American diplomats have been ordered to compile a dossier detailing Iran's violations of international law that some fear could be used to justify military strikes against the Islamic republic's nuclear programme. Members of the US secretariat in the United Nations were asked earlier this month to begin "searching for things that Iran has done wrong", The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Meanwhile, deluded Mr./Mrs. Joe “Stupid” Lunchbag, their index fingers plugged firmly into both ears, their eyes tightly shut, and goofy grins on their faces, muttler to themselves, “George Bush is a good Christian man, out to defend us against them murderous sand niggars and nuke-makin’ Mulims so we can stay free.” Pathetic!

Iran Labels CIA 'Terrorist Organization'

Iran's parliament voted Saturday to designate the CIA and the U.S. Army as "terrorist organizations," a largely symbolic response to a U.S. Senate resolution seeking a similar designation for Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The parliament said the Army and the CIA were terrorists because of the atomic bombing of Japan; the use of depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq; support of the killings of Palestinians by Israel; the bombing and killing Iraqi civilians and the torture of imprisoned terror suspects. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: This is an Associated Press (AP) news story. It would have been a very interesting straight news story had not this AP news writer injected his or his editor’s or AP’s or the White House slant into it: “…a largely symbolic response to a U.S. Senate resolution seeking a similar designation for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.” Now it reads like a “hit piece” drawn up by Dick Cheney and FAX-expressed to the AP news desk.

Trigger-Happy Cop Shoots Watchful Family Dog as Toddler Watches

Television news story from Minneapolis. Please view the video before reading further.

For many perfectly normal families their dogs are trusted, faithful, loving family members. When a family’s dog dies, family members grieve, sometimes for days and sometimes for a few weeks or more. With that grief comes great and justified anger if their ever-watchful, four-footed, loyal family member has died because he has had his brains blown out by a mindless, trigger-happy, pistol-packing sheriff’s deputy whose standing order is to “shoot the dog if it growls”.

This is certainly not the first time that a law enforcement officer’s foolishly pounding on the wrong door at the wrong address with the expectation of ultimately being awarded a gold medal and an ‘at-a-boy by his sergeant for arresting a dope dealer or thief has mindlessly and needlessly slaughtered a much-loved and treasured four-footed, barking family member doing its own job: Watching and warning.

But this needs to be the last time this kind of mindless slaughter of a watchful, treasured family dog occurs. It could be if the injured family in this case sues this jerk and is awarded a financial settlement that puts this mindless fool in the poor house for the rest of his life. Perhaps then the word will get out that murder is murder, be it the unwarranted killing of a human or loved canine family member.

New Oil Law is Not in Iraq's Interest

Iraq's draft oil and gas law, which was approved by the Iraqi government in April and which is scheduled for parliamentary approval, is one of the most dangerous laws issued since the occupation of the country began in 2003. The permanent constitution, passed in 2005, is another dangerous document that threatens the future of Iraq. Some chapters of the draft oil law are based on the constitution, which is opposed by a large number of Iraqis. Many Iraqi politicians and lawmakers see the law as a major threat to Iraq's national interests. FULL ARTICLE=>

India's Loss May be China's Gain, Says Iran

Iran could replace India with China in the $7.4 billion Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project or go ahead with a two-nation Iran-Pakistan pipeline. “How long can we wait for India? It is not possible to wait eternally,” Iran's Energy and Economic Counselor in India Ainollah Suri told Business Standard. While the pipeline deal was seen as ""done"" two months ago, when the trilateral meeting took place in New Delhi, India is perceived to be dragging its feet on the project since then. It has stayed away from the subsequent two meetings in which Iran claims to have covered a lot of ground with Pakistan. FULL ARTICLE=>

US Interceptors in Europe to Hit Russian ICBMs

A number of top U.S-based physicists have concluded the United States used inaccurate claims to reassure NATO allies about U.S. missile defense plans in Eastern Europe. They say the planned Polish-based interceptors and a radar system in the Czech Republic could target and catch Russian missiles, thus threatening Russia’s nuclear deterrent. That view supports Russia’s criticism of the system. Russia adamantly opposes the plan and the dispute has escalated U.S.-Russian tensions to the highest point since the Cold War. FULL ARTICLE=>

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Dawn Launch Mosaic

Shortly after sunrise on Thursday at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the Dawn spacecraft began its journey to the asteroid belt, arcing eastward into a blue and cloudy sky. Dawn's voyage began on a conventional, chemically fueled Delta II rocket, but will continue with an innovative ion propulsion system. The spacecraft's extremely efficient ion engines will use electricity derived from solar power to ionize xenon atoms and generate a gentle but continuous thrust. After a four year interplanetary cruise, Dawn will orbit two small worlds, first Vesta and then Ceres. Vesta is one of the largest main belt asteroids, while nomenclature introduced by the International Astronomical Union in 2006 classifies nearly spherical Ceres as a dwarf planet. FULL ARTICLE=>

Hexayurt Project at Burning Man 2007

The Hexayurt Project just won the Participate! Treehugger / Current.TV / Burning Man prize for eco-nifty Burning Man stuff. A hexayurt is a shelter designed for refugees and other people with a small housing budget. FULL ARTICLE=>

Strong Demand for Military Psychologists

As a recent Pentagon report finds (see "Transforming Military Mental Health"), psychologists' expertise is being recognized—and sought—more than ever before to train service members, help them cope with their duties, and treat those with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and other mental health concerns.

To give APA members a glimpse of the varied, intense, and sometimes dangerous work of psychologists serving in the military, the Monitor interviewed five who are now serving. Here are their stories. FULL ARTICLE=>

Which Vitamin Will Improve Your Life Expectancy the Most?

Dr. Mercola

Vitamin D supplements may lower your risk of dying from any cause, according to a new European study.

Researchers from the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, reviewed 18 trials of more than 57,000 people. FULL ARTICLE=>

Suicide Rate Soars for Girls -- What's Going On?

Dr. Mercola

The suicide rate for young people between the ages of 10 and 24 jumped 8 percent from 2003 to 2004, representing the largest single-year increase in 15 years, a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found.

Although overall suicide rates among young people fell by nearly 30 percent since 1990, one "dramatic and huge" increase is drawing concern from health officials: the suicide rate among *** and young teen girls, those aged 10 to 14, rose 76 percent from 2003 to 2004. FULL ARTICLE=>

September 29

Iran Strengthens Ties With South America

The leaders of Iran and Venezuela cemented an alliance aimed at countering the United States while the Iranian president reached out to a new ally in Bolivia and declared that together, "no one can defeat us." After being vilified during his U.N. visit this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled on to friendlier territory Thursday, first stopping in Bolivia where he pledged $1 billion in investment and then visiting Venezuela to meet President Hugo Chavez. FULL ARTICLE=>

First US Troops leave Iraq Under Draw-Down Plan

The first US military unit scheduled to withdraw from Iraq under President George Bush’s plan to cut troop levels has left the war zone. Captain Pamela Marshall, a military spokeswoman in Washington, said the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a group of 2,200 marines who were stationed in western Anbar province, had boarded a naval vessel and begun the trip home. A brigade combat team of 4,000 troops is expected to leave Iraq in mid-December followed by four other brigade combat teams and two Marine battalions. FULL ARTICLE=>

FDIC Shuts Down NetBank Because of Excessive Level of Mortgage Defaults

NetBank Inc., an online bank with $2.5 billion in assets, was shut down by the government on Friday because of an excessive level of mortgage defaults. It was the largest savings and loan failure since the tail end of the industry's crisis more than 14 years ago. Federal regulators appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as a receiver for Alpharetta, Ga.-based NetBank. FULL ARTICLE=>

School Security Guards Beat Teen over Cake Spill

School security guards in Palmdale, CA have been caught on camera assaulting a 16-year-old girl and breaking her arm after she spilled some cake during lunch and left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning it up. FULL ARTICLE=>

Congress Quietly Approves Billions More for Iraq War

The Senate agreed on Thursday to increase the federal debt limit by $850 billion -- from $8.965 trillion to $9.815 trillion -- and then proceeded to approve a stop-gap spending bill that gives the Bush White House at least $9 billion in new funding for its war in Iraq. Additionally, the administration has been given emergency authority to tap further into a $70 billion "bridge fund" to provide new infusions of money for the occupation while the Congress works on appropriations bills for the Department of Defense and other agencies. FULL ARTICLE=>

Blackwater Cancels Planned Expansion

In more fallout from the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead, Blackwater USA apparently has stopped its expansion projects. On Wednesday, the North Carolina private military contractor canceled a $5.5 million deal to buy 1,800 acres of farmland near Fort Bragg, where it was going to set up a training ground for soldiers and corporate executives. FULL ARTICLE=>

Helicopter Ben Earns His Wings

By Peter Schiff

Coming at a time when rate increases were needed to combat the sinking dollar and surging gold, oil and other commodity prices, Ben Bernanke’s 50 basis point cuts in the Fed funds and discount rates this week may go down as the most irresponsible move in Fed history. To America’s creditors around the world, whose mountains of dollar reserves will be debased by lower rates in the U.S., this action amounts to the monetary equivalent of “let them eat cake.” My prediction is that rather than doing so, they will just throw it back in our faces, and refuse to continue funding our deficits. FULL ARTICLE=>

Science: Is it Possible to Make Science Sexy?

Roger Highfield invites Telegraph readers to come up with ways to increase the public's interest in science. They have split the atom. They know when the Big Bang of creation took place. And they have read the entire recipe of a human being. But scientists are still a bit clueless about the laws of journalism and how to spread awareness of scientific issues. FULL ARTICLE=>

No-Cost Low-Cost Tips for Saving Money & Energy

Here are a few dozen ways you may want to consider if you want to save on energy costs. FULL ARTICLE=>

The REELRADIO Tenth Birthday Special

Top 40 Veterans Bobby Ocean and Charlie Van Dyke host this 65-minute special created for the tenth birthday of REELRADIO on February 12, 2006. It features samples of all REELRADIO HITBOUND exhibits for each birthday, beginning in 1996 and continuing through 2005.

LC Editor’s Comments: Beautiful! This was real radio! And check out the complete ReelRadio.com --- it’s the priceless repository of “airchecks” from the Top 40 radio during the haydays of radio!

Aircheck: Larry Lujack in the Morning, 89 WLS Chicago

Here’s a pristine aircheck which sounds very much like it came right out of the studio skimmer. Larry Lujack on WLS!

Discovered in this box of cassettes that the donor asked to be called annonymous about a year ago (really), this is a great look at Mr. Lujack’s morning show in 1970. Includes a few commercials and “The Jeffrey Hendricks Report” from WLS News! Hearing Hendricks and that delivery style - WOW! That was news!

September 28, 2007

Dollar Hits Record Low as Fed Seen Cutting

The dollar tumbled to a new low against the euro as signs that inflationary pressures in the US are easing fuelled speculation that the Federal Reserve will add to this month's dramatic rate cut.

The monthly core consumer price index – which excludes volatile food and energy items including oil – edged up just 0.1pc for a sixth straight month, according to the US Commerce Department. Year-on-year, core prices were up 1.8pc, the smallest increase since a similar 1.8pc rise in February 2004.

Robert Sinche, head of currency strategy in New York, said: "The dollar was sold on a significantly bearish outlook. Now the dollar has been pushed to an extreme level." FULL ARTICLE=>

US Housing Market in Freefall Dive

Sales of new homes in the US plunged in August at the fastest rate since modern records began, prompting fears the economy is sliding into a full-blown recession.

Total sales dropped 8.3pc on the month and are now down 21.2pc during the past year, a sign that the credit crunch has cut off mortgage funding for large numbers of people. JP Morgan now expects sales to fall by more than half from their peak before touching bottom well into next year. FULL ARTICLE=>

Dollar Respite as Saudis Stick to Peg, for Now

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

U.K. Telegraph

The dollar has at last begun to stabilize after a week of preciptious falls on news Saudi Arabia intends to stick to its closely watched exchange-rate peg, despite its refusal to cut interest rates in lockstep with US Federal Reserve. FULL ARTICLE=>

US Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel

By Mike Whitney

GlobalResearch.com

Sept. 19, 2007

By now, you’ve probably seen the photos of the angry customers queued up outside of Northern Rock Bank waiting to withdraw their money. This is the first big run on a British bank in over a century. It’s lost an eighth of its deposits in three days. The pictures are headline news in the U.K. but have been stuck on the back pages of U.S. newspapers. The reason for this is obvious. The same Force 5 economic-hurricane that just touched ground in Great Britain is headed for America and gaining strength on the way. FULL ARTICLE=>

Soldiers Break up Burma Protests

Soldiers and police have baton-charged Burmese protesters who tried to stage a further day of marches in Rangoon. Security forces sealed off five monasteries that were focal points of previous mass marches, in a bid to prevent further demonstrations. Official media said nine people were killed on Thursday as troops fired tear gas and bullets to clear large crowds of protesters off Rangoon's streets. British and Australian ambassadors in Burma say the toll was probably higher. FULL ARTICLE=>

Myanmar Breaks up Rallies, Cuts Internet

Soldiers clubbed activists in the streets and fired warning shots Friday, moving decisively to break up demonstrations in Myanmar before they could gain momentum. Troops occupied Buddhist monasteries and cut public Internet access, raising concerns that the crackdown on civilians that has killed at least 10 people was set to intensify.

Troops also fired tear gas to break up a demonstration of about 2,000 people in the largest city, Yangon, witnesses said. Five protesters were seen being dragged into a truck and driven away. The clash in an area near the Sule Pagoda was the most serious of the several sporadic - though smaller - protests that were reported. FULL ARTICLE=>

Q&A: Protests in Burma

As demonstrations in Burma continue to gather pace, the BBC looks at what triggered the protests, who is involved and what they could mean for the country's military leaders. FULL ARTICLE=>

Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy

Ray McGovern

It is an exceedingly dangerous time. Vice President Dick Cheney and his hard-core "neo-conservative" protégés in the administration and Congress are pushing harder and harder for President George W. Bush, isolated from reality, to honor the promise he made to Israel to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. FULL ARTICLE=>

Testimony in Court-Martial Describes a Sniper Squad Pressed to Raise Body Count

An Army sniper is taught to kill people “calmly and deliberately,” even when they pose no immediate danger to him. “A sniper,” Army Field Manual 23-10 goes on to state, “must not be susceptible to emotions such as anxiety or remorse.” But in a crowded military courtroom seemingly stunned into silence on Thursday, Sgt. Evan Vela all but broke down as he described firing two bullets into an unarmed Iraqi man his unit arrested last May. FULL ARTICLE=>

The Man Behind the My anmar Madness

Myanmar's monk-led struggle for political change has made global headlines, but the dictator who rules the country with an iron fist, General Than Shwe, 74, is still obscure, often grimly hidden behind dark sunglasses and a military uniform decorated with medals. He is widely viewed, both at home and overseas, as the major stumbling block to national reconciliation and the restoration of democracy. FULL ARTICLE=>

A Pandemic of Police Brutality

Paul Craig Roberts

Bush's "war on terror" quickly became Bush's war on Iraqi civilians. So far over one million Iraqi civilians have lost their lives because of Bush's invasion, and four million have been displaced. Iraq's infrastructure is in ruins. Disease is rampart. Normal life has disappeared. FULL ARTICLE=>

Spy Officials Tracking Key Scientists

Tracking scientists moving from country to country to share their expertise in building biological weapons is a major challenge, a top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday. FULL ARTICLE=>

Russia is Far from Oil's Peak

The good news is that panic scenarios about the world running out of oil any time soon are wrong. The bad news is that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. "Peak Oil" is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. US Vice President Dick Cheney and friends are all too willing to assist. FULL ARTICLE=>

Hate Crimes Bill Tacked Onto Defense Bill

The Democratic-led Senate on Thursday voted to let federal law enforcement help states prosecute attacks on gays, attaching the provision to a massive spending bill for the Iraq war and daring President Bush to veto the whole package. The White House wasn't commenting on the prospects for a veto of the underlying defense authorization bill. But some Republicans warned that's just what would happen after the Senate voted by voice to accept the hate crimes amendment. FULL ARTICLE=>

Why Does Norman Podhoretz Hate America?

Norman Podhoretz's new book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, is a hate-filled, anti-American book of the first order. Podhoretz hates every American who does not support the neoconservatives' views, the foreign policy they have devised, and the military and national security disasters to which they are leading America. Patrick Buchanan, Andrew J. Bacevich, Sir John Keegan, Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, and many others are all targets of Podhoretz.

These men are variously characterized as anti-Semites, isolationists, recanters from the true creed, or simply as small men who fear the neoconservative utopia is about to arrive, discredit their views, and cost them their jobs or prestige.

Podhoretz is particularly vicious toward Buchanan because he knows that Buchanan sees through the neoconservative fantasy with the most unrelenting acuity. Buchanan's frank voice and non-interventionism – not isolationism – are genuinely American characteristics, so Podhoretz must go all out to discredit Buchanan as an anti-Semite, lest Americans listen to Buchanan's advice not to get their children killed fighting other peoples' wars, be they wars for Israelis or Muslims or anyone else. FULL ARTICLE=>

Strategies and Tools for Influencing Congressmen

Community leaders can have a significant impact in their communities by taking a stand on health and health care issues. Below we list several tactics that leaders can use to engage and influence Congress, the White House, their communities, and the media. The following is a list of tips to help community leaders communicate with members

of Congress and learn how the lawmaking process works. FULL ARTICLE=>

Dealing With Negative People Made Easy

I was playing tennis today with one of my tennis buddies. We play once a week and we usually chat about work, professional tennis players and local news. Today he was very negative about the people of the area we live in. According to him they are all thieves and crooks. Now this makes me really angry when I hear him talking like this since I have had very positive experiences with the people I have dealt with locally. I find the locals to be very friendly, helpful and considerate. So we disagree on the facts. What can I do about his negative thinking? What can you do when dealing with negative people? FULL ARTICLE=>

Dealing With Very Angry People

The story is told of a man pursued up a steep mountain road by several people intent on killing him. The road twisted and turned and his only course was forward and upward – it was straight down on the right and straight up on the left. He came around a hairpin turn to find a huge dragon blocking the road. The man could not go back, for he was badly outnumbered. The steepness of the mountain precluded leaving the road. His choices were unexpectedly limited: he could engage the dragon in combat and kill it (or be killed, an unattractive alternative), or he could tame the dragon, turning it from enemy to ally.

Have you ever faced a fire-breathing dragon? Being unexpectedly confronted by someone who is very angry feels like facing a dragon. FULL ARTICLE=>

Safe Water Treatment and Storage in the Home

In many parts of the developing world, drinking water is collected from unsafe surface sources outside the home and is then held in household storage vessels. Drinking water may be contaminated at the source or during storage; strategies to reduce waterborne disease transmission must safeguard against both events. We describe a two-component prevention strategy, which allows an individual to disinfect drinking water immediately after collection (point-of-use disinfection) and then to store the water in narrow-mouthed, closed vessels designed to prevent recontamination (safe storage). New disinfectant generators and better storage vessel designs make this strategy practical and inexpensive. This approach empowers households and communities that lack potable water to protect themselves against a variety of waterborne pathogens and has the potential to decrease the incidence of waterborne diarrheal disease. FULL ARTICLE=>

Simple System for Water Power Generation of Electricity

Large-scale hydroelectric power has been used worldwide for a long time to generate huge amounts of power from water stored behind massive dams. Small-scale hydropower has been used for hundreds of years for manufacturing, including milling grain, sawing logs and manufacturing cloth. However, it can also be used without a dam to generate electricity for home scale remote power systems. These so-called micro-hydro installations can be a very good complement to a solar power system, as they produce electricity 24 hours a day. FULL ARTICLE=>

September 27, 2008

Senate Temporarily Sidelines Immigration Legalization Bill

The prospects for immediate Senate action on the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants, disappeared Wednesday amid Republican opposition. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged that senators would vote on the measure, which is strongly opposed by anti-illegal immigration groups, before the Senate finishes its work for the year in mid-November. FULL ARTICLE=>

New-Home Sales Tumble to 7-Year Low

New-homes sales tumbled in August to the lowest level in seven years, a stark sign that the credit crunch is aggravating an already painful housing slump. Sales of new homes dropped by 8.3 percent in August from July, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, driving down sales to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 795,000 units. That was the lowest level since June 2000, when sales clocked in at a pace of 793,000. FULL ARTICLE=>

Cigarette Surveillance Program Begins Today

NASHVILLE — Starting today, state Department of Revenue agents will begin stopping Tennessee motorists spotted buying large quantities of cigarettes in border states, then charging them with a crime and, in some cases, seizing their cars.

Critics say the new “cigarette surveillance program” amounts to the use of “police state” tactics and wrongfully interferes with interstate commerce. But state Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr says his department is simply doing its job, enforcing a valid state law while protecting Tennessee retailers who properly pay. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: All is well in Police State Amerika.

Ahmadinejad Meets Christian Leaders and Holds Friendly Exchange

After two days of prickly confrontations with critics at Columbia University and the United Nations, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran held a friendly, even warm, exchange yesterday with Christian leaders from the United States and Canada convinced that dialogue is the only way to prevent war. FULL ARTICLE=>

Fined Pro-Democratic Group Tied to Hillary

Officials of a defunct pro-Democratic group that was hit with a near-record campaign-finance fine last month hold strong ties to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, documents show. At least four persons who worked for the America Coming Together (ACT) fundraising group, which the Federal Election Commission recently fined $775,000, work directly for the Clinton campaign or hold top positions with consulting firms hired by it. FULL ARTICLE=>

‘A Coup has Occurred’

Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered insights into the looming war with Iran and the loss of liberty in the United States at an American University symposium on Sept. 20. Here is an edited transcript of Ellsberg's remarkable speech:

I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.

If there's another 9/11 under this regime ... it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth. FULL ARTICLE=>

No More Wars for Israel Conference

Here is information about the ‘No More Wars for Israel’ Conference to Be held in Southern California on the weekend of October 12-14, 2007.

The conference is being dedicated to Mordechai Vanunu, former Israeli nuclear technician who spent 18 yrs in the hellhole of an Israeli prison for trying to warn the world about the most dangerous nation in the world possessing the most dangerous weapons in the world. He has recently been convicted of violating an Israeli court order barring him from speaking to foreign journalists and faces an additional 6 months in prison. FULL ARTICLE=>

Top Neocon Urged Bush to Bomb Iran During Private White House Meeting

Giuliani adviser Podhoretz predicted Bush 'will hit' Iran before term is up

One of the few remaining neoconservatives in America was recently granted a private audience in the White House to deliver a 45-minute sales pitch to convince President Bush, accompanied by political deputy Karl Rove, to bomb Iran. FULL ARTICLE=>

Generals Opposing Iraq War Break with Military Tradition

The generals acted independently, coming in their own ways to the agonizing decision to defy military tradition and publicly criticize the Bush administration over its conduct of the war in Iraq. What might be called The Revolt of the

Generals has rarely happened in the nation's history. FULL ARTICLE=>

EPA to Approve New, Controversial Fumigant for Crops

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected within days to approve a new toxic fumigant for use by fruit and vegetable farmers, despite opposition from California regulators, prominent scientists and environmental and farmworker groups.

The agency intends to register methyl iodide as a substitute for the pesticide methyl bromide, which is being phased out by international treaty, according to government officials familiar with the decision. The new product is MIDAS, a methyl iodide compound manufactured by Tokyo-based Arysta LifeScience Corp. Its EPA approval is due by Friday, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision publicly

Blackwater: Lawyers, Guns and Money

Nathan Hodge

MOYOCK, N.C.—First rule of Blackwater is: You do not talk to the clients.

Back in October, I travelled to Camden County, North Carolina for the unveiling of Blackwater HK International Training Services, a joint venture that offers high-end firearms training courses developed by private security firm Blackwater and gun manufacturer Heckler & Koch. It was a rare glimpse inside the Blackwater's 7,000-acre training facility. Perhaps like no other private security firm, Blackwater projects a certain mystique; and even when the gates were open to a visiting group of reporters, an atmosphere of high secrecy surrounded the place. Chris Taylor, Blackwater's vice president for strategic initiatives, greeted our group in the lobby of the company's vast new headquarters building, which bears an odd resemblance to a Cabela's retail outlet. FULL ARTICLE=>

PBS: Weapons of US Soldiers in Iraq 'Plagued with Problems'

The M-16, the choice rifle of the United States Armed Forces, turns 50 years old this month and is still plagued by many of the same problems it had half a century ago, putting American troops in Iraq at a severe disadvantage when it comes to small arms combat, the PBS program Newshour reported tonight.

"That AK-74 outhits the M-16 by two to one on full automatic," said Jim Sullivan, referring to the Russian-made assault rifle, now in its third generation. "And the reason there were 100 million AK's made wasn't to equip the Russian army - it was to give [to] our Third World opponents. The United States can't win ground wars anymore."

The M-16 and its successor, the shorter M4, are known for their finickiness, jamming in even the most innocuous conditions. In combat, the unreliability of the rifle can be deadly. FULL ARTICLE=>

AK-47 vs AR-15: Which One is the Better Assault Rifle?

The first M16s had all kinds of problems, most of which have been resolved. The remaining problems mainly amount to jamming due to dust or sand during long periods in the field. Since civilians almost never spend weeks in the field, a civilian owner will almost never see one of those problems. FULL ARTICLE=>

Firearm Review: Romanian AK-47 Variant, the WASR-10

By Mark LeFabre

Firstly, this rifle IS NOT LEGAL under the laws of California, Massachusets and Washington DC. I DO NOT advocate breaking the law to obtain one of these rifles. It is perfectly legal to own in the other 48 states (including my own). Another important factor when modifying any AK clone is knowledge of the 922r "parts count" compliance laws. They state that any imported rifle capable of accepting a magazine wiht more than ten rounds cannot have more then 10 foreign made parts. The 922r compliance statutes make up an article of their own and I will not delve into them here.

The rifle was purchased through my local dealer for $370. It came with two 30 round magazines and an accessory kit with cleaning tools and a sling. The rifle was wrapped in plain brown paper and coated with heavy cosmoline grease for shipment. I spent about two hours dissasembling and cleaning off this sticky grease. I discovered that laquer thinner worked the best and did not remove the finish from the gun. All parts were inspected and oiled prior to reassembly. No defects or problems were found. FULL ARTICLE=>

September 26, 2007

Bush Administration, DOJ Blocking Iraq Fraud Suits

Peter Keisler, the acting US attorney general, covered up evidence of alleged widespread contracting fraud in Iraq by preventing whistleblowers' complaints from being investigated, according to a prominent fraud attorney.

Alan Grayson, an attorney who has represented scores of whistleblowers in suits against companies that were awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts related to Iraq reconstruction, blamed the Bush administration for the lack of government action on Iraq fraud. FULL ARTICLE=>

US Nuclear Weapons Being “Guarded” by Israel

Michael Collins Piper

Sept. 26, 2007

American supporters of Israel were delighted to learn that an Israeli company, Magal Security Systems-owned in part by the government of Israel-is in charge of security for the most sensitive nuclear power and weapons storage facilities in the United States. FULL ARTICLE=>

What World War III May Look Like

Philip Giraldi

Antiwar.com

Sept. 25, 2007

Neoconservatives are great observers of war and warriors, though they are sometimes not in complete agreement about the numbering of the conflicts that they send other people's sons and daughters to fight. Norman Podhoretz, the patriarch of the neocons, believes that the Cold War was World War III and that the U.S. is now fighting World War IV against "Islamofascism." He intends to expand World War IV by slating Iran as the next domino to fall to America's military might. Podhoretz undoubtedly sees the current global conflict as something that is good and necessary, both containable and winnable, but as his judgment on Iraq was fallible, his prediction of Iran's rapid destruction is also unreliable. It might be useful to imagine just how war with Iran could play out if the Iranians don't roll over and surrender at the first whiff of grapeshot. FULL ARTICLE=>

Secret US Air Force Team to Perfect Plan for Iran Strike

The United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with Iran. Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June. FULL ARTICLE=>

Rabbis Say Iran Seeks Peace, Respects Judaism

“It is sad that so few have actually attempted to speak to the Iranian President or seek the true opinion of Iranian Jewry who live in peace and practice their faith throughout that nation. We have met this man who has demonstrated time and again that he is sincerely interested in the well being of Iran's Jewish community and has deep respect for world Jewry and their Torah faith, The Zionist attempt to socially isolate this man and his people is immoral and disastrous.”

“Zionism is antithetical to Torah beliefs. It believes in creating our own sovereign entity which is expressly forbidden due to the Divine decree of exile. This ideology leads to aggression against nations and is incarnated in the State of 'Israel.' This State continually oppresses other people in the name of Judaism and the entire Jewish people. This movement has exacerbated anti Semitism throughout the world. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad understands this distinction between traditional Judaism and Zionist distortion”. FULL ARTICLE=>

Scornful Ahmadinejad Says Issue of Iranian Nuclear Programme Closed

The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, remained on a direct collision course with the Western powers last night, unilaterally declaring that as far as he is concerned the issue of his country's nuclear enrichment activities should henceforth be "closed".

In an address filled with scornful references to the United States and the other "bullying powers", Mr Ahmadinejad insisted that all Iran's nuclear steps have been "completely peaceful and transparent" and therefore should be handled only by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. FULL ARTICLE=>

Secret Confab Teaches Officials to Sell Foreigners US Assets

Jerome Corsi

A top Carlyle Group executive is leading a panel tomorrow at a conference to teach government officials in the U.S. how to lease public assets to foreign groups – an event that barred WND.

Barry Gold, managing director in charge of infrastructure investment, will be at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City to lead a session at the "North American PPP & Infrastructure Finance Conference."

The government of Abu Dhabi has made an investment in the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private investment firm with close ties to former President George H. W. Bush and his family and top officials in the Reagan and Clinton administrations. FULL ARTICLE=>

Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report

Seven CIA veterans have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and have called for a new investigation. “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke,” said Raymond McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates during the seventies. “There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions. And the reason they’re unanswered is because this administration will not answer the questions,” he said. McGovern, who is also the founder of VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), is one of many signers of a petition to reinvestigate 9/11.[1] FULL ARTICLE=>

Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure

How large a role does the "Israeli Lobby" play in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East? Some answers may be contained in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, reviewed in the Sept. 23 New York Times, and Rulers and Ruled in The U.S. Empire by James Petras, just published by Clarity Press. Mearsheimer teaches at the University of Chicago and Walt teaches at Harvard.

According i to Petras, a sociologist at Binghamton University, New York, the pro-Zionist "power configuration" is not just the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee(AIPAC). The Zionist lobby is so powerful, Petras argues, it "calls the shots" and "supports the escalation of the Iraq war and the savaging of Palestine, Somalia and Afghanistan." FULL ARTICLE=>

The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract

The future of U.S. anti-terrorism technology could lie near the end of a Moscow subway line in a circular dungeon-like room with a single door and no windows. Here, at the Psychotechnology Research Institute, human subjects submit to experiments aimed at manipulating their subconscious minds. FULL ARTICLE=>

When America Went Fascist

Chris Rowthorn

"Fascism: a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator"
-- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000

It is a truism in the blogosphere that one more terrorist attack will turn America into a fascist state. People speculate about what fascism in America will look like, or how they might fight it. Others boast that they plan to flee the country ahead of the coming fascist takeover of the United States. One cannot read these posts without a sense of bitter irony, because one thing is clear to those who are watching carefully: The United States of America is already a fascist state. FULL ARTICLE=>

No More Mercenaries

Eric Margolis

Private armies have a very sinister reputation in Europe. Memories still linger of Germany’s post WWI army veterans, the`Stahlhelm,’ and Nazi Brownshirts, who battled Communists street toughs here in Munich and Berlin. Europeans remember Italy’s fascist Blackshirts and, most recently, Serb neo-fascist gangs like Arkan’s `Tigers’ and the `White Eagles’ who committed some of the worst atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo. FULL ARTICLE=>

Tastes Just Like Chicken

Allen Easterly

So you want to raise some critters that taste just like chicken? There’s no better critter than the chicken itself. Chicken has become the most sought after meat in the marketplace. Raising your own birds can save you a few bucks at the grocery store. Even more satisfying is the great sense of accomplishment that comes with raising your own food from egg to dinner table and providing this healthy meal to your family. FULL ARTICLE=>

Answering Some Well Asked Questions About Personal Defense

Massad Ayoob

Jeff Yago, Backwoods Home’s energy writer, recently completed a couple of concealed carry handgun courses. The classes apparently left some questions hanging in the air, and Jeff passed along a request through Dave Duffy for those questions to be addressed in this space. Here goes. FULL ARTICLE=>

This Common Antioxidant Supplement Could Cause You Loads of Trouble

Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System have discovered troubling side effects of N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a common antioxidant used in nutritional and bodybuilding supplements. NAC can form a red blood cell-derived molecule called nitrosothiol that fools your body into thinking there’s an oxygen shortage, which can lead to pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). FULL ARTICLE=>

Artist's NSFW Creations Envision Robot Sex

While making an animated war movie featuring armies of battling robots, filmmaker Michael Sullivan began to get a new idea: His film should feature non-stop robot sex.

The Sex Life of Robots centers around a robot baby and his mother scanning their home computer for porn. It shows -- in graphic detail -- the scenes of robot coitus that pop up on their screen. "It's supposed to be like a silent robot porno movie from another planet," Sullivan explains. Despite the subject matter, Sullivan's creation exhibits a high degree of artistry. His eye for detail gives his movies a gritty, industrialized atmosphere, as you can see in this preview Sex Life of Robots. Warning: the video is not safe for work (NSFW).

September 25, 2007

Emergency: New Right De-emphasizes the Hate Bill

Rev. Ted Pike

Sept. 25, 2007

Confident that President Bush can be counted on to veto the federal "anti-hate" bill, most Christian/conservative leaders now give greatest emphasis to defeat of ENDA (The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, H.R. 2015). On their websites, they attack ENDA as the primary enemy of freedom and Christian values. Consequently, millions of their Christian followers have stopped resisting Sen. Kennedy's hate crimes amendment, S.A. 2067, just as it is about to be voted on in the Senate! FULL ARTICLE AND ACTION INSTRUCTIONS=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Pre-written letter for transmittal to your U.S. Senators and instructions are provided.

Action Needed: Anti-gun Zealots Trying To Ram Disarmament Bill Through Senate

Larry Pratt

September 25, 2007

You'd think that when rabid, anti-gun legislators like Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy join together to pass anti-gun legislation, it would raise a few red flags. But these two New York Democrats are currently planning to roll over gun owners with H.R. 2640 -- legislation which would bar you from owning guns if:

* You are a battle-scarred veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; or

* As a kid, you were diagnosed with ADHD.

Not to mention the fact that your ailing grandfather could have his entire gun collection seized, based only on a diagnosis of Alzheimer's (and there goes the family inheritance).

Gun owners have been desperately fighting this bill for several months. You will remember that it passed in the House with an unrecorded voice vote in June and was later passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- also without a recorded vote. Sen. Schumer is pushing hard to pass this legislation -- dubbed the Veterans Disarmament Act -- so he is circulating an "agreement" which would waive the Senate rules in order to bring up and pass the bill. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Pre-written letter for transmittal to your U.S. Senators and instructions are provided.

Air Force Refused to Fly Nukes: B-52’s Missiles on Way to Middle East for Iran Attack

Wayne Madsen

September 23, 2007

WMR (Wayne Madsen Reports) has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community. FULL ARTICLE=>

Congress Denounces Iran's Ahmadinejad

September 25, 2007

Congress signaled its disapproval of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a vote Tuesday to tighten sanctions against his government and a call to designate his army a terrorist group.

The swift rebuke was a rare display of bipartisan cooperation in a Congress bitterly divided on the Iraq war. It reflected lawmakers' long-standing nervousness about Tehran's intentions in the region, particularly toward Israel—a sentiment fueled by the pro-Israeli lobby whose influence reaches across party lines in Congress. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: This action by Congress should come as no surprise to informed Americans, especially those persons who have read Mearsheimer and Walt’s essay "The Israel Lobby" .

Outing the 'Israel Lobby'

When John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt published their controversial essay "The Israel Lobby" in the London Review of Books in March 2006, their work elicited the kind of response of which most academics only dream. But it was also attacked and condemned by critics for its provocative and pointed argument that a wide-ranging coalition that includes neoconservatives, Christian Zionists, academics, columnists and Washington lobby groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is responsible for shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East and suppressing the public debate in Washington. FULL ARTICLE=>

Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 1

Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial are all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war.

Juan Cole

Sept. 24, 2007

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly has become a media circus. But the controversy does not stem from the reasons usually cited. FULL ARTICLE=>

Iran’s Ahmadinejad to New Yorkers: US Threats are the Real Danger to Peace

President Ahmadinejad said yesterday that talk of American military strikes against Iran threatened world security, as he tried to soften his image in the West.

Greeted in New York by headlines that he was an evil madman, Mr Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran “will not attack any country”. He also ducked a chance to accuse the United States of preparing for war, telling a questioner: “That is not how I see it.” Such talk in America, he said, arose from anger, electoral purposes and “a cover for policy failures over Iraq”. FULL ARTICLE=>

President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University

Text of presentation.

Generals Opposing Iraq War Break with Military Tradition

Generals has rarely happened in the nation's history. FULL ARTICLE=>

Hot Property: Spacious Larsen Missile Base As Your New Home

Looking for a new home with a bit more space as well as a 1950s Cold War ambiance? A US intercontinental ballistic missile base, equipped with a vast underground network of tunnels and rooms but no atomic warheads, is for sale in a remote corner of the United States. The warheads and missiles went when the US government abandoned the Titan bases in the 1970s. Located near remote Moses Lake in the northwest state of Washington, the former Larsen military base includes 4,000 square meters (43,000 square feet) of "usable" space on 23 hectares (56 acres) of land, and the owner is only asking for 1.5 million dollars -- which might buy a small home in Hollywood. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Contact Ron Larsen at ron@libertycalling.com .

September 24, 2007

Veterans Disarmament Act to Bar Vets from Owning Guns

Hundreds of thousands of veterans -- from Vietnam through Operation Iraqi Freedom -- are at risk of being banned from buying firearms if legislation that is pending in Congress gets enacted. How? The Veterans Disarmament Act -- which has already passed the House -- would place any veteran who has ever been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the federal gun ban list. FULL ARTICLE=>

Anti-gun California Senator Dianne Feinstein Is At It Again

You may recall that in recent years, GOA has enlisted your aid in fighting so-called "gang" legislation, which typically includes attempts to apply federal RICO anti-racketeering statutes to minor gun infractions -- thus harassing and prosecuting otherwise law-abiding gun owners as though they were Mafia bosses. Well, Feinstein's S. 456 is the latest vehicle for such underhandedness. FULL ARTICLE=>

Act Now! Vets Disarmament Bill Could Come Before Senate Any Time

The Senate could bring up the Veterans Disarmament Bill at any time, as a result of its passage in the Judiciary Committee a few weeks ago. The bill -- introduced by F-rated Rep. Carolyn McCarthy and Sen. Patrick Leahy -- is ready to come to the floor. Gun Owners of America delivered draft amendments to every Senate office yesterday, providing important changes that must be made to the bill. Among others, the most important amendment would make it clear that veterans suffering from PTSD are NOT prohibited persons, and thus, are not to be denied the ability to purchase a firearm simply because of emotional problems resulting from their service to this country. FULL ARTICLE=>

NRA Attorney: “Your Honor, we are here wanting to register handguns.” (2003)

What follows is an annotated transcript of the oral arguments held October 8, 2003, in D.C. federal court in the NRA-Halbrook firearms case. This is both an exercise in argument analysis and an attempt to explain the case, its strengths, and shortcomings. The ALL CAPS text is the transcript as received from the court reporter minus only a couple of typos. The bold, colored, normal sentence text is annotation. These are the opinions of the author and are intended to be useful and educational for future Second Amendment litigation. FULL ARTICLE=>

Gun Control, Patriotism & Civil Disobedience (1991)

The State of California recently enacted a law that requires owners of semiautomatic weapons to register their guns with the state. But when the law went into effect, thousands of California gun owners, although risking a felony conviction, refused to comply with its requirements. FULL ARTICLE=>

Toward an Annotated Bibliography of the Second Amendment

This article summarizes the treatment of the Second Amendment in law journals in the last decade, and offers the author's analysis of the merits of some of the more important articles. Don B. Kates and Gary Kleck are the authors of "The Great American Gun Debate" (Pacific Research Institute, 1997), from which this article is partly adapted. Links to full-text version of many of the articles discussed below can be found at the following site http://www.primenet.com/~mfuller/legal/. FULL ARTICLE=>

Zelikow: 9/11 Cover-Up Expert – Part 1- VIDEO

Philip Zelikow, 9/11 insider, is scheduled to speak at Chautauqua Institution on August 9, 2007 (western New York, near Jamestown). As Webster Tarpley notes, Zelikow is very important in the 9/11 cover-up. In 1998, Philip Zelikow published an article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, entitled CATASTROPHIC TERRORISM: Imagining the Transformative Event. Nearly two years later, PNAC picked up the CFR-Zelikow language, saying that the desired transformation "is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor..." In part one of this series, we hear from author Webster Tarpley, Professor Graeme MacQueen (religious studies, McMaster University, ret.), Ken Jenkins (filmmaker), and Peter Dale Scott, author. FULL ARTICLE AND VIDEO=>

Zelikow: 9/11 Parallel Universe – Part 2 - VIDEO

Zelikow, author of the 9/11 Commission Report, responds to a couple of uncensored questions August 9, 2007 at Chautauqua Institution. Question 1 comes from Paul Zarembka, editor of The Hidden History of 9-11-2001. Professor Zarembka, State University of New York at Buffalo (Economics Dept), asks Zelikow why he failed to investigate reports of several of the so-called hijackers alive and protesting their non-involvement. Then yor yevrah of snowshoefilms asks Zelikow about Building 7. Zelikow says he doesn't accept the hypothesis that any buildings were brought down by controlled demolition. FULL ARTICLE AND VIDEO=>

The XP Alternative for Vista PCs

While Microsoft is still pushing Vista hard, the company is quietly allowing PC makers to offer a "downgrade" option to buyers that get machines with the new operating system but want to switch to Windows XP. The program applies only to Windows Vista Business and Ultimate versions, and it is up to PC makers to decide how, if at all, they want to make XP available. Fujitsu has been among the most aggressive, starting last month to include an XP disc in the box with its laptops and tablets. FUL:L ARTICLE=>

September 23, 2007

Bush Ups his War Budget to $191 Billion for 2008

The Bush administration plans to increase its 2008 financing request for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by almost $50 billion, with about a quarter of the additional money going toward armored trucks built to withstand roadside bombs, Pentagon officials said Saturday. FULL ARTICLE=>

Secret US Air Force Team to Perfect Plan for Iran Strike

LC Editor’s Comments: Let’s play a game, shall we? First, let’s ask what comes into your mind when you read title of this article? You say, “Good for Bush’s Air Force guys. They’ll make sure U.S. will put down Iran for good. President Bush is a good president. He goes to war when he wants to go to war. No country has to threaten us with war. If he thinks some country could ever be a threat to Israel or the U.S. someday, he doesn’t wait around for the Congress to declare war, as required by the Constitution. Bush just takes ‘em out.

Now let’s change the title to read Secret German Luftwaffe Team to Plan for France Strike. I wonder if the German people who approved of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime might have responded to this title this way around the year 1940? ----“Good for Hitler’s Luftwaffe guys. They’ll make sure Germany will put down France for good. Hitler is a good Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor. He goes to war when he wants to go to war. No country has to threaten us with war. If he thinks some country could ever be a threat to Germans, or maybe if he wants its industry and resources, he just takes ‘em out!

With respect to its attitude toward conducting wars of agression, is the new Amerika ruled by the Bush administration that much different Hitler’s Nazi Germany?

Texans Turn Against Bush: Disillusionment with Iraq War Smoldering

As George W. Bush approaches his final year in office saddled with an unpopular war, the shifting winds of public opinion have reached even the wide-open spaces of Bush country. More and more Texans appear disillusioned with the war in Iraq and with the man who was once their widely popular governor, though some can still seem reluctant to talk about it. FULL ARTICLE=>

‘Declare This an Emergency’ - VIDEO

Another great video by PuppetGov.com . Take heart. Better yet, take action! The lives you save may be your own and the lives of your children’s.

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

---Albert Einstein

Screw-Ups in the Missile Storage Bunker at Minot AFB?

Just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 29, a group of U.S. airmen entered a sod-covered bunker on North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base with orders to collect a set of unarmed cruise missiles bound for a weapons graveyard. They quickly pulled out a dozen cylinders, all of which appeared identical from a cursory glance, and hauled them along Bomber Boulevard to a waiting B-52 bomber. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Sorry, George and Dick’s “fish story” about the nuke incident does not pass the “sniff test”. But this kind of explanation should come as no surprise to the American people, at least the people who don’t partake of the evening CNN, Fox, MSNBC and ABC television or cable services exclusively to obtain their daily news. As should be obvious now, the Bush administration has become famous for assigning fault incorrectly time and time again. That is, actions any reasonable man would judge to constitute White House planned, authorized or directed unlawful actions or intentional failures to take action on the part of high-level government official and their organizations (CIA, DoD, State Department, FBI) the Bush administration invariably attributes to incompetence, minor error in judgment or simple oversight by these officials and their subordinates. An obvious case in point is the lead up to 9/11 and 9/11 itself.

For more believable, plausible explanations of what was behind B-52 transfer of the nuke cruise missiles, read Dr. Mark Salla’s two articles, Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak? and B-52 Bomber Incident & Insider Trading: Connecting the Dots . These articles are listed below along with an LC Editor’s comment containing still another reasonable explanation.

How to Analyze the News and What goes on Around You

Critical analysis of current events is a complex process that is not systematized or rigid. All the information you see or gather is, generally, a combination of truth, half-truths, and error. Filtering out the truth begins with finding reliable sources, as well as critically scrutinizing sources that are known to have a specific bias. FULL ARTICLE=>

Another Soldier Known for Writings On War Dies In Iraq?

Earlier this month, two of seven soldiers who had penned an Op-Ed for The New York Times that expressed skepticism about the war in Iraq were killed in a vehicle accident there. Now another soldier whose writings on the war, but with a more pro-war view, were widely circulated has died in another non-combat related incident. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: First we heard about Pat Tillman’s death due to “friendly (?) fire”. Now about several soldiers serving in Iraq who had penned blogs and OpEd articles. Two of them are dead, killed non-combat related “accidents”.

Any president—George W. Bush, for example, who would allow 9/11 to occur and over 3,000 persons to die as a result; support the snatching of people off the streets and having them flown to foreign lands where they would be tortured; allow over 500,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children to die during bombing raids and at the hands of U.S. military and Blackwater executioners; signed into law legislation (Military Commissions Act), now public law that destroys due process by eliminating habeas corpus writs; authorize the use of depleted uranium tipped munitions, chemical and nuclear weapons, in the battlefields and cities of Iraq would certainly have little compunction about allowing the murder of a few bloggers and OpEd writers who were soldiers in Iraq and happened to be critical of the war in Iraq.

September 20 and Earlier

Fears of Dollar Collapse as Saudis Take Fright

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East. FULL ARTICLE=>

Four-Month Tax Evasion Trial Ends with No Convictions

A criminal tax case alleging income tax evasion and conspiracy dissolved in federal court this week, when a jury returned zero convictions on 161 charges faced by nine defendants.

Monday's verdict "sends a strong message," said defense attorney Lisa Rasmussen, who represented Joel Axberg, a tile layer.

Informally called the Kahre case -- after the primary defendant, local business owner Robert Kahre, who paid workers in gold and silver coins -- the trial lasted four months. It relied heavily on evidence gathered in a controversial armed raid in May 2003 on several of Kahre's local business places. The raid entailed keeping more than 20 workers handcuffed, at gunpoint, in 106-degree heat without shade or water while agents collected records and equipment.

"Yeah, that's a pretty major victory," said defense lawyer William Cohan. "If you go 0 for 160 (in baseball), they'd send you down to the minor leagues." FULL ARTICLE=>

Gold Hits 28-year High After Dollar Sinks to Record Lows

Spot gold rose more than one percent to hit a 28-year high at $730.0 an ounce on Thursday on safe-haven buying and a slide in the dollar to record lows against the euro. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: As of 2:37 PM CDT today (Thursday, September 20) the spot price of gold is at $733.90 and the U.S dollar index (USD), which was at 78.69 at 8:35 this morning, is currently at 78.48 at the Kitco.com site. The USD was at 120.00 when George Bush took office and president in January 2001. Look what Bush economics has done for our republic: The dollar has lost approximately 33 percent in value since then!

Senate Condemns "General Betray Us" Ad

The Senate voted Thursday to condemn an advertisement by the liberal anti-war group MoveOn.org that accused the top military commander in Iraq of betrayal.

The 72-25 vote condemned the full-page ad that appeared in The New York Times last week as Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, testified on Capitol Hill. The ad was headlined: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us? Cooking the books for the White House."

LC Editor’s Comment: Hooray for MoveOn.com! Okay, what about the many other instances of the American people’s betrayal by Congress? More! More! Let’s get some momentum going!

US Airport Screeners Are Watching What You Read

International travelers concerned about being labeled a terrorist or drug runner by secret Homeland Security algorithms may want to be careful what books they read on the plane. Newly revealed records show the government is storing such information for years.

Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country, along with cursory answers given to U.S. border inspectors about their purpose in traveling. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore's choice of reading material, and worry over the number of small flashlights he'd packed for the trip. FULL ARTICLE=>

Credit Crisis Costs Morgan Stanley $940M

Morgan Stanley yesterday became the second Wall Street firm this week to suffer badly from the credit crunch, announcing a related $940 million (£469 million) writedown for its third quarter.

The adjustment, on the value of loans on its books and other financing commitments, came after the sub-prime crisis was transformed into a broader credit calamity and marks the bank’s first quarterly profits fall since John Mack returned as chairman and chief executive two years ago. FULL ARTICLE=>

America’s Hegemonic Status Slipping Away

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s memoir has put him in the news these last few days. He has upset Republicans with his comments on various presidents, with George W. Bush getting the brickbats and Clinton the praise, and by saying that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was about oil, not weapons of mass destruction.

Opponents of Bush’s wars welcomed Greenspan’s statement, as it strips the moral pretext away from Bush’s aggression, leaving naked greed unmasked.

It is certainly the case that Iraq was not invaded because of WMD, which the Bush administration knew did not exist. But the oil pretext is also phony. The US could have purchased a lot of oil for the trillion dollars that the Iraq invasion has already cost in out-of-pocket expenses and already incurred future expenses. FULL ARTICLE=>

Republicans Block Habeas for Gitmo Detainees

Despite the support of a solid majority of the US Senate, a measure designed to restore the right of foreign terrorist suspects to challenge their detention in federal court was blocked here Wednesday on a procedural maneuver.

The measure, an amendment to the 2008 defense authorization bill, would have restored habeas corpus rights for non-citizens in US custody, including the some 340 prisoners still held at the naval detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, many of whom have been there for more than five years. FULL ARTICLE=>

Republicans Pushed 'Bogus' Terror Threat to Expand FISA, Lawmaker Says

Republicans and the Bush administration used a 'bogus' terror threat that raised specific fears of an attack on the Capitol to scare lawmakers into adopting a dramatic temporary expansion of the government's spy powers last month, a former top intelligence committee Democrat said Wednesday.

Congress agreed to give President Bush and the nation's intelligence agencies extra authority to spy on Americans just hours before lawmakers left for a month-long recess in August. In the legislative session's final week, news emerged of an impending plot by foreign terrorists to attack the US Capitol, and Republicans pointed to the reports as justification to expand the administration's powers.

"That specific intelligence claim, it turned out, was bogus; the intelligence agencies knew that," Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) said at a forum on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act organized by the Center for American Progress in Washington. However, lawmakers did not learn of the claim's unreliability until "the day" they approved the FISA expansion, she said. FULL ARTICLE=>

Senate Blocks Bill on Combat Tours

Democrats' efforts to challenge President Bush's Iraq policies were dealt a demoralizing blow Wednesday in the Senate after they failed to scrape together enough support to guarantee troops more time at home.

The 56-44 vote — four short of reaching the 60 needed to advance — all but assured that Democrats would be unable to muster the support needed to pass tough anti-war legislation by year's end. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., was seen as the Democrats' best shot because of its pro-military premise.

"The idea of winning the war in Iraq is beginning to get a second look," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who led opposition to the bill alongside Sen. John McCain.

Webb's legislation would have required that troops spend as much time at home training with their units as they spend deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Members of the National Guard or Reserve would be guaranteed three years at home before being sent back. Most Army soldiers now spend about 15 months in combat with 12 months home.

"In blocking this bipartisan bill, Republicans have once again demonstrated that they are more committed to protecting the president than protecting our troops," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: See how your U.S. Senator’s voted on this legislation by clicking here. Listen to and watch Senator Webb discuss his amendment before the vote was taken but after Senator McCain made the statement that the Constitution doesn’t give Congress the right to manage troop rotations and that the Webb amendment “would create chaos”. Webb replied, "Senator McCain -- who I've known for 30 years -- needs to read the Constitution. There's a provision in Article 1 Section 8 which clearly gives the Congress the authority to make rules with respect to the governance of ground and naval forces." Here is the link to Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution.

Is it True The More You Sleep, The Longer You Live?

“Sleep is the most undervalued contributor to optimal health and performance,” says Dr. Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. Dr. Humphreys does research in addiction treatment, and national mental health and drug policy. He has written for the New York Times and other publications.

Many people have no idea that getting enough sleep is essential for helping them stick to a diet, making their workouts more productive, or boosting their immune system in general. FULL ARTICLE=>

Dr. Mercola’s Comments: First of all let me make it VERY clear that I do NOT agree with Dr. Humphreys’ premise, that the more you sleep the longer you live. There is very strong evidence that sleeping longer than seven hours can cause brain diseases like Parkinson’s.

While there is no better example of optimal wellness than to be in harmony with your deepest function (sleep), I am convinced that there is a window we should strive for, somewhere between six and eight hours is probably good for most. MORE COMMENTS=>

Euro Hits New High Against Dollar

The euro continued to soar against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday, reaching its all-time high in the aftermath of a half-percent rate cut by the U.S. central bank.

The euro rose as high $1.3987, a new high, in morning European trading before settling back to $1.3981, above the $1.3971 it bought in late New York trading the night before. The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate a half-point to 4.75 percent, the first reduction in this key rate in four years. Most dealers had expected a quarter-point cut.

Lower interest rates, used to jump-start the economy, can weaken a currency by giving investors less return on investments denominated in the currency. FULL ARTICLE=>

Gold Rises to Highest Since 1980 as Dollar Slumps on Fed's Cut

Gold futures rose to a 27-year high after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates, sending the dollar to a record low against the euro and boosting the appeal of the precious metal as a currency hedge.

The Fed lowered its benchmark rate by 0.5 percentage point, more than economists forecast, to 4.75 percent, the first cut in four years. Five of the past six bear markets for the U.S. currency have sparked a rally in gold. FULL ARTICLE=>

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. FULL ARTICLE=>

American is No More - 2007

Paul Craig

Naïve Americans who think they live in a free society should watch this video filmed by students at a John Kerry speech September 17, Constitution Day, at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

At the conclusion of Kerry’s speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast’s book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware that Palast’s investigations determined that Kerry had actually won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to consider Bush’s impeachment when Bush was about to initiate another act of military aggression, this time against Iran?

At this point the public’s protectors – the police – decided that Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging him off. Meyer said repeatedly, "I have done nothing wrong," which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and assaulted no one.

But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and jailed on a phony charge of "disrupting a public event." FULL ARTICLE=>

FLASHBACK: How Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to Power

Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday September 25, 2004
The Guardian

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. FULL ARTICLE=>

Rice Swipes at IAEA, Urges Bold Action on Iran

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scolded the U.N.'s atomic watchdog agency on Wednesday over its Iran strategy and called for diplomacy with "teeth" to end Tehran's nuclear plans. While repeating the U.S. stand that "all options" remained on the table -- a reference to military action against Tehran -- Rice sought to ease fresh concerns over talk of war. "We believe the diplomatic track can work but it has to work both with a set of incentives and a set of teeth," said Rice.

AP Interview: Clinton on Health Care

WASHINGTON - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health insurance was the only way to achieve universal health care but she rejected the notion of punitive measures to force individuals into the health care system.

"At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed," the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We're providing incentives and tax credits which we think will be very attractive to the vast majority of Americans."

She said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination," but said such details would be worked out through negotiations with Congress. FULL ARTICLE=>

Student Arrested, Tasered at Kerry Event

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - A university student with a history of taping his own practical jokes was Tasered by campus police and arrested after loudly and repeatedly trying to ask U.S. Senator John Kerry questions during a campus forum. Andrew Meyer, 21, spent a night in jail before his release Tuesday morning. His attorney, Robert Griscti, did not return messages seeking comment. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Video produced by the same student: Beauty is in the Eye of the Beerholder .

US Air Force sets up Cyber Command

The US Air Force established a provisional Cyber Command Tuesday as part of an expanding mission to prepare for wars in cyberspace, officials said. The move comes amid concerns over the vulnerability of the US communications and computer networks to cyber attack in a conflict, as well as the military's desire to exploit the new medium. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne announced the creation of the new command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where the air force's existing cyber warfare operations are centered. FULL ARTICLE=>

'Dead' Man Wakes Up Under Autopsy Knife

CARACAS (Reuters) - A Venezuelan man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realize something was amiss when he started bleeding. They quickly sought to stitch up the incision on his face. FULL ARTICLE=>

Federal Reserve Cuts Rates to Halt Credit Crisis

America took action last night to prevent the global financial crisis plunging the world's biggest economy into recession.

· Dow soars after Fed's rate-slash surprise

· Comment: Bernanke faces a hard landing in history books

· More on the credit crisis

· Interest rates special

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point in what was seen as a desperate bid to avert a Northern Rock-style banking crisis engulfing the United States. FULL ARTICLE=>

State Dept. in Crisis Mode after Blackwater Accused in Deaths

The State Department moved quickly Monday to tamp down anger and possible repercussions after the alleged killing of eight Iraqi civilians in an incident involving a private security firm based in North Carolina that was hired to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to express regret at the loss of life and promise that the results of an internal investigation into Sunday's incident would be shared with the government in Baghdad. FULL ARTICLE=>

Expulsion of Blackwater Could Undermine Iraq Troop Withdrawal Plans

Iraqi government restrictions on security contractor Blackwater USA could mean a range of complications for US involvement in the country--potentially even undermining current plans to remove some troops on the ground, reports the Wall Street Journal in a story by August Cole and Neil King, Jr. After an incident on Sunday in which Blackwater security personnel killed Baghdad civilians during a fight with insurgents, the government of Iraq announced that it plans to deny the firm permission to continue operations. FULL ARTICLE=>

Vietnamese Botanist’s Project: Restoring Land Poisoned by Agent Orange

Phung Tuu Boi reaches down to inspect one of the spiny shrubs lined up in a row before him. A few feet away, a cow grazes serenely in this emerald valley in the hills of central Vietnam.

Boi, a forester and director of the Center for Assistance in Nature Conservation and Community Development in Hanoi, points to the cow. "See this?" he says. "Very, very bad."

An invisible poison clings to the soil beneath the cow's muddy hoofs. During a short stretch of the Vietnam War this patch of ground served as an American Special Forces air base, and while the soldiers departed long ago, a potent dioxin from the Agent Orange that they stored and sprayed here lingers still. FULL ARTICLE=>

US Home Foreclosures Soar 36 Percent in August: Survey

Home foreclosures in the United States surged 36 percent in August from the prior month and more than doubled from a year ago, a leading foreclosure data firm said Tuesday. RealtyTrac said foreclosure filings -- including default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions -- jumped to 243,947 in August, compared with 179,599 in July and 113,300 in August 2006.

The company said the August number of foreclosure filings is the highest in a single month since it began issuing its monthly report in January 2005. Filings were under way nationwide in an average of one in 510 homes, also the highest figure ever reported, with state sof Nevada, California and Florida the worst affected, RealtyTrac said. FULL ARTICLE=>

Study: Vitamin D May be a Key Factor in Prevention of Cancer - VIDEO

Dr. Larry Norton, a cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, speaks with Harry Smith about a new study that claims Vitamin D may be a key factor in preventing cancer. VIDEO INTERVIEW=>

LC Editor’s: See also the comment by Dr. Edward Giovannucci, M.D. of Harvard University’s School of Public Health and How to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer By 50% and other articles by Dr. Mercola.

Blackwater License Being Revoked in Iraq

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government said Monday that it was revoking the license of an American security firm accused of involvement in the deaths of eight civilians in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion near a State Department motorcade.

The Interior Ministry said it would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday shooting. It was the latest accusation against the U.S.-contracted firms that operate with little or no supervision and are widely disliked by Iraqis who resent their speeding motorcades and forceful behavior. FULL ARTICLE=>

World Should Brace for Possible War over Iran: France

The world should brace for a possible war over the Iranian nuclear crisis but seeking a solution through talks should take priority, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday.

"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," he said in an interview broadcast on French television and radio.

"We must negotiate right to the end," with Iran, he said, but underlined that if Tehran possessed an atomic weapon, it would represent "a real danger for the whole world." FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Mr Kouchner continues to perpetuate the big Iran-is-making-a-nuke lie for President George Bush. Over the past two ears we discussed the evidence --- better yet, the complete lack of evidence--- concerning Iran’s alleged intent to build nuclear weapons. According to the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) there is no evidence whatsoever that can be construed to support the contention of the Bush regime that Iran is gearing up to produce nuclear weapons. As it did in the case of Iraq’s allegeded production of weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime is simply looking for a excused to bomb and invade another oil-producing country, this time Iran.

Israeli PM vows to "Wipe Iran off the Map"

Tel Aviv, Israel— Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared Tuesday that Iran is a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map" and banished from the pages of time.

Olmert's speech to participants at a "World without Islam" conference set a hard-line foreign policy course that continues the saber-rattling of his predecessor, Ariel Sharon.

Olmert pledged to continue on in the hallowed tradition of the Stern Gang who set siege to the Palestinian city of Acre in 1948, going so far as to poison the town's drinking water to kill off the inhabitants. FULL ARTICLE=>

Venezuela, Facing Food Deficit, Prepares World's Biggest Soup

By Matthew Walter

Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plans to serve up the biggest pot of soup in history tomorrow to feed more than 60,000 people as the country faces shortages of basic foods including milk and eggs.

The government will close down the Avenida Bolivar in downtown Caracas to cook a massive ``sancocho,'' a traditional stew of beef, chicken, vegetables and potatoes, in a 15,000- liter (3,958-gallon) pot.

``It's going to break the Guinness record,'' said Rafael Oropeza, the country's nourishment minister, in comments broadcast today by state television. ``There's enough to celebrate with the family and with all of the citizens that want to participate.'' FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: And in the U.S., “the wealthiest” nation in the world, millions of men, women and children walk the streets homeless and starving. Meanwhile, the “this job would be a whole lot easier if this were a dictatorship, providing I was the dictator …Ha, ha” President of the United States spends billions of dollars each week having his American troops and bomber pilots murder thousands of innocent men, women and children each week in Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of George Bush’s “war on terror”, a.k.a., war on freedom and hunt for oil and other natural resources of nations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

It is the Death of History

By Robert Fisk

2,000-year-old Sumerian cities torn apart and plundered by robbers. The very walls of the mighty Ur of the Chaldees cracking under the strain of massive troop movements, the privatisation of looting as landlords buy up the remaining sites of ancient Mesopotamia to strip them of their artefacts and wealth. The near total destruction of Iraq's historic past – the very cradle of human civilisation – has emerged as one of the most shameful symbols of our disastrous occupation.

Evidence amassed by archaeologists shows that even those Iraqis who trained as archaeological workers in Saddam Hussein's regime are now using their knowledge to join the looters in digging through the ancient cities, destroying thousands of priceless jars, bottles and other artefacts in their search for gold and other treasures.

In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, armies of looters moved in on the desert cities of southern Iraq and at least 13 Iraqi museums were plundered. Today, almost every archaeological site in southern Iraq is under the control of looters.

FULL ARTICLE=>

Arctic Sea Route Opens as Ice Melts - Space Agency

LONDON (Reuters) - The Arctic's Northwest Passage has opened up fully because of melting sea ice, clearing a long-sought but historically impassable route between Europe and Asia, the European Space Agency said.

Sea ice has shrunk in the Arctic to its lowest level since satellite measurements began 30 years ago, ESA said, showing images of the now "fully navigable" route between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

A shipping route through the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic has been touted as a possible cheaper option to the Panama Canal for many shippers. FULL ARTICLE=>

Firearm Review: Romanian AK-47 Variant, the WASR-10

By Mark LeFabre

US Defense and Intelligence Officials: Bush Setting America up for War with Iran

Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.

Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.

Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action. FULL ARTIICLE=>

Alan Greenspan: Claims Iraq War was Really for Oil

AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.

In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.

However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: There can be little doubt that Alan Greenspan in addition to being a government and banking industry insider is also a Bush family insider. Consequently, he should be expected to know the Bush regime’s reason or better yet the globalist elites’ reason for the US war in Iraq.

But does being an insider necessarily imply that Mr. Greenspan can be counted upon to reveal the truth, whole truth and nothing but to the truth to the world in his memoir? Certainly not, especially in regard to telling all of the truth about why the United States or for that matter any nation goes to war.

Without a doubt, as General Smedley Darlington Butler so eloquintly stated in his book of the same name, “War is a Racket.” Where there is war or a potential for war exists there is money --- lots of it --- to be made banks, politicians and corporations.

This is expecially true in the case of President Bush’s War on Terror, which is a war on a concept ---terrorism. It is also a war on its perpetrators---terrorists---who may live in and be citizens of any land on planet Earth, although Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are the regime’s current targets of opportunity.

Add to this characteristic of terrorists that large numbers of new terrorist often come into being spontaneously as a result of the regime’s overseas war machine slaughtering innocent family members of potential terrorist, and we have a war necessarily without end ---an unprecedented opportunity for the bankers, the politicians and corporations to make windfall profits from of the horror and misery of war

Now Mr. Greenspan, the Bush family insider and pal of the bankers, says that the Iraq war is “largely about oil”. Of course “largely” is a weasle word, giving “about oil” a larger meaning. If he were to be honest, he would have to say that the Iraq war is about money and also about power, because the abstraction of money is often taken as power.

Let’s consider the Bush regime’s Iraq war as a way of entending power, especially its military and economic power. If you will look at a map of the Middle East you will notice that the location of Iraq makes it the ideal jumping off point for military expansion into key adjoining nations, including Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, all of them, to be sure, major oil producers. So, in this sense Mr. Greenspan may be correct in linking the Iraq war with oil in Iraq.

However, that the Bush regime acting on behalf of the globalist elites has something grander in mind than the capture of just Iraq’s oil reserves is the evidenced by the recent construction in Iraq of the U.S.’s massive embassy. It is a heavily fortified embassy, one built of house and office thousands of employees. It has also been desgned to protect them from the unruly Iraqi people, who understably hate the American agressors who have destroyed their water system and electrical power grid, contaminated the land with poisonous, radioactive depleted uranium dust, and murdered over one million of the their countrymen, all in the name of Mr. Bush’s “war on terror”.

The regime’s plan for this something grander that running off with Iraq’s oil is laid out in the report of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, which was published in October 2000, just three months before George Bush moved into White House in 2001. Philosophical and geopolitical underpinning of the PNAC report, however, are described in detail by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book The Grand Chessboard, published in 1998.

Taken together, the PNAC document and Brzezinski’s book provide us with the detailed plans of the globalist elites for the future military involvement of the U.S. the Middle East, Central Asia and northern Africa as written by their scribes before 9/11. The objective of the plan is simply this: To assure U.S primacy and military dominance on the world scene throughout the twenty-first century at any cost. However, both Brzezinski and the PNAC document authors acknowledge in their works that they believed that the American people would be unlikely go along with this plan for outward projection of U.S. military power unless they were induced to do so by a event as fear-inducing as the Japanese sneak attack of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

American’s got their new Pearl Harbor on September 11, 2001 --- 9/11. This incident provided the Bush regime with a justification for the kick-off of his war on terror. First the regime’s war machine struck Afghanistan, taking out the Taliban at least temporarily, allowing an international energy consortium to build a major gas pipline in that country. The consortium profited. The temporary defeat of the Taliban, a strict religeous sect also allowed the opium poppy growers to go back into business, soon resulting in bumper crops and a marked increase in drug trafficing, which benefited the Wall Street brokers who use laundered money in their trade. Next the regime’s war machine hit Iraq and soon Halliburton, which supplies support services for the troops there, had its money coffers filled to brimming.

So Alan Greenspan is almost correct in his assessment of the reason for the current Iraq war: oil, at least mostly. But “almost” counts only in horse shoe throwing competitions and tossing live hand grades. Yes, the reason for the Iraq war is partially oil, but more than that is serves as a profit center for those who benefit from war and that Iraq serves and a perfect jumping off point geographically for the military expansion of the U.S. influence into Iran and Syria and Saudi Arabia and then into Central Asia.

What can and very well will probably prevent this expansion is the economic collapse of the U.S. under the burden of the burgeoning costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here it is worthwhile to discuss and other reason to be added to the list of reasons for the Iraq war: The economic destruction of the U.S. by the global elitists, the objective of which is to reduce the U.S. to the economic level of the second or third world nation, thereby allowing it to be incorporated as nation state in a world government.

The ongoing creation of the North American Union, the North American counterpart of the European Union is currently underway, much to the consternation of informed American, who are aware that transformation is taking place without the oversight of Congress and by presidential edict. One wonder when the great mass of the American people will awaken and horrified at what is occurring march on Washington with their pitchforks in hand and demand the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for high treason.

9/11 Pentagon Crash: Can’t Gov’t Get Story Straight on Flight Data Recorder?

By Robert Balsamo

Co-Founder,

Pilots for 9/11 Truth

September 16, 2007

As many already know, the data supplied by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) does not support the government story of the American Airlines Flight 77 impact with the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. (See Pandora’s Black Box – Chapter Two – Flight of American 77 for detailed analysis).

Some have argued “How could the data not support and impact, when the FDR was found inside the Pentagon?” We feel that is a great question and one we have been trying to get government agencies to explain. FULL ARTICLE=>

100,000 Attend Peace Protest and Rally in D.C. – 190 Arrested

Several thousand anti-war demonstrators marched through downtown Washington on Saturday, clashing with police at the foot of the Capitol steps where more than 190 protesters were arrested.

Organizers estimated that nearly 100,000 people attended the rally and march. That number could not be confirmed; police did not give their own estimate. A permit for the march obtained in advance by the ANSWER Coalition had projected 10,000.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, speaking from a stage to crowds clad in camouflage, American flag bandanas and Harley Davidson jackets, said he wanted to send three messages.

"Congress, quit playing games with our troops. Terrorists, we will find you and kill you," he said. "And to our troops, we're here for you, and we support you." FULL ARTICLE=>

The Ambitious Delusions of George Bush and David Petraeus

We now learn that General David Petraeus fancies himself a Dwight Eisenhower for the 21st century.

According to a report in London's Independent newspaper by the reliable Middle East observer Patrick Cockburn, the U.S. military viceroy in Iraq would like very much to return from his mission and -- like the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and of North Atlantic Treaty Organization in its aftermath -- mount a bid for the White House.

Petraeus has apparently been so open in expressing his "long-term interest in running for the US presidency" that Sabah Khadim, a former senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry who worked closely with the general in Baghdad, recalls, "I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'."

Such are the political calculations of the man whose embrace of President Bush's war has become so complete that he and his aides have radically altered the manner in which statistics are gathered on violence in Iraq in order to foster the fantasy that the fight has taken a turn for the better. FULL ARTICLE=>

An Open Letter to the New Generation of Military Officers Serving and Protecting Our Nation

"I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order. I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal." (Dr., Lt. Col. Bob Bowman)

Call to Action

By Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, Ret.,

National Commander, The Patiots

September 13, 2009

Dear Comrades in Arms,

You are facing challenges in 2007 that we of previous generations never dreamed of. I'm just an old fighter pilot (101 combat missions in Vietnam, F-4 Phantom, Phu Cat, 1969-1970) who's now a disabled veteran with terminal cancer from Agent Orange. Our mailing list (over 22,000) includes veterans from all branches of the service, all political parties, and all parts of the political spectrum. We are Republicans and Democrats, Greens and Libertarians, Constitutionists and Reformers, and a good many Independents. What unites us is our desire for a government that (1) follows the Constitution, (2) honors the truth, and (3) serves the people.

We see our government going down the wrong path, all too often ignoring military advice, and heading us toward great danger. And we look to you who still serve as the best hope for protecting our nation from disaster. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: This is timely call to action by a true American Patriot. Please read his letter from top to bottom now and then discuss it with your family and email copies of it your friends and associates.

A Sleeper Amnesty: Time to Wake Up from the DREAM Act

Just three months after the Senate immigration bill met its well-deserved end, amnesty advocates in the U.S. Congress resumed their efforts. Recently, Senator Richard Durbin (D–IL) announced on the Senate floor his intention to offer the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act as an amendment to the defense authorization bill.

The DREAM Act (S. 774) is a nightmare. It is a massive amnesty that extends to the millions of illegal aliens who entered the United States before the age of 16. The illegal alien who applies for this amnesty is immediately rewarded with "conditional" lawful permanent resident (green card) status, which can be converted to a non-conditional green card in short order. The alien can then use his newly acquired status to seek green cards for the parents who brought him in illegally in the first place. In this way, it is also a backdoor amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens who brought their children with them to the United States. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Time is short and the hour is late. This bill could be brought to a vote in the Senate on Monday ----Yes, just two days from today, Monday, September 17, a day that could live in imfamy if we don’t take action by early Monday morning. See the next article (by Devvy Kidd) for instructions on what all of us need to do immediately to kill this deadly legislation!

DREAM ACT – Call to Action: Senate Amnesty Vote Next Week...They're Still At It!

By Devvy Kidd

We knew this was coming:

"We must keep them from attaching the Dream Act Amnesty to the Department of Defense authorization bill."

. When you call your senator about my column (if ya do), tell him/her that we the people have caught them again trying to hookwink us and we will not stand for it. Please network this far and wide. We beat them down last time and we must do it again.

Devvy

From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA

Date: Thursday 13SEP07

11:30 p.m. EDT

Senate will try again next week to pass an amnesty -- URGENT to phone & fax Friday -- Don't wait OPEN-BORDERS SENATORS PLAN END-RUN DREAM ACT AMNESTY

Friends, this is not a do-it-if-you-have-time request.

This is the most urgent kind of request for your action Friday -- and again Monday.

Please send free faxes to your Members of Congress. You'll see some faxes on your Action Buffet corkboard immediately. We'll be sending you links to other new faxes during the day Friday.

FULL ARTICLE=>

What Really Happened on 9/11?

The events of 9-11 are seared into the collective psyche of this generation. We have all been affected by the catastrophes of that fateful day, but what really happened on 9-11?

Some people believe an outlandish conspiracy theory involving 19 Arab hijackers who allegedly: commandeered four commercial jets with nothing more than their cunning, wit, resolve, hatred of America, and some box cutters; then proceed to fly these aircraft around US airspace unfettered for a total lapsed time of over an hour; on three of the planes, pulled stunning flight maneuvers beyond the capability of even expert pilots; and, managed to cause damage to their targets — one of which just happens to have been the most heavily defended building in the world — so extreme as to be in clear violation of several well understood laws of Physics, Chemistry, and Thermodynamics. This amazing conspiracy theory is even more suspicious and bizarre in that it is the one proffered by the United States Government (USG) and the 9-11 Cover-Up Omission Commission. In the 9-11 Truth Movement we call it the Official Conspiracy Theory (OCT).

Thankfully, despite the best efforts of the corporate-controlled media and virtually the entire US Congress, there are literally millions of people in this country and millions more around the world who do not believe that these 19 Arabs, as clever as they purportedly were, could have somehow suspended the laws of Physics on 9-11. FULL ARTICLE=>

Twin Tower Deception and Demolition – I - VIDEO

Twin Tower Deception and Demolition begins to expose with forensic evidence the deception surrounding the design and construction of the ... all » Twin Towers. In 2 parts it has a total length of about 16 minutes. Part I is 10 minutes in length. Produced by Christopher A. Brown in July of 2007.

The towers did not have 47 steel core columns in the core. The core was a steel reinforced cast concrete tube. The producer’s information comes from a missing video documentary produced by PBS in 1987 and broadcast on cable in 1990 called "The Engineering and Construction of the Twin Towers.

The two part video provides the only logical explanations in existence which are realistic, feasible and credible for; free fall, total pulverization, superfine heated concrete particulate, smooth, square cut column ends and the heaving of heavy steel assemblies for hundreds of feet; that are on the web. VIDEO=>

Twin Tower Deception and Demolition – II - VIDEO

Twin Tower Deception and Demolition begins to expose with forensic evidence the deception surrounding the design and construction of the ... all » Twin Towers. In 2 parts it has a total length of about 16 minutes. Part II is 6 minutes in length. Produced by Christopher A. Brown in July of 2007. VIDEO=>

Billions over Baghdad

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed.

Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam's palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled. FULL ARTICLE=>

America’s Greatest Threat - Federal Reserve Bank - VIDEO

The Federal Reserve is neither Federal nor a Reserve. Owned by a corrupt group of International Bankers, it is a privately owned monopoly, largely responsible for creating America's National Debt. It is also a parasitic and unnecessary entity that literally creates American currency out of nothing and then collects interest on the backs of taxpayers for doing so. Learn who REALLY controls the U.S.Dollar and how these people are destroying America by design. VIDEO=>

(more) Dollar’s Retreat Raises Fear of Collapse

Frankfurt: Finance ministers and central bankers have long fretted that at some point, the rest of the world would lose its willingness to finance the United States’ proclivity to consme far more than it produces - and that a potentially disastrous free-fall in the dollar’s value would result. FULL ARTICLE=>

Iran Leader: Bush Will Be Tried

President Bush will one day be tried in court just like deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for his involvement in the Iraq tragedy, Iran's supreme leader said Friday.

Speaking to thousands of worshippers during the first Friday prayer of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Bush will be called to account for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"A day will come that the current U.S. president and officials will be tried in an international supreme court for the catastrophes they caused in Iraq," he said. FULL ARTICLE=>

Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries

This UNICEF (United Nations) report provides a comprehensive assessment of the lives and well-being of children and adolescents in the economically advanced nations. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Take a good look at the relative standing of the U.S. with regard to child well-being.

Britain Bails Out Mortgage Lender Hit by Credit Crunch

The British financial authorities said Friday that they had extended an emergency loan to rescue a big mortgage bank as the effects of a global credit crunch stemming from the crisis in the U.S. subprime home lending business spread to one of the most buoyant housing markets in the world. FULL ARTICLE=>

Northern Rock (U.K.) Shares Plunge 32%

Shares in one of the UK's largest mortgage lenders, Northern Rock, have fallen 32% after it had to ask the Bank of England for emergency funding. But experts say it does not mean Northern Rock, which has £113bn in assets, is in danger of going bust. The bank has struggled to raise money to finance its lending ever since money markets seized up over the summer. Other bank shares fell, with Bradford & Bingley, Alliance & Leicester and HBOS down nearly 8%, 7% and 4% respectively. FULL ARTICLE=>

Large US Nuclear Force Remains in Europe (2005)

The United States currently deploys approximately 480 nuclear weapons in Europe. The weapons are stored at eight bases in six countries, mainly located in northeastern Europe. At four other bases, mostly in the eastern Mediterranean region, the nuclear weapons have been removed but could be redeployed if necessary. FULL ARTICLE=>

9/11 First Responder Heard WTC 7 Demolition Countdown

Paul Joseph Watson

Infowars.com

A 9/11 first responder has gone on the record to describe how he heard a demolition-style countdown precede the collapse of WTC 7, eyewitness testimony that dovetails with other EMT’s and rescue personnel who were also told that Building 7 was gong to be "’brought down". FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comments: Big deal! What is it with the 9/11-Truth movement in general and Alex Jones’ news organization in particular that they rejoice upon finding new evidence that WTC 7 was brought down with explosives? After all, long-term lease holder of the WTC building complex Larry Silverstein admitted during the 2002 PBS documentary that he had okayed the "pulling" of this building --- that is it’s controlled demolition --- late in the afternoon of 9/11.

What should be especially perplexing to Alex Jones followers is that it was Jones who originally broke the story about Silverstein’s admission on television that he and the fire department commander had agreed that because that there was so much loss of life WTC 7 should be “pulled”. Then, according to Silverstein, they watched it collapse as the pre-placed demolition charges were fired off to bring the building down.

The net effect of Jones’ as well as the Loose Change video gang’s focusing on the obvious controlled demolition collapse of WTC 7 has been to divert their readers’ attention from the not-so-obvious, that is how Twin Towers 1 and 2 were disintegrated, to the obvious, which is that WTC 7 was brought down by controlled demolition.

Now it should be obvious that Alex Jones and Dillon Avery and his Loose Change team members all have above average IQs and that they’ve been plugged into 9/11 for a long, long time. So we can rule out stupidity and ignorance as the reasons for their making such a big deal about WTC 7 and their all-but-completely ignoring the Twin Towers.

Furthermore, these folks are charismatic types, so they have a huge influence on the thinking of the rank-and-file 911-Truthers as well as their leaders.

So if we "connect the dots” what does all of this tell us about the part Alex Jones and the Loose Change guys may play in the 9/11-Truth movement?

Military Drills - False Flag Provocation, Attack On Iran?

Webster G. Tarpley

US military bases in the continental United States (CONUS) will go on special lockdown between September 17 and September 21 under the auspices of Solid Curtain-Citadel Shield '07, a reliable source reported today. Under these exercises, US installations will institute enhanced anti-terror force protection measures, with increased security at all gates. The increased security was so elaborate that base personnel were being warned to expect significant delays at all base entrances. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: In the full text of this article Tarpley connects this information with the Military Times article dated September 5, B-52 Mistakenly Flies with Nukes Aboard.

Stopping the Next War

Pat Buchanan

President Bush has won the Battle of September.

When he turns over the presidency on Jan. 20, 2009, there will likely be as many U.S. troops in Iraq as there were when Congress was elected to bring them home in November 2006.

That is the meaning of Gen. Petraeus' recommendation, adopted by President Bush, that 6,000 U.S. troops be home by Christmas and the surge of 30,000 ended by April. Come November 2008, there will likely still be 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Will this make America safer?, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked. "I don't know," answered the general. An honest answer. None of us know. FULL ARTICLE=>

Baghdad Neighbours Protest over Dividing Wall

Hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis marched on Wednesday in protest at the building by US troops of a tall concrete wall separating their northwest Baghdad neighbourhoods, an AFP photographer said. The protesters complained that the wall would promote sectarianism and demanded its removal.

Residents said that US forces last week began building the two-kilometre (1.25 mile) wall along the border of the mainly Shiite al-Shuala and adjoining Sunni-majority al-Ghazaliyah neighbourhoods without consulting them. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Israel is to Palestine as the U.S. is to Iraq.

1,000 Marines Now Dead in Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

More than 1,000 Marines have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a grim milestone reached Sept. 6 with the death of four Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based Marines, according to Defense Department statistics.

The four Marines were assigned to 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion. They were Cpl. Christopher L. Poole Jr., 22, of Mount Dora, Fla.; Cpl. Bryan J. Scripsick, 22, of Wayne, Okla.; Staff Sgt. John C. Stock, 26, of Longview, Texas; and Sgt. Michael J. Yarbrough, 24, of Malvern, Ark.

Their names were announced Monday. Since then, the Pentagon has announced the deaths of four more Marines, bringing the Corps’ total death toll for the two wars to 1,006 as of Thursday morning. FULL ARTICLE=>

CNN: Mystery 9/11 Aircraft was Military 'Doomsday Plane'

Shortly before 10 am on the morning of September 11, 2001, amid rumors of a fourth hijacked plane headed for Washington, DC, a mystery aircraft appeared in restricted airspace over the White House. There has never been an official explanation for this incident, which has provided abundant fuel for 9/11 conspiracy theories.

CNN has now learned from two government sources that the mystery plane was a military aircraft and has determined that the blurry image on video appears to match photos of the Air Force's E-4B (discussed here on Wikipedia), a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit. FULL ARTICLE=>

Rebuilding America’s Defenses

This 76-page policy paper, prepared in September 2000 by key members of the private think tank, the Project for the New American Century, is the playbook for global elitists’ high-stakes game that has the objective of establishing and maintain U.S. military dominance and worldwide control. Read it carefully and often.

Here is an intesting quote from page 51 of this document: “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

FULL ARTICLE=>

Senate Panel Okays $850 Billion Debt Increase

The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday approved an $850 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority to $9.815 trillion in order to avoid a default as the government nears its credit limit of $8.965 trillion.

The committee approved the bill on a voice vote and it clears the way for the full Senate to take action most likely by early October. As of last Friday, the federal debt stood at $8.923 trillion and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been urging Congress to act quickly to avoid unnerving financial markets that are already jittery over rising mortgage foreclosures. FULL ARTICLE=>

Superior Derided Petraeus as Suck-Up, Opposed the Surge

Gareth Porter

In sharp contrast to the lionization of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the US Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus' superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickens**t" and added, "I hate people like that," the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior. FULL ARTICLE=>

Robot Maker Builds Artificial Boy

David Hanson has two little Zenos to care for these days. There's his 18-month-old son Zeno, who prattles and smiles as he bounds through his father's cramped office. Then there's the robotic Zeno. It can't speak or walk yet, but has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captivates with a range of expressions.

At 17 inches tall and 6 pounds, the artificial Zeno is the culmination of five years of work by Hanson and a small group of engineers, designers and programmers at his company, Hanson Robotics. They believe there's an emerging business in the design and sale of lifelike robotic companions, or social robots. And they'll be showing off the robot boy to students in grades 3-12 at the Wired NextFest technology conference Thursday in Los Angeles. FULL ARTICLE=>

64% Agree with Court Ruling on Patriot Act

Sixty-four percent (64%) of American adults agree that a search warrant should be required before the government can ask Internet providers to turn over customer records. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 16% disagree and 20% are not sure.

Last week, a District Judge ruled that the provisions of the Patriot Actallowing such warrantless searches violated First Amendment constitutional guarantees and constitutional provisions concerning separation of powers. Thirty-one percent (31%) of adults say they followed news stories about the Court ruling Very Closely and another 34% followed it Very Closely. FULL ARTICLE=>

Are You a Rifleman Or a Victim?

What did you do this week on Tuesday, September 11, 2007, the 6th anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon disaster?

Did you mourn the dead? Did you hug your family members? Did you watch the ceremonies on television? All three of those are good things to do. Well, on second thought watching the ceremonies on TV probably isn’t a great use of your time for a number of reasons that only those on LewRockwell.com would understand. FULL ARTICLE=>

The Vanishing Right to Travel

The freedom to travel has joined habeas corpus and freedom from unwarranted searches on America's endangered rights list. Over the last 10 years, a combination of federal legislation, court decisions and new federal regulations have greatly reduced the rights of U.S. citizens to travel internationally and domestically. FULL ARTICLE=>

Lack of Play Hurting Children's Mental Health, Experts Warn

An international group of therapists blames this problem on unstimulating activities. All is not well in the playgrounds of the world, says an international group of child therapists, including several prominent Canadians.

In a letter published Sunday in the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph, 270 professionals blame "the marked deterioration in children's mental health" on an overprotective society and too much "sedentary entertainment."

It cites a recent UNICEF report that found British children are among the unhappiest in the developed world.

In particular, outdoor, unstructured, and loosely supervised play is missing in children's lives, resulting in "an explosion in children's clinically diagnosable mental health problems," reads the letter. FULL ARTICLE=>

Obesity is Only One Piece of the Diabetes Puzzle

Although the health implications of diabetes are clear, researchers are still struggling to understand many of the aspects of the disease.

One question being asked is why most people with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese, when most overweight or obese people are not diabetics?

The fat cells themselves may offer a clue. These cells release triglycerides and free fatty acids into the blood, which may decrease cells ability to respond to insulin, thereby increasing the body’s demand for the hormone. Paradoxically, another hormone, adiponectin, is also made by fat cells, and this hormone makes cells more responsive to insulin. FULL ARTICLE=>

Brainy Parrot Dies, Emotive to the End

He knew his colors and shapes, he learned more than 100 English words, and with his own brand of one-liners he established himself in television shows, scientific reports and news articles as perhaps the world’s most famous talking bird.

But last week Alex, an African gray parrot, died, apparently of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard who studied and worked with the parrot for most of his life and published reports of his progress in scientific journals. The parrot was 31. FULL ARTICLE=>

Assassination of JFK, Jr: Murder by Manchurian Candidate - VIDEO

The Assassination of JFK JR: Murder by Manchurian Candidate is the second conspiracy theory film written, produced and narrated by John Hankey. Just as with his previous film, "JFK II: The Bush Connection", Hankey makes serious allegations about the involvement of the Bush family in the assassination of President John F Kennedy and forty years later, the death of Kennedy's son John F. Kennedy Jr. 1 hr – 47 sec. On Google Video =>

LC Editor: Excellent!

Will the US Really Bomb Iran?

Alexander Cockburn

“They're about taking out the entire Iranian military.”

This particular spine-chiller comes from Alexis Debat, excitingly identified as "director of terrorism and national security" at the Nixon Center. According to Debat, the big takeout is what the U.S. Air Force has in store, as opposed to mere "pinprick strikes" against the infamous nuclear facilities.

Predicting imminent war on Iran has been one of the top two items in Cassandra's repertoire for a couple of years now, rivaled only by global warming as a sure-fire way to sell newspapers and boost website hits.

Debat was re-roasting that well-scorched chestnut, the "Shock and Awe" strategy, whereby-back in March of 2003-the U.S. Air Force proposed to reduce Iraq's entire military to smoldering ruins. In the event, "Shock and Awe" was a resounding failure, like all such pledges by Air Force commanders to destroy the enemy's military since the birth of aerial bombardments nearly a century ago. Such failures have never stopped the US Air Force from trying once again, and there are no doubt vivid attack plans now circulating the government. FULL ARTICLE=>

Russia Tests Superstrength Bomb: Military

Russia has tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, which unleashes a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast, the military said on Tuesday, dubbing it the "father of all bombs".

The bomb is the latest in a series of new Russian weapons and policy moves as President Vladimir Putin tries to reassert Moscow's role on the international stage. FULL ARTICLE=>

Honey Bee Virus Threatens Nation's Food Supply, USDA Says

USDA researchers, in cooperation with scientists at two leading U.S. Universities, have found that the U.S. population of honey bees is threatened by a virus, which if it cannot be contained could severely hamper food production in the United States on crops that require pollination.

The honey bee virus is called Israeli acute paralysis and is responsible for the collapse of entire colonies.

So how serious a problem is Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) that it would have the food industry buzzing about it? Researchers found an association between colony collapse disorder (CCD) in honey bees and IAPV, though they have been quick to say they're not positive that the honey bee virus is the culprit behind CCD, but all evidence points to Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. FULL ARTICLE=>

"Natural" Beehives Appear less Affected by Colony Collapse Disorder

Colony Collapse Disorder in domestic honey bees is all the buzz lately, mostly because honey bees pollinate food crops for humans.

However, we would not be so dependent on commercial non-native, factory-farmed honey bees if we were not killing off native pollinators. Organic agriculture does not use chemicals or crops toxic to bees and, done properly, preserves wildlife habitat in the vicinity, recognizing the intimate relationship between cultivated fields and natural areas.

While no one is certain why honey bee colonies are collapsing, factory-farmed honey bees are more susceptible to stress from environmental sources than organic or feral honey bees. Most people think beekeeping is all natural, but in commercial operations the bees are treated much like livestock on factory farms. FULL ARTICLE=>

Start a Self-Sufficiency Garden Even in a Cramped Apartment

You are sitting there in your recliner chair in your small city apartment desperately longing for the day when you can escape to the country and become a homesteader and become more self-sufficient. Well, don’t just sit there. Get a head start. Bloom where you are planted until you can actually make the big move. Don’t waste valuable time in pointless dreaming. Begin making your dreams a reality, now.

You dream of growing your own fresh, pesticide-free, organic vegetables. So do it. Go dumpster diving and trash mongering and collect all the free containers you can find that will hold soil and that you can poke a few holes into. Wash and disinfect the containers thoroughly. Then get some potting soil suitable for veggies.

Make your own compost to add to your potting soil in a dark corner (or under the sink) by putting shredded newspaper, kitchen wastes (not meat or grease), and coffee grounds in a large container and adding a few earthworms (which you can either buy or collect for free after a rain at the nearby park). Maybe you can get some leaves and grass for your compost bin at the park too. Keep the composting materials moistened.

While you are waiting for your earthworms to make the fertilizer, you can order your seeds. Here, I can give you another shortcut. Since I’m stuck in an in-town situation myself at the moment, I’ve already done the research to find which vegetables are best for small space and container gardening, and where to get them. Here are a few recommendations to get you started. (Keep in mind that this list is by no means all-inclusive. It is only meant as a suggestion.)

FULL ARTICLE=>

Preparing Your Basic Survival Stash

If you've given any thought to survival, you know the big three -- food, water and shelter -- are the foundation of any long-term survival plan. If you prepare to provide these three items for yourself and loved ones, you're farther ahead than probably 90 percent of the public. Many would say water is the most important of the three, but we'll address them in the order above: Food, water and shelter. FULL ARTICLE=>

Kick the Credit Card Habit: Learn How to Stash Cash

Claire Wolfe

My friend Jeanie, a professional woman, whips out her credit card at every spending opportunity. Wal-Mart expedition? Credit card. A week’s worth of groceries? Credit card. DVD rental? Yep, you got it—out comes the credit card. If gumball machines took credit cards I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jeanie pop a ten-cent purchase onto that card.

It’s the new American way and—so the propaganda of the cashless society tells us—the way of the future.

Ick! FULL ARTICLE=>

“Swear him in!”

Ray McGovern

That's all I said in the unusual silence on Monday afternoon as first aid was being administered to Gen. David Petraeus' microphone before he spoke before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

It had dawned on me that when House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) invited Gen. Petraeus to make his presentation, Skelton forgot to ask him to take the customary oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had no idea that my suggestion would be enough to get me thrown out of the hearing.

I had experienced a flashback to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in early 2006, when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) reminded chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that Specter had forgotten to swear in the witness, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and how Specter insisted that that would not be necessary. FULL ARTICLE=>

Patraeus Outlines his Troop Withdrawal Plans

David Espo

Sep 10, 7:00 PM (ET)

WASHINGTON (AP) - The top U.S. general in Iraq outlined plans Monday for the withdrawal of 30,000 troops by next summer, drawing praise from the White House but a chilly reception from anti-war Democrats.

Gen. David Petraeus said a 2,000-member Marine unit would return home this month without replacement in the first sizable cut since a 2003 U.S-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein and unleashed sectarian violence.

Further "force reductions will continue," he told a nationally televised congressional hearing that was frequently interrupted by anti-war protesters.

Petraeus said it would be "premature to make recommendations on the pace," and he recommended that President Bush wait until March 2008 to make any decisions. FULL ARTICLE=>

Bush Not Trusted to End Iraq War: Poll

ONLY 5 per cent of Americans say they trust the Bush Administration to resolve the Iraq conflict, says a poll published on the eve of the American commander's appearances before Congress.

General David Petraeus was due to give testimony on progress in Iraq early today, Sydney time, to a joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees and to the Senate tomorrow.

The New York Times reported yesterday that General Petraeus had recommended that decisions on the contentious issue of reducing the main body of American troops in Iraq be put off for six months. FULL ARTICLE=>

B-52 Bomber Incident & Insider Trading: Connecting the Dots

Michael Salla, Ph.D

A B-52 bomber loaded with five (increased to six in later reports) nuclear weapons fitted on the pylons under its wings was discovered after sitting for ten hours on a tarmac at Barksdale AFB on August 30. Three anonymous Air Force officers leaked the news of the incident to the Army Times newspaper which announced the discovery on September 5. The discovery immediately gained world wide coverage:

(http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/marine_nuclear_B52_070904w/ .

The mainstream news media has so far concentrated on the Air Force version of events that the incident was an ‘error’ and is now subject to an official investigation. FULL ARTICLE=>

USAF Air Combat Command Orders Commandwide Standdown on Friday

On Sept. 14, flight lines will be very quiet at Air Combat Command bases.

The entire command — about 100,000 active-duty airmen — is standing down training flights and many other operations as part of a command-wide safety day.

Command boss Gen. Ronald Keys ordered the Sept. 14 safety standdown in the wake of the Aug. 30 nuclear incident at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., in which six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads were loaded onto a B-52H and then flown to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., without anyone on the ground or bomber realizing the nuclear weapons were on the plane. It was not until the B-52H was parked at Barksdale that ground crews discovered the cruise missiles were carrying real warheads. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor's Comment: Because of the elaborate set of checks and balances that must have already been in place and operative at Minot AFB on August 30, the odds against of this nuclear incident being the result of a misunderstanding on the part of air and ground personnel associated with the flight of this plane are enormous. That is, the loading the plane with nuke-tipped cruise missiles was intentional, not accidental.

For an example of one man's informed opinion on what may have actually occurred, look in today's issue of Liberty Calling on the web (www.libertycalling.com) for and read the article titled "Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled a Leak?"

And here is another possibility: That otherwise loyal officer-level flight and ground personal associated the plane, looking for a way to call national public attention to what they saw as Mr. Bush's transformation of his presidency into a near dictatorship and hoping that Congress would see to it that Congress would correct this condition, intentionally had the plane loaded with the cruise missiles, knowing that discovery of these missiles at Barksdale AFB would give rise to a nuclear incident report.

How to Analyze the News and What goes on Around You

Petraeus: Troop Withdrawals by Year's End

The 30,000 additional troops deployed to Iraq in January could come home by next July, but further American withdrawals would be "premature," the U.S. commander there told a fractious congressional hearing Monday.

"Our experience in Iraq has repeatedly shown that projecting too far into the future is not just difficult, it can be misleading and even hazardous," Gen. David Petraeus said at a joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. "The events of the past six months underscore that point." FULL ARTICLE=>

Iraqis' Own Surge Assessment: Few See Security Gains

Barely a quarter of Iraqis say their security has improved in the past six months, a negative assessment of the surge in U.S. forces that reflects worsening public attitudes across a range of measures, even as authorities report some progress curtailing violence.

Apart from a few scattered gains, a new national survey by ABC News, the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK finds deepening dissatisfaction with conditions in Iraq, lower ratings for the national government and growing rejection of the U.S. role there. FULL ARTICLE=>

Troop Surge in Iraq to Peak at 172,000 in Mid-October

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military surge in Iraq has reached a record high and is projected to continue over the next few months. Officials said the U.S. military presence would further increase to 172,000 by mid-October amid the current troop surge designed to quell the insurgency in Iraq.

The Pentagon reported a record 168,000 troops in Iraq, an increase of 40,000 since January 2007. FULL ARTICLE=>

Microchip Maker 'Hid ties to Cancer'

The safety of implantable tracking chips in human beings is suddenly in focus with the revelation the devices could cause cancer, and that studies showing links to the disease were kept under wraps. According to the Associated Press, despite the chips' approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, neither their maker nor federal regulators publicly mentioned a series of veterinary and toxicology studies dating to the mid-1990s found chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

The chips are made by VeriChip Corp., a division of Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla. The company says some 2,000 have been implanted in humans worldwide, and VeriChip sees a target market of 45 million Americans looking to be medically monitored. FULL ARTICLE=>

The Occupation Within: The US Mimics Israel

James Brooks

How were the terms of US political and economic debate severed from basic standards of evidence and common sense? Why does the word “hypocrisy” seem inadequate to describe the pretzel logic of the neo-conservatives? Why do the people of the United States remain inert as the madness at the top claims the authority to hemorrhage its execution of Iraq into a nuclear war on Iran?

John McMurtry is a decorated professor of philosophy who has pursued questions like these to the ideological foundations of today’s US-centric global empire. His analysis offers insights that can help us identify and think our way out of this now ubiquitous “mind-lock”. McMurtry’s approach also turns out to be useful for illuminating core ideological contradictions in Israel’s US-supported ethnic cleansing regime, which has been forcing Palestinians off their lands for the last 60 years. FULL ARTICLE=>

Thousands of GIs Cope with Brain Damage

The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers. Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.

"I've been in the field for 20-plus years dealing with TBI. I have a very experienced staff. And they're saying to me, 'We're seeing things we've never seen before,'" said Sandy Schneider, director of Vanderbilt University's brain injury rehabilitation program. FULL ARTICLE=>

Mossad Agent Pearlman Behind New Bin Laden Video

Adam Pearlman, the Jewish Mossad agent who once wrote stinging essays condemning Muslims as “bloodthirsty terrorist”, has been singled out as the creator of the suspicious “new”Osama Bin Laden video. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: The London Telegraph broke the original story, naming Adam Gadahn, whom American spy chiefs identified as the head of al-Quaeda’s English language media operations, as the author of large sections of bin Laden’s recent broadcast. However, it was Alex Jones’ PrisonPlanet.com news team stated in May of this year that the FBI had identified the name Adam Gadahn as one of Adam Pearlman’s aliases. On the basis of this and other information, Jones’ team concluded in its May news story that Pearlman is a double agent and most likely for Mossad.

Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak? New!

Michael Salla, Ph.D.

September 7, 2007

On August 30, a B-52 bomber armed with five nuclear-tipped Advanced Cruise missiles traveled from Minot Air Force base, North Dakota, to Barksdale Air Force base, Louisiana. Each missile had an adjustable yield between five and 150 kilotons of TNT which is at the lower end of the destructive capacities of U.S. nuclear weapons. For example, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 13 kilotons, while the Bravo Hydrogen bomb test of 1954 had a yield of 15,000 kilotons.

The B-52 story was first covered in the Army Times on September 5 after the nuclear armed aircraft was discovered by Airmen (see: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/marine_nuclear_B52_070904w/ ). What made this a very significant event was that it was a violation of U.S. Air Force regulations concerning the transportation of nuclear weapons by air. Nuclear weapons are normally transported by air in specially constructed planes designed to prevent radioactive pollution in case of a crash. Such transport planes are not equipped to launch the nuclear weapons they routinely carry around the U.S. and the world for servicing or positioning.

Former top DOJ Lawyer Speaks Out on Fight against Bush Spying

Former Department of Justice lawyer Jack Goldsmith, who frequently countered White House legal justifications for expanded executive power during his time as director of the Office of Legal Counsel, spoke publicly for the first time on the Thursday edition of ABC's Nightline.

A new book by Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency, will be released later this month.

"I discovered in my first weeks on the job that some of our most important counterterrorism policies were based on legal opinions that I viewed as flawed, " Goldsmith told Nightline. "Not necessarily what was being done, but what might be done in the name of these opinions that I didn't know about." FULL ARTICLE=>

Can Humans Live to 1,000? Some Experts Claim We Can

Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey has famously stated, “The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today …whether they realize it or not, barring accidents and suicide, most people now 40 years or younger can expect to live for centuries.”

Perhaps de Gray is way too optimistic, but plenty of others have joined the search for a virtual fountain of youth. In fact, a growing number of scientists, doctors, geneticists and nanotech experts—many with impeccable academic credentials—are insisting that there is no hard reason why ageing can’t be dramatically slowed or prevented altogether. Not only is it theoretically possible, they argue, but a scientifically achievable goal that can and should be reached in time to benefit those alive today. FULL ARTICLE=>

Prospects for Extending Healthy Life - A Lot - VIDEO

Speaker: Aubrey de Grey Ph.D

SENS 3 Conference

Cambridge, U.K.

Sept. 6-10. 2007

It may seem premature to be discussing approaches to the effective elimination of human ... all » aging as a cause of death at a time when essentially no progress has yet been made in even postponing it. However, two aspects of human aging combine to undermine this assessment.

The first is that aging is happening to us throughout our lives but only results in appreciable functional decline after four or more decades of life: this shows that we can postpone the functional decline caused by aging arbitrarily well without knowing how to prevent aging completely, but instead by increasingly thorough molecular and cellular repair.

The second is that the typical rate of refinement of dramatic technological breakthroughs is rather reliable (so long as public enthusiasm for them is abundant) and is fast enough to change such technologies (be they in medicine, transport, or computing) almost beyond recognition within a natural human lifespan.

In this talk I will explain, first, why (presuming adequate funding for the initial preclinical work) therapies that can add 30 healthy years to the remaining lifespan of healthy 55-year-olds may arrive within the next few decades, and, second, why those who benefit from those therapies will very probably continue to benefit from progressively improved therapies indefinitely and thus avoid debilitation or death from age-related causes at any age. VIDEO AND POWERPOINT=>

LC Editor’s Comments: 1 hr.- 1 min. in length. Excellent. Make sure to click on the link www.sens.org on the upper right hand panel of the page to open the Power Point presentation, which will allow you to follow the presentation easily.

Olbermann: Surge debate already over, Bush wins 'shell game'

Since last spring, the White House has been saying the nation should reserve debate about America's presence in Iraq and the possibility of withdrawal until after General Petraeus delivers his report on the effectiveness of the surge. However, according to Keith Olbermann, "Today we learned that by then it will have been too late. ... The president has already made up his mind. We are staying." FULL ARTICLE PLUS VIDEO=>

LC Editor’s Comments: President Bush continues to lie to and deceive the American people, U.S. military forces on the ground fighting his wars of aggession, and the Congress about anything and anything under the sun. That’s S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) for the Mr. Bush now, and it has been so ever since the day he moved into the White House in January 2001.

Then why is it that anyone would continue to believe Mr. Bush’s fairy tale accounting of 9/11: That it was conceived and managed by a sick cave dweller in Afghanistan by the name of Osama bin Laden; and that bin Laden’s complex three-pronged jet airliner attack upon American was executed with the precision of a Blue Angels team in action by a score of rabid, radical, boxcutter-wielding Muslims whose flight instructors said could barely keep their single-engine propeller-driven trainers flying straight and level? That, my friends, is a mystery!

Zogby: 51% of Americans Want Congress to Probe Bush/Cheney Regarding 9/11

As America nears the sixth anniversary of the world-churning events of September 11, 2001, a new Zogby International poll finds a majority of Americans still await a Congressional investigation of President Bush' and Vice President Cheney's actions before, during and after the 9/11 attacks. Over 30% also believe Bush and/or Cheney should be immediately impeached by the House of Representatives.

The 911truth.org–sponsored poll also found that over two-thirds of Americans say the 9/11 Commission should have investigated the still unexplained collapse of the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001. FULL ARTICLE=>

Released DC Protesters say Police used Intimidation Tactics

Two of the protesters arrested on Thursday during an outdoor press conference at Washington D.C.'s Lafayette Square say that the show of force from police at the scene--which included a S.W.A.T. team and mounted officers, according to reports--was excessive and designed to send a message.

Tina Richards, of the group Grassroots America, and Ian Thompson, a lawyer and organizer for the anti-war group ANSWER Los Angeles, spoke to RAW STORY shortly after they were released from jail and formally charged with misdemeanors in D.C. Superior Court. A third individual, Adam Kokesh, a leader of Iraq Veterans Against the War, has also been released, Richards and Thompson said. FULL ARTICLE=>

Mexican Rigs Hitting US Pavement

Congressman: Bush 'hell-bent' to green-light foreign truckers

Jrome Corsi

World Net Daily

September 7, 2007

Trucks owned by Mexican trucking companies and piloted by Mexican drivers are scheduled to hit the pavement of U.S. roadways as early as today, according to an Oregon congressman.

U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., late yesterday said what critics call the Bush administration's "stealth plan" to allow Mexican long-haul rigs to run on roads throughout the United States is being launched.

"The Bush administration has indicated to me that tomorrow (Friday) they will open the U.S. border to 100 Mexican-domiciled trucking companies," DeFazio said. "This is a sad day for America." FULL ARTICLE=>

Outing the 'Israel Lobby'

Try Bush for War Crimes, Urges US Combat Veteran

GEORGE W. Bush should be tried as a war criminal for his role in launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Howard Government is culpable for supporting him, a US anti-war activist claims. The US President and John Howard were committed to a failing war that was being waged for oil and economic motives, former US marine and two-time combat tour veteran Matt Howard said in Sydney yesterday. The anti-war movement was growing in the US, and veterans had a responsibility to tell the truth about what was happening in Iraq, Mr Howard, 26, told a news conference at the Alternative APEC Centre in Sydney's Trades Hall.

FULL ARTICLE=>

Dazed Bush Forgets What Country He's In, What Summit He's At

President Bush's trademark struggles with the finer points of public speaking were on full display Friday, when he thanked his "Austrian" hosts for inviting him to this year's "OPEC" summit. The Language Mangler-in-Chief was in Australia attending the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit. FULL ARTICLE=>

Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act

A federal judge struck down parts of the revised USA Patriot Act on Thursday, saying investigators must have a court's approval before they can order Internet providers to turn over records without telling customers.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said the government orders must be subject to meaningful judicial review and that the recently rewritten Patriot Act ``offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers.''

The American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the law, complaining that it allowed the FBI to demand records without the kind of court order required for other government searches. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Details of the ruling are provided at are provided at the University of Pittsburgh’s Law School Jurist web site.

Police Break Up Anti-War Meeting in Washington

Mounted police charged in to break up an outdoor press conference and demonstration against the Iraq warin Washington on Thursday, arresting three people, organizers and an AFP reporter said.

"The police suppressed the press conference. In the middle of the speeches, they grabbed the podium" erected in a park in front of the White House for the small gathering, Brian Becker, national organizer of the ANSWER anti-war coalition, told AFP. "Then, mounted police charged the media present to disperse them," Becker said. FULL ARTICLE=>

Secrets of the Federal Reserve

Eustace Millins

In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a Federal institution for the insane), Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten dollar bill marked "Federal Reserve Note" and asked me if I would do some research at the Library of Congress on the Federal Reserve System which had issued this bill. Pound was unable to go to the Library himself, as he was being held without trial as a political prisoner by the United States government. After he was denied broadcasting time in the U.S., Dr. Pound broadcast from Italy in an effort to persuade people of the United States not to enter World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt had personally ordered Pound’s indictment, spurred by the demands of his three personal assistants, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, and Alger Hiss, all of whom were subsequently identified as being connected with Communist espionage.

I had no interest in money or banking as a subject, because I was working on a novel. Pound offered to supplement my income by ten dollars a week for a few weeks. My initial research revealed evidence of an international banking group which had secretly planned the writing of the Federal Reserve Act and Congress’ enactment of the plan into law. These findings confirmed what Pound had long suspected. He said, "You must work on it as a detective story." I was fortunate in having my research at the Library of Congress directed by a prominent scholar, George Stimpson, founder of the National Press Club, who was described by The New York Times of September 28, 1952: "Beloved by Washington newspapermen as ‘our walking Library of Congress’, Mr. Stimpson was a highly regarded reference source in the Capitol. Government officials, Congressmen and reporters went to him for information on any subject."

FULL ARTICLE PLUS THE ENTIRE BOOK ONLINE=>

LC Editor’s Comments: All of the scholarly accounts the describe the secret origins of the Federal Reserve System, including why the bankers really created the Federal Reserve ----and the enormous benefit to them ---and how the Federal Reserve created money out of them air and charges interest for its use, are based on this classic book by Eustice Mullins.

My first exposure to these seemingly radical ideas came with my reading of The Creature from Jekyll Island, a true account of the origins of the Federal Reserve System authored by G. Edward Griffin.

The Federal Reserve: Its Astounded Exposure by Congressman McFadden in 1934

This article contains quotations from several speeches made on the Floor of the House of Representatives by the Honorable Louis T. McFadden of Pennsylvania. Mr. McFadden, due to his having served as Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee for more than 10 years, was the best posted man on these matters in America and was in a position to speak with authority of the vast ramifications of this gigantic private credit monopoly.

As Representative of a State that was among the first to declare its freedom from foreign money tyrants it is fitting that Pennsylvania, the cradle of liberty, be again given the credit for producing a son that was not afraid to hurl defiance in the face of the money-bund.

Whereas Mr. McFadden was elected to the high office on both the Democratic and Republican tickets, there can be no accusation of partisanship lodged against him. Because these speeches are set out in full in the Congressional Record, they carry weight that no amount of condemnation on the part of private individuals could hope to carry.

FULL ARTICLE=>

US Force Levels in Iraq Swell to All-time High

US force levels in Iraq have grown to an all-time high of 168,000 troops, a senior Pentagon official said Thursday, as the US administration gears up to defend its surge strategy before Congress. Major General Richard Sherlock, director of operational planning for the Joint Staff, said the higher number of troops was the result of overlapping troop deployments. The total rose from 162,000 troops, the previous high of the nearly four and a half year old war. FULL ARTICLE=>

Oil Price Tests an All-Time High

The price of oil has risen close to a record level, putting more pressure on Opec to give a positive signal about production levels at its meeting in Vienna next week. The price increase was triggered by claims that Israeli warplanes had penetrated Syrian airspace.

As US crude rose to less than $1.50 short of its record peak, Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of Total, the French oil group, told the Financial Times he expected the oil price to stay high, and suggested the cycle in the market had been broken. FULL ARTICLE=>

New Mortgage Foreclosures Set Record

The number of homeowners receiving foreclosure notices hit a record high in the spring, driven up by problems with subprime mortgages.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported Thursday that mortgage-holders starting the foreclosure process in the April-June quarter reached 0.65 percent, marking the third consecutive quarter that this figure has set an all-time high.

FULL ARTICLE=>

Fed Injects 31.25 Billion Dollars into Markets

The Federal Reserve added 31.25 billion dollars in temporary reserves to the US money markets Thursday in three different operations, the latest move to keep credit markets from drying up. The New York Fed added 7.0 billion dollars in 14-day repurchase agreements, 16 billion in seven-day repurchase agreements and 8.25 billion in one-day repos.

The Fed has injected some 200 billion dollars into the financial system since August 9 in a bid to boost credit flows which have seized up due to problems linked to the distressed US mortgage market. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: What the Fed has done today and has been doing for the past four weeks is highly inflationary. It will produce major increases in the prices of goods and services in the coming months and years. Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster, says that economy is in for an extended period of hyperinflation that may rival what Germany experienced in the 1920’s. A severe economic depression is anticipated to follow this period. Batten down the hatches, mates, there be a doozie of a storm ahead!

The Israel Lobby

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

March 23, 2006

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical. FULL ARTICLE=> and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: See the next article.

Iraq, Israel, Iran

David Bromwich

September 4, 2007

When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s article (March 23, 2006) on the Israel Lobby appeared in the London Review of Books, after having been commissioned and killed by the Atlantic Monthly, neoconservative publicists launched an all-out campaign to slander the authors as anti-Semites. Now that their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy has appeared–a work of considerable scope, carefully documented, and not just an expanded version of the article–the imputation of anti-Semitism will doubtless be repeated more sparingly for readers lower down the educational ladder. Meanwhile, the literate establishment press will (a) ignore it, (b) pretend that it says nothing new or surprising, and (c) rule out the probable inferences from the data, on the ground that the very meaning of the word “lobby” is elusive.

The truth is that many new facts are in this book, and many surprising facts. By reconstructing a trail of meetings and public statements in 2001-2002, for example, the authors show that much of the leadership of Israel was puzzled at first by the boyish enthusiasm for a war on Iraq among their neoconservative allies. Why Iraq? they asked. Why now? They would appear to have obtained assurances, however, that once the “regime change” in Iraq was accomplished, the next war would be against Iran. FULL ARTICLE=>

No More Wars For Israel Conference, Columbus Day Weekend, So. Cal. Oct. 12-14

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

On the weekend of October 12-14 (Traditional Columbus day weekend) patriots from around the world will be gathering in southern California to call for an end to the endless wars being waged… and yet more planned, if the neokahns get their way…. in the middle east by the U.S., sacrificing the lives of our sons and daughters all for the sake of a worthless parasitic and terrorist nation by the name of “Israel,” and at the behest of their powerful lobby here in D.C.

NOW is the time to stand up and let your voices be heard….BEFORE our out-of-control president and the Israeli moles who encircle and advise him begin what very well may be World War III by attacking the peaceful nation of Iran….AGAIN for the sake of the cancer in the middle east known as Israel. FULL ARTICLE=>

If Americans Knew What Every American Needs to Know about Israel and Palestine

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.

It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution. FULL ARTICLE=>

Australian Police Warn of Full-Scale Riot over Bush Visit

The largest protest so far during US President George W. Bush's visit to Sydney ended peacefully Wednesday, but police predicted a "full-scale riot" later in the week.

About 300 students, many still in their high school uniforms, marched through central Sydney chanting anti-war slogans in protest at the US leader's presence in Australia for this week's Asia-Pacific summit. FULL ARTICLE=>

Bush Considers Standing by Iraq Strategy

April may become the new September when it comes to deciding whether to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, if President Bush's senior advisers have their way. But Congress might not stand for it.

Since Bush ordered the deployment of some 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq in January, he urged Congress to give the new plan until at least September to work. Accordingly, this month became a deadline among lawmakers for substantial progress, including several Republicans who said they were wary of Bush's military strategy but agreed for the most part to bite their tongues until then.

Now, administration officials are recommending Bush stand by his war strategy until the spring, and Bush is considered unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year. Officials familiar with the assessment spoke on condition of anonymity to describe decisions not yet publicly released. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Important: Play the Keith Olbermann video, next article. You will learn what President George Bush told the author Robert Draper he intends to do regarding the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq and the reason and behind that decision. Astounding!

Bush Just Playing Us with 'Troop Withdrawal'

'Revelation' contradicts every other rationale offered in the last 500 days

Keith Olbermann

Countdown MSNBC

Sept 4, 2007

And so he is back from his annual surprise gratuitous photo-op in Iraq, and what a sorry spectacle it was. But it was nothing compared to the spectacle of one unfiltered, unguarded, horrifying quotation in the new biography to which Mr. Bush has consented.

As he deceived the troops at Al-Asad Air Base yesterday with the tantalizing prospect that some of them might not have to risk being killed and might get to go home, Mr. Bush probably did not know that, with his own words, he had already proved that he had been lying, is lying and will be lying about Iraq. FULL ARTICLE AND VIDEO LINK=>

LC Editor’s Comment: President George Bush is not a traditional conservative. Mr. Bush, like his former advisors Paul Wolfowitz and other current and former members of this White House team, is a neo-conservative. They are so-called “neo-cons”, disciples of the political philosopher Leo Strauss. Strauss (1899-1973) was a great believer in the efficacy and usefulness of lies in politics. He referred to them as “noble lies”.

You can learn about the Straussian politics and the neo-con agenda and their connection with ongoing and expanding U.S. military operations in the Middle East by reading the next article, by Danny Postel. Postel interviews Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at the Univeristy of Regina in Saskatchewan, an expert in neo-con political philosop

CDC Covering Up Serious Hazards of Water Fluoridation

On August 9, Daniel Stockin, a public health professional of The Lillie Center, Inc., presented the CDC’s joint ethics panel with a detailed, formal complaint alleging unethical activities by the CDC.

According to the complaint, Oral Health Division manager William Maas and CDC Director Julie Gerberding have committed “serious and egregious” unethical actions, by not disseminating new findings about the real hazards of fluoridated water. FULL ARTICLE=>

North American Union Driver's License Created

Logo intended to standardize documentation across continent

The first "North American Union" driver's license, complete with a hologram of the continent on the reverse, has been created in North Carolina. "The North Carolina driver's license is 'North American Union' ready," charges William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration. Gheen provided WND with a photo of an actual North Carolina license that clearly shows the hologram of the North American continent embedded on the reverse. FULL ARTICLE=>

Noble Lies and Perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the Neo-Cons, and Iraq

Danny Postel

October 18, 2003

Are the ideas of the conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss a shaping influence on the Bush administration’s world outlook? Danny Postel interviews Shadia Drury – a leading scholarly critic of Strauss – and asks her about the connection between Plato’s dialogues, secrets and lies, and the United States-led war in Iraq. FULL ARTICLE=>

B-52 Mistakenly Flies with Nukes Aboard

By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer

Military Times
Wednesday Sep 5, 2007

A B-52 bomber mistakenly loaded with five nuclear warheads flew from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, resulting in an Air Force-wide investigation, according to three officers who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.

The b-52

was loaded with Advanced Cruise Missiles, part of a Defense Department effort to decommission 400 of the ACMs. But the nuclear warheads should have been removed at Minot before being transported to Barksdale, the officers said. The missiles were mounted onto the pylons of the bomber’s wings. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: The Bush administration’s sloppy management practices and utter contempt for the safety and wellbeing of the American people continue to trickle down into the military operating organizations of the Defense (War) Department. Shocking!

Nuclear weapons safety violations like this one are not supposed to occur under any circumstance. There are check and balances built into nuclear weapons handling operations and into air force flight missions. For example, pilots are given have printed checklists they are required to follow rigorously and check off as completed at every step of a mission or flight.

Included in every preflight checklist of a bomber is the requirement that the pilot-in-command (POC) of a flight sign-off on the list of weapons carried aboard. Furthermore, during his “walk-around” physical inspection of his plane he is required to check for the physical presence (or in this case the absence) of each weapon listed as assigned to his flight. There are checks and balances. Adhere to them and all goes well. Failure to adhere to them and incidents occur.

Apparently the POC and Crew Chief or Armaments Officer (if those are the appropriate titles) failed to follow their checklists. Why did this occur? What remedial action has been taken as a consequence of this event to prevent it from reoccurring?

Dick Cheney's Top Aide: “We're one bomb away” from our goal

In October of 2003, Jack Goldsmith -- a right-wing lawyer with radical views of executive power and long-time friend of John Yoo -- was named by the Bush administration to head the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, one of the most influential legal positions in the executive branch. During his tenure, he discovered numerous legal positions which the administration had adopted (many created by Yoo) that he found baseless and even unconscionable -- from torture to detention powers to illegal surveillance -- and he repudiated many of them, thereby repeatedly infuriating the most powerful White House officials, led by Cheney top aide David Addington. As a result, his tenure was extremely brief, and he was gone a mere 9 months after he began.

Goldsmith, now a Harvard Law Professor, has just written a book, to be released this month, criticizing and, in some cases, exposing for the first time, many of Bush's executive power abuses. He is donating all the proceeds from the book to charity to prevent the standard integrity attacks which Bush followers launch at any ex-officials who commit such blasphemy. In a lengthy profile in The New York Times Magazine, Jeffrey Rosen profiles Goldsmith and highlights some of the book's key revelations. FULL ARTICLE=>

What The Constitution Says About Iraq

Most Americans want the war in Iraq ended, but it continues and Americans are killed, mutilated or wounded every day, as the Democratic majorities in Congress struggle to produce legislation that will take our forces out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, President Bush continues to insist that as commander in chief, he has the constitutional power to go to war and decide when to end it, unilaterally. At the same time, another possible disaster emerges from the shadows: Bush appears to be considering a military assault on Iran, again apparently without Congress declaring war first.

How did we get to this point and what, if anything, can we do now? FULL ARTICLE=>

Analysis: Industry Eager to See Passage of Iraq Oil Law

By Ben Lando
UPI Energy Editor

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 4 (UPI) -- The question is simple on the third and final day of a major Iraqi energy conference where hundreds of hungry oil men and women broke bread with Iraq's industry chiefs, politicians and technocrats: When will Baghdad set the ground rules for the international oil community's long-awaited venture into the largest oil prize on Earth?

Chasing Bugatti: Two Upstart Carmakers Race to Beat the King

In an early '60s episode of the The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling issues a warning to pool sharks: If you're the best, you'll spend eternity defending your title. The Bugatti Veyron carries that burden through the automotive netherworld. A top speed of 253.2 miles per hour makes it the fastest production car in the world. Now two small builders are eager to unseat the king, with rides that boast insane horsepower figures and ground-gripping aerodynamics. Will they hit 253.3? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, there will always be a new crop of upstarts looming in the champ's rearview. Welcome to hell, kid. FULL ARTICLE=>

Point, Click ... Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

It's a "comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS and push-to-talk systems," says Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor and longtime surveillance expert. FULL ARTICLE=>

Feds use Keylogger to Thwart PGP, Hushmail Encryption of Email

A recent court case provides a rare glimpse into how some federal agents deal with encryption: by breaking into a suspect's home or office, implanting keystroke-logging software, and spying on what happens from afar.

An agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration persuaded a federal judge to authorize him to sneak into an Escondido, Calif., office believed to be a front for manufacturing the drug MDMA, or Ecstasy. The DEA received permission to copy the hard drives' contents and inject a keystroke logger into the computers.

That was necessary, according to DEA Agent Greg Coffey, because the suspects were using PGP and the encrypted Web e-mail service Hushmail.com. Coffey asserted that the DEA needed "real-time and meaningful access" to "monitor the keystrokes" for PGP and Hushmail passphrases. FULL ARTICLE=>

White House Scrubs its Site in Attempt to Make Office 'Exempt' from FOIA Requests

The White House has scrubbed its Web site of evidence it has reversed its policies on allowing public access to information to which it is legally entitled. However, a source told RAW STORY that the scrub would have no legal implications. Sometime over the weekend, White House computer technicians removed from government Web sites any references to the Office of Administration or its previous compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests.

FULL ARTICLE=>

Bush Can't Recall Why Iraqi Army Disbanded

One of the most heavily criticized actions in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was the decision, barely two months later, to disband the Iraqi army, alienating former soldiers and driving many straight into the ranks of anti-American militant groups. But excerpts of a new biography of President Bush show him saying that he initially wanted to maintain the Iraqi army and, more surprising, that he cannot recall why his administration decided to disband it. "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told biographer Robert Draper in excerpts published in Sunday's New York Times.

Draper pressed Bush to explain why, if he wanted to maintain the army, his chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, issued an order in May 2003 disbanding the 400,000-strong army without pay. "Yeah, I can't remember; I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " Bush said, adding: "Again, Hadley's got notes on all this stuff" -- a reference to national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley.

Spokesmen for the White House and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined to comment about the excerpts Sunday. Bremer could not be reached for comment. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editors’s Comment: He can’t recall making this major decision? Could President Bush be experiencing blackouts? Who is really making the major policy decisions and giving the orders at the White House? And the Senate gave Mr. Bush a blank check for a massive military attack on Iran? See Flashback, below

Justice Fails Afghan Women

Afghanistan is building new jails for women. Though there are only 300 female prisoners now, that number is expected to grow. While there are no signs of a crime wave, one of the reasons for the increase is an unlikely one. Lacking in transitional houses for released prisoners, a suggested solution includes using jails as secure places where women can stay until they are reintegrated into society.

By some strange logic, funding for building jails is much easier to come by. But again, half of the women in jail should not be there at all. Imprisoned for what are loosely described as "moral crimes", these women would qualify as victims rather than criminals under any interpretation of international human rights laws, including those to which Afghanistan is a signatory.

LC Editor’s Comment: This is life for women in young Bush’s New Afghanistan.

Flashback:

The Senate's Blank Check for War on Iran

Chris Floyd

July 14, 2007

As you may know – unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course – yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to. READ FULL ARTICLE=>

How the Food Industry is Deceiving You

Dr. Mercola

This terrific five-part video series by Peter Jennings explores how the food industry spends billions of dollars to sabotage your health.

Jennings also takes a critical look at our government’s agricultural subsidy programs, and their unintended consequences on your nutritional choices and health. For example, sugar and fat receive 20 times more government farming subsidies than fruits and vegetables. Does this oversupply of fats and sugars, compared to fruits and vegetables, affect your food choices?

Some statistics, implicating both the food industry and the government as co-creating factors in the obesity epidemic, include:

In 2002, consumers spent $174 billion on processed foods.
90 percent of foods marketed each year are processed foods.
Last year, 2,800 new candies, desserts, ice cream, and snacks were introduced to the marketplace, compared to 230 new fruits or vegetable products.
The food industry spends $34 billion per year marketing their products.
$12 billion is spent marketing to children.

FULL AUDIO AND FIVE PART VIDEO=>

LC Editor’s Comment: First class production!

Human-Animal Embryo Study Wins Approval in the UK

Mixing cells and eggs to be allowed in search for new medical treatments

Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government's fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were "at ease" with scientists creating the hybrid embryos. FULL ARTICLE=>

Distinguishing Science and Pseudoscience

Rory Coker, Ph.D.

The word "pseudo" means fake. The surest way to spot a fake is to know as much as possible about the real thing—in this case, about science itself. Knowing science does not mean simply knowing scientific facts (such as the distance from earth to sun, the age of the earth, the distinction between mammal and reptile, etc.) It means understanding the nature of science—the criteria of evidence, the design of meaningful experiments, the weighing of possibilities, the testing of hypotheses, the establishment of theories, the many aspects of scientific methods that make it possible to draw reliable conclusions about the physical universe.

Because the media bombard us with nonsense, it is useful to consider the earmarks of pseudoscience. The presence of even one of these should arouse great suspicion. On the other hand, material displaying none of these flaws might still be pseudoscience, because its adherents invent new ways to fool themselves every day. Most of the examples in this article are related to my field of physics, but similar beliefs and behavior are associated with iridology, medical astrology, meridian therapy, reflexology, subluxation-based chiropractic, therapeutic touch, and other health-related pseudosciences. FULL ARTICLE=>

Direct Evidence for Explosions at the WTC

Dr. Crockett Grabbe

Dept. of Physics

University of Iowa

http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/GrabbeExplosionsEvidence.pdf

Claims have been made that there is no direct proof that explosions occurred in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but there are in fact visible photographs of collapse results that provide that proof. One such photograph posted in late 2005 is shown in Figure 1, which shows the rapidly expanding cloud of the North Tower that directly exhibits explosions shattering material with hundreds of pieces of metal cladding and beams flying in the air at the edge of the dust cloud. However, there is also a whole set of photographs posted on the web which can be shown through physics calculations to graphically exhibit the direct effects of explosions in the World Trade Center towers, yet these facts have not been previously investigated. FULL ARTICLE=>

Preparing an Emergency Food Supply Short Term Food Storage

Food storage is considered part of being prepared for emergencies and natural disasters. Individuals and families can eliminate some stress, worry and inconveniences by planning for emergency food needs. How much and which foods to store will depend on the members of your household, your preferences, special health conditions, ability to use the food in an emergency, and space for storage. Planning for short-term emergency food needs may be as simple as increasing quantities of some staple foods and non-perishable foods that you normally would use. (Non-perishable foods are those that can be stored safely at room temperatures.) FULL ARTICLE=>

Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?

By Ray McGovern,

Former CIA Analyst

Why do I feel like the proverbial skunk at a Labor Day picnic? Sorry; but I thought you might want to know that this time next year there will probably be more skunks than we can handle. I fear our country is likely to be at war with Iran-and with the thousands of real terrorists Iran can field around the globe.

It is going to happen, folks, unless we put our lawn chairs away on Tuesday, take part in some serious grass-roots organizing, and take action to prevent a wider war-while we still can. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: Ray’s article constitutes amounts to a blatant an in-your-face appeal to the American people to coalesce into as strong as or stronger front than the American People did to defeat the illegal alien amnesty bill a month ago. Then he wants the united American people to do whatever it takes to cause the mad paperhanger in the White House now and his buddy the Darth Vader look-alike to back off from their obvious intention to lay waste to Iran through massive bombings and cruise missile attacks conducted over a period of three days.

Former Reagan Aide says Congress must Start Impeachment Inquiry

A constitutional lawyer who served in Ronald Reagan's administration says President Bush's "apparently criminal" authorization of a warrantless wiretapping program is grounds for the House to begin an impeachment inquiry.

By not beginning such an investigation, impeachment will become a "virtual dead letter," Bruce Fein, former deputy attorney general under Regan, said in a essay published in Slate.

Fein has emerged as a fierce critic of Bush's administration and has previously called for the president and Vice President Dick Cheney to be impeached. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: It’s time for us to apply massive pressure to our U.S. representatives to push for an immediate impeachment inquiry. This could put a temporary halt the Bush administrations moving forward on its plans for a massive bomber and cruise missile attack of Iran.

Such an attack, even if successful in destroying Iran’s homeland military forces, could still allow the Iranian government to act in reprisal by unleashing its highly trained and equipped terror teams already established on the U.S. mainland on our infrastructure and our people. According to retired General Tommy Frank, another attack on our infrastructure that could be attributed to terrorist in our midst, could cause Americans to question the usefulness of constitution based law and give rise to calls for a military dictatorship as a means for protecting them from further terrorist attacks.

We don’t want that to happen and we don’t need that to happen, and it need not happen if make sure that Congress impeaches both Bush and Cheney now and has them removed from office now. We need to do whatever is necessary to make that happen, and we need to do it now if we are to save our republic and preserve whatever level of freedom and personal liberty we still possess. Let’s go for it now!

Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph and the Hard Way Ahead

By Chris Floyd

Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone. And not just in some abstract sense, some metaphorical or mythological sense, but down in the nitty-gritty, in the concrete realities of institutional structures and legal frameworks, of policy and process, even down to the physical nature of the landscape and the way that people live. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: As I was reading this article, I thought immediately of Claire Wolfe’s Twelve Tips for Toppling Tyrants, an article I’ve read dozens of times and have come back to time and time again, each time coming away with a profound attitude of gratitude for being exposed to the wisdom it contains and the practical advice it offers. It has become for me my course outline, textbook and workshop manual as a student of new, practical strategies for the toppling of tyrants during the Bushian Age. I have provided the link to the article next for your convenience, if you have not yet read this Claire Wolfe classic and wish to read it now.

Twelve Tips for Toppling Tyrants

By Claire Wolfe

Everywhere outside of Hardyville, the thunder of tyranny's jackboots storms ever closer. Already Americans are practically forbidden to travel without government permits. The U.S. military is developing weapons to inflict unendurable pain on civilians from nearly a mile away. Spy cams festoon city streets. Black-robed villains decree that any of us can be subjected to a drug search at will without the slightest suspicion of wrongdoing.

And that's not even the tip of the iceberg. That's just the latest dusting of snow on the icy monster's peak. "It's time to shoot the bastards!" some friends of liberty shout. And then they stand around waiting for somebody else to make the first move.

Rightly so. Shoot now and you just become one more quickly forgotten (and probably dead) "lone nut with guns" in one more shallow, sensationalistic news story. You won't even merit as much serious consideration as Robert Blake or Michael Jackson. FULL ARTICLE=>

Pentagon ‘Three-Day Blitz’ Plan for Iran

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: The Bush administration insists that it will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapons capability, and the imminent bombing of Iran is presumably designed at least in part to eliminate this possibility. Retired CIA Analyst Ray McGovern stated in January 2007 that the (most recent) National Intelligence Estimate on Iran completed in early 2005 concluded that the Iranians will not be able to produce one nuclear weapon before "early to mid-next decade, in other words, sometime between 2011 and 2015, which is before 4 and 8 years from now. That is, just one nuke, and that at least 4 years from now.

By way of comprison, the U.S. currently has an estimated 10,000 nukes in its arsenal now and Israel has an estimated 400 nukes in its arsenal now. Even if Iran had this non-existent nuke in hand now and dropped on Israel tomorrow at breakfast time, American bombers carrying only a small fraction of the available nukes would be able to carpet bomb all of Iran and turned it into a radioactive sheet of glass by lunchtime. And Iranian leaders would chance that?

For what? Come now, Mr. Bush. Just how stupid do you think we are?

"We Are Going To Hit Iran. Bigtime"

Mccabee

I have a letter of a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. She told me we are going to attack Iran. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: This letter contains important information offered a Landing Signal Officer currently aboard one of the carriers in stuationed in the Gulf.

Bob Chapman’s ‘Train Wreck of the Week’ - September 1, 2007

The mortgage crisis grossly underestimated, the bankrupting of America, the softening of the economy, the corruption and scams for rebuilding Iraq, Yahoo! turns over identities to Chinese government, Blackwater mercenaries now have an air force FULL ARTICLE=>

Agressive Federal Action on House Prices Foreseen

Federal Reserve governor Frederic Mishkin set the stage for an aggressive monetary policy response by the US central bank to any fall in house prices in his presentation to the Jackson Hole symposium this weekend.

Mr Mishkin told fellow central bankers and top economists gathered for the annual retreat organised by the Kansas City Fed that policymakers should not wait until a decline in house prices leads to a fall in gross domestic product, but should “react immediately to the house price decline when they see it”.

He said the optimal policy response involved quicker and more aggressive interest rate cuts than those suggested by a standard policy rule, in which policymakers respond only to deviations in output and inflation. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: If the Fed cuts long term interest rates significantly, we can expect further loss in the confidence of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and the dollar (USD) index, now at 80.41, to break through its support level of 80 and head downward. See Bob Chapman’s The International Forecaster website.

A Survival Tip: Throw a Block Party to get to Know your Neighbors

In today's busy world, neighbors are often greeted with a quick wave at best. Have a block party where everyone can relax, have fun and get to know each other--and soon you'll be having coffee together, swapping kids or whoopin' it up with a pitcher of margaritas. FULL ARTICLE=>

LC Editor’s Comment: LIBERTY CALLING promotes the notion of survival in style as a mostly enjoyable, pleasant, effective way for us to live for the next few years in New Amerikan Empire created after 9/11 by President George Bush and his Darth Vader look-alike VP. Historians know that invariably --- and given enough time--- all dictatorships and their empires rise to prominence and then fall into obscurity just as do the angry waves that impinge upon on a storm swept beach.

I believe that taken together the Bush regime and the regime that may follow will suffer will suffer the fate and thereby give rise to the rebirth of our founder’s republic. It’s the one steeped in the rule of law under the Constitution and dedicated to the preservation of life, the fostering of liberty and the protection of the choice to own property. In the meanwhile, however, it could be survive-in-style-time for America’s modern-day patriots, at least those who have learned to pick their battles wisely, rather than stupidly pick fights, and wait for opportunities to restore our republic.

Survival for any protracted time depends upon the existence of community. Take it as good advice from that wise old founder Benjamin Franklin, “We must all hang together or surely we will all hang separately.” However, I’d modify his admonition to read “…all hang loosely together…” in recognition of the Bush-era truth that any group of any size dedicated to the fostering personal liberty, restoration of the republic and making it without the assistance of FEMA in what could turn out to be tough economic times ahead can and will be infiltrated by fed agents out to do no good.

Your throwing frequent block parties in your neighborhoods could be a convenient, friendly, informal way of getting acquainted with your neighbors to discover which ones you can trust and which ones you can’t “when the lights go out”, so to speak.

A Beginner's Guide to Stopping Power

Chuck Hawks

Much of what one reads about the subject of handgun stopping power is a mixture of truth, half-truth, untruth, rumor and legend. A good place for inquiring minds to start would be to read the books by Ed Sanow and Evan Marshall, which are the most important works on the subject at the present time. They did the research, visited the morgues, talked to the shooting victims and police, and in the end collected the validated data from actual shootings that demonstrates what has worked in the real world. Their findings can correct a lot of popular misconceptions for those who are willing to learn. FULL ARTICLE=>

Beyond Wind and Solar, a New Generation of Clean Energy

Oregon Iron Works has the feel of a World War II-era shipyard, with sparks flying from welders' torches and massive hydraulic presses flattening large sheets of metal. But this factory floor represents the cutting edge of American renewable-energy technology.

The plant is assembling a test buoy for Finavera Renewables, a Canadian company that hopes to harness ocean waves off the coast of Oregon to produce electricity for U.S. consumers. And Finavera is not Iron Works' only alternative-energy client: So many companies have approached it with ideas that it has created a "renewable-energy projects manager" to oversee them. FULL ARTICLE=>

American’s Keep Dying!

Americans keep dying for what reason? The ‘safety’ of Israel? To protect the crude oil reserves of the Middle East nations so they may be later taken over international energy globalists and the bankers? Or is it for the glory of the paperhanger who occupies the White House?

This is the current name list published in the September 1 issue of AntiWar.com of American fighting personnel lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s about time for a very big impeachement and removal from office party for America’s very own Darth and Adolph! Today may be the time for weeping, but surely tomorrow is the time for all of us to call, write, fax and email our representatives senators in the U.S. Congress demanding immediate impeachment of both president and vice-president and their removal from office for the reasons specified the U.S. Constitution.

Welcome to the New US Embassy in Iraq

Baghdad is a city of ruins - of burnt-out homes, of shops wrecked by suicide bombs, of the crumbling shells of Saddam-era palaces and ministries destroyed by smart bombs in the US invasion of 2003.

There is one notable exception. It is probably the only big new building project in the capital in the past four years. It is the new US Embassy on the west bank of the Tigris which the contractors will transfer to the US Government officially today.

A towering wall renders the huge new embassy almost invisible from ground level. For security reasons the State Department has refused all requests for media tours – promising instead to release pictures of the interior at some later date. The only way to view it is from the roof of the Babylon hotel, across the river. FULL ARTICLE=>

Interview With Flight Data Recorder Expert: AA Flight 77 and Pentagon Hit

Flight Data Recorder Expert and Former Navy Combat Systems Specialist Dennis Cimino interviewed by pilotsfor911truth.org Co-Founder Rob Balsamo. Topics include radar, history of Govt cover-ups, TWA 800 and of course Flight Data Recorder information reported to be from American 77 - the aircraft that is claimed to have struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 - provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Common excuses made by biased supporters of the govt story are also addressed. FULL ARTICLE=>

Bush Opposes Release of Court Rulings on Wiretaps

The Bush administration opposed in U.S. court on Friday an effort to peel back a secrecy lid over its domestic counterterrorism wiretapping program, which critics say infringes on privacy and rights.

In a filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is itself secret and oversees the program, the U.S. Justice Department said the court should reject a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to disclose its legal rulings at the center of debate over the program. FULL ARTICLE=>

Murder at a Distance: The US Air War

According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan's North Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan's Pakitka Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were dead.

The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114 Hellfire missiles they used in the attack were directed from a base deep in the southern Nevada (U.S.A.) desert. FULL ARTICLE=>

IAEA-Iran Resolving Outstanding Questions

Gordon Prather

The Cheney Cabal media sycophants at the New York Times and elsewhere are indignantly reporting that Iran continues to ignore certain sections of resolutions passed by Board of Directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, requiring actions deemed "necessary" to satisfy their "concerns" about Iran’s nuclear programs – concerns subsequently "reaffirmed" by the UN Security Council, ever "mindful of its primary responsibility" under the UN Charter "for the maintenance of international peace and security."

But the reality is the IAEA has once again verified to all IAEA members and NPT-signatories "the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials" by Iran. Furthermore, Iran and the IAEA Secretariat have just announced an important agreed "time table" for "resolution" by year’s end of "all outstanding questions" relevant to the implementation of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement. And even some "questions" that aren’t relevant. FULL ARTICLE=>

George-the-Spendthrift: Bush’s $50B add-on Plan Surprises DoD, Congress

Word that the White House plans to ask for an extra $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “came as a surprise to us,” an aide to a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee said.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates had much the same reaction. “That’s news to me,” he told a deputy.

Although members of Congress and Pentagon officials expected there would be a request for more money, they did not expect it to be for so much.

President George W. Bush has already asked Congress for $147 billion to fund the wars in 2008. An extra $50 billion would push the total to $197 billion. War costs for 2007 total $173 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service. FULL ARTICLE=>

A New Motto for America

Charley Reese

I have a rifle, a shotgun and a few rounds of ammunition locked away in my gun safe. Should I learn that enemy soldiers are landing on the beach, I will hobble down to the dunes and kill as many of them as I can before they kill me.

That being said, as long as foreign folk stay on their side of the border, I don't give a birdie's tweet what they do or say or think. We should drop the motto "In God We Trust" and adopt a new one, "Let Us Mind Our Own Business."

FULL ARTICLE=>

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