t r u t h o u t - New York Times | Shake and Bake

t r u t h o u t - New York Times | Shake and Bake: "Shake and Bake
The New York Times | Editorial

Tuesday 29 November 2005

Let us pause and count the ways the conduct of the war in Iraq has damaged America's image and needlessly endangered the lives of those in the military. First, multilateralism was tossed aside. Then the post-invasion fiasco muddied the reputation of military planners and caused unnecessary casualties. The W.M.D. myth undermined the credibility of United States intelligence and President Bush himself, and the abuse of prisoners stole America's moral high ground.

Now the use of a ghastly weapon called white phosphorus has raised questions about how careful the military has been in avoiding civilian casualties. It has also further tarnished America's credibility on international treaties and the rules of warfare."

t r u t h o u t - Wilkerson Continues Assault on Bush, Cheney Was Powell hood whigged?

NOT the BBC version of Wlikerson. I am not sure it even makes sense.
The really important point is that even Bushco people are beginning to accept that Cheney's WHIG was covering their eyes, and making them look stupid.

t r u t h o u t - Wilkerson Continues Assault on Bush, Cheney: " Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because 'otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.'"

What price a foolish war

The big question is whether Bushco will be held accountable for the debacle that is Iraq, or whether they will sneak out just as the American troops will sneak out.

On the Today programme this morning one of the Powell team more or less accused Cheney of war crimes and accused him outright of committing crimes against US law.

The investigation of Rove starts to go deeper.

What revelation will come next?
t r u t h o u t - James J. Zogby | Adrift and No Substantive Debate: "What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon - and at what cost. In this respect, as in so many others, the obvious parallel to Iraq is Vietnam.

Confronted by a demoralized army on the battlefield and by growing opposition at home, in 1969 the Nixon administration started withdrawing most of its troops in order to facilitate what it called the 'Vietnamization' of the country. The rest of America's forces were pulled out after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a 'peace settlement' with Hanoi. As the troops withdrew, they left most of their equipment to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam - which just two years later, after the fall of Saigon, lost all of it to the communists.

Clearly this is not a pleasant model to follow, but no other alternative appears in sight."

t r u t h o u t - James J. Zogby | Adrift and No Substantive Debate

While the Americans debate the fact there is no debate on Iaq worth having, over here instead of a debate we have Minges Campbell blowing into the wind.

Still, the Tory leadership race is almost over.
Currently I expect Cameron to duck the issue.

t r u t h o u t - James J. Zogby | Adrift and No Substantive Debate: "Adrift and No Substantive Debate
By James J. Zogby
truthout | Perspective

Monday 28 November 2005

We are adrift in Iraq, and there is no serious policy debate equal to the dangers of the current situation. The problems are many.

It is not just that the Bush administration's current course isn't working, it's that there is no clarity as to what that course is. There are slogans: 'supporting our troops,' 'fighting terrorists there so we won't have to fight them here,' 'advancing democracy,' etc. They all sound clear and quite simple, but they do not provide a realizable goal, let alone a strategy. It should be clear by now that elections alone do not constitute a functioning democracy (either in Iraq or Afghanistan). With the original goal of a secular, Western-style democracy in Iraq exposed for the unrealistic objective it always was, there is a need for new metrics to measure success in Iraq."

art and terror

Veritas satire

evil live

t error

I love this stuff.

Go check out the mix of art music and poetry

We have to make a new st art

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold: Fitzgerald Targets Rove Again

It has taken a while, but now Fitzgeralsd seems to be moving forward again. It is looking bad for Rove, and for another top Bushco aid. We can't be sure which one yet though.

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold: Fitzgerald Targets Rove Again: "two things are very clear: either Rove will agree to enter into a plea deal with Fitzgerald or he will be charged with a crime, but he will not be exonerated for the role he played in the leak, based on numerous internal conversations Fitzgerald has had with his staff. If Rove does agree to enter into a plea, Fitzgerald is not expected to discuss any aspect of his probe into Rove, because Rove may be called to testify as a prosecution witness against Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was indicted last month on five counts of lying to investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice related to his role in the leak.

Moreover, a second high-ranking official in the Bush administration also faces the possibility of indictment for making false statements to investigators about his role in the leak: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley."

t r u t h o u t - Frank Rich: Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...

Working on the Cheyne gang
going down down down down!

Meanwhile the London Times has a front page full of the brutalisation of our own British Troops.

They clearly need to be brutalised before they go out and commit war crimes in Iraq.


t r u t h o u t - Frank Rich: Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...: "each day brings slam-dunk evidence that the doomsday threats marshaled by the administration to sell the war weren't, in Cheney-speak, just dishonest and reprehensible but also corrupt and shameless. The more the president and vice president tell us that their mistakes were merely innocent byproducts of the same bad intelligence seen by everyone else in the world, the more we learn that this was not so. The web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House. The real point of the Bush-Cheney verbal fisticuffs this month, like the earlier campaign to take down Joseph Wilson, is less to smite Democrats than to cover up wrongdoing in the executive branch between 9/11 and shock and awe.

The cover-up is failing, however. No matter how much the president and vice president raise their decibel levels, the truth keeps roaring out. A nearly 7,000-word investigation in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times found that Mr. Bush and his aides had 'issued increasingly dire warnings' about Iraq's mobile biological weapons labs long after U.S. intelligence authorities were told by Germany's Federal Intelligence Service that the principal source for these warnings, an Iraqi defector in German custody code-named Curveball, 'never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.' The five senior German intelligence officials who spoke to The Times said they were aghast that such long-discredited misinformation from a suspected fabricator turned up in Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations and in the president's 2003 State of the Union address (where it shared billing with the equally bogus 16 words about Saddam's fictitious African uranium)."

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Islam underpins schools' lessons

Many years ago when I was training to be a teacher I did a practice in a Roman Catholic school.
The conflict between religion and secular state was palpable in the tension between the training agency and the school.

We used to have a department for education and science.
Now it is education and skills.

I guess we are not bothered about science in education anymore. We are running out of physics teachers in the state sector.

Mr Blair is obviously much more interested in faith education. He has an education minister from an extreme Catholic sect.

I guess we will soon have lots of Christian Schools that don't bother much with biology, and lots of Muslims Schools which don't have laboratories. Once upon a time the Muslims led the world in science. Not any more.

I wonder if we will soon have special science academies, where pupils are encouraged to believe in "science."

"Islam underpins schools' lessons

By Linda Pressly
Producer: Inside a Muslim School

BBC Radio 4 visits a privately-run Muslim school in Lancashire to see how Islam affects the curriculum and how such a school equips its students for their role in modern Britain."

Independent Online Edition > Another step in the creation of a police state

Another step in the creating of a police state.

Robert Fisk is warning us loud and clear of the demise of freedom in our country under Blair. He writes about the destruction of Al Jazeera in Baghdad by the Americans as well as the threat to destroy them elswhere in the middle east.

"Of course, al-Jazeera is no golden child of journalism. Its discussion programmes are often weighed down with uncompromising Islamists, its dutiful presentation of bin Laden's tiresome sermons balanced by interviews with
Western leaders far tougher than any questions put to al-Qa'ida's bearded leadership. But it is a free voice in the Middle East - and so was attacked by the Americans in Kabul and in Baghdad. And almost in Qatar. And thus British journalists must now be suppressed by Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara if they dare to reveal the latest revelation from the dark and bloody pit into which Messrs Blair and Bush have plunged us."


Independent Online Edition > UK Politics: "The decision of the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, to approve the prosecution and warn the media against coverage of the leaked document has surprised many at Westminster. The affair has renewed accusations of 'control freakery' by the Government. MPs said the decision to go to court and gag the media was 'heavy handed' and a sign that Tony Blair was losing his grip on power. Some in Whitehall see it as a 'warning shot' to journalists following a string of embarrassing leaks revealing the internal workings of Tony Blair's government."

Iraq Torture Like Saddam's Era Claim - Yahoo! News UK

Well now!
The first puppet prime minister of Iraq is not happy.
He thinks there is less liberty and more torture now than in Saddam's day.
Meanwhile the British army dresses its corporals as school girls and encourages naked fighting, where the loser is kicked unconscious. Unless that was just to encourage him to fight harder.

The authorities, who have been handed a film of the event involving our marines, has suggested that punishment will be in order, if rules have been broken.

That leaves me unsure if this kind of thing is a normal part of our forces training.

That would not be surprising. Other reports include stories of face sitting among recruits, which remind us of the happy little chappies in Abu whatever.

After all, two police inquiries have concluded that an army recruit managed to shoot himself in the head, not once, but twice.

God, our chaps are good! That shows incredible talent and amazing determination.

"Never say die".

Sorry! Not the right expression that time.

More like, "if at first you don't succeed try try try again". Well done private. See what the public school system does for us.
"Iraq Torture Like Saddam's Era Claim
Sky News Sunday November 27, 01:21 PM

Iraq's former prime minister claims human rights abuses are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein's rule.Ayad Allawi said Iraqis opposed their former dictator because of human rights abuses but now 'people are doing the same as (in) Saddam's time and worse'.Mr Allawi, talking to The Observer, accused fellow Shi'ites in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres.

The brutality of some security officers rivals that of Saddam's secret police, he said."

Sunday laugh time

This came in this morning. There is an attribution below, but I have seen much of this before unattributed.

Enjoy.

DEMOCRATIC
You have two cows
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICANISM
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So what?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

RALPH NADER'S PARTY

No one has any cows because they are considered unsafe and are regarded as religious symbols

LIBERTARIANISM

You have fifty cows.

One neighbor has thirty-two cows

Another neighbor has forty-five cows.

Everyone is happy because the government not involved and there are no taxes.

People who want milk or steak, pay for it in gold.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pour the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.


FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.

While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.

The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegals
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Thomas "Rocky" Costanzo


British Corporation

You have two cows.
One is New Labour in Milton Keynes new town
It is modernist, and made of concrete
One is Tory
It no longer gives milk
Because the supermarkets pay too little for it
No one drinks milk any more anyway

t r u t h o u t - Paul Rockwell | How Do We Honor Our Fallen Troops in a Wrongful War?

"If any question why we died
Tell them because our fathers lied." Kipling.

My daughter is applying for her first job teaching.

She has even shown interest in the Combined Cadet Forces of our Public Schools.

At present we are all accessories to a terrible war crime. I cannot bare the thought of my daughter endorsing a system that, in the case of my own house in my own school, encouraged us to think "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

The thought of her actively encouraging our youth to be part of an active part of a state that invades other countries on the back of a conspiracy of lies is utterly sickening.

The Americans are moving fast on this one now.

As usual we are lagging.





"How Do We Honor Our Fallen Troops in a Wrongful War?
By Paul Rockwell
t r u t h o u t | Book Review

Friday 25 November 2005

A review of Cindy Sheehan's uplifting and soulful book.

The agony of war can transform any human being.

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Rudyard Kipling, the bellicose poet of the British empire who coined the infamous phrase 'white man's burden,' urged his own son to join the British military. One week after his son enlisted, he was dead. Overwhelmed with grief, Kipling wrote two 'Epitaphs for War.' In the first, dead soldiers speak:

If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.

In the second, 'The Dead Statesman,' a statesman speaks:

And now all my lies are proved untrue.
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young.

There are many kinds of betrayal in human affairs - forgery, embezzlement, adultery, murder. But in the affairs of state, there is no greater disloyalty, no greater act of betrayal, than to send young men and women to their deaths on the basis of fraud.

To lie is to murder."

t r u t h o u t - Rep. Norm Dicks Sees War Vote as Mistake

First a democrat hawk now even a republican hawk wakes up and smells the putrifying rat of Bush's war.

t r u t h o u t - Rep. Norm Dicks Sees War Vote as Mistake: "Dicks thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and wouldn't hesitate to use them against the United States.

After visiting Iraq early in the war, 'Norm told me the Iraqis were going to be throwing petals at American troops,' Murtha said in an interview this week.

Dicks now says it was all a mistake - his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war.

While he disagrees with Murtha's conclusion that US troops should be withdrawn within six months, Dicks said, 'He may well be right if this insurgency goes much further.'"

Hard News: Life Goes On in Fallujah's Rubble

The story of Falluja continues.

Let us remember that it all began with a peaceful protest against US forces taking over a school. Just as in Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland 15 people were shot dead, when someone thought they heard a gun shot.

Violence just escalates. Murder leads to murder. Civilised people become barbarians. That is the way of war, especially an unjust war.

Hard News: Life Goes On in Fallujah's Rubble: "Dahr Jamail

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 23 (IPS) - A year after the U.S.-led 'Operation Phantom Fury' damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness.

The Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Fallujah (SCHRD) estimates the number of people killed in the city during the U.S.-led operation in October and November 2004 at 4,000 to 6,000, most of them civilians. Mass graves were dug on the outskirts of the city for thousands of the bodies."

TomDispatch - Tomgram: Jonathan Schell, Welcome to Camp Quagmire

This is beautiful writing. How sweet it is to move on from Thomas Hobbes.

I think we have seen an attempt to move from an American Republic to an empire. It is failing.
The citizens of Falluja will end as martyrs to the deafeat of the first global fascist dictatorship of the twenty first century.

Blair's decision to be the lieutenant of that imperial power will be his and our lasting shame and disgrace.

TomDispatch - Tomgram: Jonathan Schell, Welcome to Camp Quagmire: "'Most important, in the political arena, the United States is weak, precisely because in the contemporary world military force no longer translates easily into political rule. ‘Covenants, without the sword, are but words,' Hobbes said. Since then, the world has learned that swords without covenants are but empty bloodshed. The Romans in ancient times were able to convert military victories into lasting political power. The United States today cannot. In the political arena, the lesson of the world revolt -- that winning military victories may sometimes be easy but building political institutions in foreign lands is hard, often impossible -- still obtains."

t r u t h o u t - John Pilger | The News Revolution Has Begun

Here comes Pilger steeming up in support of Blairy England. He does not exactly say the BBC has been infiltrated, just that the BBC always supports the British establishment. The examples in my last two posts suggest it is now going further than that, though, actively massaging the news to make the British establishment look better.

Luckily more and more of us are finding the truth through the internet blog resports. There are several good ones mentioned below.

t r u t h o u t - John Pilger | The News Revolution Has Begun: " The BBC and most of the British political and media establishment invariably cast such a horror as a public relations problem while minimizing the crushing of a city the size of Leeds, the killing and maiming of countless men, women and children, the expulsion of thousands and the denial of medical supplies, food and water - a major war crime.

The evidence is voluminous, provided by refugees, doctors, human rights groups and a few courageous foreigners whose work appears only on the internet. In April last year, Jo Wilding, a young British law student, filed a series of extraordinary eye-witness reports from inside the city. So fine are they that I have included one of her pieces in an anthology of the best investigative journalism.* Her film, 'A Letter to the Prime Minister,' made inside Fallujah with Julia Guest, has not been shown on British television. In addition, Dahr Jamail, an independent Lebanese-American journalist who has produced some of the best frontline reporting I have read, described all the 'things' the BBC failed to 'see.' His interviews with doctors, local officials and families are on the internet, together with the work of those who have exposed the widespread use of uranium-tipped shells, another banned weapon, and cluster bombs, which Campbell would say are 'technically legal.' Try these web sites: dahrjamail.com, zmag.org, antiwar.com, truthout.org, indymedia.org.uk, internationalclearinghouse.info, counterpunch.org, voicesuk.org. There are many more.

'Each word,' wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, 'has an echo. So does each silence.'"

Dear David Cameron,

A cross-party motion has now been tabled in Parliament to set up a Select Committee to investigate the conduct of the Government's policy in going to war in Iraq.

The names appearing on the Early Day Motion include Alan Simpson (Labour), Kenneth Clarke and Douglas Hogg (Conservatives), Menzies Campbell (Liberal Democrats), Alex Salmond (SNP) and Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru).

Speaking at Westminster Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price, who drafted the motion, said:

"Too many questions remain unanswered about the way we were taken to war in Iraq, and we demand to have them answered. Neither the Hutton nor the Butler Inquiries addressed the central question - were the Parliament and country misled? Therefore it is essential that a committee is set up to investigate the matter thoroughly. If we do not restore proper accountability to the Government, it will corrupt our whole society by providing evidence that allows our enemies to call our democracy a sham."

The Early Day Motion reads:

"Conduct of Government Policy in relation to the war against Iraq"

"That this House believes that there should be a select committee of 7 Members, being members of her Majesty's Privy Council, to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto, in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and in its aftermath."

I would like to encourage you very strongly to support this motion. The people of this country and also the United States believe we have been misled over the Iraq war. Every day more evidence pours into the public domain that an inner circle in Washington was planning to invade Iraq even before 911, and that our Government went along with that policy, knowing that iraq posed no significant threat to us.

Vote fraud in America raises its head.

I am not sure how mainstream this rag is. But the media is finally beginning to talk about the way the electronic voting machines are contradicting the exit and other polls in American elections.

TMS Features: "POLL SHOCK

By Robert C. Koehler

Tribune Media Services

One of the most wildly inaccurate pre-election polls in memory, which was off by over 40 points on some predictions, may prove to be deadly accurate as an indicator of the problems we face as a nation with our voting process - and democracy itself. "

Has Blairco infiltrated the BBC?

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Four month detention for Glitter: "Vietnamese police say they need longer to complete their investigations, although they say they have enough evidence to hold Glitter for another four months.

Under Vietnamese law, he can be held for up to 12 months before it is necessary to lay charges."

Last week I saw a BBC report about Brazilian police shooting lots of people in the head. I wondered why. After all the Chinese and many other countries police do that all the time.
I assume the BBC team went to Brazil to research this because of our police shooting a Briaazilian plumber in London.

Today we have a report that a British National in Vietnam is being held for months without charge.

Hmmm.

What is the sub text, the message the BBC wants us to pick up?

Are we being groomed, as if by a peaedophile Government, to accept levels of human rights that are below a civilised standard?

Did the Hutton triumph over the BBC go much deeper than we may have thought?

Answers please?

We are seeing a steady stream of stuff coming out into the media differentiating Blair the good buy from Bush the villain.

I smell a rat in a spin. Let us not be a mazed!

Blair should be awarded the triple cross

I am not sure why Joe Wilson has come here backing Blair.
Perhaps it is a charm offensive, thinking we still love our prime minister.

It is hard to believe Wilson has not seen the Downing Street memos which show so clearly how the whole UN thing was a cover story for the invasion.
Saddam was to be provoked into reaction to our bombing raids to make him look like an agressor.

Similarly I find our ex ambassador laughable in his suggestion that Blair was ever wishing to persuade Bush to delay the attack till the autumn.

It all looks to me like a very clever plan to save Blair from the fate of Bushco.

Telegraph | News | White House 'double-crossed' Blair, says Plame husband: "'Mr Blair came to the US when Mr Bush was talking about regime change, and when he left Mr Bush started talking about disarmament as the objective.

'Mr Bush went to the United Nations, I think that that had a lot to do with the influence of the British. I think that Mr Blair really thought that he was getting involved in a disarmament campaign, which was all to the good - I fully supported that."

t r u t h o u t - Ray McGovern | Will the US Seize the Opening for Troop Withdrawal?

The arabs have become united about something!

Everyone wants the occupying forces out of Iraq as a first priority.

Blairy England will directly e-mail Mr Blair, just in case he pretends not to be aware of this.

t r u t h o u t - Ray McGovern | Will the US Seize the Opening for Troop Withdrawal?: "Will the US Seize the Opening for Troop Withdrawal?
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 24 November 2005

The surprising degree of consensus reached by the main Iraqi factions at the Arab League-orchestrated Reconciliation Conference in Cairo last weekend sharply undercuts the unilateral, guns-and-puppets approach of the Bush administration to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. The common demand by Shia and Kurds as well as Sunnis for a timetable for withdrawal of occupation forces demolishes the administration's argument that setting such a timetable would be a huge mistake. Who would know better - the Iraqis or the ideologues advising Bush?

Withdrawal of Occupation Forces

From the final communiqué:

We demand the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable, and the establishment of a national and immediate program for rebuilding the armed forces ... that will allow them to guard Iraq's borders and to get control of the security situation ..."

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS

Marc Parent suggests here that Cheney still holds extraordinary power and is not giving it up.
We know Cheney was in personal charge of NORAD as the planes moved in on the twin towers. 911 could not have happened without his support. It gave him power to dominate the world.

I think that power is falling away.
We will see as the days and weeks go by.

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS: "9/11 gave Cheney untrammeled power -- and he's not about to give it up Nov. 24th, 2005 @ 08:22 am
The long march of Dick Cheney
For his entire career, he sought untrammeled power. The Bush presidency and 9/11 finally gave it to him -- and he's not about to give it up.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Nov. 24, 2005 | The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential power. When it matters, the regular operations of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department have been sidelined.

Richard Nixon is the model, but with modifications. In the Nixon administration, the president was the prime mover, present at the creation of his own options, attentive to detail, and conscious of their consequences. In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has been arranged, a closely held 'cabal' -- as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it -- wields control."

Cheney can no longer bully the media out of the truth

"All that is required for the victory of evil is for good men to do nothing."

This whole Iraq thing looks more and more like the result of a fascist take-over of the United States.

Joe Wilson spoke on the Today Programme in London this morning. He described a republican in congress free to say that his wife Valerie Plame "got what she deserved."

When they tried to abuse Murtha the other day in congress for opposing the war someone flew across the floor and screamed at them. That should have happened before. The bullying is over.

But how could it be acceptable anywhere, to say that by exposing her as a secret agent, (what we over here would maybe call treason,) Bushco was giving her what she deserved?

History will tell us that the US state was taken over by a group of conspirators, and Dick Cheney was the principal amomg them.

Journalists who would not go to bed with alliance troops were murdered in Iraq. Any political opposition to the war was stamped as treachery. "If you are not with us you are against us." Remember that. The latest we hear is that Bush almost bombed Al Jazeera in a friendly country for broadcasting things he did not like.

When Joe Wilson dared to be the little boy who told us the President's case for war was a naked lie, he had to be made an example. For two years Bushco ran a smear campaign against him which went to the extreme of exposing his wife as a secret agent, putting the country's spies at risk.

My question is: what is the truth? Did the entire mainstream media buy into Bushco, or were they terrorised, or was it a mixture of the two.

Why is it only now, as the truth starts to break through the bubble of lies and deceit that has been coined as truth for the last few years, even after the wmd were blatantly shown to be non existent, that the media has begun to tell us the truth about Bushco?




The reality, however, is that while the Yalie president may not be the brightest star on the horizon, the owlish Cheney is nobody's dummy. What he is, and has always been, is the most bald-faced of the administration's war hustlers, shamelessly peddling, for example, the cloak-and-dagger tale of a Hussein operative meeting with Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Prague long after U.S. intelligence had dismissed it.

Similarly, it was Cheney who was instrumental in getting Colin Powell to make the astonishing claims of the intelligence source code-named "Curveball" the centerpiece of the secretary of state's prewar presentation to the United Nations. Now, thanks to a definitive investigation by the Los Angeles Times published Sunday, we find out that top German intelligence sources in charge of interrogating Curveball had already declared him an unreliable source."

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | George Monbiot: Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes

Here Monbiot is telling the same story I told earlier.
The US accepted using chemical weapons against insurgents.

But the truth is they used them against all of Falluja. The US troops treated everyone in the city as a fighter. This was truly a war crime. As Monbiot says, "they had stpped all men of military age from leaving the city."

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | George Monbiot: Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes: "But we shouldn't forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city, the marines stopped men 'of fighting age' from leaving. Many women and children stayed: the Guardian's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left. The marines treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used 'hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population'."

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold: How Pre-War Iraq Intel Was Cooked

Did I say a flood? This is a deluge.

But will the British Parliament catch up or just lag behind as usual.

Come on. Let's have all the facts about this criminal conspiracy of a war.

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold: How Pre-War Iraq Intel Was Cooked: "Based on the way the probe is starting to shape up, it's clear the administration, particularly Feith, who resigned earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and possibly Cheney will bear the brunt of the blame, because the three of them sidestepped the usual intelligence gathering process that historically was handled by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency in favor of their own clandestine intelligence gathering operations in which questionable information on the so-called Iraqi threat was collected and used by administration officials to build a case for war but wasn't vetted by career intelligence analysts, said a senior aide to McCain who requested anonymity for fear of angering members of the GOP."

mparent7777: Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel; Bush Knew 9/21/01: No 9/11 - Iraq Connection

This week Cheney went on the offensive claiming there was no evidence his people misled the American people. So what about this stuff, Mr Cheney?

mparent7777: Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel; Bush Knew 9/21/01: No 9/11 - Iraq Connection: "The next day, Rumsfeld said, 'We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.'

The most explosive of allegations came from Cheney, who said that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, had met in Prague, in the Czech Republic, with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, five months before the attacks. On December 9, 2001, Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press: '[I]t's pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in [the Czech Republic] last April, several months before the attack.'

Cheney continued to make the charge, even after he was briefed, according to government records and officials, that both the CIA and the FBI discounted the possibility of such a meeting."

mparent7777: Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel; Bush Knew 9/21/01: No 9/11 - Iraq Connection

Here comes the deluge.
Evidence purs in that Bush lied about the Iraq 911 connection.

Over here we have all the data we need to convict Blair, but till now there has been no political will to persue it.
That has to change now.

mparent7777: Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel; Bush Knew 9/21/01: No 9/11 - Iraq Connection: "Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel; Bush Knew 9/21/01: No 9/11 - Iraq Connection
ADMINISTRATION
Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.


The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President's Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.




The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the 'President's Daily Brief,' a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders."

Dems win McCain’s backing

We need the same thing happening here. The whole Blair cabal needs to be forced to explain itself. Someone has to pick up the Butler gun and fire these people.


Dems win McCain’s backing: "Dems win McCain’s backing
By Alexander Bolton

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has emerged as a leading opponent of the Bush administration’s policy on interrogating detainees in the war on terrorism, wants Senate investigators to interview senior administration officials about their statements regarding the threat posed by Saddam Hussein before the war."

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Blair faces Iraq war inquiry move

My cries are not in vain.
Parliament looks as if it may vote to go after Blair on Iraq. Will his cronies manage to protect him?

It depends just how badly they are implicated. New Labour may be as screwed into this war as Blair himself.

But the game is afoot. We the people must get behind this very very strongly.


BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Blair faces Iraq war inquiry move: "'This House believes there should be a select committee of seven Members, being Members of Her Majesty's Privy Council, to review the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto in the period leading up to military action in that country in March, 2003 and in its aftermath.' "

Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable

I write to Blair demanding he leave Iraq.
I write to David Cameron asking him to challenge Blair.

They do not respond.

Why are the Brits letting the grass grow under their feet?

You cannot repair the damage you did to Iraq. Your staying only makes matters worse.
Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable: "Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable

By SALAH NASRAWI
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 22, 2005; 12:06 PM

CAIRO, Egypt -- Iraqi leaders at a reconciliation conference reached out to the Sunni Arab community by calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and saying the country's opposition had a 'legitimate right' of resistance."

An American soldier starts to think

Americans are beginning to realise that they are barbarians.
This is a beautiful testimony by a man who fought hard and then saw the evil of his ways.

"We, in America refer to ourselves as civilized and people from other

countries still living the simple life are backwards and uncivilized,

but what is civil about the capability to create atomic weapons? What

is civil about being able to kill over 100,000 people with just one

bomb? We may be more technologically advanced but are we more

civilized? I think the answer is no. War has to be considered the

absolute enemy of mankind. Where we would be without it? I would

presume that we as a nation would be out of debt if we were to apply

as much energy to pursuing sound economics as we do pursuing war, we

would never get sick if we spent as much on preventive medicine as we

do on war, the elderly would get affordable prescription medication

if we were to use the resources that are spent on war to work for

that purpose, there would not be un educated children if we were to

buy new classrooms and books for schools instead of new weapons

systems, social security would be a lot more secure with some of the

money that war costs.

Why do we want to train the young people in the world that the only

way we can settle our differences is to kill one another? Why

shouldn't we train them to become surgeons or homebuilders? Why

shouldn't we train to become anything but killers? I think that the

world would be better off if we were to do that instead. I have

talked to veterans from every war from WWII on and their opinion is

that the wars they fought were to be the last war ever fought. How

many more are we going to fight before we realize that the act of war

is for small minded people that are intent in only satisfying their

own needs and not the needs of the people in general? I do not want to

be killed because I am living in a place that has a ruler that wants

to go to war with any one.

The only way to bring peace to the world is to let the people of the

world decide for themselves what they want to spend their efforts on.

I feel that in this day and age governments start wars, and not

people, and since the governments want the wars then why don't we let

the government fight the war? All of the politicians that want to

fight a war are free to trade places with me at any time. I will

gladly go and learn war no more.

There are activities that I have been involved in that have led me to

these new and developed beliefs, and they are numerous but I can tell

you some of them. When you walk in the woods and you see a deer stand

and look at you, or you are on the river in the morning and the mist

rises off the water while you hear the morning calls of the river

birds, and the otters just lie there as you glide past in your boat

and don't even move, you know that there is a better way. When you

can find solitude in the woods that are so filled with peace and the

wildlife that is all around you, you feel the better way all around.

A person must acknowledge the fact the we are a part of the universe

and the universe does not want to be out of sorts with itself, so why

do we spend so much effort on trying to be out of sorts with others

of the human race?

I have been to the war zone and I have seen the devastation it causes.

Why can't everyone agree that war is the most repugnant of all human

endeavors? Why is it considered noble to be able to look through the

sights of a rifle and kill another human being from 300 meters away?

Why are you a hero if you can throw a hand grenade farther than the

next guy in the foxhole? Shouldn't these young men and women that are

in the army be throwing footballs or baseballs or softballs instead?

It would impress me a lot more to see someone make the winning free

throw at the basketball game or kick the winning extra point at the

football game, or knock in the winning run at the World Series than

to see them be able to shoot more humans from 300 hundred meters. I

would rather they spend their time at the golf course or the tennis

courts or in college, any where but in the war zone trying to survive

and having to kill to do it. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Sgt Kevin Benderman"

AlterNet: Blogs: Peek: An averted Bush bomb

Downing Street is becoming so leaky we will be expecting talk of hurricanes.
Now we hear of a war crime Bush did not commit.
Do you want to believe Blair stopped him?

Or is this Blair trying to swim away from the vortex that is dragging Bush down.

AlterNet: Blogs: Peek: An averted Bush bomb: "On this one count, lapdog Blair reportedly talked master Bush out of a possible violation of the Geneva Conventions.

According to the latest leaked British memo, Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeerah but was talked down by Blair. Paul Schmelzer writes: '[this] means, the president wanted to bomb an independent media outlet in Doha, the capital city of Qatar, a key ally of the coalition.'

Ally or not, targeting any civilian institution, like the media (state run or not), is a violation of the Geneva Convention and thus, a war crime. But it didn't happen, you say?

That didn't happen, but former British Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle explains why releasing the memo remains crucial:

'If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces.'"

t r u t h o u t - Marc Ash | Dying for a mistake

Mr Blair. You are a fake.
How many more
will die for your mistake?

t r u t h o u t - Marc Ash | Leaving Baghdad: "Leaving Saigon was hard, but we had no choice, the time had come. The war in Iraq is now, and always was, unwinnable. We will leave. The only question is how many men, women and children will die as we come to that conclusion. In 1971, a young Navy Lieutenant returning from duty in Vietnam sat before the US Senate and challenged the entire premise for the war, and in doing so laid the groundwork for peace. He said:

'Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, 'the first President to lose a war.' We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?'"

World citizens!

Something to ponder?

Who Represents World Citizens?©

Garry Davis

In politics, the nation-state insidiously controls not only the dialogue but also the electoral process. Check the platforms of the recent US candidates for president. Not one advocates a world constitution to outlaw war. Quite the contrary, both John Kerry and George W. Bush (as well as Al Gore) were for an increased military budget and the updated version of Reagan's "Star Wars," while the Pentagon wants to "master" space above our heads. Neither endorsed a government beyond the nation to deal with environmental devastation despite the overwhelming dangers the human race itself faces because of global warming, ocean pollution, ozone layer depletion, rain forests burning and species, both plant and animal, extermination. It is as if both they and the US voters live on another planet. But worse, the general public’s loyalty to this myopic political illusion blinds it to the solution of humanity’s ills taken together, i.e. world law based on human rights. Small wonder that less than 50% of the US public votes in presidential elections.

Can Bush, Blair, Chirac, Barmak, Putin, Sharon, Khatami, Chrétien, Rasmussen, Dehaene, Simitis. Oddesson, Prodi, Juncker, Kok, Jagland, Gutteres, Azhar, Erbakan, Cardosa, Memen, Klestil, Teng-hui, Mubarak, Bhavan, Abdullah, et al, resolve world problems—your problems— as heads of state? Are we humans politically represented on the level where our own problems reside? The question answers itself. Moreover all national leaders confess their impotence while sanctimoniously maintaining their own mandate as executors of exclusive law. The contradiction is blatant and transparent. They are only legally sanctioned to preserve the existence of their particular fictional states and not the state of the world in which they and their co-citizens live in reality.

Then why do we, the innocent victims of state domination, continually look to them in their never-ending meetings for solution? Are we not sheep being led to the slaughter all the while wondering who to elect as the next “butcher?” What is lacking here? In every other field but politics, individuals operate globally: the post-office, telephone and television being prime examples. Today, the Internet is coming along as a fast fourth.

The entire world so-called peace movement lacks global representation! Why are “peace” groups all talking only to themselves? What are the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates doing about eliminating war-making….about creating the conditions of peace? And the former nuclear scientists? And the former generals and admirals and Peace Corps workers? And the philosophers, poets, gurus, and sages? How is it that the arms race continues unabated while people starve? How is it that we can communicate with one another instantaneously worldwide and cannot travel without the absurdity of national passports and visas? How is it that all national leaders talk, talk, talk about human rights and yet they are violated by EVERY nation EVERY second? In short, why are most world citizens not playing hardball politics?

Let's face it, no national parliamentarian, congressperson or state head represents us, the people of the world. Because millions of us already identify ourselves as World Citizens as an inalienable right.

Well-intentioned peaceniks write of "nations" being unwilling to "relinquish" their national sovereignty. But nations do not have sovereignty. Ultimately, it is you and I—now reborn into world citizenship—who have civil sovereignty. This is the axiom of civil democracy. Nations cannot "relinquish sovereignty" because it is not theirs to begin with: sovereignty belongs to the people.

With this axiom in mind, it is necessary also to look at this word "relinquish." If sovereignty resides in the people, there can be no such thing as "relinquishing" our sovereignty. It is inherent in us by the very fact of being human. The whole connotation of the words "relinquish" or "cede" is negative and totally unsuited for expressing the immensely creative step which the people of the earth must now take, and are now starting to take, in the direction of forming a planetary government. For years, the ogre of all the world government movements has been the "red herring" of "relinquishing" our rights, "ceding our claims", "renouncing our sovereignty," all of which makes the would-be follower immediately fearful that he or she will be losing something of valuable self-interest. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The people of the earth would lose nothing of real self-interest by a civil world government. Quite the contrary, they would gain enormous freedom from needless suffering and taxation. The only persons who would lose their usurped rights would be precisely those national leaders whom we are asked to believe in as the initiating-source of world government. Their right to destroy the earth over petty conflicts, for instance, would definitely be taken away from them. And along with them, the spies, diplomats, consular personnel, frontier guards and indeed, the army of money changers! What a boon for humanity!

The word we should use instead is "delegate". People can delegate their decision-making functions, their functional sovereignty, to others to perform and exercise, i.e., to forming governments. Up to this point in history people have seen fit to delegate their sovereignty to the level of national governments. But now, it is necessary that the people not "relinquish" their sovereignty, but reassert and extend it to the level of functional human unity as a legal and political institution.

World government, then, need not occur only when nations begin to "relinquish" their national sovereignty." It begins when citizens wake up to the fact that they are by every right world citizens, that they have the right to set up their own political machinery on the world level, and when they then take that step can actually begin to set a world government into action.

We must be clear that the formation of a world government need not in any way depend on the actions or "recognition" of national governments.

In essence, we must stop being a slave to the mentality of nationalism and the word "nation." We must stop falling into the mind-set that affirms old world order relationships even as it seeks to transcend them.

Who then represents us, the sovereign world citizens?

The question is as self-evident as the answer. We, the human beings concerned, are not represented in our entirety, as members of the human race, because we have not yet democratically chosen our own world citizen representatives! And why is that?

BECAUSE NO WORLD CITIZEN CANDIDATES HAVE YET DECLARED THEMSELVES AS AVAILABLE!

Governments start by individuals claiming de facto citizenship. Ref., the United States of America. That is precisely what my candidacy for World President, declared in 1983, is all about. It may seem quixotic to some. But already we are citizens of our own world government. (See http://worldgovernment.org.) The office of World President of our government would be largely ceremonial and symbolic. Once established, with follow-up subsidiary instruments: a world parliament, world judiciary, world executive, etc., it follows that positive law has finally allied with the perennial truths of unity and universality taught by humanity’s sages from time immemorial. In other words, a vote for World President is not only a vote for a person, not even a vote only for an political office, but a vote for a set of truths or conceptual values such as justice, freedom, benevolence, cooperation, and the gamut of social and economic rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The specific mandate for global government as well as global elections is already provided by Article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"The will of the people shall be the base of the authority of government; this will

shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and

equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."

This is a global sanction and mandate for declared and registered World Citizens to elect declared and registered World Citizens.

It may come as very exciting news that such a global enterprise is now actually afoot, and that the beginnings of such a government, though embryonic, are now at hand in the issuance of a number of world documents, including so far a world citizen card, a world birth certificate, and a world passport already recognized by many Third World nations.*

Taking its initial lead from such documents as the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Optional Protocol to the latter Covenant, and other basic doctrines of international law, and having adopted the neutral international language Esperanto as its future official language, this legitimate government, whose administrative branch is known as the World Service Authority (District III for the USA) bids well to become the most significant civil world democratic movement of this new century.

The missing link to complete the instrumentation of world representation will soon become available: an Internet site, sponsored by the World Service Authority, the "city hall" of the World Government of World Citizens. Declared candidates for world public office will be able to signify their availability to the world citizen constituency: http://www.worldcandidates.org. mandated by aforementioned human rights article. (In construction).

The site will not only provide a place for candidates to expose their program, experience, educational qualifications, etc., but also the actual ballots for both World President and World Parliamentarian for the registered World Citizen can be downloaded. A link to the World Government site will access on-line individual registration, the fee paid by a recognized credit card.

. The Internet is already being utilized for local and national electoral processes, three US states permitting registration of citizens directly on their state websites. Every nation and every candidate for national political office must have a website these days of electronic politicking. Indeed, the World Government site has already had a World Referendum operating since 1995, its five questions dealing with global subjects never asked by national pollsters. Ref.: http://www.world-government.org/referendum.

Numerous world constitutions written since 1945 will be reproduced on the above-mentioned site along with references to fundamental human rights in both national

constitutions and international covenants. A section on historical references to world citizenship and a world state will lend substance and credibility to the concept throughout humankind's evolution to a peaceful world. A library of excerpts from rare books dealing with the subject of world law will be accessible. An index of individual advocates throughout history to the present will complete the site.

If this millennium has any historical mission it is evidently to eliminate the scourge of war from the human community. Otherwise, as Einstein has warned us, war will eliminate us in toto.

888888888888888888888888

Published by

World Government House

POB 9290

South Burlington, VT 05403

(802) 864-6818; Fax: (802) 862-3744

Email: worldlaw@globalnetisp.net

Copyright 2005 - All rights reserved

"The Nation" comes out against the war.

I have no idea how important this magazine is in America but I sure wish we had one over here.

Perhaps we could use the strategic voter web site to identify pro war MP's and counsellors so we can vote them out.

I copy it here as just one more proof that the US will soon cut and run and the Brits had better not get left behind in the rush, or there will be many more British troops killed.

"The editors of the Nation Magazine has declared that they will not

support any Democrat for national elective office who continues to

support the war in Iraq.

"The Nation therefore takes the following stand: We will not support

any candidate for national office who does not make a speedy end to

the war in Iraq a major issue of his or her campaign. We urge all

voters to join us in adopting this position. Many worry that the

aftermath of withdrawal will be ugly, but we can now see that the

consequences of staying will be uglier still. Fear of facing the

consequences of Bush's disaster should not be permitted to excuse the

creation of a worse disaster by continuing the occupation."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Tories leap on Rimington's ID card rejection

The retired head of our intelligence services has come out to tell us that the Governments ID cards won't protect us from terrorism.

Well, we already knew that, and the Government admitted it. But the Government will go ahead any way because they want more control of our lives.

When are the tories going to stand up for civil liberties properly?

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Tories leap on Rimington's ID card rejection: "Tories leap on Rimington's ID card rejection

Mark Oliver and agencies
Thursday November 17, 2005

ID cards. Photograph: Getty Images
Photograph: Getty Images

The Conservatives said today that criticism of ID cards by former MI5 chief Dame Stella Rimington showed the government's justifications for their introduction were 'completely bogus'."

Cheney: Some Iraq Critics Are 'Dishonest' - Yahoo! News

I agree with Cheney: some critics are dishonest. Some democrats are contemptible.

But I just watched a video of Murtha talking and heard Cheney's response.

Murtha is solid and sound. He is leading a bipartisan tidal wave that will soon wash the desert clean of the barbarians.

Cheney talks of the civilised world. But he is not a part of a civilised world. Yet even a man who thinks torture is fine does not dare just now to attack Murtha. The savaging of the opponent will not work any more.

Cheney says the intelligence was not distorted. Read the archive of this blog. The evidence of it is overwhelming.

"'The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. But any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false,' Cheney said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

As to proposals for a rapid pullout of U.S. troops, Cheney said, 'It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone.' "

Baghdad Burning: Call it conventional terror

An Iraqi persective on our invasion and the destruction of Fallujah.

The Americans are lying barbarians.

"Last year I blogged about Falloojeh and said:

“There is talk of the use of cluster bombs and other forbidden weaponry.”

I was immediately attacked with a barrage of emails from Americans telling me I was a liar and that there was no proof and that there was no way Americans would ever do something so appalling! I wonder how those same people justify this now. Are they shocked? Or do they tell themselves that Iraqis aren’t people? Or are they simply in denial?

The Pentagon spokesman recently said:

'It's part of our conventional-weapons inventory and we use it like we use any other conventional weapon,'

This war has redefined ‘conventional’. It has taken atrocity to another level. Everything we learned before has become obsolete. ‘Conventional’ has become synonymous with horrifying. Conventional weapons are those that eat away the skin in a white blaze; conventional interrogation methods are like those practiced in Abu Ghraib and other occupation prisons…

Quite simply… conventional terror."

TomDispatch - Tomgram: An American Tipping Point?

This is special. This article is the best and most detailed inside-America summary of the tipping point in Bush's fate that I have been blogging about a lot recently.

But this extract below is even more special because it places the resistence and martyrdom of the people of Falluja in the centre of the overthrow of what was set to become another fascist empire of a thousand years.

the mission was all too nearly accomplished. But Falluja resisted. Now all the cowards are coming out of hiding. The fear makers are in fear. The wheel of fortune has past the zenith. It hurtles Bushco down to its end now.

My fourth poem on Falluja may be starting today.

TomDispatch - Tomgram: An American Tipping Point?: "Following this 'historic landing,' he stepped up to an on-deck podium where, under a White House banner that read 'Mission Accomplished,' he declared that 'major combat operations in Iraq have ended.' This was clearly meant to be the stunning start of the President's campaign for reelection in 2004, a classic piece of Rovian image manipulation and a nail in the coffin of the Democratic Party. And so it seemed to most at the time.

But if you revisit the CNN story about the landing and speech, headlined 'Bush calls end to ‘major combat,'' it's hard now not to note the subhead lurking just under it: U.S. Central Command: Seven hurt in Fallujah grenade attack. Seven wounded American soldiers -- that really says it all. The photo-op that was meant for the reelection campaign was already being undermined by another story; two policies yoked together were already pulling in different directions. Our present moment was already being born, unnoticed but in plain sight."

Daily Times - Site Edition

I am not sure how reliable this tale is. It certainly follows in the tradition of Iran Contra.

The idea that the Americans blew up their own wmd in iraq is a little puzzling.
The idea of a special squad sent to steal Saddam's gold seems absolutely Bushco. Having the squad killed off by "friendly fire" afterwards is in a hallowed treasure finders pattern.

Daily Times - Site Edition: "US tried to plant WMDs, failed: whistleblower

Daily Times Monitor

According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration’s assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to “plant” WMDs inside the country"

Bush's Asia Trip Meets Low Expectations

The Washington Post has got this story all wrong. Bush exceeded all expectations on this Asia trip. He really excelled himself. Hey! Maybe he wrote the speech himself. Never has he set himself up for this much mirth.

We heard him on the Today programme this morning making glowing comparisons between his America and Mongolia, where he is staying. Both overcame colonial status, he said and are characterised by horsemen riding across the plains.

Yessir! While the Americans massacred a few thousand Indians whose stone age tools could not withsatnd their cavalry and machine guns, the Mongolians conquered most of Asia and quite a bit of Europe with bows and arrows.

What do Mongolians and Americans have most in common?

No, Mr Bush, it is not escaping from colonisation. It is not riding horses. It is being history's greatest barbarian invaders and destroyers of civilisation. But not even the Mongolians saw as much despoiling of treasures as the Americans in Iraq. So many priceless relics stolen or destroyed.

We are not going to remember you as a new Ghengis Khan, though, Mr Bush. You will be seen as just another barbarian, who lost his way in the desert of the middle east.

The Mongols gave their name to a genetic inferiority, suffered by people who are gentle and loving. One day we may we refer to psychopathic egomaniacs with delusions of connection with God as Bushmen. No, that is unfair. Those are noble, primitive people of the Kalahari.

We already have an inclination to call ourselves "bushed" when we can't think straight any longer. Perhaps that expression can develop into something referring to a more permanent condition.
Perhaps it is something that happens to people when they are "bushwacked".

Bush's Asia Trip Meets Low Expectations: "Bush's Asia Trip Meets Low Expectations

By Peter Baker and Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 21, 2005; Page A01

BEIJING, Nov. 20 -- When President Bush was flying toward Asia a week ago, his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, predicted to reporters in the back of the plane that the four-nation trip would yield no 'headline breakthroughs.' He turned out to be right."

t r u t h o u t - Marjorie Cohn: Ending the Occupation

A chicken hawk is a bird that attacks chickens, I believe.
Cheney turned on an old cockerel the other day and got a savaging. For our European readers, a hawk is someone who is keen on war and a chicken is a coward. Bushco sneds other people to war. It just dresses up as a warrior.
I am not sure how the cowardly chickens dressed up as hawks ever fooled America.
I guess the Americans are just foolish.

t r u t h o u t - Marjorie Cohn: Ending the Occupation: "Cheney, who didn't fight in Vietnam because he had 'other priorities,' noted that Murtha was 'one of my strongest allies in Congress when I was Secretary of Defense [in the Bush I administration].' When Cheney was first tapped for the job, he told Murtha, 'I'm going to need a lot of help. I don't know a blankety-blank thing about defense.'

Cheney's respect for the war hero evaporated, however, after Murtha's explosive remarks last week. 'The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone,' the chicken hawk veep snarled in a speech to the right-wing Frontiers of Freedom Institute.

In a clear reference to Cheney's draft dodging during the Vietnam War, Murtha replied, 'I like guys who got five deferments and [have] never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.'"

AlterNet: War on Iraq: A 'Loyal Opposition' Won't End the War

Even American commentators have picked up on the sliminess of the democrats.
The tories are pretty much as bad in Blairy old England.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: A 'Loyal Opposition' Won't End the War: "The refrain of the Democrats about being misled into supporting the invasion of Iraq has become really tired. And someone other than the White House smearmongers needs to say it: The Democrats cannot be allowed to use faulty intelligence as a crutch to hold up their unforgivable support for the Iraq invasion. What is DNC Chair Howard Dean's excuse? He wasn't in Congress and didn't have any access to Senate intelligence. Still, on March 9, 2003, just days before the invasion began, Dean told Tim Russert, on NBC's Meet The Press, 'I don't want Saddam staying in power with control over those weapons of mass destruction. I want him to be disarmed.'"

Open letter to David Cameron: re Cluster bombs

Dear David,
At a public meeting in Charlbury I recall you promising to address the issue of cluster bombs dropped in civilian areas of Iraq with the Government.

Thank you for your letter and the letter written by the junior defense minister Mr Ingrams in response to my question about the Downing Street memos. What I wanted was a response from Mr Blair about his lies about the plans agreed for war on false intelligence. I guess a junior MP only gets a response from a junior minister. It seems that the commons is so organised now that I am very lucky you had a reply at all. I expect things to change when you become leader of the opposition very soon.

I have to say that a flood of evidence from the US like a hurricane through New Orleans is exposing Mr Ingrams version of events before the last iraq war as false, as false as his statement to the commons that phospherus was not used as a weapon in Iraq. He has owned up to that now at least.

Please let me know what your party is doing to address these human rights violations by our forces.

Open letter to Mr Cameron: Cluster bombs

Dear Mr Cameron,
You promised at a public meeting in Charlbury after the last Iraq war, to address the issue of cluster bombs used by British forces in Iraq on civilian areas. This has become front page news in the Independent today.

We would very much like to know what has become of your efforts to address this issue with the Government. Currently it appears the Government is continuing to evade any responsibilty for this war crime.

"UK's deadly legacy: the cluster bomb
It is feared that thousands of bomblets lie unexploded in Iraq, capable of maiming or killing innocent civilians. This week, more than two years after they were dropped, Britain is finally being held to account
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 21 November 2005

Tony Blair is facing fresh fury over the use of controversial munitions in the Iraq war. Campaigners lambasted the Ministry of Defence over its use of deadly cluster bombs and shells during the invasion, warning that they could contravene international law.

MPs are to table a raft of new questions today over the affair amid fears that thousands of bomblets released during the war will leave a deadly legacy for Iraqi civilians. They warned that any unexploded bomblets could kill or maim civilians for years to come.

The dispute over British use of cluster bombs will be intensify this week with the publication of a report by the pressure group Landmine Action, which raises questions over the efforts made to ensure that the weapons did not harm civilians. It comes as international signatories to the international convention on conventional weapons meet in Geneva this week, amid pressure for a moratorium on the production of cluster bombs and tough new limits on their use.

The report, funded by the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, said British officials had failed to gather field data about the failure rates of cluster bomblets, and had done 'little or nothing to gauge the humanitarian impact of these weapons'.

It said that the UK had 'failed to undertake any significant effort to understand better the impact of cluster munition use and has continued to use them. As was foreseeable, these cluster munitions have been a cause of civilian casualties.'

Michael Moore, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: 'This is a very significant report which raises some very serious issues. "

7.11 Constitutional Referendum That Wasn't

This article proves nothing about the Iraq referendum. I quote from it for the observations about the control exerted by the Americans on the process.
A constitution with references to oil and military bases for Americans?

The UN first claimed that there were too many votes cast. Then they went quiet.
I wonder just how much pressure the US managed in buying off or bullying the UN.

But we know that Bush cheated in two US elections. Cheating in Iraq would be no problem at all.

The problem is that cheating on votes won't win the war on the ground. They are losing, and they do not have enough troops to win.

The latest move is to bring back people from the old army. Wow! Talk about putting cats with the pigeons.

I have written about this before. It is history repeating itself. The only difference is that this time the power is America and before it was Britian.

In 1918 the Brits replaced the Sunni administration with a Shia one. But then they found things were too messy or difficult and reverted to the Sunnis, which is how the Baath party came to power and held it so ruthlessly following the terror imposed by the British army of occupation in 1920.

The US and UK have found they have a set of murderous militia instead of an army. let's start again says Reid.

But the Shia are not going to sit back and let the Sunni army back into power this time.

When are we going to have British politicians spelling it out so that the Government has to respond?

"US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad even consistently pressured the Iraqi government to accept his own drafts of articles which included words like “oil” and “military bases” in the so-called constitution in the weeks leading up to the vote.

“It is a matter of public record that in the final weeks of the process the newly arrived US ambassador (Zalmay Khalilzad) took an extremely hands-on role,” Justin Alexander, legal affairs officer for the office of constitutional support with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq told me. “Even going so far as to circulate at least one US draft.”"

t r u t h o u t - Abramoff Scandal Threatens GOP Lawmakers

The Bush jumper is unravelling.
Soon the ugly naked truth of this corrupt bunch of law makers and administrators will be exposed fully.

" Corruption Inquiry Threatens to Ensnare Lawmakers
By Philip Shenon
The New York Times

Sunday 20 November 2005

Washington - The Justice Department has signaled for the first time in recent weeks that prominent members of Congress could be swept up in the corruption investigation of Jack Abramoff, the former Republican superlobbyist who diverted some of his tens of millions of dollars in fees to provide lavish travel, meals and campaign contributions to the lawmakers whose help he needed most."