We Burn Corpses, Don't We? War Crimes in Afghanistan By Erid Ruder For the people of Afghanistan, fed up with U.S. atrocities and support for regional warlords, there's growing talk of ejecting U.S. troops--just as the former USSR's military was kicked out in 1989 after a decade of occupation. "Their future will be like the Russians," said Zahidullah, a resident of Kabul. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10778.htm

What Reagan Started, Bush Is Finishing By David Martin After eight years of the Gipper, four years of Bush I, eight years of Republican Lite under Clinton, and five years of Shrub, we see the truth of the Reagan Revolution. The gradual withering away of the welfare and regulatory state has not unleashed the American entrepreneurial spirit. Rather, it has set loose the predatory greed of the 19th century robber barons, the class cannibalism of Social Darwinism, and the winner-take-all rapacity of laissez faire capitalism. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10779.htm

Medicaid reform to leave senior citizens with less: In an effort to cut government expenses, once again Congress is poised to reduce medical benefits available to middle-class senior citizens. This time, the cuts will come in the form of reducing Medicaid eligibility for those who need nursing home care. In New Jersey, nursing home care costs in excess of $75,000 per year, more than the median income for a New Jersey family of four. http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051021/OPINION/510210382/1030/POLITICS

Medicaid reform to leave senior citizens with less ( I can’t believe they charge $75,000 a year here it’s only like $14 or 15 thousand a year. WOW Save money fire the Private homes and get Public ones.)Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/21/05

Burning Bodies Afganistan

ABUL, Afghanistan — Islamic clerics have expressed outrage at television footage that purportedly shows U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters to taunt other militants and warned of a possible violent anti-American backlash.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the alleged desecration and ordered an inquiry. The operational commander of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, which launched its own criminal probe, said the alleged act, if true, was "repugnant."

Worried about the potential for anti-American feelings over the incident, the State Department said it instructed U.S. embassies around the globe to tell local governments that the reported abuse did not reflect American values.

Cremating bodies is banned under Islam, and one Muslim leader in Afghanistan compared the video to photographs of U.S. troops abusing prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

"Abu Ghraib ruined the reputation of the Americans in Iraq and to me this is even worse," said Faiz Mohammed, a top cleric in northern Kunduz province.

"This is against Islam. Afghans will be shocked by this news. It is so humiliating. There will be very, very dangerous consequences from this." Anger also was evident in the streets.http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051021/arghan_taliban_burning_051021/20051021?hub=World  For entire story

Living in a Fascist State  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10710.htm "But I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, then Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength in our land." -Franklin D. Roosevelt, November 4, 1938 By Lewis H. Lapham 10/21/06 "Harper's Magazine", October 2005, pps. 7-9 -- -- In 1938 the word "fascism" hadn't yet been transferred into an abridged metaphor for all the world's unspeakable evil and monstrous crime, and on coming across President Roosevelt's prescient remark in one of Umberto Eco's essays, I could read it as prose instead of poetry -- a reference not to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or the pit of Hell but to the political theories that regard individual citizens as the property of the government, happy villagers glad to wave the flags and wage the wars, grateful for the good fortune that placed them in the care of a sublime leader. Or, more emphatically, as Benito Mussolini liked to say, "Everything in the state. Nothing outside the state. Nothing against the state."

Bush is nothing if not consummate con man: The late and wonderfully caustic George Burns used to flick the ash off his cigar and say: "The secret of success in show business is sincerity. Once you learn how to fake that, you've got it made, kid." http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2005/10/22/m13a_mcevoy_1022.html

Afghan journalist killed in blast: A bomb ripped through a military vehicle in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing an Afghan journalist and injuring three military personnel, an intelligence official said. http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=6733

The Most Important Criminal Case in American History
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10709.htm
By James Moore

10/21/05 "Huffington Post" -- -- If special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald delivers indictments of a few functionaries of the vice president’s office or the White House, we are likely to have on our hands a constitutional crisis. The evidence of widespread wrongdoing and conspiracy is before every American with a cheap laptop and a cable television subscription. And we do not have the same powers of subpoena granted to Fitzgerald. The Biological And Toxin Weapons Convention And Iraq

Motion in the UK Parliament has been tabled for a third time

10/20/05 "PIMS" Parliamentary Information Management Services

Mitchell, Austin

That this House notes that the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention binds signatories not to transfer to any nation any agents, toxins, weapons and equipment of biological and toxin warfare and provides that any nation finding another signatory in breach of this undertaking may lodge a complaint to the UN Security Council;

Notes that the Riegle Report to the US Senate has published evidence that the US sold bacillus anthracis, clostridium botulinum, histoplasma capsulatum, brucella, melitensis and clostridium perfringens to agencies of the Iraqi government pursuant to export licences issued by the US Department of Commerce, at a time when the US was fully aware of the Iraqi biological warfare programme and that these exports have been fully documented noting,
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10711.htm

Saddam's germ war plot is traced back to one Oxford cow

By Dominic Kennedy

08/09/05 "The Times" -- -- A BRITISH cow that died in an Oxfordshire field in 1937 has emerged as the source of Saddam Hussain’s "weapons of mass destruction" programme that led to the Iraq war.

An ear from the cow was sent to an English laboratory, where scientists discovered anthrax spores that were later used in secret biological warfare tests by Winston Churchill.

The culture was sent to the United States, which exported samples to Iraq during Saddam’s war against Iran in the 1980s. Inspectors have found that this batch of anthrax was the dictator’s choice in his attempts to create biological weapons.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9721.htm

Bush Critic Became Target of Libby, Former Aides Say: Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10712.htm

Old Bush vs. new

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- The Bush administration is bracing for a powerful new attack by Brent Scowcroft, the respected national security adviser to the first President George Bush.

'Gunmen surrounded us, firing into the windscreen. The dreaded moment had arrived: kidnap' : Rory Carroll, the Guardian's Baghdad correspondent was abducted for 36 hours before being freed on Thursday. This is his story http://www.guardian.co.uk/rorycarroll/story/0,16647,1598082,00.html

Official Says U.S. Rushed to War in Iraq: A top U.S. official for aid to Iraq has accused the Bush administration of rushing unprepared into the 2003 invasion because of pressures from President Bush's approaching reelection campaign. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10716.htm

Ike Was Right About War Machine By Andy Rooney No other Country spends the kind of money we spend on our military. Last year Japan spent $42 billion. Italy spent $28 billion, Russia spent only $19 billion. The United States spent $455 billion. Quick Time Video

Bush's choice: America or the empire: This war is too costly. Hundreds of millions of dollars are diverted from the U.S. budget everyday to feed the war machine; good news for the Pentagon and the military establishment maybe, but not so good for the majority of Americans, especially the poorest among them.

Uzbekistan cuts off ties to U.S. on fighting terror: After cutting off U.S. access to a key military base, Uzbekistan has also quietly terminated cooperation with Washington on counterterrorism

Blood, Sweat & Tears Asia’s Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq By David Phinney Numerous former American contractors returning home say they were shocked at conditions faced by this mostly invisible, but indispensable army of low-paid workers. Third country nationals frequently sleep in crowded trailers and wait outside in line in 100 degree plus heat to eat "slop." Many are said to lack adequate medical care and put in hard labor seven days a week, 10 hours or more a day, for little or no overtime pay.

Navy Secretly Contracted Jets Used by CIA  secretly contracted a 33-plane fleet that included two Gulfstream jets reportedly used to fly terror suspects to countries known to practice torture, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.  At least 10 U.S. aviation companies were issued classified contracts in 2001 and 2002 by the obscure Navy Engineering Logistics Office for the "occasional airlift of USN (Navy) cargo worldwide," according to Defense Department documents the AP obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Two of the companies — Richmor Aviation Inc. and Premier Executive Transport Services Inc. — chartered luxury Gulfstreams that flew terror suspects captured in Europe to Egypt, according to U.S. and European media reports. Once there, the men told family members, they were tortured. Authorities in Italy and Sweden have expressed outrage over flights they say were illegal and orchestrated by the U.S. government.

US Army goes shopping for anthrax  Would you like that giftwrapped?

By Lucy Sherriff

Published Monday 26th September 2005 12:10 GMTGet breaking Reg news straight to your desktop - click here to find out how

The US Army has asked companies to bid for contracts to produce large quantities of anthrax and equipment to produce other unnamed biological agents, according to New Scientist, but has not said what it needs the facilities for.

Alan Pearson, programme director for biological and chemical weapons at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington DC, says the contracts raise serious questions about the US' commitment to the Biological Weapons Convention.

In 1 year, Halliburton's stock doubles as troop deaths double : Since the beginning of the Iraq war, Halliburton, the Texas energy giant once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has seen its stock price more than triple in value.

This is right on Jason Miller : Peaceful Assault on the Epicenter of Evil : Many Americans are overcoming the lies they have been "programmed" to believe since they were able to fashion conscious, coherent thoughts.

Excerpts from Bush Speeches  Rather Amusing and not very impressive.

Goveners Son Aressted  Jeb Bush Son Arrested

Chavez: U.S. Plans to Invade Venezuela

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday he has documentary evidence that the United States plans to invade his country.

Chavez, interviewed on ABC's "Nightline," said the plan is called "Balboa" and involves aircraft carriers and planes. A transcript of the interview was made available by "Nightline."

He said U.S. soldiers recently went to Curacao, an island off Venezuela's northwest coast. He described as a "lie" the official U.S. explanation that they visited Curacao for rest and recreation.

"They were doing movements. They were doing maneuvers," Chavez said, speaking through a translator.

Chavez at UN: US "Terrorist State" Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez called the United States a "terrorist state" and said the United Nations headquarters should be moved away from New York.

Iraq Worse than Vietnam in Number of Journalists Killed

Chip Ward | Left Behind: Bush's Holy War on Nature  Chip Ward tells us that the Bush administration's environmental record is lousy. More than lousy, it is potentially disastrous. But why? At first glance, it's easy enough to understand. Philosophically, Republicans believe in the power of the marketplace to shape behavior. Their animosity toward government regulation is long-standing. They emphasize the rights of private-property owners over any notion of the commons, and so are comfortable letting corporations pursue profit at the expense of air or water quality.

Jose Padilla : U.S. Citizen Imprisoned Without Trial or Charges for 3 Years and 118 Days

The United States has given away eight of its long-range maritime patrol and anti-sub aircraft without charge to Pakistan's Navy, allowing it to more effectively engage in long-distance surveillance and fire Harpoon missiles at targets, the Indian-based Sify news service reported Wednesday.

The craft, new, are made by Lockheed Martin for $36 million apiece, making the gift a generous one indeed. The last Navy P-3 came off the production line at Lockheed in 1990.

"The P-3C Orion aircraft are being provided free-of-cost by the US Navy and the expenses for modification of aircraft avionics systems will be met mostly from the US military aid," a Pakistan Navy statement said in Islamabad on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's top investigator has resigned amid accusations that he stonewalled inquiries into senior Bush administration officials suspected of wrongdoing.

Study Shows "Media Spin" on Iraqi Civilian Deaths: Roberts reported that the coalition was responsible for 84% of these violent deaths.

U.S., Iraqi troops sweep into city of Tall Afar: Force 5,000 soldiers-strong starts on biggest offensive since Fallujah

Mystery Unfolds Over Hunt for WMD in Iraq : The story of the weapons that weren't there, the prelude to war, was over, but a long post-mortem is still unfolding - of lingering questions in Washington, of revelations from investigations, leaks, first-person accounts.

Former CIA Director Tenet Threatens Disclosures?: Former CIA director George Tenet, said to be the target of what the Washington Times called "a scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson" - may go public with embarrassing disclosures about the Bush administration and its actions leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.

Venezuela: revolutionaries and a country on the edge : Venezuelans were hardly surprised by an American preacher's call to kill their President. After all, the US funded a coup attempt against him

Who Would Jesus Assassinate? Hugo Chavez and the Men Who Claim to Speak for Jesus? By Ron Jacobs Ever since Chavez began his popular upheaval in Venezuela he has been under attack by the Catholic hierarchy in that country. In fact, members of Opus Dei were involved in the failed coup of 2000 and have been instrumental in the CIA-funded opposition movement since the coup, just as they were intimately involved in the murderous CIA-sponsored coup in September 1973 in Chile.

Chavez offers Americans cheap fuel: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, popular with the poor at home, has offered to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of petrol. 

Good Things Happening in Venezuela Chavez charges that the United States government is plotting to assassinate him. I can believe it.

 Republicans that are Crimminals Very Shocking If These are the people Running the Country i would be Worried. And I am. Why are they not in Jail? They should be all in jail for their crimes. Everyone of them.

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/index.php

http://icasualties.org/oif/Kutler_2Year.htm

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Analysis  American violence in Iraq: Necrophilia or savagery?
Part 1 of a 5-part series: Bully, cheat, kill, and conquer

By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
Online Journal Contributing writers

Govt Knew Since 1974 Pot Could Cure Cancer

Pot Shows Promise Cure For Cancer

The PDF of Madrid Study Done On Pot

The wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation : Britain has never faced up to the dark side of its imperial history

The Trillion-Dollar War
By LINDA BILMES
THE human cost of the more than 2,000 American military personnel killed and 14,500 wounded so far in Iraq and Afghanistan is all too apparent. But the financial toll is still largely hidden from public view and, like the suffering of those who have lost loved ones, will persist long after the fighting is over.

The cost goes well beyond the more than $250 billion already spent on military operations and reconstruction. Basic running costs of the current conflicts are $6 billion a month - a figure that reflects the Pentagon's unprecedented reliance on expensive private contractors. Other factors keeping costs high include inducements for recruits and for military personnel serving second and third deployments, extra pay for reservists and members of the National Guard, as well as more than $2 billion a year in additional foreign aid to Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and others to reward their cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill for repairing and replacing military hardware is $20 billion a year, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office.

Four Star General Fired For Organizing Coup Against Neo-Cons

Reporter suggests Brynes discovered plan to turn nuke exercise into staged terror attack


Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | August 10 2005

The head of Fort Monroe's Training and Doctrine Command, four star general Kevin P. Byrnes, was fired Tuesday apparently for sexual misconduct according to official sources.

Other sources however have offered a different explanation for Byrnes' dismissal which ties in with the Bush administration's unpopular plan to attack Iran and the staged nuclear attack in the US which would provide the pretext to do so.

According to reporter Greg Szymanski, anonymous military sources said that Brynes was the leader of a faction that was preparing to instigate a coup against the neo-con hawks in an attempt to prevent further global conflict.

Indications are that, much like popular opinion amongst the general public, half the military oppose the neo-con's agenda and half support it.

Further revelations were imparted by journalist Leland Lehrman who appeared today on The Alex Jones Show.

Lehrman's army sources, including a former Captain in intelligence, became outraged when they learned that the official story behind 9/11 was impossible.

They told Lehrman that the imminent Northcom nuclear terror exercise based in Charleston, S.C, where a nuclear warhead is smuggled off a ship and detonated, was originally intended to 'go live' - as in the drill would be used as the cover for a real false flag staged attack.

This website has relentlessly discussed similar style drills which took place on the morning of 9/11 and on the morning of 7/7 in London.

"Speculation exists that he had potentially discovered the fact that it was gonna go live and that he was trying to put a stop to it or also speculation indicates that he may be part of a military coup designed to prevent the ridiculous idea of doing a nuclear war with Iran, " said Lehrman.

Lehrman said that other sources had told him all army leave had been cancelled from September 7th onwards, opening the possibility for war to be declared within that time frame.

Northcom officials also admitted to Lehrman that CNN had been using its situation room as a studio.

Earlier this week, Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has developed its first ever war plans for operations within the continental United States, in which terrorist attacks would be used as the justification for imposing martial law on cities, regions or the entire country.

American Conservative Magazine recently reported that Dick Cheney had given orders to immediately invade Iran after the next terror attack in the US, even if there was no evidence Iran was involved.

Government and media mouthpieces have been fearmongering for weeks about how a nuclear attack within the US is imminent.

Now would be the most opportune time for the Globalists to stage a major attack, as it would head off any potential indictments against the Bush administration for their involvement in illegally outing CIA agent Valerie Plame.

While rumors circulating about indictments having already taken place against Bush and Cheney should rightly be treated very carefully, the fact that there is an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter is something that's admitted and shouldn't be viewed as speculation.

My country is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits
Howard Zinn
The Guardian

It has quickly become clear that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country. We became familiar with that term during the second world war. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who occupied countries. The United States liberated them from occupation.

Now we are the occupiers. True, we liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, but not from us. Just as in 1898 we liberated Cuba from Spain, but not from us. Spanish tyranny was overthrown, but the US established a military base in Cuba, as we are doing in Iraq. US corporations moved into Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and the oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The US framed and imposed, with support from local accomplices, the constitution that would govern Cuba, just as it has drawn up, with help from local political groups, a constitution for Iraq. Not a liberation. An occupation

Schroeder caution on Iran
Published: Sunday, 14 August, 2005, 12:00 PM Doha Time
HANOVER: German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday pushed aside the option of using force to contain Iran and its uranium enrichment activities, saying that military options were worthless.
"Let’s leave military options aside, we have already seen that they don’t amount to anything," Schroeder said during an electoral meeting in the northern city of Hanover.

NUCLEAR WAR-FEAR

Author says prepare for nuclear terror
Former official: Not trying to cause panic, but prevent it


U.S. officials should get serious about nuclear terrorism by urging Americans to prepare for disaster by stockpiling food, water, building shelters and planning evacuation routes, says an author and former member of the Indiana House of Representatives.

In response to reports al-Qaida is planning an "American Hiroshima" nuclear attack on the U.S. using weapons and operative already smuggled into the country, Don Boys, author of "Islam: America's Trojan Horse," says he is not trying to panic the public.

Why is the media burying new revelations about 9/11?

GOP Paying Legal Bills of Bush Official: Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

Wounded Soldier Refused To Meet Bush: "I don't want anything to do with him," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Talking Wounded
Terry Rodgers Came Back From Iraq a Changed Man, and Not Just Because of the BombBy Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
"So we're driving down the road and it's midnight, so it's pitch-black, and when you're driving at night, you don't use any lights," says Terry Rodgers, "but we can see fine because we've got night vision goggles."

He's sitting in the living room of his mother's townhouse in Gaithersburg, telling the story of his last night in Iraq. He's still got his Army crew cut and he's wearing a T-shirt with an American flag on the chest.

"We're driving down this road and there's this tiny bridge over a little canal," he says. "They had rigged up this bomb and they had a tripwire running across the bridge and we hit it and it blew up."

Like the rest of the 13,877 Americans wounded in Iraq, Rodgers has a story to tell. He tells it in a matter-of-fact voice, like he's talking about making a midnight pizza run or something.

The Plan is for the United States to rule the world.

Dick Cheney’s Song of America

The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.By David Armstrong

Harper's Magazine, 0017789X, Oct 2002, Vol. 305, Issue 1829

Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government policy papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick Cheney’s masterwork. It has taken several forms over the last decade and is in fact the product of several ghostwriters (notably Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has been consistent in his dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his name, and he has maintained a close association with the ideologues behind them. Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of documents the Plan.

 Withdrawal from Iraq just 'speculation,' Bush says

Last Updated Thu, 11 Aug 2005 23:39:32 EDT

U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday described recent reports that American troops would begin withdrawing from Iraq next spring as "speculation."

He would give no timetable for an eventual pullout, saying only, "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

"Withdrawing before the mission is complete would send the signal that the U.S. is weak and that all they have to do is terrorize and we will leave," Bush said.

The president also said the International Atomic Energy Agency had made "a positive first step" in calling for Iran to halt its nuclear program.

But he suggested the country's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would not be barred from getting a U.S. visa to attend the United Nations in New York next month, despite being investigated by U.S. intelligence for alleged ties to the 1979 seizure of U.S. hostages by extremists in Iran.

Riot erupts outside main U.S. Afghanistan base

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Hundreds of protesters chanting "Die America!'' and throwing stones tried to batter down a gate at the U.S. military's main Afghan base Tuesday, adding to anxieties in a country worried that fighting with insurgents could disrupt elections.

The rioting erupted just hours after an overnight battle in southern Afghanistan that a provincial governor said killed at least 50 suspected Taliban rebels and two Afghan soldiers.

More than 800 people have died in a surge of rebel attacks and government offensives since March, and U.S. and Afghan officials have warned that the violence is a threat to parliamentary elections scheduled for Sept. 18.

Afghans: U.S. airstrike killed civilians

Residents of a remote village in southern Afghanistan said Thursday that U.S. warplanes bombed houses during operations against militants this week, killing several civilians.

Zabul province Gov. Ali Khail said that U.S.-led coalition forces had "made a mistake" during recent operations in the province, but gave no details. "There were some casualties among villagers, but I don't know the exact number," he said.

The U.S. military denied that any civilians had been in the area of the fighting Monday in the Day Chopan district where the villagers come from. The military said earlier that 18 suspected insurgents and one U.S. service member were killed in a clash -- one of five Americans to die in action in Afghanistan in the past week.

Women Without Boarders Help Iraqi Women

INDOCTRINATION?...MORE LIKE TOTAL BRAINWASHING!

From the time that each of us is born in this Republic of the USA we are steeped in the erroneous doctrines of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny that has allowed the unfettered scourge of expansionism, genocide, slavery, indentured servitude,wage slavery, environmental degradation and imperialism on this continent and then around the planet. All this is done in the name of "In God We Trust," patriotism, democracy, and "Mom and Apple Pie!"

The Twilight Era of Petroleum  Michael T. Klare

Michael T. Klare is the professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict. Several recent developments —persistently high gasoline prices, unprecedented warnings from the Secretary of Energy and the major oil companies, China's brief pursuit of the American Unocal Corporation—suggest that we are just about to enter the Twilight Era of Petroleum, a time of chronic energy shortages and economic stagnation as well as recurring crisis and conflict. Petroleum will not exactly disappear during this period—it will still be available at the neighborhood gas pump, for those who can afford it—but it will not be cheap and abundant, as it has been for the past 30 years. The culture and lifestyles we associate with the heyday of the Petroleum Age—large, gas-guzzling cars and SUVs, low-density suburban sprawl, strip malls and mega-malls, cross-country driving vacations, and so Iraqi women hark back to early 1950s  By Ali Dhiaudeen

Iraqi women had their best days in the early 1950s and since then their conditions have deteriorated and worsened alarmingly after the U.S.-led invasion.

The 1950s were truly Iraqi women’s gold era. One would have thought their conditions would further improve rather than deteriorate by the turn of the century.

There are many who would like to return women to the dark ages, relegating them to second class citizens – this is the challenge enlightened Iraqi women and men must face to defeat the forces of darkness, ignorance and evil in the society.The gates of hell  By Jamal Mudhafar

The headline of this article is not a title of a science fiction film. It truthfully translates what is currently taking place in Iraq.

The gates of hell are now wide open – thanks to U.S. invasion – and their fires have enveloped almost everything in our country.

There is no electricity, no water, no fuel, no food rations, no security, no sewage …

There is terror everywhere and there is fear of everything – fear of the present and of what lies ahead in the future.

All indications tell that our future is bleak as there is nothing left in this country that makes you feel secure about your own future and that of your children.

What is happening is not a war, rebellion or insurgency. It is mass killing and annihilation coupled with torture and brutal and barbaric dismembering of innocent people.

Iraq: The Human Toll

David Cortright

Living conditions for the people of Iraq, already poor before the war, have deteriorated significantly since the US invasion. This is confirmed in a new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation. Based on a survey of 21,000 households conducted in 2004, the study shows that the Iraqi people are suffering widespread death and war-related injury, high rates of infant and child mortality, chronic malnutrition and illness among children, low rates of life expectancy and significant setbacks with regard to the role of women in society.

'America will never leave Iraq', US solider says: A US soldier holidaying in Ireland speaks candidly about the war in Iraq and says bases his country are building there are permanent...

The real reason Blair opposes withdrawal : Their problem is that they want a pliable puppet regime in Baghdad, and they know that immediate withdrawal will undermine that aim.

Origins of the Species Neo-Con: Tracking the genealogy of the cabal of neo-conservatives who have so disastrously dominated foreign policy under George W. Bush, journalists have followed a political bloodline back to the 1960s, to cold war pamphleteers like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, and-more respectably if also more tenuously- to the postwar University of Chicago political theorist Leo Strauss.

Contractors, military in 'bidding war': The U.S. military has hired private companies at a cost approaching $1 billion to help dispose of Saddam Hussein's arsenal in Iraq

GI exposed abuses at prison By Matthew D. LaPlante He had witnessed a soldier shoot a 14-year-old boy in the back during a raid - as the boy was running away. That matter, he claimed, was never thoroughly investigated.

Leaked emails claim Guantanamo trials rigged: "The process is perpetrating a fraud on the American people" Leaked emails from two former prosecutors claim the military commissions set up to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay are rigged, fraudulent, and thin on evidence against the accused. 

5,000 US Troops Have Gone AWOL: Getting Out of Iraq...One Way or Another

Cheney's boundless Iraq profiteering: Things are going well in Iraq for the invaders. Well, at least for some people, such as US Vice-President Richard Cheney. He is receiving more than $US1 million ($A1.3 million) a year from Halliburton, the company of which he was CEO from 1995 to 2000, in "deferred remuneration" while he is VP. He is worth every penny.

U.S. territories hotbed for Army recruits: High school graduates from places like Micronesia and the Philippines are signing up in droves, looking for a good paycheck.

 Iraq's Child Prisoners : A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that coalition forces are holding more than 100 children in jails such as Abu Ghraib. Witnesses claim that the detainees – some as young as 10 – are also being subjected to rape and torture

The treaty wreckers

In just a few months, Bush and Blair have destroyed global restraint on the development of nuclear weapons

George Monbiot
The Guardian

Saturday is the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The nuclear powers are commemorating it in their own special way: by seeking to ensure that the experiment is repeated.

As Robin Cook showed in his column last week, the British government appears to have decided to replace our Trident nuclear weapons, without consulting parliament or informing the public.