Week Starting
June 11th 2006
With newfound attention being paid to the health of 9/11 rescue workers since a New Jersey coroner attributed first responder James Zadroga’s death to Trade Center toxins, local residents wonder what health risks they face and if their persistent ailments were caused by exposure to the toxins that covered their neighborhood...
"In an email interview with John Hawkins at the Right Wing News web site, Coulter was asked, among other things, to offer short comments on several individuals. After harmlessly dismissing former Ambassador Joseph Wilson as the "World's most intensely private exhibitionist," she said of Rep. John Murtha, the hawkish ex-Marine and now antiwar congressman: "The reason soldiers invented 'fragging."
Fragging, which became a well-known expression --and occurence -- during the Vietnam war, means soldiers attempting to kill their own officers for one reason or another.
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Ann Coulter Quotes;
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"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors."
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
"Liberals can't just come out and say they want to take our money, kill babies and discriminate on the basis of race."
"Name-calling has been the principal argument liberals have deployed against conservative arguments".
"The U.S. military has concluded its investigation into a video that appeared to show private security contractors shooting at civilian vehicles on highways in Iraq and determined that no one involved will be charged with a crime, a military spokesman in Baghdad said. The investigation, which officials have not released publicly, began after the video was posted on an Internet site purportedly run by employees of Aegis Defense Services, a London-based firm with a $293 million U.S. government security contract."
Immigration agents released half the people they detained who were here illegally from countries that sponsor or support terrorists, a federal study found. Since 2001, 45,000 people from those countries have been released back into society, a Department of Homeland Security inspector general found in a report released last month. Some of those released had committed crimes.
"Cher has donated more than $130,000 to the group Operation Helmet, which pays about $100 to modify the inside of soldiers' helmets to make them better able to absorb shock from a bomb blast..."
Why aren't the right wing pundits talking about this issue? A Hollywood star has to help our troops when the administration sends them out without the proper equipment.
The Department of the Army, per order of U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, has released to Judicial Watch approximately 100 pages of documents which detail the multi-billion dollar, no-bid contract awarded in 2003 by the Army to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. One document uncovered by Judicial Watch suggests the United States Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) may have publicly lied regarding the involvement of the Vice President’s office in awarding the contract.
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released two declassified “Top Secret” State Department documents that warned Clinton administration officials of the activities and influence of Osama bin Laden following his alleged “expulsion” from Sudan in May 1996. The documents, authored by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, discuss bin Laden’s travels, his prolonged stay in Afghanistan, financial networks, anti-Western threats in press interviews, ties to the Khobar Towers bombing and bin Laden’s “emboldened” threats against U.S. interests.
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The U.S. Senate will soon be voting on an amendment to the Constitution that would, for the first time ever, restrict freedoms granted to us by the Bill of Rights. This dangerous amendment gives the government the power to prohibit the desecration of the flag. It is critical that you contact your senators today and tell them that it is their responsibility to defend the Bill of Rights. Free expression and the right to dissent are core principles that the American flag represents. Freedom cannot survive if exceptions are made every time someone in power disagrees with a particular act or statement.
"Fourteen European states colluded with the CIA in secret US flights for terror suspects, a report [from Europe's human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe] concludes. The report says there is evidence to back suspicions secret prisons are or were located in Poland and Romania - allegations both countries deny."
Urge your telephone company to hang up on the NSA right now!
Over the last two years, Congress has made clear that it would not allow government-funded religious discrimination. Despite this, the Bush Administration and several Members of Congress continue to promote religious discrimination with taxpayer funds. Read more or take action right now!
Instead of supporting civil rights protections, an amendment to the Head Start re-authorization bill would allow Head Start programs to discriminate on the basis of religion.
Across most of the United States, it is perfectly legal to fire someone from their job solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Federal legislation could remedy this problem.
The next time you go to the hospital, you should not have to worry that a nurse might not treat you because it against his religion to provide the service you need.
"When an American voice is deemed unpatriotic because they ask "why", in peaceful opposition, then we as Americans must consider the source of such judgement to be venemous. The "real traitor" stands as the accuser."
~ Daniel Gargus
“Do you pray for the Senators, Dr. Hale?” he replied, “No, I look at the Senators, and pray for the country.”
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Here you will find out the little known truth concerning President George W. Bush, Victor Ashe, the current American ambassador to Poland (formerly mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee and Exec. V.P.; C.F.O. of Fannie Mae), and their adulterous-bisexual relationship with a Las Vegas woman in 1984.
This situation took place in 1984 in the State of Tennessee. It concerns a 41 year old woman [currently residing in Las Vegas], Victor Ashe and George Bush's encounter in 1984 during the senate debates between Al Gore, Jr., Victor Ashe and Ed McAteer. She was invited to come to Tennessee by Victor Ashe. While attending one of these debates she spoke briefly with Ed McAteer (Senatorial candidate in 1984 who debated alongside Al Gore, Jr. and Victor Ashe, and was responsible in part for the emergence of the Religious Right).
Members of the mainstream media (CNN, FOX/news, Chicago Tribune) have known about this Las Vegas woman [well known in the BDSM underground] since September of 2003 yet they have done little if anything to get to the bottom of it. Like Bush's national guard service records they've given him a free pass concerning the what, where and when of his participation in the Texas Air National Guard.
We believe if the whereabouts and war-time behavior of Senator Kerry during his tour in Vietnam in the early 70's are matters of importance to the American people [according to Sinclair Broadcasting and Swift Boat Vets for Truth] then the past behavior of this President and his involvement in a homosexual situation with another man in the mid 80's is of equal importance.
When this Las Vegas woman told us about her conversation with Ed McAteer we thought it was something that should be looked into. He was being treated for cancer so we had to move quickly to open a dialogue. We believed obtaining a death bed declaration [if it came down to that] of a man of Ed McAteer's stature in the Christian community [he was called the Godfather of the Religious Right] would have held tremendous weight.?Ed [finally] coming forward to say what he witnessed or knew concerning this matter would have been unimpeachable. Ed was a staunch supporter of the state of Israel and quietly lobbied for the post of U.S. ambassador to Israel back in 2001 but was turned down for the position by none other than George W. Bush. It seems in George W. Bush's isolated bubble, ambassadorships are rewards set aside for friends and lovers only.
We initially contacted Mr. McAteer back in May of this year. He mentioned at that time Victor Ashe's sexual shenanigans were no secret in Tennessee. He seemed resentful of his party's choice to back a 'sodomite' which is why he ran as an independent. Ed was on chemotherapy and it was extremely difficult for him to talk so we deferred until late August at which time his wife [Faye] informed us he wanted to talk further but was under doctors orders to refrain from all strenuous activity. Sadly, Ed McAteer passed away on Oct. 5, 2004, before we could do a follow-up interview, he was 78. For Ed's sake [and that of his family] we hope his departure was natural [God's will], however, the timing of it all seems rather untimely in our opinion.?It bares looking into by the Tennessee authorities.?
When he passed way another writer contacted Faye and she imparted to him that Ed seemed upset upon returning from the debate in Chattanooga back in 1984. Was Ed aware of Victor Ashe and George W. Bush's bisexual behavior? Perhaps that is what upset him so.
Unfortunately he didn't get the chance to tell us what he witnessed that night that upset him or if he remembered talking with the Las Vegas woman.
The Las Vegas woman was paid $15,000 to arrange sexual liaisons involving bisexual men for George W. Bush (then private citizen) and Victor Ashe (then a Tennessee State Senator). These adulterous bisexual affairs (3 encounters in all-3 different cities) took place in the state of Tennessee during the 1984 senate debates between, Al Gore, Jr., Victor Ashe and Ed McAteer. An African-American woman was invited to participate in this adulterous sexual encounter with George W. Bush and Victor Ashe immediately following the Chattanooga senatorial debate. This woman was paid $1,500. A few years later the Las Vegas woman was detained in Washington D.C. with Victor Ashe by the Metro D.C. police. She was released but Victor was taken into custody.
So confident was this woman that Ed would have remembered her [and their meeting] she had finally come forward and was prepared to tell it all. She will swear to the authenticity of what is being imparted here, which is the reason that we built this website so we could get this information out to you.
Bush & Co. will no doubt tell the world she's insane, politically motivated thus concocting this for smear reasons. She is of sound mind and body and welcomes all inquires from the mainstream media. This woman deeply laments not having come forward back in 2000 when then Governor Bush was running for the highest office in the land against [ironically] Vice President Al Gore, Jr.
Disclosure of George W. Bush's adulterous bisexual behavior will only happen if the American public demand answers. Contact your local news organizations demanding that this truth be revealed and not go the way of his Texas Air National Guard records.
Please sign an online postcard to President Bush demanding leadership for the victims of genocide;
Dear President Bush,
During your first year in the White House, you wrote in the margins of a report on the Rwandan genocide, "Not on my watch."
I urge you to live up to those words by using the power of your office to support a stronger multi-national force to protect the civilians of Darfur.
"If we turn our heads and look away and hope that it will all disappear then they will - all of them, an entire generation of people. And we will have only history left to judge us."
-George Clooney April 30, 2006, Washington
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This book uncovers the major cause of the recent breast-cancer incidence in the USA. The author shows that past exposure to ionizing radiation --- primarily medical x-rays --- is responsible for about 75 percent of the breast-cancer problem in the United States.
All it takes is the plant’s everyday routine operation, and federal regulations permit these radioactive releases.
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Vitamin D has to do with absorption of calcium into the bones - it will even take the mineral out of the soft tissues to do its building job, if not enough is around from foods we eat. But vitamin D as an antibiotic? It might seem somewhat far fetched but the evidence is hard to overlook, says Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council. "Vitamin D prevents osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and even affects diabetes and obesity. Vitamin D is perhaps the single most underrated nutrient in the world of nutrition." ~ Dr Michael Holick,
Environmental Health: What Mainstream Media Doesn't Tell You
Part #1 ~ The great naturalist E.O. Wilson of Harvard University reports we are in the midst of a spasm of extinction that is reducing the number of species on earth to the lowest level since the cataclysmic end of the Age of Dinosaurs 65 million years ago. While there is endless debate on the level of these extinctions, Wilson estimates the rate at which species are dying is now one thousand times the "background level" at which whole species would otherwise disappear. There have been only five great Ages of Extinctions in the history of the earth. How has humanity, in its brief time on earth, come to be the first species to cause a such a spasm of rapid mass extinction?
Part #2 ~ The environmental health movement could in fact be the greatest unifying force since the great progressive and social democratic movements that swept the world over the past two centuries before they were founded on the twin rocks of the totalitarian perversion of social democracy in communism and the growing power of the global market system.
Low cholesterol showed significant associations with death from cancer, liver diseases, and mental diseases.
It's true we call them 'little pests' sometimes but is that reason enough to douse them with a pesticide? The Bush administration apparently has no compunction about that, and according to an article by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility's Chas Offutt, the pesticide industry helped write the policy.
The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.
Ed Corrigan's excellent, and much needed, article provides a cogent overview of a much misused and abused view of individual rights.
Just a month ago today, at the Codex Alimentarius Food Labelling Committee meeting in Ottawa, Canada, the US delegate Dr Barbara Schneeman said that no reference should be made to "optimizing nutrition and health" in guidelines that would encourage "adequate information" on food labels
Furious at the Bush administration's callous response to the deaths of three Guantanamo Bay prisoners, rights advocacy groups in the West are calling for immediate and independent investigations into the incident.
"The (Bush) administration should stop trying to minimize the desperate actions of detainees with language that does not reflect the seriousness of the matter at hand," said Jumana Musa of Amnesty International's U.S. bureau.
Last Friday, U.S. military officials said three detainees died in their cells as a result of suicide, which they described later as "acts of warfare waged against us," and "a good PR (public relations) move."
"Colorful euphemisms such as 'manipulative self-injurious behavior' and 'hanging gestures'--both used by the (Bush) administration to refer to suicide attempts in the past--only belittle the gravity of the situation that the detainees are facing," Musa added.
In the wake of the Haditha massacre, reports of another atrocity have surfaced in which U.S. troops killed two women in Samarra, and then attempted to hide evidence of their responsibility.
Among the innumerable such cases people speak of, this one too has now come to light. According to an earlier account, Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, a 35-year-old mother of two, was killed in firing along with her 57-year-old cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan on May 30 when they were being transported to Samarra General Hospital for Nabiha to give birth.
What was not reported, according to an Iraqi human rights investigator who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity, was that both women were shot in the back of the head by U.S. snipers.
"While attacks on human rights can come from any direction, it is the political Right that often capitalizes on today’s hectic information flow by offering clever slogans that oversimplify complex public policy issues. Through skillful marketing the Right uses misleading terms such as "parental rights" and "personal responsibility" to oppose movements and organizations that promote tolerance and equality.
Whether it is immigrants, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered people, ethnic minorities or the poor, the Right routinely uses scapegoating to pursue their agenda - an agenda that is served by the public’s desire for quick-fix solutions. What is truly needed to address the complex issues we face in this country is fair and accurate analysis of complex issues."
Funny movie clip;
Not so funny movie ~ See what REALLY happens in War;
A "virtual livingroom" of news from Iraq. A collaborative documentary news project bringing you the best independent and unembedded journalism, soldiers' stories & news from the ground in Iraq.
Americans think both Iraq and Bush are mistakes: The poll, taken Monday through Wednesday before news broke that U.S. forces had killed al-Zarqawi, found that 59 percent of adults say the United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq - the highest level yet in AP-Ipsos polling.
Approval of President Bush's handling of Iraq dipped to 33 percent, a new low. His overall job approval was 35 percent, statistically within range of his low of 33 percent last month. The poll of 1,003 adults has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) has been providing plenty of material for TPMmuckraker and now he's bursting onto the scene on NBC. Lisa Myers interviewed the former CEO of a software business who had some rather interesting relationships with Lewis. Read the interview and check out TPMmuckraker to get the full picture of corruption within the top ranks of the GOP.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was alive when U.S. troops reached the mortally wounded terrorist leader after a U.S. bombing raid, a U.S. general told Fox News on Friday.
Despite what some may think, cutting taxes won’t give Democrats running room to advance rights.
Overzealous child soldiers -- and their parents -- in Jesus Camp, a film about Pentecostals, represent only a fraction of Christians.
Three soldiers film their experiences in Iraq for a new documentary, The War Tapes.
Congress will decide fate of controversial Pentagon Training Facility for Latin American Soldiers
The SOA/ WHINSEC catapulted into the headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this shocking admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the training facility has ever taken place.
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(4) 'Hidden In Plain Sight' a feature-length documentary that looks at the nature of U.S. policy in Latin America through the prism of the School of the Americas (renamed, in January of 2001, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), the controversial military school that trains Latin American soldiers in the USA.
Four animal protection groups, with undercover footage and eyewitness testimony from a former Ringling Bros trainer, have brought a federal lawsuit against Ringling Bros for its treatment of elephants; ( includes information on ) "large visible lesions" found by the USDA, during an unannounced inspection, on the rear legs of two baby elephants; death of baby Benjamin, "who eyewitnesses say was repeatedly beaten by Ringling Bros. trainers." He "died while purportedly swimming in a pond. He was only 4 years old. Video footage shows he preferred to remain in deep water to going towards shallower water because his trainer was standing there holding a bullhook." A bullhook is a heavy rod with a sharp metal hook at the end. "The lawsuit claims that Benjamin drowned when he tried to avoid a bullhook that had so frequently been used on him by trainer Pat Harned.
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Imagine what it would be like to be bred at a zoo to undergo a litany of reproductive experiments and then be shipped off to live in a cramped cage at a notorious laboratory testing facility that has been repeatedly cited by federal authorities for significant violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). This is exactly what’s happening at the Cincinnati Zoo’s Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) program, in which domestic cats are bred as a “research model [to] provide basic reproductive information about felids in general.” Experimenters attempt to extrapolate these findings to reproductively different, endangered, nondomestic cat species for the zoo’s small-cat conservation initiative—a process that is inherently riddled with scientific absurdities.
A new Congressional report by minority staff in the House found that the House and the Senate have voted 57 times in the last five years to preempt state laws and regulations. These votes, the authors declare, make clear "that there exists a wide gulf between the pro-states rhetoric...and the actual legislative record."
The American Cancer Society estimates that more than two-thirds of cancer may be prevented through lifestyle modification, and nearly one-third of these cancer occurrences can be attributed to diet alone. "Our research has substantiated the connection between diet and cancer prevention, and it is now clear that the expression of cancer-related genes can be influenced by chemopreventive compounds in the things we eat," said Kong, a professor of pharmaceutics in the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
Drug companies fund a growing number of the studies in leading psychiatric journals, and drugs fare much better in these company-funded studies than in trials done independently or by competitors, researchers reported Wednesday. About 57% of published studies were paid for by drug companies in 2002, compared with 25% in 1992, says psychiatrist Igor Galynker of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.
When Dr. Morando Soffritti, a cancer researcher in Bologna, Italy, saw the results of his team's seven-year study on aspartame, he knew he was about to be injected into a bitter controversy over this sweetener, one of the most contentiously debated substances ever added to foods and beverages.
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According to the first comprehensive scientific review to include all available studies, including negative data that have long been withheld from public scrutiny by the pharmaceutical industry, four popular antidepressants being used to treat thousands of depressed American children are unsafe, ineffective or both. Those antidepressants are: Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor,Celexa. This is damning evidence of the drug companies' patent disregard for the safety of humans and focus on profits. GlaxoSmithKline was found to be concealing evidence that shows that these drugs do not benefit children in any way and only increase their risk of killing themselves.
A modeling study by scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in England has shown that men whose cancer is detected early with a screening test are unlikely to die from the illness. So treatments such as surgery to remove the prostate gland or radiotherapy which can cause incontinence and impotence will probably not improve their survival.
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The U.S. military flew in two forensic specialists Saturday to examine the remains of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "to see how he actually died" and to reconstruct the last minutes of his life, a spokesman said. The examination comes after U.S. authorities altered their initial account of the al-Qaida leader's death, first saying he died outright in a U.S. airstrike, then saying he survived but died soon after.
"All of us as Americans need to review how the Bush Administration cherry-picked and hyped the case for war with Iraq to sell it to Congress and the American people, so we can make sure it never happens again," Reid said.
In February 2006, AOL announced that it would accept payment for incoming emails. For these certified emails, it would skip its usual anti-spam filters and guarantee delivery for cash. Our coalition believes that the free passage of email between Internet users is a vital part of what makes the Internet work. When ISPs demand a cut of "pay-to-send" email, they're raising tollbooths on the open Net, interfering with the passage of data by demanding protection money at the gates of their customers' computers.
"A poll released last month (1) by Zogby International found that 42 percent of all Americans believe the 9/11 Commission 'concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence' in the attacks. This is in addition to the Zogby poll two years ago (2) that found that 49 percent of New York City residents agreed with the idea that some leaders 'knew in advance' that the attacks were planned and failed to act."
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Despite extensive reporting on June 8 on the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, broadcast and cable news reports made no reference to reports from 2004 that the Bush administration had as many as three opportunities to eliminate Zarqawi and his terrorist training camp prior to the Iraq war. Newspaper reports published June 9 likewise omitted mention of those missed opportunities.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is reportedly looking for Germany to provide more assistance in Iraq. The German government, however, has declined the invitation.
Here we are, five and a half years into the Bush Administration, and the press corps still hasn't figured out how to handle the White House's primary tactic of media management: lying.
A patriotic Eagle Scout who had hoped to make the Army his career, 1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada says the war in Iraq is illegal and that he will not deploy with his Fort Lewis unit when it leaves in two weeks.
A senior Republican lawmaker went public on Wednesday about his often tense and complicated relationship with the Bush White House in a remarkable display of the strains within the party. The lawmaker, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, accused Vice President Dick Cheney of meddling behind his back in the committee's business, bringing into the open a conflict that has simmered for months.
Some species of animals are changing genetically in order to adapt to rapid climate change within just a few generations, scientists believe. Smaller animals in particular that can breed quickly, such as squirrels, some birds and insects, are showing signs of evolving new patterns of behaviour to increase their chances of survival. Scientists say that many of the genetic adaptations are to cope with changes in the length of the seasons rather than the absolute increases in summer temperatures.
Does it lessen the horror to admit that this is not the first time the US government has used torture to wipe out political opponents? The exclusion of the impact of the School of the Americas on war crimes in El Salvador, Argentina and Panama from our current debate on torture is evidence of our collective amnesia.
Ask your Congressman to sponsor House Resolution 635. Demand an investigation of the Bush Administration's practices
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Support the De Fazio Sense of Congress Resolution.Remind Bush that only Congress can declare war.
When a group of international journalists visited a small town in Maine, they made it clear that America's aggression in Iraq, its greed and the advance of pop culture are leading onetime allies to desert us.
Good translators speak for others, not for themselves. So why is a translator for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman being prosecuted as a co-conspirator?
"We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933 one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations," Yoffie said. "Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."
"What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?" Yoffie told a friendly audience of about 5,000 in his keynote address during the movement's national assembly in Houston, which runs through Sunday."
"When they cloak themselves in religion and forget mercy, it strikes us as blasphemy,"
"We need beware the zealots who want to make their religion the religion of everyone else."
"The bloody rise of theological politics in the Islamic world, and especially in Iraq, reminds us how rare and fragile an achievement the separation of church and state really is."
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