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  • Bush rebuked by the hand of God
    7 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    By Phil Davison
    George Bush presumably knew before this weekend that the "hand of God" could be merciless. He certainly does now. Maradona, rather than Iraq, was uppermost on the US President’s mind this weekend as he attended a summit of leaders from the Western hemisphere in the Argentinian beach resort of Mar del Plata.
    As domestic polls informed him that he was increasingly mistrusted by his fellow Americans, Mr Bush was clearly mortified to be called "human trash" by Latin America’s (…)

  • ’I’m a fashion god’ - what FEMA boss e-mailed as hurricane Katrina raged
    7 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by RHIANNON EDWARD
    AS HURRICANE Katrina battered New Orleans, the man in charge of the US government’s response was sending e-mails to colleagues about his fashion sense and how he looked on television.
    On 29 August, the day Katrina struck the United States, Michael Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), wrote to a fellow official: "I am a fashion god."
    The correspondence emerged as a congressional panel released 23 pages of internal e-mails offering (…)

  • The Consequences of Covering Up Washington Post withholds info on secret prisons at government request
    6 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    On November 2, the Washington Post carried an explosive front-page story about secret Eastern European prisons set up by the CIA for the interrogation of terrorism suspects. While the Post article, by reporter Dana Priest, gave readers plenty of details, it also withheld the most crucial information—the location of these secret prisons—at the request of government officials.
    According to the Post, virtually nothing is known about these so-called "black sites," which would be illegal in the (…)

  • Council: Bring troops home
    6 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Phillip Reese
    The Sacramento City Council called Tuesday night for the "rapid and comprehensive withdrawal of United States military personnel and bases from Iraq," citing the financial and human costs of the war on local resources.
    The resolution, sponsored by council members Lauren Hammond and Ray Tretheway, puts Sacramento on a short but growing list of cities nationwide pressing for a quick withdrawal. Chicago’s council recently approved a similar measure. San Francisco made the (…)

  • U.S. fears prospect of Saudi coup, weighs invasion plans
    6 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    WASHINGTON - The United States has raised the prospect of a military invasion of Saudi Arabia.
    The House Armed Services Committee considered the possibility of a Saudi coup and U.S. response during a hearing on Oct. 26.
    Saudi Arabia, with 200,000 military and National Guard troops, is the largest oil producer and exporter, with an output of nine million barrels of oil per day, according to Middle East Newsline. The Arab kingdom is the third largest supplier of oil to the United States, (…)

  • Montana Gov: "Are we going to allow the military to do an end run coup on civilian government?"
    6 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    HELENA, Mont. — Several governors are fuming over a Bush administration suggestion that the active military take a greater role in disaster response, calling it an attempt to usurp state authority over National Guard units.
    Governors in Washington, Mississippi, Michigan, Arkansas, West Virginia, Delaware and Alabama are among those who have panned the idea, questioning whether it would even be constitutional.
    Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, among the harshest critics, said the issue (…)

  • Republicans Still Keeping Secret Evidence Administration Used Reports They Knew Were False to Bring US to War
    6 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    4 comments

    by Rob Kall
    The US has been staying in a war for more than a year since senate Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee bottled up information that showed the administration knew that evidence they cited as reasons to go to war was provided by a source who was known to "fabricate" bogus information.
    The NY Times reports Bush, Cheney, Powell, and other administration officials repeatedly cited known dissembler’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda (…)

  • Immigrants often unpaid for Katrina work
    6 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    GULFPORT, Miss. — A pattern is emerging as the cleanup of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast morphs into its multibillion-dollar reconstruction: Come payday, untold numbers of Hispanic immigrant laborers are being stiffed. Sometimes, the boss simply vanishes. Other workers wait on promises that soon, someone in a complex hierarchy of contractors will provide the funds to pay them.
    Nonpayment of wages is a violation of federal labor law, but these workers - thousands of them, channeled into teams (…)

  • Drifting towards a Police State
    6 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    5 comments

    "Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid the terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends" — Former Attorney General John Ashcroft
    Did you know that under the terms of the new Patriot Act prosecutors will be able to seek the death penalty in cases where "defendants gave financial support to umbrella organizations without (…)

  • BOOK ON CIA’s SECRET JAILS: "Operation Hotel California" by Guido Olimpio
    6 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    The first book-length expose of CIA kidnappings and prisons — two of the greatest evils in the Bush government, and the world — by the Italian investigative journalist Guido Olimpio is here, and it’s new and as current as todays news stories about secret jails the CIA runs! The book is a must-read for anyone wanting to know about the CIA’s practice of "rendition": kidnapping people and transporting them to places like Egypt for torture. It’s an extremely controversial practice, a threat to (…)