WASHINGTON — Concern about leftist victories in Latin America has prompted President Bush to quietly grant a waiver that allows the United States to resume training militaries from 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries.
The administration hopes the training will forge links with countries in the region and blunt a leftward trend. Daniel Ortega, a nemesis of the United States in the region during the 1980s, was elected president in Nicaragua this week. Bolivians chose ano... (more)
With the Democrats and Democratic Party voters euphoric over a purported election victory, and a possible “change of course” in Iraq, the Bush administration quietly added poison to the Democrats’ celebration champagne by dredging up former CIA Director and Iran-Contra participant Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.
The “war on terrorism” will not only continue, it will expand and deepen with Gates heading the Pentagon. ... (more)
For the first time yesterday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert addressed in public the possibility that the United States may withdraw its forces from Iraq following the victory of the Democratic Party in the mid-term congressional elections. Olmert warned against a hasty withdrawal that may undermine the balance of power in the Middle East and endanger the moderate regimes in the region.
"From our point of view every withdrawal needs to be carefully planned," Olmert said, "in order no... (more)
It was not long after dawn and only a handful of fishing boats from Gaza city harbour were still out at sea. Some had come in earlier to offload the night's sardine catch, most hadn't bothered going out at all. Nearly all the small fleet's wooden boats, their paint fading, lay anchored up in the harbour, as they have for most of this year.
Abu Naim waited for his five sons to return aboard his boat. If the fishing had matched recent days they would be lucky to haul in 200 shekels-... (more)
Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq'... (more)
In mid 1970s the American Power Elite drew a “Grand Plan” to control and to monopolize global oil and nuclear energy resources, for he who controls energy resources determines the fate of nations. The base of this “Grand Plan” is the invasion of energy rich countries to directly control their resources, and to create subservient governments that would exploit their own people as cheap labor to harvest energy for the United States.
An opened jaw with yellowed teeth gaped out of its bloodied shroud. The rest of the head parts were wrapped in a plastic bag placed atop the jaw and nostrils, as if to be close to the place to which it once belonged. The bag was red from the pieces that were stuffed inside it. Below the jaw was a human neck slit open midway down: a fleshy, wet wound smiling pink and oozing out from the browned skin around it, the neck that was still linked to the body below it. Above him, in the upper freezer of... (more)
A former top State Department official said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the "philosophical guidance" and "flexibility" that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities.
Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture may be continuing in U.S.-run facilities.
"There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we... (more)
The latest Democrat "saviour" to flip flop 180 degrees in light of their victory is Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. Presumed to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in January, Conyers today said that impeachment of President Bush "is off the table."
"In this campaign, there was an orchestrated right-wing effort to distort my position on impeachment," Conyers... (more)
John Conyers, Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, didn’t mean it.
“The incoming speaker has said that impeachment is off the table. I am in total agreement with her on this issue: Impeachment is off the table,” Conyers declared after the Democrats stormed the House and Senate.
Mass psychological control via the Tavistock Method was developed by the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology deputy director John Rawlings Rees, who coined the term "psychologically controlled environment" referring to use of mass media to manipulate certain population groups. On June 18, 1940, Rees said: "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche...We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. Th... (more)
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of MI5, wants Brits to be afraid.
“There are up to 30 alleged ‘mass casualty’ terror plots in operation in Britain, as well as hundreds of young British Muslims on a path to radicalization,” reports the Independent. “Describing the scale of the home-grown terrorist problem, she said MI5 and the police were tackl... (more)
THE federal government had detailed lists of political activists and subversives it planned to arrest in the aftermath of a nuclear war or other national emergency, keeping such plans on the books until at least the early 1980s, according to new records obtained by an Ottawa historian.
Anywhere from 700 to 2,500 people, including babies, would have been held in internment camps before being shipped off to more permanent detention facilities.
County Attorney Lani Nakazawa is asking the Kaua‘i County Council today for up to $200,000 for specialized legalized services for a court case in which a Kaua‘i Police Department officer allegedly had an informant plant drugs and drug paraphernalia in people’s homes and a vehicle.
If approved, the funding would be used to retain special counsel to represent the county in a lawsuit Dominador Lopez and family members have filed against the county and Sgt. Danilo Ab... (more)
The U.S. armed services have requested a $160 billion supplemental appropriation to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the remainder of fiscal year 2007--a staggering amount that, if approved by the Defense Department, may hasten the showdown between resurgent congressional Democrats and the Bush administration over the budget-busting War on Terror.
The request--which will likely include all costs related to the war on terrorism--far surpasses the $94 billion supplemental au... (more)
In the wake of Pelosi, Reid, and Conyers declaring their fealty to the neocons, indicating justice will not be served, the last hope rested with the feisty Rep. Henry Waxman, the probable chairman of the Government Reform Committee now that the Tweedle Dum party controls Congress. “I’m going to have an interesting time because the Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction over everything,” Waxman told the Associated Press. “The most difficult thing will be to... (more)
In a recent correspondence, Adam Engel wrote: "One of the greatest myths about America is that it's the 'home of the brave.' Once, perhaps, prior to 1492. Now, it's most likely the greatest collection of cowards in the Milky Way Galaxy."
Engel specifically mentioned our lack of response to losing habeas corpus and to being both "subject to eternal imprisonment for liberating animals from vivisection labs" and "complicit in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Palestinia... (more)
WORCESTER— While Tuesday’s election gave cheer to opponents of the Republican administration, a Mount Holyoke College professor said, it failed to address what he called “perhaps the greatest scandal in American history … the Bush administration’s policy of torture.”
Politicians of both major parties have remained “deathly silent” about torture, politics professor Christopher H. Pyle told 75 people at the... (more)
The Hong Kong privacy commissioner has ordered a school to stop fingerprinting children before it becomes a runaway trend that is too late to stop.
The school, in the Kowloon District, installed the system last year but, under the order of the Hong Kong Privacy Commission, has ripped it out and destroyed all the fingerprint data it had taken from children.
Roderick Woo, Justice of the Peace at the Hong Kong Office of the Privacy Commissioner,... (more)
Lest we forget who runs Congress, consider the following “briefing” posted on the AIPAC website yesterday:
AIPAC Builds Ties With New Lawmakers
AIPAC reached nearly every lawmaker elected in Tuesday’s mid-term congressional elections as part of its effort to educate political candidates on the value of the U.S.-Israel relationship. During the campaign that ended Tuesday, ... (more)
