Depressed and demoralized White House staffers say working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is "life in a hellhole" as they try to deal with a sullen, moody President whose temper tantrums drive staffers crying from the room and bring the business of running the country to a halt.

"It?s like working in an insane asylum," says one White House aide. "People walk around like they?re in a trance. We're the dance band on the Titanic, playing out our last songs to people who know the ship is sinking and none of us are going to make it."

Though there are significant variations across the region, on average the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk for a fourth consecutive year, according to new data released by US scientists.

From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:

...if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

Bill Bennett's Morning in America airs on approximately 115 radio stations with an estimated weekly audience of 1.25 million listeners.

Israel on Wednesday dismissed as "cynically motivated" a push by Arab countries to have the United Nations nuclear watchdog's 139 member states condemn the Jewish state for having nuclear weapons.

Israel neither confirms nor denies having a nuclear arsenal but experts estimate it has between 100 and 200 atomic bombs.

Security at Labour's conference has been attacked as "mad and over the top" after an MP's camera was seized and pictures deleted.

She made no comment as she was led out of the courthouse in handcuffs and leg shackles.

The home secretary has promised the prime minister that he will lock away for five years anyone who "glorifies, exalts or celebrates" a terrorist act committed in the past 20 years. He does not care if glorification was not meant. If someone, somewhere takes anything that I say or write as encouraging to terror, even if they do not act on it, I have committed a criminal act.

Clarke is to append an open-ended catalogue of listed events. They may include any acts of violence against people, property or, bizarrely, electronic systems anywhere in the world if intended to advance a political, religious or ideological cause or to influence a government.

The UK foreign secretary says military action is still inconceivable against Iran and he hopes diplomacy can solve deadlock over its nuclear programme.

US President George W Bush has refused to rule out military strikes against Iran, which Washington accuses of wanting to develop nuclear weapons.

People in this sleepy hamlet are so sure they have been receiving other-worldly visitors, they want to build a UFO landing strip to welcome them.

"It's a very mysterious place," said Lajas Mayor Marcos Irizarry.
"A lot of people have seen things."

The school teacher says he first encountered aliens at 13. He says white lights burst into his bedroom, entered his body and cured him of a back injury he had received during a basketball game.

DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

DeLay is the first House leader to be indicted while in office in at least a century, according to congressional historians.

The indictment accused DeLay of a conspiracy to "knowingly make a political contribution" in violation of Texas law outlawing corporate contributions. It alleged that DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee accepted $155,000 from companies, including Sears Roebuck, and placed the money in an account.

Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem are being expanded and Palestinian communities segmented by the demolition of Palestinian houses and the creation of parks, South African law professor John Dugard said.

"Even in the Old City, Jewish settlements are expanding," he said in his annual report to the U.N. General Assembly.

Israel's West Bank barrier, which the Jewish state says it is building to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers, will alone result in the transfer of some 55,000 Palestinians out of Jerusalem when it is built through East Jerusalem, as currently planned, said Dugard.

When a nation such as America goes to war, by its own legal principles and self-defining ethos, it does so by majority vote.

You vote your representative in Congress. Congress votes to go to war. You vote a person into the presidency, the president runs the country almost as he sees fit.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, he did not have the mandate of the Iraqi people. He wasn't voted into office. There were no polls conducted to measure Iraqi pulse. There were no demonstrations. It was Saddam's decision.
The same is true today - when Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari decided to agree to a US invasion of Tal Afar, he did not consult the Iraqi people. And when demonstrations protesting inflation and unemployment gather force, Iraq's US-trained national guard fire on the demonstrators, killing a large number.
What's changed?

Iraqi Judge has issued an arrest warrant because police say they weren't British

You have two SAS undercover agents, disguised as Medhi army, roaming around Basra, during a religious festival, with a car wired as a massive car bomb. They were stopped at a checkpoint, and if they were really SAS, all they needed to do was show an ID.

If these were two SAS commandos, and on a undercover mission, why did they panic? The story is that they approached a checkpoint, were stopped, and suddenly there was a shootout.

These two needed to be rescued before they could be made to talk.

Studios won't release Albert Brooks' film...

Former FEMA director Michael Brown aggressively defended his role in responding to Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday and blamed most coordination failures on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

"and I think it led potentially to me being pulled out of Louisiana because it made me somewhat ineffective."

Fort Lauderdale police said yesterday that they charged three men in the 2001 gangland-style slaying of a Florida businessman who was gunned down in his car months after selling a casino cruise line to a group that included Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis was killed on a Fort Lauderdale street on Feb. 6, 2001. Two of the three men charged had been hired as consultants by Adam Kidan, one of Abramoff's partners in the SunCruz Casinos venture.

Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip have led to power cuts in the town of Beit Hanoun, while Gaza City saw a series of attacks on militant targets.

Nearly four days after Hurricane Rita hit, many of the storm's sweltering victims along the Texas Gulf Coast were still waiting for electricity, gasoline, water and other relief Tuesday, prompting one top emergency official to complain that people are "living like cavemen."

In the hard-hit refinery towns of Port Arthur and Beaumont, crews struggled to cross debris-clogged streets to deliver generators and water to people stranded by Rita. They predicted it could be a month before power is restored, and said water and sewer systems could not function until more generators arrived.

"We have been living like cavemen, sleeping in cars, doing bodily functions outside," he said.

Temperatures climbed into the upper 90s, and officials worried that swarms of mosquitoes might spread disease.

Independent ---> With time, he says, "the soldiers got the feeling that they were at a firing range, and for every shot fired ... they'd fire hundreds of bullets in return. There's no need to add that they hit innocent people, and sometimes afterwards we saw ... ambulances arriving there. Nobody cared that they were liable to hit innocent people, they found the whole thing funny."

"We set up a machine gun position in the main street of the [Nablus] Casbah, Firing orders were: anybody walking around the Casbah at night was to be shot and killed. The order was given us in a briefing by the squad commander.

...'take him down'. Killed.Then the jeep of the command post came and 'confirmed kill', throwing two grenades on the body that smashed it completely. Then they opened the bag to see what's in it and found: pita breads.

The US military told an al-Jazeera cameraman being held at Guantánamo Bay that he would be released as long as he agreed to spy on journalists at the Arabic news channel, according to documents.

Around 20,000 soldiers got their final briefing Friday afternoon at Ft. Campbell. It's been two years since the division was last deployed to Iraq.

This is just the 5th time in the history of the 101st that the entire division has been deployed all at once.

...looks like Bush is up to something.

"This whole planet is just us," the 70-year-old exiled monk said Sunday. "Therefore, destruction of another area essentially is destruction of yourself."

When the results reached Sharon's campaign headquarters at the fairgrounds, his supporters opened a bottle of champagne, chanted, "Arik, king of Israel," and lifted the leaders of his campaign up in their chairs.

Brown remains at FEMA as a "contractor" and he is "transitioning out of his job." The reason he will remain at FEMA about a month after his resignation, said the spokesman, is that the agency wants to get the "proper download of his experience."

BBC ---> Test results show that both a young girl who died last week and a 27-year-old woman who died on Monday had been exposed to the H5N1 virus.

Several other recent fatalities are being investigated, and about 20 people are in hospital with bird flu symptoms.

The deadly disease has already killed dozens of people across Asia

...on all but one of the seven counts she faced.

Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests.

Israel launched a new missile strike in the Gaza Strip on Monday, hours after Hamas said it would stop attacking the Jewish state following a weekend of Israeli air strikes in response to Palestinian rocket attacks.

A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7 hit northern Peru late Sunday.
"Several houses have fallen down and there are several people dead," Carlos Mori, a resident of the jungle town of Lamas, near Moyobamba, told Radioprograms. "All of the residents of Lamas are in the streets. Most of the people are helping."

Sharon, the final speaker of the night, walked to the podium to make his argument and found the microphone did not work. He sat down for several minutes and then walked back to the podium. He spoke a few words and then the microphone disconnected again. After waiting for several minutes, Sharon walked out of the hall.

Israel TV's Channel One quoted a Likud spokesman, Shmulik Dahan, as saying someone had intentionally cut the power.

A TIME inquiry finds that at top positions in some vital government agencies, the Bush Administration is putting connections before experience

The test run, conducted earlier this week, is seen as a precursor experiment intended to flight validate equipment and methods to construct a space elevator. This visionary concept would make use of an ultra-strong carbon nanotube composite ribbon stretching up to 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth into space.

The space elevator would be anchored to an offshore sea platform near the equator in the Pacific Ocean. At the other end in space, the ribbon would be attached to a small counterweight. Mechanical "lifters" ? robotic elevator cars ? would move up and down the ribbon, carrying such items as satellites, solar power systems and eventually people into space.

Defense and communications technicians will team up to develop a mobile combat robot to fight alongside human soldiers on the battlefield, the government said.
According to design blueprints released during a meeting of science-related ministers, the robot will have six or eight extendable legs with wheels allowing it to move like an insect over uneven terrain.
The robot will be armed with various weapons and will operate both by remote control and its own artificial intelligence system.

TWO SAS soldiers rescued last week after being arrested by Iraqi police and handed over to a militia were engaged in a "secret war" against insurgents bringing sophisticated bombs into the country from Iran.

The men had left their base near the southern Iraqi city of Basra to carry out reconnaissance and supply a second patrol with "more tools and fire power", said a source with knowledge of their activities.

They had been in Basra for seven weeks on an operation prompted by intelligence that a new type of roadside bomb which has been used against British troops was among weapons being smuggled over the Iranian border.

A series of contracts have been uncovered that relate to the US army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They ask companies to tender for the production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax, and for equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological agents.

Issued earlier this year, the contracts were discovered by Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, a US-German organisation that campaigns against the use of biological and chemical weapons.

The Nation ---> ..."today in baquba we got into the shit again and got some of it on vid.....this is me and my wingman fuckin some shit up when these fucks shot 3 rpg's at us so we took down the whole spot.....look for yourself...the fight lasted like 85 mins total and they are still counting up the bodies."
...an anonymous soldier identified only as "Stress_Relief," uploaded two videos of the clash onto the website, drawing enthusiastic responses from patrons: "nice work, guys. Keep blasting those mujadeen [sic] bastards."

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

The fundraising comes amid concern that some US projects in Iraq will be scrapped or only partly completed because of rising costs. Some officials fear that money may run out before key projects are completed.

Last week, the number of US troops killed in Iraq rose above 1,900.

Halliburton Watch ---> In 1 year, Halliburton's stock doubles as troop deaths double.
Since the beginning of the Iraq war, Halliburton, the Texas energy giant once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has seen its stock price more than triple in value. When the U.S invaded Iraq in March of 2003, Halliburton's stock was selling for $20 per share. The stock price at the close of market activity on Monday was $66.

A car bomb exploded in an industrial park in the northern Spanish province of Avila after a warning believed to be from Basque militants Eta, say reports.

"The state bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest," the official Xinhua news agency said in announcing the new rules, which took effect immediately.

It spared Houston, the fourth largest U.S. city, a direct hit. But the oil city of Beaumont, Texas, and many of the largest U.S. refiners were in Rita's path, and the extent of damage was not yet known.

Much of New Orleans was flooded again, less than a month after Hurricane Katrina, as water poured over levees.

Rattled by Hurricane Rita, residents along the Texas and Louisiana coasts began clearing away debris as power crews worked to restore electricity to more than 1 million customers in four states.

They also breathed a sigh of relief that the devastation caused by the once-dreaded storm was less severe than that caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Photos

Hart Viges ---> September 11 happened. Next day I was in the recruiting office. I thought that was the way I could make a difference in the world for the better.

I don't know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds. I have my imagination to pick at for that one. But I clearly remember the call-out over the radio saying "Green light on all taxi-cabs. The enemy is using them for transportation".

I couldn't cut my wrists. So I called the police. They come stomping through my door. I have my knife in my hand. "Shoot me."

A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year.

Fascinating. No really, the ?evolution? of state disinformation has probably never been better displayed than in the case of the two (more than likely) SAS soldiers who were 'liberated' after being arrested by the Iraqi police on 19 September by a phalanx of tanks and helicopter gunships that stormed the police station where the two undercover soldiers were being held after they allegedly failed to stop at an Iraqi police roadblock and subsequently opened fire on the Iraqi police, killing one and wounding another.

What we were actually doing in Basra was to turn a blind eye on abuse, murder and anarchy.

Britain has already privately informed Japan - which also has troops in Iraq - of its plans to begin withdrawing from southern Iraq in May.
The document being drawn up by the British government and the US will be presented to the Iraqi parliament in October and will spark fresh controversy over how long British troops will stay in the country.

This week the Bush Administration prevented witnesses from providing public testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about Able Danger, "a secret military unit that is said to have identified four of the Sept. 11 hijackers more than a year before the terrorist attacks." [Foxnews.com, 9/22/05] Even Republican members of Congress blasted the White House's unwillingness to be open and honest with the American people about our fight against terrorism.

United States is "an empire" that has "a terrorist administration," which is "a threat to humanity."

Two Children Killed, And Countless Maimed In School Attack.
Why Does Israel Destroy One Of The Few Schools These Arabs Have?

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ordered "unrestricted" military strikes against Palestinian militants...

Al-Waleed, the nephew of the late Saudi King Fahd, was in the news when he visited the World Trade Center's remains just after the September 11th attacks and offered then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani a $10 million check for relief efforts. Al-Waleed then released a statement blaming US foreign policy and support for Israel for the attacks.

Demonstration Is Largest in Capital Since U.S. Military Invaded Iraq

from Yahoo

...protest

Several thousand protesters have taken part in a demonstration in central London against the conflict in Iraq.

The route took protesters along Whitehall and into Piccadilly before reaching Hyde Park for a rally.

Police said about 10,000 people took part, but Stop The War Coalition said up to 100,000 were protesting.

The White House in mid-week said President Bush was scheduled to travel to "TBD" (to be determined) on Friday after leaving Birmingham, Ala., and would be continuing on to "TBD" on Saturday. Clearly, Bush's advisers decided it would not be smart to have the president holed up in the residence, surrounded by a marching sea of angry Americans wearing yellow "Bush lies, who dies?" buttons, especially not with the need to show compassion to victims of yet another hurricane.

Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, noting that organizers had hoped to draw 100,000 people, said, "I think they probably hit that."

A few hundred people in a counterdemonstration in support of Bush's Iraq policy lined the protest route near the FBI building. The two groups shouted at each other, a police line keeping them apart.

A new file of evidences concerning the IDF?s open-fire orders and policy in the territories during the last conflict is now uploaded. This file reveals to us once again the moral rot borne by the IDF?s activity in the territories. Unlike previous publications, the current one presents this moral decay as spreading to all ranks of command and leadership.

"The protection of intellectual property is vital to our economic growth and global competitiveness, and it has major consequences in our ongoing effort to promote security and stability around the world," he said.

The Thursday quakes began with a magnitude-3.4 jolt, which was quickly followed by a 4.7 quake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena.
There were also several lesser aftershocks.

Due to the increased allegations accusing of Israel of involvement in the incident, the IDF issued a statement:

"The IDF is not involved in any way in the explosion that occurred this evening in Jebaliya. All attempts to accuse [the IDF] or implicate the army's involvement by certain elements are baseless and unfounded. The IDF views seriously attempts to use the incident as an excuse to attack Israel."

Hamas claimed that Israeli aircraft flew overhead during the rally and fired on demonstrators.

According to the National Enquirer, President George W. Bush, an alcoholic, is drinking again.

In normal times, such a story in a tabloid like the Enquirer would be dismissed as just another fantasy for the newspaper that normally devotes its front page to gossip about celebrity divorces. But an America with Bush as President is anything but normal and too many warning signs point to the sad fact that Dubya the drunk is back on the bottle.

A 14-year-old student was expelled from a Christian school because her parents are lesbians, the school's superintendent said in a letter.

...the US and Iraq "feed the myth" that foreign fighters are the backbone of the insurgency. While the foreign fighters may stoke the incurgency flames, they only comprise only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents.

...their message tomorrow will be singular: "End the war in Iraq."

I was watching the convenience store in our building and there were lots of shady characters scoping it out. I went in to talk to the owner and we both agreed that it was time for him to lock up and leave. He was in a very dangerous position and there are no legitimate customers on the streets anyway. The two of us will be watching the retail section from the safety of our balconies. Unfortunately I went into this storm thinking that Houston would avoid much looting (we have in the past) but I'm pretty pessimistic about what will happen later tonight.

Like the power of nature, there is a power at work in New Orleans that defies explanation.

...another lie exposed

Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes.

"You can't go to war and win without space," said Gen. Lance Lord, the four-star general in charge of the Colorado-based Air Force Space Command.
"If somebody is trying to use space against us, we could interrupt, in a reversible kind of way, those kind of capabilities as needed and as directed by U.S. policy,"

This, while troops are in battle.

David Mery ---> They handcuff me, hands behind my back, and take my rucksack out of my sight. They explain that this is for my safety, and that they are acting under the authority of the Terrorism Act. I am told that I am being stopped and searched because:

· they found my behaviour suspicious from direct observation and then from watching me on the CCTV system;

· I went into the station without looking at the police officers at the entrance or by the gates;

· two other men entered the station at about the same time as me;

· I am wearing a jacket "too warm for the season";

· I am carrying a bulky rucksack, and kept my rucksack with me at all times;

· I looked at people coming on the platform;

· I played with my phone and then took a paper from inside my jacket.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter delivered a shocker at an American University panel in Washington...
There is "no doubt in my mind that Gore won the election," the erstwhile President declared, saying the 2000 election process "failed abysmally."

President Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on terrorism, for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers.

Israeli troops killed a Palestinian youth Thursday in the northern West Bank as he tried to enter a military camp one day before its evacuation.

An unclassified draft of a US nuclear doctrine review that spells out conditions under which US commanders might seek approval to use nuclear weapons has been removed from a Pentagon website.

Russia and China warned the United States and European Union on Wednesday against escalating the nuclear standoff with Iran, potentially blocking a Western drive to haul Tehran before the UN Security Council.

Acts of terrorism are sometimes justified, London Mayor Ken Livingstone said Thursday. There was often no other way to fight oppression than using "the assassin's bullet or the assassin's bomb," he added.

Speaking at a London news conference, Livingstone, labeled "Red Ken" for his outspoken and often controversial political views, said he had known terrorists whom he viewed as "courageous and principled."

U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver.

Monday was one of those rare illuminating days. A juxtaposition of events starkly exposed Western double standards and made the Iraqi government's claims of sovereignty even more nonsensical than it already was.

Among many unanswered questions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we have this one: Why didn't the stranded residents of flooded New Orleans simply walk to dry land? For many, the answer was simple and disturbing: The suburbs wouldn't let them.

Goddamn you! Here are your terrorists! Here are your terrorists!!! Tony Blair you slick, pompous, blow-dried freak of nature; you slimy, slithering snake. The New World Order, thank you very much.

...if you get your news from the mainstream media then you don?t know, because nowhere is this mentioned.

The Israeli lobby in Washington was never monolithic and new that to be effective it had to get into both major parties in the US. The lobby knew that the best way to advance closer working relationship with the right would be that Israel is a good and willing ?tool? for advancing US interests. Such a formulation helps deflect criticism from patriotic Americans who worry about the growing influence of this lobby. On the other side, left leaning Zionists wanted to work with a democratic left that occasionally complained about ?US Imperialism? and corporate interests. In that case, it was easier to claim Israel helps US public interests or that Israel is a democratic ally. When push comes to shove, even Zionists on the left would deflect any critique of the Zionist lobby claiming that criticism should be solely directed to the masters (corporate or other elites) who merely ?use? Israel as a tool.

Is it true that many of the killings in Iraq are not in fact perpetrated by Sunni extremists or foreign insurgents, but indeed by British and American security forces, trying to take the strain off their troops in their realization that the war in Iraq was a monumental mistake from day one, witness to freedom and democracy George Bush style and that followed by his sickening bunch of sycophants eager to make an easy buck on the international stage by breaking an international law or six?

The badly mangled bodies of three FEMA workers were discovered two days ago, hanging from a tree inside the courtyard of a French Quarter apartment. The bodies, found by U.S. Military Police units engaged in searching for survivors, bore crudely written placards that read, "FEMA THIEF-DIE," "RACIST PIG," and "FEMA LOOTER BITCH."

Found with the badly decomposing and mutilated bodies were expensive leather luggage, apparently looted from Saks Fifth Avenue?s New Orleans store and containing very expensive women?s clothing, jewelry, several boxes of Davidoff cigars, three Rolex watches and nearly $3 thousand in small bills.

As the anti-war movement arrives in Washington this weekend, many top Democrats are leaving.

Pictures of the arrested undercover British SAS in Basra.
...those pages are deleted from Yahoo. Now the link goes to a picture of Lyndie England.

Today, somewhere in the DC metropolitan area, the military is conducting a highly classified Granite Shadow "demonstration."

Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military?s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.

The European Commission has adopted proposals to log details of all telephone, Internet, and e-mail traffic, to combat terrorism and serious crime.

Houston Mayor Bill White has called for residents to leave low-lying areas of the city as Hurricane Rita approaches.

What we saw was poverty with a black face. All around the world - and in the United States itself - people asked why the American Dream was not able to touch every American.

This is a fiasco without parallel in recent British history. Iraqis must run their country: we've made enough mess of it already...

Sadly, this story is really not all that surprising. After hearing countless accounts of using napalm and torture against innocent civilians in addition to the other daily abuses dished out by American overseers, the thought of British scheming seems perfectly reasonable.

So what we have here is a clear instance of a foreign power attempting to fabricate a terrorist attack. Why else would the soldiers be dressed as Arabs if not to frame them? Why have a car laden with explosives if you don't plan to use them for destructive purposes? Iraq is headed towards civil war, and this operation was meant to accelerate the process by killing people and blaming others. Nothing more, nothing less.

There have been a number of insurgent bombings in Iraq recently. Who really is responsible for the bloodshed and destruction? The only tangible benefit of the bombings is justification for Coalition forces maintaining the peace in Iraq. Who benefits from that? Certainly not the Iraqis - they already believe most suicide bombings are done by the United States to prompt religious war.

IRAN may be only six months away from acquiring the capability to produce nuclear weapons, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has claimed.

"Our experts say they are very close to this (production) stage," Mr Shalom said. "They may need only another six months."

...not long ago, we've heard, from Israel, the same story about Iraq.

The program allows recruiters to enlist a high school dropouts...

Washington has repeatedly denied North Korean allegations of a planned attack, most recently in the joint statement at the talks in Beijing, where the U.S. delegation "affirmed that it has no nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula and has no intention to attack or invade (North Korea) with nuclear or conventional weapons."

The Department of Defense forbade a military intelligence officer to testify Wednesday about the work of a secret military unit that identified four 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, according to the man's attorney.

In written testimony prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, attorney Mark Zaid, who represents Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said the Pentagon also refused to permit testimony there by a defense contractor that he also represents.

Cindy Sheehan, escorted by other anti-war activists, carries a letter to be delivered to U.S. President George W. Bush near the White House in Washington, DC, September 21, 2005 calling on Bush to remove U.S. troops from Iraq.

Gaining strength with frightening speed, Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast today as a Category 5, 165-mph monster storm.

...officials ordered the mandatory evacuation of vulnerable areas in advance of Hurricane Rita.

Things you should keep in mind

BRITISH soldiers freed two comrades in a dramatic operation last night just hours after the men, believed to be with an undercover special forces unit, were arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen.

Witnesses and Iraqi officials claimed British troops backed by up to ten tanks smashed down the walls of the central jail in the southern city of Basra and freed the two men.

This "undercover special forces unit" were disguised as Arabs in local garb over their T-shirts and trousers. The men wore black-hair wigs and, according to some reports, typical headresses.
And they also carried a whole lot of weapons, including explosives and other bomb-making materials. ...then they began firing at the police and passers-by.
At least one Basra policeman was shot dead. At least one person in the crowd was shot dead. An undetermined number of others were injured in the gunfight.

There are about 8,500 British troops in and around Basra. Four Iraqis died in the riots against the jailbreak mission.
Also, a local reporter who wrote for the New York Times and The Guardian was found murdered.

...the British Ministry of Defense denied all wrongdoing, called the destruction of the jail "absolutely right," and blamed everything on a "civil war"

...take a look ---> The Role of US Agents Provocateurs in Iraq

New evidence that bombs are being planted by British Commandos

After four or five weeks ... it would have spread to too many places and then it will be probably impossible to contain,' Oshitani warned, speaking to the WHO's Regional Committee for the Western Pacific.

20 percent of the world's population may quickly die off ...

..."say 'ts not true...please"

"This is not simply manslaughter through incompetence, though the White House's incompetence abounds. It is murder - for Bush was warned four years ago of the threat to New Orleans, as surely as he was warned of the disaster that would come of his war on Iraq. ..."
"His is the America of Halliburton, the M-16 rifle, the cluster bomb, the gated communities of the rich and of the billionaires he grew up with in Texas. There is another America. It is the land of the poor of Louisiana, it is the land of the young men and women economically conscripted into the military. It is the land of the glorious multiethnic mix that was New Orleans, it is the land of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and of great struggles for justice."

Haaretz ---> Channel 10 showed footage of the entrance to a swanky Fifth Avenue apartment building in Manhattan, where Sharon met wealthy supporters for dinner on Sunday evening.

A Channel 10 reporter read from an invitation sent by Nina Rosenwald, identified as the heiress of the Sears empire, stating that people attending the dinner with Sharon in her apartment would be expected to contribute at least $10,000 to Sharon's campaign to retain Likud leadership against a challenge from former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US comprises a small fraction of the world but it sees all the rest of the world ? and, for emphasis, ALL the rest of the world ? as its servant, its supplier of cheap goods and labour, its warehouse, its flea market, the place to play with its guns.

US military analysts are beginning to wonder if the US has been defeated by the insurgency.

Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, says: "We can't secure the airport road, can't stop the incoming (mortar rounds) into the Green Zone, can't stop the killings and kidnappings." The insurgency controls most of Baghdad and the Suni provinces.

At the Human Rights Conference on September 9, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, described Americans as "people with blood-soaked hands."

"Who are the terrorists," asked Mahathir, the Iraqis or the Americans?

The entire world is asking this question.

Tamimi was kidnapped from his home in his wife's presence by four men in plain clothes who reportedly told her they were police and wanted to interrogate her husband. His body was found with a bullet in the head a few hours later 3 km southwest of the city.
He is the 68th journalist to be killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003, and the 19th since the beginning of 2005. In comparison, a total of 63 journalists were killed in the Vietnam war, which lasted from 1955 to 1975.

One British aid worker last night called the move "sickening senselessness" and said furious colleagues were "spitting blood".

The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.

Biologist Jose Umberto, who had been invited onto the show to give his expert opinion, confirmed that the images were not the work of man. A human hand would have deformed the leaves' structure, he said.

A microscopic examination showed that the tiny holes pierced in the leaves varied in diameter and that the intervals between each of the two neighboring holes were not the same.

While scientists continue their efforts to establish the origin of the mysterious images, theologians and psychics maintain these are messages from God.

No one has any idea when, or even if the ice will go back to the gulf coast.

...idiots and pure evil are in charge of things.
...HELP!
...S O S

As Cindy was speaking, a large platoon of police massed behind from the interior of the park, then formed a circle behind her, the speakers' area and a few dozen people who were deployed in an arc behind her. Overall, about 200 people were in attendance, with the crowd steadily increasing in size as the rally progressed. As the police formed their arc just behind, the men and women immediately behind Cindy linked arms. A captain made a cutting motion at his throat, signalling he wanted no more free speech. He waited about 30 seconds, then the police moved in. They didn't dare arrest Cindy, but they immediately moved in and grabbed zool, the event's organizer and one of the main organizers of Camp Casey-NYC, pulling him away and arresting him.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq, last night brought her campaign to end the war to New York, where she accused Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of not doing enough to challenge the Bush administration's Iraq policies.

Speaking in front of more than 500 supporters in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Ms. Sheehan, speaking of Senator Clinton, said, "She knows that the war is a lie but she is waiting for the right time to say it."

In the next few weeks, five men and seven women will secretly visit the Cleveland Clinic to interview for the chance to have a radical operation that?s never been tried anywhere in the world.

They will smile, raise their eyebrows, close their eyes, open their mouths. Dr. Maria Siemionow will study their cheekbones, lips and noses. She will ask what they hope to gain and what they most fear.

Then she will ask, "Are you afraid that you will look like another person?"

North Korea pledged Monday to abandon its entire nuclear program, but U.S. officials including President Bush and other diplomats participating in six-party talks warned there would be a long, difficult road of detailed negotiations before achieving the goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior" friend.

Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:

"Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.

"I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down."

Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.

We know a lot of nasty and weird things about the Bush family, and we have good cause to suspect a lot worse. What's more, they know we know. And they know, and we know, that these things will not be spoken in the mass media. And so they enjoy the liberty of winking at us. Like two years ago, when Jeb "joked" during a cabinet meeting that the people of San Francisco were "an endangered species, which may not be a bad thing. That's probably good news for the country." As the room erupted in laughter he added disingenuously, "Did I just say that out loud?" Like George HW Bush posing in bed with his granddaughters, a model of an Illuminati pyramid in his lap. Like Dick Cheney's delighting in his underground reputation as a conspiracrat. Like Jeb speaking matter-of-factly before a partisan crowd about his habitual summoning of a warrior entity.
They know what signs they send.

David Safavian, who oversees $300 billion of annual federal purchasing as director of the Office of Procurement Policy, has been arrested for three criminal charges relating to obstruction of a federal investigation.

The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared.

"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent.

"Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."

The rally will be the first demonstration allowed to surround the White House in more than a decade.

Organizers say they're bringing in protesters from across the nation for what could be the largest war protest since the invasion of Iraq.

Police say they're expecting as many as 100,000 people of all ages.

Angry crowds attacked a British tank with petrol bombs and rocks in Basra on Monday after Iraqi authorities detained two British undercover soldiers in the southern city for firing on police.

"They're treating us like dogs," said Joseph, 54, as she sat outside the Reliant Arena, where she sleeps on a cot. "They just want to get us out of Houston as fast as they can. Thanks for nothing."

"The food is awful, it's too cold, and every time you ask somebody anything, the answer is the same: 'We're working on it,' " said Pamela Virgil, 49.

Some irate Houston residents say Katrina victims are getting preferential treatment.

The plot of the Jim Carrey film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" could one day become true now that researchers at Fudan University have discovered a way to block memories.

The findings could one day be used to wipe out memories of terrible events and treat people with psychological problems, researchers said.

...one of the largest online communities of it's kind, anywhere in the world. With almost 25,000 volunteer members, over 300,000 posts on our forums, over 149,000 government documents, over 10,000 archived news articles, and over 14,000 photographs of military aircraft, UFOs, JFK Assassination material, and much more. Due to these statistics, The Black Vault has been referenced as one of the largest technological achievements on the 'net!

On Katrina: The Only Mistake We Made Was Not Overriding The Local Government...

On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan Is A Clown. There Is No Real Anti-War Movement...

Although more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds have been appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction, the administration earlier this month launched an Internet-based fundraising effort that it says is aimed at giving Americans "a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq."

Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or precisely where it's headed, because the government says it must keep the details secret for security reasons.

The system, officially a tropical depression, could be Tropical Storm Rita by later on Sunday and a hurricane by Tuesday, when it was expected to be in the Florida Straits between the Keys and Cuba, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Tim Collins told his troops this was a war of liberation, not conquest.
Now he says that he was naive to believe it

A U.S. Defense Department study has determined that Muslims in the Middle East do not yearn for U.S. liberation.

A Pentagon advisory board has released a report that asserted that Muslims in dictatorial regimes do not seek freedom as those in countries that had been dominated by the Soviet Union after World War II. The board said that unlike those who lived in East Bloc states, Muslims do not see the United States as their liberator.

FEMA paid $31 million in Miami-Dade County for Hurricane Frances, even though the Labor Day weekend storm made landfall 100 miles to the north. Subsequent reports detailed how FEMA inspectors receive little training; that the agency paid for funerals for deaths unrelated to the storm; and that some criminals were hired to inspect damage.

He accuses the Prime Minister, John Howard, and Mr Bush of being cowards, saying 'they wouldn't fight themselves, of course, but they readily send other people's children to fight in their name'.

'It's just another form of neo-colonialism,' Mr Latham says of the alliance, saying, 'it should be ditched.'

The United States has supposedly created new ?democracies? in Afghanistan and Iraq, but these endeavors give democracy a bad name.

Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, made the off the record prediction that the US will go into Syria to combat insurgents that have been using the country as a staging ground for terrorist activity in Iraq.

t may have been a throwaway remark during a private conversation with Rupert Murdoch, but what Tony Blair said about the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina speaks volumes about where the Prime Minister's loyalties lie.

Robert Fisk ---> Years of Western interference in the Middle East has left the region heavy with injustices

A University of New South Wales academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit.

What's more, his simple new framework means calculations can be done without trigonometric tables or calculators, yet often with greater accuracy.

"Now there is a better way. Once you learn the five main rules of rational trigonometry and how to simply apply them, you realise that classical trigonometry represents a misunderstanding of geometry."

The massive emigration came after Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi last week warned of a military attack against the city to "cleanse it from the terrorists."
Last October, Iraqi-U.S. forces invaded Samara, killing more than 300 people...

Exit polls showed conservative challenger Angela Merkel's party leading in German parliamentary elections Sunday but falling short of the majority she needed to form a center-right coalition as the nation's first female chancellor.

Seeking to turn the tables of Western powers that suspect Tehran of developing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad offered to allow other countries and private companies to participate in his country's uranium enrichment program to prove that Tehran is not producing nuclear weapons.

Calling the charge that Iran is seeking to produce nuclear weapons "a pure propaganda ploy," Ahmadinejad said Iran has a right to a nuclear fuel program, but stressed that the country's "religious principles" prevent it from seeking atomic weapons.

He called for the establishment of a UN committee to formulate solutions for nuclear weapons disarmament and said the committee should "investigate how materials, technology and equipment related to atomic weapons made their way to the Zionist regime, in breach of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)."

To understand this true weapon of mass destruction, you must understand the position the American Dollar holds in the world economy.

A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon.

...documents as "2.5 terabytes" ? as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.

In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

It's not so much that the government is not responding [with storm relief], they are obstructing the response. They are telling us we can't bring people the basic necessities of life because that would give them hope. It is a question of oppression vs. mutual aid. That is the revolution.

Ali Ghazi, also a Shia from the Iraqi deep south. "I believe it is the Americans who are doing this, pretending it is the Sunni, so there will be a civil war and they can control our wealth." Many survivors lying mangled by this morning?s bombs subscribed to a conspiracy theory according to which the US wants to rule Iraq by fomenting differences between Shia and Sunni.... many of those wounded denied there would be a war between Shia and Sunni. Mohammed Abdul Karim, an injured Shia at Noman hospital, pointed out that he was in a Sunni district and the Sunni doctors were doing everything to help him.

What brings the leading voice of the ?liberal? media together with the ultra-right president? Both defend the interests of the narrow layer of wealthy families at the top of American society. Both react with fear and trepidation to the exposure of the vast social gulf that exists in the United States between this privileged elite and the vast majority of working people...

Ariel Sharon met with South African President Thabo Mbeki Friday and asked him to advance the referral of Iran?s nuclear program to discussion at the United Nations Security Council.
Until now, the South Africans have resisted the move.

Controversy is raging in Paraguay, where the U.S. military is conducting secretive operations. 500 U.S. troops arrived in the country on July 1st with planes, weapons and ammunition. Eyewitness reports prove that an airbase exists in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, which is 200 kilometers from the border with Bolivia and may be utilized by the U.S. military. Officials in Paraguay claim the military operations are routine humanitarian efforts and deny that any plans are underway for a U.S. base. Yet human rights groups in the area are deeply worried. White House officials are using rhetoric about terrorist threats in the tri-border region (where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet) in order to build their case for military operations, in many ways reminiscent to the build up to the invasion of Iraq. (1) The tri-border area is home to the Guarani Aquifer, one of the world?s largest reserves of water. Near the Estigarribia airbase are Bolivia?s natural gas reserves, the second largest in Latin America. Political analysts believe U.S. operations in Paraguay are part of a preventative war to control these natural resources and suppress social uprisings in Bolivia.

The UN agency and the European Union have been urging countries for months to prepare for the possibility of a future human pandemic caused by the bird flu virus...

FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say.

"The U.N. Charter was violated. The right to negotiation was violated, because the document was discussed by only 30 nations, by an elite. The right to vote was violated, because it was adopted by consensus," Chavez said.
Describing the document as "illegal," the Venezuelan president said "the U.N. is good for nothing"

Transcript --->

"I would really like to visit Britain," Mr Sharon was said to have told Mr Blair. "The trouble is that I, like Major-General Almog, also served in the (Israeli Defence Force) for many years. I too am a general. I have heard that the prisons in Britain are very tough. I wouldn't like to find myself in one."

While the world has been falling all over itself to remember the victims of 9?11 and digging deep in its pockets to aid the wealthiest nation on the planet recovering from a natural disaster, a ferocious man-made onslaught on a town in northeast Iraq is being virtually ignored.

This is yet one more example of the double standards prevalent today when the color of your passport can determine your worth as a human being.

...a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family.
Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

"It is appalling that the Bush administration -- which has already badly bungled its response to hurricane Katrina -- would hire a company with a record of gross mismanagement of mortuary services," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington D.C.-based watchdog group. "I can only imagine that this decision was made because of President Bush's long-time friendship with the head of SCI, Robert Waltrip."

We watched a flatbed truck drive by, a man on the back with an M-16 looking up on the roofs for snipers, as is common in Iraq. Private security contractors were stationed outside the Royal St. Charles Hotel; when asked if things were getting pretty wild around the area, one of them replied, ?Nope. It's pretty Green Zone here.'"

With an hour-long slide show that blends satellite imagery with disquieting assumptions about Iran's nuclear energy program, Bush administration officials have been trying to convince allies that Tehran is on a fast track toward nuclear weapons.

The PowerPoint briefing, titled "A History of Concealment and Deception," has been presented to diplomats from more than a dozen countries. Several diplomats said the presentation, intended to win allies for increasing pressure on the Iranian government, dismisses ambiguities in the evidence about Iran's intentions and omits alternative explanations under debate among intelligence analysts.

...the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.

That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt.

Egyptian border troops let Palestinians vault over a low wall and cross a fence to the Egyptian side of Rafah and did nothing to stop people going the other way.

Abdullah Shaer, 53, a Palestinian living in the Egyptian town of El-Arish, about 25 miles away, clambered over to the Gaza Strip with his daughter and grandchild, en route to a reunion with his brother. He said he hadn't been on Gaza soil in 38 years.

"I can't describe my feelings," he said. "This is a dream."

His daughter, Mayada, 24, said she had barely slept the previous night.

"The terrorists must know that wherever they go they cannot escape justice," Bush said to world leaders. Those gathered before him -- including many who harbor lingering bitterness about the U.S.-led war in Iraq -- sat silently throughout the speech.

"We must send a clear message to the rulers of outlaw regimes that sponsor terror and pursue weapons of mass murder: You will not be allowed to threaten the peace and stability of the world," Bush said. "Confronting our enemies is essential, and so civilized nations will continue to take the fight to the terrorists."

65 percent of citizens across the world do not think their country is governed by the will of the people, a poll commissioned by the BBC suggests.

We call upon theatre artists internationally to co-ordinate the staging of readings of the play Bury the Dead by Irwin Shaw on Monday, September 19, 2005. This is meant to connect with the international day of action called for Saturday, September 24

...simultaneous readings in Canada and the United States

in Toronto --->
MONDAY SEPT. 19 @ 7:30pm
THE FACTORY THEATRE, STUDIO SPACE, 125 BATHURST ST.

We will fight and resist in any way that we know how ? from readings of anti-war plays to the huge demonstrations on September 24th to opening our homes to US soldiers who refuse to fight.
THE WORLD SAYS NO TO WAR!

James McMurtry - Texas musician --->
"We Can't Make it Here"

Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore

That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore

See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They're just gonna set there till they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore

The bar's still open but man it's slow
The tip jar's light and the register's low
The bartender don't have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore

High school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what'll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it's way too late to just say no
You can't make it here anymore

Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their sh@# don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the da$% little war
And we can't make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat sh$%, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore

And that's how it is
That's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you're listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That's done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore

"From now on, nothing is impossible for Israel, which is a normal country like any other. We won't wait another half a century to sit on the Security Council," Dan Gillerman told Israel's privately owned Channel Two by telephone.

The dam has burst. An Israeli politician can say anything and everything, in spite of common sense and what he may have said the day before, without raising an eyebrow. Even before now it was not exactly a dam that held back the lies and self-righteousness; it was more like a little knoll.
Now even that is gone, after Shaul Mofaz spearheaded the foolish campaign against demolishing the synagogues in Gaza. The rich catalog of political deception has never had such a murky wave as this, which overnight washed out a solid cabinet majority, and at the same time the minimal courtesy toward the Supreme Court, the State's Attorney General, the intelligence of the street - and the sense of shame.

In what seems destined to become one of the most yakked about photos of the month, if not year, a Reuters photographer today seems to have captured President George W. Bush scribbling a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggesting that he needed to take a "bathroom break" during a session at the United Nations.

The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed show.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.

Bush was very happy with himself...

...a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, saw the burn marks and knew immediately what caused them. When he surfaced and showed the evidence to his superior, the on-site Coordinator for FEMA stepped-in and said "You are not here to conduct an investigation as to why this rupture occurred, but only to determine how best to close it." The FEMA coordinator then threw the evidence back into the water and said "You will tell no one about this."

At that point, the diver went back down to do more inspection of the levee. On the second dive, he secreted a small chunk of the debris inside his wet suit and later arranged for it to be sent to trusted military friends at a The U.S. Army Forensic Laboratory at Fort Gillem, Georgia for testing.

According to well placed sources, a military forensic specialist determined the burn marks on the cement chunks did, in fact, come from high explosives. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity said "We found traces of boron-enhanced fluoronitramino explosives as well as PBXN-111 embedded in the debris. This would indicate at least two separate types of explosive devices."

The levee ruptures in New Orleans did not take place during Hurricane Katrina, but rather a day after the hurricane struck. Several residents of New Orleans and many Emergency Workers reported hearing what sounded like large, muffled explosions from the area of the levee, but those were initially discounted as gas explosions from homes with leaking gas lines.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House did not seek Brown's resignation.

"This was Mike Brown's decision and we respect his decision," he said

The New Orleans catastrophe is inexplicable.

FEMA's slow response is a mystery.

The Department of Homeland Security and FEMA knew days in advance that Hurricane Katrina was threatening the Gulf coast of the US. Yet, the normal advance preparations were not undertaken.

Compare this inexplicable delay with the rapid response to the Florida hurricanes last year.

Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers ---> Americans are always boasting about how they are the richest and the freest, etc., etc. But from the eyes of this American son, America?s twilight has fallen. It is getting dark. I cannot see any way out of the disaster you folks are headed for. The problems are too numerous, the needed debate unheard, and the psyche already destroyed.

Guardian ---> ...on the 16th, there is to be a further day of solemnities on which the nation will pray for the unnumbered victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Thus has George Bush become the Archbishop of Washington even as his aura as lord protector slides into the putrid black lagoon, bobbing with cadavers and slick with oil, that has swallowed New Orleans. No doubt the born-again president is himself sincere about invoking the Almighty. But you can hear the muttered advice in the White House: Mr President, we were in trouble after 9/11; the unfortunate episode of the schoolroom, My Little Goat and all that. But do what you did then; set yourself once more at the centre of the nation; go to the epicentre of the horror and embrace its heroes; make yourself the country's patriotic invigorator and all may yet be well.

Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
...doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.

Scotland Yard was thwarted yesterday in its attempt to seize a former senior Israeli army officer at Heathrow airport for alleged war crimes in occupied Palestinian lands after a British judge had issued a warrant for his arrest.

"When the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic flood waters five days after a hurricane struck, it is time not only to respond directly to the victims of the catastrophe, but to hold ... the leaders of our nation accountable," Gore told environmentalists at the Sierra Club's national convention.

A wide-ranging power outage, set off when a cable was accidentally cut, darkened large sections of downtown Los Angeles and many parts of the San Fernando Valley for a couple hours shortly after noon, authorities said.

I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton. Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us in case of an emergency or catastrophe.

"We had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of September 11 to justify the reconception of America's correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war." Instead of, even in theory, being a war to end all wars, the new war for America would be a war to end peace.

"I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise..."

In Austin, protesters gathered outside the convention center shouting, "Cheney, you are scumbag" and carrying signs that said "Fire Cheney too" and "Relief not Repression."

Cheney said the evacuees he spoke to in Texas did not raise concerns about the FEMA shake-up

Tape Released: American al Qaeda Member Warns of Attacks

"Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne"

FEMA has been entirely reshaped under the Bush Administration. It's no longer designed to meet the needs of a natural disaster but, rather, to advance the political agenda of the current regime. This is clear by the way that FEMA employees did everything in their power to undermine relief operations for the people stranded by Hurricane Katrina. Their orders simply corresponded with Washington's intention to put the city under federal control and to forcefully-evacuate the victims to locations around the Southwest.

Something very important is happening here -- something more than simply a hurricane, or the suffering of thousands who were neglected by their government during a time of great need. Most worldly occurrences reflect deeper truths. What is happening is a gigantic reckoning, as Americans are forced to come to terms with how very, very naked is the emperor who we thought had such incredible clothes.

Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.

Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as 2 weeks ago.

How much of New Orleans does FEMA plan to restore, and how much does it plan to simply replace. And if the houses are replaced with something else, are they to be replaced for their original owners? Or will the land be taken by eminent domain and redistributed?

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Floodwater samples across the New Orleans area were collected and tested for total coliforms and E . Coli bacteria. Results of these tests indicated bacteria levels in the floodwaters greatly exceeded EPA's recommended levels of contact.

When a lot of people see a lot of dead bodies, politicians begin thinking of damage control.

Now Bush can lock up anyone forever without charge

... how Bush's failures in Iraq and New Orleans are linked

William Cook ---> U.S. administration support of significant magnitude to citizens of a foreign country, citizens who illegally occupied another people's land, while American citizens languished on rooftops or sweltered in makeshift shelters for days on end with no understanding of where they will go or how they will replace their lost homes. Can anyone doubt that this administration's priorities favor those able to offer it political advantage at the expense of the average citizen stranded at the mercy of Nature's might? How about a "disengagement plan" for New Orleans' residents and those made homeless by Katrina? How about diverting the American/Israeli compensation package to Americans? After all, isn't it questionable at best that our tax dollars support "Squatters"?

ARMED police have begun to handcuff hurricane survivors who refuse to leave their homes in New Orleans.

As many as 10,000 people have stayed put in the devastated city despite orders to evacuate.

Many are now said to be going voluntarily, but others are being detained and taken to evacuation centres.

Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.

Uri Avnery ---> Somewhere in the article, far away from the sensational headline, there appear the nine words: "The possibility that Arafat had Aids is not high".

The U.S. military is tube-feeding more than a dozen of the 89 terror suspects on hunger strike at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, a spokesman said Friday.

Some of the 89 striking detainees at Guantanamo have not eaten for a month, said Guantanamo detention mission spokesman Sgt. Justin Behrens. The others have refused at least nine consecutive meals, he said.

Fifteen have been hospitalized and 13 of those were being fed through tubes, Behrens said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press. Medics are monitoring all 89 and checking their vital signs daily, he added.

Previously, the military has said that 76 inmates were participating in the hunger strike.

A three-judge federal appeals court panel ruled unanimously on Friday that President Bush had the authority to detain as an enemy combatant an American citizen who fought United States forces on foreign soil.

The panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va., threw out a ruling by a trial judge in South Carolina that Mr. Bush had overstepped his bounds by detaining Jose Padilla, a Chicago native, for three years.

Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

...the web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in the post-Katrina reconstruction rush.

25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath

...private companies have public obligations in time of emergency and Nagin should have used that arguement with the RTA chief. Both should be made to stand trial for murder.

The culpable players must be brought to justice, no excuses.

...a warning that an erosion of civil liberties might be necessary to stop more British citizens from being killed by terrorists.

Cindy Sheehan ---> Most everyone who is reading this knows what happened to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 04, 1968. Some of you may even know what happened to my son, Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan on April 04, 2004. If you don't know, Dr King and Casey were murdered by the same malevolent entities...

...the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement on the bill that the administration is "concerned" about the extra NOAA funding.

Iraq says a major operation is under way to try to retake the northern town of Talafar.
The Americans believe the town is being used as a staging post by foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria.

A German military plane carrying 15 tons of military rations for survivors of Hurricane Katrina was sent back by U.S. authorities, officials said Saturday.

"The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again...

There are two Level-3 biolabs in New Orleans and a cluster of three in nearby Covington. They have been working with anthrax, mousepox, HIV, plague, etc.

The board sent the notice after learning that a minister in the 500-home subdivision had traveled to New Orleans and planned to take in three families of evacuees.

These planners were not involved in the frantic preparations for Katrina. By coincidence, they were working on a yearlong project to prepare federal and state officials for a Category 3 hurricane striking New Orleans.

Their fictitious storm eerily foreshadowed the havoc wrought by Category 4 Katrina a few days later, raising questions about whether government leaders did everything possible ? as early as possible ? to protect New Orleans residents from a well-documented threat.

Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

Naomi Klein ---> For a people's reconstruction process to become a reality (and to keep more contracts from going to Halliburton), the evacuees must be at the center of all decision-making. According to Curtis Muhammad of Community Labor United, the disaster's starkest lesson is that African-Americans cannot count on any level of government to protect them. "We had no caretakers," he says. That means the community groups that do represent African-Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi -- many of which lost staff, office space and equipment in the flood -- need our support now. Only a massive injection of cash and volunteers will enable them to do the crucial work of organizing evacuees...

Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.

The decision to approve the procedure on appeal, after two previous applications were rejected, is controversial because it could eventually lead to the birth of children who carry genes from two mothers and a father.

"They have been trying to sweep us (African-Americans) under the kitchen sink and it was so in people's faces and so on TV... that they couldn't even hide it any more.

"Down there, people are living below the poverty level to start off with, before this happened.

The decision to order Brown back to Washington from Louisiana _ he remains as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency _ marked the administration's latest attempt to assert leadership in the wake of the devastating storm and its aftermath, including the weakest public opinion polls of Bush's time in office.