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Monday, March 17, 2008
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Pope Benedict XVI
Calls for End of Iraq War – “Enough with the Slaughters…” Nicole Winifield reporting for the
Associated Press (AP) writes: “Pope Benedict XVI issued one of his
strongest appeals for peace in Iraq on Sunday, days after the body of the
kidnapped Chaldean Catholic archbishop was found near the northern city of
Mosul. The pope also denounced the
5-year-long Iraq war, saying it had provoked the complete breakup of Iraqi
civilian life. ‘Enough with the slaughters. Enough
with the violence. Enough with the hatred in Iraq!’ Benedict said to applause
at the end of his Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square.” 
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“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
~George Orwell~
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Weak U.S. Dollar: Americans Flee To
Gold… ·
Argentina,
Brazil Drop Dollar In Mutual Business
Transactions ·
Venezuela Switches To Euros For Oil ·
Protests greet
Condoleezza Rice in Brazil. "One trillion dollars for war, not a cent for peace.
Condoleezza Rice out of Brazil." ·
Bush Spending US Tax Dollars to Foment Unrest in Bolivia
The Crashing U.S. Dollar…  Dan Eggen of the Washington Post reports, "The FBI has
increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of US
citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or
counterintelligence investigations, and at least once it relied on such
orders to obtain records that a special intelligence-gathering court had
deemed protected by the First Amendment, according to two government audits
released yesterday."  F.B.I. Made ‘Blanket’ Demands for Phone Records Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times
writes, “Under the USA
Patriot Act, the F.B.I. received broadened
authority to issue the national security letters on its own authority — without the
approval of a judge — to gather records like phone bills
or e-mail transactions that might be considered relevant to a particular
terrorism investigation. The Justice Department inspector general found in
March 2007 that the F.B.I. had routinely violated the standards for using the
letters and that officials often cited “exigent” or emergency situations that
did not really exist in issuing them to phone providers and other private
companies.  Congressman/M.D. Ron Paul writes: “It has been said that ‘he who
lives by the sword shall die by the sword.’ And in the case of Eliot Spitzer
this couldn’t be more true. In his case it’s the political sword, as his
enemies rejoice in his downfall. Most people, it seems, believe he got
exactly what he deserved. The
illegal tools of the state brought Spitzer down, but think of all the harm
done by Spitzer in using the same tools against so many other innocent
people. He practiced what could be termed ‘economic McCarthyism,’ using
illegitimate government power to build his political career on the ruined
lives of others. No
matter how morally justified his comeuppance may be, his downfall
demonstrates the worst of our society. The possibility of uncovering personal
moral wrongdoing is never a justification for the government to spy on our
every move and to participate in sting operations. For
government to entice a citizen to break a law with a sting operation – that
is, engaging in activities that a private citizen is prohibited by law from
doing -- is unconscionable and should clearly be illegal. Though
Spitzer used the same tools to destroy individuals charged with economic
crimes that ended up being used against him, gloating over his downfall
should not divert our attention from the fact that the government spying
on American citizens is unworthy of a country claiming respect for liberty
and the fourth amendment. Two
wrongs do not make a right. Two wrongs make it doubly wrong.”  ·
Iraq: Rules Of Engagement Thrown Out The Window ·
Poll: 7 Out of 10 Iraqis Want Foreign Forces to Leave ·
War's Cost: Loss of US Power,
Influence ·
'Magic is over' for
USA, says foreign minister of France... ·
Was Getting Rid of Saddam Worth It? ·
Colin James: Bush's
true victim - the morale of the US people ·
UN torture envoy
says US deny access to Iraq jails  China Doesn't Find Enough Human Rights in U.S. China
rebuffed by its own Human Rights Record by the United States, lashes out at
Washington. According to China’s document, the United States analyses human
rights in 190 countries of the world, without mentioning its own problems.
The greatest attention is paid to the U.S. prisons. The United States is the
biggest prison of the world, the report says. Racism, sexism and
assassination of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t forgotten
either. 
Global Public Opinion Turns Against the U.S. on Iran's
Nuclear Program 
 ·
The US
Military's Assassination Problem ·
US Missiles Kill 20 in Pakistani
Tribal Home  Viktor Bout arrested in Thailand. Extradition to US sought
after alleged weapons deal with FARC. Bout has also been a contractor for the Bush regime in Iraq and
Afghanistan. US Attorney for
New York Michael Garcia, who indicted Bout for the FARC deal, has his own
links to US mercenary and small weapons firms. Bout knows a
lot, enough to sink politicians from Washington to Tel Aviv and London.  Over One Million Murdered -- and Nothing Has Been Learned
To mark the fifth anniversary of the war
crime against Iraq, The New York Times asked nine experts on military
and foreign affairs to reflect on their attitudes in the spring of 2003 and
to comment on the one aspect of the war that most surprised them or that they
wished they had considered in the prewar debate." All nine entries are listed here.  Recalling America’s Other “Heart of Darkness”: My Lai
 VIETNAM EXPOSED! Another Illegal Washington Invasion... The Gulf of Tonkin Never Happened – ROBERT MCNAMARA (Video)  Tom Hayden writes for The Nation: “The top counterinsurgency
adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq advocates practicing a ‘global
Phoenix Program,’ alluding
to the notorious Vietnam-era CIA operation that provoked a worldwide uproar
because of the detention, torture and execution of thousands of Vietnamese. The mainstream media has never
reported on the use of the ‘global Phoenix program’ in Iraq, perhaps because the explosive terminology has largely
disappeared from the writings and résumé of Lt.
Col. David Kilcullen after he first being referred
to it in a forty-eight-page strategy paper, "Countering Global Insurgency"
published in the obscure Small Wars Journal in
September-November 2004. Kilcullen, an Australian PhD who served for twenty-one years in
the Australian army, was the "chief adviser on counterinsurgency
operations" to Petraeus in planning the 2007 US troop surge. He also
served as chief strategist in the State Department's counterterrorism office
in 2005 and 2006, and has been employed in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the
Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.  |
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Video Database The CIA’s Coups of Terror
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An extraordinarily prescient video interview
with General Norman Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy National Security
Advisor to Former President George Bush Sr. Why Invading Iraq Was A Profoundly Stupid Idea…
(Click on blinking dot above
for video)
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