Laura Dawn Lewis ---> US Policy is defined as: Israel/Palestine, ending the US support of apartheid and ethnic cleansing the United States funds, supports and diplomatically protects from International law; invading countries that did not attack us on false pretense and an end to shielding the governments of Saudi Arabia and other regimes hurting their people.
Bin Laden's objections to our foreign policy are legitimate. What we are doing by proxy in Palestine is wrong. Not my opinion, that is according to the Hague Resolutions, Geneva Conventions, Rome Statues, The United Nations, our own constitution and International law.
For those using the God excuse, nearly everything the US funds in Palestine ignores the teachings of the Gospels, which for Christians is the final word of God and take precedence over all books of the Old Testament. Those justifying this ethnic cleansing with Old Testament prophecies and quotes, negate the whole point, message, meanings and teachings of Christ behaving as if the year is 24 BC, not 2004 AD. This distortion represents another botulism infested can of twisted worms Bush's agenda exploits well. It, Chiliastic Christianity, continues as a root cause and enabler of terrorism. Without it, peace would have been achieved in the Middle East, three decades ago.
What we are doing in Iraq is wrong. Again, not my opinion. That statement originates with the Hague Resolutions, the Geneva Conventions, Rome Statues, our own constitution and International law. Terrorism's defeat only occurs upon the removal its causes: Oppression, greed, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, colonization, conquest and invasion, not the leaves, flower or seeds illustrated by the people. Our policies cause terrorism both in Palestine and Iraq. And yes, the two conflicts are intimately connected. Anything other than addressing the realities on the ground of these two policy nightmares feeds terrorism.
Unfortunately, this tape provides fuel for Bush's objectives. Our "I'm never wrong and my actions are God inspired" President Bush and "Me too" Kerry backed by warmongers and profiteers can now use any attempt addressing the causes of terrorism as being 'influenced by the terrorists'. This well-timed tape along with its effectiveness at vilifying anyone looking for diplomatic solutions eradicates humane resolutions, opting for the barbaric while effectively segregating those promoting diplomacy thus insuring this "war" goes on indefinitely. Concurrently it creates enough fear to insure the money keeps rolling in and the remaining portions of the PNAC plan, now known as the Bush Doctrine can continue to clear the Middle East of any person not 100% behind Israel or the US.
By appealing to the American people, this tape differentiates itself from all others. What the tape says to me, reading between the lines is:

"Here's your chance America. We don't hate you. We hate what you're doing so we're giving you one last opportunity to change your ways. If you choose to continue killing us, our children, our culture and our faith, you leave us no choice but to fight back. Stop interfering with our ability to live and we'll stop interfering with you. If you don't, you have only yourselves to blame."

I see this as the moral equivalency of a clear conscience from bin Laden's point of view. His way of giving us one last chance to reverse this course. In his mind I'm believe he's saying:

"See I told the American people what they need to do in order to avoid being attacked. I'm not asking them to do anything illegal. I'm just asking them to stop doing what is illegal and return to the principles and values they pretend they espouse. And look, they don't care. They want to kill us. Therefore since they won't stop killing us and messing with our lives, they are not innocent any longer. Not their women. Not their children, none of them. Not innocent in God's eyes and not innocent in mine. They allowed this to happen, therefore all are responsible."

Our governement has used 9/11 to strip us of our most personal rights and control the American people, basically taking our freedom and convincing us that the loss of freedoms is freedom. They've told us persons against pre-emptive strikes and our consistent violations of international law are unpatriotic. This administration brands diplomacy and addressing the causes as anti-American.
...Now...the most ominous, I suspect this tape is a gesture, a warning and a last opportunity for peace, which the bullheaded nature of our government now will never approach on the convenience of "being influenced by terrorists".
We can create a win/win here and eliminate terrorism. But to so that we must step out of the fear and actually begin to think.

AP ---> Osama bin Laden, publicly injecting himself into the campaign four days ahead of presidential elections, said in a videotape aired Friday that the United States can avoid another Sept. 11 attack if it stops threatening the security of Muslims.
He refrained from directly warning of new attacks although he said "there are still reasons to repeat what happened."
"We fought you because we are free ... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," bin Laden said.
Before the tape was aired, the State Department urged the government of Qatar, which finances Al-Jazeera, not to broadcast it, a senior State Department official said.
Al-Jazeera broadcast about seven minutes of the tape.

WRH ---> If the new Osama tape is real, it only underscores that Bush has spent two hundred billion dollars and the lives of a thousand Americans without actually making the US any safer from Osama.

You and I are trapped behind Homeland Security, hassled at airports, spied upon, frisked, and confined to "Free speech zones", while this latest Osama, clearly rested and healthy, goes where he will, into TV studios, and is able to send taunting video tapes with impunity.

When the Osamas of the world are free while we who pay the bills are prisoners, this must be counted a complete failure by the administration which claims so many extraordinary powers under the banner of the "war on terror".

Another Scottish regiment may be deployed to the dangerous US-controlled area south of Baghdad when the Black Watch leaves there before Christmas, it emerged today.
The Royal Scots have been told to prepare for a possible deployment to the so-called 'Triangle of Death' area, according to a report in the Scotsman newspaper.

Arab satellite television Al Jazeera said on Friday it would broadcast a video tape from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden addressing the American people.

The songwriter who helped pen the 1970s hit, "Still the One," is demanding that President Bush stop using the tune at campaign events, arguing that he's no fan of the Republican incumbent and the campaign never got permission to use the song.

Is it a pre-election gift to the Bush campaign from al-Qaida? Or is it the Republicans' long-awaited October surprise?

A deal to allow the Palestinian president to leave the West Bank was apparently secured after Israel gave ironclad assurances to King Abdullah of Jordan and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Arafat would be allowed to return when he was ready. Arafat has been confined to his Ramallah compound since 2001.
He has been unable to leave in case Israel refused to allow him back in the country.

The Bush Administration's modus operandi: tough on terror, weak on the truth. And its friends in high places are always willing to lend a helping hand to distort, suppress and postpone facts crucial to America's national security.

In the last few months Bush has launched a recruiting drive for people to work on the draft boards around the country, the DefendAmerica government site posted an advert looking for volunteers, but when someone brought this to the attention of the press it was promptly removed, fueling rumours about the possibility of a draft.

Sixty thousand votes, or to be more precise, fifty-eight thousand votes is a lot of votes in a swing state such as Florida, where four years ago the world looked on aghast as the Bush regime stole the election away from the Democratic candidate, Al Gore.
Four years on, days before the election, the world looks on again, this time hardly surprised because the below-the-belt blow we have been expecting has arrived. 58.000 absentee ballots have been sent, but never arrived.

Media Monitors Network ---> Like any subversive group, Canada's Israel lobby conducts its nefarious doings out of the public eye. If Canadians had regular reports on how this cabal and their MP sock-puppets try to control our foreign policy a furour would erupt.

The brazen double standard by which Israeli state terrorism is empowered by the U.S., as a matter of official policy, while retaliatory terror on the part of the Palestinians is unreservedly condemned, has fueled all sorts of unsavory conspiracy theories.

Video: Bush when he was Texas Governor giving the finger to the camera

Pictures

Defence Minister Robert Hill has defended Australia's involvement in Iraq in the face of a US university report which says 100,000 civilians have died as a result of the war.
"Unfortunately there will always be some civilian casualties," he said.

On the eve of an American presidential election fought principally over Iraq, let us set aside the arguments over that overseas adventure and ignore the implausibility of George W. Bush's spin on it. Consider instead two propositions from a historical perspective...

"In the past few weeks they've taken money, some vehicles and kidnapped a girl," says Mamood. "They work for the commanders. They take whatever they want and they will kill you if you try and stop them. When you hear 'commander' just think 'thief' or 'murderer.' That is all they are."

Whatever one thinks of George W. Bush--do you see a smile or a smirk?--it is now patently obvious that the most powerful vice president in US history is in charge of the White House. Cheney's ultra-secretive, anti-democratic and crony-capitalist instincts have defined this Administration.

The presidency comes with powerful tools that can help incumbents keep their jobs: a mighty public-relations machine, a bully pulpit, a famous airplane. Yet President Bush has been powerless to halt a recent tide of bad news, from surging violence and missing weapons in Iraq, to missteps by his own campaign, to a potentially damaging new probe by the FBI.

Right-wing Jewish extremists violently opposed to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?s planned withdrawal from Gaza, are plotting a string of protest moves to thwart the project, including potentially explosive action at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.

The US appeases Sharon, the rest of the world looks on, and even more Palestinian civilians are murdered.

Israel has killed the road map peace plan for the Middle East with apparent US acquiescence, a UN human rights investigator says.
"The road map is dead. Israel has killed it," South African law professor John Dugard told a UN General Assembly committee on Thursday.
"The world is looking to the United States for leadership in this region, and the world is simply not getting it," said Dugard, who monitors the Palestinian territories for the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Commission.

Gravely ill Yasser Arafat, who is being rushed to a French hospital for treatment, is suspected to be suffering from leukaemia, a senior Palestinian official said early today.

A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Sixty-four interviews, with soldiers and Marines en route to and returning from the war in Iraq, plus interviews with military families make up this moving documentary by longtime activist-artists Sally Marr and Peter Dudar.

Throughout history, it is few the men and women who are living at moments such as these, when monumental shifts in human existence can be touched and its ramifications seen over the bright sunrays of hope. It is few the men and women in the short sand clock of human civilization whose waking conscious and steadfast courage can propel future generations forward in time, to lands promising and cultures flourishing, in an instant breaking free from the grip of absolute inertia that has hijacked an entire society.

Russia summoned a U.S. diplomat to protest at a Pentagon claim that Russian soldiers spirited away hundreds of tons of explosives from a site in Iraq just before the U.S. invasion, Interfax news agency said on Friday.

U.S. marines are preparing for a big assault on Sunni Muslim rebels and Arab fighters in the Iraqi cities of Falluja and Ramadi.
"We are gearing up for a major operation," Brigadier General Denis Hajlik told reporters on Friday at a base near Falluja. "If we do so, it will be decisive and we will whack them."

Civil rights groups representing blacks, Hispanics and the disabled accused Republican Party workers on Thursday of trying to keep U.S. minorities from voting.
"In state after state, Republican officials and operatives are working to deny American citizens the right to vote," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Soldier to brief reporters at Pentagon within the hour that he was tasked with removing explosives from al QaQaa and he and his unit removed 200+ tons... Officer was ordered to join the 101st airborne on April 13 - to destroy conventional explosives at the al QaQaa complex.....

A group calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade, said it had coordinated with officers and soldiers of "the American intelligence" to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility."
The claim couldn't be independently verified. The speaker was surrounded by masked, armed men standing in front of a black banner with the group's name on it in the tape obtained by Associated Press Television News.

European leaders on Friday signed the EU's first constitution, a diplomatic triumph they hope will give the union a sharper international profile and speed up decision-making in a club now embracing 25 nations.
The treaty was the result of 28 months of sometimes acrimonious debate between the 25 EU governments and now faces ratification in national parliaments.
A "no" result in any country would stop the constitution in its tracks.

For the 13th consecutive time, the UN General Assembly has passed a resolution calling for an end to the US blockade of Cuba. The voting on the resolution was 179 countries in favor and four against (The United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau), while Micronesia abstained . During the debate at the 59th session of the UN General Assembly, several heads of state and government condemned Washington?s policy of aggression against the small island.

The International Atomic Energy Agency stepped back into the controversy over missing explosives in Iraq Thursday, insisting that almost 330 tonnes had indeed vanished from a depot in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

...shows the embedded reporters filming the now-disputed explosive materials at the al Qaqaa facility in Iraq.

A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months after the U.S. invasion.
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they said.
The study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, is being published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet medical journal.

The world is on the brink of a major flu epidemic - one that could claim more than a billion lives, the head of the Russian Virology Institute, Academician Dmitry Lvov said at a press conference organized by the RIA-Novosti news agency on Thursday.
"Up to one billion people could die around the whole world in six months," Lvov said. The expert did not give a timeframe for the epidemic, but said that it is highly probable that it will start this year. "We are half a step away from a worldwide pandemic catastrophe," the academic said.

NBC and ABC are developing miniseries revolving around the Sept. 11 attacks, using the "9/11 Commission Report" as the blueprint for dramatic retellings of the events that led to the devastating strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In a new step for crime fighting in Los Angeles, the Police Department plans to start installing surveillance cameras on city streets, beginning with Hollywood Boulevard.

Doctors decided to fly ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Paris for treatment, as associates described a Palestinian leader who was too weak to stand Thursday, appeared confused and spent most of the day sleeping.
Fifteen doctors - including Palestinians and specialists rushed in from Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt - examined the 75-year-old Arafat on Thursday and decided he would be able to get the best treatment in Paris, one of the doctors said.

Studies show Bush supporters are misled on Bush policies and the news.
But it's not just the right-wing media purveying lies -- they are quoting the administration. These misimpressions come directly from the Bush administration, still, over and over.

Why will so many Americans buy images of national leaders that are so at odds with so much evidence?
This troubling question is crucial because the American democracy was founded on the notion that the truth will emerge in the deliberations of a free people.

Israel National News ---> ...if Yasser Arafat dies, PA officials will undoubtedly make an effort to have him interred on the Temple Mount.
"I call on the Jewish masses to block his body in such an occurrence to prevent the murderer or murderers who is dripping with the blood of thousands of Jews from being buried on the Temple Mount", Marzel stated.

Every career has its perks - some rather more than others. Whoever wins on Tuesday will enjoy the finest freebies on the planet. John Walsh takes a look at the victor's spoils

He's been America's most unorthodox political commentator for more than 30 years. But for Dr Hunter S Thompson the Bush presidency is evil beyond belief - and judgement is nigh

For the American military, Fallujah is "the last battle", an overwhelming assault that will destroy the epicentre of the rebellion sweeping through the country, the beginning of the end of major American military action in Iraq.

In a 200-page report released Wednesday, London-based Amnesty International (AI) stressed that without such an investigation and the clear, unequivocal rejection of torture and ill-treatment by top U.S. officials, "the conditions remain for further abuses to occur."

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

John Pilger ---> From Guatemala to Iran, from Chile to Nicaragua, to the struggle for freedom in South Africa, to present-day Venezuela, American state terrorism, licensed by both Republican and Democrat administrations, has fought democrats and sponsored totalitarians. Most societies attacked or otherwise subverted by American power are weak and defenceless, and there is a logic to this. Should a small country succeed in breaking free and establish its own way of developing, then its good example to others becomes a threat to Washington.

...he believes a "surgical strike" against North Korea is one way of ensuring that it is not pursuing a nuclear-weapons program that is a threat to the United States.
"I think it will be dangerous for America" if Democratic contender John Kerry becomes president, said Perle, a leading light among a band of U.S. neo-conservatives who are considered by some to have had a major role in shaping Bush's policies.

Florida's computers have already counted thousands of votes for George W. Bush

The Republican party in the United States intends to repeat a act of fraud similar to that in the 2000 elections in the upcoming polls, according to a confidential document transmitted today by the British BBC TV today.

Attacking Mike Ruppert serves but one purpose; it lets us know exactly how effective Mike has become with respect to "outing" those who definitely need to be exposed for their high crimes against our Constitution.

President Bush taught three Oregon schoolteachers a new lesson in irony - or tragedy - Thursday night when his campaign removed them from a Bush speech and threatened them with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said "Protect Our Civil Liberties."

If the "war on terrorism" truly is a "war," then the laws of armed conflict apply, both to the states combating terror and to the terrorists themselves. These laws, commonly known as the Geneva Conventions and their Protocols, prohibit acts of terror. The laws of armed conflict can never be suspended; they are designed precisely to apply in situations of great danger and violence. Certain parts of international human rights law, on the other hand, may be suspended in times of public emergency. The freedoms of speech, association and assembly, for example, may be restricted under carefully defined conditions. Other rights, like the right to life and the prohibition on torture, can never be suspended, even in all-out war. This is why it is so important that those responsible for the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees at US prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan be prosecuted and punished.

Yasser Arafat's sudden health crisis has again raised the question, in Palestinian circles as in the wider world, of who ultimately will replace the 75-year-old president - and whether the succession will be smooth or volatile.

A 17-day Israeli onslaught in northern Gaza left in its wake nearly 140 dead, one-third of them children. The newest tragedy to visit the impoverished strip, was neither the first, nor will it be the last.
Those who understand the depth of the tragedy ? unhampered by the desensitising Arabic media and dehumanising Western counterpart ? may often wonder why such blatant state terrorism would compel no serious response, especially from those who endlessly decry poor human rights records of countries far superior to Israel in their respect for international law and human rights treaties.

Israeli troops shot and killed an eight-year-old Palestinian girl who was on her way to school in a Gaza Strip refugee camp today, witnesses said.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment.

The most significant aspect of the US Presidential elections is the dramatic shift of the entire political spectrum to the Right. Fundamental reactionary changes in the US constitution, social legislation, international politics and law, as well as historical experience have become the common language of both major candidates in this election.
The Patriot Act in its original and revised versions effectively eliminated the Bill of Rights, and the protection of citizens from arbitrary arrest by the State. Both major candidates and Parties endorse it. The National Security State is the centerpiece of both parties? Presidential campaigns.

January: IAEA inspectors view the explosives at Al-Qaqaa for the last time. The inspectors take an inventory and again place storage bunkers at Al-Qaqaa under agency seal.

Signs showed the improvement of ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's condition as of early Thursday morning, while Israel continued its offensives in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Arafat's aide said that a decision on whether to transfer Arafat to hospital would be made in the next few hours.

Arabic television station Al-Jazeera broadcast a video in which an armed group in Iraq said it had kidnapped a Polish woman.
"The Polish government is not in the business of meeting kidnappers' demands," Szmajdzinski told TVN.

The Russian embassy in Washington rejected the claims as 'nonsense', saying there were no Russian military in the country at the time.

Setup Spin?

The reality is that Israel has been cleansing all of Palestine of its indigenous population, which is the real genocide in this region. But for die-hard Zionists, Israel can never do any wrong and any criticism or negative characterization of its belligerence or oppression is immediately called "anti-Semitic". Thus forever banishing further discussion of Israel's inhuman acts against impoverished and beleaguered Palestinians. For nothing can beat the stigma of being labeled "anti-Semitic".

Brazilian authorities Wednesday arrested five people in an industrial espionage case against Kroll Inc., an international security consulting firm.
Federal police said they also seized papers, listening equipment and computers from Kroll's Sao Paulo office. Kroll is owned by U.S. insurance firm Marsh & McLennan Cos., which is currently embroiled in a rate fixing scandal.
Brazilian newspapers in July reported allegations Kroll was spying on members of the Brazilian government, including high-ranking ministers.

Some 40 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles have rolled into a West Bank refugee camp -- exchanging fire with Palestinians.

Plans to build an 80ft statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator character in his Austrian home town have been scrapped because he's backing President Bush.

In the end, US voters will not be frightened into becoming a nation that disdains decency.

The deteriorating facts on the ground in Iraq, plus the Bush doctrine of acting pre-emptively and unilaterally against hostile regimes, will soon leave him no choice. If President Bush is re-elected, he will have to restart the draft.
Indeed, President Bush has already imposed Stage 1 of a new draft. Many soldiers whose enlistment period is up are not being allowed to leave the service, and those who left the service years ago are being forced to put on the uniform again against their will. It is clear that we already have a backdoor draft.
President Bush has effectively ended the all-volunteer military.

In response to George W. Bush's invocation of prominent Democrats including President John F. Kennedy, Kennedy's daughter Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg issued this statement. "It's hard for me to listen to President Bush invoking my father's memory to attack John Kerry. Senator Kerry has demonstrated his courage and commitment to a stronger America throughout his entire career. President Kennedy inspired and united the country and so will John Kerry. President Bush is doing just the opposite. All of us who revere the strength and resolve of President Kennedy will be supporting John Kerry on Election Day."

Philadelphia Daily News ---> Two men who worked extensively in the wreckage of the World Trade Center claim they helped federal agents find three of the four 'black boxes' from the jetliners that struck the towers on 9/11 - contradicting the official account.
Both the independent 9/11 Commission and federal authorities continue to insist that none of the four devices - a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) from the two planes - were ever found in the wreckage.

WASHINGTON TIMES: Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, 'almost certainly' removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

Members of the Palestinian security services were put on alert, a Palestinian official said, after doctors were rushed to the bedside of the ailing Yasser Arafat.
"Agents of the Palestinian security services have been called back to their posts as soon as possible and to go on alert," the official told AFP, asking not to be named.
"The situation is serious and we will have to examine tomorrow (Thursday) what to do at the level of the Palestinian leadership," he said.
Arafat, 75, kept under virtual Israeli house arrest at his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah since December 2001, has lost consciousness for several hours, Israeli public radio reported earlier.

If U.S.-led forces carry out a threatened full-scale assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, they will find the rebel stonghold virtually deserted.
Thousands of women and children have long since fled almost daily bombardment of the city by U.S. warplanes.
Shops open for only a few hours a day. Their shutters close when the first shots are fired in frequent clashes between U.S. marines on the edge of Falluja and guerrillas in the city.

Iran's supreme leader threatened to pull out of negotiations if European countries press their demand for total suspension of uranium enrichment, as a new round of talks ended Wednesday without an agreement to avert the possible threat of U.N. sanctions.
Britain, France and Germany are trying to work out a deal that would avoid a standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, which the United States says aims to develop nuclear weapons.

Yasser Arafat's health worsened Wednesday, and a team of doctors went to his compound to examine the Palestinian leader, who summoned the prime minister and another top politician to his bedside, according to a Palestinian official close to Arafat.

ABC News has asked U.S. security officials to examine a videotape it obtained in Pakistan of an English-speaking man threatening a massive attack on the United States, the network says.
Sources familiar with the tape -- the authenticity of which U.S. intelligence officials have not been unable to verify -- said the man, who claims to be a U.S. native and al Qaeda supporter, warns that the "streets will run with blood."
ABC News vice president Jeffrey Schneider said the network has not shown the video because its authenticity has not been verified by either independent analysts or government experts.
"We have worked with the CIA and the FBI, neither of whom have authenticated the tape," he told Reuters. "Obviously, it would be beyond irresponsible to broadcast this tape without first authenticating it."

Four British ex-inmates of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay sued Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others on Wednesday saying they were tortured in violation of U.S. and international law.
The four former detainees are seeking $10 million in damages but primarily want Rumsfeld and other defendants to be held accountable for their actions, said Eric Lewis, the lead lawyer in the case.

...history is littered with innumerable examples of psy-war operations conducted by the US around the planet, whether it was covert backing of the invasion of Cuba in 1961 or its support (and training) of death squads in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua all the way through to its arming and support of UNITA in Angola for decades. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the US would be up to its neck in such operations as kidnappings and executions, all purportedly orchestrated by one man, Abu Masaab al-Zarqawi.

Amnesty International has accused the United States of being more concerned with getting around international laws which prohibit torture than with safeguarding human rights as it wages its "war on terror".

No one disputes that Tehran is pursuing a dangerous path, but with 200 or more Israeli nukes targeted upon them the Iranians' insistence on keeping their options open is understandable. Clearly, the nuclear nonproliferation regime today hangs by the slenderest of threads. The world has arrived at a fateful crossroads.
If a showdown over Iran develops in the coming months, the man who could hold the outcome in his hands will be thrust upon the world stage. That man, like him or hate him, is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the light of the growing discussion initiated by Israeli politicians and Zionist enthusiasts regarding the eruption of new anti-Semitism I am here to announce as loudly as I can: there is no anti-Semitism any more. In the devastating reality created by the Jewish state, anti-Semitism has been replaced by political reaction. I am not suggesting that Jewish interests are not being mutilated and vandalized. I am not saying that synagogues aren't being attacked, that Jewish graves are not brutally smashed up. I am saying that these acts, that are in no way legitimate, should be seen as political responses rather than racially motivated acts or 'irrational' hate crimes.

Normally, conspiracy theories are popular in underdeveloped despotic societies in which the government lies to the people and is lied to in return. In such societies no one says or does anything without some concealed motive, and nothing happens without a secret plan concocted by a cabal of conspirators.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he will not bow to pressure from cabinet colleagues for a referendum on his Gaza disengagement plan.

Many Americans, like the citizens of dominant nations of the past, believe that their way of life is superior and should be shared with other peoples?often at gunpoint. Lately, this American exceptionalism has assumed even more pernicious forms.

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday.
The revelation strengthened suspicions that Tony Blair gave his agreement to President George Bush to go to war while the diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions were continuing.

Oil giant BP today posted record profits of $3.94bn (£2.14bn) after fuel prices hit new highs.
The third quarter performance of Britain's biggest listed company came as oil prices rose to an average of almost $50 a barrel.

Rupert Murdoch has claimed his Fox News channel is not biased in favour of George Bush and that News Corporation, his global media empire, is a "fair and balanced" company.
Speaking at the company's annual general meeting in Adelaide, Mr Murdoch insisted Fox News' reporting was more balanced than that of other US networks.
"It's full of Democrats and Republicans, the others only have Democrats. We don't take any position at all," Mr Murdoch said in response to a question about Fox's impartiality.
"We're not in the least bit biased, we're a fair and balanced company."

"The significance of this is that apparently, a foreign government, based on a secret process, can have the U.S. government silence independent news sources without ever having to answer to the American people about how that kind of restraint could happen," said Keith Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which drafted the motion. "Every press organization should be asking, 'Am I next?'"

THE CHOICE

Britain's respected Financial Times endorsed John Kerry as the best choice for US president, saying incumbent George W. Bush had polarized the world with his radical foreign policy and led a reckless economic policy.
The paper, one of the world's leading financial dailies, called Bush "a polarizer, exploiting the war on terror to cow domestic opposition and divide the world into Them and Us."
"Over the past three years, the gap between ambition and reality has created what could be termed a 'Bush bubble'," it said.

This is a new kind of tension, one that I have never known before. Fear, loathing and paranoia have replaced liberty, peace and freedom.

A senior UN official has warned that no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be found without international involvement.
In a briefing to the Security Council, Kieran Prendergast spoke of "a palpable sense of drift and foreboding... towards chaos".
He urged both sides to abandon violence and engage in negotiation.

President Vladimir Putin said Russia could switch its trade in oil from dollars to euros, a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for the global balance of power -- potentially hurting the U.S. dollar and economy and providing a massive boost to the euro zone. "We do not rule out that it is possible. That would be interesting for our European partners," Putin said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

As many as 78 people were crushed in the aftermath of a riot in southern Thailand, officials said on Tuesday.
A prominent Thai pathologist told a news conference that most of the victims likely suffocated when they were packed onto army trucks after being arrested. Autopsies were performed at an army camp in Pattani province.

Kerry's claims are incorrect in the sense that contrary to what he has been stating, the command and control of the Tora Bora operations remained in the hands of the US military and a large number of US troops and aircraft participated in the battle and suffered casualties. However, the US troops did not raid the caves. They made the Afghans do it. They avoided a frontal confrontation with al-Qaeda.

According to yet another poll, this one done by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a whopping 18 percent of African Americans support George W. Bush in this year's election. In the 2000 election President Bush received 9 percent of the African American vote. So let's get this straight, since the last presidential election, George W. Bush's support among African Americans has actually doubled?!
The poll goes on to absurdly suggest that Blacks over 50 are migrating over to the Republican Party while younger ones are flocking to the Democrats. Middle-aged and senior African Americans are some of the staunchest Democrats in the country, yet the Republicans have somehow captured the hearts and minds of the Black Civil Rights generation in less than four years.

Russia has resumed Cold War levels of spying and intelligence gathering in Britain, senior Whitehall and security sources have told The Independent.
Among the spies are at least 32 Russian diplomats who are attempting to obtain secret information about the United Kingdom's military, technical and political capabilities, according to authoritative sources.
The spy network is also collecting information about opponents and critics of Vladimir Putin, the Russian President and a former KGB officer, who are exiles in Britain.

The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday.

It began as one of the Bush administration's most ambitious homeland security efforts, a passenger screening program designed to use commercial records, terrorist watch lists and computer software to assess millions of travelers and target those who might pose a threat.
The system has cost almost $100 million. But it has not been turned on because it sparked protests from legislators and civil liberties advocates who said it intruded too deeply into the lives of ordinary Americans. The Bush administration put off testing until after the election.

Now the choreographer of that program, a former intelligence official named Ben H. Bell III, is taking his ideas to a private company offshore, where he and his colleagues plan to use some of the same concepts, technology and contractors to assess people for risk -- outside the reach of U.S. regulators.

The Bill of Rights is moribund in today's America because in the view of many powerful people it should never have been born.

...with a fury not seen since the 1960s.

Titled the October Plan, the program called for "aggressive - even obvious - surveillance" of a wide range of individuals (regardless of whether or not they're suspected of any criminal wrongdoing) until the Nov. 2 presidential election, according to an internal document leaked to the press.
The plan - a collaboration between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other agencies - involves renewed scrutiny of mosques and interrogations of people whose national origin, religious faith, or political leanings might, in the eyes of the feds, indicate even the most far-flung relationship to "terrorism."

Consider: After three years of terror and death at the hands of a terrorist band run by two guys hiding in caves, after a bloody, failed invasion of the wrong country in search of who knows what, after a jobs market crash matched only by the Herbert Hoover Administration, and after mismanaging huge national budget surpluses into over-the-cliff national deficits ? all supported by the most outlandish lies - Bush still holds a firm grip on the minds of more than half of the people who say they're going to vote for him.

The United States could attack Europe's planned network of global positioning satellites if it was used by a hostile power such as China.The paper also reported a disagreement between EU and US officials this month over Galileo at a London conference which led to the threat to blow up the future satellites.The European delegates reportedly said they would not turn off or jam signals from their satellites, even if they were used in a war with the United States.

Here's the crucial difference between the GOP theft of the election in 2000 and their efforts to steal the 2004 White House campaign.
In 2000, they were outside the government trying to steal their way in, with Florida as ground zero in the mugging of democracy.
In 2004, they ARE the government: controlling the legislative, executive and judicial branches.

"The US believes that the tribunal has become not only an undemocratic institution, but also a direct threat to the development of democracy on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. This change means not only a dramatic change in US politics towards the tribunal, but also, more importantly, a fatal blow to the power and credibility of Carla Del Ponte."

The fascists are not doing this to convince us to vote for Bush, for they know we will not vote for Bush. They are doing it to show us that they can act with impunity while we cannot (that is, that the state supports their criminal activity).

People posing as election officials are visiting residents of several counties and offering to take absentee ballots.

More than 800 former soldiers have failed to comply with Army orders to get back in uniform and report for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army said Friday. That is more than one-third of the total who were told to report to a mobilization station by Oct. 17.

Kerry now leads Bush 125-96 in endorsements in E&P's exclusive tally, and he leads by about 16 million to 10 million in the circulation of backing papers.

'The American Conservative' Endorses Kerry for President.
This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support.

Army may let company retain billions of dollars from Iraq work, despite auditors' questions.

At least 2,000 people gathered on Pushkin Square on Saturday to call for an end to the war in Chechnya. It was one of the largest antiwar protests in years and also provided a rare public platform for broader criticism of President Vladimir Putin's rule.

As the US presidential election campaign is coming to a close and Iraq continues to burn, another dangerous diplomatic tussle is taking place: the United States and Israel are acting as a tag-team against the potential emergence of Iran as a nuclear power.

"Democracy" is not the issue in Iraq. How can people believe that precision strikes against civilian neighborhoods are a persuasive weapon conducive to winning hearts and minds and establishing democracy? Moreover, there's nothing "precise" about it: US ground intelligence is sketchy at best.

Eric Margolis ---> The vision of a re-elected George W. Bush ruling the world does not sit well. Few non-Americans know anything about Kerry, but that hardly matters. He is popular everywhere abroad simply because he looks civilized and is the un-Bush.

The Army has denied most of the thousands of compensation claims Iraqis have made against the U.S. military, determining that combat accounted for most of the deaths, injuries and property damage, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Allies are getting balky about following America's lead.
A senior British diplomat put it bluntly to NEWSWEEK: "Never again."

We will kill and maim you and yours until you agree to our domination and say you are ecstatic to be given this 'freedom'

A major Israeli offensive on the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza has left at least 14 Palestinians dead and dozens injured.
The operation began late on Sunday with a series of air strikes, as a large Israeli force with dozens of tanks moved into the area.

In 1964, nuclear scientists came together in unprecedented fashion to oppose the candidacy of Barry Goldwater for president. Like George Bush, Barry Goldwater was a "super hawk" who believed first and foremost in America's military might and dominance in the world.

You have to go back as far as Herbert Hoover to find a president with a worse record on jobs than the incumbent and poverty is on the increase in the world's largest economy. The stock market, which boomed under Clinton, suffered under Bush as a result of the dotcom boom's collapse, recession and a string of corporate scandals. Yet, if you listen to the candidates and monitor the media, jobs are not the real issue.

According to the International law, everybody has the right to defend himself and his own country from agression, but nobody has the right to protect himself by occupying other people's countries and homelands. The occupation is not legitimate, the ITF operations in Gaza and the West Bank are not legitimate, and even the U.S is saying that it is not legitimate. It is a violation of the International law. A violation of the Human rights. It is Terrorism.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, on a mission to restart talks on North Korea's nuclear program, on Sunday branded North Korea a "terrorist state" that shows "no respect whatsoever for human rights."

"The Muslim media has, in fact, miserably failed to present the reality to the American public in particular. The results is that Polls in Time and Newsweek show that more than 70 percent of the American public supports Israeli atrocities, and newspaper editorials mostly blame the Palestinian side for all the troubles."

George Bush has exploited the suffering of September 11 and turned back decades of efforts to make the world a safer place, the former president Jimmy Carter says in an interview with the Guardian published today.

Nearly 380 tons of powerful explosives are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations, local media reported Monday.
It was confirmed by the U.N. nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which said that it would report the missing to the U.N. Security Council later Monday.

American expatriates in Germany are turning out in record numbers for the presidential election, spurred on by the German public, U.S. military commanders or a newfound sense that every vote could be decisive. Germany's Der Spiegel magazine recently predicted that Germany could be a "swing state" in the election -- not because it has any electoral college votes but because the U.S. military would not be as pro-Republican as in the past.

The presidential campaign debates are over, and the time for decision has come. The Nation endorses Senator John Kerry to be the next President of the United States.

"MI handlers will be turning on heat to this one," reads an entry at 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 12, referring to inmate No. 152529, identified in investigative documents as Asad Hamza Hanfosh. In a statement, Hanfosh alleged that soldiers stripped him, beat him and left him shackled naked to his bed overnight. "Sleep management program was requested but paperwork has not been approved yet," the entry reads.

According to commercial bank dealers, the Central Bank has not supported the dollar despite a large selling of dollars by market participants.

After reporting the rape the Army took Jennifer to a civilian Hospital emergency room for treatment, after which she was held in seclusion by the Army for three days. During this time military CID agent Eric Barreras informed Jennifer of her Miranda rights and then proceeded to threaten her with criminal prosecution for filing a false report. Further victimize the victim, that's the Army way. And this nation has the audacity to talk about the "rule of law."
...the Army gave Jennifer two weeks leave to go home and "get over it."

US intelligence officials have transferred detainees out of Iraq for interrogation, a move that experts say violates international law.
According to The Washington Post in its Sunday edition, the CIA has invoked a confidential memo written by the US Department of Justice to justify secretly transferring as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the past six months.

The Sunday Herald has been given access to detailed intelligence information focusing on a recent three-day period inside Iraq. The overall picture the intelligence paints is a divided, war-torn country, nowhere near being ready to hold free and fair democratic elections in January.
The intelligence also challenges the claims of US military commanders, in Iraq and the Pentagon, that clearing up the insurgency ?stronghold? of Fallujah will improve the prospect of legitimate elections. The military problems facing the coalition and limited Iraqi forces go well beyond Fallujah

It's been going on for years now. Almost daily we read that another child, another parent, another sister or brother, another grandpa or aunt, is killed in Afghanistan or Iraq by U.S. weaponry in Mr. Bush's "war on terror." Sometimes it's a wedding party, or a bunch of kids, or a family of six. Sometimes it's a journalist, or a whole group of journalists, who may even be killed on camera in real time for all the world to see and hear.
But no matter how bad it gets, nothing seems to change Americans' support for war, which for some reason is stiffest among Christian supporters of the Bush administration. "Stuff happens in a war zone." "Don't worry because God is in control." With these and other slogans, I've been reassured by countless pro-war Christians that, as long as civilians aren't intentionally targeted, taking their lives is okay, maybe even predestined, God's will.

Who are the terrorists in Falluja and how are they terrorising the civilian population?

Flash presentation

Everybody in Israel is talking about the next war. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it.
Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians.
The talk is about the coming civil war.

It is nine days until America goes to the polls, and already an army of lawyers working for President Bush and his opponent John Kerry are engaged in an intense legal battle in what is shaping up to be the most litigious election in US history.
The Kerry campaign has raised more than $3 million for legal expenses. According to a party spokesman, the legal effort is ?one of the top, if not the top, priorities?.
The Bush campaign refused to reveal the size of its legal budget but said it is currently training thousands of lawyers.

While the unit suffered no fatalities in Iraq, they were plagued the entire time by supply chain glitches. The unit never received body armor, and had to resort to stealing scrap metal for vehicle armor. Bottled water had to be rationed due to shortages, but Giese later filled a swimming pool for a general's use.
"This was a complete, chaotic mess," Giese said. "In my opinion there was no plan ... no one knew where we were going."

As competition for diminishing oil resources threatens U.S. dollar hegemony over world oil transactions, expect to see increased Chinese political and military presence in the Middle East.

But if he feels infallible because he thinks he is carrying out God's will, we do have a problem. Several, in fact.

George W. Bush has been a busy boy these past four years. Because his Administration's policies are so radical and his attempts to change our country so far-reaching, it is sometimes difficult to remember them all. Here's a summary of why Bush and his gang of bloodthirsty corporate goons must go; voters may take them along to the polls to help them cast their ballots.

"This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and having thought, to have second thoughts."

"Are you a Bush supporter?" I was asked. I explained that I was a registered Independent and not necessarily a Bush supporter. "Are you going to vote for Bush?" I was asked. "No," I honestly, and out of curiosity to see what would happen, replied. I was summarily told that if I wasn?t planning on voting for Bush, I wasn?t welcome. "John" came over to make sure I got the message. I told him I?d taken my kids to similar events (we saw Clinton and Gore in 1996) and didn?t he think it was good to get my kids involved in the democratic process early? To take them to events such as these and let them make up their own minds? I guess not. He just kept repeating, in a rather intimidating way, that if I wasn?t a supporter, I wasn?t welcome.

Vast efforts to mobilize or suppress African-American, Hispanic and Democratic voters have already reached a greater level of intensity than in any modern campaign. The Republicans in Ohio, for example, have attempted to toss out new Democrat registrations because it was claimed they were written on the wrong weight of paper, a gambit overruled by a federal court. From Pennsylvania to Arizona, a Republican consulting firm is discouraging new Democratic voters from getting on the rolls.

The survey also found a major gap between Bush?s stated positions on a number of international issues and what his supporters believe Bush?s position to be. A strong majority of Bush supporters believe, for example that the president supports a range of international treaties and institutions which is actually on record as opposing.

For the first time in my life, and with great amazement and sorrow, I feel what can only be described as hatred. It took me a long time to admit it, but there it is. I loathe the hubris, the callousness, and the lies of those in the Bush administration who led us into this war. Truth be told, I even loathe the fallible and very human purveyors of those lies. I feel no satisfaction in this admission, only sadness and recognition. And hope that - given time - I can do better. I never wanted to hate anyone.

In the furious debate over the war in Iraq, there is one voice conspicuously missing ? that of the American soldier.

Do the supporters of President Bush really know their man or the policies of his administration?
A new survey reveals that Bush supporters choose to keep faith in their leader than face reality.

Palestinian militants are seeking revenge Friday, pounding Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip with mortars. The violence flared up after a top Hamas militant was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The lower house of parliament, which is dominated by the Kremlin-directed United Russia party, approved the United Nations environmental accord by a vote of 334 to 73 on Friday. There were two abstentions.

It is already widely known that the Bush administration has ordered the American press not to take photographs of the caskets of military dead being returned home. Additionally, military operations in Iraq that are videotaped for newsreel presentation must be cleared by the military. Visual reports and videotapes of Iraqi civilians killed are prohibited unless approved by the American military. And fleeing and disoriented refugees are never seen or heard of.
As usual with the Bush administration, the explanations offered for this suppression of public information is "national security." Accurate reporting of the suffering of both our military and Iraqi civilians is offered as being counterproductive to the war effort and dangerously unpatriotic.
It is becoming increasingly safe to say that a growing majority of Americans are now opposed to the war, and want the American military pulled out of Iraq. If this is the way the majority feels, then suppressing the realities of Iraq serves only to deprive the American public of the real facts enabling our government to ignore the will of the people. This is not conducive to a truly safe, secure and free society.

If enacted, the Constitution Restoration Act will effectively transform the United States into a theocracy, where the arbitrary dictates of a "higher power" can override law.

The Associated Press (AP) will be the sole source of raw vote totals for the major news broadcasters on Election Night. However, AP spokesmen Jack Stokes and John Jones refused to explain to this journalist how the AP will receive that information. They refused to confirm or deny that the AP will receive direct feed from voting machines and central vote tabulating computers across the country. But, circumstantial evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen.

According to White House and Washington Beltway insiders, the Bush administration, worried that it could lose the presidential election to Senator John F. Kerry, has initiated plans to launch a military strike on Iran's top Islamic leadership, its nuclear reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, and key nuclear targets throughout the country, including the main underground research site at Natanz in central Iran and another in Isfahan. Targets of the planned U.S. attack reportedly include mosques in Tehran, Qom, and Isfahan known by the U.S. to headquarter Iran's top mullahs.
In addition, Israel has been supplied by the United States with 500 "bunker buster" bombs. According to White House sources, the Israeli Air Force will attack Iran's nuclear facility at Bushehr with the U.S. bunker busters.The joint U.S.-Israeli pre-emptive military move against Iran reportedly was crafted by the same neo-conservative grouping in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office that engineered the invasion of Iraq.

The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

A leading Hamas militant near the top of Israel's wanted list was killed last night in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza City. Adnan al-Ghoul, 46, and the number two in Iz a Din al-Kassam, the faction's military wing, was killed along with his deputy, Imad Abbas, when the car in which they were travelling was incinerated by the missile attack.

Hutton and Butler exposed the decay of accountable government

Addressing the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan Wednesday night, George Tenet, former director of central intelligence, called the war on Iraq "wrong."

"Please, please I beg of you, the British people, to help me," Hassan pleaded. "I dont want to die like Bigley," referring to British hostage Kenneth Bigley who was decapitated on a video posted this month on an Islamist Web site.
"Please help me," she begged. "This might be my last hour."

US warplanes and artillery pounded the Iraqi flashpoint city of fallujah overnight, killing seven people and wounding six others, witnesses and hospital sources said on Friday.

...the words on the T-shirts the ladies were wearing did not disparage Bush, nor did they suggest support for Kerry or any other candidate. The words did not condemn or support the war in Iraq, nor did they slam any Administration policy. No, the T-shirts the three women wore showed an American flag, and under it the words, "Protect Our Civil Liberties". That was all -- I kid you not.

The definition of 'terrorism', includes actions made 'with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause'. It is so broad that it would cover civil disobedience by peace groups, M1 and other anti-globalisation blockades, union pickets and strikes, actions to stop logging in forests and similar activities. The demonstrators who pushed over a fence at the refugee detention centre at Woomera would be defined as 'terrorists'...

...the price of gas serves as a constant reminder of Bush's failures in both foreign and domestic policy. Common wisdom says that people vote their pocket. Indeed, nobody cares what the price is for a barrel of oil ...unless it filters into higher gas and energy prices.

by Yitzhak Laor ---> It is not about cheating the Europeans, nor selling them warmongering wrapped up in peace phraseology, by writers who, at home, either encourage the army to do atrocities or keep their mouth shut. No, it is about a bizarre function of a "Peace loving writer from Israel", who has nothing to declare but a heart full of grief, or anger, no information, nothing but some incoherent beliefs, some "optimism" for the complacent reader.

...and began publicly discussing whether torture might be an appropriate, even necessary, weapon in President George W Bush's "war on terror". The most persuasive among them, Harvard academic Alan M Dershowitz, advocated giving courts the right to issue "torture warrants", ensuring that needed information could be pried from unwilling Arab subjects with steel needles.

It's another story of the American Dream come true, the kind you see every day in George Bush's blessed realm. All the usual inspiring elements are there: a couple of plucky kids starting a business with nothing but hustle and a whole lotta heart; a few lucky breaks crowned with big-time success; a duffel bag stuffed with millions in cash from a war-zone slush fund; a father and son held hostage at gunpoint to block a corruption probe, then dumped in hostile territory with no papers, no money, no protection.

Now we come at last to the heart of darkness. Now we know, from their own words, that the Bush Regime is a cult -- a cult whose god is Power, whose adherents believe that they alone control reality, that indeed they create the world anew with each act of their iron will. And the goal of this will -- undergirded by the cult's supreme virtues of war, fury and blind faith -- is likewise openly declared: "Empire."

As soon as British troops are redeployed, the US will again turn the city into a bloodbath

As much as America and the world wish to believe Florida will not be rigged with electoral fraud this November, the sad truth is that all the mechanisms needed to steal the state in favor of George Bush are already firmly entrenched. Thanks to Jeb Bush, Jim Crow manipulator of mandates, corrupt fraudster, decimator of democracy and brother of the president, and the Republican Party, which in essence controls the logistics of and the keys to running the election, Florida has already declared tens of thousands of voters, mostly black and Democratic, ineligible. Many more voters, of all creeds and colors, will be disenfranchised on election day, be it through intimidation, coercion, government intervention, criminal negligence, corruption and fraud, and, of course, through electronic voting machines, most of which are owned by staunch Republican supporters.

The Stanford Daily ---> The 9-11 Commission failed to mention or address the multiple war games / exercises that were being conducted that day, out of the White House. As many as five war game drills were in process, some involving hijacked airliners, a plane crashing into a building, some involving false blips deliberately inserted onto FAA and military radar screens.
One exercise pulled significant fighter resources away from the Northeastern United States on Sept. 11.
These exercises involved North American Air Defense Command, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Canadian Air Force, the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office.
Coincidentally, in New York City, massive preparations were underway for a biochemical attack drill involving FEMA, the Mayor?s Office of Emergency Management, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice, Weill Medical College, the N.Y. Deptartment of Health, the N.Y. Fire Department, the N.Y. Police Department, the American Red Cross and the Port Authority.

"Our administration is concerned about deficits, and the way they deal with deficits is you want to control spending. And I hope Congress lives up to their words. When they talk about deficits, they can join us in making sure we don't overspend. They can join us and make sure that the appropriations process is focused on those issues that -- those items that are absolutely necessary to the American people. I'm pleased that members of the Congress are talking about deficits. It means they understand their obligations not to overspend the people's money."
President Bush

Six blood relatives of President Bush who support John F. Kerry's bid for the presidency have launched a website to publicize their sharp disagreements with Bush's policies.

President Bush has not really registered the failures in his life. When his early oil venture failed, he was bailed out by the Saudi oil family or by his father. But when he bets all his money on a lunatic invasion of Iraq, no one can bail him out. During his debates with John Kerry, no one could bail him out. When Kerry told him, in front of millions of people, that the war was wrongly begun, wrongly planned, wrongly carried out, he had to resort to making faces. There is only so much the Saudi oil family can do.

The Boston Globe ---> The Rebublicans are out to steal the 2004 election -- before, during, and after Election Day. Before Election Day, they are employing such dirty tricks as improper purges of voter rolls, use of dummy registration groups that tear up Democratic registrations, and the suppression of Democratic efforts to sign up voters, especially blacks and students. On Election Day, Republicans will attempt to intimidate minority voters by having poll watchers threaten criminal prosecution if something is technically amiss with their ID, and they will again use technical mishaps to partisan advantage.
But the most serious assault on democracy itself is likely to come after Election Day.

If three days of early voting can constitute a trend, Democrats think the beginning of the election in Nevada bodes well for a John Kerry victory.

Jacksonville is an old gold mining town. Our main street is only five blocks long, lined with restored storefronts. The sidewalks are narrow. We are a peaceful community. The prospect of an overnight presidential visit was exciting.
Police armed with high powered rifles perched upon our rooftops as the presidential motorcade approached. Helicopters flew low, overhead. A cadre of motorcycle police zoomed into town. Black SUVs followed, sandwiching several black limousines carrying the president, his wife and their entourage as they sped to the local inn where they would eat and sleep.
Anyone vocalizing anti-Bush or pro-Kerry sentiments were prohibited from venturing forward.
The chants were loud and apparently could be heard by President Bush. An order was issued that the anti-Bush rhetoric be quieted. The local SWAT team leapt to action. It happened fast. Clad in full riot gear, at least 50 officers moved in. Shouting indecipherable commands from a bullhorn, they formed a chain and bore down upon the people, only working to clear the side of the street appearing to be occupied by Kerry supporters. People tried to get out of their way. It was very crowded. There was nowhere to move. People were being crushed. They started flowing into the streets. Pleas to the officers, asking, "where to go" fell upon deaf ears. Instead, riot police fired pellets of cayenne pepper spray into the crowd. An old man fell and couldn,t get up. When a young man stopped to help, he was shot in the back with hard pepper spray balls. Children were hit with pepper spray. Deemed "Protesters" people were shoved and herded down the street by the menacing line of armed riot police, until out of the President's ear-shot.

The parliamentary committee appointed to investigate the Beslan tragedy may keep the results of its investigation a secret, simply because they are too scary.
"The truth about the real organizers of the terror attack may be so scary that revealing it would lead to new, bloody conflicts," Newsru.com quoted Duma deputy and committee member Yuri Savelyev as saying at a press conference in St. Petersburg.

We have been told by several avid Bush supporters that the days when newspapers publish editorials without personal repercussions are over. As publishers, we have printed editorials for decades, and have endorsed candidates, both Republican and Democrat. When Bush was endorsed four years ago, the Gore supporters did not respond with threats, nor did Democrats when we endorsed Reagan twice. Republicans did not threaten us personally or our business when we endorsed Carter and Clinton for their first terms.

A US soldier on trial for abusing Iraqi prisoners told a Baghdad court martial yesterday that he hooked up wires around a hooded detainee in a mock electrocution at the behest of military and civilian intelligence officials.

Sproul & Associates, a consulting firm based in Chandler, Ariz., hired to conduct the drive by the Republican National Committee, employed several hundred canvassers throughout the state to register new voters. Some workers yesterday said they were told to avoid registering Democrats or anyone who indicated support for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

Israel is becoming more and more corrupt for the third year running, according to the recently-released Corruption Perception Index.
In the new list Israel is ranked 26th, a drop from its 21st place ranking last year. Two years ago Israel placed 18th, and in 2000, 16th. It further emerges that Israel's points dropped in the last two years from 7.3 to 6.4.
The Palestinian Authority also showed a substantial increase in its level of corruption, and was ranked 108th, with 2.5 points, a drop from its 78th-place ranking last year.

The ideologues in the U.S. administration claim it is some kind of battle between freedom and democracy on one side and barbarism and despotism on the other, a sort of battle between good and evil. This comic-book simplification of geopolitics is so patently absurd it hardly warrants a refutation. Yet, for the sake of argument, it should be said that the failure of these so-called defenders of freedom to address the root causes of what they call terrorism, such as hunger, poverty, injustice, occupation, and racism, gives the lie to their fake mission to save the world.

Bush declared the proceeds as a long-term capital gain, which it wasn't, as opposed to ordinary income, which it was. This means Bush paid at the capital gains' rate of 20 percent as opposed to the ordinary income rate of 39.6 percent. Beating the IRS out of nearly 20 percent in additional taxes. But the fun doesn't stop there.

The aim of the Israeli government is to discredit the attempts of the United Nations?feeble as they are?to expose the crimes being committed by Israel in the occupied territories, and prevent UNRWA from delivering aid to the Palestinians. Not accidentally, the smear against UNRWA coincides with Israel?s military offensive against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The man is no two-bit internet conspiracy buff. He was a senior advisor and chief of staff to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. He is very successful counselor and lawyer.

Stanley G. Hilton has filed a class action lawsuit in Federal court in Northern California against against high officials in the current Bush administration (including the federal government, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Mueller, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft), for complicity in aiding and abetting and facilitating the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks.

"This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder."
Stanley Hilton


All honor to Stanley Hilton for risking his life so that we may know the truth of 9/11.

streaming video

Alex Jones interviews Stanley Hilton - Transcript

Israel's opposition leader has said Ariel Sharon risks being assassinated by extremists opposed to his Gaza withdrawal plan.

US election begins with voting in Florida dogged by controversy over faulty machines and disenfranchised voters

TrueMajority Action

As citizens of the United States of America, who have the power to endorse or to dismiss the policies of the Bush regime, you have a collective responsibility not only unto yourselves, but to the world, which will hold you accountable for your decision.

In "Fascism Anyone?," Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism."

Facing advertiser defections, a viewer boycott and a plummeting stock price, as well as strong opposition from Democrats, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. scrapped its plan to air a film that attacks the 1970s-era antiwar activities of Sen. John F. Kerry.

The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition - Pat Robertson - said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, "We're not going to have any casualties."

He called Americans 'ignorant' and their president a 'liar'.
And he predicted that the 'ignorant' lot will re-elect Mr George Bush in next month's presidential election.
Rather strong words.
But that's Malaysia's former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for you.

One of the world's largest aid agencies, Care International, has suspended its operations in Iraq and says it might quit altogether after its British-Iraqi country manager was kidnapped.

The Larry Franklin spy probe reveals an escalating fight over control of Iran policy.

The Selective Service has been updating its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelmed the military's medical corps.

"The house was completely destroyed by a missile dropped from an American plane and we have pulled from the rubble the bodies of four children, a woman and a man," said Bassem Mohammed, a resident of the western city of Fallujah.

???

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

With each passing day, it became more apparent that Israel?s strategy is twofold: not only to dismantle Palestinian society, but also to eliminate any moderate Palestinian who could serve as a "partner for peace."

In 2002, FAO estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers used saved seed from their own stocks from last year's harvest or purchased from local markets. When the new law - on plant variety protection (PVP) - is put into effect, seed saving will be illegal and the market will only offer proprietary "PVP-protected" planting material "invented" by transnational agribusiness corporations. The new law totally ignores all the contributions Iraqi farmers have made to development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Its consequences are the loss of farmers' freedoms and a grave threat to food sovereignty in Iraq. In this way, the US has declared a new war against the Iraqi farmer.

The Bush White House's attacks on one of America's grandest newspapers mark a clear break with Republican tradition.

Americans who disagree with the handling of the war in Iraq should keep their opinions to themselves ? that's the thinly veiled suggestion from Bush administration supporters who consider open criticism of Iraq policy an aid to the enemy.

The Washington bureau chief for Sinclair Broadcast Group said he was fired Monday after he criticized the company's plans to produce a news program based on a documentary critical of John Kerry's Vietnam-era anti-war activities.

Now that President George W. Bush's allegations about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda and ambitious weapons programmes have been thoroughly discredited, another outstanding charge remains to be resolved.

'Dirty wars' have dirty little secrets: the Honduras-Baghdad connection

By committing himself to preventive war, George Bush has overturned two centuries of US thinking on global diplomacy

Of the 160,000 men and women deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 4,119 are 50 or older. At a time in life when most people are looking forward to retirement or eyeing Florida real estate, these soldiers are leaving behind corporate jobs and grandkids.

From Oct. 11 to Oct. 17, an estimated 208 Iraqis were killed in war-related incidents, significantly higher than the average week; 23 members of the United States military died over the same period.

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams weren't true, neither are these nightmares.