George W. Bush has Gotten away with Murder

ExistentialistCowboy.blogspot

Since former LA prosecutor Vince Bugliosi charged that Bush was guilty of the crime of mass murder, allegations by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan have simply 'buttoned up' Bugliosi's already open and shut case. Bugliosi now has a material witness.

Bugliosi has much more than 'probable cause' to bring charges against Bush and his inner circle. He has the smoking gun, the open and shut case, the verifiable, indisputable fact that Bush knew Saddam did not have WMD but sent some 4,000 Americans to their deaths in Iraq anyway. I want to see McClellan on the witness stand spilling his guts about how Bush planned to hoax the world for the benefit of Dick Cheney's Halliburton!

General Accuses White House of War Crimes

Washington Post

The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability.

In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement.

Pamela Hess of the Associated Press has more on the report, which resulted from "the most extensive medical study of former U.S. detainees published so far" and "found evidence of torture and other abuse that resulted in serious injuries and mental disorders."

Mexican Drug Cartel Violence Off the Charts

Infowars

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A powerful coalition of drug gangs led by Mexico’s most-wanted man is collapsing, meaning the surge in bloodshed and police killings will get worse, a senior U.S. counternarcotics official said.

“The Sinaloa cartel is weakened, divided … . There are internal disputes, rivalries, betrayals,” the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters in an interview. “You’re going to see more violence.”

Related: A Primer to the World Drug Trade...

Massive DEA Raids Planned for Humboldt

Humboldt Herald

The Federal Drug Enforcement Agency is sending 200 agents to Northern Humboldt to crack down on marijuana growers, according to sources. The full-blown bust-a-thon will take place June 22-30.

300 houses have already been targeted by way of high electric bills. Perhaps our readers at PG&E can tell us to how the feds got those records. Did they use warrants or just ask nicely?

While some of the upcoming busts will target illegal operations under California law, others will take aim at patients protected by Prop. 215. Will Humboldt County Sheriffs or city police participate in raids that violate laws of the state?

Defender of Jail Abuse Pleads Amnesia

Sydney Morning Herald

IF EVER there was a case that cried out for enhanced interrogation techniques, it was the appearance of the Pentagon's former top lawyer in the US Senate.

William "Jim" Haynes II, the man who blessed the use of dogs, hoods and nudity to pry information out of recalcitrant detainees, proved to be a model of evasion himself as he resisted all attempts at inquiry by the Armed Services Committee.

Did he ask a subordinate to get information about harsh questioning techniques?
"My memory is not perfect."

Did he see a memo about the effects of these techniques?
"I don't specifically remember when I saw this."

Did he remember doing something with the information?
"I don't remember doing something with this …"

When did he discuss these methods with other Bush Administration officials?
"I don't know precisely when, and I cannot discuss it further without getting into classified information."

5 million Face Hunger in Zimbabwe

Telegraph

The United Nations has warned that more than five million Zimbabweans could be threatened by hunger next year due to a steady drop in food production coupled with the world's highest rate of inflation.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Program said in a joint report that an estimated two million people in Zimbabwe will not have enough to eat in the summer months.

That figure is projected to rise to 3.8 million people after September and to about 5.1 million between January and March 2009, as the impact of President Robert Mugabe's seizure of land from commercial farmers continues to take its toll. The population is just over 12 million people.

Mississippi Overflows Levees, Crops Threatened

Yahoo

FORT MADISON, Iowa (Reuters) - The swollen Mississippi River ran over the top of at least 11 more levees on Wednesday as floodwaters swallowed up more U.S. farmland, adding to billion-dollar losses and feeding global food inflation fears.

The slow-rolling disaster, the worst flooding in the Midwest in 15 years, has swamped vast sections of the U.S. farm belt and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

'Flight Risk' and 'Dangerous' -- But Judge Loosens Bail For CEO

WNBC

NEW YORK -- Just days after a convicted CEO faked his own death and fled to avoid prison, a federal judge on Long Island reduced bail conditions for a separate CEO accused of a massive fraud even though prosecutors maintain he is a "flight risk" and "dangerous."

Judge Joanna Seybert reduced restrictive bail conditions for David Brooks, who ran DHB Industries -- a company that sold bulletproof vests to the military.
Brooks is accused of looting funds and committing securities fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Prosecutors said he then funneled his ill-gotten gains to accounts overseas.

Energy Guzzled by Al Gore’s Home in Past Year Could Power 232 U.S. Homes for a Month

TenneseePolicy.org

NASHVILLE - In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

Oliver North Beats the Rap

NYTimes

Oliver North, quarterback of the Iran-contra scandal, has won dismissal of his criminal convictions because the prosecution can't prove he had a perfect trial, utterly free of error. He pronounces himself "totally exonerated."

That's a wild overstatement. It's as though Ernesto Miranda had claimed that the Supreme Court gave him a character reference when it threw out his famous confession for crimes in Arizona because the police had not read him his rights.

Fed Assistance to URBAN MOVING SYSTEMS, NJ 2001

FedSpending.org

Summary
Fiscal Year: 2001Federal dollars: $498,750

Total number of recipients: 1

Total number of transactions: 1

Get list of recipientsGet list of transactions

For the newcomers, Urban Moving Systems was used as a cover by the Mossad Agents arrested high-fiving each other and video-taping the collapse of the WTC. Following 9-11, the owner of Urban Moving Systems, Dominic Suiter, abandoned his homer and business and fled back to Israel.

"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." -- US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11.

Tim Russert, Dick Cheney, and 9/11 By David Ray Griffin 17/06/08 "ICH"

Information Clearing House

Commenting that he himself “remember[ed] that interview vividly,” Lauer asked: “Anything stand out from that interview?” In his reply, Cheney said: “We went back and reminisced to some extent about what had actually happened on the morning of 9/11. So it was---it was a remarkable moment in my career.”

It was indeed. In reminiscing about his movements that morning, Cheney contradicted what was to become a crucial element of the account that the 9/11 Commission would give of those movements.

Crowds 'Pick Leaders to Follow'

Telegraph

People in crowds behave just like sheep, scientists claim, by blindly following one or two people who seem to know where they are going.

Like ants, humans are easily led

The team, led by Prof Jens Krause, conducted a series of experiments in which volunteers were told to walk randomly around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions.The results published today show that it takes a minority of just 5 per cent of what they called "informed individuals" to influence the direction of a crowd of a minimum of 200 people. The remaining herd of 95 per cent follow without realising it.

Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise

MSNBC

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.

With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The British Occult Secret Service - New Dawn Magazine

Anomaly News

During World War II British Intelligence invited many occultists into its ranks because it needed their specialist knowledge and skills. The assistant director of Naval Intelligence during the war was Lt. Commander Ian Fleming RN, best known later as a thriller writer and the creator of the famous fictional spy James Bond 007. Fleming was also interested in astrology and numerology and he was a friend of the notorious magician Aleister Crowley, who had worked for MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service) during World War I and in the 1920s and 1930s spying on Germans with occult interests (see ‘The Magus Was A Spy’ by Dr Richard Spence in New Dawn No. 105, November-December 2007).

Read the rest of this excerpt here: The British Occult Secret Service

The Political Consequences of Child Abuse

Anomaly News

Although centuries of novels and autobiographies have dealt with the subject of child abuse in all its forms, society has been slow in recognizing the frequency with which this assault is committed. Only in the last twenty years has there been any real progress in this respect, and most of it is due to the efforts of a small number of researchers and above all to the media. Still underestimated and sometimes contested are the consequences very early abuse will have for the victims in their adult lives. The issues involved have been largely ignored, and there is correspondingly little mention of them in historical and anthropological studies. Thus sociologist Wolfgang Sovsky is able to write an otherwise impressive work on forms of violence without making one single reference to the childhood dimension. He gives very considerable space to the willful infliction of suffering, calling it “mysterious,” although it is readily explicable once we countenance the idea that the bodies of the executioners, torturers and the orchestrators of organized manhunts may have learned their fateful lessons very early and thus very effectively.


Also Goldhagen restricts himself to a phenomenological discussion of the people who volunteered to torture and humiliate others, without giving any consideration to their childhood. He does devote much attention to the emotions of the perpetrators, a subject hitherto largely ignored, but without the background of their early upbringing their behavior still remains mysterious. The reader seeks in vain for an explanation. What made respected members of society suddenly act like monsters? How could a former teacher like Klaus Barbie, and other men described by their daughters as kind, caring fathers, have innocent people tortured or indeed do the torturing themselves? Goldhagen does not address this question. He is obviously convinced that references to traditional anti–Semitism in Germany provide a satisfactory answer. They do not.

Police to seal off DC Neighborhoods

DCist.com

Can you say Police State? The Examiner has the scoop on a controversial new program announced today that would create so-called "Neighborhood Safety Zones" which would serve to partially seal off certain parts of the city. D.C. Police would set-up checkpoints in targeted areas, demand to see ID and refuse admittance to people who don't live there, work there or have a “legitimate reason” to be there. Wow. Just, wow.

The full description of this plan from the mayor's press release is below.
Photo by AlbinoFlea

The Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative has been developed to help increase security for those who live in high-crime areas around the city and to help residents reclaim their communities. The program will authorize the Metropolitan Police Department to set up public safety checks to help safeguard community members and create safer neighborhoods in the District by increasing police presence aimed at deterring crime.

The safety zones will be established only upon request by a District Commander where there is evidence to support the existence of neighborhood violent crime, such as intelligence, violent crime data, police reports and feedback and concerns from the affected community.

Potential Neighborhood Safety Zones must be approved by the Chief of Police, and will be in effect for a maximum of 10 days. Public safety checks will be established along the main thoroughfares of the established neighborhoods. Anyone driving into a designated area may be asked to show valid identification with a home address in that neighborhood, or to provide an explanation for entering the NSZ, such as attending church, a doctor’s appointment or visiting friends or relatives. Pedestrians will not be subject to the public safety checks.

“The Neighborhood Safety Zones is just another tool MPD will employ to stop crime before it happens. The Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative will help residents terrorized by violent crime to take back their neighborhoods,” said Chief Lanier.

Initiatives such as the Neighborhood Safety Zones have been accepted by federal courts as a legitimate law enforcement practice in keeping with the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. The constitutionality of the NSZ initiative has been reviewed by the D.C. Office of the Attorney General.

The NSZ will be launched next week in the Trinidad area.

Vanunu's Letter, He Needs Our Help Before July 8

uruknet

June 4, 2008
Dear readers and visitors to thepeoplesvoice,
Mordechai Vanunu has sent a letter to us and other Web sites asking for our support.
We want to encourage readers to email their State representatives before Vanunu's July 8 court date.
Please contact your state representatives and tell them that Vanunu should be allowed to leave Israel and live in Norway. Vanunu told the world the truth about Israel's nuclear ambitions and he suffered over eighteen years imprisonment and repression because of it. Now he only wishes to be free and to live in peace. Please contact your representatives and tell them to support Vanunu's right to leave Israel. Contact Congress Contact Your Senator

Vanunu's letter:

Dear Editors
I am Mordechai Vanunu, the man who told the truth about Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program in 1986 and paid with 18 years of my life in isreal Prison. I was released in April 2004, but Israel denied me my human rights of free speech and freedom movement.not allowed to leave since 1986,until now 2008.

On July 8, 2008, I will return to court to appeal a new 6 months prison sentence for speaking to foriegn Media since my release in 2004.

I am asking the Media to report on my case and on the efforts of Norwegian Lawyers and citizens to grant me asylum.

Israel claims I still have a secret about their underground nuclear plant-a place I have not been to in twenty-three years and international atomic energy inspectors never have.

I said all I knew about Israel's Nuclear weapons Programs in 1986, because I [listened to] the voice of my conscience and wanted to avoid a nuclear wars. Since 2004, I have spoken with thousands of tourists and pilgrims in east Jerusalem and taped hours of video available on the World Wide Web.

Israel was founded contingent on upholding the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I am asking the world to demand they honor it, and not only on this case.

Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.- Article 13-2.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. -Article 19.
VANUNU MORDECHAI J C.KIDNAPPED IN ROME SEP' 30 TH'-1986.AFTER 18 YEARS IN ISRAEL PRISON.VMJC
-###-
By: Mordechai Vanunu June 4, 2008

Spooks Infest Marriott Hotel As Bilderberg Begins

Prison Planet

Spooks, FBI agents and cops have descended on the Westfields Marriott hotel in Chantilly Virginia to scrutinize Jim Tucker and Alex Jones as the 2008 Bilderberg meeting gets underway today without even being mentioned in the American corporate media.

The pathetic reply from the BBC over a complaint that they didn't report the Bilderberg meeting

We are talking about about some of the world's most influential people across the whole swathe of politics, business, banking, military etc. meeting in a hotel in Washington without any coverage by the mainstream media.

The BBC - Blatant Bloody Censorship


Dear Mr McFerran
Thank you for your email.I understand you feel the BBC should be reporting on the Bilderberg meeting as you feel it is an extremely important issue.
BBC News is more than aware that a report that is of great interest to one part of our audience may be of little interest to another. The choice of which reports are included in the news has more to do with whether it is news that has just come in and needs immediate coverage, how unusual it is and how much national interest there is in the subject matter. The choicehas to be selective and no matter how carefully such decisions are made, news editors are always aware that some people may disagree with them.You may rest assured that I do understand your concerns, however I hope this goes someway to explaining the very difficult decisions news editors have to make and why they make them. You may rest assured that your comments have been registered and brought to the attention of BBC News. Thank you for taking the time to contact us to express the strength of your views.
RegardsRoss JubinBBC Complaints

Invasion of the Cardboard Police!

Following hot on the heels of the Cardboard Policeman in Morrisons, we were keen to investigate this continuing invasion ... When we insisted upon speaking to the Shop Manager of Chesterfield Marks & Spencer to ask what was the meaning of this, she appeared not to know anything about it, and indeed asked us to take her to look at the cardboard policeman in her own shop window!?

She then telephoned her superior (presumably the area manager for M&S?) and came back to tell us that Chesterfield Police had positioned it there the day before "because we have dishonest customers". I told her that as a regular, honest customer, I felt intimidated and offended by the cardboard policeman, and asked her whether she was the shop manager, or were Chesterfield Police now responsible for window displays in M&S Chesterfield?

She seemed unable to formulate a response ... unbelievable - get us out of here!!! We don't know whether to laugh or cry!!!

The untold story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples

What does an apology mean to Harry Wilson?

HiddenFromHistory.org

Harry Wilson was taken from his mother when he was five years old and incarcerated in the Alberni residential school.

He was held there for twelve years and was routinely beaten and sodomized by a network of staff and fellow students, including the infamous Arthur Plint and Principal John Andrews. Their preferred method was to use a bathroom plunger on Harry.One morning, evading his torturers, thirteen year old Harry escaped from the dormitory and stumbled across the body of a young girl from the school, on the playground, as he recounted to me in 1998,

"She was from way up north, a Haida girl. She was naked and all covered in blood, maybe sixteen. I told Andrews later that day and he told me not to tell anyone. She just disappeared. Then the Mounties came and shipped me over to the Indian hospital in Nanaimo ... They held me there in a padded room, all strapped down. Stuck needles in me. I was in there for months, past Christmas ... They kept telling me I never saw the girl's body."

Iraqi children: sexual abuse, addiction and imprisonment

Uruknet

Independent and government reports have confirmed an increase in the number of orphaned and sexually abused children, as well as a rise in the number dropping out of school. And as the security situation has worsened of late, nongovernmental organizations warn against the impact of deteriorating security conditions on Iraqi children.

Officials from Childhood Voices Association, a children’s non-governmental organization, say that "there are 11,000 children addicted to drugs in Baghdad alone, that many girls aged 12 to 16 years old have been victims of rape, and that many girls aged 12 years and above have endured sexual harassment." The organization also quotes international reports stressing that "more than 1 million Iraqi children have entered the labour market with the increase in the rate of poverty (one third of Iraq’s population live under the poverty line) and that they suffer violence and sexual abuse." According to their report, 1.3 million children aged 8 to 16 years old, equal to 6.1% of the population, have become workers.

15,000 Ark. hens test positive for bird-flu exposure

USA Today

LITTLE ROCK (AP) — Tyson Foods Inc. has begun killing and burying the carcasses of 15,000 hens from a flock that tested positive for exposure to a strain of the bird flu in northwest Arkansas, state officials said Tuesday.

Tyson said preliminary tests on the flock indicated the presence of antibodies for H7N3, a less virulent strain of the virus.

Editors note: Tyson has been connected with drug running and a host of nefarious activities involving everyone's favorite Arkansas Governor

US Troops are Increasingly Medicated

Think Progress

Data contained in the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials say. […]

Nearly 40% of Army suicide victims in 2006 and 2007 took psychotropic drugs — overwhelmingly, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft. While the Army cites failed relationships as the primary cause, some outside experts sense a link between suicides and prescription-drug use — though there is also no way of knowing how many suicide attempts the antidepressants may have prevented by improving a soldier’s spirits.

Taser Loses 1st Product-Liability Suit; Jury Awards $6 Million

Bloomberg.com

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- Taser International Inc., the largest stun-gun maker, lost a $6.2 million jury verdict over the death of a California man who died after police shot him multiple times with the weapon. The defeat is the first for Taser in a product- liability claim.

Taser previously won two trials, one over claims by a police officer injured in a training accident and the other involving a death in custody. Taser has settled at least 10 cases involving injuries to police officers during training, company lawyer Doug Klint told Bloomberg News last year. Taser said it will appeal the verdict.

Gadhafi: Obama fears Israel will assassinate him like it did JFK

Haaretz

Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said on Wednesday that U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's expressed support for Israel stems from his fear that the Mossad would assassinate him, just as it did President John F. Kennedy. "We suspect he may fear being killed by Israeli agents and meet the same fate as Kennedy when he promised to look into Israel's nuclear program," Gadhafi said. While the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is widely assumed, Israeli officials have never admitted their existence and U.S. officials have stuck to that line in public.

Robert Mugabe's Militia burns Opponents Wife Alive

Times Online

The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.

The killing last Friday – one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980 – was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in just over two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trade-mark was to chop off hands and feet.

Record numbers using food stamps in Ohio, Michigan

World Socialist Web Site

Nationally, the number of people using food stamps is due to reach 28 million by next year, tying a record for the program set in 1994. As one might expect, the number of people using food stamps in economically devastated Michigan and Ohio is particularly high; more than 1.25 million—a record number—of Michigan residents now receive food assistance, while the 1.1 million Ohio residents using food stamps represent a doubling of the number since 2001. The latter figure does not include the estimated 500,000 people who are eligible for food stamps but have not signed up.

Convicted Steroid Dealer who Gave Names to NFL Found Dead

ESPN

PLANO, Texas -- A convicted steroids dealer who recently met with NFL security officials and gave them names of players he said bought steroids from him has been found dead in his home.

Early Thursday morning, Plano police made a welfare check and found 35-year-old David Jacobs and 30-year-old Amanda Jo Earhart-Savell dead. Both had been shot.

According to ESPN the Magazine senior writer Shaun Assael, who had been in contact with Jacobs throughout May, Jacobs was reticent and nervous about the information he had and the people it implicated.
When explaining why he did not want to go public, Jacobs said: "The kinds of people I know about could put a bullet in the back of my head."

Family Felt Like 'Lab Rats' In FEMA Trailer

SunHerald

It was when the sight of a bloody child became routine that Lindsay Huckabee broke down and cried. She and her husband, Steve, had spent months dealing with "two, three, four nosebleeds a week," in their FEMA mobile home, she said. When it wasn't a nosebleed, one child or another had burning eyes, coughing, congestion and "colds" that wouldn't go away.

The Huckabees have become icons for a Sierra Club movement that believes formaldehyde fumes in FEMA trailers have caused widespread poisoning of hurricane victims. The organization tested the formaldehyde levels of 69 FEMA trailers. Based on an industrial standard, most tested high, as did the Huckabees'. The Sierra Club is now campaigning for stringent standards on formaldehyde levels in building products, where it is used in glues, resins, particle board and sometimes insulation.

BBC Uncovers Lost Iraq Billions

BBC

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.
The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.

Switzerland Bans GMO's til 2012

Organic Consumers

The Swiss Federal Council (government) has voted to extend the country's moratorium on genetically modified (GM) plants for a further three years beyond the current expiry date of November 2010, Dow Jones reports.

The Council imposed a moratorium on the commercial cultivation of GM crops in 2005, on the basis that there was no demand for them in Switzerland at the time and that big gaps remained in scientific knowledge about the risks of this technology.

4000 Year old Pyramid Discovered in Memphis

Gulf Daily News

SAQQARA, Egypt: Egypt unveiled yesterday a newly uncovered 4,000-year-old 'missing pyramid' and a ceremonial procession road where high priests, their faces obscured by masks, once carried mummified sacred bulls worshipped in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis.

The pyramid was actually a 'rediscovery,' said Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass. It is believed to have been built by King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years.

BBC Probe: Gag Orders Hide Contractor Corruption in Iraq