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It is time for unauthorized truth-telling. Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts-for example, the facts that have been wrongly concealed about the ongoing war in Iraq: the real reasons behind it, the prospective costs in blood and treasure, and the setback it has dealt to efforts to stem terrorism. Administration deception and cover-up on these vital matters has so far been all too successful in misleading the public. [...]

There is a growing network of support for whistleblowers. In particular, for anyone who wishes to know the legal implications of disclosures they may be contemplating, the ACLU stands ready to provide pro bono legal counsel, with lawyer-client privilege. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will offer advice on whistleblowing, dissemination and relations with the media.[...]

Some of you have documentation of wrongly concealed facts and analyses that-if brought to light-would impact heavily on public debate regarding crucial matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. We urge you to provide that information now, both to Congress and, through the media, to the public.[...]

more: TruthTellingProject.org

Signatories: Edward Costello, Former Special Agent (Counterintelligence), Federal Bureau of Investigation  /  Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, Federal Bureau of Investigation  /  Daniel Ellsberg, Former official, U.S. Departments of Defense and State  /  John D. Heinberg, Former Economist, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor  /  Larry C. Johnson, Former Deputy Director for Anti-Terrorism Assistance, Transportation Security, and Special Operations, Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism  /  John Brady Kiesling, Former Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Athens, Department of State  /  David MacMichael, Former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency  /  Ray McGovern, Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency  /  Philip G. Vargas, Ph.D., J.D., Dir. Privacy & Confidentiality Study, Commission on Federal Paperwork (Author/Director: "The Vargas Report on Government Secrecy" -- CENSORED)  /  Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel and U.S. Foreign Service Officer  /  Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatowski, recently retired from service in the Pentagon's Office of Near East planning

The Terrorists are Coming!
So says Homeland Insecurity Puppet Tom Ridge... and this time, they want to disrupt our elections! Yes, even, maybe, attack our polling places! And if that sounded like the first of two shoes, the second indeed fell the following week, with the quiet announcement that the Bush administration was seeking a legal basis for postponing the elections, in case of 'terrorist threat'. Right. These guys really don't intend to lose in November, do they? The Republican defamation machine is in full swing, the lies fly thick as arrows, and with the connivance of BigMedia, America is encapsulated in some kind of alternate reality incomprehensible to the rest of the world, in which the Bush crew are cast as determined heroes. Republicans even own the "blackbox" voting machines which leave no receipt and allow no recount of dubious results, and all this isn't enough... they now talk of the possible necessity of canceling the election... in case of "terrorist threat".
Update: Ashcroft, FBI announce the "October Plan"....

Exchange of Gifts
The Bush administration continues to misrepresent the recent Spanish election, accusing the voters there of caving in the face of the Madrid bombings. Actually 90% of the Spanish were against their government's decision to join Bush's Iraq War; the Madrid bombings if anything confirmed their determination to get out of the whole mess asap; but what really got them angry was Prime Minister Aznar's attempt to blame the bombings on Spanish Basque separatists, rather than admit that the atrocity was a result of entanglement in a war the people had overwhelmingly rejected.
Nevertheless, in the Bush version of reality, the Spanish were cowards and caved as Americans would never do. Americans, in this version, if attacked, would redouble their commitment to the "war on terror", not "back down", and presumably... vote massively for Bush. Can it really be that the Bush people think a further attack on America would help them at the polls? It seems to be what they are intimating. BigMedia pundits readily agree. So you can see where this is going. Planned or not, we seem to be witness to an ongoing exchange of gifts: on 9/11 a lame, corrupt and narrow-minded administration with no mandate suddenly refashioned itself as the warrior-saviour of western civilization; and thanks to the "new Pearl Harbor" was able to deploy the PNAC plan for world domination, the "Patriot" Act to suppress dissent at home, claim draconian "wartime" powers for the executive, and redirect enormous sums of public money to their Haliburton style cronies. Then, after chasing the supposed perpetrators of 9/11 up into the remote Pakistan border regions and leaving them there, they invaded Iraq, an arab state which had nothing to do with 9/11, but which has a lot of oil, and is right there in the middle of the mid-east action. This delusional war has been recognized now as a huge boon to Al Quaeda and the rest of the jihadist movement. So far, a boon to Bush, a boon to Osama. Now the administration seems to be inviting the jihadists to a further round in the exchange... an attack they think will drive American voters to Bush in November. America is already paying a heavy price for the delusions of this administration... how much worse will it get?
(see "Al-Qaida may 'reward' American president with strike aimed at keeping him in office, senior intelligence man says" - Guardian Interview with author of "Imperial Hubris") (see also: NYTimes Paul Krugman: "The Arabian Candidate")

Our previous pieces re Iraq Occupation are still very pertinent:
April 2004: Iraq- A Bad Idea Gets Worse ... March 2004: Truth or Consequences ... June 2003: Quicksand ... May 2003: Bait Taken ... April 2003: Hot Potato

LATimes Editorial: Iraq- The Disaster of Failed Policy
"...It will take years for widely felt hostility to ebb, in Iraq and other countries. The consequences of arrogance, accompanied by certitude that the world's most powerful military can cure all ills, should be burned into Americans' memory banks.
Preemption is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster. The U.S. needs better intelligence before it acts in the future. It needs to listen to friendly nations. It needs humility." (archived here)

Diplomats and Military Commanders Speak Out
"The Bush administration does not understand the world and remains unable to handle "in either style or substance" the responsibilities of global leadership, a group of 27 retired diplomats and military commanders charged yesterday."
"Our security has been weakened," the former ambassadors and four-star commanders said in a statement read to a crowded Washington news conference. "Never in the 2 1/4 centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted... We need a change."
The group, called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change,noted its members include Democrats and Republicans who have "served every president since Harry S. Truman" in an effort to underscore that their concerns are bipartisan. (see DiplomatsforChange.com)

Law School Faculties Speak Out
A group of more than 450 professors of law, international relations, and public policy - led by Harvard Law School faculty members - today (6/16) sent a letter calling on Congress to hold accountable, through impeachment and removal if appropriate, civilian officials from the top of the Executive Branch on down for policies developed at high levels that have facilitated the recent abuses at Abu Ghraib. (Full letter here)


Abu Ghraib

I find these pictures especially disturbing, these shots of Sabrina Harman, in her latex gloves, flashing her oh-so winsome smile over a torture victim. Had I ordered a slice at Papa John's in Alexandria Va, where she was assistant manager before being sent to Iraq, and gotten that lovely smile, it might have made my day. What to think? (more on Miss Harman from the Washington Post)

Znet: Sexual Humiliation, Gender Confusion and the Horrors at Abu Ghraib

Rasheeda Bhagat, writing in The Hindu Business Line: "To those of us who've agonised over how wars and war-like situations make women the worst victims, it was a doubly traumatic experience to witness the presence of so many women tormentors in the notorious prisoner abuse case of Iraq." (article)

Barbara Ehrenreich op-ed from the LATimes on the women of Abu Ghraib (article)

Naomi Klein writes in the Guardian: "Torturers Of Abu Ghraib Were McWorkers Who Ended Up In Iraq Because They Could No Longer Find Decent Jobs At Home"

Newsweek: A Circus of Sadism: Abu Ghraib Tortured Were Small Time Criminals; International Red Cross: 80% of Abu Ghraib prisoners had nothing to do with the resistance.

(Some newspaper websites require a sign-in to read; you can use BugMeNot.com to sign in anonymously and automatically)

Note that the draft laws now being prepared will call women too. That's right- our 18-26 year-old girls will be sent, along with the boys, to Iraq, and other imperial warfronts, to wreak devastation on evil-doers.
Now, if you are wondering why we need to so militarize our society (you're obviously not watching Fox enough!), just click on the Bush-Cheney campaign button at left for the explanation in a nutshell. (source)

Meanwhile, a preacher from cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement told worshippers in Basra he would pay a reward of $US170 for the capture of a British or American woman soldier he said could then be kept as a sex slave. "If we capture a British woman soldier we will take her as a concubine and we will have the right to pleasure ourselves with her." said the preacher, Kassem Hassan.

"Please identify yourself to the court."
"I am Saddam Hussein, President of the Republic of Iraq ...You know that this [trial] is all a theater by Bush the criminal, to help him win his election."

A team of 22 lawyers will defend America's erstwhile ally cum public enemy number one.
The team will include Aisha Gaddafi- yes, you heard right, General Gaddafi's daughter, in the photo at left. (more)

Bushido: The Way of the Armchair Warrior
"The unenlightened speak of "failures of intelligence." But the armchair warrior knows that "intelligence"- the effort of the mind to observe facts, apply reason, and reach conclusions about what is true and what ought to be done- is a delusion, making the mind turn in circles like an ass hitched to a mill. The armchair warrior feels in his hara, or gut, what ought to be done. He is like a warhorse that races into battle, pulling behind him the chariot of logic and evidence. When the people see the magnificent heedlessness of his charge, they cannot help but be carried along..." a must-read- (from The New Yorker, and archived here)

A recent article in The Atlantic, by James Fallows, makes much of Bush's supposedly extraordinary oratorical skills evidenced in a 1994 debate with then-governor of Texas, Ann Richardson. The author points out numerous instances where Bush correctly completed moderately long sentences with apparent ease. ( ! ) So what happened? Some speak of the strains of the office, maybe a sense of inadequacy to the job, then again, maybe it's a canny ruse... In that vein, there has been discussion about the Senegalese Wolof tribes, in which "upwardly mobile" males cultivate "inarticulateness as a sign of status" in speaking to their lessers. Click the Bush portrait at left for an enlargement- it is composed of photos of American dead soldiers in the Iraq War.

Sibel Edmunds
Sibel Edmunds was hired as a translator for the FBI immediately after 911 and was set to work on the backlog of untranslated intercepts; she discovered a nightmare of disfunction, corruption, intrigue and deceit, incompetence and coverup; among which: "Certain investigations were being quashed, let's say per State Department's request, because it would have affected certain foreign relations [or] affected certain business relations with foreign organizations..."
She has testified before the 911 Commission, but since then Ashcroft has placed a gag order on her. She has resisted with a lawsuit against the DOJ and Ashcroft (more here on that)
- Aug.8: Edmunds interviewed on CBS 60 Minutes (story-transcript)
- Here's an interview with Daniel Ellsburg (The Pentagon Papers whistleblower) on Ms. Edmunds' case
- And here is an audio interview with Ms. Edmunds.
- 7/29: DOJ Report Vindicates Edmunds in letter to Senate (story)

CodePink awarded Sibel Edmunds their Badge of Courage Award on June 14. "This badge is symbolic of the deep appreciation we have for the courage Sibel has shown and continues to show in speaking truth to power. Her journey has not been easy and yet she persists. This badge is meant to remind Sibel that CODEPINK Women stand with her, taller and stronger, because of her heroic actions on behalf of all Americans. Thank you Sibel, we are pround of you." (CodePink alward here)
Latest on Ashcroft Gag Order: Retroactive Classification

Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)
Now columnist at MilitaryWeek.com, Karen's critiques of American post 911 policy are deep and cutting.
Read her bio here; read her columns here.

Here is a good review of the many FBI whistleblowers since 911. A close reading of their experiences makes it clear that had the FBI not been in such a disastrous state, 911 could very well have been prevented. But instead of cleaning up the Bureau, Bush made war on Iraq, and Ashcroft slammed the whistleblowers with gag orders. Maybe we should have invaded the DOJ instead?

If you spend a half-hour a day or more watching ABC-NBC-CBS-PBS-FOX news, you owe it to yourself to see the documentary "Control Room" on the coverage of the Iraq adventure by the nascent mideast cable network AlJazeera, a film by Jehane Noujaim, an Egyptian-American director. "My mother is American- from Indiana. My grandfather fought in World War II and my Uncle fought in Vietnam..." (Read about the film and see trailer here)

Michael Moore's film "Farenheit 911" is his best ever; and it's more than a brilliant movie- it's what the BigMedia never showed you, the unseemly truths of Bush 2. What to make of that footage of the President, having just been told that the second tower was hit, sitting there looking like a deer in the headlights for 7 + minutes? Here's the school video; Here's the Fahrenheit 911 trailer.

911: Outspoken Europeans

Michael Meacher MP was UK environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003. In "This War on Terrorism is Bogus", he says the 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination. Guardian article

Andreas Von Buelow is the former German Defense Minister and Minister of Technology. Von Buelow went public to say the US government carried out 9/11. His book is one of the bestsellers across Europe. Interview w/ Alex Jones

Spoiler Nader Update
The Greens wouldn't have him this time; but that didn't stop Ralph 'blind-ego' Nader from running, even without a party. Only problem is getting on the states' ballots; and there, the Republicans have rushed to help- particularly in closely contested 'battleground' states like Michigan and Oregon. In fact, in Michigan, where Nader could raise only 6,000 of the 30,000 signers needed on his petition, the Republicans brought him in 40,000. Big support. Finances too. Shame on you Ralph. (see Wash.Post: "Republicans Helping Nader") (see also: Oregon flyer) and by the way, guess who is publishing Nader's campaign-companion book, "The Good Fight"? Rupert Murdoch.
Here's film of Howard Dean debating Ralph Nader on July 9.

I've recommended many excellent books in the side columns which can be purchased through Amazon. Some must-reads: "Imperial Hubris" by Anonymous, "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, "Against all Enemies" by Richard Clarke, "Worse Than Watergate" by John Dean, "House of Bush, House of Saud" by Craig Unger, "The Price of Loyalty" by Ron Susskind, "The New Pearl Harbor" by David Ray Griffin, "American Dynasty" by Kevin Phillips, and "Ghost Wars" by Steve Coll, and finally, to really get at the roots of the problem: "For Your Own Good : Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence" by Alice Miller.
  - SM/Dvmx

Shakespeare Was a Lady

Robin Williams was given a double-header for her July 3rd presentation of research at the 2004 Conference of The Shakespearean Authorship Trust at the Globe Theater in England, demonstrating a 'stunningly convincing' case that Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, was the author of the body of work attributed to William Shakespeare. Sidney's salon has been called a "a seedbed of literary revolution" and Sidney herself "the first major female literary figure in England." She had a vast library, a deep education and command of foreign languages, and couldn't have been better connected in the literary scene. Read Ms. Williams persuasive detective work at MarySidneySociety.org
Was the Bard a Woman? Anne Underwood, Newsweek, June 28
"Mary Sidney: alias Shakespeare"- documentary in-progress. Filming begins in London this summer. See MarySidney.com for more information.

Animals Rising Up One morning last month, walking to the local cafe, I saw a white poodle, crossing the intersection upright on her hind legs, fully at ease, and fully alert. According to Barbara, Maggie's human companion, Maggie started walking in this way spontaneously, with no training or coaxing. Click the picture to see a movie of Maggie taking a stroll... Meanwhile, Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology say a 9-year-old border collie has mastered a vocabulary of 200 words and is capable of the kind of linguistic "fast mapping" that enables human toddlers to learn new words after hearing them only once. (article) Then there's Natasha, a five-year-old black macaque monkey at the Safari Park next to Tel Aviv, who now walks exclusively upright after a near-death experience with a severe flu. Click image at left for an enlargement. (story)

Reality check: education
Here are some questions from an eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.
"7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication."

Makes you wonder.... (Full test is reprinted here)

The World Seen From Rome
Vatican City, June 30, 2004. An international consultation on New Age religion was held by the Holy See from June 14 through 16 on the theme "New Age Is a Challenge for Christianity". Participant Father Alessandro Olivieri Pennesi, a professor at the Mater Ecclesiae Higher Institute of Religious Sciences of the Lateran, gave an interview with ZENIT -"The World Seen From Rome".
"Father Olivieri Pennesi: New Age constitutes a great challenge for Christianity. Not only because it is spreading on a global level, but especially because it incorporates elements of Christianity, altering its original meaning. For example, Jesus Christ is no longer recognized as Son of God and only savior of the world.
"There is the loss of the concept of truth; we are living in an age of pure subjectivism. God has a thousand facets: cosmic energy, extra-cosmic energy, a Mind, the All, we ourselves are God, etc.
"If Jesus Christ is no longer the savior, people go in search of other salvations which become "self-oriented salvation" through methods, meditations, different practices, including magic. The eschatological expectation is devoid of meaning, insofar as salvation is attainable after some or many reincarnations.
"... Since the New Age movement makes much of a communication with nature, of cosmic knowledge of a universal good - thereby negating the revealed contents of Christian faith - it cannot be viewed as positive or innocuous."
Read full interview with Father Pennesi
Read story on the Vatican Conference

Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of Portland has declared bankrupcy in the face of scores of lawsuits brought by victims of pedophile priests. (story)

35 Scientists Denounce Big Bang Dogmatism
"...in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.
"Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific enquiry."
(CosmologyStatement.org)

Speed of light may have changed recently
"The speed of light, one of the most sacrosanct of the universal physical constants, may have been lower as recently as two billion years ago - and not in some far corner of the universe, but right here on Earth.
"...A varying speed of light contradicts Einstein's theory of relativity, and would undermine much of traditional physics. But some physicists believe it would elegantly explain puzzling cosmological phenomena such as the nearly uniform temperature of the universe. It might also support string theories that predict extra spatial dimensions." (article)

Silicon Graphics and Stephen Hawking, Universe Partners...
...team up to bring us what promises to be an extraordinary cinematic experience of the cosmos as we understand it now... "Beyond the Horizon" premieres in 2005. "Cosmology is a rapidly advancing field. With the COSMOS supercomputer, SGI has allowed scientists to think about the universe more deeply," said Stephen Hawking. "Now, SGI helps bring the universe to everyone -- from children to adults -- around the world. We will all be able to see and experience the universe through the wonders of our large-format film. It is an extraordinary next step." (read more)

Mystery Creature - Bill Kurdian photographed this unidentified animal with a motion-sensing camera in his back yard in Asheville NC on May 20. Mammalian experts have yet to identify the mystery creature. (article)
Mystery Hand - A hand fell out of the sky on Memorial Day, landing on the deck of a boat on Long Island. (article)

Bikini Show at Rio Fashion Week
Slide show hosted at Xinhua.net

Norway: Doin' It For Forests, On Stage
"Today's environmentalists have become more politicians than idealists. We want to bring forth the message with attitude... The goal is to take over the entire commercial porn industry and transfer all the money to protection of the environment." (article, photos *PG18)
More from the Erotic Vanguard: Zoophilia Cetaceana

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