Looks like Bush won’t need that extra $50 billion for Iraq after all! In fact, we can leave Iraq completely, bring all the troops home, and put them to work rebuilding the Gulf Coast because they’ve just found the weapons of mass destruction — turns out the UN had them all along!
I’m reminded of when I look all over the apartment for my sunglasses, only to realize they’ve been on my head the whole time. Kind of the same thing, only three million people don’t die when I make that mistake.
Here are some interesting stories from the past week that I’m willing to bet you haven’t seen on CNN.
They really don’t want you to see this video. Too bad it already has over 700,000 views.
Amazing video from WeAreChange! They had lots of good questions, he of course pretended not to hear them.
It always helps when the building isn’t laced with bombs.
81% of the vote in Alabama. Next-highest was Romney with 5%. What, you didn’t hear about that? Huh.
She didn’t want to come out and play…
There’s so much going on right now, I can’t even try to keep up, so this is just a tiny little taste. Don’t wait for me to post it all, go find it for yourself!
For Portland’s sake, I hope this turns out as wrong as the April 6th Iran strike prediction.
This is from PrisonPlanet.com, but I also recommend Portland IndyMedia’s coverage:
This is an urgent advisory notice from concerned citizens of Oregon and Washington about an upcoming U.S. Joint Forces Command emergency management exercise known as NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 that will simulate terrorism or disaster scenarios in the Lower Columbia River Basin between Aug. 20th and Aug 24th, 2007.
NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 was designed and will be directed by U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and the Department of Homeland Security. We are aware of no public notice concerning this exercise, but preliminary investigation has revealed that Oregon National Guard officials and federal officials will conduct the drill. Details from official sources are minimal.
This advisory is to document our concerns, raise public awareness and urge citizen action based on the following facts:
1. NOBLE RESOLVE is a computer-based simulation of a large-scale emergency situation (e.g. earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, or terrorist attack with nuclear weapon) in order to train for managing all aspects of the emergency response through comprehensive software.
2. Military exercises such as NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 have a recent history of coinciding with lethal “live” events. This occurred both at the start of Desert Storm in 1990 and on 9/11/01 when five or more major military or security exercises were in progress on the very day of the actual attacks. The same phenomenon occurred with the London Bombings of 7/7/05 during which a drill concerning multiple bomb attacks was being staged on that day.
3. Vice President Cheney, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff and former Senator Rick Santorum have all warned of a new 9/11 attack this summer, but are giving no evidence in support. Chertoff based his prediction on a “gut feeling”.
4. The May 2007 Presidential Directive NSPD 51 (HSPD 20) addressing “continuity of government” in the event of a massive emergency, includes secret “annexes” which are pertinent additional documents. Some US Congressional Committee on Homeland Security members such as Rep. Peter DeFazio have written to formally request permission to review these secret “annexes” and have twice been denied access by the White House.
5. This particular exercise, NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2, includes one scenario involving an unaccounted for, “loose,” ten kiloton nuclear weapon, exactly as Vice President Cheney hinted in recent interviews. Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff claims he fears the same.
6. The plummeting support for the GOP has triggered comments from its members and analyses of its current political strategy that point to a new 9/11 attack as a contributing factor to GOP political salvation. Moreover, it appears that legends or back stories are being disseminated to support just such an event.
Transparency concerning NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 is vital for the public safety of everyone in the Lower Columbia River Basin. We call on the planners, directors and participants in NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 to be vigilant and to maintain transparency with respect to these military exercises. We also urge citizens and our elected officials to monitor the activities of participants connected with the exercises and alert authorities to any suspicious behavior. These exercises have an established pattern of becoming “live” events. (Please read references below.)
Have you ever taken the time to peruse the lovely assortment of government websites out there? You should— your tax dollars pay for them. There are some really great ones like THOMAS and the Library of Congress. And who can forget whitehouse.org? — Oops, I mean whitehouse.gov.
Some sites are just downright creepy, some are more amusing than watching Bush try to piece together a coherent sentence. I first realized their entertainment value after visiting the TSA website, researching whether I was allowed to bring 3 or 4 ounces of face lotion/potential bomb-making cream on a recent trip to Los Angeles. Not only did I find the answer to that mind-boggling National Security question, I also found the “Are you on a watch list?” page. What fun!
I thought I had grasped the extent of it, but then I found that most every government website also has a kids page. 
I’m not talking Student pages intended for high school and/or college students. I’m talking real kids: 5 year olds with sticky fingers that get Captain Crunch stuck up their nose. Well don’t worry, the government hasn’t forgotten about them, they’ve made sure they’re brainwashed as soon as they learn how to say “dot gov!”
“The CIA is an independent US government agency that provides national security “intelligence” to key US leaders so they can make important, informed decisions. CIA employees gather intelligence (or information) in a variety of ways, not just by “spying” like you see in the movies or on TV (though we do some of that, too).”
“Terrorism is the use of threat or violence to scare governments into changing their policies. A terrorist can be an individual or a member of an organization. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, are examples of acts of terrorism.”
I know what you’re thinking. It was the first thing in my head too. Why in the world doesn’t the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have a Children’s page?? Never fear, they have one too.
From Common Dreams (thanks to Chellinsky for sharing):
American Genocide In The Middle East: Three Million and Counting
by David Goodner
Deaths directly and indirectly attributable to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have neared one million people, a body count higher than the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan combined, according to a new report released by Just Foreign Policy.
That brings the U.S. caused death count in the Middle East to over three million people, and that’s not even counting fatalities in Afghanistan or Palestine.
The Just Foreign Policy report is an update to two controversial studies published by the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet. In 2003, the Lancet reported over 100,000 excess deaths in Iraq were attributal to the U.S. invasion. That study may be read here.
In 2006, the Lancet updated their study and found over 600,000 excess deaths in Iraq since the U.S. invasion. That study may be read here.
The killing of Iraqis since the U.S. invasion includes violence caused by the overwhelming air and ground power of U.S. military forces, mortalities caused by the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and disappearances and murders caused by sectarian conflict and internal power struggles among different Iraqi factions.
The report’s methodology is controversial because it bypasses the normal model of death verification – which requires documenting each and every individual body tallied by governments, hospitals, and morgues – and instead uses a model first developed to estimate deaths caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters, where bodies are often never found.
Many defenders of the occupation of Iraq claim that a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq would spark a genocide as sectarian conflict and civil war escalated out of control. Indeed, violence may increase temporarily in the short term following a U.S. withdrawal. Nature abhors a vacuum and competition among Iraqi factions for power may increase as they rush to fill the void.
However, what is clear is that the U.S. invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq in and of itself constitutes a kind of genocide. American economic sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s killed one million civilians, according to a 2003 study by the Centre for Population Studies. And the U.S. funded both sides of the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980’s, contributing to well over one million Arab and Persian casualties, according to Farhang Rajaee in a 1993 article published by the University of Florida titled The Iran-Iraq war: the politics of aggression.
Now an additional 996,836 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion in 2003. The instability and sectarian conflict were stoked by this unilateral, preemptive, and illegal invasion, and there is little hope of the internal conflict ending while Iraq is under foreign military occupation.
This situation is historically similar to the colonial period, where infighting between African and other indigenous tribes around the globe increased because of the havoc wreaked by colonial powers and their divide-and-conqueor strategies.
Indeed, the seeds of conflict and disputes between ethnic groups, e.g. in Rwanda, were planted by Western colonialism. People of color around the world reap what we sow.
The immediate future of Iraq looks grim, with solutions ranging from bad to worse. Our only hope of ending the senseless violence is an unconditional and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, followed by some kind of responsible assistance by the U.N. and Arab peacekeeping forces.
If the Iraqis have to go to civil war to sort out the mess that our government has left them in, let them. It will eventually burn itself out like in Lebanon and, without any further interference from the West besides reconstruction and reparations, the Iraqis will be able to begin rebuilding their devastated country.
David Goodner is senior at the University of Iowa majoring in international studies and human rights.
Why strike? Why on 9/11?
September 11 is a day of mourning and reflection, but it should also be a day of dissent and action.
Since the tragics events of 9/11/01, America has fallen under a spell of fear and deception. The government peddles lies and steadily chips away at our democratic rights. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in the Iraq war—mostly civilians. Torture, surveillance, tyranny, empire. Many of us can recognize the fascistic direction of this government. But what do we do?
The time has come to let go of our fear—to stand up to lies and tyranny with passion and urgency. To connect with others and show our collective power. It’s time to realize that we’ve got nothing to lose. The time is now.
The General Strike is a national call to action, from citizens to other citizens. It is not about a single issue. It is not an anti-war protest, a civil rights protest, an election fraud protest. It is not about torture, surveillance, corporate media, the 9/11 coverup, or the environment. This strike is about all these issues and more.
We all have different concerns, but we all have the same concern: we are being lied to and this government does not represent us. Join other Americans in demanding truth, justice, and accountability.
This our country.
And our world.
We just have to stand up.
Good luck finding this in the mainstream news. As is usually the case, the latest freak accident couldn’t come at a better time.
I have a funny feeling about this bridge collapse story, that’s for sure. And I’m not alone. When consuming stories like this one happen, that’s when you should pay attention to OTHER events happening, the ones in smaller print. Use your detective skills to find what’s NOT on CNN, what’s on the last page of the newspaper, or what is being bumped completely off the headlines right now.
Like this little gem:
Karl Rove granted executive privilege — real original Mr. Bush!
US President George W Bush has ordered close adviser Karl Rove not to testify before a Senate hearing on the sacking of eight federal prosecutors.
Mr Bush used the executive privilege he has as president to exempt Mr Rove from having to appear.
The US Senate committee is investigating whether the White House arranged the sackings for improper political reasons.
The Bush administration maintains that the dismissals were justified.
“Mr Rove, as an immediate presidential adviser, is immune from compelled congressional testimony about matters that arose during his tenure and that relate to his official duties in that capacity,” White House lawyer Fred Fielding wrote in a letter to Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy, and made available to the Reuters news agency.
Mr Rove had been due to testify at a hearing on Thursday morning, along with another White House aide, deputy political director Scott Jennings.
You have the internet, therefore you have a choice.
Get – your – news – from – somewhere – besides – the mainstream media.
