Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....

[cowboyangel]

got this from the daily foo

I knew it....

[DVD Burner]

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3674

The Illuminati-Staged US Presidential Election
Monday 11th October 2004 :
By Michael Shore

WHO BELIEVES THE LIE THAT ANYONE CAN BECOME PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.A.?

The Illuminati rule America! Who are the super rich "elite" Illuminati and their associates? The Queen of England, her husband Prince Philip and the Royal House of Windsor, the hierarchy on the board of directors of the Vatican, including the Pope; the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Morgans, Duponts, Fords, Carnegies, Melons, Bush’s etc. To get the details of who the Illuminati are, put Illuminati in www.google.com

It is not the American people who choose the President and Vice President of the United States of America, but rather the super secret "shadow government" called the Illuminati/New World Order who choose them!

Various researchers, including,David Icke in his book "The Biggest Secret", point out that all 43 men who were Presidents of the U.S.A. are related, and that 33 of the Presidents can be traced back to the bloodline of Charlemagne, who in the year 800 was crowned by Pope Leo III to be Holy Roman Emperor, the first head of an empire that would last over 1000 years! This should be setting off major alarm bells in your mind. Like this is no coincidence. The odds of all 43 Presidents being related, and this just randomly happening, are billions to one. Democratic and Republican candidates are "chosen" by the "Elitist" super rich organization called the Illuminati. Democrats and Republicans and the Illuminati would not want you to believe any of this. They don’t teach you this in schools and for good reason: the Illuminati want to stay hidden. They do not want the masses to know that their small secret organization even exists so they can covertly continue their rule.

This farce called an "election" shows that America is a one party state. Both Democrats and Republicans work for the agenda of the Illuminati. They create a charade that looks like each party is different, but in the end the Democrats and Republicans vote for anything the Illuminati want in order to push forward the Illuminati agenda for "total world domination". This is why actors make such good politicians because this whole covert political charade at this time is an "act" being played out to control all the people in a so-called democracy. If you’d like to know who is going to win the U.S.Presidential election, just call up super wealthy David Rockefeller and he can tell you today because it’s all a "staged event". This may be challenging for most people to believe, but it’s true and if given the chance and enough money to fund a proper investigation, this can be proven. There is no "true" democracy in America, only an illusion that looks like a supposed democracy. Currently democracy is imprisonment disguised as freedom.

A true democracy is not a two party system. It is many parties with different ideas that represent the will of the People, not the will of a few very rich individuals and the corporations that they own. Why weren’t members from other political parties, who have candidates running for the Presidency, allowed to participate in the Presidential debates? Because the Presidential debates are a "staged Illuminati event" that’s why. They would not allow any other competing candidates to participate, just like they don’t allow any of the Illuminati controlled mass corporate media to cover and interview the other smaller party candidates. By suppressing any competing candidates outside of the Illuminati controlled Democratic and Republican parties, the Illuminati eliminate the possibility that someone might actually tell the American people the truth about 911, the war for oil in Iraq, the unconstitutional income tax, the private banking cartel, called the Federal Reserve that controls the money in the U.S., Patriot Acts 1 & 2, etc.

Did you see any of the Conventions of any other party besides the Democrats and Republicans on T.V. or in any other major mass media? Do you see media coverage on a daily basis of any of the other Presidential candidates and what they stand for? You rarely see or hear anything in the Illuminati controlled mass media about any other candidates, you only see and hear Bush and Kerry! Is this what you call "democracy"? No, it’s called brainwashing and mind control. If Bush and Kerry are the only candidates the Illuminati controlled mass media shows everyday, and they both lie about the war in Iraq, the war on "terror", Social Security, the budget deficit, unemployment, the economy etc. without any real challenge to what they are saying by other candidates or independent journalists, than the masses conclude that what Bush and Kerry are saying is the ONLY "truth". If you tell people the same lie over and over again and it goes unchallenged, that "lie" becomes the people’s "truth". Hitler was very successful at using this technique. Bush Jr. has been extremely successful with this technique over the last four years of his Presidency. And Bush Sr.summed it up when he once said "don’t confuse the People with the truth". Could you imagine Jeff Rense, David Icke, Sherman Skolnick and some of the other truth seeking journalists and writers being at a Bush or Kerry news conference and being able to ask them their questions? Better yet what would it be like if these same men were able to pose questions to Bush and Kerry in a prime time nationally televised debate? There would probably be a People’s revolt in the streets!!! Starting to get the picture?

Another subversive thing that has been done in the U.S. "Presidential elections" is that the Republican and Democratic parties have made laws that "qualify" a political party to get tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars if they meet certain "criteria"..So the Republicans and Democrats and Illuminati blatantly screw the People even more by using the People’s own tax dollars to keep out any legitimate candidates, who don’t qualify for this money, but who do really and truly desire to work for the benefit of the people.

The Republican and Democratic parties spend billions of dollars on the Presidential election, so if you can’t get together a billion or two billion dollars, you don’t have a chance! Who could even afford to run in a Presidential election? If you only have two parties, then rich people and the Illuminati through their Fortune 500 corporations can make large contributions to both parties and thereby control both parties. So no matter who wins the election, these corporations and a few rich people get special favors and laws passed to make themselves even richer.

The most blatant example of this was the $1.3 trillion dollar tax cut for the rich. Only approximately 43,000 rich families, including the Bush and Cheney families, got to share over $1.2 of the $1.3 trillion dollars from this HUGE tax cut, and these rich families each got millions of dollars. Each of the over 100,000,000 American working "slaves" got a measly $300 or $600 check Did your President or any Senators or Congressmen who voted for this tax gift to the rich tell the American citizens this? Of course not! And even though the U.S. is running up huge budget deficits that could lead to a 1929 style depression, Bush and the Democrats and Republicans will not rescind this huge tax cut for the rich that would help balance the budget. . Bush and Kerry are Illuminati "puppets" and the Illuminati’s ideal ticket. No matter who wins, the Illuminati rule. Kerry’s voting record is similar to Bush’s on many issues. Even President Bush points out that Kerry voted for and supported Bush’s war in Iraq. How much more blatant can they be than that? When is the last time you checked out the voting record of the candidate you support? The citizens are too lazy to check out their candidate’s voting record. They’ve been brainwashed to trust their politicians who lie lie lie all the time. The People won’t take the time to check out the voting record of their favorite candidates and the Illuminati know this, so the Illuminati can easily continue to con the people. If you would take the time to check out your candidate’s voting record you would see this truth. You’ll be amazed how they don’t vote for the people’s interests, Republicans and Democrats vote for corporate and Illuminati interests!

Both Bush and Kerry are fraternity brothers in Skull and Bones, a super secretive neo Nazi fraternity at Yale University that covertly supported Hitler and the Nazis in WW ll. Many American Presidents, government and top business leaders have come out of Skull and Bones, without the American people being aware of this. Both Bush’s father, Bush Sr., and Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, are and were Skull and Bones men. Prescott Bush put up millions of dollars to help put Hitler another Illuminati "puppet" into power. The Illuminati always fund both sides in every Illuminati generated war in order to achieve their "control of the world agenda", and make billions of dollars for themselves in the process!. For details about this read David Icke’s book " ....And The Truth Shall Set You Free", www.davidicke.com

Here you have a situation where out of ALL the possible people who could qualify to run for President of the U.S.A., you wind up with two Skull and Bones men. This is no accident. The chances of this "randomly happening" are millions to one! Skull and Bones was founded by the Russel family, who made their huge fortune illegally smuggling opium to China in the 1800’s, thereby causing another war called The Opium War. The flag that was flown on the Russel ships that were smuggling dope was the Skull and Bones emblem, hence the name of the fraternity. So now you have two men who are fraternity brothers in a super secretive fraternity that was founded by a drug baron! Seems a little strange doesn’t it? To this very day the Bush family, along with other "families" continue to make billions of dollars smuggling and selling illegal drugs all over the world. They are assisted by the C.I.A, which Bush Sr.once headed, and by a few of Vice President Cheney’s companies. Books and articles have been written exposing all of this, but the Illuminati corporate controlled mass media do not report this secret. If anyone could survive and not be murdered attempting to expose this, and get the facts into a court of law, the Bush’s and Cheney et al would be finished!

The Bush and Cheney Drug Empire

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/c ... drugs.html

http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm

Both Bush and Kerry are sworn to secrecy and do not talk about Skull and Bones. Is their personal allegiance to Skull and Bones or to the American people? Should Bush and Kerry be allowed to be members of a highly secret organization, where many American Presidents and other high government officials and key business leaders come out of, without the American people knowing what this organization stands for? How can this be? Shouldn’t the media be intensely questioning both Bush and Kerry about Skull and Bones, especially in the Presidential debates? Shouldn’t the FBI, CIA and every other intelligence agency be investigating Skull and Bones on behalf of the American people to see "what is going on here?" And while they’re at it, they could investigate the other connected "elite" secret societies, who have an agenda of "total world domination" and who exist all over the world >>>Illuminati, Bildebergers, Trilateral Commission, Committee of 300, Round Table, Club of Rome, Council of Foreign Relations etc. Forget that idea because the C.I.A., F.B.I and every other U.S. government agency is controlled by the Illuminati also. And to anyone who cannot bring themselves to begin to believe any of this, please take the time and put the names of each of these organizations into www.google.com and read about them to your amazement. Yes these connected "elite" secret societies of of a few extremely wealthy individuals really do exist and meet on a regular basis to pursue their quest for a One World Government, organized as a global fascist police State, ruled by a so-called "elitist" dictatorship!

Now let’s take a look at the Illuminati "staged" Presidential debates and see how the American people allow themselves to be conned to believe that these debates are so important and have so much relevance to the outcome of the "election".

First and most important of all, the main question that the American people, the media and the moderator of the Presidential debates should be asking President Bush is: "who currently controls the multi-trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil?" We’re talking about trillions of dollars here, a super amount of money that most people cannot even begin to comprehend. After all the war in Iraq is about oil.. Both Bush and Cheney are both oil men and are very closely connected to the major oil companies. Within a few weeks of Bush and Cheney taking office in 2001, Vice President Cheney was pushing forward for regime change in Iraq! After the U.S. military invaded and conquered Iraq, it was reported that Vice President Cheney’s Haliburton Corporation was given control of all the Iraqi oil. How the trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil is being divided up amongst the major U.S. oil companies, while thousands of U.S.servicemen and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children are being killed and wounded in Iraq should probably be the main campaign issue. But the Illuminati "puppet" John Kerry in his campaign does not say ONE word about this criminal conflict of interest.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1095545411401&call _pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724&tacodalogin=no

In early 2001, before 911, Vice President Cheney had secret meetings in his office with his "energy task force" and senior American oil company executives. To this day, Vice President Cheney has fought every court attempt to have him divulge the names of the people he met with at those meetings in 2001. This is not only suspicious, this is preposterous that the American people have not even been made aware of the seriousness of Cheney’s actions, which more than likely was a catalyst for the war in Iraq! Cheney is suppose to be working for the best interests of the American people and not for the interests of a few huge oil companies. If Kerry was a "legitimate" candidate, this would be one of his main campaign issues>>>bringing this ridiculous situation to the attention of the American people and getting Cheney to divulge not only the names of the people he met with, but also what they were discussing? The price of OIL is in the news everyday. Oil just went to over $50 a barrel. There are actions that the President could take to help bring the price of oil down, like allowing millions of barrels of oil to be released from the hundreds of millions of barrels that are held in U.S. government reserves for national emergencies. Or whoever controls Iraqi oil could be pumping large amounts of Iraqi oil and shipping it to the U.S.A. or other countries to help bring the price down. Kerry could easily make this a campaign issue since Bush is not doing anything about this situation because the higher the price of oil, the more billions the Bush/Cheney connected oil companies make!. You cannot get anymore blatant than all of this to show you that Bush, Kerry and Cheney et al all work together for the benefit of the Illuminati/New World Order.Agenda.

In addition Kerry could say that he will hold investigations to see how Vice President Cheney’s Haliburton Corporation was given control of the trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil. and also given billions of dollars of no-bid contracts during the "rebuilding" of the Iraq that Bush and Cheney destroyed. How sick can they be? Kerry could also say that he is going to have Bush’s father’s Carlyle Group and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s Bechtel Corporation investigated for potential "conflicts of interest" for the multi billions of dollars in contracts that these companies have also received from the war in Iraq. Carlyle Group is one of the largest war companies in the world. The more war Bush Jr. makes, the more billions that Bush Sr.and the Bush family makes, which is a criminal conflict of interest.

Let’s look at another important issue that Kerry could raise in his campaign, but doesn’t In his campaign and in the debates, Kerry could point out that Kofi Anan, the Secretary General of the United Nations has recently declared the horrendous Iraqi war to be illegal. Kerry could be bashing Bush for illegally lying to start a multi-billion dollar "war for profit" in Iraq that has cost the lives of over 1000 American servicemen and over 7000 wounded, plus the killing and maiming of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men women and children. This is treason and crimes against humanity on the part of Bush, Cheney et al., which Kerry or any courageous U.S.politician could point out, but they don’t. If the war has been determined to be illegal, Kerry could be calling for Bush, Cheny et al to be removed from office for lying to the American people and the World in their quest for personal financial gain from the trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil and multi-billion dollar military and "rebuilding" contracts.

Kerry could say that if he’s elected, he will call for an immediate "cease fire" and work with the Iraqi leadership all over their country along with other connected Allied Nations to stop this ’illegal war" and the killing asap and bring the American troops home within 6 months or less. With the billions of dollars that are being wasted and "stolen" in Iraq, this could be done, especially since the Iraqi people would love to see peace and an end to the occupation and killing of their family and friends by the American troops in their country However, remember as pointed out above, there are trillions of dollars of oil and billions of dollars of military and rebuilding contracts at stake here, so even if Kerry got elected, you will probably not see any pullout of American troops in Iraq anytime soon!

Kerry could be pointing out to the American people that it is very risky and not too smart to have a President who lies to start wars and who is in control of thousands of U.S.Weapons of Mass Destruction, more WMD’s than all other Nations in the world combined. Kerry could say that there is the risk that Bush could lie again and again and start more and more "wars for profit", where you’ll need so many soldiers to be used as " war fodder" by wealthy owners of oil and war corporations, that the U.S. will have to reinstate the draft. This could cost the lives of tens of thousands and maybe even hundreds of thousands of American young men who really don’t want to die so Bush Sr’s Carlyle Group and Vice President Cheney’s Haliburton Corporation and other Bush government connected corporations could make even more multi-billions of dollars from more Bush wars!

But Kerry would never say any of these things because he’s just another Illuminati "puppet" doing exactly what he is told to do. Plus after the fiasco in Florida in the 2000 election, many States rushed to buy billions of dollars of electronic voting machines to be used in elections. These electronic voting machines can be programmed to change votes with the click of a mouse and leave no paper trail showing this fraud. Hardly any States have put into place laws or safe guards that would prevent this potential criminal action. Since the election has been purposely maneuvered to be so close, it’s even easier to control the outcome of the election in the U.S.A.! With a click of a mouse, the Illuminati could put in place whichever candidate they have already "chosen". There’s only two possibilities, Bush or Kerry. This method is a lot less "messy" than what happened in Florida in the Illuminati controlled 2000 election.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78

http://www.hermes-press.com/vote_rig.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.ericblumrich.com/gta.html

http://www.rense.com/general40/fr.htm

http://www.kucinich.us/issues/e_voting.php

Unfortunately for America and the world, the Illuminati win very election no matter which Democratic or Republican candidate wins. Both Kerry and Bush will do what they are told to do by the "elite" super rich Illuminati. It should be noted that the Illuminati use similar or other tactics in other Nations, in order to control those Nations too in the final quest of their "Great Work Of Ages" for total world control!

Lie, cheat and murder on a global scale - this is the satanic Illuminati way, unfortunately for humanity.

WAKE-UP ALL HUMAN BEINGS IN AMERICA AND THE WORLD!

Hopefully, more and more people will be able to see this blatant Illuminati manipulation taking place right in front of their very eyes? Only then can we stop them!

Michael Shore

[DVD Burner]

Looks like the Israeli army solders are starting to realize how wrong some of thier Israeli army commanders are huh?

Israeli Commander Probed in Girl's Death

October 11, 2004 05:24 PM EDT


JERUSALEM - Israel's top military prosecutor has opened an investigation into a platoon commander whom soldiers accuse of emptying an ammunition clip into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl to make sure she was dead, the army said Monday.

In media interviews, soldiers said the commander approached the girl, who had already been shot and possibly killed, and repeatedly shot her as they pleaded with him to stop.

In an unusual move, the top military prosecutor, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelbleet, ordered an inquiry into the incident before the army finished its own investigation, an army spokeswoman said. In addition, the battalion and division commanders are conducting their own investigations and will submit their findings to Army chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, she said.

The issue surfaced when soldiers who serve under the platoon commander - whose name was not made public - told Israeli newspapers and TV reporters about the incident.

Iyman Hams, 13, was shot and killed Oct. 5. Initially the army said soldiers shot and killed Hams as she planted a bomb near an army outpost in southern Gaza.

But after soldiers recounted a different version of events to the media, an investigation was launched. The soldiers told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper they were unhappy that the platoon commander had not been suspended.

Dozens of Palestinian children have been killed since fighting erupted four years ago, but the army rarely launches investigations into the incidents.

In disguised voices and without revealing their identities, the soldiers told a chilling story to Israeli television stations Sunday night of a platoon commander who fired two bullets from close range at the girl, who had already been shot, to confirm that she was dead. Two soldiers then described the commander going back a second time and spraying her with automatic weapon fire.

The soldiers told Yediot that before the commander shot the girl they shouted to him over the two-way radio: "Don't shoot, she's a little girl."

"We saw her from a distance of 70 meters. She was fired at ... from the outpost. She fled and was wounded. I understood that she was dead. The platoon commander neared her shot two bullets at her, returned toward the force, turned back to her, put the weapon on automatic - and emptied his entire clip," one soldier said.

"We were in shock, we held our heads. We couldn't believe what he had done. Our hearts ached for her. Just a 13-year-old girl. How do you spray a girl from close range? He was hot for a long time to take out terrorists and shot the girl to relieve pressure," the soldier said.

Dr. Ali Musa, director of the hospital in Rafah, said Hams was hit by at least 15 bullets, most in the upper body.

Ihab Samir Hams, the girl's brother, said his sister was on the way to school when she was shot. He said soldiers didn't allow an ambulance into the area for 70 minutes. He said she had bullet wounds in her head, chest, legs - "everywhere."

Brushing off the investigation, Hams asked: "Will this bring her back to life? Will this bring her back home? Will this heal our wound? They are murderers and they killed her in cold blood."

[Simply Joel]

And the beat goes on.....

Scandal With No Friends
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON — How fares the multination cover-up of the richest rip-off in world history?

Obstruction of justice has never had it so good. Last month, after some badgering in this space and elsewhere, the House International Relations Committee announced it would look into the $5 billion kickback scandal in the United Nations' six-year Iraqi oil-for-food program, the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken.

Our State Department, eager for U.N. help in Iraq, wants no revelations of U.N. ineptitude and corruption. It waltzed the committee staff around.

Senate Foreign Relations, however, not wanting to be upstaged by its House counterpart, called instant publicity hearings to blow off steam. Chairman Dick Lugar asked if some countries turned a blind eye to the rampant theft of aid that should have gone to hungry Iraqis because they "saw a money-making opportunity."

Senator Joe Biden chimed in, demanding that our ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, release the names of the U.S. companies that State has known for years have been part of the kickback scheme. Negroponte, soon to be our man in Baghdad working with the U.N., said that no such list had been compiled.

Meanwhile, because U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's son was on the payroll of the Swiss company hired to monitor the imports, and because Kofi's right-hand man had been in charge of the program rife with 10 percent kickbacks, the world's foremost diplomat announced he would appoint an independent panel to investigate.

He chose men of integrity: Paul Volcker, former U.S. Fed chairman; Judge Richard Goldstone, the first Balkans war crimes prosecutor; and Mark Pieth, a Swiss lawyer said to be an expert on money laundering.

End of cover-up, right? Wrong. Volcker properly required a Security Council resolution, which would presumably empower his panel to take sworn testimony and gain access to the U.N.'s corrupt contracts that enabled Saddam to build palaces instead of providing food to his people.

But such a U.N. resolution would reveal dealings with companies in Russia, France and China — all Security Council permanent members whose nationals had their hands in the till. As Senator Lugar suggested, some nations had secret profiteering reasons to keep Saddam in power.

To nobody's surprise, Vladimir Putin's government was the first to say nothing doing. Russia's U.N. spokesman said, "We understand the reputation of the secretariat is in question, but we do not think it is possible to adopt a resolution on the basis of mass media reports."

Of the 270 suspected kickbackers and recipients of illegal allocations of oil whose names were revealed by Al Mada, the Iraqi newspaper, one-fourth were Russian, including a member of the Russian Parliament and a former Russian ambassador to Baghdad. No wonder Putin wanted no "regime change," and now resists any serious investigation.

And what of those "mass media reports" about the scope of the corruption, which are backed by the initial findings of Congress's General Accounting Office? Editorialists have dutifully tut-tutted. Reporters have passed along some details of what the G.A.O. estimates is a $5 billion fraud (not counting $5 billion more in smuggled oil). The Financial Times, working with Italy's Sole, recently advanced the story, interviewing a middleman to show how an apologist for Saddam got $400,000 to finance a film.

But outrage that drives coverage is selective, and there is little establishment appetite to pursue this complex scandal. Speaking power to truth, Newsweek headlines "Anti-U.N. Campaign," and reports dark suspicions by U.N. bureaucrats that the scandal was "drummed up" by the doves' Iraqi villain, Ahmad Chalabi.

France's U.S. ambassador writes under "Oil-for-Food Lies" in The Los Angeles Times that "unfounded accusations . . . have been spread by a handful of influential, conservative TV and newspaper journalists in the U.S." He noted that all 15 members of the Security Council approved all the oil-for-food contracts, and "the complete contracts were only circulated to the U.S. and Britain, which had expressly asked to see them. . . ." (And State shut its eyes — and has no list?)

Lawyers and accountants hired by Iraq's Governing Council will appear before Chairman Christopher Shays' national security subcommittee on Wednesday. The Connecticut congressman offers journalists a useful briefing memo, but expect little coverage; this scandal has no friends.

nearly six months later....

October 13, 2004
Duelfer to France: J'accuse!
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Powerful officials and their profiteering friends in France had a reason to try to stop the U.S. from overthrowing Saddam Hussein: they were pocketing billions in payoffs through a United Nations oil-for-food front.

That's the import of the Duelfer report. This nonpartisan investigation team found not only documents "giving economic favors to key French diplomats or individuals that have access to key French leaders," but also got Saddam's mouthpiece, Tariq Aziz, to sing about their purpose: "According to Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift U.N. sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council."

Charles Duelfer's group put on the public record the name of Charles Pasqua, France's former interior minister and now a senator. Pasqua denied all to the BBC and fingered ex-associates: "maybe other former ministers are involved."

The former French ambassador to the U.N., Jean-Bernard Mérimée, is listed as receiving vouchers for 11 million barrels of oil from Saddam, the proceeds from which would beat a diplomat's pay. Another of President Jacques Chirac's friends receiving Saddam's U.N. largesse is Patrick Maugein, "whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac," according to the report.

Maugein, 58, whose association with Chirac has occasionally been chronicled by the French journalist Karl Laske, is chairman of Soco, an oil company active in Vietnam. He's down for 13 million barrels. French oil companies Total and Socap got about 200 million barrels.

A name that keeps coming up in my poking around is Marc Rich, the American billionaire who was for many years a fugitive, until blessed with one of Bill Clinton's midnight pardons. Rich's company Trafigura, spun off from the Swiss-based Glencore, and its possible dealings with outfits like Jean-Paul Cayre's Ibex have excited the interest of many of the sleuths I've spoken to.

France's diplomats here are apoplectic, calling the unconfirmed Duelfer reports "unacceptable." They note in high dudgeon that U.S. firms involved in the U.N.'s corrupt caper are not named by the U.S. team and deride our excuse about "privacy laws."

However, within 24 hours of the damning report's issuance, Judith Miller and her colleagues had the names of the U.S. companies involved - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco, Bay Oil and one Oscar Wyatt Jr. of Houston, who may have profited by $23 million - on the front page of The New York Times. (Will our runaway anti-press prosecutor try to clap Judy in jail for protecting her confidential government sources on this one, too?)

The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued seven subpoenas and a dozen hard-to-ignore chairman's letters from Senator Norm Coleman to companies in the U.S., as well as to multinationals doing business here. I hear the committee has met no legal resistance so far. Ben Pollner, head of Taurus Oil, active in Iraq all through the oil-for-food fiasco, stiffed Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau's men. (Pollner tells me his dealings were legal, but he clammed up to investigators because he remembers Martha Stewart.)

What also miffs the French is that Russian officials and oligarchs were able to rip off even more than France's predators. Vladimir Zhirinovsky made out like a bandit when his party had some power; so did "the office of the Russian president" and the Peace and Unity Party, both headed by the unmentionable Putin.

As the hares zoom by, Paul Volcker, the U.N. investigative tortoise, tells his people to forget the French and Russians and to concentrate on Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Benon Sevan, and Kofi Annan's son's relationship with Cotecna, the U.N.'s see-no-evil "monitor," The White House is wringing its hands because it needs the U.N.'s blessing on the Iraqi election, and John Kerry must be praying not to be asked about this in tonight's debate.

If I were a French reporter and wanted to lose my job at Chirac's Le Figaro in a hurry, I would drop in at 24 Boulevard Princess Charlotte in Monaco and ask if Patrick Maugein, Rui de Souza or Mario Contini has dropped by to see if Toro Energy and the African Middle East Petroleum company are still there? If that's a blind alley, try the casino.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Rian Jackson]

yeah. hundreds and hundreds of dead children....
we lost some who were 3, 4, 5, 6 years old... i saw schoolgirls get shot. the way they scream in pain and fear........

and these days, a lot of the killings you hear of are assassinations.
close range, shots to the back of the head, that sort of thing...
not exactly self protection, eh?

i mean, they aren't ALL that intentional. like when abdullah was killed, he was carrying hot milk. they used a grenade, or whatever, and the force of the explosion knocked the kid down (i think he was 5). he died from the extensive burns from the scalding milk....

go figger.....

most of their investigations have led to nothing at all. Rachel's death - nothing. i think the sniper who killed Tom got a slap on the wrist, if that. hopefully this one will pan out.

but frankly, it is NOT an isolated issue....... fairly pervasive (though certainly not all soldiers would do that sort of thing)

[Simply Joel]

WHEN CHURCHES HEAD LEFT

America's mainline Protestant churches are in trouble. One sign is shrinking membership. Another is the turning of their political policymaking over to fringe leftists whose deepest instinct is to blame America and pummel Israel whenever possible.
The latest disgrace is the Presbyterian Church's plan for selective divestment in Israel, ending the church's investment in multinational companies that the church believes bear particular responsibility for the sufferings of the Palestinian people. For example, the Presbyterians say they may divest themselves of Caterpillar stock, because bulldozers made by that company are used to level Palestinian homes in Israel's anti-terrorism campaign. Of course, these bulldozers can also be used to move debris after Palestinian suicide bombers have finished blowing up another round of women, children and other civilian bystanders in Israel.

How do the Presbyterians go about adopting stances like this? Apparently they cast a stern moral glance around the world, look for possible abuses in China, North Korea and Iran, and seeing nothing disturbing there, decide to focus once again on Israel.

The conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) released a measured and devastating report on the human-rights efforts of mainline churches and groups: the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), plus the reliably leftist National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches. The report, covering the years 2000 to 2003, found that of 197 human-rights criticisms by mainline churches and groups, 37 percent were aimed at Israel and 32 percent at the United States. Only 19 percent of these criticisms were directed at nations listed as "unfree" in Freedom House's respected annual listing of free, partly free, and unfree nations.

So Israel was twice as likely to be hammered by the mainliners as all the unfree authoritarian nations put together. The fixation on Israel left little time and inclination for these churches to notice the most dangerous violations of human rights around the world. Not one nation bordering Israel was criticized by a single mainline church or group, the IRD report says. No criticisms at all were leveled at China, Libya, Syria or North Korea.

Human-rights groups are normally accorded great respect for the work they do. But the rights work of the mainline churches is basically a one-sided expression of ideology. America is essentially viewed as a malignant force in the world, while Israel is seen as nothing more than a dangerous colonial implant of the West. The IRD report says the mainliners' "pervasive anti-Americanism is demonstrated time and again in their public-policy advocacy, and one need not investigate far to find it." Later, the report says, "When U.S. policy cannot be blamed, the mainline denominations seem less interested in speaking up for the victims."

Anti-Americanism is an old story in the mainline church bureaucracies. During the 1970s and 1980s, these churches generally ignored human-rights abuses in the Soviet Union and focused instead on the United States as the primary source of abuse. One result was to scorn dissident movements, such as Solidarity in Poland, which were pressing Moscow for more freedom.

The persistent folly of the World Council of Churches on this issue made news in July when its former president, Konrad Raiser, apologized for not supporting freedom movements during the Cold War. At this rate, a future president of the World Council might decide he's finally ready to apologize for ignoring severe abuses in today's vicious dictatorships, oh, sometime maybe around 2030.

The Presbyterian divestment plan seems to be an obvious effort to get an anti-Israel bandwagon rolling among the churches. The Episcopalians quickly obliged, letting it be known that divestment in companies doing business with Israel is now up for discussion. A high-level group from the church recently toured the Middle East, meeting with Yasser Arafat but not with any Israeli officials. Par for the course.

The divestment movement is a pretty big issue on some college campuses, supported by Muslim students and aging professors committed to blaming the West for all the world's evils. As part of this effort, Israel is routinely equated with the apartheid regime in South Africa and, by implication, with the Nazi regime in Germany. Despite all the inflammatory and one-sided rhetoric, no university has ever come close to supporting divestment.

Many Jews see the divestment movement as an instrument of anti-Semitism. Maybe it is, but the efforts of the woeful mainline churches are better seen as classic knee-jerk leftism, an expression of hard-core loathing for the United States and the West, with Israel as a stand-in for America. The mainline churches believe they still stand for high moral purpose in politics. They don't. They can no longer be taken seriously on politics or human rights.

COPYRIGHT 2004 JOHN LEO

[cowboyangel]

oh crapola again...please visit http://www.tikkun.org for the truth from a sensible Jewish perspective

[Rian Jackson]

yeah, or a lot of Jewish Palestinian-rights advocates.

or look at numbers.

or look at the Geneva conventions.

or are those outdated now???

[Rabbi Dali Rick]

Be the first one on you're block to own one...

http://www.kaicurryservices.com/peaceca ... nestdubya/



willingly,
the rebbi

[DVD Burner]

Be the first one on you're block to own one...

http://www.kaicurryservices.com/peaceca ... nestdubya/



willingly,
the rebbi

The say something stupid button is hilarious.

That had me laughing so hard I'm tearing.

[DVD Burner]

A follow up!


Israel suspends officer after Palestinian girl shot

Last Updated Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:11:06 EDT
JERUSALEM - The Israeli army has suspended a platoon commander accused of firing at a wounded Palestinian girl.

Soldiers from the platoon say the girl had already been shot, and possibly killed, when the commander emptied his automatic weapon into her on Oct. 5 near an army outpost in southern Gaza.


A poster with a picture of the 13-year-old.


The army claimed 13-year-old Iyman Hams was planting a bomb, but her family says she was on her way to school.

"I found it necessary to suspend the platoon commander for now," Israeli Col. Eyal Eisenberg told Israel Army Radio. "The accusations are grave. We will get to the bottom of the truth."

The incident made headlines after Israeli troops complained to Israeli media that the commander repeatedly shot her as they pleaded with him to stop.

They said the platoon commander fired two bullets from close range to confirm that she was dead. He then allegedly went back a second time and sprayed her with automatic-weapon fire.

Soldiers told the Israeli newspaper Yediot that they shouted to the commander over the two-way radio: "Don't shoot, she's a little girl."

"We saw her from a distance of 70 metres. She was fired at ... from the outpost. She fled and was wounded. I understood that she was dead. The platoon commander neared her, shot two bullets at her, returned toward the force, turned back to her, put the weapon on automatic and emptied his entire clip," one soldier said.

A Palestinian doctor said the girl was hit by at least 15 bullets in her head, chest and legs.

Israel's top military prosecutor has opened an inquiry into the shooting and the army has its own investigation underway.

The Israeli army has become increasingly wary of Palestinian teenagers and women after several committed suicide bombings or were used to transport explosives.

Hundreds of Palestinian children and teens have been killed by army fire in the past four years. The army rarely investigates the deaths.

Israel launched its biggest offensive into Gaza on Sept. 30 following the launch of rockets by Hamas militants. At least 92 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed since then.

Written by CBC News Online staff

[Rian Jackson]

the girl who was shot at her desk just died.

[DVD Burner]

the girl who was shot at her desk just died.

yeah I just heard on the BBC.

[cowboyangel]

ya, and to call Iraeli army folks terrorists is simply out of the q for the mainstream news

[DVD Burner]

Sharon is a known convicted war criminal.

Israel should be ashamed of itself along with the United States.

[Rian Jackson]

the commander has been suspended, it sounds like.
we'll see how long it lasts.

israel wants to limit visitors to the Al Aqsa mosque (it's like, the third holiest shrine in Islam) during Ramadan, citing earthquake damage and danger of collapse.

officials from Egypt and Jordan have inspected it and say it's safe.

forgive me for having some skepticism, oh Israeli officials.
it's just that ya'll regularly limit access so people don't get to go and PRAY!!!

of course, one corner of my mind remembers that Muslims would have some stake in seeing it as stable. still, who wants to be responsible for a bunch of worshippers getting crushed?

still a skeptic....

[Apollonaris Zeus]

The Saudi family has released a letter condeming the invasion of Iraq.

They claim that it has increased terrorism.

Now the Bush want to overthrow the saudis.

Shit if we left Saddam alone it could have done it all for US.

A II Z

[samtzu]

A II Z wrote:

Now the Bush want to overthrow the saudis.

After watching Farenheit 911, I would say it's the other way around. And they have the power to do it.

[DVD Burner]

Now the Bush want to overthrow the saudis.
A II Z

Read "The new American century." The Saudis are not what Bush and Co. are after.

Mess of an administration could get worse with four more years Mess of an administration could get worse with four more years

Date published: 10/15/2004

The image Laura Bush provided at the Republican National Convention of her husband pacing the White House lawn, pondering the decision over war, is surely her fantasy.
Think back. The first mention of invading Iraq came from Vice President Dick Cheney in August before the 2002 midterm election. As one of the founding members of the Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank, he had been advocating war with Saddam since 1995.
So the decision had already been made to have a war, and the 9/11 attacks merely provided a backdrop for the Karl Rove propaganda machine to get rolling.
And roll it did. The image that President Bush led a reluctant nation to battle is also spurious. By the time Rove was done, about 70 percent of the population was in favor of the war. The resistance, although passionate, was not able to deter that amount of propaganda.
Now they're trying to sell us on the notion that we are safer because freedom is on the march in Iraq. There is no more chance that democracy will root itself in Iraq than that John Kerry will carry Virginia.
All those men and women who died in Iraq might just as well have died in a car accident. With another turn of the Bush administration, we'll just see the accident get worse.
Page L. Knight
Kinsale

http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/ ... 04/1533858

[DVD Burner]

Troops refuse "suicide mission"


Army platoon arrested for refusing "suicide mission"

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday.

The platoon could be charged with the willful disobeying of orders, punishable by dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and up to five years confinement, said military law expert Mark Stevens, an associate professor of justice studies at Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, N.C.
[...]
The 343rd is a supply unit whose general mission is to deliver fuel and water. The unit includes three women and 14 men and those with ranking up to sergeant first class.

"I got a call from an officer in another unit early (Thursday) morning who told me that my husband and his platoon had been arrested on a bogus charge because they refused to go on a suicide mission," said Jackie Butler of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Michael Butler, a 24-year reservist. "When my husband refuses to follow an order, it has to be something major."

The platoon being held has troops from Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi and South Carolina, said Teresa Hill of Dothan, Ala., whose daughter Amber McClenny is among those being detained.

McClenny, 21, pleaded for help in a message left on her mother's answering machine early Thursday morning.

"They are holding us against our will," McClenny said. "We are now prisoners."
Of course, we are only hearing about this because some soldiers managed to alert their families in the States.
Patricia McCook said her husband, a staff sergeant, understands well the severity of disobeying orders. But he did not feel comfortable taking his soldiers on another trip.

"He told me that three of the vehicles they were to use were deadlines ... not safe to go in a hotbed like that," Patricia McCook said.

Hill said the trucks her daughter's unit was driving could not top 40 mph.

"They knew there was a 99 percent chance they were going to get ambushed or fired at," Hill said her daughter told her. "They would have had no way to fight back."
Another ominous item in this story:
Harris said conditions for the platoon have been difficult of late. Her son e-mailed her earlier this week to ask what the penalty would be if he became physical with a commanding officer, she said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Also....the green zone is supposed to be the safest in Bagdad.


Hummmm!

[geekster]

But they just grabbed a few other guys from the same unit and the mission went off without a hitch. But it is a convenient molehill, lets make a mountain out of it!

[geekster]

See, the problem is that you can not contaminate fuel with water. The water settles out. Every fuel tank in the world has water on the bottom of it which is why the fuel pickup doesnt extend all the way to the bottom of the tank.

If you have fuel "contaminated with water" you just drop a hose in the tank and start pulling it out until you get fuel.

There is something fishy about this story.

[geekster]

As a matter of fact ...

Pouring water into the tank is an old trick I learned when I was in the Army when you ran out of fuel. If you were COMPLETELY stranded in a bad spot, you could pour water into the tank. That would float the fuel that was below the fuel line pickup up high enough to be used but you had to be careful not to swamp the pickup. For the nest several fuelings you added a little alchohol to the tank every time you fueled up to dry up the water.

[Simply Joel]

Uniform Code of Military Justice

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj.htm

apply as required.

[DVD Burner]

Uniform Code of Military Justice

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj.htm

apply as required.

Thanks Joel. this will come in handy.

[geekster]

http://www.moveonplease.org/ <<-- THIS is one of the funniest sites on the net.

[diane o'thirst]

OREGONIANS! GO VOTE!!!

Just got my ballot in the mail today. You probably have yours today, too. Go check your mail, grab that sucker, fill it out and trip down to your ballot box site with it! Right now!!

It's easy. Vote in your skivvies. Vote in the kitchen. Vote in the bedroom. Vote with the cat on your shoulder. Vote in the car. One choice for President, then vote your party if that's your preference, vote your conscience on the state issues, stick it in the secrecy envelope then in the big envelope, sign the back, take it to the nice white ballot box downtown, you're done. No more calls and you can laugh at the people with the Bush/Cheney and Yes on 36 bumper stickers on their cars!

...

Hey, it's political!

[DVD Burner]

I love playing in the Bush's.

Bush 1
Bush 2

[Simply Joel]

Uniform Code of Military Justice

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj.htm

apply as required.

Thanks Joel. this will come in handy.

i hope they prosecute the reservist who refuse their duty to the full extent of the UCMJ.

[Simply Joel]

And now for a bi-partisan position...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 17, 2004

'Oops. I Told the Truth.'
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Sometimes it's useful to stand back and ask yourself: If I could vote for anyone for president other than George W. Bush or John Kerry, whom would I choose? I'd choose Bill Cosby - on the condition that he would talk as bluntly to white parents and kids about what they need to do if they want to succeed as he did to black kids and parents a few months ago.

The one thing that has gone totally missing, not only from this election, but from American politics, is national leaders who are actually ready to level with the public and even criticize their own constituencies. The columnist Michael Kinsley once observed that in American politics "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth." We could use a few really big gaffes right now. Because we have not one, but three baby booms bearing down at us, and without a massive injection of truth-telling they could all explode on the next president's watch.

The leading edge of the American baby boom generation is now just two presidential terms away from claiming its Social Security and Medicare benefits. "With unfunded entitlement liabilities at $74 trillion in today's dollars - an amount far exceeding the net worth of our entire national economy - and with payroll taxes needing to double to cover the projected costs of Social Security and Medicare, how can any serious person not call entitlement reform the transcendent domestic policy issue of our era?" asks former Commerce Secretary Peter G. Peterson, whose book on this subject, "Running on Empty," provides a blueprint for a bipartisan solution to this problem for any president daring to lead.

The second group of boomers barreling down the highway are the young people in India, China and Eastern Europe, who in this increasingly flat world will be able to compete with your kids and mine more directly than ever for high-value-added jobs. Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they'll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work.

When was the last time you met a 12-year-old who told you he or she wanted to grow up to be an engineer? When Bill Gates goes to China, students hang from the rafters and scalp tickets to hear him speak. In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears. We need a Bill Cosby-like president to tell all parents the truth: throw out your kid's idiotic video game, shut off the TV and get Johnny and Suzy to work, because there is a storm coming their way.

The third group of boomers our next president will have to deal with is from the Arab world. The Arab region has had the highest rate of population growth in the world in the last half century. It has among the highest unemployment rates in the world today. And one-third of the Arab population is under the age of 15 and will soon be entering both a barren job market and its child-bearing years. There are eight Saudis under age 15 for every one between ages 45 and 60.

This is why I believed so strongly in trying to partner with the people of Iraq to establish some sort of decent government there that might serve as a beachhead for more progressive governance in the Arab world. I have not given up hope for this, but it may turn out that we made too many mistakes and that Iraqis are too divided for such a project to succeed. If so, the next president is going to need plan B - some combination of oil conservation that reduces our exposure to this region, a new military strategy and a renewed focus on promoting better government there through diplomatic and economic means. The Arab world is not even close to educating its baby boomers with the skills needed to succeed in the 21st century. Left untended, this trend is a prescription for humiliation and suicide terrorism.

I realize that elections are no time to expect honesty from politicians. But we're in this hole because the political season used to stop on Election Day. Now it's a permanent campaign. That is simply not a luxury our next president will have. The boomers are coming - from three directions - and we will not be able to deal with them without a president with a real penchant for gaffes of honesty.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company