UPDATE: Tucker Carlson is Looking to be called A LIAR and a CHEAT.
Posted Monday, June 23, 2003 by symbolman

REMEMBER: He said MY Shoes and MY Tie. NOT Fetish shoes or Doggie Toys. Here's the scoop:

NEW YORK POST GOSSIP

June 23, 2003 -- CNN'S dapper Tucker Carlson is gearing up for the worst meal of his life. Carlson has repeatedly asserted on CNN's "Crossfire" that he'll eat his shoes and tie on-air if Hillary Clinton sells a million copies of her memoir and Simon & Schuster recoups its $8 million advance. Clinton has now sold upwards of 600,000 copies and Carlson is reluctantly getting ready to chow down. "I feel a little sick to my stomach just thinking about it," he told the Washington Post. "I'm going to contest the results and demand recounts, but ultimately I'm going to give in and do the right thing." Carlson says he plans to consult fetish Web sites in search of edible footwear, but draws the line at munching his tie: "There's only so much humiliation one man can take."

Hey "Dapper" boy, Take Back the Media is not going to let you CHEAT, and that's what you are saying you will do. Be a MAN for once and do what you say.

Either do it right or shut the hell up for GOOD because WE will hold you to it.

Like real men are wont to say: "If you can't do the TIME - Don't commit the CRIME."

Time to put up or SHUT UP "Ducker" Carlson.

We invite everyone to click on the Banner above and let them know that the Public will NOT let this clown eat a shoe shaped chew toy - it's got to be HIS SHOES JUST LIKE HE SAID, or we want his resignation - there are enough liars on TV (CNN) and this MisAdministration already.>> More

Our troops suffer uranium sickness
Posted Monday, June 23, 2003 by symbolman

Australian servicemen and women who served in the recent Iraq war were reporting symptoms of uranium sickness, a United States nuclear weapons expert said today.

Dr Douglas Rokke is a former US Army nuclear health physicist and was formerly the Pentagon's expert on the health effects of depleted uranium ammunition.

Speaking in Melbourne today, Dr Rokke said Iraqi women and children and American and Iraqi military personnel had reported respiratory illnesses and rashes after the recent conflict, and he had also been told of Australian servicemen and women with similar symptoms.

"That's the reports I received from the US Army medical department. That's something that needs to be verified and looked into," he said.

"When American soldiers are sick and the Iraqis are sick there's nothing that says an Australian soldier is going to be isolated when he goes through those areas and he is not going to become ill.

During operation Desert Storm in 1991 Dr Rokke led a team assigned to clean up uranium contamination caused by friendly fire.

"What we saw can be described in only three words - Oh my God! The wounds were horrible, the contamination was extensive," he said.

"Although myself and my team members wore respiratory and skin protection, that protection we know today does not provide any adequate protection against the inhalation, the ingestion, the absorption of uranium compounds."

He said he now suffered rashes, respiratory problems, kidney problems and cataracts related to his exposure to uranium.>> More

WHO exactly didn't let us know about these potential problems? How about the sin of lying called OMISSION. Think of the American troops that haven't been slaughtered DAILY for Bush's lies YET - he was cutting their Veteran's Funding WHILE they are getting exposed to Depleted Uranium in IRAQ - AND they are STILL THERE being Exposed! Avoid the Rush - IMPEACH BUSH Today. Wake up America!!

Dollar-euro-oil equation (Has Bush killed the Dollar?)
Posted Monday, June 23, 2003 by symbolman

Dollar-euro-oil equation - By Rahim Panjwani

While Bush tells Americans to continue shopping, travelling and enjoy the American way of life, federal deficits grow, domestic programmes are cut and half of all the US states are engulfed in budget crises. What happens if global investors continue pulling out of the United States and the dollar keeps falling? Many market players expect it to fall by another 20 per cent. Other countries that have lost money in the dollar's fall may continue buying more euros.

The other shoe may drop, too. Opec may decide to officially re-denominate their oil in euros (since most of the organization's customers are in Europe anyway). Opec economists have been considering this "no-brainer" scenario for sound financial reasons - even though they feared the US wrath and retaliation.

Indeed, many believe that a deeper reason for the US attack on Iraq was its decision in 1999 to require payments for its oil for food programme in euros. The United States - heavily dependent on imported oil - benefits price-wise and in influencing markets through Opec's US dollar pricing. Iraq's dinar will also be replaced by dollar if the United States has its way.

Thwarting President Bush's global dollar diplomacy and its designs on breaking Opec's oil pricing power provide additional reasons for Opec to switch to payments in euro. This would mean that the United States would have to buy euro with dollar before it could buy Opec oil. The dollar would fall further and the euro would rise. The US economy would eventually have to adjust to $5-a-gallon gasoline (the average world price).>> More

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW - MUST READ
Posted Monday, June 23, 2003 by symbolman

With Dan Briody, Author of "The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group"

They are at the epicenter of the military-industrial-complex-Bush-Cheney-crony-capitalism administration. The Carlyle Group is the model example of the nearly seamless connection between the Bush administration, self-enrichment and companies who receive big government defense contracts.

The roster of Carlyle 'consultants' reads like a who's who guide to
government officials of the 1980s, starting with former president George Bush, former secretary of state James Baker, and former defense secretary Frank Carlucci.

The most chilling aspect of Briody?s book is that the political
connections and lobbying activities he unmasks are not illegal.

It is a testament to the brain dead mainstream media that the relationship between the Carlyle group and the Bush-Cheney cartel is not a national scandal.>> More

This is one of the Most Important Issues facing this country today - BUZZFLASH nails it again - a Must READ! When will Congress Re-enact the WAR PROFITEERING ACT that was put into place on or about World War Two?! Where are the MEDIA on this?!

"In the Line of Fire":   When Journalists Become Targets
Posted Monday, June 23, 2003 by vgdesign

FRONTLINE / WORLD - Patricia Naylor, Reporter /Producer

The West Bank city of Hebron is a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is home to 150,000 Palestinians and an enclave of some 400 Jewish settlers who are guarded by Israeli soldiers. The tensions between the settlers and the Palestinians make Hebron particularly volatile.

While working as a journalist in Israel, Patricia Naylor, a Canadian TV producer, met a number of Palestinian video cameramen and still photographers who cover the frequent clashes in Hebron. These journalists work for Western media companies. Cameramen Mazen Dana and Nael Shyouki of the British news agency, Reuters, and their colleagues are accustomed to the risks of photographing street protests and riots. But displaying their wounds, they all told Naylor they had become targets of Israeli soldiers firing rubber bullets and even live ammunition.

To document the shootings and other hazards they face, the Palestinian cameramen made a pact: whenever one of them was being attacked, the others would film. Mazen Dana and the others showed this private video collection to Naylor.

On one tape she sees Israeli settlers in Hebron, some of them children, throwing stones at the cameramen. On another tape, settlers attack and beat unconscious a cameraman for the French news agency, AFP. There is footage of Mazen Dana being shot twice.
>>Learn More / WATCH VIDEO

Bush to NGOs: Watch your mouths
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by symbolman

By NAOMI KLEIN - Friday, June 20, 2003 - Page A15

The Bush administration has found its next target for pre-emptive war, but it's not Iran, Syria or North Korea -- not yet, anyway.

Before launching any new foreign adventures, the Bush gang has some homeland housekeeping to take care of: It is going to sweep up those pesky non-governmental organizations that are helping to turn world opinion against U.S. bombs and brands.

The war on NGOs is being fought on two clear fronts. One buys the silence and complicity of mainstream humanitarian and religious groups by offering lucrative reconstruction contracts. The other marginalizes and criminalizes more independent-minded NGOs by claiming that their work is a threat to democracy. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is in charge of handing out the carrots, while the American Enterprise Institute, the most powerful think tank in Washington, D.C., is wielding the sticks.>> More

THIS IS A MUST READ! Please pass this around to all you know - IMPORTANT!

Finns in shock as "Iraqgate" topples Jaeaetteenmaeki
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by symbolman

Finland was in a political vacuum after a Nordic version of Iraqgate brought down Anneli Jaeaetteenmaeki, the country's first-ever woman prime minister, after only 63 days in power.

Fresh elections were seen as unlikely Thursday, and Jaeaetteenmaeki was expected to head an interim government before handing over to her successor, tipped to be current Defense Minister Matti Vanhanen, a veteran of her own Center Party.

Jaeaetteenmaeki resigned suddenly late Wednesday amid claims she lied to parliament about her use of leaked secret government documents, becoming the first ever prime minister to resign amid a scandal.

"If someone comes before parliament and lies straight to our faces, then we cannot trust a prime minister like this," said Greens leader Osmo Soininvaara.

Transparency and openness are highly regarded in Finland, and the country consistently tops the list of least corrupt nations.

"When the trust is gone, it's gone, and I've lost it," Jaeaettenmaeki acknowledged dryly after it was clear that her time as prime minister was up.>> More

We could use some of that Openness and Transparency right HERE in the Land of the Free.

Without WMDs, it's got to be the oil
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by symbolman

By DERRICK Z. JACKSON - SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Oil is to die for. More to the point, oil is precious enough for the government to send off your children, your husbands, your wives, your partners, your brothers and your sisters to die for. That is a rapidly escalating conclusion as American soldiers continue to die at the rate of one a day in Iraq without any major perturbation in Congress or disturbance from the American people.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found. What we do have are sniper shootings, grenade attacks and the deaths of nearly 50 U.S. soldiers 48 days after Bush said major combat operations were over in Iraq.

On May 1, Bush said, "We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated."

Seven weeks later and with no vile vials in hand, Bush gave a speech Monday in Elizabeth, N.J., where he did not make a single reference to weapons of mass destruction. Instead, Bush chose to distract Americans from his Nixonian erasing of his justification for war by criticizing his critics as "revisionist historians."

Meanwhile, Bush's fellow Republicans in Congress were suppressing history by fighting any formal investigation into the possible cooking of intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Their job, for the time being, is being made a piece of cake by a Democratic Party that cannot spell the term "opposition party" if you spotted them all the o's and p's.>> More

Opposition Party? Don't make us laugh. As for Bush LYING, let's call a spade a spade - Bush Lied, People DIED.

DANGEROUS OCCUPATION (Killed American Soldiers)
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by symbolman

On May 1 President Bush declared that combat operations in Iraq were over. Since then, over 40 Americans have died in Iraq.

The casualty figures listed below come from a database maintained by The Associated Press. Names of service members who have died are entered only after their official release by the military. Since names are not always released immediately, the number of names in the database may not correspond to overall numbers of deaths reported by military authorities.>> More

Support the Troops - IMPEACH BUSH

DEFEAT THE RIGHT IN THREE MINUTES
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by symbolman

Have you got three minutes?

Because that’s all you need to learn how to defeat the Republican Right. Just read through this handy guide and you’ll have everything you need to successfully debunk right-wing propaganda.

It’s really that simple. First, you have to beat their ideology, which really isn’t that difficult. At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of “haves” and “have nots” that I call “corporate feudalism”. They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a “respectable” sounding ideology. That ideology is pure hogwash, and you can prove it.

But you have to do more than defeat the ideology. You have to defeat the “drum beat”. You have to defeat the “propaganda machine”, that brainwashes people with their slogans and catch-phrases. You’ve heard those slogans. “Less government”, “personal responsibility” and lots of flag waving. They are “shorthand” for an entire worldview, and the right has been pounding their slogans out into the public domain for getting on forty years.>> More

VERY Interesting site! Take a tour!

Ted Rall: BUSH'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by vgdesign

America Betrayed by Cowardly Citizens

Today's version of the heroic Nathan Hale would fall to his knees, beg for mercy, and swear fealty to the British crown. A 21st century Patrick Henry would no doubt argue that homeland security trumps personal liberty. Benedict Arnold would make the rounds of the TV talk shows, lauded as an "heroic pragmatist." In a land of wimps, the dimwit is king--such is the dismal state of post-9/11 America.

As George W. Bush's aristocorporate junta runs roughshod over hard-earned freedoms, as his lunatic-right Administration loots $10 trillion from the national treasury, as his armies invade sovereign nations without cause, as he threatens war against imagined enemies while allowing real ones to build nuclear weapons, those charged with standing against these perversions of American values remain appallingly, inexplicably silent.

We have become a nation of cowards, and I am ashamed. >>More

Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by vgdesign

The control freaks in the White House have really outdone themselves this time
By Naomi Klein, The Guardian

The Bush administration has found its next target for pre-emptive war, but it's not Iran, Syria or North Korea. Not yet anyway.

Before launching any new foreign adventures, the Bush gang has some homeland housekeeping to take care of: it is going to sweep up those pesky non-governmental organisations that are helping to turn world opinion against US bombs and brands.

The war on NGOs is being fought on two clear fronts. One buys the silence and complicity of mainstream humanitarian and religious groups by offering lucrative reconstruction contracts. The other marginalises and criminalises more independent-minded NGOs by claiming that their work is a threat to democracy.

The US Agency for International Development (USaid) is in charge of handing out the carrots, while the American Enterprise Institute, the most powerful think-tank in Washington, is wielding the sticks. >>More

PROTEST of BUSH in NEW YORK CITY on JUNE 23
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by symbolman

Protest the $2000 Hamburgler! In NYC

Protest on Monday, June 23rd at 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm in Manhattan at
Seventh Avenue where Bush will be staging a $2,000 a plate
Presidential re-election campaign fund-raiser at the Sheraton New York Hotel.

Thousands of people are expected to protest the unelected President
who is seeking a second term and his policies, including military aggression against occupied Iraq, corrupt influence of corporate
interests, disregard for the environment, women's rights and civil rights.

The Sheraton New York Hotel is located on Seventh Avenue between 52nd Street and 53rd Street. Voter March has a permit for the area between West 53rd and 54th Streets on Seventh Avenue, and will be joined by co-sponsors NoBloodForOil.org, Democracy March.>> More

Also a lovely map of the Impeachables Fundraising Fear Spreading Campaign. American Soldiers DIE EVERY SINGLE DAY while the LYING FRAUD runs around gathering Corporate money so he can further pay off more burgeoning future Ken Lays. Support the Troops - IMPEACH BUSH.

Jimmy Breslin: A Fate Sealed Under Secrecy
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by vgdesign

On Friday, I rode across the Brooklyn Bridge, whose gray netting went with the sky, and as long as there was tension about the bridge, I was remembering Richard Seaberg, a big cop from Emergency One, who climbed to the top of the bridge so many times and pulled somebody down before he jumped. Seaberg protected the Brooklyn Bridge.

Now there is a charge by the government that terrorists intended to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, or pull it down. Simultaneously, while protecting the bridge, the government was doing frightening damage to the life of the country.

Because of it, I am thinking that it could be time for me to begin thinking about leaving this news business. It is not mine anymore. Let me tell you why. >>More

US war reporter under fire
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by symbolman

June 22 2003 - By Christopher Reed - Los Angeles

A reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, is the target of claims that she and her newspaper have been the vehicle for White House and Pentagon "propaganda" over Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Miller, a Pulitzer Prize winner and co-author of a best-seller on biological warfare, is a hawk in the United States media coverage of Iraq's alleged weapons possession.

Miller's star status, frequent TV appearances and her newspaper's position as the daily US news agenda-setter, made her reports crucial to the war debate.

But her work has been attacked in The Washington Post, the New York Observer, The Nation magazine, the influential Washington newsletter CounterPunch, and independent weapons think tanks in Washington, such as the Arms Control Association.

Its executive director, Daryl Kimball, said: "The Times and Miller accepted shaky information from official sources that they should have known was questionable. In fact, it was propaganda.">> More

Eleanor Clift: The Masters of Spin
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by vgdesign

Why the Bush administration is the most arrogant in memory

The long, hot summer has begun in Iraq. American GIs are dying almost daily. So are Iraqis. But that hasn’t stopped President Bush from embarking on a fund-raising spree premised on his triumphal role as commander in chief. Who needs reality when you’ve got spin?

THE PRE-WAR spin was all about weapons of mass destruction and the price of U.S. inaction. Bush said we couldn’t afford to wait until there was a mushroom cloud. Critics who suspect the intelligence data about Saddam’s nuclear program was hyped are brushed aside like gnats on an elephant. Bush says they’re engaging in “revisionist history,” which is on a par with calling Watergate a third-rate burglary.

Bush wins the spin for now. The debate over weapons of mass destruction is an inside-the-Beltway story; it’s not resonating with the public. The bigger question is existential: do the gods punish hubris? >>More

Like Judas of old you lie and deceive
A world war can be won you want me to believe
But I see through your eyes and I see through your brain
Like I see through the water that runs down my drain
- Bob Dylan, Masters of War

Iraqis Suffer From Radiation Symptoms
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2003 by vgdesign

By SABAH JERGES, Associated Press

AL-MADA'IN, Iraq - Dozens of people are showing up every day at a hospital near a defunct Iraqi nuclear plant, suffering from rashes, bloody noses and other symptoms of radiation poisoning, doctors said Saturday.

The Tuwaitha nuclear facility, 12 miles south of Baghdad, was left unguarded after Iraqi troops fled the area on the eve of the war. It is thought to have contained hundreds of tons of natural uranium and nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium, which could be used to make nuclear weapons.

U.S. troops didn't secure the area until April 7. By then, looters from surrounding villages had stripped it of much of its contents, including uranium storage barrels they later used to hold drinking water.

People suffering from symptoms of radiation sickness started showing up at the hospital closest to the nuclear site as early as two months ago, two doctors interviewed by The Associated Press said Saturday. Their numbers have since grown considerably. >>More
...
BBC News reports: The IAEA team is visiting the Tuwaitha site, which is 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Baghdad, under close American guard.

The visit was agreed after weeks of pleading by the IAEA, which has kept the radiological materials at the site safely under UN seal for 12 years.

However, members of the UN group - all non-Americans, with expertise ranging from nuclear physics to arms-control analysis - are not authorised to look at issues of health and safety arising from, for example, the misuse of the barrels.

In preparation for the visit, the Americans ordered villagers to sell back the barrels for $3 each. The Pentagon says it has so far received about 100 of the 3,000 missing barrels. >>More

The Pirates' Blunt, Useless Instruments
Posted Saturday, June 21, 2003 by vgdesign

The Iraq occupation cannot possibly succeed - The Black Commentator

The Bush men looked out upon the expanses of Iraq and saw the perfect staging ground for a glorious, global offensive that would lead, inexorably, to a New American Century. From Kurdistan and the Shi’ite south the United States would commandeer sufficient oil to become OPEC, thus thwarting any move to unhitch petroleum prices from the dollar and sustaining a domestic fossil fuel feast that might last through a hundred corporate quarterly reports.

Once the U.S. military and its corporate camp followers were fully embedded on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the whole of the Eurasian land mass would be open to American power projection. Syria would swing wide the gates to Damascus, lest they be knocked down. Jubilant Iranians would sing Farsi songs in praise of Coca-Cola over Ayatollahs, while contributing their crude to the U.S.-controlled mix. Saudi Arabia would crumble from princely rot, ridding the U.S. of fat royal skimmers of profits rightfully belonging to people of Aramco.

France, Germany, Russia, China – every combination of nations – would accept the Borgian pronouncement: “Resistance is futile!” For all the world’s peoples but Americans, time would stop, the dimension itself awaiting final definition by the Centurions.

For more than a decade the Pirates-in-waiting savored the moment that U.S. tanks would cross the Rubicon of history at the Kuwaiti border, the first leg of a short march to global hegemony. In April they stepped – into space. Like Wile E. Coyote, they are absolutely incapable of finding their way back. >>More

Bush-backed feature film of 9/11 casts him as scourge of 'tinhorn terrorists'
Posted Saturday, June 21, 2003 by vgdesign

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles, The Independent

According to one version of history, President George Bush was so slow to react to the momentous attacks of 11 September 2001 that he continued reading to a group of primary school children in Florida even after being informed of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Centre.

Then, after making an anodyne remark about finding "the folks who committed this act", he was whisked off in Air Force One, first to Shreveport, Louisiana and thence to an underground bunker in Nebraska, where he was hastily coached in the art of responding to the crisis in an appropriately presidential manner.

That, however, is not the George Bush who emerges from a new television docudrama due to air on cable in time for the second anniversary of the attacks this September.

In this version, the President is all swagger and seize-the-moment bravado. "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me," he says. "I'll be at home. Waiting for the bastard." "But Mr President ..." stammers his Secret Service chief. "Try 'Commander-in-Chief'," Mr Bush corrects him, "whose present command is, 'Take the President home!'"

If this scenario sounds like wishful thinking cooked up by the Republican National Committee, it probably is, given that the film, entitled DC 9/11, was produced and written by a direct associate
of the President's, Lionel Chetwynd, in close co-operation with Mr Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove. >>More