CHRISTIAN, RIGHT?

Thanksgiving in a culture of death

"As TV and radio talking heads waxed poetic about the high-tech 500-pound bombs that would be dropped to "soften" human beings and "break the back of the insurgency," I felt that growing sense of dread that is by now familiar to anyone who doesn't rely on mainstream U.S. news sources. This dread, this feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop, tightens the stomachs of those who were raised to take seriously 'Thou shalt not kill' … that dusty old law around which the Bush administration has found a thousand loopholes." - Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

FEAR AND LOATHING

'Security services foil 9/11 attack in UK'

UK security services report they have thwarted four or five September 11-style attacks on targets including Canary Wharf and Heathrow Airport.
The 'plots' include a number of attacks planned by al-Qaeda since 9/11 that have come to nothing after the authorities intervened, the reports - which cite top security sources - claim.
The disclosure comes as the Government prepares to unveil a series of tough law-and-order Bills in this morning's Queen's Speech, setting out the legislative program for what is expected to be the final session of the current Parliament.

Blunkett plans tough new terror laws

UK Home Secretary David Blunkett said officials were looking at a range of measures - from jury-less anti-terror courts to allowing wire-tap evidence in trials - which could be implemented if Labour is re-elected at the General Election.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Joe Broadhurst's INTL NEWS site mysteriously shut down after Diebold-US election criticism

Joe Broadhurst's "INTL News" blog has contributed much over the past few years to the dissemination of the truth about the double dealing and deception of politicians and government officials.
It appears then that the day has finally arrived where the mere act of posting a link which highlights government mendacity is enough to warrant direct censorship and infringement of the much touted "free speech" - a central tenet of the "freedom and democracy" that the US government is determined to impose on the world.

" [...] As soon as I posted a story directly linking a Diebold employee to manipulating votes in Gaston, N.C. I got a note from my host, ServerFly, that my credit card wasn't being excepted. I checked with my bank and all was fine, I even went out and used the card TWICE to make sure it was fine. Then I posted that I was being shutdown and 45 minutes later I was. They even said I would have to post an APOLOGY if I wanted to reinstate the account. I have since found out that "ServerFly" is based in Houston."

INTL News old site is: http://intlnews.typepad.com/intlnews/

Feds seize Indymedia servers

The FBI yesterday seized a pair of UK servers used by Indymedia, the independent newsgathering collective, after serving a subpoena in the US on Indymedia's hosting firm, Rackspace. Why or how remains unclear.
Rackspace UK complied with a legal order and handed over hard disks without first notifying Indymedia. It's unclear if the raid was executed under extra-territorial provisions of US legislation or the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Provisions of RIPA make it a criminal offence to discuss warrants, so Rackspace would not be able to discuss the action with its customer Indymedia, or with the media.

FLASHBACK

Union Carbide's pesticide factory in India killed 8000, poisoned thousands more

"I am trying to make visible the invisible -- trying to show that there are boundary lines being violated daily by toxic substances. Corporations are making a profit on the invasion of my personal space, my biology. They are not controlling the full costs of their operation, and we are picking up the tab for their externalities in form of disease, illness, lower immunity, altered reproduction, birth defects, cancer. That's not right. That's a mortal trespass, an unforgivable transgression that must be stopped. We are certainly not calling on consumers to ask that companies be forgiven -- quite the opposite. They need to be prosecuted. Companies like Dow are getting away with biological trespass daily."

To coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, Doyle is out with Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century (Common Courage Press, 2004).

FIRST CASUALTY

Why people won't see

I think there is no question in anyone's mind at this moment that America has no integrity. Certainly the mainstream American media has absolutely no integrity, in that it's obvious to everyone the real stories about the Iraq war, depleted uranium, public corruption, fixed elections, and on and on ad infinitum are never mentioned on the TV "news".

But the larger question is: Do WE have integrity? I'm talking about you and me.
Are we willing to look at the truth as we perceive it and try to identify and admit our own complicity in all these atrocities, as the American government runs around the world shooting innocent women and children in the head over reasons we KNOW are lies. I mean, we're supposed to be fighting terrorists, right, but we KNOW these terrorists are not Muslim malcontents, and that most likely they are CIA/Mossad-contracted mercenaries assigned to kill Iraqi aid workers, behead innocents and blow up churches and mosques in order to inflame the situation to kindle support from the braindead public, who then mindlessly cheer the genocidal tactics of George W. Bush and pretend not to notice that not only did America CREATE the terrorists and start the war with phony evidence, we now continue the war as viciously as we can, continually murdering innocents and turning our own troops into raging psychopaths. Why? Increased profits for the military contractors, of course, which means increased under-the-table payments for our elected officials.

[I believe that religions are ultimately debilitating to the spirit, because they try to make us believe things that we know are not true, and in accepting the tenets of any religion, we leave ourselves open to a pattern of behavior that accepts things on faith, without examining them rationally. And this process habituates us to accepting lies as truth, as long as they emanate from an authority figure we have conditioned ourselves to respect.
Once you are willing to accept something that deep in your psyche you know goes against what you perceive to be rational truth — e.g., Jesus died for our sins and rose again from the dead — THEN YOU CAN BE MADE TO BELIEVE ANYTHING, whether it is true or not, as long as it comes from an authority figure to whom you have given credibility in your mind.
I believe this is a central component in the phenomenon of a majority of the American people believing the government’s bogus story about 9/11, and in their willingness to accept the psychotic carnage in Iraq as being somehow relevant to their own well-being. ]

NEW WORLD ORDER

Peace and the new corporate liberation theology

"The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it and are now in the process of selling it. I speak of Iraq, not because everybody is talking about it, but because it is a sign of things to come."

The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney.

TIANAMEN II

Tanks menace anti-war protest in LA

Two armored tanks showed up at a Los Angeles anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood.
The tanks circled the block twice then stopped in the street directly in front of the area where most of the protesters were gathered.
Enraged, some of the people attempted to block the tanks, but police quickly cleared the street. The people continued to protest the presence of the tanks, but about ten minutes later the tanks drove off.
It is unclear as to why the tanks were deployed to this location. [video 6.8mb]

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Israeli 'mole' in the office of US under secretary of defense for policy

Federal appears to have agents involved in an investigation into an alleged Israeli 'mole' in the office of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.
Early reports suggested that the FBI had wiretap evidence that a veteran Iran analyst working in Feith's office at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Larry Franklin, may have passed a classified draft of a National Security Presidential Directive on Iran to an official working for the pro-Israel lobbying organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

MARCH OF FASCISM

CIA plans to purge its agency

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

EQUAL TIME

Schools to teach more than evolution

School officials have revised the science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism, prompting an outcry from more than 300 educators who urged that the decision be reversed.
Members of Grantsburg's school board believed that a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum 'should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory,' said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.

TALIBAN IN SUITS

From Justice Scalia, a chilling vision of religion’s authority in America

"The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible"

DEMOCRACY DEAD

Electronic voting machine woes reported

In many cases, voters said they intended to select John Kerry but when the computer asked them to verify the choice it showed them instead opting for President Bush, the group said.
After 10 minutes trying to change her selection, one Pinellas County resident said she called a poll worker and got a wet-wipe napkin to clean the touch screen as well as a pencil so she could use its eraser-end instead of her finger. Harvey said it took about 10 attempts to select Kerry before and a summary screen confirmed her intended selection. Election officials in several Florida counties where voters complained about such problems did not return calls Tuesday night.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Bush to reporter: "Obviously, you didn't listen to the will of the people"

REPORTER: Mr. President -- thank you. As you look at your second term, how much is the war in Iraq going to cost? Do you intend to send more troops or bring troops home? And in the Middle East, more broadly, do you agree with [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair that revitalizing the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political issue facing the world?
BUSH: Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule. That was three questions [laughter].[...]
REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. How will you go about bringing people together? Will you seek a consensus candidate for the Supreme Court if there's an opening? Will you bring some Democrats into your Cabinet?
BUSH: Again, he violated the one-question rule right off the bat. Obviously, you didn't listen to the will of the people.

[In case you think he was joking, watch him speak here.]

MARS MYSTERY

Mars rover gets mystery power boost

One of NASA's Mars rovers has unexpectedly gained power recently.
The rover Opportunity recently experienced an unexplained rejuvenation from what can so far be described only as two or three significant "cleaning events," said Jim Erickson, the rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
"Now we're assuming they're cleaning, but all we can really say is that overnight the solar panels produced between two and five per cent additional power immediately," he said.

BIG PHARMA

California firm will make recombinant drug for strategic national stockpile

Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services Tommy G. Thompson has announced an $877.5 million contract to VaxGen to produce 75 million doses of a new recombinant anthrax vaccine. VaxGen—a spin-off of the biotech firm Genentech—is receiving the first contract under the 2004 Project Bioshield Act. To prevent cost overruns, HHS has negotiated a fixed-price award with the company.

GREAT BALLS OF ICE

Chilling mystery hits Kent

Its a "chilling" mystery -- how did chunks of ice wind up in an 8-year-old's bed in Kent?
Troy Hualte and his family came home Thursday night around 6 p.m. from their daughter's ballet practice and weren't prepared for what they saw.
There was a hole in the ceiling. On her bed were grapefruit-sized ice balls.
"I climbed up on the roof and noticed that there was one very large hole and must have busted whatever it was up on impact," Troy said.
...
Troy called the FAA and was told the ice probably did not come from a plane. The ice in his daughter's room was clear. Ice chunks that fall from passing planes are blue.

BIG BROTHER

Hi-tech scans eyed at border

US officials are testing cutting-edge technology to scan information from travellers as they leave the U.S.
Travellers will be required to report to border agents as they exit the U.S.

The US-VISIT program requires everyone except Canadian citizens to be photographed and finger-scanned before they're allowed into the United States.
"This applies to anyone who requires a visa," he said. "It is a simple process that enhances the security of the U.S."
The new measures take about 15 seconds, officials said. The fingerprints will be compared against 1.2 million in U.S. police databases, Mocny said.

EARTH CHANGES

Mt. St. Helens lava dome grows 100 metres higher in nine days

The new lava lobe inside Mount St. Helens' crater has sprouted a piston-like protrusion the size of a 30-story building - glowing red at night.
"The magma is pushing the plug upward. It's going high in the sky," said hydrologist Carolyn Driedger of the U.S. Geological Survey at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, about 50 miles from the southwest Washington mountain.
One section of the new lobe has risen by 330 feet in the past nine days, Driedger said.

SCIENCE SUBVERTED

Governments chief climate advisor warned off global warming topic by NASA

The Bush administration's well-deserved reputation for tailoring scientific information to fit its political agenda was reinforced last week when James Hansen, the government's pre-eminent climatologist, said that he had been instructed by Sean O'Keefe, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, not to discuss publicly the human contribution to global warming. The charge came as part of a broader indictment, delivered in a speech in Iowa, of the administration's refusal to confront the consequences of climate change or to do anything meaningful about reducing the industrial emissions that contribute to it.

Scientists Against Bush: In February of this year, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a policy statement deriding George Bush and his administration for its ideology-driven science programs and its cynical manipulation of science for raw political ends.

LOOSE THREAD

Karl Rove behind latest Bin Laden tape, says veteran newsman

Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape.
Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN.
Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is 'inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.'
Interviewer Larry King did not ask Cronkite to elaborate on the provocative election eve observation.

REALITY BITES

Welcome to the cult of Neoconservative reality

A White House 'senior adviser' to president Bush, The New York Times reported, explained the cult of Bush's regime to author Ron Suskind in the heady pre-war days of 2002.
The top Bush insider mocked the journalist and all those 'in what we call the reality-based community' i.e., people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' Suskind's attempt to defend the principles of reason and enlightenment cut no ice with the Bush-man.

'That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,' he said. 'And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'