AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS

 

Sunday – November 5, 2006

 

 

Trenchant Political Comment, Videos and More…

 

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SQUIRMS ARCHIVE

 

As The World Squirms

 

Commentary Etc.

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Music/Music-Videos

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·         August 30, 2006

·         September 2, 2006

·         October 17, 2006

·         October 18, 2006

·         October 21, 2006

·         October 23, 2006

·         October 24, 2006

·         October 25, 2006

·         October 28, 2006

·         November 5, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

·         September 9, 2006: “No More Lies! What Really Motivated The 9/11 Hijackers? (Video)

·         British MP George Galloway Speaks Out On Israel, Hezbollah And ‘Zionist State Terrorism’ (Video)

·         Palestine & Lebanon: Watch The Destruction! (Video)

·         Saddam Hussein: “Thanks For The Memories”, He Was Always Washington’s Man – Always! (Video)

·         Iraq, The Real Story – BBC Newsnight Report (Video)

·         9/11 - Selective Memory –Parody (Animation)

·         9/11 Vendetta – Past, Present & Future (Video)

·         Don’t Shut-Up, Stand-Up!  (Video)

·         Classic George Carlin Rant – Trenchant and Profane - Caution,  ‘colorful’ Use of Profanity and Much Truth (Spoken)

·         Keith Olbermann: The ‘Murder’ of Habeas Corpus (Video)

·         Bush's "Comma" Comment On Iraq (Video)

·         Keith Olbermann: Military Commissions Act, A Special Comment (Video)

 

·         “Bring ’Em Home” – Bruce Springsteen’s New Antiwar Anthem (Music-Video)

·         September 4, 2006:” John The Revelator”- Depeche Mode (Music-Video)

·         ‘Fascist Christ’ - Todd Rundgren (Music-Video)

·         ‘Right Now…’ (Music-Video)

·         Bush-Blair “Endless Love” –Parody (Music- Video)

·         Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Pages” (Music)

·         ‘Whatever Happened To Peace On Earth’ – Willy Nelson’s New Antiwar Anthem  (Music)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News & Comment

 

INTERVIEW: U.S. Lawyer Says

Saddam Faces “Victor's Justice

 

11.4.06

Reuters

 

AMMAN, Nov 4 (Reuters) -A death sentence on Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity would deliver "victor's justice" that would fuel violence in Iraq for decades, former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark said on Saturday. "It's an unfair trial in more ways than you can count. Where have we seen a trial take place in the midst of such uncontrollable violence?" Clark said Saddam will almost certainly receive the death sentence on Sunday when the court is due to deliver its verdict, said Clark who leads a team of international lawyers defending Saddam. He described the court as prejudiced and lacking impartiality, and said it had already condemned the ousted Iraqi president for killing 148 Shi'ite villagers after an attempt on his life in 1982. "To let there be worse than victors' justice and the revenge of all enemies at a time like this for Iraq is something history and humanity should not have to bear," Clark said before flying to Baghdad. who leads a team of international lawyers defending Saddam. "It will create violence maybe for generations to come. "The trial will go down in history as politically forced, it was a disaster for justice. It just went on for too long with lawyers killed and judges kicked off," said Clark.

 

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Former Iraq President Saddam Hussein Found Guilty, Sentenced To Hang

 

11.5.06

Globe & Mail - Canada

BAGHDAD Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to hang for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in a Shiite town, and the ousted leader responded by shouting God is great! As he, his half brother and another senior official in his regime were convicted and sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal, Saddam yelled defiantly: Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies! Later, his lawyer said the former dictator had called on Iraqis to reject sectarian violence and refrain from revenge against U.S. forces. The trial brought Saddam and his co-defendants before their accusers in what was one of the most highly publicized and heavily reported trials of its kind.

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Neocons Make Excuses for Mass Murder

 

11.4.06

Kurt Nimmo

 

In America, instead of facing justice, criminals from up high usually write memoirs, or become elder statesmen, and are interviewed, settling comfortably into the historical record, either oblivious to or proud of the swathe of blood and gore that enshrouds them.

For instance, take the neocons, who should be filling up the docket at the Hague for plotting and executing the invasion and occupation of Iraqcurrent death total, 650,000, with millions floundering in abject miserybut are instead allowed to walk free and talk freely with David Rose, Vanity Fair contributing editor.

Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, Michael Rubin, Eliot Cohenthese comprise the very marrow of the neocon criminal camarilla. Rose interviews them as one would interview any petty bureaucrat (Adolf Eichmann comes to mind). Roses article, or the short preview here, casts the neocons as pentiti, the Italian word for those who have repented.

Well, sort of, as the sociopath rarely repents, but instead blames others, as the neocons blame Bush and his obsequious followers and lackluster appointees, all outside the neocon circle.

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UN Call For Moratorium On Executions

UN human rights chief Louise Arbour today called for a moratorium on executions after former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court.

11.5.06

She also called for the rights of defendants to a fair appeal to be fully respected. A credible appeals process is an essential part of fair-trial guarantees, she said in a statement. This is particularly important in this instance, in which the death penalty has been imposed. Those convicted today should have every opportunity to exhaust their appellate remedies in a fair way, and whatever the outcome of an appeal, I hope the government will observe a moratorium on executions.

 

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Top Military Publications To Call For Rumsfeld’s Resignation

 

11.4.06

Ecanadanow.com

Washington (dpa) - Major US military publications are calling for the resignation of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld days before the countrys mid-term elections.

Editorials in the latest editions of the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times to be published Monday say Rumsfeld has lost the support and respect of the military leadership, the senior managing editor of Army Times Publications, which publishes the four titles said.

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‘Neo Culpa’

Warmongering, Treasonous, Neocons Abandon Bush

~or~

Rats Flee Sinking Ship

 

It is perfectly within the malicious personality of the neocon to turn on a nominal and expendable leader when things get tough and do not go exactly as planned.

 

11.4.06

Mail & Guardian – London

 

Several prominent neoconservatives have turned on United States President George Bush days before critical midterm elections, lambasting his administration for incompetence in the handling of the Iraq war and questioning the wisdom of the 2003 invasion they were instrumental in promoting. Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, who were both Pentagon advisers before the war; Michael Rubin, a former senior official in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans; and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, were among the neoconservatives who recanted to Vanity Fair magazine in an article that could influence Tuesday's battle for control of Congress. The Iraq war has been the dominant issue in the election.

 

Martyn Turner, Ireland, The Irish Times

 

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More Troops - or Less Empire?

11.6.06

by Patrick J. Buchanan

 

When the debate over expanding the U.S. Army begins in 2007, there need to be voices raised calling for withdrawal of U.S. ground forces from Korea and Central Asia, where they do not belong, and a bottom-up review of all U.S. war guarantees. This will be denounced as isolationism. But was it isolationism for the Russians to go home from Cuba? Just as we wanted the French, British, Spanish, and, finally, Russians out of our hemisphere, other nations bristle at U.S. troops stationed just over their border.

We have more than enough soldiers to defend the United States and our vital interests and allies. If we will pull up the old trip wires we put down in the Cold War and bring home the troops manning those trip wires, we will also find that, suddenly, we have fewer quarrels and fewer enemies than the administration has managed to make for us.

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The More-Than-$2-Trillion War

Two scholars, one a Nobel Prize winner, revisit their estimate of the true cost of the Iraq war and find that $2 trillion was too low. They consider not only the current and future budgetary costs, but the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East.

By Linda Bilmes
linda_bilmes@harvard.edu
and Joseph E. Stiglitz
jes322@columbia.edu

COMMENTARY | November 01, 2006

In January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war – in both blood and money – has risen even faster than our projections anticipated. More than 2,500 American troops have died and close to 20,000 have been wounded since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. And the $2 trillion number – the sum of the current and future budgetary costs along with the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East – now seems low.

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Army Guard, Reserves Face New Iraq Call-Ups

11.5.06

Washington Post

Two Army National Guard combat brigades with about 7,000 troops have been identified recently in classified rotational plans for possible special deployment to Iraq, according to senior Army and Pentagon officials, who asked that the specific units not be named. One brigade could be diverted to Iraq next year from another assignment, and the other could be sent there in 2008, a year ahead of schedule.

Next year, the number of Army Guard soldiers providing security in Iraq will surge to more than 6,000 in about 50 companies, compared with 20 companies two years ago, Guard officials said. "We thought we'd see a downturn in operational tempo, but that hasn't happened," said one official.

A more sweeping policy shift is under consideration that would allow the Pentagon to launch a new wave of involuntary mobilizations of the reserves, as a growing proportion of Guard and Reserve soldiers are nearing a 24-month limit on time deployed, they said. Army officials said no decision had been made on the politically sensitive topic but that serious deliberations will unfold in the coming months.

Senior Army leaders have made clear that without a bigger active-duty force, the only way they can maintain the intense pace of rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan is by relying more heavily on the reserves, which make up 52 percent of the Army's total manpower. The Army as a whole is providing the bulk of the forces in today's wars, with about 105,000 soldiers in Iraq and 16,000 in Afghanistan.

 

CIA Torture Down the Memory Hole

11.4.06

by Kurt Nimmo

According to the CIAs favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, the unitary decider administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the alternative interrogation methods that their captors used to get them to talk. According to the government, these alternative interrogation methods, actually brutal medieval torture techniques updated to include sexual humiliation, are now among the nations most sensitive national security secrets and any release of information about the systematic sadism of the state against largely innocent victims, especially released to the attorneys of the victims, could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage to the torture and murder state, now a bestial leviathan with tentacles stretching around the world.

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Revealed: U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

 

11.1.06

Editor & Publisher

November 01, 2006)The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didnt make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.

She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a non-hostile weapons discharge.

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After 46 years of failure, we must

change course on Cuba

11.1.06

The Guardian - London


The US is deaf to the almost unanimous international view: its embargo is a block on positive change in Havana.

 

 

Rainer Hachfeld, Berlin, Germany, Neues Deutschland

 

Moscow condemns US interference in Nicaragua presidential election

11.3.06

MosNews

 

Moscow is ’surprised and concerned’ over the ’undisguised interference’ of the United States in the run-up to Nicaragua’s presidential election, the Foreign Ministry is quoted by RIA Novosti news agency Thursday.

 

 

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Iran Shows New Generation of Anti-Helicopter Weapons

 

11.5.06

Xinhua

TEHRAN, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on Saturday tried new generation of anti-helicopter weapons and other military hardware during the ongoing military maneuvers, the official IRNA news agency reported. Different types of improved anti-helicopter, anti-armor and anti-personnel weapons had been used by the Iranian troops, General Mohammad-Reza Zahedi, commander of the IRGC's ground forces, told a press conference. The combat capability of these anti-helicopter weapons had been doubled in recent years and they could be used against all types of helicopters, Zahedi said. Iran's new generation of anti-personnel bullets, which had been used in the war games, could penetrate the most advanced bullet-proof vests, Zahedi said. The IRGC forces were using modern equipment and tactics to encounter enemies' combat power, the Iranian general said, adding that the IRGC ground forces' weapons could reach as far as 1,400 km into hypothetical enemy's territory. Zahedi said the war games were intended to show the Iranian military's ability to defend the country against any attack and thereby discourage enemies from inimical contemplation. The IRGC's 10-day maneuvers, dubbed "The Great Prophet 2," began on Thursday and are to be carried out in the Gulf waters, the Sea of Oman and 14 of the country's provinces.

 

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·     Germany says Israel not respecting Lebanon airspace: BERLIN (Reuters) - Israel is ignoring deals on the policing of Lebanese airspace and is struggling to accept international peacekeepers in the region, a German deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying on Saturday. "That Israel is still trying to control the airspace over Lebanon despite the international presence of French, Italian and other soldiers, runs contrary to every agreement," Gernot Erler told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "The Israelis have so far rejected every internationalization of their security. But this is now happening with the UNIFIL mission. It's evidently something the Israeli armed forces take some getting used to."

·     Israeli troops open fire on Palestinian women outside mosque: Two Palestinian women were killed and another 10 were reported wounded when Israeli forces today opened fire on a group preparing to act as a human shield for militants in a Gaza mosque.

The scene near a mosque in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after Israeli troops opened fire on a group of Palestinian women, killing one of them and injuring 10 others. The mosque had been the scene of an Israeli siege after a group of men, presumed to be armed, took refuge there. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters

·     Baptist convention told: Muslims 'are here to take over our country’: CAPE GIRARDEAU The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures are known for their warnings of doom and gloom, but even Jeremiah arguably the gloomiest Old Testament sage would have tipped his hat to the Rev. David Clippard at the Missouri Baptist Convention's annual meeting here this week.

 

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·     Chinese banks see profits surge: BEIJING - Six publicly listed Chinese banks unveiled better assets quality and greatly improved profitability in their quarterly reports in spite of a moderate rise in bad loans in some banks. The listed banks reported an average profit growth of nearly 30% in the first three quarters of the year. Bank of China (BOC), which is listed in Shanghai and Hong Kong, led the listed banks in a net profit of 32.4 billion yuan (US$4.1 billion) in the first three quarters.

 

 

 

 

An extraordinarily prescient TV interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy National Security Advisor to Former President George Bush Sr.

 

Why Invading Iraq Was A Very Stupid Idea…

 

(Click on blinking dot above for video)

 

 

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“People should not be afraid of their government.

Governments should be afraid of their people.”