Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Eavesdropping and the Information Awareness Office


Govt. Must Reveal Some Eavesdropping Info
By ELIZABETH LeSURE (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
May 31, 2006 6:11 AM EDT

NEW YORK - Justice Department employees involved in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Sept. 11 detainees must disclose whether they know of any government monitoring of conversations between the detainees and their attorneys, a judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven Gold ruled in response to a motion by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human rights group representing the detainees. It filed the motion after the public disclosure in December of a secret government program that allowed investigators to eavesdrop on international communications between Americans and people suspected of terrorist ties.

The class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in New York in 2002 on behalf of hundreds of Arab and Muslim men who were detained and deported as part of the government's investigation into the 2001 terrorist attacks.

At about the same time period, the Information Awarenness Office was being formed by DARPA


New York Times

November 9, 2002

INTELLIGENCE

Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans.

By JOHN MARKOFF

The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe — including the United States.

As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.

Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization. But Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States.

Admiral Poindexter, who has described the plan in public documents and speeches but declined to be interviewed, has said that the government needs to "break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence agency analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.

"We must become much more efficient and more clever in the ways we find new sources of data, mine information from the new and old, generate information, make it available for analysis, convert it to knowledge, and create actionable options," he said in a speech in California earlier this year.

Admiral Poindexter quietly returned to the government in January to take charge of the Office of Information Awareness at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa. The office is responsible for developing new surveillance technologies in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

And this from The Memory Hole....

The government's Information Awareness Office--you know, the Defense agency that's running the Total Information Awareness Program, the huge database that will track everything about everyone in the US and beyond, helmed by convicted felon John Poindexter--keeps getting more shy. First, the IAO took down the biographies of its senior staff. (The Memory Hole has mirrored them here.)

More on Information Awareness Office

Monday, May 29, 2006

Clean Edge Act? Please...not another tricky name

Yaknow...Just looking at the name of this "Clean Edge?" bill sends me the signal that it probably won't cut it. Is it really written to benefit "We The People"? Or is it leaving the controlls in the hands of Corporate government?
What made this country great, is free enterprise and the imagination of the American people. At the turn of the century many of our farms had their own blacksmith shop in the barn. Self sufficient farm families traded with other families and invented farm machines to suit their needs. Anyone that wanted to build and market an automobile was free to do so. By the 1920's there were over 200 kinds of automobiles. There was of course gasoline power, but also steam powered, electric powered, and a gas/electric powered vehicles. The gas electric had a motor/ generator in line with the gas motor and differential, which...yes...put power back in the batteries when coasting or braking.Sound familiar? Well take a look at the Toyota Prius, an environmental friendly car that gets 50 mpg.
Great...we say. Look what we can buy, if we pay more tax because we are using less gas. Of course, "We The People" can do much better if we can develope cottage industries, and return to our own blacksmith shops. I dream about this kind of freedom, and pray that the Corporate Government isn't able to tune in to my thoughts.
Anyhoo...getting back to Toyota...In 2002 Toyota came out with a prototype e-car that surpassed 100 mpg, in tests, and was advertized on Toyotas web site. It is a supercharged 4 cylindar deisel\electric, that stores energy when coasting or braking. There was an artical in The London Times on this car, and there were people trying to buy one, but no one could find anything out from Toyota. So there are a few of them around, that have been road tested, with excellent reports on performance and milage, but it is the Prius,which came on the market in 1997 that is on the market. It is a shame that yet another efficient car has dissappeared from the market at a time when we should be doing everything possible to reduce co2, and conserve energy. This is just another example of what Al Gore is saying in his latest movie..."An Inconvenient Truth.I don't know what kind of bill we need, but I believe that if it has to have a name, that it should be something like "Power To The People", or "Free Enterprise For Everyone", or maybe "Freedom".That's what we truelly need in this country is freedom. Not the freedom that the Bush administration says we are fighting for in Iraq. Not the Neoconserative treachery that puts tricky names on every agenda in order to control every aspect of business and government. But the old fashioned freedom that this country was founded on.


Democrats Unveil Energy Plan


The National Security-Clean Energy Link

R. James Woolsey , director of the CIA from 1993-1995 and now co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding democracy and fighting terrorism, is embracing the vision of a robust, clean-energy future. Woolsey and fellow co-chairman George Schultz, recently authored a paper (PDF) entitled Oil and Security, describing the national security reasons for diversifying our energy portfolio.
Woolsey spoke with John Gartner about the risks of petroleum dependency and the emerging clean energy technologies that could reduce oil imports

Is it ok to name this energy plan after the name of a corporation?(Clean Edge Inc.). They are a consulting firm on clean technologies.

From their web site:
Clean Edge, Inc., with offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland, Ore., is a leading research and publishing firm that helps companies, investors, and policymakers understand and profit from clean technologies. Through its research and reports, conferences and events, online publications, and strategic consulting services, Clean Edge tracks and analyzes clean-tech markets, trends, and opportunities. Launched in 2001 by environmental and high-tech business pioneers Ron Pernick and Joel Makower, Clean Edge and its network of partners and affiliates offer unparalleled insight and intelligence. For more information visit www.cleanedge.com

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Where is Toyota's ES3 100mpg (Eco Spirit Cubic)?


In 2002 Toyota came out with a prototype e-car that surpassed 100 mpg, in tests, and was advertized on Toyotas web site. There was an artical in The London Times on this car, and there were people trying to buy one, but no one could find anything out from Toyota. So there are a few of them around, that have been road tested, with excellent reports on performance and milage, but it is the Prius,which came on the market in 1997 that is on the market. It is a shame that yet another efficient car has dissappeared from the market at a time when we should be doing everything possible to reduce co2, and conserve energy. This is another example of what Al Gore is saying in his latest movie..."An Inconvenient Truth".

In 2002 Toyota came out with a prototype e-car that surpassed 100 mpg, in tests, and was advertized on Toyotas web site. There was an artical in The London Times on this car, and there were people trying to buy one, but no one could find anything out from Toyota. So there are a few of them around, that have been road tested, with excellent reports on performance and milage, but it is the Prius,which came on the market in 1997 that is on the market. It is a shame that yet another efficient car has dissappeared from the market at a time when we should be doing everything possible to reduce co2, and conserve energy. This is another example of what Al Gore is saying in his latest movie..."An Inconvenient Truth".

While the media has focussed its attention on hybrid technology, led by the Toyota Prius, auto engineers have been competing to develop so-called "3-liter cars." This appellation refers to a vehicle that consumes no more than three liters of fuel per 100 kilometers.

Toyota's ES3 (Eco Spirit cubic) ups the ante by reaching the 100km goal on less than 2.7 liters of diesel fuel (EC mode, measured by Toyota). That's well over 100 miles per gallon.

Toyota's Diesel Particulate-NOx Reduction System (DPNR) uses new catalyst technology to bring diesel emissions down to Euro Step IV standards for gasoline-powered vehicles.

Toyota took a multi-pronged approach to achieving efficiency.

Over 100 miles per gallon
First, the ES3 trims curb weight down to 700kg with its aluminum alloy frame, magnesium frame seats, lightweight polymers and other light-yet-strong materials.

Second it uses an aerodynamic form, measuring a drag coefficient of just Cd 0.23.

Third, its powertrain features Toyota's D-4D direct-injection common rail diesel engine with CVT (continuously variable transmission).

Ultra fuel efficient 1.4 liter D-4D direct injection-diesel common rail turbo engine with DPNR (Diesel Particulate-NOx Reduction System).

Adopting techniques from Toyota's hybrid success, the ES3 employs regenerative braking and "Stop & Go" power train management to turn the engine off when the vehicle is stationary.

As part of its total environmental effort, Toyota also carefully chooses materials that are recyclable and do not pose hazards. "Bio-plastic" interior furnishings are made of biodegradable plant materials, wire harnesses are PVC free, and many interior and exterior components such as the bumpers are made of TSOP (Toyota Super Olefin Polymer) which can be recycled to make new parts.

Toyota Displays ES3 at Motor Show in Frankfurt

Saturday, May 27, 2006





Bring em on

'Sent the wrong message'
The Texan said that he regretted saying "bring 'em on" when responding in July 2003 to a question about the Iraqi insurgency.

On Thursday, Bush said the remark was "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong message to people".

"I learnt some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know. "Wanted, dead or alive"; that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted," he said.

Well....Dubya sounded allmost appologetic the way he was talking the other day, but today is another day, and in the Neoconservative world means another photo-op to make another impression. So forgot anything you saw or heard, because we have some new reality for you...

President Delivers Commencement Address at the United States Military Academy at West Point
Mitchie Stadium
United States Military Academy at West Point
West Point, New York

Friday, May 26, 2006

WMD'S~TONY BLAIR~DAVID KELLY~and the BBC

A British Take on Weapons Of Mass Destruction

In the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, Tony Blair was promoting the same stories about weapons of mass destruction that were being told by the neoconservative's in the US government. In the same way that the Neocons were questioned about WMD's, Tony was confronted with facts that didn't ring true with his accusations that Iraq possesed them. BBC news, a publicly owned news service, known for their true and unbiased reporting, was on the carpet for reporting information that was contrary to that reported by Blair. Before it was over, the head of BBC news resigned, along with two of his best reporters, and David Kelly supposedly commited suicide.

Bill Moyers "NOW" on PBS did an excellent report on this, back when it was an hour long program, and was probably the most informative and comprehensive program on TV.

NOW

4-26-04

Hutton Inquiry Who's Who
In July 2003 the British Government asked Lord Hutton "urgently to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. Kelly." Dr. David Kelly
had become the center of a battle between the Blair government and the BBC over the accuracy of the reports presented by the government in the lead up to war with Iraq. As many of the players will not be familiar to American audiences, a who's who of the key players is below. (Review a timeline of the scandal and inquiry.)

~LINKS~

MSNBC

wikipedia.org

fromthewilderness

Guardian Books

timesonline

Thursday, May 25, 2006

The letter from Iran


Iranians Fault Rice's Dismissal of Letter

Iran has requested through intermediaries direct talks with Washington over its nuclear program, the Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing US officials, Iranian analysts and foreign diplomats. The requests follow a May 8 letter from Iran's hardline leader Mahmood Ahmadinejad to US President George W. Bush, the first such communication between an Iranian and US leader in more than 25 years.
This letter has been brushed off by Condaleeza Rice, and been mentioned in most of the news media, however the actual text of the message has not been published on tv news channels, including PBS. I'm sure that no one will agree on all the points mentioned in the letter, but it bears reading, and should be presented to the public, rather than be available to the few that seek it out on the internet. This is a historical document, that deserves a reply, but this administration ignores it as being below their notice? We had a president once...a Rhode's Scholar, who would have answered this letter without delay, if for no other reason, because he was the president.

LINK to unofficial translation of letter

A HISTORICAL LETTER TO PRESIDENT CLINTON


There is nothing like an old fashioned letter to communicate with someone. We have had a postal service since the Civil War, and important letters and documents have been shared through the history of this country in this manner. For fun, I entered "letter" into the Google search engine. The 3rd. answer came up with the letter to President Clinton from the Project For A New American Century "PNAC". A historical document indeed, which shows how this Neoconservative think tank used a letter to try to influence President Clinton in his dealings with Iraq.


THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY

January 26, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.


Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.


Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick











These same people are, of course in important positions in our current Corporate Government, and are still using their influence to further the ambitions outlined on the PNAC web site. The echo's of their beliefs have been heard over and over in the media, and used by the members of the Bush administration, since his first day of office. I believe that one of the most ludicrous things we witnessed, was the appoointment of John Bolton. as our representative to the UN, by George W Bush. Of course, it is difficult to follow everything that has been done by this evil cabal, but the internet is still alive and well, so maybe the best thing to do is write a letter, or at least print out some letters from these historical times.

Robert Bruce Zoellick (born July 25, 1953) is the current United States Deputy Secretary of State. Before his present position, he served as United States Trade Representative from February 7, 2001 until February 22, 2005. He is expected to resign in mid-2006 to return to the private sector. [1]

Robert Zoellick also serves or has served as a board member on a number of private and public organizations: Alliance Capital, Said Holdings, and the Precursor Group; a member of the advisory boards of Enron and Viventures, a venture fund; as a Director of the Aspen Institute's Strategy Group, Council on Foreign Relations, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the World Wildlife Advisory Council; and a member of Secretary William Sebastian Cohen's Defense Policy Board.[2][3] He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

*******************
Robert James Woolsey Jr. (born September 21, 1941) is a foreign policy specialist and former Director of Central Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency (February 5, 1993 - January 10, 1995).

Woolsey was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1941 where he graduated from Tulsa Central High School. In 1963 he received his BA from Stanford University (Phi Beta Kappa), and in 1965 his MA from Oxford University—where he was a Rhodes Scholar—and an LLB from Yale Law School in 1968.

Woolsey has served in the U.S. government as:

Advisor (during military service) on the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT 1), Helsinki and Vienna, 1969-1970
General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, 1970-73
Under Secretary of the Navy, 1977-1979
Delegate at Large to the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and Nuclear and Space Arms Talks (NST), Geneva, 1983-1986
Ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Vienna, 1989-1991
Director of Central Intelligence, 1993-1995
He is currently a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Advisor of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, Founding Member of the Set America Free Coalition, and Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton for Global Strategic Security. He was formerly chairman of the Freedom House board of trustees.

He is also a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signatories to the January 26, 1998, PNAC letter sent to President Clinton that called for the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Woolsey is featured in the new documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? addressing solutions to oil dependency.

**********************
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American academic and political figure. He is currently the President of the World Bank, but may be most famous as a prominent architect of the ambitious foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration known as the Bush Doctrine, a role that has made him a controversial and polarizing figure both within the United States and abroad. His views are often characterized as exemplifying the modern American philosophy of neoconservatism, and he is often seen as a leading proponent of the 2003 Iraq War.

A former aide to Democratic Senator "Scoop" Jackson in the 1970s, Wolfowitz also served in the U.S. Defense Department, as Director of Policy Planning and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. State Department, as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and as Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Administration of George W. Bush.

**********************
John Vincent Weber, a Congressman from Minnesota; born in Slayton, Murray County, Minnesota, July 24, 1952; attended the public schools; attended the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 1970-1974; copublisher, Murray County newspaper; president, Weber Publishing Co.; press secretary to Representative Tom Hagedorn, 1974-1975; senior aide to Senator Rudy Boschwitz, 1977-1980; delegate, Minnesota State Republican conventions, 1972, 1978; elected as a Republican to the Ninety-seventh and to the five succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1981-January 3, 1993); was not a candidate for renomination in 1992 to the One Hundred Third Congress; is a resident of Walker, Minnesota.

He is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton.

Currently, Weber is managing partner of Clark & Weinstock's Washington, D.C. office, where he provides strategic advice to institutions with matters before the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

Weber also serves as chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, nonprofit organization designed to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. He is a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, where is co-director of the Policy Forum. Weber is a board member of several private sector and nonprofit organizations, including ITT Educational Services, Department 56, and the Aspen Institute. He also serves on the Board of The Council on Foreign Relations and co-chaired a major independent task force on U.S. Policy Toward Reform in the Arab World with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In addition, Weber is a member of the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board.

Weber is one of the most prominent and successful strategists in the Republican Party and served as the Bush-Cheney '04 Plains States Regional Chairman. He maintains strong bipartisan relationships across the legislative and executive branches of government.

*************************
William Schneider, Jr. is an American politician who currently chairs the Defense Science Board.

Schneider served as Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, and later became a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). He was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to President Bill Clinton that encouraged an attack against Iraq.

In January of 2001, as George W. Bush prepared to take office, Schneider served on a panel for nuclear weapons issues sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. Other members of the panel included Stephen Hadley, Stephen Cambone, and Robert Joseph, who later were appointed to senior positions in the Bush Administration. This panel advocated using tactical nuclear weapons as a standard part of the United States defense arsenal.

Schneider was selected by Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Science Board. In this position, Schneider continues to advocate using nuclear weapons in certain limited first-strike situations.

*************************
Donald Henry Rumsfeld (born July 9, 1932) is currently serving as the 21st United States Secretary of Defense, since January 20, 2001, under President George W. Bush. He is the oldest person to have held that position, and was also the youngest when he served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford. Rumsfeld also served in various positions under President Richard Nixon, as well as four terms in the United States House of Representatives, and as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) (1973-1974).

He served in the U.S. Navy from 1954 to 1957 as an aviator and flight instructor, training in North American SNJ basic trainers and later flying Grumman F6F. fighters. In 1957, he transferred to the Ready Reserve and continued his Naval service in flying and administrative assignments as a drilling reservist until 1975. He transferred to the Standby Reserve when he became Secretary of Defense in 1975 and to the Retired Reserve with the rank of Navy Captain in 1989.

He has also served as an official in numerous federal commissions and councils.

Rumsfeld married the former Joyce Pierson in 1954. They have three children and six grandchildren
******************
Peter W. Rodman (born November 24, 1943 in Boston). Educated in at Harvard College (A.B. summa cum laude), Oxford University (B.A., M.A.), and Harvard Law School (J.D.). Is currently United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He is also the author of More Precious Than Peace, a book on the Cold War in the Third World in which he praises the Reagen administration for warding off communism in places like Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia. He is one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, Project for the New American Century letter sent to the U.S. President Bill Clinton. He has worked extensively with Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, amongst other things helping him write his memoirs. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, Vice President and member of the Board of Directors of the World Affairs Council of Washington, DC
********************************
Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941 in New York City), is an advisor on national security issues who served the Reagan administration as an assistant Secretary of Defense and served on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004. He was Chairman of the Board from 2001 to 2003 under the Bush Administration.

He is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998 PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton.

*****************************
William "Bill" Kristol (born December 23, 1952 in New York City) is an American neoconservative commentator. He is cast as a neoconservative for his passionate advocacy for Israel and strong advocacy for projecting American power and for a strong American presence in the Middle East. Starting with the 1991 Gulf War, he continuously called for the ousting of Saddam Hussein.

Kristol is Jewish and the son of Irving Kristol, considered to be one of the founders of the neoconservative movement and Gertrude Himmelfarb, a Victorian scholar. Kristol graduated in 1970 from The Collegiate School, a preparatory school for boys located in Manhattan. In 1973, he received a B.A. from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in three years; in 1979, he received a Ph.D. in political science, also from Harvard. During his first year of graduate school, Kristol was Alan Keyes' roommate; this is significant, because many years later, in 1988, Kristol would run Keyes' unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign against Paul Sarbanes in Maryland. After teaching political philosophy and American politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Kristol went to work in government in 1985, serving as chief of staff to Education Secretary William J. Bennett during the Reagan Administration, and then as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle under the first President Bush.

Kristol first made his mark as leader of the Project for the Republican Future, a conservative think tank and rose to fame as a conservative opinionmaker during the battle over the Clinton health care plan. In his first of what would become legendary strategy memos circulated among Republican policymakers, Kristol said the party should "kill", not amend or compromise on, the Clinton health care plan. In doing so, Kristol presented the first public document uniting Republicans behind total opposition to the reform plan. A later memo advocated the phrase There is no health care crisis, which Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole used in his response to Clinton's 1994 State of the Union address.

After the Republican sweep of both houses of Congress in 1994, arguably a result of the debacle over health care reform, Kristol established along with neoconservative John Podhoretz and with financing from Rupert Murdoch, the conservative periodical The Weekly Standard. In 1997, he founded, with Robert Kagan, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a movement credited in part for some of the foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration as evidenced by their 1998 letter to US President Bill Clinton advocating military action in Iraq to "protect our vital interests in the Gulf". He is also a member of the long-time conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute from which the Bush administration has borrowed over two dozen members to fill various government offices and panels. Kristol is currently chairman of PNAC and editor of The Weekly Standard.

In 2005, Kristol caused controversy by praising President George W. Bush's second inaugural address without disclosing his role as a consultant to the writing of the speech. Kristol praised the speech highly in his role as a regular political contributor during FOX's coverage of the address, as well as in a Weekly Standard article, without disclosing his involvement in the speech either time.

However, Kristol has not always fallen in line behind the Bush administration. In 2004, he wrote an op-ed, strongly criticizing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld [1]. He was also one of many conservatives to oppose Bush's second Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers. He said of Miers: "I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. [...] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president".

He is currently a visiting professor at Harvard University, where he is teaching a course in the school's Government Department entitled, "Intellectual Foundations of American Foreign Policy". In addition to his role as a political contributor on FOX News, Kristol is also a semi-regular guest on World News Tonight on Sky News (effectively FOX News' British sister channel), appearing live from the US.

He is married to Susan Scheinberg, with whom he has three children. He lives in McLean, Virginia.

His daughter, Anne, is an undergraduate student at Washington University in Saint Louis. His son, Joe, is an undergraduate student at Harvard University and a contracted Marine Corps ROTC
*********************
Dr. Zalmay M. Khalilzad (born 1951) is the highest-ranking native Afghan and Muslim in the Bush administration. In May of 2001 he was named Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Persian Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues at the National Security Council, reporting to the then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. On September 24, 2003, President Bush named Khalilzad the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan and he took his post in Kabul on November 27. Currently, Khalilzad is U.S. ambassador to Iraq; he was sworn in on June 21, 2005. After the Al Askari shrine bombing in February 2006 he warned that sectarian violence spread might lead to a civil war in post-invasion Iraq and possibly even the neighbouring countries. [1]

He is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to U.S. President Bill Clinton. Khalilzad is also a former board member of Friends of Afghanistan, which received extensive U.S. funding.

An ethnic Pashtun, he was born in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. He began his education at the private Ghazi Lycée school in Kabul. He emigrated to the United States as a high school exchange student. Khalilzad received his doctorate at the University of Chicago, where he studied closely with strategic thinker Albert Wohlstetter, who is a prominent nuclear deterrence thinker and an opponent to the disarmament treaties. In the early 1980s, he taught at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. At Columbia University he also worked closely with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Carter administration's architect of the policy supporting the Afghan mujahideen resistance to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. In 1984 Khalilzad accepted a one-year Council on Foreign Relations fellowship to join the State Department, where he worked for Paul Wolfowitz, then the director of Policy Planning. In 1988 he was the State Department's Special Advisor on Afghanistan to Undersecretary of State Michael H. Armacost. During this period he developed and guided the international program to promote the merits of a Mujahideen-led, Wahhabi-based Afghanistan to oust the Soviet occupation.

Khalilzad served under former U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as special assistant to the president for Southwest Asia, the Near East and North Africa. From 1985 to 1989, Khalilzad served as a senior United States Department of State official advising on the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war, and from 1991 to 1992, he was a senior Defense Department official for policy planning. He served as a counsellor to Donald Rumsfeld. Khalilzad initially viewed the Taliban as a potential force for stability and as counter balance to Iran, but his views changed over time, especially after the events of September 11. Dr. Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney Transition team for the Department of Defense and has been a Counselor to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

In May 2001, National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice announced the appointment of Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues, National Security Council.

Khalilzad was an advisor for the Unocal Corporation. In the mid-1990s, while working for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analyses for Unocal for a proposed 1,400 km (890 mile), $2-billion, 622 m³/s (22,000 ft³/s) natural gas pipeline project which would have extended from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. For this project, he met a delegation of Taleban in the United States. Between 1993 and 1999, Dr. Khalilzad was Director of the Strategy, Doctrine and Force Structure program for the RAND Corporation's Project Air Force. RAND is a think-tank primarily focused on "national security" issues, created just after World War II in connection with high ranking officers from the armed forces and now closely linked to the neoconservatives (Donald Rumsfeld was chairman 1981-1986). While with RAND, he founded the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Khalilzad co-authored the RAND study, "The United States and a Rising China", where one can find this sentence : "of course, US armed forces must be prepared to defeat China militarily". From 1979 to 1989, Dr. Khalilzad was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.

Khalilzad holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1979). His wife, Cheryl Benard, is a political analyst with the RAND Corporation. They have two children, Alexander and Maximilian
***************************
Robert Kagan (born 1958) is an American neoconservative scholar and political commentator. He is a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Robert's brother Frederick and father Donald are also prominent American neoconservatives, and also affiliated with the PNAC.

Kagan worked at the State Department Bureau of Inter-American Affairs (1985-1988) and was the principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz (1984-1985). Prior to that, he was foreign policy advisor to New York Representative and future Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp (1983). Kagan is a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Kagan, who has written for The New Republic, Policy Review, the Washington Post, and the Weekly Standard, now lives in Brussels, Belgium, with his family. He is married to Victoria Nuland and has two children, Elena and David.

***************************
Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952 in Chicago) is an influential American philosopher, political economist and author. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science, and is currently Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the International Development Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.

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Dr. Paula J. Dobriansky (born September 14, 1955) is a neo-conservative politician, pundit, and author, and graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and of Harvard University. She currently is the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, a position in which she was appointed 1 May 2001 by US President George W. Bush. She is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton. She is also member of and the Trilateral Commission. She was born in Alexandria, Virginia.

Dobriansky has served as Senior Vice President and Director of the Washington Office of the Council on Foreign Relations, including operations relating to all groups and meetings. She has been designated the Special Coordinator for Tibet.

According to her official Department of State biography, she was "unanimously confirmed" by the Senate. Dobriansky's responsibilities include "a broad range of foreign policy issues, including democracy, human rights, labor, counter-narcotics and law enforcement, refugee and humanitarian relief matters and environmental/scientific issues. (1)

Dobriansky served as Senior International Affairs and Trade Advisor at the law firm of Hunton & Williams and as Co-Chair of the International TV Council at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.


Paula J. Dobriansky at FPC briefingDobriansky has held other government positions including the Associate Director for Policy and Programs at the United States Information Agency (1990-1993), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (1987-1990); Deputy Head of the U.S. Delegation to the 1990 Copenhagen Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe CSCE; Advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the 1985 UN Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi, Kenya; and Director of European and Soviet Affairs at the NSC (1983-1984). She also was a coordinator of Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.

Dobriansky has served on the Western NIS Enterprise Fund, National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, American Council of Young Political Leaders, the American Bar Association Central, East European Law Initiative, and the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

She previously hosted Freedom's Challenge, and co-hosted Worldwise, and has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN Headline News, CNN, Fox Morning News, John McLaughlin's One-on-One, The McLaughlin Group, C-SPAN, MSNBC, PBS, National Public Radio, and has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations and House International Relations Committees. She is also on the advisory board of the Independent Women’s Forum.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Dobriansky"
***************************************
John Robert Bolton (born November 20, 1948) is an American diplomat, serving currently as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Bolton was nominated by President George W. Bush to his current position on March 7, 2005. His nomination was the subject of a prolonged filibuster in the United States Senate by Democrats and George Voinovich of Ohio, a moderate Republican. However, Voinovich has since recanted his opposition.

On August 1, 2005, President Bush installed Bolton as Ambassador to the UN via recess appointment. The recess appointment will last until a new Congress convenes in January 2007, or until Bolton is renominated and confirmed, whichever comes first. He previously served as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security.

For various reasons Bolton has been the subject of enormous media controversy. Some of such controversy has involved salacious detail which has arguably tended to obscure substantive issues, while other aspects of the controversy has raised deep issues not only relating to Bolton's judgment but also regarding the extent to which he enjoys the patronage of the Bush White House.

*****************************************
Jeffrey Bergner, Ph.D. is one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, Project for the New American Century (PNAC Letter) sent to US President Bill Clinton.

Bergner is President and Managing Financial Partner of Bergner Bockorny, Inc. He is an Adjunct Professor, National Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.

Bergner Bockorny, Inc. was a registered foreign agent in March 1998 with the Taipei Economic & Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) (formerly: China External Trade Development Council (CCNAA)). "The registrant monitored legislation relating to Taiwan in the House and Senate. The registrant also monitored trade and political issues of interest to Taiwan. $32,500.00 for the six month period ending March 20, 1998." The firm was again registered with the Taiwan government for its activities with the Taipei Economic & Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) (formerly: China External Trade Development Council (CCNAA)). The firm (i.e. registrant) "monitored legislation relating to Taiwan in the House and Senate. Other activities included general monitoring of trade and political issues of interest to Taiwan and received $45,500.00 for the six month period ending September 20, 1997." [1] Also in 1997, the firm was acting as a registered foreign agent for the Friendship in Freedom: A German Initiative for European-American Relations. However, no financial activity was reported.[See article on International Trade below.][2]

Bergner was Policy Director, Lugar for President Campaign; Staff Director, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Chief of Staff/Legislative Director, Senator Richard Lugar; Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania; and Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan.

Bergner has affiliations with The Asia Foundation; The Calvert Institute; The Hudson Institute; and, of course, the Project for the New American Century.

Bergner received his B.A. from Carleton College (1969), M.A. at Princeton University (1971), and Ph.D. from Princeton (1973).

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bergner"
*****************************
William John Bennett (born July 31, 1943) served as United States Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988. He also held the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (or "Drug Czar") under George H. W. Bush.

Bennett was born in Brooklyn but later moved to Washington, DC, where he attended Gonzaga College High School. He graduated from Williams College and went on to get a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in Political Philosophy. He also has a law degree from Harvard Law School.

From 1976 to 1981, he was the executive director of the National Humanities Center, a private research facility in North Carolina. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he served until Reagan appointed him Secretary of Education in 1985. Bennett resigned from this post in 1988 and, later that year, was appointed to the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by President Bush. He was confirmed by the Senate in a 97-2 vote.

He was co-director of Empower America and was a Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Long active in United States Republican Party politics, he is now an author, speaker, and, since April 5, 2004, the host of the weekday radio program Morning in America on the Dallas, Texas-based Salem Communications. In addition to his radio show, he is the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute.

Bennett and his wife, Elayne, have two sons, John and Joseph. His wife Elayne is the President and Founder of Best Friends Foundation,a nationwide abstinence-based program for adolescents. He is the brother of prominent Washington attorney Robert S. Bennett.

*********************************
Richard Lee Armitage (born April 26, 1945) was, from 2001 to 2005, the 13th United States Deputy Secretary of State, the second-in-command at the State Department. Previously, he was a high-ranking troubleshooter and negotiator in the Departments of State and Defense.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life and military career
2 Public service career
3 Life after public service
4 Valerie Plame investigation
5 External links
6 References



[edit]
Early life and military career
Armitage graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1967. Upon graduation, he joined the United States Navy, initially holding the rank of ensign. He served on a destroyer stationed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War and volunteered to serve as an advisor to the Vietnamese riverine ("brown water") naval forces. In 1973, Armitage left active duty and joined the office of the U.S. Defense Attache in Saigon. (It has been frequently, and inaccurately, reported that Armitage was a member of the elite Navy SEALs, a mischaracterization that Armitage now corrects in interviews.)
*********************************
Elliott Abrams (born January 24, 1948) is an American lawyer who has served in foreign policy positions for a number of U.S. Presidents, most recently George W. Bush. During Bush's first term in office, he was appointed the post of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs. At the start of the president's second term (February, 2005), Abrams was promoted to be his deputy national security adviser, responsible for advancing Bush's strategy of advancing democracy abroad. A leading neoconservative, Abrams' appointment by the White House on December 2, 2002 was considered highly controversial due to his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair, over which he subsequently pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

(Al Gore and director Davis Guggenheim)

Los Angeles, D.C., Cannes and Kyoto

May 18th, 2006

After the Los Angeles premiere of An Inconvenient Truth Tuesday night, we were in our nation’s capitol last night for an event at the National Geographic Society. Here’s a story from cbsnews.com with a great photo gallery of some of the stars that came out including Sharon Stone, Jessica Alba, David Duchovny, Radha Mitchell, Larry David and many others.


GLOBAL WARMING ACCORDING TO AL GORE

The new consensus: The world scientific community is now in near-unanimous agreement on five key points:


Global warming is real.


Mankind is primarily responsible for it.


The effects are catastrophic.


The effects are accelerating.


It's not too late to turn it around.

The effects: Drastic climate change, extreme hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, insect plagues, epidemics and other health problems, killer heat waves, the extinction of many plant and animal species, the swamping of our coastal cities as the ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica melt and the oceans rise, rings of social, political and economic chaos rippling out from the centers of environmental disaster.

The causes: Greenhouse gas emissions (mostly spewing from automobile tailpipes and coal-burning power plants) trapped in the Earth's atmosphere; declining plant life (which breathes in carbon dioxide as it grows and breathes out oxygen).

The chief bad guy: The United States of America, which has only 5 percent of the world's population but is responsible for a quarter of the world's carbon emissions (6 billion tons a year, and rising) and is virtually alone among nations in refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

The cure: A massive global effort to protect forests, reduce emissions, and develop and make available new clean energy technologies such as wind power, solar power, hybrid electric engines and alternative fuels.

The timetable: Five to 10 years, before the effects become irreversible.

What you can do: See "An Inconvenient Truth" and read its companion book, go to http://www.climatecrisis.net/ to learn how to get involved, make a personal commitment to reduce your own personal greenhouse gas emissions, demand our leaders make the fight against global warming their No. 1 priority

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Halliburton Solves Global Warming

SurvivaBalls save managers from abrupt climate change

An advanced new technology will keep corporate managers safe even when climate change makes life as we know it impossible.

DBJ article prompts calls for resignation of HUD secretary, investigation


U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-NJ, has called for the resignation of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson following a report in the Dallas Business Journal that Jackson scuttled a government contract after an applicant said he didn't like President Bush.

Alphonso Jackson, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary, was quoted as saying he withdrew a contract when the contractor stated he had “a problem with your president”.

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

“He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years,” Jackson said of the prospective contractor. “He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something … he said, ‘I have a problem with your president.’

“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t like President Bush.’ I thought to myself, ‘Brother, you have a disconnect — the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn’t be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don’t tell the secretary.’

“He didn’t get the contract,” Jackson continued. “Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don’t get the contract. That’s the way I believe.”

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A few more Jackson quotes from brainyquote.com and thinkexist.com.

It would be a mistake to rebuild the Ninth Ward.

The other part of outsourcing is this: it simply says where the work can be done outside better than it can be done inside, we should do it.

The Bush administration is the most diverse in history because the president fills jobs on the basis of a person’s capabilities and qualifications, not on the color of his or her skin.

I was soon drawn to the Republican Party because I realized that it truly, not just rhetorically, believed in equality.

And I always like to stress, it’s not a quota, not a set-aside, it’s not about race, it’s about giving opportunities to demonstrate their abilities to do work with the Federal Government.

You can’t rise as a class. You have to rise individually. It’s what many of the civil rights-era people don’t understand.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

~JUNK FOOD & JUNK SCIENCE~Monbiot




David Bellamy's Inaccurate and Selective Figures on Glacier Shrinkage
are a Boon to Climate Change Deniers

GEORGE MONBIOT
The Guardian (UK)
10, may2005

For the past three weeks, a set of figures has been working a hole in my mind. On April 16 New Scientist published a letter from the famous botanist David Bellamy... Many of the world's glaciers, he claimed, "not shrinking but in fact are growing ... 555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980". His letter was instantly taken up by climate change deniers. And it began to worry me. What if Bellamy was right?



An observer from mars would find us a pretty strange species indeed. We poison our own children's minds with advertising so we can poison their bodies with junk food, all in the name of profits for a few. Then we complain about skyrocketing costs of health care and crime, but all we can think to do are build more hospitals and prisons. Never mind actually taking seriously what we know about causes and prevention.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 2nd May 2006

Does television cause crime? The idea that people copy the violence they watch is debated endlessly by criminologists. But this column concerns an odder and perhaps more interesting notion: if crime leaps out of the box, it is not the programmes that are responsible as much as the material in between. It proposes that violence emerges from those blissful images of family life, purged of all darkness, that we see in the advertisements.

An observer from mars would find us a pretty strange species indeed. We poison our own children's minds with advertising so we can poison their bodies with junk food, all in the name of profits for a few. Then we complain about skyrocketing costs of health care and crime, but all we can think to do are build more hospitals and prisons. Never mind actually taking seriously what we know about causes and prevention.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Gordon Smith's Broadband for America Act Will Tax the Internet





Senator Gordon H. Smith Pitches Telecom Bill

Priority Reforms Needed to Create Jobs, Build Rural Economies

April 25th, 2006 - WASHINGTON, DC - Today, U.S. Senator Gordon H. Smith (R-OR) addressed the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association’s Legislative and Policy Conference and outlined his Broadband for America Act of 2006. The proposal is a ‘disciplined’ and ‘directed’ piece of legislation that the Senate can swiftly pass to promote the construction of new broadband networks in rural America.

It may seem that I have a poor opinion of Gordo, but that is hardly the case. The truth is I detest him and his crooked policies, and will be overjoyed when he is voted out of office. It is documented, that he is involved in the Jack Abramoff scandal, and that he lobbied in congress for the so called "HEALTHY FOREST'S INIATIVE".
GEEZER POWER: Ranger Gordon Don't Know Jack


New bill would impose Universal Service Fund fees for broadband access

4/25/2006 3:13:29 PM, by Eric Bangeman

In a speech given today at an industry meeting, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) outlined a new telecom bill. Called the Broadband for America Act of 2006, the bill is intended to spread the broadband loving from sea to shining sea.

It would also set aside up to US$500 million annually to provide broadband in places where fast Internet is not currently available. These would presumably be rural sites and other areas that broadband ISPs deem too unprofitable to invest in.

Where does one come up with US$500 million in a time of soaring budgets and government spending? With a new tax. More precisely, payments into the Universal Service Fund would be expanded from telephone service providers (e.g., landline, long distance, and cellular) to cover "any company capable of carrying 2-way voice communication." That would mean USF fees would be tacked on the broadband bills of American ISP customers.

The USF was conceived of as a way to provide telecommunications services to qualifying low-income US residents, schools and libraries, rural health care providers, and high-cost-to-serve areas. Originally subsidized exclusively by long-distance service, it was expanded in 1996 to encompass all wired and wireless phone service. Under the terms of Smith's bill, broadband ISPs would be required to contribute, and they in turn are all but certain to pass the increased fees on to consumers.

From the Desk of Patrick J. Fitzgerald


In case anyone is wondering where Karl Rove is?













I am just this close to prosecuting your ass Karl.

From the Desk of Patrick J. Fitzgerald

Sunday, May 07, 2006

George W. Bush Tells His Biggest Lie












Bush's best moment in office? reelin in big perch

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch "You know, I've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Bush said the worst moment was September 11 when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

Well...Dubya has lied once again, and this time it's a whopper. The largest perch caught in the US was 4 lb. and 10 z. A White Perch, caught by Mrs. Earl Small in Maine.

Maybe what Dubya is talking about is a bass, or else a Nile perch, that was trans-planted to his pond. There was a fellow in Texas who caught a 12 pound Nile perch, but that wouldn't be anything to brag about, as there was one caught in Lake Victoria in Africa, that was 392 lbs.

The pond on Bush's so called ranch has only been there for around 4 years, and is only part of the whole fantasy that it is a little Texas ranch where he goes to cut brush. I believe it is actually, what I would call an expensive photo-op.

Prairie Chapel Ranch is a 1583 acre (6.4 km²) estate located seven miles (10 km) northwest of Crawford, Texas. It is the home of President George W. Bush. Then–Governor Bush bought the land, which was a former pig farm, in 1999 shortly after earning a $14.3-million profit from the sale of the Texas Rangers. Based on fair-market land prices at the time the deal was closed for an estimated $1.3 million. While Bush is there as President, the estate is known as the Western White House and it has also been called the "Texas White House".

In 2002 Bush added an 11 acre (45,000 m²) man-made pond
that is stocked with 600 bass and thousands of bait fish. In 2002, the ranch was wired for what Bush described in a 2003 tour of the ranch as "real time, secure videoconferencing" to be used for his briefings from the CIA and Dick Cheney.

Saturday, May 06, 2006




World News
The Times May 03, 2006

Building work at the 104-acre complex, known locally as 'George W's palace', is supposed to be secret, but it is impossible to disguise the cranes dominating the Baghdad skyline. In the chaos of Iraq, one project is on target: a giant US embassy.

"Holy Moly" comes to mind, as I reminisce on Captain Marvel, and his encounters with Dr. Doom. I feel like the news is coming from the comic books I used to read, as the hypocricy of the liberation of Iraq is once more blatantly pointed out. There will be 24 buildings, with a staff of 1700 people, to show our diplomacy to a free people? I couldn't find any other pictures, but that is not surprising with the secretive bunch of thieves occupying the White House.

Ray McGovern & events leading to Invasion of Iraq


Weapons of Mass Distraction: Where? Find? Plant?

By David MacMichael and Ray McGovern
April 26, 2003
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: The Stakes in the Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction
The Bush administration's refusal to allow UN inspectors to join the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in U.S.-occupied Iraq has elicited high interest in foreign news media. The most widely accepted interpretation is that the U.S. is well aware that evidence regarding the existence and location of such weapons is "shaky" (the adjective now favored by UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix), and that the last thing the Pentagon wants is to have Blix' inspectors looking over the shoulders of U.S. forces as they continue their daunting quest.

The Weekly Standard, does smear job on Ray McGovern




The viewpoint from the right...

The Weekly Standard is a Neoconservative rag, edited by William Kristol, one of the original signers for the Project For The New American Century "PNAC". The artical contains outright lies about the "Not In Our Name" coalition, and states that Not In Our Name is a coalition formed in 2002 by the likes of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist party.It is commonly referred to as anti-war, but it's no such thing. Some of its constituent groups profess a deep belief in revolutionary violence--which is to say, they are pro-war, they just want the United States to lose.

The viewpoint from the left...

The Not In Our Name project was initiated at a meeting in New York City, on March 23, 2002. The meeting was called for by a letter that proposed ways to strengthen and expand resistance to our government's course in the wake of September 11, 2001

'West Point' off limits to anti-war alums


WILLIAM KATES
Associated Press
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - The Army warned an anti war group of former West Point military cadets to stop using the words "West Point" in its name, saying they are trademarked.
A co-founder of West Point Graduates Against the War countered Friday that his organization is simply following the cadets' code.

"At West Point, we were taught that cadets do not lie, cheat or steal - and to oppose those who do," said William Cross, a 1962 West Point graduate. "We are a positive organization. We are not anti-West Point or anti-military. We are just trying to uphold what we were taught."

The group, open to West Point graduates, spouses and children, claims about 50 members.

West Point spokesman Lt. Col. Kent Cassella said the academy sent the April 12 warning letter because the group failed to go through a licensing process to get permission to use the term "West Point." The group's anti-war stance is irrelevant, he said.

"This is not a political issue. They did not ask for permission. We are doing what any college or university would do to enforce its trademarks," Cassella said.

The Army registered the words "West Point" - as well as "United States Military Academy," "USMA," and "U.S. Army" - as trademarks in 2000 to control their use on educational material and commercial goods.

An attorney hired by Cross and his colleagues said the warning raises questions of First Amendment speech protection and selective enforcement. Joseph Heath said he noted the concerns in a response sent to the Army on Monday; he has not yet received a reply, he said.

"I would hope that the Army would be proud of these men and their willingness to promote democracy and freedom of speech," wrote Heath, a Navy veteran who also opposes the war.

Heath also noted widespread commercial use of the words "West Point."

Cassella said the Army has negotiated agreements with local businesses allowing them to use the phrase in their names.







"The Honor System as a feature of West Point seems to grow in importance with a graduate as the years secede until finally it becomes something which he is almost reluctant to talk about -- it occupies a position in his mind akin to the virtue of his mother or his sister." (1)
Dwight D. Eisenhower
United States Military Academy
Class of 1915




"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." (2)

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity. War settles nothing." (3)

"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." (4)

"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They’ll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government." (5)

Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th President of the United States
(1953-1961)

Friday, May 05, 2006


Last week at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, comedian Stephen Colbert delivered a scathing satirical commentary on the Bush Administration -- right in front of President Bush himself. But unless you get your news from online sources such as the blogs, you probably didn't even hear about it.

The lack of media coverage on this brilliant commentary on the things that many of us have known, and are still witnessing, just shows that this Corporate Government still controls most of the media by the manipulation of big money and the people who are afraid to break the ties. Fear is still a factor when it comes to telling the truth, but Stephen Colbert showed none, as he stood in the belly of the beast, and told it like it is. Our senators, and congressmen should be reporting the travesties of justice, and outright lies that are happening on a daily basis, and working for "We The People", instead of a corporate gpvernment that undermines our constitution.

Call to action by Act For Change

Thursday, May 04, 2006


I stole this from an historical attorney...Patric Fitzgerald

Turkish FM Abdullah Gul: Ankara will not be drawn into any US or Israel military operations against Iran

DEBKAfile

May 4, 2006, 10:44 AM (GMT+02:00)
The Dubai newspaper Al Bayan (out on April 30) quotes the Turkish leader as disclosing that, during her visit to Ankara last Tuesday, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice requested the use of the Incirlik air base for an American strike against Iranian nuclear installations. She was said to have offered Turkey in return a nuclear reactor for electricity, but was turned down.
DEBKAfile’s military sources add: Washington’s original request was for permission to build a new air base in eastern Turkey between Lake Van and the Iranian border. From there, US bombers could have reached nuclear targets situated in northern Iran where most of its nuclear sites are thought to be concentrated.

In particular, they could have hit the top secret plant under construction at Neyshabour – first disclosed by DEBKAfile on April 15 - to run 155,000 centrifuges, enough to enrich uranium for 3-5 nuclear bombs a year.

To read this article, click HERE.

This was the second time in three years that the Turks have spurned an American request to use its bases for attacking a Middle East neighbor. Ankara’s refusal of a second front for the US-led Iraq invasion in 2003 delayed Saddam Hussein’s overthrow by more than a month.

Turkey’s rationale this time is motivated by five factors:

1. Ankara does not believe the US will go through with military action against Iran.

2. Gul says that with 165 nuclear sites scattered over Iran, its program is well nigh indestructible.

3. Ankara perceives the Bush administration’s domestic situation as too shaky to undertake an effective military attack on Iran. The Erdogan government believes the Republican party faces defeats in the mid-term elections at the end of the year.

4. Turkey has no intention of joining an American-Israeli military collaboration against Iran, or following the example of Pakistan and India in complying with Washington’s demands.

5. Turkish actions against the radical Kurdish PKK rebel strongholds in Northern Iraq are raising tensions in relations Ankara-Washington relations. Especially resented is the reciprocal assistance understanding Turkey and Iran have concluded to help each fight the Iraq-based Turkish PKK and the anti-Tehran People’s Mujaheedeen. Both Turkey and Iran have massed forces on their borders with northern Iraq. Turkey complains that its requests to Washington to help root the PKK out of its bases in northern Iraq were greeted with the response that violence in other parts of Iraq were the priority of US force.

Rice during her visit called on Ankara to refrain from “unilateral action” against the Kurdish rebels in Iraq.

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Turkey tells Rice it opposes military option

27 April 2006 [20:34] - Today.Az

Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer stressed to visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
on Tuesday that Turkey wants a peaceful diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, and that it opposes any military options
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April 25, 2006

Rice Encounters Protests in Greece, Turkey
By ANNE GEARAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

From the Desk of Patrick J. Fitzgerald:






March 3, 2006 — - A stunning investigation of bribery and corruption in Congress has spread to the CIA, ABC News has learned.
The CIA inspector general has opened an investigation into the spy agency's executive director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, and his connections to two defense
contractors accused of bribing a member of Congress and Pentagon officials.
From the Desk of Patrick J. Fitzgerald: