political nonsense

Watching the corporate media back here, I see the disparity between that and what’s actually happening on the ground continue to grow. If we look at corporate media, we’re led to believe that after the January 30 elections, things are better in Iraq. We have a democracy there. Yes, it’s — there’s still a little chaos, but things are getting better, but that is not the facts at all when we look at just the numbers. We have still an average of over a soldier a day dying, ten times that number wounded, infrastructure in shambles, and things continue to get worse. At least a car bomb a day in Baghdad and insecurity throughout most of the rest of the country.
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More than 50 former and current government officials from more than a dozen agencies have formed a new coalition to protect and support national security whistleblowers.

The group, called the National Security Whistleblower’s Coalition, is planning a series of meetings with House and Senate lawmakers and a press conference on Thursday to put forward its proposals.
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The Army is preparing to issue a new interrogations manual that expressly bars the techniques disclosed in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, and incorporates safeguards devised to prevent such misconduct at military prison camps in the future, Army officials said Wednesday.

Military investigations have faulted senior officials – including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq – for adding to the confusion by giving approval, and then rescinding it, for limited use of harsh techniques that went beyond what was allowed in the manual.
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The food services giant Sodexho has agreed to pay out $80 million to thousands of its African-American employees. This marks one of the largest corporate settlements ever in a racial discrimination case. In a lawsuit, African-American employees of the company had accused the company of denying them promotions because of their race and for fostering a segregated work environment. Court documents showed that in 2000, there were no African-Americans holding any of the company’s top corporate positions.

At the United Nations, the Bush administration has officially opposed the reappointment of the U.N.’s top nuclear inspector. Mohamed ElBaradei received the support of all other 34 nations on the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The U.S. opposition has essentially blocked ElBaradei’s reappointment for now since the board usually acts by consensus. The Bush administration has openly squared off with ElBaradei since he accurately doubted that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.
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The Republican House leadership announced it would rescind changes to ethics rules that appeared to have been made to protect House Majority Leader Tom Delay. The ethics commission is now expected to meet for the first time in four months in order to investigate a series of new allegations that Delay has broken house ethics rules.

USA Today reported earlier this week that the Republican members of the ethics commission may all face a potential conflict of interest in investigating DeLay — all five members have received campaign donations in recent years from Delay’s political action committee.
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Philip Zelikow, the interim director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center said, “Unfortunately, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and in particular, Iran continued to embrace terrorism as an instrument of national policy. Most worrisome is that these countries also have the capabilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and other destabilizing technologies that could fall into the hands of terrorists.”

Congressman John Conyers and five other Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate the New York Police Department’s conduct during the Republican National Convention.
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President Bush called for the construction of new nuclear power plants as part of his plan to ease the country’s dependence on foreign energy.

The U.S. military has admitted the ability of the Iraqi resistance to wage attacks has not diminished at all over the past year. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers said, “In terms of incidents, it’s right about where it was a year ago.”

i don’t believe its possible to be neutral. the world is already moving in certain directions- wars are going on, children are starving-and to be neutral, to be passive, in a situation like that is to collaborate with whatever is going on.
zinn on democracynow

Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill on Tuesday giving Florida residents more leeway to use deadly force in their homes and in public. The measure is known as the “stand your ground bill.” It permits people to use guns or other deadly force to defend themselves in public places without first attempting to retreat. The National Rifle Association lobbied hard for the bill’s passage and said it would use the victory to push for similar measures in other states.

A new Gallup Poll shows that half of all US citizens now say the Bush administration actively lied to the country about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the highest percentage that Gallup has found since the question was first asked in late May 2003, when 31% said the administration deliberately misled them.

The city of New York has admitted they did involuntary testing of experimental drugs on 465 HIV-positive foster children under the legal guidance of the city’s child welfare department between 1988 and 2001. Most of the children were poor and black. Some of them were infants.
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United Airlines has reached a settlement with the federal government that will result in the airline saving $645 million in each of the next five years at the expense of taxpayers.

A new study by Save the Children has founded that almost half of the 300,000 children fighting in wars today are girls – some of whom are as young as eight years old.

A US military investigation has cleared the soldiers who shot dead a high-ranking Italian intelligence agent last month in Iraq. The intelligence agent, Nicola Calipari, died on March 4 after US troops opened fire on the car that was also carrying Giuliana Sgrena – the Italian journalist who just been freed from captivity.

In a front-page editorial in her newspaper Il Manifesto Sgrena wrote today “After the apologies comes the slap in the face.” Italy maintains that that car carrying Calipari and Sgrena had been driving slowly, received no warning and that Italy had advised U.S. authorities of their mission to evacuate Sgrena from Iraq.
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The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued minus the statistics. Ms Rice’s spokesman, Richard Boucher, denied the change was politically inspired. However, intelligence officials said there were no immediate plans to publish the figures.
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The US has forced out a top human rights investigator at the United Nations just days after he released a report criticizing the US for committing human rights abuses in Afghanistan. The UN eliminated Cherif Bassiouni’s job last week after Washington had pressed for his mandate to be changed so that it would no longer cover the US military.
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Bush said that whether or not the price of gas can go down depends on supply and demand.

He met with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at his ranch in Texas to ask him for more oil. Bush greeted him with a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. The president then took Abdullah’s hand in his and guided him up the path leading to his office, taking care to a point out a field of bluebonnets on the way.
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