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The End of Faith
A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything
else in a person’s life.
Are you a scientist? A liberal? A racist? These are merely species
of belief in action. Your beliefs define your vision of the
world; they dictate your behavior; they determine your emotional
responses to other human beings.
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Ten-point plan seeks to halve
world poverty within a decade
Every year, 11 million children die - most under the age
of five. Around the world, 114 million children do not receive
basic formal education.
The United Nations has devised a cure for such economic stagnation.
It includes a massive increase in direct financial aid, but
it is also backed up by a host of inexpensive "Quick Win" measures,
proposals which could be put in place today if only there was
the political will.
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Vladimir Putin versus
the Grey Revolution
President Vladimir Putin, seeking to assuage rising public
anger, has promised a moderate increase in pensions after nearly
two weeks of revolt by pensioners and others affected by benefits
cuts.
Putin's public comments came after demonstrators blocked major
roads in cities across Russia. In St. Petersburg thousands of
pensioners brought traffic to a halt.
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Heart of Old Baghdad
Finally Giving Out
The charm of old Baghdad is finally gone. Rashid Street,
the once vibrant heart of the city, with its colonnaded,
Ottoman-era charm, has fallen foul of the anarchy, crime and
guerrilla violence unleashed after the U.S. invasion. Shops
close at early as noon, and armed gangs roam the area with not
a policeman in sight.
Iraqi playwright Jawad al-Asadi returned to Baghdad after 28
years in exile. He wrote: "The faces at Um Kalthoum cafe are
scarred by oppression. The clothes are torn, and the souls are
smashed. There is no hope in the eyes. These faces massacred
me.
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Withdrawal? Pentagon Taking
Steps For Longer Stay in Iraq
Pentagon plans for a permanent military comm-unications system
suggest U.S. troops will be in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
The contract for the new Central Iraq Microwave System of 12
comms towers and fiber-optic cables connecting coalition bases,
worth about $10 million, was won by Galaxy
Scientific Corporation --which has previously worked with
McDonnell Douglas, SAIC, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.
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Is This the Beginning
of a Second Watergate?
Four Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee
have
asked the Dept. of Justice to begin a criminal investigation
into Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.
They are seeking an investigation into voter intimidation, improper
voter purging, perjury, misuse of Help America Vote Act funds,
tampering with voting machines and misuse of the Great Seal
of the United States in a campaign
letter.
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No vote left behind
Or, how we learned to stop worrying about
election
scandals and focus on the president’s new puppy
Witness the media whitewash of the 2004 election scandal.
The sad fact is that, in today’s 24-hour news cycle, yesterday’s
"conspiracy theory" becomes tomorrow’s "old news."
Maybe that’s why the president’s new puppy got infinitely more
publicity than the House Judiciary Committee report. Freedom
may or may not be on the march around the world, but democracy
most definitely begins here at home.
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My Son - The Fall Guy - Graner Mom
"Bush
and Rumsfeld are the ones who
disgraced the country" --Irma Graner
Graner
Might Take the Hardest Fall --LA
Times
"Stuff like this doesn't happen in a prison in Iraq out of the
blue," said Kevin J. Barry, a retired military judge and co-founder
of the National Institute of Military Justice. "Surely, ...it
would be a horrible injustice if Graner goes to jail for a long
time and nobody higher is ever held accountable."
BFN: Graner was hardly an exception to the rule, in a
prison where death was often a merciful release. Thugs like
Graner were given a licence by powerbrokers who are unlikely
to face trial. A deserving scapegoat is still a scapegoat.
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US Regrets Kidnapping German
According to Der Spiegel newsmagazine, Washington has unofficially
apologized to Berlin for kidnapping German citizen Khaled el-Masri.
The 41-year-old says he was seized at the Serbian border with
Macedonia in December 2003 and detained for five months at a
prison in Afghanistan. German prosecutors have opened an investigation
into the matter.
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FBI whistleblower 'vindicated'
over intelligence services failings
A report by the US Justice Department has boosted the credibility
of Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI translator who claimed a foreign
intelligence agency had blocked evidence gathered prior to the
9/11 attacks.
"We found that many of Edmonds' core allegations relating to
the [espionage allegation] were supported by either documentary
evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds," said the report by
senior oversight official, Glenn Fine.
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Fake Drug Bust Cop
Guilty in Texas Perjury Trial
An undercover agent who sent dozens of black people to prison
on bogus drug charges in Tulia, TX has been convicted of perjury.
Rev. Alan Bean, who is covering the trial has commented: "This
really isn't about Coleman anymore... It's about the war on
drugs, and restoring sanity to a grotesque criminal justice
system. Will Tom Coleman become the rolling snowball that sparks
an avalanche? Please Jesus, let it be so.
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Bush: Actually...Don't Bring it On
President Bush now regrets using phrases like "Bring 'em
on" and "dead or alive" in his first term and has pledged to
be more diplomatic.
In an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters to be broadcast on
Friday, Bush said some of his past remarks were too blunt. "It's
not the most diplomatic of language," Bush said.
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Street-wise Washington backs off
"We hope, at some point in time, everybody
is free."
- --George Bush, about Iran December 20th
As the above quote indicates, the Bush administration's rhetorical
zeal for democracy-making in the Middle East appears to be waning.
While "freedom" is still spoken of as the desired end state,
it isn't being suggested that its reign is imminent with the
same fervor that preceded the Iraq war. Evolving US policy toward
Syria and Iran had a decidedly sharper edge to it prior to the
Iraq imbroglio.
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Why boycott Coca Cola?
A Colombian workers’ union is promoting a world wide boycott
in order to raise awareness of the intimidation, torture, kidnapping,
illegal detention and murder of workers in the Coca Cola bottling
plants in Colombia.
 In
the 1970s workers at Coca Cola bottling factories in Guatemala
were killed, in the 1980s Coke supported the Apartheid system
in South Africa and in the 1990s they supported the brutal Abacha
regime in Nigeria.
Coca Cola set up Nazi Coca-Cola factories in expropriated soft
drinks plants in occupied countries, and staffed them with kidnapped
civilians.
On the other side of the world, in several South Indian states,
including Kerala and Tamil Nadu, boycotts have been running
for years, in protest against Coca Cola’s excessive water consumption,
pollution of local wells, destruction of agriculture, drying
up underground aquifers and contaminating the land with toxic
sludge.
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Prince Harry to Visit Auschwitz
after wearing Nazi’s uniform
Israel has harshly criticized British Prince Harry -- pictured
wearing a Nazi soldier’s uniform, just two weeks before the
60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
"Harry the Nazi" said The Sun, Britain's top selling newspaper,
beside its front-page photo of Prince Harry, 20, while wearing
a uniform of the Afrika Korps and a swastika armband. The photo
was taken last weekend at a "native and colonial" fancy dress
party.
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Thatcher: "I'm Guilty"
Fine sparks anger
Political parties in South Africa are rowing over whether
British businessman Mark Thatcher should have been allowed to
plea bargain.
Accused of contributing financing towards a coup plot in Equatorial
Guinea, Thatcher pleaded guilty in the Cape High Court on Thursday
and received a R3m fine and a four-year suspended sentence.
The sentence on Thatcher was "nothing more than a slap on the
wrist", the African National Congress Youth League said. "This
is indeed an abomination and a miscarriage of justice." .
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You
Thought Kerik Was Bad?
Chertoff's Dirty Little Secrets
Bush's latest pick for security head honcho, is a political
hitman, who’s raised a ton of money for Bush and once worked
under Rudi Guliani.
Chertoff was U.S. Attorney in New Jersey. A political attack
dog, who deliberately let get away his big buddy, Bob "The
Torch" Torricelli, forced to resign his U.S. Senate seat
from Sopranoland in a major corruption scandal.
Long active in the Federalist Society brotherhood of legal reactionaries--Chertoff,
helped to write the Patriot Act.
He was also John Ashcroft’s honcho in the indiscriminate grilling
of over 5000 Arab-Americans after 9/11. He cooked up the use
of "material witness" warrants to lock up people of
Middle Eastern descent and hold them indefinitely without trial.
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"I
am a lawyer,
and I'm going
to deal with
evidence..."
"I have to deal
with what I think
a court would do..."
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Interview from Camp Kerry
By William Rivers Pitt
Q: Any regrets on the part of Senator Kerry or anyone else
from the campaign about that Wednesday morning concession?
A: "At the end of the day, no. I think it was closer, but
I am a lawyer, and I'm going to deal with evidence. I have to
deal with what I think a court would do. That's the kind of
judgments I make. That was a judgment I participated in.
A lot of people who know how to count votes, how votes are counted,...
would have loved nothing better than to do battle with Karl
Rove and James Baker again, to take them on and give them their
own back. But we looked at it hard... but there was enough
of a margin in Ohio that I think we could have closed that margin
but would still have been some tens of thousands of votes short.
Finding
Enough Votes to satisfy Cam Kerry
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Harvey Wasserman, senior editor of freepress.org,
speaks to the media about the Ohio
election results
lawsuit against US President Bush Jan.
5, in Wash. DC |
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The Election Reform
Movement Blasts Off
Nashua Advocate
Worried the election reform movement would stall post-certification
challenge? Think again.
The mainstream media's chagrin over the strident tone of the
movement seems to have been mollified by the certainty -- at
this point -- [of] the specter of a constitutional crisis fading.
A lot more Americans know about our flawed voting systems now.
And some heavy-hitters in the media are coming out of the woodwork
in support of election reform.
Not reform at some time in the distant future, but reform now.
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9
out of 10 Fallujans
Won't Resettle in Ruined City
The U.N. refugee agency says around 85,000 of Fallujah's
more than a quarter of a million former residents have returned
to their city --but only 8,500 will be staying.
About 36,000 more intend to stay in their current locations
outside the city, until after the elections at the end of January
because of the tense security situation and general lack of
services, especially schools and hospitals.
An assessment conducted by UNHCR’s partner agencies also shows
that a number of families have purchased property in their current
places of displacement, suggesting that some may be considering
settling out of Fallujah for an extended period.
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WMD Search Is Over,
Found: Big Fat Zero
Charles Duelfer, the CIA adviser who had led the hunt for
WMD's in Iraq, has returned home along with members of his Iraq
Survey Group.
Duelfer will produce no final report. His Sep., 2004 interim
report said that Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical
weapons and no functioning nuclear programme.
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Human Mad Cow Disease:
Turns Out to be a Myth
BFN Editor: The findings hide the fact that the disease
model was all wrong --infected beef was never the true cause.
Manganese and organophosphate insecticides are the much more
likely, but still unadmitted culprits.
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Harvey Wasserman, senior editor of freepress.org,
speaks to the media about the Ohio
election results
lawsuit against US President Bush Jan.
5, in Wash. DC |
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"Big Brother is a bully"
Germaine Greer has likened the Celebrity Big Brother TV show
to a fascist prison and suggested it might be responsible for
encouraging playground bullying.
"Because I am a teacher, I deal with bullying in schools.
I would quite like to have a look at the epidemiology of bullying
to see if the rise and rise of Big Brother and the rise and
rise of bullying have anything to do with each other,"
the feminist icon said after her shock departure.
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Kerry's sibling wields backroom power
He doesn't draw screaming headlines, but low-key Cameron
Kerry is one of John Kerry's most powerful and trusted campaign
advisers.
The senator's younger brother, known as Cam, is playing the
same pivotal role that the late Robert F. Kennedy played for
his older brother back in 1960: confidant, adviser and powerful
inside player. It's a mission that stretches far beyond simple
family loyalty and brotherhood.
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Reuters Myopic Report of
CBS 'Myopic Zeal' Sackings
Reuters
corrects it's 'Rathergate' story:
Original:
"Twelve days after the segment aired, CBS News retracted
it and Rather apologized, saying they were duped by bogus documents."
Corrected:
"Twelve days after the segment aired, CBS News retracted
it and Rather apologized. CBS said it had been misled about
the chain of custody and provenance of key documents in the
segment and said it was unable to stand behind them. The panel
cast doubt on the documents but did not rule on their authenticity."
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What Happened in Ohio
Washington Post
I'd been waiting for John Conyers to tell me about the voting
irregularities that marred the November elections in Ohio.
I would like to know if public officials and private citizens
engaged in a significant and concerted effort to
steal the election in the event the wrong person
seemed to be winning it. And if so, I'd like to know who the
miscreants were, what they did and what heads are going to roll.
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Is this the Mastermind behind
$40million Belfast Bank Raid?
A former British soldier, known as "The Striker"
has dismissed a news report
naming him as the suspected mastermind of the recent $40million
raid on a Belfast bank --a robbery which has thrown the Irish
peace process into
disarray.
The British Sunday Herald, reported yesterday that Tony Cascarino
aka "The
Striker" was suspected of planning the robbery. However,
Cascarino ( personal
website) has described
the claim as a : "politically motivated... attempt
to discredit Croatian General Ante Gotovina" --in a reply
to inquiries by Cryptome.org.
The raid has been linked by Northern Irish police to the IRA,
who are on ceasefire. Cascarino's involvement would shift suspicion
onto a splinter terror group called the Real IRA.
Cascarino is reputed to have sprung the Gotovina from a Croatian
jail. Gotovina is
now being hunted by British MI6, suspected of war crimes
during a 1995 CIA-backed operation to reclaim Croatian territory
from Rebel-Serbs. Croatia's entry into the EU is
reported to be dependent on his capture.
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Don't Blame Me!
I Voted For The Ass!
Pauline Philips, Baou.com
I've waded through enough of the substantive evidence associated
with the claims being made in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and
New Mexico and therefore I accept
that the 2004 Election was rigged, fixed, stolen -call it what
you will.
In a speech to Congress on July 4, 1861 Abraham Lincoln said:
"The Ballot is stronger than the bullet," but less than four
years later when he was assassinated (April 15, 1865), that
statement appears somewhat optimistic, or as it happens, simply
wrong. In future, if Americans continue to be denied the faith
and trust they once possessed in the U.S. electoral system --if
our elected leaders will not even try to fix the problem-- then
I predict the bullet may once again demonstrate its strength
in determining who holds the office of the presidency, or at
least who does not.
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Conyers Right To Demand Debate
John Nichols, The Nation
The dramatic imperfections in the 2004 presidential election
in Ohio deserve a more serious response than they received from
the majority of Congressional Democrats.
But Conyers is right to argue that a formal objection needs
to be made. That it has not received that broad support is a
sad statement about the seriousness with which most Democrats
take their party's pledge to "count all the votes this time"
-- and about the prospects for reform of erratic, unequal and
unreliable voting systems.
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The Ballots at the Back of the Bus
From Nov 04
Nationwide, about 1 million black votes "disappeared"
into the spoiled pile. Another million come mainly from Hispanic,
Native-American and poor white precincts, a decidedly Democratic
demographic.
Ohio’s cussed insistence on forcing 73% of its electorate to
use punch cards voided votes mostly in black precincts.
Blackwell knows that if reading machines had been installed,
almost all of the 93,000 spoiled votes
(from overwhelmingly Democratic areas) would have closed the
gap on Bush’s lead of 136,000 votes.
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MSNBC'S
Olbermann
says up to Six Senators
will Challenge Ohio Vote
View
RealPlayer Video
from MSNBC's Countdown
Wednesday 8pm ET 6mins
According to Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's
Countdown, six senators are set to challenge to the Ohio electoral
college votes on Thursday 6th Jan. --along with with an unspecified
number of Representatives. Both Houses meet in joint session,
with Dick Cheney hearing the roll-call of the states contest results.
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We Will Continue to Stand
mp3 Audio 3mins
Rep Elijah Cummings - outgoing chairman speaking
at the Congressional Black Caucus swearing-in ceremony:
"We stood and opposed Iraq war - and even when they said
we were not patriotic, we stood...we stood... And now they see
how right we were. We will continue to stand, even if no one
else stands... we will stand... we will stand."
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Top
Geologist Warned
Repeatedly of Tsunami
A leading geologist repeatedly warned Indonesian
officials of an earthquake and tsunami.
Prof. Kerry Sieh, became so concerned that he printed and distributed
5,000 brochures around islands later hit by the earthquake.
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Prof.
Kerry Sieh, California Institute of Technology,
whose scheduled meeting with Indonesian officials
last month was cancelled by them for lack of funds. |
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Senators should object to Ohio vote
If the Ohio election were held in the Ukraine, it would not
have been certified by the international community.
The systematic bias and potential for fraud is unmistakable.
An in-depth investigation is vital -- and the partisan secretary
of state has opposed it every step of the way.
Conyers, Reid and Kerry will face harsh criticism for [refusing
to] provide those who would cheat with essentially a free pass.
The time has come to stand up for clean elections, and to let
it be known that massive irregularities will not go unchallenged.
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Shirley Chisholm:
'Unbought, Unbossed & Unbowed
"I'd like them to say that Shirley Chisholm
had guts. That's how I'd like to be remembered."
She had guts, all right. Would that we had more like her.
The woman who ran for Congress from New York City in 1968 with
the slogan "Unbought and unbossed," did not take office
to keep her mouth shut.
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Newsweek Hit Piece:
Interview Paints Kerry as
Confused, Loser
Newsweek's new issue has a Kerry interview --timed
to hit the shelves just as moves are made to challenge Ohio's
electoral college votes.
Here's a flavor: "He... caught himself,
smiled and walked home to his empty house." The
interview --from 11th Nov., 2004 depicts Kerry as a loser, confused
and lonely. Not that it's trying to pressure anybody. No, not
at all. It's just a coincidence. Ok?
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Hit Piece II:
So What Happened
in That Election, Anyhow?
Here's the first sentence of a New York Times
hit piece :
"With the exception of a few Democratic
outliers in Ohio, few people dispute that the election for president
is done and decided: President Bush won and John Kerry lost."
Really? A poll
showed 19% thought there was fraud. But that's what
you call getting your denial in first. Make no mistake, an article
starting like that, clearly indicates that the election fraud
movement has arrived! Here we go!
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Ringing
in 2005:
Times Sq. & Kiev
Photo:
"Orange Revolution," leader Victor Yushchenko lifts
aloft
a rooster. Symbolizing 2005
new year in Independence square, Kiev on 1st Jan.
Meanwhile, in Times Square New York the crowd was also wearing
orange. Discover had launched a credit card promo by giving out
many thousands of Orange Jester hats.
NY
& Kiev Photos
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Mon
3 Jan Audio mp3
Bush Over-Reacts
& Tsunami Update
Listen or Dwnload
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Two Hour Debate for Jan 6 Challenge?
 "When
the two Houses separate to decide upon an objection that may
have been made to the counting of any electoral vote or
votes from any State, or other question arising in the matter,
each Senator and Representative may speak to such objection
or question five minutes, and not more than once; but after
such debate shall have lasted two hours it shall be the duty
of the presiding officer to put the main question without further
debate."
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