Unwarranted Executive Power

The pursuit of terrorism does not authorize the president to make up new laws
By THOMAS G. DONLAN
Unnatural Disaster

AS THE YEAR WAS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, we picked up our New York Times and learned that the Bush administration has been fighting terrorism by intercepting communications in America without warrants. It was worrisome on its face, but in justifying their actions, officials have made a bad situation much worse: Administration lawyers and the president himself have tortured the Constitution and extracted a suspension of the separation of powers.

WHAT KIDS ARE REALLY LEARNING IN SCHOOL

[Col. Writ. 11/26/05] Copyright '05 Mumia Abu-Jamal

On November 2nd, 2005, kids across the nation joined protests organized by The World Can’t Wait, which called for walk-outs to support the demand for an end to the Bush Regime.
One of those who answered the call was a 10th grader named Geovany Serrano. A student at L.A.'s Belmont High, Geovany passed out fliers, and tried to organize his fellow students to support the walkout. When administrators learned of the plan, they launched an attack on the youth, grabbing him, blasting him with pepper spray, and arresting him! He was hauled into the infamous Rampart Division police station, taken to Juvenile Hall and fingerprinted.

In praise of... Orhan Pamuk

Boy, you'd think that a nation that wanted to join the EU wouldn't start suing authors. Well, if your going to step in it, do it right... I guess.
BB

Leader
Friday December 16, 2005
The Guardian

It is not every day that a world-class writer ends up in court, still less so on charges of insulting his country. That is the deplorable fate of Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author of acclaimed novels such as Snow, Istanbul and My Name is Red.

Iranian president's comment on Holocaust stirs anger in Germany

More from the "you can't make this up" files.
BB

By Matthew Schofield
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BERLIN - Germans in government and out Thursday condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's dismissal of the Holocaust as a Western myth as the world continued to denounce the Iranian leader and warn that his statements could have broader consequences.

White House drops long-standing opposition to torture legislation

Well, maybe the Rebublican dominated legislature CAN actually listen to the people and not just side with the administrative branch. Could this be a change of tides? We can only hope.
BB

Senate and House force Bush's hand
· United stand against anti-terror tactics

Julian Borger in Washington and Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday December 16, 2005
The Guardian

The White House bowed to international and congressional pressure yesterday and abandoned its opposition to Senate legislation prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods of detainees in US custody around the world.

Columnist Says Bush Knows Who Leaked Name

Quite the change of stance from Bob "nofact." Guess he got tired of the heat

BB

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 15, 2005; Page A07

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who has repeatedly declined to discuss his role in disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, said in a speech this week that he is certain President Bush knows who his mystery administration source is.

When Will We Fight the New Shiite Army We're Building in Iraq?

Well, if history repeats itself (and it usually does), this is a very valid question.

The inevitable blowback from America's Iraq adventure
Editor’s note: GNN is pleased to introduce our newest contributor Cenk Uygur, the irrepressible co-host of The Young Turks, the first nationwide liberal radio show. In one of the most insightful pieces we’ve read recently, Uygur breaks down the ultimate irony of continued U.S. occupation of Iraq. As The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry put it this week, “This war will be won when we leave Iraq, not as a failed nation-state eviscerated by a quarter-century of a tyrant’s rule, but as a military and economic superpower ruled by Islamists with an enormous grudge against the United States.” Watch Corddry’s bit here. Read Uygur and weep here:

Rumsfeld’s Handshake Deal With Saddam

Here is antother thing yet unmentioned by the mainstream media. Our once friendly relationship with the man we have now captured.
Boy, it sure seems as though the US has a long history of being fair weather friends to it's "partners"
Plus cest la chang, plus cest la memchose.(Sorry, don't know where to pull up the French punctuation marks)
By Norman Solomon
History out of media bounds
Christmas came 11 days early for Donald Rumsfeld two years ago when the news broke that American forces had pulled Saddam Hussein from a spidery hole. During interviews about the capture, on CBS and ABC, the Pentagon’s top man was upbeat. And he didn’t have to deal with a question that Lesley Stahl or Peter Jennings could have logically chosen to ask: “Secretary Rumsfeld, you met with Saddam almost exactly 20 years ago and shook his hand. What kind of guy was he?”

The US Military's Vast, Secretive Information War

Is this really what the founding fathers had in mind?
BB

Summary:
The military has sought to expand its media influence efforts beyond Iraq to neighboring states, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan, Pentagon documents say. Lincoln submitted a plan that was subsequently rejected, a Pentagon spokesman said. The company proposed placing editorials in magazines, newspapers and Web sites. In Iraq, the company posted editorials on a Web site, but military commanders stopped the operation for fear that the site’s global accessibility might violate the federal ban on distributing propaganda to American audiences, according to Pentagon documents and a former Lincoln employee.

CIA Flights Into and Out of Europe

Boy, you might think that the administration would have learned their lessons about lying by now. I guess once you start you just can't stop.
BB

Data Openly Contradicts Rice's Assurances to Irish Foreign Minister

WASHINGTON - December 5 - Amnesty International today revealed that six planes used by the CIA for renditions have made some 800 flights in or out of European airspace including 50 landings at Shannon airport in the Republic of Ireland.

Propaganda and Bribery - The Bush Administration Will Pay Both at Home and in Iraq for Buying Puff Pieces in the Media

BURN THE WITCH

It seems such a tiny, insignificant thing. Why worry about planting a little propaganda and bribing a few journalists when your men in the field are dying day after day? "This is war," says the Pentagon. Yes indeed, adds the sonorous senator who chairs the armed services committee, "this is war". And in war, of course, anything goes (even including bombing al-Jazeera) because ... well, it's war, isn't it?

So two linked stories rise, then fade away. Maybe there was outrage last week when the LA Times reported that the department of defence had hired a Washington company called Lincoln Green to harvest phoney tales of triumph written by US army personnel in Iraq - then, duly translated, feed them back to the "free" Baghdad press Donald Rumsfeld loves so much. Maybe eyebrows flickered when it emerged that some Iraqi reporters and editors are on America's payroll. Maybe the Arab world was still fuming over alleged threats to its favourite 24-hour news channel.

But, war changes - and excuses - everything. Events move on. We slide swiftly back to a status quo where politicians seek to make the media the villains of every piece. Re-enter Alastair Campbell, singing his greatest hits (against the BBC). The director of al-Jazeera arrives in Whitehall demanding to see Tony Blair, who turns out to be somewhere else. Dirty, dud yarns don't seem to matter a jot.

DeLay Could Face Trial Early Next Year

I would like it better if they said in 6-8 weeks but eh, same thing. Things are getting exciting.
Burn the witch!!!!
BB

Rep. Tom DeLay Could Face Trial Early Next Year on Money-Laundering After Judge Tosses Conspiracy Charges

By APRIL CASTRO Associated Press Writer


AUSTIN, Texas Dec 6, 2005 — Rep. Tom DeLay could face a trial early next year now that a judge has refused to throw out money-laundering allegations against the former House majority leader.

Judge Pat Priest dismissed a conspiracy charge against DeLay in his ruling Monday, but with the more serious charges still intact, the case heads closer to trial although other defense objections remain to be heard.

Polluter Playtime

Frank O'Donnell
December 02, 2005

Frank O'Donnell is president of Clean Air Watch, a 501 (c) 3 non-partisan, non-profit organization aimed at educating the public about clean air and the need for an effective Clean Air Act.

In a move virtually unnoticed by the press corps, the Bush administration this week quietly dropped a lawsuit against a big electric power company.

The suit against Duke Power Company was brought by the Clinton administration, which accused Duke of illegally spewing too much pollution into the air. The Bush team initially gave lip service to continuing the suit, but it shelved the case after a setback in a lower court.

In the process, the administration demonstrated a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly apparent: For a government seemingly obsessed with promoting the “rule of law” everywhere from Iraq to Mongolia, the Bush administration can be pretty loose when it comes to enforcing the law back home.

'Gay weddings' become law in UK

Hundreds of gay couples are preparing to form civil partnerships in the coming weeks as the law changes after decades of campaigning.

At least 1,200 ceremonies are confirmed as being scheduled already, according to figures from councils compiled by the BBC News website.

Global Warming and the Right-Wing Distortion Campaign

By David K. Adams
Republished from Sunil/Dissident Voice

The Battle Over Public Awareness

A series of recent polls conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA 2005) has demonstrated that public opinion in the United States has become more informed over the years with regard to the “scientific consensus” on global warming. The scientific consensus is in short: Human-induced global warming is occurring and it is presently necessary to take action to curtail production of greenhouse gases. It is referred to as the scientific consensus because it represents the view of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. The increase in public awareness of the scientific consensus should be considered major progress. This is especially true when one considers the concerted effort from the 1980s to the present by global warming “skeptics” and their corporate sponsors to muddy the issue. The global warming skeptics are a tiny but vocal group of scientists who argue that absolutely no conclusive evidence exists for global warming. Their views have been disseminated very effectively by right-wing think tanks and through Internet websites (e.g., www.junkscience.com and www.techcentralstation.com ). A series of articles in the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones magazine details the financial ties between the energy industry, conservative think tanks and the skeptics.

Skewed,' Secret Study Says

By Scott Shane
Republished from New York Times / Common Dreams
N.S.A. releases controversial study and hundreds of long-secret documents

WASHINGTON – The National Security Agency has released hundreds of pages of long-secret documents on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which played a critical role in significantly expanding the American commitment to the Vietnam War.
The material, posted on the Internet overnight Wednesday, included one of the largest collections of secret intercepted communications ever made available. The most provocative document is a 2001 article in which an agency historian argued that the agency’s intelligence officers “deliberately skewed” the evidence passed on to policy makers and the public to falsely suggest that North Vietnamese ships had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964.

Skewed,' Secret Study Says

By Scott Shane
Republished from New York Times / Common Dreams
N.S.A. releases controversial study and hundreds of long-secret documents

WASHINGTON – The National Security Agency has released hundreds of pages of long-secret documents on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which played a critical role in significantly expanding the American commitment to the Vietnam War.
The material, posted on the Internet overnight Wednesday, included one of the largest collections of secret intercepted communications ever made available. The most provocative document is a 2001 article in which an agency historian argued that the agency’s intelligence officers “deliberately skewed” the evidence passed on to policy makers and the public to falsely suggest that North Vietnamese ships had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964.