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Bloglines - Cynthia McKinney, sole vocal Israeli critic on the Hill has no worries in primary this week

Postman Patel

Cynthia McKinney, sole vocal Israeli critic on the Hill has no worries in primary this week By Postman Will Georgia Voters Give Cynthia McKinney a Pass? says the headline in TIME magazine reviewing Cynthia McKinney as she heads into the July 18 Democratic primary. The principal concern is to see how this feisty lady "crazy like a fox" as they say in Georgia fares, faced with implacable opposition by AIPAC and it's many allies. AS TIME explains ...."Controversy has surrounded McKinney before. In

Fw: [UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 14 Jul 2006]

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-------Original Message------- From: UrukNet Date: 07/15/06 01:41:14 To: bill giltner Subject: [UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 14 Jul 2006] uruknet.info ???????.???? :: information from occupied iraq :: informazione dall'iraq occupato When Torture Isn't Good Enough Booman Tribune Some of you may recall reports from Iraq which described the egregious tactic of US troops kidnapping the family members of detainees in order to "assist" the interrogation process. At the time we were informed this was a only a limited effort, and that all such family members detained were people who were known to be guilty of aiding the insurgents. As we know all too well by now, such "official" remarks are often a flat out lie to cover up systematic abuses. Salon's! David Benjamin has a story up that reveals the use of kidnapping family members of detainees in Iraq by US forces is the standard operating procedure for many interrogations (...) Yes, there's nothing like the threat of having your daughter or wife raped by American soldiers to loosen one's tongue. Why, I'd say anything they wanted me to say, I'd sign any confession put before me, if my wife or daughter was in the hands of foreign troops who had occupied my country (...) And what works with daughters and wives can work equally as well with sons: In a hearing before Shays' Government Reform subcommittee last February, Provance testified that the Army had retaliated against him. Provance also made the disturbing allegation that interrogators broke an Iraqi general, Hamid Zabar, by imprisoning and abusing his frail 16-year-old son. Waxman was shocked. "Do you think this practice was repeated with other children?" he asked Provance. "I don't see why it would not have been,! sir," Provance replied. Zabar's son had been apprehended with! his fat her and held at Abu Ghraib, though the boy hadn't done anything wrong.".... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24623 Israeli Terrorist Forces Use New Unconventional Weapons Killing Body Cells, Exposing Bones, Causing Amputations Al-Jazeerah.info Director of Public Relations at Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital, Dr. Juma Al Saqqa, confirmed the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s report from earlier this week which stated that Israeli forces are using toxic weapons in the Gaza Strip. The doctor spoke on Thursday, giving the death count at 85 Palestinians in the Strip since the latest Israeli attack began. Among the dead are 34 childre! n under the age of 13. And as of Thursday afternoon, 300 Palestinians are injured. Dr. Al Saqqa told Voice of Palestine Radio that the Israeli army is using new types of unconventional weapons against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the recent attacks. He said, "They are targeting the Palestinian body with unconventional weapons and with that comes a phenomena we have not seen before in any Israeli bombardment we have lived through for many years."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24635 Israel Can Do No Wrong. Lenin's Tomb ...No matter what Israel does, its apologists are either silently cheerful or loudly bombastic in its defense. Israel can do whatever the hell it likes, can starve people, terrorise them shoot at civilians, bomb them repeatedly, destroy infrastructure, kidnap and torture children, steal land and property, pass racist laws, promote anti-Arab racism in their classrooms, engage in ethnic cleansing, kidnap Palestine's government, treat its Arab citizens with contempt - nary a fuck! ing word... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24621 Author of Iran insignia lie invited to White House as 'expert' Sherwood Ross, Middle East Times Canada's National Post has apologized for running a fabricated story that Iran passed a new law requiring Jews to wear a yellow insignia. Oddly enough, or maybe not so odd at that, the author of this deceit, Iranian exile journalist Amir Taheri, was invited to the White House on May 30 as one of a group of "Iraq experts" to consult with US President George W. Bush. We learn of the peculiar background of those Bush call! s upon for counsel from Larry Cohler-Esses, whose article on Taheri appeared in the July 3rd issue of The Nation, a liberal American weekly. Taheri concocted the story for Benador Associates, an American PR firm operating out of D.C. that suckered National Post into running it... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24638 Armed Honour: How to Stop Rape in Iraq Richard Marsden, The Business of Emotions ...The USA thinks it is entitled to invade and plunder an innocent country, rape and murder its people, and get away with it. The rape of Abeer, the rape of Iraq. The part contains the whole. An American soldier imposes his will on an Iraqi girl. The American military imposes its will on Iraq society. Both acts are motivated by the same wretched morality which bestows the same feeling of entitlement. Steven Green is no "bad apple". H! e's typical fruit of a bad society, one morally indifferent to what is being done in its name in Iraq. Nor should he be made a scapegoat. War brutalises both sides to a conflict, albeit in different ways. Every man knows that he is capable of rape—in certain circumstances. When armed young men know they can both die tomorrow and act with impunity they are liable to rape. This excuses them not at all. It extends responsibility to those who placed them in that hellish situation in Iraq. If the five soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division are guilty of this crime, so too is the entire chain of command, all the way up to Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and Bush... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24620 US, Israel push world to brink of world war Larry Chin, Online Journal Associate Editor In unleashing an all-out Middle East war with the bombing and blockade of Lebanon, and mounting escalations involving all surrounding countries in the region (Iran, Syria), Israel has committed an act of naked aggression and open fascism that easily rivals the worst acts of Hitler’s Third Reich. In the space of mere hours, the world has been collectively incited, provoked, and dragged into an all-out war that is on course towa! rds potential nuclear super power conflict (...) The entire world knows that only the US can stop it. The Bush administration won’t. It has only not even bothered to script words that sound like diplomacy, it has purposely congratulated Israel, which has spectacularly executed the shared 9/11-created policy of presumptive unilateral war against "terrorists" (all political opponents are "terrorists")... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24640 BBC Quiz on Israel and killing civilians Gabriele Zamparini Dear BBC’s Ladies and Gentlemen, How many Israeli civilians have been killed in Israel AND how many Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have been killed in Gaza and in Lebanon by the Israeli Government since June 9th when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 Palestinian civilians and injuring 32? Why doesn’t the BBC answer this simple question in its journalistic work? Possible options: 1) all journalists at BBC can’t count (?) 2) all journalis! ts at BBC are on holiday (?) 3) all journalists at BBC are afraid to be kidnapped-captured-arrested (you decide) by Israeli troops (?) 4) the BBC is afraid to be bombed by the Israeli air force pilots flying US fighter planes (?)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24634 Corporate Media Faithfully Spins Lebanese Mass Murder Kurt Nimmo If you watch CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc., ad nauseam, and you are a retard when it comes to real history (in this sense, most Americans are retards), you will believe the disgusting lie that poor little "democratic" Israel is simply responding to Arab terrorism when it kills 60 or more civilians in Lebanon, targets civilian infrastructure, bombs roads and bridges, thus trapping frightened residents in towns where they can expect to share the fate of ! the Palestinians, who are under siege for the sin of demanding Israel stop treating them as "drugged cockroaches" and "beasts on two legs," as Israeli leaders have called them. If you watch the corporate media and have allowed your higher mental facilities to be swamped by incessant pro-Israel propaganda, chances are you believe poor little Israel has "entered" Lebanon as a last ditch effort to stop Arab terrorism. In fact, Israel has messed with Lebanon for decades... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24615 What's Rove Got to Do With It? Robert Parry Right-wing columnist Robert D. Novak’s confirmation that White House political adviser Karl Rove was one of his sources for identifying Valerie Plame as a CIA officer leaves unresolved two other troubling questions – who passed this sensitive information to Rove and why was Rove cut in on such a discrete intelligence secret. A key national security principle for dealing with narrow life-or-death secrets, such as the identity of an undercover CIA officer, is compartmenta! lization. It’s not just whether officials have the appropriate level of security clearance; they also must have a "need to know."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24633 After Supreme Court ruling against military commissions White House, Congress seek to legalize kangaroo courts, torture Patrick Martin, WSWS White House officials and congressional leaders have begun intensive discussions on how to evade the Supreme Court’s June 29 ruling in the Hamdan case, which struck down the Bush administration’s military commissions for prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and said that the prisoners were entitled to humane treatment under Article Three of the Geneva Con! ventions. At Senate and House committee hearings this week, Justice Department and Pentagon officials urged Congress to pass legislation that simply ratifies the military tribunals as they were established under an executive order issued by Bush four years ago. At the same time, leading senators held talks at the White House on the procedures to be employed at the tribunals, which would include hearing evidence obtained from "coercive interrogation," a euphemism for torture... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24632 Middle East: Cradle Or Graveyard Of The Empire? Ardeshir Mehrdad, Countercurrents.org ...One can understand US-Iran relations with such a definition of the current place and role of diplomacy. On the one hand the United States has placed Iran at the heart of the 'axis of evil' and openly declared war against it. On the other hand, when the US deemed it useful for its long term ends, the administration has made contact with rulers of the Islamic Republic regime, notably before military attacks against Afghanistan ! and Iraq, engaging them in such plans. The aim behind such contacts was principally to seek the support of Iran's Islamic regime to defeat resistance in these countries and to help the establishment of an order favorable to the United States. Whenever the Islamic regime has responded positively to such approaches (usually in secret and through intermediaries) and done whatever was asked of it -- interceding or spying - the ultimate response has been more or less the same: the Iranian regime is aggressive and unmemorable and remains a threat to international security. As long as such a regime exists, it is a danger and a threat, even if they do everything they are told, there will be no "amnesty"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24631 Serpent's Egg Chris Floyd ...The tacit acceptance of neo-Nazis in the military is part of a broader pattern at work in the Bush imperium: the "mainstreaming" of right-wing extremism in U.S. society, an alarming development well documented by journalist Dave Neiwert on his Orcinus blog. White-power advocates once stuck on the lunatic fringe now appear on network television as respected spokesmen on the "immigration question." High-profile Bush-backers in the mainstream media -- Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Rush L! imbaugh and other gasbags -- routinely tout "fantasies" of ethnic cleansing, concentration camps and death for "traitors," i.e., anyone who opposes the hard-right line. Bush himself has openly embraced religious extremists like the "Dominionists," whose rabid doctrines of Christian nationalism are scarcely distinguishable from the religious perversions that undergird most neo-Nazi philosophies... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24630 Israel Lebanon Crisis - The Lesson Of Hizbollah Alberto Cruz, Rebelión Europe is used to being surprised when certain crises blow up that are not within the range of the "politically correct". If Israel repeatedly breaks international law by, among other things, collective punishment of the population of Gaza (we can cite here Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that establishes that "the occupying power cannot use collective punishments against the civilian population") in that case we limit ourselves to ! calls for calm, prudence and similar nonsense. Does anyone remember the decision of the International Court of Justice in the Hague against Israel's apartheid wall? Has a single government demanded Israel remove it, as the judgement demanded? No. However, if Palestinian combatants capture one Israeli soldier during a military operation there is a general weeping and ganshing of teeth demanding his uncondtional liberation, although for years thousands of Palestinians and other Arab citizens have been languishing in jail without the high-minded Europeans lifting a finger to help them... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24629 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, July 14, 2006 Today in Iraq Gunmen ambushed an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Iraq, killing 12 soldiers and wounding one, in one of the deadliest single attacks in months against the U.S.-trained Iraqi forces (...) A bomb planted in the street killed at least seven people and wounded five as they left a Sunni mosque in northern Baghdad after Friday prayers. Further details of the incident at the Ismail al-Qubaisi mosque were not immediately available. Gunmen killed a taxi driver in a! drive-by shooting in the Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24627 When a war is not a war (unless the media says it is) William Bowles, I'n'I ...So back to the war that’s not a war. The most obvious thing about media coverage is the fact that without exception the MSM has accepted the version put about by the Israeli government, that its barbarous assault on Lebanon was in 'retaliation’ for a Hizbollah attack on Israel. But does anyone really believe this? Well yes, the MSM does and it has done a very good propaganda job on behalf of the Zionist goverrnment in pushing this lie.! Only one story made a reference to a report that the Israeli soldiers were captured by Hizbollah forces on the Lebanese side of the border. So what is going on here? Not only has the massive military assault on Gaza not had the (alleged) desired result of getting the return on the soldier captured during the military raid on the Israeli post, it has hardened the Palestinian resistance. I contend that the attack on Lebanon is an attempt to divert attention away from the slaughter going on in the Occupied Territories where now it seems the Occupation Army is murdering entire families. So great is the slaughter that even the pro-Israeli Western media has been finding it difficult to ignore. There are also credible reports of Israeli use of chemical weapons against the civilian population, also not reported in the Western media.... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24626 Letter to Kuwait's ambassador Friendship Across Frontiers - Albasrah.net Iraq, since March 2003, has experienced unprecedented sectarian and ethnic division verging on civil strife. Indeed such drastic conditions, if allowed to continue, will undoubtedly spill over to the whole region. In this context I request Your Excellency to investigate the report claiming that Shaik Mohammad Al Ali Aljabir Al Sabah stated on tape and video "95% of ethnic terrorist attacks conducted are financed by Kuwait in the interest of! the eventual division of Iraq into three regions, and ultimately downgrade a future threat to Kuwait." Undoubtedly such activities cannot be carried out successfully without the local support. Regrettably at present Iraq is not short of rogue support, namely the Badir Brigade, Mahdi Army, Kurdish Militia and foreign mercenaries, all unified in a common cause of fuelling destabilisation, lawlessness and eventual fragmentation... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24625 Iraq After Halliburton Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch The Pentagon has taken an important first step by canceling the contract for Halliburton 's military logistics contract in Iraq and putting it up for open bid. Halliburton has only itself to blame for shoddy managment, over-charging and thumbing its nose at military investigators. In our three alternative annual reports on Halliburton , CorpWatch has uncovered innumerable cases of incompetence and corruption: for example torching brand-new $85,000 Mer! cedes trucks and charging $100 for a bag of laundry. U.S. taxpayers have paid Halliburton some $20 billion for such work supporting the administration's "war on terrorism" over the last five years. At the end of the day, they have been cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars in unsupported costs and overcharges that the military auditors have disputed, but that the Pentagon has paid anyway. If the administration's sudden change of heart is really about fiscal responsibility, it should demand that money back. Today Halliburton has completed the major tasks for which it was hired, primarily building of five major military bases in Iraq... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24622 Iraqis! Soon you will witness amazing blows which will pound the forts and the spiders' holes of all these traitors! By Abir's godfather, Al-Moharer.net ...Many Islamic and religious leaders have issued statements warning about this new US filthy last card played by the Occupation and its stooges i.e. the sectarian civil strife.. Be aware! Be aware to fall into this dark trap which threatens our Iraq and everything we have. Furthermore the stooges and their masters care damn about the killing and the mass murder ! of inncents Iraqis..and even if Iraq is wiped out. Rather this will enrich even more the US looters, murderers and their mercenaries. Through our awareness, and our unity we shall wreck all the enemies plans. Forget not! Maliki's government is in a very, very bad way indeed. This government is impotent and is corrupt!... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24619 US may have kidnapped families of Iraqi detainees Raw Story American forces in Iraq have been accused of kidnapping the families of detainees as an interrogation tactic, RAW STORY has learned. A story in today's edition of Salon suggests that the kidnapping method may have been used systematically in the course of intelligence gathering through interrogations in the Iraq war. Salon added that Members of Congress including Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican of Connecticut, have issued a subpoena to Secretary of ! Defense Donald Rumsfeld to hand over documents on the matter. They are due at 5 PM today... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24618 Syria on edge Truth About Iraqis Not looking good here. Much talk of imminent attack on Syria itself, possibly Damascus. Already hear reports of attacks on roads leading to the main Lebanon-Syria highway. Refugees from Iraq and now refuges from Lebanon, thousands of Lebanese, Arabs and other tourists trying to escape fighting in southern Lebanon and southern suburbs of Beirut. A bombing of Syrian installations is in the offing, likely within the next 24-72 hours IF things do not change on the ground... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24617 Media coverage on the assault on Lebanon Eli Stephens, Left I on the News Continuing my theme from yesterday, Eric Boehlert at Huffington Post (yes, believe it or not, there finally is one post there on the subject) quantifies CNN's coverage of the deaths that occured yesterday. He found twelve references to the lone Israeli civilian casualty to a single mention of the 52 Lebanese civilian casualties. For my part, let me note this. Typified by this AP story, press coverage that I have seen universally mentions th! e "50 Katyusha rockets" (sometimes listed as 75 or 100) that Hizballah has fired at Israel, but not one has quantified the number of Israeli strikes. Of course they mention the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, but any idea that those strikes have been manyfold greater in number, not to mention probably an order of magnitude or two greater in tonnage, is completely absent... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24616 www.uruknet.info: a site gathering daily information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts of iraqi resistance available in Italian and English. You receive this newsletter because you subscribed it. If you think it was an abuse, or simply if you don't want to receive it any more, click here to unsubscribe from the newsletter.

Bloglines - Ignorance is Strength?

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pyramid.blog-city.com pyramid.blog-city.com

Ignorance is Strength? In 911 truth Campos dressed his smear attack up in an article supposedly about Joe Lieberman, but the propaganda techniques were clearly aimed at discrediting the September 11th truth seekers. To back up Campos' arguments, he provided nothing at all, except for name calling.

Bloglines - Israel Shows World How To Deal With Terrorists

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Mein BlogoVault The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ~ Edmund Burke

Israel Shows World How To Deal With Terrorists By Good Lieutenant No talk. No compromise. No appeasement. Threaten them, and back it up with lethal force. Lots of it . Keep the pressure on. Do not back down because of whiny, impotent socialists in Europe. Watch and learn, peaceniks and antiwarbots. You can't take the "starving alligator" approach with Islamists, where you keep feeding the alligator little pieces of meat while it eats everyone else - eventually, you are going to be on the menu when the tidbits run out. Talk like this is encouraging - Israel has been taking Islamist terrorists rockets, suicide bombs, invasions, kidnappings, etc. for years: Iran and Syria both "are playing with fire and will bear the consequences" for any assistance they give Hezbollah in holding the two soldiers as hostages. Go, my fine Jewish allies. Go forth, and show these animals what it means to push around Western civilization. Hussein found out. Zarqawi and oodles of dead terrorists in Iraq found out. The Taliban found out. Khadafi found out. Hezbollah is learning. Iran is watching, and despite the Nazi-like rhetoric, will be inneffectual in an actual tactical strike against Israel. The IDF is too well armed, trained and resolved to take any guff from Iran's Hitler Jr. And another thing gets me. The Neville Chamberlains of the world demand "proportional response?" What exactly is that? Israel kidnapping militants, hodling them hostage while they blindly fire rockets into civilian population centers deep in Lebanon- targeting innocents? Here's to Israel and her continued success at wiping these Islamist pigs off the planet once and for all.

Bloglines - CNN's King, Kagan echoed Republican falsehoods on Wilson's trip to Niger

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Media Matters for America Latest Media Matters for America items

CNN's King, Kagan echoed Republican falsehoods on Wilson's trip to Niger In War in Iraq On the July 14 edition of CNN's Live Today, host Daryn Kagan and chief national correspondent John King repeated two falsehoods frequently advanced by conservatives to attack former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who - along with his wife, former CIA-operative Valerie Plame -- filed a lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney, White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, and former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby the previous day. First, King falsely claimed that Wilson "did say in one television interview, and ... intimated in some others, that the vice president had sent him to Niger" to investigate reports that Iraq had sought to purchase yellowcake uranium from that country. Later, both King and Kagan claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee found that Plame "sent" Wilson on the trip to Niger. As Media Matters for America has noted numerous times, Wilson did not claim Cheney sent him to Niger, and the Senate Intelligence Committee report did not officially conclude that Plame was responsible for sending Wilson on the trip. Falsehood #1: Wilson claimed Cheney sent him to Niger During his discussion with Kagan, King stated that the matter of "who decided Joe Wilson goes to Niger" was a "thing in contention" and "an open question," and that Wilson "did say in one television interview, and he intimated in some others, that the vice president had sent him to Niger." But as Media Matters has noted, Wilson did not claim that Cheney sent him to Niger. King's assertion appears to echo a Republican National Committee (RNC) talking points memo made public on July 12, 2005, which accused Wilson of falsely claiming "that it was Vice President Cheney who sent him to Niger." To support this accusation, the RNC misrepresented Wilson's July 6, 2003, op-ed in The New York Times, in which he criticized the Bush administration's use of intelligence to suggest that Iraq had sought to purchase yellowcake uranium in Africa. Additionally, the RNC distorted a remark Wilson made in an August 3, 2003, interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. Contrary to the allegations advanced by the RNC -- and apparently adopted by King -- Wilson clearly stated in the op-ed that "agency officials" at the CIA had requested he travel to Niger. Further, in the CNN appearance, he stated it was "absolutely true" that Cheney was unaware he went on the trip. King's remark was first noted by Joshua Micah Marshall on his Talking Points Memo weblog. Falsehood #2: The Senate Intelligence Committee found that Plame sent Wilson to Niger Additionally, King and Kagan both falsely claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee "said that she [Plame] sent him [Wilson]" to Niger. This claim echoes previous conservative attacks on Wilson, including those of RNC chairman Ken Mehlman and syndicated columnist Robert Novak. Both suggested that Wilson's trip to Niger was the result of nepotism, in an attempt to discredit his subsequent criticism of the Bush administration. But as Media Matters previously noted, in an addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2004 Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) wrote that Democrats on the committee had prevented the inclusion of the following statement as an official conclusion of the report: "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee." Additionally, unnamed intelligence officials have been subsequently quoted in the media claiming that the CIA -- not Plame -- selected Wilson for the mission, and CIA officials have disputed the accuracy of a State Department intelligence memo that reportedly indicates that Plame "suggested" Wilson's name for the trip. From the July 14 edition of CNN's Live Today: KAGAN: There you have the husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson. Before that, Valerie Plame, the other plaintiff in this lawsuit, the former CIA officer, talking about how she would rather be a public servant at this time rather than a plaintiff in a lawsuit. And then the former ambassador going back and retracting this trip to Niger in 2003 that really is the crux of what this controversy grew out of. I want to go ahead and bring back in John King and talk about that trip a little bit. One thing in contention here is, who decided Joe Wilson goes to Niger? There are the allegations that it was Valerie Plame as a CIA officer who said, "We should send my husband." They say that that's not true, however. KING: Well, Daryn, this is one of the key contentions and it will be a key contention not only if this suit goes forward, but it is a key contention in a court of law right now: the federal trial of the former vice presidential chief of staff, Scooter Libby. And among the exhibits in the trial the prosecutor put in, that column Joe Wilson just mentioned with some scribbles by Vice President Cheney asking, who sent him? Did his wife send him? Was this a junket? The vice president asking those questions of his chief of staff, Scooter Libby. It is an open question. But what the White House says happened -- you heard Ambassador Wilson say that this was a deliberate effort to punish and discredit his wife. What Scooter Libby has said in the hearings before his trial is that, no, they were trying to discredit what Joe Wilson said, take issue with some things they say were factual and that his wife came up almost as an afterthought when they were dealing with that point, who sent Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson did say in one television interview, and he intimated in some others, that the vice president had sent him to Niger. What the White House is saying, that it was responding saying, no, he didn't. That the vice president had nothing to do with that trip, that he asked the CIA, is there any more information about uranium and can we check this out a little bit more? Can we find out more about this? And the CIA decided to send Joe Wilson. His wife was involved in that at some level, some officials say. Others say she came into the process very late. That is a debating point, Daryn. KAGAN: Well, the Senate Intelligence Commission investigation said that she sent him. KING: Yes, the Senate Intelligence Committee said that she sent him. And what Ambassador Wilson and his wife said is the intelligence committee investigation was led by Republicans, and that if you go into the CIA it's more complicated than that, that at some point she was brought into the loop and said, "Well, he knows the territory, he certainly could be helpful there." So if this goes forward, this is one of the issues that will be in this civil trial that they have filed and also in the criminal trial of Scooter Libby. This is one of the issues. Although one of the reasons many people think this suit is being filed now is because the judge has narrowed the focus in the Scooter Libby trial, and that many of the issues Ambassador Wilson would like explored in that trial, would like put on to the public record, will not be because Scooter Libby is not charged with leaking Valerie Wilson's name. He's charged with lying to investigators and lying to the grand jury. Karl Rove was not charged in this case because the source of the original column, Bob Novak, says that Karl Rove was not his number-one source. So the trial has not gone, if you will, to this open-ended process to tell this whole story over and over again. And many think that's one of the reasons Ambassador Wilson and his wife wanted to file this suit, because there are questions they want addressed that will simply not be answered in Scooter Libby's trial. KAGAN: John King in Washington. John, thank you.

Flight 77 Revisited (58 Passingers and 6 crew)

American Airlines Flight 77, from Washington to Los Angeles, crashed into the Pentagon with 64 people aboard.

CNN.com Specials

They were joined by four flight attendants and 58 passengers, giving a total of 64 aboard when the plane took off at 8:20 a.m.

It had 58 passengers, four flight attendants and two pilots aboard, the airline said.

technorati tags:Flight_77, 9/11, passengers

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Bloglines - David Horowitz: Kill More Arabs

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Another Day in the Empire

David Horowitz: Kill More Arabs By Administrator on Uncategorized David Horowitz, former Marxist gone to neocon seed, salivating over a possible war in the Middle East, writes: “Americans need to take a hard look at what is going on in the Middle East, because it provides the clearest picture possible of the war we are in. The war reveals the impossibility of a Palestinian state and the necessity of a civilized occupying force in a region that is populated by a people who have been terminally brainwashed into an ideology of hate, which makes their self-government a crime waiting to happen.” Civilized—you know, like bombing families with twelve children while they sleep. In other words, the Israelis should run roughshod over the Arabs forever because, as David tells us, all of them, down to the last man, woman, and child are “bad guys,” as they like to say in Washington. From the Black Panthers to the Likudites, Horowitz has made quite the transformation, although the fanaticism and radicalism has not left his bones. He considers himself a “conservative,” codeword these days for a Jacobin neocon. He writes: “The goal of the United States and Israel and all freedom-loving and civilized people in this war must be the destruction of the Hamas and Hizbollah leadership, their military infrastructure and capabilities. If there was a UN worthy of the name, it would expel Syria and Iran from its body, and send a Security Council armed force to the West Bank and Gaza to institute an occupation whose duration should not be less than a generation. During this occupation, the hate schools of the West Bank and Gaza should be revamped so that the children of Palestinian Arabs are taught basic rules of civilized behavior—tolerance instead of ethnic and religious hatred…” Horowitz wants the United States to join in on the brutal and illegal attack against the people of Lebanon, sort of a continuation of Iraq, a “war” even Philip Zelikow, Bush advisor, admitted was launched in Israel’s name. Horowitz, like John Bolton, would like to see the United Nations “reformed” (i.e., all countries not with us, but against us, evicted, leaving about two or three nations, including a couple broken down ones from eastern Europe tagging along with their rattling tin cups). This new membership will be tasked with indoctrinating Palestinians, making damn sure they finally understand resistance is futile and they are, indeed, nothing but lowly hewers of wood and drawers of water for the altar of Yhwh, or at least the Zionist state. In fact, for the current generation of Likudites and their neocon fellow travelers, this status is too good—the Palestinians must be ethnically cleansed (more polite Israelis call this “transfer,” sort of like a ticket punched at a bus terminal, although for many Palestinians this bus ride will end up in a squalid refugee camp, later to be bombed by another generation of Israelis, citizens of the only democracy in the Middle East). Golda Meir simply refused to acknowledge the Palestinians. However, the group of Israelis supported by Horowitz are determined to kill them—that is if the Palestinians cannot summon up the required humility to grovel and beg for their lives, plead for a place at the table, or rather beneath the table, where the dogs fight for the master’s scraps. Horowitz and his buddies think they have a monopoly on civilized behavior and tolerance, all the while supporting and cheerleading ethnic and religious hatred, beginning with Arabs and extending out to encompass Mizrachi or Sephardic Jews from Arab countries. Down near the bottom, near the Arabs, are the Ethiopian Jews. Israel has the sort of democracy practiced in Alabama, circa 1920, or maybe South Africa. No, Israel is far worse than South Africa, as the latter did not habitually attack Tswanaland or Bushmanland the way the former attacks Gaza and the West Bank. Anyway, it is telling the way the Israelis are conducting themselves in Lebanon, refusing to send in ground troops and instead attacking the Lebanese from the air and sea with U.S. provided F-16s and Apache attack helicopters. Israel remembers well how it suffered a humiliating defeat in 2000, forced to leave southern Lebanon due to the persistence of Hezbollah. If they send in ground troops, they will face once again explosive-laden donkey carts and land mines at every turn. It will be a nightmare and Olmert knows it. But then there is always Israel’s “friend,” the United States, a lumbering and stupid giant repeatedly suckered into fighting battles for the conniving outlaw state. If Israel can stir up enough trouble—attack Syria, piss off Iran, get them involved—the United States will undoubtedly do Israel’s bidding once again. And that will put a smile on David Horowitz’s face. Comments

Scoop: Leopold: Why Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Filed

Scoop: Leopold: Why Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Filed

Intensidad... o Lago Fagnano

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Bloglines - Oppose the Israeli assault on Gaza and Lebanon!

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Left I on the News A leftwing view of the day's news and the way it's presented in the media

Oppose the Israeli assault on Gaza and Lebanon! By Eli For those of you who couldn't make the demonstration today in San Francisco, here's your chance to participate virtually: And a still if you have trouble seeing the video above: And while we're on the subject of demonstrations, Politics in the Zeros has videos, stills, mp3 files, and details of a recent anti-Minutemen demonstration in Los Angeles at which demonstrators were viciously beaten by the LAPD (beaten badly enough to require hospital visits). Not only were they beaten, several of the anti-racist demonstrators were arrested; one was actually charged with lynching! ANSWER-LA is now suing the LAPD as well as demanding the charges be dropped; after you familiarize yourself with the details at Politics in the Zeros, stand up for your own rights to demonstrate by sending a letter on behalf of the demonstrators.

Bloglines - Media coverage on the assault on Lebanon

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Left I on the News A leftwing view of the day's news and the way it's presented in the media

Media coverage on the assault on Lebanon By Eli Continuing my theme from yesterday, Eric Boehlert at Huffington Post (yes, believe it or not, there finally is one post there on the subject) quantifies CNN's coverage of the deaths that occured yesterday. He found twelve references to the lone Israeli civilian casualty to a single mention of the 52 Lebanese civilian casualties. For my part, let me note this. Typified by this AP story, press coverage that I have seen universally mentions the "50 Katyusha rockets" (sometimes listed as 75 or 100) that Hizballah has fired at Israel, but not one has quantified the number of Israeli strikes. Of course they mention the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, but any idea that those strikes have been manyfold greater in number, not to mention probably an order of magnitude or two greater in tonnage, is completely absent. 73 Lebanese, "almost all civilians" according to AP, have now been killed. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice describes this in this way: "I think they understand the need to exercise restraint." Evidentally not showing restraint to Condi would involve the use of nuclear weapons; anything else is "exercising restraint," violations of international law and common decency notwithstanding.

Israel Crosses the Line

Israel Crosses the Line

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Bloglines - Israeli Attacks Kill More Women and Children

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS - LiveJournal.com

Israeli Attacks Kill More Women and Children Thursday, July 13, 2006 Lebanese Civilian Deaths Rise, Arab Foreign Ministers Plan Emergency Meeting while European Stocks Fall Compiled by Daily Star staff The Israeli army has warned Lebanon to evacuate all residents from a southern Beirut neighborhood where it believes Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah lives, Israeli media reported on Thursday. The United States, reacting to escalating violence between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, on Thursday urged restraint on both sides but said Israel had a right to defend itself. “We are urging restraint on both sides, recognizing Israel's right to defend itself” a U.S. administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Death tolls from dawn air strikes in Lebanon are now estimated at least 47 civilians and wound over 100 people. Lebanese officials say that a family of 10 and another family of seven were killed in their homes in the village of Dweir, the officials said. Israeli fighter-bombers continued their assault on Lebanon striking a Shiite Muslim prayer house in a village in the eastern Bekaa valley of Lebanon today. While Hizbollah continued its military escalation for Israeli “massacres” by firing 60 Katyusha rockets at Nahariya in northern Israel killing one. Meanwhile Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz vowed Thursday that Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas would be prevented from returning to their strongholds on the border with Israel following the abduction of two soldiers. In response to the growing Israeli initiated crisis Arab foreign ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting in Cairo Saturday to discuss the latest deadly escalation between Israel and Lebanon and the Palestinians. The meeting "will examine the serious situation in Lebanon and in Palestine, as well as the aggressions and threats made by Israel against them," the pan-Arab body said in a statement. While financial impacts of Israel’s assault on Lebanon continued to grow with European stock markets falling heavily on Thursday as investors worried over international tensions and the rise of oil prices after Israel bombarded Lebanon in a new twist to the Middle East conflict, they added. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=73935 Comments

Bloglines - U.S. accused of kidnappings in Iraq: Rumsfeld must respond to Congress by 5 ET

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS - LiveJournal.com

U.S. accused of kidnappings in Iraq: Rumsfeld must respond to Congress by 5 ET Congress demands that the Pentagon release documents that could show U.S. forces kidnapped family members of terror suspects. By Mark Benjamin Jul. 14, 2006 | Congress has demanded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hand over a raft of documents to Congress that could substantiate allegations that U.S. forces have tried to break terror suspects by kidnapping and mistreating their family members. Rumsfeld has until 5 p.m. Friday to comply. It now appears that kidnapping, scarcely covered by the media, and absent in the major military investigations of detainee abuse, may have been systematically employed by U.S. troops. Salon has obtained Army documents that show several cases where U.S. forces abducted terror suspects’ families. After he was thrown in prison, Cpl. Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader at Abu Ghraib, told investigators the military routinely kidnapped family members to force suspects to turn themselves in. A House subcommittee led by Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays took the unusual step last month of issuing Rumsfeld a subpoena for the documents after months of stonewalling by the Pentagon. Shays had requested the documents in a March 7 letter. "There was no response" to the letter, a frustrated Shays told Salon. "We are not going to back off this." The subpoena demands that the Pentagon turn over documents about apparent retribution by the military against Army Spc. Samuel Provance, a whistle-blower, who sought to expose abuse at the infamous prison by talking to military investigators and the press. Following his revelations, the Army demoted Provance from sergeant and revoked his security clearance. The subpoena also includes a separate demand, at the behest of Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., for any documents that might show that U.S. forces were systematically detaining family members of suspects at Abu Ghraib, and mistreating them to force suspects to talk. In a hearing before Shays' Government Reform subcommittee last February, Provance testified that the Army had retaliated against him. Provance also made the disturbing allegation that interrogators broke an Iraqi general, Hamid Zabar, by imprisoning and abusing his frail 16-year-old son. Waxman was shocked. "Do you think this practice was repeated with other children?" he asked Provance. "I don't see why it would not have been, sir," Provance replied. Zabar's son had been apprehended with his father and held at Abu Ghraib, though the boy hadn't done anything wrong. "He was useless," Provance said about the boy in a phone interview with Salon from Heidelberg, Germany, where he is still in the Army. "He was of no intelligence value." But, Provance said, interrogators grew frustrated when the boy's father, Zabar, wouldn't talk, despite a 14-hour interrogation. So they stripped Zabar's son naked and doused him with mud and water. They put him in the open back of a truck and drove around in the frigid January night air until the boy began to freeze. Zabar was then made to look at his suffering son. "During the interrogation, they could not get him to talk," Provance recalled. "They said, 'OK, we are going to let you see your son.' They allow him to see his son in this shivering, freezing, naked state," Provance said. "That just totally broke his heart and that is when he said, 'I'll tell you what you want to know.'" Provance said the boy was timid and afraid. "He was so skinny and so frail, and he was scared out of his mind," Provance remembered. "He was so skinny the handcuffs would not fit securely on his wrist. I had to put this green sandbag on his head. I just felt like a horrible person doing this." Provance was not an interrogator; at that time, he worked on a security detail at Abu Ghraib. He said he did not see firsthand the boy being abused in the truck, although an interrogator working on the general's case later explained the abuse to Provance in detail. Provance's account does not appear to be an isolated allegation. It echoes similar accusations at Abu Ghraib and across Iraq. In an interview with military investigators conducted after he was imprisoned, Graner called kidnapping, in addition to detainee abuse, "the other big Geneva Convention violation" going on at the prison. "They were picking up, you know, Joe Snuffy's wife to get Joe Snuffy," Graner explained to military investigators. "So, more or less, we're holding this female with no charges, which happened a lot." Graner did not say in the interview who was doing the kidnapping. There were a broad range of forces operating at Abu Ghraib, including military Special Operations troops and CIA operatives. Similar allegations have shown that kidnapping may have been a systematic practice. Special Operations troops, working with an elite unit called Task Force 6-26, allegedly abducted the 28-year-old wife of a suspected Iraqi terrorist during a raid on a house in Tarmiya, Iraq, in May 2004, the month after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. That is according to a memorandum buried in thousands of pages of documents obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act. The memorandum, a formal complaint titled "Report of Violations of the Geneva Conventions," was filed in June 2004 by a 14-year veteran intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency. The Department of Defense blacked out the officer's name. In the memorandum, the intelligence officer said the kidnapping was planned. "During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF [Task Force] personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender," the officer recalled, stressing that he objected to the tactic. Later, the wife was indeed present when the raid took place. "I determined that she could provide no actionable intelligence leading to the arrest of her husband," the officer recalled. "Despite my protest, a raid team leader detained her anyway." She was held for two days. Little has been reported about kidnapping in comparison to the exposure of the detainee abuse depicted in the photographs from Abu Ghraib. But there have been isolated press reports. In 2003, Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush died in U.S. custody in northern Iraq after suffering beatings and interrogations. He died when he was stuffed into a sleeping bag and straddled by Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr. In January 2006, Welshofer was reprimanded for Mowhoush's death. His son, Mohammed, told the Washington Post that month that U.S. forces first kidnapped him and his three brothers from their home. Mohammed was 15 at that time and claimed he was not an insurgent. "They said if my father does not come [turn himself in] you will never see your family back," Mohammad told the Post. The article stated that classified documents show the general "later surrendered in an attempt to free his sons." Congressional staff said the Department of Defense so far has not adequately responded to the subpoena for documents about Provance or kidnapping at Abu Ghraib. The Pentagon claimed that Shays' subcommittee already had everything it needed about detainee abuse. "The Department has already provided much of this information to the Congress -- mainly to the House Armed Services Committee, a committee of oversight," Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros said in an e-mailed statement. "We have delivered to the House Government Reform Committee all of the documents that can be provided and are appropriate to provide." Ballesteros added that, "Humane treatment is and always has been the Department of Defense standard for the treatment of detainees in its custody." But staff from both parties on the House Government Reform Committee said that won't do. Shays, a pro-war incumbent facing a tough election this fall, told Salon that he had no intention of backing down. "If the administration wants more power, then oversight of it has to be more aggressive," he said. He lamented that congressional oversight of detainee issues should have been stiff all along. "I just wish we had been on top of this issue sooner," he said with regret. Congressional experts agree. "Oversight has been moribund during the first five years of President Bush's terms," said Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, who worked as solicitor and deputy general counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1984 to 1995. "Nowhere has it been more moribund than with respect to the Pentagon." There is no paper trail that shows that kidnapping or abusing the family of suspects might have been official Department of Justice or Pentagon policy. It is not mentioned in any of the Bush administration interrogation memos that have so far surfaced in the press. In late 2002, commanders at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay did request authority, during interrogations, for "the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequence are imminent for him and/or his family." In a December 2002 memorandum, Rumsfeld rejected a "blanket approval" of that interrogation technique, but did not rule it out completely. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/07/14/kidnap/ Comments

100_1253

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Bloglines - BBC Quiz on Israel and killing civilians

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The Cat's Blog "DID YOU, TOO, O FRIEND, SUPPOSE DEMOCRACY WAS ONLY FOR ELECTIONS, FOR POLITICS, AND FOR A PARTY NAME?" - WALT WHITMAN

BBC Quiz on Israel and killing civilians By The Cat's Dream Dear BBC’s Ladies and Gentlemen, How many Israeli civilians have been killed in Israel AND how many Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have been killed in Gaza and in Lebanon by the Israeli Government since June 9th when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 Palestinian civilians and injuring 32? Why doesn’t the BBC answer this simple question in its journalistic work? Possible