byin-rlab

The Secret World of Energy - The Evolution and Use of the World's Energy Systems

2005-10-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

Every minute enough of the Sun's energy reaches the Earth's surface to meet the world's energy demands for a whole year. Combine this powerful energy source (the very source of life for our planet) with other readily available energy sources like wind, moving water and heat from within the Earth (geothermal heat), it almost seems incredulous that our human population depends on the burning of fossil fuels to meet nearly all of its energy demands. And this picture doesn't look like it will change very much in the near future.

Why fossil fuels? The fossil fuels we largely depend on today are coal, oil and natural gas. They are called non-renewable energy sources. But if you think about it, that description is actually another way of saying we use them faster than they form. Over 100,000 times faster to be exact! So how did we ever decide this would be the primary energy resource to power human development and progress?

Continued @ Ecology

Letters at 3AM - Things to come: Part 2

2005-10-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

Long after we've stopped expecting anything intelligent from Congress, a conservative from Maryland has turned the tables on us all. On March 14, and again on April 20, Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett gave two extraordinary speeches in the House (available on his Web site or from the Congressional Record). Bartlett tried to make his colleagues understand that the United States must change drastically to accommodate the coming scarcity of oil. His speech received scant coverage and prompted no action. Nevertheless, Congressman Bartlett represents a healthy sign: People of all political persuasions are beginning to face reality.

Bartlett summed up the problem and suggested the solution. "Oil companies have admitted that their estimates of the reserves were exaggerated." Demand for oil is outpacing supply and refining capacity. This will cripple our economy's ability to grow. "We have a debt that we cannot service. It will be essentially impossible to service that debt if our economy does not continue to grow." Government itself, then, will be severely hampered. "At $100 or $200 a barrel" other oil sources, like Canadian sand tar, may become economically viable, but that will take an enormous investment (and, a point he did not make, a great deal of time to get up and running, so scarcity in the short term will occur anyway). "We're also running out of topsoil, without which we need oil-derived fertilizer to grow food." "The green revolution" (advances in agribusiness that enable us to feed so large a population) has been "very largely the result of our intensive use of oil." A "transition to sustainability" is a matter of survival, but it "will not happen [by] applying market forces alone." (Yes, this is a Republican speaking.) Bartlett pointed out that "the hydroelectric and nuclear power industries did not arise spontaneously from market forces alone. They were the product of a purposeful partnership of public and private entities focused on the public good. This is what we have to do relative to alternatives." He proposed "a Manhattan-type project focusing on renewables." "The real challenge now is to use conservation and efficiency to reduce our demand for oil so that we have enough oil left to make the investments on alternatives and renewables [that] can take the place of oil."

Continued @ The Austin Chronicle

America's Endangered Forests

2005-10-14T04:27:00.000-07:00

Today, the National Forest Protection Alliance - a network of 135 organizations from around the country - released its third biennial report listing twelve of the country's most endangered national forests.

It could easily be argued that every single one of America's 155 national forests face mounting threats to wildlife, clean water and wild places. In part this is due to the Bush Administration's public lands policies, which have clearly titled the playing field to favor their friends and campaign contributors in the resource extraction industry.

However, as any seasoned public lands activist will tell you, another part is due to the U.S. Forest Service itself, which has not only failed to confront a post-WWII legacy of industrial-style resource extraction that scared the land with over 400,000 miles of roads and the near liquidation of our ancient forests, but continues in many places to operate with a frontier mentality that clearly is out of line with 21st Century realities.

"Our national forests face myriad threats from Bush administration policies and Forest Service management," said Jake Kreilick, NFPA's Endangered Forests Project Coordinator and author of the report. "Collectively, the forest profiles in this report illustrate the poor ecological state of the national forest system as a whole, in large part from Forest Service efforts to place private, industrial interests above the long-term interests of the American people who own these forests and the long-term survival of the critters that calls these forests home."

Continued @ CounterPunch

Car companies tackle hybrid mileage complaints

2005-10-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

With consumers complaining that hybrids vehicles don't get the gas mileage advertised on window stickers, Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Co. are stepping up efforts to let drivers know why they might not get the desired fuel economy.

Hybrids, which combine a gasoline engine with an electric motor, have become hot sellers because they are touted for their fuel efficiency at a time when gas prices are hovering around $3 a gallon. In September, Toyota's Prius, the top selling hybrid in the U.S., saw sales jump by 90 percent compared with the same period last year. The vehicle sticker pasted on Prius windows at dealerships says the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the car goes 60 miles on a gallon of gas.

But there have been increasing complaints that many cars, and especially hybrids, don't deliver the miles per gallon estimated by the EPA. According to a study by Consumer Reports that tested the mileage of vehicles in real world conditions, hybrids had some of the biggest disparities, with fuel economy averaging 19 miles per gallon below the EPA city estimate. The problem is that the EPA estimates assume that drivers are operating under certain ideal conditions, such as not using air conditioning and accelerating slowly, that can be very unlike what people actually do on the road.

Continued @ Detroit News

Nanotech solar breakthrough will help spur viability of alternative energy

2005-10-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

Imagine being able to paint your roof with enough alternative energy to heat and cool your home. What if soldiers in the field could carry an energy source in a roll of plastic wrap in their backpacks?

Those ideas sound like science fiction þu particularly in the wake of the rising costs of fossil fuel.

But both are on the way to becoming reality because of a breakthrough in solar research by a team of scientists from New Mexico State University and Wake Forest University.

Continued @ PhysOrg

Permaculture and Seattle's Energy Descent

2005-10-08T22:21:00.000-07:00

Maybe its no coincidence that at a time when gas prices reach $3 a gallon and an American city is flooded with hunger and despair as a result of climate change, that here in Seattle a growing number of people are rallying around the desire to bring the concepts of permaculture home to the city. We need healthy, fair, sustainable examples of how humans can live on the earth, and we need them now. And for many, permaculture is the articulated solution we've known must exist.

"Permaculture" is a somewhat awkward word used to describe a holistic process by which people learn from and design sustainable human settlements and ecosystems. It began as a movement 27 years ago when two Australian ecologists hypothesized that perhaps the efficiency and integrity of living in an ecosystem could be brought back into our modern culture's conversation with the earth and its' resources. We have simply forgotten a lot of basic life skills that are non-harming to the earth's cycles, and it is no wonder that permaculture is now a worldwide tool that millions of people use. Permaculture teaches everything form food preservation to running photovoltaic systems, from creating food "forests" to constructing green buildings, to urban planning. Permaculturists have created sites all over the world, and locally, that demonstrate how to live abundant lives using considerably fewer resources. The results nourish us individually as well as having far-reaching relevance for cultural change as a whole.

Continued @ Eat the State

The Future Needs Futurists

2005-10-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Being a futurist sure sounds like a fun job. Observe the world at large, amass predictions and inspire awe at one's visionary talents.

But is there a future in it?

According to the Association of Professional Futurists, prospects are starting to look quite promising. As companies and government agencies grapple with the seemingly scorching rate of technological innovation and change, more are engaging the services of self-described futurists for advice on how to adapt.

"It used to be there were a few superstars," said Andy Hines, a founder of the 3-year-old association. "What you're starting to see now is a lot of lunch-pail sorts of futurists."

Today, a number of corporations and agencies, including British Telecom, IBM, the FBI and even Hallmark, have futurists on staff. Scores of other firms employ them as consultants.

Continued @ Wired News

Court: 'Dirty bomb' suspect can be held

2005-09-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

A federal appeals court Friday sided with the Bush administration and reversed a judge's order that the government either charge or free "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.

Continued @ Boston Globe

Failing Nature - The Democrats' Environmental Record

2005-08-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush's environmental record can be summed up in one simple word: devastating.

Not only has President Bush gutted numerous environmental laws -- including the Clean Air and Water Acts -- he has also set a new precedent by disregarding the world's top scientists and the Pentagon, whose concerns about the rate of global warming grow graver by the day.

As Mark Townsend and Paul Harris reported for the UK Observer in February 2004, "[The Pentagon report] predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water, and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents."

Bush's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even admits that climate change is being exacerbated by American's consumptive culture. "What has changed in the last few hundred years is the additional release of carbon dioxide by human activities," the EPA admits. "Fossil fuels burned to run cars and trucks, heat homes and businesses, and power factories are responsible for about 98% of US carbon dioxide emissions, 24% of methane emissions, and 18% of nitrous oxide emissions. Increased agriculture, deforestation, landfills, industrial production, and mining also contribute a significant share of emissions. In 1997, the United States emitted about one-fifth of total global greenhouse gases."

It was easy for Bush to back out of the Kyoto Protocol when Al Gore and Bill Clinton undermined the agreement in the late 1990s. "Signing the Protocol, while an important step forward, imposes no obligations on the United States. The Protocol becomes binding only with the advice and consent of the US Senate," Gore said at the time. "As we have said before, we will not submit the Protocol for ratification without the meaningful participation of key developing countries in efforts to address climate change." Sadly, Gore stood by his promise.

Continued @ Counterpunch

Tony Snow's evolutionary falsehoods

2005-08-14T01:47:00.000-07:00

In his August 12 nationally syndicated column, Fox News host Tony Snow equated evolutionary theory to "intelligent design" (commonly referred to as ID), claiming that "[e]volutionary theory, like ID, isn't verifiable or testable. It's pure hypothesis." Specifically, he falsely asserted that no fossil evidence exists in support of evolutionary theory. In fact, there is significant support for evolutionary theory in the fossil record, just one of many pillars of evidence supporting evolutionary theory.

The theory of evolution maintains that increased complexity among organisms (the development of species) occurs through random genetic mutation and that organisms with characteristics best suited to their environment thrive -- the result of a process known as "natural selection." Conversely, "intelligent design" maintains that life on earth is far too complex to have arisen solely as a function of random genetic mutation and was instead designed by a supernatural "intelligence."

Continued @ Media Matters

The Periodic Autonomous Zone

2005-08-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

I would guess that the old life way of transhumancy always proved both enjoyable and practical, at least in small scale economies. Twice a year you get up and move, travel, change your life and even your diet -- a taste of nomadic freedom. But always the same two places. One place is typically more heimlich than the other -- the village, the hearth; while the other place is typically wilder than the first, and this one might be called the place of Desire, of Summer. In the tales of Finn Mac Cumal and his Fenian band we nearly always meet them at this wilder end of the spectrum, the greenwood, the landscape of the hunt which reaches "back" in time to a more golden pre-agricultural age, and also "aslant" in time -- to Tir nan Og, the Land of Summer, realm of the Tuatha de Danaan, who are both the Dead and the Fairies.

Continued @ Alamut

The Hiroshima Cover-Up

2005-08-13T23:11:00.000-07:00

A story that the U.S. government hoped would never see the light of day has finally been published—60 years after it was spiked by military censors. The discovery of reporter George Weller's first-hand account of conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects of the atomic bombing on Japan.

On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; three days later, Nagasaki was hit. General Douglas MacArthur promptly declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the press. Over 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Instead, the world's media obediently crowded onto the USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the Japanese surrender.

Continued @ Mother Jones

The al-Dubya Training Manual

2005-08-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

This is now the official and frequent response of White House, Pentagon, and State Department spokespersons when confronted with charges of American "abuse" (read: torture) of prisoners, and is being repeated by many supporters of the war scattered around the Internet.

It can thus be noted that White House, Pentagon, and State Department training manuals emphasize the tactic of saying "It is important to note that al Qaeda training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations," when confronted with charges of American torture of prisoners for which the spokespersons have no other defense.

It is equally important to note that these sundry spokespersons never actually offer a precise quotation from any terrorist training manuals, of al Qaeda or not. The one instance I've been able to find of US government officials referring to a specific terrorist training manual in the context of torture, is a referral to the so-called "Manchester Manual", a manual found on the computer of a suspected terrorist in Manchester, England in 2000.{1} In the references to torture, in the portions of the manual that have been made public, there is certainly no clear, unambiguous directive for making false allegations of abuse, much less an emphasis on such. The manual, apparently written in the 1980s, says the following about torture: "Each brother who is subjected to interrogation and torture, should state all that he agreed upon with the commander and not deviate from it." ... "Security personnel in our countries arrest brothers and obtain the needed information through interrogation and torture."

Continued @ Counterpunch

Widespread Ignorance

2005-08-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

President Bush has endorsed the pseudo-scientific notion of "intelligent design" (ID) and declared it to be a legitimate alternative to the theory of evolution. This is not surprising, as he has always maintained that "the jury is still out" on the question of evolution.

But the jury is not out -- indeed it was well in before President Bush was even born -- and anyone familiar with modern biology knows that ID is nothing more than a program of political and religious advocacy masquerading as science.

It is for this reason that the scientific community has been divided on just how (or whether) to dignify the spurious claims of ID "theorists" with a response. While understandable, I believe that such scruples are now misplaced. The Trojan Horse has passed the innermost gates of the city, and scary religious imbeciles are now spilling out.

Continued @ Alternet

Permanent TAZs

2005-08-13T22:54:00.000-07:00

TAZ-theory tries to concern itself with existing or emerging situations rather than with pure utopianism. All over the world people are leaving or "disappearing" themselves from the Grid of Alienation and seeking ways to restore human contact. An interesting example of this-on the level of "urban folk culture"-can be found in the proliferation of hobby networks and conferences. Recently I discovered the zines of two such groups, Crown Jewels of the Hlgh Wire (devoted to the collection of glass electrical insulators) and a journal on cucurbitology (The Gourd). A vast amount of creativity goes into these obsessions. The various periodic gatherings of fellow-maniacs amount to genuine face-to-face (unmediated) festivals of eccentricity. It's not just the "counter-culture" which seeks its TAZs, its nomad encampments and nights of liberation from the Consensus. Self-organized and autonomous groups are springing up amongst every "class" and "sub-culture". Vast tracts of the Babylonian Empire are now virtually empty, populated only by the spooks of MassMedia, and a few psychotic policemen.

TAZ-theory realizes that THIS IS HAPPENING- we're not talking about "should" or "will be"-we're talking about an already-existing movement. Our use of various thought-experiments, utopian poetics, paranoia criticism, etc., aims at helping to clarify this complex and still largely undocumented movement, to give it some theoretical focus and self-awareness, and to suggest tactics based on coherent integral strategies-to act the midwife or the panegyrist, not the "vanguard"!

Continued @ Hermetic

Maher Arar Fights to Keep Torture Suit Against U.S. Government Alive

2005-08-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

Canadian torture victim Maher Arar is the first person to mount a civil suit challenging the U.S. government policy of extraordinary rendition. Now his attorneys are fighting the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the case. We speak with David Cole, the lead lawyer for Maher Arar.

Continued @ Democracy Now!

Will human enhancement make us better?

2005-08-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

THE FLIP SIDE of the steroid scandal in baseball is last week's announcement of the first cloned dog. Ballplayers are punished for using pharmaceutical technologies to improve their physical abilities, while scientists are rewarded for pushing toward a similar goal — in the words of artificial intelligence techno-visionary Ray Kurzweil, "reverse engineering our biology and then reprogramming it."

Biological engineering is not just about curing disease anymore. The incentives and profits are moving toward drugs, gene therapies and other technologies to enhance human performance — memory, creativity, concentration, strength, endurance, longevity. Asking athletes not to partake of these advances is not just hypocritical, it's likely to be increasingly futile.

Continued @ LA Times

Taking Stock of Life Extension

2005-08-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

By reaping the benefits of modern medicine and following the tenets of healthy living, most of us can expect to live substantially longer than our forefathers did. How much longer, however, is a matter of much debate.

Some optimists believe we can extend the human life span almost indefinitely over the next several decades with sufficient advancements in technologies like gene therapy and tissue engineering. Others claim we humans weren't built to last much beyond our 90s, and even the hardiest folk won't outlive 120 years.

Continued @ Wired

Leak Investigation: An Oversight Issue?

2005-08-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

From: Newsweek

The departure this week of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who has accepted the post of general counsel at Lockheed Martin, leaves a question mark in the probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Comey was the only official overseeing special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's leak investigation. With Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recused, department officials say they are still trying to resolve whom Fitzgerald will now report to. Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum is "likely" to be named as acting deputy A.G., a DOJ official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter tells NEWSWEEK. But McCallum may be seen as having his own conflicts: he is an old friend of President Bush's and a member of his Skull and Bones class at Yale. One question: how much authority Comey's successor will have over Fitzgerald. When Comey appointed Fitzgerald in 2003, the deputy granted him extraordinary powers to act however he saw fit—but noted he still had the right to revoke Fitzgerald's authority. The questions are pertinent because lawyers close to the case believe the probe is in its final stages. Fitzgerald recently called White House aide Karl Rove's secretary and his former top aide to testify before the grand jury. They were asked why there was no record of a phone call from Time reporter Matt Cooper, with whom Rove discussed the CIA agent, says a source close to Rove who requested anonymity because the FBI asked participants not to comment. The source says the call went through the White House switchboard, not directly to Rove.

Is It Your Brain? - Wrye Sententia In Conversation With R.U. Sirius

2005-08-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

Cognitive liberty ... the individual’s right to control her own brain. It’s the sort of thing that has been the subject of beaucoup novels and movies. It’s been a topic of conversation — directly or indirectly — at one point or another, for almost every thinking person living in advanced technological civilization. It’s been floating in the psychic ether at least since Orwell’s

Wrye Sententia

1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World ... hell, maybe since the first mesmerist tricked the other tribe members into giving him most of the coconuts. But I don’t believe there has ever been an organization dedicated to the defense of freedom of thought.

Enter The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics , operating out of Davis, California — advocating, analyzing, and educating around cognitive liberty issues; filing amicus briefs and generally bringing brain rights into the civil realm.

As a director of the CCLE, puckish and brilliant Wrye Sententia oversees projects that aim to focus public attention on cognitive technologies in relation to individual rights of mind (neuroethics), as well as drawing attention to neuroethical concerns about trends in psychopharmacology and related cognitive neuroscience fields. She is currently completing her Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis.

Continued @ Neofiles

Get liberated with Ronald Bailey's brave new book for a brave new world!

2005-08-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

In his new book, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution, Reason's Ronald Bailey examines the scientific and ethical controversies surrounding everything from stem cell research to therapeutic cloning to longer life spans to genetically modified food. Bailey writes, "The benefits of biotechnology are well known–the cure of diseases and disabilities for millions of sufferers; the production of more nutritious food with less damage to the natural environment; the enhancement of human physical and intellectual capacities—and all can be easily foreseen. It is the alleged dangers of biotechnology that are, in fact, vague, ill defined, and nebulous."

Continued @ Reason

A Strategy For Sustainability

2005-08-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

The ethical dimension of sustainability is basically about balance – balancing care for the earth with care for our fellow humans. This involves a consideration of the permaculture principle of ‘Fair Shares’ – a recognition that at a basic level we are equal and have rights to live peaceably and fruitfully on the earth, and have duties to work towards an equitable use of the earth’s resources. There is only so much of land and physical resources, and history teaches us that people, if deprived of their fair share, sooner or later fight for it, trashing nature even more in the process. Fights over water, for example, are on the increase...

Continued @ Permaculture

Hybrid car catching on with towns

2005-08-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

With gas prices at near-record levels, officials in some communities west of Boston are mulling whether to add hybrid and other alternative-fuel cars to their fleets.

Officials in Marlborough and Newton, which have both tried out Toyota Priuses, said they were happy with the cars and would consider buying more.

Doran Crouse, assistant commissioner of public works in Marlborough, said the city was curious about the fuel efficiency and emission control benefits of a hybrid when it bought its Prius in 2002.

''We try to lead by example," said Crouse, who drives the car. ''And this vehicle has the potential of getting much better mileage than the average car. And, by burning less oil, we're placing less of a demand on our natural resources and helping to protect the environment."

Continued @ Boston News

Shabaka's Seedlings

2005-08-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

Shyaam Shabaka is a different kind of public health worker. He's tackling Richmond, California's social, health, and environmental ills by empowering inner-city youth with lessons in ecology and gardening at the EcoVillage Farm Learning Center. Students who have never planted a seed or watched a lamb romp through an orchard can travel just a few miles to experience growing their own food and taking care of farm animals.

Continued @ Utne

Peter Lamborn Wilson lecture, Woman in the wilderness, July, 1993

2005-08-07T07:27:00.000-07:00

A Peter Lamborn Wilson lecture on utopian communities in America, including a 17th century community of mystics founded by Johannes Kelpius and known as The Society of the Woman in the Wilderness. Wilson divides communities into two types: platonic (based on an authoritarian, usually Christian, ideology) and anti-platonic (based on autonomy and equality). He evaluates communities according to how they perceive nature and wilderness, putting his discussion in the context of the differences in outlook between the indigenous peoples of America and the European colonists, and focusing on those colonists who joined Indian communities or incorporated native ideas and customs into their way of life. Wilson concludes by playing some hymns by Johannes Kelpius.

Download @ Internet Archive

Mom Protesting Iraq War Meets Bush Aides

2005-08-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

The angry mother of a fallen U.S. soldier staged a protest near President Bush's ranch Saturday, demanding an accounting from Bush of how he has conducted the war in Iraq.

Supported by more than 50 demonstrators who chanted, ``W. killed her son!'' Cindy Sheehan told reporters: ``I want to ask the president, 'Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?''' Sheehan, 48, didn't get to see Bush, but did talk about 45 minutes with national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin, who went out to hear her concerns.

Continued @ Guardian Unlimited

Bush Remarks On 'Intelligent Design' Theory Fuel Debate

2005-08-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

President Bush invigorated proponents of teaching alternatives to evolution in public schools with remarks saying that schoolchildren should be taught about "intelligent design," a view of creation that challenges established scientific thinking and promotes the idea that an unseen force is behind the development of humanity.

Although he said that curriculum decisions should be made by school districts rather than the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

Continued @ Washington Post

Doug Rushkoff: Renaissance Prospects

2005-08-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

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Description: IT Conversations audio from Pop!Tech 2004 (Renaissance Prospects): Douglas Rushkoff analyzes, writes and speaks about the way people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other’s values. He sees “media” as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and “literacy” as the ability to participate consciously in it.

Early clues to Nazi goals found

2005-07-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

Who in Allied governments, the Vatican and the news media knew what about the Holocaust and when? What could and should have been done to save Europe's Jews? Ever since World War II, those questions have been fiercely debated.

In January 1942, the Nazis convened to map their Final Solution and by the following December the Allies knew or suspected enough -- mostly from escaped prisoners and other partisans -- to issue a public denunciation of Germany's ``bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.''

Now, a U.S. government analysis suggests that while the evidence was incomplete, gruesome details from coded Nazi messages that Britain intercepted beginning in 1941 could have confirmed and exposed the scope of German genocide well before mid-1944, when Allied troops liberated the death camps and became witnesses to the horror.

Continued @ Mercury News

The Security Fallacy

2005-07-27T08:10:00.000-07:00

There is a major tendency for people to presume that further security measures will somehow save us from potential terrorist attacks. This presumption, however, is an outright fallacy. Nothing will completely save us from the eventual terrorist who wishes to exact violence on our soil. Nothing.

Look at Iraq. You have a nation that is completely occupied with over 140,000 troops. You have a country where there is no Bill of Rights. You have a country that is basically under military rule 24 hours a day. Yet still, violence is rampant. In fact, the U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War. And this doesn't even account for the thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed as "collateral damage."

The inescapable truth is that we are vulnerable to any group that has the will to attack us. Our borders are vast. Our nation's enemies are growing, in spite of the four years of "War on Terrorism." In truth, it's a war that cannot ever end. After all, the day we claim victory in the war on terror is the day we leave ourselves vulnerable to attack. Thus, our leaders have chosen to commit us to what is, in essence, a war that cannot end-- a war that cannot truly ever be won.

So what can be done?

Continued @ Blog Critics

It’s high time that marijuana laws be liberalized

2005-07-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

wenty-nine-year-old Scott Bryant had just settled down to watch TV with his 7-year-old son on the night of April 17, 1995, when 13 Wisconsin sheriff’s deputies burst through his front door looking for marijuana. Bryant, who was unarmed, was shot and killed as his young son helplessly looked on. Police seized less than 3 grams of marijuana in the no-knock raid. On review, the county district attorney ruled that the shooting was “not in any way justified.” Bryant was a victim — not of marijuana, but of marijuana prohibition.

During the last decade, more than 6.5 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges, more than the entire populations of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming combined. As in the case of Bryant, nearly 90 percent of these arrests were for the simple possession of marijuana for personal use, not for cultivation or sale.

Continued @ Minnesota Daily

Will the President Pardon Rove?

2005-07-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

Today, I wrote to the White House to ask the President to pledge that he will not pardon any Administration official indicted during the course of the Fitzgerald investigation. As some of you may recall, his father, President George H.W. Bush, issued pardons of officials under indictment in the Iran-Contra scandal. Many of my Republican colleagues, and some of my Democratic Colleagues, raise questions about the pardons issued by President Clinton during his last days in office. It would seem to me that an Administration that promised a higher standard of ethics could, at least, make this pledge.

Continued @ Conyers Blog

The victim and the killer

2005-07-27T07:43:00.000-07:00

In the Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in west Baghdad on June 24, a 33-year-old Iraqi man named Yasser Salihee was driving alone as he approached a small number of soldiers from a mixed U.S. and Iraqi patrol. Salihee was driving west. It was midday and most of the soldiers in the patrol had just entered a four-story building on the south side of the street to search for suspected insurgents on the roof. A few stayed down on the street to provide security. On the north side of the street stood two U.S. snipers; across the street an American from the same unit and at least one Iraqi soldier were posted. The street was left open to traffic: the patrol had not blocked off the street with cones and concertina wire, as they normally would for a cordon and search operation. The soldiers decided to stop cars by standing in the street and aiming their rifles at the drivers.

As Salihee approached the patrol from the east, another car was turning around in front of him. He began to drive around it to the right. Exactly what happened next is in dispute. What is certain is that as Salihee went around the car, the two U.S. snipers, thinking he was a suicide bomber, opened fire. At least four rounds were fired. One blew out the car's right front tire; another ricocheted off the ground and pierced the gas tank. The final 7.62 millimeter round pierced the driver's side of the windshield, entering Salihee's right eye and shattering his skull. Salihee died instantly.

Continued @ Salon

There Is An Alternative

2005-07-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

In capitalism, owners together with about a fifth of the population who have highly empowered work decide what is produced, by what means, and with what distribution. Nearly four fifths of the population does largely rote labor, suffers inferior incomes, obeys orders, and endures boredom, all imposed from above. As John Lennon put it, "As soon as you're born they make you feel small, by giving you no time instead of it all."

Capitalism destroys solidarity, homogenizes variety, obliterates equity, and imposes harsh hierarchy. It is top heavy in power and opportunity. It is bottom heavy in pain and constraint. Indeed, Capitalism imposes on workers a degree of discipline beyond what any dictator ever dreamed of imposing politically. Who ever heard of citizens asking permission to go to the bathroom, a commonplace occurrence for workers in many corporations.

Capitalism's ills are not due to antisocial people. Instead, capitalism's institutions impose horrible behavior even on its most social citizens. In capitalism as a famous American baseball manager quipped "nice guys finish last." More aggressively: "garbage rises." Witness Washington's White House.

Continued @ Z Net

Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net

2005-07-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.

Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.

Continued @ Washington Post

Italy issues warrants for 6 more CIA agents

2005-07-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

An Italian appeals court ordered the arrest of six more CIA agents Monday in connection with the disappearance of a radical Muslim cleric who was snatched from the streets of Milan two years ago, a prosecutor said.

The arrest warrants bring to 19 the number of CIA operatives being sought by Italian justice officials. None is believed to be in Italy, and no one has been arrested in connection with the case.

"We now have 19 fugitives," the lead prosecutor in the case, Armando Spataro, said.

Continued @ Chicago Tribune

Casting Aside Justice

2005-07-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

By claiming the power to imprison terrorist suspects without trial, or to send them abroad to be tortured by foreign secret police, President Bush is creating precedents that imperil the rights of U.S. citizens.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

— O'Brien, torture specialist in George Orwell's 1984

Roughly a century and a half before Orwell published 1984, his cautionary tale of endless dictatorship through perpetual war, British statesman Edmund Burke warned that "criminal means, once tolerated, are soon preferred." That which we authorize our government to do to anyone, it can do to everyone. If we permit the government supposedly protecting us to ignore the constitutional limits on its powers, it will quickly become the single greatest threat to our own lives and liberties.

Continued @ The New American

FBI document links former Green Beret to McVeigh, bombing

2005-07-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

An FBI report of investigation (FD 302) obtained by this newspaper contains never-before-published information and allegations regarding links between a former member of the Army's elite special forces, Timothy McVeigh, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The man at the center of these revelations is David Michael Alexander Hollaway, an individual whose life experiences appear to be as unusual as they are conflicted. Referred to as "Dave" by his friends and business associates, the 48-year-old man who is the focus of the report served an 8-year stint in the U.S. Army where Hollaway earned the right to wear the elite Green Beret.

Also included in that same report of investigation are references to Hollaway's lengthy service to Kirk Lyons, a Black Mountain, NC., lawyer with a long history of representing members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Branch Davidians and other fringe elements.

And then there is Hollaway's alleged role as a pilot for the CIA and his well-established relationship with the FBI.

However, the most remarkable allegations contained in the Feb. 25, 1997, FBI report, are those regarding Hollaway's eerie admissions that McVeigh failed to park the bomb truck in the best location in front of the Oklahoma City federal building that fateful April morning in 1995.

Continued @ McCurtain Daily Gazette

The Mrs. Thatcher of the Democrats

2005-07-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton: Outflanking Bush from the Right

By JOSHUA FRANK

Senator Hillary Clinton, a likely 2008 presidential candidate, called for a "cease fire" within the Democratic Party as she accepted a leadership post with the Democratic Leadership Council on July 25.

The DLC was greatly responsible for her husband's rise to power in the early 1990s, and Hillary's new position within the right-wing organization is a sure sign the New York Senator wants to see the Democrats move further right. Hillary is apparently attempting to build a conservative base for a potential presidential bid in 2008.

During the Senator's speech at the annual DLC convention in Columbus, Ohio, she promised to help resurrect the non-existent Democratic dexterity of the 1990s. "[The Republicans] turned our bridge to the 21st century into a tunnel back to the 19th century," said Clinton. "The clear mission of a unified Democratic Party is to back us out of that Republican tunnel, fill it in, go back across the bridge, and get America back in the business of building dreams again."

Continued @ Counterpunch

National Security Service created by Bush; surveillance plan endorsed

2005-07-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

From: Politech Bot

President Bush on Wednesday announced the "National Security Service,"

to be organized under the FBI:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/29/bush.intel/index.html

Also, at the same time, he endorsed this proposal:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/06/20050629-2.html
President Bush supports extending the duration of electronic
surveillance in cases involving agents of foreign powers who are not
U.S. persons.

More details:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/06/20050629-5.html
The President should seek to have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) amended to extend the duration of electronic surveillance and
"pen registers" in cases involving agents of foreign powers who are not
U.S. persons.

Extending the duration of FISA orders for non-U.S. person agents of
foreign powers will result in a substantial savings of resources and
permit the Department of Justice (DOJ) to focus more time and attention
on other FISA matters where U.S. persons are involved. DOJ has already
proposed legislation that would extend the duration not only for
electronic surveillance and pen register orders, but also physical
search orders in cases involving agents of foreign powers who are not
U.S. persons. This proposed legislation has been shared with appropriate
Committees of the House and Senate.

-Declan

Libraries Say Yes, Officials Do Quiz Them About Users

2005-07-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

Law enforcement officials have made at least 200 formal and informal inquiries to libraries for information on reading material and other internal matters since October 2001, according to a new study that adds grist to the growing debate in Congress over the government's counterterrorism powers.

In some cases, agents used subpoenas or other formal demands to obtain information like lists of users checking out a book on Osama bin Laden. Other requests were informal - and were sometimes turned down by librarians who chafed at the notion of turning over such material, said the American Library Association, which commissioned the study.

Continued @ The New York Times

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret

2005-07-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

Continued @ Washington Post

Making Green Design Affordable

2005-07-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

The Holiday Neighborhood in Boulder, Colorado is a world-class model of a sustainable, affordable residential and commercial development. By design, its houses and yards are smaller than average, but open space per capita is higher; retail and work/live opportunities are part of the neighborhood; high levels of energy efficiency, water efficiency and passive solar heating and daylighting are standard; and “livability” is enhanced by features such as a large park, a community garden and orchard, and a central, unifying walkway that invites people to get out of their cars and their houses. This neighborhood will be one to watch.

To people recently driving past the old Holiday Drive-In Theater site in Boulder, Colorado, it might seem like a new neighborhood has sprung out of the ground overnight. But those who worked on the multi-year project’s development know better: collectively, hundreds of thousands of decisions and choices were made by various designers and developers to create the 330-home neighborhood, where affordability and sustainability are primary goals.

Continued @ Terrain

STAR WARS: The Sequel and the Reality

2005-07-20T08:23:00.001-07:00

Scholars have long commented on the U.S. government's need for an "endless frontier" - a substitute for the mythologized Wild West. A place Americans can explore, conquer, and dominate, and where riches and profits can be plundered. With the official closing of the continental western frontier in 1890 and the ongoing exploitation of Alaska's resources, space truly represents the "final frontier."

The current Bush administration's plan to weaponize space and seize the new high-tech military "high ground" poses perhaps the greatest threat to humankind in the 21st century. The U.S.'s stated policy, revealed in the U.S. Space Command document "Joint Vision for 2020," calls for "full spectrum dominance" of Earth, both militarily and economically, through control of the moon corridor.

Continued @ The Free Press

John Roberts and Enemy Combatants

2005-07-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

The United States long ago ceased to be anything like a living, thriving republic. But it retained the legal form of a republic, and that counted for something: as long as the legal form still existed, even as a gutted shell, there was hope it might be filled again one day with substance.

But now the very legal structures of the Republic are being dismantled. The principle of arbitrary rule by an autocratic leader is being openly established, through a series of unchallenged executive orders, perverse Justice Department rulings and court decisions by sycophantic judges who defer to power - not law - in their determinations. What we are witnessing is the creation of a "Commander-in-Chief State," where the form and pressure of law no longer apply to the president and his designated agents. The rights of individuals are no longer inalienable, nor are their persons inviolable; all depends on the good will of the Commander, the military autocrat.

Continued @ Counterpunch

Iraqi Casualties: Unnamed and Unnoticed

2005-07-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

Introduction by Tom Engelhardt

On July 23, 2003, not quite four months after Baghdad had been occupied by American troops, Tomdispatch published a piece by Jack Miles, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book God: A Biography, entitled How Many Iraqis Have We Killed? At that time, less than 100 Americans had died in the "post-war" era in Iraq, while untold numbers of Iraqis were dying in those same months. The Bush administration and the Pentagon were already invested in not counting, or even acknowledging, Iraqi deaths, and the media had already established a habit of leaving those deaths largely unconsidered and unnamed. Miles suggested that "at stake was American honor." He asked: "Will it be said -- years from now, perhaps even months from now -- that in the first preemptive war in American history, Americans did not ask and did not want to know how many Iraqis they had killed and did not consider it their responsibility to so much as notify the orphans, the widows, and the bereaved parents?"

Continued @ Mother Jones

Time for FOIA to get tougher

2005-07-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

It is not acceptable that certain government agencies have gotten into the habit of simply ignoring Freedom of Information Act requests.

The law, as currently crafted, doesn’t have much teeth. But that might be about to change.

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, are pushing a package of legislative proposals that would create, for the first time, penalties for agencies that ignore FOIA requests. They also want to create a position for an independent arbiter — an ombudsman for FOIA — who would help referee conflicts between the public and the government.

Continued @ Journal News

Lee plans town hall on war and Downing Street memo

2005-07-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

Members of Congress — including Oakland's representative — will mark the third anniversary of a British government meeting detailed in the "Downing Street memo" by taking criticism of the Iraq war to the masses.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, will host a town hall meeting from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday at the Grand Lake Theatre, 3200 Grand Lake Ave. in Oakland. Eight other lawmakers from New York to Michigan to New Mexico to California will hold district meetings this weekend as well.

Lee will be joined by Berkeley's Daniel Ellsberg, a former government worker famed for leaking the "Pentagon Papers" on U.S. decision-making in Vietnam in 1971; Steve Cobble, an activist and co-founder of afterdowningstreet.org; Bill Mitchell of Atascadero, a Gold Star Families for Peace co-founder whose son, U.S. Army Sgt. Michael Mitchell, 25, was killed in Baghdad; and Iraq Veterans Against the War members.

Continued @ Alameda Times-Star

Justice Dept. Criticizes Media Shield Bill

2005-07-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

Under fire for presidential adviser Karl Rove's role in the leak of an undercover CIA agent's identity, the Bush administration on Wednesday labeled as ``bad public policy'' legislation to protect reporters from being jailed when they refuse to reveal their sources.

Deputy Attorney General James Comey canceled his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee just before a hearing on this issue was to commence Wednesday morning. But in prepared remarks already submitted to the panel he said the measure would ``create serious impediments'' to the Justice Department's ability ``to effectively enforce the law and fight terrorism.''

Continued @ Guardian Unlimited

Lawyer Argues Against Padilla Confinement

2005-07-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

The lawyer for an American citizen accused of being involved in a ``dirty bomb'' plot told appeals court judges Tuesday that his client shouldn't be held indefinitely without charges. But a government attorney said the president must have the authority to protect U.S. citizens.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in May 2002. Accused of being an al-Qaida operative, he was designated an ``enemy combatant'' by President Bush one month later.

``I may be the first lawyer to stand here and say I'm asking for my client to be indicted by a federal grand jury,'' Padilla's lawyer, Andrew Patel, told the three-judge appeals panel.

Continued @ Gaurdian Unlimited

Memorial To Be Held For Medical Marijuana Pioneer

2005-07-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

Medical marijuana activists plan to hold a memorial at City Hall Tuesday for Steve McWilliams, who killed himself on his 51st birthday Monday.

"He was a pioneer in the movement," Claudia Little, a retired nurse from Point Loma who is helping to organize the local service, told The San Diego Union-Tribune. "He was the one who brought the issue of the implementation of Proposition 215 to the forefront."

Activists in at least 15 other cities are planning events for Tuesday to coincide with the San Diego event. In Washington D.C., supporters are planning a candlelight vigil encircling the Capitol, the Union-Tribune reported.

Continued @ 10News

Rights groups sue for FBI documents

2005-07-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups, the Justice Department acknowledges.

The organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, are suing for the release of the documents. The organizations con tend that the material will show that they have been subjected to scrutiny by FBI task forces set up to combat terrorism.

The FBI has identified 1,173 pages related to the ACLU and 2,383 pages about Greenpeace, the government said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Continued @ The Plain Dealer

Cheney aide also linked to CIA leak

2005-07-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

The vice president's chief of staff was a source along with the president's chief political adviser for a Time magazine article that identified a CIA officer, a Time reporter said Sunday.

The disclosure further countered White House claims that neither aide was involved in the leak.

Until last week, the White House had insisted for nearly two years that Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff, had no connection to the leak.

Continued @ Chicago Tribune

Medical Marijuana Act passes state legislature

2005-07-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

The Rhode Island General Assembly is one step away from making the Ocean State the eleventh U.S. state to legalize the medical use of marijuana by the chronically ill.

After the House voted 52-10 in favor of the bill on June 22, Republican Gov. Donald Carcieri '65 vetoed the legislation, prompting a Senate override vote of 28-6 only four days later. The bill now awaits a House override vote in September before being made law.

Continued @ Brown Daily Herald

Over 150 Events Planned on 3rd Anniversary of Downing Street Memo

2005-07-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

Over 150 Events Planned on 3rd Anniversary of Downing Street Memo

Congressional Town Hall Meetings, Public Forums, Dramatic Recreations, House Parties, Rallies, and Study Circles on July 23, 2005

On July 23, 2005, events around the United States will mark the three-year anniversary of the meeting at #10 Downing Street in London, England, that was recorded in the now infamous minutes known as the "Downing Street Memo."

At least eight events will be hosted by or participated in by Members of Congress, including John Conyers in Detroit, Jim McDermott in Seattle, Barbara Lee in Oakland, Maxine Waters in Los Angeles, and Maurice Hinchey in New York. Congressman Charles Rangel will host an electronic town-hall meeting, answering questions from his New York constituents on the internet, from noon to 1 p.m., July 22. Congressman Xavier Becerra will host an event in Los Angeles on July 30, and Congressman Barney Frank in Boston on July 31.

Continued @ Op Ed News

CNN's Bash repeated debunked GOP talking point on Wilson

2005-07-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

On the July 14 edition of CNN's Inside Politics, White House correspondent Dana Bash repeated the GOP's false assertion that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV had claimed Vice President Dick Cheney sent him to Niger to investigate reports that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium there. In fact, Wilson never claimed Cheney sent him to Niger. Nevertheless, Bash reiterated the Republican talking point without telling viewers that it was bogus.

Continued @ Media Matters

Rove: CIA leak came from Novak

2005-07-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

Rove testified that he later informally discussed the information with a Time magazine reporter days before the story broke during the summer of 2003, the Associated Press reported, citing an unidentified person it said was briefed on Rove's testimony.

Rove said Novak, a conservative syndicated columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times, contacted him and offered the information, the AP reported, and then published the information several days later.

Continued @ Market Watch

Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation

2005-07-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

Dahr Jamail reports on the struggling health care situation in Iraq. The report surveys 13 Iraqi Hospitals, examines the actions taken by US military against hospitals and care workers that constitute war crimes as defined by the Geneva conventions, discusses and documents cases of US medical personnel complicit in torture through failures to document the visible signs of torture on their patients, and much more.

Download PDF Version of Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation

Read the web version of Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation

Guantanamo abuse shows double standards says Hicks

2005-07-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

THE United States is showing double standards in its treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and its condemnation of abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the father of terror suspect David Hicks says.

Continued @ The Daily Telegraph

The difference between Sibel Edmonds' case and the Downing Street Memos

2005-07-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

In a recent editorial, Online Journal writer W. David Jenkins III called on the Internet community to push the story of fired FBI translator Sibel Edmonds back into the mainstream media, as they have with the so-called Downing Street Memos.

Ms. Edmonds once had the pleasure of mainstream media attention in 2002, when she claimed that the FBI translation program was penetrated by a Turkish organization that deliberately mistranslated documents related to 9–11, but her story was lost down our collective memory mole once the drums for the Iraq war started to beat.

Then Edmonds reappeared in early 2004 with a vengeance, claiming that her lawsuit against the FBI for wrongful termination was being suppressed to protect high-level U.S. officials from criminal prosecution around the 9–11 attacks. However, this time, the major media outlets paid her much less attention than they had in 2002, with most mainline reporting on her case revolving around the Bush administration's extraordinary attempts to keep her testimony in the Motley-Rice lawsuit of the 9–11 families suppressed. Neither The New York Times nor the Washington Post nor any other major news outlet asked the obvious question, "What is the government trying to hide?"

Continued @ Online Journal

Witness recounts horror of massacre in the DRC

2005-07-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

A witness on Tuesday gave a gruesome account of how a massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo took place last weekend, accusing the perpetrators of locking up innocent people and then burning them.

"The criminals locked up people in their homes and then burned everything," a survivor of the killings at Ntulumamba, a village in the east of DRC, said after members of an armed group killed more than 30 civilians there on Saturday night.

Continued @ Mail & Gaurdian

The selling of the Blogosphere—Technorati's big push into monetizing its treasure trove of data collected about millions of blogs

2005-07-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

Mr Hirshberg's pitch very much played into the fear that most corporations and their media relations teams currently wrestle with: how do you deal with millions of bloggers acting as journalists? How do you control your corporate message?

Well, Technorati is offering services that will help companies control their corporate message by identifying those blogs and their social network, that have posted around the "wrong" message. Then, I would imagine, some sort of corporate "SWAT" team could parachute in and engage those off-message bloggers.

Continued @ Silicon Valley Watcher

Medical marijuana supporters hold demonstrations in several cities

2005-07-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

California supporters of the state's medical marijuana program held simultaneous demonstrations in several cities today, accusing police of aiding federal agents in closing marijuana dispensaries.

Continued @ KESQ

Think Again: Homeland Security

2005-07-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

For the vast majority of Americans, the chances of dying in a terrorist attack are close to zero. There’s a higher probability that you’ll die by falling off a ladder than getting mixed up in some terrorist plot. So why is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security constantly telling every American to be afraid? That’s a strategy that creates widespread fear without making America any safer. U.S. homeland security efforts should focus less on what is possible and more on what is probable.

Continued @ Foreign Policy

Bush's Iraq Speech: Long On Assertion, Short On Facts

2005-07-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

Summary

Standing before a crowd of uniformed soldiers, President Bush addressed the nation on June 27 to reaffirm America's commitment to the global war on terrorism. But throughout the speech Bush continually stated his opinions and conclusions as though they were facts, and he offered little specific evidence to support his assertions.

Here we provide some additional context, both facts that support Bush's case that "we have made significant progress" in Iraq, as well as some of the negative evidence he omitted.

Continued @ Fact Check

California suspends medical pot card program

2005-07-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

California health officials suspended a program that had begun providing patients who smoke marijuana for medicinal reasons with state-issued identification cards because of concern about a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

State Health Director Sandra Shewry on Friday asked the state attorney general's office to review the court ruling to determine whether the ID program would put patients and state employees at risk of federal prosecution.

"I am concerned about unintended potential consequences of issuing medical marijuana ID cards that could affect medical marijuana users, their families and staff of the California Department of Health Services," Shewry said.

Continued @ SF Gate

U.K. Memo Cites Plans For Troop Reduction

2005-07-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

The United States and Britain are drawing up plans to withdraw the majority of their troops from Iraq by the middle of next year, according to a secret memo written for British Prime Minister Tony Blair by Defense Secretary John Reid.

The paper, which is marked "Secret -- UK Eyes Only," said "emerging U.S. plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," allowing a reduction in overall U.S.-led forces in Iraq to 66,000 troops. The troop level is now at about 160,000, including 138,000 American troops, according to a military spokesman in Baghdad.

Reid on Sunday did not dispute the authenticity of the document, but said that no decision on troop levels had been made. In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said officials there had not seen the document.

Continued @ Washington Post

Zell, idol on same track?

2005-07-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

Will Forte, the over-the-top comic who plays Zell Miller on Saturday Night Live, just received a carload of fresh material.

Miller has been caught with his hand in the taxpayers' cookie jar - sort of.

When this nationally famous figure left the governor's office in 1999, he pocketed more than $60,000 in taxpayer funds earmarked for entertainment and other expenses at the Governor's Mansion, WSB-TV investigative reporter Dale Cardwell revealed last week.

Continued @ Macon Telegraph

Why Bush Has To Fire Rove

2005-07-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

The Nation -- In a weekend posting I asked if it was time to get ready for the Karl Rove frog-march? The question was prompted by a Newsweek article by reporter Michael Isikoff that disclosed the first documentary evidence showing that Rove revealed to a reporter that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. In a July 11, 2003 email that Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper sent to his bureau chief, Cooper noted he had spoken to Rove on "double super secret background" and that Rove had told him that Wilson's "wife...apparently works at the agency on wmd issues." "Agency" means CIA. This is not good news for Rove and the White House.

The email--which Time had turned over to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the Plame/CIA leak--may not be enough to prompt Fitzgerald to indict Rove. Under the narrowly written Intelligence Identities Protect Act, Fitzgerald would have to show that Rove knew Valerie Wilson (a.k.a. Valerie Plame) was working at the CIA under cover--that is, as a secret employee--which she was. But Fitzgerald still could build such a case upon other evidence. And Rove also could be in legal peril if his previous testimony to Fitzgerald is contradicted by this email--or the other material Time surrendered, over Cooper's objections, to Fitzgerald or by Cooper's forthcoming testimony to Fitzgerald's grand jury. (Last week, Cooper declared his source, presumably Rove, had given him permission to testify before the grand jury.)

Continued @ Yahoo News

Thompson's Ashes to Be Blasted From Cannon

2005-07-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

Friends and family of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson are preparing to pepper the sky with the late writer's ashes.

His cremated remains will be shot into the air Aug. 20 from a cannon installed on a 150-foot-high tower behind his home in Woody Creek. The 67-year-old Thompson, who had been in failing health, shot himself at his home on Feb. 20 after a long and flamboyant career.

Continued @ Seattle Post-Intellingencer

Flashback: Press Briefings by Scott McClellan

2005-07-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

This briefing from September 29, 2003 is concerned with the leak of an undercover CIA agents name to the public and Karl Rove's possible involvement. Enjoy.

More:

September 16, 2003
October 1, 2003
October 2, 2003
October 6, 2003
October 7, 2003

Deceits enervate an Iraq exit

2005-07-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

President George W. Bush's latest attempt to justify his Iraq policy with a televised address to America comes as more evidence emerges that the invasion of Iraq was a war of choice. In arguing that the United States must persevere because Iraq has become "a central front in the war on terror," he sounds like the man who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court for being an orphan.

It has long been evident that leading administration officials desired war against Iraq long before Sept. 11, 2001. A series of leaked British government documents demonstrate that the lengthy "debate" over Iraq was Kabuki theater, irrelevant to the preordained result.

Continued @ Japan Times

Hinchey rails at Bush regime

2005-07-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

Last night, more than 500 people hung on Maurice Hinchey's every word.
The Hurley Democrat leaned into the podium and looked gravely at the audience.
"We are in danger of losing our republic," he said. He was far from joking.

The topic of discussion: the so-called Downing Street memos, a series of documents recounting conversations between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and high-ranking British officials in 2002, during the buildup to the war in Iraq.

Continued @ Times Herald-Record

U.S. Holding 5 Americans for Iraq Activity

2005-07-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

The U.S. military in Iraq has detained five Americans for suspected insurgent activity, Pentagon officials said Wednesday. The five have not been charged or had access to a lawyer, and face an uncertain legal future.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to identify any of them, citing the military's policy of not providing the names of detainees. They are in custody at one of the three U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.

One was identified by his family and U.S. law enforcement officials as Cyrus Kar, an Iranian-American filmmaker and U.S. Navy veteran.

Saying Kar is being held unjustly, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the government on Wednesday in an effort to secure his release.

Continued @ Gaurdian Unlimited

Marijuana clinic wins in court

2005-07-07T19:51:00.000-07:00

The first medical marijuana dispensary in the San Gabriel Valley is now free to distribute marijuana to patients with doctors' notes, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Yaffe ruled against Los Angeles County, denying its request for a preliminary injunction against Hacienda Heights-based dispensary California Medical Caregivers Association.

The decision is a victory for locals who use marijuana as medicine to treat cancer, anorexia, glaucoma, AIDS and other illnesses, said Richard Gordon, an attorney for CMCA.

Continued @ San Gabriel Valley News

An Interview with Norman Solomon -- War Made Easy

2005-07-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist on media and politics, as well as founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts. His new book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “a must-read for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee, or to arm themselves for the debates about Iraq that are still to come.” Writer-journalist Adrian Zupp interviewed Solomon about the book, which was published in July.

Adrian Zupp: What prompted you to write the book?

Norman Solomon: We keep getting scammed by one president after another. And it really hit me during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq that we’ve been seeing a lot of boilerplate propaganda techniques playing out. Throughout my lifetime, the first real US invasion that I was aware of was in 1965 with the marines landing in the Dominican Republic. I was really bothered, not only by the effectiveness of time-worn, manipulative, propaganda techniques coming out of the Administration and implemented, often seamlessly by the mass media, but also a kind of mythology that built up in 2002 and 2003, from the likes of [presidential candidate] Howard Dean. This notion that was avidly embraced for partisan reasons -- but I think for somewhat comforting ideological reasons as well -- that the George W. Bush Administration’s egregious lies were somehow aberrations. I quote in the book a statement that came from the Dean campaign to the effect that this has never happened before -- America has always tried to find peaceful resolutions before going to war and that this record was shattered by the invasion of Iraq. War Made Easy as a book, among other things, refutes that mythology. I think it’s important that those myths be challenged, because when we have the delusion of a baseline of humanistic foreign policy, then the same old tried and true -- or one might say tried and mendacious -- techniques will simply be trotted out again and people will be largely conned into going along in the new incarnation. One of the disturbing things that I’ve seen -- I’m 53 years old -- is that the slate gets wiped clean. It’s as if there’s no history that matters. And the tacit message is, “That was then but this is now.” As though the Pentagon, State Department and the White House are kind of reborn and likewise the media are reborn and the old sins are simply washed away by the passage of time or a new set of configurations of a particular situation.

I’m very mindful of that now having just got back from a trip to Iran. I’m very worried about the likelihood of a US attack, and some similar denials to what I was hearing in the summer and fall and winter of 2002 into the beginning of 2003 are echoing -- “Well gee, they wouldn’t be that stupid” -- “They” being the Bush Administration officials -- “to go ahead with the war.” “It’s a bluff…” Well I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen but I do feel that the likelihood of a missile strike on Iran is actually quite high in the next year or so. It’s that sort of a pattern that really prompted me to write War Made Easy.

Continued @ Dissident Voice

Documents Reveal Nixon White House's Hate for Indira Gandhi

2005-07-07T19:32:00.000-07:00

From: India West

President Richard M. Nixon referred privately to Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as an ``old witch'' and national security adviser Henry Kissinger insulted Indians in general, according to transcripts of Oval Office tapes and newly declassified documents.

Nixon and Kissinger met in the Oval Office on the morning of Nov. 5, 1971, to discuss Nixon's conversation with Gandhi the day before.

Downing Street Memo

2005-07-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

From: Fox News 40

Congressman Maurice Hinchey, D-NY, spoke out against the war in Iraq at a community forum last night. The forum was held at Binghamton’s Christ Episcopal Church and focused on a recently leaked Downing Street memo. Hinchey said the memo, printed in Britain’s The Sunday Times, seemed to reveal that American intelligence was manipulated in order to gain public support for the invasion of Iraq. Hinchey fielded questions about the memo and allegations that the Bush administration was intent on war, disregarding the potential consequences. Hinchey avoided questions about whether Bush should be impeached over the issue, but said there is rapidly growing dissent in Congress over the war.

Two Years Into CIA Leak Probe, No Charges

2005-07-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

A prosecutor's hunt for Bush administration leakers of classified information has produced no indictments after almost two years, and legal experts say it's very possible the only person jailed will be a reporter who never wrote a story.

In pursuit of the officials who revealed a CIA officer's identity to reporters, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has gone to the highest reaches of the White House, interviewing President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and their closest aides, including deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove.

Rove's name resurfaced in the past week, with his lawyer saying that Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper spoke to him in the days before the name of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame was first revealed by columnist Robert Novak. The Bush White House has denied since the issue first came up in 2003 that Rove was involved.

Continued @ Washington Post

Police Arrest Owner Of Medical Marijuana Storefronts

2005-07-07T19:19:00.000-07:00

San Diego police have arrested the operator of two medical marijuana dispensaries on charges he illegally possessed marijuana with the intent to sell the drug, it was reported Thursday.

Jon Sullivan was handcuffed at his La Jolla Boulevard home Wednesday morning while a team of drug agents executed a search warrant, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Continued @ 10 News

Open Letter to Kansas School Board

2005-07-07T19:16:00.000-07:00

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Continued @ Venganza

Explosions rock London underground and buses

2005-07-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

As many as 40 people may have been killed and many more have been injured in a series of at least seven explosions in the London underground subway system and on a double-decker bus. The BBC reports that British Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was "reasonably clear" there had been a series of terrorist attacks. London's police chief Sir Ian Blair said "traces of explosives had been found at one site."

Continued @ Christian Science Monitor

Senator slams National Guard on spy claim

2005-07-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

A state senator said on Wednesday a federal probe into the California National Guard may hamper his own investigation into allegations that the Guard spied on anti-war protesters.

"I fear that what may occur here is that the federal authorities, if they find damning evidence of the Guard acting outside the law, may very well take possession of that material and take it out of the state of California depriving us of any access to that information," said state Sen. Joe Dunn.

"If that's what's happening, it is a cover up, plain and simple and that's what we want to prevent."

Continued @ Reuters

Calif. planning green power revolution

2005-07-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Only four years removed from an energy crisis that cost a governor his job and plunged the state into debt, California is embarking on an environmentally friendly but risky strategy to quench it future thirst for power.

The state is encouraging energy development, including production from out-of-state and a 1,300-mile transmission line to deliver the power that Californians will need to avoid the rolling blackouts that they experienced in 2000 and 2001. However, it is demanding that the power be produced in a way that doesn't further harm the environment.

Because of its size, market muscle and emerging crackdown on greenhouse gases, the most populous state and world's fifth-biggest economy could trigger sweeping changes in electricity production and transmission across the fast-growing West.

Continued @ USA Today

Christian church is first to declare support for same-sex marriage

2005-07-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

ATLANTA The United Church of Christ became the first mainline Christian denomination to officially support same-sex marriages when its general synod passed a resolution affirming "equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender."

The resolution was adopted Monday in the face of efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage. It was both a theological statement and a protest against discrimination, said the Reverend John Thomas, president and general minister of the denomination, which has 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members.

Continued @ International Herald Tribune

The Lost Founder: Thomas Paine

2005-07-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

On July 17, 1980, Ronald Reagan stood before the Republican national convention and the American people to accept his party's nomination for president of the United States. Most of what he said that evening was to be expected from a Republican. He spoke of the nation's past and its "shared values." He attacked the incumbent Carter administration and promised to lower taxes, limit government, and expand national defense. And, invoking God, he invited Americans to join him in a "crusade to make America great again."

Yet Reagan had much more than restoration in mind. He intended to transform American political life and discourse. He had constructed a new Republican alliance -- a New Right -- of corporate elites, Christian evangelicals, conservative and neoconservative intellectuals, and a host of right-wing interest groups in hopes of undoing the liberal politics and programs of the past 40 years, reversing the cultural changes and developments of the 1960s, and establishing a new national governing consensus.

All this was well-known. But that night, Reagan startled many by calling forth the revolutionary, Thomas Paine, and quoting Paine's words of 1776, from the pamphlet Common Sense: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Continued @ Tom Paine

June 2005 Interview With Anarchist Rob los Ricos

2005-07-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

Chicano anarchist Rob los Ricos is currently incarcerated and is serving his 7th and last year of imprisonment in the Mill Creek Corrections Facility in Salem, Oregon. He is due for release in June of 2006. In June of 1999, Rob was arrested and charged with Assault I, Assault II and Riot. His crime? Throwing a rock at and hitting a Eugene, Oregon police sergeant (well, wouldn’t you?) who came charging at him with tear gas and baton at a Reclaim the Streets protest. Rob was chased down, thrown to the asphalt (an action that broke his nose), beaten, pepper sprayed, handcuffed and taken into the custody of the state.

Continued @ Infoshop News

Jail for journalists? What about Rove?

2005-07-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller go back before a federal judge in Washington Wednesday to learn of their fate. If the federal prosecutor handling the Valerie Plame investigation has his way, both reporters will be in jail -- and not in home confinement -- by the end of the week.

At least one commentator thinks that's just fine, and not for the reasons you might think. CQ Weekly columnist Craig Crawford says Cooper should go to jail in order to send a wake-up call to his fellow Americans. "We need this," Crawford writes on his blog. "Americans must see a reporter in handcuffs to understand what is happening to the freedom of the press. [Cooper] should do a Martha Stewart and immediately volunteer to go to a minimum security facility where there will be no issue about his safety. And he should insist on a perp walk to the squad car. That picture will be as provocative and illuminating as the brave soul standing before the tank in Tiananmen Square."

Continued @ Salon

Downing Street Memo 2

2005-07-06T08:27:00.000-07:00

We have to admit that our attention was elsewhere when Michael Smith published his Sunday Times article on the Downing Street memo on May 1. We were busy focusing on our own pre-election Media Alerts and then immediately moved on to the task of completing the first Media Lens book: Guardians Of Power - The Myth of The Liberal Media (forthcoming, Pluto Press, January 2006).

Our understanding of the story was based solely on what we had gleaned from a few newspaper and TV reports. According to the media accounts we saw, the main revelation appeared to centre around comments made by Sir Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6:

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD" and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy".

This did not strike us as particularly interesting. We knew from former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill's evidence that Bush had been intent on deposing Saddam Hussein from the very first days of taking power:

"It was all about finding a way to do it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this'... From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go." (O'Neill, cited, Julian Borger, 'Bush decided to remove Saddam "on day one"', The Guardian, January 12, 2004)

Continued @ ZNet

The Zarqawi Phenomenon

2005-07-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

From: Mother Jones

A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his organization Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn't claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets). Given that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be based upon administration lies and manipulations, I had begun to wonder if the vaunted Zarqawi even existed.

UFO fan Chris digs up real-life X-Files

2005-07-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

From: icWales

The truth is out there - perhaps lurking in a detached house in Rumney, Cardiff.

A South Wales UFO fan has dug up the real-life X-files thanks to a new law allowing access to Government information.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, 34-year-old Chris Fowler obtained a detailed 107-page Ministry of Defence report into a night when 70 UFO sightings were reported across Britain - including South Wales.

The sightings were taken so seriously that high-level consultations were carried out to see if it could have been top-secret trials of American stealth aircraft.

Chris, who has been interested in UFOs for many years, was delighted with his discovery. He said: 'Ninety per cent of UFO stuff is rubbish but there is a good deal that is really interesting and just cannot be explained away. Everyone should know about stuff like this as it's not enough just to dismiss it out of hand as so many people do.'

Anti-G8 protesters clash with police in Scotland

2005-07-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

From: Wired News

Anti-G8 protesters clashed with police on Wednesday and disrupted traffic near the heavily fortified hotel where Group of Eight leaders are to meet.

Hooded protesters broke car windows, threw bricks and clashed with riot police in pre-dawn violence in nearby Stirling as they left camps to head to the Gleneagles hotel, which is protected by 10,000 police and a 5 mile steel fence.

Protesters put up impromptu barricades and threw obstacles on the roads around Gleneagles, blocking parts of the main highway in central Scotland for more than four hours.

Cutting gear was needed to remove some activists who chained themselves together across the north-south highway.

Save the First Amendment--from Karl Rove

2005-07-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

From: Editor & Publisher

In 99.9 percent of cases I know, journalists must not break the bonds of appropriate confidentiality, to protect their ability to report, and to defend the First Amendment. I’ve testified in court to that end, and would do so again.

But the Valerie Plame-CIA case that threatens jail time for reporters from Time and The New York Times this week is the exception that shatters the rule. In this case, journalists as a community have been played for patsies by the president’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, and are enabling him to abuse the First Amendment, by their invoking it.

Prime Minister Tony Blair Confirms Authenticity of Downing Street Memo

2005-07-01T12:04:00.000-07:00

From: After Downing Street

SAN STEFFAN / WESTMINSTER
DATGANIAD I'R WASG PLAID CYMRU THE PARTY OF WALES PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday 29 June 2005 - for immediate release

The Prime Minister has confirmed the authenticity of a Downing Street memo in which Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, tells Mr Blair that the Bush administration was "fixing" the intelligence and facts about Saddam Hussein's regime to back up a decision that had been taken to invade Iraq as early as July 2002.

The Downing Street memo which was leaked to the Sunday Times newspaper in May 2005 has become a critical issue in the US. Senators Kennedy and Kerry have joined the escalating debate by writing to the President asking whether or not the memo was authentic and accurate. Downing Street has previously refused to comment on the memo's authenticity, but challenged for the first time on the floor of the House of Commons the Prime Minister has finally confirmed its authenticity.

Speaking after Prime Minister's Questions, Adam Price MP said:

"The confirmation that the memo is authentic will cause ripples throughout the United States where 122 Members of the US Congress have written to the President asking if Sir Richard Dearlove's statement in the memo, that 'the intelligence and the facts are being fixed around the policy' is correct.

"I challenged the Prime Minister on whether Sir Richard Dearlove was a reliable intelligence source, and if so, could he confirm whether his statement was an accurate assessment of the Bush administration's intentions and actions. In his answer, the Prime Minister refuses to distance himself from the assessment made by the former head of MI6 and simply goes on to say resolution 1441 changed the position. I fail to see how this is relevant to my question.

"Today is a significant step forward in establishing the truth about the US and UK's policy to invade Iraq. However difficult it proves to extract information about the war from the government, the Prime Minister must be held to account by Parliament, and the President must be held to account by Congress."

Diwedd / Ends

Notes to Editors

For more information about the Downing Street memo please visit
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com or
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org

For a copy of the Downing Street memo, please visit:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

Adam Price MP (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) asked the Prime Minister:

Does the Prime Minister still regard Sir Richard Dearlove as having been a reliable source of information on Iraq? And if he does, is it safe to assume that Sir Richard's statement in the summer of 2002 that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" was an accurate assessment of the intentions and actions of the Bush administration?

The Prime Minister:

First of all, as I'm sure the honourable Member knows that memo and other documents of the time were covered by the Butler Review (1). In addition to that I have to say to him that this was of course before we went to the United Nations and secured a second resolution, the resolution 1441 that had unanimous support and I would also say to the honourable gentleman that contrary to his view when I stood next to the new PM of Iraq, somebody who has had five of his relatives assassinated by Saddam, when I stood by him and realised that he was in power because of the democratic vote of 8 million Iraqis then I was glad that we took the action that we did and made sure that Iraq was no longer governed by a dictatorship but by a democracy.

(1) Butler Review paragraph 287 refers to Downing Street meeting on 23 July 2002 but omits to mention key statement that "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy"

For further information please contact:
Gwenllian Griffiths
Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales
Swyddog y Wasg Seneddol / Parliamentary Press Officer
Tel: 020 7219 6422
Mob: 07980 013842
Fax: 020 7219 2633

52 House members file FOIA request seeking documents related to Downing Street minutes

2005-07-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

From: Raw Story

Conyers and 51 Members File FOIA Request on Downing Street Minutes; Members Formally Seek Hearings in House

Representative John Conyers, Jr., (D-MI) House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member, along with 51 other Members today submitted a broad and comprehensive FOIA request to the White House, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State seeking any and all documents and materials concerning the Downing Street Minutes and the lead up to the Iraq war, RAW STORY has learned.

In addition, the Members also formally requested that the House Committees on Judiciary, Armed Services, International Relations, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence commence hearings on the Downing Street Minutes.

"This is the next stage of the Downing Street investigation and brings the investigation to a new more and more aggressive stage," one Democratic Judiciary aide said.

Following is the FOIA request, obtained by RAW STORY.

Democrats move Downing Street speeches to Thursday

2005-06-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

From: Raw Story

Several Democratic congressmembers, led by ranking House Judiciary member John Conyers (D-MI), have opted to move planned Downing Street memo-related speeches on the House floor Tuesday evening to Thursday, RAW STORY has learned.

The handful of members were forced to delay their plans after the Republican leadership scheduled several late-night votes, Conyers press secretary Dena Graziano told RAW STORY. They now plan speeches Thursday evening, though they could be thwarted again if votes are scheduled or Congress is adjourned.

Among those who have expressed interest in speaking are Democratic Reps. John Conyers, Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, John Lewis, Jay Inslee, Julia Carson, Louise Slaughter, Major Owens and Barney Frank, aides say.

Conyers has also announced he and several other House Democrats will hold town halls across the country July 23, the third-anniversary of the 'Downing Street Memo,' minutes of a meeting between British and American officials at which the British intelligence director said intelligence was being 'fixed' around a policy of war.

Congressman Hinchey Public Forum on Downing Street Memos

2005-06-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

From: uruknet

Congressman Hinchey Public Forum on Downing Street Memos
Posted: Wednesday June 29, 2005

Event Date: Thursday July 7th, 7 PM
Location: State University of New York at New Paltz
................Coynkendall Science Auditorium
................Click for Directions
................Campus Map

Congressman Hinchey will be holding a Public Forum to discuss the implications of the Downing Street Memos and other information that has recently been revealed calling into question the Bush Administration's case for war in Iraq. We're trying to raise public awareness about Bush's lies about Iraq (including references to WMD's, the Iraq Al-Queda connection, implying Iraq had nuclear capabilities, etc..) While many individuals (including Maurice, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neil, etc.) have previously stated that Bush was making a false case for war, we now have independent, third-party verification that Bush was intent to topple the Iraqi regime immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11 (if not before.)

The Congressman will be joined by a Journalism Professor to discuss how the media is (or isn't) reporting on these matters.

Congressman Hinchey recently joined Congressman John Conyers and other Members of Congress at a hearing in Washington to discuss these matters and is a signatory of Congressman Conyer's letter to President Bush seeking answers to questions raised by the Memo.

The Forum will be taped for broadcast on WAMC and for possible distribution to radio stations around the country.

OrbStandard will post audio of the event.

'Downing Street Memo' Has Lingering Effect

2005-06-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

From: The Wallstreet Journal

Activists Use British Documents
To Mount Media Campaign,
Put Bush on Defensive Over Iraq

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 28, 2005; Page A4

A series of three-year-old British documents seized upon by those who think the Bush administration manipulated intelligence before the war with Iraq has demonstrated unusual staying power. That is due in part to declining public support for the conflict – but it also has much to do with an Internet campaign by war critics prodding journalists to talk about them.

Documents detailing the run-up to the Iraq war have been splashed across London newspapers since they surfaced in the fall and hit a crescendo on May 1 with the publication of the so-called Downing Street memo.

After a slow start in the U.S., a half-dozen liberal activists are having some success in making the documents fodder for Capitol Hill rhetoric and White House news briefings.

Their campaign comes at a dicey point for President Bush, who has seen support for his Iraq policy erode amid the insurgent violence that has followed January elections in that country. A spate of recent bombings in Iraq has taken a heavy toll on Iraqi security forces and has produced fresh anxiety in the U.S. about how long American troops will have to remain in Iraq. Facing criticism from Democrats and some fellow Republicans, Mr. Bush will deliver a nationally televised speech from Fort Bragg, N.C., tonight in an attempt to regain the high ground in public opinion.

The documents, summarizing meetings between U.S. and British officials in the spring and summer of 2002, appear to lend support to what administration critics have long alleged: That the White House was determined to invade Iraq nearly a year before it did and that it "fixed" intelligence to justify the invasion. In many ways, though, the documents don't reflect much new; at the time they were produced, U.S. news outlets were speculating that Mr. Bush might be heading toward conflict in Iraq, which is why they garnered little attention here when reported earlier.

Still, the memos have galvanized left-leaning activists in the U.S., with some even saying the matter justifies impeachment proceedings against Mr. Bush for lying to Congress.

Though congressional Republicans so far have declined to hold hearings, minority Democrats have held their own mock hearing on the matter. Meanwhile, the activists believe that a grass-roots Internet campaign to prod the U.S. media into covering them is yielding fruit. At a joint White House appearance recently, Mr. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair both denied they had fixed anything and said they preferred alternatives to war. "There's nothing farther from the truth," Mr. Bush said. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

The current Internet pressure from the left is reminiscent of a publicity battle waged by conservatives during Mr. Bush's re-election run that questioned Democrat John Kerry's service as a Swift Boat commander in Vietnam and his antiwar activity that followed. Though Swift Boat Veterans for Truth used some traditional media to get its message out, the group mounted a potent cyberspace campaign that helped keep the issue at the fore of the public debate.

"The coverage seems to be getting more intelligent," after reporters initially gave the memos short shrift, says Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Mr. Reid himself has begun citing the documents in public remarks, ad libbing a reference to them in a recent Senate floor speech.

The most politically provocative document summarized a July 2002 meeting between Mr. Blair and other British officials. Though U.S. newspapers at the time were swirling with leaked Pentagon war plans, Mr. Bush maintained he was dedicated to finding a peaceful solution. The Downing Street memo recounts a meeting between a British official referred to as "C" and his U.S. counterpart. Media outlets in Britain and the U.S. have identified "C" as a senior British intelligence official.

In the document, the senior British intelligence official reported "a perceptible shift in attitude" about Iraq in Washington months before the war. "Military action was now seen as inevitable," the document says, and "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism" and weapons of mass destruction. "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

In mid-May, three regular readers of Daily Kos, a liberal blog, published their own Web site to publicize the documents. According to its operators, Downingstreetmemo.com was created by a Silicon Valley Web-page designer, a Chicago college student and a Canadian citizen certain they had stumbled onto the smoking gun that could drag the Bush administration down.

They were joined later by three other Daily Kos readers, including Bob Fesmire, husband of the Silicon Valley Web designer. Mr. Fesmire, a marketing executive for an engineering business, said he returned from a business trip to find his wife, Gina, obsessed with the leaked British documents, so he read them. "I said, 'This is it -- this is what's going to crack this whole thing open,' " Mr. Fesmire recalled. He was equally struck by the lack of interest in the documents, even among liberals.

The idea to target news operations came from Michael Clark, a Pennsylvania professor of ancient history and occasional poster to Daily Kos who didn't know the Fesmires before joining the effort. Mr. Clark said he knew nothing about running such a campaign but decided to contact three media outlets a day, including the likes of C-Span, the Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

On June 3, the group directed messages to NBC. On June 6, MSNBC did a segment on the Downing Street memo. On June 9, Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of NBC's evening newscast, posted a request for a truce on his Internet blog: "One more note to those of you who are part of the mass email project on the so-called Downing Street Memo: That's enough, we get it...it's an important story...and all you're doing now is taking up computer space. We're well aware of the story, we've covered it, and likely will again."

Mr. Clark broadened his efforts to include smaller newspaper chains and newspapers, searching for email addresses of specific editors. Downingstreetmemo isn't the only Internet-based group calling attention to the British documents. Overall, the efforts appear to be working. A search of U.S. publications and television news-program transcripts shows that in the two weeks after the London Times broke its story, the Downing Street memo was mentioned fewer than 100 times. The phrase has appeared nearly 800 times since Mr. Clark's efforts began, although it isn't clear the extent to which this is the result of his campaign.

Mr. Clark plans to turn his campaign on Congress this summer and has told supporters to email Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas. "I've been so busy with this that I haven't been out to spray my orchard," Mr. Clark said. "I'm going to lose my crop this year." A spokeswoman says the Republican senator has received about 40 emails but doesn't plan to hold hearings.

Mr. Fesmire, the group's spokesman, said he is often asked who is really behind Downingstreetmemo.com and what kind of support it is receiving from national liberal groups. The truth, he said, is hard for some people to swallow.

"It really is just six people, and I don't even know the name[s] of two of them," he said. "People find it hard to believe it when I tell them that for a $20 Web-hosting fee, you too can get something like this going."

Write to Christopher Cooper at christopher.cooper@wsj.com¹

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Advocate records medical marijuana radio ads

2005-06-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

From: The Daily Review

Montel Williams joins Oakland woman in national campaign

FROM STAFF REPORTS

The voice of Oakland's Angel Raich might soon be emanating from radios near and far as medical marijuana advocates launch a nationwide advertising blitz.

Listen to the MPP PSA's:

Angel Raich: [60sec] [30sec]

Montel Williams: [60sec] [30sec]

Tom Robbins: [60sec] [30sec]

The Marijuana Policy Project on Monday sent CDs with 30- and 60-second spots to 1,000 radio stations from coast to coast.

The campaign includes ads with Raich, a plaintiff in the recently decided U.S. Supreme Court case, and television talk show host Montel Williams speaking about how medical marijuana has helped them survive serious illnesses. Raich uses marijuana for a variety of maladies, including a wasting syndrome, while Williams uses it to control symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

Another pair of spots features novelist Tom Robbins describing his mother's battle with glaucoma.

"We are proud to partner with these three distinguished Americans to bring a message of

hope — and accurate information — to patients and those who love and care for them," said MPP communications director Bruce Mirken.

Although the Supreme Court ruled federal authorities can enforce the federal marijuana ban even in the 10 states with medical marijuana laws, Rhode Island lawmakers have just passed a medical marijuana bill that could get a gubernatorial signature this week.

The MPP ads are available online at www.mpp.org/media/psa.html.

The Downing Street Memo - Part 1

2005-06-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

From: ZNet

by Dave Edwards; Media Lens; June 28, 2005

At the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal in 1946, Nazi leaders like Goering, von Ribbentrop, Jodl and Streicher were sentenced to death by hanging for "Crimes against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing." (Article 6, Charter of the International Military Tribunal, August 8, 1945, http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/NurembergIndictments.html)

It is remarkable, but now indisputable, that the current leaders of Britain and the United States are responsible for just such a conspiracy.

Carne Ross, a key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors in Iraq, said last week that British government claims about Iraq's weapons programme had been "totally implausible". Ross told the Guardian:

"I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too. There was a very good alternative to war that was never properly pursued, which was to close down Saddam's sources of illegal revenue." (Richard Norton-Taylor, 'WMD claims were "totally implausible",' The Guardian, June 20, 2005)

But an alternative to war was never an option for the Bush-Blair alliance. On May 1, the Sunday Times published a leaked Downing Street memo that hammered the final nails in the coffin of Tony Blair's credibility. The document - minutes of a highly confidential meeting dated July 23, 2002 - was written eight months before the invasion began. John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), opened proceedings by summarising the intelligence and latest JIC assessment:

"Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action." (Michael Smith, 'Blair planned Iraq war from start,' Sunday Times, May 1, 2005)

As Scarlett's initial statement makes clear, it was understood by everyone present that the issue at hand was how best to overthrow Saddam Hussein, not how to neutralise the supposed threat from any weapons of mass destruction. Indeed little mention was made of WMD.

The memo then records the words of Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence service MI6, who commented on his recent visit to Washington where he had held talks with George Tenet, director of the CIA:

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [US National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." (ibid)

This recognition of the inevitability of war is reiterated in comments made in the meeting by foreign secretary Jack Straw:

"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." (ibid)

But in the absence of a threat - even to Iraq's neighbours, much less to the West - how could war possibly be justified? Straw explained:

"We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force." (ibid)

A further leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper from the same day clarifies that since regime change was illegal under international law it was "necessary to create the conditions" that would help provide legitimacy for war.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Michael Smith notes that the briefing paper asserts the only way the allies could justify military action was "to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors". But the briefing paper warns this would be difficult.

"It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject," the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be "most unlikely" to obtain the legal justification they needed. (Smith, 'Ministers were told of need for Gulf war "excuse",' Sunday Times, June 12, 2005)

Notice the point is not that it was "just possible" than an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would +accept+ - an outcome that might have allowed a peaceful resolution to the crisis. The aspiration was to cast an ultimatum that Saddam would +reject+, so providing an excuse for war. The goal, clearly, was to lay a trap for a war of aggression and conquest, not to negotiate for peace and security through disarmament. After all, if disarmament had been the concern, an ultimatum would have been superfluous - Saddam was "not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran".

Smith accurately comments: "The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war." (ibid)

But this was merely Plan A of a two-part plan to make war possible. There was also Plan B.

As part of the "attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war," Smith writes, Britain and America increased bombing raids on Iraq, dropping twice as many bombs in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001. (Smith, 'RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war,' Sunday Times, May 29, 2005)

By October, with the UN vote still two weeks away, RAF aircraft were dropping 64% of bombs falling on the southern no-fly zone.

This aggressive targeting of Iraqi defences contradicted Foreign Office legal advice appended to the leaked July 23, 2002 briefing paper, which states that allied aircraft were only "entitled to use force in self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems". (ibid)

The attacks, in other words, were illegal acts of state terror. Last week, Smith summarised the two-part plan to generate an excuse for war in an article in the Los Angeles Times:

"British officials hoped the ultimatum [for Iraq to readmit UN weapons inspectors] could be framed in words that would be so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject it outright. But they were far from certain this would work, so there was also a Plan B... Put simply, US aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict." (Michael Smith, 'The real news in the Downing Street memos,' Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2005; http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-smith23jun23,0,1838831.story)

Straw, Blair And The Big Lie

The staggering deceit and criminality of the current British leadership is apparent when we compare the above with their public statements. Despite clearly plotting to ensure a violent outcome at least as early as July 2002, Jack Straw told BBC Radio 4's Today programme in January 2003:

"What's important for people to understand is that war is not inevitable." ('War with Iraq not inevitable - Straw,' January 6, 2003, 12:19 GMT; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2630155.stm)

Responding to comments made by an unnamed government source suggesting that the prospect of conflict had receded from a 60:40 likelihood of conflict to a 60:40 likelihood of peace, Straw commented: "I think that's a reasonably accurate description." (ibid)

This was Jonathan Freedland's take on Straw in the Guardian:

"To dump Straw would look especially perverse after Sunday's leaked memo revealed not only that Downing Street had set its heart on regime change back in 2002 - as opponents of the war always charged - but also that Straw played a Colin Powell role in those internal deliberations, warning that the case against Iraq was 'thin'. To make him the fall guy would look unfair..." (Freedland, 'Campaign 05: It won't be the names that matter,' The Guardian, May 3, 2005)

In his May 1 article, Smith had rightly rejected exactly this benign interpretation:

"Despite voicing concerns, Straw was +not+ standing in the way of war. It was he who suggested a solution: they should force Saddam into a corner where he would give them a clear reason for war." (Smith, Sunday Times, May 1, op. cit, our emphasis)

That was obvious to Smith; it is obvious to us. How curious that it was not also obvious to Freedland. Straw was in fact proposing a conspiracy to lure Saddam into actions that would help 'legitimise' a US-UK war of aggression.

In the July 23, 2002 memo, the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. Tony Blair responded that "it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors".

Blair's comment was made in the context of Straw's points about the lack of a threat and the need for an ultimatum, and of the briefing paper arguing it was "just possible" that "an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject". Blair, then, was also willing to use UN inspectors, not to disarm Iraq, but to provoke Saddam's refusal to cooperate, so providing an excuse for war.

Blair's criminality in launching a war of aggression, and in lying to Parliament and to the British people, is therefore not in doubt. On November 8, 2002, Blair said:

"Iraq now has a 'final opportunity' to comply with its international and legal obligations by giving up once and for all its weapons of mass destruction... If it does not, then the consequences are clear." (Cited, Panorama, Iraq - Tony & the Truth, BBC 1, 10.15PM, March 20, 2005; http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8579.htm)

The "final opportunity" was a fraud, an endgame in a plot to provide an excuse for war. The consequences, completely regardless of Saddam's response, were already clear.

In February 2003, Blair said:

"If we go to war it will not be because we want to, but because we have to in order to disarm Saddam." (David Cracknell and Sarah Baxter, 'Allies set date for Iraq war,' Sunday Times, February 23, 2003)

As late as February 15, 2003 - just one month before the war began on March 20 - Blair told the Labour Party's spring conference in Glasgow:

"I hope, even now, Iraq can be disarmed peacefully, with or without Saddam." ('Blair speech - key quotes,' February 15, 2003, 12:38 GMT; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2765763.stm)

But Blair had been plotting to secure a violent outcome since at least July 2002. With these words, Blair was deliberately deceiving the British public.

The evidence of a conspiracy to lure and goad Saddam into providing an excuse for war is amply corroborated by other sources. Sir Christopher Meyer, the British ambassador to the United States, wrote in a March 18, 2002 memo:

"We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option. It would be a tough sell for us domestically." (Cited, Panorama, op. cit)

John Ware reported on the BBC's Panorama programme in March that this "clever" plan involved getting the UN Security Council to pass a tough new disarmament resolution. Was it intended to achieve peace or provide a trigger for war? Meyer could not be clearer:

"The US could go it alone if it wanted. But if it wanted to act with partners there had to be strategy for building support for military action. I then went through the need to wrong foot Saddam on the inspectors." (ibid)

As we have seen, the 'wrong footing' involved Saddam being provoked into rejecting the ultimatum - a desired outcome that was considered "just possible".

Richard Haass, director of policy planning, State Department 2001-2003, also confirms that war had long been the intended outcome:

"... the first time I came away persuaded that a war was ninety nine percent likely was in early July of 2002 during one of my regular sessions with Condoleezza Rice, then the national security advisor... I was uneasy about it, thought that it raised questions to me at least whether it was worth it... and when I began to raise these concerns, Condi's reaction was essentially, save your breath, hold your fire 'This decision's pretty much been made, this is where the President is.'" (Cited, Panorama, ibid)

Part 2 will follow shortly.

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