Mosque Before and After

Mosque Before and After
Originally uploaded by jmillerdp.

This would also apply to British integrity and trust in the middle east

Werther: a Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask

Werther: a Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask: "4. Who wrote the script for the rhetorical response to 9/11?

The smoke was still rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center complex and the Pentagon when the unanimous and universal cry erupted in government circles, and was relentlessly amplified by the media, that this was 'war,' not a criminal act of terrorism. How very convenient that this war, declared against a diffuse and stateless entity, would trigger long-sought legal authorities and constitutional loopholes which would not apply in the case of a criminal act. [5] Torture, domestic spying, selective suspension of habeas corpus, all the unconstitutional monsters whose implications are only clear four years after the event, all slipped into immediate usage with the rhetorical invocation of war.

This was not merely war, it was unlimited war, both in the sense of total war meant by General Ludendorff (civilian rights being trivial), and in the sense of lacking a comprehensible time span. 'A war that will not end in our lifetimes,' said Vice President Cheney on Meet the Press on the very Sunday following the attacks. How could he be so sure during the fog of uncertainty following the strike?

If bin Laden and his followers were merely a limited number of fanatics living in Afghan caves, as we were assured at the time, why did the Bush administration relentlessly advance the meme that a decades-long war was inevitable? Could not a concerted intelligence, law-enforcement, and diplomatic campaign, embracing all sovereign countries, have effectively shut down 'al Qaeda' within a reasonable period of time--say, within the period it took to fight World War II between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender?

Four years on, Vice President Cheney, doing a plausible imitation of the radio voice of The Shadow, continues to publicly mutter, in menacing tones of the lower octaves, that the war on terrorism [6] is a conflict that will last "

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Why we can't capture Bin Laden

I don't care how crazy it appears. I think Bin Laden is working with Bushco. It seems that he pops up with a message just when America needs to be reminded that the bogeyman is still out there.

Catch him!? He is much too valuable as a continuing reason why we should have all our freedoms taken away by the extremists of left and right together.

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Why we can't capture Bin Laden: "Here's another theory, wacko though it may seem. Some have suggested that the worst thing that could happen to the fragile right wing coalition would be for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Its existence and promises to overturn it are simply too powerful a rallying cry to be replaced.

Could the capture of Bin Laden function similarly? Could the continued freedom of Bin Laden function as a free-floating bogeyman for the Bush administration to whip out when fear ebbs and civil liberties come to the fore?

Naah, that's just crazy talk."

Fathers 4 Justice halts operations - Yahoo! News UK

Fathers 4 Justice halts operations - Yahoo! News UK

Little Leo, so much like my son J, just two years older.

I wonder what life is like for him inside the Government's spy ders web.

This was another piece of Blairco spin.
There was never a real threat against the boy.
Hey, but Blair needs all the sympathy he can get as his education minister blunders from error to disaster.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Iraq: Deconstructing the Reconstruction

A Marshall Plan for the middle East?

Haliburton and Co have stolen so much money that even Bush is drawing back from offering these people any more.
What are the Iraqis getting.

Power? No
Water? No
Oil? No
An army. Hey, they have recruits, but the money for new weapons was stolen, Billions.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Iraq: Deconstructing the Reconstruction: "Score another one for the 'stay the course' hypocrites in the White House. Last week, I wrote about the president talking up our progress in Afghanistan while cutting U.S. troops and funding. Now he's doing the speaking-out-of-both-sides-of-his-mouth trick when it comes to the rebuilding of Iraq.

In a speech in front of a veterans' group last week, Bush said of Iraq: 'On the economic side, we will continue reconstruction efforts and help Iraq's new government implement difficult reforms that are necessary to build a modern economy and a better life.'

But this presidential promise is directly contradicted by recent reports that the administration has decided not to seek any more funds for reconstruction in the new budget -- effectively signaling an end to an effort that was once touted as a Middle East version of the Marshall Plan."

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The Torture Policy

Why bother to repeat myself?
Well, someone might pay attention eventually.

The Government knows that if you lie long enough and sincerely enough people believe you.

So why not keep repeating the truth?

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The Torture Policy: "In England, The Guardian reported Thursday on new information it had received about the British government's knowledge of the US practice of rendition - the secret transfer of terror suspects to interrogation centers in Europe and Asia where they may have been tortured. The paper reported that the leaked document shows the Blair government is trying to 'stifle' attempts by members of Parliament to find out just how much Britain knew about what some MPs are calling the CIA's 'torture flights.'"

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Archbishop's anti-war message

Remember this.

So many of us spoke and marched against this bloody murderous disaster of a war.

We must hold the perpetrators, the traitors to account.
These were crimes against humanity.
What we need most of all from the 21 century is that world leaders cannot any longer get away with that.

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Archbishop's anti-war message: "'The strategists who know the possible ramifications of politics miss the huge and obvious things and wreak yet more havoc and suffering.'

Despite better communications, intelligence and surveillance than ever before, the innocent continue to be killed, he said.

'Here we all are, tangled in the same net ... stepping deeper and deeper into tragedy', he added.

Dr Williams has previously warned against the dangers of war and urged the government to find a diplomatic solution.

On the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks he described war as 'at best the lesser evil' and added that attacking Saddam Hussein could bring 'real cost to our own humanity'."

The Scots have their own dossier

The Scots have a detailed dossier on the dodgy dealings of Blair and co supporting the kidnapping of people and their export for torture.

Bad news for you Mr Blair

SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier

westminster

The SNP has published a report on suspected US intelligence flights through Scottish airports. The document lists in detail the planes, dates on which they landed and 10 firms which allegedly operated on behalf of the CIA.

The publication comes as inquiries continue into “rendition flights” by the Council of Europe, European Parliament and an all party group of the House of Commons.

SNP Foreign Affairs and Defence spokesman, Angus Robertson MP, has sent the report to First Minister Jack McConnell urging the Scottish Executive to “use every avenue open to it through the criminal justice system to establish whether there has been the illegal transportation of people through Scottish airports and discourage it ever happening in the future”.

The report lists 10 firms which allegedly operate as CIA shell companies and details the plane types, registration numbers and dates which they landed at Prestwick, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports. Among the planes was a Gulfstream jet (Registration number N379P/N8068V) nicknamed the “Guantanamo Bay Express” and was reportedly used to transport suspects to the US prison on Cuba. That plane is listed in the report as having landed five times at Glasgow and Prestwick airports between 2002 and the end of 2004.

SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier — SNP - Scottish National Party

aha
the Scottish Nationalists have a dodgy (for Blairco) dossier on renditions through Scotland.

The Government will go on wriggling but the questions will go on getting more detailed.
This one is not going away any more than Iraq has gone away.

We do not want a Government that supports torture in any way.


SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier — SNP - Scottish National Party: "SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier
westminster
The SNP has published a report on suspected US intelligence flights through Scottish airports. The document lists in detail the planes, dates on which they landed and 10 firms which allegedly operated on behalf of the CIA.
[ Portrait ]

The publication comes as inquiries continue into “rendition flights” by the Council of Europe, European Parliament and an all party group of the House of Commons.

SNP Foreign Affairs and Defence spokesman, Angus Robertson MP, has sent the report to First Minister Jack McConnell urging the Scottish Executive to “use every avenue open to it through the criminal justice system to establish whether there has been the illegal transportation of people through Scottish airports and discourage it ever happening in the future”."

Rendering unto Caesar. Leaked avoidance advice from the FO to Blair.

Blair said he knows nothing about our involvement with US renditions apart fromn a couple in the Clinton era.

The Foreign Office has had a memo leaked suggesting he avoid anything specific and move subjects as fast as possible.

It may not be incriminating but it reveals a conspiracy to evade the truth.

Ms Rice says the Americans don't torture, but they do do what us Europeans would call torture.

We just don't ask what they are up to with those planes so we can plead ignorance.

I think that the Government could be donbe for conspiracy with another (the US) to commit crime.

AlterNet: The President Does Not Know Best

Der Fuhrer knows best

Yes
he does.

AlterNet: The President Does Not Know Best: "It has been widely reported that even Bush appointees, such as former Assistant Attorney General James B. Comey, and possibly former Attorney General John Ashcroft, objected to the NSA's wide-ranging warrantless spying. After 20 years as a federal prosecutor, I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of career attorneys at DOJ and criminal prosecutors from U.S. Attorneys' Offices around the country, as well as federal law enforcement agents, would have refused to participate knowingly in this program. Bush and his coterie knew that their legal arguments were weak and intellectually dishonest, if not ludicrous, so rather than making their case honestly, even to their own people, they avoided dissent by acting in secret and affirmatively misleading the entire country. Using a tragically familiar modus operandi, Bush has carried out his unlawful spying scheme by acting not as a unitary executive (whatever that is), but as a solitary executive -- as if the President Knows Best."

AlterNet: The Return of Bush's Brownshirts

yes the old slow boat chicken shitters are back, trying to destroy Murtha the way they did Kerry.

Will it work this time?

Who cares?
All it takes for BushBlairco sorry I should have said evil is for good men to do nothing.

The women as I said earlier are off their asses.


AlterNet: The Return of Bush's Brownshirts: "Here we go again. Buckle up, the bad boys are back in town.

Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question

(CNSNews.com) -- Having ascended to the national stage as one of the most vocal critics of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha has long downplayed the controversy and the bitterness surrounding the two Purple Hearts he was awarded for military service in Vietnam.

(CNSNews bills itself as 'The Right News, Right Now,' and you can find it quoted and pointers to it on Christian-right sites like Pat Robertson's 700 Club and the Gospel News Network.)"

POLITICS: Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe

While Salman Rushdie thinks Islam is afraid of female power maybe Bushco should start worrying.
American women are linking up with women around the globe to oppose the Iraq war.


POLITICS: Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe: "POLITICS:
Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe
Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Jan 16 (IPS) - Eminent female writers, artists, lawmakers and social activists in the United States are reaching out to women leaders across the world in an attempt to forge a global alliance against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

A U.S.-based women's group has launched a global campaign to gather 100,000 signatures by Mar. 8, International Women's Day, when they will be delivered to the White House and U.S. embassies around the world.

'We are unleashing a global chorus of women's voices shouting, 'Enough!' said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, a California-based rights advocacy group that has spearheaded the global women's campaign, called 'Women Say No to War'. "

Is It Warm in Here? Another story on irreparable climate change

from Lovelock to Lovejoy.

How curious!

Another ecoscientist this time American thinks it may be too late for the planet.
The writer thinks that Americans are unlikely to notice till it is too late, if it is not so already.

Is It Warm in Here?: "Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be irreversible. Scientists reported last month that there is an Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents that, in turn, are similar to projected climate change. With less rainfall, the tropical forests are beginning to dry out. They burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests return less moisture to the atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are deprived of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six, and similar devastation affects other species, too.

'When do you wreck it as a system?' Lovejoy wonders. 'It's like going up to the edge of a cliff, not really knowing where it is. Common sense says you shouldn't discover where the edge is by passing over it, but that's what we're doing with deforestation and climate change.'"

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Civil War Looms; Media Yawns

It would appear that the Shia have reneged on the possibility of changing the constitution, which was the only reason that many Sunni were persuaded to vote in the recent elections.

This could lead to a total melt down in Sunni Shia relations.

Does the media take an interest?

apparently not

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Civil War Looms; Media Yawns: "he has described the agreement to allow changes to the constitution as a key element in keeping the political process moving forward. 'Thanks to last-minute changes, including a new procedure for considering amendments to the constitution,' he said on the eve of the December vote, 'the revised constitution was endorsed by Iraq's largest Sunni party. Sunnis voted in large numbers for the first time. They joined the political process. And by doing so, they reject the violence of the Saddamists and rejectionists. Through hard work and compromise, Iraqis adopted the most progressive, democratic constitution in the Arab world.'

Now it is clear that the Shiites were just saying what the Bush administration wanted to hear; they never meant it and never intended to follow through. 'We will stop anyone who tries to change the Constitution,' said al-Hakim yesterday.

This belligerent stance could easily drive Iraqi Sunnis (in the words of today's New York Times) 'into the arms of radical Sunni groups in neighboring lands' and 'leave the Shiites even more dependent than they are now on Iran and American troops.' Sounds like a recipe for endless civil war -- and a foreign policy debacle of unimaginable proportions for America.

But, despite this looming disaster, with the exception of the Times' powerful editorial, the mainstream media are giving this major development hardly any play. Even the New York Times has its news story on al-Hakim's statements on page A-10 -- and at the very bottom of the page at that. In the Washington Post, the story appears on A-14, while the Los Angeles Times and USA Today do not cover the story at all! And a LexisNexis search didn't yield a single mention of the story on any of the broadcast or cable news shows. So the match that could ignite an all-out civil war in Iraq was just lit, and the U.S. media can barely muster a yawn."

US Troops accused of raping Iraqi children

I picked this up from a Pagan group this morning.
I cannot say that it is good quality intelligence, but it quotes sources and is probably as reliable as any of the sources BushBlairco relied on as excuses to invade Iraq.

U.S. TROOPS RAPE CHILDREN

--- In National-Anarchist-Online@yahoogroups.com, Troy Southgate

wrote:

Iraqi girl of nine kidnapped in front of her school, raped and

left unconscious and bleeding by US troops south of Baghdad on

Sunday 8 January 2005. Americans recorded as having raped 71

Iraqi children under the age of 10 in the year 2005 alone.

-------------------

In a dispatch posted at 7:45pm Mecca time Sunday

night, "Mafkarat al-Islam" Arabic site reported medical sources in

the city of "Al-Hillah", south of Baghdad, as saying that US

troops on Sunday had forcibly kidnapped and raped a nine-year-old

girl, abducting her as she came out of her school after classes.

The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a doctor in al-

Hillah General Hospital, who asked not to be identified, as

saying that the little girl was found four hours after the

criminal attack, unconscious with blood all over her face and legs.

Witnesses said that the little girl Aminah (the rest of her name

was not published) was standing by the door of "Umm al-Banin

School", waiting for her family to pick her up. In full view of

all the people in the area, an American soldier kidnapped her in

his military vehicle which was part of a patrol passing by.

Numerous witnesses reported that Aminah was later found in

the "Maqali` al-Hasa" area near "al-Hillah", close to an American

base there.

The doctor in al-Hillah General Hospital, who spoke with

Mafkarat al-Islam, said that he had reported the crime to

correspondents for the "Al-Arabiyah Satellite TV Network" and "Al-

`Iraqiyah TV Network" which is owned by American-run Iraqi

government, but they were not interested in the incident,

believing that running the story would get them in trouble with

the US occupation authorities and the American-installed puppet

regime.

Aminah's family requested that the Mafkarat al-Islam

correspondent not publish the full name or photograph of their

daughter in hospital for ethical reasons and Mafkarat al-Islam

complied with their wishes.

The correspondent noted that the "Iraqi Organization for

Children Welfare" had registered 71 cases of rape committed by US

occupation troops against Iraqi children under the age of 10

during the year 2005 alone

t r u t h o u t - 2002 Memo Doubted Niger Uranium Sale Claim

The Americans quite quickly owned up to the Niger story being a fraud.
The Brits have hung onto it, saying it is real intelligence that they will not disclose.

Plamegate has faded out of the headlines recently, but Blair has never been made accountable for the plagiarised student thesis, that was 10 years out of date.

t r u t h o u t - 2002 Memo Doubted Niger Uranium Sale Claim: " The analysts' doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous '16 words' in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy."

AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Military Recruiter's Lament

People don't want to kill for Bushco any more.
They are happy to take the risks of being a firefighter but they don't want to go to Iraq.


AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Military Recruiter's Lament: "When one examines the employment picture in America today, firefighting is listed as one of the most dangerous vocations. And yet America's youth are lining up to compete for firefighting jobs, despite the dangers. The reason for this is that danger aside, firefighting is seen as an honorable profession, one worthy of the sacrifice entailed.

Americans aren't afraid to put their lives on the line for a worthy cause. It is not military service that is being rejected, but rather military service in support of a cause not deemed worthy of the sacrifice expected. The military today has degenerated into an entity that is viewed by many in the American public as no longer serving the larger interests of the American people, but rather the play toy of a political elite who use the U.S. military as a tool to impose their ideology on others around the world, as opposed to 'upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States,' the mission assumed when one is sworn into military service."

AlterNet: Whistling in the Wind

It seems there is no one left to blow the whistle to in Bushland.
The agency designed to help whistleblowers is needing whistleblowers of its own


AlterNet: Whistling in the Wind: "The silencing of Gabe Bruno and the whitewashing of FAA corruption is far from an aberration; under the tenure of Scott Bloch, such treatment has become standard practice. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), whistleblowers are coming forward in record numbers, yet the number of whistleblowers who have been helped by the OSC has plummeted.

Since Bloch took office, over 1,000 whistleblower complaints -- many leveling serious charges of government corruption and incompetence, including allegations of misconduct within FEMA before the Katrina disaster -- have been summarily dismissed. In the words of Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, the OSC has become 'a plumber's unit for the Bush administration, plugging leaks, blocking investigations, and discrediting sources.'"

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Bush OK'd illegal spying before 9/11

More evidence comes in to show Bushco keeping spy records on Americans pre 911.

No doubt the Bushco could argue that it was necessary to defend the country then too.
After all, they knew 911 was about to happen.


AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Bush OK'd illegal spying before 9/11: "Jason Leopold of Truthout reports that Bush authorized illegal spying before 9/11, according to a recently declassified document. In early 2001 the National Security Agency requested permission to undertake data mining operations that might bring up the names of American citizens.

The Agency requested that the administration delete those names, should they crop up. Keeping them would be illegal domestic spying. The administration ignored the NSA's request and used the names to compile an illegal enemies list.

Leopold writes:

What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information.

But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law."