contributions

Bryan Casler is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. He is the Northeast Regional Coordinator for the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Speaking at a “Winter Soldier” rally in Baltimore City, on Oct. 18, 2008, he said: We were trained, intensely, to “kill without thought”...and then to “think about it later.” The military’s objective is to make its soldiers “into a killing machine.” In basic training and in boot camp, they “broke people down. You weren’t a person (…)

By Stefan Simons in Paris
Corruption, arms sales and a civil war in Africa: France’s biggest ever bribery scandal sees 42 leading figures of the French business and political world on trial. They are accused of being involved in a murky network said to have facilitated the illegal transport of arms to Angola in the 1990s.
The story, the actors and the exclusive scenery are the stuff of movies. The cast includes former cabinet ministers, billionaires, financial experts and glamorous (…)

Brown, Merkel, and Sarkozy propose a Bretton Woods II to be held in New York sometime after November 4.
DOUG SAUNDERS
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail October 18, 2008 at 12:05 AM EDT
BRUSSELS — A week ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel found themselves strolling together through the cobble-stoned streets of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, a tiny village in the northeast of France, where they were attending a war-memorial ceremony.
The town is known (…)

Obama is an American, not a Negro
Obama is an American, period. On birth certificates in every country except America they use their nationality (race)...Germans, Spanish, British, Russian, etc. In America the slave master mentality is Caucasian (white), negro..black American?...So Obama even though his parents have different skin color...one was African the other was American... Obama was born in America thus making him an American. Ask a darker skinned Russian or Spaniard if they are (…)

By David Glenn Cox
Poor Joe the plumber, plucked from obscurity and thrust into the national limelight, his life has now become an open book. After all, all he did was ask a question about tax policy. Little did he know the McCain campaign and Fox News would seize upon him and try to make him an icon.
I wondered about Joe even before the stories started to come out about the tax lien against him or his lack of plumbing license. For years I worked for a man that made well over $250,000 a (…)

The war in Iraq is creating a major - and perhaps deadly - shortage of night vision goggles for civilian pilots who fly medical helicopters in the U.S. "The war in Iraq escalated and the goggles weren’t available," said Gary Sizemore, president of the National EMS Pilots Association and a pilot in Perry, Fla. "We were put on a waiting list." Sizemore estimated only 25 percent of the 800 or so emergency medical helicopters in the U.S. have the technology.
Iraq War Creates Shortage of Night (…)

by Andrew Johnson
French police arrested the head of a company that distributes stun guns in France for Scottsdale-based Taser International Inc. on Tuesday, according to foreign news reports.
Authorities detained Antoine Di Zazzo and nine other people, including police officers and private detectives, on suspicion that they spied on Olivier Besancenot, a former presidential candidate in France who publicly questioned the safety of Taser’s devices, reports stated.
Di Zazzo runs SMP (…)

By Don Logana
SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - One day after a stay of execution was lifted, a new execution date has been set for Troy Anthony Davis.
Today, the Department of Corrections scheduled the execution for October 27 at 7pm after Judge Penny Haas Freesmann signed a new death warrant for Davis.
The order states that the execution has a seven day window and can occur any time between noon on October 27 and noon on November 3.
Davis was convicted back in 1991 for the killing of Savannah (…)

By Peter Fredson
Enough is now more than enough.
While Dubya may call himself "The Decider", McCain now may also call himself "The Denigrator."
For the past several months the only argument that McCain seems to muster is to denigrate Barach Obama. He decided to concentrate on personality rather than speak to issues of importance to his country.
Thus Obama is, for McCain, too young, too inexperienced, too naive and too "strange" to be acceptable for high office. He dare not call (…)

"Well, this is no picnic for me either, buster!"
http://benamarine.blogspot.com/2008...