Skeletons in the Cupboard (dressed in Nazi Uniforms)

We could also talk about Karl Rove and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but that’s all ancient history. Except that it isn’t.

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Snow: Americans ‘Out of Touch With Reality’ In Iraq

Just weeks ago, President Bush insisted that the United States was “absolutely” winning in Iraq. Recently, as the casulties have mounted, he’s toned back his sunny rhetoric slightly, saying the United States was not “winning or losing.” Yet media reports indicate Bush believes the United States can win by sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq, a gambit that has been tried before and failed.

This prompted a reporter to ask White House Press Secretary Tony Snow if Bush was “fundamentally out of touch with what the reality is on the ground in Iraq?” Snow responded that “we may be out of touch with reality because we sit around and we look at fractional pictures on the screen.” Bush, on the other hand, “knows more than anybody in this room about what’s going on there.”

Watch it:

After a sinister year, it's down to us to protect our freedoms

In 2007, we should demand that MPs of all parties fight to restore the liberties which have been stolen by this government

Henry Porter
London Observer
Sunday, December 31, 2006

An article in the New Scientist has reported that a rhesus monkey named Murph and a bottlenose dolphin called Natua, which lives in a harbour in Florida, have both exhibited a fascinating ability when doing reward-based tests. As well as being able to understand when they answered right or wrong, they learned to signal when they didn't know something and so avoid the disappointment of being wrong. Like Mastermind contestants, they elected to 'pass'.

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A dictator created then destroyed by America

Robert Fisk
London Independent
Saturday, December 30, 2006

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

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The Ordinary Citizen and the Fight against Global-Evildoers

An entire army of lawyers and Grand juries couldn’t investigate all the crimes committed by this and previous administrations!

Waxman and Fitz have their work cut out for them just prioritizing the most important ones, and I’m not even sure they get that right!

Here’s some that have apparently been missed, or are still at the bottom of their in-tray, and I’m sure there’s enough evidence in all these cases to justify the convening of a grand jury.

• Death of JFK Sr
• Death of MLK
• Death of RFK
• Death of John Arthur Paisley
• Jonestown
• Death of John Lennon
• WACO
• Death of JFK Jr and his companions
• 9/11 (indeed Paul Mitchell has asked to present evidence on this one before g. jury)
• The Iraq War

By the way, a man called Michael L. Kathrein lost a case against a firm of lawyers whom he said were fleecing him, appealed and lost again.

He presented “evidence” of wrongdoing to PJF who, presumably, on the basis that the case had already been tried before a p. jury, and again on appeal, saw no further point in bringing it before a g. jury, and suggested Mitchell take his case to the FBI.

Kathrein then petitioned the SCOTUS for writ of Certiorari to be issued to the US Court of Appeals for the 7th circuit, arguing that

1. An American Citizen has a Constitutional right to petition the federal grand jury to investigate crimes committed against them.
2. An American Citizen has a statutory right to petition the federal grand jury to investigate crimes committed against them.
3. Members of the executive or judicial branches of government do not have the authority to block access to the grand jury.

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Indeed, Paul Andrew Mitchell, private attorney general, believes that he has found a legally binding precedent throughout the judicial district of New York, and therefore in lower Manhattan, for “a private litigant” to “obtain a writ of mandamus to compel U.S. attorney to present facts concerning alleged criminal wrongdoing to grand jury.

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Unfortunately, as I said earlier, an entire army of lawyers and Grand juries couldn’t investigate all the crimes committed by this and previous administrations!

Scarlett, author of the Iraq war dossier, is knighted

Nigel Morris and Kim Sengupta
London Independent
Saturday, December 30, 2006

John Scarlett, who took responsibility for the error-ridden dossier that justified the war in Iraq, is knighted in today's New Year's Honours list. The award will enrage peace campaigners, who have accused the veteran spymaster of saving Tony Blair's skin over the flawed case for the invasion.

The news came as a British soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra yesterday, the 127th to die since the invasion in 2003.

Sir John, the head of MI6, played a key role in the Hutton Inquiry hearings into the death of the weapons expert David Kelly, three years ago. He steadfastly defended the dossier, which contained the notorious claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. And he dismissed accusations he had bowed to pressure to "sex up" the document's conclusions.

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Anthony's Comment:

This is truly sickening!

They illegally invade a foreign country on the basis of a lie concocted under pressure by politicians, concoted by John Scarlett, head of MI6, that Saddam could launch WMDs against British territory (Cyprus?) in 45 mins, which constitutes a war crime.

Then they capture its leader, put him on trial and hang him for, wait for it, yes, war crimes!!!

Then they knight the man who took the rap for the sexed-up dossier.

All I can say is:

"Arise Sir John!"

1:00 PM

The First casualty of War

History gets revised as history is being made, especially in time of war, let alone after the war is over and the victors can write what they like. As Churchill said, "The first casualty of war is truth".

You can bet your bottom dollar that if truth is indeed the first casualty of war, then by the time that war nears it's end, truth is in a pretty bad way!

A classical example of how history is revised is the way we were told, then and now, that we had to drop the bomb on Japan because they refused to surrender.

As Gore Vidal argues, on the basis of several published books with citations, the Japanese had been willing to surrender on the condition that they retained their emperor, and had been contacting the US admin through the embassies of neutral countries.

The US insisted on unconditional surrender and dropped the bomb, as Vidal says, to frighten the Russians.

And as it happened, McArthur decided to retain the emperor anyway.

As Voltaire said, "History is a lie that is generally agreed upon!" Wise words indeed!

Churchill also said that truth was so precious it had to be rationed which, frankly, I find deeply sinister.

A Tale of three exiles (4 actually): Kundera, Singer and Allende (and me!)

I've been slowly reading (for the 3rd time), Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits, and I've been reading the fictionalised, but true to history account of the coup and imposition of martial law in Chile.

Page after page of unrelenting horror.

What sticks out is that people thought that a coup couldn't happen here, could it.

And, then when it happened, they were in denail.

The right which had sanctioned it, expected the generals to hand power back to Parliament once they had sorted out the mess Allende was supposed to have got the country into, a mess orchestrated by the CIA and ITT.

Funny that three of my favourite books, all of which fall into the category of one or other kinds of magic realism, are written against the background of a coup or foreign invasion.

Milan Kundera's the unbearable Lightness of Being.

I read two essays by Milan Kundera on the Jewish contribution of the culture of Mitteleuropa (Mahler, Kafka), and how, after the annihilation of the Jews partitioning of Europe at Yalta, Central Europe ceased to exist and pan-slavism was imposed, and an extract from this book in the literary magazine, granta, in a hotel room in Arrezzo, one weekend back in 1985.

Because there was a long queue for the only copy of the English translation of this book when it came out later that year, I decided to buy it in Spanish and read it on the long trainride through the ever-changing landscape (greenery, desert, mountains) between the Basque country where I was living at the time and Madrid.

I had already begun to speak falteringly, and read, Spanish, but found the thick accent of Las Arenas very difficult to understand.

When I got to Madrid, I found I could speak Spanish better, either that, or the Madrilenos speak Spanish much more clearly.

I managed to book a hotel room without trouble at the station, and awoke the following morning feeling that I could speak a whole new language!

The second book is Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Slave, about a Jew living in Poland in the aftermath of Bogdan Chmielnizki’s Cossack incursions into Poland in the seventeenth century.

And the third Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits.

Which brings me to the main point of this comment.

If the Chilean middle-classes thought that a coup could not possibly happen in Chile, are we any wiser?

Of, course it couldn’t happen here, could it?

Could it?

A happy new year everybody!

So, it’s official. Saddam executed.

Whatever his crimes, it makes me sick that Bush and Blair are going to get away scot free.

Bush and Blair invaded Iraq because, they would have us believe, Saddam posed a threat to the rest of the world. WMDs can be fired at British territory (Cyprus?) in 45 mins, were the news headlines back in ‘03.

So, they went in there knowing this to be untrue.

In my books that counts as a war crime, the moral equivalent of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which took place after some German soldiers dressed as Poles fired on some German soldiers.

Saddam is captured, and, after a show-trial executed, as, wait for it, a war criminal.

Am I missing something?

I’m as mad as hell about all this.

I’ll give you my ha’penny worth about Ford and what the New Year has in store in a mo’.

BTW, GNMNUK, Bush doesn’t give a monkey’s about the rights of unborn babies, or for any one else for that matter.

It’s just about getting the votes of the idiot Christian right.

And I’m speaking as a Christian.

If Bush is a genuine Christian, then I’m Monica Lewinski.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’ve just read the news on the CBS website.

By all accounts he died bravely. A darn sight more bravely than those evil creeps Blair and Bush will die when, or if, justice ever catches up with them. They’ll die soiling themselves.

It completely escaped comment in my parents' household this morning, and my father's someone who follows the news on CEEFAX religiously.

I had to choke back a tear when I read it. Not because I liked Saddam. He was a nasty piece of work. But it’s so grotesquely unfair that he pays for his crimes and others can just rewrite history.

Bush's Great Leap Forward

Chris Floyd
Thursday, December 27, 2006

The outlines of Bush's "New Way Forward" or "Great Leap Forward" or "Long Walk Off a Short Pier" in Iraq is now fairly clear. It has three general thrusts: a large increase in troop numbers; a direct assault on the forces of Motqada al-Sadr; and, if possible, an expansion of the war beyond Iraq's borders through a military strike on Iran.

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Anthrax Attacks on U.S. Congress Were Inside Job

ANTHRAX ATTACK ON U.S. CONGRESS
MADE BY FT. DETRICK, MD., SCIENTIST
AND COVERED UP BY FBI, EXPERT SAYS

By Sherwood Ross

The perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attack on Congress likely was a government scientist employed at the Army's Ft. Detrick, Md., bioterrorism lab having access to a "moonsuit" that made it possible to safely process and manufacture super-weapons-grade anthrax, a bioterrorism authority says.

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Are Bush and Cheney Planning an Early Attack on Iran?

DAVE LINDORFF
Counterpunch
Sunday, December 24, 2006

Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

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Anthony's Christmas Message

This year, as last year, we sang this carol at the carol service I attended in my church last Sunday.

And this year, the words, "The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight" hit me once again, between the eyes, just as they had done the last time I had sung it a year before.

"hopes and fears"!

What are my hopes and fears for the forthcoming year?

What are yours!

It's half past twelve here in the UK, I've prepared the carrots and sprouts, yet to wrap the prezzies, then I'll be ready to go!

A happy Christams everybody!

O Little Town of Bethlehem !

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

For Christ is born of Mary
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love
O morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth
And praises sing to God the King
And Peace to men on earth

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may his His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel

Rector Phillips Brooks (1835-1903) of Philadelphia, wrote the words to the carol O Little Town of Bethlehem in 1868, following a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He is said to have been inspired by the view of Bethlehem from the hills of Palestine especially at night time hence the lyrics of O Little Town of Bethlehem. His church organist Lewis Redner (1831-1908) wrote the melody to O Little Town of Bethlehem for their Sunday school children's choir.

Redner was Brooks’ organist at Holy Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts. The tune came to him on Christmas Eve, and was first sung the next day.

The Power of Nightmares

The BBC documentary that Blair and Bush didn't want you to see!

The Cold War: A complete Distraction? A neo-con con trick? A Scam? A "nice little earner" for the military-industrial complex, and at the same tiome provide the neos with the most powerful fighting force in the world to do with as they wished.

So that's why poor John Arthur Paisley, who liaised between groups A and B, had to die! He'd worked out what it was all about!

If the html links don't work, here's the link:

www.information clearinghouse.info/video1037.htm

Use clusty as a search engine,

Watch The Power of Nightmares here!

60 Minutes: CIA Official Reveals Bush, Cheney, Rice Were Personally Told Iraq Had No WMD in Fall 2002

Tonight on 60 Minutes, Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s Europe division, revealed that in the fall of 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others were told by CIA Director George Tenet that Iraq’s foreign minister — who agreed to act as a spy for the United States — had reported that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction program.

Watch it:

BRADLEY: According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high level meeting at the White House.

DRUMHELLER: The President, the Vice President, Dr. Rice…

BRADLEY: And at that meeting…?

DRUMHELLER: They were enthusiastic because they said they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis.

BRADLEY: And what did this high level source tell you?

DRUMHELLER: He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program.
BRADLEY: So, in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam’s inner circle that he didn’t have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?

DRUMHELLER: Yes.

BRADLEY: There’s no doubt in your mind about that?

DRUMHELLER: No doubt in my mind at all.

BRADLEY: It directly contradicts, though, what the President and his staff were telling us.

DRUMHELLER: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.

Read the full transcript HERE.

Only paranoia can justify the world's second biggest military budget

Britain's level of defence spending isn't related to real threats we face, but the needs of our military-industrial complex

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 28, 2006
The Guardian

No one noticed. Or if they did, no one complained. The government didn't even bother to issue a press release. Last week the Ministry of Defence quietly secured a £1.7bn increase in its budget. The spending for 2006-7 was allocated months ago, which means that another fund must have been raided to find the extra money. It's the equivalent of half the annual budget for the Department for International Development. But another billion or two doesn't make much difference when we are already sloshing out £32bn a year on a programme whose purpose is a mystery.

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Bush Survey

I’m carrying out an important survey of American opinions as to possible causes of bush’s speech problems. Please tick one of the boxes below and post on comments thread.

He’s suffering from alzheimer’s ⃞
He’s been on the maryjane ⃞
He can’t talk and listen to his earpiece at the same time ⃞
He’s just plain stupid ⃞

Routine and systematic torture is at the heart of America's war on terror

In the fight against cruelty, barbarism and extremism, America has embraced the very evils it claims to confront

George Monbiot
Tuesday December 12, 2006
The Guardian

After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

Last week, defence lawyers acting for José Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant", released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk - taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.

Is Padilla really that dangerous? Far from it: his warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for "a piece of furniture". The purpose of these measures appeared to be to sustain the regime under which he had lived for more than three years: total sensory deprivation. He had been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators. As a result, he appears to have lost his mind. I don't mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.

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GOPedo Alert!!!

Foley Pedophile Sex Scandal May Go Back 20 Years

“It’s beyond belief that arguably the most powerful person in the world, the POTUS in the form of Richard Nixon could not prevent the investigation of Watergate or that president Reagan could not prevent the investigation of Iran-Contra and yet some how this group of unnamed, unknown, anonymous individuals…can have such power that they can control and protect all of these people from being investigated.”

So that’s how powerful these people are!

Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war

By Colin Brown and Andy McSmith
The Independent
Published: 15 December 2006

The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.

In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, "at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests."

Mr Ross revealed it was a commonly held view among British officials dealing with Iraq that any threat by Saddam Hussein had been "effectively contained".

He also reveals that British officials warned US diplomats that bringing down the Iraqi dictator would lead to the chaos the world has since witnessed. "I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed)," he said.

"At the same time, we would frequently argue when the US raised the subject, that 'regime change' was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos."

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