:

---Population of San Diego fire evacuation zone: 500,000
---Population of the New Orleans flood evacuation zone: 500,000

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It is no secret that the current PLO, headed by the American-backed Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is no longer capable of navigating the Palestinian cause toward the shore of safety. The hapless and infinitely corrupt organization is senile, unreformed and utterly undemocratic, and as such can no longer represent the vast bulk of the Palestinian masses at home and in the Diaspora.

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I marched and lobbied in DC last June to call for an end to forty years of Israeli occupation and the U.S. policies that support it. The sign I carried posed a single question. It is one that urgenly begs to be addressed, debated and answered. I believe it holds significant implications, not only for Jews, but for the entire middle east. "When do we stop sitting shiva for the Holocaust?"

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"I don't know what a Nazi concentration camp looked like, but I imagine that Kitziot looked
very much like a concentration camp yesterday,"

Israel's regard for Palestinians can be summed up in how it imprisons and terrorises them.

A few weeks ahead of the upcoming "peace conference" in Annapolis, Maryland, Israel has been displaying its "goodwill" towards the Palestinians. At the notorious Kitziot Prison, a real concentration camp minus gas chambers, crack Israeli soldiers have been ganging up on helpless and fettered Palestinian prisoners, shooting, beating and humiliating them under largely concocted pretexts.

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June 8th, 2007, Reagan National Airport

I am not a big fan of soaring at 30,000 feet, so when the wheels touched down and the plane finally came to a complete stop I was indescribably relieved, despite the fact that it was Washington DC. No, I am not an uncultured cretin, as some may imagine.

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On October 5, George Bush confronted a public uproar and defended his administration claiming "This government does not torture people." Again he lied. Once secret US Department of Justice (DOJ) legal opinions confirm the Bush administration condones torture by endorsing "the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency." It also condones paramilitary thuggery, oppressive occupation, and genocide. This unholy combination is the ugly face of an imperial nation run by war criminals. That's the state of things today. First, the practice of torture.

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The last time I spoke publicly in the United States before my current tour was nearly four years ago. During this time I had travelled the world, passing my message to people in nearly 20 countries. Wherever I went, my calls for justice for the Palestinian people and for global alternatives to racism and war were well-received. However, my latest talks in the US have made me realize that the witch hunt on intellectuals that escalated rapidly since September 11, 2001 is nowhere near over.

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Vice President Dick Cheney's continuing push for U.S. military strikes against Iran, which would trigger a global Hundred Years War conflagration, has once again put the issue of his removal from office at the center of any legitimate war-avoidance strategy. According to interviews conducted by EIR with dozens of American and foreign military officials, diplomats, and intelligence specialists, the Cheney-led war party has gained strength, despite massive opposition, and the prospects of a U.S. military attack on Iran have increased in recent weeks. The war danger will intensify, one senior U.S. intelligence source warned, until the Bush-Cheney team leaves office-or until Cheney is forced out.

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Can you think of anyone better than George W. Bush with whom to entrust the dictatorial powers hinted at in NSPD-51? Or perhaps you are unwilling to trust anyone with such powers, even Bush. That is not a option in NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE 51 (NSPD-51), signed by Bush and released without comment by the White House on May 9, 2007.

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Several years ago, when I was doing some research on bin Laden, I learned he was suffering from progressive kidney failure. Since he was obviously being selected by the American propaganda machine to be a symbol similar to that of a Tojo or Hitler during WWII, I wanted to know more about the real bin Laden, as opposed to the propaganda construct.

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My wife, Alice, and I hold a deed to twenty acres of land in Morgan County, West Virginia. To most people, there is nothing remarkable about this place. But to us, it is extraordinary. I have spent seventeen years exploring the botany of this land: photographing its wild flowers, learning the language of its avian citizens, and capturing its various moods on film and in pixels. Knowing it as I do, I could never think of this place as a resource. It is simply home: the source.

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The brave boys and girls in Amerikan uniform did it again. This time, flying their fat asses on helicopters and fighter jets, they bombed the suburb east of Baghdad Madinat al-Thawra (City of the Revolution), now known as Madinat al-Sadr (Sadr City). You may see in this photo gallery women and children among the victims of such a heroic action. Support "our" troops!

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This reporter has now become a proud member of the banned voices who have dared speak out for equal human rights for Palestinians and the truth about the injustices committed by the state of Israel on the supposedly progressive free speech sites known as the Daily Kos and the Democratic Underground.

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Village Voice

'We do not torture': Groans from the CIA's black sites beg to differ

Soon after real-time terror hit home, the president gave the CIA authority to interrogate suspected terrorists in its secret prisons, wholly outside our laws or the UN International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of prisoners. Eventually, hard evidence of torture kept emerging from victims of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" (as the president likes to call them); from human-rights organizations; and from reports in the European and American press (including this column). In response, the Republican-controlled Congress gave CIA torturers immunity from prosecution in the 2006 Military Commissions Act.

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The September and October United Auto Workers (UAW) GM and Chrysler agreements are just the latest examples of union leadership surrender and betrayal. It's an ominous sign of labor's plight and clear indication of what's ahead - more for business, less for workers, and no relief in sight with union bosses out for themselves and more allied with business and imperial interests than their own rank and file.

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Soon after 9/11, Bill Maher lost his job on mainstream television for his remark about the relative cowardice of the alleged hijackers. I have to believe that he's been warned that any further discussion of 9/11 that does not follow the official Bush/PNAC line will mean the end of his career. It seems that Bill Maher, like so many others, has his price.'

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"Hezbollah is today popular in the Arab world."

Strange and scary names like Hamas and Mujahideen and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah cited over and over in the news create sensations of tension and fear. Hezbollah is a familiar name, usually linked to repetitive scenes of tightly knit military formations marching shoulder to shoulder over streets of the Arab world. The more curious observer might wonder who they really are.

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Kawther Salam

Israel violates the international convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. Mohammed Safi Muhammed Al-Ashkar, a Palestinian prisoner of age 29, was murdered today morning at 2 AM by an Israeli jailer, who shot him with dumdum bullets at the “Ansar 3/ Nafha” concentration camp south of Al-Nakab, also known as Ketziot. International laws forbid using dumdum ammunitions, which explode inside the victims bodies. Over 400 IDF soldiers from the Shimshon and Metsada special forces raided eight departments of Palestinian prisoners at Al-Nakab in a savage way, shooting live bullets, destroying and burning the prisoners property.

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Camp Falcon explosions. Photo : Al Jazeera

Index Research

Iraqis and Americans must read the information below. They must watch the two videos. And then they, and people over the world, must ask the U.S. government for a full and open explanation of what happened at Camp Falcon, Baghdad, on the 10th of October 2006.

Index has had the following report from an Iraqi concerning the explosions at As Saqr / Camp Falcon. I am not sure it was the 'resistance' that caused the explosion, nor am I sure that the video was transmitted by jazeera ... but give you the following information anyway.

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Mr. Bush wants to bomb wonderful Iran and contaminate this beautiful
country with nukes. Why? -Because israel told him to do so?

Global Research

This article is Part III (b) of The Imperial Playground: History of Iran in Recent History

This is not the only terrorist threat to Iran. Over the past years, conflicts have been developing out of the Northern Iraqi Kurdistan region, which are affecting not only Iran across the Eastern border, but also Turkey along the Northern border, threatening to even draw Turkey into the enveloping crisis in the region. The Northern Kurdistan region of Iraq was not under the control of Saddam when he was in power, and since the 2003 US-led occupation of Iraq, has been under a regional government.

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Mr. Bush wants to bomb these wonderful human beings and contaminate their
beautiful country with nukes. Why? -Because israel told him to do so?

Global Research

This article is Part III (a) of The Imperial Playground: History of Iran in Recent History

The preparations and build-up for a war with Iran are speeding up, and the main force pushing for an attack upon Iran is Israel, as they claim that Iran wants to use a nuclear weapon against them.

There is an often-cited quotation that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, has said that “Israel must be wiped off the map!” in some absurdly hyperbolic threat of the intention to use a nuclear weapon against Israel. This is always mentioned by the West, predominantly Israel and the United States, in an effort to speed up support for action against Iran, however, this has been a gross misquotation and mistranslation on the part of Israel. What was really said, as reported by the Guardian, was that “The remarks are not out of context. They are wrong, pure and simple.

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From Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem

Crack Israeli soldiers on Monday ganged up on hundreds of helpless Palestinian detainees, beating them with plastic clubs and rifle butts, and showering them with rubber-coated bullets and tear-gas grenades, causing several critical injuries among the detainees.

The “Gestapo-like assault,” using the words of one of the detainees, occurred early Monday at the notorious Kitziot detention camp in the heart of the Negev desert where 2300 Palestinian political prisoners are detained in extremely harsh conditions.

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Painting : Iraqi artist, Muhammed Muhradin

Do you want to know what am doing right now ?

Of course, you will think to yourself, this woman is a bit of a moron, really- asking such a question. It is so damn obvious what she is doing, she’s typing away on her keyboard. Wow ! You really guessed right, here.
So, you do still have some common sense and you can spot the obvious. Hats off to you. Am impressed.

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© Jupiter Images

The most significant takeover of the past decade isn't to be found among the telecoms, the big oil companies, or in Silicon Valley. The reconfigured entity is headquartered in Washington, but we can see and hear the results everyday on your television, radio, and computer screen. And America is much the worse for it. I'm talking about the takeover of the Republican Party by its lunatic fringe.

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The entire world changed on September 11, 2001 with the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City, but the world had started to change in 1989, with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The media and social engineers those who work to manipulate and influence the thinking of the people had done a skillful job of “dumbing-” down America; moreover, quite naturally the trends of a changing world would go unnoticed by the masses of the people, in particular inside the United States and the world over in general; in reality, the world had started to change long before the bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. However, the masses of people have always been made confused, deceived and disorientated in their ability to determine fact from fiction by a small minority for the purpose of global and international exploitation. (Reference: “None Dare Call it Conspiracy” by Gary Allen and Larry Abraham).

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© AP photo / Charles Dharapak

Don’t worry, the White House is telling us. The world’s most powerful leader was simply making a rhetorical point. At a White House press conference last week, just in case you haven’t heard, President Bush informed the American people that he had told world leaders “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” World War III. That is certainly some rhetorical point, especially coming from the man singularly most capable of making such an event reality.

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ISM / IMEMC

On October 22nd, at two in the morning, Israeli prison guards from Ketziot prison in the Negev desert began searching the tents and belongings of Palestinian inmates. Searching prisoners’ tents in the middle of the night is a classic form of harassment; keeping people from sleeping. Some prisoners resisted the search due to the early hour and the army responded by throwing sounds grenades and shooting tear gas canisters into the tents of prisoners and at prisoners themselves.

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Pat Tillman (left) and his brother Kevin stand in front of a
Chinook helicopter in Saudi Arabia before their tour of duty
as Army Rangers in Iraq in 2003.

TruthDig

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

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Research conducted from the mid 90s to 2005 by a team from the University of East Anglia shows that the North Atlantic Ocean is only absorbing half of the CO2 that it used to.(1)

Another research project from the same University published in May, 2007 found that the southern oceans are no longer absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere. But to make things worse, they are starting to release it back into the air.(2)

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"People must first be made to give up on the existing system before they will become receptive to fundamental change." - Michael Byron, Ph.D. Author of Infinity's Rainbow: The Politics of Energy, Climate and Globalization

Last week a review of the documentary "What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire" was posted on Energy Bulletin and sub-titled "a review of a new doomer cult classic." While the review was favorable, I must state that as someone who has seen the documentary dozens of times, who consistently shows it to my history classes, and who is a personal friend of the film makers, I was appalled at the use of the word "doomer" to describe the film.

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WSWS

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was busy “lowering expectations” after her five-day tour of the Middle East. In truth, Israel had its expectations fully realised, and, amongst the Palestinians, only the Abbas regime would have entertained any other outcome.

Last week’s tour was to promote and prepare for President Bush’s planned Middle East summit in Maryland late November. By the end of the week, Rice was denying that the summit had been postponed until December, because no invitations had been sent yet.

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Palestine Free Voice

Interview with Um Nidal ( Meriam Farhat ), Gaza Strip October 20 2007

Hiyam Noir: Dear Um Nidal I like to start our interview, to thank you for you confidence in me to let me come a little bit closer into your life. I truly admire your strength and courage, and understand to the fullest your struggle and your painful experience as a mother of losing your beloved children to the Israeli enemy.

H: How many of your children have they killed, the Israelis ? What where the children's first names, and at what age and what year were they assassinated by the Zionist occupant? How many children are alive and what is their name and age? What are their professions?

Um Nidal: In the name of Allah the Merciful - Praise be to Allah, peace and prayers be on the Prophet of Allah! At the beginning of this interview, [I would like to say that] I really appreciate your great work and your support of the Palestinian people's struggle, hoping it will be in your Hasanat balance.

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As you know, a B-52 bomber was equipped with six nuclear warheads mounted on Advanced Cruise Missiles and then flown from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on August 30. They were mounted on the wings of the bomber.

According to Michael Madsen's sources, a group of officers within the US Air Force became aware of the theft of these missiles and their nuclear warheads and intercepted them at Barksdale.

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Arab Woman Blues

I have often wondered if Americans are breast fed criminality...or maybe some especially made, designed baby formula only available in the U.S. And exported to Great Britain, Israel and other corners of the world where you have your trusted allies. -Or maybe it is the other way round, an Israeli baby formula injected into your own infants, or maybe a British baby formula patent that you took over and refined...

Whatever it is that you were given as children has proved to be very effective. You have indeed grown up into the perfect strong adults, into the perfect "master" race, of...criminality. Of this, I have absolutely no doubt.

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Why would a prominent law professor supposedly in favor of having the nation’s second constitutional convention organize a symposium where the keynote speaker is dead set against a convention? And why pack the three subsequent panels with people against a convention? I kept asking myself these questions as I attended the recent symposium that Larry Sabato had the audacity to title “National Constitution Convention.”

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As Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas continues to bask in his eternal “optimism,” about the nearness of peace with Israel , Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has stressed that the putative Annapolis “Peace” conference will not lead to any breakthrough toward ending decades of the Nazi-like Israeli occupation of the Palestinian homeland.

Olmert reportedly assured a number of his fascist-minded ministers, who call for expulsion or enslavement of non-Jews in Israel and the occupied territories, that he wouldn’t allow the conference to discuss the “core issues” of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The core issues include the right of return, Jerusalem and Jewish colonies built on stolen Arab land.

If so, one would wonder what Abbas and Olmert have been talking about during all these high-profile meetings that they had in West Jerusalem and Jericho in recent months?

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GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA –OCTOBER 03: IMAGE REVIEWED BY U.S. MILITARY PRIOR TO TRANSMISSION. A large American flag is framed on the wall inside the Administrative Review Boards and Combatant Status Review Tribunals room inside the Camp Delta detention facility at the U.S. naval Station at Guantánamo Bay October 3, 2007 in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Not technically a legal process, the tribunals “provide an annual review to assess whether the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay present a threat to the U.S. or it’s allies”, according to the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants. Based on the tribunal’s recommendations, 199 detainees have been approved for release or transfer from Guantánamo. About 340 ”enemy combatants” captured since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States [by the US & Israeli governments] continue to be held on the island. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)(#77188306)

Harper's Magazine

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rivers of oil? . . . He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? –Micah 6:7-8

In the past several weeks I’ve had a number of meetings with military and civilian lawyers involved in the Guantánamo military commissions, including prosecutors, defense counsel, military judges and staffers with the convening authority. They are a disciplined group, with a strong sense of dedication to the performance of their mission. And there is pretty much across the board a smoldering anger towards the Bush Administration—a sense that the military commissions, which could have been used to showcase American values, have instead become a sort of laughing stock for the world, an embarrassment for the uniformed services.

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Far and near, high and clear,
Hark to the call of War.
Over the gorse and the golden dells,
Ringing and swinging the clamorous bells,
Praying and saying of wild farewells:
War! War! War! (Robert W. Service)

The legacy of pain it is leaving for your grandchildren

No religious persuasion has ever been more clearly responsible for so much bloodshed and destruction as has “Christian Zionism.” This 100-year old offshoot of fundamental Christianity has almost single-handedly legitimized wars in Arab states since January 1991. Its power at the polls is only now being understood.

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"It was God that kept us afloat."

In totalitarian and fascist regimes the people are afraid of the government.

In healthy democracies the government is afraid of the people.

I don't do church anymore, but every day I read and meditate [in Christian lingo that means THINK!] upon the daily readings of the Roman liturgy. This Sunday's gospel [good news] was the story of the Persistent Widow who demanded JUSTICE from the UNJUST Judge, and I spin it for you this way:

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“What’s going on now [in Iraq]. We’re saving the President’s face!” - Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA)

On Saturday, Oct. 20, 2007, President George W. Bush spent the afternoon at the waterfront mansion of V.P. Dick Cheney. Cheney’s $2.5 million manor is located in St. Michaels, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and it fronts on the Chesapeake Bay. I wonder if it’s named, “Halliburton,” after the corporation where Cheney made most of his mega-millions? (1) It’s appropriate that Bush and Cheney, two ultra-Chicken Hawks, got together for a luncheon, in a part of Maryland known for its many “chicken” hatcheries! I doubt if Cheney has ever invited any of the tens of thousands severely wounded U.S. troops from the Iraq conflict, to enjoy his spectacular view of the Bay. His Neocon crony and neighbor, Donald Rumsfeld, “yes,” but an Iraq War Vet, “no.” Meanwhile, 28 U.S. troops have died in Iraq this month alone, bringing the total to 3,834, since the U.S. led invasion of March 20, 2003, which was launched on lies concocted by Bush and Cheney. (2) Here is one of the duo’s biggest whoppers: “We support the troops!” Now, let me tell you how these two warmongers have stabbed the troops in the back.

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Consider the following: Nancy Pelosi has in fact admitted to having knowledge of the Bush-Cheney program of illegal warrantless eavesdropping initiated by Bush immediately after assuming office. She apparently learned of this soon after Bush initiated it. She therefore has quite possibly known about it since before 9/11. By not reporting criminal actions by Bush, Pelosi has made herself blatantly guilty of a serious crime.

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We, the people of South-Asia, have a shared past going back ten millennia; our national identities are barely 60 years old.

Nature has been very kind to us. It gave us snow-covered Himalayas, perennial rivers, rich biodiversity, and fertile land. The wisdom of our ancestors ensured that we had abundant food, clean water, fine clothing, excellent habitat and, with all the caring and sharing that comes with abundance, an unusually gentle way of life. Elaborate rites and rituals were designed to ensure a symbiotic relationship of humans, the habitat and the ecosystem. It is this centrality to Mother Nature and holistic management of natural resources that made South Asia a super power right up to 1830s.

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Marine says he erased photos of Haditha Victims

Index Research

AP reported on 20 October that two servicemen will face court martials. "Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani faces charges of dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order on allegations that he mishandled the aftermath of the Nov. 19, 2005... Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, was ordered to face a court-martial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault." Involuntary manslaughter?

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When I submitted my last article for publication, I discovered a censorship problem that I had never encountered before. The article that I submitted to a site that used AOL email, kept bouncing back, citing a reference within it for a "permanent failure" message. The cited URL http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Cyprus/8815/Khazars.html was for a document that debunked anti-Semitic disinformation. The bounced mail notice claimed that the censoring was for: "generating substantial complaints from AOL members. AOL blocks emails that contain domains that may have been previously used to send unsolicited email or inappropriate content...These blocks mainly target clickable links, but may also block non-clickable domains."

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On April 17 2006, Seymour M. Hersh, "an American Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, DC", reported in 'The New Yorker' that the United States is considering the use on "bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites" in Iran. This story was also carried on CNN.

It was reported that on January 7 2007, an Israeli attack squadron comprising of three IAF F-16s, each carrying "conventional munitions-as well as a single 20-kiloton nuclear bomb" on a bombing raid to Iran were turned back by "U.S. planes under threat of missile interception."

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Almost anyone can be nominated for the prize... Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini,
Joseph Stalin and more recently George W. Bush...

Alfred Nobel was a wealthy nineteenth century Swedish-born chemist, engineer, inventor of dynamite, armaments manufacturer and war profiteer who remade his image late in life by establishing the awarding of prizes in his name that includes the one for peace. This most noted award was inspired by his one-time secretary and peace activist, Bertha von Suttner, who was nominated four times and became the first of only 12 women to be honored.

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The front group, Project for the New American Century was not the first fear mongering group to arrogantly promote “American world leadership” by military force. Almost a hundred years ago the Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment decided that the most effective scheme to launch an entire society into socialism is war. In 1909, they considered methods of involving America in a war and concluded that they must control the State Department, the diplomatic machinery and ultimately education. [1] Natural repugnance would compel reflective Americans to oppose warfare, a moral obligation. Given our history since 1945, the greedy, amoral elite who surreptitiously run this country have been enormously successful – America developed a predictable propensity for serial warfare. The public, swayed by a group-think, flag-waving, false allegiance mentality, has become anesthetized to the bloody, reprehensible realities of war wherein governments have senselessly slaughtered millions of people in the name of peace.

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There has been a virtual media blackout on the conduct of major military exercises by both Russia and the US.

Reminiscent of the Cold War, Russia and America are conducting major war games simultaneously.

=> Read more!

Raphael Correa was elected Ecuador's president last November and took office January 15 promising social change. He's the country's eighth president in the last decade including three previous ones driven from office by mass street protest opposition against their misrule and public neglect. Correa must now deliver and just got a boost from his governing Movimiento Alianza Pais' landslide Constituent Assembly election victory to rewrite the nation's constitution for the 177th time in Ecuador's history hoping to get it right this time. Awaiting a final tabulation of results, it appears Correa supporters got around 70% of the vote winning 80 of the 130 Assembly seats. That's a comfortable majority to push through change, but doing it won't be easy, and Correa's commitment has yet to be tested.

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As the war drums were beating for Iraq I knew something was wrong. I was paying attention to President Bush as he continually accused Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction and being linked to terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. Yet, there was no solid proof that any of Bush's accusations had any validity to them. I guess if you repeat the same lies over and over again they begin to sound true. How else could Bush have tricked the nation into an unjust and unnecessary war in Iraq?

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Mid 80's - Some scientists warn about CO2 and global warming but they are largely dismissed by other scientists and the public. 1993 - Two separate ice cores drilled into the Greenland Ice Sheet to depths of two miles both confirmed earlier evidence of many 'abrupt climate changes' that have occurred in as little as a decade rather than the thousand year transition that was previously believed.

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After the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington – and in spite of nationalist propaganda of unprecedented levels coming from the warmongers and their bowing and scraping servants in the media – the hopes for a global, really internationalist anti-war movement for peace and justice were very promising. Many objective factors contributed to those hopes: the most despicable American citizen was co-opted to be the White House’s resident by his father’s friends sitting at the Supreme Court; a well known gang of bloodthirsty psychopaths formed his infamous Junta; important parts of the American establishment were critical or very critical of the Bush Junta’s criminal plans and many governments voiced their opposition to those plans, which would bring to the unprecedented 2003 UN tsunami.

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One can no longer understand US governmental policy on the basis of conventional language or traditional wisdom. Language itself and its long-established meanings were long ago twisted and distorted in order to deceive the people. Now war is peace and terror and occupation is liberation. In order to make sense of what is happening, it is important to understand everything within the context of a specific economic philosophy, and the distorted capitalist system that spawned it.

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Is humanity so resistant to change that we will tamper with the biosphere's workings to construct a "Frankensphere"; rather than reducing population, consumption and emissions?

It is being widely suggested that humanity can "geo-engineer" a global solution to climate change; that is, modify the Earth's biosphere at a planetary scale. Many methods are suggested. Most include either reflecting additional solar radiation away from the Earth, or using the ocean to store more carbon.

=> Read more!

Ben © Heine

Zmag

I heard about the conversation a few months ago. It took place between my 18 year old daughter and some of her friends. Her friends had concluded that they would not permit THEIR children to have children because they believed that by that time the world would be coming to an end. To this day I remain stunned by that conversation.

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Ben © Heine

By John McCrae

O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear
Above their heads the legions pressing on:
(These fought their fight in time of bitter fear,
And died not knowing how the day had gone.)

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Empire Burlesque

Here's the Terror War ethos in action: when the security forces are caught red-handed in a flagrant act of, literally, overkill -- in this case, the totally unprovoked, multiple shooting to death of an innocent man in a London subway -- they will resort to any measure to avoid the consequences for their action.

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Xymphora

The New York Times, still dedicated to the relentless promotion of Zionist lies exemplified by their star writer Judy Miller, continues the tradition (emphasis in red; I’m shocked that Michael Gordon didn’t write this!):

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"Dr. Strangelove rides again." In an utterly twisted logic, World War III is
presented by the US President as a means to preventing collateral damage.

"We got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously...." (George W. Bush, 17 October 2007)

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News Dissector

A while back, I was showing part of my film WMD at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. I had been a Nieman Fellow years earlier where I frequently debated with media mainstreamers about the coverage of wars. We had just come through Vietnam at the time. This time around, I was surprised and delighted to meet a current fellow, a fabulous still photogrpher by the name of Molly Bingham, the daughter of a well known newspaper publisher, and her shutterbug colleague Steve Connors. Both had been in Iraq and both more or less shared my disgust and dismay with most of the American coverage. Molly had been in the news there herself when she as jailed at one point.

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Electronic Intifada

The "Middle East Peace Process" is like one of those big budget Broadway extravaganzas; they go on for years, but with each revival the cast changes. What may seem like a tired production to some nevertheless manages to remain fresh to the gullible throngs willing to hand over the price of admission.

Unlike a few hours of theatrical escapism, however, the producers of the Middle East Peace Process hope that the audience will actually believe that what they are viewing on stage, whether performed in Madrid, Oslo, London, Washington or Sharm al-Sheikh is real-life and even has the potential to end the conflict caused by a century of western-supported Zionist colonization in Palestine.

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Then the face of Big Brother faded away again and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

[George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four]

The Afghanistan’s puppet Karzai offered the Taliban “high position in a government ministry as a way to end the rising insurgency” in the country.

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Benjamin Netanyahu (left) after delivering
a speech March 28, 2006, in Tel Aviv;
Arcadi Gaydamak at a Beitar Jerusalem
training session in August 2005. (Reuters/
Jerry Lampen/File)

Salon

One of this year's nominees for Israeli TV's "Man of the Year in Politics" award doesn't speak Hebrew. He has vast wealth and a shady past. He was once a circus worker. He isn't even a politician, at least not yet.

But over the past several years Arcadi Gaydamak, an enigmatic Russian-Israeli billionaire, has managed to become a widely influential figure in Israel. And he is now at the center of a right-wing political alliance -- featuring Israeli über-hawk Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu -- that could dramatically influence the country's direction. If the rising alliance takes power in the next election, it could push Israel toward military confrontations with Iran, Syria or Hezbollah, while extinguishing any remaining flickers of hope in Israel's peace camp regarding the Palestinians.

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Last month I reviewed Naomi Wolf's recent best seller, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot in which I praised Wolf's succinct and thorough analysis of the triumph of fascism in the United States. This past week, Wolf's article "American Tears" has been posted on a variety of internet sites and forwarded to me several times. Whereas I was inspired to give The End Of America a glowing review that it more than deserves, I must take issue with the fundamental premise of "American Tears" which is in my opinion, the most inappropriate of all responses to the dire situation Wolf elucidates in The End Of America.

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets with US President Bush
in New York, September 2007. (POOL/Omar Rashidi/MaanImages)

Electronic Intifada

Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well-guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel's "next generous offer."

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Current Concerns

In 1979, depleted uranium (DU) particles escaped from the National Lead Industries factory near Albany, N.Y., which was manufacturing DU weapons for the U.S military. The particles traveled 26 miles and were discovered in a laboratory filter by Dr. Leonard Dietz, a nuclear physicist. This discovery led to a shut down of the factory in 1980, for releasing morethan 0.85 pounds of DU dust into the atmosphere every month, and involved a cleanup of contaminated properties costing over 100 million dollars.

Imagine a far worse scenario. Terrorists acquire a million pounds of the deadly dust and scatter it in populated areas throughout the U.S. Hundreds of children report symptoms. Many acquire cancer and leukemia, suffering an early and painful death. Huge increases in severe birth defects are reported. Oncologists are overwhelmed. Soccer fields, sand lots and parks, traditional play areas for kids, are no longer safe. People lose their most basic freedom, the ability to go outside and safely breathe. Sounds worse than 9/11? Welcome to Iraq and Afghanistan.

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The meeting at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 5, 2007 was anything but routine. Seated before Cong. John Olver (D-MA) were twenty seasoned citizens from over a dozen municipalities in this First Congressional District which embraces the lovely Berkshire Hills.

The subject—impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney.

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© leonkuhn.org.uk

Global Research

Simultaneously, Russia and America Conduct Major War Games

There has been a virtual media blackout on the conduct of major military exercises by both Russia and the US.

Reminiscent of the Cold War, Russia and America are conducting major war games simultaneously.

The Russian Air Force will be conducting major military exercises over a large part of its territory from the 16th to the 30th of October.

These Russian exercises coincide chronologically with the conduct of major US sponsored war games under Vigilant Shield 08, which are slated to take place from the 15th to the 20th of October.

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An Egyptian activist flashes an Arabic banner con-
demning torture in front of riot troops during a protest
in Cairo. AP photo.

TruthDig

The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak , unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.

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© marketingjesuschrist.com

We Hold These Truths/Pharisee Watch

Why Pharisee Watch? Jesus addressed the Pharisees of his day; the job of Christ-followers is to address the Pharisees of our day. -A friend recently wrote to us saying he likes what we say but:

"Can you consider changing the name to something a little less? Automatically offensive to Jewish people, a little less terminally (if unintentionally) anti-Semitic, than "Pharisee Watch"? The insensitivity of this name boggles the mind."

The writer expresses himself plainly, so he should appreciate Jesus' words. We chose "Pharisee Watch" as the title for our Internet journal about five years ago, not in order to place blame on the ancient Jews, but to place it squarely on the "Christians" of our day. Our church leaders are the Pharisees. Of course there are exceptions; we leave it to you to find them, and we want to hear about them when you do.

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Palestinian and Israeli negotiators began a series of secret meetings on Monday in an effort to draft a joint document for the upcoming US-sponsored peace conference, scheduled to take place in Annapolis, Maryland, in November. The two sides continue to be deeply divided on the major issues at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

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“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” - Harry S. Truman

I’ve been waiting and waiting for her to do the right thing and end the Iraq War. I’m talking about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). She has made one lame excuse after another why she “can’t do,” what she and the other Democrats promised the American people prior to the Nov. 7, 2006 election, they “would do,” if they gained control of the U.S. Congress--end the war. “We don’t have the votes,” is one of Pelosi’s dubious replies. The truth is, the Democrats DO HAVE THE VOTES! In fact, if they do nothing, don’t vote for another supplemental funding bill, the Bush-Cheney Gang will have to begin to end the occupation of Iraq. There is, also, as Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) said, more than enough money in the current budget to bring the troops home, safely. (1) Consequently, I feel I must give Speaker Pelosi a “F” grade for failing her duty on Iraq and on other national issues as well.

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Index Research

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

“Logic: if such a thing as an irresistible force exists, then no object is immovable, and vice versa. It is logically impossible to have these two entities (a force that cannot be resisted and an object that cannot be moved by any force) in the same universe.

Semantics: if there is such a thing as an irresistible force, then the phrase immovable object is meaningless in that context, and vice versa, and the issue amounts to the same thing as asking, e.g., for a triangle that has four sides.” ―Wikipedia.

Two events delighted me last week: the Nobel Prizes, and Condoleeza Rice’s initial discomfort while talking with Vladimir Putin in his dacha outside Moscow. Ms. Rice has never endeared herself to Mr.Putin. At this meeting, Ms. Rice said Iran (like Iraq) was "LYING." This from a Gold Star member of the US Lying Factory. The U.S. objects to Iran oil deals as well as the Iranian shift from the Dollar to the Euro. It is really hard for the rest of the world to believe that mainstream media are again drum-thumping the Bush-Cheney nuclear accusations for their next war for oil, in Iran. The real US problems with Iran lie unexplored.

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Shieldsnet © org

Online Journal

”She was practiced at the art of deception,
I could tell by her blood-stained hands”
-- Mick Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want”

In a desperate attempt to keep the country in the hands of National Security State stalwarts, corporate media are pushing the "inevitability” of Senator Hillary Clinton as the choice of the Democratic Party.

Hillary will ensure that the war continues unabated, health care will remain in the hands of the medical mafia, and the lion's share of revenues will continue to go to ruling transnational investors who finance our political campaigns at the expense of the public interest.

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Empire Burlesque

Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, "This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem."

-- Bob Dylan, "Blind Willie McTell"

Truthteller Chris Hedges shines the torchlight on one of the ugliest corners of the "Terror War" being carried out by George W. Bush and his willing executioners in Congress: the rendition pipeline of Bush's captives to the torture chambers of Egyptian despot Hosni Mubarak. While the war of aggression in Iraq has killed a million people in the name of "bringing democracy to the Middle East," the United States has continued its long-running, unstinting support for the brutal tyranny in Egypt.

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"You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared" ~ Warren Zevon, Hunter S. Thompson

My friend Bernie says since Democrats won the Congress, George Bush reminds him of a cartoon where this destructive Texas jackrabbit was careening headlong down a path, his eyes riveted on a rabbit hole in the distance.

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© ircigroup.com

Given the complexities of the modern world, and the uncertainties inherent in such, it is prudent for any nation possessing global reach and ambition to be prepared to defend its legitimate interests through the use of military force. The geographic reality of Iran’s physical location vis-à-vis the Straight of Hormuz, and the dire economic consequences that would accrue should Middle Eastern oil supplies become choked off through any closure or lengthy disruption of shipping through the Straight of Hormuz, dictate that the United States plan for the possible deployment and employment of its military to secure this strategic shipping lane.

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Irvine Marriott

What happened on October 13, 2007 in California and "It's NOT over 'till the fat lady sings"

[Irvine, California, October 13, 2007] I arrived at the Irvine Marriott last Friday evening because I was scheduled to speak the next day at "The No More Wars for Israel Conference" which had been dedicated to Mordecahi Vanunu. I learned then that the event had been canceled.

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John Dugard, Special Rapporteur on the situation of
human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
presents a report to the fourth session of the United
Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzer-
land, March 2007. (UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré)

Electronic Intifada

The United Nations has come under strong criticism from one of its own top human rights officials for failing to take effective action to check the ongoing Israeli abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Expressing his anger and frustration at the fast-deteriorating human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinian territories since 2001, has suggested that the world body quit the Middle East Quartet.

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Palestine Information Center

John Dugard, the UN human rights envoy to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, has castigated the world body, accusing it of watching passively and doing nothing to stop serious violations of Palestinian human rights.

=> Read more!

This article is Part 2 of the author's essay: Imperial Playground: The Story of Iran in Recent History

Brzezinski’s Strategy for a New World Order

I will now briefly jump to discussing Zbigniew Brzezinski, remember him? He was the co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, as well as being Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, and as a result, was a principal figure, to his own admission, to forming and fostering the group that we now today as Al-Qaeda, or what he referred to as a group of “stirred of Moslems”.

=> Read more!

As Bush also mentioned in his State of the Union address on January
29, 1991, “The world can therefore seize the opportunity of the present
Persian Gulf crisis to fulfill the long-held promise of a New World Order.”

GlobalResearch.ca

This article is Part 2 of the author's essay: Imperial Playground: The Story of Iran in Recent History

Imperial Playground in The Post Cold War Era

After Iran-Contra, and the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted until 1988, new developments began to occur in the region of and around Iran, which have a great deal to do with the current situation we are facing today. In 1989, George H.W. Bush became President, and, after pardoning all the former Contra criminals who kept his part in the Affair secret, had his eyes set on the Middle East as well. This was also an extremely pivotal point in history, as in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, which was the great symbol of the division between the West and the Soviet Union. Before the world, the Soviet Union began to collapse, just as Brzezinski had hoped, as the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan ended in 1989, with the Soviets defeated.

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Really the only thing worth talking about today is the new book "Cost of Freedom".

Don't give me that crap about Hillary this or Obama that. What a couple of dolts.
The only candidates worth a hill of soybeans are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

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British soldier

By all accounts, U.S. military commanders in Iraq, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are furious at the British government not only for pulling the vast majority of its troops out of Iraq, but for turning over the keys to the vital oil region of the south to competing Shi'ite militias. Great Britain's military departure from Iraq is not the consequence of anti-war ferment inside the United Kingdom. It is a key feature of a British oligarchical "Great Game" strategy of fomenting "managed chaos" throughout the vital Persian Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean areas-and sticking the United States with the legacy of crushing failure and the hatred of much of the Arab and Islamic world.

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Ben © Heine

Congratulations, Steve! We are very, very happy that you are active and well, that you have created such a great site, and that you are tirelessly working for peace & understanding in the Middle East. You are very sincere ―committed― to this work. Every day you painstakingly create good and very readable blog posts. You have been a "pacer" for us ―your contribution has been and is priceless! Two more years? ―Yes, please! Happy blogiversary! ~Schuyler & Ragnar~

Desert Peace

This week starts the third year of Desert Peace's attempt to make this world a better place for all of its inhabitants.

Two years past, over a quarter of a million visitors since day one, many friends made, one could say that my endeavors have been a success.

I owe special thanks to those that have been cross posting my threads on a regular basis, making it possible to reach out to many more readers.... to them I am particularly indebted... they are....

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Many people around the world tend to forget that the holocaust didn’t start with Auschwitz- Birkenau and the use of Zyklon-B, or even with Kirstallnacht in November 1938, or the anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws three years earlier.

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The 2003 invasion of Iraq has enabled two important realisations. First, that imperial powers act only to preserve their interests, and second, that humanitarian intervention -- i.e. humanitarian imperialism -- is touted and encouraged by the media and official circles mostly to circumvent the true self-serving intents of aggression.

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Catholic Bishops giving the collective Nazi salute

The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) called on media to stop inviting Ann Coulter as a guest commentator and strongly condemned her comments that Jews should be “perfected” by accepting the New Testament and that America would be better off if Judaism were “thrown away” and all Americans were Christian.

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heynet.org

Translated by AMSI Press Department.

The partition plan of US Senates does not stop in dividing only the Iraqi territory but there is another project which is partition of Baghdad too.

From first instant US Administration and the war gangs began to commit the partition plan, they gave complete autonomy to the Kurdish Region away from Baghdad government, following the separation of Kurdistan. The occupation has completed the second stage of the project.

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CounterPunch

"They are advocates. We are leaders." ~House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in regards to "Anti-war activists."~

People of America, this is truly the problem with what was once a Representative Republic and now is a country run by "elected" officials who believe that they, individually and collectively, are above any accountability and are not answerable to their constituents. Our public servants erroneously believe that they are the leaders!

=> Read more!

Palestine-Info

“This man is deceitful and duplicitous and can’t be trusted. Besides, he should have understood a long time ago, while he was Britain’s Prime Minister, that the problem in Palestine is this Nazi Jewish occupation which prevents normal economic activities,” said Abu Ahmed Qasrawi.

“How can we have normal economic activities in the West Bank when we are not allowed to travel on our own roads, when Israeli military roadblocks, manned by young, trigger-happy, Gestapo-like soldiers kill every semblance of normal life, economic and otherwise.?”

The former British Prime Minister on Wednesday, 10 October, met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and reportedly discussed with him creating “economic incentives” that would be conducive to creating the right environment for advancing peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

=> Read more!

Art by Clay Bennett

The politicians, though they profess to ignore them, are greatly influenced by the national concensus polls. There have long been comments that the polls can say anything you want them to depending on the wording of the questions. It seems that may be all too true, because those questions do not include a real choice in the answer.

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Ben © Heine

fidh.org

This is my new cartoon about the terrible situation in Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world, although and paradoxically it has a large number of gold mines. The image describes how foreign multinationals (like Anglogold, Randgold, Iamgold and Bouygues) do not care about Malian people. These companies just go there to steal all the wealth and devastate the Malian environment. For example, there are deadly chemicals linked to the mines' activity currently killing innocent Malian citizens. This must end. ~Ben Heine~

Introduction

Gold mining has become a major economic activity in Mali since 1990, its second source of export revenue after cotton. Its fast growth has led to much hope for development, a hope that has been bolstered by the past few years' boom in the price of gold on the global markets.

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"Relax away from the buzz, take a break, unwind and shoot some Iraqis.
Contribute to your national pride."

Shortly after the occupation of Iraq in 2003, Coalition Provisional Authority administrator Paul Bremer issued an edict granting immunity to U.S. military and civilian personnel including employees of Blackwater USA, from criminal prosecution in Iraqi courts.

On October 7th 2007, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the investigation set up by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had found Blackwater "deliberately killed" the 17 people in the September 16th shooting in western Baghdad.

=> Read more!

Electronic Intifada

PHOTO: Palestinian Muslim worshippers pass through a narrow corridor of soldiers to cross an Israeli army checkpoint in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on the way to Jerusalem to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third most holy site, on the fourth Friday of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, 5 October 2007. (Luay Sababa/MaanImages)

In a recent article on the OpenDemocracy website, the rewritten Palestinian Authority policy document that replaced "muqawama" (resistance) with "popular struggle" was hailed as having "the potential to dramatically transform a conflict whose just resolution has continually eluded diplomats and militants." [1] The writer Maria Stephan may be admired for her optimism about the possibility of large-scale mobilization in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) for a program of nonviolent resistance, but there is a twofold failure of contextualization that compromises her analysis.

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Online Journal

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” --Martin Luther King Jr.

Amnesty International has embarked on a campaign to close Guantanamo detention facilities, adding an important voice to the rising demands to end the Guantanamo disgrace.

For years, Amercians have been reluctant to criticize the Bush administration’s efforts to keep the detention of terrorism suspects outside the purview of both American and International law. However, with the disturbing revelations of abuse and violation of detainees’ human rights, and with recent reports of the ways several unsuspecting bystanders ended up in the ranks of Guantanamo detainees, anyone who cares about justice and the rule of law must join the call to close the infamous facilities, and end the moral and legal excesses committed under the veil of secrecy, and in the name of promoting freedom and the rule of law.

=> Read more!

Fishing Boat in Greenland. Photo AFP

Global Research

Recently, a documentary aired on the UK’s Channel 4, entitled “The Great Global Warming Swindle” [1], which challenged the prevailing political understanding that global warming is caused by man-made activity. The movie argues that it is in fact the sun that is responsible for the current changes in the Earth’s temperature and the film is riddled with the testimony of many scientists and climate experts, furthering a growing dissent to the man-made theory. After all, that’s all it is, a theory. As soon as people start to state that “the debate is over”, beware, because the fundamental basis of all sciences is that debate is never over, that questions must be asked and answered and issues raised in order for the science to be accurate. So what exactly are the arguments behind the Sun being the main cause of global warming?

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It is an imperial war of conquest that happens to be
unfolding in an oil rich environment.

The following are words of Richard Dawkins that were sent to Richard Franklin by a reader of Franklin’s Focus. They are followed by Franklin’s response.

A Quotation from Richard Dawkins:

It is easy for religious faith, even if it is irrational in itself, to lead a sane and decent person, by rational, logical steps, to do terrible things. There is a logical path from religious faith to evil deeds. There is no logical path from atheism to evil deeds.

=> Read more!

London Review of Books

Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.

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3.3 billion people in an urban concentration camp
of shantytowns and high-rise pigeonholes...

This is a planet in denial. While the existential question gets a red hot "apocalypse now" for an answer, our stock markets seem to have regained paradise lost. We are witnessing nothing less than history's first confluence of unsustainable "peaks." Perhaps, we are incapable of piecing them all, for when crude oil reached an all-time intra-day high of $84.10 per barrel on Sept 20, its entitlement to a front pager screamer was conceded to the tale of a few thousand empty -- or emptying -- American homes.

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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
By the late Grace Halsell

American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? President Bill Clinton as well as most members of Congress support Israel—and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers.

The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere —among those who support Israel but don’t really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel—and Zionism—often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood. I am one of those.

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(Photo illustration. Unrelated to the article.)

To the Editor of Palestine Free Voice
From a Palestinian Living in United States

Salam wa alekom

California United States: Living in the US away from all of my family and relatives just makes living Muslim Sunni more difficult. I feel betrayed sometimes by most of the people who live around me. The Americans make me feel uncomfortable to say the least. I am sometimes tempted to just bolt and leave this wretched enviroment,that is totally false and inhuman here in the United states.

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We Hold These Truths

[A question for Charles E. Carlson:] What do you consider is the most honest truthful Bible interpretation a Christian can read today? Regards, Steve

Dear Steve:

We hear this question a lot, and we are not experts, but this writer has an opinion. There are two Bibles, not one, the Old and New Testaments. They should never have been combined to look like one book. To do so is like publishing a modern 2005 physics book with a 1910 physics edition pasted on in front. Physics has changed in those 95 years, and the Old Testament and the New are thousands of years apart, why would one have to read the old first to get to the new?

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Miftah

There is a consistent thread, a pattern, which designs Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories. Any scrutinizing observer will notice how Israel first pitches an idea to the public – however preposterous – then allows the Palestinians and the international community to absorb it before putting it into action. This way, policies and measures are less shocking and seem more acceptable once the dust has been allowed to settle.

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James Petras is Binghamton University, New York Professor Emeritus of Sociology whose credentials and achievements are long and impressive. He's a noted academic figure on the left, a well-respected Latin American expert, and a longtime chronicler of the region's popular struggles as well as being an advisor to the landless workers (MST) in Brazil and unemployed workers in Argentina. Petras is also a prolific author. He's written hundreds of articles and 63 books (and counting), published in 29 languages, including his latest one and subject of this review - "Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire."

=> Read more!

Ben © Heine

Sydney Morning Herald

When the haggard and broken figure was laid out on the slab and displayed to the world it was not just Che Guevara that had died. The dream of socialist revolution in South America was over. His image and name would continue to inspire millions, but on the continent he wanted to transform he was a political failure, a defeated guerrilla on the wrong side of history.

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Diego Garcia is one of the destinations for CIA rendition flights and is the location
of one of the CIA's secret prisons program.

The indigenous population of Diego Garcia was considered expendable by the Power Elite who routinely seize prime real estate, either for resources or location – inhabited or not. Dispassionate depopulation and genocidal slaughter are standard procedures. “What if you and your family were thrown out of your home, put on a ship, dumped on docks somewhere, destitute? How would you like it?” [1] That’s the question that journalist John Pilger justifiably posed to Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister responsible for the Chagos Archipelago, a group of sixty-five predominantly uninhabited islands in the Indian Ocean.

=> Read more!

Portfolio.com

World According to ...Lynn Forester de Rothschild (Interview)
The American entrepreneur —and friend of the Clintons and the Blairs — talks about India, telecom, Conrad Black, and her marriage to Sir Evelyn Rothschild.

When 67-year-old British banking scion Sir Evelyn Rothschild first set eyes on 44-year-old Lynn Forester at the 1998 Bilderberg conference—the matchmaker was none other than Henry Kissinger—she was already a woman of major means.

A corporate lawyer and telecommunications entrepreneur, the sparkly blond ex-wife of former New York politician Andrew Stein had made more than $100 million from the sale of cleverly acquired wireless broadband licenses. She was also sexy, charming, and dazzlingly well connected. Two years later, after the smitten Sir Evelyn divorced his second wife, Victoria Schott, the mother of his three children, Forester became the third Lady Rothschild. After marrying in November 2000 at a London synagogue, they honeymooned at the White House, guests of Lynn's good friends Bill and Hillary Clinton.

=> Read more!

Tikun Olam

American debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being stifled by an insidious form of pre-emptive censorship.

I've noticed what may be a new phenomenon in the Israel-Palestine debate as it plays out in the US. I call it pre-emptive censorship. A number of non-Jewish organisations have denied supposedly controversial speakers or organisations the right to speak or perform due to the anticipated reaction of the local Jewish community.

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Common Dreams

Oil, Israel, and America: The Root Cause of the Crisis

There is no shortage of examples of historical points of friction between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States to draw upon in order to illustrate the genesis of the current level of tension. One can point to the Islamic revolution that cast aside America’s staunch ally, Reza Shah Pahlevi, the period of reactionary exportation of Islamic “revolution” that followed, the take over of the US Embassy and subsequent holding of Americans hostage (replete with a failed rescue mission), the Iranian use of proxies to confront American military involvement in Lebanon, inclusive of the bombing of the Marine barracks and US Embassy compounds, America’s support of Saddam Hussein during the 8-year war between Iran and Iraq, the ‘hot’ conflict between Iran and the United States in the late 1980s, or Iran’s ongoing support of the Hezbollah Party in Lebanon. The list could continue.

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"But the book [The Israel Lobby], and the response to it, opens up another controversy: the stifling of debate about unconditional U.S. support for Israeli policies... They work diligently to silence those who question ill-conceived policies of the Israeli and U.S. governments... the stifling of dissent... Even Walt and Mearsheimer, who are getting plenty of exposure, couldn't have asked for better proof of their point that the lobby works to stifle dissent... Unless this atmosphere of intimidation is confronted, Americans will continue to lack access to information and perspectives necessary to formulate effective Middle East policies, virtually ensuring that Israel and the United States will be at war for many years to come."

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In my recent article "The End Of America: The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now" I included experiences of escalating intimidation on the part of law enforcement in the United States within recent months. I must confess that when I cite such incidents, I fear that in a few days or weeks, it will all go away, and everyone else, myself included, will begin to question the validity of the examples, breathing a heavy sigh of relief and rejoicing that the situation isn't nearly as dire as I'm asserting it is.

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John Lennon would have turned 67 on October 9, 2007. Although he hasn't spoken in 27 years, he has not been silenced.

At the age of 12, in the summer of 1966, inspired by John Lennon's honesty, I tuned out the Catholic Church.

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Ben © Heine

Harper's Magazine

A man describes his journey through Latin America retracing the trip Che Guevara took in the 1950s, as detailed in 'The Motorcycle Diaries.' The man visits such places as Buenos Aires, Argentina, Futaleufu, Chile, and Lima, Peru, exploring the legacy of Guevara.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, JANUARY 4, 1996

On the way down to the port, we drive behind the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. The taxi is moving fast (in Buenos Aires, they all do), and I catch a sudden glimpse of a tiny crowd, some banners, and a cloud of smoke drifting through the air.

"Tear gas," the driver announces. "Roll up your window."

We barrel along toward the port, passing a dark green beast lumbering the other way up the avenue. It is an armored truck topped with a comically tiny spout for shooting water at the delincuentes. I ask my driver what cause has brought peaceful Argentina back to the brink of civil unrest.

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Palestine-Info

It is really difficult to give the upcoming Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, the benefit of the doubt. We do see a lot of movement here and there, but there is very little action if any. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has been making unwarrantedly optimistic statements about the imminence of a historical breakthrough between the Palestinians and Israel. On Sunday, 7 October, she was quoted as saying that she believed the Palestinian problem was finally coming to an end.

I don’t know if Rice knew what she was saying. However, from observing things on the ground, it seems there is very little if any to warrant this euphoria. In any case, one should remember that statements coming out of the mouths of senior officials of the Bush administration have very little credibility.

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Cluster B Personality Disorders

1776.0 Americanistic Personality Disorder

The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one’s self and one’s nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological.

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Harper's Magazine

The Bush Justice Department does have an essential law enforcement mission, though sometimes it seems to behave much more like a criminal syndicate. It warmly embraces the crime of torture as a tool for collecting human intelligence–notwithstanding both its manifest illegality and immorality and the uniform view of intelligence professionals that torture consistently produces corrupted, inherently unreliable information. In so doing of course it is engaged in a fairly primitive game of self-protection. It can’t acknowledge the fundamental criminality of its conduct, so it turns the Justice Department into its consigliere.

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A soldier has written "I'm a rapeist"
(sic) on the half-naked man lying
in the foreground"

Media With Conscience

Bush’s insistence that his administration doesn't torture rings hollow. He lied about weapons of mass destruction and a Saddam-al Qaeda connection in Iraq. He lied when he assured us his officials would not wiretap without warrants. As evidence of secret memos detailing harsh interrogation policies continues to emerge, we can't believe Bush's denials about torture.

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© Time.com

Palestine Free Voice

A visit to a women prison in a Baghdad neighborhood has revealed that Iraqi authorities are paying lip service to human rights and rule of law.The visit by Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi found the jail over crowded with many women afflicted with contagious diseases due to lack of medicine and medical care.

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Huwwara Checkpoint, Occupied Palestine

British Medical Journal / Um Khalil

I have been following the debate in these columns with a mixture of interest and incredulity. I wonder how many of those who accuse Tom Hickey and Derek Summerfield of 'anti-Israel bias' and 'anti-Semitism' have actually visited the West Bank or Gaza to see the facts for themselves. I had the good fortune to visit Israel and the West Bank for two weeks in August. What I saw there changed my life forever.

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"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

A symbolic Olympic torch relay is making its way around the world to call attention to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, in western Sudan, and to call on China, host of the 2008 Summer Olympics, to use its considerable influence with Sudan to end the violence there.

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Historicle American icon, Christopher Columbus, and his brother Bartholomew,
mass murdered some two million of the Taino people on the island of
Hispaniola in just four years. In their quest to kill and torture as many people
as possible they built extremely wide gibbets, hanging victims with feet barely
touching the ground amidst fire caused a slow strangling burning death.

On yet another USA manufactured “holiday” where schools close to honor the savage conquistador, Christopher Columbus, who ushered into history the holocaust of approximately 11 million native north American “Indians” I propose a mandate for indigenous holocaust education, K-12. Like the new federal legislation introduced in congress to mandate education of the Jewish holocaust, I also propose we replace not only senior citizens arts and crafts but pre-school arts and crafts with education workshops developed to examine the denial of Indian genocide and removal; the denial of African Diaspora genocide and slavery, past and present; and, the genocide of Arabs and Muslims occurring in Palestine today.

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CounterCurrents

Recently Countercurrents published an expert analysis by outstanding US medical epidemiologists Professor Burnham (Johns Hopkins University ) and Professor Roberts (Columbia University) in which they commented trenchantly on the Mainstream media NON-reportage of the latest UK ORB survey indicating over 1 million violent post-invasion Iraqi deaths (see Countercurrents: http://www.countercurrents.org/burnham230907.htm ) . These world’s top medical epidemiologists concluded that, QUOTE: “Ignorance of Iraq death toll [is] no longer an option … Established methods for estimating deaths exist, even in times of war. Discussion of trends and policy effects based on meaningful and validated measures such as median income and death rates would make our leaders more accountable and leave us better informed. Deliberately ignoring the numbers of dead Iraqis is not an option worthy of the United States , or in our enlightened self-interest.”

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Ben © Heine

These are Ben Heine's farewell words for Marcel Marceau: Marcel Marceau, the master of mime who transformed silence into poetry with gestures and pliant facial expressions that spoke to generations of young and old, has died. He was 84. Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau breathed new life into an art that dates to ancient Greece. He played out the human comedy through his alter-ego Bip without ever uttering a word. Offstage, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.

A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp during World War II, unlike his father who died in Auschwitz. Marceau worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children, and later used the memories of his own life to feed his art. He gave life to a wide spectrum of characters, from a peevish waiter to a lion tamer to an old woman knitting, and to the best-known Bip.

~~~~~~

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© bendib.com

Xymphora

One of the most important things to know about the Lobby is that it is so powerful, and so ruthless, that those who have felt its influence are terrified to talk about it. Thus, the relative shortage of anecdotal evidence about how it operates. That’s why this posting by "wmtriallawyer" at Daily Kos is so useful (reprinted here in case it disappears; considering it is at the notoriously censored Daily Kos, it is nothing short of a miracle that it is still there!; needless to say, wmtriallawyer was immediately slurred.

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Al-Moharer

By far the biggest story and best-kept secret in the Western media has been the steady development of the Resistance to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. While the attention of the U.S. information services and its accomplices has been fixated on the sectarian violence among various ethnic and religious communities, the Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party has steadily been uniting and cooperating with all in Iraq who show themselves to be committed to ridding their country of occupation and restoring it to the exercise of self-determination and a resumption of its role at the forefront of the Arab struggle against Imperialism and Zionism.

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Harper's Magazine

This last week, the nation’s leading newspaper established that the Bush Administration continues to use torture techniques as a matter of formal policy, crafted at its highest levels. This comes more than three years following the exposure of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and more than two years after the Administration’s lies about the use of torture, unconvincing to start with, were finally exploded by the issuance of a series of internal reports. We face now a leadership stained with deceit and criminality. More importantly, it is a leadership which can never recognize nor admit its failings and moral errors. Hence, consistent with a tyrannical disposition, it acts to force all to accept its crimes and lawful, and thus to pervert the law and the institutions charged to enforce it.

The use of torture is a criminal act, and its systematic sanctioning by this administration is a matter of the utmost gravity for the country.

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For many generations, the unethical Zionist leadership consistently sought to scuttle legitimate criticisms of Israel’s systematic ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in Palestine by brandishing the weapon of “anti-Semitisms” in the face of those who dared call the spade a spade.

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Tutu and Vanunu

Bishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his courageous and fearless opposition against the South African apartheid system. This year, Bishop Tutu nominated Mordechai Vanunu, the whistle blower of Israel's WMD Program for the Nobel. Last week, the University of St. Thomas' president Father Dennis Dease, after pressure from a few local Jewish leaders, cancelled a scheduled presentation by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

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Please click on image to see and hear this charismatic poet.

Um Khalil

In Al-Quds “In Jerusalem” تميم البرغوثي ... في القدس,
by Tamim Al-Barghouti.
Translated by Adib S. Kawar,
and revised by Mary Rizzo,
members of Tlaxcala

By our lover's house we passed but we were turned away…
By the enemy's laws and walls
A blessing it could be for me I said…
When you see it, what do you see?
What you cannot bear is what you see…
When from the side of the road its houses appear…
When every soul sees its lover …
And every absentee surrenders to happiness…
To see him before their meeting is her secret as much as it is his…
Even her happiness does not give her safety…
When old Al-Quds you see once…
When the eye shall see it, where ever it turns the eye shall see it…
In Al-Quds… a cabbage vender from Georgia…

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Please forgive me but I must tell you that I nearly doubled over with laughter when I saw the notice at OpEdNEWS (1) advising that Rob Kall and its editors actually came, by "consultation" and "email exchanges", to the hilarious conclusion that the words "Zionism, Zionist, Islamism and Islamist" were to be banned from articles and commentaries posted on their site. The subsequent statement that "this policy will build on the civility and integrity of the site." used in their convoluted rationalizations for the ban is similarly a thigh slapper.

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Peace Palestine

Writing for Italy's L'Espresso, Italian General Fabio Mini has understood and explained the dangerous mechanisms of gaining consensus to wage war against "Enemies", which are variable and flexible according to the interests of hegemonic power. This enlightening article explains the manner in which War against Iran has been promoted in the West as well as the operative elements that will bring it about. A MUST READ! Translated from Italian by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo for Tlaxcala and Peace Palestine. (Also on Peace Palestine by Fabio Mini: Even Escape is an Art, about the impossible disengagement from Iraq.

Anyone who thought that the green light for the Israeli-American attack against Iran would come from the American Congress, was wrong. Equally wrong were those who thought that a president like Bush, so frustrated by the Iraqi chaos, the Afghan deadlock and the industrial lobbies’ pressures, would wind up making the decision on his own. The attack against Iran will take place thanks to the newly-appointed French Foreign Minister Kouchner. In these years of threats and counter-threats, of pretexts to make war, the only “revealing” words have been those from the laconic phrase “we must prepare ourselves for the worst.” Many have taken these words as a slip of the lip, others have regarded them as a bad luck-dispelling provocation, others as an instigation and still others as a submission to an ineluctable event. It could be that the sentence contains all of this, but the profound essence of Kouchner’s words is different.

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"Justice is as strictly due between neighbor nations as between neighbor citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

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BB King said it best when he sang “the thrill is gone.” It certainly is no fun trying to defend Bush Republicanism going into the 2008 elections. Bush has simultaneously radicalized and corrupted the modern Republican Party. Unfortunately, the blight is bigger than the individuals running the Bush White House. The corruption and resulting incompetence has become institutionalized in the mechanics of the Republican political machine.

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Some of the most manipulative games in the Power Elite Playbook are orchestrated mass migrations or depopulation of desirable strategic locations for the purpose of confiscation. These terrorist tactics are akin to Chess except people are the pawns. These satanic schemes are expertly employed to accomplish stealthy social, economic or political goals. Unsuspecting people “spontaneously” migrate for various reasons: economics, “natural” disasters (Katrina), warfare, enforced famine (decimate the buffalo/starve the indigenous population), terrorism and organized religious, ethnic, emotional and physical persecution.

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"Their response to our press conference was to assault
innocent bystanders with mounted police and SWAT
units. Now we face six months in prison..."

Washington, D.C.-- Three activists who were arrested at a press conference near Lafayette Park appeared in Washington D.C. Superior Court yesterday where they were given a trial date of January 3, 2008, and face a six-month prison sentence.

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The recent death of Haider Abdul-Shafi could not have come at a worse time. Bearing in mind the grim shortcomings of the Palestinian leadership and the lack of any serious attempt to rectify the situation, the loss of this unique and iconic leader feels all the more acute.

Here was someone who always managed to transcend factionalism and religiosity, tribal politics and self-serving ideologies, maintaining his principles through any external difficulties. He co-founded the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the 1960s and went on to start the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Gaza in the 1970s.

=> Read more!

The United States is planing to implement a massive chemical-spraying program in Afghanistan, emulating the failed Plan Columbia program that has been in operation for the last decade in Latin American.

=> Read more!

We! magazine / My Town

Mercenaries, like genocide and child rape, have been around for a long time. According to Wikipedia , they date back to the days of Pharaoh Ramesses II, some 3,400 years ago. Even back then, they were used to subjugate occupied societies and to act as palace guards for the leaders and aristocrats. Ramesses hired some 11,000 of them, so there was a whole lot of subjugating and guarding going on.

=> Read more!

© cathedral.org

Dissident Voice

The Bonhoeffer Moment of nonviolent civil resistance and disobedience to the world war being waged by the United States is clearly at hand. As Congress considers an additional $190 billion to fund the Iraq-Afghanistan war through September 2008 and as the threats of war against Iran become increasingly loud, it is time for us to learn lessons from the German resistance to Hitler, to the Nazi regime and to the war waged by the German nation-state. We must engage in the Long Resistance to this current world war, using every nonviolent means to bring about its end.

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The Truth Seeker

Hardly a day goes by without an article on the Internet blaming Israel for the war in Iraq. The power of the Jewish neo-cons is analogous to that of Jewish Communists in the FDR era. Caroll Quigley wrote, "the power that these energetic left-wingers exercised was never their own power or Communist power but was ultimately the power of the international financial coterie." ("Tragedy and Hope", p.954)

=> Read more!

Xymphora

The comment “Why Bush won't attack Iran” is still marred by a lack of appreciation of the effects of globalization on the thinking of the strategists, and misses the Big Plan with respect to oil, but is still much better that just about anything else you’ll read on the subject of ‘Iran talk’.

=> Read more!

After many years of political disappointment, more progressives, liberals and conservatives -- and certainly moderates and independents -- know in their hearts that voting for Democrats or Republicans is a waste. Just imagine if voter turnout was cut to 25 percent or less! Let the whole world see Americans boycotting a broken and corrupt political system and rejecting what has become a delusional democracy. To keep voting in an unjust political system makes us willing political slaves that the rich and powerful elites exploit.

=> Read more!

A research team from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder published their report of the annual 'Arctic Ice Minimum' last week which tells the extent of the summer melting. It broke the previous record set in '05, but it did so by a huge margin. The area that melted this year is 26% more than the '05 record.

Using satellite images, NASA has put together a short slide show of the ice melting from Jan. 1 to Sept. 16, 2007. It can be found on the below link to NASA. (1)

=> Read more!

It’s an interesting time for Americans who understand citizenship as an active personal responsibility. United States policy is as committed as it has ever been to visions of empire with all the trimmings. In addition to the imperial quagmire in Iraq and curtailment of civil liberties at home, we’re facing a climate crisis that’s inconvenient for corporate interests. But widespread public dissatisfaction is more evident in opinion polls than it is at the ballot box or on the street.

=> Read more!

According to Bush, everyone should have access to reasonably priced
cigarettes. That's more important than access to health care.

As promised, George W. Bush has vetoed a highly popular bipartisan bill that would provide health care for uninsured low-income American children.

=> Read more!

Milton Friedman

An era ended November 16, 2006 when economist Milton Friedman died. A torrent of eulogies followed. The Wall Street Journal mourned his loss with the same tribute he credulously used when Ronald Reagan died saying "few people in human history have contributed more to the achievement of human freedom." Economist and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called him a hero and "The Great Liberator" in a New York Times op-ed; the UK Financial Times called him "the last of the great economists;" Terence Corcoran, editor of Canada's National Post, mourned the "free markets" loss of "their last lion;" and Business Week magazine noted the "Death of a Giant" and praised his doctrine that "the best thing government can do is supply the economy with the money it needs and stand aside."

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If we are to deal with the threat to the planet’s biosphere, it should be obvious to all that there has to be both political and economic democracy if we are to stand even a chance of stabilising what we’ve totally buggered up. And judging by the concern people are expressing about what’s happening to our Home (let alone how it’s actually impacting on those with no control over anything and what they feel, what’s the betting that if we had the opportunity to directly participate in the economic process as more than damn drones of capital, we would arrive at very different conclusions than our so-called political leaders have as to what steps to take.

=> Read more!

© Diana Walker, UT Center for American History

Consortium News

Editor’s Note: Given Hillary Clinton’s emergence as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, a Consortiumnews.com reader asked that we post the entire first chapter of Robert Parry’s 2004 book, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

The book opens with a scene early in the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency with him explaining to White House guests why he didn’t pursue geopolitical scandals that had implicated George H.W. Bush in gross abuses of power and arguably criminal acts.

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Last year, I agreed to speak to a Jewish youth group about my organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, and our opposition to Israel's occupation. My talk was to follow one from a member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself "America's pro-Israel Lobby."

A week before, a shaken program leader said the AIPAC staffer had threatened to get the entire youth program's funding canceled if I was allowed in the door. The threat worked, and, in disgust, they canceled the whole talk.

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Arab Woman Blues

This is " Iraq al Jadeed ", the New Iraq of the sectarian Iranian Government, with its militias and thugs and "Islamic" revolutionary Guards...who landed with the Occupation

This is the New Iraq of the "Islamic" fundamentalists, the pious ones, the " God fearing ones." ...who arrived with the Occupation.

This is the New Iraq that America brought to us. This is American Freedom and Democracy. This is American Liberation

=> Read more!

The latest word from the Democratic chicken-coop on Capitol Hill is that, if President Bush orders military strikes against Iran, both he and Vice President Dick Cheney will be immediately impeached. This is the newest prize-winning excuse-of-the-week being circulated by a number of leading Democratic lawmakers to their key constituents, who remain fit-to-be-tied over the Dems' capitulation to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has declared, for months, that impeachment is "off the table."

=> Read more!

Last week, the White House sent Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Capitol Hill to lobby for increased funding to keep the killing going on in Iraq for another year. The updated price tag: over $190 billion. For one year. And for what?

The situation in Iraq has been called a quagmire.

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It was on the second Saturday in September, 2007, while in Arlington, Virginia, at George Mason University attending the 6th annual US Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, that I first heard someone say when they were asked their organizational affiliations, reply, "I am here as a free radical."

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“While greed may be good, war is better” Forbes.com, comment on DynCorp’s financial profits on the stock markets.

Prologue

For many today, the mere term mercenary evokes inevitably the image of individual “soldiers of fortune” and other “dogs of war”. But the public generally ignores a far more horrific new reality: the fast growing role of Private Military Contractors (PMC’s).

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© coxandforkum.com

“Our lives begin to end the day we become ‘silent’ about things that matter.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

He held one of the highest positions that can be bestowed on a public servant. I’m referring to Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (1987-2006). After leaving office, he penned a tell-all book that filled his pockets with mega-greenbacks. It’s entitled, “The Age of Turbulence.” In it, he made this shocking statement: “It is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what ‘everyone’ knows: the Iraq War is largely about oil.” Translation: Greenspan consciously chose to remain silent about what he now reveals was one of the true reasons for the Iraq War--oil! Why didn’t he resign his office and come clean with the American people that a massive fraud, a war based on serial lies, was being perpetrated on them by the Bush-Cheney Gang? (1) As of today’s date, 3,808 U.S. troop have died in that conflict.

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Michael Chertoff, with the Cheshire Cat smile in the middle, was an Asst.
U.S. Attorney under Rudolph Giulani in the 1980s when Giuliani and
Chertoff went after gangsters of the Italian sort.

ChristopherBollyn.com

Michael B. Mukasey, the current nominee to be the next Attorney General of the United States, was the former chief judge of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, until he resigned in 2006. Mukasey first became a federal district judge in Manhattan in 1987 after he was recommended by Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato to President Ronald Reagan.

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St. Petersburg Times

NO CONVICTIONS: The former USF professor and his co-defendants relieved after long, complicated case. DEADLOCK: Jurors can't decide many counts. "Evidence making these guys terrorists just wasn't there."

The judge announced the verdicts, one by one, and Sami Al-Arian's eyes shifted to his family, then back to the bench to take in the words he had waited years to hear. As U.S. District Judge James S. Moody read the last "not guilty," Al-Arian threw his head back, looked toward the ceiling and smiled. With tears pouring down his face, he took his glasses off and wiped his eyes with a tissue. "God bless America," whispered his wife, Nahla, from the spectator section.

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© Carlos Latuff

CounterPunch

States or People?

It is a curious phrase this "right to exist". Israel wants the world to accept its "right to exist" as a state, but it denies the indigenous Palestinians their right to exist as a people in their own land. International relations only acknowledges the rights of people, not states. [1] States exist because of the formal recognition afforded them by other states, and now that Israel is recognised as a state, it in fact exists. It makes no sense to demand that a political party recognise Israel's "right to exist", much less punish 4 million Palestinians because a majority voted the Hamas Party into government. Yet, these are the very words that are holding the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza, to an impossible ransom.

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© "The Secret Beach"

Exterminating Angel Press

Solitude is a good thing. You should want it. You should embrace it. You’ll reap the benefits of it – profoundly.

That could be the end of this story. But it’s not, because most people I know avoid it at all costs.

I define “solitude” as time to yourself to do what you want without external guidance (the infamous “telling you what you should do”). Call it down time, quiet time, reflective time, whatever. It’s a time when you’re not answerable to anyone but yourself. And maybe that’s where it gets especially scary.

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Antoine Ghanem assassination

The assassination of Lebanese politician Antoine Ghanem on September 19 is likely to be used, predictably, to further US and Israeli interests in the region. Most Western and some Arab media have industriously argued that Syria is the greatest beneficiary from the death of Ghanem, a member of the Phalange party responsible for much of Lebanon's bloodshed during the civil war years between 1975 and 1990.

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After retiring as the Federal Reserve's second longest ever serving chairman, Alan Greenspan is now cashing in big late in life at age 81. He chaired the Fed's Board of Governors from the time he was appointed in August, 1987 to when he stepped down January 31, 2006 amidst a hail of ill-deserved praise for his stewardship during good and perilous times. USA Today noted "the onetime jazz band musician went out on a high note." The Wall Street Journal said "his economic legacy (rests on results) and seems secure." The Washington Post cited his "nearly mythical status."

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After many years of political disappointment, more progressives, liberals and conservatives – and certainly moderates and independents – know in their hearts that voting for Democrats or Republicans is a waste. Just imagine if voter turnout was cut to 25 percent or less! Let the whole world see Americans boycotting a broken and corrupt political system and rejecting what has become a delusional democracy. To keep voting in an unjust political system makes us willing political slaves that the rich and powerful elites exploit.

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Palestine-Info

From Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

A right-wing Israeli newspaper and the Fatah organization have been cooperating to smear Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement.

On Sunday, the Jerusalem Post, a clearly Islamophobic English newspaper which is also a mouthpiece for Jewish settlers, published an article claiming that Hamas’ men were recently involved in lynching and stoning to death a 16-year-old Gaza girl in connection with what is generally known as honor killing. The story has turned out to be a hoax based on disinformation provided to the paper by Fatah’s intelligence officers.

The article gave graphic details of the incident, quoting fictitious eyewitnesses as well as Fatah activists who claimed to have seen the incident.

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© Saheh

My Town

Putsch junta intent on using global chaos for maintaining power

Iran. The Putsch junta wants to attack Iran. Oh, every so often one of them makes a /pro forma/ noise about a “peaceful resolution” and a negotiated solution to what they insist is an “impasse,” but the fact is, they want to attack Iran.

Well, they wanted peace and negotiations with Iraq, too, remember? They were lying then. They are lying now. They want to attack Iran.

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"We must become the change we want to see." - Mahatma Gandhi

"In any case, I hate all Iranians." - Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates

How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout -- enough! -- then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation's citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.

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A review of The True Story Of The Bilderberg Group, By Daniel Estulin

It is difficult to re-educate people who have been brought up on nationalism to the idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supra-national body. ~ Bilderberg Group founder, Prince Bernhard

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CounterCurrents

October 2nd will mark the birth anniversary of Human Rights Activist, Mahatma Gandhi and for the first time, the United Nations is officially proclaiming this day to be the International Day of Non-violence. Hopefully, on this day we can all spare a little of our time to reflect on how little we have all understood Mahatma Gandhi's message, after all everyday we seem to plunge into a worse state of affairs and drift away farther from Gandhi's respectable message; "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."

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Gaza

On September 30, 2007, Daniella London-Dekel's political cartoon ran in the Hebrew [but not English edition] of Ha'aretz, depicting men carrying stretchers of wounded and dead in Gaza on a television set. At the other end of the room, a man with his back to the TV held a newspaper and apparently completely oblivious/unconscious to the scene in Gaza, says "Poor Monks in Burma."

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ZioPedia.org

The U.S. has no longer a government of Goyim [Gentiles], but an administration in which the Jews are full partners in the decision making at all levels. Perhaps the aspects of the Jewish religious law connected with the term 'government of goyim' should be re-examined, since it is an outdated term in the U.S. ( From the major Israeli newspaper Maariv) 269

"I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to [the Jews] ... They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wouldn't write anything down. If the American people