soc.culture.usa
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa
soc.culture.usa@googlegroups.com

Today's topics:

* Permission to Speak Freely, Sir - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2ed36f006ecf8daa
* Haymarket: Jose Marti & the Chicago Martyrs - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/f43ac4b8a873e7a8
* Brits Jail RAF Iraq War Resister - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/210a5125a1981c40
* NYC: 9/11 Dust Is Called Fatal - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/3ae53234b1615f43
* Libya Renews Compensation Demand for Reagan's Unprovoked - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/90dd806667655a7
* Ivins: White House Whopper Becomes Instant Classic - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b6fb87b9c9c241a2
* Judge in CIA Leak Case Threatens Gag Order - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/51e2731c0d04ef36
* Juan Cole: Iran Can Now Make Glowing Mickey Mouse Watches - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/cd84ba73c70e4140
* US Sprays Colombia with Poison, and Coca Crop Increases - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/81a786988b796830
* Libby: Cheney Authorized Leak of CIA Report - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/8f83271c6423e32
* Script for Iran Invasion Headed for Production? - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2319f399f1a6e11c
* The Debate You're Not Hearing: Immigration and Trade - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/cff8e76b6c8091a4
* Brit Military Resisters Threatened with Life Sentences - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d04caa94eff7caca
* Field & Stream Mag Editl Blasts Bush Regime - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/fefc70692b3cab3d
* NYTimes Corrections 20 Days Late & Still Misunderestimating - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/37bcd989de103e43
* Nicaragua Network Hotline - Apr 12, 2006 - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/86d0a896fc4d23bd
* ANOTHER "ERROR" TODAY - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/5c01587375d4ea84
* Shocking Pictures from Turkey! - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/628595681c318dac
* Brit Pentagon Hacker Fears Being Sent to Gitmo Gulag - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/368c16c13c87d501
* Hersh vs. Bush: Who Would You Believe? - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/ba628ff46dad22bc
* Government Goons Murder Puppies - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d5d011b0e073077d
* Tax Resisters: When the IRS Shows Up, They Don't Answer - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/835ab6749f3bfe87
* EUSSIAN AID TO HAMAS - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d18a61b9beb1e165
* Too late on global warming? - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/04df8d16eee15557
* Sri Lanka 'Body parts everywhere' - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/8c8b61225f3adb1a

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Permission to Speak Freely, Sir
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2ed36f006ecf8daa
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:39 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Permission to Speak Freely, Sir

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

[Stephen Pizzo speaks up for the military brass that's FINALLY speaking out.
One addendum to the story distributed earlier this week about General
Batiste, the most recent to call for Rummy's resignation: Apparently Batiste
decided to opt for early retirement, foregoing down a third star and
several more years of career military advancement, because he felt so
strongly about the Chickenhawks' Debacle. In many ways, he seems to have
given up more than anyone since Shinsecki by speaking out. -NY Transfer]

News for Real via TruthOut - Apr 15, 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041506H.shtml

Permission to Speak Freely, Sir

By Stephen Pizzo

I am sorry that high school and college kids no longer have to face a couple
of years of mandatory military service. That may be a strange thing to say
for a guy who protested the draft back in the '60s. Maybe it's the
inevitable aging process. Or maybe it's the perspective you get from the
higher altitude of experience.

What got me thinking about this were the extraordinary statements being made
by recently retired U.S. generals. Those who have never served in the
military don't understand how extraordinary it is for career military
officers to say the things these guys are saying about their former civilian
superiors.

I hit Marine Corps bootcamp on July 7, 1965, a wimpy kid from suburbia. The
first thing we were told was that we were the lowest forms of life on earth
- - and that meant lower than civilians. I was to learn as time went on that
this was not just drill instructor blather. It was a genuine, deeply
ingrained belief that permeated the highest ranks of the military for
civilian control. We were repeatedly told that the lowest civilian we met on
the street outranked the highest grade military officer. And that was not
show. They believed it, not just as a principle, but a sacred trust.

Those who never served will likely see that as corny, empty rhetoric, window
dressing, quaint - at best. But those who did serve know of what I speak. We
get it. That's one reason I bemoan that two generations of kids have since
been spared a stint in uniform. It changed my life in ways I now understand
and appreciate in ways I could not back then.

This is not a column about reinstituting the draft. I just want to make the
case that you pay close and respectful attention to the recent statements by
retired top Pentagon brass. Because never in my life did I ever expect to
hear these kinds of things coming out of the mouths of such men. Never.
Here's a sampler:

* "[Donald Rumsfeld] has proved himself incompetent strategically,
operationally and tactically. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down."-General Paul
Eaton, who oversaw training of Iraqi army troops, 2003-2004

* "I really believe that we need a new secretary of defense because
Secretary Rumsfeld carries way too much baggage with him. Specifically, I
feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces
there."-retired Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, former commander of the 82nd
Airborne Division.

* "I think we need a fresh start ... We need leadership up there (the
Pentagon) that respects the military as they expect the military to respect
them."-Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander 1st Infantry Division in Iraq,
2004-2005

* We won't get fooled again ... Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to
fundamentally change their approach should be replaced."-Marines Lt. Gen.
Gregory Newbold, director of operations of Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2000-2002

* "The problem is that we've wasted three years ... absolutely, Rumsfeld
should resign."-Marines Gen. Anthony Zinni, former chief of U.S. Central
Command

* "A lot of them [other generals] are hugely frustrated. Rumsfeld gave the
impression that military advice was neither required nor desired" in the
planning for the Iraq war.-Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, former commander of
Marines forces in the Pacific Theater

* "Everyone pretty much thinks Rumsfeld and the bunch around him should be
cleared out. [Rumsfeld and his advisers have] made fools of themselves, and
totally underestimated what would be needed for a sustained conflict."-Army
Maj. Gen. John Riggs

The administration is trying to counter these devastating statements by
noting that none of the generals voiced such reservations during the lead-up
to the war. And, because so many Americans now lack any direct experience
with the military, the tactic may just work. After all, it's easy to dismiss
these retired generals just that easily. "So, where were your qualms when we
really need them, general?"

I know the answer to that question - and it's not the answer the Bushies
want you to get.

When an officer has a particularly sticky problem with the actions or orders
of a superior officer, s/he can "request permission to speak freely, sir."

Well, that was tried, by Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was promptly and
unceremoniously "shit-canned." (Another term my fellow vets may find
familiar.)

The Pentagon's civilian leaders sent a clear message to the rest of the
Pentagon brass: "Do what we want, or we'll find a junior officer who will."

With the "permission to speak freely" option off the table, the brass was
left only with their prime directive: Civilians rule.

So, their silence leading up to war was not cowardice or careerism, as some
have suggested. It was instead the manifestation of that deeply ingrained
principle that civilians not only outrank them, but that the most dangerous
thing that can happen in a democracy is for the military to start preempting
civilian leadership.

We can quibble over that notion, of course. We can wave around the Nuremberg
principle that "just following orders" is no defense for wrongdoing. I
agree. But let me tell you, my experience in the military left me with a
deep respect for the way the American military views its place in our
democracy. They really do believe civilians rule. I would have it no other
way. And neither should you.

Which is why we old vets understand better than most how gut-wrenching it
must have been for these recently retired officers to go public. I am
certain it was not the way they wanted to end their lifetimes of service to
their country. Because, as far as these men are concerned, under normal
circumstances, such behavior smacks of treason.

Retired two-star Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the Big Red One (the
Army's 1st Infantry Division) in Iraq until November, said Rumsfeld must go
for ignoring and intimidating career officers. "You know, it speaks volumes
that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership
climate in the Department of Defense. (Full Story)

So, no one should take their statements lightly. This is serious business
.. especially at the very moment these same civilian leaders are grunting
eagerly over satellite images of Iran.

[Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including Inside Job: The
Looting of America's Savings and Loans, which was nominated for a Pulitzer.]

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
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TOPIC: Haymarket: Jose Marti & the Chicago Martyrs
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/f43ac4b8a873e7a8
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:39 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Haymarket: Jose Marti & the Chicago Martyrs

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Cub aSi - Apr 14, 2006
http://cubaguide.cubasi.cu/desktopdefault.aspx?spk=160&clk=117188&lk=2&ck=61053&spka=37

Haymarket:

Jose Marti and the Chicago Martyrs

By Georgina Suárez Hernández
English translation by Cubasi

Lucy Parsons's visit to New York helped to modify the early vision
Martí had about the events of May 4th, 1886 in Haymarket square of Chicago.

Parsons traveled throughout the whole country spreading the truth of
her partner's participation and the rest of those involved in the
faked and extensive trial against them. The Haymarket events which
ended up on an open battle were transformed into a conspiracy against
workers whose only crime was to have organized a protest act against
police violence unleashed during the act of May 1st that year.

The main suspects were presented from that point on as vicious beasts.
Of hundreds of arrested workers, eight were taken to trial and seven
convicted to be hanged. Four of them were ultimately executed. The
verdict was passed on August 20th, 1886.

In the first three chronicles in this respect, Martí had offered an
assessment of Chicago events influenced by the distorted image spread
around by the press, the presentation of false witnesses and the
selection of a cooperative jury.

The conspiracy against those men was so big that spread confusion in
people of deep thinking and independent as Martí. He himself defined
it later as: "Ah, the press, the rich classes, the fear to this
frightening rising of our justice has forged the truth in that
ridiculous and immoral process!"

The reasons heard from Lucy Parsons's lips should have moved Martí.
But it's also truth that before his eyes were unveiled at the same
time the great machination which presented those men as members of a
conspiracy advocating terror and blood thirst.

Although in the first moments Martí said that those accused "... urged
the slaughter and sowed it with their hand"..., when they were hung on
November 11th, 1887 a change of attitude had already dawned in him
and he didn't thought of them as guilty. For this reason he condemned
the true causers who "... they judge the social crimes without to know
and to think the historical causes that they were born judge social
crimes without knowing and thinking of the historical causes from
which they were born neither the impulses of generosity that produce
them"...

A big shock was originated not only in North American territory, but
in the entire world. The worthy Cuban respected the firmness and
courage in those processed during the montage of the justice
caricature staged in the American court of law. Probably Martí's
chronicles presented in North American Scenes contributed to some
extent to denounce the truth about the facts.

When Martí spoke of "those aggressive leagues of industrials,
privileged by the favoritism of law" he qualified in just a few words
the North American political system. This system exerts its authority
through institutions capable to work as instrument to stage
provocations and later exercise pressure on juries so they judge to
its will.

These events contributed to ripe Martí's conception on classes
struggle. ... "those strikes which are already open battles of
thinking rather than wage demands..." he expressed in overt support to
the leaders of the confused Chicago.

And in a sharp position he expressed referring the application of the
justice in the United States that... "This republic, due to the
immeasurable cult to wealth, has fallen, with none of the obstacles of
tradition, in the inequality, injustice, and violence of monarchic
countries."

(c) 2006 Unidad de Negocios Datos.
Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA) All Rights Reserved.

*
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TOPIC: Brits Jail RAF Iraq War Resister
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/210a5125a1981c40
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:39 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Brits Jail RAF Iraq War Resister

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

The Independent via Truthout - Apr 14, 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041406F.shtml

Prisoner of Conscience:

RAF Doctor Who Refused Iraq Service Is Jailed

By Kim Sengupta

Doctor. RAF officer. And now war criminal [sic]. Flt. Lt. Malcolm
Kendall-Smith was yesterday jailed for refusing to serve in Iraq.

An RAF doctor who refused to serve in Iraq because he believed
the war to be illegal was jailed for eight months yesterday.

The conviction and imprisonment of Flight Lieutenant Malcolm
Kendall-Smith, the first member of the armed forces to be charged
with disobeying orders to deploy in Iraq, has provoked widespread
condemnation. Anti-war groups declared that a man who had shown
great moral courage and acted according to his conscience was being
pilloried for his beliefs.

MPs said that the high-profile case illustrated the "legal
quagmire" created by Tony Blair's decision to follow George Bush
and take part in the conflict.

Kendall-Smith's lawyers said they had received more than 500
messages of support, many of them from serving and former members
of the forces.

Bitter accusations and recriminations dominated the trial,
which took place at Aldershot barracks. At an earlier hearing,
Assistant Judge Advocate Jack Bayliss had ruled the doctor could
not use the defence that in refusing military orders he had acted
according to his conscience. The judge maintained that the US and
British forces were now in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi
government.

Judge Advocate Bayliss also refused to allow the defence to
call as witnesses, among others, Ben Griffin, a member of the SAS
who resigned from the Army because he believed the Iraq war was
illegal and who refused to serve alongside US forces because of the
excesses they committed. Also barred was an Iraqi doctor who had
flown to Britain to describe his experience of what has happened to
the country following the invasion.

During the hearing Kendall-Smith repeatedly expressed his view
that an order for him to deploy to Basra was illegal. He also
described the actions of the Americans in Iraq as being akin to the
Nazis.

It took the military jury of five RAF officers just one hour
and 28 minutes to find Kendall-Smith guilty on all five charges of
disobeying orders.

Judge Advocate Bayliss accused Kendall-Smith, a former
university tutor of moral philosophy, of "amazing arrogance" and
seeking to be a "martyr". The sentence was intended to make an
example of him and serve as a warning to others in the forces.

"Obedience of orders is at the heart of any disciplined force.
Refusal to obey orders means the force is not a disciplined force
but a rabble. Those who wear the Queen's uniform cannot pick and
choose which orders they will obey. Those who seek to do so must
face the serious consequences," he said.

"We have considered carefully whether it would be sufficient to
dismiss you from the Royal Air Force and fine you as well. We do
not think that we could possibly be justified in taking such a
lenient course. It would send a message to all those who wear the
Queen's uniform that it does not matter if they refuse to carry out
the policy of Her Majesty's government."

A spokeswoman for the Royal Air Force Prosecuting Authority
said: "It is right that Flt Lt Kendall-Smith was prosecuted for
disobeying legal orders. British troops are operating in Iraq under
a United Nations mandate and at the invitation of the Iraqi
government."

As well as the sentence, which will be served in a civilian
prison, Kendall-Smith was ordered to pay £20,000 towards his
defence costs which were covered by legal aid. The court heard that
he had personal savings of £20,000. His solicitor, Justin
Hughston-Roberts said the intention was to appeal against both
conviction and sentence.

Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on defence, said
"Hostility to the war is not just confined to the public at large,
many members of the armed forces share their concern and have
genuine moral objections to serving in Iraq.

"This case illustrates the legal quagmire that has developed
over the Government's decision to go to war. The Government has
repeatedly had to hunt around to find legal justification for this
war."

The former Labour MP Tam Dalyell said: "Any servicemen has
obligations, but a doctrine was laid down at Nuremberg [trials of
Nazis for war crimes] that when orders seem to be a crime against
humanity, it was not a sufficient excuse to say simply: 'They were
orders and I was doing what I was told.'"

Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament, said: "Many people believe the war in Iraq was an
illegal war and therefore we would consider he was quite within his
rights and it was indeed commendable he believed it was right to
stand up to what he considered to be an illegal instruction to
engage in an illegal war. We have full sympathy for him and he has
our full support. We consider it to be a commendable and moral
act."

Lindsey German, convener for the Stop the War Coalition, said:
"The majority of public opinion agree this war was not based on
international law."

Why he sacrificed his career and his liberty

"I have been convicted and sentenced, a very distressing
experience. But I still believe I was right to make the stand that
I did and refuse to follow orders to deploy to Iraq - orders I
believe were illegal. I am resigned to what may happen to me in the
next few months. I shall remain resilient and true to my beliefs
which, I believe, are shared by so many others."

"Iraq was the only reason I could not follow the order to
deploy. As a commissioned officer, I am required to consider every
order given to me. Further, I am required to consider the legality
of such an order not only as to its effect on domestic but also
international law. I was subjected, as was the entire population,
to propaganda depicting force against Iraq to be lawful. I have
studied in very great depth the various commentaries and briefing
notes, including one prepared by the Attorney General, and in
particular the main note to the PM dated 7 March 2003. I have
satisfied myself that the actions of the armed forces with the
deployment of troops were an illegal act - as indeed was the
conflict. To comply with an order that I believe unlawful places me
in breach of domestic and international law, something I am not
prepared to do."

"The invasion and occupation of Iraq is a campaign of imperial
military conquest and falls into the category of criminal acts. I
would have had criminal responsibility vicariously if I had gone to
Iraq. I still have two great loves in life - medicine and the RAF.
To take the decision that I did caused great sadness, but I had no
other choice."

'Criminals' in Blair's Britain

Maya Evans

She became the first person to be convicted under the Serious
Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005 last December. She had
been arrested with Milan Rai at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, for
reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq. She was
given a conditional discharge by Bow Street magistrates and ordered
to pay £100 costs.

Brian Haw

Mr Haw, 56, has held a protest against Britain's involvement in
Iraq in Parliament Square since 2001, sleeping in the square. He
was the intended target of SOCPA, which states that anyone
demonstrating in a half-mile zone in central London must have
police permission, but he won a legal battle to continue because
his protest began before the law was introduced. The Government has
taken the matter to the Court of Appeal.

Milan Rai

On Wednesday, Mr Rai was fined £350 and ordered to pay £150 in
costs for his unauthorised demonstration at the Cenotaph, where he
read out the names of UK soldiers killed in Iraq. He pleaded guilty
to breaching SOCPA.

Douglas Barker

The 72-year-old former RAF pilotfrom Purton, near Swindon, was
found guilty of withholding 10 per cent of his income tax in
protest at the Iraq war. He had sent a note to the Inland Revenue
explaining that he would give the money to charity. But in February
magistrates at Chippenham, Wiltshire, dismissed his protest.
Bailiffs will take property to cover the £1,215.45 Mr Barker is
said to owe.

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: NYC: 9/11 Dust Is Called Fatal
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/3ae53234b1615f43
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:39 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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NYC: 9/11 Dust Is Called Fatal

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

The New York Times - Apr 14, 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041406L.shtml

Debate Revives as 9/11 Dust Is Called Fatal

By Anthony DePalma

In the cold, clinical language of the autopsy report of a retired New York
City detective that was released this week, there were words that thousands
of New Yorkers have come to anticipate and to fear.

"It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of
death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident," stated the
report from the medical examiner's office in Ocean County, N.J.

That "reasonable degree of medical certainty" - coroner language for "as
sure as I can be" - provides the first official link made by a medical
expert between the hazardous air at ground zero after the trade center
collapse and the death of someone who worked in the rescue effort.

The report has reopened old wounds, giving lawsuits brought by first
responders and downtown residents new evidence to back up allegations that
the toxic mixture of dust and fumes at ground zero was deadly.

The report has also reignited a fierce debate over whether to classify
deaths like that of Detective James Zadroga, 34 - who died on Jan. 5 of
respiratory failure at his parents' New Jersey home - as being "in the line
of duty," making survivors eligible for more benefits.

Dr. Robin Herbert, who has screened thousands of first responders through
the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program,
called Detective Zadroga's autopsy report a "sentinel event" and a warning
sign.

"It should be taken very seriously and investigated with great vigor," Dr.
Herbert said.

But while acknowledging that those exposed to the dust may develop fatal
diseases, many medical experts who have tracked the health effects of the
trade center collapse have been reluctant to cross the line in between
probability and certainty.

The autopsy report went further than any other medical document to link a
death to the dust, but it by no means provides conclusive proof of the
dust's general toxicity and its impact on other workers at the site. That,
experts generally agree, may take 20 years to play out, depending on the
latency period for many cancers and other diseases that could be linked to
exposure to the toxic materials.

Proving the cause of a disease, even when the cause may seem obvious, is
difficult. Dr. Michael M. Baden, former chief medical examiner of New York
and a forensics expert, said the phrase "reasonable degree of certainty" is
the standard term used in court to mean that given the available
information, "it's very likely that that opinion is correct."

That said, Dr. Baden noted that given the impact of such a finding, he would
have expected the medical examiner's office to consult with doctors who had
tested or treated other first responders before coming to such a conclusion.
Other experts said that tests should have been done on the particles found
in Detective Zadroga's lungs to compare them with the dust from the trade
center.

Neither step was taken. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Gerard Breton, a
73-year-old retired pathologist who has been on contract to the medical
examiner's office in Ocean County for a decade.

Dr. Breton said in a telephone interview yesterday that he did not attempt
to classify the "innumerable foreign body granulomas" containing
"unidentified foreign materials" in Detective Zadroga's lungs. He also did
not consult any doctors besides the detective's physician, who he said had
informed him of Detective Zadroga's work at ground zero.

Nonetheless, Dr. Breton said what he found was unmistakable.

"I cannot personally understand that anyone could see what I saw in the
lungs, and know that the person was exposed to ground zero, and not make the
same link I made," said Dr. Breton.

Detective Zadroga, who joined the New York Police Department in 1992, did
not smoke and had no known history of asthma. His family has long believed
that the 450 grueling hours that the highly decorated officer spent working
on recovery efforts at ground zero in 2001 had filled his lungs with
fiberglass, pulverized concrete and a toxic brew of chemicals that fatally
scarred his lungs, leading to his death at the age of 34.

For them, the autopsy report was an awful confirmation.

Joseph Zadroga, Detective Zadroga's father, said his son and other officers
who had worked at the trade center site knew the air they were breathing
would probably cause health problems down the road. "You had to be a fool
not to realize that," he said on Tuesday at a news conference in Manhattan.

Detective Zadroga's colleagues have argued that hundreds of officers who
were also exposed to the dust will probably suffer from a variety of serious
illnesses, including a number of blood cancers, because of their work at
ground zero.

Michael J. Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association,
said that he wanted state pension law amended so that Detective Zadroga's
death and others like it are reclassified as occurring in the line of duty,
qualifying survivors to receive larger benefits. A bill to make such a
change has been proposed in Albany.

In Brooklyn yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg noted that a law was
passed last year allowing city workers who got sick after responding to the
trade center site to qualify for full disability pensions, even after they
retire. He called Detective Zadroga's death tragic, but said the autopsy
report may not be definitive.

"We'll see what other doctors say," Mr. Bloomberg said. "Generally, there
are lots of other contributing factors."

More than 7,300 people who worked at the trade center recovery site - police
officers, firefighters and constructions workers - have joined in a
class-action suit seeking damages from their employers.

David E. Worby, the lawyer handling that suit, said about 40 of the
plaintiffs have already died. "At a minimum, their diseases were aggravated,
and accelerated by the toxic exposure," he said.

Toxic substances known to cause cancer, like benzene and asbestos, take
decades to develop the disease. Mr. Worby said the doctors and scientists he
had consulted believe that the complex mixture of chemicals that resulted
from the collapse of the two towers - along with everything in them - may
have created a compound that acts as an accelerant, vastly increasing the
speed by which known carcinogens trigger cancer.

"It's a horror show," he said.

In a separate class-action lawsuit against federal environmental officials,
residents and schoolchildren from Lower Manhattan claim they were given
false assurance that the air around ground zero was safe enough for them to
move back in a few days after the attack.

In February, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that statements about safety
made by officials after 9/11 were misleading and "without question
conscience-shocking."

[Kareem Fahim and Diane Cardwell contributed reporting for this article.]

*
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Libya Renews Compensation Demand for Reagan's Unprovoked
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/90dd806667655a7
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:39 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Libya Renews Compensation Demand for Reagan's Unprovoked

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Reuters via Yahoo - Apr 15, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060415/wl_nm/libya_usa_compensation_dc_3

Libya renews demand for US compensation

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya on Saturday marked the 20th anniversary of a U.S.
bombing raid that killed an estimated 40 people by renewing a demand that
Washington apologize and pay compensation.

A statement by the official news agency JANA also repeated a call that
relations between the two countries, now undergoing a gradual rapprochement
after years of turmoil, be conducted on an equal footing and without
violence.

Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered the 1986 overnight air strikes
in response to a bombing of a West Berlin discotheque used by U.S.
servicemen that killed three people and wounded up to 200. Washington blamed
the bombing on Libya.

"The Libyan people renewed their call for an apology," the statement said of
the raid, in which Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's 15-month-old adopted
daughter Hanna was killed.

"The Libyan people reaffirm their right to compensation for the aggression
from those who caused the killing of many women, children and elderly."

"The Libyan people also reaffirm their readiness to develop their relations
with the American people far from the logic of force pursued by Reagan."

Libya began to emerge from more than a decade of international ostracism in
2003 when it accepted responsibility and began paying compensation for the
bombing of airliners over Scotland and Niger in 1988 and 1989.

It promised to dismantle its nuclear, chemical and biological programmes and
signed additional protocols with the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy
Agency.

But Libyan officials have long complained of what they see as the slow pace
of detente with Washington.

The United States said in March Libya would remain on the State Department's
list of countries that sponsor terrorism for the time being, despite what
U.S. officials have described as Tripoli's help on security matters.

Presence on the terrorism list bars a country from getting U.S. arms,
controls sale of items with military and civilian applications, limits U.S.
aid and requires Washington to vote against loans from international
financial institutions.

When Reagan died in June 2004, Gaddafi said he regretted that the former
U.S. president had died without ever being tried for what he called his
crime against Libyan children -- Hanna was one of several infants among the
dead.

In 2004 Libya agreed to accept civil responsibility for the Berlin bombing
and paid $35 million compensation to more than 160 victims. But despite the
agreement the north African country maintains its denial that it carried out
the attack.

*
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Ivins: White House Whopper Becomes Instant Classic
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b6fb87b9c9c241a2
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Ivins: White House Whopper Becomes Instant Classic

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Creators Syndicate - Apr 14, 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041406K.shtml

White House Whopper Becomes Instant Classic

By Molly Ivins
Creator's Syndicate

Personally, I think this is a really good time not to keep up.
The more you try, the less sense it makes, although getting us used
to having it all make no sense at all may be an extremely sneaky
Karl Rove ploy to justify the war in Iraq. Hard to say.

The latest development to which the only appropriate response
is, "Huh," is the news that the "mobile weapons labs" introduced to
us by President Bush before the war as conclusive evidence of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were not evidence - conclusive
or otherwise - of WMD and were not, in fact, mobile weapons labs.

The only thing new here is the news that George W. Bush likely
knew a couple of days before he talked about them in public that
the Defense Intelligence Agency had found they were not mobile
weapons labs.

OK, given everything we already know about the lies before the
war, this is not particularly startling - although I do think it's
long past time we stopped referring to the campaign of
disinformation and false information that we were fed as anything
but lies. No, the startling and funny part of the "mobile weapons
lab" lie is the administration's defense of it, which is so batty
it's an instant classic.

According to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, the DIA
report debunking the "weapons labs" is "a complex intelligence
white paper and it's ... one derived from highly classified
information (and) takes a substantial amount of time to coordinate
and to run through a declassification process."

If I understand what McClellan is saying, Bush leaked bad
information from a classified intelligence report because there
wasn't enough time for the contradictory DIA report to go through a
declassification process. All of which would make more sense if we
hadn't just gone through this Valerie Plame episode, where the
White House says if the president leaked it, then it's legal to
leak it. No problem, the president can declassify at will, they
said. I don't know about you, but none of it is becoming clearer
for me. Does anyone understand why we have to bomb Iran yet?

Meanwhile, Congress can't figure out how to do a deal on
immigration. I'd like to stick my two cents in here to say the
reason that deal fell apart and the reason it won't come back
together is because of American business, which hires the illegals
and donates the campaign money. Bless your sweet heart if you think
the deal came unglued over the Republicans ignoring their base or
some other political problem. Money, my friends, talks, and bull
walks. Look at who wants illegal workers here. Look at who controls
Congress.

Courtesy of the Daou Report on salon.com, I found this item on
a blog called The Shape of Days, about the recent demonstrations:
"There's really no other way to say it: Being here is weird. To be
surrounded by a crowd of thousands of people, all of whom look
alike, none of whom look like me, many of whom are decorated with
our flag, none of whom are speaking our language, on our national
Mall ... it's a surreal experience. Despite my best judgment and
best intentions, I feel the inklings of xenophobia bubbling up
inside. This place isn't for me; I don't belong here. It's time to
go."

I suppose this citizen deserves credit for honesty, but I'm so
much more amazed by his or her provincialism. I feel one of those
rants about suburbia coming on. Never been in a public place before
surrounded by people who speak a different language and look
different from you? Can you live in a city and not have experienced
that?

I was high just from seeing them all-500,000 in Dallas! Of
course, most of us know the immigrants are there-it's just so
interesting to see them en masse. If you've ever wondered what this
country would be like without illegal workers, now you've got the
answer. It would come to a halt.

Let me point out again, I don't have a dog in this fight. There
are just some things I know from living in Texas all my life. One
is, don't bother to build a fence. Two is, if you want to stop
illegal immigrants, stop the people who hire them-quit punishing
people who come because there are jobs. Three, this border has
always been porous, and it has always worked to the advantage of
the United States.

If you want to do the smart thing and look for a long-term
solution, try fixing NAFTA and helping with economic development in
Mexico. Meantime, I could do without the drivel about how these
people are so different. Of course they're not. Try getting out a
little more.

[Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The
Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books
including Who Let the Dogs In?]

*
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Judge in CIA Leak Case Threatens Gag Order
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/51e2731c0d04ef36
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Hash: SHA1

Judge in CIA Leak Case Threatens Gag Order

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

The Washington Post via Truthout - Apr 14, 2o006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041406N.shtml

Judge in CIA Leak Case Threatens Gag Order

By R. Jeffrey Smith
The Washington Post

The federal judge presiding over the pending trial of I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby threatened yesterday to impose a gag order barring
statements or disclosures to the news media by Libby's defense team
or by the special prosecutor investigating alleged wrongdoing by
the former White House official.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walston did not explain exactly
what provoked his pique, but he wrote in his order that "on several
occasions information has been distributed to the press by counsel,
which has included not only public statements, but also the
dissemination of material that had not been filed on the public
docket."

He complained that the parties to the case did not heed an
earlier warning that he would not tolerate "this case being tried
in the media," and he said such disclosures could impair the
court's ability "to ensure that both sides receive a fair trial."
Walton gave both sides eight days to state any objections before he
imposes the gag order.

He made the threat a week after special prosecutor Patrick J.
Fitzgerald, who is investigating leaks to the media by
administration officials about a CIA operative, wrote in a court
filing that President Bush and Vice President Cheney had authorized
Libby to release information to the media from a classified
intelligence report.

In a reply brief filed late Wednesday evening, Libby's defense
team noted that this disclosure set "off an avalanche of media
interest." Acting in response to questions, one of Libby's lawyers
had made a brief statement to the media that Libby's White
House-authorized release of information about Iraq was disconnected
from any release of the name of the CIA officer, Valerie Plame,
contrary to what Fitzgerald said in his court papers.

Plame's employment by the CIA was classified. She is married to
former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was dispatched by
the CIA to look into reports that Iraq was trying to acquire
nuclear weapons materials in Africa. Wilson disputed the reports
and wrote publicly that the administration had twisted intelligence
to support its invasion of Iraq. Fitzgerald has alleged that
officials leaked Plame's name in an effort to undermine Wilson by
making it appear as if his assignment for the CIA stemmed from
nepotism.

In their reply brief, which was described in late editions of
Thursday's Washington Post, Libby's lawyers said he did not assert
in grand jury testimony that Bush or Cheney instructed him to
disclose Plame's name to reporters as part of an effort to rebut
Wilson's criticisms.

Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, was indicted last year
on charges of lying to the FBI and a grand jury when he said he had
not discussed Plame with reporters. His new court filing was the
latest salvo in his battle to gain access to information held by
the administration and by government investigators about Wilson's
trip, and about other officials' statements to reporters regarding
Wilson and Plame.

Libby has said he needs these documents partly to prepare for
expected testimony at his trial by current and former senior
administration officials, who Libby says were aware of Plame's
employment.

Libby has said the documents will show that Plame's employment
was a peripheral matter in his conversations with others, and that
thus he had good reason to forget precisely what he had said to
reporters about it. "He testified to the grand jury unequivocally
that he did not understand Ms. Wilson's employment by the CIA to be
classified information," the court filing states.

In a related development, The Post yesterday was subpoenaed by
Libby's defense team to produce records related to the case that
the newspaper had not turned over to Fitzgerald. Eric Lieberman, a
counsel at The Post, said the newspaper would comply by providing
Libby with a complete copy of a memorandum by Assistant Managing
Editor Bob Woodward from his interview with Libby on June 27, 2003.

Woodward has said Libby spoke in the interview about the same
intelligence report he discussed with other journalists. "This
action does not pose legal or journalistic concerns to The Post or
Mr. Woodward," Lieberman said.

*
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Juan Cole: Iran Can Now Make Glowing Mickey Mouse Watches
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/cd84ba73c70e4140
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Juan Cole: Iran Can Now Make Glowing Mickey Mouse Watches

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Informed Comment via Truthout - Apr 12, 2006
http://www.juancole.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041206A.shtml

Informed Comment

Iran Can Now Make glowing Mickey Mouse Watches

By Juan Cole

Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran
"going nuclear," the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5
percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they
"cascade."

The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the
ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80%
enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small
centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000
centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away
from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme
Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb
because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will
ever have a bomb.

The crisis is not one of nuclear enrichment, a low-level
attainment that does not necessarily lead to having a bomb. Even if
Iran had a bomb, it is hard to see how they could be more dangerous
than Communist China, which has lots of such bombs, and whose
Walmart stores are a clever ruse to wipe out the middle class
American family through funneling in cheaply made Chinese goods.

What is really going on here is a ratcheting war of rhetoric.
The Iranian hard liners are down to a popularity rating in Iran of
about 15%. They are using their challenge to the Bush
administration over their perfectly legal civilian nuclear energy
research program as a way of enhancing their nationalist
credentials in Iran.

Likewise, Bush is trying to shore up his base, which is
desperately unhappy with the Iraq situation, by rattling sabres at
Iran. Bush's poll numbers are so low, often in the mid-30s, that he
must have lost part of his base to produce this result. Iran is a
great deus ex machina for Bush. Rally around the flag yet again.

If this international game of chicken goes wrong, then the
whole Middle East and much of Western Europe could go up in flames.
The real threat here is not unconventional war, which Iran cannot
fight for the foreseeable future. It is the spread of Iraq-style
instability to more countries in the region.

Bush and Ahmadinejad could be working together toward the
Perfect Storm.

*
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: US Sprays Colombia with Poison, and Coca Crop Increases
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/81a786988b796830
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

US Sprays Colombia with Poison, and Coca Crop Increases

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

[And Amerikkka's very own VOA News admits it...]

Voice of America - Apr 15, 2006
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-04-15-voa15.cfm

US: Coca Growing Areas in Colombia Up Despite Eradication Efforts

By VOA News

The United States says efforts to help Colombia eradicate the coca
crop are working, despite a 26 percent increase in coca cultivation
areas from 2004 to 2005.

A new report by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy says
that although coca was discovered in new areas of Colombia during that
time period, the government eradicated a record 170,000 hectares.

The U.S. report concludes coca plantings in Colombia have decreased in
fumigated areas, and increased where no chemical spraying occurred. It
says eradication efforts will focus on the new coca fields.

Money from drug trafficking has helped finance both the rightist
paramilitary groups and Marxist guerrillas on opposing sides of
Colombia's four-decade-long civil war.

Coca is the raw material used to make the illegal drug, cocaine.
Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine.

The United States has provided Colombia with more than three billion
dollars since 2000 to help it destroy coca crops, train and equip
anti-drug units of its armed forces, and rebuild its judicial system.

Some information for this report was provided by AP.

*
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Libby: Cheney Authorized Leak of CIA Report
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/8f83271c6423e32
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Libby: Cheney Authorized Leak of CIA Report

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

The National Journal via Truthout - Apr 14, 2006
http://www.truthout.org

Cheney Authorized Leak Of CIA Report, Libby Says

By Murray Waas
The National Journal

Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media
portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped
would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C.
Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy,
according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and
sources who have read the classified report.

The March 2002 intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson
by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after Wilson returned from a
CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims, later proved
to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure
uranium from the African nation, according to government records.

The debriefing report made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie
Plame, then a covert CIA officer, or any role she may have played
in her husband's selection by the CIA to go to Niger, according to
two people who have read the report.

The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant
because only hours after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to
disclose information from the CIA report, Libby divulged to
then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine
correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that
she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.

Both Libby and Cheney have repeatedly insisted that the vice
president never encouraged, directed, or authorized Libby to
disclose Plame's identity. In a court filing on April 12, Libby's
attorneys reiterated: "Consistent with his grand jury testimony,
Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any
disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson [Plame] by President Bush, Vice
President Cheney, or anyone else."

But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak
portions of a classified CIA report on Joseph Wilson adds to a
growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was
outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply
involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband.

A spokesman for the vice president declined to comment.

On April 5, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case,
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asserted in a court filing that Joseph
Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in The New York Times criticizing
the Bush administration's Iraq policies "was viewed in the office
of Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice
President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the
rationale for the war in Iraq."

Moreover, on July 12, 2003, the same day that Libby spoke to
both Cooper and Miller, Libby and Cheney traveled aboard Air Force
Two for the dedication of a new aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Va.
During the flight either to or from Norfolk, Cheney, Libby, and
Cathie Martin, then-assistant to the vice president for public
affairs, discussed how they might rebut Wilson's charges and
discredit him, according to federal court records, and interviews
with people with first-hand knowledge of accounts that all three
provided to federal investigators.

It has long been known that Cheney was among the first people
in the government to tell Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. The
federal indictment of Libby - who has been charged with five counts
of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to
federal investigators in the CIA leak case - states: "On or about
June 12, 2003, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the
United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence
Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that
the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA."

Fitzgerald asserted that just days before Libby divulged
Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper on July 12, "Vice President
Cheney, [Libby's] immediate superior, expressed concerns to [Libby]
regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was legitimate or whether it
was a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife." Although contained in a
public court filing, this second conversation between Cheney and
Libby had gone unreported.

The new disclosure about the CIA report further raises
questions about the vice president's role in directly authorizing
the leak of classified information outside the formal
declassification process. Last week it was reported that Libby also
testified to the grand jury that Cheney told him that as part of
the effort to rebut Wilson's criticism, President Bush had
authorized the leaking of portions of a then-classified National
Intelligence Estimate concerning purported attempts by Iraq to
develop nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration has asserted that presidents have the
constitutional right to declassify information. Although vice
presidents haven't shared such authority, President Bush issued an
executive order in March 2003 allowing Cheney to share such
authority with him. According to Fitzgerald's April 5 filing, Libby
has also testified that in July 2003, then-Counsel to the Vice
President David Addington "opined that Presidential authorization
to publicly disclose a document amount to a declassification of the
document."

Jeffrey Smith, a former general counsel for the CIA, said in an
interview, however, that while there are executive orders that
apparently allow the vice president "on his own to determine what
to declassify and to whom," that authority should "not exempt him
or anyone from exercising prudence or good judgment" in doing so.
"You would want the president or the vice president to seek the
views of the CIA or any other intelligence agencies... to make sure
that there is no potential disclosing an intelligence source" or
some other sensitive information.

Criticizing the decision to leak portions of the NIE, Rep. Jane
Harman, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence
Committee, said last week: "Leaking classified information to the
press when you want to get your side out or silence your critics is
not appropriate. If I had leaked the information, I'd be in jail.
Why should the president be above the law? I am stunned."

In his grand jury testimony, according to Fitzgerald's filing,
Libby portrayed himself as a reluctant subordinate in July 2003 who
took orders from higher ups. Libby "testified that he at first
advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation
with [Judith] Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE,"
said the special counsel's filing. "[Libby] testified that the Vice
President later advised him that the President had authorized
[Libby] to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE." It was
during this time that Libby says he spoke to Addington on the
matter.

Steve Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation
of American Scientists, who tracks government secrecy and
classification issues, said that Libby "presents himself in this
instance and others as being very scrupulous in adhering to the
rules. He is not someone carried on by the rush of events. If you
take his account before the grand jury on face value, he is
cautious and deliberative in his behavior.

"That is almost the exact opposite as to how he behaves when it
comes to disclosing Plame's identity," Aftergood said. "All of a
sudden he doesn't play within the rules. He doesn't seek
authorization. If you believe his account, he almost acts
capriciously. You have to ask yourself why his behavior changes so
dramatically, if he is telling the truth that this was not
authorized and that he did not talk to higher-ups."

Libby has insisted that the vice president never authorized or
told him to discuss Plame's identity. Although Libby discussed
Plame with Miller and Cooper on July 12, 2003 - the same day he
says he was authorized by Cheney to leak portions of the NIE and
the CIA report - Libby insists the two actions are unrelated.

The new disclosure also raises the question whether President
Bush or his aides knew that Cheney may have been deciding on his
own to authorize the leaking of classified information. Senior
government officials said that top Bush aides - including
then-deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and White
House Communications Director Dan Bartlett - were not aware that
Cheney had authorized the disclosure of the CIA report on Wilson's
Niger mission. These officials raised the possibility that Bush
himself was unaware at the time of Cheney's action.

Regarding the release of Plame's name and CIA employment, a
senior administration official said that even if Cheney did not
directly authorize Libby to leak the information to the press, the
vice president might have set a climate in which his aides viewed
it as routine to release classified information whenever it served
their purposes.

The administration was interested in discrediting Wilson
because the former ambassador asserted in his op-ed piece that he
found no evidence in Niger to substantiate Bush administration
claims that Saddam had attempted to purchase uranium from that
country. Wilson alleged that the administration had misrepresented
intelligence by making that claim in its case to go to war with
Iraq. Six days after the Times published Wilson's piece, Libby
leaked Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper.

Cheney and other Bush administration officials also believed
that the CIA debriefing report might undermine Wilson's claims
because it showed that Wilson's Niger probe was inconclusive on the
uranium questions. Wilson was restricted on the persons he was able
to interview in Niger, and he was denied some intelligence
information before undertaking the trip.

In reportedly directing Libby to disclose portions of the March
2002 CIA report on Wilson's mission, Cheney apparently kept in the
dark a number of administration officials who were working to
declassify that very same document.

According to Fitzgerald's recent filing, Libby "testified that
on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice
President to speak to the press in the place of Cathie Martin (then
the communications person for the Vice President) regarding the NIE
and Wilson. [Libby] was instructed... to [also] provide information
contained in a document [he] understood to be the cable authored by
Mr. Wilson. During the conversations that followed on July 12
[Libby] discussed Ms. Wilson's [CIA] employment with both Matthew
Cooper (for the first time) and Judith Miller (for the third
time)."

The purported Wilson cable refers to the classified CIA
debriefing of Wilson, according to sources who have read the
document. Wilson never himself authored a cable on his Niger
mission. Rather, the CIA Directorate of Operations, which sent
Wilson to Niger in February 2002, produced a March 8, 2002 report
based on Wilson's debriefing by intelligence officers. The report
did not name Wilson, or even describe him as a former ambassador,
but rather as a "contact with excellent access who does not have an
established reporting record" to protect the-then covert nature of
the trip.

The report was then "widely distributed in routine channels,"
according to a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the
CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq. It is unclear whether Cheney or
his office received the report at the time it was distributed, or
sometime later.

But two government officials with first-hand knowledge of
events said during the summer of 2003, Libby and other White House
officials sought any reports and other classified information
regarding Wilson's Niger trip, and it was provided at that time.

A relatively small amount of information derived from the March
2002 report was revealed on July 11, 2003, when then-CIA Director
George Tenet released a statement regarding Wilson's trip to Niger
in which he disclosed some aspects of the debriefing described in
the document. But other portions remained highly classified at the
time that Cheney directed Libby to leak portions of the report, two
senior government officials said in interviews. These officials say
the White House abandoned its attempt to declassify all or part of
the March 2002 report when Tenet released his statement.

The federal indictment of Libby states: "On or about June 9,
2003, a number of classified documents were faxed to the Office of
the Vice President to the personal attention of Libby and another
person in the Office of the Vice President. The faxed documents,
which were marked as classified, discussed, among other things,
Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name.
After receiving these documents, Libby and one or more persons in
the Office of the Vice President handwrote the names 'Wilson' and
'Joe Wilson' on the documents."

It is unclear if one of the documents in question, or the one
with Wilson's name handwritten on it by someone in the Vice
President's office, was the March 2002 CIA report, but the fact
that it did not mention Wilson by name suggests that it possibly
was indeed the one with the handwriting.

Cheney, Libby, and others wanted to leak and declassify
portions of the report because they believed that it would undercut
the perception that Wilson's mission had disproved the allegations
definitively that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger,
two senior government officials said in interviews.

Among other things, Wilson had agreed only to interview former
Nigerien officials, instead of current ones, so as not to step on
the toes of the State Department or its then-ambassador to Niger,
and he was disadvantaged in his inquiries, the two senior
government officials said.

In an interview, Wilson said it was unnecessary to interview
current Nigerien officials because the then-U.S. ambassador was
conducting her own inquiry, and a decision was made for him to
speak to former Nigerien officials while the ambassador made her
inquiries of the current government.

"When I arrived in Niger, I spoke to the ambassador who thought
that she had already debunked the allegations with current Niger
officials," Wilson said. "We agreed then that I would speak to
former government officials, who I knew better than she did because
I worked with them while I was on the NSC staff at the White House,
and thereafter. So that was the division of labor."

Wilson also said that the ambassador told her that a "four-star
Marine general had also already talked to current officials, and
that he too had concluded and reported that he believed there was
nothing to the allegations."

[National Journal correspondent Shane Harris also contributed to
this report.]

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Script for Iran Invasion Headed for Production?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2319f399f1a6e11c
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Script for Iran Invasion Headed for Production?

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Rich Winkel (activ-l)

NarcoNews - Apr 11, 2006
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2006/4/11/224852/783

Script for invasion of Iran appears headed for production

By Bill Conroy

If you listen and read carefully, you will get a sense of dj vu
right now.

Remember Iraq? Its like that.

A quietly rising media jingoism campaign is already beginning to
stoke fear among the American people that Iran is an out-of-control
regime dead set on raining down nuclear fire on innocent children.

So it is no real surprise that investigative journalist Seymour
Hersh recently penned an article for the New Yorker revealing that
the Bush Administration is currently laying the groundwork for an
invasion of the Persian nation.

Iran is at least two and as much as 10 years away from developing
a viable nuclear weapon, according to intelligence experts who spoke
with Narco News. Even then, Iran would have a petty nuke arsenal
that would be more than checkmated by much larger arsenals in India,
Pakistan, Israel, China and the United States, among others.

So why the rush to war?

Well, to explore that subject, Narco News decided to check in with
a trusted source -- a consultant who was recently invited to
Washington, D.C., to bid on a contract to help develop an Iran war
plan for the Pentagon. The source came forward after discovering
that the insanity of the Bush Administrations plan for Iran, as it
was laid out in the contract negotiations, merited exposure.

Now, many folks reading this notebook may immediately conclude that
a writer for Narco News couldnt possibly have the inside skinny on
this insanity. After all, Bill Conroy is no Seymour Hersh.

Still, I feel compelled to convey what I was told and only ask that
you mark the link to this story. Then, six months from now, you can
look back and see if any of it was on the mark. In terms of preventing
this madness from unfolding in the meantime, well, that is something
that cant wait six months.

So, following, in brief, is what the source had to say about what
he was told by Pentagon officials, whom, he claims, were seeking
to hire him to help develop a strategy to get the American people
on board with this Iran plan. (The goal, the source says, is to
educate the American people, not through PR, but by tweaking the
danger factor, to get the people to support the governments
pronouncements about how much of a danger Iran is to us.)

The source claims this Iran plan has been in the works for about
24 months, blowing out of the water any claim by the administration
that it is a contingency plan.

The Pentagon, this consultant adds, plans to spend $1 billion to
refurbish the two existing major bases the U.S. military now operates
in Iraq.

"If we (U.S. troops) are getting out of Iraq in a year or so, they
would not be spending $1 billion to refurbish the bases, the
consultant stresses.

In addition, the Pentagon plans to appropriate, through various
channels, another $2 billion to build a third major base and three
smaller ones, the source says.

Then they will begin moving in aircraft and other equipment within
three to four months, the source says. They are talking about
maintaining 100,000 troops long-term (in Iraq). The plan is for the
bases to be permanent.

Included in the "equipment" shipped into Iraq for the assault on
Iran will be tactical nuclear weapons, for use in targeting deep
underground installations, the consultant claims. The troop preparation
for the invasion of Iran, and the invasion itself, will be staged
from U.S. bases in Iraq, he adds.

They will need ground troops for the invasion of Iran, the consultant
says. A 100,000 troops is not enough, but its better than trying
to bring all of the necessary troops in from far away.

Within six months (prior to the upcoming Congressional elections),
the strategic bombing is slated to begin in Iran, the consultant
claims. However, he says because there are an estimated 100 or more
unknown underground sites that are being used as part of Irans
fledgling nuclear program, strategic bombing (even tactical nuclear
weapons) alone wont do the trick, the consultant says, which is why
the ground troops must be committed to the war effort.

The Bush Administration will launch the invasion with or without
the consent of Congress, the consultant claims. The legal justification
that will be used, according to information supplied to him by
Justice Department attorneys, is that the Iraq war resolution adopted
by Congress also authorizes the action in Iran.

The consultant adds that the rationale for the invasion currently
being packaged for the media and the American public by the Pentagon
(Irans supposed imminent nuclear-weapon threat) is a red herring
- -- the bait for the jaws of war.

Weve gone through nine reasons for going into Iraq, the consultant
says. They arent looking for reality here (in the planned Iran
invasion) either. The real reason for this (new war) is to rally
the American people to get the administration out of the horrible
bind theyre in.

Thats right, it is an election year, and the big threat to the Bush
Administration is not really Iran, after all. Rather, its a changing
of the guard in Washington that might put Democrats in the position
of setting up their own congressional committees with subpoena
power.

Like I said, check back at this link in six months to see if I did,
in fact, get an advance copy of the Iran War script.

However, I, for one, hope this Wag the Dog Tale never makes it to
production.

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: The Debate You're Not Hearing: Immigration and Trade
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/cff8e76b6c8091a4
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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The Debate You're Not Hearing: Immigration and Trade

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Michael Givel (activ-l)

Common Dreams - Apr 8, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org

The Debate You're Not Hearing: Immigration and Trade

by Andrew Christie

As immigration again becomes the hottest political topic in America, the
debate has again focused on higher fences and driver's licenses,
amnesties and guest worker programs. As always, a central fact has gone
largely unstated: Corporate globalization and U.S. trade policies have
more to do with how many people cross our borders illegally than U.S.
immigration policy or any potential reform thereof.

The exploitation of less developed countries in the economic
globalization framework known as free trade has resulted in their
financial and environmental impoverishment - both major causes of global
overpopulation and increased migration.

When the focus of the debate is U.S. immigration policy rather than the
nature of immigration, this reality is invisible. But a consensus has
begun to emerge. "At the turn of the millennium," said Marcelo
Suarez-Orozco in his presentation at the 2001 conference "Global shifts:
U.S. immigration and the cultural impact of demographic change," "we are
witnessing intense new worldwide migration and refugee flows...largely
structured by the intensification of globalization." The same year, the
Journal of Media and Culture noted "The privileging of rich migrants over
poor ones romanticizes globalization as corporate progress and ignores
the immense human suffering it entails for the majority of the world's
population.. These waves of internal migration also result in the
movement of peoples across national borders in order to survive."

The Globalization Caucus at the United Nations World Conference Against
Racism noted the "actions of transnational corporations, international
development and financial institutions...[that] heighten inequality among
and within states, increase pressure to migrate, and impede efforts to
fight racism and racial discrimination"

But word has not gotten around. While it's a given that over consumption
and waste is built in to the model of economic globalization, one seldom
hears it acknowledged that forced migration is also a consequence of the
increasing impoverishment of less developed nations, and therefore also
directly attributable to the role of free-trade style globalization. At
most, you might hear a vague comment that other countries should improve
the lot of their citizens so they won't flee to the U.S. and the riches
of the West, with no analysis of how that improvement should come about
or exactly what is preventing it.

Regardless of what you believe about resource consumption, overpopulation
or immigration in setting the bar for a sustainable society and healthy
environment, the problem is the economic engine of inequity that is
driving both wasteful consumption and forced migration. Tackling the
problem at its source means focusing our energies on a common strategy
with a common goal: Eliminating the growing chasm between the winning and
losing ends of the "free trade" equation. That means turning free trade
into fair trade.

"Restricting immigration to the United States won't solve the
environmental problems that force people to move in the first place, and
the increasing numbers of illegal immigrants indicate that restrictions
are more thumb-in-the-dike than viable policy," says Stephen Mills,
director of the Sierra Club's International Program. "The Sierra Club's
international efforts go to the headwaters, promoting environmentally
sustainable livelihoods that keep forests and families healthy, while
making polluting multinational corporations accountable and trade
agreements fair."

Or as environmental legend and past Sierra Club President David Brower
succinctly put it as he cast his sharp eye on the fallout from the North
American Free Trade Agreement: "Rather than complaining about immigration
from Mexico, the U.S. could stop causing it."

[Andrew Christie is a member of the Sierra Club's Responsible Trade
Committee.]

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Brit Military Resisters Threatened with Life Sentences
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d04caa94eff7caca
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Brit Military Resisters Threatened with Life Sentences

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Riaz K Tayob (activ-l) - Apr 15, 2006

NO life sentence for soldiers who refuse to be occupiers

The Armed Forces Bill now going through the UK Parliament would
impose harsh penalties on soldiers who refuse to take part in
military occupations.

Section 8 which has hardly been mentioned in the media -- introduces
a new tougher definition of desertion: soldiers who intend to avoid
serving in a /military occupation of a foreign country or territory/
can be imprisoned for life.

This major redrafting of military law has been introduced at a time
when the number of soldiers absconding from the British Army has
trebled since the invasion of Iraq a clear attack on the growing
movement of men and women in the military who refuse to be part of
wars, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran.... It contravenes the Nuremberg
Charter which enshrined in international law the responsibility
that each of us has to refuse to obey illegal and immoral orders
from any government. At the same time the UK Defence Secretary is
urging that the Geneva Convention be rewritten to legalise pre-emptive
military action.

Former SAS soldier Ben Griffin

Malcolm Kendall-Smith

George Solomou

British refuseniks: Ben Griffin, Ray Hewitt, Malcolm Kendall-Smith,
George Solomou

Poll after poll has demonstrated overwhelming public rejection of
the war and occupation of Iraq. This has been reflected in the
actions and views of troops who have refused to go, or go back, to
Iraq. Military families, mostly mothers, have campaigned against
the killing and maiming of their own loved ones and of the civilian
population in Iraq and elsewhere, and demanded that troops be brought
back home from a war nobody wants.

We are outraged that Section 8 of this Bill with its blatant violation
of the human rights of soldiers and in particular of their right
to conscientious objection -- is proceeding quickly through Parliament
without any public debate.

Please act now to stop this terrible miscarriage of justice from
becoming law.

NOTES

* See Independent on Sunday, of 19 March 2006
http://www.refusingtokill.net/UKGulfwar2/Soldiersgoingawolhavetrebled.htm

* Nuremberg Charter, Article 8: The fact that the Defendant acted
pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free
him from responsibility....

Payday is a network of men working with the Global Womens Strike

Invest in Caring not Killing.
See our website http://www.refusingtokill.net
Information: 0207 209 4751 payday@paydaynet.org

WHAT YOU CAN DO

* Write to the British Embassy or High Commission to let
them know your opposition to Section 8 of the Bill (see model letter
below or write your own) and cc payday@paydaynet.org
Details can be found at
http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029395231

* Sign the petition at Petition on Line
http://www.petitiononline.com/UKArmedF/petition.html

* Write to the press, newsletters, websites asking them to
publicise this attack on human rights.

* Tell all your contacts and networks anti-war, religious,
community, trade union - about it. Ask them to contact the British
Embassy/High Commission, the press and to sign the petition.

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Field & Stream Mag Editl Blasts Bush Regime
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/fefc70692b3cab3d
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Field & Stream Mag Editl Blasts Bush Regime

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Al Dykes (panix.chat.politics) - October, 2003

[What constituency can the Republicans piss off next? -AD]

Field & Stream Magazine - Oct, 2003 (see also May, 2006 issue)
http://www.fieldandstream.com/fieldstream/columnists/conservation/article/0,13199,489794,00.html

[Editor's note: This article appeared in the October 2003 issue of our
magazine. For the latest on this story, check out our May 2006
conservation column The Killing Fields: Unchecked energy development
is ruining your public hunting lands.]

Drilling the Wild

A voracious energy policy afflicts our public lands (this article was
first published in our October 2003 issue).

by Ted Kerasote

Rod and gun in hand, and backing the Second Amendment right to own
firearms, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have
won the hearts of Americas sportsmen. Yet the two men have failed to
protect outdoor sports on the nations public lands. With deep ties to
the oil and gas industry, Bush and Cheney have unleashed a national
energy plan that has begun to destroy hunting and fishing on millions
of federal acres throughout the West, setting back effective wildlife
management for decades to come.

The Invasion Begins

In his second week in office, President Bush convened a National
Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Vice President Cheney.
Meeting with representatives of the energy industry behind closed
doors, it eventually released a National Energy Policy, the goal of
which was to expedite permits and coordinate federal, state, and local
actions necessary for energy-related project approvals on a national
basis.

Put into practice through a series of executive orders, the policy has
prioritized drilling over other uses on federal lands, while
relegating long-standing conservation mandates from the 1960s and 70s
to the back burner. For example, in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado,
and New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management has approved over 75
percent of the energy industrys applications for exemptions to work in
critical winter range, heretofore closed to protect wildlifesage
grouse, mule deer, and pronghorns, in particular (the Federal Land
Policy Management Act of 1976 gave agencies the means to close
critical habitat). The BLM has also continued to issue drilling leases
while in the process of writing new resource management plans that
still await public comment. In addition, the Bush administration is
working hard to eliminate Wilderness Study areasset aside for their
scenic value as well as their importance to wildlife. Most
disturbingly, Congress is now debating a national energy bill that
would codify the policy, making it the law of the land rather than an
executive order. Subsequent administrationsbe they Republican or
Democraticwould be unable to institute a more balanced management plan
for our western lands without resorting to new congressional
legislation.

The results of these actionsbilled as promoting national energy
securityhave begun to turn vast tracts of the western United States
into industrial landscapes. The winners are the energy companies,
which have been able to acquire their leases for as little as $2 per
acre. The casualties are big game, upland birds, cold- and warmwater
fisheries, the traditional interests of hunters and anglers, and the
economic welfare of communities whose livelihoods are based on outdoor
recreation and ranching. The High Cost of Natural Gas

The Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern
Montanaapproximately 13 million acres of prairie, escarpments, and
mountainsprovides the starkest example of how the Bush administrations
unbridled energy policy is running roughshod over our public lands.
The BLMs final environmental impact statement for the area calls for
about 66,000 new coalbed methane (CBM) wells (about 14,000 have
already been drilled in Wyoming; several hundred in Montana), 26,000
miles of new roads, and 52,000 miles of new pipelines.

Peter Dube, an outfitter from Buffalo, Wyoming, has already felt these
impacts firsthand. My ranch is out in the sticks, he says, 60 miles
from Buffalo, 45 miles from Gillette, and Ive had to wait to pull onto
my county road because the truck traffic is so badwith smog like L.A.
Pronghorn and mule deer habitat has become fragmented, and his hunters
have lost what Dube calls the aesthetic experience of being in a
remote and quiet landscape.

Roads and pipelines arent the only way energy development is making
wildlife more vulnerable. Wherever there are coal seams, CBM is
trapped on the surface of the coal by water pressure. Pumping out the
groundwater releases the methane, which rises to the surface, where
its collected. However, each well discharges about 16,000 gallons of
salinized water per day43 million gallons per month for the Powder
River Basin alone. Not only are underground aquifers being rapidly
depleted, but the discharged water must be put someplace. Its been
spread over the landscape; its emptied into rivers; its collected in
infiltration pits. The salinized water kills forage for wildlife and
livestock, and it pollutes waterways. Art Hayes Jr., whose family has
ranched on the Tongue River since 1884, told me that the salinity
level in the Tongue has gone up fivefold seasonally since a CBM
company, Fidelity Exploration, began dumping water directly into the
river. Both a tailwater fishery for rainbow and brown trout and a
warmwater fishery for smallmouth bass and walleyes have been
jeopardized. As president of the Tongue River Water Users Association,
Hayes says that hes spent countless days trying to get CBM development
done halfway sanelyto no avail.

Energy, Over All Else

Western Colorados Roan Plateau is also potentially facing the same
sort of development thats taking place to the north: 20- to 40-acre
spacing of well heads, in a land that supports deer, elk, mountain
lions, black bears, turkeys, and a genetically pure strain of native
Colorado cutthroat trout. Such tight spacing puts in a lot of roads,
which fragments animal habitat and displaces varieties of game, making
them more vulnerable to stress and poaching. Keith Goddard, who lives
in Rifle and whose outfitting business caters to about 100 hunters and
anglers each year from across the United States, says, If the energy
companies put in wells at this spacing, Im out of business because of
the stress it causes on game. Id like to see one pad per 640 acres.

The know-how to secure energy in environmentally sound ways exists,
but the will to do so does not. Cheneys National Energy Policy
Development Group, in its report on the energy policy, says, Enormous
advances in technology have made oil and natural gas exploration and
production both more efficient and more environmentally sound. Better
technology means fewer rigs, more accurate drilling, greater resource
recovery and environmentally friendly exploration. Why, then, arent
advances in technology like directional drilling being used? Answer:
Its more expensive. The casualties of the energy companies
penny-pinching are fish and wildlife.

A New Kind of Wise Use

Rampant gas development has also come to my own backyard, Wyomings
Upper Green River Valley, a region thats home to the longest mule deer
and pronghorn migrations in the Lower 48. The BLM has permitted 4,176
gas wells with 5,000 to 7,000 more on the way, and Ive witnessed
pronghorn herds fleeing from seizmic thumper trucks only to be turned
around by hovering helicopters.

Despite our dismay at seeing western landscapes transformed in this
way, none of ushunter, angler, wildlife watchercan discount the need
for energy. We use it in our vehicles; we use it to heat our homes and
cook our meals. Clearly, something must be done to secure supplies.
But only 3 percent of the worlds oil and natural gas lies under
domestic soils, while we used 25 percent of the global total in 2002.
In other words, our energy security can never result from more
drilling in our public wildernesses. Of course, the worldwide quest
for fuel damages the environment wherever it is unleashed. As Doug
Grann, the president and CEO of Wildlife Forever, the conservation arm
of the North American Hunting and Fishing Club, points out, we cannot
sacrifice the wildlife and wild country of this planet while doing
nothing to develop alternative fuels and improving the fuel efficiency
of our cars, factories, and homes.

Legal efforts mounted by conservation organizations over the
inadequacies of the BLMs environmental impact statements, and input by
hunters and anglers to their senatorswho are now debating a national
energy billcan affect how much hunting and fishing will be left on
these federal lands.

Copyright © 2006 Time4 Media, Inc.

*
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NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: NYTimes Corrections 20 Days Late & Still Misunderestimating
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/37bcd989de103e43
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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NYTimes Corrections 20 Days Late & Still Misunderestimating

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Danny Burstein (panix.chat.politics) - Apr 14, 2005

But it only took 20 days for this correction to appear. Only 20..

"An article on March 27 about a discussion between President Bush and
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain in January 2003 about the prospect of
an invasion of Iraq referred imprecisely to Resolution 1441, adopted the
previous November by the United Nations Security Council. The resolution
said the Council had 'repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious
consequences as a result of its continued violations,' but it did not say
the Council 'authorized' consequences.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html
(url will change)

*
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Nicaragua Network Hotline - Apr 12, 2006
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/86d0a896fc4d23bd
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Nicaragua Network Hotline - Apr 12, 2006

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

NicaNet-Action mailing list
http://lists.afgj.org/mailman/listinfo/nicanet-action

Nicaragua Network Hotline
http://www.nicanet.org

April 12, 2006

Topics covered in this hotline include:

1. U.S. Ambassador Trivelli offers to finance right-wing unity
primary elections; call State Department!
2. FETSALUD announces end of five month strike
3. Fifty per cent of buses back on Managua's streets
4. First meeting of Indigenous communities of the Pacific
5. Dramatic story of Nicaraguan captured by US Immigration agents

1. Trivelli offers to finance right-wing unity primary elections;
call State Department!

On April 5, US Ambassador to Nicaragua Paul Trivelli sent a letter
to the leaders and presidential candidates of right-wing parties
offering financial and technical help to unite the Nicaraguan right
wing for the general election in November. US Embassy spokesperson
Preeti Shah said she could neither confirm nor deny the existence
of the letter, saying "We do not discuss the Ambassador's private
correspondence." However, Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC)
president Jorge Castillo confirmed that he had received a letter
from Trivelli offering a donation to finance primary elections for
a united right-wing alliance.

Trivelli said in his letter that he was responding to requests by
Nicaraguan "democratic parties" for US support in their mission to
keep Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega from a presidential victory.
"As part of my government's efforts to respond to these requests
to promote democratic practices and free elections in Nicaragua,
the US is willing to collaborate in this process," reads the letter.
Trivelli went on to insist that all parties must reply to this
proposal with a list of their candidates by April 18th.

The PLC, however, rejected the offer. Former President Arnoldo
Aleman's daughter, Maria Dolores Aleman said Trivelli made this
proposal to the right-wing parties because "he knows his preferred
candidate [Eduardo Montealegre] has no chance of winning."

The general secretary of Montealegre's National Liberal Alliance
(ALN), Eliseo Nuqez, did accept the invitation although Montealegre
himself reiterated his stance again this week that he will not ally
with the PLC while Aleman still controls the party. The other
right-wing parties which received the letter, including President
Enrique Bolaqos' party Alliance for the Republic (APRE), the
Conservative Party (PC), the Christian Path Party (CC), and the
National Resistance Party (PRN), have not yet replied to the
invitation.

There was uproar within the Nicaraguan media at Trivelli's actions
which were compared in several news outlets to the Dodd Law passed
in 1923 that allowed the US Marines to administer and supervise the
general elections of 1928. During that year, a US General named
McCoy was named president of the Supreme Electoral Council. This
week "the US intervention was so blatant that even some right-wing
sectors felt awkward and had to reject the offer," said the El Nuevo
Diario editorial on April 6.

Sandinista party leader Daniel Ortega reminded Trivelli that the
Vienna Convention "expressly prohibits diplomats from interfering
in internal matters of the country where they are assigned. At the
International Socialist Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean
(IS) meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay, last week, Tomas Borge, who
serves as Vice General Secretary of the Sandinista Party, denounced
Trivelli's actions in Nicaragua. This prompted the organization
to issue a press statement condemning diplomatic representatives'
interference in the electoral process. "We are particularly concerned
about the consistent intervention of US Ambassadors in Central
America," read the statement.

Ambassador Trivelli's repeated interventionist actions are grounds
for his removal from his post. Call the State Department comment
line today at (202) 647-6575 and leave a message explaining that
Ambassador Paul Trivelli's continued statements and actions have
crossed the line between diplomacy and intervention in Nicaragua's
internal affairs.

Also visit the Nicaragua Network web page at www.nicanet.org for
more information and a sample letter to your senators and representative
asking them to speak out against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua's
electoral process.

2. FETSALUD announces end of five month strike

Gustavo Porras, General Secretary of the Federation of Health Workers
(FETSALUD) announced on April 6 that, after nearly five months,
FETSALUD was ending the union's strike and that its 23,000 members,
who are health workers in the Nicaraguan public health system, would
be returning to work.

The agreement signed by Porras, Minister of Health Margarita Gurdian
and Minister of Public Finance Mario Flores consists of 16 points
which, among other things, guarantee an extra US$1.76 million for
medicines in public hospitals and health centers and a 30% pay raise
for all health workers who do not currently earn at least US$1176
per year (16.75% on top of the 13.25% pay increase designated to
health workers in the 2006 budget). MINSA also committed itself to
1) canceling all current contracts with private health companies
which provide services within the public sector and 2) working
towards cheaper medicines by promoting the sale of generic drugs.

However, the Pro Salary Doctors Federation, which represents 3,300
of the 3,500 doctors working within the public health sector, has
still to sign an agreement with the government which would put an
end to members' five month long strike. Elio Artola, Director of
the Pro Salary Doctors Federation, announced on April 7 that he had
come to an agreement with Finance Minister Mario Flores to raise
doctors' salaries by an extra 13.25% on top of the 30% guaranteed
for all health workers in the agreement signed by FETSALUD. Minister
Flores denied that any such agreement had been reached with the
Director of the Doctors' Federation saying "no concrete decisions
came out of my meeting" with Artola.

Health Minister Gurdian said that there had been a 10% rise in
infant mortality and a 6% increase in maternal mortality as a result
of the strike. She also feared an outbreak of rotavirus which
affected tens of thousands of Nicaraguan children and elderly people
last year. According to Gurdian "even if health workers worked
double shifts from tomorrow"

the backlog of consultations, surgeries and other work would not
be caught up by the end of the year. It is likely her assessment
underestimates the much more tragic reality of a population living
in desperate poverty which has had no access to healthcare since
November.

It is unclear if the agreement with FETSALUD will meet with the
approval of the IMF, which has conditions future loans on keeping
social spending down.

3. Fifty per cent of buses back on Managua's streets

On April 5, Maria Auxialidora Aleman, First Secretary of the National
Assembly, announced that the two bills affecting public transportation
in Managua had been sent to assembly committees and would not be
discussed until April 25 - 27. Aleman explained that it was not
clear how the first bill, the budget reform which would allot a
US$2 million public transportation subsidy to cover costs for
February and March, would affect the 2006 Budget and whether the
bill should be amended before being debated by the Assembly. The
other bill, which would have Managua's public transportation
administered directly by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure
(MTI), has apparently caused an uproar among other regional transport
cooperatives and this has caused legislative delays.

These two bills were sent to the National Assembly by President
Enrique Bolaqos in mid-February after an agreement had been reached
with striking bus owners who complained that soaring oil prices had
made their work financially nonviable. They demand either a government
subsidy of US$1.18 million a month or permission to raise bus fares
from US$0.15 to US$0.18. Bolaqos had promised a US$2 million subsidy
for February and March followed by authorization from the MTI to
raise bus fares in April. The National Assembly's failure to pass
Bolaqos' bills has caused anger among public transport cooperatives
who called another full stoppage on April 4. Fifty per cent of the
buses went back to work on April 5, however, after Aleman announced
that the bills would not be discussed until the end of the month.
Some of the buses which returned to work were charging the unauthorized
fare of US$0.18.

6. First meeting of Indigenous communities of the Pacific

The first meeting of indigenous communities of the Nicaragua's
Pacific region took place on April 4. The event was organized and
funded by the Human Rights Ombudsman office and the Office of
Dutch-Nicaraguan Cooperation with the aim of discussing and defining
the communities' rights as well as their demands before the central
government.

Carlos Lenys, technical advisor of the indigenous people of Mozonte,
said the main problem faced by this community is the usurpation of
their communal land which results from a generalized failure to
respect the people's traditional systems among society as a whole.
"We are defending our autonomy and the rational use of the natural
resources found on our land, especially water and forests," explains
Lenys. "INAFOR (National Institute of Agriculture and Forestry) has
recently authorized timber logging companies to exploit timber
resources within our land without consulting the leaders of the
community."

Mario Raul Padilla, Director of the Office of Dutch-Nicaraguan
Cooperation, said that, "Article 5 of Nicaragua's constitution
establishes the rights of the ethnic minorities in the Caribbean
region.

But there are indigenous communities in over ten municipalities of
the Pacific region who urgently need adequate legislation which
recognizes their rights."

7. Dramatic story of Nicaraguan captured by US Immigration agents

A twenty three year old Nicaraguan mother of four who has lived in
Camden, New Jersey, for over five years is awaiting deportation
after fifteen armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents
forced their way into her home on March 21 and arrested her. Marta
Ramos said the agents were carrying sub-machine guns and, after
breaking down the door, they threw her on the sofa, hit her and
handcuffed her before saying they had a deportation order for her.
She was detained for fourteen hours but convinced the agents to
release her because there was no one else who could look after her
children of four months, one, two and three years (all of whom were
born in the US), one of whom has Down's Syndrome.

Ramos says she has still not been shown the order against her, but
has been told she has until April 24 to prepare herself and her
children for deportation. "All my family lives here, I have nothing
in Nicaragua,"

says Ramos whose husband and the father of her children is from the
Dominican Republic but has legal status in the US. So far her family
has raised US$1,000 for the costs of legal assistance. She has
called on Hispanic leaders in the US to intercede in the case.

**********

This hotline is prepared from the Nicaragua News Service and other
sources. To receive a more extensive weekly summary of the news
from Nicaragua by e-mail or postal service, send a check for $60.00
to Nicaragua Network, 1247 E St., SE, Washington, DC 20003. We can
be reached by phone at 202-544-9355. Our web site is: www.nicanet.org.
To subscribe to the Hotline, send an e-mail to nicanet@afgj.org

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: ANOTHER "ERROR" TODAY
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/5c01587375d4ea84
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 7:40 pm
From: "serwad"

Roadside bomb hits US troop near Fallujah

www.chinaview.cn 2006-04-15 20:04:34
Special Report: Tension accelerates in Iraq

BAGHDAD, April 15 (Xinhua) - A roadside bomb struck a U.S. patrol in a town
near Fallujah on Saturday, destroying a U.S. Humvee, a local police source
said.

"An explosive charge, planted on the road between Fallujah City and Amriyat
al-Fallujah town, went off at about 7:00 a.m. (0300 GMT)," the source told
Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

"The blast destroyed a U.S. Humvee, killing and wounding all aboard," the
source said, adding the blast prompted the U.S. patrol to open fire randomly
at nearby houses.

The U.S. troops continued random shooting for 15 minutes, wounding three
civilians, including a woman, and damaging several houses, the source said.

Iraq's western Anbar province, which includes Ramadi, Fallujah and Qaim, has
long been witnessing tensions as insurgents frequently attack US troops and
Iraq's fledgling security forces. Enditem

Editor: Lin Li

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/15/content_4428275.htm

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Shocking Pictures from Turkey!
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/628595681c318dac
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 4:40 pm
From: "SHIT THE DUMB JURK"

Ali Asker wrote:
> "Ilgaz Ocal" <ilgaz_ocal@yahoo.com > wrote in message
> news:4abst8Fs8juoU1@individual.net...
> > On 2006-04-14 22:54:59 +0300, "Ali Asker" <pasa_asker@kurdistan.kd> said:
> >
> >> The village guard : Turkish army used chemical weapon
> >
> > Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and they are not
> > suitable to kill 10 people on open fields.
> >
> > Ask any army officer, whatever side you pick.
>
> I KNEW YOU WERE FUCKEN TURKISH SCUMBEG

Stop your BEGGING filthy PKK terrorist BEGGAR !

You will be flown to Gatwick from Belfast city, accompanied by an
Immigration officer, you will be put on a special deportation flight to
Istanbul

On arrival at Istanbul you will be immediately arrested and you will
face trial for those crimes you fled Turkiye to evade

Justice will be done

Britain will be free of parasitical, terrorist glorifying SCUM

Hoshcha kalun aptal maymun

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Brit Pentagon Hacker Fears Being Sent to Gitmo Gulag
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/368c16c13c87d501
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:40 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Brit Pentagon Hacker Fears Being Sent to Gitmo Gulag

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

BBC News - Apr 12, 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/4905036.stm

British 'hacker' fears Guantanamo

A British man accused of being behind the largest ever hack of US government
computer networks could end up at Guantanamo Bay, his lawyer has claimed.
Gary McKinnon, from London, denies causing $700,000 (=A3400,000) damage to
military and Nasa systems in 2001-2.

Bow Street Magistrates' Court was told the 40-year-old feared a prosecution
might take place under US anti-terror laws if it agreed to his extradition.
The US said Mr McKinnon had assurances he would be tried in a federal court.
But defence lawyers said his human rights could be breached if he was sent
to the US.

Mr McKinnon was remanded on bail until 10 May when District Judge Nicholas
Evans will rule whether the extradition will go ahead.

'Administrative revenge' Much of the hearing was taken up with argument over
whether Mr McKinnon would be subject to Military Order Number One - a legal
procedure which enables the president to specify that suspects can be
detained indefinitely.

Mark Summers, representing the US government, said there was no precedent to
suggest the US would breach its promises, and the court should take on
"faith" the undertaking.

Defence lawyer Edmund Lawson said the US Embassy in London had provided an
"unsigned and anonymous" diplomatic note and said Mr McKinnon was still
"vulnerable" to such an order.

He said the US had not given a guarantee he will face a federal court trial.
"The US government wants to extract some kind of species of administrative
revenge because he exposed their security systems as weak and helpless as
they were," Mr Lawson added.

Mr McKinnon is accused of hacking into computers in 14 states, including at
the Pentagon and naval weapon station Earle.

At an earlier hearing his lawyers suggested his actions were not malicious -
he had been trying to expose lax computer security and access what he
believed was withheld information about UFOs.

(c) BBC MMVI

*
================================================================
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Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Hersh vs. Bush: Who Would You Believe?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/ba628ff46dad22bc
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 4:40 pm
From: "Purple Roses"

NY.Transfer.N...@blythe.org wrote:
>
> Hersh vs. Bush: Who Would You Believe?
>

Is this a trick question? Who told us about WMD that was never there?

As they've said "fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, screw me
you should".

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Government Goons Murder Puppies
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d5d011b0e073077d
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 11:41 pm
From: "SheBlewHimDidYouBlowHim"

so, start killing cops, problem solved

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Tax Resisters: When the IRS Shows Up, They Don't Answer
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/835ab6749f3bfe87
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 4:42 pm
From: "Möbius Pretzel"

NY.Transfer.N...@blythe.org wrote:

> Tax Resisters: When the IRS Shows Up, They Don't Answer
>
> See also: "Tax Day Protests Across US - Apr 17, 2006," distrb'd Apr 9, 2006
> http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20060403/035347.html
>
> The website of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee:
> http://www.nwtrcc.org
>
>
> The Christian Science Monitor via TruthOut - Apr 14, 2006
> http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041406S.shtml
>
> When the Tax Man Cometh, They Don't Answer the Bell
>
> By Chris Gaylord
>
> Tax resisters say refusal to pay all or part of their taxes is an
> act of civil disobedience. The IRS and US courts say it's illegal.
>
> When Ruth Benn of Brooklyn filed her federal income taxes this
> week, she left out an important element: the check.
>
> "In good conscience I cannot pay this money to the US
> government," Ms. Benn wrote in a letter to the IRS that accompanied
> a completed, but unpaid, 1040 form. "I do not want my tax dollars
> to be used for killing and war."

A *REAL* fucking American!
Are there any left?!

> Benn joins an estimated 10,000 Americans refusing to pay their
> federal taxes this year in protest of US military power. Many of
> these conscientious objectors - some driven by personal politics,
> some by religious beliefs - plan to donate their tax obligation to
> charity instead.
>
> The Internal Revenue Service does not keep a count of tax
> resisters, but they're no doubt a tiny fraction of the 120 million
> people expected to file to Uncle Sam. Though her evidence is
> anecdotal, Benn sees their ranks growing, noting that three years
> into the Iraq war her tax-resister clearinghouse has more than
> doubled its online readership, from 200 hits a day to about 500.
>
> Of course, not paying taxes is against the law. Federal courts
> have rejected protesters' right to withhold taxes, regardless of
> the motive, says IRS spokesman Robert Marvin. Although few tax
> resisters ever face charges, the IRS has cracked down on some
> offenders.
>
> Last July, a US District judge sentenced three members of the
> Restored Israel of Yahweh church, which preaches against war taxes,
> to six months in prison for tax evasion and openly allowing
> employees of their New Jersey construction company to avoid their
> income taxes.
>
> "On rare occasions, if a person has owed a lot of money over a
> lot of time, the IRS may go after them," says attorney Peter
> Goldberger, who is handling the appeal for two of the Restored
> Israel of Yahweh worshipers. "But criminal prosecution is rare to
> the point that it is almost not heard of."
>
> In general, the IRS treats tax resisters as it does millions of
> other Americans who are behind on their taxes, Mr. Goldberger says.
> Fines and interest accumulate, but legal action is usually reserved
> for fraudulent or egregious cases.
>
> Jim Allen, a retired Army social worker now teaching at St.
> Louis University, knows he is breaking the law by withholding some
> of his income taxes. But last year he and his wife, Jan, became fed
> up with the billions of dollars spent to fund the war in Iraq and
> decided to take a moral stand.
>
> "I am not opposed to paying taxes, but I am when such a large
> percent is going to pay for war," says Mr. Allen, who served in the
> Army for 20 years.
>
> The White House says 19 cents of every tax dollar goes to
> military spending. Many tax resisters dispute the way that figure
> is calculated. Allen believes the number is closer to 42 percent,
> so he and his wife withheld about $1,300 - 42 percent of what they
> owe the IRS this year.
>
> "I see the military getting more and more funding while
> education and healthcare get less and less," he says. "As Roman
> Catholics, my wife and I know that is wrong and immoral."
>
> Becky Pierce of Boston says she evades the IRS by not filing at
> all. Each April she fills out a 1040 form to determine how much
> she'll donate to charity, then puts the income tax form in her
> filing cabinet.
>
> Ms. Pierce says she is part of a long American tradition of tax
> resistance, reaching back to when revolutionaries tossed tea into
> Boston Harbor. But to follow in the footsteps of American
> protesters such as Henry David Thoreau - who went to jail for
> withholding taxes during the Mexican-American War - Pierce says she
> must live on a Walden Pond level of thrift. "You need to have
> control of your money," she says. "I'm a self-employed carpenter.
> No one is reporting what I make. That's why I can go unnoticed."
>
> But Jim Stockwell of Micaville, N.C., refuses to take a vow of
> poverty for what he considers "a simple act of conscience." He
> laughs about how he never paid income taxes while working as a
> vitamin supplement salesman in Maine and a Home Depot employee in
> North Carolina.
>
> "I made bundles and bundles of money and gave bundles away [to
> charity]," Mr. Stockwell says. "I arranged my life my own way and
> the IRS never caught up with me."
>
> Rather than chase down war tax resisters, the IRS often seizes
> back taxes by garnishing wages or bank accounts.
>
> Allen assumes the IRS will catch up with him eventually and
> regrets he'll probably need to pay back far more than he refused to
> pay. "Sooner or later, they're going to get their money," he says.
> "But until that happens, I'm going to continue protesting. This is
> too important not to."
>
> While Goldberger does not practice tax resistance - and as a
> lawyer is barred from advising anyone how to do so - he counsels
> those who have hit legal trouble on how to minimize the damage. His
> advice: Be honest.
>
> "The IRS would never admit this, but I've found that they go
> easier on people with sincere beliefs [who] are open about those
> beliefs," he says. "If you are open and honest, you will find it
> far easier than if you are sneaky."
>
> *
> ================================================================
> NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
> Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
> 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
> List Archives: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: EUSSIAN AID TO HAMAS
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d18a61b9beb1e165
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 7:44 pm
From: "serwad"

Russia offers aid to Hamas
By: /Reuters on: 15.04.2006 [12:32 ] (52 reads)

Russia said it had promised emergency aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian
Authority, breaking with fellow mediators the EU and the US, which have
stopped funding to try to force Hamas to recognise Israel.

(1834 bytes) [c]

A Foreign Ministry statement said the offer came in a telephone conversation
on Friday between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas.

"Mahmoud Abbas highly appreciated the intention of Russia, confirmed by
Lavrov, to grant the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority urgent financial aid in
the nearest time," it said.

Russia is a member of the quartet of Middle East mediators searching for an
end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with the United Nations, the
EU and the United States.

The United States and the European Union have halted direct aid to the
Palestinian Authority because it has not renounced violence, recognised
Israel or agreed to abide by interim peace deals.

Washington has barred American citizens and organisations from most business
dealings with the Palestinian Authority.

Israel has also blocked the transfer of customs and tax receipts.

Mr Larvov had earlier criticised the halting of aid, though he has urged
Hamas to meet the demands of international mediators.

He said the only way to make Hamas meet international demands was to work
with it, not boycott it.

It was wrong to deny aid to the Palestinians "purely because in democratic
elections they elected a government made up entirely out of Hamas members
... we are convinced that this approach is mistaken", he was quoted as
saying last Tuesday.

Russia is the only major power to have received Hamas on an official visit
since its landslide win in Palestinian parliamentary elections in January.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday the "unholy
alliance" led by the United States would not bring down the new Hamas
government and warned of grave consequences if it did.

-Reuters

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200604/s1616810.htm

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end

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Too late on global warming?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/04df8d16eee15557
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 4:48 pm
From: "Purple Roses"

info@economicdemocracy.org wrote:
> "up to 64 per cent of China's glaciers may be gone by 2050. If that
> happens, the lives of 300 million Chinese, who depend on the glaciers
> for water, will be at risk."

Perhaps this is how nature deals with over-populated human? Let's say
half of the Chiinese population is somehow vanished, there are still
over 700 millions more on Earth. That's more than twice the population
of the US and more than 30 times that of Australia!

So, what's the big fuss?

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Sri Lanka 'Body parts everywhere'
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/8c8b61225f3adb1a
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 15 2006 4:52 pm
From: "Lokku Banda"

karthika wrote:
> In Vanni
> Body parts are for sale now!
> Anton Balsingam got soem free.
> Now Nordics sell body parts of Tamil kids!
>
WHERE R U HIDING YOUR BODY PARTS ? INSIDE THE UNDIES THE CANADIANS GAVE
YOU FOR FREE ?

> "Karuval Suntha" <ksuntha@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1145042661.216359.272150@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > Eyewitness: 'Body parts everywhere'
> >
> > There have been reports of other blasts across Trincomalee
> > Several people have been killed by a bomb blast in a vegetable market
> > in Sri Lanka's north-eastern town of Trincomalee.
> >
> > Fish wholesaler, Lahiru Hettige, was at the fish market when the bomb
> > exploded nearby.
> >
> >
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> >
> > I was inside my shop when I heard an enormous noise from the market.
> >
> > I knew it was a bomb. There was nothing else it could be. We are used
> > to this sort of thing in Trincomalee, we are used to violence and
> > blasts.
> >
> > We immediately ran outside and there were scenes of chaos in the
> > vegetable market - that was where the bomb had gone off.
> >
> > I could see about 20 bodies around the place. There were body parts
> > everywhere. I could see that the one army personnel had died.
> >
> > People were running all over the place: I could see that the dead and
> > injured included young children and women.
> >
> > It was such a shocking sight.
> >
> > It happened in the middle of the market and there was a lot of traffic,
> > trishaws, vans, bicycles. Somebody said the bomb was a packaged as a
> > parcel on a bicycle.
> >
> > 'Blood everywhere'
> >
> > You can't look at scenes like that. There was blood everywhere, there
> > was a terrible burning smell - I couldn't bear it.
> >
> > Those who came with the people who had been killed just screamed and
> > screamed. I didn't touch the bodies. I called for people to come and
> > help take them to hospital.
> >
> > They were loaded into cars and trishaws and taken away.
> >
> > The police, navy and army all turned up and they are still there
> > dealing with the carnage.
> >
> > This is the last day of the old year. Tomorrow it is Sinhala and Tamil
> > new year now. The market was so crowded. Everybody was shopping for the
> > food to celebrate, buying rice, fish and vegetables.
> >
> > No celebration
> >
> > People are saying this is the work of the LTTE - it must be them. Is
> > this any way to start a new year?
> >
> > All the businesses have shut. Everything is silent. Nothing is going
> > on. People have gone home. We can't even think of having a New Year.
> >
> > We cannot celebrate. It is all tragedy now. When I look at the site,
> > there is just broken glass.
> >

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