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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 151 through 225 of 511.
- The bill would grant so-called "administrative subpoena" authority to the FBI, letting the bureau write and approve its own search orders, without judicial approval in advance, for any tangible thing it deems relevant to an intelligence investigation. - Even after reducing its recruiting target for May, the Army missed it by about 25 percent, Army officials said on Tuesday. The shortfall would have been even bigger had the Army stuck to its original goal for the month. - The Justice Department has decided that most health care employees can't be prosecuted for stealing personal data under a privacy law intended to protect medical information. "It looks like they decided on the outcome for political reasons, namely the health care industry's desire to get out from criminal prosecution."
- Zimbabwe is preparing for a two-day general strike called by opposition groups in protest at a huge number of arrests across the country's cities - Sixteen private American security guards are under investigation for shooting at U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians during a three-hour spree west of Baghdad, the military said Thursday. - In what could be the most business-friendly climate since the days of President McKinley, President Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress are moving to extend corporate tax breaks, pass pension reforms, allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and limit lawsuits - including a settlement of asbestos litigation that has driven 70 companies into bankruptcy.
- Some members of the Bush administration have taken a cue from a classic John Wayne Western and are advising their boss to take the film's advice – "Never apologize" – when dealing with Muslims." - Edward S. Lampert made $1.02 billion, while his firm, ESL Investments, raked in a 69 percent return on investment, largely due to Lampert’s deal-making in the merger of Kmart and Sears. While thousands of Kmart and Sears workers have lost their jobs the price of Kmart stock soared after the merger.
- So who do we have to thank for this? According to the official story, TheFaceBook was founded by 3 students from the CIA’s favorite breeding ground of Harvard University. - At a time when our schools and city services are straining to stretch every tax dollar, we have found a story of government waste that is simply staggering. Hundreds of millions of dollars a year are thrown away, or given away, or simply lost. - David Cay Johnston, the invaluable New York Times reporter who specializes in our tax system, has come up with some staggering figures on what he calls "the hyper-rich," the wealthiest one-thousandth of the population, and their taxes.
- "Big tobacco is one of the top donors to Republicans and it is getting what it paid for."
- Asked to predict who would win in ’04, I said that, again, Bush would lose, but I was confident that in the four years between 2000 and 2004 creative propaganda and the fixing of election officials might very well be so perfected as to insure an official victory for Mr. Bush. - ......the dead man had been trained to be one of the September 11 pilots but was left behind, only to be tracked down and killed by CIA or FBI assassins. The woman, who says in the program that the September 11 attacks were instigated by the Bush family for oil and power, then is targeted, presumably to silence her.
- A day after students kicked military recruiters off campus, they returned to SFSU. When two activists attempted to hand out anti-recruitment leaflets by the recruiters' tables, eight police officers surrounded them and forcibly removed them from their own student center, pushing them and twisting one activist's arm in blatant violation of their basic civil liberties. - A senior US military chief has admitted "good, honest" Iraqis are fighting American forces. Major General Joseph Taluto said he could understand why some ordinary people would take up arms against the US military because "they're offended by our presence".
- Thousands of people are detained in Iraq without due process in apparent violation of international law, the United Nations said on Wednesday, adding that 6,000 of the country's 10,000 prisoners were in the hands of the U.S. military.
- ....yet another visual reminded of how society is slipping back into a Stasi-like climate whereby everyone is trained to be suspicious.
- The opening of the new oil pipeline from Azerbaijan, through Georgia, to Ceyhan, Turkey represents a triumph for U.S. imperial policy over Russian ambitions in the southern Caucasus - and the culmination of a 13-year campaign to open up the Caspian region to Western oil multinationals. - To a considerable extent, Bolton was one of Bush’s primary fixers. - Hundreds of soldiers have deserted the Afghan National Army complaining of poor conditions and fierce resistance from the Taleban, US officials say. - After years of suffering under U.S. backed dictatorships, the majority of the people in South America have rejected neo-liberal policies and have voted for left-leaning governments in the most recent elections. SOA Watch, the organization started by Bourgeois, now has the chance to ask the elected leaders of these countries to pull their troops out of training at the school. - Foreign capitalists are getting rich, and intend to go on getting rich, from these resources. They restrict the possibilities that this wealth, which should belong to us, might be used to benefit the lives of all Bolivians. The capitalists, whether local or foreign, puts profits and her or his own personal benefit above the collective and national interest. - The U.S. Special Operations Command has hired three firms to produce newspaper stories, television broadcasts and Web sites to spread American propaganda overseas.
- Scientists funded by the US government have used genetic engineering to make a virus 100 percent lethal. - A London-based Israeli couple are at the centre of one of the world's largest industrial espionage and computer hacking scandals. - The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked on Thursday a peaceful demonstration organized by a number of disabled Palestinians in wheel-chairs in support of the people of Bil'in village's anti-wall rallies.
- In addition to the mass killings of Iraqi civilians, U.S. forces deliberately committed cultural genocide against Iraqi national heritage, and Iraqi treasures. “Not even the Nazis would have allowed such crimes”, wrote the Indian philosopher, Aijaz Ahmad. Ahmed added; “Every single Article of the Geneva Convention and the U.N. Charter was violated, and a whole range of war crimes committed, with impunity. Yet, not a single member of the so-called ‘international community’ has come forward to say so: not Kofi Annan and his bureaucrats at the U.N., not the leaders of the Franco-German alliance [for political opportunism] or any other member of the Security Council, not the head of any Arab state” was able to whisper a word of resistance.
- Expressing alarm, public broadcasters and their supporters in Congress interpreted the move as an escalation of a Republican-led campaign against a perceived liberal bias in their programming. That effort was initiated by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's own chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson.
- Like Halliburton, Christ Inc. has become the latest recipient of taxpayer largesse, having won the contract to keep the media out of the news business, and to ensure that power speaks to truth, as opposed to the other way around. In recent months the escalating violence in Iraq and mounting evidence of US-run torture chambers has been dutifully ignored by the Christian News Network, a.k.a. “The Missing White Girl Network” who never miss an opportunity, these days, to provide their theo-con masters with a platform to discredit the administration's naysayers and whistleblowers. - This partially came out in the national media last week but the spin was that it was just a case of blowback and that these US trained commandos had come back to haunt their former handlers. The truth is that they are still working for the US government in protecting drug routes to keep the wheels of Wall Street oiled.
- Halliburton’s Kazakhstan operations reportedly violated customs laws by shifting imported equipment to operations that were not exempt from customs duties. - India's economic boom is causing unsustainable environmental damage and is blinding people to the misery of hundreds of millions of poor, prize-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy said. - The Bush administration though is pulling no punches with Iraqification. It's a Pandora's box: inside one will find the Battle of Algiers, Vietnam, El Salvador, Colombia. All point to the same destination: civil war. - A Saudi Arabian couple was in custody Friday, accused of turning a young Indonesian woman into a virtual slave, forcing her to clean, cook and care for their children while she was threatened and sexually assaulted.
- While wandering down the isles of this megastore...I discovered a wall of porn!.. not segmented by curtains or velvet ropes, but literally right above the children's movies... - An extensive research study confirms what advocates have been saying for over fifty years: children of gay and lesbian parents are doing just fine. - The Kryptos sculpture incorporates a coded message made up of thousands of letters punched through a nearly 4 meter (12ft) high copper scroll. Though it was installed where only CIA agents and cryptographers could see it, amateur code-breakers have worked away on transcripts posted on the CIA's website. - A cow has tested positive for mad cow disease in the United States, agriculture officials said, opening the door to possible changes in testing procedures in the US beef industry. - In less than a week, state officials are poised to approve a new Diebold electronic-voting system. But the system showed problems in security, protection of voter privacy and printing of a paper trail during testing this spring. State elections authorities have obscured the full nature of those problems by blacking out parts of test reports that have been released under the state Public Records Act and declaring other documents too full of Diebold "trade secrets" for public release.
- "The Army is looking at a number of scenarios, including accidental death, attack by an intruder or infiltrator -- and fragging, which is the killing or wounding of a fellow soldier."
- Ephraim Halevy, the former chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence service and the current national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, says plans have been made for a substantial U.S. military presence in the Middle East lasting decades.
- A study of media citations of think tanks in 2004—the 10th year of collecting such data—finds that think tanks of the right and center still predominate, despite a slight increase in citations of left-leaning think tanks.
- Nearly two dozen states have passed legislation allowing their transportation systems to operate toll roads and okaying private firms to build and run them. Converting existing roads to toll corridors – thereby forcing taxpayers to pay each time they use roads for which they’ve already paid. - More than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the FBI nabbed two Arab grocers loading boxes onto a tractor-trailer outside a drab gray apartment building here. The cargo: stolen Kellogg's cereal. To this day, the grocers remain on the federal government's list of terrorism cases, although they never were charged with a terrorism-related crime. Often cited to emphasize the government's success fighting terrorism, the list is made up in large part of men caught up in the post-Sept. 11 dragnet that targeted Middle Easterners.
- Florida Investigator Who Got Too Close to Florida "Coin Gate" Silenced by Jeb Bush's Gangsters - Increasing numbers of young American children are showing signs of serious malnourishment, fueled by a greater prevalence of hunger in the United States, while, paradoxically, two-thirds of the US population is either overweight or obese.
- A military spokesman said the soldiers started shooting when a car came too close to an American armored patrol. - US Military in Iraq announcement: "To the 68 year-old man whose house we burst into in the middle of the night, firing stun grenades, and who we then handcuffed, hooded and dragged off to interrogate and then discovered was entirely innocent because we are a bunch of incompetent boobies, we regret any inconvenience."
- CAFTA is a minefield, with many deadly bombs buried in its thick brush of text. Yet, have you heard any major network or newspaper cry out? I have heard George Bush's best patriotic voice on radio in sound bites from speeches telling us what a boon this is to America, Central America and Freedom. Oh yeah, at least kiss us before you screw us. The speeches are his idea of foreplay.
- MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal. - The paper, produced by the Cabinet Office on July 21, 2002, is incomplete because the last page is missing. The following is a transcript rather than the original document in order to protect the source. - A few years ago while in San Francisco, Bob Woodward made an intriguing remark. He told the San Francisco Chronicle he wouldn’t expose Deep Throat until the man died but that when he died people would begin to research the case and one thing would lead to another. Woodward said it would all lead to a “fantastic” discovery - A former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush's first term now believes the official story about the collapse of the WTC is 'bogus,' saying it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.
- Former executives of Custer Battles -- an American firm accused of stealing millions from Iraq reconstruction projects and banned from further government contracts -- have continued doing contracting work and have formed new companies to bid on such projects. - The document titled "Secret ORCON: Interrogation Log Detainee 063" included the following entries
- Despite calls for more transparency after revelations about the side effects of ibuprofen, the FDA has withheld 28 pages of information on a new wave of painkillers
- Senate admits failing to stop 'holocaust' of public executions - Forty stories tall, with twirling arms as long as several semis, at least 243 wind towers would be scattered over 50 square miles in what the wind industry says will be the most productive land-based wind farm on Earth. Farmers who toil to make $50,000 in a good year could rent their land to developers and add half that much--guaranteed--by watching the wind blow.
- "We want people to think about it: Do you want to give up all your rights and live in a police state? I don't think they can make us secure if they're bombing other countries. To be perfectly honest, I'm in far more danger from my own government than from any terrorist." - With the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in serious trouble, a prominent business leader recently laid it on the line: Business groups are prepared to cut off campaign contributions to House members who oppose the pact. "If you [lawmakers] are going to vote against it, it's going to cost you." - A panel set up by the Counsel on Foreign Relations wants Americans to stop thinking of themselves as United States citizens and to think of themselves as just North Americans. The panel has published a report called “Building a North American Community” in which it proposes a single common border around the three countries. It seems unfortunate that Asia is not adjacent to us so that they could provide even larger numbers of even cheaper labor for the corporate citizens of this new world order, that has now completely bought out our government. - Users of Microsoft's new China-based Internet portal were blocked from using the words "democracy", "freedom" and "human rights" in an apparent move by the US software giant to appease Beijing. Other words that could not be used include "Taiwan independence" and "demonstration". - "Capitalism is the road to destabilisation, violence and war between brothers."
- The United States constitutes 4 per cent of the world population....Americans use 50 million tons of paper annually - consuming more than 850 million trees....
- You have no secrets from the booming electronic personal information industry - and you should be worried. - 25 Reasons to Impeach George W. Bush - Jewish-Zionist plans for war against Iraq had been in place for years. - President George W. Bush’s practiced smiles and his cronies’ anxious denials can’t hide the truth: Exposures of prisoner abuse, the military recruiting crisis, the instability of Washington’s client regime in Baghdad, and especially the powerful resistance movement are slamming the U.S.-led occupation. - Regardless of cast, color, creed or national identities, the world is divided into two main opposing social classes, the tiny Haves and the massive Have-nots. The main driving force of modern history is simply the struggle between these two classes. Religious polarization is merely another tool in the hands of the Haves to keep the Have-nots busy, heads down, in their myriad struggles lest they pause long enough to behold their own emaciated selves and the folds of fat around the frames of the slave masters.
- The official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a key part of our current self-deception. Anyone who honestly looks at the evidence has difficulty finding anything in the official story of 9/11 that is believable. It’s not just one or two strange twists or holes in the story, the whole thing is bogus from start to end.
- The bill would repeal limitations on a President holding office for a maximum of two terms. - Is it possible the MEK—with a track record for violence against not only Iranians but Americans as well—is responsible for the deadly attacks inside Iran? Nobody knows for sure but with the Strausscon's well-advertised desire to foment chaos and bring down the mullahocracy, it should not be overlooked. It should also not be overlooked that Scott Ritter and others have predicted something would happen in Iran this month. - The disease, which has been under control in the area for more than 50 years, has been rising steadily since the conflict in 2003. - U.S. employers have fired or otherwise retaliated against more than 10,000 workers so far this year for demonstrating support for a union, according to labor rights advocates. Every 23 minutes, a worker suffers retaliation just because they supported a union at work.
Pages for June, 2005
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