Nowhere to Hide - Israelis kill 6yr old girl and her family in Gaza
The Israeli military, initially denying that any shells had been fired, later admitted a missile had missed its target in an open field and landed on a street in the Shajaya district on the outskirts of the city, near the Karni border crossing.
ISRAEL PLANNED CAPTURE OF PALESTINIAN GOVERNMENT LONG BEFORE ALLEGED KIDNAPPING
Golani commander: IDF soldier likely killed in Gaza by friendly fire
At first it was believed that Bassel had been shot by a Palestinian sniper. Now, however, it appears highly likely that a Golani force in the adjacent house misidentified Bassel's force as Palestinian and opened fire on it.
Israel rejects Palestinian call for truce
The Hamas-led Palestinian government called for a cease-fire Saturday in its violent two-week standoff with Israel, but Israel rejected the offer because it did not call for releasing a soldier held by Hamas militants.
Israeli army turns on Olmert
AFTER a week of fierce fighting against Palestinian militants in Gaza, the Israeli government was last night facing growing unease within its own military over the refusal to negotiate with Hamas for the release of kidnapped soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit.
Crisis in US Media Coverage of Gaza
One element fueling the current crisis in Gaza is the ongoing failure of US corporate media coverage of Israel/Palestine. US policy, public opinion and mainstream media coverage of Israel/Palestine are all dangerously biased towards Israel. Media coverage both reflects and influences policy and public opinion. Media coverage of events in Gaza again illustrates how the US mainstream media privileges the Israeli narrative, and frequently ignores both Palestinian experiences and international law, providing the US public and policymakers with only part of the story.
Are Israeli lives worth more than Palestinian?
Arab Media Watch expresses its concern at the amount of coverage given to Israel's killing yesterday of almost two dozen Palestinians, including civilians, compared with the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier on 25 June, as well as the continued portrayal of the current crisis as being triggered by the kidnapping.
The Voice of the White House for July 7th 2006
The oft-heard argument that “Israel was the homeland” for the Jewish people may well have been true, 2000 years ago, but the current inhabitants of Israel are not Jewish by heritage but by enforced conversion of nomad tribes in Russia in 800AD. 95% of the Israeli Jews are from this background, not the original Semitics who forced out of Judea by the Romans.
War crimes
The 1949 Geneva Conventions state, in article 54 of their additional protocol: “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited”. It is also “prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”. That means that the Israeli army’s latest offensive in the occupied territories amounts to war crimes; it includes the blockade of the civilian population and their collective punishment, the bombing of Gaza’s $150m power station, depriving 750,000 Palestinians of electricity in the intense summer heat, and the kidnapping on the West Bank of 64 members of the political wing of Hamas, including eight cabinet ministers and 22 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. On 5 July the Israeli government said it would expand its military operation in Gaza.
State Department Lawyers Warned in 2002 That Denying Terror Suspects' Geneva Conventions Rights Could Upset U.S. Courts, Make Officials Vulnerable to War Crimes Charges
A group of State Department lawyers warned in 2002 that the Bush administration was inviting an enormous backlash, both from U.S. Courts and foreign allies, by denying terror suspects rights commonly given under U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Contributing Editor Stuart Taylor, Jr. in the July 17 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, July 10). "Even those terrorists captured in Afghanistan ... are entitled to the fundamental humane treatment standards of ... the Geneva Conventions," William Howard Taft IV, the State Department legal counselor wrote in a January 23, 2002 memo obtained by Newsweek. In particular, Taft argued, the United States has always followed one provision of the Geneva Conventions-known as Common Article 3- which "provides the minimal standards" of treatment that even "terrorists captured in Afghanistan" deserve.
Nation Breaking
A soldier discovers that training the Iraqi army is not President Bush’s priority.
Gallup: Almost Two-Thirds Want Iraq Withdrawal
A new Gallup poll finds that roughly 2 in 3 Americans urge a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, with 31% wanting this to start immediately.
Gallup's director, Frank Newport, sums up the results today: "Taken together, it is perhaps fair to say that a significant majority of Americans would like the United States to either withdraw troops from Iraq or make specific plans to do so, although there is no majority demand that troops be withdrawn immediately.
"The poll was unusual in that rather than give respondents a list of options, it allowed them to respond in their own words. Gallup then grouped the varied responses and labelled them with a common theme.
Results showed that almost 1 in 3 want to "pull the troops out and come home," as soon as possible. About the same number seem to wish for a gradual pullout. The remaining one-third back the present course or want to "finish what we started."
The plot to defeat our liberty
For any form of tyranny to succeed, there have to be people who roll up their sleeves and get the job done. Repression doesn't just happen. It has to be organized, arranged, justified and marketed to a willing populace. In other words, it takes a team.
"The Republicans Have a Plan - And it is Called FEAR"
Plan to attack New York tunnels: Yet another dubious “terror plot”
Bush, Rumsfeld and the Supremes
George W. Bush, with Cheney and Rumsfeld holding his train (or is that a leash?) continues to strut. He incessantly refers to himself as Commander in Chief of the American people.
He is not, of course. We hear morning, noon, and night about the “war' in Iraq, in Afghanistan, on terrorism, even still the “war' on drugs. But the only real war the government of the United States is fighting today is a war on our republic, a war on the Constitution.
Landmark al Qaeda trial collapses
The trial of 19 alleged al Qaeda members had been designed to showcase how serious Yemen was in the fight against terror. But the Islamic militants, accused of plotting to assassinate Westerners and blow up a hotel frequented by Americans, were all acquitted for lack of proof, the presiding judge ruled Saturday.
Illinois court awards victims of Israeli terror attack Iranian artifacts
An Illinois court of justice a while ago issued a verdict based on which the bereaved family members of a terrorist attack in Israel can receive as remuneration the Iranian historic artifacts kept at Oriental Studies Institute of Chicago University.
"WTF?" - Nobody
Full Recount Would Show that López Obrador Won Mexico’s Presidency by More than One Million Votes
The Tip of the Iceberg of the Crimes Committed by Mexican Electoral Authorities Is the Fraudulent Vote Count of 2006
Commercial Media organizations are reporting that Felipe Calderòn won Sunday’s presidential election by 0.58 percent of the vote and will govern Mexico for the next six years, beginning on December 1.
It would not be the first time that the Commercial Media has been wrong.
Many of those reports have claimed that Wednesday’s first official count of precinct results in Mexico – 130,000 pieces of paper that claim to represent the vote tallies – was a “recount.”
It would not be the first time that lazy “pack journalism” got a major international story wrong.The truth: No recount occurred on Wednesday, or before, or since. What occurred – we repeat – was only the first official count of precinct tallies.
A Narco News investigation has found that in the small sample of precincts – less than one percent – where a recount was allowed, the shift in numbers away from Calderón was so drastic that, if recounts of all the ballots followed the same trend, the official results would invert and Andrés Manuel López Obrador would become the clear winner of the presidency by more than one million votes:
Mexico: Calderon's brother-in-law wrote the vote-counting software, and it's already been hacked!
Mexico: Vote Counting Software Hacked
In Mexico, we've got it all. All the plays in the playbook. The rush to declare a victor before the votes are counted, the partisan software company--and voting software that's proven to be hackable.
Mexico: All the errors went FOR the conservative, AGAINST Obrador
Obrador supporters take to Mexico streets
Thousands of defiant supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took to the streets Saturday in a bid to overturn his narrow election defeat, launching protests that threatened to widen Mexico's regional and class divisions.
Lopez Obrador called for protests across Mexico, saying last Sunday's elections were more fraudulent than those held during 71 years of one-party rule. European Union election observers have said they had found no major irregularities.
Most of Lopez Obrador's supporters come from poor southern states while conservative Felipe Calderon's strength is in Mexico's industrialized north.
Election officials say Calderon beat Lopez Obrador by less than 244,000 votes out of a total of 41 million ballots — or a margin of about 0.6 percent.
"We are never going to recognize this man (Calderon)," said Apolinario Fernandez, 37, a teacher from Lopez Obrador's home state of Tabasco in the southeast. "If he wants, let him govern in the north for the rich, but not in the south."
Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Curbs U.S. Deficit
An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief.
On Tuesday, White House officials are expected to announce that the tax receipts will be about $250 billion above last year's levels and that the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what they projected six months ago. The rising tide in tax payments has been building for months, but the increased scale is surprising even seasoned budget analysts and making it easier for both the administration and Congress to finesse the big run-up in spending over the past year.
Tax revenues are climbing twice as fast as the administration predicted in February, so fast that the budget deficit could actually decline this year.
The main reason is a big spike in corporate tax receipts, which have nearly tripled since 2003, as well as what appears to be a big rise in individual taxes on stock market profits and executive bonuses.
The surge could also evaporate as quickly as it appeared. Over the past decade, tax revenues have become much more volatile, alternately soaring and plunging in the wake of swings in the stock market and repeatedly defying government projections."
And federal debt has ballooned to $8.3 trillion, up from $5.6 trillion when Mr. Bush took office
"Well now...lets take a look behind the curtain and see how the trick was done...First you encourage the corporations to be taxed now at a lower rate rather than later at their normal rate...Got to time it just right for the election..." - Nobody
The $104 Billion Refund
The most absurd corporate tax giveaway of 2005.By Michelle LederPosted Thursday, April 13, 2006, at 12:33 PM ET Feeling flush because you're getting a nice tax refund this year? You're not alone. Some of America's largest corporations—a virtual who's who of the Fortune 100—have been reporting their own hefty tax windfalls, thanks to an absurd provision of a law designed to create jobs.
IBM, for example, is banking a $2.8 billion refund—well, better to call it a "tax savings"—because instead of paying the normal corporate tax rate of 35 percent on $9.5 billion in profits it earned overseas, the company paid only 5.25 percent. That's the magic of the American Jobs Creation Act, a piece of legislation that passed with comfortable margins in both the House and the Senate and was signed into law by President Bush just two weeks before the 2004 elections.
The AJCA, which was pushed through during the last fit of panic about outsourcing, was ostensibly designed to encourage companies to add jobs here. It gave a small tax deduction to American manufacturers, and it offered a one-time tax holiday in 2005 when corporations could repatriate their foreign income at a massively reduced tax rate. This repatriation, the theory went, would encourage R & D and capital investment in the United States, leading to new positions down the road. But, like President Bush's creatively named Clear Skies initiative and Healthy Forest Restoration Act, the American Jobs Creation Act has not lived up to its title.
Some helpful charts
"Now was this a "job creation act" or was it an election maneuver?" - Nobody
US jobs growth weaker than expected
The US produced fewer jobs than expected last month, adding to evidence that the economy is losing momentum.
The outcome was shy of the consensus expectation for job creation at 175,000. Over the past three months job creation has averaged just 108,000, down from 176,000 over the previous three months and below the level necessary to prevent unemployment from rising over the longer term.
"Yeah...that's what I thought...But in all fairness maybe the republicans have more important issues to deal with..." - Nobody
Ally Told Bush That Failing to Inform Congress of Spying Projects Might Be Illegal
In a sharply worded letter to President Bush in May, an important Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters.
The letter from Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the intelligence activities that he believed had been hidden from Congress.
But Mr. Hoekstra, who was briefed on and supported the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and the Treasury Department's tracking of international banking transactions, clearly was referring to programs that have not been publicly revealed.
Recently, after the harsh criticism from Mr. Hoekstra, intelligence officials have appeared at two closed committee briefings to answer questions from the chairman and other members. The briefings appear to have eased but not erased the concerns of Mr. Hoekstra and other lawmakers about whether the administration is sharing information on all of its intelligence operations.
Link to letter here
"There's more!?" - Nobody
Republican Priorities Stalled in Congress
Unpopular President, Deep Divisions in GOP Add Up to a Congress Having Trouble Doing Its Job
Could a Republican-controlled Congress pass a bill to protect the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance from court challenges? No problem, especially if proposed during the patriotic season leading up to the Fourth of July, Republican leaders thought. No way, it turned out.
The bill, the first item on the GOP's election-year "American Values Agenda," couldn't get past a House committee. Even worse for the Republicans: They couldn't blame the flameout on Democrats. One of the GOP's very own, Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, voted no. Seven other Judiciary Committee Republicans skipped the panel's meeting entirely.
So it goes this year for House Republicans, their majority in jeopardy for the first time in more than a decade. An unpopular president, deep divisions in their ranks and Democrats determined to regain control add up to a Congress that's having trouble doing its most basic job: passing legislation.
Republican leaders tried to shrug off the setbacks, while Democrats have pounced on the lack of progress.
Powerful GOP Activist Sees His Influence Slip Over Abramoff Dealings
For more than a decade, Grover G. Norquist has been at the nexus of conservative activism in Washington, becoming a Bush administration insider whose weekly strategy sessions at his Americans for Tax Reform have drawn ever-larger crowds of lawmakers, lobbyists and even White House political adviser Karl Rove.
Over the past six years, Norquist has been a key cheerleader and strategist for successive White House tax cuts, extracting ironclad oaths from congressional Republicans not to even think about tax increases. And even before President Bush's election, he positioned himself as a gatekeeper for supplicants seeking access to Bush's inner circle.
But in the aftermath of reports that Norquist served as a cash conduit for disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the irascible, combative activist is struggling to maintain his stature as some GOP lawmakers distance themselves and as enemies in the conservative movement seek to diminish his position.
Washington Babylon
In June 2004—in the middle of the Caucus Room, a crowded Washington restaurant—Cunningham accepted a fat envelope from Wade. "What's in it?" asked David Heil, Cunningham's chief of staff. Money to repair the Duke-Stir, $6,500 in cash, Cunningham told him. Several months later the aide, who had long been concerned about his boss's misdeeds—so much so that he personally checked Cunningham's real-estate records in California—begged Cunningham to resign. "This is stupid! It's insane!" the aide supposedly said. "I would bet my own house this whole thing will come out." Cunningham listened to this lecture, silent and shamefaced, but he didn't resign. Instead, his chief of staff did.
Every time [Brent] Wilkes was asked by Tom Casey, a California defense contractor who would eventually work with him, how he got to be so friendly with Lowery and other congressmen, the answer was always the same, Casey tells me: "Honduras." Specifically, Casey adds, Wilkes described sexual encounters between congressmen and women from Honduran villages. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports similar recollections, attributing them to three of Wilkes's former friends.
Ohio Governor Faces Public Reprimand
Gov. Bob Taft faces a public reprimand for ethics violations under an agreement his attorney has reached with the state office that monitors lawyers' behavior.
Taft, a Republican who has been an attorney since 1976, pleaded no contest last August to failing to report golf outings and other gifts while in office and was fined $4,000.
Taft would receive a public reprimand for his convictions on those misdemeanor ethics violations under an agreement forged by the governor's private attorney and the Ohio Supreme Court's disciplinary counsel.
Jonathan Coughlan, the disciplinary counsel, filed a complaint in April saying Taft's actions violated Ohio's code of professional conduct for lawyers.
GOP senator helped hip-hop producer dodge coke sentence
U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a musician in his own right, helped secure the release of Atlanta R&B producer Dallas Austin from a United Arab Emirates jail after a drug conviction, the senator's office confirmed Saturday.
A Grammy winner who has produced hits for Madonna, Pink and TLC, Austin was arrested May 19 and convicted of drug possession for bringing 1.26 grams of cocaine into the UAE city of Dubai.
On Tuesday a court sentenced him to four years in jail and said Austin, 34, should be deported after serving the term. Hours later, Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum pardoned and released Austin.
Beyond saying Hatch has "good relations with the ambassador and other good people in Dubai," his office gave The Associated Press no specifics about Hatch's dealings with the Dubai government.
"WTF is it with Dubai and some members of the republican party?" - Nobody
Court Rules Against Sanitizing Films
Sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and several companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, an appeals judge ruled.
Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence is an ''illegitimate business'' that hurts Hollywood studios and directors who own the movie rights, said U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch in a decision released Thursday in Denver.
''Their (studios and directors) objective ... is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies,'' the judge wrote. ''There is a public interest in providing such protection.''
Matsch ordered the companies named in the suit, including CleanFlicks, Play It Clean Video and CleanFilms, to stop ''producing, manufacturing, creating'' and renting edited movies. The businesses also must turn over their inventory to the movie studios within five days of the ruling.
CleanFlicks produces and distributes sanitized copies of Hollywood films on DVD by burning edited versions of movies onto blank discs. The scrubbed films are sold over the Internet and to video stores.
Clean scenes
A video watchdog in Utah edits out all the nasty stuff for his Mormon customers.
Mormons in Utah hoping to rent a Hollywood film without sex, violence or profanity have found their savior. His name is Ray Lines, and he doesn't merely preach against the heathens of hell. Lines is a man of action. The one-time sportscaster operates two CleanFlicks video stores in the greater Salt Lake City area, and spends much of his time editing the videos to remove bare breasts, sex scenes, gun battles and unfortunate dialogue like "fuck" and "goddamn it.
"The large local membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides an ideal customer base for Lines and his Carry Nation crusade against video filth. Since his stores opened a few months ago, he has attracted a steady stream of well-scrubbed film fans who don't mind paying up to $17 to rent a Mormon-friendly version of "Titanic" or "Saving Private Ryan."
Candidates explain why they switched
Ending lifelong allegiances to the Republican Party in Kansas was no simple matter.“I didn’t sleep well that night,” said Kent Goyen of Pratt, who’s running for the 114th District seat.
But each of the party jumpers had a common tonic — visits with Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, either in person or by telephone.
Steve Lukert, Sabetha
Age: 58
Occupation: Farmer, retired government teacher
Running for: 62nd District House seat
Switched parties because: Two reasons. He ran for the state Senate two years ago in the GOP primary and lost, but said he was disillusioned by the tactics used to defeat him. “I was put off by the meanness of the campaign within the Republican Party and the intentional misrepresentations,” Lukert said.
"As heartening as this is do we really need more DINOs in the party?" - Nobody
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