Website / newspaper / journal / web based media updates: Mar 28th -April 4th : Blog here!

by Asamblea Florida Este Tue Mar 30, 2004 05:02

Mediactivism texts, Global War and more
The Asamblea Florida Este / AFE (Argentina) has just been upgraded the MEDIACTIVISM dossier, with the complete translation of Mediactivism book, released in Italy.
We also included a GLOBAL WAR dossier and more.

NOTE: the site and texts are in spanish

Asamblea Popular de Florida Este
http://www.sindominio.net/afe

e-mail:
afe@sindominio.net

by redjade Tue Mar 30, 2004 16:02

Joe Conason interviews Richard Clarke

Richard Clarke was the National Security Council's
counterterrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and W Bush ... what he has to say is rocking US politics now. This interview reveals much and well worth the reading.

One 'conspiracy theory' that has been kicked around on the net only a few months after Sept 11 2001 was if the Bush Admin escorted Saudi Royals living in the USA out of the country at a time that ALL OTHER PLANES were grounded. Nothing was allowed in the air in the days immediately after the attack, except military planes - and, apparently Saudi Royals leaving the scene of the crime.

Bush defenders have always claimed that this story was nonsense, but now Bush's ex-Counter-Terrorism chief conforms the story....

- - - - -
Q. Were you aware of the Saudi airlifts of their nationals after 9/11,
at the time that they were happening?

A. What I am aware of is that sometime after 9/11, in the days
immediately thereafter, the Saudi embassy requested to evacuate some
of its nationals because it feared there would be retribution. That
information came to me and I was asked to approve it. I said no, I
would not approve it, until the FBI approved it. And I asked the FBI
to approve it, to look at the names of people on the flight manifests,
and the FBI approved it.

Now, there's a big tempest about this in retrospect. People think the
FBI should have done a better job of looking at the names. The FBI
could have called me and said they wanted more time, and I would have
given it to them. They could have said they want this individual or
that individual detained, and I would have said fine. I am still
unaware to this day of anyone who left on any of those flights who the
FBI now wants.

by pat c Tue Mar 30, 2004 18:40

Flash mob to attempt supercomputing feat

An attempt to transform a motley collection of laptops into the first ad-hoc supercomputer is about to go ahead, thanks to software written at the University of San Francisco.

On Saturday 3 April, over 1000 laptop owners will converge on the university gym in an attempt to build a "flash mob" supercomputer. The project's organisers hope that FlashMob will run fast enough to beat supercomputers in the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers.

by redjade Wed Mar 31, 2004 00:59

''When you look at the war and you look at the reasons that took
us to war and you don't find that any of the things that we were
told that we're going to war for turned out to be true, [....]
When you don't find there are weapons of mass destruction and
when you don't find that there was a link between Saddam Hussein
and al Qaeda and you see that you're not helping the people and
the people don't want you there and, to me, there's no military
contract and no military duty that's going to justify being a
part of that war.''

- US Army Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia
{ Now Iraq War Resister, Charged with AWOL }

American War Resister

by redjade Wed Mar 31, 2004 01:44

More than a year after the launch of the Iraqi War, the U.S. has no answer to a fairly straightforward question: how many Iraqis have been killed in the invasion and occupation of their country? The U.S. can't say how many Iraqis have been killed for a very simple reason: it doesn't keep count.

"We don't keep a list. It's just not policy," Pentagon spokeswoman Lieutenant Commander Jane Campbell explained to the New York Times earlier this month

more at....

by redjade Wed Mar 31, 2004 14:25

Emotional Elder Bush Attacks Son's Critics

An emotional former President George H.W. Bush on Tuesday
defended his son's Iraq war and lashed out at White House critics.

It is "deeply offensive and contemptible" to hear "elites and
intellectuals on the campaign trail" dismiss progress in Iraq
since last year's overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the
elder Bush said in a speech to the National Petrochemical and
Refiners Association annual convention.

"There is something ignorant in the way they dismiss the
overthrow of a brutal dictator and the sowing of the seeds of
basic human freedom in that troubled part of the world," he said.

The former president appeared to fight back tears as he
complained about media coverage of the younger Bush that he
called "something short of fair and balanced."

"It hurts an awful lot more when it's your son that is being
criticized than when they used to get all over my case," said
Bush, who has often complained about media coverage of both Bush
presidencies.

by redjade Wed Mar 31, 2004 21:11

The steadily deteriorating security situation in the Falluja area, west of Baghdad, has become so dangerous that no American soldiers or Iraqi security staff responded to the attack against the contractors.

There are a number of police stations in Falluja and a base of more than 4,000 marines nearby. But even while the two vehicles burned, sending plumes of inky smoke over the closed shops of the city, there were no ambulances, no fire engines and no security.

Instead, Falluja's streets were thick with men and boys and chaos.

Boys with scarves over their faces hurled bricks into the burning vehicles. A group of men dragged one of the smoldering corpses into the street and ripped it apart. Someone then tied a chunk of flesh to a rock and tossed it over a telephone wire.

``Viva mujahadeen!'' shouted Said Khalaf, a taxi driver. ``Long live the resistance!''

Nearby, a boy no older than 10 put his foot on the head of a body and said: ``Where is Bush? Let him come here and see this!''

username: salon
password: tabletalk

by redjade Wed Mar 31, 2004 21:37

How did an unsigned document about Iraq posted on to an open website by an unknown individual, which makes no mention of terror attacks in Europe, come to be seen as a 'blueprint' for Madrid, as an 'instruction' from on high that Spain should be bombed, as evidence that al-Qaeda, no less, plotted the train attacks in Madrid as a means of deposing Aznar, and that it was, in the words of Andrew Sullivan, 'stunningly successful'? How did a document that is not aimed at Islamist militants in Spain, and which contains no instruction to plant bombs in Spain, and which we cannot be certain was ever read by anyone in Spain, come to be viewed as the instruction manual for the terror in Spain on 11 March?


This is a result of our obsession with al-Qaeda, and our desire to see al-Qaeda's hand behind every terror attack. The way in which this anonymous document has been held up as an explanation for what happened in Madrid shows that it is we who read meaning into contemporary terror attacks, rather than those attacks necessarily having any meaning. The attribution of almost every attack to al-Qaeda, and to a clear political aim on al-Qaeda's behalf, is not only inaccurate - it also has a potentially destabilising effect. It can encourage other groups (or, indeed, loners) to post documents on to websites, to send scary-sounding emails, to post letters to the French government threatening to launch an attack unless it repeals the ban on French schoolgirls wearing the Muslim veil, all of which are guaranteed to grab the headlines and convulse entire nations in our al-Qaeda-obsessed world.


The truth is, we still don't know who bombed Madrid or why - and creating stories to make sense of the bombings is likely to create more problems.

by redjade Thu Apr 01, 2004 12:56

As the 9-11 Commission continues its focus on why more wasn't done to prevent the terror attacks, a public inquiry set to begin in the next few weeks in Canada may reveal long-hidden secrets about the abuses of America's war on terror. Headed by a judge, it will investigate why Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was flying home to Montreal in 2002, was detained by the U.S. authorities at JFK Airport, and then escorted through Jordan to Syria, where he said he was tortured and kept in a grave-like cell for 10 months. Arar was finally cleared by a Syrian court and sent back to Canada, where he hasn't been charged with any crime.

[....]

"[F]ederal officials removed Mr. Arar to Syria under the Government's 'extraordinary renditions' program precisely because Syria could use methods of interrogation to obtain information from Mr. Arar that would not be legally or morally acceptable in this country or in other democracies," the group charged.

by redjade Thu Apr 01, 2004 13:12

Rahul Mahajan, who wrote 'Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond' ( http://www.rahulmahajan.com ) has his own blog at http://www.empirenotes.org/

Sample:
''Angola, like many other southern African nations in recent years, has concerns about donated GM foods. Zambia barred them outright; Angola is taking a milder position, just asking for the grains to be milled, so that there is no chance they will germinate and contaminate the local flora. Unfortunately, because of the emergency nature of this and the small milling capacity in Angola, this will result in serious delays.

The Times says the United States has "accused governments of placing political and theoretical concerns above the survival of their own people." Nowhere in the article does it say that anyone accuses the United States of taking advantage of humanitarian emergencies to insert GM crops and take over the markets of other countries, despite the very legitimate concerns about those crops.''

http://www.empirenotes.org/

by redjade Thu Apr 01, 2004 13:58

Greg Palast in an interview....

Most people don’t realize that Poppy Bush had a gold mine: Barrick Gold Mining Corp. Just before Mr. Bush left office at the request of two-thirds of the American people, he changed the rules for gold mine claims, allowing one corporation named Barrick to lay claim to a $10 billion gold mine, the biggest in the United States, and pay the U.S. Treasury $10,000. They then gave President Bush a lucrative job as their senior international advisor. Barrick got the gold mine, the public got the shaft and Poppy got the job.

The company said in suing my paper, the Guardian in Britain, that any reasonable person reading these facts would conclude that they’re connected. So I’ve gotta say they’re not connected. To beat these guys we piled up tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills that I personally incurred even though I wasn’t personally sued, my paper was, to defend the truth. Furthermore, this same company bought a gold mining company with George Bush’s help, which cleared a site in Tanzania by running bulldozers across it to push out the miners who were there. And the evidence we received, including photographs and witness statements, was that when the bulldozers ran across the property 50 miners were still in their pits and they were buried alive. I reported that, that Bush’s operation was buying this mine and benefited from this clearance and they demanded that I not just give their side of the story; they wanted me to say that I could verify that no one died.

[....]

If you’re a member of Amnesty International, quit, because it reported the killings but when it was threatened it removed all references to it and refused to support the Tanzanians. One of my sources in Tanzania has been charged with sedition for giving me this material. This is serious stuff. And not many people are willing to stand up to the heat.

by redjade Thu Apr 01, 2004 15:16

The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations to save $12 million, a Congressional hearing was told on Tuesday.

The Internal Revenue Service had asked for 80 more criminal investigators beginning in October to join the 160 it has already assigned to penetrate the shadowy networks that terrorist groups use to finance plots like the Sept. 11 attacks and the recent train bombings in Madrid. But the Bush administration did not include them in the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year.

Username: salon
Password: tabletalk

by Donnacha - news.amnesty Thu Apr 01, 2004 18:25

Amnesty criticises UK government over Finucane case.
In failing to establish an immediate public inquiry into the killing of human rights lawyer Patrick Finucane, the UK government is making a mockery of its commitment to ascertaining the truth and to the rule of law, said Amnesty International today. Using one outstanding prosecution as the excuse further undermines the government 's credibility and raises more questions as to its real intention.

"This is a major opportunity to establish the truth behind Patrick Finucane's killing and justice for his family. The UK government's refusal to establish an immediate public inquiry is shameful," Amnesty International said.

by Ida Fri Apr 02, 2004 08:28 ida at fresnomail dot com

Strange to hear the patrician George HW complain that 'elies' are bashing Junior (Yale, Harvard Business School). I think it is us peons who are bearing the brunt of his misguided policies (see www.bringthemhomenow.org) As I recall Daddy Bush arranged Junior's short visit with the Air National Guard while his poorer compatriots were dying in an unjust war. As far as the charge that intellectuals are criticizing Junior, well, what can I say but he does it to himself.

This is a short poem made up entirely of actual
quotations from George W. Bush. These have been
arranged, only for aesthetic purposes, by Washington
Post writer, Richard Thompson. A wonderful
Haiku poem like this is too good not to share.


MAKE THE PIE HIGHER

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

by bohola Fri Apr 02, 2004 10:03

did you see the pictures of this? these scum should be rounded up and shot.

by redjade Fri Apr 02, 2004 12:58

The four "civilians" killed, burned, and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq, on Wednesday morning weren’t really civilians. Or were they? They were employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, a rural North Carolina subsidiary of Blackwater USA, one of several dozen firms taking over the duties of the regular American military in Iraq, protecting buildings and grounds as well as officials.

In fact, Blackwater itself is in charge of protecting L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the U.S. official who now runs Iraq as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. In the coming weeks, hundreds of American civilian workers who really are civilians will be entering Iraq to work on private contracts let by the Bush government. Their security will be provided by guards (like the Blackwater men killed yesterday) from a variety of security firms, often consisting of former U.S. military special ops people.

The use of private military forces raises tricky questions for the U.S. government. The most important one is why is the Bush administration is recruiting civilians to work there when our government can't possibly guarantee the security of the area. Another question: Why aren't these jobs in combat zones being carried out by American military forces, instead of mercenaries?

read the rest at
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0401-14.htm

- - - - -

also:
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/

"We grieve today for the loss of our colleagues and we pray for their families. The names of the victims will not be released out of respect for their families.

The graphic images of the unprovoked attack and subsequent heinous mistreatment of our friends exhibits the extraordinary conditions under which we voluntarily work to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people....''

by redjade Fri Apr 02, 2004 13:02

Guardian/UK:
The Israeli government has written to the BBC accusing its Middle East correspondent, Orla Guerin, of anti-semitism and "total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups" over a report on a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber last week

[....]

Last month the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, pulled out of an interview on Sky's Sunday with Adam Boulton after the show refused to cancel an appearance by the Palestinian representative in London.

CNN sources say the network has bowed to considerable pressure on its editors. Israeli officials boast that they now have only to call a number at the network's headquarters in Atlanta to pull any story they do not like.

by Sister Fallujah Fri Apr 02, 2004 14:44

A leaflet distributed in Fallujah by a previously unknown group, claims responsibility for the 31 March 2004 gruesome killing of four US contractors in this town, saying it was to avenge the recent assassination of Palestinian Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin by Israel.

by redjade Fri Apr 02, 2004 15:09

BARRY YEOMAN: Sure. Blackwater is a small player in a very big field. We have seen ten-fold growth in private military firms since 1991 when we were in the first Gulf War, we typically hear about Halliburton and Dynacorp. They really are big players. However, Blackwater is a small company that has very big dreams. It was founded by a group of Navy Seals. It's headed by a former Navy Seal, who told me his goal was to build the largest private army in the world. He has talked about expanding to serve militaries in France and other places, and right now has contracts that he says are so secret that he is not able to tell one branch of the Feds that he's working for a different branch of the Feds. They provide all sorts of military services. As you know, with no-bid contracts sometimes. They stop short of combat, but it's often hard to see the line between what's combat and what's not combat.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/01/1621244

- - - - -

Barry Yeoman's June 2003 article in Mother Jones:

Soldiers of Good Fortune
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/05/ma_365_01.html

Indeed, the Bush administration's push to privatize war is swiftly turning the military-industrial complex of old into something even more far-reaching: a complex of military industries that do everything but fire weapons. For-profit military companies now enjoy an estimated $100 billion in business worldwide each year, with much of the money going to Fortune 500 firms like Halliburton, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. Secretary of the Army Thomas White, a former vice chairman of Enron, "has really put a mark on the wall for getting government employees out of certain functions in the military," says retired Colonel Tom Sweeney, professor of strategic logistics at the U.S. Army War College. "It allows you to focus your manpower on the battlefield kinds of missions."

[....]

The push to privatize war got its start during the administration of the elder President Bush. After the Gulf War ended, the Pentagon, then headed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid a Halliburton subsidiary called Brown & Root Services nearly $9 million to study how private military companies could provide support for American soldiers in combat zones. Cheney went on to serve as CEO of Halliburton -- and Brown & Root, now known as Halliburton KBR, has since been awarded at least $2.5 billion to construct and run military bases, some in secret locations, as part of the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. In March, the Pentagon hired Cheney's former firm to fight fires in Iraq if Saddam Hussein sabotages oil wells during a U.S. attack.

Pentagon officials say they rely on firms like Halliburton because the private sector works faster and cheaper than the military. When U.S. Marines distributed relief supplies in Somalia in 1992, for example, the military contracted with Brown & Root for logistical support. "They had laborers and vehicles at the Port of Mogadishu within 11 hours after we had given them notice," recalls Don Trautner, who runs the Army logistics program.

by I Mac d. - living poets society. Fri Apr 02, 2004 16:13

Mise Raifteirí
Antaine Ó Raifteirí

Mise Raifteirí an file,
lán dóchais is grá
le súile gan solas,
ciúineas gan crá

Ag dul síos ar m'aistear
le solas mo chroí,
fann agus tuirseach
go deireach mo shlí;

Féach anois me
lem aghaidh ar Bhalla
ag seinm cheoil
do phócaí falamh.

We do not need a translation of our Poet.

************************************************
meanwhile Cherie Blair has warned that too many women are in Prison. She ought be accompanied by all proper thinking politicians male and female in that.
you may see the letter @
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/image/0,11026,1183780,00.html

by redjade Sat Apr 03, 2004 13:47

Although the number of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq is rarely mentioned, previous estimates in the media have ranged between 2,000-3,000. The Pentagon now says that in the first year of war in Iraq, the military made over 18,000 medical evacuations - representing 11,700 casualties

by John Byrne Sat Apr 03, 2004 16:56

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com has just gone online. It contains articles on politics and economics as well as literature, music and history.

by SF Sun Apr 04, 2004 18:18

Published: 4 April, 2004

Sinn Féin Dublin EU candidate Mary Lou McDonald has today reacted to a report conducted by the peace group Action from Ireland (Afri), which has revealed that a number of Irish Universities are being sponsored by some of the world's largest arms companies. Ms McDonald responded to the report saying that 'Irish universities must not be complicit in the international arms trade'.

by Roger Fri Jun 18, 2004 13:07

http://rzz.blogspot.com
http://rzzz.blogspot.com
http://squiggle-strike-again.blogspot.com
http://todays-news.blogspot.com
http://selective-information.blogspot.com
http://weblinker.blogspot.com
http://dexer.blogspot.com
http://rogers-homepage.blogspot.com