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| Taking a Closer Look at the Stories Ignored by the Corporate Media |
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Archive for the Month of June, 2005.
Viewing ALL NEWS articles 76 through 150 of 511.
- Military officials say new weapon uses voice frequencies; troops use weapon for first time during violent anti-West Bank separation barrier rally - US Apache helicopters have become a nightmare for Iraqi farmers and villagers who had thousands of acres of their farmlands destroyed by the flash bombs poured on them almost every day.
- The soldiers, part of a 90-strong force called the Defence Force of Rutba, said they had refused to attend training because they feared reprisals from locals if they were seen to have cooperated with the Americans.
- The US government is operating an "archipelago" of prisons around the world, many of them secret camps into which people are being "literally disappeared," a top Amnesty International official said.
- When wealthy contributors write checks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, they often get a few canapes and a drink — and a secret telephone number that grants them access to his closest advisors and even the governor himself.
- The Palestinian National Information Center reported that the Israeli army killed since the beginning of the Intifada in September 29, 2000, 4032 residents, and injured 44666. - The White House often cited Amnesty to make the case for war in Iraq. - Haiti, a country that under the current circumstances can not feed it's population, spends millions on "voter-registration", the contract of which conveniently goes to a company in the country from which the original occupying force hails.
- So, even NPR, and PRI are running with fear, CNN, and others have long since capitulated, as has the NY Times and Washington Post—so all we have left are we few on the internet, and at some point, we’ll be shut down, and some of us will probably be “persons of interest” and possibly arrested for sedition and speaking out—as happened in Nazi Germany. - Don't be surprised if, within the next year or so, a fresh, new discovery hits the world's media outlets. A well-hidden, undetectable, long-suspected, and cleverly disguised WMD facility in the ladies lounge of the third palace of the second wife of the suspected, illegitimate son of Saddam Hussein. It was hard to find, but by golly, they did it! - Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the United States has spent $990 million on U.S. "embassy" operations there, but none of that has been put toward building a permanent home for the U.S. diplomatic presence, according to a report for Congress.
- This latest news about abuse at Guantanamo Bay is just another example in the never ending saga of mistreatment of prisoners that has been reported by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the Red Cross. Which begs another question: when is someone going to toss Rumsfeld into a cage?
- Life savings have been reduced to black, acrid smoke rising in columns across the town. “That is how we get rent, that is how we get food,” she said. - Military recruiters are known for their flashy tactics: television ads, omnipresent brochures, recruiting ships, trucks and vans, and even a free Army video game kids can download off the Internet. Yet, the Army hasn't met its recruitment goals in three months. - Economic mobility - moving from one income group to another over a lifetime - has actually stopped rising in the United States, researchers say. Some recent studies suggest it has even declined over the last generation.
- Fanatical rebels have terrorized northern Uganda for years, enslaving and torturing those who seek safety in squalid camps and at town facilities
- Two new and startling discoveries announced by Bev Harris and BlackBoxVoting.org indicate that Diebold Optical Scan Machines are vulnerable to, and designed for, hacking that would modify the results of an election.
- One day in 2000 after lecturing about risks of the pain-reliever Vioxx, Harvard University professor Lee Simon got a call that shocked him. It was from Louis M. Sherwood, then a senior vice president at Merck & Co. Inc., maker of Vioxx. Sherwood challenged Simon's view - later proved correct - that Vioxx could cause more strokes than a rival drug.
Sherwood didn't stop there. He said "he would hurt my career if I continued to lecture," Simon recalled. "I was astonished."
- The Department of Housing and Urban Development is leading the charge to deny assistance to the families who need it the most. - He said the US, not Venezuela, should face scrutiny by the Organisation of American States.
- John Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful. Bolton felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
- The federal government has the power to prevent sick patients from smoking home-grown marijuana that a doctor recommended to relieve their chronic pain, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a setback for the medical marijuana movement.
- The US Labor Force: One Foot in the Third World
- Even its recent "democratic" repackaging cannot halt the headlong slide of the American imperium and its legitimacy. - The 2002 coup d'état, in fact, bore all the hallmarks of past U.S. interventions in Latin America. A popular president, struggling to change the situation of social exclusion and poverty in his country, and reassert local sovereignty at the expense of U.S. political and economic interests, was forced out of office by high-ranking members of the military and representatives of the country's oligarchy. Hours after it had taken control, the U.S. State Department praised the new regime. - As poverty leads to a surge in thefts, jails are bursting. Children and adults share cells, often awaiting trial beyond the time they'd likely serve.
- U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted. They total about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005. The ongoing, underreporting of the dead in Iraq, is not accurate. The DoD is deliberately reducing the figures. A review of many foreign news sites show that actual deaths are far higher than the newly reduced ones. Iraqi civilian casualties are never reported but International Red Cross, Red Crescent and UN figures indicate that as of 1 January 2005, the numbers are just under 100,000.
- Careless mistake reveals subversion of Windows by NSA.
- THE personal computer of Syria’s British-born first lady was bugged by Israeli military intelligence to build up a profile of her husband, President Bashar al-Assad, it emerged last week. - The Central Intelligence Agency gave ex-Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos at least $10 million in cash over the last decade, as well as high-tech surveillance equipment that he used against his political opponents, the Center for Public Integrity has learned.
- “Congress should not be in the business of slipping taxpayer subsidies into large bills to benefit individual corporations, especially executives from a company that perpetrated one of the greatest corporate frauds in American history." - "..attackers pulled him out of the car and brutally assaulted him. The assailants threatened Mr. Hook to keep silent. A bouncer at the bar intervened and broke up the attack. Mr. Hook was hospitalized in an Emergency Room with severe trauma to his face and head, including a fractured jaw, and a herniated disk. He is heavily medicated today and unable to speak to the media."
- The ”war on terror”, identified in Amnesty International's annual report as a new source of human rights abuses, is threatening to expand to Latin America, targeting indigenous movements that are demanding autonomy and protesting free-market policies and ”neo-liberal” globalization.
- Will American soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who figured out that they were sent in for oil and Empire be able to turn their weapons on their own brothers and sisters and cousins and friends?
- For American neo-conservatives, rendition stories are fun. Don't be surprised if at dinner tables, they drink and laugh and talk about Muslims degrading Muslims. - New Jersey is using an anti-terrorism law for the first time to try six animal rights activists charged with harassing and vandalizing a company that made use of animals to test its drugs. - In their exclusive clubs, central bankers and their CIA-CFR minions are toasting the gullibility of the American public and having a good laugh. While portraying Watergate as a victory for press freedom and democracy, they were again able to make a mockery out of both.
- A photo poem about Bush and the Iraq War. - The Manhattan District Attorney, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are jointly probing a tax-shelter plan run out of the Isle of Man. - 15 men dressed in traditional white dishdasha robes, their hands tied behind their backs, emerge from a house and are lined up on the ground in front of a wall, bowed heads on their knees. "Bad guy, bad guy, bad guy," a US soldier repeats, following advice from the agents.
- The defendants at last week's trial never met the lawyer who argued their case. They weren't allowed to introduce medical or other evidence. There was no cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, because there were none: the defendants have confessed, but said they did so under torture that included rape with a metal rod.
- The current American administration, with its neo-conservatives and their dangerous ideologies (that match the myths of Israel’s ideologues), declared war on our region and its nations. This war targets the forces that disagree with their plans for domination, influence, and colonization. Two projects are in the forefront: The Zionist “Greater Israel” and the American “Greater Middle East.”
- The Pentagon war to annex Iraq as a profitable region of US capital's empire is still raging, long after the fragile pretexts for invasion have torn like tissue. The sheer brutality and colonial-style character of the occupation have unleashed a firestorm of resistance that enjoys widespread support in the Iraqi population. But not many people in the US are seeing the reality of life for Iraqis and GIs on TV news or in newspapers.
- Children living in military bases are twice as likely to be killed by a parent or caregiver than other children. Is this because military parents, who are schooled in violence, are more violent towards their kids? - For the first time since the Cold War, global military spending exceeded $1 trillion in 2004, nearly half of it by the United States, a prominent European think tank said Tuesday. However, the figures may be on the low end, the institute said, as countries are increasingly outsourcing services related to armed conflict, such as military training and providing logistics in combat zones, without classifying them as military expenses.
- Famine and malnutrition in Niger have reached critical levels while appeals by both the country's prime minister and the UN have failed to garner a response.
- The corporate world has certainly been successful in indoctrinating North Americans in the mentality of full-blown capitalism, convincing us to accept its harsh divide between rich and poor. - Ongoing insecurity in Iraq is hampering the clearance of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO), forcing international organisations to leave the country or halt operations. - "We are now living under another dictatorship, you see what kind of democracy we have, seems more like bloodacracy. You see what kind of liberation they brought: unemployment, murder and destruction. We must resist this, it is the right of any occupied people to resist. Especially the women, we can use the simplest weapons of resistance, a financial boycott." - The CIA would be given authority to coordinate all human intelligence activities overseas, including those carried out by Pentagon and FBI personnel, under legislation proposed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill.
- Witnesses to the May 13 killings say Uzbek troops opened fire without warning on a crowd of unarmed demonstrators, among them women and children, who were protesting about poverty and government repression. - The Colombian inspector general is demanding that Congress review a diplomatic treaty with the United States that shields US soldiers operating on Colombian soil from local prosecution for misdeeds committed here.
- A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents. - Bolivian President Carlos Mesa was driven out of office yesterday, following weeks of escalating protests demanding nationalization of the country’s natural gas resources.
- When Google Inc.'s 19 million daily users look up a long-lost classmate, send e-mail or bounce around the Web more quickly with its new Web Accelerator, records of that activity don't go away.
- A local Iraqi reporter went to look at the condition of Falluja's school buildings, and found that since the U.S.-led assault on the city last November, hardly any of the promised reconstruction has taken place. Locals also continue to report feeling humiliated by U.S. forces at checkpoints to the city.
- Dozens of Iraqi prisoners rioted against guards in the United States-run Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and pelted them with stones. - I had three FBI agents come to my NJ home as a result of benign posts in a Yahoo news forum. - A U.S. rocket booster that came down into waters off Newfoundland's Grand Banks in April was carrying up to 2.25 tonnes of highly toxic chemicals. - A troubling shift is underway in how lawmakers censor media in this country. - On a recent trip to NY City (last weekend) three gun-mounted, armored tanks/vehicles were driving through the streets of Manhattan. - Ahlam Najam just needed a job. At 25, she had a university degree in education but could not find work as teacher. When Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), subsidiary of the U.S. firm Halliburton offered her a job as a security guard at a U.S. base in Iraq, she took it. On May 18 last year she was shot twice in the head as she waited for a taxi to take her to work. - The domestic radical groups and labor activists, which visibly constitute a threat to the established political order, are now conveniently lumped together with foreign Islamic terrorists, suggesting that the PATRIOT anti-terror laws together with the Big Brother law enforcement apparatus are eventually intended to be used against potential domestic "adversaries".
- President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries. - The accounts of four Iraqis working for Western news organizations who say they were abused by American troops in January 2004 sound hauntingly familiar to the horrors of Abu Ghraib that emerged four months later. But the episode has received little media attention. - From the Pentagon as of January 14th 2005,figures have been released at some 1361 U.S personnel killed and just over 10,000 wounded from the Iraq war and occupation. Is this a true reflection of the actual casualties or a manipulation of the figures ? - The scale of Israel's illegal land grab in the occupied territories was disclosed yesterday when the government's own investigation found at least £9 million of taxpayers' money was recently used for illegal Jewish outposts.
- In late May, Bush and England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair received personal invitations to attend a session of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI). The WTI, made up of thousands of people worldwide including many preeminent scholars and dignitaries, seeks to reclaim justice regarding the Iraqi invasion. The group was formed two years ago with the intent to document the war crimes orchestrated by Bush and Blair and eventually bring both heads of state to justice because of what group leaders say is “an arrogant flaunting of world opinion and established law.” - As is the case in other industries, meatpacking and poultry workers have suffered the impact of the Bush administration's collusion with industry giants like Tyson, a fact that has permitted "government agencies themselves [to] give production priority over worker safety."
- US influence in Indonesia through economic and business ties over the past few decades has also been mirrored in the military field as well. - Top House Democrat Charles Rangel complained on Monday that the Bush administration's decision to concoct a "fraudulent" war in Iraq was as bad as "the Holocaust."
- THE INTERNATIONAL FORECASTER editor Bob Chapman writes: Rumors have been circulating in Washington for the last year that a coup d’etat against George W. Bush and the neocons is being seriously contemplated in certain circles.
- "Richard Nixon was forced to resign because of Watergate and the “feeding frenzy” over it initiated by the Washington Post. Yet, this same Post has been silent about the Iraqi-related lies of George W. Bush! Why did the Post ignore the CIA connections to Watergate? Did a Shadow Government bring Nixon down because of his peace overtures to Vietnam and the Soviet Union?" - I remember that day all too well. I was standing in front of my TV. I had just awakened and flipped it on, intending to zap the clicker to ESPN to catch the latest sports news, a typical daily habit that occurs just before I stumble into the kitchen to make my coffee. By chance, the tube was set to NBC, where the plastic Today show commentators were talking about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. So I never changed the channel. I just stood there, eyelids glued apart, and watched as plane number two glided into the south tower, and into history.
- Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on a single defector : 100 - Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents : 0 - Amount for which George W. Bush successfully sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car in 1999 : $2,500
Pages for June, 2005
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