Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press and Brick Ogden an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
I have just figured out why Republigoats are so eager to establish a "guest worker" program in the United States of America. It is because they believe that money grows on trees, and they are concerned that they will need someone to harvest it for them.
I tuned in to C-Span Radio on the internets yesterday. I got in just in time to listen to them debating "PAYGO." PAYGO, according to the C-Span Congressional Glossary, "compels new spending or tax changes to not add to the federal deficit. New proposals must either be 'budget neutral' or offset with savings derived from existing funds."
The first time I heard the concept of "pay as you go" referred to as the odd D.C. contraction "PAYGO," it fell out of the current president's hula-jawed mouth. It made me laugh very hard. Only later did I learn that PAYGO is actually Washingtonese.
The interesting thing about this afternoon's debate on this portion of House rules was how shocking and foreign the concept of "paying for things with money you actually have" is to Republigoats. Republigoat after Republigoat stood up and warned that, if this crazy lunatic plan of the Democrats was approved—get ready for this—it might lead to tax increases.
Here's Republigoat Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana: "...I will oppose this element of the rules package having to do with the 'pay-as-you-go' provisions, which, while they sound in a common sense way attractive, this particular version, I believe, is lacking for three reasons. I believe it is a weak and watered-down version of PAYGO proposals of the past, including Democratic Party proposals of the past. Number two, it doesn't reduce current spending levels or require a reduction of current spending levels. And number three, it is, as so many of my colleagues have said, a means of justifying tax increases on working families, small businesses, and family farms. In a very real sense, the American people ought to know that this proposal translates to, 'You pay as Congress goes on spending.'"
With estimates of the losses from the subprime mortgage fiasco spiraling past $100 billion, Citigroup, Bank of America and similar citadels of financial genius are deep in a huddle with the US Treasury over some sort of rescue operation.
Pundits are shocked at the prospect of taxpayers bailing out companies whose middle managers are distraught if their year-end bonuses come to less than seven figures. After all, deregulation and global competition was supposed to banish the cozy relationship between big business and big government that justifies corporate welfare under the slogan "Too Big to Fail."
But a look just south of the border -- where Citigroup has also been making headlines -- reminds us that crony capitalism is not some anomaly that rears its hypocritical head in times of financial crisis. It is built into the DNA of multinational banking.
The Slow Starvation of the People of Gaza
by Saree Makdisi The people of Gaza were able to enjoy a few days of freedom last week, after demolition charges brought down the iron wall separating the impoverished Palestinian territory from Egypt allowing hundreds of thousands to burst out of the virtual prison into which Gaza has been transformed over the past few years -- the terminal stage of four decades of Israeli occupation -- and to shop for desperately needed supplies in Egyptian border towns.
Gaza's doors are slowly closing again, however. Under mounting pressure from the United States and Israel, Egypt has dispatched additional border guards armed with water cannons and electric cattle prods to try to regain control. It has already cut off the flow of supplies crossing the Suez Canal to its own border towns.
Little Ships of Horror
by Christopher Leslie Brown "Every man condemns the [slave] trade in general," wrote the abolitionist Thomas Cooper, of Manchester, England, in 1787, "but it requires the exhibition of particular instances of the enormity of this Commerce, to induce those to become active in the matter, who wish well to the cause upon the whole."Those accounts of the trade that present "particular distress, with its attendant circumstances," are best "calculated to excite compassion."
Such were the principles of the British campaign against the slave trade at the end of the eighteenth century, as historian Marcus Rediker explains. And this emphasis on itemizing particular instances describes just as well the approach that guides Rediker's breathtaking new book on the eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade.
If you saw the grainy footage of Saddam Hussein being brutally hanged on December 30, 2006, amid the taunts of his political enemies, "international justice" is probably not the first thought that came to mind. "Tribal vendetta" is a more likely guess.
More than sixty years ago, the need to avoid vendettas was one of the factors behind the establishment of an international military tribunal at Nuremberg to judge Nazis accused of war crimes. The Nuremberg tribunal has since served as a model of sorts for the handful of international tribunals created by the United Nations in the past two decades to judge people accused of committing war crimes in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Since the midterm elections, my primary focus has shifted from denouncing the Bush regime to exploring how to employ the newly won Democratic power.
This is not a shift in purpose, which is still to defeat the Bushites and to repair the damage that they have done to this nation, to the international system, and to the planet. But the change in circumstances means that our strategy needs a shift in emphasis. After the first stage devoted to waking people up enough to become an electorate that would begin transferring power out of Bushite hands, it now seems to time figure out how to best use that transferred power .
Many people have responded favorably to my strategic shift. But there are people who liked it better when I was denouncing the Bushites than when I portray the Democrats as a potentially effective instrument of our purposes.
Indeed, the very idea of valuing the Democrats and their newly won power makes them angry. And they express this by denouncing the Democrats for their various corruptions and weaknesses.
7. Royal Porton Down (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : Brian Rayner
by Brian Raynor
Before royalty opens or gives its name to anything, exhaustive checks are made to eliminate any adverse and potentially damaging after effects. They open Bridges, Hospitals, Stadia, all structures that rest comfortably within their ‘common subjects’ psyche. Each event is hugely propagandist for the royals and Monarchy as well as politically motivated, although they would deny it. Royalty is encamped at the centre of British politics, but continues to offend the nation by trading on tyranny and denial, blocking our right to elect a Head-of-State. Royal Porton Down (my title), is a government establishment that was NOT opened by royalty, (although from 1916 to 1929, it temporarily carried the prefix Royal). No spin doctors, No fanfares, No hype, No Royal propaganda!
Nevertheless, it is one of Her Majesty's research centres where civil servants and scientists work who swear an oath-of-allegiance to Britain's unelected Monarch. It may be argued that Porton Down exists to produce "anti-dotes" for use against the proliferation of chemicals and biological "poisons" being produced around the world, but why produce the poisons in the first place? Dangerous substances have been manufactured there; perhaps Ricin was one of them. If this is the case, who were the unfortunate person(s) or nations earmarked to receive them? Our "Holier-Than-Thou" attitude regarding OUR possession is sanitised for public consumption. How different when an undesirable country has control of them!! All hell breaks loose.
The illustrations and motive behind this cartoon go some way to debunking Britain’s sanctimonious attitude. Unfortunately the hypocrisy displayed here is still rife in the British establishment and at the very heart of Monarchy. While the Royals are safe in their reinforced bunkers and able to cope effectively with any eventuality thrown at them, one message within the cartoon is loud and clear for the rest of us.
Take cover under the
stairs or wherever you can folk’s, our deadly concoctions are returning home
with a vengeance
Click on Thumbnail for full image after page loads.
Thursday, 01 February 2007 | 488 Hit(s)0 comment(s)
Rapid Unraveling and the Demise of Adolescent America
by Carolyn Baker
Well here it is folks-the great unraveling so many of us have been forecasting during the past five years as we've read the tea leaves and researched the unprecedented convergence of myriad natural, political, economic, and environmental realities.
As most of you know, I'm traveling, yes on the road, across this country. I was going to wait until arriving at my final destination before writing about my experience, but with oil rapidly heading for $200 a barrel, it feels important to do so sooner rather than later because our lives have just changed more dramatically than we can imagine, and we will only be able to comprehend to what extent as the repercussions of the end of the age of oil reverberate through what is left of industrial civilization.
by Carolyn Baker
A frightening story came across the radio waves this week and was later reported by MSNBC:
“Texas governor orders STD vaccine for all girls.”
Governor Rick Perry had just signed an order making Texas the first of what is likely to be many states to require that school girls be vaccinated against Human Papiloma Virus (HPV), implementing what at first blush appears to be sensible and humane legislation attempting to prevent the spread of the deadly STD. Perry, who usually votes with the conservative Christians who oppose this order, parted company with them, and little research is required in order to understand why given Perry’s cozy relationship with Merck, the vaccine’s manufacturer. Not only is one of Merck’s principal lobbyists Perry’s former chief of staff, but his current chief of staff’s mother-in-law, state legislator, Dianne White Delisi, is the state director of Women In Government. Add to that a $6,000 political contribution from Merck for Perry’s re-election campaign and Merck’s generous donations to Women In Government plus a top official from Merck sitting on the Women In Government business council, and all the dots begin to connect.
Suddenly, Mr. Champion Of Family Values, Rick Perry, has dumped the fervent anti-fornicators of the religious right in favor of remaining in bed with Merck. If we didn’t know about that liaison, and if the governor's order weren't so draconian, we might be tempted to applaud his concern for the health of young Texas women.
Last week in Chile, on the other hand, President Michelle Bachelet took
on the Roman Catholic Church and right-wing opposition there by signing a decree
that the morning-after pill be available to girls as young as 14, even
as the Constitutional Court of Chile ruled that she could not do so. In
the same week, however, Bachelet held a special ceremony in La Moneda,
Santiago’s presidential palace, celebrating new laws that ensure that
working mothers can nurse their children in the workplace, even when
there is no daycare center on the premises—another long-time taboo in
Chile’s traditionally Catholic, patriarchal milieu. Moreover, Bachelet
affirmed that her administration was “guaranteeing that people have the
tools to exercise a loving, spiritually strong maternity or paternity,
and allowing the bonds between mothers and children to be enriched.”
America’s Ruling Clique
by Charles Sullivan Neoconservatives derive much of their political strength from the portrayal of big government as the enemy of the people: a belief that plays only too well in America.
Big government is indeed the enemy of the people when it does not serve the people’s interests, or when it betrays them.
Where the neoconservatives and the chicken hawks have been
spectacularly successful is in the field of perception management. The
super rich—or the ruling clique—constitutes no more than 0.1 percent of
the US population. Yet they control the mainstream media, every branch
government, the electoral process and the country’s major financial
institutions.
by War Resisters in Canada Today, Thursday November 15, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the appeal by US war resisters:
JOIN THE PROTESTS DEMANDING THAT
the Canadian Government enact a
provision giving refuge to US War Resisters
TORONTO:
Thursday November 15
5:00 P.M.
Federal Court Building
330 University Avenue (just north of Queen St. W., Osgoode subway)
OTTAWA:
Thursday November 15
5:30 P.M.
Human Rights Monument
(corner of Elgin and Lisgar streets, just South of Laurier St).
SUDBURY:
Thursday November 15
5:00 P.M.
In front of Federal Building
Lisgar Street
VANCOUVER:
Thursday November 15
5:30 P.M.
Canada Immigration Offices
300 West Georgia St.
(W. Georgia & Hamilton, Northeast corner of Library Square)
VICTORIA:
Thursday November 15
5:00 P.M.
Immigration Offices
800 block of Government Street (Government & Courtney)
NELSON:
Thursday November 15
5:00 P.M.
White Building (City Hall)
310 Ward Street
PETERBOROUGH:
Thursday November 15
5:30 P.M.
Confederation Park
LONDON:
Thursday, November 15
5:00 P.M.
Federal Building
451 Talbot Street (south of Queens)
CHECK BACK later for other locations...
CALL YOUR MP!
Now that two opposition parties - the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois - support a provision for asylum for U.S. war resisters, it’s time to put pressure on the opposition Liberals and the minority government of Stephen Harper to “Let them stay!”
On June 19, 26 year old SPC Eli Israel put himself at great personal risk by making the courageous decision to refuse further participation in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Eli told his commanding officer and sergeants that he will no longer be a combatant in this illegal, unjustified war.
Eli believes that the U.S. government used the attacks of September 11, 2001 as a pretense to invade Iraq and that “we are now violating the people of this country (Iraq) in ways that we would never accept on our own soil.” Eli is stationed at Camp Victory in Baghdad with JVB Bravo Company, 1-149 Infantry of the Kentucky Army National Guard.
As the bombs continue to fall over Palestine, the bodies piling higher by the hour, I'm spending my weekend (thanks to Queen Victoria, a mercifully long one) reading over 18 "offending" articles published at my former home Peace, Earth, and Justice (www.PEJ.org).
I'm doing this because, Canada has Hate Speech laws, and me and PEJ have apparently fallen afoul of them. Or, so says the British Columbia branch of the B'nai Brith organization.
Releasing Pandora: UK Lab Believed Responsible for Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak
by C. L. Cook
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth in rural Britain is now believed to have emanated from a vaccine lab near the epicenter of the infectious disease's spread.
The Institute for Animal Health Pirbright Laboratory is a government/corporate partnership between England's Institute for Animal Health and Merial Animal Health, a Georgia-based private pharmaceutical company.
Remembering the first anti-fascist fighters of the mid 20th Century.
In 2000, a memorial was erected in Confederation Square in downtown Victoria. The "Spirit of the Republic" remembers the Canadians who joined the fight to defend the elected Socialist government of Spain against the fascist backed attack of General Franco.
Most years since that time Vancouver Island citizens have gathered there on November 11 to keep the spirit of that fight alive - the right of democratically elected governments to rule as the citizens have mandated.
Return to Dieppe
by C. L.Cook Observances were held across Canada today, marking the anniversary of the ill-fated assault on the French coastal town of Dieppe. Prime Minister Stephen Harper interrupted remembrance ceremonies briefly to express his personal regrets and condolences to the family and friends of a Canadian soldier killed outside Kandahar, Afghanistan early today.
In many ways, the death of Private Simon Longtin of the famed Van Doos regiment is analogous to the disastrous Dieppe raid so long ago.
I've lived in
Victoria long enough to remember what the great annual regatta used to
be and mean to the locals.
Sadly passed, it's another case of our
little burg's (d)evolution. But this attitude extends beyond us. I
wrote the below a couple years back, and but for adding details like
"our" government's further downward spiral towards militaristic
fascism, it still holds true.
by CBC The Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Research Center has a name more impressive than its actual appearance. The centre is a collection of trailers and mobile homes clustered behind a fence in Israel's Negev Desert.
Despite the humble surroundings, the work going on behind its doors is at the cutting edge of solar technology. It could change the way we produce energy — in theory, at least.
This week, Lebanese immigrant to the United States, and founder of the Palestinian Children's Welfare Fund was found dead in Austin's Lady Bird Lake.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008, the Austin Police Department announced Riad Hamad's death as a 'suicide,' despite his body being discovered gagged and bound with duct tape. Hamad had claimed he was being targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement.
Bipartisan Perversity: Rebuking the Truth, Mocking the Dead
by Chris Floyd
Here's how it works in the fightin' progressive liberal anti-war Democratic majority in Congress: if you speak the actual truth about George W. Bush's murderous war crime in Iraq, you get slapped down.
Pelosi issued a statement Friday evening rapping [Democrat Representative Pete] Stark, who is in his 18th term representing the liberal East Bay. He's California's longest-serving House members...
After numerous Republicans called on him to apologize, Stark said it was they who should be apologizing, for failing to provide the votes to override Bush's veto.
Early
October can be dismal in Moscow. The short, harsh summer is over, the
brief and beautiful refreshment of September has passed, yet the snow –
in which the city has its deepest life – has not yet come. Instead
there is often miasma: gray days pocked with rain or fog, vague and
ragged days, neither autumn nor winter but suspended in a limbo state.
They
say last Saturday was just such a day in Moscow: tepid, damp, fog
through the morning, clouds all afternoon, a limp breeze pushing at the
torpor. The muffled sunlight would have just begun draining toward
night when a young man – dressed in black, carrying a 9mm Makarov
pistol – approached the non-descript apartment building at 18/13
Lesnaya Street. His target was in sight: a woman, early middle age,
laden with groceries, walking toward the door. A few stray lines of the
setting sun might have split the clouds as he moved toward her – or
perhaps it stayed dim, miasmic. He wouldn't have noticed in any case:
the door was open, they were inside, the pistol was out, he fired – a
few shots to the body, one to the head; the woman fell. Her life was
gone; the job was done. He dropped the pistol, as he'd been taught to
do, and left the scene. It was, they say, about 4:30 in the afternoon.
That's
how Russia's leading journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, came to die last
week. Many details of the death are still unclear – and as the Russian
authorities launch their usual "thorough investigation" of yet another
reporter's murder, no doubt the details will grow more and more
muddled, more vague and ragged, until the chain of accountability
leading back to the real culprits, the instigators of the hit, is lost
in the murk. All we will be left with is this stark, basic fact: one of
the world's most fearless voices for truth and human decency has been
silenced forever.
Yesterday we wrote of the plight of a U.S. citizen who had fled the fighting during the Bush-backed invasion of Somalia only to find himself "renditioned" into the sinister prisons of the Ethiopian invaders -- despite the fact that U.S. officials declared that there were no charges against him. (See the second half of that post.)
Now The Independent reports that Amir Meshal -- the 24-year-old New Jersey man renditioned by U.S. officials because he refused to confess to being an al Qaeda agent -- is not alone in being subjected to the lawless procedure so beloved by the defenders of civilization. (For an early example of this, which also involved Somalia, see Render Unto Caesar.)
Anger at US 'rendition' of refugees who fled Somalia (Independent)
Excerpts: At least 150 people arrested in Kenya after fleeing violence in Somalia have been secretly flown to Somalia and Ethiopia, where they are being held incommunicado in underground prisons, human rights groups say...
Ain't Gonna Let No Cyber-Thugs Turn Me Around: Empire Burlesque Returns
by Chris Floyd
It will not have escaped your notice that we have had some technical difficulties here of late. The site was hijacked by a vicious group of hackers twice this week and was knocked out of action for several days.
Once again, heroic efforts by webmaster Rich Kastelein have rescued the site from the clutches of these nasty little techno-twerps, and we are taking measures to bolster security, although it may take some time before they are all in place.
The Bush Administration has now embarked on its fourth "regime change" operation in its global "Terror War." Following the more direct overthrows in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the aggression by paid-for proxies in Somalia, we now have the civil war in Palestine, with U.S. arms and money backing the armed overthrow of the democratically elected Hamas government.
As in Somalia, where the American-trained army of the Ethiopian dictatorship joined up with Somali warlords in the pay of the CIA, the latest regime change is being carried out by a combination of foreign and native proxies: the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
Riverbend on the Rape of Sabrine al-Janabi Chris Floyd
One of the truly courageous voices of the Iraqi war, Riverbend, the "girl blogger" from Baghdad, is back after weeks of silence with this report on the rape charges against the "security" forces of the American-trained, Bush-backed Iraqi government. The case of Sabrine al-Janabi could have horrific consequences in accelerating the destruction of Iraqi society (not to mention the Iraqi government) -- which is no doubt one reason why Bush's man in Baghdad, Nouri al-Maliki, leader of a violent sectarian faction with a history of terrorism, is now trying so hard to denigrate the victim and exonerate the death squads under his command.
Saddam Hussein, who is being held in American custody, has been tried by an American-appointed court which has ensured that all evidence pertaining to the massive Anglo-American support given to Saddam during the worst years of his savage reign has been completely supressed. The crimes for which he has been sentenced to death were carried out while Donald Rumsfeld was shaking his hand and Ronald Reagan was supplying him with moolah, diplomatic support and direct military intelligence to target his poison gas attacks on Iranian forces and aid his bombing of Iranian cities. The crimes for which he is currently on trial -- gassing the Kurds -- were not only countenanced by George Herbert Walker Bush and his administration (which included Dick Cheney and Colin Powell in key positions), but Bush went on to reward Saddam with showers of money (much of it funneled through secret bank accounts), military hardware -- including dual use technology for WMD -- and agricultural credits, which allowed Saddam to use his hard currency reserves for more weaponry.
Further charges -- moot now -- would doubtless have included Saddam's brutal suppression of the Shiite revolt following the Gulf War: a revolt openly fomented by Bush I who then betrayed the Iraqi rebels, specifically allowing Saddam to break the rules of the post-war armistice and use his attack helicopters on the Shiites, and also using the American forces still in place there to prevent Shiite rebels from reaching buried arms caches. Many of the mass graves over which American officials -- like the unctuous Colin Powell -- have publicly shed salt tears were, again, the result of direct collusion with Saddam by American officials, many of them now in power once more.
Tool Time: Rove Goes But the Malevolent Machine Rolls On
by Chris Floyd Karl Rove has resigned, and for the moment that seems like good news — although given the history and M.O. of the Bush gang, it will probably lead to something worse in one way or another. For example, look how much better things are now that Don Rumsfeld has gone!
We've progressed from his last-days, panicky memos about curtailing the war (while spinning it as a victory) to a full-bore, wide-open escalation of the conflict which the chief surger, Gen. David Petraeus, tells us could last for 10 more years.
Or for another, even more glaring example, look how things improved at the Justice Department after John Ashcroft was replaced by Alberto Gonzales. Colin Powell was a weak and pathetic bagman, whoring his media-inflated prestige to sell a war he didn't believe in — but aren't things so much better with Condi Rice in charge at State?
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe
by Chris Floyd Tell me that this doesn't sound like something out of a history of Nazi tactics in World War II:
"The rules [of engagement] explicitly allowed the killing of unarmed Iraqis under certain circumstances... Specifically, the snipers were allowed to shoot unarmed people running away from explosions or firefights... Of course, it's not unusual for innocent people to run from explosions.
"Didier, who has since been promoted to captain, said that "if that individual makes contact with you and then breaks contact of their own accord and disarms themselves while they are breaking contact, they are still an engageable target because they are not wounded, nor did they surrender." He explained, "They are only breaking contact so that they can engage coalition forces at a later time." In court, Sgt. Anthony Murphy, one of the snipers who was responsible for a questionable kill, testified that he interpreted this order about breaking contact so they can engage at a later time as: "Engage fleeing local nationals without weapons."
In other words, if an innocent, unarmed Iraqi runs away to seek safety from a suicide bombing, a missile attack or a gunfight -- which any human being would instinctively do -- then he is fair game to be killed by an American sniper.
Why We Resist
by Chris Hedges The refusal to pay my taxes if we go to war with Iran, and the portion of my taxes spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if we do not cut off funding for these two conflicts, is not a means. It is an end.
I do not know if my refusal, and the refusal of others, will be effective in halting these wars. All I know is that it is worth doing.
The alternative, a complacency bred from cynicism and despair, is worse. Refusing to actively resist injustice and flagrant violations of international law, refusing to attempt to turn back the tide of American tyranny, is surrender.
Afghanistan: A River Running Backward
by Conn Hallinan When historians look back on the war in Afghanistan, they may well point to last December's battle for Musa Qala, a scruffy town in the country's northern Helmand Province, as a turning point. In a war of shadows, remote ambushes, and anonymous roadside bombs, Musa Qala was an exception: a standup fight.
On one side was the Afghan National Army, the U.S. 82nd Airborne, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On the other the Taliban.
When the fight was over, the U.S.-led coalition had "won." What they had "won" was a town shattered by B-1 and B-52s bombers, A-10 attack planes, Apache helicopters, AC-130 gunships, and artillery barrages.
Further British Involvement in US Rendition Programme Comes to Light
by Craig Murray
CBS reported last week on allegations that U.S. authorities held terrorist suspects on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia as part of a secret prisons network.
Diego Garcia, an island of great apparent beauty, is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. What goes on there is the business of Westminster.
Stories of rape committed by both U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have
appeared since the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The first
stories emerged from inside Abu Ghraib prison. These, along with
photographic evidence of sexual humiliation, provoked widespread anger
across Iraq.
Rape victims in Iraq rarely come forward because
they fear public scorn and humiliation. A Muslim woman who acknowledges
being raped risks death at the hands of male relatives seeking to
restore family honour.
Dr. Harith al-Dhari, secretary-general of
the Sunni religious group The Association of Muslim Scholars, told
reporters this week that rapes take place often, but victims are not
coming forward to file complaints.
But since Janabi went public with her story, other stories of rape have begun to emerge.
On the day martial law was declared, US tanks began rolling into the outskirts of Fallujah, while war planes continued to pound the city with as many as 50,000 residents still inside.
Iyad Allawi, the US-installed interim prime minister, laid out the six steps for implementing his "security law". These entailed a 6pm curfew in Fallujah, the blocking of all highways except for emergencies and for government vehicles, the closure of all city and government services, a ban on all weapons in Fallujah, the closure of Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan (except to allow passage to food trucks and vehicles carrying other necessary goods), and the closure of Baghdad International Airport for 48 hours.
Tossing Fuel on a Fire
by Dave Lindorff According to a new Associated Press report, the US is offering Israel a record $30-billion 10-year military aid package. Let's ignore for a moment the AP story's irony-free comment that "Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said the package was meant to back peace-seeking countries like Israel and moderate Arab states in the region to counter U.S. adversaries such as Iran." (Israel is a "peace-seeking" country?)
We'll just focus on the amount of money that's being promised here.
Israel is a land of only 6 million people. That works out to about $5000 in arms aid per man, woman and child, and of course, since nearly a third of the people in Israel are Palestinian, and won't see a penny's (or bullet's) worth of that aid, it's really closer to $7500 per person.
Things Your Media Mama Didn't Tell You
by Dave Lindorff The fact that most Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and want the president impeached, is testimony to the native intelligence and common sense of the citizens of this nation.
It sure isn’t thanks to the quality of the news we’re getting here in America!
Here are ten of the things you don’t know if you just depend on the corporate media for your information.
Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually
by Dave Lindorff Say what you will about the looming catastrophe facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting accelerates. There is a silver lining.
Look at a map of the US.
The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean—and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats—are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
Requiem for Principle and Law in Britain
by David Halpin In the crossbenches stands Lord Boyce, former British Chief of Defence Staff. In a “defence” debate with his peers on 22 November 2007, he spoke of blood on the deck of the Ministry of Defence; fellow warriors have been pleading for the weapons and leaving almost empty handed. Brown without an 'e' is in the frame.
Admiral the Lord Boyce - war profiteer
The register of peers' interests show that this ex-sailor [Lord Boyce] holds a remunerated directorship in VT Group plc. This little business sells warships to Her Majesty’s Government, among other boys' toys. Hansard records no declaration of his possible interest in the hardware central to the debate.
38. Republicrats (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : David Howell
Click on thumbnail for full pic once page loads
David Howell was born in 1972 in Elmhurst, Illinois. He started drawing
shortly afterwards. In 1998, he moved to San Francisco where he
attended art school, accumulated a lot of debt, graduated with an MFA,
fell in love, and got married. He now lives in Savannah, Georgia with
his wife. His work can be found at http://www.davidhowellillustrator.com/
Saturday, 13 January 2007 | 443 Hit(s)0 comment(s)
Feedback 
I have just figured out why Republigoats are so eager to establish a "guest worker" program in the United States of America. It is because they believe that money grows on trees, and they are concerned that they will need someone to harvest it for them. 
With estimates of the losses from the subprime mortgage fiasco spiraling past $100 billion, Citigroup, Bank of America and similar citadels of financial genius are deep in a huddle with the US Treasury over some sort of rescue operation. 
The people of Gaza were able to enjoy a few days of freedom last week, after demolition charges brought down the iron wall separating the impoverished Palestinian territory from Egypt allowing hundreds of thousands to burst out of the virtual prison into which Gaza has been transformed over the past few years -- the terminal stage of four decades of Israeli occupation -- and to shop for desperately needed supplies in Egyptian border towns.
"Every man condemns the [slave] trade in general," wrote the abolitionist Thomas Cooper, of Manchester, England, in 1787, "but it requires the exhibition of particular instances of the enormity of this Commerce, to induce those to become active in the matter, who wish well to the cause upon the whole."Those accounts of the trade that present "particular distress, with its attendant circumstances," are best "calculated to excite compassion." 
If you saw the grainy footage of Saddam Hussein being brutally hanged on December 30, 2006, amid the taunts of his political enemies, "international justice" is probably not the first thought that came to mind. "Tribal vendetta" is a more likely guess. 
Since the midterm elections, my primary focus has shifted from denouncing the Bush regime to exploring how to employ the newly won Democratic power.
Well here it is folks-the great unraveling so many of us have been forecasting during the past five years as we've read the tea leaves and researched the unprecedented convergence of myriad natural, political, economic, and environmental realities. 
A frightening story came across the radio waves this week and was later 
Today, Thursday November 15, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the appeal by US war resisters:
On June 19, 26 year old SPC Eli Israel put himself at great personal risk by making the courageous decision to refuse further participation in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Eli told his commanding officer and sergeants that he will no longer be a combatant in this illegal, unjustified war. 
As the bombs continue to fall over Palestine, the bodies piling higher by the hour, I'm spending my weekend (thanks to Queen Victoria, a mercifully long one) reading over 18 "offending" articles published at my former home Peace, Earth, and Justice (
The Associated Press (AP) is 
Remembering the first anti-fascist fighters of the mid 20th Century.
Observances were held across Canada today, marking the anniversary of the ill-fated assault on the French coastal town of Dieppe. Prime Minister Stephen Harper interrupted remembrance ceremonies briefly to express his personal regrets and condolences to the family and friends of a 
Swiftsure, Driftsure...'05
The Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Research Center has a name more impressive than its actual appearance. The centre is a collection of trailers and mobile homes clustered behind a fence in Israel's Negev Desert. 
This week, Lebanese immigrant to the United States, and founder of the Palestinian Children's Welfare Fund was found dead in Austin's Lady Bird Lake. 
Here's how it works in the fightin' progressive liberal anti-war Democratic majority in Congress: if you speak the actual truth about George W. Bush's murderous war crime in Iraq, you get slapped down. 
age,
laden with groceries, walking toward the door. A few stray lines of the
setting sun might have split the clouds as he moved toward her – or
perhaps it stayed dim, miasmic. He wouldn't have noticed in any case:
the door was open, they were inside, the pistol was out, he fired – a
few shots to the body, one to the head; the woman fell. Her life was
gone; the job was done. He dropped the pistol, as he'd been taught to
do, and left the scene. It was, they say, about 4:30 in the afternoon.
The Bush Administration has now embarked on its fourth "regime change" operation in its global "Terror War." Following the more direct overthrows in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the aggression by paid-for proxies in Somalia, we now have the civil war in Palestine, with U.S. arms and money backing the armed overthrow of the democratically elected Hamas government. 
One of the truly courageous voices of the Iraqi war, Riverbend, the "girl blogger" from Baghdad, is back after weeks of silence with this 
am during the worst years of his savage reign has been completely supressed. The crimes for which he has been sentenced to death were carried out while Donald Rumsfeld was shaking his hand and Ronald Reagan was supplying him with moolah, diplomatic support and direct military intelligence to target his poison gas attacks on Iranian forces and aid his bombing of Iranian cities. The crimes for which he is currently on trial -- gassing the Kurds -- were not only countenanced by George Herbert Walker Bush and his administration (which included Dick Cheney and Colin Powell in key positions), but Bush went on to reward Saddam with showers of money (much of it funneled through secret bank accounts), military hardware -- including dual use technology for WMD -- and agricultural credits, which allowed Saddam to use his hard currency reserves for more weaponry. 
Karl Rove has resigned, and for the moment that 
Stories of rape committed by both U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have
appeared since the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The first
stories emerged from inside Abu Ghraib prison. These, along with
photographic evidence of sexual humiliation, provoked widespread anger
across Iraq.
On the day martial law was declared, US tanks began rolling into the outskirts of Fallujah, while war planes continued to pound the city with as many as 50,000 residents still inside. 
According to a new Associated Press report, the US is offering Israel a record $30-billion 10-year military aid package. Let's ignore for a moment the AP story's irony-free comment that "Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said the package was meant to back peace-seeking countries like Israel and moderate Arab states in the region to counter U.S. adversaries such as Iran." (Israel is a "peace-seeking" country?) 
The fact that most Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and want the president impeached, is testimony to the native intelligence and common sense of the citizens of this nation. 
In the crossbenches stands Lord Boyce, former British Chief of Defence Staff. In a “defence” debate with his peers on 22 November 2007, he spoke of blood on the deck of the Ministry of Defence; fellow warriors have been pleading for the weapons and leaving almost empty handed. Brown without an 'e' is in the frame.
