NYT: A scary ordeal at U.S. immigration

posted by admin on Thursday January 22, @02:29AM

http://www.iht.com/articles/125919.html
Nina Bernstein/NYT The New York Times

Wednesday, January 21, 2004
NEW YORK A German woman married to a Brooklyn schoolteacher had been told that she had all her permits when she took a quick trip to show off her infant daughter to her parents in Germany.

But her return home in late December turned surreal and terrifying when Homeland Security officials at Kennedy Airport rejected her documents, confiscated her passport, then detained her and the 3-month-old for 18 hours in a room with shackled drug suspects. They let her go only after ordering her to leave the country no later than Jan. 22.

After a month of desperate efforts by her American husband, their lawyers and legislators, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department said late Tuesday that the woman, Antje Croton, 36, would be granted a last-minute reprieve. But Croton said she had received no written notification.

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Leakergate: Don't Be Fooled

posted by ewing2001 on Wednesday December 31, @11:27AM

Don't Be Fooled

Photo: RayMcGovern with Dennis Kucinich

By Ray McGovern, AlterNet
December 31, 2003

It seems it is all too easy to get caught up in the holiday spirit. How else to explain the reaction of the normally astute Senator Charles Schumer to the news that Attorney General Ashcroft has finally done what the New York Times lauds as "the right thing."

Schumer is quoted in today's Times as seeing the glass "three-quarters full" in light of Ashcroft's decision to recuse himself from the investigation of the deliberate blowing of the cover of CIA official Valerie Plame, and the decision to appoint US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as "special counsel" to investigate that felony.

Howard Dean labeled the maneuver "too little, too late." I fear Dean is right.

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Bush's Worst Enemy

posted by ewing2001 on Monday December 29, @02:14PM

Bush's Worst Enemy

Truthout.org -Tuesday 30 December 2003

By William Rivers Pitt -t r u t h o u t | Perspective

When Ambassador Joseph Wilson speaks of the White House, he tries to take the high road. "It's hard to imagine the government being irrational," he told me over the telephone on Monday afternoon, "and revenge is an irrational act." One breath later, however, Wilson showed why the Bush administration has a great deal to be worried about. "If they thought I was going to go away after they raped my wife," said Wilson, "they were dead wrong."

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Merry Armegeddon from W.

posted by ewing2001 on Friday December 19, @03:54PM

Don't think Jihad/Holy War, think Armeggedon

By tonie61 -December 20

Does anyone recognize Armegeddon? Don't think 'terror,' think 'tribulation.' Don't think Jihad/Holy War, think Armeggedon. Don't think NWO (New World Order,) think 'End Times.'" Say, chumps, “Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name”!

You aging baby-boomers, which was a more real threat, Communism, Ronnie’s “Evil Empire”, or W’s, “Axis of Evil”, his “everlasting war against terrorism”? The Commies could hit a button and entire US cities would be vaporized--yet they never did. The extremist Islamic terrorists can kill 3,000 at a clip, but only if the President sleeps through a summer after receiving a daily briefing that explicitly warned him that bin laden was going to attempt for a huge strike in the US using planes, as his group had done previously.

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Boston Globe: Saddam's capture didn't change anything

posted by ewing2001 on Wednesday December 17, @08:29AM

Still no mass weapons, no ties to 9/11, no truth

Update: 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue (NY Times 12/18)

Boston Globe -December 17

By Derrick Z. Jackson

THE INVASION was still a lie. The capture of Saddam Hussein changes nothing about that. There were too many forked tongues in the road to his lair. The way we removed the dictator, we became a global dictatorship.

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Underneath the robe: What's really going on with Bush's judicial nominees

posted by admin on Wednesday December 03, @09:09AM

Joseph O. Patton writes by Joseph O. Patton
Editor and Publisher
Capital City Free Press
http://www.capcityfreepress.com

What's the difference between a litter of puppies and Republicans in the U.S. Senate? Puppies stop whining after six weeks.

If I hear another word emanate from Senate Repubs about their Democrat colleagues blocking George W. Bush's nominees for federal judgeships, I'm gonna spit up my coffee. For months now, they've whimpered and sniveled incessantly like neglected lap dogs, claiming in shrill tones that their Democrat colleagues are causing the wheels of justice to grind to a halt due to batting down Bush's appointees to various federal appellate courts like a bad Tom Brady pass.

They complain and bawl that the central government's appellate court system will suffer irreparably due to Bush's sweetheart nominees being jilted in the Senate by those pesky Dems. I hate to allow the facts to get in the way of their pity party, but here goes....

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'Speaking Of Secret', -Bush's trip to Iraq

posted by ewing2001 on Monday December 01, @11:05AM

Speaking of secret…

By Andrew Longworth -November 30

Lately, the media has been at least an apparition of the fair and balanced journalism it’s always purported to be. There’s Peter Jennings talking about the latest war deaths on the evening news. There's CNN (that’s right! CNN!) showing the toppling of the Bush statue during the Commander in Chief’s recent visit there. These are clear signs that might prompt you to think that our journalism may be waking out of its stupor. Then again, this country is not big enough for two Rush Limbaughs.

Then I realize that it takes only one setback to put the media back into a coma again.

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Mission Creep Hits Home

posted by ewing2001 on Monday November 24, @05:24PM

Martial Law?: Military Actively Involved in Domestic Spying

LA Times -Sunday 23 November 2003

     Mission Creep Hits Home
     By William M. Arkin

American armed forces are assuming major new domestic policing and surveillance roles.

     Preoccupied with the war in Iraq and still traumatized by Sept. 11, 2001, the American public has paid little attention to some of what is being done inside the United States in the name of anti-terrorism. Under the banner of "homeland security," the military and intelligence communities are implementing far-reaching changes that blur the lines between terrorism and other kinds of crises and will break down long-established barriers to military action and surveillance within the U.S.

     "We must start thinking differently," says Air Force Gen. Ralph E. "Ed" Eberhart, the newly installed commander of Northern Command, the military's homeland security arm. Before 9/11, he says, the military and intelligence systems were focused on "the away game" and not properly focused on "the home game." "Home," of course, is the United States.

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Miami: NYC-Indymedia Video Activist held - Bail $10,000

posted by ewing2001 on Saturday November 22, @09:51AM

Update: Justin is free, thinks now about legal steps (11/24)

Justin Lipson of Indymedia Video was in Miami to report for the IMC and INN Report, GFP's new cooperation partner. Lipson was arrested, while he was peacefully filming the protests. As many as 75 people were arrested, including at least five independent journalists incl. the producer of DemocracyNow. Others being shot with rubber bullets, pepper bullets, and getting doused with pepper spray.

All arrestments and the protest, now also reflected in an Editorial by Commondreams. The latest reports at FTAA IMC
(Contact to protest: Dade County Jail - 305-471-1900)

A Sad Day for Miami

by Barbara Villela

Last night was a jolt into a reality that I never thought could exist in this country. What I describe below is the experience of a middle-class woman, a wife and mother who is simply a citizen of the U.S. concerned about the state of her nation. I do not have a shaved-head, tattoos or multiple piercings, and have not been running around with a sling-shot (as has been rumored about the FTAA protesters). I have never destroyed someone else's personal or private property (nor do I ever intend to) but I do take my first amendment rights very seriously and that is why I am writing this.

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British Polls vs. US Polls show "different Bush"

posted by ewing2001 on Sunday November 16, @09:13PM

US Media phony polls get worse

APFN Cheryl Seal -Sun Nov 16 21:02:08 2003

The Sunday Herald (UK) says that 85% of the Brits don't feel Bush should be honored with a state visit. Today, (11/16), the UK Independent had a poll of 9,800 people that said 91% of Brits do not even want Bush on UK soil.

Now, tonight, on State TV (CBS), an "instant corporate poll" shows that 50% of Brits say having Bush over to visit is just fine and dandy by them.

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I’m begging you red staters to get the facts

posted by ewing2001 on Wednesday November 12, @02:12AM

By Tonie61 -November 11

Disqualify yourself from the responsibilities of a democracy, a government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system, if you can’t hold up your part of the bargain.

You “expletive deleted” people—you know who you are, either read a newspaper or exclude yourself from taking opinion polls and voting. Put a label on your shirt that takes you off the hook from discharging your greatest responsibility, your hugest right that of voting.

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Resistance vs. Terrorism in Iraq

posted by ewing2001 on Tuesday November 11, @04:05PM

Resistance By Any Other Name

Axis of Logic, November 11, 2003

By Beth Henry

I watched the bombardment of Baghdad this past spring in horror. Later, and much worse, I saw pictures of Iraqis’ homes crushed into dust and jagged blocks, and of small Iraqi children wrapped in bloody cloths, lying in wooden coffins. I thought of my children, of my neighbors, and of their children.

How would I feel toward someone who would do this to us? What would I do?

How would I respond to their tanks rolling down my street, to their heavily armed troops raiding and searching our homes and setting up roadblocks at the entrance of our subdivision? How would I feel if we had to go about our business at gunpoint, stopped and challenged and frisked each time we crossed the boundaries of our neighborhood?

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Sinking Ship-of-Fools in Washington

posted by ewing2001 on Tuesday November 04, @02:47PM

The Corporate Media abandons the sinking Ship-of-Fools in Washington

By Les Blough -November 4

The New York Times reports that Paul Bremer and others in the Bush regime are complaining bitterly about the media's coverage of post-war Iraq. After supporting the idea of an unprovoked war on Iraq and the war itself through it's "embedded reporters", would the NYT have us believe the corporate media has been objective and neutral about the war all along?

The real story in the New York Times article (1) about Paul Bremer's complaints about the media is not just about a political bum moaning about a great media-watchdog - as the NYT would have us believe.

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Why is this Tragedy allowed to continue?

posted by ewing2001 on Sunday November 02, @08:17PM

By Tonie61

3 November, 2003

Dubya is on a campaign tour hypocritically touting the increase in the economy--he fails to mentions that even the latest encouraging numbers include even more job losses, and in Iraq 15 US soldiers are attacked as a SAM in Iraq downed their chopper. He and his PNAC boys are complaining about the filter, but they don’t mention that the US is failing in the Iraq occupation.

The reasons we are failing is because both Dubya’s chief agent of destruction, the man who gets his jollies with “Shock and Awe” Rummy, is doing a deplorable job, as is the “I‘ll take all of the credit, but none of the blame“, Commander-in-Chief.

The Chinook helicopter believed carrying soldiers en route home for leave was struck by a missile and crashed west of Baghdad on Sunday, killing 15 soldiers and wounding more than 20 others. Lately the terrorists are demoralizing the US soldiers--how can it be worse for morale than getting killed while going on R. and R.?

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We are all expendable foot soldiers

posted by ewing2001 on Sunday October 19, @05:49PM

We are all expendable foot soldiers

By Tonie 61 -October 19

We are all pawns in Dubya’s schemes. Some of us are not soldiers, but we might as well be in garrison US. Since the US economy is being destroyed to give his buddies, the top 1% everything, while funneling every last cent into the high-tech, bloated military, we can say we are under the control of the military’s payroll. Do you doubt that?

Read the articles “Fiscal Doomsday in the Offing” by David Broder and “Stating the Obvious”, by Paul Krugman which portray Dubya not as a typical “compassionate conservative, but as a radical GOP swindler raping the US. He is ruining our economy and intentionally destroying our social service network, for GOP political advantage.

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One true word?

posted by ewing2001 on Friday October 17, @06:27AM

Where is?

By Tonie61 -October 16

Where is Bin laden?
Where is Hussein?
Where is the coalition that Dubya promised both the US Congress and the UN he would get before he attacked Iraq?

Where are the WMD?
Where is one sign that Hussein was an imminent threat to the US?
Where is an intelligence agent who thought that there was an allegiance between bin laden and Hussein? bin laden labeled Hussein as being a bad, socialistic, Muslim, so this makes no sense, doesn’t it?

Where are the Iraqis who would greet us as liberators?

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Lies about Iraq rise to level of the absurd

posted by ewing2001 on Friday October 17, @04:56AM

Lies about Iraq rise to level of the absurd

AJC.com -October 16

By Jay Bookman

Lies beget more lies; a policy built on deception will always require further deception to sustain itself.

Case in point: The campaign by leading members of the Bush administration to rebuild faltering support for their invasion of Iraq. To hear them tell it, everything that has happened since last March has just proved how right they've been all along.

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Atomic Veterans revisited through depleted uranium

posted by admin on Thursday October 16, @09:15AM
from the letters-to-the-editor dept.

Vincent L Guarisco writes "

Atomic Veterans Revisited Through Depleted Uranium Exposure

Written by
Vincent L Guarisco
Axis of Logic editorial
October 15, 2003

" I ask you, what is the difference between 30 million people dead and 130 million people dead? ... With 30 million dead, the United States can survive..."~~Edward Teller, nuclear physicist and 'father' of the H-Bomb.

Welcome to the 21st century uranium slaughtergate, an age-old curse where the forsaken still inherit a radiated death sentence after more than 50 years of tearful grave digging.

I am the offspring of an Atomic Veteran, and I have been in "shock and awe" my entire life over the hushed-up military practice of wanton execution -- I have had to come to grips with the reality of how our government criminally maims, disables and kills anyone at will and with impunity.

History is a useful prognostic tool if those who record it archive it with accuracy and without revision. But as long as recorded history continues to be twisted and suppressed by those above the law, our nation will never learn anything from its mistakes. America will continue to stumble on blindly -- repeatedly victimized by those who write this fairytale from hell with pens literally dipped in the spilled blood of its citizens.

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On the Road to Fascism

posted by ewing2001 on Friday October 10, @07:27AM
from the Durango-Herald dept.

On the road to Fascism

United States is taking on all the defining characteristics

Durango Herald -October 5, 2003

Photos: Christine Eleanor Anderson, Ross A. Worley

We believe that the United States of America is drifting towards its own version of fascism.

Fascism, whatever its particular national characteristics, is inherently a destruction of the "old order" of a country its laws, its culture, its internal politics and its international relations. Fascists govern within existing systems until parallel systems are in place. Once those systems are in position, the evolution from national populism to fascism is unstoppable. Fascist states are internally destructive. When they become externally destructive, they are destroyed from outside.

Characteristics of fascist states include:

Fascist countries project that they are in a permanent or long-term state of war. (Example: We are in an endless war on terrorism.) Fascist countries invade other countries without provocation. (Example: pre-emptive war against Iraq.) We tried the Germans at Nuremberg for exactly this offense.

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Mainstream Thoughts about PNAC and the "9/11-Iraq connection"

posted by ewing2001 on Wednesday October 08, @04:45AM
from the Star-Tribune dept.

Iraq/ It was never about Sept. 11

Star Tribune - October 7, 2003

Two years ago today, the first American bombs fell on Afghanistan. It was the opening of the military segment in the war on terrorism, coming just a few days short of one month after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

America and the world had waited expectantly for this shoe to drop; it was well accepted that the attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden and his followers -- and that they were being shielded by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The world was with the United States two years ago; indeed, it was eager to help. Since then, that unity has crumbled to dust, not least because of the go-it-alone arrogance the Bush administration demonstrated from the outset. But by far the largest fracture occurred because of the administration's efforts to portray the preemptive attack it wanted to mount against Iraq as part of the post-Sept. 11 war on terror.

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The Dogs of War

posted by ewing2001 on Monday October 06, @03:18PM
from the Tonie61 dept.

The Dogs of War

By Tonie61

October 6

"We all have our dark side to say the least, but dealing in death is the nature of the beast”!
Who, except for the aging ex-hippies, knows that song lyric?

Pink Floyd’s “Dogs of War” being unleashed by their silent transfers in marbled halls. Well Dubya, the Flim-Flam man--merchant of death, uses it as his credo. Once the wolfish Dubya acquired his first taste of blood, it became an irresistible appetite. He has slowly understood that you can good profits in ripping off US suckers, but you get your biggest bonanzas by raping and pillaging oil rich countries.

That a host of our fine US boys and girls die in combat is a shame, but getting the cream off the top will require some sacrifice.

Besides, we must show our enemies that the US won’t run away from a confrontation at the first little problem. The PNAC boys say we must be tough and stay no matter what the cost.

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Attack against Syria was no Surprise

posted by ewing2001 on Sunday October 05, @05:33PM
from the Ewing2001 dept.

The attack against Syria comes with no real surprise

By Ewing2001

October 6, 2003

It was long planned by the NeoCon Think Tank PNAC, a Washington-Jerusalem committee of JINSA- and IASPS-related members.
(GFP and/or Ewing2001 reported since late 2001).

In 2000, the study, "Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The US Role", was co-authored by Daniel Pipes, who has just been nominated by Bush to a post at the US Institute of Peace, and Ziad Abdelnour, who heads a group founded by him called the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL).

The study was released by Pipes' group, the Middle East Forum.

Among the signers are many PNAC-members and several senior members of the administration of President George W Bush, including the chief Middle East aide on the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, and Michael Rubin and David Wurmser, senior consultants to both the State Department and the Pentagon on Iraq policy.

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Ex-CIA McGovern: Conscience Before Career

posted by ewing2001 on Thursday October 02, @09:26PM
from the TomPaine dept.

Conscience Before Career

TomPaine.com -October 2

Photo: Ray McGovern (with Dennis Kucinich)

"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors." George H. W. Bush, 1999

What could have been going through the heads of senior White House officials when they decided to expose a CIA officer working under deep cover? Why would they want to blow the cover of Valerie Plame, wife of former United States Ambassador Joseph Wilson?

What will the FBI find out? It is not altogether reassuring to learn that John Dion is heading the investigation. Dion is widely known in intelligence circles as one who does not feel he can go to the bathroom without first asking the Justice Department for permission. Sadly, we can expect the kind of "full and thorough investigation" that Richard Nixon ordered then-Attorney General John Mitchell to conduct into Watergate.

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Schwarzenegger the Liar

posted by ewing2001 on Thursday October 02, @12:03AM
from the Jackson-Thoreau dept.

Schwarzenegger and Interest Money

By Jackson Thoreau -October 2

Update: Schwarzenegger's Nazi ties
Sex, Lies and Hitlerotape (By Ewing2001)

Forget for a moment that Arnold Schwarzenegger has pretty much gotten a free ride from the mainstream and scandal-sheet media, which have largely refused to investigate numerous reports of the Terminator cheating on his wife in recent years and even sexually assaulting women.

Forget that if Schwarzenegger was running as a Democrat, you wouldn't see all of the national and Californian Republican hypocrites genuflecting before him as if he was a god - they'd be labeling him a liar and cheater and worse names.

If you don't care about how Schwarzenegger cheated on his wife and lied about it many more times than President Clinton, consider the following lies made by Schwarzenegger:

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Leaker is a Martian with a voice imitator

posted by ewing2001 on Wednesday October 01, @11:54PM
from the Tony61 dept.

"Leakergate" and the FBI

By Tonie 61 -October 2

Robert D. Novak wrote his July 14 column outing Mr. Wilson’s wife, but the major media let it alone, until they found out that CIA Director George J. Tenet had asked the Justice Department to look into the matter for possible violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

It was essentially ignored for ten weeks until the evening of Sept. 26, when MSNBC.com and NBC News broke the news of the CIA's request to the Justice Department. In the opinion of Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, "The truth is, the press blew it on this one. The story was out there and very few picked up on it."

Briefly, remember how recently the media went crazy about the Clinton impeachment? Early on I read moderate sources saying that although the GOP House came up with their articles that Republic Senator Leader, at that time Trent Lott, would rapidly throw the foolish escapade to a screeching halt-which he did. Why did the media cover something that they knew was going to be discarded as a farce? It was solely for the political gain of the GOP. See the pattern?

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