Observations on current events

The Rule of Law:

OneWorld: Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor
"A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferencz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting 'aggressive' wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq..."

Wages and Profits:

NY Times: Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity
"With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.
That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.
The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.
As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s..."

Targeting Iran:

Ray McGovern: Just When You Thought You'd Seen Everything: Hoekstra's Hoax
"I was suffering a bit from outrage fatigue yesterday but was shaken out of it as soon as I downloaded an unusually slick paper, 'Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States,' released this week by House intelligence committee chair, Pete Hoekstra.
No, not 'Hoaxer.' This is serious - very serious. The paper amounts to a pre-emptive strike on what's left of the Intelligence Community, usurping its prerogative to provide policymakers with estimates on front-burner issues - in this case, Iran's weapons of mass destruction and other threats. The Senate had already requested a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. But Hoekstra is first out of the starting gate. Professional intelligence officers were 'as a courtesy' invited to provide input to Hoekstra's report...
...Now suddenly appears a pseudo-estimate titled 'Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States.' To wit, the challenge set before the Intelligence Community is to get religion, climb aboard, and 'recognize' Iran as a strategic threat. But alas, the community has not yet been fully purged of recalcitrant intelligence analysts who reject a 'faith-based' approach to intelligence and hang back from the altar call to revealed truth. Hence, the statutory intelligence agencies cannot be counted on to come to politically correct conclusions regarding the strategic threat from Iran...
...[Hoekstra] has violated all precedent in consenting to have his committee author this faux-National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, making it out to be a strategic threat. But a threat to whom? The answer leaps off the cover. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is pictured giving a Nazi-type salute behind a podium adorned with a wide poster (in English) 'The world without Zionism.' And atop the first page stands an Ahmadinejad quote: 'The annihilation of the Zionist regime will come ... Israel must be wiped off the map ...'
The authors make a college try to persuade that Iran is also a threat to the US, but is singularly unpersuasive. Like Cheney's major speech of August 26, 2002, which provided the terms of reference and conclusions of the subsequent NIE of October 1, 2002, it merely asserts that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and probably has offensive chemical and biological weapons programs and 'the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East.' The text then tacks on for good measure Iranian support for terrorist groups and support for the insurgency in Iraq.
The paper gives most space to the nuclear issue (shades of the 'mushroom cloud' conjured up before Congress voted to authorize war on Iraq in October 2002). But the best it can do in conjuring up a threat that most see as 5 to 10 years out is that a nuclear-armed Iran might be emboldened to 'advance its aggressive ambitions in and outside of the region ... [and] ... threaten US friends and allies.' Stretching still further, the authors argue that Iran might think that a nuclear arsenal might protect it from retaliation and thus would be 'more likely to use force against US forces and allies in the region.' Last, but hardly least: 'Israel would find it hard to live with a nuclear armed Iran and could take military action against Iranian nuclear facilities.'
The Hoekstra-issued draft bears the fingerprints of one Frederick Fleitz - the principal drafter, according to press reports. Fleitz did his apprenticeship on politicization under John Bolton when the latter was Under Secretary of State, and became his principal aide and chief enforcer while on loan from the CIA. In this light, his behavior in trying to cook intelligence to the recipe of high policy is even more inexcusable. CIA analysts, particularly those on detail to policy departments, have no business playing the enforcer of policy judgments; they have no business conjuring up 'intelligence around the policy.'
Fleitz must have flunked Ethics and Intelligence Analysis 101. For he is the same official who 'explained' to State Department's intelligence analyst Christian Westermann that it was 'a political judgment as to how to interpret' data on Cuba's biological weapons program (which existed only in Bolton's mind) and that the intelligence community 'should do as we asked,'..."

Abuse of Power:

ABC News: The Blotter
"State Farm Insurance supervisors systematically demanded that Hurricane Katrina damage reports be buried or replaced or changed so that the company would not have to pay policyholders' claims in Mississippi, two State Farm insiders tell ABC News.
Kerri and Cori Rigsby, independent adjusters who had worked for State Farm exclusively for eight years, say they have turned over thousands of internal company documents and their own detailed statement to the FBI and Mississippi state investigators..."

Selling Fear:

Peter Wilby: Reid's best hope is to make us think we need a strongman
"...if you are Reid, your best hope of political advancement is to convince everybody they need a strongman. This has been his approach at the Home Office. He has promised more prison places, more immigration controls and more deportations. But he has also revived a favourite trick of Margaret Thatcher's. This is to express exasperation with what you are supposed to be in charge of, as though it were nothing to do with you. The Home Office, therefore, is not 'fit for purpose'. This ensures that, if anything goes wrong in Reid's department, not only is somebody else to blame, but Reid is proved right.
The terrorist crisis gave him the perfect opportunity to elaborate his role as the strongman. The day before the suspects were arrested, he told the thinktank Demos that Britain was facing 'probably the most sustained period of severe threat since the second world war' (in which 60,000 civilians died), and the people who 'just don't get it' are judges, the media and other politicians - in other words, all who try to restrain the government from draconian anti-terror measures. We were 'unable to adapt our institutions and legal orthodoxy as fast as we need to' - words that seem worryingly close to a call to suspend our institutions and our laws.
In subsequent days, Reid talked up the mortal dangers we supposedly face. In the worst days of the second world war, Churchill quoted Longfellow: '... westward, look, the land is bright'. Reid, by contrast, saw darkness in every direction. He never mentioned the likelihood that, given the difficulties of mixing explosives in aircraft lavatories, several of the planned attacks would have failed. The loss of life, had the attacks gone ahead, would have been on an 'unprecedented scale'; clearly, there were no doubts that the alleged conspirators were fit for purpose. We needed 'a common purpose and a common solidarity' against 'a threat to us all'. That threat, he said after meeting European security ministers, was 'virtually unconstrained in its capacity and ability to do immense harm, death and destruction'. In a BBC interview, he effectively confirmed, through a forest of double negatives, reports that 'up to two dozen' separate terror investigations were ongoing. In the same interview, he hinted that ministers would again introduce proposals for 90-day detention..."

Using Fear As A Political Weapon:

Robert Sheer: Spinning Old Threats Into New Fears
"Government-induced hysteria thrives on public ignorance, which is why President Bush is so confident of turning the British bomb plot to his partisan purposes. Otherwise, how could he dare claim that his policies have made the nation safer?
Consider, first off, that the attack envisioned — smuggling liquid-explosive ingredients onto 10 passenger planes — was outlined in chapter five of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report as a plot first exposed a decade ago. The originator of that planned hijacking of 12 U.S.-bound planes, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was also the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. According to U.S. prosecutors, his nephew, convicted terrorist Ramzi Yousef, even managed to explode such a liquid-based bomb on a Manila-Tokyo flight, killing one passenger, as part of a plot code-named 'Bojinka.'
Because checking or banning fluids was not a focus of this administration’s post-Sept. 11 airport security measures, this 'coincidence' would suggest either enormous negligence on the part of those charged with protecting us or a ludicrous overreaction this past week. Knowing as we did of Mohammed’s earlier plan, why wasn’t the Department of Homeland Security requiring fliers to dump their bottles of hairspray and mother’s milk before?..."

Extraordinary Rendition:

Paolo Pontoniere and Jeffrey Klein: Two Strange Deaths in European Wiretapping Scandal
"Just after noon on Friday, July 21, Adamo Bove - head of security at Telecom Italia, the country's largest telecommunications firm - told his wife he had some errands to run as he left their Naples apartment. Hours later, police found his car parked atop a freeway overpass. Bove's body lay on the pavement some 100 feet below.
Bove was a master at detecting hidden phone networks. Recently, at the direction of Milan prosecutors, he'd used mobile phone records to trace how a 'Special Removal Unit' composed of CIA and SISMI (the Italian CIA) agents abducted Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, and flew him to Cairo where he was tortured. The Omar kidnapping and the alleged involvement of 26 CIA agents, whom prosecutors seek to arrest and extradite, electrified Italian media. U.S. media noted the story, then dropped it.
The first Italian press reports after Bove's death said the 42-year-old had committed suicide. Bove, according to unnamed sources, was depressed about his imminent indictment by Milan prosecutors. But prosecutors immediately, and uncharacteristically, set the record straight: Bove was not a target; in fact, he was prosecutors' chief source. Bove, prosecutors said, was helping them investigate his own bosses, who were orchestrating an illegal wiretapping bureau and the destruction of incriminating digital evidence. One Telecom executive had already been forced out when he was caught conducting these illicit operations, as well as selling intercepted information to a business intelligence firm.
About 16 months earlier, in March of 2005, Costas Tsalikidis, a 38-year-old software engineer for Vodaphone in Greece had just discovered a highly sophisticated bug embedded in the company's mobile network. The spyware eavesdropped on the prime minister's and other top officials' cell phone calls; it even monitored the car phone of Greece's secret service chief. Others bugged included civil rights activists, the head of Greece's 'Stop the War' coalition, journalists and Arab businessmen based in Athens. All the wiretapping began about two months before the Olympics were hosted by Greece in August 2004, according to a subsequent investigation by the Greek authorities..."

The Politics of Fear And The So-Called War On Terror:

Keith Olbermann: Terror and Politics in America
"Keith Olbermann does a stunning job of laying out a five year history of Bush administration Terror Alerts that came at moments when the administration may have wanted to change the subject." QuickTime, Windows Media Player and RealPlayer links.

Only Fear Sells Better Than Sex:

What's left unsaid in the NBC report is the motivation by US intel officials to expose the plot before British investigators had a tight case for prosecution. Getting the unconditional US support for Israel in its war with Hezbollah, and the deteriorating security situation in Iraq out of the headlines is of paramount interest to Karl Rove and Team Bush. Cynically dousing the American public with yet another ration of fear is much too easy, it seems. The timing of this seems far too convenient, given the closeness to the November election. Just like in 2002, Karl Rove is playing the national security card, insinuating that only the GOP will protect America from 'Islamofascism.'

Lisa Myers (NBC): NBC: Disagreement over timing of arrests
"LONDON - NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.
British officials knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.
In contrast to previous reports, one senior British official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.
The sources did say, however, that police believe one U.K.-based suspect was ready to conduct a 'dry run.' British authorities had wanted to let him go forward with part of the plan, but the Americans balked.
At the White House, a top aide to President Bush denied the account...
...Another U.S. official, however, acknowledges there was disagreement over timing. Analysts say that in recent years, American security officials have become edgier than the British in such cases because of missed opportunities leading up to 9/11...
...One senior British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the United States would 'render' him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.
British security was concerned that Rauf be taken into custody 'in circumstances where there was due process,' according to the official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, this official says, Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British.
The official shed light on other aspects of the case, saying that while the investigation into the bombing plot began 'months ago,' some suspects were known to the security services even before the London subway bombings last year."

Chris Floyd: Letter From Airstrip One: Fear Over Facts
"...It's unlikely, however, that last week's apparent thwarting of an alleged test-run by one alleged conspirator in an alleged plot by a group of alleged religious extremists to allegedly blow up an ever-shifting number of US-bound airplanes with some sort of liquid explosive or other will be celebrated centuries from now as 'Rashid Rauf Day,' after the alleged plot mastermind who was arrested in Pakistan and is now, after the gentle ministrations of the ISI, said to be 'cooperating with authorities.' But Britain's political and media elites have reacted to the incident with a degree of fearmongering and rancor that would have done old Guy's torturers and quarterers proud.
In fact, the level of government bombast and media Muslim-bashing following the Great Bomb Scare Plot far surpasses that seen after the successful terrorist attack on July 7 last year, when 56 people were killed by bombs on London's transport system. And it's off the scale when compared to the nation's measured stoicism in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when 78 Britons died in the attacks on American soil. It seems Tony Blair and the UK commentariat are operating by some strange law of inverse proportion: the less dire the incident, the greater the frenzy...
...The inherent schizophrenia of the 'War on Terror' was everywhere in evidence. Britons were told they were facing the greatest threat to the life of the nation since World War II, requiring tireless vigilance, a 'huge effort of will and courage' - but they should keep shopping, keep traveling, carry on with their normal lives (as their tanned and jaunty leader was doing). They were pipelined stories by an unquestioning media about the dazzling triumph of the super-efficient security services - the same services that had botched the Iraq WMD intelligence, shot dead a Brazilian carpenter they mistook for a terrorist last year and, just two months before, sent 250 heavily armed agents on a raid to seize two alleged 'chemical bombers' (and shoot one of them) on the false word of a single informant. Britain has arrested more than 700 people on terrorism charges in the last five years; only 17 have been found guilty - and only three of these convictions were related to 'Islamic terrorism,' as CounterPunch and the Guardian report...
...Reid is the rising star of the Blair Remnant, which aims to prevent Tony's long-time rival and putative successor, Chancellor Gordon Brown, from seizing the Labour crown when Blair makes his long-promised, much-delayed exit. In the bomb plot media blitz, Reid completely eclipsed the nominal head of government in Blair's absence, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who was already in the doghouse after an adultery scandal - and who will likely be eased out altogether now that he has committed the ultimate heresy of Blair's inner circle: denigrating George W. Bush. In private remarks leaked to the Independent this week, Prescott called Bush's Middle East policy 'crap' and mocked him as 'cowboy with his Stetson on.' Doubtless Prescott is now mulling the fate of ex-Foreign Minister Jack Straw, who was dumped from his post earlier this year after publicly declaring that the Bush administration's obvious yen for a war with Iran was 'nuts.' Those who speak ill of the Master in the White House are not long toleratd by his satrap in Downing Street.
But perhaps the most surreal and jarring juxtaposition of all was the assertion by the British Establishment that the UK's central role in the Iraq War - and Blair's lockstep behind Bush's 'crap' policy of giving Israel's hardline government free rein in the Middle East - have played no part in radicalizing young Muslims. Leading writers from the left-leaning Guardian and Observer to the staid rightists of the Times and the Telegraph joined Blair and Reid (and Bush and even Bill Clinton) in advancing this remarkable thesis. No, they all said, the fact that America and Britain invaded the Islamic heartland on false pretenses and have killed more than 100,000 innocent Muslim civilians there could not possibly have angered a small handful of Muslims to the point of wanting to answer violence with violence. Nor could the pictures of shredded infants being pulled from the rubble of farming villages in Lebanon while Bush and Blair cheered on Israel's inducement of 'birth pangs' in the region have had any effect of anguished and impressionable minds..."


The Rule Of Law:

Unsurprisingly, after this ruling an email goes out to the GOP-faithful with the subject line "Democrat Judge Weakens National Security."

Glenn Greenwald: Unclaimed Territory: The Post Editorial Board tell us how serious, high-minded people should talk about Presidential law-breaking
"For the last four years, the Bush administration has deliberately violated multiple laws because it has adopted radical theories which vest law-breaking powers in the President. It also happens to be well on its way to obtaining the power to criminally prosecute journalists for articles they publish about the administration's conduct. And while all of that has been happening, the Washington Post Editorial Board has said virtually nothing about any of it, sitting idly by while the President vests himself with what George Will calls 'monarchical' powers that (at least) rival terrorism as a threat to our country, and while Attorney General Alberto Gonzales casually speculates about putting Jim Risen and New York Times editors (and perhaps even the Post's own Dana Priest) into a federal prison, just as his most prominent supporters have been urging.
But at long last, the Post Editorial Board has finally found something to be outraged about -- the fact that the judicial opinion issued by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor yesterday isn't scholarly and 'complex' enough for the intellectual tastes of Fred Hiatt. What really matters, says the Post in its unbelievably petty editorial, is not the profound constitutional crisis we face by virtue of a President who believes he has the power to act outside of the law and has been exercising that power aggressively and enthusiastically in numerous ways over five years. No, that is merely a fascinating intellectual puzzle, something for super-smart experts to resolve with great civility and high-minded, complex discussions as they ponder what the Post calls the 'complicated, difficult issues' raised by the administration's lawlessness..."

Crooks And Liars: Jonathon Turley Discusses Today’s Ruling
"Jonathon Turley was on [CNN's] Countdown tonight to talk about today’s ruling that Bush’s NSA eavesdropping program is illegal.

[Video links at the site]

Turley: 'Every time a judge rules against the administration they are either too Democratic or too tall or too short or Pisces. All this spin - this effort to personalize it is doing a great injustice to our system. The problem is not the judge. The problem is a lack of authority. When Gonzales says ‘I got something back in my safe and if you could see it you would all agree with me’. Well, unless there’s a federal statute back in his safe, then it’s not going to make a difference.'"


On Torture:

Reuters: CIA contractor guilty of Afghan detainee abuse
"RALEIGH, North Carolina - A former CIA contractor was found guilty on Thursday of assaulting an Afghan prisoner who later died in a case that raised new questions about the treatment of detainees by U.S. interrogators.
David Passaro, a 40-year-old former Special Forces medic, was the first civilian to be charged with abusing a detainee in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Prosecutors said Passaro beat Abdul Wali so badly he pleaded to be shot to end his pain. Wali died of his injuries two days after the interrogation in June 2003..."

Finally, A Federal Judge Has The Courage To Stand Up For The Rule Of Law

Washington Post: Federal Judge Orders Halt to NSA Wiretapping
"A federal judge in Detroit ordered a halt to the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, ruling for the first time that the controversial effort ordered by President Bush was unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor wrote in a strongly-worded 43-page opinion that the NSA wiretapping program violates privacy and free-speech rights and the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government. She also found that it violates a 1978 law set up to oversee clandestine surveillance.
Ruling in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups, Taylor, 73, wrote that 'public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of the Constitution...'
'It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,' she wrote. '...There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all 'inherent powers' must derive from that Constitution,'..."


America In The Eyes Of Others:

Julia E. Sweig: Why They Hate Us
"...Around the world, anti-Americanism is not simply the result of anger about President Bush's foreign policies. Rather, it is deeply entrenched antipathy accumulated over decades. It may take generations to undo.
Consider the causes..."

The Rule of Law:

Adam Cohen: Has Bush v. Gore Become the Case That Must Not Be Named?
"At a law school Supreme Court conference that I attended last fall, there was a panel on 'The Rehnquist Court.' No one mentioned Bush v. Gore, the most historic case of William Rehnquist’s time as chief justice, and during the Q. and A. no one asked about it. When I asked a prominent law professor about this strange omission, he told me he had been invited to participate in another Rehnquist retrospective, and was told in advance that Bush v. Gore would not be discussed.
The ruling that stopped the Florida recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush is disappearing down the legal world’s version of the memory hole, the slot where, in George Orwell’s '1984,' government workers disposed of politically inconvenient records. The Supreme Court has not cited it once since it was decided, and when Justice Antonin Scalia, who loves to hold forth on court precedents, was asked about it at a forum earlier this year, he snapped, 'Come on, get over it,'...
...There are several problems with trying to airbrush Bush v. Gore from the law. It undermines the courts’ legitimacy when they depart sharply from the rules of precedent, and it gives support to those who have said that Bush v. Gore was not a legal decision but a raw assertion of power.
The courts should also stand by Bush v. Gore’s equal protection analysis for the simple reason that it was right (even if the remedy of stopping the recount was not). Elections that systematically make it less likely that some voters will get to cast a vote that is counted are a denial of equal protection of the law. The conservative justices may have been able to see this unfairness only when they looked at the problem from Mr. Bush’s perspective, but it is just as true when the N.A.A.C.P. and groups like it raise the objection.
There is a final reason Bush v. Gore should survive. In deciding cases, courts should be attentive not only to the Constitution and other laws, but to whether they are acting in ways that promote an overall sense of justice. The Supreme Court’s highly partisan resolution of the 2000 election was a severe blow to American democracy, and to the court’s own standing. The courts could start to undo the damage by deciding that, rather than disappearing down the memory hole, Bush v. Gore will stand for the principle that elections need to be as fair as we can possibly make them."

Lebanon:

Seymour Hersh: The New Yorker: Fact
"In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive...
...The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.
Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country’s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, 'We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.'
Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a profound threat—a terrorist organization, operating on their border, with a military arsenal that, with help from Iran and Syria, has grown stronger since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended, in 2000. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said he does not believe that Israel is a 'legal state.' Israeli intelligence estimated at the outset of the air war that Hezbollah had roughly five hundred medium-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and a few dozen long-range Zelzal rockets; the Zelzals, with a range of about two hundred kilometres, could reach Tel Aviv. (One rocket hit Haifa the day after the kidnappings.) It also has more than twelve thousand shorter-range rockets. Since the conflict began, more than three thousand of these have been fired at Israel.
According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings..."

Aug. 14th, Hersh was interviewed about his article on Democracy Now!

Using Fear As A Political Weapon:

This is amazing stuff. If true, no wonder we're being told nothing about it in the US press.

Wayne Madsen: Wayne Madsen Report
"AUGUST 11, 2006 - The London terror plan was 'known' last Sunday by British and American authorities, according to the Indian press. American Airlines flight 109 from London Heathrow to Boston boarded a family of five, however, after the plane left Heathrow authorities determined that the father appeared on a British suspect list drawn up after the 7/7 London transit attacks. At first, the pilot was instructed to fly all the way to Boston where U.S. authorities could claim credit for apprehending the suspect. However, the pilot, fearing for the safety of his passengers and crew, refused and quickly returned to Heathrow without informing the passengers. Once on the ground, it was discovered that the male had in his carry-on baggage the type of combination liquid explosive and electronic device now being hyped by the British and American media.
British sources report that the reason for the delay in informing the airlines and traveling public about the liquid bomb on the American flight was to maximize the beneficial political impact for Blair and George W. Bush, both plummeting in the polls from the situations in Iraq and Lebanon...
...what prompted Murdoch and Blair to hype a new global 'terror' threat was what Murdoch learned from eavesdropping on the phone calls of Prince Charles' staff at the future king's office, home, and limousine. The eavesdropping revealed that Charles was working with Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who is to the left of Blair, to conduct the same type of political maneuver that John Major used to oust Margaret Thatcher from office. London's left-wing Mayor, Ken Livingston, was also in on the Charles-Brown plan and it was expected that in return for his support, Livingston would get a senior position in a Brown cabinet -- a development that sent shock waves through the neo-con circles in London, Washington, and Jerusalem, including British Home Secretary John Reid and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The Charles-Brown plan was briefed by Blair to Bush during the former's recent visit to Washington. However, because the phony terror plot was known to both leaders -- they decided to be away on vacation when the terror plot was 'uncovered.' Bush is vacationing at his Crawford, Texas 'ranch,' while Blair is on vacation in Barbados, staying at Sir Cliff Richard's luxurious villa.
After Blair met with Bush in Washington, he flew to California where on July 30 he attended Murdoch's News Corporation private corporate executive conference at the posh Inn at Spanish Bay golf resort in Pebble Beach. Blair met with Murdoch, Israeli former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, and various Fox, Star, and Sky News executives. The final touches were agreed to by Blair and Murdoch on how the fake terror plot would play out in Murdoch's media empire..."

The So-Called War On Terror:

NY Times Editorial: The London Plot
"...On Wednesday, when the administration already knew that British agents were rounding up suspects in what they believed was a plot to blow up planes en route to the United States, Vice President Dick Cheney had a telephone interview with reporters to discuss the defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut in a Democratic primary. Mr. Cheney went off on a rather rambling disquisition, but its main point was clear: In rejecting Mr. Lieberman, who supported the war in Iraq, the Democrats were encouraging 'the Al Qaeda types.' Within the Democratic ranks, the vice president added, 'there’s a significant body of opinion that wants to go back — I guess the way I would describe it is sort of the pre-9/11 mind-set, in terms of how we deal with the world we live in,'...
...Here is what we want to do in the wake of the arrests in Britain. We want to understand as much as possible about what terrorists were planning. To talk about airport security and how to make it better. To celebrate what worked in the British investigation and discuss how to push these efforts farther. It would be a blessed moment in modern American history if we could do that without turning this into a political game plan."

Fighting Dirty:

ExxonMobil has no good argument to defend their role in the twin global problems of global warming and finite resource use.

So, they'll just opt for mocking the personality promoting awareness of the issue. How upstanding, the behavior of these fine corporate citizens.

Democracy Now! - Headlines for August 8, 2006
"PR Company Tied To Online Video Mocking Al Gore

...a new video has appeared online mocking Al Gore’s fight against global warming and his film 'Inconvenient Truth'. In the short video Gore appears as a sinister figure who brainwashes penguins and bores movie audiences by blaming the Mideast crisis and Lindsay Lohan's shrinking waist size on global warming. The video is purportedly the work of a 29-year-old video-maker in Beverly Hills. But the Wall Street Journal has revealed the video appears to actually be the work of the public relations and lobbying company DCI Group. The company’s clients include Exxon Mobil..."

The CT Democratic Primary:

William Rivers Pitt: It Wasn't About the War
"...William Greider's seminal article 'Enron Democrats' tells the tale. 'His most important crusade,' wrote Greider of Lieberman, 'was protecting the loopy accounting for corporate stock options. Nervous regulators recognized early on that the profusion of stock options had the potential to deceive investors while cheating the tax system - illusions that could drive company stock prices to impossible heights. Yet when employees eventually cashed in the options, the companies claimed them as tax deductions. This two-way mirror is symptomatic of the deceptive bookkeeping that permeated corporate affairs during the boom and the bubble.'
'Back in 1993,' continued Greider, 'when the Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed to stop it, Lieberman went to war. 'I believe that the global pre-eminence of America's vital technological industries could be damaged by the proposal,' he warned. The FASB, he insinuated, was politically motivated or simply didn't grasp the bright promise of the New Economy. Lieberman organized a series of letters warning the accountants' board to stop its meddling. In the Senate, he mobilized a resolution urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to squelch the reform. It passed 88 to 9. The regulators backed off - and stock prices soared on the inflated earnings reports. Whenever FASB tried to reopen the issue, Lieberman jumped them again. He was well rewarded by Silicon Valley and auditing firms.'
It wasn't just the war. It was a long, slow slide that eventually tipped Lieberman's applecart. It was a process of insinuation into the cash-and-carry culture of Washington, DC. It was a series of astonishingly bad votes on incredibly important issues. It was, above all, political cowardice; Lieberman attached himself to Bush while Bush was riding high, and was unable to extract himself as Bush's popularity collapsed..."

Energy Markets:

Greg Palast: BRITISH PETROLEUM’S 'SMART PIG'
"Is the Alaska Pipeline corroded? You bet it is. Has been for more than a decade. Did British Petroleum shut the pipe yesterday to turn a quick buck on its negligence, to profit off the disaster it created? Just ask the 'smart pig.'
Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum’s management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.
Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline. I say 'courageous' because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems..."

Why Whistleblowers Need Protection:

A man following his conscience was called a 'traitor' and 'fabricator' for telling the truth? I wonder if he'll get any apologies.

UPI: Declassified files show Vietnam war crimes
"Newly declassified Army files confirm U.S. atrocities in Vietnam were more extensive than previously reported, with at least 320 alleged incidents.
The 9,000 pages describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese -- families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
In one example, soldiers from B Company of the 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division, entered a settlement in Quang Nam to question residents and search for weapons on Feb. 8, 1968.
Medic Jamie Henry said he heard a radio transmission describing the rounding up 19 civilians and soldiers asking what to do with them.
The company commander allegedly responded, 'Kill anything that moves,' Henry later recalled.
Moments later, the 19 villagers lay dead or dying.
Henry later published a report on the slaughter, but was branded a traitor and a fabricator, as were other veterans who spoke about war crimes.
The declassified Army files show that Henry and others were telling the truth, a Times review of the files found."

Not Playing Fair:

The irony in this is that 60% of IRS audits target people who make less than $100,000 and a disproportionate number of those are being audited due to claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The Boston Globe: No haven for tax cheats
"Unscrupulous lawyers and accountants who create elaborate scams to help clients avoid paying taxes depend on their very complexity to escape scrutiny and regulation. Fortunately, a special bi partisan subcommittee of the US Senate has ripped the veil off an abusive tax-shelter industry that is costing the US Treasury as much as $70 billion each year. The honest taxpayers of America owe Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Norm Coleman of Minnesota their gratitude, and the rest of Congress ought to support their calls for major changes in a tax collection system that seems overwhelmed by the scope of abuse at the very top of the wealth pyramid.
The case studies illustrated in the Senate report, released last week, require a sleuth's eye and a mathematician's mind to follow. Suffice it to say that accountants, brokers, and investment firms that serve the super-rich have helped their clients evade billions in taxes by shifting assets off shore, dubious stock swaps, money-laundering, disguising identities, exaggerating losses, and creating shell corporations and sham trusts to hide assets from the IRS..."

The Rule of Law:

Rep. John Conyers: The Constitution in Crisis Final Report Released
"Today, I am releasing the final version of my report, the 'Constitution in Crisis.' The report, which is some 350 pages in length and is supported by more than 1,400 footnotes, compiles the accumulated evidence that the Bush Administration has thumbed its nose at our nation's laws, and the Constitution itself. Approximately 26 laws and regulations may have been violated by this Administration's misconduct.
Our Constitution established a tri-partite system of government, with the notion that each branch of government would act as a check on the other two. Unfortunately, for the last six years, the Republicans in Congress have largely viewed themselves as defenders of the Bush Administration, instead of a vital check on overreaching by the Executive Branch. By doing so, I believe they have acted to the detriment of our Constitutional form of government..."


W's Open Contempt For The Fourth Estate:

Dan Froomkin: White House Briefing
"...whether journalists are caged in a centrally-located pen -- or in one a little further away -- doesn't really matter so long as this White House continues to treat the establishment press with thinly-disguised contempt. The spin, the secrets, the non-answers and the unprecedented lack of access are an insult not only to journalists, but to the public that depends on us to fully inform them about what's really going on in the White House.
So there was something entirely appropriate about Bush stopping by the briefing room yesterday not to answer (or even be asked) a single substantive question -- but to insult pretty much everyone in spitting distance..."

The Deadly Mess In The Middle East:

Ray McGovern: Sadly, the Plural of 'Fiasco' Requires No 'E'
"...Let's begin with the new people and policies that President George W. Bush brought in with him when he took office on January 20, 2001. Who urged on him what Michael O'Hanlon of Brookings calls 'the huge mistake of giving Israel a blank check?' Who played the leading roles in encouraging Bush to let slip the dogs of war on Iraq?
Honors for the leading role in the category of fiasco goes, ex aequo, to Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - the 'Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal,' as described by Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (USA, ret.). At an award ceremony, the cabal no doubt would offer copious thanks to key members of the cast - first and foremost, ideologues Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. The Oscar for best actress in a supporting role goes to Condoleezza Rice.
It was five and a half years ago that Rice was formally initiated into the neo-conservative brotherhood as an auxiliary. Her most important service was greasing the skids for the brothers to try to shoehorn into reality their ambitious but naive dreams of using war to ensure total US/Israeli domination of the Middle East. At the new administration's first National Security Council meeting on January 30, 2001, then-national security adviser Rice stage-managed formal approval of two profound changes in decades-long US policy toward Israel-Palestine and Iraq. Thanks to Paul O'Neill, confirmed as treasury secretary just hours before the NSC meeting, we have a first-hand account..."

Raw Story: US supplying Israel with NSA signals intelligence
"A report by columnist Sidney Blumenthal in Salon claims that Israel is receiving intelligence from the US's National Security Agency.
Blumenthal claims to be in touch with 'a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation' to supply Israel with signals intelligence from American assets to help it monitor armament transfers from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah. He states that President Bush has approved the intelligence sharing.
Bush is being influenced by neoconservatives in his administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney's staff and Elliot Abrams, senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council. The group, according to Blumenthal, seeks to start a 'four front war' by giving Israel the pretext to strike Iran and Syria. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been briefed, but is not a central actor in the plan..."


The Aftermath At The WTC

Let's remember that the EPA's message to the public, at the time, was that there was no significant threat to human health.

Newsday: Study: Major lung damage for 9/11 first-responders
"First-responders who inhaled toxic dust after the World Trade Center attack lost lung capacity equal to 12 years of aging, a medical study published Tuesday said.
The study compared the lung function of 12,079 firefighters from the five years prior to 9/11 to tests given to firefighters taken after the response and recovery efforts at Ground Zero. Firefighters on average lost 12 years of lung capacity in a matter of months, the study found.
'It is a strong study insofar as proving the cause and effect of World Trade Center exposure and breathing problems,' said Gisela Banauch, a Montefiore Medical Center doctor who authored the report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. 'A big drop in lung capacity following the exposure helps to bolster a cause and effect.'
Another finding that bolsters the causal relationship is that the earlier firefighters responded on 9/11, the worse their breathing problems, Banauch said..."


More Unsettling News About That Day:

Prison Planet: NORAD Tapes Only Intensify Implausibility Of 9/11 Official Story
"Newly released portions of NORAD tapes from 9/11 featured in a Vanity Fair article do little to answer skeptic's questions about the impotence of U.S. air defenses on 9/11 and if anything only increase focus on the incompatibility of the official version of events with what is actually known to have taken place on that day.
It is clear that the exercises revolving around hijacked airliners scheduled for that morning created so much noise in the system that controllers could not pinpoint the positions of any of the real airliners to orchestrate any kind of intercept.
Errant 'ghost' aircraft such as 'Delta 89' and American Airlines 11 which controllers weren't aware had already crashed into the World Trade Center north tower continually confuse NORAD officials and at one point after Flight 77 has hit the Pentagon, they even intercept their own aircraft.
Several exchanges between NORAD personnel outline the confusion that the drills caused and delayed the response of air defense procedures..."


The Rule of Law:

...is making a few war-criminals nervous.

Washington Post: Gonzales Fears War Crimes Charges
"An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.
Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.
In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such 'protections,' according to someone who heard his remarks last week..."


Campaign Finance:

Too bad this is not a joke...

TPMuckraker: GOP Donors Funded Entire PA Green Party Drive
"...Every single contributor to the Pennsylvania Green Party Senate candidate is actually a conservative -- except for the candidate himself.
The Luzerne County Green Party raised $66,000 in the month of June in order to fund a voter signature drive. The Philly Inquirer reported yesterday that $40,000 came from supporters of Rick Santorum's campaign (or their housemates). Also yesterday, we confirmed that another $15,000 came from GOP donors and conservatives. Only three contributions, totaling $11,000, remained as possible legit donations.
Today, I confirmed that those came from GOP sources..."

Dubious Electronic Voting:

Again, if the people who make the voting machines can provide back-doors for certain people to defeat the intent of the electorate, our elections are worthless.

Any guesses as to why the corporate media are not covering this issue?

Raw Story: Group identifies new flaws in Diebold evoting machines
"The Open Voting Foundation, a California-based nonprofit organization that works to promote the adoption of 'open source' technology to the nation's voting machines, has announced it has found what it calls the 'worst ever security flow found in Diebold RS voting machines.'
The Foundation claims to have discovered a switch inside of the machine which, when flipped, can have the machine operate in 'a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.'
'Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,' said the Foundation's President Alan Descert, in a statement obtained by RAW STORY. 'If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver,' he continued..."