Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | The battle of posters: "The cost of one of those coloured posters is enough to feed a hungry child for days. The cost of the television commercial which portrays the Iraqi premiere as the new strong man of Iraq, could provide food and cloth for a five- person Iraqi family for one year."

WESH.com - News - Gov. Bush Wants To Use Genetic Testing To ID Newborn's Fathers

Rumsfeld's power grab from CIA is a threat: "Forty-five years ago, Dwight Eisenhower, in the prescient moment of his presidency, warned about the dangers of the military-industrial complex to American democracy. Bush's proposed military-political-intelligence complex looms as an even greater menace."

The Daytona Beach News-Journal Bush Family Values: Rob from the poor & give to the rich.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | A televisual fairyland

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: "Let's not miss the big news in today's article in the Times about Dick Cheney. The vice president supports putting over 95% of the employee-side contribution to Social Security into private accounts.

Unfortunately, the authors construct the sentence in a somewhat murky fashion. But the key passage is this one: 'Mr. Cheney is said by associates to favor creating investment accounts into which workers could deposit 4 percent to 6 percent of their earnings that are subject to the Social Security payroll tax.'

In orther words, Cheney supports putting 4 to 6 percentage points of each individual's 6.2% contribution into a private investment account and taking it out of the Social Security system.

(Just for maximum clarity, that means about 97% of the employee's payroll tax contribution, which is 6.2% of their salary up to $90,000. And it's about 48% of the total Social Security money going into the program for the given individual since the employer also kicks in another 6.2%.)"

Transcript of Bush Interview (washingtonpost.com)
"The Post: Why do you think [Osama] bin Laden has not been caught?

THE PRESIDENT: Because he's hiding."

The Vote on Mr. Gonzales (washingtonpost.com): "At a time when nominees for the Cabinet can be disqualified because of their failure to pay taxes on a nanny's salary, this reluctance to hold Mr. Gonzales accountable is shameful."

Moussaoui Asks Supreme Court to Ban al Qaeda Witnesses (washingtonpost.com) From Cassel's June, 2003 piece on Chertoff: "Next, we can expect the Supreme Court to be closed, can't we?" From this morning's Post: "The Moussaoui brief is classified and was filed with a court security officer yesterday in the basement of the federal courthouse in Alexandria before being sent to the Supreme Court....a redacted copy [will] be released after a security review."

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Iceberg Cometh: "It's the standard Bush administration tactic: invent a fake crisis to bully people into doing what you want."

Elaine Cassel: Michael Chertoff, Ashcroft's Top Gremlin

CJR January/February 2005: Blog-Gate "[T]he coverage of Memogate effectively killed the story of Bush’s Guard years. Those who kept asking questions found themselves counted among the journalistic fringe."

Who Owns What CJR's guide to media conglomerates.

MSNBC - 'The Salvador Option': "What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are"

Los Angeles Times: Doctor's Orders -- Spill Your Guts: "A medical degree, Tornberg told us, isn't a 'sacramental vow.' When a doctor participates in interrogation, 'he's not functioning as a physician,' and the Hippocratic ideal of fidelity to patients is beside the point."

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "Worse Than Fiction"

Why Our Embeds Don't Tell All: "If anyone gets too close to us we fucking waste them,' said the Marine lieutenant. 'It's kind of a shame, because it means we've killed a lot of innocent people."

Hey, It Worked for the Romans: "There's a simple, logical way to reconcile President Bush's foreign and domestic policies: Start demanding tribute from foreign countries."

Yahoo! News - Human rights group warn military impeding relief effort in Aceh

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: Inside the spin machine: Republican heads explode

Federal Times Online: "Searches and gag orders: Homeland Security�s unprecedented campaign cloaks unclassified info"

Head Scarves Now a Protective Accessory in Iraq (washingtonpost.com): " Before the war, Iraqi Christian women rarely put on scarves....Iraqi women are more afraid today than ever before."

211th to depart - newarkadvocate.com: "The activation is the largest military deployment from Licking County since World War II. It's the first time the maintenance company has been activated in its 55-year history."

U.S. Troops Answered Oil Firm's Pleas $98 million for Plan Colombia, $35 million for tsunami relief.

Meanwhile, three blocks away at the Federal courthouse,Kerry Files Motion to Protect Ohio Vote Evidence:

"In order for a judge to consider such a motion, the plaintiff must be able to prove irreparable harm in the matter at hand, and must also be able to prove a significant chance that the case will succeed on the merits. The stumbling point for the Green Party and Libertarian Party in this matter has been the ability to prove that potential for success, because no recount would deliver an Ohio victory to them. A recount could very well deliver Ohio to Kerry, thus fulfilling the success on the merits requirement."

Yahoo! News - Ohio Official Refuses Interview Over Vote

Lawmakers examine election recounts - newarkadvocate.com: "State lawmakers will look at ways to make it harder and more expensive to get election recounts."

Yahoo! News - Tribal Money Linked to GOP Fundraising: Bob Ney on front page of Washington Post. Will the Liberal Media in Ohio take notice?

A Lawmaker Under Scrutiny
One member of the House leadership already under scrutiny for his ties to Abramoff, House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), used the MCI Center box, and his chief of staff was later hired by Abramoff. A Senate panel investigating Abramoff released e-mails last month showing that Abramoff directed a Texas tribe to contribute $32,000 to Ney in 2002, days after Ney took steps to sponsor legislation sought by the tribe.

t r u t h o u t - Giles Fraser | Empires Prefer a Baby and the Cross to the Adult Jesus: "As the carol reminds us: 'And man at war with man hears not the love song that they bring, O hush the noise ye men of strife and hear the angels sing.'"

THE PRESIDENT'S CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY TO CONDUCT MILITARY OPERATIONS AGAINST TERRORISTS AND NATIONS SUPPORTING THEM This is the September 25, 2001 John Yoo memo referenced in this week's Isikoff/Klaidman/Hirsch piece. In case it drives anybody else crazy to read a reference to something "quietly posted on an obscure government Web site," that doesn't include a link.

Really - having written on presidential war power myself long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away - there's nothing particularly outre in Yoo's interpretation of federal constitutional law. (Although - like Alberto Gonzales' death penalty recommendations to then-Gov.Bush - he does fail to refer to authorities that detract from his position. It's more an argumentative brief than a considered memorandum.) What's more telling, and recalls the more famous "torture memo," is the absence of any suggestion that international law might place any limit on the war power.


Happy holidays, everyone. Peace.

Rep. Ney deserves scrutiny - lancastereaglegazette.com Rep. Ney deserves scrutiny

Home / Headlines / The 9/11 Catastrophe - A Dereliction of Duty by Our Commander-in-Chief - Media Monitors Network (MMN)

War Crimes

Builder Sues Forest Service Workers Under RICO Act: "more than a month after Okovita filed his suit, the U.S. Department of Justice, which routinely represents federal employees accused of wrongdoing, has not moved to defend the three Forest Service employees"

BELLACIAO - 37 Reasons to Ignore Election Fraud and the Ken Starr Rodeo - Bellaciao collective

KR Washington Bureau | 12/17/2004 | American consumers suffering as more new drugs debut in U.S., analysis shows: "in 1992, just before Congress directed the FDA to speed up drug approvals, there was an average of one adverse drug reaction for every 16,300 prescriptions filled. In 2003, adverse reactions hit one in 9,000."

Aggressive policy on North Korea backfires for US - World - www.smh.com.au: "A leading Russian expert on the country, Georgy Toloraya, has warned that the underlying objective of Mr Bush's neo-conservative advisers - to bring down Kim Jong-il's regime - would, if successful, lead to a long-running civil war on the Korean peninsula that would be 'worse than Iraq'."

Probe may be trouble for Ney - zanesvilletimesrecorder.com: "Ney will likely survive the controversy because the issue does not resonate in his rural, predominately Republican district."

Values, schmalues.

MSNBC - Ohio offers lessons for 2008: "It happens every election"

Pentagon Ousts Official Under FBI Investigation: "In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Shaw expanded on the accusations made in his previous report, charging that Defense Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith, his former law partner L. Marc Zell and Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress party, were also involved in the conspiracy. "

Democracy Now! | Bernard Kerik: "Political Criticism is Our Enemy's Best Friend"

Newsday.com Published a week ago: "Let this be a warning from someone who's followed the man's ladder-climbing career: He's a personal and professional time bomb the Bushies will learn to regret. Don't say I didn't warn you, guys!"

Fox News has its own view of reality: "The movie 'Polar Express' takes viewers on a fantasy trip to the North Pole. The computer-generated virtual reality that the movie creates is amazing. I saw it Thanksgiving evening.
The next day a friend recorded a 2-minute segment on Fox News Channel about the 'scandal' of the United Nations' oil-for-food program. In its way, it, too, was an amazing fantasy trip into a virtual reality."

TheStar.com - U.S. media still hiding bad news from Americans

Reuters AlertNet - FEATURE-US troops on emotional rollercoaster in Iraq: "Convinced they have killed four to six insurgents in the mortar team, they are joyful. 'It was like Vietnam!' yells one. 'Warriors, dude!'"

Drying Up: The Global Water Privatization Pandemic

Zogby International: "Santa Claus 'a Democrat', Ebenezer Scrooge, Grinch 'Republicans', New Zogby Poll Finds"

Yahoo! News - Administration Misses Drug Import Deadline: "The report, mandated by last year's Medicare prescription drug law, is supposed to examine whether medicines can safely be brought into this country from Canada and elsewhere."

Activists Dominate Content Complaints: "nearly all indecency complaints in 2003 - 99.8 percent - were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group"

'The Power of Nightmares': Hyping Terror For Fun, Profit - And Power: "Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated?
Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate the Cold War."

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "since the politics of privatization depend on convincing the public that there is a Social Security crisis, the privatizers have done their best to invent one"

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is: "In Iraq, the US does eliminate those who dare to count the dead "

Ohio Papers Getting Nowhere on Vote Fraud Allegations: "we have found very little evidence that anything has happened in the election that didn't happen in every other [Ohio] election"

Sept. 11's Smoking Gun: The Many Faces of Saeed Sheikh This research hasn't been updated in nearly two years, but it's worth a read in light of the recent police killings of two more suspects in the Daniel Pearl case, and Musharraf's visit with Bush this week.

Reporters Without Borders notes that journalists have been denied access to Ghafoor's body, while Farooqi was reportedly shot in the face and identified by his ID card. Of four men allegedly involved in the "shootout," Farooqi was the only one killed, according to an Associated Press report.

Chicago Tribune: Dead voters on rolls, other glitches found in 6 key states Meanwhile, four Lucas County elections officers are mysteriously suspended for a "clerical error", and E&P reports the Ohio papers' failure to cover voter fraud like it was a good thing.

The Japan Times Online Knives out for Kofi Annan

Lynch Mob's Real Target Is the U.N., Not Annan

The Free Press -- Independent News Media - Election 2004

RICHARD HAYES PHILLIPS : LYRIC POETRY WEBSITE Ohio Recount

MiddleEast.org - Mid-East Realities AIPAC offices are raided to collect evidence to be destroyed. Almost-ignored action guarantees no evidence remains to indict pentagon staff for using manufactured "intelligence" to start illegal war.

The first "Burning Times" Award: Governor Mike Johanns of Nebraska How the new secretary of agriculture got his job.

The New York Review of Books: On War

Yahoo! News - IF IT'S 2005, IT MUST BE TIME FOR ANOTHER WAR: "Powell's claims that Iran obtained schematics for an atomic bomb from Pakistan are even older [than the discredited "intelligence" about Iraq], dating to 1996. Moreover, the Iran sourcing--the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI)--makes Ahmed Chalabi look like a Boy Scout. The NCRI, a front organization for the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), is a bizarre, Shiite, pro-Baathist (yes, you read that right) guerilla army infamous for crushing the 1991 Kurdish uprising on Saddam's orders. Better yet, it's designated as a 'known terrorist organization' by Powell's own State Department."

Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says (washingtonpost.com): "Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals 'can result in pregnancy'...; that 'A 43-day-old fetus is a thinking person; HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears; [and] Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.'

"Some course materials cited in Waxman's report present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for 'admiration' and 'sexual fulfillment' compared with a woman's need for 'financial support.' One book in the 'Choosing Best' series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. 'Moral of the story,' notes the popular text: 'Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess.'"

And then there are the statements that are wrong just for the sake of being wrong, without any apparent policy justification, like "twenty-four chromosomes from the mother and twenty-four chromosomes from the father join to create this new individual."

Yahoo! News - Europe's Central Bank Seen Holding Rates: "U.S. military has announced that troops stationed in Europe would receive a 31 percent cost of living increase to help provide some relief"

New DEA Statement Has Pain Doctors More Fearful (washingtonpost.com): "the new DEA position is at odds with a set of guidelines negotiated over several years by DEA officials and a group of leading pain-management experts."

Something's fishy in Ohio

As the oil-for-food program scandal deepens, let's remember the conditions the U.S. had created in Iraq before the program was initiated: "International aid efforts and the U.N. oil-for-food program helped reduce the ruinous impact of sanctions, and the rate of acute malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis gradually dropped from a peak of 11 percent in 1996 to 4 percent in 2002."

CBC News Indepth: Continental Divide?

The New York Times > National > Colleges Can Bar Army Recruiters: "Howard J. Bashman, who helped write a supporting brief on behalf of students who favored the law, said the decision would hurt the military and the public.

'A ruling of this sort will cause the military to end up with a lower quality of lawyer,' Mr. Bashman said. 'These lawyers are involved in targeting decisions and in decisions about how prisoners have to be treated.'"

So, presumably, had Harvard Law School permitted military recruiters on campus at the time, perhaps 1982 alum and Air Force Academy dropout Alberto Gonzales might've gone back into the military, and things might've been MUCH different.....

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: The Great Indecency Hoax ABC began apologizing before anyone complained. Overhyped news items about sex sell better than advertising, especially in the more-moral-than-thou Red States.

Times Community Newspapers: "Under the current system, incumbents are likely to face a real challenge only from within their own party, according to Shogun, and most likely by someone with an even more extreme political view than their own."

Congressman Ney is at center of influence peddling scandal

U.S. threatens to cut aid over court / Congress wants immunity accords for Americans

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Two more top spies quit troubled CIA "Goss and his minions can do a great deal of damage in short order."

Ummmm, Dallas 21, Chicago 7: "The UN atomic agency is expected to let South Korea off the hook for making small amounts of weapons-grade plutonium"

The Columbus Dispatch - Election More voting questions raised

Yahoo! News - Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained: "Some of us are going to die there, and some of us are going to die unnecessarily because of the lack of training,' he said. 'So I don't care. Let them court-martial me. I want the American public to know what is going on. My men are guilty of one thing: volunteering to serve their country. And we are at the end of our rope."

www.GovExec.com - I Spy Mismanagement (11/24/04)

Clear Channel billboard pictures Bush with the "L" word. You know, the English word that translates "Fuhrer" or "Duce."

From last night's "60 Minutes": Military analyst John "Pike says the military is trying to minimize the casualty count" by failing to include up to 30,000 wounded and ill in its casualty counts. "It’s an effort Pike believes is misguided, because he says that even if Americans understood the full human cost of the war, public support would not weaken.

'I think that all of the public opinion polling that we're seeing suggests that the public is prepared to sustain far higher casualties than politicians give them credit for,' says Pike."

One still holds out a faint hope that by "full human cost," he means the direct cost to US servicemembers, not the conservatively estimated 16,000 Iraqi civilians killed or the 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from wasting due to malnutrition.

Remember Afghanistan? "[T]his year Afghanistan has established a double record -- the highest drug cultivation in the country’s history, and the largest in the world....The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is slowly becoming a reality as corruption in the public sector, the die-hard ambition of local warlords, and the complicity of local investors are becoming a factor in Afghan life.

The soldiers' story: the war the video cameras do not see

Oakland Tribune Online - Local & Regional News: "The UC Berkeley report has not been peer reviewed, but a reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the analysis Thursday at the request of the Oakland Tribune and The Associated Press. He said an investigation is warranted.....'Seven professors later, nobody's been able to poke a hole in our model,' Mangels said. 'Our results still hold up.'"

Surprising Florida Presidential Election Results: "Pinpointing Precincts with Vote-Counting Errors"

Outsourcing the Pentagon - The Center for Public Integrity

U.S. ELECTION: Democracy in Question

UC DATA Home Page Working Paper: The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections

Boston.com / News / Politics / Presidential candidates / Media accused of ignoring election irregularities

Landscape After Battle

VotersUnite!
Summaries of voting problems nationwide, with links. 327 entries so far.

Attack on Fallujah can't be justified

White House Orders Purge of CIA 'Liberals,' Sources Say Ignorance is strength

Consortiumnews.com "Contrary to assertions in the flawed Post article, the most surprising numbers actually don’t come from small rural counties in [Florida], but rather from large counties, including Orange county (mentioned above), Hillsborough (Tampa), Brevard (Cape Canaveral), Duval (Jacksonville), Polk (next to Orange county), and heavily Democratic Leon (Tallahassee) and Alachua (Gainesville)."

ExxonSecrets Organizations: "Documenting Exxon-Mobil's funding of climate change skeptics"

Business 2.0 :: Online Article :: Marketing Focus :: Does a Bush Win Mean U.S. Brands Lose?: "'This is undoubtedly the worst thing that could have happened,' Anholt says of the president's reelection. 'Bush has presided over a period of unparalleled decline in the popularity of the United States. Global disapproval of U.S. foreign policy has become so intense that it is spilling over and contaminating the image of U.S. brands and culture.' "

CounterPunch: "America's Best Political Newsletter" Voter Intimidation in Tampa
Dispatches from the Gound

Columns: The man behind all the bad decisions

FindLaw's Writ - Dean: White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales's Texas Execution Memos

David Swanson: Media Black Out on Vote Fraud Allegations