Citizens For Legitimate Government™
is a multi-partisan activist group established to expose and resist US imperialism, corpora-terrorism, and the New World Order.

November 2002 Archives, Page Two

November 27, 2002

• Bush Set to Sign Terror Insurance Bill Today Consumer groups opposed the bill, saying insurance companies don't need a prospective taxpayer bailout despite their pleas of economic distress.
• Bush Signs Homeland Security Bill Dictator Bush today signed into law the long-awaited bill to create a new Department of Homeland Security, a superagency [not to mention --veritable police state] that will combine 22 separate federal agencies, and as expected, he nominated former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge as the new department's first secretary.
• Bush Approves Homeland Security Overhaul Dictator Bush signed legislation Monday creating a new Department of Homeland Security. One provision permits federal business with American companies that have moved their operations abroad to sidestep U.S. taxes. Another measure legally shields drug companies already sued over ingredients used in vaccines. A section helps Texas A&M University win homeland security research money...
• Domestic Security Bill Riles 9/11 Families Many families of Sept. 11 victims had expected to give their support to the creation of a Department of Homeland Security as a strong indication of the country's determination to prevent another attack. But in interviews today many relatives, including leaders of the largest family organizations, said they were surprised at how bitter they felt about the partisan politics surrounding the measure.
• Resistance Rising! True Patriots Networking --by Nat Hentoff "Despite the self-satisfaction of George W. Bush and John Ashcroft, and the somnolence of the press, there is rising resistance around the country to the serial abuses of our liberties."
• Bill of Rights Defense Committee List of areas to learn if a Civil Liberties Safe Zone resolution is underway in your community.
• Coretta Scott King denounces foreign policy, honored by SF gays Civil rights leader Coretta Scott King denounced the Bush administration's foreign policy as she accepted an award for her work in the gay community, saying homeland security should focus on domestic problems ranging from hate crimes to homelessness.
• Findings on Miami-Dade Elections Show Improvements Still Needed, Coalition Says (Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition) Saying Miami-Dade County's November 5th elections were far from problem-free, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition today issued a run down of Election Day blunders that demonstrate the county's failure to implement meaningful voting reforms. View full report (.pdf)
• Voting into the void New touch-screen voting machines may look spiffy, but some experts say they can't be trusted. Rebecca Mercuri, a computer science professor at Bryn Mawr, tells everyone she can, from election judges to county supervisors to the local media, that the supposedly "state-of-the-art" machines they've all been sold are nothing but "a bill of goods."
• Civilians should run, oversee Dade elections, group says Miami-Dade County should return to staffing voting polls with volunteers rather than government employees, end police involvement in running elections and appoint an advisory panel to oversee the Elections Department, a community coalition said Monday.
• Bush advisor tells British MPs: war against Iraq regardless of UN findings One of pResident Bush’s top security advisers, Richard Perle, told British members of Parliament (MPs) at a November 15 all-party meeting that the United States intends to attack Iraq even if United Nations inspectors fail to find any weapons.
• U.N. says Iraq inspectors qualified Only about a third of the U.N. weapons inspectors have been in Iraq previously, but the main U.N. agency running the inspections denied Monday that lack of on-the-ground practice will hamper the operation.
• Tanks will be ready for desert war, says Hoon (UK) Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, spelt out preparations for a war against Iraq last night, promising to get Britain's battle tanks and rifles ready for a strike against Saddam Hussein.
• An asleep media and an unjustified war --by James O. Goldsborough "The media have never excelled in warning about wars, but this time have surpassed themselves, becoming a co-conspirator in making 'regime change' in Iraq seem as natural a thing as a change of seasons."
• War Protesters Organizing - Slowly As the United States prepares for a possible invasion of Iraq, groups of anti-war demonstrators are beginning to organize across the country.
• Protesting War With Iraq (IL) Last week some 350 people gathered in downtown Chicago for a peace rally.
• Protesters criticize CNN coverage of Iraq More than 80 demonstrators picketed outside CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta Sunday afternoon, saying the network lacks anti-war perspectives in its coverage of the U.S. confrontation with Iraq. [Note: CensoringNewsNetwork removed the link by 17:00 11/25/02. --Lori Price] Indymedia's account: 100 March under Anarchist colors charging "CNN Half the Story All the Time"

  
  Atlanta, GA -- Protestors from the 4910 Collective challenge what they call CNN's policy of delivering "Half the Story, All the Time". (Indymedia)

• Hate Crimes Against Arabs Surge, FBI Finds Arabs and others who appeared to be Muslim were threatened, beaten and generally discriminated against more last year than at any other time in the past, according to the FBI's annual survey of hate crimes released yesterday.
• U.S. expected to approve $14 billion aid request Israel will today submit a request for $14 billion in economic aid to U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. pResident George Bush is expected to quickly approve the request - $4 billion in defense aid and U.S. guarantees for $10 billion - with minor changes, Israeli sources said.
• US to start evacuating Jordan staff The US, declared over the weekend that it was starting the evacuation of non-emergency staff.
• Saudis Face U.S. Demand On Terrorism A National Security Council task force is recommending an action plan to Dictator Bush that is designed to force Saudi Arabia to crack down on terrorist financiers within 90 days or face unilateral U.S. action to bring the suspects to justice, senior U.S. officials said yesterday.
• Strange Saudi "Coincidences" (New Democrats Online) "...the 'coincidences' linking the Saudis to terrorist networks continue to mount..."
• U.S. hypocrisy in Indonesia --by Kenneth Roth "...George W. Bush called for "a new ethic of personal responsibility in the business world." Yet the State Department has recommended dismissal of a lawsuit alleging corporate complicity in violent human rights abuse in Indonesia... In the suit, the plaintiffs charge that they were raped, tortured or kidnapped - or their relatives murdered - by Indonesian soldiers paid to protect a big Exxon Mobil natural gas plant in the province.
• States Face $40 Billion 2003 Budget Deficit-Report Sunk in the worst financial doldrums since World War II, states face a possible collective budget shortfall of $40 billion by the end of the fiscal year, the National Governors Association said on Monday.
• Critics Say Government Deleted Web Site Material to Push Abstinence Information on condom use, the relation between abortion and breast cancer and ways to reduce sex among teenagers has been removed from government Web sites, prompting critics to accuse the Department of Health and Human Services of censoring medical information in order to promote a philosophy of sexual abstinence.
• Tainted blood: Red Cross charged (Canada) Police have filed charges against four doctors, the Red Cross and a US pharmaceutical company after a five-year investigation into a tainted blood scandal that saw thousands of Canadians infected with HIV and hepatitis. The Canadian charges include criminal negligence causing bodily harm, which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.
• Problem of Lost Health Benefits Is Reaching Into the Middle Class The growing number of uninsured and the rising cost of health insurance have stimulated Congressional interest on a scale not seen since 1993 and 1994, when President Bill Clinton tried to remake the health care system and guarantee coverage for all Americans.
• Template for Health Care Coverage --by Henry J. Aaron "...the president[sic]'s plan will do little to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and may inadvertently increase them... Beleaguered employers may treat a new tax credit as cover for dropping sponsorship of health plans. If so, the population of the uninsured could explode.
• Mr. Bush and Tobacco (Washington Post) "...the Bush administration persists in siding with [R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc.] RJR and the other cigarette giants in international tobacco-control negotiations convened by the World Health Organization... As well as selling a product that kills people, RJR allegedly finances people who kill people. If the suit succeeds, similar complaints against other tobacco majors are expected. "
• BP Pulls Out of Campaign to Open Up Alaskan Area BP, the world's third-largest oil company, has pulled out of a major lobbying group that is spearheading the campaign to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling, a company spokesman said yesterday.
• Political Candidates Can Pay Themselves - FEC The Federal Election Commission agreed on Monday to let some candidates for federal office pay themselves out of campaign donations.
• Democrats Must Learn Lessons of Wrestler Wellstone --by Courtland Milloy "During his induction into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame last year, Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (D-Minn.) had this to say: 'I have been able to persevere in a lot of situations because of what I learned during wrestling.'"
• Judge Denies Church's Bid to Seal Records on Priests Accusing the Archdiocese of Boston of toying with the court, a judge ordered today that 11,000 documents concerning the church's handling of 65 priests accused of sexually abusing children be made available to the public.
• Groups Decry Commercial Turkey Farms Dismayed by the practices of large commercial turkey farms, animal-welfare groups are intensifying their appeals to consumers to reconsider their Thanksgiving menus.
• The secret war Behind public preparations for an invasion, British and American aircraft are destroying Iraq's air defences while covert groups of special forces are training Kurdish fighters and preparing equipment. British and American warplanes are attacking Iraq's air defences almost daily, and making practice runs on other targets.
• Inspectors arrive to Iraqi protests at 'pretext' for war A team of 18 UN inspectors arrives in Iraq today to begin the crucial first round of new checks on Iraqi weapons sites. But in a letter sent to the UN, Baghdad has complained that the resolution the inspectors are working under contravenes international law and was designed to give the United States an excuse to attack.
• Voices for peace convene meeting on war with Iraq (NH) Local peace activists believe there’s so much opposition to a possible war on Iraq, they were reluctant to publicize an informal gathering planned for Monday night for fear they’d overflow the South Church, Unitarian-Universalist.
• The new, united Europe asserts its independence --by Eric Margolis "Flashback to 480 BC. Xerxes: "At last I have found a way whereby we may at once win glory, get possession of a rich land and obtain satisfaction and revenge." Epilogue: To everyone's surprise, the irksome Greeks ("Grecians" to George W. Bush) won." [a must-read]
• UN rejects Israeli account of British official's killing The United Nations dismissed as "not credible" yesterday an Israeli army claim that Palestinian gunmen fired from inside a UN compound in the West Bank city of Jenin on Friday before its soldiers shot dead Iain Hook, a 52-year-old British relief worker.
• The Saudi Money Trail Rent payments for 9-11 hijackers and mysterious checks from a princess’s account. Is there a Saudi tie to terror? Inside the probe the Bush mis-ministration doesn’t want you to know about
• Saudi link could signal wider threat Senators: U.S. can’t pull punches in investigating alleged Saudi money trail in Sept. 11 attacks --Allegations that money from the Saudi royal family indirectly helped two Sept. 11 hijackers mean a well-financed terrorist structure still could be in place in America, capable of striking again, lawmakers said Sunday.
• Lawmakers Urge Full Probe of Saudi Ties to 9/11 U.S. lawmakers urged the White House on Sunday to more aggressively investigate reports that Saudi Arabia funneled money to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, a charge denied by the kingdom, and whether the FBI failed to pursue the alleged ties.
• U.S. Defends FBI's Saudi-9/11 Probe The White House defended the FBI's handling of a diplomatically sensitive [?!?] investigation into reports that Saudi Arabia provided money that helped support two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
• Grassley Investigates FBI Treatment of Whistleblower Agent (Grassley press release) Sen. Chuck Grassley is asking for an investigation of allegations that an FBI agent who has testified before Congress and spoken to the media about FBI problems is suffering reprisals for his criticisms.
• Material Witness Law Has Many In Limbo Nearly Half Held in War On Terror Haven't Testified --Authorities have arrested and jailed at least 44 people as potential grand jury witnesses in the 14 months of the nationwide terrorism investigation, but nearly half have never been called to testify before a grand jury, according to defense lawyers and others involved in the cases. Although they had not been charged with any crimes, these "material witnesses" were often held under maximum security conditions, in detentions ranging from a few days to several months or longer. At least seven of the witnesses were U.S. citizens.
• Local terror inquiry heats up (MN) Surveillance of Muslims and Arabs now includes undercover agents in mosques, informants working the streets, scrutiny of financial records and wiretaps on phones, say community leaders who have noticed heightened fear in the past two months.
• Springs cops contributed to 'spy files' Protesters' car plates noted (CO) The American Civil Liberties Union revealed documents Thursday that indicate the Colorado Springs Police Department collected information about peace activists that wound up in the Denver Police Department's "spy files."
• Bush Government "Out of Control" --by Chuck Baldwin "Back in August, columnist Paul Craig Roberts asked the question, 'Is a vote for Republicans a vote for a police state?' The answer seems to be a resounding yes! The Bush administration seems determined to turn our country into the most elaborate and sophisticated police state ever devised."
• Congress Adjourned Officially Department of Homeland Security Approved, Unemployment Benefits Blocked The 107th Congress adjourned today after giving final approval to legislation creating a Department of Homeland Security and blocking a Democratic move to extend unemployment benefits that are due to expire shortly after Christmas.
• Bush extends Scalia's job as top Labor Department lawyer Dictator Bush kept the Labor Department's top lawyer, Eugene Scalia, in his job Friday for a few more weeks by naming him acting solicitor. Bush appointed Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to the position in January when Congress was in recess, bypassing the Senate confirmation process.
• GOP Looks To Move Its Social Agenda Hill Push to Include Abortion Curbs, 'Faith-Based' Programs --With Democrats no longer blocking their way in the Senate, Dictator Bush and Republican congressional leaders plan a more vigorous push on their social policy agenda by trying to limit abortions, provide greater support to religious groups and increase funding for sexual abstinence and fatherhood programs, according to White House officials and key lawmakers.
• Faux News chief doubled as political adviser to Bush The revelation that Faux News Channel Chairman Roger Ailes sent a secret memo offering political advice to George W. Bush after last year’s terrorist attacks illustrates one of the fundamental facts of American political life: the utterly dishonest and politically incestuous relationship between the mass media and the government.
• Woodward: All the president's man --by Linda Mcquiag "Watching one of the great heroes of American journalism on TV last week, I found myself wondering if I had tuned in to a remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Bob Woodward certainly appeared to be a changed man from 30 years ago when, along with Carl Bernstein, he broke the Watergate story."
• Hell Hath No Fury Like a Conservative Who Is Victorious --by Adam Cohen "Over four days of panels and soirees, the Federalists were the toast of official Washington. Members of the Bush cabinet, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, joined in the festivities..."
• Government adviser says slave trade is alive in U.S. Department of State advisor Laura Lederer tells Rosa's story wherever she goes... There're more than 55,000 people suffering in slavery situations in America, Lederer said, and the numbers keep growing.
• Homeland a megamerger mess (Daily News) "After months of lectures from politicians on how to run their businesses, corporate executives must be chuckling to themselves. They're watching Washington policymakers make what will likely be a major organizational misstep of their own - pushing forward a massive, ill-conceived merger that puts many of the failed megadeals of the '90s to shame."
• N.Y. Fiscal Crisis Is Echoed Across Nation "Most of the nation's cities and states are in the same shape as New York City," said Chris Hoene, research manager at the National League of Cities. "For the first time in 10 years, you have to talk about cities facing a genuine recessionary economy."
• Homeland Defense Taxes State Budgets States are in a bind when it comes to homeland defense: Nearly every step needed to increase safety requires more cash, and nearly every state is facing a fiscal crisis.
• Unexploded Arms Require Big Cleanup At 16,000 U.S. Sites EPA Papers Note Major Health Risks --Unexploded munitions at 16,000 inactive military ranges, including chemical and biological weapons, pose "imminent and substantial" public health risks and could require the largest environmental cleanup program ever implemented by the U.S. government, according to newly released Environmental Protection Agency documents.
• Cranberry wars: Wisconsin grower sues giant Ocean Spray The suit, filed Nov. 8 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Northland Cranberries Inc., accuses Ocean Spray, based in Massachusetts, of several illegal activities designed to gain a monopoly in the market.
• Vaccine Madness --by Nicholas Regush "The 'Breakthrough' headlines have been running all week about a new vaccine for cervical cancer - this is medical science and health journalism at its worst and a shameful example of how medical research is taking dangerous short-cuts and badly misleading the public..."
• The George W Fight Song! (humor)
• Justice Dept. Acts to Use New Power in Terror Inquiries The Justice Department, moving quickly to use its expanded powers for spying on "possible terrorists," plans to assign federal lawyers in counterintelligence to terrorism task forces in New York and Washington to help secure secret warrants against suspects, officials say. The deployments, along with other changes under discussion by top Justice Department officials, are seen as a crucial first step in breaking down the wall between intelligence gathering and law enforcement, officials said.
• Democrats Say Economic Security Top Priority Democrats said on Saturday that economic security and domestic security go hand-in-hand and it was important that lawmakers set priorities with both goals in mind.
• Statement by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle It Is Shameful For The House To Leave Town Without Helping Workers --"This is a sad day for a lot of workers. Because of Republican inaction, nearly one million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits three days after Christmas. Without jobs, and without an extension of their unemployment insurance benefits, they are facing a grim holiday season."
• Energy providers have juice --by David Lazarus "So now we know, thanks to documents just released by federal regulators, that energy providers Williams and AES conspired to drive electricity prices higher during the worst of the California power crisis. What most people don't know, though, is that board members of both companies have links to the White House, as do directors of other energy heavyweights that have received subpoenas for their alleged role in fleecing California ratepayers.
• Weapons inspectors warn of delays A newly arrived United Nations team has warned of delays in inspecting the most controversial suspected Iraqi weapons sites, including the palaces of Saddam Hussein. The news is likely to infuriate Washington, which has little time if it is to launch an invasion of Iraq before the onset of hot weather there.
• US Mulling 3-Stage Plan for Post-War Iraq-Report A consensus is forming within the Bush mis-ministration on how to govern Iraq in the event of a successful U.S. military campaign against Baghdad that envisions an initial period of military rule, a news magazine reported on Saturday.
• Any war in Iraq to cost billions Including occupation, price may top $1 trillion, one expert estimates; Impact on energy market feared --The cost of ousting Saddam Hussein could stretch into hundreds of billions of dollars and possibly trigger a worldwide economic downturn, analysts and economists say.
• Western Planes Again Strike Southern Iraq Western planes bombed a mobile radar system in southern Iraq on Saturday, continuing the recent "spike" in skirmishes in the no-fly zone, the U.S. military said.
• Reserves Get Ready for War in Iraq About 50,600 reservists and guardsmen are already active, most assigned to homeland duty in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon officials said last week they may need 100,000 more, possibly 200,000, if the country goes to war.
• Scott Ritter's Iraq Complex At the back of the auditorium, a man cupped his hands over his mouth, improvising a megaphone: ''Iraq is not the problem. Enron is!'' ...Most of the crowd wanted to hear the case against war, and they were exuberant to be hearing it from Scott Ritter, the onetime United Nations arms inspector and now America's most unlikely peacenik.
• Coretta Scott King argues against war on Iraq Coretta Scott King is speaking out against the possibility of a war on Iraq.
• Veterans Say Pentagon Still Covering Up Weapons Tests The U.S. Defence Department gave them cryptic names like 'Fearless Johnny', 'Errand Boy' and 'Rapid Tan'. But Jack Alderson, then a 31-year-old Navy lieutenant, knew the tests were part of a biological weapons project.
• Military Recruiting Law Puts Burden on Parents High schools across the nation must provide a directory of names, addresses, and telephone numbers for the Pentagon-- what one school official called "a gold mine of a list" --under a sleeper provision in the new No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted this year.
• Pearl Jam Get Their Act Together The sardonic Bush-baiting grunge poem "Bush Leaguer" ("A confidence man, but why so beleaguered?/ He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer"), leaves no question about the band's assessment of the pResident.
• Angry French President shields Chretien Chretien said he'd decided not to fire his aide, Francoise Ducros, for calling pResident George W. Bush "a moron." [See photo, above.] Some coverage in the U.S. was complimentary, with one former Clinton aide calling Ducros' candour "refreshing."
• Ridge Rebuts Gore Attack GOP Governors Are Told of 'Substantial Progress' in Terror War --Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge today rebutted charges from President Al Gore that Dictator Bush has lost focus on the war against terrorism and has left the country more vulnerable to future attacks, saying, "I don't know what the vice president[sic]'s talking about."
• Bush allows oil drilling on pristine Texas beach Environmentalists are again waging war with Republicans. This time the row is over a decision to allow an energy company to drill two gas wells in a coastal national park in Texas that is home to the world's most endangered species of sea turtle.
• The black tide inches to shore. And Spain holds its breath Eye witness: Prestige oil spill
• Easy Credit and Hard Times Bring a Flood of Foreclosures The epitaphs of foreclosed homes have spread like crab grass across Indianapolis.
• US government sets out to create artificial life-form in laboratory Dr Craig Venter has received $3m (£2m) from the US government to create an artificial microbe that could be developed into anything from a new source of energy to a biological weapon [?!?]. The project raises ethical concerns ranging from the role of scientists in "playing God" with nature to whether this form of genetic modification can ever be safely controlled.
• Israel Admits One of Its Soldiers Killed U.N. Official in Jenin The Israeli military admitted tonight that it was a shot fired by one of its soldiers that killed a senior United Nations official on Friday at the agency's compound in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
• Catholics admit persecution of Aids victims The Catholic Church's official programme for international development has issued an extraordinary apology on behalf of Catholics worldwide, saying they have colluded in the persecution of HIV and Aids victims in the developing world.

  November 24, 2002

• Now, This Is War: A Refrain, In Thomas Carlyle Fashion, by the so-called 'Dumbed-down Left' (Was "America, The Hopeless") [revised] -- by Michael Rectenwald, CLG Founder and Chair: "Given the obvious fact that the Republican agenda is anathema to the interests of any majority, in the US or the world at large, one might conclude, with some Europeans, that Americans are either suicidal, mentally retarded, or both. But this is not the case; Europeans cannot imagine the extent to which the American media has, especially since the repeal of the Fairness in Broadcasting Act (circa 1986), been overrun by corporate interests allied to the Republican agenda. Nor do Europeans, with a strong leftist tradition, understand the failure of the US political system to develop any substantial opposition party to forcefully and clearly articulate a political vision other than the one foisted by said corporate media. The articulation of an alternative is left to the castigated voices of the Internet, like those of the CLG. If the people are "dumbed down," it is only because they suffer from paucity of real political education and analysis. Dumbing down is more the fault of such people as New York Times writer, Nicholas Kristof, than any fault of the Internet activists, or the people in general."
• The war against Iraq and America’s drive for world domination by David North "No other country in modern history, not even Nazi Germany at the height of Hitler’s madness, has asserted such a sweeping claim to global hegemony—or, to put it more bluntly, world domination—as is now being made by the United States." [A must read!]
• 9/11 Report Says Saudi Arabia Links Went Unexamined A draft report by the joint Congressional committee looking into the Sept. 11 attacks has concluded that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A, in their investigations, did not aggressively pursue leads that might have linked the terrorists to Saudi Arabia, senior government officials said today.
• 9-11 Hijackers: A Saudi Money Trail? The FBI is investigating whether the Saudi Arabian government—using the bank account of the wife of a senior Saudi diplomat—sent tens of thousands of dollars to two Saudi students in the United States who provided assistance to two of the September 11 hijackers, according to law-enforcement sources. [While the Saudis have this plausible connection to Al Queda and the hijackers themselves and there has been not even a hint of a connection between Iraqis and Al Queda, Bush is moving forward with plans to bomb Iraq! Why is that? Well, because Saudi Arabia already has a royal dictatorship beholden to US oil interests, and the Iraq does not. This proves that "weapons of mass destruction" and "terrorism" are false pretexts for any war on Iraq. Otherwise, we'd be attacking Saudi Arabia. The war on Iraq is a war of empire. All else represents nothing but a lie. --Michael Rectenwald]
• California fans still want Gore for president They showed up hours in advance to stake out a spot. They formed endless, snaking lines. Some waited by the hundreds in the dark outside just to get a glimpse of President Al Gore and First Lady, Tipper Gore.
• Aide keeps job after ‘moron’ quip Chretien’s spokeswoman overheard deriding Bush at summit --Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said Friday that he had rejected an offer by his chief spokeswoman to resign after she was quoted as calling pResident Bush a moron. [Why should she resign? The spokeswoman was merely articulating what millions of people throughout the world think of the Idiot Usurper. --Lori Price]
• Welcome to the American Gestapo --by Doug Thompson "Wonder if any of the vast sums of money approved Tuesday for the new Department of Homeland Security are set aside for black uniforms with knee-length boots and black leather trench coats? Should be. Since we’ve gone to all this trouble to create the new American Gestapo we might as well let them look the part."
• Agency Weighed, but Discarded, Plan Reconfiguring the Internet The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which is exploring how to create a vast database of electronic transactions, considered but rejected another surveillance idea: tagging Internet data with unique personal markers to make anonymous use of some parts of the Internet impossible.
• Pentagon drops Internet ID plan A Defense Department agency (DARPA) recently considered—and rejected—a far-reaching plan that would sharply curtail online anonymity by tagging e-mail and Web browsing with unique markers for each Internet user. The idea involved creating secure areas of the Internet that could be accessed only if a user had such a marker, called eDNA, according to a report in Friday’s New York Times.
• In the Name of Security, Privacy for Me, Not Thee The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, based in St. Louis, held that the police could obtain e-mail messages of an accused child pornographer by faxing a warrant to Yahoo, the Internet service [well, if you can call it that], and relying on Yahoo's technicians to produce the materials. The case turned on whether the technicians could in effect be deputized by the government.
• Bush Leans To Limited Smallpox Vaccination Top aides to pResident Bush favor a plan that would offer smallpox vaccinations to millions of Americans but would stop short of making the bioterror defense universally available, senior White House officials said.
• Iraq's nuclear non-capability --by Imad Khadduri "As the war storm against Iraq swirls and gathers momentum, seeded by the efforts of the American and British governments, serious doubts arise as to the credibility of their intelligence sources, particularly the issue of Iraq's nuclear capability... I worked with the Iraqi nuclear program from 1968 until my departure from Iraq in late 1998."
• Right-wing US group lobbies for war on Iraq --Colonial conquest in the name of "liberation" --Faced with mounting public unease and outright opposition to its preparations for an unprovoked invasion of Iraq, the Bush mis-ministration and its right-wing supporters have cobbled together a front group whose aim is to convince Americans that war is necessary to “liberate” the Iraqi people.
• Coalition Forces Strike Iraqi Communications Facilities Coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons today to target unmanned communications facilities located south of Al Amarah, about 165 miles southeast of Baghdad, U.S. Central Command officials said.
• Recess Appointees Relinquish Title Only Reich, Scalia Put In Similar Jobs --Dictator Bush yesterday extended the tenure of two of the most controversial members of his mis-ministration after their recess appointments expired with the adjournment of Congress.
• Brooklyn: Over 1,000 Pack House of the Lord Church To Say No War Against Iraq Over 1,000 people crowded into three floors of Brooklyn's House of the Lord Church for New York's first major anti-war demonstration in the African American community.
• 1M to Lose Unemployment Benefits Nearly 1 million unemployed workers across the country who will start losing jobless benefits three days after Christmas because Congress failed to grant an extension before leaving for the year. Without congressional action, an estimated 820,000 people will lose benefits that day, with an additional 95,000 each week thereafter.
• The leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives are ready to adjourn Friday without extending unemployment aid for 800,000 jobless workers, who will lose their benefits Dec. 28.
• Democrats Ask Bush to Help Pass Benefits for the Jobless Democratic leaders of Congress appealed today to Dictator Bush to intervene in a standoff over extending unemployment benefits. House Republicans said they would not consider any proposal when the House met on Friday.
• Liberal philosophy, policies, programs benefit Americans --by Dan Radmacher "Liberal isn’t a dirty word. The sooner Democrats remember that, the sooner they can start rebuilding the party."
• Major change is in the air for pollution rules The Bush mis-ministration on Friday gave 17,000 older power plants, refineries and factories greater flexibility in meeting the Clean Air Act — a move that some states planned to challenge in court. State air pollution officials and environmentalists said the revisions will increase pollution and premature deaths.
• White House Loosens Clean Air Rules The Bush mis-ministration on Friday eased clean air rules to allow utilities, refineries and manufacturers to avoid having to install expensive new anti-pollution equipment when they modernize their plants.
• California Files Lawsuit on Gas Prices The lieutenant governor of California filed a lawsuit this week against dozens of natural gas companies and two trade journals, contending they conspired to publish false information that led to price spikes.
• Corporate Culture and Big Pay Come to Nonprofit Testing Service Buoyed by growing revenue, the Educational Testing Service, the not-for-profit group that produces the SAT, the Advanced Placement exams and the Graduate Record Exams, last year gave one-time bonuses of as much as $366,000 to 15 of its officers.
• Canada to U.S.: Mind your business Don't tell us how to run our military, defence minister admonishes U.S. pResident. Second Canadian official calls Bush 'a moron' for pushing Iraq onto NATO agenda -- Earlier in the day, a senior Canadian official, who asked not to be identified, called Mr. Bush "a moron" because of his efforts to push the war against Iraq to the top of NATO's agenda.
• Canadian PM doesn't think Bush is "a moron" [?!?] Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, attempting to head off an embarrassing spat with Washington, has quickly distanced himself from a senior official who reportedly called U.S. pResident George W. Bush "a moron". [Just say the truth --we all *know*that George Bush is the Idiot Usurper.]
• War, Whatever Bush aide: Inspections or not, we'll attack Iraq --George Bush's top security adviser last night admitted the US would attack Iraq even if UN inspectors fail to find weapons. Dr Richard Perle stunned MPs by insisting a "clean bill of health" from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix would not halt America's war machine.
• A war that can't be won The west isn't just losing the fight against terrorism - it is fuelling it across the globe --by Seumas Milne "After a year of US military operations in Afghanistan and around the world, the CIA director George Tenet had to concede that the threat from al-Qaida and associated jihadist groups was as serious as before September 11... In other words, the global US onslaught had been a complete failure - at least as far as dealing with non-state terrorism was concerned."
• Saddam the new Hitler, Bush tells Europeans [Hello, Pot? This is Kettle. You're blaaaccckkkk!] George Bush has reminded Europeans of the heavy price they have paid for appeasing dictators [like himself???] and challenged NATO members to join him in confronting Saddam Hussein and fighting terrorism beyond Europe. In a speech to students on the eve of a two-day NATO summit, Bush compared the challenge of the Iraqi President to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which led to World War II.
• U.S. hopes inspectors will find proof for war With no conclusive evidence of its own, the Bush dictatorship is relying on United Nations inspectors to prove what the White House has been alleging for months: that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons.
• Powell: Summer No Obstacle to Fighting Iraq The United States could fight Iraq in the summer, especially in the cool of the night, if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein waits until the winter passes and then obstructs U.N. weapons inspections, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday.
• The Tip of the Spear -- A war on Iraq would be waged as never before by Special Forces. Their game plan—from a general who once led them
• Students countywide protest war (CA) Groups from Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Sebastopol high schools, SSU leave classes to express opposition to attack on Iraq
• Faculty protest war in Iraq With the possibility of a war against Iraq looming, Penn (University of Pennsylvania) faculty and staff held a teach-in last night to express their opposition to the war as well as educate and inform the greater University community.
• U.S. Military Budget Tops Rest of World by Far While the rest of the world is cutting military spending, the United States is adding billions to its military budget.
• Bush's strategy digs U.S. into a bottomless hole Not our job to prevent the proliferation of weapons of terror --by Steve Chapman "We now spend as much on defense as the next 15 nations combined. And you know what? It's not enough... Iraq is first on Bush's list, and the administration admits that the war and its aftermath could cost up to $200 billion. Unlike the 1991 Persian Gulf War, we may not find many other countries willing to share the sacrifice in either blood or treasure."
• Israel Eyes Up to $10B in U.S. Aid Israel will ask the United States for loan guarantees aimed at jump-starting its economy which has been damaged by two years of violence and the request will total between $8 billion and $10 billion, a senior government official said Thursday.
• IBM's Gerstner to Lead Carlyle Group Louis V. Gerstner, IBM Corp.'s outgoing chairman, will take the helm of The Carlyle Group, the politically connected investment league whose rarefied leadership and investor roster ranges from former president George Bush to the Saudi family of Osama bin Laden.
• Government Posts $54B Budget Deficit The government started off the 2003 fiscal year with a $54 billion budget deficit, while the 2002 budget shortfall was slightly smaller than the government had earlier reported, the Treasury Department said Thursday.
• US intelligence appeals court sanctions increased domestic spying The ruling is the latest in a series of government actions and court decisions since September 11, 2001 attacking democratic rights, expanding the police powers of the state, and paving the way for authoritarian rule in the US.
• CIA Concerned About Data Overload Broad new surveillance powers granted the Justice Department come with a risk for investigators: There may be such an information overload that agents could overlook a critical fragment of information that would prevent a terrorist attack, a senior CIA lawyer said Thursday.
• Drug Industry Seeks Ways to Capitalize on Election Success Having spent more than $30 million to help "elect" their allies to Congress, the major drug companies are devising ways to capitalize on their electoral success by securing favorable new legislation and countering the pressure that lawmakers in both parties feel to lower the cost of prescription drugs, industry officials say.
• Bush Mis-ministration to Release New Pollution Rules The Bush mis-ministration will release new rules on Friday to give older coal-fired power plants more leeway to avoid maintenance to reduce emissions, congressional sources said on Thursday. "These rollbacks of the Clean Air Act are unacceptable and endanger public health," said Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts. Markey called the planned changes "the post-election opening salvo in the Republicans' war on our nation's clean air and clean water laws."
• Approval of Park Drilling Angers Environmentalists The Bush mis-ministration has approved the drilling of two new natural gas wells in this national park, which lies along the nation's longest stretch of undeveloped beach.
• Boeing to Cut 5,000 More Jobs in 2003 Boeing Co., the world's largest aircraft maker, said on Wednesday it would cut 5,000 commercial jet jobs in 2003, on top of 30,000 workers fired in 2002 after the Sept. 11 hijack attacks pummeled its airline customers.
• Black & Decker Cutting 1,300 Jobs Black & Decker Corp. will close its Easton, MD plant, eliminating 1,300 jobs and leaving the toolmaker with virtually no manufacturing presence in its home state.
• Cheney Meetings Fuel Speculation About Economic Team Vice pResident Dick Cheney has been meeting with several prominent conservative economists and some Republican sources say he may be laying the groundwork for a possible reshuffling of the mis-ministration's economic team.
• The Sons Also Rise -- by Paul Krugman "Your success in life depends on your ability and drive, not on who your father was. Just ask the Bush brothers..."
• Florida's rate of graduations worst in U.S. Florida's high-school graduation rate ranks dead last in the nation, according to a conservative research group challenging the state's increasingly rosy figures. [Yes, all the money goes toward stealing elections and coronations (see below), for Jeb's "devious plans." -- Lori Price]
• Bush plans three-day inaugural celebration Gov. Jeb Bush's inaugural celebration will include three events in Miami and Tallahassee, leading up the actual swearing-in on Jan. 7, a spokesman said.
• Top German official demands "more inequality" In a rare moment of candour, a top government economist has publicly stated what Germany’s corporate and political elite has long been discussing in private and is now implementing as social policy."We need more social inequality in order to get more employment," Wolfgang Wiegard stated in Berlin last week.
• Gore: Bush Making Serious Mistakes Al Gore said Wednesday that pResident Bush is making serious mistakes in the war on terrorism and called his economic plan "a catastrophic failure." That gives Democrats "an excellent chance" to win the White House in 2004, whoever their nominee is, he said.
• Gore Plans Bolder Race in 2004 — if He Runs --President Al Gore, as he nears a decision on whether to seek the presidency again, has begun formulating plans for a possible campaign that would be much more informal in style and more ambitious in its ideas than his successful race in 2000.
• Dictator Bush: (as adapted from an interview for the book, Bush at War, an inside account of the debate within the Bush mis-ministration) "I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president [sic]. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
• Springtime for Hitler? --by Knute Berger "Do you smell fascism in the air? A little whiff of the Wehrmacht? ...'Fascist' is a word that hippies wore out with too many references to dad's necktie, so it's not a terribly useful term. But something about Bush II and terrorized America is bringing Third Reich references to the lips:..."
• Bush compares terror to Nazis Dictator George W. Bush has warned European allies that NATO countries face threats from terrorism in the 21st century as dangerous as those posed by German armies in the last. [Given that Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bu$h, directly supported the Nazi party, he should know! -- Lori Price (See also, "The Bush Nazi Connection"]
• Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases A massive database that the government will use to monitor every purchase made by every American citizen is a "necessary tool in the war on terror," the Pentagon said Wednesday. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is home to the Pentagon's brightest thinkers -- the ones who built the Internet. DARPA will be in charge of trying to make the system work technically.
• George Bush's Big Brother --by Jonathan Turley "Long thought dead, it now appears that Orwell is busy at work in the darkest recesses of the Bush administration and its new Information Awareness Office. It is a title that is truly a masterpiece of doublespeak. After all, who could be against greater awareness of information? ...Welcome to the latest product from the good people at DARPA."
• Law Permits Surveillance by FBI They have broken into homes, offices, hotel rooms and automobiles. Copied private computer files. Installed hidden cameras. Listened with microphones in one couple's bedroom for more than a year. Rummaged through luggage. Eavesdropped on telephone conversations. It's the FBI, operating with permission from a secretive U.S. court.
• FBI query upsets UMass campus An ad-hoc group of UMass faculty and student groups are charging that the university's involvement in the interrogation of M.J. Alhabeeb, a teacher of consumer studies at the University of Massachusetts, represents betrayal.
• Ehrlich use of aircraft raises legal, ethics issues -- Company linked to WBFF Faux 45 provided helicopter -- (MD) Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has been given extensive use of a luxury executive helicopter provided at an apparent discount by a company with ties to two Maryland television stations.
• Faux News Head Sent a Policy Note to Bush Roger Ailes, the chairman of the Faux News Channel, confirmed yesterday that he sent a note to the White House last year suggesting policies for the Idiot Usurper [Bush] to follow in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
• Court Denies Lifetime Care for Vets A divided, reluctant federal appeals court denied claims Tuesday by World War II and Korean War veterans who said the government reneged on a promise to provide free lifetime health care if they stayed in the service for 20 years.
• Rumsfeld, Annan Clash on Whether Iraq 'No Fly' Zone Fire is Grounds for War Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday took aim at U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who said the Security Council did not back a U.S. charge that Baghdad was already violating a new U.N. resolution on Iraq.
• Nine gay Army linguists discharged --All Trained at Monterey School, six in Arabic; Critics Say Policy Affects National Security During a time when the U.S. government has acknowledged that Arabic linguists are desperately needed in the war against terror, nine gay Army linguists have been discharged after being trained at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey.
• U.S. to Be More Dependent on Imported Oil The United States will become more dependent on crude oil and natural gas imports to meet its energy needs over the next two decades, the government forecast on Wednesday. [Bush's paymasters hit paydirt w. Bush's obsession over Iraq. -- Lori Price]
• PM plans to ask U.S. for aid that could top $10 billion An inter-ministerial team headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, is working on a proposal requesting American economic assistance that could top $10 billion.
• Bush, Bin Laden on Person of the Year List What does Dictator Bush have in common with Osama bin Laden, rapper Eminem and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein? Answer: They are all on the "short list" for Time Magazine's 2002 Person of the Year.
• Minnesota's shame Republicans don't like my criticism? Too bad. They have to answer for Norm Coleman's campaign, which exploited 9/11 in a way that was truly evil. -- by Garrison Keillor (Salon.com "Premium") "...the use of Iraq as an election ploy, openly, brazenly, from the president [sic] and Karl Rove all the way down to Norman Coleman, who came within an inch of accusing Wellstone of being an agent of al-Qaida. To do that one day and then, two days later, to feign grief and claim the dead Wellstone's mantle and carry on his 'passion and commitment' is simply too much for a decent person to stomach."
• Schools bend under tight budgets The worst fiscal crisis in 10 years forces districts to enlarge classes, cut sports teams, and charge for busing.
• 300,000 of state's jobless to lose benefits on Dec. 28 --House, Senate couldn't agree on extension (CA) As many as 300,000 Californians will see their federal unemployment benefits cut off three days after Christmas because House and Senate leaders could not agree to extend a program to help those hit hardest by the recent recession.
• [Holy copycat alert, Batman!] Israel gives smallpox vaccines -- should U.S.? In just three months, the Israeli government has gone from making the decision to nearly completing the task of vaccinating 15,000 health workers, police officers and others that would likely be first on the scene in the event of a smallpox outbreak.
• Preliminary Report on November 20th Not In Our Name Student/Youth Day of Action (Indymedia) November 20th was the Not In Our Name National Student/Youth Day of Action Against The War. Here at 'Ground Zero' thousands of New York City high school and college students gathered in solidarity to say "NO, NOT IN OUR NAME" to the war on Iraq.
• Italy: Twenty anti-globalization activists arrested in police sweeps Charged under Mussolini-era subversion laws --Less than a week after one of the biggest anti-war demonstrations in Europe since the end of World War II, the Italian judiciary and police have conducted a large-scale operation against anti-globalisation protesters.
• Tajik Military Retaliates Against Journalists by Drafting Them Into Army Military officials in Tajikistan have forcibly conscripted three journalists into the army following the trio’s involvement in the production of a television program that detailed the use of "press-gangs" to fulfill draft quotas. [If only the Army would take: Brian Williams, Wolf Blitzer and Candy Crowley, life would be good. Oops! --forgot --they aren't journalists. -- Lori Price]
• Senate approves Homeland bill Capping months of debate, the Senate Tuesday approved 90-9 a bill that would create a Department of Homeland Security -- a massive reorganization of the federal government sparked by the devastating September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks [sparked by the criminal negligence of George W. Bush -- Lori Price].
• U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 107th Congress - 2nd Session On Passage of the Bill (H.R. 5005, as amended ) Senators who voted Nay: Akaka (D-HI), Nay; Byrd (D-WV), Nay; Feingold (D-WI), Nay; Hollings (D-SC), Nay; Inouye (D-HI), Nay; Jeffords (I-VT), Nay; Kennedy (D-MA), Nay; Levin (D-MI), Nay; Sarbanes (D-MD), Nay
• Senate Roll Call: Amendment to Homeland Security Bill An alphabetical listing by state of how each senator voted on the amendment to remove what Democrats called a special interests provision from the Homeland Security Department bill. A "yes" vote was a vote to approve the amendment and a "no" vote was a vote to defeat it. Voting "yes" were 45 Democrats, 1 Republican and one independent. Voting "no" were 3 Democrats, 48 Republicans and one independent.
• Senate Republicans Prevail on Homeland Security The U.S. Senate on Tuesday refused to drop a package of pro-business provisions attached to legislation to create Dictator Bush's proposed Department of Homeland Security. On a largely party-line vote of 52-47, the Senate defeated a Democratic amendment to strip out what critics called "special interest" provisions slipped into the bill to benefit Republican allies.
• A BILL: To Establish the Department of Homeland Security, and For Other Purposes (.pdf)
• Byrd, at 85, Fills the Forum With Romans and Wrath As his colleagues hurriedly tried to give the president a domestic security bill, Senator Robert C. Byrd took the floor this morning to tell them of a "truly great" senator from the first century A.D. named Helvidius Priscus. One day this Roman was met outside the senate by the emperor Vespasian, who threatened to execute him if he spoke too freely.
• Address by Senator Robert Byrd and Senator Debbie Stabenow Delivered on the Floor of the US Senate --The Homeland Security Act of 2002 [Excerpted from Congressional Record of 11/14/02]
• Back to the Usual Pork --by David S. Broder The Republicans in the House of Representatives have just given a demonstration of how their party can squander the opportunity created by the midterm election to become the long-term majority in this country.
• Gore Rips ‘Big Brother' Bush President Al Gore charged last night that the new Homeland Security Department shows the Bush mis-ministration is moving "towards a Big Brother-type approach" to government.
• President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper Gore, joined Larry King for the hour on November 19, with phone calls. Click here for transcript.
• Republicans Mull Tax Cuts Starting Near $100 Bln The White House and Republicans in Congress are laying the groundwork for a wide range of tax cuts, including a short-term economic "stimulus" [Bu$h's corporate welfare bonanza] starting near $100 billion, congressional aides and lobbyists said on Tuesday.
• Annan Says Iraqi No-Fly Zone Firing No Violation Iraq's firing on U.S. and British aircraft enforcing "no-fly" zones in Iraq is not a violation of the latest Security Council resolution, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday.
• Hellfire Missiles, Howitzer Shells Rock Northern Kuwait as American Troops Prepare for War With Iraq Apache helicopter-fired Hellfire missiles and high-explosive artillery shells rocked the desert just miles from the Iraqi border as U.S. forces prepared for a possible war on Iraq.
• Military Boondoggles Former Pentagon official raps missile defense --It may not work. It's too expensive. And it certainly will not protect the United States against terrorism. These are the conclusions that two college professors and a former Pentagon official reached Tuesday, November 12, during a panel discussion at Providence College on Dictator Bush's proposed missile defense system.
• Pakistani MP brands America a 'terrorist' A senior Pakistani MP described America as the "biggest terrorist state" in prayers said in Parliament yesterday for a man executed in Virginia last week for the murder of two members of the CIA.
• Suspicious Letter Closes Sorting Center (CT) A sorting room at the U.S. Postal Service's processing center in Hartford was sealed off Tuesday morning after an employee reported finding an envelope containing a suspicious white powder, officials said. The powder was collected by hazardous materials crew that placed it in a Hartford police bomb squad container to be analyzed in a state laboratory.
• Hartford Post office evacuated after suspicious envelope found Emergency crews are checking out a possible problem at the central post office in Hartford involving a suspicious envelope.
• Cases hint of terrorism, fizzle into the mundane Investigations: As the nation sorts out how to deal with threats, the burden falls on law enforcement and Muslim visitors.
• US Muslims suffer backlash Hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims in the United States increased by 1,700% in 2001, according to crime statistics compiled by the FBI. Human Rights Watch has criticised US authorities for not doing enough to stem the backlash following the 11 September attacks.
• Family Feud --An escalating war of words threatens the Bush mis-ministration's ties to conservative Christians --A major battle has broken out between the Bush White House and religious conservatives.
• Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman concedes In his announcement, Siegelman said "serious questions" had been raised about the vote returns in Baldwin County. He said the GOP district attorney in the county "threatened to put everyone in jail" who tried to conduct a recount. He also said Republican Rep. Bob Riley had "blocked a recount at every turn" and that 13 days after the vote, not a single ballot had been recounted.
• Panel, Citing Health Care Crisis, Presses Bush to Act The National Academy of Sciences said today that the United States health care system was in crisis and that the Bush mis-ministration should immediately test possible solutions, including universal insurance coverage and no-fault payment for medical malpractice, in a handful of states.
• Suit Filed Over Alabama Chemical Weapons Incinerator An Army plan to burn Cold War-era chemical weapons in Alabama unfairly endangers minorities, a dozen groups contend in a federal lawsuit that seeks to block the incineration. Some 75,000 people live within nine miles of the incinerator at Anniston, and 44 percent of them are black, while only about a quarter of Alabama's population is black, the opponents say in the lawsuit filed Tuesday.
• Police assault anti-WTO protesters in Australia Backed by state and federal government leaders, police attacked anti-World Trade Organisation (WTO) protesters in Sydney on Thursday and Friday. Protesters’ chants included, "This is not a police state, we have the right to demonstrate", "The whole world’s watching" and "This is what democracy looks like". Others chanted, "WTO: You’ve got to go" and "WTO and CIA are the real terrorists of the world today".
• Democrats question items in homeland bill McCain says he will support effort to strip provisions -- The bill creating a Department of Homeland Security faced a new hurdle Tuesday following an announcement by Republican Sen. John McCain that he would side with Democrats on a key vote to strip seven "special-interest" provisions from the bill passed last week by the GOP-led House.
• DeLay warns of House recall House Majority Whip Tom DeLay yesterday threatened to call the House back to Washington if Senate Democrats stripped Republican-backed provisions from the Homeland Security bill.
• Broader domestic spying allowed Court says U.S. can employ new powers The U.S. government can take advantage of sweeping secret surveillance powers adopted by Congress last year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a special appeals court said Monday in a major victory for the Bush dictatorship's domestic "war on terrorism."
• This perfect system --by Matthew Engel "Vice-Admiral Poindexter was national security adviser in the Reagan administration before being named as 'the decision-making head' of the Iran-Contra affair, the scheme to sell weapons to Iran to fund anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. He was jailed, but eventually got off, solely because it was ruled that his evidence had congressional immunity... Poindexter has re-emerged as head of a new Pentagon operation - with a $200m annual budget - called the information awareness office."
• A Snooper's Dream (The New York Times) "The threat of terrorism has created a powerful appetite in Washington for sophisticated surveillance systems to identify potential terrorists. These efforts cannot be allowed, however, to undermine civil liberties. There is a program now in the research stage at the Pentagon that, if left unchecked by Congress, could do exactly that. Ostensibly designed to enhance national security, it could lead to an invasion of personal privacy on a massive scale."
• Florida Revisited: An account of the US midterm elections BHHRG (British Helsinki Human Rights Group) visited Florida to see whether the conduct of the 2002 midterm elections would represent an improvement on the 2000 pResidential poll [coup d'etat].
• Washington Merry-Go-Round --by Jack Anderson and Douglas Cohn "Prediction: There is a 50-50 chance that McCain and Chaffee will switch parties and a similar chance that McCain will become the Democratic standard bearer in 2004."
• Clinton in Line For Key Post Senate Democratic leaders are expected to name Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to their leadership team next year to help develop a plan to counter Republican spin. The promotion would put Clinton in charge of the Steering and Coordination Committee, a mid-level leadership position that is appointed by Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.).
• Fox [Faux] News chief's objectivity is questioned New book details advice offered to pResident Bush Fox News Channel Chairman Roger Ailes is taking heat after excerpts from a new book said he gave what sounded like political advice to the White House in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.
• US Border Patrol sets up random checkpoints in Michigan As part of the Bush dictatorship’s ongoing attack on democratic rights, the US Border Patrol began setting up rotating and unannounced checkpoints November 12 in southeast Michigan near the US-Canadian frontier.
• Police to get new powers to hold suspects (UK) Draconian powers to allow police to lock up suspects for longer and fingerprint them without being charged were announced yesterday in a drive to improve police "efficiency".
• Court Blocks Afghan Detainee Lawsuit A federal appeals court Monday rejected a challenge to the detention of 600 or so Afghan war prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, ruling that a group of clergy members and professors have no legal standing to intervene.
• U.S. May Warn Reservists of Iraq War The Pentagon is considering whether to alert some members of the National Guard and Reserve that they might get called to active duty for war in Iraq, even though Dictator Bush has not yet decided whether to use military force, a senior official said Tuesday.
• As arms inspectors arrive, row erupts over US smears Team leader says attacks by hawks 'unhelpful' -- The United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, yesterday accused hawks in Washington, who are bent on going to war with Iraq, of conducting a smear campaign against him.
• Warplanes Bomb Northern, Southern Iraq Coalition warplanes launched strikes on targets in southern and northern Iraq in separate incidents Monday in response to "hostile fire," U.S. military authorities said.
• War without death The Pentagon promotes a vision of combat as bloodless and antiseptic --Leon Daniel, like others who reported from Vietnam during the 1960s, knew about war and death. So he was puzzled by the lack of corpses at the tip of the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Iraq on Feb. 25, 1991...
• Media Representatives Get Taste of Military Training Fifty-eight reporters, photographers and cameramen are getting a view of military training they don't usually see -- they're doing it, not watching it. The training isn't only to help media members survive, it's to help them "successfully report" [LOL!] on military operations, Army Lt. Col. Gary Keck, a Defense Department spokesman, explained.
• St. Xavier professor suspended for e-mail to cadet A St. Xavier University professor who called an Air Force cadet a "disgrace to this country" and a "baby-killer" has been suspended from teaching for the rest of the semester and his academic and teaching record will be reviewed, the university said.
• Judge's Biblical Monument Is Ruled Unconstitutional (AL) "This court holds that the evidence is overwhelming and the law is clear that the chief justice violated the Establishment Clause," wrote Judge Myron H. Thompson of Federal District Court in Montgomery in a crackling opinion, referring to a clause in the First Amendment. The monument is "nothing less than an obtrusive year-round religious display intended to proselytize on behalf of a particular religion, the chief justice's religion."
• Storm-Wrecked Oil Tanker Breaks in Two Off Spanish Coast A stricken tanker carrying millions of gallons of oil split in two and was sinking off northwest Spain today, raising fears of an environmental disaster.
• Flooded With Comments, Officials Plug Their Ears Last week, Interior Department officials said they had received 360,000 comments on the Bush mis-ministration plan to keep snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, the most ever on any question related to the national parks. Fully 80 percent of the writers wanted snowmobiles barred from the parks, just as the Clinton administration had proposed.
• British national indicted in military hacking case A British hacker managed to obtain "sensitive" but not classified information from computers at a variety of U.S. military installations before being caught, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

  November 19, 2002

• Bush Homeland Security bill nears passage by US Congress Police-state measure threatens democratic rights -- The US House of Representatives voted November 13 to establish a new federal Department of Homeland Security along the lines laid down by the Bush mis-ministration. The Senate, still under Democratic Party control in the lame-duck session, began considering the bill Friday, under an expedited procedure that limits debate to 30 hours and insures a final vote by November 20.
• Bush’s double standard: protecting corporations, victimizing workers The Homeland Security bill is a blatant piece of class legislation, combining the destruction of workers’ rights with a slew of special provisions awarding tax or liability benefits to favored corporations and industries. These provisions were added to the bill after the November 5 election, when the White House decided to use the revived bill as a vehicle for rewarding some of its most important corporate supporters, such as the drug manufacturers.
• Senator Barbara Boxer's Statement on Homeland Security Rider "In the dead of the night, the Republicans rewarded one of their biggest campaign contributors – the pharmaceutical companies – by adding a provision to the Homeland Security bill that has nothing to do with homeland security. As a matter of fact, this provision will create insecurity in our homeland by sending a message to thousands and thousands of families that their children's health takes a distant second place to large corporations."
• Fascism Comes On Little Cat Feet --by Harley Sorensen "Suppose all the bad-guy Germans of the 1930s and 1940s -- the Gestapo, the Brownshirts, the Blackshirts -- were fed into the time machine and emerged as modern-day Americans. Suppose they all still held the beliefs they had when they died. So my question is, Which political party would they support now, Democratic or Republican? ...But this isn't a column about the Gestapo, the Brownshirts and the Blackshirts. It's about our new Homeland Security Department (due to be approved by the Senate today), government jobs and events in the state of Michigan." [a must-read]
• Secret Court Says U.S. Has Broad Wiretap Powers A special, secretive appeals court on Monday said the U.S. government has the right to use expanded powers to wiretap terrorism suspects under a law adopted by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
• Appeals Panel Reverses Limits Placed on Justice Dept. Wiretaps The Justice Department has broad discretion in the use of wiretaps and other surveillance techniques to track suspected terrorists and spies, a federal appeals court panel ruled Monday.
• Pursue the truth about Sept. 11 --by Antonia Zerbisias "The questions are endless. But most are not being asked — still — by most of the media most of the time. All of which to say, there are many people, and more by the minute, persuaded that, if the Bushies didn't cause 9/11, they did nothing to stop it. Even if you don't buy that, it's hard to deny that the administration has exploited the massacres, using them to advance its agenda while avoiding such issues as corporate corruption."
• Elections boss [and former Air Force counterintelligence specialist] Cliff Borofsky takes the blame for not putting the choices on 1 sheet of paper (TX) The decision to use a two-sheet ballot threw Bexar County's counting process into a tailspin from which it couldn't recover, county officials were told during a heated, finger-pointing inquiry Tuesday into the Nov. 5 general election. Election Systems & Software (ES&S), which supplied the optical-scan tabulators, were also cited in an inquiry for failing to find a way to get all of the Nov. 5 races on a single ballot sheet. [Click here for a litany of horror stories regarding Republican-owned ES&S voting machines.]
• Found: The portion of the 20/20 Barbara Walters-Gore Family Interview that did not air on 11/15 The Gore family recounts the stress of the rightwing siege on the VP Residence during the 2000 s-election.
• In the War Room Bob Woodward’s new book goes backstage with the Bush Fourth Reich for the making of the "fight against" terror -- Judging from Woodward’s book, Bush’s war cabinet wandered and even seemed to lose its way from time to time. But it kept moving forward, deeper into the dark.
• Rumsfeld Says Don't Sweat DARPA Info Awareness Experiment "It's a case of 'Ready' 'Shoot,' 'Aim,'" Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Nov. 17 while talking about the new Information Awareness Office. The Information Awareness Office is an experiment by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency to use advanced capabilities to gather and analyze information that may help in the war on terror. Rumsfeld pointed out that DARPA invented the Internet. [LOL! And the rightwing media said it was Al Gore who made that claim! It was actually one of Rumsfeld's agencies!-- Lori Price]
• US Afghan ally 'tortured witnesses to his war crimes' The United Nations has found evidence that a leading Afghan warlord and strong ally of the US tortured witnesses to stop them testifying against him in a war crimes inquiry, a senior UN source said last night.
• Agencies begin tracking Iraqis in America The U.S. government has begun monitoring Iraqis in the United States, hoping to flush out potential terrorist threats in the event that war breaks out with Iraq, Bush administration and congressional sources said. The news concerned Arab-American leaders, who called this a "nightmare" that will add to the discrimination and profiling their community has felt since Sept. 11, 2001.
• US makes new weapons for Iraq The Pentagon has accelerated development of a new generation of advanced precision weaponry that could be ready for use in a high-tech battle for Baghdad, according to US military sources.
• Antiwar Activists Plan to Stay The Course Women Settling In For Four-Month Vigil -- Women from the Washington area and across the country gathered in front of the White House yesterday to kick off a four-month, 24-hour vigil to protest the possible war with Iraq.
• Protesters brave cold to condemn war against Iraq Despite snow and freezing temperatures, thousands of anti-war activists marched in several cities across Canada on Sunday.

  
  
  Canadian protesters, Nov. 17, 2002

• 90 Arrested at Army Base Protest (GA) More than 90 people, including at least six nuns, were arrested for marching onto Fort Benning grounds Sunday during an annual protest of a U.S. military program that trains Latin American soldiers.
• Supreme Court to Consider More Limits on Lawsuits by Disabled The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider more limits on lawsuits by the disabled. The high court heard four cases involving the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in its last term, and all four rulings went against the disabled.
• Amway cofounder hoping to increase organ donations Amway cofounder Rich DeVos has a new job and a new quest. The 76-year-old is behind the push -- gaining ground in Congress and some organ transplant circles -- to give a financial incentive or tax break to people who agree to donate their organs when they die. [Rich DeVos and Amway are among the largest donors to the RNC.]
• Dispatch from Huntsville, Texas: A New Museum Shows Death Penalty as a Way of Life The sun was shining here in the nation's death penalty capital when the mayor cut a ceremonial swath of red ribbon. The correctional officer choir sang "God Bless America," and tourists sampled a cake decorated with a black ball and chain.
• Mr. Resident [by using the term "Mr. Resident," Liza Mundy appropriates language used on ours and other web sites that most accurately designates the fraudulent occupier of the White House, the Idiot Usurper, G. W. Bush!] A gavel stroke away from being the world's most powerful human, he becomes someone's suburban neighbor instead....
      "...he occupies a unique position in the history of America, that he'll go down as the man who won more votes than any Democratic presidential candidate; more votes than any Republican presidential candidate except Ronald Reagan in 1984; more votes than George W. Bush; and despite all this, did not win the presidency itself." [Let's correct this once and for all: Gore DID win the presidency. But the Supreme Injustices, in cahoots with the Republican propagandists (i.e., almost the entire corporate media, the G.O.P. and other felonious frauds in Florida) stole the election and the presidency from him. The Washington Post itself reported this fact, but fails to correctly state the matter. Even Donna Brazille mistakenly uses the word "lost." Yet, it was reported very clearly after the NORC recount in the rightwing Miami Herald and elsewhere that had the votes in Florida really and totally been counted, they would have shown that Gore won the state by tens of thousands of votes. "[I]f the recount had been started from scratch in each of Florida's 67 counties, The Herald concluded 'Gore would be in the White House today.''' ]
      "... What is that like? Al Gore wasn't telling...until now. "I was surprised that they took the case," President Gore says. "I was shocked because the philosophy that had been followed by the conservative majority on the court was completely inconsistent with a decision to take the case away from the state court..." [Yes, they only stick with their 'states' rights' philosophy when states' rights favor a rightwing decision. When the conservative decision is a federalist one, they vote as federalists. We're dealing not with impartial judges in the USSC, but the most blatantly biased legal HACKS on the planet. They selected a resident of the White House and now the world is dealing with the disastrous consequences of their egregiously mistaken and usurping act.]
     
  U.S. ponders resumption of nuke-weapons test The Bush mis-ministration is laying the groundwork for the resumption of nuclear testing and the development of new nuclear weapons, according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder.
• U.S. Fears Prosecution of President [sic] in World Court A senior U.S. official said a principal motive for U.S. opposition to the newly created International Criminal Court was fear that the court might prosecute the president [sic] or other civilian or military leaders. [This is a virtual ADMISSION that the US [p]resident is a likely international war criminal and the US a violator of international law!!!! The Bush mis-ministration knows that the [p]resident will have committed numerous war crimes before his tenure is finally done. Why don't the Democrats denounce this outright admission????]
• U.S., U.N. differ on Iraq arms hunt -- White House urges most intrusive inspections possible -- With an advance team of U.N. weapons inspectors due to arrive in Baghdad on Monday after a four-year absence, the United States and the United Nations are divided over how aggressively the inspectors should conduct their hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in Iraq, U.N. and U.S. officials say.
• Dissecting the vote process problems -- by Robert Parten (TX) "This is an apology to the residents of Tarrant County. The unfortunate events of Election Day that resulted in a loss of public trust in the election process are almost incomprehensible to me and my staff... The error occurred in the tabulation program for the voted ballots."
• Florida Firm Seeks to Microchip Americans A Washington forum debated on Friday the benefits and hazards posed by a new way of identifying people with a microchip implanted under their skin to replace conventional paper identification. Seeling said each chip costs about $200, and that scanner devices needed to read the data would be targeted for sale to police, hospitals, schools and other agencies across the United States.
• WVU drops 'free speech zone' policy Under legal pressure from a civil liberties organization, West Virginia University has dropped a policy that restricted student protesters to designated "free speech zones" on campus.
• ACLU Asks Court to Order Government to Immediately Account for its Use of Vast New Surveillance Powers The American Civil Liberties Union today asked a federal court to order the Department of Justice to respond immediately to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking information on the government's use of extraordinary new surveillance powers granted to it by Congress last year.
• Tombstone paper calls for militia (AZ) Cochise County's "official newspaper" has issued a call to arms and is spearheading the formation of a local militia to combat illegal immigration.
• Speakers barred from campus -- Injunction stops talk on Mideast (Canada) Montreal's Concordia University was granted a court injunction yesterday that allowed it to bar NDP MPs Svend Robinson and Libby Davies from using its campus to discuss the Mideast conflict.
• Voters chose to ignore threats to rights, freedom -- by Tom Bigler "It is appalling that most Americans, instead of protesting actions by President [sic] Bush and his administration that violate the very essence of a free and democratic society, have instead indicated a quiet acceptance."
• New Evidence of Fraud in Power Crisis -- Workers at AES Corp. and Williams Cos. agreed to idle California plants to drive up electricity prices, federal regulators allege. New evidence has emerged that AES Corp. and Williams Cos. conspired to squeeze electricity supplies to California in early 2000, drawing an angry response Friday from state officials and bolstering contentions that the enormously expensive energy crisis was at least partly a fraud.
• Enron exec Sherron Watkins resigns Enron Corp. executive Sherron Watkins has resigned, 15 months after sending memos warning then-chairman Kenneth Lay that improper accounting could cause the company to "implode in a wave of accounting scandals."
• Gore Calls 2000 Verdict 'Crushing,' Assails Court In his first interviews since conceding the pResidency to George W. Bush almost two years ago, President Al Gore calls the outcome of the 2000 election [coup d'etat] "a crushing disappointment" and criticizes the 5-4 Supreme Court decision that put Bush in the White House as "completely inconsistent" with the court's conservative philosophy. After the 2000 election, Gore chose to stay in the background, against the recommendations of some supporters. "I could have handled the whole thing differently," he told the Post Magazine, "and instead of making a concession speech, launched a four-year, rear-guard guerrilla campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Bush presidency and to mobilize for a rematch. And there was no shortage of advice to do that." [That's all right, President Gore, we're doing it for you.]
• ABC News did not include this segment of Barbara Walters's interview with President Al Gore and family, which aired November 15 on 20/20. [Why not?!?]
• Bush at War, by Bob Woodward (Drudge preview:) Rove Thought Post-9/11 World Series Game Like Nazi Rally -- "The president [sic] emerged wearing a New York Fire Department windbreaker. He raised his arm and gave a thumbs-up to the crowd on the third base side of the field. Probably 15,000 fans threw their arms in the air imitating the motion. He then threw a strike from the rubber, and the stadium erupted. Watching from owner George Steinbrenner’s box, Karl Rove thought, It’s like being at a Nazi rally." (p. 277) [In other words, Rove felt right at home.]
• Ghost Precincts in 2002 "elections" (investigation by Bev Harris/VoteWatch.us) With computerized vote tabulation, "unofficial" precincts have been included in totals in some areas, adding precincts that don't really exist. A Florida woman, a former news reporter, discovered that votes were being tabulated in 644 Palm Beach precincts, but only 643 precincts have any eligible voters.
• Carter calls on US to destroy own weapons arsenal Former US president Jimmy Carter, this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, says the United States would do well to destroy its own weapons of mass destruction.
• White House Denies Assertions on Preoccupation With Iraq The White House disagreed sharply today with assertions by senior Democratic senators that the campaign against terrorism is lagging and that a preoccupation with Iraq is one of the reasons.
• Before the shooting starts -- A fabricated case? -- by George Hunsinger "Did Saddam Hussein gas the Kurds? He is regularly accused of doing so, but the story may not be true. A little-known Army War College study, written by Stephen Pelletiere and Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Johnson, came to the conclusion that he did not..." [ a must read]
• UN Resolution Does Not Authorize US To Use Force Against Iraq -- by Stephen Zunes " 'If the Security Council fails to act decisively in the event of further Iraqi violations, this resolution does not constrain any member state from acting to defend itself against the threat posed by Iraq or to enforce relevant United Nations resolutions,' U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte claimed immediately after last Friday's vote. Nothing could be further from the truth."
• Coalition forces strike Iraqi radar site Coalition aircraft patrolling the southern "no-fly" zone in Iraq struck an air defense communications facility Friday after the planes came under heavy fire, an action the United States said violates the latest U.N. resolution.
• Warning that war could plunge world into deep recession Cost of toppling Saddam Hussein may run into hundreds of billions of dollars and this time America will have to foot the bill itself -- A war against Iraq could cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars, play havoc with an already depressed domestic economy and tip the world into recession because of the adverse effect on oil prices, inflation and interest rates, an academic study has warned.
• 3 arrested at recruiting office (WA) Three Bellingham women were arrested on misdemeanor trespassing charges Tuesday after an anti-W-ar protest at the Armed Forces Recruiting Center at 313 Telegraph Road.
• West Marin women strip for peace (CA) West Marin women bared their bodies on Tuesday in Point Reyes Station for a photo protesting America's plans for armed conflict with Iraq.
• Into the Wilderness -- by Paul Krugman "If the Democratic Party takes a clear stand for the middle class and against the plutocracy, it may still lose. But if it doesn't stand for anything, it — and the country — will surely lose."
• Bush aides mull domestic spy agency Dictator Bush’s top national security advisers have begun discussing the creation of a new, domestic intelligence agency that would take over responsibility for counterterrorism spying and analysis from the FBI, according to U.S. government officials and intelligence experts.
• Bush Is Said to Pick Ridge for New Post Dictator Bush has decided to nominate Tom Ridge, his domestic security adviser, to be the first secretary of homeland security, the cabinet officer who will head the big new department that Congress is on the verge of creating, mis-ministration officials said today.
• Dems wage final Homeland Bill battle As a bill to create a new Homeland Security Department inched closer to congressional approval Friday, Senate Democrats made a last-ditch effort to remove a handful of controversial provisions that were buried in the bill at the eleventh hour. [Yes, and some *controversial provisions* were buried in the bill in the *first* hour. -- Lori Price]
• Oppose the New Homeland Security Bureaucracy! -- by Rep. Ron Paul, MD "Mr. Speaker, HR 5710 gives the federal government new powers and increases federal expenditures, completely contradicting what members were told about the bill. Furthermore, these new power grabs are being rushed through Congress without giving members the ability to debate, or even properly study, this proposal. I must oppose this bill and urge my colleagues to do the same."
• Lying With Pixels In the fraction of a second between video frames, any person or object moving in the foreground can be edited out, and objects that aren't there can be edited in and made to look real... real-time video manipulation has been within the grasp of technologically sophisticated organizations such as TV networks and the military.
• US gov's 'ultimate database' run by a felon -- by Thomas C Greene "Imagine a huge, absolutely huge, central database containing both the official and commercial data of every single citizen, run by the US military ostensibly for anti-terror and Homeland Security purposes, and all of it under the direction of a convicted felon... the felon who will run it is disgraced Reagan administration liar, dirty-trickster and cover-uper Admiral John M. Poindexter, who Dubya has taken out of mothballs to keep us all safe from dreadful evildoers."
• 'A supersnoop's dream' -- by Audrey Hudson "Language tucked inside the Homeland Security bill will allow the federal government to track the e-mail, Internet use, travel, credit-card purchases, phone and bank records of foreigners and U.S. citizens in its hunt for terrorists."
• Grounded For the first time, a spokesman for the new Transportation Security Administration has acknowledged that the government has a list of about 1,000 people who are deemed "threats to aviation" and not allowed on airplanes under any circumstances. Peace activists and civil libertarians fear they're on it. (Salon.com exclusive)
• Penn. bill to require pledge in schools Students in private and public schools would be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem each morning under a bill unanimously passed this week by the state Senate. [The unconstitutional Pledge of Allegiance making a comeback. -- Mike Rectenwald]
• Senate Judiciary Panel Approves 2 Judges -- Controversial Bush Appellate Nominees to Face Votes Before Full Chamber -- Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee closed a contentious season on a conciliatory note yesterday by approving two of Dictator Bush's controversial nominees to be appellate judges.
• Bush mis-ministration exploits DC sniper case to promote death penalty The Bush mis-ministration is deliberately manipulating the tragedy surrounding the Washington-area sniper shootings to promote capital punishment, a key element of its right-wing political agenda.
• Settlement Reached in UC Disability Lawsuit (Berkeley, CA) UC agreed to change the way it accommodates hearing disabilities after recently settling a class action lawsuit brought by students from its Berkeley and Davis campuses.
• Ciresi's law firm looking into Wellstone plane crash The lawyers who successfully handled Minnesota's landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry have begun investigating the plane crash that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone.
• US training Iraqis to run post-Saddam government -- Threat of war: Washington's plans for regime change move into high gear as weapons inspection teams prepare to return to Iraq -- The Bush mis-ministration has been quietly training scores of civil servants to oversee the transformation of the Iraqi economy in the aftermath of military strikes. The effort is said to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• FBI: Al-Qaida May Try Major Attack The FBI warned Thursday that al-Qaida is likely to attempt a "spectacular" attack intended to inflict large-scale casualties and damage the U.S. economy. The latest FBI warning was circulated to law enforcement officials nationwide despite a lack of specific credible evidence.
• F.B.I. Alert Not Made Public Wednesday's alert was not made public because there was no specific infor mation about a target, officials said. "In selecting its next targets," the F.B.I. alert said, "sources suggest Al Qaeda may favor spectacular attacks that meet several criteria: High symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the U.S. economy, and maximum psychological trauma. The highest priority targets remain within the aviation, petroleum, and nuclear sectors as well as significant national landmarks."
• The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks -- by Chris Floyd "According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization--the 'Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)'--will carry out secret missions designed to 'stimulate reactions' among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to 'counterattack' by U.S. forces."
• This War Brought to You by Rendon Group "Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic translator who did a great Saddam imitation," recalls the Harvard grad student. "Eventually, someone phoned me, asking if I wanted to help change the course of Iraq policy."
• Little Headway in Terror War, Democrats Say American intelligence agencies came under renewed attack in Congress today for failing to find Osama bin Laden, with the increasing certainty that he is still alive prompting senior Democratic senators to brand the effort to dismantle Al Qaeda as a failure. Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, charged that the Bush mis-ministration had been distracted from the fight against terrorism by the preparation for a possible invasion of Iraq.
• House OK's Terror Insurance Bill The government would cover up to $90 billion annually in insurance claims from any future terrorist attacks under a compromise bill approved Thursday by the House as lawmakers sorted through their final stack of legislation for the year.
• Cyber Security Act slips into Homeland Security legislation A 16-page Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) slipped into the Homeland Security bill at the last moment to allow police to conduct Internet or telephone eavesdropping willy-nilly with no requirement to ask a court's permission first.
• Vaccine Shocker Homeland Security Bill Incorporates Expanded Liability Protection For Vaccine Manufacturers Including The Mercury-Based Preservative Thimerosal
• Controversial provisions could delay Senate Homeland vote From vaccine liability protections to a delay in an airport baggage-screening deadline, the GOP-drafted bill that passed the House Wednesday and heads to the Senate Thursday includes contentious measures quietly written into the bill as the congressional session draws to a close.
• The United States is starting to look more like Bush's kingdom -- by Robyn E. Blumner "In 17th century France the king could arbitrarily order someone's imprisonment in the Bastille by issuing a lettre de cachet. The executive authorization didn't have to designate a term of imprisonment and there was no appeal. Release was at the king's pleasure. Elements of this are appearing as a central organizing principle in our nation's 'war' on terrorism."
• Ex-Arms Inspector: Iraq War Inevitable Due to 'Hidden Trigger' in UN Plan Former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter says the U.N. resolution on disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction makes war inevitable. "We're going to war, and there's not a damn thing the inspectors can do to stop it, and that's a shame. Inspections worked once and they can work again," Ritter said Wednesday night during a speech at the California Institute for Technology.
• Iraqi oil, American bonanza? In a post-war Iraq, U.S. companies could be major players -- Once U.N. economic sanctions on Iraq are lifted, who will develop — and control — Iraq’s vast oil reserves?
• US prepares for a post-Hussein Iraq American officials debate how to rebuild a battered Iraq - and who will do it. With unanimous passage of a Security Council resolution demanding Iraq's disarmament, the calendar of events in Iraq speeds up - making the question of what happens should Saddam Hussein be ousted suddenly more urgent.
• Too-Real Demo of Iraq Gear The Army demonstrated equipment for detecting and identifying chemical and biological weapons yesterday - and offered an unintended lesson when a soldier wearing a stifling protective suit collapsed in the heat of the television lights.
• 7 vets speak out against war with Iraq (CO) A group of veterans lobbied Tuesday for Colorado's U.S. senators to oppose a war in Iraq.
• Tricked and bamboozled into war -- The west's warlords will get their invasion, in spite of global opinion -- by Simon Tisdall "Casualty lists are usually compiled after the battle. But since the coming war in Iraq has been so heavily trailed, it is possible to identify its victims in advance - or pre-emptively, to use one of George Bush's favourite words."
• Journalist Helen Thomas condemns Bush mis-ministration "Where is the outrage?" Thomas demanded. "Where is Congress? They're supine! Bush has held only six press conferences, the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned. I'm on the phone to [press secretary] Ari Fleischer every day, asking will he ever hold another one? The international world is wondering what happened to America's great heart and soul." [It was eaten by an Idiot Usurper, Helen, as you well know. -- Michael Rectenwald]
• US economic outlook: fears of renewed recession—and worse The unexpectedly large interest rate cut announced by the Federal Reserve Board last week demonstrates that the US central bank shares the fears of renewed recession that are widespread in corporate America.
• Civil service jobs in jeopardy Bush pushes privatization of federal work In a bid to boost government efficiency and diminish the clout of organized labor -- a key Democratic constituency -- Dictator Bush plans to open nearly half the civilian jobs in the federal government to competition from private companies over the next few years.
• Gore Favors Single-Payer Health Care President Gore Says He Favors Single-Payer Health Care System -- Al Gore says he now favors single-payer health coverage, a proposal that would require a massive change in the nation's health insurance system. With single-payer coverage, all money spent on health care would be collected by a public agency, which would then pay for comprehensive coverage for all citizens.
• First Woman Elected U.S. House Democratic Leader U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi was elected leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives on Thursday, making the 62-year-old California liberal the first woman to head either party in the U.S. Congress.
• Government Plan May Make Private Up to 850,000 Jobs The Bush mis-ministration said today that it would place as many as 850,000 government jobs — nearly half the federal civilian work force — up for competition from private contractors in coming years. Bobby L. Harnage Sr., the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 600,000 federal workers, said Bush had "declared all-out war on federal employees."
• Gun Distributor to Pay Widow $1.2M A jury ordered a weapons distributor Thursday to pay $1.2 million to the widow of a teacher gunned down by a 13-year-old student, largely sparing the company from blame in the closely watched case.
• 1 in 3 say Bush is biggest threat Dictator George Bush is seen by a third of Britons as a bigger threat to world safety than Saddam Hussein, according to a new poll conducted by a senior US Republican and due to be broadcast today.
• Annan Presses Bush to Avoid a Rush to War Secretary General Kofi Annan said today that the United States seemed to have a lower threshold for going to war in Iraq than other nations on the United Nations Security Council. [That's because the US wants a war with Iraq no matter what! The war is written into the script called "Bush, The Sequel: Idiot Usurper of the World"--Michael Rectenwald.]
• U.S. a menace to world: Chomsky The real axis of evil is the United States, Israel and Turkey, not North Korea, Iraq and Iran, Noam Chomsky proclaimed last night. "The U.S. is becoming a menace to its own population and the world, and much of the world is rightly frightened."
• Mounting signs of early US invasion of Iraq In the wake of Iraq’s formal acceptance Wednesday of the United Nations Security Council resolution imposing a new weapons inspection regime, the Bush mis-ministration is continuing to prepare a war against the Arab country, which could begin as early as next month.
• Pentagon prepares psychological warfare campaign for Iraq Sometime after the first of the year, residents of Baghdad could find some new programming on their FM radio dial: a soothing Arabic voice urging them to remain in their homes or away from the approaching U.S. troops who will liberate them from Saddam Hussein.
• Bin Laden is back, now as defender of Iraq Osama bin Laden has proved he is still alive with his taped message broadcast Tuesday. He has also stood himself foursquare beside Iraq, amid mounting US preparations for an assault on Baghdad. [More lies from the Bush dictatorship trying to conflate bin Laden and Hussein in the American mind. The fact remains that Iraq and Al Queda are not connected. Iraq is a secular state; Hussein opposes Islamic fundamentalism in the state. Wake up America! These people are writing fiction! -- Michael Rectenwald]
• House OKs Homeland Security Dept. The recharged effort to create a Homeland Security Department passed its first congressional tests Wednesday as Dictator Bush neared his goal of responding to last year's terrorist attacks with the biggest restructuring of government in half a century.
• H R 5710 YEA-AND-NAY Bill Title: Homeland Security Act (House Roll Call)
• Microsoft Appoints Company's New Homeland Security Director Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has appointed Thomas Richey as its new Federal Director of Homeland Security. Richey will be responsible for developing and executing Microsoft's strategy as a partner in the U.S. government's evolving Homeland Security policy.
• You Are a Suspect -- by William Safire "If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:... This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks."
• ACLU Seeks U.S. Surveillance Records The American Civil Liberties Union asked a judge on Wednesday to order the Justice Department to release information on increased surveillance in the United States under a law passed after last year's terrorist attacks.
• US drug makers accused of bullying The US government and the giant pharmaceutical companies are continuing to bully poor countries to tighten up their patent rules, hampering efforts to obtain cheap medicines for people with diseases such as HIV/Aids, according to a new report.
• Afghan police shoot, kill students protesting over lack of basic necessities As many as four students are dead and others were seriously injured on Monday night after police in Kabul opened fire with automatic weapons on hundreds of demonstrators protesting over the appalling conditions in their university dormitories.
• Tweedledum and Tweedledee: Mass Murderers -- by Kurt Nimmo -- Either the corporate polltakers are lying, or there's something terribly wrong with the American people. [While we don't agree with the author that Democrats and Republicans are the same in principle, we must acknowledge that they have become nearly indistinguishable in practice. Either we can restore Democrats to their principles, or they must be by-passed and removed for real liberals in practice. -- Michael Rectenwald]
• The World This Week: An Open Letter to Deadbeat Dems One party, one leader, one miserable failure. -- by Alan Bisbort "Dear Democrat Party Leaders, Congratulations. In the past two elections, you have achieved two seemingly impossible milestones. First, you let George W. Bush steal your presidential victory, one that was said to be impossible to lose. Then, you let Republicans have unprecedented mid-term gains in, and control of, the U.S. Congress. In neither case did the Republicans actually win; no, you gave them power through sheer spinelessness." [In other words, the Democrats are our only hope. And they suck."--Michael Rectenwald]
• Democrats must get back to their grass-roots -- by Robert Steinback "By attempting to create McBride out of thin air, Florida Democratic leaders showed they didn't trust white Democrats to vote on principle, took black voters wholly for granted and turned a tin ear to Hispanics."
• Terrorism's threat to globalization (YellowTimes.org Power and Interest News Report) "Since September 11, the United States has been pursuing a policy of coercion in order to destroy any threats to the current global economic order."
• Army Corps Employee Gets Award for Whistle Blowing, but Corps Silence Him An Army Corps of Engineers whistle-blower honored Wednesday for his role in stalling a $1 billion river construction project was warned by the corps not to talk about any past, present or future projects.
• Documents Reveal Enron's Clout on Energy Agenda In its highflying days, Enron Corp. sought to guide the new Bush mis-ministration toward a sweeping energy agenda, ranging from creating a national electricity grid to opposing protection of domestic steel products, according to documents made public Tuesday by congressional investigators.
• Senate Panel: FERC Missed Enron Clues The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ignored or missed early clues that Enron Corp. might be manipulating wholesale electricity prices in California and Western markets, Senate investigators said in a report issued on Tuesday.
• This Time a Bush Embraces 'Voodoo Economics' Theory Dictator Bush took a ride on the Laffer Curve yesterday and espoused a tax-cut theory his father once derided as "Voodoo Economics."
• FBI: Hospitals in Four Cities Possible Targets of Terror Attacks The FBI has received unconfirmed information from intelligence sources overseas that hospitals in four U.S. cities could be the targets of a terrorist threat. [This is from Faux News, so take it with sixteen grains of salt. -- Lori Price]
• Bush Signs Bill on God References Dictator Bush signed into law on Wednesday a bill reaffirming -- with a slap at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance and national motto.
• White House Wages Stealth War on Sex Health "The only 100 percent effective way to avoid nonmarital pregnancy and STD infection is to avoid sexual activity outside a mutually faithful, lifelong relationship - marriage," says the Texas-based Medical Institute for Sexual Health. The group's founder, Dr. Joe S. McIlhaney, Jr., now sits on the presidential AIDS panel.
• Man Taken Into Custody After Claiming to Have Explosives, Threatening Bush A man was arrested Wednesday outside the Agriculture Department after claiming to have explosives in a van and making threats against pResident Bush, police said.
• Sweeping police measures against anti-WTO protests in Australia Acting at the behest of the state Labor government, New South Wales police have taken extraordinary measures to block protests against a World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Sydney today and tomorrow.
• Gores Launch Tour to Promote Books Al and Tipper Gore launched a 12-city tour to promote their two new books examining the American family -- but made no mention of another possible run for the White House.
• Bob Fertik of Democrats.com responds to Nicholas Kristof's attack on the CLG: " Dear Nicholas: I read with interest your attack on the 'intelligent left.' I note that when reporting on Saudi Arabia, you take the time and trouble to actually visit Saudi Arabia and talk with a few of its citizens. But when you report on the 'intelligent left', you exert no more effort than grabbing a few titillating headlines for rhetorical effect. Exactly how is that different from what you accuse us of doing? If you're interested in actually interviewing a member of the 'intelligent left,' I'd be delighted to oblige. Here's what you'll learn - there are millions of Americans who will never 'get over' the stolen election of 2000. If this happened in another country, I am confident you would be on the side of pro-democracy activists. But in your own country, you side with those who stole the election, and dismiss pro-democracy activists with rhetorical contempt. I have a simple question: why?"

  November 14, 2002

• Official: Iraq accepts U.N. resolution President Saddam Hussein has accepted a new U.N. resolution on the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, an Arab diplomat said Wednesday, two days ahead of the deadline set by the Security Council for Iraq to respond to the resolution.
• Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium On the "Highway of Death," 11 miles north of the Kuwait border, a collection of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military vehicles are rusting in the desert. They also are radiating nuclear energy.
• Asking The Hard Questions On Iraq -- by Paul Vitello "The news conference was getting ugly. 'Do you even like America?' asked one member of the press corps. 'It seems like you have a lot of complaints.'
• Bush warns Iraq after parliament rejects UN resolution -- Vote greeted with derision by US Dictator -- The shadow-boxing between America and Iraq continued yesterday when the parliament in Baghdad recommended rejecting the United Nations resolution on weapons inspections and Dictator George Bush said such a decision would lead to war.
• Defensible Tripwire for War (The Christian Science Monitor) "President [sic] Bush failed over the summer to provide enough hard evidence of Iraqi support for Al Qaeda to justify a war against Saddam Hussein. But rather than retreat in the face of international doubts, Mr. Bush instead launched a new moral offensive."
• Let 'The Quiet American' Speak -- by Brett Dakin "Australian director Phillip Noyce's film adaptation of Graham Greene's 1955 novel, 'The Quiet American,' is set in Saigon during the early years of America's involvement in Vietnam... 'The Quiet American' has been finished for more than a year, and it was a hit at the Toronto Film Festival. Critics at home and abroad have raved. But Americans still can't see it."
• Bush military role less than glorious (letter to The Boston Globe) -- by John Hamilton "Now that President [sic] Bush is preparing to order young Americans into battle, he should reflect on his own less than courageous behavior when America was asking young men to kill and die for 'freedom.' ''
• Imperiled pipeline gets U.S. troops in Colombia On the edge of the war-torn city of Saravena, U.S. military advisers are preparing for a major escalation of American involvement in Colombia's 38-year-old civil war.
• Argentina probes former Ford officials for links to murders An Argentine judge said on Monday he had opened a probe into allegations that former executives of U.S. automaker Ford's local unit were implicated in the "disappearances" of employees during the 1976-83 dictatorship. Up to 30,000 suspected leftists died or disappeared -- a euphemism for being kidnapped, tortured and murdered -- under Argentina's brutal military dictatorship. Many victims were thrown out of planes into the Atlantic Ocean while still alive.
• Webster Ends His Brief Stint on S.E.C. Oversight Board William H. Webster resigned today as head of a new board overseeing the accounting profession in the midst of continuing controversy over his ties to a company under investigation for fraud.
• FERC Scolded for Lack of Oversight The federal agency charged with policing the nation's energy markets to prevent price gouging continues to shirk its enforcement duties, a congressional report to be released today concludes. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has promised reforms to prevent a repeat of the abuses that marked California's 2000-2001 electricity crisis.
• Halliburton says submits 200,000 documents to SEC Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL) said on Tuesday said it has submitted about 200,000 documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of an ongoing inquiry into the accounting practices at the oilfield services firm.
• Probes proceeding on several fronts Bulging boxes holding thousands of Enron documents line the walls four high in the offices of the Energy Task Force on the 18th floor of a downtown building leased to the California Attorney General's Office.
• Leading US companies 'expect to cut jobs' Executives from some of America's leading companies are expecting to cut jobs and delay investment over the coming year, in the latest sign that the US economic recovery is struggling to gain momentum.
• Senate shift on trees, oil and air When Republicans settle into chairing the Senate’s 14 committees, it’ll be hard to find any changes starker than those in the two panels that decide energy and environmental policies. Under Democrats, those committees were pulpits for critics of Bush mis-ministration policies on logging, air pollution and oil drilling. Now they are about to become pulpits for those who say that environmental regulations often outweigh any benefits and hurt the economy.
• Bechtel Vs. Bolivia - Time to Open Up Secret Trade Courts -- by Jim Shultz "Sometime in the next few weeks, behind closed doors at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., panelists in a secret trade court will decide if the people of South America's poorest country will have to pay $25 million to one of the world's most wealthy corporations."
• Groups sound off at the Capitol over textbooks' content (TX) Dozens gathered at the Capitol on Tuesday to criticize what they say is an unfair influence of social conservatives and religious right groups in Texas' textbook adoption process.
• Democrats Said to Pick Boston Over New York for Convention The Democratic National Committee was moving tonight to bypass New York as the site of its 2004 presidential convention, settling instead on Boston as the location for its quadrennial meeting, officials familiar with the deliberations said.
• Democrats Plan to Allow Confirmation of 2 Judges Democrats who had been using their slim majority in the Senate to block several of Dictator Bush's judicial candidates are expected to give way some on Thursday and allow the confirmation of two appeals court nominees, senior Congressional aides said today.
• Democrat raised funds for the GOP (FL) In a sign of the increasing influence of money in Tallahassee, Gwen Margolis, an incoming Democratic state senator from Northeast Miami-Dade, raised campaign contributions for the new Republican Senate president -- money that he used to help defeat Margolis' fellow Democrats seeking Senate seats.
• Happy days are here again? Right -- by Tom Brazaitis "But beware, Democratic appeasers. Learn a lesson from Sens. Jean Carnahan of Missouri, Max Cleland of Georgia and Tim Johnson of South Dakota, all of whom went along with Bush's 2001 tax cuts and Iraq war resolution only to have Bush hunt them down like a serial sniper in the closing days of the campaign."
• In a First, a Lesbian Is Elected District Attorney in San Diego With her victory over District Attorney Paul Pfingst sealed, Judge Bonnie Dumanis of Superior Court will become the first openly gay prosecutor elected in the country, gay advocates say.
• Ministers develop plan for 'Protect and Survive' film to warn of terror threat (UK) A public information film in the style of the 1970s Protect and Survive campaign is being considered by the Government as part of plans to improve the country's ability to cope with terrorist attacks.
• Radioactive particles contaminate workers (UK) Twenty-one workers at a nuclear reprocessing plant were contaminated with radioactive particles, it was revealed last night.
• Traffic Checks: Random stops begin today in Michigan Federal agents will begin randomly stopping traffic today, looking for illegal immigrants, terrorists and drug or weapon smugglers. Cars will be stopped at unannounced, rotating checkpoints within Michigan, including metro Detroit. U.S. Border Patrol agents at the checkpoints will ask passengers their citizenship and will have leeway to ask a host of follow-up questions.
• Terror war hits home -- Detroiters caught in widening investigation Convinced that Al Qaeda terrorists are hiding in southeast Michigan, federal investigators have focused much of the government's secret war on terrorism in metro Detroit neighborhoods. The result is a massive, extraordinary network -- with undercover agents infiltrating Arab and Muslim communities, street informants feeding information to investigators, and cooperative, but wary, community leaders acting as cultural guides into the local Arab world.
• U.S. Hopes to Check Computers Globally -- System Would Be Used to "Hunt Terrorists" A new Pentagon research office has started designing a global computer-surveillance system to give U.S. counterterrorism officials access to personal information in government and commercial databases around the world. The Information Awareness Office, run by former national security adviser John M. Poindexter, aims to develop new technologies to sift through "ultra-large" data warehouses and networked computers in search of threatening patterns [?!?] among everyday transactions, such as credit card purchases and travel reservations, according to interviews and documents. [Are we not edging toward military dictatorship??? -- Lori Price]
• Three GOP candidates all win races with same number of votes Officials in Comal County in Central Texas can only shake their heads at a statistical oddity from Tuesday's elections. After all the votes were counted, Republican County Judge Danny Scheel had received 18,181 votes in defeating Democrat Lois Duggan. Republican state Senator Jeff Wentworth also got 18,181 votes in Comal County in beating Democrat Joseph Sullivan and Libertarian Rex Black. And Republican Carter Casteel got 18,181 votes in Comal County in her victory over Democrat Virgil Yanta in the race for state House District 73 race. [*Shake our heads?* How about *Raise our fists???* -- Lori Price]
• Winning vote totals uncanny in Comal (TX) What are the odds? Let's just say it's the proverbial "astronomical." Comal County elections officials noticed an extreme oddity after the final votes were tallied in Tuesday's general election. [Uncanny? No, it's the Coup of 2002!]
• US Dollars Yielded Unanimous UN Vote Against Iraq Friday's unanimous vote in the U.N. Security Council supporting the U.S. resolution on weapons inspections in Iraq was a demonstration of Washington's ability to wield its vast political and economic power, say observers. ''Only a superpower like the United States could have pulled off a coup like this,'' an Asian diplomat told IPS. [all sorts of coups...]
• War in Iraq could kill up to four million - report A war against Iraq could escalate into a nuclear conflict that would kill nearly four million people and have catastrophic health and environmental consequences, medical experts said on Tuesday.
• World Wide Launch Of 'Collateral Damage' Report - Forecasts Huge Death Toll A US-led attack on Iraq is likely to result in between 48,000 and 260,000 deaths during the first three months of combat, according to a study by medical and public health experts launched in Parliament House by the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) today. Post-war health effects could take an additional 200,000 lives.
• Iraq Parliament Rejects U.N. Call, Leaving Decision to Hussein In a surprising public display of rejection, the Iraqi Parliament today voted against cooperating with a United Nations Security Council resolution on resuming arms inspections. It put the final decision in the hands of President Saddam Hussein, where it always rested in the first place.
• US warns war on Iraq may start before Christmas Dictator Bush issued a tough new warning to Saddam Hussein yesterday as mis-ministration officials said that a war could begin before the end of the year.
• After Iraq, Bush will attack his real target -- by Eric Margolis " One poignant photo said it all: Georgia's defeated Democratic senator, Max Cleland, sitting in a wheelchair, missing both legs and an arm lost in combat in Vietnam. This highly decorated hero was defeated by a Vietnam war draft-dodger who had the audacity to accuse Cleland of being "unpatriotic" after the senator courageously voted against giving Bush unlimited war-related powers. I do not recall a more shameful moment in American politics."
• White House defends CIA killing of US citizen in Yemen Having confirmed reports that one of the six men killed in a CIA missile strike in Yemen November 3 was an American citizen, US government officials are defending the action as a justifiable use of force and making clear that it will be replicated elsewhere.
• Yemen/USA: government must not sanction extra-judicial executions (Amnesty International press release) Amnesty International has today written to the President [sic] of the United States, George Bush, to express its deep concern at reports that the six men blown up in a car in Yemen on 3 November were killed allegedly by a missile launched by a CIA-controlled Predator drone aircraft.
• In Rescuers' Voices, 9/11 Tape Reveals a Gripping History To the abject frustration of family groups that had lobbied hard for such an inquiry -- a national commission to investigate possible lapses by the intelligence services the plans have stalled: the Bush mis-ministration has been concerned about exposing intelligence methods, [and about its role in 9/11 being revealed] and objected to the terms of an inquiry that had been agreed to by Republicans and Democrats in Congress. This week, the matter will again be debated when Congress takes up next year's budget for intelligence. "The American people must know the full story has yet to be told," Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said at a hearing last month.[Petition to Senate to Investigate Oddities of 9/11 http://www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html surpasses 17,075 signatures -- please add yours!-- Lori Price]
• With High Court OK, Family Sues an HMO (CA) Strictly to save money, a Costa Mesa man wasn't told of a lung transplant option, his survivors say. They also sue a Newport Beach doctors group.
• Bush mis-ministration approves more snowmobiles in national parks The Bush mis-ministration plans to allow more snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks on average, while cutting numbers on the busiest days. The decision reverses one taken during the Clinton presidency that would have banned them by next winter.
• Massive famine stalks Ethiopia Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has warned that his country faces a famine worse than that of 1984 which killed nearly one million people and sparked a big international relief effort.
• Chip glitch [?!?] hands victory to wrong candidate (TX) A Scurry County election error reversed the outcomes in two commissioner races. A defective computer chip in the county's optical scanner misread ballots Tuesday night and incorrectly tallied a landslide victory for Republicans. Democrats actually won by wide margins.
• Disparity between pre-election polls and the election "results" via Diebold Electronic Voting Machines in six states [a must read]
• GOP had election lawyers poised If Tuesday's election had not turned out for the best for Gov. Jeb Bush , Florida Republicans were prepared for the worst. With lessons learned from the bitterly fought 2000 pResidential s-election [coup d'etat], Republicans crafted a legal battle plan that they were prepared to carry out with military precision. [I think they carried it out *before* the 2002 elections, by refusing to reveal the source code of the computerized voting machines which are owned by Republican-run corporations such as Election Systems & Software in Nebraska. -- Lori Price]
• Recount in Alabama Dealt Setback Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman's call for a statewide recount suffered a blow Friday when the Republican attorney general said sealed ballots can't be opened just because the governor trails his GOP challenger. [Holy coup d'etat, Batman!]
• Oh Boy More Fear and Gluttony Darkness falls across the land, flowers wilt, the GOP takes full, and frightening, control -- by Mark Morford "..Fear not -- it's just the dark storm clouds of sadness and savage spiritual pain that just settled in over the collective soul of the country and indeed much of the world recently, as the Republican Party snatched total control of the American government and really honestly promised to further its agenda of fear and war and intolerance and bad sex and more petroleum products forevermore."
• Behind the Smile -- by Bob Herbert "Driven by its right wing and aided immeasurably by George W. Bush's genial smile, the G.O.P. is putting in place profoundly conservative policies that will hamper progressive efforts for decades to come, no matter what happens in upcoming elections."
• Salmon concedes to Napolitano (AZ) After five days of counting, Republican Matt Salmon called Democratic rival Janet Napolitano tonight to concede in one of the closest and hard-fought governor's race in Arizona history.
• [Howard Fineman copies Lori's lingo:] How Bush Did It In a historic win [sic], Dubya defied the experts once again. Behind the GOP’s early planning and product-testing in a wartime race "His [Bush's] Democratic opposition was left divided and confused, groping for ways to oppose a leader they had dismissed as a dimwitted usurper after the disputed election of 2000." [Hey, Howard: copy *accurately*. My term was, (Bush is an) "idiot usurping lying weasel." -- Lori Price]
• Arab Diplomats Say Iraq to Agree To Resolution Iraqi President Saddam Hussein intends to accept a recently passed U.N. Security Council resolution that requires his nation to disarm and mandates rigorous weapons inspections, Arab foreign ministers and diplomats said today.
• US will attack without approval -- 'Zero tolerance' policy by Bush mis-ministration -- The Bush mis-ministration yesterday said it would not wait for the UN security council to approve an attack on Iraq if it fails to comply with weapons inspections, casting new light on leaked battlefield scenarios.
• Only matter of time before US hit by terrorists: Ridge Dictator George Bush's Homeland Security Adviser Tom Ridge said in an interview with the BBC broadcast on Sunday that it was only a matter of time before America was again attacked by terrorists. [America was *attacked* by Rove, et.al., via the rigged voting machines on 11/5 -- Lori Price]
• Army braced for massacre of civilians in terror attack (UK) Emergency security measures, including a rapid reaction force of Army reservists and a squadron of fighter jets on permanent stand-by, have been set up to cope with a terrorist strike in Britain, The Observer can reveal.
• U.N. Discusses Germ - Warfare Plan A 146-nation conference looked for new ways Monday to reduce the threat of germ warfare, meeting for the first time since the United States scuttled a plan to enforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
• Iraqi Battleground Fiercer, Gulf War Veterans Worry -- Anti-Chemical Gear Considered Weak -- Many Gulf War veterans worry about the cost of returning to the Middle Eastern nation, which is armed with chemical and biological weapons. [Simple solution: do not go to war in Iraq!]
• Forced Vaccines Haunt Gulf Vets Ruling in the 1947 trial of 23 Nazi doctors and medical administrators charged with crimes against humanity during World War II, judges of the American Tribunal in Nuremberg set forth 10 conditions for permissible medical experiments. Did the Pentagon obey this directive during the Gulf War?
• War Veterans Gather To Stop A War -- "Angry military veterans attack 'an administration of chickenhawks' that demands the blood of another generation of US soldiers and marines -- blood these macho-posturing, drum-beating hyper-'patriotic' middle age warriors refused to shed in their youth." -- by Stewart Nusbaumer
• Book refers to priests as prophets of peace As the nation contemplates war, two authors with Iowa connections have published a book that lauds several Catholic priests as prophets of peace.
• Unanswered questions in Bali bombing investigations Within Indonesia, speculation about military involvement in the Bali attack has been so rife that Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) Armed Forces chief General Endriartono Sutarto felt compelled to convene a special press conference on October 24 to deny a series of rumours—including one that implicated two generals who were in Bali prior to the bombings.
• Bush Authorized Yemen-Style Strikes, Rice Says Dictator Bush has given broad authority to "a variety of people" in his mis-ministration to launch attacks like the missile strike that killed six suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen last week, his national security adviser said on Sunday.
• The Washington Post and the killings in Yemen: "Liberal" press extols CIA’s Murder Inc. -- by Bill Vann "The CIA assassination of six men in Yemen, carried out November 3, has drawn widespread praise from the US news media."
• PBA Ban -- Bank on It, Lott Says The new Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, says not only will important legislation dealing with homeland security and the economy be moved along quickly, but also a key issue of importance to Christians: a ban on partial-birth abortion.

  November 11, 2002

• Iraq Expected to Accept U.N. Text Iraq was expected to accept the U.N. resolution to disarm, Egypt's foreign minister said early Sunday. But if Baghdad fails to follow through, U.S. officials said a Pentagon plan called for more than 200,000 troops to invade Iraq.
• Iraq invasion force mobilised (UK) Thousands of British troops will be ordered to the Persian Gulf this week, sending a clear message to Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction or face military action.
• War Plan in Iraq Sees Large Force and Quick Strikes Dictator Bush has settled on a war plan for Iraq that would begin with an air campaign shorter than the one for the Persian Gulf war, senior mis-ministration officials say. It would feature swift ground actions to seize footholds in the country and strikes to cut off the leadership in Baghdad.
• Bush Approves Iraq War Plan; Large Force Seen Dictator Bush has approved a war plan for Iraq to initially capture parts of the country for footholds to thrust in 200,000 or more troops, U.S. officials said on Saturday.
• U.S. Plans 250,000 Troops for Iraq A Pentagon plan for invading Iraq, should the new U.N. arms inspection effort fail, calls for a land, sea and air force of 200,000 to 250,000 troops, officials said Saturday.
• No Child Unrecruited -- Should the military be given the names of every high school student in America? The principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont, was shocked when she received a letter in May from military recruiters demanding a list of all her students, including names, addresses, and phone numbers... The recruiters cited the No Child Left Behind Act, Dictator Bush's sweeping new education law passed earlier this year. There, buried deep within the law's 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student -- or face a cutoff of all federal aid.
• Plan set for GI smallpox vaccine The Pentagon has readied a plan for vaccinating some U.S. troops against smallpox and is awaiting White House approval before giving the first shots, said a senior defense official.

  

• Hundreds of thousands march against war in Iraq in Italian rally Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched through Florence to oppose a war on Iraq in what could prove to be the world's biggest street protest yet against US sabre-rattling toward Baghdad. Between 400,000 and one million people -- according to respective police and organizers' estimates -- braved the cold to march through this heavily policed Renaissance city, but the mood remained festive with no reported incidents. [One million people! See? *Everyone* hates the Idiot Usurping Lying Weasel (sorry, Mr. Kristof -- I can't resist.) -- Lori Price]
• Half-A-Million March in Anti-W-ar Rally in Italy More than half a million anti-W-ar protesters from across Europe marched through this Italian Renaissance city on Saturday in a loud and colorful demonstration denouncing any possible U.S. attack on Iraq. "Take your war and go to hell," read one banner, in a forest of multi-colored and multi-lingual placards. "Drop Bush, not Bombs" read another. Some placards depicted pResident Bush as Hitler and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as Mussolini.
• Italy Anti-W-ar March Draws 450,000 Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Florence Saturday in a protest against globalization and U.S. policy in Iraq.
• Alabama Democrats Want Recount in Governor's Race Supporters of Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama on Friday began filing petitions for a recount of the state's gubernatorial race, setting the stage for one of the most contentious vote-counting battles since the 2000 presidential ballot in Florida. [Actually, that would be, "since the 2000 coup d'etat in Florida". -- Lori Price]
• Ala. Governor's Recount Hopes Dim With a 3,000-vote deficit and the Republican attorney general blocking his request for a recount, Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman may be running out of options to stay in office.
• Napolitano's ballot count in Pima County likely to favor her (AZ) Republican Matt Salmon narrowed the margin by about 3,000 votes in the governor's race Friday, but Democrat Janet Napolitano is expected to win a bigger prize today when Pima County counts 27,000 ballots that likely will go heavily Democratic.
• Dangerous Times Ahead After Election 2002: Despite the Nation's Deep Divisions and Bush v. Gore, The President [sic] Plans On Filling The Courts With Right Wing Judges -- by John W. Dean "Election 2002 does not give the Bush-Cheney administration a mandate to load the federal judiciary with right wing judges. The voters, after all, had the economy and the war on their minds - not the federal courts. But if you doubt it's about to happen, just sit tight and wait."
• Police to videotape protesters Chicago police are expected to videotape anti-globalization demonstrators today under intelligence-gathering powers they have regained from the courts after a two-decade ban. Department rules that took effect Oct. 25 also permit officers to pose as members of groups as long as the intelligence-gathering has a legitimate law-enforcement purpose. And the rules let officers surf the Internet to scan groups' Web sites for information about them.
• White House Weighs Letting Military Tribunal Try Moussaoui, Officials Say The White House is weighing a proposal to abandon the Justice Department's prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui in a federal court, remove him from the United States and place him before a military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, mis-ministration officials say.
• Anti-AshKKKroft banner drop in Manhattan (photos, video, and report) The banner was unfurled at the busy intersection of Houston between Broadway and Lafayette in New York City...
• US Massacre Claims A British documentary claims to have proof that American troops watched as Northern Alliance soldiers allegedly slaughtered thousands of captured Taliban fighters during the Afghan war. The programme claims soldiers loyal to the local Northern Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum loaded many of the 8,000 captives into sealed containers for the journey, in which many suffocated. One soldier admits in the documentary that when the prisoners called for air he and others fired in to the containers to ventilate them, killing more.
• Understanding the New Imperial Empire: Will America's Past Become America's Future? -- by Sidney M. Willhelm "Will the Court tolerate an Attorney General who massively trashes civil liberties, a president [sic] with the privilege to deny all legal rights by declaring even citizens 'enemy combatants' and repressive measures such as the USA Patriot Act? Although the evidence is, at present, too tenuous to assure prediction, we simply must anticipate general compliance by the Supreme Court to the demands forthcoming from the Bush Cabal."
• Environmentalists brace for changes led by GOP With Republicans controlling the House and Senate as well as holding the White House, environmental groups are bracing for an onslaught of business-friendly policies they fear will threaten hard-won environmental protections.
• Catching tax cheats -- White House won't let IRS chief testify on agency's needs The White House wouldn't let Commissioner Charles Rossotti, who stepped down Wednesday, tell a congressional hearing that the IRS needs more agents to keep pace with tax cheaters' increasing sophistication.
• Drug Industry Poised to Reap Political Dividends Few industries campaigned harder than pharmaceutical manufacturers to elect Republicans to the new Congress, and few industries are better positioned to reap the rewards of the election returns, analysts said Thursday.
• Kane GOP sheriff reassigning election foe (IL) The day Ken Ramsey won re-election as Kane County sheriff, he also reassigned his election opponent to a desk job.
• President Al Gore provides a guest-voice as himself in the season finale of Futuarama on Fox Sunday, November 10.
• USA's Biggest Voting Machine Company Demands Removal of Web Page
• ES&S demands retraction, threatens to sue Attorneys for Election Systems & Software (ES&S) are demanding retraction of an Internet article posted at www.talion.com/election-machines.html. In this surprising letter, they acknowledge that the Ahmanson family [right-wing, radical political activists] financed what is now the USA's largest voting machine company.
• The Nebraska Problem ES&S, according to the Nebraska Elections Division, is the ONLY vote-counting company certified to sell machines in Nebraska. ES&S counts 80 percent of the votes; the remaining 20 percent are hand counts. ES&S is owned by the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy runs the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy is the Campaign Treasurer for Republican Senator Chuck Hagel; The FEC designates Michael McCarthy as a Primary Campaign Committee for Candidate Chuck Hagel; and Chuck Hagel's financials list the McCarthy Group as an Asset, with his investment valued at $1-$5 million.
• Alabama Democrats Want Recount in Governor's Race Supporters of Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama on Friday began filing petitions for a recount of the state's gubernatorial race, setting the stage for one of the most contentious vote-counting battles since the 2000 presidential ballot in Florida. [Another coup d'etat? -- Lori Price]
• A Repository for Voter Complaints
• Anonymous Mailer sends website: Photos taken inside a military C-130 transporting POWs
• Photos of terrorism suspects cause stir Pentagon investigating who took, released pictures The Pentagon today was investigating to find out who took and released photographs of terror suspects as they were flown in heavy restraints to the high-security prison in Cuba. [LOL, keep looking, fools! Ever hear of the *First Amendment*? -- Lori Price]
• Pentagon trying to find out who released photos of terror suspects The Pentagon was investigating Friday to find out who took and released photographs of terror suspects as they were being transported in heavy restraints aboard a U.S. military plane.
• Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists [?!?] around the globe — including the United States.
• 9/11 Tape Raised Added Questions on Radio Failures The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's analysis of its 78-minute tape of firefighter communications from Sept. 11 flatly contradicts the city's version of what went wrong. It also raises questions about the thoroughness of the city's investigations into the worst loss of life any fire department has ever experienced — 343 men.
• U.N. Panel's Vote Is Unanimous After more than seven weeks of diplomatic wrangling and finessing, the United Nations Security Council unanimously agreed today on a resolution requiring that Iraq show that it has abandoned its weapons of mass destruction or face "serious consequences."
• Rumsfeld Warns Iraq Not to Threaten U.N. Inspectors Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Iraq not "to take or threaten hostile action against inspectors or coalition aircraft upholding U.N. inspections" under the U.N. Security Council resolution signed today.
• UN resolution on Iraq: a cynical cover for US aggression With its unanimous vote Friday on a US-British resolution threatening "serious consequences" if Iraq does not comply with a new weapons inspections regime, the United Nations Security Council has given the Bush mis-ministration an international cover for the war it is planning against the Arab nation.
• U.S. quietly builds up around Iraq Heavy equipment, 63,000 troops in position, awaiting word -- While the United States waged a very public battle at the United Nations to win support for a tough resolution on Iraq, the Pentagon has been quietly and steadily sending equipment to the region.
• Israel: Sharon forced to call new elections -- 100,000 march for peace in Tel Aviv Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has asked President Moshe Katzav to dissolve the Knesset (parliament)... Last week saw a massive peace demonstration in Tel-Aviv, numbering over 100,000.
• U.S.-German Chill Eases Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared the mis-ministration's frosty relations with Germany to be "unpoisoned" last night after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder moved to make amends with Dictator Bush. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice made the mis-ministration's anger plain, telling the Financial Times that some statements in the German campaign were "beyond the pale." "How can you use the name Hitler and the name of the president [sic] of the U.S. in the same sentence?" Rice said. [Well! It's the quintessential, If The Shoe Fits, Wear It! -- Lori Price]
• Frost drops out of House leadership race Acknowledging that he lacked enough votes to win, Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas, dropped out of the race for House minority leader Friday and predicted that a liberal colleague from California would win the post.
• Okay, Here's What We've Got To Do -- by Carolyn Kay "We’ve had a few days to lick our wounds now, so let’s get over that and get cracking. One of the things the right wing does very successfully is to take a licking and come back kicking. We can learn from that. We have to..."
• A trust fund that gives a fillip to the feel-good factor by Alison Beard " ' If you want a flippant way of saying it: Sex is good for the economy.' "
• Carve-up of oil riches begins US plans to ditch industry rivals and force end of Opec -- The leader of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, has met executives of three US oil multinationals to negotiate the carve-up of Iraq's massive oil reserves post-Saddam.
• US midterm election: the meaning of the Democratic debacle (WSWS) "The Republican sweep in the November 5 midterm election sets the stage for an enormous intensification of the social and political crisis in the United States. The attempt by the media to present the election result as a vindication of George W. Bush and an expression of popular support for his policies is an exercise in cynical propaganda."
• Eleven Activists Arrested at UN (NY) Eleven activists with local anti-war group No Blood for Oil were arrested outside of the United Nations today while trying to hand deliver a letter to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
• Activists Drop Giant Anti-Ashcroft Banner in Soho (NY) If you happened to be downtown Tuesday night, you might have seen a 20-by-50-foot demonic spectre of Attorney General John Ashcroft overtake the giant billboard at the corner of Houston and Lafayette, usually splashed with slinky models in tight jeans.
• Ala. Gov. Asks for Statewide Recount Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman demanded a statewide recount in Alabama's disputed gubernatorial election Thursday, saying the outcome is so close it needs a second look. According to unofficial returns, Siegelman trails Republican Rep. Bob Riley by 3,195 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast.
• Democrat losses bolster Gore by default President Al Gore, who won the popular vote but lost the pResidential s-election in the 2000 coup d'etat, has yet to announce whether he will run for reelection. But the apparent failure of senior Democrats in Congress to inspire the electorate has bolstered Mr Gore's position as Democratic leader by default.
• Barbara Walters interviews President Al Gore on Nov. 15 on 20/20 (excerpt on webpage from the interview)
• The Race for Gephardt's Post In a post-election shakeup, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a California liberal, is the front-runner in the race to succeed Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) as the House Democratic leader, key lawmakers said yesterday.
• Ford Makes Bid to Succeed Gephardt Rep. Harold Ford, saying House Democrats crave "a clean break" from the party's legislative and political strategy, on Friday threw his name into the mix of candidates vying to succeed House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt.
• [Mega-double-barf alert] Dictator Bush says Cheney would be his running mate in 2004 [Why bother to even *have* elections, when exit polling is canceled to facilitate the GOP coups? -- Lori Price]
• Bush Pushes His Agenda Dictator Bush yesterday demanded international action against Iraq's Saddam Hussein and congressional action on other mis-ministration priorities. Bush insisted on immediate action from the current Congress on legislation creating a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Floating an array of policy ideas from tax cuts early next year to the partial privatization of Social Security, he also urged the Senate to reconsider previously rejected judicial nominees.
• Environmentalists Fear GOP Gains Democrats weren't the only ones who watched this week's election results with mounting discomfort. Environmentalists also were alarmed by the GOP's tightened grip on Congress.
• Bush: Homeland Sec. Is Top Priority Dictator Bush, outlining a legislative agenda after his party captured both the House and the Senate in midterm elections, said Thursday his top priority was legislation to create a new Department of Homeland Security. He said he wanted it this year.
• Democrats Object to Bush's Rhetoric Democrats See Disconnect Between Rhetoric and GOP Actions -- Democrats were particularly incensed yesterday about Bush's claim Wednesday that Republican candidates had succeeded because of their clean campaigns [?!? ROFL!] Some of Bush's hand-picked candidates used images of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to try to tar Democrats as soft on national security. Bush occasionally joined in the attack. Rep. C. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) used an ad featuring videotape of Osama bin Laden in his successful campaign to unseat Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who lost both legs and his right arm in a grenade explosion while serving as an Army captain in Vietnam.
• Bush Reviewing Options for Troop Vaccinations Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld presented recommendations on the possible inoculation of U.S. troops against smallpox to Dictator Bush on Thursday but no decision has been made, the White House said.
• 23 Sailors Refuse to Take Anthrax Vaccine Twenty-three sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt have been demoted, fined and given extra duty for refusing to take anthrax vaccinations, according to the U.S. Navy.
• US longshore officials cave in to West Coast shippers’ anti-union demands The leadership of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) last week agreed to the main concessionary demands put forward by West Coast shipping companies in the protracted negotiations for a new contract.
• White Extremists Plot to Seize Power, South Africa Says The police say that Thomas Vorster and his co-conspirators — including three white army officers — hoped to restore white rule in South Africa by seizing military bases, freeing jailed apartheid-era killers and chasing blacks out of the country.

  November 8, 2002

• Broward "Finds" Additional 104,000 Votes -- (FL) More than 100,000 votes went "missing" on Tuesday between the time they were counted by electronic machines and the time they were reported on cable-access television and on the Supervisor of Elections web site. A "glitch" in the vote reporting system left a 104,000-vote difference between Tuesday night's totals and those reported late Wednesday.
• Equipment causes voting problems in several counties -- (FL) Old or faulty equipment was blamed for voting problems in several counties, election officials said Wednesday.
• Problems in Florida: Coup 2000 Revisited, or Rightwingers trying to discredit reports from the original coup?
• Alabama Governor Results in Dispute -- Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman and Republican challenger Bob Riley both claimed victory in the Alabama governor's race Wednesday, with Siegelman charging that a GOP-dominated county altered its vote totals in the middle of the night.
• Election Day gremlins [coupmeisters] turn voting into frustrating experience for some -- (MO) Voting didn't begin at one polling place in south St. Louis until after 7 a.m., because the Republican judge showed up late. Some people left without voting.
• Election problems in two counties -- (TX) Problems with the early-voting ballot stopped the ballot count dead in its tracks for much of the night in Bexar County. Bexar elections administrator Cliff Borofsky said election counters are having to inspect each of the 128,000 early votes cast.
• Equipment causes voting problems in several counties -- (SC) Old or faulty equipment was blamed for voting problems in several counties, election officials said Wednesday.
• Provisional Ballots Cause Problems In Kansas -- (KS) Republican Phill Kline and Democrat Chris Biggs can't decide who won the race for Kansas attorney general.
• Election night problems continue in Adams County -- (NE) More than 12 hours after polls closed in Tuesday's general election, no votes had been counted in Adams County.
• Atlantic County tally delayed by computer problems -- (NJ) Failures in an 18-year-old computer system prevented the electronic tabulation of votes in Atlantic County, forcing a manual count that dragged through Wednesday.
• Manistee County Polling Problems -- (MI) A northern Michigan county's polling problems hold up final tallies to state elections. A ballot shortage in Manistee County delayed election results in both local and state races.
• SF Election Bungled, Again -- (CA) It's the story San Francisco elections officials were hoping not to hear. Problems, big problems, during Tuesday's voting... There were no more ballots. Poll workers said more ballots were on the way. So they waited and waited and waited some more. Finally at about 9 o'clock, people started leaving.
• VNS Abandons US Exit Poll Operation -- Voter News Service abandoned its state and national exit poll plans for Election Night, saying it could not guarantee the accuracy of the analysis which media organizations use to help explain why people voted as they did.
• Voting Machine Technology - It's Not Secure: Next time... Vote-By-Mail -- by Bev Harris and Lynn Landes "The legitimacy of government in the United States will remain in question as long as over 98% of the vote is tabulated by machines that can be easily rigged, impossible to audit, and owned by a handful of private companies."
• "Your Vote Doesn't Matter" (.pdf) -- by John Kaminski "Your vote does not matter. It might not even be counted, assuming you're allowed to vote to begin with."
• Victorious Republicans Preparing a Drive for Bush Agenda and Judgeship Nominees -- Republicans began setting plans yesterday to push forward a domestic agenda of tax cuts, a national energy policy, creation of a vast homeland security department and the confirmation of conservative judges as they savored a sweep of the midterm elections that gave them complete control of the Capitol.
• GOP Victory's Ripples Spread -- Gephardt to Quit as Minority Leader; Democratic Presidential Aspirants Scramble -- Dictator Bush's show of strength in Tuesday's s-election shook up Washington yesterday-shifting the balance of power, resetting the legislative agenda and ending the eight-year reign of House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).
• Gephardt to Forgo House Leader Post -- Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt intends to announce Thursday that he is stepping down as House Democratic leader after eight years, senior aides said, one day after his party suffered historic losses in midterm elections.
• Governors Roundup: Democrats Get A Few Big Wins -- On a disappointing day for their party, Democrats yesterday salvaged some solace by capturing the governorships of three key states -- Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan -- but watched as allies of Dictator Bush secured the Sun Belt bastions of Florida and Texas, where Democrats had hoped to embarrass him.
• Ex-CFO Fastow Pleads Innocent to Massive Enron Indictment -- Former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow pleaded innocent Wednesday to a 78-count federal indictment charging him with masterminding complex financial schemes that enriched him and helped doom the energy trading powerhouse.
• GOP Eyes Quick Approvals -- Judicial Nominees Focus of Plans -- The Bush mis-ministration and congressional Republicans immediately began to map out yesterday how they could use the GOP's sudden ascendancy in the Senate to accelerate the approval of judicial candidates, possibly including a pair of nominees who were rejected in recent months.
• U.S. Wants Prints Of Muslim Visitors -- Arab Rights Groups Denounce Plan -- The Justice Department announced yesterday that it will require thousands of students, workers and other men from five Muslim countries who are temporarily residing in the United States to be fingerprinted and photographed, the latest step in its program to register visitors from countries linked to terrorism.
• Pentagon Has Smallpox Plan for Troops -- The Pentagon has readied a plan for vaccinating some U.S. troops against smallpox and is awaiting White House approval before giving the first shots, according to a senior defense official.
• National Guard and Reserve Mobilized as of November 6, 2002
• German Cabinet Approves Extended Mandate for Troops in U.S.-Led Anti-Terror Campaign -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Cabinet on Wednesday decided to extend by a year the mandate of German troops participating in the U.S.-led war against terrorism.
• U.S. Criticizes Sweden for Comments -- A senior U.S. official sharply attacked Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh on Wednesday for comments critical of a U.S. missile strike that killed a senior member of al-Qaida and five other suspects in Yemen. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick objected to Lindh's characterization of the strike earlier this week as a "summary execution that violates human rights".
• America has always been at war -- by Ash Pulcifer "Americans fail to realize that, for the last 50 years, their country has been at constant war. Since World War II, the American government has been pressuring countries across the globe to join the economic system of free trade capitalism."
• The American Idol -- by Thomas L. Friedman "...If you think Germany is turning anti-American, pay attention to what happened here last month when the president visited Berlin. No, not President [sic] Bush — President Clinton. Mr. Clinton, who helped unveil the refurbished Brandenburg Gate, was swarmed as Germans clamored to see, hear or shake hands with him. Elvis was in the house. If Mr. Bush visited Germany today there would also be street riots — the sort they use tear gas to control."
• Glitch delaying Tarrant results (TX) A voting machine bungle [?!?] in Tarrant County and a deluge of early ballots in Bexar County have delayed final results in Texas' third- and fourth-largest counties until as late as Wednesday evening. "This is horrendous," Tarrant County Commissioner Dionne Bagsby said of a programming mistake that caused vote-counting machines to ignore straight party selections. "This is a system that has been used successfully for a number of years."Art Brender, chairman of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, said that about 40 percent of local Democrats traditionally vote the straight ticket.
• State Supreme Court Voids Order to Keep Polls Open The Arkansas Supreme Court tonight voided an order keeping the Pulaski County polls open until 9 p.m.. The GOP went before the high court to protest an earlier order by Judge Collins Kilgore. Kilgore granted a request by Democrats and extended Pulaski County poll hours 90 minutes to 9 p.m..
• White House Maps Ambitious Plans With Republicans gaining control of both the White House and Congress, Bush mis-ministration officials last night began to prepare an ambitious legislative agenda to press their new -- and somewhat unexpected -- advantage.
• Federal Bench Fiasco Dictator George W. Bush's plan for speeding up confirmation of his nominees to the federal judiciary -- and Sen. Orrin Hatch's reasons for supporting it -- misidentifies the problem and who is responsible for it.
• US masses forces for war on Iraq While Washington goes through the diplomatic motions of moving a resolution on weapons inspection through the United Nations Security Council, the Pentagon continues its systematic buildup of forces in preparation for a military attack on Iraq.
• North Korea Says It May Restart Missile Tests After Talks Fail North Korea warned today that unless relations with Japan are quickly normalized it would resume its testing of ballistic missiles.
• Republicans marshal "poll watchers" to intimidate Democratic voters The Republican Party, with the backing of the Bush mis-ministration, will post thousands of party functionaries at polling stations in various parts of the country on Election Day, November 5, to intimidate working class and minority voters from casting their ballots. This anti-democratic operation is being carried out under the cover of "poll watching." [Republicans are attempting to make the Coup permanent! Don't be intimdated! INSTEAD, INTIMIDATE THE REPUBLICAN POLL WATCHERS WHO TRY TO INTIMIDATE VOTERS.]
• Exit poll service fails on election night The exit polling system used by media organizations to anticipate the outcome of elections failed Tuesday, the night of the midterm elections, leading news networks to announce that they would not call races, except on the basis of votes actually counted.
  
• Foreigners Watching US Vote The choice, as most of them see it, is between the very bad situation they have now, with an American foreign policy torn between the macho hawks of the Pentagon and the emollient wimps of the State Department, or an even worse situation in which the hawks reinforced by Republican control of both House and Senate carry all before them.
• Swiss keep a watchful eye on Florida ballot Americans go to the polls on November 5 in the mid-term elections. This time, Swiss and international observers will be monitoring the voting process.
• Judges to Watch Polling in 14 States More than 400 federal observers and Justice Department attorneys will monitor polling places in 14 states, the largest federal Election Day effort since the civil rights era.
• Voter News Service Tests Poll Info. Hours before Election Day, Voter News Service said Monday it still hadn't worked all the bugs out of a new system designed to provide media organizations with exit polling information from voters.
• Clinton Campaigns For Curry (CT) Former President Bill Clinton rallied supporters of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry in Hartford, CT, on Monday. Clinton told a crowd of more than 600 people at the Connecticut Expo Center to call 10 to 12 friends when they got home and urge them to support both Curry and 2nd District candidate Joe Courtney. Clinton said such an effort could affect 20,000 to 30,000 votes. "...Make it an investment in Connecticut's future," he told the crowd. "If you want to win bad enough, you're going to win tomorrow."
• Jackson Urges Florida Blacks to Hit the Polls The Rev. Jesse Jackson urged blacks and others to hit the polls in Florida Tuesday and not be discouraged by the problems that plagued the state's last two statewide elections.
• Economy Expected to Draw Voters For Tim Oliver, an Alabama convenience store worker, going to the polls isn't really a choice. It's simply a fall tradition and duty, guided this year by his concern for the stumbling economy.
• Poll: Democrat Widens Lead in N.J. Senate Race Former Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg has widened his lead over Republican Douglas Forrester in New Jersey's race for the U.S. Senate, a poll released on Monday showed.
• Mondale to Coleman: 'You're not listening' Whether the United States should go it alone against Iraq, help for paying for prescription drugs and Social Security took center state Monday in the only debate between Democrat Walter Mondale and Republican Norm Coleman in the whirlwind campaign for Minnesota's U.S. Senate seat.
• Ventura Appoints an Independent as Interim Senator Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota named a fellow Independence Party member, Dean Barkley, as interim senator today, in a move that could affect the balance of power on Capitol Hill, at least for the near future.
• Colonialism on trial in Iraq attack- Archbishop A military attack on Iraq by the U.S.-led anti-terror alliance risks destabilising the region and could rake up the past, The Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, Rowan Williams, said on Tuesday.
• Pearl Harbor ships to join armada in Persian Gulf At least seven of Pearl Harbor's 30 home-based ships and subs are — or soon will be — part of an armada the U.S. Navy is massing in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. The aircraft carrier USS Constellation battle group left San Diego on Saturday to join the build-up of forces.
• MoD 'preparing to mobilise reservists' (UK) The Government is reportedly preparing to announce the compulsory mobilisation of up to 10,000 reservists in preparation for a war on Iraq. Ministers are preparing to issue Queen's Order - not used since the Korean War - giving defence chiefs wide powers to mobilise large numbers of reservists indefinitely, according to the Daily Telegraph.
• Attack Iran the day Iraq war ends, demands Israel Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called on the international community to target Iran as soon as the imminent conflict with Iraq is complete.
• Bush in S.D. - People Kicked out of Hotel Rooms (Rumor Mill News Reading Room Forum) "I thought this was a free country not a Dictatorship. The Secret Service came in and decided they wanted a 40 room squared block at the Ramkota hotel. They took all the luggage of those who already paid for their rooms and left their belongings in the hall... The secret service only started their security checks about 45 minutes before the President [sic] arrived to let the people in... One woman who was in line had to go to the hospital because of frostbite after waiting so long."
• Revolution! (from blah3.com)
• Ohio GOP Ad Uses Trade Center Images Infuriated Democrats on Sunday called for Ohio Republicans to pull a television ad using images of the destroyed World Trade Center and New York City's Ground Zero area in an ad against Ohio Democratic congressional candidate Tim Ryan, calling it "disrespectful" and "a new low."
• 7 protesters arrested; ticketholders kept out Seven protesters were arrested Saturday outside the USF Sun Dome, where pResident Bush was speaking at a political rally for his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush. Several Bill McBride supporters who had tickets to the rally were denied entrance because they were wearing McBride buttons.
• Judge rules Bexar early vote ballots are illegal (TX) A federal judge has ruled that early voting ballots in Bexar County are illegal, throwing into question the fate of more than 112,000 votes already cast for Tuesday's election.
• Who makes the vote-counting machines? Election Systems & Software [ES&S], according to the Nebraska Elections Division, is the ONLY vote-counting company certified to sell machines in Nebraska. ES&S counts 80 percent of the votes; the remaining 20 percent are hand counts. ES&S is owned by the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy runs the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy is the Campaign Treasurer for Republican Senator Chuck Hagel; The FEC designates Michael McCarthy as a Primary Campaign Committee for Candidate Chuck Hagel; and Chuck Hagel's financials list the McCarthy Group as an Asset, with his investment valued at $1-$5 million.
• 31 Election Mistakes (So Far) Thirty-one city newspapers have documented voting errors that only add to the ballot-stuffing, dead-people-voting, hide-the-ballots-in-your-trunk, absentee-faking problems of the past. The rush to computerized counting, and the consolidation of the "voting machine industry" into just three major players, who try to keep identities secret, fail to mention conflicts of interest, and shrug off criminal records has added new worries about the security of our voting process.
• VoteWatch has a new online service to immediately report voting problems.
• 30,000 vote early in Broward With absentees, it's 15% of projection Broward voters casting early ballots Saturday in hopes of avoiding long lines on Election Day found that perhaps they'd already waited too long. ''People are outraged. We want Jeb Bush out,'' said Patrick Jabouin, president of the Caribbean-American Club of Broward.
• Turnout Key for McBride in Florida Democrat Bill McBride needs a huge turnout from blacks and retirees if he hopes to stop Jeb Bush from becoming the first Republican governor re-elected in Florida, political experts say.
• Clinton stumps in West Palm On the 10th anniversary of his defeat of George Bush, Bill Clinton stood before more than 1,000 supporters in Currie Park Sunday urging them to do the same thing to Bush's second son.
• Mondale helped Wellstone with advice and fundraising Lamenting U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone's death in a campaign ad running this weekend, Walter Mondale mourns the loss of "a great champion" and a "dear friend." But the two Democrats were more than friends. During Wellstone's 12 years in the Senate, Mondale was a frequent behind-the-scenes adviser.
• Running to the Supremes -- by James Hall "...where do Republicans run to when they have electoral problems? You guessed it --- the Supreme Court. Republicans argue the switch of candidates in New Jersey violates election laws and sets a bad precedent. But the precedent had already been set --- by Republicans themselves. In 1990, only 8 days before the election for Minnesota's governor, Jon Grunseth, a Republican candidate riddled by a sex scandal, resigned from the race after finding himself hopelessly behind in the polls. Republicans appointed another candidate, Arne Carlson, who won the election."
• Top Court: Protesters Can Sue over Pepper Spray The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for two California sheriff's officers to stand trial for using pepper spray on the eyes and faces of environmental activists at three peaceful protests in 1997.
• Judge Clears Protestor, Then Scolds Police -- by Regis T. Sabol "A Pittsburgh area district justice, the lowest level in America’s jurisprudence system, demonstrated Thursday that she understands the First Amendment of United States Constitution better than U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out a disorderly conduct charge against Bill Neel, a 65-year-old demonstrator who stood outside a fenced-in 'Free Speech' zone holding up a sign lampooning George Bush when the president [sic] appeared at a Labor Day picnic on Neville Island, south of Pittsburgh."
• Bush Appoints Former Criminals to Key Government Roles Since becoming pResident, George Bush has brought back into government service men who were discredited by criminal involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, lying to Congress, and other felonies while working for his father George Bush senior and Ronald Reagan.
• pResident To Author: Your Book Is Unpatriotic Gabe Hudson's new collection of short stories, "Dear Mr. President [sic]" (Knopf, $19), has made him a favorite of book critics, fellow writers and lots of readers. But the book, it seems, has had the opposite effect on George W. Bush... Hudson says FBI agents have been hanging around at his recent book readings, and the book's website (Gabehudson.com) is apparently being monitored by the government.
• White House Rejects North Korean Offer for Talks The White House today rejected an offer from North Korea to open negotiations over the North's newly disclosed nuclear weapons program, with its spokesman saying there could be no talks until the program was dismantled.
• Moving in for the kill on Iraq A little way off the Californian coast, near the island of San Clemente, the men of the USS Constellation's squadrons were last week going through their paces to ready themselves for war.
• Israel reportedly helping with U.S. war preparation Israel is secretly playing a key role in U.S. preparations for possible war with Iraq, helping to train soldiers and Marines for urban warfare, conducting clandestine surveillance missions in the western Iraqi desert and allowing the United States to place combat supplies in Israel, according to U.S. Defense and intelligence officials.
• Saudi Says It Will Not Help Any U.S. Strike on Iraq Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. regional ally, said on Sunday it would not allow the United States to use its facilities for any attack against neighboring Iraq even if a strike was sanctioned by the United Nations.
• Turkish Election Winner Says Opposes U.S. Strike on Iraq Unless It Is Backed by United Nations The leader of winning party in Turkey's elections said Monday he is opposed to a U.S. military strike against neighboring Iraq, unless approved by the United Nations. "We do not want war, blood, tears and dead in our region," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party, which has Islamic roots.
• Protesters oppose war, push causes, remember Wellstone About 300 people representing a variety of causes took up stations across the street from the arena, using signs, chants and cheers to urge "No blood for oil" and "Make jobs not war." Earlier a slightly smaller crowd gathered outside the Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis for a rally organized by Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) as a supplement to the demonstration in St. Paul.
• Court Upholds Ban on Exxon Valdez An appeals court upheld the federal law that bans the Exxon Valdez tanker from the Alaskan sound where it spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil over a decade ago.
• Florida Voucher Program Examined More than one in four students who took a voucher to attend private school in Florida this semester have transferred back to public education, a newspaper reported.
• Don't Give Up Votes Twice, Clinton Tells Floridians Former President Bill Clinton took to a palm-lined stage on the sands of Miami Beach on Saturday to rally support for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride, who trails Republican Gov. Jeb Bush ahead of Tuesday's election in Florida, the decisive battleground state in the 2000 election. "If they took it from you once, don't give it to them twice," Clinton told hundreds of cheering people gathered at a park on glitzy neon-lined Ocean Drive.

  
  Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride, right, gestures as former President Bill Clinton cheers him on during a "Get Out the Vote" rally at Miami-Dade Community College on Saturday. (AP/CHRIS O'MEARA)

• Ashcroft asked to assist Broward in obtaining paper ballots Hoping to ease the anticipated lengthy delays at polling places on Election Day, two U.S. congressmen from Broward County have asked federal officials to encourage Florida to allow paper ballots at precincts. State officials told all elections supervisors Thursday that paper ballots would not be available to relieve long lines. "With the glide path we are on, we're going to have a disaster Tuesday," Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Fort Lauderdale, said. "The wait times will be extreme if something isn't done now. People will leave in droves _ in the thousands and tens of thousands _ without voting."
• Vote fraud charges hit mom, daughter A mother and daughter working as election judges on Chicago's Northwest Side in the March primary have been indicted on vote fraud charges for allegedly spoiling 66 ballots, Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine said Friday. Geraldine Rossler, 48, and Michele Rossler, 22, both of the 3100 block of North Newland Avenue were working as Republican election judges in the 36th Ward.
• GOP voting notice misleading, state official warns (NM) The state Bureau of Elections has criticized claims by the Republican Party of New Mexico that pushing the straight party button will cancel out individual votes for another party. The claim appears as a notice on several Republican mailers targeting Democratic congressional candidate John Arthur Smith and promoting Smiths opponent, Republican Steve Pearce.
• Democrats leading in latest Field Poll -- Shutout of Republicans in state offices possible (CA) Democrats could be looking at a historic sweep of statewide offices, according to a Field Poll released today showing the party's candidates gaining momentum -- holding leads in all seven races for constitutional offices.
• Congressional Generic: Democrat 51% - GOP 49%; Democrats Now Best Suited to Handle Economy, Latest Zogby America Poll Reveals
• Page says column was inaccurate After refusing to comment for a week on speculation about whether he was on a short list of potential U.S. Senate candidates after Sen. Paul Wellstone's death, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page broke his silence Friday. Angered by a syndicated column by Robert Novak, which ran in Friday's Pioneer Press, Page said that though reluctant, he had to comment.
• Attention turns back to liberties Skepticism of government is back. In public opinion polls, the courts and Congress, there is an emerging resistance to what a growing number of critics say is an extraordinary assault on civil liberties by the Bush mis-ministration.
• Army's secret 'people zapper' plans Britain has been involved in secret talks with the United States over the development of so-called non-lethal weapons, including lasers that blind the enemy and microwave systems that cook the skin of human targets.
• Apartheid South Africa's Germ Warfare Program Connected to California Doctor, 60 Minutes Reports A California doctor who committed suicide after being accused in a murder plot gave deadly germs to apartheid South Africa's secret chemical and biological weapons program, CBS' "60 Minutes" reported Sunday.
• California Doctor's Suicide Leaves Many Troubling Mysteries Unsolved There were the suggestions that Dr. Larry C. Ford was working for the C.I.A. Several people close to him — including Dr. Hunter Hammill, a Baylor University professor who collaborated on papers with him — say he sometimes told them so. "We had heard that he had worked for the government, worked at Fort Detrick," said Dr. Daniel Knobel, a senior official in Project Coast. He was referring to the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., where the government did biological weapons research.
• The commander who is planning a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq has... The commander who is planning a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq has won Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's support for a ground force well in excess of 100,000 American troops, senior defense officials and military analysts said.
• Army Weighs Privatizing Close to 214,000 Jobs The Army is considering whether to contract out nearly 214,000 military and civilian employee positions in what would be the largest transfer of jobs to the private sector by a government agency, Pentagon officials said. Federal unions denounced the Army plan as a thinly veiled attempt to do away with their jobs and benefit defense contractors.
• Pitt Under Fire for Not Telling All He Knew About Webster Three investigations began today into the Securities and Exchange Commission's choice of William H. Webster to head a new board overseeing the accounting profession. House and Senate Democrats called for the resignations of both Mr. Webster and Harvey L. Pitt, the commission's chairman.
• The Pitt Principle -- by Paul Krugman "So Harvey Pitt decided not to tell other members of the Securities and Exchange Commission a small detail about the man he had chosen to head a crucial new accounting oversight board, after turning his back on a far more qualified candidate. William Webster, reports Stephen Labaton of The Times, headed the audit committee at U.S. Technologies. Now that company is being sued by investors who claim that management defrauded them of millions. And what did Mr. Webster's committee do after an outside auditor raised concerns about the company's financial controls? That's right: It fired the auditor."
• U.S. consumer confidence plummets in October Worries about jobs and a possible U.S. attack on Iraq pummeled consumer confidence to its lowest level in nine years in October, a report said on Tuesday, a grim omen for the holiday shopping season ahead.
• Saturday-Night-Live December 14, 2002 (Live) Host: Al Gore
• Transcript of "Iraq and the War On Terrorism" the classic speech given by President Al Gore at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, CA, Sept. 23, 2002
• Gore blasts Bush's 'cowboy' Iraq policy -- Global goodwill already squandered, he tells S.F. boosters In one of the most forceful Democratic condemnations of George Bush's foreign policy, President Al Gore warned in San Francisco on Monday that a pre-emptive strike on Iraq would distract America from its war on terrorism and "weaken our ability to lead the world." "After Sept. 11, we had enormous sympathy, goodwill and support around the world," Gore told about 500 people at the Commonwealth Club of California. "That has been squandered in a year's time and replaced with great fear, anxiety and uncertainty around the world, not at what the terrorist network is going to do, but at what we are going to do."

  November 3, 2002

• Wellstone pilot had felony record Richard Conry, the chief pilot who flew U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter and three aides on last Friday's fatal flight, had a felony record for mail fraud and served at a federal prison camp in South Dakota in 1990, according to court records and attorneys.
• Co-pilot played minor role in story of Moussaoui The co-pilot who died in Friday's plane crash with Sen. Paul Wellstone played a minor role in the story involving Zacarias Moussaoui, the accused Sept. 11 conspirator who briefly attended an Eagan flight school.
• Court Makes Criminal Referral on Republican/Bush Administration Threats Against Judicial Watch Vice pResident Cheney Ordered to Turn Over Energy Task Force Documents by November 29th -- Rejects Request for Stay Pending Appeal
• Court deadline looms for Cheney energy papers Judge admonishes White House for slow review process -- Seven days before a court-imposed deadline, the Bush mis-ministration said Tuesday that it has fully reviewed only two out of 12 boxes of documents at issue in lawsuits over Vice pResident Dick Cheney's energy task force.
• S.E.C. Orders Investigation Into Webster Appointment The Securities and Exchange Commission today ordered an investigation into the appointment of William H. Webster to head a new board overseeing the accounting profession after Mr. Webster's disclosure that he told the S.E.C. chairman, Harvey L. Pitt, that he had headed the auditing committee of a company facing fraud accusations.
• Senior Republican Joins in Criticism of S.E.C. Chairman The political troubles of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission deepened today when the senator who will become the senior Republican on the banking committee supported calls by Democrats for hearings into the selection of an overseer of the accounting profession.
• Pitt Must Go Latest in a String of Controversies Surrounding Harvey Pitt -- Thoroughly Compromises His Leadership of Securities & Exchange Commission -- Judicial Watch Seeks Full Disclosure of Records
• Enron's Fastow indicted on federal charges Former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew S. Fastow was indicted Thursday on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy in connection with the collapse of the Houston energy trading company.
• US job cuts continue to mount The official US unemployment rate increased slightly to 5.7 percent in October (from 5.6 percent the month before) as businesses continued to carry out substantial layoffs, resulting in a net loss of 5,000 jobs. More than 8 million people are currently registered as unemployed, while another 4.3 million work part-time although they would prefer full-time employment.
• Unemployment benefits running out for over 3 million US jobless Over three million unemployed workers in the US have either exhausted their unemployment insurance (UI) or face cutoff in the coming months, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
• US profit rates decline despite productivity growth The latest calculations of labour productivity growth highlight the emergence of a deepening contradiction in the US economy, and by implication, the world economy. While productivity has sharply increased over the past five years, profit rates have declined and, in the aftermath of the high-tech and stock market bubble of the late 1990s, the economy has entered a period of "jobless growth," if not double-dip recession
• Gov. Races Give Hope to Democrats More than a dozen races for governor remain neck-and-neck in this election's final, furious days as Democrats push to win back control of a majority of the states' top offices.
• GOP issues apology for vote-fraud mailing (SD) The Republican National Committee is apologizing for dramatizing a direct-mail piece on voter fraud by using a headline from a story that didn’t relate to the subject.
• Judge: Republican PAC can't put pollwatchers at Miami-Dade precincts A Miami-Dade circuit judge on Friday blocked a Republican political action committee's attempt to place pollwatchers inside Miami-Dade's precincts during next week's general election.
• Strategy targets poll watchers -- Democrats sue to block group Citing fears of voter intimidation and a repeat by GOP operatives to ''barrage polling places,'' local Democrats -- including former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek -- are suing to block Miami-Dade County from allowing a Republican political action committee to put poll watchers inside the county's precincts Tuesday.
• The Campaign of Lies Bush Runs the Most Dishonest Campaign in Modern Florida History -- (www.mcbride2002.com press release 11/1) "Definition of 'lie' from dictionary.com: A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression..."
• Jeb Bush's Secret Weapon (revisited) Coup 2000, the Sequel: Jeb Bush to Use Fellonious and Fallacious Voter Purge List of 94,000 (mostly Democratic voters) to rob voters of voting rights, again. Greg Palast reports.
• Republicans Conspire to Steal More Elections in 2002 -- by Jackson Thoreau "So much political treachery by Republicans, so little time to cover and expose it all..."
• Bush Slated to Pay Top Dollar for Libby Pataki’s Florida Land -- Jeb & George -- by Wayne Barrett "Libby Pataki, the governor's wife, is part owner of a canker-ridden parcel of citrus groves in southeast Florida that state and local officials are negotiating to purchase at three times the price the Pataki-tied company paid for it in 2000. Jeb Bush's administration has already cleared the way for the acquisition by giving the parcel a top ranking in the Florida Forever preservation program, even though it does not meet the pristine wetlands standard ordinarily applied to state-financed purchases."
• Forgotten Bush surfaces in schools' quagmire -- by George McEvoy "I couldn't believe my eyes. There it was in black and white, in the public prints, the name that never was heard spoken aloud in top Republican circles -- Neil Bush... It seems that Neil has found a new business interest. He is heading up an educational software company -- Ignite! Learning Inc. -- and hopes to sell its training programs to all of Florida's public schools."
• Report on urban warfare points to US plans to destroy Iraqi cities A new report on urban warfare by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff is a blueprint for the use of America’s overwhelming military and technological supremacy to brutalize and terrorize a far weaker opponent into submission. It suggests that in any invasion of Iraq, American military planners are prepared to use massive firepower to destroy Iraq’s major cities.
• Coming Home Again, to Rumors of War -- A Vietnam veteran returns home to a president in the hysterical grip of a serious mistake, to a congress as the cheerleader, and to chickenhawks wielding the big stick of patriotism. Sounds like deja vu. -- by Igor Bobrowsky
• Judge clears Bush opponent 'I think they went a little too far. He has the right to protest' -- Bill Neel, the 65-year-old man arrested for carrying a sign that lampooned pResident Bush, walked out of court a winner yesterday. District Justice Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out a disorderly conduct charge against Neel, saying he was guilty of nothing except trying to peaceably exercise his First Amendment right to free speech. [Read the Bill Neel protest report; read "Neville Island on Labor Day 2002: First Amendment Behind Bars " by Michael Rectenwald]
• Half of the world's species of plants are in danger of disappearing, says study Up to half of the world's plants could become extinct this century, according to a new analysis of the true number of endangered species.
• The Death of the Internet -- How Industry Intends to Kill the 'Net As We Know It The Internet’s promise as a new medium -- where text, audio, video and data can be freely exchanged -- is under attack by the corporations that control the public’s access to the 'Net, as they see opportunities to monitor and charge for the content people seek and send. The industry’s vision is the online equivalent of seizing the taxpayer-owned airways, as radio and television conglomerates did over the course of the 20th century.
• The (Possible) Assassination Of Paul Wellstone: George W. Bush's Legacy of Cynicism and Contempt George W. Bush and his henchmen stole the presidency. They threw thousands of innocent people into prison without even charging them with a crime. They're gearing up to invade Iraq without bothering to come up with a substantial justification. Now some Democrats and progressive Americans are asking the unthinkable about an administration they increasingly believe to be ruled by thugs and renegades. Did government gangsters murder the United States' most liberal legislator? [This is on YAHOO News, folks!]
• Is Mondale a world-class pol who could help bring us together? The emotions surrounding the memory of Paul Wellstone — pain and pride — are so politically powerful precisely because they are so real.
• Henry Slips Past Largent
• Election '02: Senate control may not be decided Tuesday As with 2000, when Florida's vote-counting fiasco delayed the outcome of the presidential race for 36 days, several races next Tuesday may take days or weeks to resolve. Control of the US Senate, in particular, may hang in the balance until December.
• New draft resolution by U.S. will delay action until after election The United States is preparing to revise its proposed U.N. resolution on Iraqi weapons inspections in a move certain to delay Security Council action past the midterm elections. The political effect would be that pResident Bush will be able to hold back on announcing whether he intends to go to war with Iraq - a potentially explosive issue - until after Tuesday's elections.
• Doubts Grow on Bush's Resolve for Business Reform The mis-ministration's latest misstep in handling America's corporate crisis has convinced many people on both sides of the political divide that pResident Bush does not take the business scandals of the last year all that seriously. [Of course not--everyone realizes that Bush himself is one of the villains, and the best friend of the rest of them.]
• Russian and U.S. economies desire opposite outcome in Iraq (yellowtimes.org)
  - A successful invasion will drop the oil prices on the free market
  - A successful invasion will give profits to American oil companies who have secured drilling rights from the new Iraqi government-- perhaps the Iraqi National Congress
  - Hussein, fearing his end, is giving large oil deals to Russia and other members of the Security Council in hopes that they will put pressure on the United States not to invade.
  - The Bush mis-ministration and U.S. oil companies are worried that they will lose all the lucrative oil deals since most of them have already been given away to other countries.
  
• More than 100,000 troops OK'd for invasion of Iraq The commander who is planning a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq has won Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's support for a ground force well in excess of 100,000 American troops, said senior defense officials and military analysts.
• Bush and American humble pie Candidate George Bush promised to treat foreign countries with humility. But since his inauguration, and especially since Sept. 11, he has acted otherwise.
• Police scolded as Bush protester acquitted A man arrested during a local appearance by pResident Bush got his protest sign back, and police got a scolding, at a hearing this morning. District Justice Shirley Rowe Trkula dismissed a disorderly conduct charge against Bill Neel, 65, of Butler, without any defense witnesses having to testify. Neel was arrested because he refused to move to a fenced-in area for protesters before Bush's Labor Day appearance at a union picnic in Neville. "This is America," said Trkula during the hearing at her office in Coraopolis. [Well, that's NEWS to us at the CLG. At the same protest, CLG Founder and Chair Michael Rectenwald faced threats of a felony charge by the Secret Service for holding a sign that read "Citizens For Legitimate Government". Anti-Bush protesters have been routinely denied their First Amendment Rights by being relegated to so-called "First Amendment Zones," often behind fences or police ribbons, and guarded by police like prisoners. Read the original report by Bill Neel submitted the to CLG, and Michael Rectenwald's report from the same protest. This one should embolden protestors to reclaim their lost rights.]
• Russia to monitor American elections Amid the worldwide outbreak of Schadenfreude that accompanied America's chaotic presidential showdown in 2000, senior members of the Russian Communist party sarcastically offered to send election monitors to Palm Beach to help the nascent democracy find its feet. Albanian politicians echoed the joke, as did President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. But the line between jokes and reality in Florida has always been a blurred one: now, America has accepted the offer.[The whole world knows that Bush was not legitimately elected to office. Only US Republicans are in denial and "think" otherwise.]
• Minnesota Poll: Mondale leads Coleman 47% to 39% Paul Wellstone's likely replacement on the ballot, former Vice President Walter Mondale, leads Republican Norm Coleman by 47 to 39 percent -- close to where the race stood two weeks ago when Wellstone led Coleman 47 to 41 percent.[Despite Republican hopes regarding Wellstone's untimely and strangely coincidental death as well as their attempts to spin the Wellstone memorial service as a party rally, Democrats will still win Minnesota. First a dead man beats the soon-to-be Attorney General, now a 74 year old retired politician will beat Bush's monied boy.]
• [MEGA-BARF-alert:] Rethuglicans Ask for Equal Time Minnesota Republicans are asking Minnesota broadcasters to provide them with free airtime to compensate for the airing of Tuesday's memorial for Senator Paul Wellstone. [These people are either hypocrites or ignoramuses, or both. AFTER ALL, IT WAS REPUBLICANS WHO FOUGHT TO REPEAL THE FAIRNESS IN BROADCASTING ACT THAT GUARANTEED EQUAL TIME TO POLITICAL INTERESTS. SINCE THIS REPEAL (circa 1986), THE MEDIA HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER BY RIGHTWING IDEOLOGUES AT THE BEHEST OF THEIR CORPORATE MASTERS WHO BENEFIT DIRECTLY FROM REPUBLICAN POLICIES, AT OUR EXPENSE!!!]
• US returns to triple-digit budget deficits The Bush mis-ministration announced October 24 that the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30 was $159 billion. If excess receipts for Social Security, supposedly earmarked for paying future benefits, were excluded, the latest federal deficit would top $300 billion.
• After Enron, WorldCom, and Other Scandals 200 Global Justice Groups Call for Corporate Accountability More than 200 global justice groups are resisting the Bush mis-ministration's attempt to use the war on Iraq to distract from its under-the-radar attacks on corporate reforms by issuing an October 30 joint statement on the need for stronger and deeper corporate accountability, beyond those already enacted by Congress.
• Support for military action against Iraq slipping, poll shows Just over half, 55 percent, support military action against Iraq to replace Saddam Hussein, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. That is down from 64 percent in mid-September. And support for such action drops by half - to 27 percent - if the United States is not joined by allies in such an effort.
• Santa Fe Joins Growing List of Cities in Condemning War and Resisting Patriot Act The Santa Fe City Council voted Wednesday to pass a resolution opposing military action against Iraq... The Council also voted for a resolution directing police to not cooperate with federal authorities under the Patriot Act in cases where in their judgment it violates civil rights guaranteed under the Constitution. [More info on the efforts of cities nationwide to protect and restore their residents' civil liberties. 10+ cities have passed civil liberties resolutions; more than 30 other cities and counties in 22 states are working on them.]
• E-Mail and Web Sites are Computer Terrorism, Says Government A truly bizarre new web site at www.intelligence.gov claims to represent the U.S. Intelligence Community as a whole. Examining some of the statements on this site, its slogan, "Uncovering the Truth," must refer to some special definition of "truth" that we aren't yet aware of. [Using e-mail and websites to organize? Isn't that all of us?]
• Canada Issues Travel Advisory Against US Ottawa has issued a travel advisory warning Canadian citizens born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan to "consider carefully" whether they need to travel to the United States…. Canadian citizens are Canadian citizens and that both the United States and Canada are countries that are multicultural in nature and based on immigration," Graham said. "It would be inappropriate under both our constitutions -- our Charter and even the U.S. Constitution -- to do this."
• U.S. Gets Low Grade for Press Freedom The United States ranks number 17 for press freedom, below most Western European countries and Costa Rica, according to a new global index drawn up by journalists, researchers, and legal scholars and released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) last week.
• Board was told of risks before Bush stock sale One week before George W. Bush's now-famous sale of stock in Harken Energy Corp. in 1990, Harken was warned by its lawyers that Bush and other members of the troubled oil company's board faced possible insider trading risks if they unloaded their shares. [But the criminal Bush did it anyway!]
• Murder of US envoy shows anti-Bush feeling is spreading [Bush is getting us killed all over the world. Thanks to the Idiot Usurper, "American" is now a dreaded epithet.]
• The death of US Senator Paul Wellstone: accident or murder? There is a serious question about the sudden death of Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone that has no doubt occurred to many people: was Wellstone the victim of a political assassination?
• For Wellstone, Cheers and Tears. They came straight from work with kids in tow. They came early, waiting patiently in lines wrapped around the Williams Center, packing the 20,000-seat venue to the rafters. Some sat on the floor and those who couldn't get in stood outside listening to stories about the late Sen. Paul D. Wellstone, chiming in with their own about how the scrappy senator with a short frame and big heart had personally touched their lives.
• Election outcome may be delayed: Could the 2002 election wind up as a double overtime thriller? [Will Coup 2000 become permanent?]
• Mondale Says He Will Run! Walter Mondale formally announced Wednesday that he will accept the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nomination for U.S. Senate.
  
• Rally in Washington Is Said to Invigorate the Antiwar Movement
  Emboldened by a weekend antiwar protest in Washington that organizers called the biggest since the days of the Vietnam War, groups opposed to military action in Iraq said they were preparing a wave of new demonstrations across the country in the next few weeks. [See peace protests and action page for details.]
• AWOL George Denies Disabled Veterans -- by James Glaser
• Rightwing Mouthpiece David Horowitz Calls Anti-War Protestors in D.C. "100,000 Communists"
• U.S. and France Near Deal on Iraq Attack The United States and France are moving toward a compromise on Iraq that would oblige the Bush mis-ministration to consult the United Nations Security Council before embarking on military action against Saddam Hussein but still leave it the freedom to act alone.
• Military training links string of serial killers ["The chicken comes home to roost," "you're gonna reap what you sow..." What other truisms come to mind to describe this most obvious pattern? However, the rightwing doesn't care! In fact, they WANT domestic terrorism. It helps justify their repressive regime!]
• U.S. military building database of terror suspects' fingerprints, faces, voices With this project, the U.S. government has taken biometrics — the measuring of human features — well beyond its most common use to date: verifying people's identities before giving them access to computers or secure areas.
• US Media Rigged Journalists from major media outlets bemoan the fact that big corporations and advertisers dictate their stories.
• Wellstones [and nation] to Cheney: Stay Home [wasn't that Texas? Keep your lying, cheating, stealing, sickening self at home and don't despoil the name and memory of the Great Paul Wellstone!]
• Judge dismisses voting-machine case DALLAS - A state district judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday that was filed last week by the county Democratic Party over early voting, saying that she did not have jurisdiction to hear the case. The Democratic Party filed the lawsuit after receiving dozens of complaints from voters who said that when they tried to vote for a Democratic candidate, the voting machine cursor instead landed on the Republican candidate. Election officials said some machines had become miscalibrated because of being moved. [The GOP is setting the stage for Coup 2002!]
• The Connecticut Elections (The New York Times) "One of the most serious arguments against [GOP] Governor Rowland is his refusal to provide any real explanation for the loss of almost $200 million in state funds in what amounted to an unsecured loan to Enron from the state's trash authority. Shortly after the loan, Enron made an $80,000 contribution, since returned, to the Republican Governors Association, which Mr. Rowland now heads... It is hard to imagine that he heard nothing about this deal. But not knowing how his co-chief of staff was handing out so much state money is also no way to run a state government. We endorse Bill Curry for governor of Connecticut."
• NAACP: Get your souls to the polls AUSTIN - The Texas NAACP has a message for black voters: Get your souls to the polls. This Sunday, pastors across the state are planning to educate members of their churches about the importance of voting and provide vans to drive people to the polls.
• Ventura says results of Senate election will likely be challenged Gov. Jesse Ventura said today he fears the results of the U.S. Senate election on Nov. 5 will be challenged in court and questioned the fairness of how absentee ballots already cast for the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone will be treated. "It’s very difficult to say that it’s a fair election when they’ve already said that anyone that voted absentee with the name 'Paul Wellstone' won’t be counted, and anyone who voted absentee with the name 'Norm Coleman' will be counted. That to me right there creates an unfair election."
• Daschle accuses Republicans of voter harassment Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. has accused Republicans of attempting to suppress voting by American Indians. "In my state of South Dakota, we are now seeing a concerted Republican effort to make allegations and launch initiatives intended to suppress Native American voting. These efforts appear to be motivated more by partisan politics than a concern with clean elections," Daschle said.
• Manchester Democrats File Complaint with Attorney General (NH) Manchester City Democrat Chair Raymond Buckley today announced that he planned to file a complaint with the Attorney General’s office concerning the Republican City Committee’s violations of election law. The Manchester Republican Committee has not, to date, filed a finance report with the Secretary of State, which is mandated by law. [Gee, is there any state in which Republicans *are not* violating election laws? Just curious.]
• Presence of outside observers at polls fuels fears, skepticism Members of the Election Reform Community Coalition, which has been monitoring election preparations for the Nov. 5 election, said they are skeptical about the U.S. Justice Department sending monitors into Miami-Dade. They gave Attorney General John Ashcroft a ''no confidence'' vote for making the offer. The Justice Department ''has refused to act when presented with overwhelming evidence of disenfranchisement from one of the most egregiously flawed elections in U.S. history,'' said Gihan Perera, executive director of the social action organization the Miami Workers Center, in reference to the 2000 presidential s-election.
• Gingrich Accusations Come Under Scrutiny -- Leading the GOP charge against likely Minnesota senatorial candidate Walter Mondale, former House Speaker [and rightwing hypocritical nutcase] Newt Gingrich accused the former vice president Sunday of supporting Social Security privatization and raising the retirement eligibility age, but it appears the allegations are false. [Gee, is there any Republican that can tell the truth? Just curious.]
• Online Campaigning 2002: A Primer Online Campaigning 2002: A Primer is a publication of The Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet. The .pdf file available here.
• Morris: Bush Approval Rating Plummeting A new Fox News Dynamics poll set for release Tuesday shows that pResident Bush's job approval numbers are plummeting.
• Feds Weigh Establishment Of Interstate Communications System The Bush mis-ministration is exploring the possibility of creating an "interstate communications expressway," patterned after the interstate highway system, to quicken the exchange [?!?] of homeland-security information among federal, state, and local governments, [of the full-blown Bush Fascist Dictatorship] the CIO of the White House Office of Homeland Security told attendees Monday at the annual conference of the National Association of State CIOs in St. Louis.
• US weapons secrets exposed Respected scientists on both sides of the Atlantic warned yesterday that the US is developing a new generation of weapons that undermine and possibly violate international treaties on biological and chemical warfare. The scientists, specialists in bio-warfare and chemical weapons, say the Pentagon, with the help of the British military, is also working on "non-lethal" weapons similar to the narcotic gas used by Russian forces to end last week's siege in Moscow. Among the projects:
• · CIA efforts to copy a Soviet cluster bomb designed to disperse biological weapons · A project by the Pentagon to build a bio-weapon plant from commercially available materials to prove that terrorists could do the same thing · Research by the Defence Intelligence Agency into the possibility of genetically engineering a new strain of antibiotic-resistant anthrax · A programme to produce dried and weaponised anthrax spores, officially for testing US bio-defences, but far more spores were allegedly produced than necessary for such purposes and it is unclear whether they have been destroyed or simply stored.
• Feds Want Terror Report Kept Secret A classified document describing terror suspect Jose Padilla's multiple contacts with top al-Qaida leaders should remain secret, federal prosecutors said in court papers filed Monday. [Yes, we can't find out that the "multiple contacts w. top al-Qaida leaders" include Bush/Rove/Cheney/Rumsfeld cronies, can we?]
• Report: Nerve gas killed Russian hostages Footage aired on independent television in Georgia shows doctors reputedly with hospitals in Moscow saying the several dozen hostages who died in Saturday's dramatic rescue ["rescue?" OMG. The quintessential Nixonian-Vietnam moment: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."] were poisoned by the gas Russian forces used to wrest control of the Chechen-held theater. The doctors in the footage described the gas as being a neuro-paralyzing agent, one that disables the body's nervous system.
• Journalist Cronkite warns against war with Iraq Walter Cronkite, the veteran newsman who covered almost every major world event that took place during his six-decade career, on Sunday warned that if the United States takes action against Iraq without support from the United Nations it could set the stage for World War III.
• France issues warning on Iraq as UN deadline nears France is privately warning the US and the UK that they will be left alone in the political and economic task of reconstructing Iraq if they press ahead with a war on Saddam Hussein without UN support.
• The Only "Regime" Change Needed -- by Ed Lewis "...Bush has lied multiple times while under oath to the American people. His lies are costing hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of lives, both which may escalate well into the billions if the man is allowed to continue as he has."
• Making a Killing: The Business of War At least 90 companies that provide services normally performed by national military forces – but without the same degree of public oversight – have operated in 110 countries worldwide, providing everything from military training, logistics, and even engaging in armed combat.
• The Business of War (report links -- by The Center for Public Integrity)
• Unveiled: the blueprint for United States of Europe The blueprint for a new constitution for Europe, unveiled yesterday, paves the way for sweeping changes to the EU but provoked instant British opposition by suggesting the bloc could be renamed "United States of Europe".
• Exemption from wildlife treaty sought for military Some members of Congress are upset that the Bush mis-ministration wants to exempt the military from a wildlife treaty. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., in a news release this week, accused the Bush mis-ministration of "setting its anti-environmental sights on the nation's oldest conservation law, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918."
• Lawmakers move to stall Army bid to privatize civilian jobs Congressional lawmakers are lining up to slow an Army effort to privatize its repair depots, arsenals and ammunition plants—and the jobs of more than 15,000 Army civilian employees who work at these sites.
• Consumer confidence plummets U.S. consumer confidence plunged in October, as Americans continued to worry about a stagnant employment picture and the prospect of armed conflict with Iraq. [I hope this does not portend another act of terrorism from the Bush junta, to distract us...]
• U.S. Sees Net Borrowing of $76 Billion for Quarter (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury said it will borrow a net $76 billion during the final three months of the year, the most for that period in nine years, as slow growth curtailed tax collections and spending rose. [PLEASE let us awaken from this nightmare and find Al Gore in his rightful home -- White House.]
• Bush Bans Cable News From Air Force One Before pResident Bush boards Air Force One, his staff makes sure that the plane's TVs are tuned to nearly anything other than cable news. Otherwise, Bush might spot CNN or FOX NEWS and demand, as he has in the past,"Who turned that on?!" [We don't want to interfere with the Idiot Usurper's Hungry Caterpillar cartoon programs, LOL!]
• The death of US Senator Paul Wellstone: accident or murder? (WSWS) "There is a serious question about the sudden death of Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone that has no doubt occurred to many people: was Wellstone the victim of a political assassination?"
• Key clues lost ["lost"] in Wellstone crash The mangled remains of the plane in which Sen. Paul Wellstone died were so badly damaged by the impact and subsequent fire that some key clues to help investigators understand the cause of the crash appear to have been lost. [What a surprise...]
• Bush Absence Draws Scrutiny [scroll to second article] pResident Bush does not plan to attend tonight's memorial service for Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (D-Minn.), and some Democratic officials are asking why. The matter seemed straightforward when White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters Sunday that the administration would send "an appropriate official," but not the pResident.
• Clinton to attend Wellstone services Former President Clinton's scheduled visit to Honolulu on Tuesday will be delayed a day so he may attend services for the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone in Minnesota, a spokesman said Sunday.
• Tribute to Wellstone -- poem by Natasha Hull-Richter (age 11)
• Newsweek: Hillary Clinton to Crowd at Fund-Raiser in Los Angeles: Bush Was 'Selected' President, Not Elected; Says Bush's Machine Has Raised Far More Money to 'Ruin the Reputations of Our Candidates' -- Bush Dispatching Money and Lawyers to Help with Brother Jeb's Florida Governor Campaign; Former President Bush Got Updates from Jeb's Campaign Manager During Debate with Opponent Bill McBride, Then Relayed Them to Washington [in preparation for the coup of 2002!]
• Remembering How a President [sic] Who Promised to Unify a Nation Fixed an Election: The Five Worst Republican Outrages -- by Wayne Barrett (December 20 - 26, 2000)
• Michael Rectenwald [Founder and Chair of Citizens for Legitimate Government] replies to a rightwinger who informs the CLG staff that its members are in "dire need of psychiatric treatment or a brain transplant"
• Bush Feels Heat of U.N. Debate, U.S. Elections During a brief question-and-answer session with Mexican President Vicente Fox, Bush broke protocol by cutting off the interpreter trying to provide the English version of Fox's answer for viewers around the world. "I know what he said," snapped Bush, whose aides say he is not fluent in Spanish. [LOL, pResident Moron needs an interpreter for the *English* version of any questions. George W. Bush is an *international* embarrassment.]
• GOP Takes Aim at Mondale in Minn. Race Ex-Vice President's Record Already Under Fire in Battle to Replace Wellstone -- With former vice president Walter F. Mondale likely to carry the late Sen. Paul D. Wellstone's torch into the Nov. 5 election, Republicans today took aim at the popular elder statesman in what is likely to be a remarkable, and remorse-filled, one-week Senate campaign.
• Hutchinson Struggling to Keep Arkansas Senate Seat for GOP Race Against Ex-Senator's Son is Nasty, Expensive and Close -- The most recent independent poll for the Arkansas News Bureau and Stephens Media Group, showed Pryor -- the son of former senator David Pryor (D-Ark.) -- with 48 percent, and Republican Tim Hutchinson favored by 43 percent of those surveyed. Others polls have had the race a dead heat.
• Stanford honors FBI chief "There is a continuum between those who would express dissent and those who would do a terrorist act," declared FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III at Stanford Law School on Friday night. [Emendation: there is a continuum between Bush's military-industrial-security complex and those "who would do a terrorist act," i.e., 9/11.]
• Leftist Handily Wins Brazilian Presidential Race Brazil took a decisive turn to the left on Sunday, electing as its new president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party, a former factory worker, labor union leader and political prisoner who has never before held executive office. The margin of victory for Mr. da Silva was the largest in Brazilian history.
• Canada's Big Brother to extend reach Ottawa — A huge database of personal information on air travellers — slammed as illegal by the federal Privacy Commissioner — will be expanded to include people who arrive in Canada on cruise ships, ferries, trains and buses, government documents say. Customs officials will soon screen all Canadian travellers and visitors before they arrive to assess the potential risk of terrorism and other [?!?] crimes say documents obtained under the Access to Information Act. ["Crimes" -- such as US draft evasion -- when Bush invades Baghdad, circa 2003? Just a thought.]
• Mexico Tells Bush It Won't Support Iraq Resolution U.S. Favors pResident Bush left a summit conference here today without a pledge from Mexico to support the American resolution in the United Nations Security Council to disarm Iraq. Mexican officials made it clear that Mexico is siding with France in the debate at the United Nations.
• Reserve Call-Up for an Iraqi War May Equal 1991's If pResident Bush orders an attack against Iraq, the Pentagon has plans to mobilize roughly as many reservists as it did during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, when about 265,000 members of the National Guard and Reserves were summoned to active duty, mis-ministration officials and military experts say.
• The National Organization of Women thanks Citizens for Legitimate Government as a source for their "The Truth About George Project."
• Peace March October 26, 2002 Washington, DC "Dedicated to the memory of Senator Paul Wellstone, who tragically died October 25, 2002" -- by Jim Macdonald
  Saturday in DC -- by Mary Titus
  Report from Ann Arbor, Oct. 26, 2002 -- by Eileen Parker
  100,000 Rally, March Against War in Iraq (D.C.) Tens of thousands of people marched in peaceful protest of any military strike against Iraq yesterday afternoon, in an antiwar demonstration that organizers and police suggested was likely Washington's largest since the Vietnam era.
  Thousands March in Washington Against Going to War in Iraq (D.C.) Thousands of protesters marched through Washington's streets, chanting and waving banners against possible military action against Iraq. The rally was one of several held in American and foreign cities today.
  Hundreds of thousands in US protest Iraq invasion plans Rallies and marches to oppose the Bush mis-ministration’s plan to launch an unprovoked war against Iraq brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators into the streets in Washington DC, San Francisco and several other US cities on October 26.
  Thousands Rally Around World Against Iraq War Tens of thousands of anti-W-ar protesters marched peacefully on the White House on Saturday to express opposition to a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, some chanting slogans accusing pResident Bush of planning genocide.
  Thousands gather for anti-war protest in San Francisco (CA) Thousands of demonstrators from California and across the West gathered here Saturday for a rally and march to protest a potential war against Iraq.
  Antiwar rally in St. Paul draws thousands (MN) Silver-haired Jim Steinhagen, a combat Marine in Korea a half-century ago, and Omar Jamal, a Somali who came to Minnesota seven years ago, stood shoulder to shoulder Saturday afternoon. Along with several thousand other Minnesotans, they marched from the St. Paul Cathedral to the State Capitol to voice their opposition to a war with Iraq and to mourn Sen. Paul Wellstone.
  Iraq rally draws 4,000 (CO) Civic Center crowd rips potential war -- Organizers estimated about 4,000 attended; police declined to estimate the number of protesters.
  
  Denver, CO Photo provided: courtesy Janet Salmons
  Nashvillians protest possible war with peace march (TN) Hundreds opposed to a war with Iraq marched from east Nashville to the downtown Metro courthouse yesterday in a peace rally timed to coincide with similar gatherings across the country and around the world.
  Anti-War Demonstrations The anti-war protestors came -- largest gathering since the Vietnam War -- yet the news media hardly noticed; but Intervention was there -- by Regis T. Sabol "I was dumbfounded. Well over 100,000 Americans were barred from anywhere close to the White House, the home of their nation’s ostensible president [sic], to exercise their Constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, yet these British tourists could walk right up to the fence."
  Amid Anti-War Protests, U.S. Decries UN Iraq Delays Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Washington and other cities to voice opposition to a possible U.S. war against Iraq, while the United States decried a U.N. "debate that never ends" over a tough new resolution to disarm Iraq.
  U.S. decries U.N. Iraq delay amid anti-war protests Thousands of Americans took to the streets during the weekend to oppose a war on Iraq, but the Bush mis-ministration stood firm and said it was time for the United Nations to act, not debate.
  Poll: Illinoisans not ready for war A Chicago Sun-Times/Fox News Chicago Poll puts Illinois somewhat at odds with the nation as a whole. More than half of Illinois voters want additional proof that Saddam is developing weapons of mass destruction before the United States launches an attack. And they want the U.S. military to take action only as part of a broad international coalition of allies. An additional 18 percent want no attack at all.
  White House Says It Can Build Anti-Iraq Coalition Without U.N. Turning up the pressure on skeptical allies, the White House said Saturday it would be "not hard at all" to assemble an international coalition to disarm Saddam Hussein without U.N. help.
  Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11 America's most controversial writer Gore Vidal has launched the most scathing attack to date on George W Bush's pResidency, calling for an investigation into the events of 9/11 to discover whether the Bush mis-ministration deliberately chose not to act on warnings of Al-Qaeda's plans. Vidal's highly controversial 7000 word polemic titled 'The Enemy Within' argues that what he calls a 'Bush junta' used the terrorist attacks as a pretext to enact a pre-existing agenda to invade Afghanistan and crack down on civil liberties at home. [Petition to Senate -- Investigate "Oddities" of 9/11: http://www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html]
  Mondale Likely To Yield to Pleas To Run for Senate Former vice president Walter F. Mondale is likely to yield to pleas from Democratic leaders and step in for the late Sen. Paul D. Wellstone in Minnesota's critical Senate race, several party officials said today. A top White House official said Mondale would be tough, if not impossible, to beat. Other Republicans were hoping Mondale would forgo a run.
  GOP set to lose governorships -- by Robert Novak "George W. Bush may defy historical precedent Nov. 5 by avoiding the usual midterm congressional losses endured by a new president, but he is almost sure to suffer heavy losses in governors."
  Blagojevich up by 12 points (IL) Democrat Rod Blagojevich is holding on to his double-digit lead over Republican Jim Ryan as the governor's race moves into its crucial final days.
  Razor thin race Poll's 1-point difference shows it's anybody's race -- (CO) Democratic challenger Tom Strickland has edged slightly ahead of incumbent Wayne Allard for Colorado's pivotal U.S. Senate seat, according to a poll released Friday.
  TIMECNN Poll Says 53% Rate Economy Poor pResident Bush’s approval rating has also dropped -- from 65% in August to 61% today, according to the poll. Democrats hold an edge over Republicans, with almost half (47%) of those surveyed saying they would vote for Democratic candidates in the Congressional race in their districts, while just over four in ten (43%) said they would vote for Republican candidates in their districts.
  Cockpit Voice Recorder Is Focus of Search for Cause of Crash Federal investigators today sorted through the wreckage of a plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstone and seven others, but efforts to determine the cause of the crash could be hampered by the absence [?!?] of a cockpit voice recorder.
  [Senator Paul Wellstone, 58, died in plane crash. We have lost one of our best, brightest and most consistently progressive Senators. And now Senate control is in serious jeopardy. We mourn the terrible loss of a true Patriot and hero.]
  Paul Wellstone, Fighter -- by John Nichols (The Nation, May 9, 2002) "Paul Wellstone is a hunted man. Minnesota's senior senator is not just another Democrat on White House political czar Karl Rove's target list, in an election year when the Senate balance of power could be decided by the voters of a single state. Rather, getting rid of Wellstone is a passion for Rove, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the special-interest lobbies that fund the most sophisticated political operation ever assembled by a presidential administration. 'There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone,' a senior Republican aide confides. 'This one is political and personal for them.' "
  Bush Fears Tenacious, Popular Wellstone -- by John Nichols (Madison Capital Times, April 24, 2001) "Let there be no doubt as to the identity of George W. Bush’s least favorite Democratic U.S. senator. It’s Wellstone, the rabble-rousing Progressive who represents not just Minnesota but what remains of the fighting populist spirit of the Upper Midwest... The Bushies despise Wellstone, who unlike most Senate Democrats has been fighting spirited battles against the new administration’s policies on everything from the environment to the tax cuts for the rich to military aid for the 'Plan Colombia' drug war boondoggle. Other Democratic senators who face re-election contests in 2002 are, according to polls, more vulnerable than Wellstone. But the Bush camp has been focusing highest-level attention on "Plan Wellstone" — its project to silence progressive opposition."
  Mysterious group spends $1 million on anti-Wellstone campaign Americans for Job Security, a Virginia-based interest group that opposes the reelection of Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, has made an unprecedented $1 million ad buy that will fill the airwaves in the last two weeks before the election, according to Wellstone campaign officials.
  Wellstone Sets Pace, Declares Support for Action on Corporate Reform (Oct. 24, 2002) Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota today became the first Member of Congress to support a pledge to work for top to bottom reform of corporations and to provide new tools for federal regulators to protect taxpayers, consumers and investors. The 12-point pledge is being circulated to all 535 members of the Senate and the House of Representatives by Ralph Nader in an effort to build momentum for major reforms in the wake of the corporate fraud exposed at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphi, Arthur Andersen and many other businesses.
  Minnesota Senator Is Among 8 Dead in Crash Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was killed Friday when his campaign plane crashed in a wooded region in the northern part of his state, officials said Friday. Mr. Wellstone, 58, a Democrat who was one of the Senate's most liberal members and was in a fierce fight to win re-election to a third term, perished along with seven other people when the aircraft went down near Eveleth. Mr. Wellstone had opposed the resolution giving pResident Bush the authority to invade Iraq. [This is a terrible loss and one of the most inauspicious coincidences imaginable!]
  Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone dead in plane crash in Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Democrat from Minnesota, was killed in a small plane crash Friday about seven miles east of Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport, authorities said. Eight people were reported aboard the plane -- a twin-engine turboprop King Air manufactured by Raytheon Aircraft.
  Raytheon wants to help in investigation of senator's plane crash [Holy Cover-Up, Batman!! I am *SURE* they do! ] Wichita-based Raytheon Aircraft Co. said it is willing and able to send an investigative team to examine the cause of the plane crash that killed U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone along with his wife, daughter and five others in northern Minnesota Friday.
  Team to search for crash causes -- Investigation: The FBI will determine whether Friday's crash was caused by bad weather, mechanical problems or human error. The Beech King Air that Sen. Paul Wellstone boarded in St. Paul Friday morning had a solid track record as one of the most popular workhorses in the sky. But something went wrong Friday...
  Did the right-wing or CIA or someone close to Bush tamper with Sen. Wellstone’s plane? By Jackson Thoreau "My first hunch about Sen. Wellstone's tragic plane crash less than two weeks before this pivotal election is that the plane was tampered with by right-wingers, possibly the CIA. Raytheon Co., one of the biggest U.S. military contractors and manufacturer of the plane that crashed, is a huge donor to Republicans - U.S. House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, for instance, received $48,201 alone from Raytheon in 1997-98. The Republican National Committee received at least $170,000 from Raytheon since 1999."
  Senator Paul Wellstone July 21, 1944 - October 25, 2002 (Bush Body Count) "The talking heads mentioned 'bad weather', but weather.com reported light drizzle, unlimited visibility and 3 mph winds just 2 hours after the crash. There was light snow reported earlier, but what Minnesota pilot could not fly under those conditions? ...Is Paul Wellstone is dead because his seat was critical to Democratic control of the Senate?"
  Raytheon -- Strategic Business Areas The company's four strategic business areas are aligned to provide customers with solutions that draw upon the capabilities of the entire company. These strategic business areas are: Missile Defense; Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Precision Strike; and Homeland Security. Raytheon Backgrounders: Raytheon - Experienced Partner in Homeland Security; Raytheon - Airport Security; First Responder Command and Communication Vehicle
  Similarities of Wellstone, Carnahan deaths send shudder through body politic It was all too similar: A fatal plane crash days before an election in a hard-fought U.S. Senate race [killing key Democrats]. The accident that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat, members of his family and three of his staff on Friday chilled political figures from Missouri, coming as it did almost exactly two years after the death of Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan. "Senator Wellstone was a champion for the working men and women of our country. He always spoke from his heart and stayed true to his beliefs. A proud and passionate voice for working people has been silenced today." [And that is EXACTLY what the murderous Bush mis-ministration wanted all along!!!!]
  Wellstone Death Throws Senate Race Into Chaos The sudden death of incumbent Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone threw a tight Minnesota race that could decide control of the Senate into chaos on Friday, little more than a week before the election.
  Statement by President Al Gore on Senator Paul Wellstone 1944-2002
  Was Gulf War syndrome a factor? Sniper suspect may have been exposed to chemical weapons -- The alleged Washington sniper, John Allen Muhammad, may have been exposed to chemical weapons that have been linked to Gulf War Syndrome, an illness which experts said can result in unexplained bouts of intense violence. [Yes, the chicken comes home to roost. When you breed a culture of violence and destruction, as in the first Gulf War, and initiate chemical warfare against others and your own soldiers, you get terrorism and violence in return, to wit: Timothy McVeigh and now, John Allen Muhammad. Imagine what further damage the second Gulf War will bring. GET TO D.C. (or San Francisco) TOMORROW!!!! -- Michael Rectenwald, CLG Founder and Chair]
  Curbs sought on smallpox shot suits Officials look to head off issue of injury compensation The Bush mis-ministration is preparing to ask a lame-duck Congress to address one of the stickiest issues in the smallpox vaccine debate: how to compensate people who are injured or killed by the vaccine itself. [Do you ever get the feeling that you are living in Nazi Germany, circa 1939?]
  Afghan heroin crop spikes this year Poppy cultivation increased nearly 19-fold between 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan, the world's leading exporter of heroin, according to a new U.S. study of poppy cultivation in the post-Taliban state. [Wow! A prompt infusion of funds for the CIA's drug-weapons-smuggling crew and the Bush mis-ministration. Another Rove goal attained when Bush "hit the Trifecta" on 9/11.]
  F.B.I. Issues a Terror Warning, Citing Possible Threat to Trains The F.B.I. issued a warning this evening that Al Qaeda may be planning to attack passenger trains, "possibly using operatives who have a Western appearance."
  Antiwar Groups Massing in Washington Tens of thousands of demonstrators from around the country are expected to converge here on Saturday to tell the Bush mis-ministration that they oppose its strategy for a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq.
  Halliburton Says Judicial Watch Suit Has No Merit, Asks for Dismissal Vice pResident Dick Cheney and Halliburton Co. have asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit accusing them of defrauding investors by changing accounting methods at the oilfield-services company.
  Fed Is Troubled by Economy As growth sputters and war looms, the board weighs another rate cut. With the U.S. economic recovery losing steam and the outlook clouded by the possibility of war with Iraq, a volatile stock market and corporate accounting scandals, Federal Reserve officials appear likely to cut short-term interest rates before the end of the year.
  Rowland's Tax Returns Still A Mystery (CT) No Disclosure Yet Of 1991-1994 Filings -- Nearly two months after his campaign said he would do so, [GOP] Gov. John G. Rowland still has not released his federal income tax returns for the four-year period when he operated a lucrative consulting business.
  Ohio Man Sentenced to Death in Slaying Over Objections of Victim's Family A judge Friday sentenced a double murderer to death over the objections of one of his victim's parents, who said their daughter opposed capital punishment.
  Irradiated Meat Comes To Local Stores (IA) Hy-Vee stores across the area are now stocking irradiated ground beef. The meat is processed by a company called Sure Beam. [Mega-double barf alert: the Bush mis-ministration's uninspected meat and radiation!]
  White House: 2002 Deficit Hits $159B The government ran a $159 billion deficit in the fiscal year just ended, the Bush mis-ministration said Thursday, punctuating one of the federal budget's worst nosedives ever just 12 days before elections for control of Congress.
  Restatements Cost Billions, GAO Says Study Confirms Effect on Stock Value -- A new congressional study adds statistical support to what most shareholders already know: Inaccurate corporate financial statements have cost investors billions of dollars in recent years.
  Cheney, Halliburton face deadline today on suit Vice pResident Dick Cheney and his former employer, Halliburton Co., face a deadline today to respond to a lawsuit charging them with accounting fraud that cost shareholders millions of dollars.
  Bush Accused of Undermining Corporate Reform Law The Bush mis-ministration is seeking to limit protections for government whistle-blowers who cooperate with lawmakers, undercutting the landmark corporate reforms pResident Bush signed into law after a wave of boardroom scandals, key lawmakers said on Thursday.
  Pitt Is Wrong Person For SEC Chief -- by Helen Thomas "In the middle of his own political self-destruction, [chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey] Pitt proposed that his agency be raised to Cabinet level. You have to admire his chutzpah... It's time for Pitt to return to lobbying for Wall Street. Some critics say he never actually left."
  Poll: Democrats pull ahead of GOP The race for majorities in Congress is still too close to call, but Democrats are being boosted by what voters see as a weak economy and inadequate attention to the issue by pResident Bush, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows.
  McAuliffe Describes Jeb Bush as the Democrats' Top Target Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic national chairman, said today that his No. 1 goal in the Nov. 5 elections was to defeat Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida and that his No. 1 worry was whether Senator Jean Carnahan, Democrat of Missouri, could hold her seat.
  Curry's remarks not all wrong Last week, The Washington Post reported a series of comments made by Curry just prior to Bill McBride appearing on his morning radio program. According to The Post story: Curry charged on the air that the Bush family and the bin Laden family are business "partners" seeking to profit from war. "These people are on a neo-Nazi, right-wing mission against the American people,'' he continued, adding that the Bush administration is a "godless, wicked regime."
  Controversy Greets Early Voting Early voters were met Monday at the Jefferson County Courthouse by poll watchers from the Republican Party of Arkansas who demanded identification and challenged voter ballots. The Under the watchers' eyes, both voters and county officials received what they called unexpected - and unnecessary - scrutiny of the election process. Trey Ashcraft, chairman of the Jefferson County Election Commission, said it was obvious the Republicans' actions were targeting African-Americans.
  Democracy Spoiled: National, State, and Local Disparities in Disfranchisement Through Uncounted Ballots by The Civil Rights Project of Harvard University
  "One Vote Away" Ad Warns of Right Wing Control of All Branches of Government So far in this election season, there has been almost no attention to the fact that for the first time since 1929, the right wing of the Republican Party might have effective control of all three branches of government. People For the American Way is ready to end that silence with a hard-hitting television ad.
  Big Business Wants to Buy a House Oh, And a Senate To Go With It (The Daily Enron) "ExxonMobil thinks the vote a week from next Tuesday is so important that it has its own well-financed get-out-the-vote effort rolling. And it is not the only large corporation showing a sudden interest in the democratic process. Many of America's large industry groups see this midterm election as the best chance they've had since pro-industry Gingrichistas swept the House in 1994."
  Democrats say Bush hostile toward environment The Bush mis-ministration took office [literally, *took* office] in 2001 with a "predetermined hostility" toward federal rules that protect the nation's air, land and water, according to a report released on Thursday by Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
  Gore Urges Health Care Changes President Al Gore urged passage of a "national defense public health act" on Thursday, citing a heightened risk of biological attack if the United States goes to war with Iraq.
  Proof of Controlled Demolition at the WTC -- by Jerry Russell, Ph.D. "Steel frame towers are built very strongly. They need to withstand the pressure of gale-force winds, the violent rocking motion of earthquakes, and the ravages of time. For this reason, they are almost impossible to destroy." [For more 9/11 "Oddities," including Mike Rectenwald's classic commentary on the topic, click here: http://legitgov.org/9_1_1_oddities.html]
  Report: Next Attack Could Top 9/11 [Oh, is Rove getting busy again?] The United States remains "dangerously unprepared" to deal with another major terrorist attack, said a report by former top government officials, academics and business leaders.
  Base security plans Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has ordered all military bases in the United States to draw up emergency plans for responding to large-scale attacks by mid-December, sources say. The plans are needed on an urgent basis because of concerns that U.S. bases could be attacked in retaliation for any U.S. military action against Iraq, defense officials said. [A regime change is desperately needed in the United States.]
  Parents Of Dying Iraqi Children Vent Rage At Bush If pResident George W. Bush believes that ordinary Iraqis will welcome U.S. troops with open arms he may be in for a rude surprise. However much they fear to say what they think under the ruthless rule of President Saddam Hussein, their feelings of deep-seated hatred toward Bush are only too clear.
  While Americans were dying in Vietnam and demonstrating in America, our hawkish President [sic] did neither. He went AWOL! -- by Frederick Sweet "Lt. George W. Bush's October 1, 1973 discharge papers from the Texas Air National Guard reveal that, although under the Guard rules he had originally signed up for six years of service obligation, this fighter jet pilot had only 'completed 5 years, 4 months, and 5 days toward this obligation. …' Signed by his commanding officer Major Rufus Martin, Bush's discharge papers also note that at the time of his discharge he was 'not available for [his ] signature.' "
  Pentagon Sets Up Intelligence Unit Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior advisers have assigned a small intelligence unit to search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists that the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked, Pentagon officials said today.
  ACLU, Other Groups Sue Government The American Civil Liberties Union and three other groups sued the Bush mis-ministration Thursday, demanding information about expanded Justice Department surveillance in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
  Muslims Fear Sniper Backlash The arrest of a Muslim man on charges connected to the deadly Washington-area sniper shootings has the Islamic community bracing for another round of threats and attacks like those that followed the Sept. 11 terrorism.
  DC sniper suspect 'expert' Army marksman John Allen Williams, one of two men being held by police in connection with the serial sniper, qualified as an expert marksman with the M-16 in the U.S. Army, according to a defense official. Williams, a veteran of the Persian Gulf War, was awarded the Southwest Asia Service Medal and the Kuwait Liberation Medal for his participation in the Persian Gulf War, the Army Achievement Medal; the Army Service Ribbon, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Non-Commission Officer Professional Development Ribbon.
  What Does a Torturer Tell His Kids? -- by Richard Thieme "It would be interesting to know about the moment in a torturer's life when he or she tells the kids what they do for a living. State-sponsored torture is being debated as a viable option, and lawyers such as Alan Dershowitz suggest that torture warrants [?!?] should be issued by judges if evidence suggests that a situation is time-critical."
  Man Arrested After Jumping White House Fence An unidentified man jumped the fence surrounding the White House along Pennsylvania Ave. Thursday morning and was immediately taken into custody, the Secret Service said.
  Fed: Economy Is In A Funk The United States was struggling with a "sluggish" economy over the past two months with weak retail sales, tough times in manufacturing and a lackluster job market, the Federal Reserve reported Wednesday. [Not a chance of hearing about this story in the national media: Sniper TV cannot be preempted. Isn't Bush *lucky* that these issues are NOT being discussed, two weeks prior to the elections?]
  Grand jurors eye Lay $70 million in stock sales focus of probe -- The Houston federal grand jury investigating Enron has heard from several witnesses this week about the personal finances of former Chairman Ken Lay.
  Democrats Surge in N.J. Senate Race Democrats have pushed ahead in New Jersey's crucial Senate race. Their last-minute fill-in for Torricelli, Frank Lautenberg, is leading in polls, skirting debates and hammering Forrester about newspaper columns written years ago.
  Florida governor's race tightens with stakes high While the cumulative InsiderAdvantage tracking poll -- which has surveyed Florida voters every day since Oct. 2 -- has shown an ever-dwindling lead for Bush, the survey's latest weekly ''horse race'' numbers show an unexpected development: Democrat Bill McBride now leads.
  Carnahan for Senate (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) "Missouri voters have a clear choice on Election Day: the relentless moderation of Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., or the staunch conservatism of her GOP opponent, former Rep. Jim Talent. They should choose Mrs. Carnahan because of her stands on the issues, her efforts to bridge the partisan divide and the grit she has demonstrated since stepping into her husband's Senate seat."
  Davis blames Simon for negative campaign Gov. Gray Davis, defending a campaign defined by months of negative ads, insisted Tuesday that he has acted in self-defense in response to Republican attacks. "I don't cast the first stone. I just have to fight back," the Democratic incumbent told The Chronicle editorial board about the barrage of negative ads in his campaign against Republican Bill Simon.
  Gore to deliver major health care policy address President Gore's speech will address health care issues of concern in the current elections as well as issues that he feels should be part of a future political dialogue - - especially given the national defense challenges facing America.
  Drug Industry Financing Fuels Pro-GOP TV Spots Spending Swamps Donations for Liberal Ads by 3-1 Margin -- With strong backing from the pharmaceutical industry and other businesses, pro-Republican "independent" television advertising is overwhelming traditional big-spending liberal interest groups. One new organization that declined to reveal its funding sources -- the Council for Better Government -- has spent about $1 million for ads on black radio stations urging African Americans to consider voting Republican.
  Bush Enlists Government in GOP Campaign Cabinet Members, Memos to Workers, Photo Ops Employed to Push for Midterm Success [Rove is taking a page out of the Goebbels playbook.] -- pResident Bush has harnessed the broad resources of the federal government to promote Republicans in next month's elections.
  CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations More Offices, More Agents With FBI The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its domestic presence, placing agents with nearly all of the FBI's 56 terrorism task forces in U.S. cities. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recently described the new arrangement as his answer to MI5, Britain's internal security service.
  Bush employs lies and maneuvers to pave way for war against Iraq Amid signs of dissent within military circles With the preferred D-Day for a US invasion of Iraq barely three months away, there are growing signs of unease within sections of the US ruling elite over the implications of the Bush mis-ministration’s plans for a preemptive war of conquest and a protracted military occupation of the Arab country.
  French diplomacy and Bush’s campaign against Iraq The French government is trying to contain the US offensive against Iraq through negotiations in the UN Security Council, where France has veto power.
  US boxed in by Bush's strike-first doctrine --by James Rubin "The problem with the Bush document is that it appears to make first strikes the rule rather than the exception... Teddy Roosevelt once counselled America to 'speak softly and carry a big stick'. Unfortunately the current administration has forgotten those wise words, choosing instead to accompany its big stick with a loud voice."
  Protesters call for civilian review of police actions 150 protesters marched through downtown to spread the word of their boycott of conventions and meetings in St. Louis. The Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression says it will move to enforce its boycott effective May 1 if the city doesn't create a new citizens board that can investigate allegations of misconduct. "We are going to shut down St. Louis," veteran protester Zaki Baruti shouted through a bullhorn during the group's stop in front of City Hall. "We will contact all businesses and conventions here and tell them, 'If you come to St. Louis, you will feel the wrath of the people.'"
  Bush Signs $355B Military Spending Bill; Largest Budget Boost Since Reagan Wednesday, pResident Bush signed into law a bill giving him the tools he wants to wage an expensive, no-end-in-sight global fight against terror and possibly Saddam Hussein. The $355.4 billion defense bill, approved with overwhelming support to provide most of what Bush requested, increases spending by more than $34 billion over the previous fiscal year.
  Anthrax Vaccine Scares Off Top Troops Highly trained and experienced pilots and crews in the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve are leaving or have left military service in part because of the Pentagon's anthrax vaccine, congressional investigators say in a report released Tuesday. Randomly selected guard and reserve troops surveyed in 2000 by the General Accounting Office also reported adverse reactions to the vaccine at double the rate claimed by the manufacturer, BioPort Corp., the GAO said.
  FDA Says It Won't Regulate Implanted ID Chip Sales of an identification chip intended to be implanted in a person's body will resume immediately now that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has completed its review of the device, the chip's maker Applied Digital Solutions Inc. announced Tuesday. [Oh, but the FDA is hot on the case of Stevia, having burned books in warehouses on the all-natural sweetener so that deadly Monsanto-owned Aspartame does not have any "competition."]
  School Takes Boy's Internet Privileges Away A Missouri boy was kicked off school computers for the rest of the year after teachers said that he accessed "pornography" [?!?] WhiteHouse.org online, KMBC reported Tuesday. 13 year-old Matthew Schooler's mom is fighting the school's action against her son because she said safeguards weren't in place and that the website wasn't pornographic, but a Web site that parodies the official [mega-heinous, perverted] White House Web site. [The actual pornography in question is the actions of the illegitimate Bush regime, which promulgates the perversion of murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis every year with immoral sanctions, and an impending W-ar-for-oil.]
  'Unprecedented' controversy Election video opens old wounds A controversial documentary about Florida's voting problems during the 2000 presidential election stirred the emotions of those who saw it Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Port Charlotte. "We need political reform. The government in this country is for sale," Joan Karatzas said after watching "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election." Other viewers said the 50-minute video reinforced their opinion that George W. Bush is not the legitimate president of the United States, having won the office by questionable means.
  Early Voters Report Problems Some North Texans heading to the polls for early voting say there are problems with some voting booths in Irving. They say they're frustrated by the new electronic machines that have replaced the traditional paper ballots. [Coup 2002, falling into place...]
  At march, blacks urged to vote early A band of black voters -- still smarting from Florida's flawed 2000 pResidential s-election -- marched from a historic Overtown church to the Miami-Dade County Government Center on Monday to cast their ballots on the first day of early voting for the general election.
  Contributions to Harris come from far, wide Through Sept. 30, Republican Katherine Harris had raised nearly $2.9 million, compared with Democrat Jan Schneider's $193,280.
  Green Party could play role in a few tight races The Green Party, boosted by Ralph Nader's presidential run two years ago, has fielded its most candidates ever this year and could play a role in deciding several key Senate and governor's races on Nov. 5. Republicans attempted earlier this year to give Greens $100,000 in an attempt to swing the races toward the GOP in New Mexico.
  Gephardt Asks Voters: 'Are You Better Off?' House of Representatives Democratic leader Richard Gephardt said on Tuesday that voters in next month's congressional elections should ask themselves if they are better off today than they were two years ago.
  Jackson stresses the 'struggle is not over' Civil Rights leader takes on Bush -- ''He[Colin Powell]'s not on our team,'' Jackson told a packed house at Greater Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which celebrated its 110th anniversary Sunday. ''If he wins, Trent Lott wins. We're not on that team. If he wins, we lose. If he wins, poor folks lose.''
  Democrats Say Ganske Campaign Over (IA) In his race against Tom Harkin, Greg Ganske's already down in the polls and down in campaign cash. Harkin's folks say Ganske could soon be down and out.
  Bill McBride comes from behind A look at the Florida lawyer who may unseat Gov. Jeb Bush -- One of the most closely watched elections this year is again taking place in Florida, where a virtual unknown is neck-and-neck against the incumbent governor who has instant name recognition — Jeb Bush.
  Alaska Gov. Race Surprisingly Close A year ago, Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski's campaign for governor looked like a breeze: He had an established political network, and the top Democrat was unknown to a quarter of Alaska. But Murkowski now finds himself in a close battle against Democratic Lt. Gov. Fran Ulmer, a relentless campaigner who packs a gun on the road and has climbed in the polls.
  For Bush, Facts Are Malleable. Presidential Tradition of Embroidering Key Assertions Continues [Why not come out and say it like it is? Bush is a LIAR. But unlike Clinton who was trying to protect his personal privacy, Bush lies about the deficit, the tax cuts, Iraq, and his "knowledge" (we know, "knowledge" is a misnomer as applied to Bush, but he "knew") about 9-11.]
  Actual thread on freerepublic.com, regarding the sniper: "The terror will stop in a minute if the Syrian capital and Iraq were nuked off the map..." "STOP the dealing and declare marshall [sic] law instead. Shoot ten Gitmos, for each American. Prick this boil now!" [Nuke cities off the map. Declare Martial Law. Shoot people at random... Karl Rove's sniper is getting quite a bit of the Bush Fourth Reich's goals accomplished prior to the 2002 elections. Next on Rove's agenda: a terrorist with smallpox. Hello, pharmaceutical company windfall and welcome "quarantined areas" for those who refuse Ridge's deadly vaccine. At that stage, we will be under a full-blown military dictatorship. Just a hunch...]
  Doctrine for Joint Urban Operations (.pdf) September 16, 2002 -- Click on link to read the Government's new urban warfare plan.
  Bush muffs a chance at justice for veterans -- by Thomas Oliphant "Washington a few months ago, Senator John Kerry handed President [sic] Bush a golden opportunity to begin treating veterans decently and get credit for doing the right thing. The president [sic] blew it then, and he's blowing it again now..."
  Heat Won't Preclude Iraq War Unlike in 1991, analysts say, new technology means the Pentagon is prepared to battle Saddam Hussein in the spring or even summer. The Pentagon is prepared to invade Iraq even if political negotiations and Saddam Hussein's maneuvers drag on into winter and rule out action during the coolest months, defense officials and military analysts say.
  US Still Faces Stiff Opposition on Iraq Resolution Predicting negotiations for a U.N. resolution against Iraq would be "messy,'' the United States and Britain sought to convince France, Russia and China to approve tough disarmament proposals.
  Anti-Iraq War Protest Expected Saturday March Billed as Largest Protest Since Vietnam War -- Thousands of demonstrators are expected to converge on the District for an anti-war march Saturday.
  Massive Anti-War Rallies Planned Information and analysis of the massive demonstrations planned in Washington and San Francisco and the world this weekend to "Stop The War Before It Starts" -- by Regis T. Sabol "Now that Congress has given George Bush carte blanche approval for war with Iraq, it’s time for the American people to speak."

  Some Guantanamo detainees to be freed The American authorities say they are going to release a small number of detainees from the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Defence Secretary [and outright lunatic] Donald Rumsfeld commented thusly: "If you don't want them for intelligence and you don't want them for law enforcement and you don't need to keep them off the street, then let's be rid of them." [Well, a lot of us want to be rid of the ENTIRE rat-infested, maggot-ridden Bush junta!]

 

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