contributions

Iraq war stories play tricks on the mind Anna Salleh ABC Science Online Monday, 7 March 2005
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Many press reports during the Iraq war were later retracted (Image: iStockphoto) Research on the way people processed media reports about the Iraq war tells us more about how we create our beliefs and memories.
Psychologist Professor Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia and team report their study of more than 800 people from Australia, the US and Germany, in the (…)

MARTIAL LAW DECLARED, RESISTERS TO BE SHOT
By Peter Fredson
A Political Satire
In a surprise move that left many Americans gasping, Georgy W. Shrub was proclaimed as President-for-Life. Republican Senators gathered last night at midnight in a secret session and within an hour had given George Shrub all the powers he yearned for, had voted him in as President-for-Life and declared that any criticism of their move was treasonous.
The smiling President-for-Life then swaggered down the (…)

All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise. - Adolf Hitler It is well worth asking the following question: Why, specifically, was the phrase ‘war on terror’ adopted as a slogan by the US/UK (…)

Oct. 1, 2005, 7:20PM
Both right and left wary of giving domestic police power to military By STEWART M. POWELL Copyright 2005 Hearst News Service
WASHINGTON - The law is from a bygone era, it has a Latin name and it’s never led to a prosecution, much less a conviction.
Yet the mere hint that President Bush might try to tinker with the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act is stirring opposition across the political spectrum, prompting conservative and liberal activists to line up against any move (…)

’06 budget remains a scandalous lie
Alan Guebert
Since early spring, Republican aggies in both the House and the Senate have warned their farm and ranch constituents that farm program spending will be cut $3 billion over five years beginning with the 2006 federal budget.
How did they arrive at that amount and timetable?
Simple. They pulled both figures out of thin air early in the 2006 budget process when party bosses designed, then pushed, a budget "reconciliation" bill through (…)

Michael P. Wright — Norman, Oklahoma USA mpwright9@aol.com
This evening at about 9:15 I was attempting to leave the south door of the University of Oklahoma library, which leads to the South Oval of the campus. The library guard told me that the exit was closed, because of an "incident" on the Oval about an hour earlier. In response to my question, he said it was an explosion, but had no further information.
I then went out the west exit, and a security guard there said that a person (…)

Jerusalem, Sept 28 (PTI) Israel may annex parts of West Bank territory, drawing borders unilaterally, if the current diplomatic deadlock with the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues, a close confidante of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned today.
"If we see that the standstill continues despite the fact that it is a standstill in a diplomatic situation which is ’easy on Israel’, there may be room to consider turning disengagement into a strategy," Eyal Arad, a senior strategy advisor to (…)

Washington, Sep 30 (PTI) If Washington and its allies do not stop Iran’s nuclear programmes by force if necessary, Israel will, three Israeli legislators visiting the US have warned. "Israel will not live under the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb. We feel we are obliged to warn our friends that Israel should not be pushed into a situation where we see no other solution but to act unilaterally against Iran," said Yosef Lapid, head of the Shinui Party.
Lapid and his colleagues Yuval (…)

Homeland Security Chief Chertoff, Not Brown, Was Responsible For Federal Response To Huricane Katrina We speak Knight Ridder reporter Alison Young about the Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff’s responsibilities and the shift of blame to former FEMA head Michael Brown. [includes rush transcript]
Alison Young, Reporter with Knight Ridder who co-wrote a recent article called “Chertoff Delayed Federal Response, Memo Shows” about how Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff actually (…)

By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush’s education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.
In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert (…)