AS THE WORLD SQUIRMSã
Tuesday,
November 18, 2008
Most Recent Edition
Note: Some hotlinks, formatting and emphasis added for context and
perspective
~ Owen
“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an
appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
~George Orwell~
In the final analysis, the last line of
defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people
themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out
from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders
their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews
forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would
all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.
~Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto [2008]
Top Judge: US, UK Were 'Vigilantes' in Iraq
Richard
Norton-Taylor reports for The
Guardian, UK: “One of Britain's most senior legal figures has
castigated the Bush administration for its ‘cynical’ disregard for the rule of
international law and the UK's record as ‘an occupying power in Iraq’. Lord Bingham
of Cornhill, who has just stepped down as senior Law Lord, cited the US-led
invasion of Iraq, its ‘redefinition’ of torture and the detention conditions of
suspects in Guantanamo
Bay. ‘Particularly
disturbing to proponents of the rule of law is the cynical lack of concern for
international legality among some top officials in the Bush administration,’ he
said in a lecture to mark the 50th anniversary of the British Institute of
International and Comparative Law.“
Vice president Cheney, former Attorney General and state Senator
indicted
Associated Press (AP) reports: “A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick
Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on charges related to the
alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County's federal detention centers. The
indictment criticizes Cheney's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds
interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention
centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and ‘at least misdemeanor
assaults’ on detainees by working through the prison companies. Gonzales is
accused of using his position while in office to stop an investigation into
abuses at the federal detention centers. Another indictment charges state Sen.
Eddie Lucio Jr. with profiting from his public office by accepting honoraria
from prison management companies.”
Bush Administration Moves to Protect Key Appointees
Juliet Eilperin and Carol D. Leonnig, The Washington Post report: "Just
weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department's top lawyer has shifted
half a dozen key deputies - including two former political appointees who have
been involved in controversial environmental decisions - into senior civil
service posts. The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal
positions, called 'burrowing' by career officials, creates security for those
employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama
administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key
jobs."
US spends
astronomical $4.28 trillion on financial crisis, more than spent on World War
II
State budgets in
shortfall: cut services or raise taxes?
The International
Herald Tribune (IHT) reports: “Two short months ago, lawmakers in
California struggled to close a $15 billion hole in the state budget. It was
among the biggest deficits in state history. Now the state faces an additional
$11 billion shortfall and may be unable to pay its bills this spring. The
astonishing decline in revenues is without modern precedent here, but
California is hardly alone. A majority of U.S. states - many with budgets
already full of deep cuts and dependent on raiding rainy-day funds or tax
increases - are scrambling to find ways to get through the rest of the year
without hacking apart vital services or raising taxes.”
US study urges Obama to press Israel over nuclear program
Haaretz (Tel Aviv, Israel)
reports: "’The Obama administration should make a key priority of
persuading Israel to join the negotiations for a universal, verified treaty
that bans the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear
explosives, commonly called the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT),’"
the institute argued. ‘As an interim step, the United States should press
Israel to suspend any production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Toward this goal, the United States should change its relatively new policy of
seeking a cutoff treaty that does not include verification. The Bush
administration's rejection of the long-standing U.S. policy of requiring
verification was a mistake that the incoming administration needs to
rectify.’"
Back to the Future? Hillary Clinton to Accept Secretary
of State Job
Somalia
Resurfaces
Michael Shank, Foreign Policy in Focus comments: "At long last, the fragile state of
Somalia seems to be slowly resurfacing from a searing bout of violence and humanitarian
crisis. Interestingly, the light at the end of this decades-long tunnel is not
burning at the behest of the United States or the United Nations; rather, it
burns because Somali leaders, both within the government and without, have
banded together. Frustrated by failed foreign interventions, they are now
seeking sustainable Somali-based solutions. The key to success, going forward,
is to keep it Somali-led. Further intervention from neighboring Ethiopia or the
United States will be ruinous."
BROKEN! Pakistani
Woman Termed “Mentally Unfit” for US Trial
“Missing” for five-years and now ruled “mentally incompetent”, was US educated MIT
graduate Dr. Aafia Sidiqui kidnapped,
and driven insane by US and Pakistani
interrogators –where are her children?
Admirals,
Generals: “Repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
The
Associated Press (AP) reports:
“More than 100 retired generals and admirals called Monday for repeal of the
military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on gays so they can serve openly,
according to a statement obtained by The Associated Press. The move by the
military veterans confronts the incoming administration of President-elect
Barack Obama with a thorny political and cultural issue that dogged former
President Bill Clinton early in his administration."
A sudden cold snap brought snow to London in
October
The world has never seen such freezing heat
Christopher
Booker of
the Telegraph (London, UK) reports: “A surreal scientific blunder
last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that
underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific
ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring
global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on
record. GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a
large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when
expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the
GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures
was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based
on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been
carried over and repeated two months running. …
The error was so glaring that when it
was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and
Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert
debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily
revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate
for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new
"hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were
showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks
ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that
the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained
from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper
quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the
figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data
sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on
to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted,
since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.”
