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Holy cow, it's just like his strategy for software: break stuff so that you increase the market for fixes!

• Invest in oil -> cause prostitution and mosquitoes -> give out more treatments for HIV and malaria
• Write a crappy OS-> cause hacking and malware -> sell new OS versions and add-on security programs

Between that and this, Gates really does sound evil!

giving away of billions in charity is all a ruse to solidify his ill-gotten position of power.

So you're saying, that it isn't?

Citations. Desperately. Needed.

giving away of billions in charity is all a ruse to solidify his ill-gotten position of power.

So you're saying, that it isn't?

Most humorous post today! Also true.

Not "HEIL HITLER!" -- > HEIL CHENEY. Cheney's no-bid contract Halliburton is rapidly building prisons. Obviously someone has a plan to use them.

Cheney is planning to invade Iran. A lot of people are saying that Cheney plans martial law. Prepare for living in a military dictatorship.

People with plenty of political experience are saying Cheney plans to attack the U.S. and claim that it was Iran that attacked. (false flag operation)

It is almost entirely true. In my view America used to relish competition, because it gave us a chance to show off how great we were. We knew we were better than everyone else, and if anyone else had a problem with that, they could challenge us.

We now seem to be a shell of our former selves. Companies cry to the US Government because of unfair competition, even when most people on the street know what the CEOs don't. The reason why you're doing poorly isn't because the other countries have an unfair advantage, it's because you've adopted myopic views. Profit is created through accounting rather than actual value. Investment in future is disregarded, marketing is key. When you do develop a strategy that works, you take it to the Nth degree, ignoring that the market doesn't need 20 colors for their RAZR or an SUV that can tow a building. It's become all style over substance. Lee Iacocca once ran advertisements for cars of "if you can find a better car, buy it." We need that confidence again, not flags flying in the background and an "American Revolution"

At some point we need to stop this slash and burn style of management, or we will falter. Let's accept that we have competition and we actually need to try, that we can't go on forever simply by chanting "We're so great", we need to shut up and let it be implied by our actions.

For those who want an interesting look at the current situation, spoken better than I can do, I'd refer you to Mr. Iacocca's except from his latest book. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17516.htm

People are getting wise and no longer expect corporate/government news sources to provide them with anything close to the truth. More and more, they are turning to various independent Internet news sources, and make up their own minds about what is credible, and what is not.

News sources such as these: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ http://www.opednews.com/ http://www.electricpolitics.com/ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Christianity has nothing to do with US foreign policy

I think you don't read the news. Anyway "chritianofascism" was related to your "islamofascism"... You know humor, sarcasm and all... no?

(in one such attack a woman was severely injured)

Please, prove it was a racist act done by muslims as it is the topic here (a hint look for Mama Galledou).

You make it sounds like their actions are just a harmless way of passing time on a Friday night. What's wrong with you?

It is for the lads from the cités... Just as it was for right wing skinheads to drown or burn muslims and jews a couple of years back... Idiocy and violence just passed into the hands of another undereducated part of the society... the part that was repressed before and expresses its blind, pointless rage now. I have been an immigrant and also lived through some difficult moments with some native idiots... but I had a pretty strong education and feel blessed for it.

Jihad is a standing order for all Muslims

Which muslims? Shias or Sunni? Ismailis, Alawis, Druzes, Twelvers, Imami, Zaidiyyah, Ash'ari, Maturidiyyah, Athariyyah... ?
You might ignore it, but there is a large number of currents in Islam just as there are different currents in Christianity and Judaism.

The influence comes from Islamic culture where attitudes towards women and sexuality are different from ours.

I believe Mormons and other sects in our culture are very close to dark ages on that point. But I might be wrong here I am not familiar with these christian sects.
I believe american culture concerning women and sex is very different from mine... I don't consider women as "hoes"... nor do i think you will "burn in hell for being sexually active as a teenager" to quote only two American ideals

There's a dramatic difference between what terrorists and US forces are doing.

You should put more arguments here... I'm not sure what your sources are. Please correct me if I am wrong, but jus ad bellum does not provide any right to preemptive wars and even less to invasions... The US invasion (of Iraq) is therefore a terrorist act (as per broadly any definition). It has never been approved by any international organization. It was organized solely by the US and a couple of accomplice nations. Led by the US without a proper declaration of war, and handled in the most brutal and destructive way for the invaded nation. The only act of reconstruction led by US authorities was that of Oil fields confiscated by the US government. All the rest (judicial system, education system culture, political framework, army and peacekeeping forces, utilities and sanitary installations...) was destroyed to put money into private contract companies during the (never planed) reconstruction. I think that apart from the chaos the worst thing Iraqis are facing now is the prospect of having the same social and health system as the US.

US forces, as a rule, do not deliberately kill civilians, and it's not legal for them to do so.

Again. It might not be legal for soldiers of the regular army... But they had no training nor knowledge when it comes ROE, LOAC or Geneva Conventions. They killed people by negligence and for fun, executing wounded and

McCain should drop out because his candidacy is entirely media-created. If the media played McCain's "100 years in Iraq" and "bomb, bomb, bomb iran" soundbites like they did Dean's Scream, he'd go away promptly.

The reality is that John McCain is a Psychopath. Most people get a sense of this, and he'll be routed in November should fortune favor the Democrats with his nomination. Even though polls show him ahead, polls also showed that Giuliani was a front runner. The old way of polling is no longer valid because there are so many more voters this time around.

McCain should quit now and quit wasting our time with his blather... Though I guess 'We the People' need him to split the Republican delegates with Romney, leading to a brokered convention and Ron Paul's nomination.

I can't find a source for the quote after some searching, but there is a similar one allegedly made by Casey at his first staff meeting in 1981 to the effect that "we'll know our disinformation campaign is effective when everything the American public believes is false." There's an article here that addresses the issue in the context of the rise of neoconservatism.

A much more likely explanation is that lots of people with different motivations run things, and sometimes they work against each other and sometimes they screw up...

I think a more likely explanation is pure arrogance. The neocons. believed their day had finally come. They believed they owned the Whitehouse and they would rule for decades. They never believed they would have to answer for the things they did and the laws they broke.

A core neo-con belief is that the US is the last superpower and we should make no apologies for using whatever means necessary, including our military, to further our goals. They simply believed that taking over the mid-east would be a cake walk. They planned to take over 7 countries in 5 years. Iraq was supposed to be just the first domino to fall. Unfortunately for the neo-cons, things didn't go as they planned.

We wound up getting bogged down in Iraq, but due to the arrogance of total power, they could not admit they had made mistakes in planning so we continued down a doomed path, spiraling out of control for years.

Arrogance is what brought us to this place. It gave us torture, domestic spying, rendition, ignoring Habeas corpus, abuse of free speech and free press and a host of other violations of Bill of Rights.

I don't believe it is incompetence or conflicting interests. Just pure arrogance at the highest levels which permeated through all layers of government.

The only good thing to come of this disaster of an administration, is the total and complete discredit of the neo-cons. Hopefully no one will ever listen to them again. Watch "The Power of Nighmares".

>> These are not US citizens; therefore, the Bill of Rights + Constitution do not apply.

Please stop spreading these lies about this issue, you are undermining the human rights legislation.

US Constitution applies to all people held under US government power. It doesn't matter where they are held, as do the Treaties on Human Rights that USA has signed and ratified.

The fact that americans have tortured hundreds of people to death (US Doctors Faked Death Certificates to Cover Up Homicides by Torture ACLU Autopsy Reports), despite these, is a shame that falls on every american, especially those who spread the above false propaganda rhetoric you posted. It is largely responsible for producing these human rights violations in the first place.

Under USA's own 1996 War Crimes Act, as people have been tortured to death, the people ordering the treatment are subject to receive the death penalty for supreme crimes against humanity.

This includes the US president and Vice President as well as Donald Rumsfeld and other facilitators.

Their crimes include having others Uzbekistani dictator's torturers boil people alive for the CIA.

Americans seriously need to owe up to this behaviour around the world.

Interestingly enough, Mr Greenspan apparently was a failed economic consultant when he was tapped on the shoulder to join the government. Those who can do, do, those who can't get a government job. I know that's completely unfair to the huge bunch of solid government workers out there, but it's remarkably ironic to hear folks like Greenspan talk up free markets (interesting idea, would like to see one), when they themselves can't turn a buck, and have to go on the dole.

More reading:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18486.htm

Is this perhaps the same guy who's famous for boiling people alive: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3943.htm

Well, if you dont see any difference, I expect to see you in the enlistment line first thing tomorrow morning. And dont make up some BS that youve 'already served' because it will be a lie. NO SINGLE PERSON who has been in war, will make the suggestion to simply to go to war over a PC break-in.

And if you STILL dont see any difference, try the following links; http://theheretik.typepad.com/the_heretik/images/c hild_of_war_life_in_death_053005.jpg http://www.videos1.informationclearinghouse.info/i mages/seven.jpg

Those that modded this 'insightful' I would expect will be in the front of that enlistment line tomorrow, right ahead of you.

What we were looking for specifically being nuclear WMDs weren't there, but there were still chemical (sarin) WMDs that he should not have had.

Keep in mind that we helped him get the chemical weapons in the first place and then provided intelligence to him when he tested his chemical weapons on the Kurds. Also keep in mind that these weapons have a short shelf life. The stuff we finally found had already degraded into useless bombs.

Every president before him tried diplomacy, and every president before him was summarily ignored. While it's not our job to be the world police I think it would be far more regrettable in the long run to stand by and do nothing. I think the war could have been better executed, but to some extent we have been hindered by the lack of support from the international community.

This isn't entirely true. We helped keep Saddam in power. The Reagan administration helped Saddam with WMD and intelligence. Not only that but we lied about our intelligence in the lead up to war. It's interesting that the very reasons Bush Sr. gave for not marching into Baghdad have come to pass.

This war was never about getting rid of a Tyrant. He was our guy until he over reached and the Saudis, our allies who supply oil and terrorists, freaked out over the invasion of Kuwait and insisted we do something about him.

Hell, we even gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait. So why should the international community help us clean up a mess of our own making?

Creating the problem enables the solution. This was so with 9/11 and is so with terrorism and torture. This is why al Qaeda is blamed for all iraqi resistance these days, despite US generals telling they had no significant part not so long ago. "Al Qaeda" became part of the solution when Negroponte set foot in Iraq and took the reins. Death Squads soon appeared. Holy mosques were bombed by SAS and US special ops teams, laying the blame on al Qaeda and arabs, that set the scene for sectarian violence among population that had lived together in peace during Saddam. Divide et Impera, straight from US war criminal Negroponte's repertoire. Neocon plan for control over strategic oil resources as stated in Project for New American Century requires US to set up permanent bases in Iraq. Terrorism creates the need to stay. Directing iraqis to fighting others saves american lives and keeps them from uniting and coordinating actions against US troops.

American intelligence services have been importing stolen cars from the US to use in alleged "suicide bombing" in Iraq.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12 802.htm

SAS man sets up Sunnis to take on al-Qa'eda
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/06/16/wirq116.xml

I mention this because today's story shows that sites like Reddit and Digg actually make life a lot easier for spin doctors and propaganda.

We all know there's quite a lot of propaganda in the U.S., such as the U.S. army funding Hollywood movies. (I think /. ran this story before. See here, here, and and here). Also, some people think prime time television is getting audiences to get used to the idea of torture. See here.

The point is that sites like Digg, Reddit and Wikipedia are maybe things that actually makes the a government's propaganda job easier, by making authority and authoritative opinion a more diffuse concept. There's no such concept as "reputation" or "editorial independence", like you have in the press.

IMHO, this is a twist on things. In particular, the younger generation that is growing up with such sites and with little or no concept of the traditional media outlets concern me the most. Newspaper sales are going down all over the world, for instance.

Real leaders like this guy Iacocca understand power.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17 516.htm

This research is written by the same kind of psychopaths that want gullible fools to continue buying into the alpha leader myth. That's
how America got into the mess it's in now. Stop lending credence to these lies and helping to perpetuate this myth. Jerks are just jerks. People with aggression problems and ego issues make very poor leaders, they should be given the psychiatric treatement they need instead of positions of power.

outlaw before you outlaw other outlaws.

Here's what some think:

Comments ( http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html...

Here is another longer video about Iran...

**** VIEWER ADVISORY ****

There are scenes in this film that might make you realize that Iranians are human beings too, just like you - so viewer discretion is advised.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17 118.htm...

By: 333 on February 20, 2007 at 12:34pm
Flag: [abusive]
Northerncross says (to paraphrase), "Bring 'em on."

- Echos of another idiot.

Whether Iran or North Korea or Pakistan or any other Nation developes nuclear weapons is orders of magnitude less important than the fact that Russia, who only benefits by our entanglements, has over 10,000 nuclear warheads. Where are all those weapons?
Why build anything when you can buy it for cheap?

The neocons instigate argument on phony premises and lies, and then sit back and take advantage of the controversy generated while they plot more profiteering.

What's a couple million people when the world has over 6 billion? Right Northernapparatchik?

By: underdog on February 20, 2007 at 12:36pm
Flag: [abusive]
just came in on our news you have your 2nd aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

So you're all set, right ? If you will use nuclear arms it will isolate you in the rest of the world more than you can imagine. We are sick and tired of your geo strategic games bringing the world closer to WW3 in order to keep your war profiteers and Israel happy.

By: CologneCitizen on February 20, 2007 at 12:38pm
Flag: [abusive]
the arabs and persians have the oil. they are our allies or should be and once were. israel has matzoballs. in a real politick relationship israel would assume the subordinate role it deserves in our foreign policy while we make sure the proper people in iraq and persia have an unlimited supply of their favorite vices. its not by accident the rest of the world makes sure its relations with the oil states are as smooth as silk while the french ambassador to britain calls israel "that shitty little country" saying what everyone is thinking. nuking israel would lead to a shortage of champagne in the world and an adundance of freely flowing(the obstensive object of our mid east strategy)and therefore, cheap oil.
By: yappymutt on February 20, 2007 at 10:27am

==============

A reasonable, rational American who seems to be capable of thinking for himself instead of just being led to the slaughter by Israel, AIPAC, JINSA and the neocons: the Zionists.

I can get on board with that.

I would like to place an order for more Americans like that to speak on ths forum.

By: CrazyAmericans on February 20, 2007 at 12:43pm
Flag: [abusive]
Any attack on Iran would inflame, not just Iran, but many Sunni nations as well who will then see commraderie with those in Iran and take steps in their own countries. You also have to remember that Iran got such a boost on the Arab street as Iran was the only nation to come to Lebanon's aid when Israel attacked it. I'm certain the leadership in surrounding countries are troubled by that.

Antiamericanism is spreading faster than at any other time in my lifetime, and it's not just the usual suspects in the Third World. Listening to affluent Europeans and other Westerners, the Americans cannot expect the rest of the world to lift a finger and come to their aid.

I fully expect a "Gulf of Tonkin" attack pretty soon. Bush has been getting other potential problems, clearing his agenda with deals with North Korea, for example.

By: PatrickWalker on February 20, 2007 at 12:45pm
Flag: [abusive]

Regards,
Kilgore Trout

Well, if you're in the U.S. now then you should feel pretty much at home, at least from the fear perspective.

Let me welcome to the Soviet States of America.

Greg Palast wrote an article about this a while back...

Killing Africans For Profit and PR

So these neoconservatives, you wouldn't mean Cheney & Wolfowitz?

As I understood it, they were actively working to divert attention from Al Quaeda, to start a war against one of Al Quaeda's more bitter enemies (Saddam), THE DAY AFTER 9/11. I accept that Bush lacks the nouce to have really followed this. This doesn't change the fact (& the point) that they had access to Bush because they were his team.

The military had always indicated that Cheney's figures for the required personnel & equipment bordered on the delusional. The war on Iraq part 2 was Cheney's war. It was done Cheney's way & for Cheney's purposes. The complete domination of all other countries, (free & democratic or otherwise) by the USA. You could call the result karma. Either way, Cheney is Bush's boy. Don't separate Cheney from the administration that enabled him.

For further reading I refer you to http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15 44.htm

So if we're going to feel bad about something, feel bad that some Chinese kid had food to eat and could go places.

China did just fine feeding itself for generations. Then subsidized U.S. agricultural products (the grain surplus) pulled the rug out from underneath Chinese subsistence farmers, driving many of them to the city to seek work. Open boarders and "Free Trade" let the U.S. Corporate class fire their expensive American workers and replace them with cheap Chinese 'slaves'. Search for a torrent of Noam Chomsky's talk, Class War.

My brother took a class that assigned Who Will Feed China?. I haven't finished it yet, but one of the points in the book was that China has replaced much productive farmland with factories. No matter your priorities, food is always more important than Ipods. Whoops.

The globalization blowback has already started, and will pick up the pace as the U.S. recession deepens.

You're right. According to the reasons that are immediately intuitively obvious to the average citizen, it makes no sense. However, according to the President's openly published plan for strategic defense, which is just a contemporary revision of the PNAC's (see below) manifesto, it's to take over the world.

Iraq is one of a series of strategically necessary American outposts in the imperialistic quest to turn the world into an American-controlled nanny state. That's just the officially stated position, and only the plan yet to date. The American government's increasingly imperialistic tendencies interpret the fall of competing superpowers as a power vacuum which needs to be immediately filled. In other words, they deny the need for there to be *no* superpowers and for the world to steadily continue to disarm and demilitarize, at least to a point. The military/industrial complex warned about by General Eisenhower absolutely must fill the only purpose it's designed to do. It no longer sees a clear and present enemy, so it must redefine the enemy as being the very unknown, it must redefine 'war' to be 'peace', it must redefine 'imperialism' as 'patriotism', and it must escalate militarization indefinitely at absolutely all costs.

When all you have is a hammer -- and the abject, narcissistic, paranoid, tautological corruption inherent in power -- then the whole world looks like a nail -- a very big and scary nail just waiting to stab you from the unknown, and must be struck before it strikes you.

Also see the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the prevailing Republican think tank, for the contemporary origins of the American imperialistic mentality. PNAC's ideology has taken hold since at least 1992 and its chief demagogues now comprise virtually all positions of American power. They have no personal experience in war; they are merely in love with the *idea* of war as a means to all ends. They are tautology, personified -- they believe that what they do is right, and it's right because they do it. GWB is not in charge of all this; he's just the chief executive demagogue and possibly the fall guy. Why do they do all of this? Ultimately, it is because they can.

Many Americans voted for the PNAC explicitly in the voting booths to the point where the PNAC was handily able to coopt the rest of the election process, and almost all Americans vote implicitly for it every day with their insatiable consumption and disposal of natural resources. See the various articles in site in the above url for PNAC citations. They're not copmrised of conspiracy theories or anti-government propaganda -- their citations come from the organization's own publications, and from the nightly news.

Let's see how far the empire can be bankrolled and tolerated. Let's see how long the economy based squarely upon unlimited cheap oil and skyrocketing housing speculation will last. Let's see how many countries' resources amd strategic positions can be invaded and indefinitely occupied and how long the American public will tolerate being the next Rome. Let's see who can defend the public against the American government after its compulsory public education system, mass media propaganda, and devious credit industry have already euthenized, lobotomized, and indebted the public itself. Let's see how many citizens can be unconstitutionally detained for the crime of hypermilitarized, paranoid suspicion. All of these institutions are too corrupt to be patched, and must be overhauled by We, The People in a hopefully bloodless revolution -- the hopefully final chapter in the American Revolution, the revolution against domestic threat.

In my opinion, American patriots need to be either loaded for bear, or ready to expatriate. *Please* correct me if there is a *clear* and *present* alternative.

Surely that's part of the 'American Dream'

Where do you get your information from. All the real economic indicators from reputable news sources show that the economy is doing great. Which economy is crumbling and what currency is worthless?

As of today, the euro is now worth about $1.28. Source: http://www.thebulliondesk.com/RHS_FX.aspx

I remember when the euro came out, it was at 1.18. It fell to 83 cents to the euro, in July 2001. It met par again during 2002, & has climbed since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro

And we wonder why Iran wanted its oil market based in euros, not dollars?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article83 54.htm

Iran had submitted a draft resolution asking the U.N. to condemn Iraq's chemical weapons use. The U.S. delegate to the U.N. was instructed to lobby friendly delegations in order to obtain a general motion of "no decision" on the resolution. If this was not achievable, the U.S. delegate was to abstain on the issue. Iraq's ambassador met with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, and asked for "restraint" in responding to the issue - as did the representatives of both France and Britain.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10 691.htm

  "What's more, the judges were not elected but appointed by the occupying powers. They flew in a nephew of Mr Chalabi [Salem Chalabi's uncle Ahmed led the foremost Iraqi opposition movement, the US-backed Iraqi National Congress]. He was a lawyer in London specialising in commercial law. Later he was appointed president of the Iraqi special tribunal."

That is... until he was accused of murder and fled the country

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1279076,00 .html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,129869 9,00.html

What a corrupt show trial. They will then say "justice" was served...

PLEASE VOTE ON NOVEMBER 17TH.

... unfortunately, teh masses have been conditioned to believe the things you speak of are un-possible. Just look what happened to my post on the same topic yesterday: (-1, Troll). Disbelief is widespread.

There's always been a dedicated few fighting the globalist gangsters, and now a few in the media are starting to pick up on the plot too - namely, Keith Olberman (see his special comments, also on YouTube) and Lou Dobbs. Hopefully when the elections get stolen (again), this time we'll have riots in the street...

The global economy is in meltdown, plan accordingly. China will do well after the restructuring, because they now have so much production capability. America will have to re-industrialize, so we'll be able to produce the things we still need...

... as far as the current system goes. Rigged elections are nothing new in America - why would the electioneers give up their control over the outcome voluntarily?

No, for "we the people" to get fair, honest elections, the entire crooked Feral government has to collapse first. The clean up crew can then round up George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and the rest of the globalist NeoCons, and turn them into NeoConvicts, for their warcrimes and other crimes against humanity. Bill Clinton for carpet bombing Serbia, the current crew for the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq & elsewhere.

Fortunately, the world's only superpower isn't much of a superpower anymore. Not only is the economy on its last legs before a much-needed correction, but our leaders have abdicated the moral high ground. Our government is now little more than a jackbooted thug, a Goliath picking on people in all corners of the world. But there are a couple groups with slingshots to keep the balance, so all's well.

Crooked elections are the least of our worries, at this point - been there, done that, look what we got. I'm looking forward to Bush & Co. getting their due.

China hasn't threatenned to "wipe Israel off the map."

The cost of replacing an entire infrastructure based around oil will also be huge. Shell Hydrogen estimates it would take at least $US19 billion to build hydrogen fuel stations in the US.

Yeah, wow, that is a lot to invest in the future when you take into account that: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12 393.htm The cost of the Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion. But who needs new fuel when you can cause civil wars in countries instead.

Can a word be immoral?
Well, if you really want to pick nits, you could argue that a word cannot be any concept. It's a word... nothing more and nothing less. However, even a single word can represent an immoral concept.

... should a government-chosen domain registry be allowed to enforce their own moral code on the public.
A government should create a policy which clearly defines what is morally acceptible for it's people. How to do this is far beyond me. If individuals at the ".ie omain Registry" are coming up with their own definitions of what is acceptible, in the absence of clear policy, I would say that they are wrong. However, the blame falls on the government for creating a set of rules without a definition of terms. In the US, the principle of "separation of church and state" forces our moral baseline to be very basic... in spite of our glorious leader's perceived religious bias.

I am a Catholic American living in a country with an Islamic government (Malaysia). I suppose that gives me a unique perspective. I see examples of a similar problem in censorship of the media. It is common knowledge that words that are contrary to public policy or morally unacceptible will not be allowed in any media. The problem is the same: Neither the public policy, nor what the government deems morally unacceptible is clearly defined. As a result, I suppose it's left up to the people in charge of the TV/radio station, newspaper, magazine, etc... Because there are no clear rules, every offensive word makes it through occasionally. Also because of the lack of clear rules, many words that are clearly not offensive and a few that are just confusing are censored. Occasionally, the name Jesus is also censored. I suppose this is the religious bias of the person employed to censor the media.

Malaysia _claims_ to have freedom of religion. Their constitution even guarantees it, though there are some problems.

For the record, I disagree with _government_ censorship in almost every form.

By the way, I've just learned that the domain "porn.us" is available... "Offer $5 000 000.00 or more and your offer will be accepted."... quite a bargain, dontcha think :)

-- Ghodmode

What the hell is wrong with the Republican leadership?!

I don't get it. What do you mean? Yeah, it seems rather sad, but honestly, their suffering was not in vain. It enabled the Great and Noble Republican Party to have one more vote. Surely, keep one vote in the House away from the Party of Evil, aka, the Democrats, is worth a few children's lives? You have to agree we must keep the evil Democrats out of the government at all costs.

And I think these kids got off pretty lightly! I mean, if Foley hadn't voted how the Administration had wanted, they could have be taken and had their testicles crushed one at a time until he agreed to get back in line.

But, I'm feeling kind today, so I don't even think we need to punish them much. Just send one or two of them, and their parents, to secret prisons. That should shut them up. We can let them back out when we don't need to operate the House anymore.

Yet even FOX News is typical of the coverage on Iran. They repeat deliberate mis-interpretations of what Iranian leaders say, and the scare over "wipe Israel off the map" is no different than the one about Iran legislating a dresscode for Jews. In the former case, we had the Iranian president saying that the Zionist regime must disappear from the page of time. Since Zionism can objectively be considered similar to Apartheid in crucial respects (not the least of which are its results).

I won't condone Iran's (or Israel's) theocracy, regardless of the particular style. Their involvement with Hizballah is questionable. But they are not a bunch of complete extremists. Iran is a country where women can get an education, show their faces, drive cars, and have access to birth control (compare that to our fascist allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). Iran has a limited, nascent form of democracy and a great deal of technical sophistication.

They are independant of the West and that fact lands them squarely on the "must demonize" list. Iran is targeted for dehumanization all the more for its relative modernity, which gains them moral and cultural influence that makes it difficult for the West to propagandize the Middle East.

For our "civilized" western media, railing against a Zionist regime is eagerly mis-interpreted as a genocidal rant against Jews and an entire country. AND they do this at a time when the US is floating the idea of a "preventative" war and nuclear attack on Iran. Meanwhile, in the middle of all this self-righteous hyperventilating, our leaders get carte blanche to lie and spill vast amounts of blood elsewhere.

B.S. the OMG the world is scary protect the children by coating the world with latex safety bumpers b.s. comes from BOTH parties. Politics in the U.S. is shot to hell. Watch this little bit by George Carlin to see what time it is:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14 837.htm

Hint the more AFRAID BOTH parties can keep us the less likely we are to question the government or the ill effects of corporate globilization.

Dude, get a grip and watch less Republican TV.

America kills willingly and deliberately. Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Chile etc etc and that's only Latin America. Once you're finished down there ask yourself what exactly you were fighting for in Vietnam. And then ask yourself what you're really fighting about in Afghanistan and Iraq. Freedom? Safety? Anti-terrorism? Right, freedom from Saddam's rule? He wasn't stopping you from buying widgets from Wal-Mart. Safety from the Taleban? They had trouble finding a car that could travel from town to town, forget having the logistical capability to mount an attack outside their own borders. Anti-terrorism? You mean like Waco, Ruby Ridge and the LA Police? The purpetrators of 9/11 aren't even certain.

Questions of culpability aside, 9/11 is a pretext. Its repeated coverage is despicable, relegating the families of the dead to poster children for the "War on Terror" and destriction of civil rights.

Oh yea, and "these Islamic death cultists" really don't give two shits about Americans in America. Its the Americans outside America raping foreign coutries for oil, copper and manufactured goods. Try reading something that isn't state run propaganda before commenting on politics. If you think you have freedom of the press, you're fooling yourself. If you think that there really are "Islamic Crazy Cultists" out there who are sitting in a dark corner plotting to take away your freedoms, then you're missing the fact that your freedoms are actually being taken away by your own government. Wake up. For your own sake, I beg you to wake up.

So an organization viewed by its country as being a freedom fighting force that successfully fought off a foreign invasion handing out USD is somehow 'horrible'... Look at the history of the conflict before tarring one side or the other - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14 391.htm

Sovereign states may have whatever weapons they wish, but when their leadership pronounces that their goal is to wipe out a neighbor state (Israel), it no longer becomes acceptable to the international community to allow such weapons programs to go forth.

Just for your reference, here's a nice page on the sticky issue of translations and how they've been spun against Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad, like many people in the middle east, believes that the number of Jews killed by Germany during WWII is frequently greatly overstated. While, in the opinion of most (including myself), this is an unjustified viewpoint, it is certainly much more defensible than the "there is no holocaust" claim that a lot of people think he made. He talks about the "myth of the Holocaust" in reference to the claim that "six million Jews" were killed. His comments were that people have created this myth of six million Jews being killed and then using it to justify everything that Israel has done ever since, and that even if that was true, this is an unfair line of reasoning.

Oh, and as per the "wipe Israel off the map" comments, that's a much worse mistranslation. He never used any language even close to that. He talked about his hope that the "occupying regime" would fall, akin to how the Shah fell, Saddam fell, and the Soviet Union fell. His speech was completely passive (didn't discuss any involvement from Iran) and spoke nothing of harm to the people in the state of Israel.

Anyways, my point is... you don't have to agree with him, but it's only fair to accurately represent what he says.

According to the current BBC article, there doesn't yet seem to be proof of an organization behind this which might profit off the uproar. (Although the informal "let's scare those infidels" movement surely does.)

In fact, it is way too early to be very excited about this success. Police don't appear to have found actual explosives yet, just plans, and there have been previous cases where "terrorist plans" turned out to be sketches of a fictional airbase, a map of the sights of York, or a tourist video. (See The Power of Nightmares, pt. III.) In each case, a big capture was announced before the case was quietly discontinued. Godspeed to Scotland Yard, but I'm not cheering along just yet.

Edmonds has given confidential testimony inside a secure Sensitive Compartmented Information facility on several occasions: to congressional staffers, to investigators from the O.I.G., and to the staff from the 9/11 commission. Sources familiar with this testimony say that, in addition to her allegations about the Dickersons, she reported hearing Turkish wiretap targets boast that they had a covert relationship with a very senior politician indeed--Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information.
[....]

in December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps.
[....]

Its subject was explosive; what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. "There was pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and take the case on, "the official says. Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation - away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials. "This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion," he says "It was to keep this from coming out."

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city's large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates.

Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes. To a person who knew nothing about their context, the details were confusing and it wasn't always clear what might be significant. One name, however, apparently stood out - a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname "Denny boy." It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.'s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert's campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.

Hastert himself was never heard in the recordings, Edmonds told investigators, and it is possible that the claims of covert payments were hollow boasts. Nevertheless, an examination of Hastert's federal filings shows that the level of un-itemized payments his campaigns received over many years was relatively high. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress Committee amounted to $483,000. In contrast, un-itemized contributions in the same period to the committee run on behalf of the House majority leader, Tom Delay, Republican of Texas, were only $99,000. An analysis of the filings of four other senior Republicans shows that only one, Clay Shaw of Florida, dec

CAMERON: Here's how the system works. Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing in the U.S. are done for the phone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private elecommunications company.

Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it.

In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret national security agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands - in Israel, in particular.

The Bush Administration is the most corrupt federal government the U.S. has had: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

A more explicit link to the sig above: Retired CIA Official Says Bush Is A War Criminal.

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Are you happy with the way your money is spent?

which didn't even make it to the US

Yeah, well neither do the people who've been racially profiled onto the no-fly-list once they've left. (registration free link)

Or how about an actual affidavit? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14 13.htm Nothing pretty about that.
But ... note that most chemicals are poisonous. Feedstocks have lots of uses. No sinister revelation there. It's not like we custom designed and built chemical plants for chemical munitions in Iraq like some European countries. The biological sources were a dumb mistake, and not authorized. There's a biological supply company that would sell to anyone with a credit card for legitimate research. Obviously that was a stupid loophole, but not a special one for Iraq. I'm not disputing the US was involved. But it seems peculiar that the US seems to be the only nation taking any blame. And we certainly weren't the ones getting rich selling to them (cough France & USSR cough).

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13 808.htm

Sorry but your horribly wrong.

UN inspectors = Could not find WMD that were not already accounted for and not deactivated. Demanded more time to inspect.

As for the intelligence community most of them said that there no weapons of mass Destruction in Iraq, including the CIA who gave bush a report detailing it.

There is a very good free documentry called "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War". Contains a whole range of famous and professionals in the area who detail that Bush was full of crap in regards to WMD (and absolutly no micheal moore in it thank god).

You can watch it here. Everything mentioned in it you can research for yourself.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article64 23.htm