Edward S. Herman --> In Violation of All Purported Enlightenment Values, and With Mind-Boggling Hypocrisy...

Never before has one word, or its relentless repetition, done so much for one man as the word 'terror' ('terra' in Texanese) has for this Texan from Crawford that now resides in the White House. No other single word, it seems, is so much responsible for Bush's continued fame among certain naive American quarters.

China?s economic boom has dazzled investors and captivated the world. But beyond the new high-rises and churning factories lie rampant corruption, vast waste, and an elite with little interest in making things better. Forget political reform. China?s future will be decay, not democracy.

Chris Floyd --> ...the precisely the same kind of state terror that Solzhenitsyn described (and survived) once again being inflicted on innocent people -- and this time in my name, under the flag of my country, at the express order of the leaders of my government.
Bush is trying to turn us all into the kind of quiet collaborationists and cowed enablers of atrocity that we habitually decry when speaking of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany: "Oh, how could they have let such awful things go on? Why did they stand silently by? How could they swallow all those monstrous lies? I would never have stood for that kind of thing!"

Scott Ritter --> "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Far from protecting America, the President Bush's frontal assault on the freedoms and protections afforded by the US Constitution have placed the United States, and indeed the world, in greater peril than any terrorist plot could ever aspire to.

In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a "monster" that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state.

United for Peace --> It is our duty and the duty of the United Nations to rescue the people of the world from the U.S. dictators. Murder for occupation and theft of land is illegal. Murder of journalists is criminal. Remove the traitors who have stolen the U.S. budget and used it to commit international crimes against humanity.

If we were being bombed and our journalists were being murdered here in the U.S. by a foreign country's military, we would hope that the people of that country would stop what they are doing and go to their president's office and demand that it was stopped. If we were the ones burying thousands and thousands of our family members and watching the destruction of the homes, schools, churches and offices that we had worked for decades to build, we would hope that someone, somewhere would care enough to do something for us. We must stop the criminals in our government NOW. There is no meeting with Congress that is going to change what they are doing. We must put the power of the people into action.

58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure.

Nearly nine of every 10 - 85% - said the U.S. mission is "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9-11 attacks," while 77% said they believe the main or a major reason for the war was "to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq."

Ninety-three percent said that removing weapons of mass destruction is not a reason for U.S. troops being there. Instead, that initial rationale went by the wayside and, in the minds of 68% of the troops, the real mission became to remove Saddam Hussein.

The Times wants a list of documents including all internal memos and e-mails about the program of monitoring phone calls without court approval. It also seeks the names of the people or groups identified by it.

Bush called the disclosure of the program to the Times a "shameful act" and the U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into who leaked it.

To the list of conservative principles which are being tossed aside like yesterday's trash in order to defend George Bush, let us add the ostensible virtue of "personal responsibility."

A-Din noted that while the head office for the anti-Israel boycott sits in Damascus, he and his fellow staff members are paid employees of the Dubai Customs Department, which is a division of the PCZC, the same Dubai government-owned entity that runs Dubai Ports World.

Moreover, the Post found that the website for Dubai's Jebel Ali Free Zone Area, which is also part of the PCZC, advises importers that they will need to comply with the terms of the boycott.

BBC --> Jailed British historian David Irving has again said he does not believe Hitler presided over a systematic attempt to exterminate Jews in Europe.

The following happened in the United States of America on Feb. 9 of this year.

Sharp differences emerged between Israel and the international community over the acute financial crisis faced by the Palestinian Authority as the EU agreed to an emergency aid package of $143m (about £82m).

...it will be held from April 14-16, chief organiser Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pour told reporters.

"The main topics of this conference will be al-Quds and support of the Palestinians," he said of the meeting, which is being sponsored by the Islamic republic?s parliament.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets March 6 to assess whether to refer the Iranian nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council, which has the power to introduce sanctions on Iran over the nuclear issue.

Two bombs have exploded in the southern Iranian cities of Dezful and Abadan, according to Iranian reports.

The House of Representatives will vote this week on a controversial "national food uniformity" labeling law that will take away local government and states' power to require food safety food labels such as those required in California and other states on foods or beverages that are likely to cause cancer, birth defects, allergic reactions, or mercury poisoning. This bill would also prevent citizens in local municipalities and states from passing laws requiring that genetically engineered foods and ingredients such as Monsanto's recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) be labeled.

For the first time, the president says he was helped by bin Laden, who put out a videotaped diatribe against Bush the Friday before the 2004 election.

Bush said there were "enormous amounts of discussion" inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called "an interesting entry by our enemy" into the presidential race.

Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite told CNN that White House strategist Karl Rove "probably set up bin Laden to this thing."

It's been accused of privatizing and monopolizing Africa's natural water supply, sucking up India's vital groundwater sources (thereby harming the country's agricultural industry and food supply and polluting its remaining water and soil) and even indirectly condoning Salvadoran child labor that violates local and international laws.

The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality: So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.

Air America Radio, The Majority Report, co-host Janeane Garofalo said, "9/11 was an inside job!! I have come to this conclusion about that."

The deadly strain of bird flu has been found in a cat in northern Germany, the first time the virus has been identified in the country in an animal other than a bird, a national lab said Tuesday.

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent.

...most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves.

...18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice-president..

Concerns by Google Inc. that a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests would violate privacy rights are unwarranted, the Justice Department said in a court filing.

Bill Moyers --> As great wealth has accumulated at the top, the rest of society has not been benefiting proportionally.
In 1960 the gap between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was thirtyfold. Now it is seventy-five fold. Thirty years ago the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives in the country was 30 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is 1000 times the pay of the average worker.

Senior GOP sources envision the retirement of Mr. Cheney in 2007, months after the congressional elections. The sources said Mr. Cheney would be persuaded to step down as he becomes an increasing political liability to President Bush.

Stephen Heller is alleged to have exposed documents in Jan. & Feb. 2004 which provided smoking gun evidence that Diebold was using illegal, uncertified software in California voting machines. The docs also showed that Diebold's California attorneys (the powerful international law firm Jones Day) had told them they were in breach of the law for using uncertified software, but Diebold continued to use the uncertified software anyway.

...the Los Angeles District Attorney, under pressure from Jones Day, is going after this whistleblower with 3 felony charges, each of which carries the potential of time in state prison.

Your mobile phone is a beacon - a radio transmitter in a box. Therefore it is possible to trace the signal and work out where it is.

A Neural Interface is any type of data link between the human nervous system and an external device, such as an electronic or hybrid computer or machine. Such links allow the transmission of information to and from the human nervous system to the external devices. Bioelectric signals are obtained from the body or brain via implanted electrodes or computer chips and are converted from an analog to a digital format.

Some day, at the new and rebuilt World Trade Center site, visitors might submit to an iris scan or an analysis of their thumb print to get into buildings, while smart cameras try to match their faces to a photo database of known terrorists. Well-paid, armed guards would be on patrol while sensors test the air for lethal gases.

The report says that units detained or summarily executed men and boys in villages suspected of links to rebel leader Lucio Cabanas.

Detainees were forced to drink gasoline and tortured with beatings and electric shocks, it says.
Bodies of dozens of leftists were dumped in the Pacific Ocean during helicopter "death flights" from military bases in Acapulco and elsewhere.

The H5N1 bird flu virus, which is dangerous for humans, might have been artificially created, Georgian biologist Dmitry Kipiani said on Georgian Imedi radio on Monday.

"We cannot be certain about this but there is some circumstantial evidence, including the unsolved murders of renowned micro-biologists in some countries," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.

It is not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will. The government, the police and the corporate press will do everything they can to minimize the extent of our outrage. Nothing the happy newspapers say can change the fact that all over India, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes, George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome.

A group of peaceniks here has demanded that President George W. Bush be kept out from the Mahatma Gandhi memorial at Rajghat during his India visit as "George Bush knows nothing about non-violence".

Haneya didn't say that Hamas would recognize the state of Israel as it was reported by the Post, the spokesman said, adding that "we have the recorded interview and it doesn't include any of the statements published by the daily."

Haneya told the Post that if Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders, allows the refugees to return to the Palestinian territories and releases Palestinian prisoners, then the issue will be discussed, al-Bardaweil said.

Harper's --> Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush...

Two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein's plan to defend the Iraqi capital, which a German official passed on to American commanders a month before the invasion, according to a classified study by the United States military.

In providing the document, German officials offered more significant help to the U.S. than their government has publicly admitted.

Four people were killed and 15 wounded when two bombs exploded near a Sunni mosque in mainly Shi'ite eastern Baghdad on Monday, police said.

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency won't oppose the U.S. Department of Defense and DuPont Co.'s plan to dump a wastewater byproduct of a deadly nerve agent into the Delaware River.

Prosecutors call it a corruption case with no parallel in the long history of the U.S. Congress. And it keeps getting worse. Convicted Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham actually priced the illegal services he provided.

Prices came in the form of a "bribe menu" that detailed how much it would cost contractors to essentially order multimillion-dollar government contracts, according to documents submitted by federal prosecutors for Cunningham's sentencing hearing this Friday.

Washington Post --> Scientists working for the chromium industry withheld data about the metal's health risks while the industry campaigned to block strict new limits on the cancer-causing chemical, according to a scientific journal report published yesterday.

Documents in the report, published in the peer-reviewed online journal Environmental Health, show that the industry conducted a pivotal study that found a fivefold increase in lung cancer deaths from moderate exposures to chromium but never published the results or gave them to OSHA. Company-sponsored scientists later reworked the data in a way that made the risk disappear.

Iraqi newspapers inciting violence will be suspended and their journalists arrested, Defence Minister Saadun Al Dulaimi said yesterday, unveiling a new security plan for the violence-wracked country.

"This is a warning to media working in Iraq," he said in a press conference.

How is it, then, that in the midst of all this greatness we are giving unwitting consensus to allowing more and more of our fellow citizens, disproportionately children, to fall into vulnerability, and into poverty? We profess to pollsters a high regard for "moral values", and yet why isn?t poverty immoral? Why isn?t lack of medical care immoral? Surely there is no more commanding moral imperative than to "value" the poor and the vulnerable, for whom the God of all religions admonishes us to care? That as a people we take so little interest in the troubles of those less fortunate demonstrates plainly that America is failing to honor God?s blessing.

RFID news has moved beyond the surreal to become 100% real -- and the progression has been amazingly swift...

About 5,000 personnel including snipers, commandos and U.S. marines using helicopters, bomb detectors and electronic jammers will protect President George W. Bush during his visit to India this week, officials said on Monday.

The personnel would be part of a three-ring security cordon around the U.S. president and First Lady Laura Bush who are due to arrive in New Delhi for their maiden visit to the subcontinent on Wednesday, they said

The White House reacted skeptically on Monday to reports that Iran had reached an agreement with Russia on a proposed joint venture to enrich uranium in Russia.

Iran's president said Monday that his country supports calls for making the Middle East a nuclear arms-free zone, but he also urged the United States and Russia to give up all their atomic weapons as a threat to the region's stability.

The White House Homeland Security Staff this week released its post-mortem on Hurricane Katrina, with a review of lessons learned and a list of 125 recommendations. Predictably, the report contains the usual fawning references to His Majesty the President, and 28 occurrences of the term "faith-based". The first words of Chapter 1 of this report about a hurricane are "Terrorists still plot their evil deeds."

While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges.

Pressure is rising for Hollywood to disqualify a controversial movie about Palestinian jihadists...

The Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, Reyad Mansour confirmed that the latest Israeli aggressions included the killing extra-judicially five residents in Nablus and two others in the Gaza Strip were violations against the principles of international law.

Mansour called on the UN Secretary General, Kofi Anan to intervene in order to stop the Israeli aggressions against the Palestinian people.

The centerpiece of the current explosive confrontation between Islamic and Arab protestors, political leaders and governments and the US and Western European regimes and publishers is rooted in Israeli efforts to polarize the world in its favor and to promote isolation, economic sanctions and/or a military attack on Iran. There are several key questions, which almost all commentators and analysts have failed to address. These include: Why did the "cartoons" get published in Denmark?

What is the political background of "Flemming Rose" the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, who solicited, selected and published the cartoons?

What larger issues coincide with the timing of the cartoons publication and reproduction?

Who "benefits" from the publication of the cartoons and the ensuing confrontation between the Arabs/Islam and the West?

What is the contemporary political context of the Arab/Islam protests?

How is the Israeli secret service, Mossad, implicated in provoking the Western-Islamic/Arab conflict, and how do the consequences measure up to their expectations?

Chris Floyd --> ...how the government of George W. Bush's beloved disciple, Tony Blair, is "persecuting innocent people, tearing up our freedoms and undermining the judiciary."

The Scarlett memo - marked top secret - was leaked by the dissident officers who want a public inquiry similar to that undertaken in America after the 9/11 attacks.

They believe ministers have withheld information from the public about what the security services knew about the suspects before the bombing of July 7 and the abortive attacks of July 21.

Village Voice --> These "black sites"-as they are called in CIA, White House, and Justice Department files- escaped attempted congressional oversight until December 2005.

"What are we going to do with these people [in the CIA secret cells]? . . . Are they going to disappear? Are they stateless? . . . What are we going to explain to people when they start asking questions about where they are? Are they dead? Are they alive? What oversight does Congress have?"

Former CIA analyst a and presidential advisor Ray McGovern does not rule out Western involvement in this week's Askariya mosque bombing in light of previous false flag operations that have advanced hidden agendas of the ruling elite.

The global economy as currently constituted does not operate with a free market by any stretch of imagination, the propaganda of neo-liberal free-traders notwithstanding. For this reason, there is a need for a global cartel for labor.

77 percent of U.S. adults watch local broadcast news, while 71 percent watch network news...

"Regarding this joint venture, we have reached a basic agreement. Talks to complete this package will continue in coming days in Russia," Iranian nuclear chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh told reporters in the Iranian port town of Bushehr.

THE movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, alleged to have played a role in the anti-Sunni violence over the last few days, publicly made peace with political and religious Sunni leaders overnight.

Four sheikhs from the Sadr movement made a "pact of honour" with the conservative Sunni Muslim Scholars Association, and called for an end to attacks on places of worship, the shedding of blood and condemning any act leading to sedition.

The meeting was broadcast on television and the religious leaders all "condemned the blowing up of the Shiite mausoleum of Samarra as much as the acts of sabotage against the houses of God as well as the assassinations and terrorisation of Muslims".

ID cards are one danger, but there are other measures which are already a reality. Since the start of this year, a little noticed change in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act has transformed the police's powers of arrest. Until 2006 only serious offences were arrestable. Now all offences, from speeding to picking wild flowers, allow a police officer to arrest us if they choose. Once we are held, they can fingerprint, photograph and take DNA evidence from us, and hold it in a national database for ever, whether or not we are charged.

This is a shocking extension of police power. It fundamentally changes our relationship with the state and leaves us at the mercy of any constable who doesn't like the way we look.

Recall Total Information Awareness, changed to Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) after a self-conscious PR revamp (including the dumping of its obvious Masonic-Illuminati logo), and criticism of its Iran-Contra convicted criminal overlord, John Poindexter. TIA weathered blistering scrutiny after its purpose was revealed?it was a massive program in the making designed to snoop the American people, who are of course the real enemy of criminal government.

Designated Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, speaking about Israel, said: "We don't want to throw them into the sea." Haniyeh was interviewed for the Washington Post and Newsweek Magazine.

"We are not looking for a war and not initiating war. We are not interested in a circle of violence. If Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, then we'll establish peace in stages."

The Financial Times --> If we did not have blogs, we might never know about the latest assaults on truth, and we certainly would not know the details.

Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia?s atomic energy agency Rosatom, said during a visit to Tehran that the civilian nuclear plant at Bushehr in Iran would be launched as fast as possible.

"We don?t see any political obstacles to completing Bushehr and we are interested in it (the station) being launched in the swiftest possible period," Kiriyenko said, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

At the city's main mortuary yesterday corpses were piled in the corridors according to the districts where they had been discovered. Periodically a policeman would shout the name of a district to the crowd outside and take families to see if they could find their missing men.

There were no stretchers, sheets or shrouds. The bodies were simply identified, pulled from the piles, dumped into cheap coffins and removed from the building by any available transport. Some were simply tied to the roofs of taxis.

"Don't cry," one man told his daughter. "We've got to get used to this by now. The cheapest thing in Iraq is a human."

...this is not science fiction. This is what is being planned and constructed in real time - our time.

It is the first time the virus has been detected on a farm in an EU country. About 80 per cent of the birds on the farm in south-east France's Ain region have died in the past week and the rest have been culled.

The National Security Agency wants to move forward in technology used in data mining of communications it deems important in the war on terrorism.
The New York Times reports NSA officials met with business heads in Silicon Valley earlier this month to look at various new ways to explore trillions of pieces of data.

A long-standing public records request for the release of Election 2004 database files created by Diebold's voting system had been long delayed after several odd twists and turns, including the revelation of a contract with the state claiming the information to be a "company secret."

But while it finally appeared as though the state had agreed to release the information (after reserving the right to "manipulate the data" in consultation with Diebold before releasing it), the state's top Security Official has now -- at the last minute -- stepped in to deny the request. The grounds for the denial: the release of the information poses a "security risk" to the state of Alaska.

An FBI-led task force is trying find out how the deadly poison ricin wound up in a student dormitory at the University of Texas.

At 2:00 without any warning shots they were fired at and a grenade was thrown at them from around the corner. According to the volunteers the shooting came from the direction of the Alleyway where the Israeli soldiers were. A twenty two year old American student was wounded by Shrapnel in the hand a twenty nine year old Dutch volunteer was wounded by shrapnel in the thigh and shoulder, Jirar Candola an ambulance driver with the UPMRC was shot in the arm and leg and Ihab Mansour, a medical volunteer working with the Palestinian scientific society, was shot in the head and taken away by the Israeli soldiers.

At 3:00 the soldiers blew up Muhammad Abu Amar's house, thus killing three Palestinian fighters who were inside.

Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which angered the Muslim world by publishing cartoons of Prophet Muhammad last year, has won a Danish critical journalism award for its initiative, the jury said.

Avi Dichter, a leader of Israel's Kadima party, said that Ismail Haniya, prime minister-elect from the Hamas movement, could be targeted for assassination in response to a future Palestinian attack.

The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson?s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration?s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.

...31 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas won the majority vote in the Palestinian elections on January 25th. These deaths are part of a retaliatory strategy as outlined by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. According to Mofaz, the Palestinian people have made their government part of the "Axis of Evil" along with Syria and Iran. As a result, "punitive measures" will be taken by Israeli forces against all the Palestinian people, he stated.

Our universe may one day be obliterated or assimilated by a larger universe, according to a controversial new analysis. The work suggests the parallel universes proposed by some quantum theorists may not actually be parallel but could interact - and with disastrous consequences.

Dahr Jamail --> The most important question to ask regarding the bombings of the Golden Mosque in Samarra on the 22nd is: who benefits?
Prior to asking this question, let us note the timing of the bombing...

Physicians for Human Rights USA investigated the high number of Palestinian civilian deaths and injuries in the first months of the Intifada, concluded that: "the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF [Israel Defense Forces] use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing."

In an interview with Ha'aretz reporter Amira Hass, an Israeli sniper described the commands he receives from his superiors: "Twelve and up, you're allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us," he said.

Dr. Abasi, an advisor to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said Tehran would respond to an American attack with strikes on the Dimona nuclear reactor and other strategic Israeli sites such as the port city of Haifa and the Zakhariya area.

Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinian militants in Gaza on Friday, drawing vows of revenge from members and supporters of the Islamist group Hamas as it prepared to form a government.

A molecular computer that uses enzymes to perform calculations has been built by researchers in Israel.

"This is basically a computer that could be integrated with the human body," Willner told New Scientist. "We feel you could implant an enzyme computer into the body and use it to calculate an entire metabolic pathway."

Best-selling author and evangelical leader Tim LaHaye has contacts that extend to the White House. That could spell trouble, since his theology espouses a bloody apocalypse in Israel.

The founder and president of the Washington-based Centre for Security Policy (CSP), a small think tank funded mainly by U.S. defence contractors, far-right foundations, and right-wing Zionists, Gaffney was among the first to seize on the government's approval of a Dubai company to manage terminals at six major U.S. ports and helped blow it up into a major embarrassment to Pres. George W. Bush.

A federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Thursday to release the identities of hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to The Associated Press, a move which would force the government to break its secrecy and reveal the most comprehensive list yet of those who have been imprisoned there.

At least two cars exploded at the gates of Saudi Arabia's huge Abqaiq oil facility on Friday when security forces fired on suicide bombers trying to storm the world's biggest oil processing plant, Saudi officials said.

Saudi state television said oil output was unaffected. Oil prices had jumped $2 (1.14 pounds) a barrel on news of the attacks against the world's largest oil exporter and a key U.S. ally.

UFPJ Coordinator Leslie Cagan announced her organization is partnering with MediaChannel.org and other media groups to organize a Media Day of War Coverage Protest on March 21, 2006. It takes part during a week of organizing and activism marking the third anniversary of the war.

The Guardian --> Hours after a commercial plane struck the Pentagon on September 11 2001 the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to notes taken by one of them.

A sheik from the United Arab Emirates contributed at least $1 million to the Bush Library Foundation, which established the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University in College Station.

In a surprisingly strong Op Ed on Friday, Ted Koppel, the former "NIghtline" host who is now an occasional columnist for The New York Times, argues that when it comes right down to it, the U.S. adventure in Iraq is, as some charge, "about the oil."

A United Arab Emirates government-owned company is poised to take over port terminal operations in 21 American ports, far more than the six widely reported.

Many of these machines showed unexplained log activity after the L&A test but before Election Day. In addition, many more machines without date anomalies showed this log activity, which revealed someone powering up the machine, opening the program, then powering it down again. In one instance, the date discrepancy appeared when someone accessed the machine two minutes after the L&A test was completed.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone has been found guilty of bringing his office into disrepute by comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard.

Mr Livingstone was suspended from duty for four weeks from March 1 after being found guilty of bringing his office into disrepute.

Police and soldiers blocked major roads and surrounded Baghdad's two main Sunni mosques as streets throughout this city of nearly 7 million emptied of people and traffic. The nation stood on the brink of civil war and the American strategy in Iraq faced its gravest test since the 2003 invasion.

CIA planes have landed in Canada 74 times since the 9/11 terror attacks, underscoring fears that the United States is ferrying suspected terrorists through its neighboring country en route to foreign prisons for torture, according to newly declassified government documents.

Mike Whitney --> There's no telling who was behind the bombing of the al-Askariya Mosque. There were no security cameras at the site and it's doubtful that the police will be able to perform a thorough forensic investigation.
That?s too bad; the bomb-residue would probably provide clear evidence of who engineered the attack. So far, there?s little more to go on than the early reports of four men (three who were dressed in black, one in a police uniform) who overtook security guards at the mosque and placed the bombs in broad daylight.

The belief that the attack was the work of American and Israeli covert-operations (Black-ops) is widespread throughout the region as well as among leftist political-analysts in the United States.

...for Samarra inhabitants, the mosques doesn?t represents a Shiia shrines only but represents the existence of the city also and they are very proud of them, even when the situation went very bad between Sunni and Shiia, Shiia pilgrimages to city never attacked by any group, it?s kind of unwritten code of honor.

Gilad Atzmon --> Needless to say, the vision of Auschwitz 'the historical event' is totally shaped by 'Auschwitz the message'. In other words, any scholarly access into the Judeocide aspects of World War II is now totally denied. Furthermore, unless one approves and repeats the official Holocaust narrative, one may find oneself locked behind bars. This happened lately to three rightwing history revisionists who dared to suspect the official Auschwitz narrative. Regardless of what they have to say, whether one accepts their views or not, the idea of locking people up just for trying to shape our vision of the past is rather alarming. In fact, it means that we have totally failed in internalising the most crucial lesson of the war against Nazism. To employ thought police is exactly what totalitarianism is all about. To lock a historical revisionist up is to become a Nazi and the reason is simple: if Auschwitz is indeed a story of total personal abuse then denying freedom of speech is nothing but surrendering to the Nazi methods of personal abuse.

The Philippine military foiled a plan by some soldiers to join anti-government rallies today, Army Commanding General Hermogenes Esperon said in a phone interview.

`"A plan for unauthorized movement was in the offing," Esperon said in an interview on Manila-based ABS-CBN radio. It was foiled by "timely action and dialogue."

In roughly four hours of a videotaped interrogation, Hamid Hayat confessed to attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and returning to the U.S. to attack hospitals, grocery stores and banks. Or did he?

It floats, it flies, it eliminates enemy targets.
Meet the water-launched unmanned enforcer...

Israeli troops killed five Palestinians on Thursday during the biggest raid against West Bank militants for months.

"This is a war crime aimed at continuing the escalation and undermining Hamas efforts to form a government," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

"We are committed to resistance and the occupation will pay the price for these crimes."

Los Angeles Times --> With the resurgence of legalized torture, rampant religious fanaticism, widespread poverty and illiteracy, the threat of mysterious plagues, fascination with magic and the occult, suspicion of science, inquisitors hunt dissidents, and crusades against Arabs are used to distract the masses from revolt...what else would you call it?

Christian youths burned the corpses of Muslims on Thursday on the streets of Onitsha in southeastern Nigeria, the city worst hit by religious riots that have killed at least 146 people across the country in five days.

...after speaking out against Bush and Blair, the singer has revealed.

"My view is that neither England or America are democratic societies. You can't really speak your mind and if you do you're investigated."

EU legislation allowing telecoms and internet data surveillance by security agencies will enter into force by August 2007.

Some sources believe Bilderberg will meet near Innsbruck, Austria, as it did in 1988. Others think somewhere in North America, as Bilderberg has a number of times over the years. Adding weight to this theory is that it is North America?s "turn" to host Bilderberg.

Uncovering the secretive group of international financiers and political leaders is a difficult annual challenge.

VeriChip Corporation, a subsidiary of Applied Digital, announced today that it will introduce its new VeriTrace system at the 58th Annual American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

VeriTrace includes a unique RFID implantable microchip, an advanced Ricoh digital camera and a web-enabled data base for gathering and storing information and images.

Village Voice --> Its name notwithstanding, the 9-11 Truth movement tells a story-and is a story-about what happens when the government lies. Again, it's simple physics: For every action, there's a reaction equal and opposite.

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit" could be out of the picture in China - along with many other cartoon favorites.

China has announced a ban on TV shows and movies that blend animated elements with live-action actors, a move aimed at nurturing local animators and apparently curbing the use of foreign cartoons.

...authorities are eager to expand the country's animation industry and also are worried about the influence of foreign pop culture on Chinese children.

There are three typical methods of enslavement: 1) kidnappers steal children away from their families; 2) families sell their sons for relatively high prices, thus attaining sufficient income for the entire family for years; or 3) recruiters lure boys away from their families, promising an education and other appealing life changes.

The federal investigation into the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff has broadened to examine his dealings with the Russian government and a pair of high-profile Russian energy company executives, according to documents.

The Bush family has always had a deal with the devil.

"Three generations of immersion in the culture of secrecy...deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks."

A 3-year-old executive order that vastly expanded his powers illuminates how the vice president and his minions led us into war.

Among the performers scheduled to play March 20 are R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, Bright Eyes, Rufus Wainwright, Fischerspooner, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Devendra Banhart and Peaches.
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan will be the guest of honor at the "Bring 'Em Home" concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom.

Who would have thought giving away software could cause such difficulties?

...the world has been presented with a teaching moment, in which the argument for free thought - that die gedanken sind frei ("thoughts are free") that the Nazis and every other absolutist dictatorship have excelled in crushing - was not advanced by those who know better. As a result, a world sorely in need of a crash course in the efficacy of free debate received nothing of the sort. Instead, the lesson has been that the suppression of ideas is valid, as long as the suppressors are convinced that they are in the right.

The Israeli army, using a bulldozer, destroyed a US-funded public park, including a children's playground and swimming pool, in a West Bank village, witnesses and officials said.

An Israeli lawyer, Ervin Shahar, says he has asked Germany to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with denying the Holocaust.

In Northern Iraq there is a place called Lalish where the Yezidis say the universe was born.

...poverty and stress may not just be symptoms of society, but bound to our anatomy.

Baghdad Burning --> Things are not good in Baghdad.

A few election watchdog groups, including some members of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who works with the federal authorities on these matters, have issued warnings about the IrDA port and protocols on voting machines. However, little -- if anything -- seems to have been done to mitigate the rather obvious security threat posed...

By combining quantum computation and quantum interrogation, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found an exotic way of determining an answer to an algorithm ? without ever running the algorithm.

Using an optical-based quantum computer, a research team led by physicist Paul Kwiat has presented the first demonstration of "counterfactual computation," inferring information about an answer, even though the computer did not run.
The researchers report their work in the Feb. 23 issue of Nature.

...as Juan Cole's written, "Tuesday was an apocalyptic day in Iraq."

The destruction of Samarra's Askariyah shrine marks a Biblical moment of provocation in Iraq's ersatz Civil War. And just in time, too, because there's a time-table to keep where "real men" want to go.

The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions.

The eventual goal is a cashless society credit system based on a worldwide citizen ID. Those designated as subversives or security threats will have their credit entitlement reduced and restrictions will be placed on when and what they can buy or sell. A world tax will be levied on all purchases.

we are in the midst of an ongoing process-a revolution in permanence, one might call it, aimed at transforming every institution and ultimately enslaving individuals.

Salt Lake City Weekly --> Despite increasing voices of caution, the biodefense boom shows no signs of slowing down.

Youth are not creating digital publics to scare parents - they are doing so because they need youth space, a place to gather and see and be seen by peers. Publics are critical to the coming-of-age narrative because they provide the framework for building cultural knowledge. Restricting youth to controlled spaces typically results in rebellion and the destruction of trust.

What we're seeing right now is a cultural shift due to the introduction of a new medium and the emergence of greater restrictions on youth mobility and access. The long-term implications of this are unclear. Regardless of what will come, youth are doing what they've always done - repurposing new mediums in order to learn about social culture.

Just after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans rumors circulated that at least one hospital had euthanized patients during the mayhem.

Now, National Public Radio says it has reviewed secret court documents related to the investigation and not yet released to the public.
The documents, says NPR "reveal chilling details about events at Memorial hospital in the chaotic days following the storm, including hospital administrators who saw a doctor filling syringes with painkillers and heard plans to give patients lethal doses. The witnesses also heard staff discussing the agonizing decision to end patients' lives."

The magnitude-7.5 quake struck at 12:19 a.m. and was felt as far away as Durban, South Africa, and Harare, Zimbabwe, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was involved in one of the biggest financial scandals to hit the Vatican, has died, church officials say.

Marcinkus was head of the Vatican Bank at the time of the fraudulent collapse of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982, with which it had close ties.
...he was granted immunity as a Vatican employee.
The missing money was traced to loans made to 10 dummy companies in Latin America, and the speculation was that the Mafia were involved.

Iran yesterday offered to help finance the Palestinian Authority after the radical Hamas movement forms its cabinet, triggering a warning from Israel that the Palestinians would take on pariah status if they accepted the money.

The military commander responsible for the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, confirmed Tuesday that officials there last month turned to more aggressive methods to deter prisoners who were carrying out long-term hunger strikes to protest their incarceration.

The British historian is appealing against his three-year sentence.

The greatest threat to America's democracy is not terrorism but governmental secrecy, said Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward, whose reporting 35 years ago pierced the veil of secrecy behind Richard Nixon's presidency.

The Bush administration has cloaked its decision-making in "an immense amount of secrecy," he said

The Bush administration said that journalists can be prosecuted under current espionage laws for receiving and publishing classified information but that such a step "would raise legitimate and serious issues and would not be undertaken lightly," according to a court filing made public this week.

Tens of thousands of people have staged protests across Iraq after a bomb attack heavily damaged one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

A written report from Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Dick Cheney when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington on a hunting outing two weeks ago says Cheney was "clearly inebriated" at the time of the shooting.

Agents observed several members of the hunting party, including the Vice President, consuming alcohol before and during the hunting expedition, the report notes, and Cheney exhibited "visible signs" of impairment, including slurred speech and erratic actions, the report said.

Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, a recognized expert witness on Germany's wartime Jewish policy and the Holocaust issue.

This sentence is an outrage. Punishing someone for peacefully expressing an opinion about history is a step backwards to the legal standards of the Middle Ages.

The sentence points up a blatant double standard that prevails in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland and some other European countries that punish anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy about the Holocaust.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday began a four-day visit to the Middle East, where she hoped to persuade Arab leaders to cut off financial aid to Hamas. But she ran into trouble on her very first stop.

Our oceans are under attack, and approaching a point of no return. Can we survive if the seas go silent?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago and our nation was the most prosperous in the world, had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What the hell happened?

President Bush's conception of his own powers is even more dangerous than his specific abuses.

Iraq war was to shake up Middle East

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was supposed to bring freedom and democracy. But a string of new revelations have exposed the violent reality of life under U.S. occupation.

The disastrous social conditions that exist for the Iraqi people after decades of war and nearly three years of US occupation are being dramatically worsened as a result of International Monetary Fund (IMF)-dictated economic restructuring.

Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law, reportedly wrote that "thousands of our military have suffered and died from, [and depleted uranium] has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed."

Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something I can no longer support". He says it should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies.

...recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.

Los Angeles Times --> What debilitates and cripples the Palestinian economy is Israel's heavy, systematic restrictions on movement within the occupied territories - hundreds of roadblocks and military checkpoints that delay, prolong and sabotage normal economic activity and, hence, potential tax revenues.

The Palestinian Authority cannot compensate for the "lost" - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say "stolen" - tax revenues.

William Tierney, the former United Nations weapons inspector who unveiled the so-called "Saddam Tapes" at a conference in Arlington, Virginia, Saturday, told National Review Online that God directed him to weapons sites in Iraq.

Tierney said he believes other tapes, which have not yet been heard, will eventually reveal that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Tierney also said that he believes Iraq orchestrated the 2001 anthrax attacks, with Saddam Hussein using American scientist Steven Hatfill as a "proxy" to carry out the mission.

The creeping extension of implantation technology will eventually break down all the barriers between us and the state.

The textbooks say nothing can travel faster than light, not even light itself. New experiments show that this is no longer true, raising questions about the maximum speed at which we can send information.

You always knew that dull, boring cubicles could suck the joy out of work, but now there's evidence that they can change your brain. Not mentally or emotionally, no, we're talking physical structural changes.

Internet TV Platform - Free and Open Source

It will give independent media the power to sidestep media giants, strengthening free speech and open debate.

He told his lawyer that he would be "hung on the door for two hours and then allowed to sit for half an hour but never allowed to sleep. This would go on for 48 hours in a row".

After this, he claims, he would be taken for interrogation for two hours at a time. "I had to kneel on the cold concrete throughout the interrogations with my cuffed hands above my head," he said. "The only way out, I was told, was to confess.

Check Your Conscience at the Door...

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.

The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and who was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.

Tests confirmed H5N1 in three birds found dead in Hungary, making the country the seventh EU nation with an outbreak of the deadly strain of bird flu, officials said Tuesday.

Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, France and Slovenia also are grappling with H5N1 in wild birds, the European Commission said.

Bush said Tuesday that the deal allowing an Arab company to take over six major U.S. seaports should go forward and that he would veto any congressional effort to stop it.

Would Someone Please Interfere in Our Elections?

Congress voted 404 - 4 to refer Iran to the UN Security Council.

Tony Blair just trampled this basic British right. He might as well have blown up one of Parliament?s towers. Britain now joins sleazy, third-world despotisms where The Glorious Leader alone determines what one may and may not say.

...a global Panopticon, a high-tech prison where every sound and motion is not only heard and observed but recorded, a terrible and fearsome place where all memory of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson, and all the others who signed the Declaration of Independence are relegated to Orwell's memory hole.

Plans for a spaceport on Singapore that will blast tourist flights into space by 2009 have been announced by a US company.
...pitted against Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which is building a spaceport near Roswell, New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic is charging $200,000 per passenger, while Space Adventures will charge $102,000. Both companies say their flights will be considerably safer than getting a ride on board existing spacecraft, and will require just a few days of training.

In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

Research involving microscopic crystals has prompted the theory that walls could be built using materials which homeowners could render transparent at will.

Scientists at Imperial College in London and the University of Neuchatel, in Switzerland, will unveil their latest attempt to achieve this vision.

"The breakthrough has been done using crystals that are not visible to the naked eye under specific conditions. The potential applications of it are exciting and far-reaching."

1.2 petabytes of storage would mean you could save every thought and image you ever had and not run out of space.
Michael Thomas, an American inventor, has found a way to create a drive with that much capacity.
He expects to see prototypes in two or three years, with commercial products in four or five years at a cost in the range of $750

Scientists say they've concluded containment might buy time, but is not enough to stop a flu pandemic.

Through mathematical modeling, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and Seattle's University of Washington show flu outbreaks are likely to emerge in multiple locations and containment of all outbreaks is improbable.

The Register --> ...it's a step towards pan-European road policing, and there are others afoot, including VERA2/eNFORCE (Video Enforcement for Road Authorities 2), a system for enforcing traffic offence penalties in the country of the vehicle's registration, and plans for the pan-European driving licence, RFID perhaps included. And then there's the satellite network. Happy journeys...

A frustrated Abramoff, who feels he has been abandoned by many of his conservative friends, added, "They will come up with excuse after excuse as to how and why he did not know me. I could have spent four months alone with him in Bolivia and he would not know me."

...when you take a good hard look at the reason why the Prophet Muhammad was dragged through the mud of Europe, you soon understand why Flemming Rose, the "cultural" editor of Jyllands-Posten, still has a job and Irving will be packed off to prison.

Linda McQuaig --> ...Israel continues to build settlements on Palestinian land and to construct a massive wall incorporating large chunks of Palestinian territory inside Israel.

Aren't these aggressive actions part of the problem?

Stockwell Day suggested in an interview with The Canadian Press that a government-issued national ID card, which Britain could begin to phase in by next year, is likely forthcoming for Canadians.

...the topic came up again this week when he spoke on the phone with his U.S. counterpart, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherkoff.

Georgian government officials said that Tbilisi fears harsh Iranian military retaliation against the Georgian republic if U.S. forces were to use its territory as a base for strikes against Iran, but nonetheless may feel obligated to accede to such a request, given the country?s heavy reliance on US aid and support. The US maintains its own military bases in Georgia.

A hundred years from now, historians will still be regaling readers with the all-too-true tales of ignorance, arrogance, dishonesty and outright incompetence that drove our nation to invade Iraq. As stories go, nothing in our country's previous 225 years of history quite matches it. And for our children's sake, we better hope that nothing in our future comes close to it, either.

A lot of the raw material for those historians is available already in the growing number of eyewitness, inside accounts of how we got into this mess. At almost every point, those accounts contradict the version of events peddled by the Bush administration and its dwindling core of supporters.

Five years is long enough. The American prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be shut down. And its 500 detainees should be set free or put on trial in a credible court.

Iran's foreign minister called Monday for an end to violent protests over the Prophet Muhammad caricatures that have left at least 45 people dead in the Muslim world during the past month.

Guardian --> It is a lie that to reject Zionism as it is practised today is to be the inheritor of Hitler's racism.

"It's no accident that we are seeing such an extensive suppression of scientific freedom," he said. "It's part of the theory of government now, and it's a theory we need to vociferously oppose." Far from twisting science to suit its own goals, he said, the government should be "the guardian of intellectual freedom."

"I'm a lifelong Republican and I think the President's gone insane," said Gadiel, 58, who heads 9/11 Families for a Secure America.

Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade is the latest public place that will soon apparently be under the watchful eye of police surveillance cameras.

Iran and China have been discussing a major energy deal that would involve the swap of oil for technology.

Western diplomatic sources said the two countries have been examining an agreement that would make Iran the leading oil supplier to China. The sources said the long-term deal was valued at $100 billion.

When you use the Internet today, your browser glides from one Web site to another, accessing all destinations with equal ease. That could change dramatically, however, if Internet service providers are allowed to tilt the playing field, giving preference to sites that pay them extra and penalizing those that don't.

One of the Pentagon's top civilian lawyers repeatedly challenged the Bush administration's policy on the coercive interrogation of terror suspects, arguing that such practices violated the law, verged on torture and could ultimately expose senior officials to prosecution, a newly disclosed document shows.

It has always been known that more people will believe a lie, the bigger the lie is and the more often the lie is repeated. Talk radio as defined by the Republican Right mindset is completely based on lies. The entire way Republican Right talk show hosts present political events and issues are based on lies designed to deceive their listeners instead of educating them.

The Republican Right dominates talk radio entirely by using business pressure to keep Democrats, environmentalists, labor leaders, progressives and independent thinkers off the air.

The 9/11 attacks were created for justification of U.S. covert plans to grab influence over oil politics in the Middle East and as an excuse to take away the rest of Americans' liberties through a manufactured threat-scenario called, "The War On Terror."

How can this travesty, betrayal, incompetence, lying and selling out of our national security continue without any major eruption of outrage and cries for impeachment and prosecution?

President Bush's request for broad, and constitutionally questionable, authority to control spending by vetoing specific items in larger bills.

Until now, the courts have taken the view that they cannot rule on the Crown's prerogative powers to wage war. But today the law lords will start hearing appeals by peace protesters who claim they were entitled to commit "criminal" acts in an attempt to prevent what they saw as the greater crime of launching an illegal war.

Haaretz --> Once upon a time, they used to say "beautiful Israel."
Today "beautiful Israel" is no more. Welcome to "ugly Israel" - cynical, corrupt and mainly shameless, brazen in its refusal to paint its face. Its ugliness and brutishness is right out there, on the table: Power is the only thing that commands respect.

Citing the "Prevention of Terrorism" act, British Police have arrested and interrogated three of the stars of the award-winning film "The Road to Guantanamo", together with the three ex-Guantanomo detainees on whose story the film is based.

The gravest indictment of the American news media is that George W. Bush has gutted the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter ? yet this extraordinary story does not lead the nation's newspapers and the evening news every day.

THE American military have been operating flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use.

Not only is the call sign bogus ? according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) ? so, it appears, are some of the aircraft details the Americans have filed with the air traffic control authorities.

Propaganda campaign portrays Iran as a pariah state...

Lethal bird flu continued its advance across Europe with more infected birds found in Germany and Italy, while in India seven people were under observation with symptoms of the disease.

Iranian and Russian officials meet in Moscow on Monday to discuss a compromise deal that may be the last chance to defuse the row over Tehran's nuclear program before Western governments seek sanctions.

Remember John Negroponte, the last US Ambassador to Iraq? He was the man who organized right-wing death squads within El Salvador to wipe out dissident groups there. Now, there are reports that death squads of a similar nature are working in Iraq, killing off Sunni dissidents and people not deemed pure enough.

Ibrahim Al Sheikh Issa, 16, and Mohammad Ahmad Al Natour, both sixteen, were killed early this morning in their home, Balata Refugee Camp. The boys were defending their home with rocks.

Implications of a US Attack on Iran...

Eric Margolis --> History shows such laws are soon followed by offences like 'being an enemy of the people'.

The tape, whose authenticity could not be verified, was posted on the Internet...

"The (U.S.) criminality has gone as far as raping women and holding them hostage before their husbands ... as for the torture of men it has now come to the use of burning chemical acids and electric drills in their joints," he said in the tape posted with an English-language voice over.

"barbaric and oppressive steps taken by the American army and its agents to the extent that there is no longer any mentionable difference between this criminality and the criminality of Saddam."

Freedoms we should strenuously preserve have been systematically dismantled...

We have failed to grasp that when we do not protest and demand an end to atrocities committed in our name, something trips in the deep-brain cynicism of the governing psyche, which takes heart from the passivity it finds and devises more ways to control and enforce its will. It is no coincidence that the abuse of rights on foreign fields has led now to the suspension of rights at home.

The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles.

Vigilance is important but only those with money in security have an interest in presenting Bin Laden as a cosmic threat.

Bin Laden?s intention in 2001 was to portray the West as scared, emotionally vulnerable, over-reactive, decadent and careless of liberal values. The West has done its damnedest to prove him right.

Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year by Michael Crichton, whose 2004 best-selling novel, "State of Fear," suggests that global warming is an unproven theory and an overstated threat.

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.
Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two.

The Israeli cabinet will consider on Sunday what measures it will impose on Palestinians to weaken a new government to be formed by Hamas after the militant Islamist group took control of parliament.

Israeli Defense Ministry officials recommended squeezing the Palestinian Authority financially by immediately stopping all tax revenue transfers and by exerting pressure on international donors to freeze all but humanitarian assistance.

The defense officials also proposed barring all Palestinians from working in Israel and from traveling between Gaza and the occupied West Bank across Israeli territory.

The space travel agency, Space Adventures, announced plans to develop a commercial "spaceport" in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to take tourists on sub-orbital flights.

"The close proximity to Dubai, one of the worlds leading luxury tourist destinations, makes (Ras Al-Khaimah) a choice location for spaceflight operations," said Space Adventures president and CEO, Eric Anderson.

"Suborbital flights will offer millions of people the opportunity to experience the greatest adventure available, space travel," Anderson said.

In the six pages allotted by Maxim this article covers a wide variety of topics in a quick and dirty fashion. Not going too in-depth on any specifics, an author named Zach Dundas has crammed everything from WTC7 to wargames to the Pentagon attack and more...

Poland's Foreign Minister Stefan Meller on Friday ruled out allowing any Iranian researchers to examine the scale of the Holocaust committed by the German Nazis on Polish soil during World War Two.

A new wave of drugs will make it a breeze to go days without sleep, and give you a good night's shut-eye in two hours - are you ready for 24-hour living?

Sexual discrimination is tradition not Islam, say new Palestinian leaders...

Unlike other biometric technologies that use fingerprints, pictures, or static bio-signals to identify a person, BDS is based on intrinsic human electro-biometric dynamic signals acquired by merely touching a small conductive surface. The signature is based on the electronic signals humans produce from their body, including the heart. These BioDynamic Signatures are as unique to an individual as fingerprints and retinal patterns. No two people have the same BDS. This new category of cardio-based biometric solutions opens a new dimension in biometric technology and offers superior performance, cost and reliability. It is highly accurate, user friendly and difficult to deceive.

Beginning in October, Norinchukin Bank will issue biometric bank cards that identify cardholders by looking at veins in their palms, bank officials said.

Federal Consumer Rights and Human Well Being Service told Itar-Tass that 350,000 birds died at one poultry farm, Eldama, in the Karabudakhkent district between Jan. 25 and Feb. 1, and 76,000 at the Makhachkalinskaya farm in Shamkhal between Feb. 6 and Feb. 8.
The dead birds tested positive for the virulent H5N1 strain of avian influenza.

Video --> ...archaeologists have taken pottery from ancient Pompeii and played the grooves back like a record.
We can hear the sounds of the pottery workshop, including laughter.

...a look at what lies behind the shocking images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison by turning to the history of the CIA and torture techniques. Professor Alfred McCoy talks about his book "A Question of Torture", a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological torture from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib. CIA mercenaries attempted to assassinate McCoy more than 30 years ago.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday called for the military and other government agencies to mount a far more aggressive, swift and nontraditional information campaign to counter the messages of extremist and terrorist groups in the world media.

HOUSTON Houston's police chief is suggesting putting surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets and even private homes.

US rocker and writer Henry Rollins was reported to the National Security hotline during his recent Australian tour because of a book he was reading on flight to Brisbane.

...and we are being told that "we are free society", "freedom" is our motto

...we, as a species, are sooooooo brainwashed.
...we let THEM do with us ANYTHING THEY WANT
...and, and...WE pay for those endeavors
...we work for THEM not for OURSELVES
...manMachine,
...propaganda, fear, money and addiction
...tools + you = newYou also known as TheirYou
...now you will think twice before opening any book

...your choice is NOT your choice anymore
...total disregard of the basics
...law of existence, law of choice, law of you

The minister attracted attention for wearing a t-shirt with insulting cartoons of Prophet Mohammed on it.

The world will have 100 million extra hungry people by 2015, scientists say.

We all want America to be a good place to live. We want decent jobs for ourselves and our children. We want to breathe fresh air and drink clean water. We have no desire to be the policeman of the world or rule an empire. We just want to live in peace.

That should be the goal of any good government.

The Seattle Times --> The use of powerful and well-placed words and images worked for INGSOC. Its slogan - war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - fits like a truncheon in the cradle of shattered bone...

...the basic higher-order political factors surrounding 9/11, factors that do not require knowledge of the melting point of girder steel or the unknowable piloting abilities of the presumed perpetrators. Let us proceed, then, in a spirit of detached scientific inquiry, to ask questions the 9/11 Commission was unprepared to ask -->

"Why would Google or anyone else turn over data that might create further risks for their customers?

Donald Rumsfeld on the afternoon of September 11, 2001:
The released notes document Donald Rumsfeld's 2:40 PM instructions to General Myers to find the "[b]est info fast . . . judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]"
"Go massive...Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

On a recent visit to the Guantanamo detention center, VOA Pentagon Correspondent Al Pessin found indications that the military has long-term plans for the facility.

AP --> "There's a reason they call this crisis management," said corporate damage-control specialist Eric Dezenhall, "and that's because it's a mess."

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has launched a passionate attack on President George Bush, saying his administration's refusal to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp reflected "a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm".

Financed by the Homeland Security Department, school bus drivers are being trained to watch for potential terrorists, people who may be casing their routes or plotting to blow up their buses.

...he declared that a political discussion programme called Ballarò, shown weekly on RAI's Channel 3, was in effect propaganda for the centre-left opposition and "picks a studio audience totally composed of left-wingers".

When the programme's producers insisted their audience was balanced, Mr Berlusconi shot back: "That programme is a weapon of war with tailor-made reports."

A U.S. federal court has dismissed a lawsuit against the Bush administration brought by Ottawa engineer Maher Arar, essentially giving Washington the green light to continue its practice of sending terrorist suspects to third countries where they could be tortured.

To many on the outside, it looked like a mistake when Vice President Dick Cheney failed to notify the White House press corps first of his shooting accident. But in the White House, it reflected a strategy of marginalizing the press.

More than ever, the Bush White House ignores traditional news media and presents its message through friendly alternatives, such as talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.

A federal judge ordered the Bush administration on Thursday to release documents about its warrantless surveillance program or spell out what it is withholding, a setback to efforts to keep the program under wraps.

...not allowing Palestinians to work or receive money will result not only in massive misery and privation but ultimately starvation as well. But then, as the Jabotinsky Likudite and former Irgun terrorist, Menachem Begin, once quipped, Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs, so really their largely ignored abuse and even murder is no big deal. Ehud Olmert, a former member of the Beitar Youth Organization and a staunch Jabotinsky Likudite, is one of many of Begin?s successors, and thus determined to victimize the Palestinians relentlessly.

We now know that Bush is openly disregarding the Constitution. We know that Congress is doing nothing about it, maybe they'll appoint another 'bi-partisan' commission to 'investigate'.
This is not acceptable.

It oftentimes boggles the mind to try and understand the ease with which the Establishment can manipulate the American citizenry into another warmongering escapade, this time an ominous foray into the Persian lands of Iran, a nation rich in history, culture, location and most importantly to the Evil Empire, oil and gas. Yet upon further inspection it is easy to comprehend this phenomenon, for we live, as Gore Vidal has labeled it, inside the United States of Amnesia.

We live in a nation of gluttonous stupor and comfortable surroundings, easily distracted by the cocktail of materialism that lines our homes. We are trained to live to work, not work to live, sacrificing love of life for love for the Almighty dollar, becoming worker bees and soldier ants, selling our souls to the demons of capitalism in exchange for the happiness and stress-free lives of yesteryear, needing pharmaceutical drugs to escape the depression of our daily lives, willingly choosing to indebt our present and future in order to possess the vast array of adult toys marketed to manipulate our emotions, wrongly thinking this or that product will reincarnate lost happiness.

A landmark new U.S.-India nuclear agreement would enable New Delhi to expand atomic weapons production and encourage Pakistan and China to do likewise, according to critics of the controversial deal.

Next week the MadCowMorningNews will succeed in doing something neither the Congressional Intelligence Committee?s nor the 9.11 Commission?s investigation ever did: depose under oath an associate of Mohamed Atta?s in Florida.

Through the justifications it has put forth for warrentless wiretapping, the Bush administration is almost literally crossing the Rubicon, beginning the process of transforming the United States from a republic into to a presidential dictatorship.

Dozens of Western multinationals have made millions of pounds in profits from exploiting African bio-resources taken from some of the poorest nations on earth, with not a penny offered in return.

Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal.

By the next millennium the global map will have been redrawn by disastrous climate changes, according to a new forecast.