contributions

== Redressing the Emperor: What did Mr. Bush REALLY know (and when did he know it)? How many Iraqnam-focused Deep Throats will it take for us to learn the answers? ==
Q: What’s worse than an incompetent president?
A: An incompetent president prone to deceive the public.
That’s the crux of a RICO-Act lawsuit recently filed in Philadelphia to compel Pres. Bush to account for his administration’s alleged foreknowledge of certain key events occurring before/during/after the 9/11/01 (…)

If you watch the debate, rather than listening to the clip, you will see that Bush was pointing to the moderator when he said let me finish.
That was because he was coming to the end of his time, and had pretty much finished making his points. The green light had come on, and if he was done, then Kerry, who was indicating that he wanted a thirty second rebuttal (evidenced by the fact that he got it) would have been given the floor. He wanted to say more, and had the time, so he told the (…)

Imagine waking up to a world where power corrupts, drug smugglers are imprisoned and drug companies are rewarded. Under the taliban in Afghanistan, poppy fields were reduced by 98%, they burned them. They wanted to be accepted in the international community, so they burned them. How about that 2%? Well, that was just the farmers who were living in the controlled sections of the Northern Alliance...you remember, US allies. It’s interesting to note, that not only are the poppy fields back, but (…)

by John ReynoldsDuring the Presidential Debate Bush made what may be his most costly error- he exposed that he’s using an earpiece to help him answer debate questions.
In the middle of an answer bush said, "now let me finish" as if someone was interrupting him - yet nobody did - he was talking to the person in his earpiece.
Listen to the mp3 yourself- or watch the video at c-span
ffwd to 40 min 30 sec
There is an mp3 with the audio at NYC indymedia
I’ve been thinking for years that (…)

By Kim Zetter An influential employee of voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems left the company recently to take a job as elections manager for a California county. Deborah Seiler, a sales representative for the beleaguered voting company, was hired a week ago and started Monday in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco in California’s wine country. The position puts her second in command of elections in the county, under the registrar of voters. The move raises eyebrows (…)

With hundreds of lawyers mobilising next month to monitor the presidential election, what are the chances of a remake of the Florida 2000 fiasco? Probably quite high, election watchers say.
The key will be how tight the November 2 race between President George W Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry is in swing states like Florida that could make a difference.
"If it’s at all close, there’s no way that the election ends on election day," Tova Wang, democracy fellow at The Century (…)

By Michelle Goldberg
In excruciating new TV ads, family members of soldiers killed in Iraq speak out about the horrible waste of their loved ones’ lives.
In a TV commercial released Wednesday, Cindy Sheehan, a 47-year-old woman from Vacaville, Calif., whose 24-year-old son was killed in Sadr City in April, speaks directly to George W. Bush.
Shot in black-and-white, her soft voice cracking, she says, "I imagined it would hurt if one of my kids was killed, but I never thought it (…)

Free Radio Santa Cruz RAIDED by the FCC and US Marshals
Knoxville First Amendment Radio (KFAR 90.9) Raided by the FCC
So a pirate radio station, in production for 10 years, warrants a "guns drawn" raid. I’m not sure if the Feds thought they might be forced to drink wheat grass juice and eat tofu...but maybe they should of just thrown some raw meat or furs on them. There is a photo gallery of the "raid" at the first link.
Hopefully the patriot act II will keep us even safer. Maybe, if (…)

By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA Analyst
It’s not an "if." It’s a "when." Pentagon officials have indicated that they plan to send as many as 15,000 additional troops during the first four months of 2005, and the President George W. Bush continues to insist "we will stay the course" until Iraq is stabilized. (I do wish his advisers would provide a different vocabulary so that those of us steeped in the mistakes regarding Vietnam could be spared painful flashbacks.)
Where will the additional (…)

by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Three years of the Bush administration’s ’’war on terrorism’’ appears to have reduced the appetite of the U.S. public and its leaders for unilateral military engagements, according to a major survey released Tuesday by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR).
Indeed, the survey, the latest in a quadrennial series going back to 1974, found that key national-security principles enunciated by President George W Bush since the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New (…)